h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>filling in the gaps so to speak.

Spot on! Seeing triangles where there are none

>>"Spiritual belief may have come not from rustlings, but from an intelligent and rational yearning for more understanding, filling in the gaps so to speak."

...Or from kids believing the bogey-man tales their parents tell them to keep them safe, or the just-so stories they invent to silence the endless "Why?"

To a large extent, yes...but the religious would say that this isn't *all* of what religion does. Objectively, we have to accept that there are subjective reports of epiphanic experiences, etc. etc.

It does seem likely that there's something neurological going on. I'd like to specualate - and it *is* only speculation - that this is connected to the human abilities for abstract reasoning and pattern-matching. We are rewarded with endorphin rushes or similar for making connections between sensory inputs. For, as Math puts it, "filling in the gaps".

(Filling in the gaps is an essential survival skill. We get through the world with very little actual information. Eg, your and my peripheral vision is very indistinct. Yet we can still 'see' the things around us. We abstract and fill in the gaps from memory)

Personally, I find biological explanations such as this *infinitely* more wondrous than spiritual tosh.

For Math for taking all my ignorant and cheeky jabs in the manner in which they are intended and always giving illuminating responses.

Hi Eddie et al

I'll start with as aside... the present title of our discussion is 'Deluded Minority'. As you rationalists seem to be in the minority on this planet in what way are you deluded?

I wasn't getting at you personally Eddie about the 'dumb ancients' mentality. It is, however, a prevalent belief that they were not as clever as us cos' hey we got all this great stuff now right?

My reference to the Kalahari bushmen was meant to illustrate that the last few neolithic hunter-gatherers we have today are really quite smart, despite their lack of a modern education or any of the 'great stuff'.

One fact you may enjoy is that out here on the fringe we have a lot of fritterers and fruitcakes. People who'll believe just about anything, immanent dragons, angels on your shoulder, psychic crystal healing, love potions (no not rohipnol - more like cough mixture), flower faeries etc.

To someone like you, or me for that matter, their baseless fantasies they are chum in the water. Easy meat. They have not actually experienced any of this, they've read it in a book or had it told to them at a psychic fair, and now believe it with child-like innocence. BTW the next robed twit who tells me to look on the world like a child will get a bash on the nose and his conkers stolen (I wasn't a nice child).

If you are willing to pass on through this circus though you will come to people who are intelligent and sincere and have real experiences that make them question the established order of the universe. They use reason and research as their tools to test their models but don't back away necessarily when their answers seems impossible. That is where I and my friends are. We accept science, logic, Occam and all the rest but are just mad enough to take the extra step for truth exists at the edge of madness.

Blessings,
Matholwch y Bara Brith .

Thanks BB

A man that cannot laugh at himself should not have mirrors in his house.

I know that I am the March Hare at this particular tea party, but amongst the ramblings I am glad someone can occasionally discern a nugget of truth.

Blessings,
Madtholwch .

I suspect you're changing, Math. It wasn't too long ago that *you* were imploring *me* to look upon the world with a child-like sense of wonder, and I was reminding you that sometimes children are barking mad. Unless I was hallucinating again.

One of us, one of us, one of us...

Now..about those robes...

Hi Eddie

I am always changing, it's what learning does to you, maybe you should try it sometime, it's fun.

Perhaps when you acknowledge that my gods are real then I'll be 'one of us' From where I stand I can just about see the box you have built to contain your perceptions.

As for robes, Google 'feral druidry'.

Blessings,
Matholwch .

The robes? I was just referring to those ones of yours you said were green. Unless I was hallucinating again.

But, hey, if you've stopped advocating OBOD courses, you've stopped looking upon the world with childlike awe and you've taken your robes off (), maybe there;s hope you'll be ditching these gods yet. They do say that all religions eventually aspire towards atheism...

Hi Eddie

I do own a green frock, wore it once at a community event, felt like a complete fraud and its now lagging the tank in the airing cupboard.

I do however, recommend the lesser known course provided by friends in the Albion Conclave. This is a lot free'r, and I believe it has a stronger scholarly basis.

Atheism is for those who refuse to believe what they see and feel. It is a sad and lonely path from which the only escape is the oblivion of death.

Waiting for the thunder of hooves...

Blessings,
Matholwch .

Oh, I know fine well what I see and feel. But it comes from my head, not from spooks. And roll on oblivion, I say. The certain knowledge that when we're dead we're done makes life all the more precious. Yearning for an afterlife is for the timid.

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Atheism comprises many different paths, as you well know. For me, I don't see anything supernatural, and that's what I believe. That there is no supernatural. For those of us who decide that our beliefs are based on what (we perceive) *actually* exists, it is simply an insult to decry our beliefs on the basis that they don't fit with your morals.

Blessings back atcha.

Hi Pedro and Ed-ro

Atheism is a bourgeois intellectual conceit. I cannot insult an absence of belief. It's like railing against the dark - it doesn't exist so my cries are in vain.

As for my morals - you assume too much young Pedro, or perhaps you would like to list them for me? Try my front page for a concise description of them and let me know which ones you disagree with huh?

Carpe tenebrum,
Matholwch .

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Shite. It's an honest opinion of how the world works. Nothing more. Any views I have follow on from what actually exists, not what I might like to be there.

As for morals, maybe that was the wrong phrase. Maybe I should've used 'beardy intellectual conceit'.

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If life is sad and lonely for atheists (*your* interpretation, not mine) then that's because the world works that way, not because I want it to be thus. Nature's not moral, old Math, and pretending it is doesn't make it so.

PS. Concise?!

Hi Pedalo

No atheism is not a statement of how the world works. Science is such a thing but not atheism. Atheism is a denial of another's belief, it is a negative.

I am beardy, possibly intellectual (maybe 'aspiring intellectual' would be closer) and often conceited - correct on all three. But at least I am honest. Are you a bourgeois intellectual pedro?

I never, ever said nature is moral, this is your assumption about my beliefs again. As Eddie will attest I am very much nature red in tooth and claw man.

Blessings,
Matholwch .

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Hmm, perhaps. For me, I can't see any reason to believe, based on how the world works, on any supernatural beings. Therefore I am an atheist. So maybe I'm just conflating the two things, although one follows from the other. It's only a negative in the sense that it contradicts others' beliefs. Pretty much the way *your* beliefs contradict most others'.

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Maybe, I haven't really considered it before. Like you, aspiring would definitely be a better description. And I am certainly honest. Are you implying all atheists are in denial here, or just trying to undermine my argument? (I can do that myself, thanks)

As an aside, why would being bourgeois weaken my conclusions?

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Oops, you didn't, no. I'm getting confuzzled again. Sorry

>>I am beardy, possibly intellectual (maybe 'aspiring intellectual' would be closer)

How about 'pseudo-intellectual'.


Semper in das Wimpy
EtB
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btw - on what grounds do you believe I'm sad and lonely?

Hi Pedalo

I don't believe in supernatural beings but I have experience of natural ones that defy modern scientific explanation. Not that I believe that they always will, just that our science has not yet got that far.

Like most humans we fool ourselves and narrow our perspectives with a series of convenient or self-protective filters. This includes those atheists who simply deny the truth of anything that has the faintest taint of the supernatural or superstition.

From my perspective atheists are in denial, just like from yours I am delusionary.

But hey that doesn't mean we can't be friends

As for 'bourgeois', well that's my old pretentious proletarian prejudices rising to the surface

Blessings,
Matholwch .