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

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So you have to be mentally ill to have any belief in God?? Yes, some people who have mental illnesses are Christians. Some are also athiests, or other religions. Same can be said of those without mental illnesses. They belong to ALL religious groups, including Christianity and athiesm.

I know there are people who stand out on the streets and shout hell and damnation to all who pass by. Those people annoy me. As a Christian, I see them as off-putting and judgmental. I hope they are the minority. the vast majority of Christians in my experience are not like that.

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I got the figure from something you don't believe in. An objective survey.

"Inglehart et al (2004) found that 22% of those in New Zealand do not believe in God, and Paul (2002) found that 20% of New Zealanders are atheist or agnostic." - http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/atheism.html

You're probably not capable of taking that to its logical conclusion, so let me help you out. If 20% of New Zealanders either refuse to believe in god or refuse to commit to a belief in god, the remaining 80% (100-20=80) of the population must believe.

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A more succintly accurate summary of your presence on this site has never been published. The difference is that I can stop being childish at any time. You know how it is. It's like a genius can act stupid, but a stupid person can't act like a genius. A great athlete can act clumsy, but a clutz can't act athletic. And so on.

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So you have to be mentally ill to have any belief in God??"

Aha. Standard Christian failure to understand how logic works.

What I SAID was that, among many, many other things that contribute to this country having a general cultural saturation with Christianity, mentally ill people stand in the street shouting and holding Bibles. This is not something that is open to debate, since it is a readily observable fact on the streets of any major city. You acknowledge that I'm not making it up.

But what you decided to read and react to was an assertion that all people who believe in God are mentally ill. That is not something I said, or even implied.

The symptom of mental illness is the standing in the street and shouting aggressively at strangers. The fact of holding a Bible is *almost* incidental, except it's very relevant to my point, which is the ubiquity of Christianity in our culture. Religion on its own is not a symptom of mental illness, per se, merely, in my opinion, a weakness and inability to deal with reality without the crutch of an imaginary friend.

What I *hope* is that you are dishonest and are deliberately twisting my words to try to make me look bad. I'd prefer that to the possibility that you're too stupid to understand what it was I said.

SoRB

I'm sorry if I took your words out of context. I merely wish to understand what you are meaning in order to respond appropriately.

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Do you mean, then, that those people who do go out onto the streets and preach are all mentally ill? I'm sure some are. I know that symptoms to mental illnesses are wide and can include such behaviour. So are those who participate in riots, strike action, protests, and similar, where they are on the streets and shouting, also mentally ill?

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So you are saying you have a better grip on reality than billions of others across the world? Surely Christianity has a far better impact on peoples lives than the crutches of alcoholism, illegal drug use, poronography, and any other addiction or dependancy we could mention. How many people say that they turned to alcoholism and it changed their live for the better?

"I'm sorry if I took your words out of context."

Why not just take them in context? It saves so much time.

"Do you mean, then, that those people who do go out onto the streets and preach are all mentally ill?"

Perhaps not *all*. Most, probably. Wildly unbalanced at the very least. Most definitely not the sort of people who should be allowed to be in charge of a motor vehicle or children.

"are those who participate in riots, strike action, protests, and similar, where they are on the streets and shouting, also mentally ill?"

I find your examples baffling. Let's see what you're trying to compare here:

- the act of standing on the street and haranguing passers-by about your imaginary friend
- the act of reacting violently, as part of a large group, to some provocation (e.g. the broadcast of a tape of someone being beaten by policemen)
- the act of reacting, usually as part of a large group, to poor employment conditions by withdrawing one's labour
- the act of reacting non-violently, as part of a large group, to some provocation (e.g. your government planning to start an illegal war against a nation that is no threat).

Note the use of the word "reacting", in every case except that of preaching. Mentally stable people do not stand in the street shouting without provocation. Mentally stable people *might* shout in the street in reaction to extreme provocation. You see the important difference?

"So you are saying you have a better grip on reality than billions of others across the world?"

Oh for f**k's sake. I'm saying what I'm saying. What is a "grip on reality"?

What I'm saying is that I can face reality without the crutch of an imaginary friend. If *you* think that makes me superior - good.

"Surely Christianity has a far better impact on peoples lives than the crutches of alcoholism, illegal drug use, poronography, and any other addiction or dependancy we could mention"

I think I see your point. You're acknowledging that Christianity is an unfortunate dependency, like alcoholism, but pointing out that it can have better outcomes than that. And I agree.

And alcoholism has better outcomes than heroin use. So, we have a nice sliding scale... at the top of which, surely, is no need for dependency on anything at all outside of oneself?

SoRB

You made a mistake, SoRB, which is, I think, an unusual one for you but a very common one for me. You have to be careful not only of the meaning of your words, but of the implications which could be read into them. You are by no means responsible for everything that people think you say, but a line like "Mentally ill people stand in the street shouting and holding Bibles" is a prime candidate for misinterpretation and should probably have been followed by some form of qualification.

I feel guilty about the amount of time I spend on h2g2 and consequently tend to read very fast. I'm sure some others are similar. Misunderstandings are common and should be expected, especially on sensitive issues.



"But what you decided to read and react to was an assertion that all people who believe in God are mentally ill. That is not something I said, or even implied."

But you do imply (elsewhere) that they're stupid. This is in some cases demonstrably untrue, though I'll accept that intelligence is not the same as wisdom.

TRiG.

Questioner: What will you say when you die and meet your maker?
Bertrand Russell: Why have you made the evidence for your existence so insufficient?



It was something like that, anyway.



Actually, this is an interesting theoretical question. How would you, the athiest, behave when faced with incontrevertible proof of a religion (any religion)? It's not necesseraly related to Pascal's wager. The point is that it is emotionally difficult to rid yourself of any fundamental belief. Humans are not purely logical beings.

TRiG.

I know you ask the question hypothetically, but when I was very young my mother turned me into a Catholic.

A Catholic?!

I got better.

Anyway, having lived through such a dramatic paradigm shift, I can tell you exactly how I felt at the moment I concluded the nonexistence of god. I was relieved and excited. I was so excited by the implications that I threw myself into a multi-pronged scholastic effort over the next several years, of which this article formed a part.

Should I be faced with incontrovertible evidence of the existence of god, I imagine I would react pretty much the same way. I'd have a million questions to ask.

Faced with incontrovertible proof of God's existance I would have no other choice than to conclude that God exists. Any other honest person who came to the conclusion there is no God via logical means would have to do the same.

However, there isn't any, is there?

Ste

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There's no proof *either way*! I find the logical reasons for not believing in God unconvincing, as much so, as others find the 'logical proofs' of God's existence unconvincing.

There are indications, and plenty of them,of God's existence, but there isn't proof in the mathematical/formal logical sense, and never can be.

However, see the God Fact or fiction thread and Toxxin's Kalam site.

One site about it.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rossuk/existenc.htm

And this is a very interesting one!
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/adam01.html

So in the absence of proof of God we should just go ahead and say "ok"?

Is that faith? I freely admit I have no idea what faith is, perhaps people of faith can give us atheists and insight into what it means and how it works?

You cannot prove the non-existence of anything. Therefore you have to prove the existence of that something. I can state that the dodo is not extinct and you cannot disprove it.

That proof, or even a slight smidgen of evidence, has never been anywhere close to forthcoming. That's why faith is necessary, no?



Ste

"Christian think tank"

"I find the logical reasons for not believing in God unconvincing"

You might just as well say you find the mathematical underpinnings of the theory of general relativity unconvincing. You are not intellectually equipped to understand that mathematics, so your opinion on its validity is irrelevant. Believe it, or don't, it's up to you, but that has no effect on how convincing it is to someone who *understands* it.

Similarly, you have repeatedly and clearly demonstrated that you lack even a basic understanding of logic. Therefore your rejection of logical modes of argument is not relevant to how convincing they are to people equipped to understand them.

There is no proof either way for the existence of unicorns. There is no proof either way for the existence of fairies. There is no proof either way for the existence of dragons, or the gods of ancient Greece, or Rome, or India, or Japan etc. etc. etc. I could go on (and frequently do...). If you were to accept, unquestioningly, the existence of anything which can't be proven NOT to exist, you'd never have time to have a life, because you'd spend your entire time placating a bestiary of deities from around the world who would surely smite you if you did not.

Universal credulousness such as you recommend is, to me an excellent idea. While you're at it, I've got a lovely house in Birmingham with views of the moutains and the beach, very reasonable price to you...

SoRB

Not panicing yet:



Tut tut. Here we go again, a Christian trying to make out that athiesm is a religion. Athiesm is not a religion. It is not really anything. It is something that the church decided to call people who have no truck with and do not believe that there exists any supernatural beings.

I for one am not and do not call myself an athiest. I am just me - a human being getting on with life. The fact that I do not believe in the supernatural does not mean that people who do believe in it can pigeon-hole me into a category for their own needs. I have no need for a label past male homosapien. Just because you need to label yourself do not start sticking labels on others when they do not want them.

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Yes, a completely theoretical question as there is no such proof. And I agree with Ste that if such proof were shown to exist (similar to proving the Sun doesn't orbit the Earth) then I'd see no reason not to accept it. Except that such proof about religions doesn't exist.

I have no religion but I would not consider myself an atheist. And I quite agree with Alfster and other so-called atheists that this term is quite meaningless except to theists who feel a need to label others in relation to their own beliefs.

So Alfster (for example) only *becomes* an atheist when asked if he believes in someone else's personal god concept. Otherwise he's just Alfster, happily living his life without any gods in it. I quite happily live my life without any faeries in it, so should I be labelled as an afaeryist?


az

Well, one person's answered the question, anyway. Thanks, Blatherskite.

For some reason, I imagine that the approriate parallel scenario for the theist is not proof in the non-existance of God (which, as has been pointed out, is never going to be absolute or clear-cut), but proof that another religion, a despised religion, was right all along. How would I react if I discovered that the Muslims or -- please God, no! -- the Roman Catholics were worshipping the true God?

Shock, I think, is the immediate answer. The questions would follow.

TRiG.

<< I can state that the dodo is not extinct and you cannot disprove it.>>

An interesting analogy, Ste! I *canb* say that there is a 98% chance the dodo is extinct, based on the fact that no one has seen one since the 18th century. However, there could be a colony of dodos somewhere... Take the giant moa, here in NZ, back in 1993, a local publican out on a tramping trip claimed to have seen one - as did his companions on the trip. In the 12 years since then, it's been generally accepted that he was publicising his hostelry.

However, no one has proven that...

You think my argument about not being able to prove a negative, stinks. Fairy 'nuff. But it remains true.

"You think my argument about not being able to prove a negative, stinks. Fairy 'nuff. But it remains true."



SoRB

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No I'm not. I've seen lives changed and released from various addictions because of becoming a Christian.

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Sounds like it happened against your will.

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What kind of "logical proof" would you like? If someone walked up to you in the street and introduced himself as God you'd have him taken to the nearest psychiatric unit.

<> Alfster

Well if a religion like Christianity is believing in a divine being etc, and athoesm is not beieving in those things, tthen athiesm can be described as believing that there is *not* a God, etc. It comprised beliefs of a religion nature in that they hold a belif that God does not exist.