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

Oh..and btw...the other PC and I are already singing from the same hymn sheet. As it were.

psychocandy! It was Ed I was teasing, not you, who I don't really know well enough. Yet! Sorry for not making that clear.

Ed: Which one of us is the *other* PC?

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I think you are P-C and I am PC. Between the two of us, we should be able to confuse ourselves thoroughly.

But hwat I want to know is who's hymn sheet Ed is singing from...? Not mine, surely?

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The Flying Spaghetti Monster wants me for a sunbeam, a sunbeam, a sunbeam...

If you say so

After all that merry banter , I forget what we were talking about....

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He's mangled your brain with His Noodly Appendage!

PC: <>

This begs the question: in what way is religion helpful? It is often stated that religion helps people, but how does it help? How is its help measured? What empirical data do we have to support it? I often find this stated as axiomatic, but there is no data to support this a priori assumption.

Christianity, for example, preaches love and teaches shame. The day I chucked it all felt *really* good.

And begs the counter: in what way is atheism helpful? It is often stated that religion hinders people and by inference a state of atheism is intellectually superior. How is its superiority as a philosophy measured? What empirical data do we have to support it? I often find this stated as axiomatic, but there is no data to support this a priori assumption.

Poke,
Matholwch /|\

Religion is helpful because it gives (or can give) focus, purpose, community, company and support. For a start. Atheism gives people a reason to avoid you at parties, and, er.... Did I forget anything?

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Hey! The fact that people avoid me at parties has nothing to do with me being an athiest!

Well...I wasn't at a party at the weekend, but at dinner with a group of friends. There was quite a stimulating discussion between two atheist fundamentalists and a new-agey yoga teacher. Beats talking about house prices at least.

Matholwch's question is excellent. Let me try my best at a sincere answer.

Atheism is not a doctrine. It is not a way of life. It will not of itself tell you anything about how to live your life or how the universe works. It will not help you through times of heartache. We can also find amongst those who profess no religion the whole spectrum of human morality, from nice to nasty. (Same for the religious, but that's by the by.)

So...something more is needed. I'm arguing (strongly! ) that this something is not irrational religion. The answer isn't in a book. It isn't in the ancient traditions of bygone peoples. We have to think out real-world answers for ourselves...'real-world' being important here: we can't start by basing anything on fictitious entities.

Religion militates against this rational approach in two ways. Firstly, it has a lot of historical baggage whereby - in some but not all cases -adherents get hung up on ancient concepts of the divine and scriptures of dubious provenance. But even in the more free-flowing faiths the bar has been set too low for what constitutes a valid belief: even those who reject implausible folk deities are hapy to run with undemonstrable, vague god-thingies.

So...what *is* needed? I suppose the best way to sum it up is as a combination of empiricism and pragmatic humanism:
Empiricism: Only believe in that which you have evidence for (oh...and by the way...that evidence has to be shared with others. Don't go obeying mysterious voices in your head!)
Pragmatic humanism: I want to be as happy as I am able. I assume that others want to also. So how can we muddle along to achieve this?

I can happily expand on this - it would make a change from the usual 'oh yes it is'/'oh no it isn't' debate - but that's enough for starters.

Some have found standing on the shoulders of giants to be helpful. Do you really think you must work all this out for yourself, that no-one in the history of humankind has already discovered what you're looking for? If they have, then take a short-cut and learn from them. If not, maybe you're far too weird, and should consider changing yourself, or trading yourself in for a more conventional model?

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Good point. By 'us' I meant Humanity as a collective. And, yes, there were indeed giants, and some of those were religious. God made sense to them. But fictitious gods also led many to daft - and often downright harmful conclusions.

Fortunately, with the Empirical Enlightenment other giants emerged. We no longer have an excuse for swallowing the irrational.

And certainly nobody in history can give us an off-the-shelf answer. In science...we're still learning. In how to live our lives...O tempora, o mores!

Good question, Matholwch, but somewhat flawed since those who do not believe in the existence of God (or fairies) cannot, and I suspect would not wish to, be grouped under one philosophical banner.

Unlike the adherents of organised religions, we are quite free to be our own philosophers, and are wary of standing upon the shoulders of others.

Being an atheist does not necessarily make me intellectually
superior, but yes I do believe that dealing with reality and ignoring superstition is harder and more 'helpful' than accepting the crutch that religions offer.

>but yes I do believe that dealing with reality and ignoring superstition is harder and more 'helpful' than accepting the crutch that religions offer<

Ditto. That sums it up quite nicely from where I'm sitting, too.

A crutch is a form of support, and we are a social species. And yet "crutch" in this context is normally interpreted as negative or undesirable....

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Pedant!

Delete 'crutch'. Insert 'readily available but unsupported answers.'

Yes, mutual support between humans is 'a good thing'. You don't need religion to assert that. Indeed, the track record of religion suggests that it will be hit-and-miss whether adherents genuinely take that from the random smorgasbord that faiths offer.

So let's just cut out the unnecessary flim-flam and start being good?

OK, so how do we know we're "dealing with reality" and "ignoring superstition"? What are the telltale signs in each/either case?

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