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

All religions are pathetic crutches. If people were truly willing to face the results of their decisions, they wouldn't need a god. Gods were invented in a time when there were no better explanations for the way things are. There was a time when people thought the word was flat. Now we know better and set aside silly ideas.
Over time, polititions learned to manipulate religion towards their own agendas. There is true power to be had in mind control.
When a religion dies it is called mythology. Be it Greek, Roman, Hebrew or Arab; It's all a big load of s**t. The day the world wakes up and takes responsibility for itself and it's actions is the day all people are free. If you don't have that crutch of a god to come and make everything alright, will you live the same way?
I'm an atheist and think in terms of today and tomorrow. How will what I do today effect the world my kids inherit tomorrow. Plain and simple. No fear of hell or a plague. Just refusal to fail the future.

The only trouble with a mass debate is that a lot people end up talking a load of w**k. So here I go...

God? Fiction.

Got to thinking today - imagine a world that had religion but had never had science. Don't need much imagination really, it existed right here for centuries. Result - massive infant mortality and an average lifespan in the thirties or forties, intolerance, superstition, mass slaughter based on minor differences of mode of worship and prayer as the cure for cholera.

Now imagine a world that had science, but had *never* had religion - none at all. *Not* a world where it was suppressed - a world where it had simply never occurred to anyone to blame anything on or ask anything of a god. No Judaism, no Christianity, no Islam, nothing. What would that world look like?

No fundamentalists. No Creationism. No Northern Ireland problem. In all probability, no September 11th. No astrology. No Holocaust. No Inquisition. No Crusades. Morality based on pragmatism, and hence rooted in the past but not so unrealistic as to be stuck there - able to adjust to changes in the nature of reality. Example: Pragmatic morality does not ban or even condemn contraception - it DEMANDS it, for everyone, whenever they want it, for free, because increasing population is a threat to the planet. Pragmatic morality does not require circumcision, because people nowadays have enough water to wash every day.

Better, or worse? Just to put my cards on the table, I'm an atheist, and I've thought just a tiny, little along this particular line, and I can't see any way in which a world with religion in it is in any way preferable to a world where it had just never happened. I think we'd all be a lot better of without it.

Of course, now it's here, it's too late (and if what I've read about a theory of the development of the mind is even close to accurate, you couldn't have conscious humans without religion - it's kind of a side effect of the species developing consciousness). You can't suppress it - the Soviet Union tried and failed, among others, and in any case, if people want to believe the moon is made of green cheese and that the tooth fairy is in the pay of the British Dental Association they should have that right.

But wouldn't the world be *better*, if NOBODY had religion? I don't know, and I'm interested what people think...

H.

WOW! I wish I had said that. Bravo, bravo.

Hi Hoovooloo and All
I think you're right in most respects, particularly on the evil that flows from Western Religions (my take in Post 19).
But I don't think atheism is a very intelligent stance either.
Can all this be explained by science? Manifestly not. A lot of it can, but there are some crucial pieces of man's knowledge missing. Man needs some humility about the Limit Of (his) Scientific Knowledge, or the highly-scientific people your religion-free world would just find another excuse for perpetrating atrocities - and possibly self-destruction. There are examples of the Evil of Science as well as the Evil of Religion too, remember. (Just don't get me started on the Evil of Money, that's all)
LOSK is a pretty odd God. His worshippers strive legitimately to diminish him, but fear the last remaining vestiges of his wrath. In the meantime, though, they respect their planet and (because their knowledge is incomplete) they consider themselves no better than their fellow men. Inculcating such respect is just about all a religion can contribute, really.
I'd call myself agnostic. I haven't ever quite decided whether Buddhism or Wicca are the truest religions. I just know that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are very bad for mankind, and that we can only hope that their ultimate decadence and decline passes off reasonably peacefully.
P.

Hiya Pinniped,

Glad to see at least some of what I said gets your seal of approval (sorry, couldn't resist ).

>But I don't think atheism is a very intelligent stance either.

What's unintelligent about it? I look at the world and don't see any evidence of any gods. People used to look at the sun and see a god. Now most intelligent people look at the sun and see a ball of fusing hydrogen and helium nuclei a little over 90 million miles away. People used to look at the moon and see a goddess. Now most intelligent people look at the moon and see a ball of rock a quarter of a million miles away. People used to see lightning and blame it on the gods, now most intelligent people see lightning and blame it on a difference in electrical potential.

Atheists look at this progression, and look around at the world, and ask, "isn't the idea of gods just something we made up to fill in the gaps?".

>Can all this be explained by science? Manifestly not. A lot of it can, but there are some crucial pieces of man's knowledge missing.

Yes, absolutely, and there always will be. Science, unlike religion, does NOT claim to be able to answer everything. But why do you need a god to fill in the gaps, and doesn't it tell you something that year by year, this god gets smaller and smaller?

>Man needs some humility about the Limit Of (his) Scientific Knowledge,

But one of the achievements of science is that it not only recognises the limit of its knowledge, in one area at least it has actually QUANTIFIED it. Any physicist will tell you there are certain things one can know, and as a result certain other things which will be forever *unknowable*. That's a fundamental feature of the universe, and science pointed it out.

>or the highly-scientific people your religion-free world would just find another excuse for perpetrating atrocities - and possibly self-destruction.

Name one atrocity, just one, perpetrated in the name of "science". Careful, now - various people have used "science" as a cover. I don't want to hear about things perpetrated in the cause of politics (e.g. use of nuclear weapons), I'm not interested in things done out of racist bigotry (e.g. medical experiments in concentration camps), and don't bring up anything where scientific results were turning a profit, because it's the profit that's the problem, NOT the science (e.g. Bhopal).

Science gives us the means for self-destruction, sure - but more importantly it gives us the means to recognise and AVOID the possibility self-destruction. Not one of the world's religions warned us about global warming or the environmental consequences of the use of CFCs, for example. Religion has so far proven to be next to useless as a cure for AIDS, malaria, cholera, measles, smallpox etc. etc. etc.

>There are examples of the Evil of Science as well as the Evil of Religion too, remember.

No, there aren't. There are examples of the evil of politics, economics, capitalism, socialism, racism, bigotry and ignorance, and a lot of the perpetrators of these evils have used the tools of science to achieve their ends. BUT saying that, for instance, those killed at Hiroshima are an example of the evils of science is like saying that the women killed by the Yorkshire Ripper are an example of the evils of hammers. DIY tools are not evil. People can choose to use them for evil ends, sure, but in and of themselves they have no moral value, good or bad. They're just tools, and so is science - it's a tool to understand the world, and tool which inherently recognises its own limitations and doesn't pretend to have answers to questions when it doesn't.

>(Just don't get me started on the Evil of Money, that's all)

Iain M. Banks writes science fiction, and very good it is too. Much of it is set in a utopian galactic society called "the Culture". One of the sayings they have in that society is "money is a sign of poverty". We here today live in an age of scarcity - not enough food, not enough fuel, not enough space, not enough transport. One day, if we're lucky, (and if you believe K. Eric Drexler it'll be sooner than you think) we will transcend all that. We'll be in a position to give everyone anything they want. Energy will be for all practical purposes unlimited. Food will be available in abundance, everywhere. Transport to anywhere you want will be available more or less on demand, free. And when that happens, money will become obsolete. There's no point having a medium of exchange when your society has progressed to the point where everyone can have anything they want. Now - given that such a society is POSSIBLE (and there's no reason that I can see to suppose that it is not), how do you get there from here? Prayer? Or research and development?

>LOSK is a pretty odd God. His worshippers strive legitimately to diminish him, but fear the last remaining vestiges of his wrath.

No idea what you mean by this. Limit of Scientific Knowledge is not a "god". Nobody worships it. And what "wrath"?

>In the meantime, though, they respect their planet and (because their knowledge is incomplete) they consider themselves no better than their fellow men. Inculcating such respect is just about all a religion can contribute, really.

Haven't you just said that there's no NEED to inculcate such respect, because it's already there? Unsure of what you're getting at here. Scientists do not consider themselves no better than their fellow men because their knowledge is incomplete. Scientists generally, to pinch a phrase, hold this truth to be self-evident - that all men are created equal. Completeness of knowledge is irrelevant - are you saying that if a scientists knowledge WAS complete he'd be somehow a better person?

>I'd call myself agnostic. I haven't ever quite decided whether Buddhism or Wicca are the truest religions.

Don't know much about Wicca (most of what I know comes from watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", which I do not consider to be a reliable source of facts...), and Buddhism to me doesn't count as a religion. It seems more like a set of instructions on how to be happy and peaceful - like a suggested operating manual for the mind. Nothing I've heard about Buddhism speaks of gods. I can even picture a day, far in the future, where science and Buddhism coincide, and science can say "yeah, Buddhism works, and here's *why*". But that's on the far shore, and we're a long way from that level of scientific self understanding - but I don't think it's unknowable. Science understands how the liver, kidneys, heart, lungs and everything else works to a greater or lesser extent, and I have no doubt that sooner or later (probably later) we'll have as complete an understanding about the brain.

For now, it's enough to know that Buddhism seems to work for a lot of people.

>I just know that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are very bad for mankind, and that we can only hope that their ultimate decadence and decline passes off reasonably peacefully.

Amen to that. Sadly they don't seem to be declining. Part of the power of religion as a meme is that it is self-replicating and protects itself from outside influences. Admittedly, religion as a concept is now under the most sustained and comprehensive attack in history, being challenged on all sides by the incredible successes of science in explaining and controlling the world and making life better for almost everyone who lives in it.

And yet, do you see people turning to their priests and saying "in two thousand years your religion achieved NOTHING to improve the life of my ancestors, made it worse in some cases and was directly responsible for the deaths of many of them, and in two centuries or less science has DOUBLED my life expectancy, practically destroyed infant and child mortality and conquered one deadly disease after another - so take your useless superstition and tell it to someone else"?

No, you don't. In fact, in the latter years of the last century, if anything we saw MORE people turning to superstition - psychic hotlines, crystal healing, astrology, and many others.

Unfortunately, religion isn't going away. It's like a virus, infecting our minds - a virus which makes us want to believe in some higher power we can't see. Over the last couple of hundred years we've started inoculating ourselves with real knowledge of the world, systematically gathered and explained in theories which were ruthlessly tested and discarded when found to be incomplete. But the religion virus is mutating, adapting to this new threat. You can see it in the new beliefs - spoon bending, alien abductions, government conspiracy theories and the like. All the characteristics of a religion (higher powers, explanations for the otherwise inexplicable, charismatic people doing the explaining to the fascinated masses, and all kinds of wacky explanations as to why there's no scientific evidence at all - compare that with, say, Creationism, or for that matter, Catholicism).

I think religion's going to be around for a while yet...

H.

Like I said, I mostly agree.
I do think you're a bit optimistic about the purity of scientists. If you're going to claim that death-camp surgeons and A-bomb physicists weren't scientists, then it's just as reasonable to argue that the 9/11 hijackers weren't Muslims.
I think your central point is that religion is unnecessary and sterile, and that conversely science is vital and potentially mankind's salvation. With that I agree completely.
If you're denying any possibility that scientific ideals are corruptible, and that mankind is somehow incapable of perpetrating evil through science, then we differ. Blaming some other nasty human characteristic (greed, thirst for power etc) for the evil, while admitting that science provides the means of causing the problem doesn't exactly get science off the hook.
There are also some examples of what I'd call scientific evil that derive principally from the arrogance of the scientific establishment. Without their over-confidence, there would have been no commercial opportunity. Prematurely-introduced drugs such as Thalidomide provide a poignant example. Unless proper care is exercised, bioengineering has the potential lead to something far worse for far more people.
This is where LOSK comes in. Of course LOSK is not a God - but I mentioned him to try to explain the desirable mindset of a community that replaces religion with science. To elaborate on an earlier point, most religions do at least propose two fundamentally good ideas for a fair and safe world. One is, we don't know everything so we'd better be careful. The other is, no one of us is any better or worse than anyone else.
Good science makes a virtue of both, and Worshippers of LOSK would know that implicitly. Bad science can get over-confident and the domain of an elite.
I'm a scientist myself, with a physics degree and a profession in engineering. A majority of the people I count as close friends are also scientists. But I do recognise a propensity for elitism in many of us, an attitude to others that goes "they're not equipped to think, so we must think for them". In my opinion, that mindset is not only ugly - it's dangerous.
P.

"I do think you're a bit optimistic about the purity of scientists."

I don't make any claims for scientists individually. I do make optimistic claims for the scientific establishment in general, because it's set up in a way to self-correct. It's only when external factors such as politics and profit become involved that those self-check measures are bypassed, and you can't blame science, or scientists in general, for that. Example: GM crops. If the experiments to check the safety of GM crops were in the purview of pure science, there'd be huge separation distances, LONG (decades long) trials, and results you could have confidence in. But because the prize for getting it right is massive profits, the government and the companies developing them are sidestepping conventional scientific methods - which is one of the things giving science a bad name with the public.

>If you're going to claim that death-camp surgeons and A-bomb physicists weren't scientists, then it's just as reasonable to argue that the 9/11 hijackers weren't Muslims.

Many Muslims have said that the 9/11 hijackers were NOT good Muslims by any definition they recognise. Interesting parallel indeed. Unfair, I think, to include A-bomb physicists in that list. They were scientists. They delivered a weapon of awesome power into the hands of the military. In the event, the military had no need at all to use it. They used it anyway. Were the scientists to blame?

>If you're denying any possibility that scientific ideals are corruptible, and that mankind is somehow incapable of perpetrating evil through science, then we differ.

This is rapidly turning into more of an agreement than a debate. Scientific ideals ARE corruptible. Evils perpetrated with the fruits of scientific research are legion. We agree.

>Blaming some other nasty human characteristic (greed, thirst for power etc) for the evil, while admitting that science provides the means of causing the problem doesn't exactly get science off the hook.

Depends what you think science is. My definition would be a world view that works on looking at evidence, building a theory that makes predictions, testing the predictions and changing the theory if it fails to predict accurately. It's a morally neutral world-view, because it offers no guidance on what to do with the results of those predictions. For that you need to look elsewhere.

>Prematurely-introduced drugs such as Thalidomide provide a poignant example.

Profit, again. This kind of problem with scientific advancement is only possible in this age of scarcity where people need to be paid money to do research. This is not a problem with science, it's a problem with economics. Drugs cost billions to develop, so there's a lot of pressure to get them to market early. Mistakes are made. But the driving force which causes those mistakes is not the scientific method, but the shareholder value.

"... most religions do at least propose two fundamentally good ideas for a fair and safe world. One is, we don't know everything so we'd better be careful. The other is, no one of us is any better or worse than anyone else."

Point one seems diametrically opposed to what a lot of fundamentalists believe. They DO know everything, because it's written in their book (whatever book it is). Anything not in the book isn't worth knowing.

Point two, also, seems diametrically opposed to what many religions teach. They mostly seem to be based on the idea that there are the Chosen, and then there's everyone else. They differ as what particular mode of painful death is appropriate for "everyone else", but they generally don't seem terribly well-disposed towards them.

>I'm a scientist myself, with a physics degree and a profession in engineering.

Me: engineering degree, career in engineering. Purely for interest's sake.

>A majority of the people I count as close friends are also scientists. But I do recognise a propensity for elitism in many of us, an attitude to others that goes "they're not equipped to think, so we must think for them". In my opinion, that mindset is not only ugly - it's dangerous.

I entirely agree. My own attitude, and you can call this elitist or at the very least arrogant if you like, is more along the lines of: "They're not equipped to think, so we must EQUIP them". Several times on this site I've encountered people who demonstrably don't even know what science is, what it's FOR, but think they do. And because of their wrong-headed idea about it, they embrace superstition. I try, occasionally, to point out what science is, its power, why it's useful, and why everyone should use it as a base mindset for interacting with the world. I don't think I've been very successful. It doesn't stop me trying.

I'd become a science teacher tomorrow, if I thought for a second I'd be any good at it and it didn't mean cutting my salary in half. It's the old saying isn't it - give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you can get rid of him for the whole afternoon...

H.

...but have to leave it there for now. The Weddell's on the warpath...
P.

I believe in God but not the Christian God. The Christian God is a bit of a sadist. He gives you a will of your own. Then toasts you in hell for eternity for using it.

Is it possible that going beyond self and trying to format a set of ethics wedding tolerance,compassion and the interconnectedness of all life might benefit us all on a very small planet.Perhaps even the internet might be a small step to raising the sacred interdependence of all life?

Couldn't the argument also be made that if it were not for profit(not prophet), politics, and power etc... religion would be pure and good? These are also to blame for the evils of god, arent they?

Hi Hoovooloo!

I've been looking back at your Posts, #27 and earlier, now I've some time. I can't find much that I disagree with in #27!

Maybe 2 points overall :
- About Buddhism not being a proper religion, just a set of rules for right living. Isn't that what a religion is? Or is it the worship of a deity that characterises a religion? My own definition would be the first. I think the second is just an unnecessary (and disastrous) convention that most of them have adopted.
Everything hinges on whether you believe religions to be God-made or man-made, doesn't it? We seem to differ only very marginally. You say there is no God, and that everything's man-made (or at least made by agencies which are the same stuff as man). I say there is a God, because the agencies can never be entirely explicable - my God is (just!) a creative force beyond our understanding.
We both think that religions are human creations, though. Very human, in fact. Like nothing could be more base and less divine.
I guess you're going to come back and say something like True Science manages with axioms for the job I seem to need a God for. Well, maybe so. Maybe science goes beyond my philosophical flexibility on that point.
2. Your earlier point :
<But the religion virus is mutating, adapting to this new threat. You can see it in the new beliefs - spoon bending, alien abductions, government conspiracy theories and the like...
Interesting idea! But what's really going on here? Is mankind's susceptibility to religion a unique failing of his reason? I think the truth is more like :
- there are charlatans around who will try manipulate the thinking of masses for their own gain (that's democracy, after all!)
- they'll try anything that people are potentially gullible about. Religion is only one candidate.
- Pseudo-science is at least as good. Your examples are rather extreme, but public perceptions of a lot of important issues are unhelpful : genetic engineering, clean and safe energy, the morality (and reliability) of space defence. I don't have a rigid view on any of these, but I deplore the standards of debate.
(Confession : I'm currently banned from one local pub. There was a bit of a scene after some guy said we needed a referendum on GM foods, and I pointed out he wasn't intellectually entitled to vote...)
So I really like your Mission to EQUIP, from the last paragraph in #27...
(and, yes, you are arrogant!)
P.

>I've been looking back at your Posts, #27 and earlier, now I've some time. I can't find much that I disagree with in #27!

Is this the five minute agreement or the full half hour?

- About Buddhism not being a proper religion, just a set of rules for right living. Isn't that what a religion is?

To me, religion implies some belief in at least one being of some sort which is in some way responsible for the way the world works, a belief which requires faith. If you don't believe in a god, or gods, then to my mind you have a philosophy, an approach to life, rather than a faith.

>Or is it the worship of a deity that characterises a religion?

Not necessarily worship - just belief in. For instance, people who describe themselves as "lapsed Catholics", say - I would characterise them as being religious. They clearly BELIEVE in their god, since they persist in characterising themselves in a religious way - but they don't worship it.

> my God is (just!) a creative force beyond our understanding.

Interesting position. How do you worship that? Or don't you?

>I guess you're going to come back and say something like True Science manages with axioms for the job I seem to need a God for.

Actually, I was going to come back and say if you characterise God as a creative force beyond our understanding, I would just add the words "for now"

>- there are charlatans around who will try manipulate the thinking of masses for their own gain (that's democracy, after all!)

That's priests since time immemorial...

>- they'll try anything that people are potentially gullible about. Religion is only one candidate.

Absolutely. Which is why I mention the other things above...

>- Pseudo-science is at least as good. Your examples are rather extreme,

Are they? Really? MILLIONS of people believe in them, in the teeth of the evidence. I don't think they're extreme at all.

>but public perceptions of a lot of important issues are unhelpful : genetic engineering, clean and safe energy, the morality (and reliability) of space defence. I don't have a rigid view on any of these, but I deplore the standards of debate.

Agreed. Which is a failing of the representatives of science to communicate, and a failing of the liberal arts mafia in the media to allow any semblance of a balanced story to be told. As long as television companies keep making documentaries about ghosts, it's going to be an uphill struggle.

Here's another observation: imagine a TV cop show. Every week, a crime is committed. The attractive and intelligent double act of FBI agents investigates. Every week, they narrow it dow to two suspects - a black man and a white man. And EVERY SINGLE WEEK it turns out the black man is the perpetrator. EVERY WEEK. How long would that show last?

The white man is a simple scientific explanation. The black man is a pseudoscientific conspiracy theory alien abduction explanation. And the show has lasted NINE YEARS on prime time.

>(Confession : I'm currently banned from one local pub. There was a bit of a scene after some guy said we needed a referendum on GM foods, and I pointed out he wasn't intellectually entitled to vote... )

Well done! I'm still bothered by the fact that next time there's a general election, Jade from Big Brother is entitled to vote - Jade, who thinks "East Angular" is in the Mediterranean. BUT Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) had this to say on the subject of democracy. Take the hundred smartest people in the world, and ask them a question on which the public is evenly divided. There are two possible outcomes. (1) They're evenly divided too, in which case intelligence is irrelevant to democracy, OR (2) They all vote the same way, in which case intelligence IS relevant but is hopelessly diluted. Either way, ouch.

Hence the mission to equip - stupid people get to vote. You can't take the vote off them, so you have to do your best to take the "stupid" off them.

>(and, yes, you are arrogant!)

I knew that!

H.

It's hard work being controversial round here...

But 2 (related) things worry me (possible cracks in Hoovooloo's edifice?)

>Actually, I was going to come back and say if you characterise God as a creative force beyond our understanding, I would just add the words "for now"
...So you (H) believe that science will solve everything, given long enough? What about your own earlier nod towards Heisenberg, which suggests you already acknowledge the absolute nature of uncertainty at least on a small scale? Maybe that observation is pedantic, but I don't think I want to believe in a universe where everything is explicable. I like the later "comfortable with the gaps" slant on this much better.

>As long as television companies keep making documentaries about ghosts, it's going to be an uphill struggle.
...There goes this certainty thing again. First you're categorically an atheist (a philosophical position of absolute certainty). Now the inference is that you don't believe in ghosts (another one). Don't you think there's a basic inconsistency in denying the validity of others' (religious) faith while seemingly having turned your own views into conviction?
Don't get me wrong - I think your reasoned position is far more coherent than a religious one, but that only means you're probably right. To claim that you're certainly right undermines your own argument.
At least, I think it does...

Let's simplify. Do you think the view that "there probably isn't a God" is an intellectual cop-out - or is it a rational position?
P.
(and poor old Jade! OK, she's pretty thick, but I never heard any suggestion that she's taken in by religion, or that she's intolerant in a malicious way. The problem with democracy comes down to DNA's 3 spaceships - the iffy group's the middle group. Not those who can't think, or those who can think, but those who think they can think)

>"for now"
...So you (H) believe that science will solve everything, given long enough?

For a given value of "everything", yes.

> What about... Heisenberg...? Maybe that observation is pedantic,

It is!

Heisenberg (and come to that, chaos theory) prevents a future where science can PREDICT everything. And since one of the fundamental powers of science is its ability to predict (eclipses, earthquakes and the weather, etc.) that's a pretty big limitation. But nothing fundamentally stands in the way of a future where science can look at any observed event in the past and explain it. Is that so bad?

>but I don't think I want to believe in a universe where everything is explicable. I like the later "comfortable with the gaps" slant on this much better.

There will always be gaps in our knowledge *of the future*. There will not necessarily be gaps in our knowledge of the observed past... if we get that far. I don't have a problem with that. There are a lot fewer gaps now than there were two hundred years ago, but a LOT of people seems quite happy completely ignoring that hard-won information and just going on being superstitious. This will continue to be an option.

>As long as television companies keep making documentaries about ghosts, it's going to be an uphill struggle.
...There goes this certainty thing again. First you're categorically an atheist (a philosophical position of absolute certainty).

Well, I'm absolutely certain I'll be devout Christian the very minute someone presents me with some evidence for the existence of that god that doesn't boil down to "someone else told me he exists and I believe them", "it says so in this book" or "I just KNOW it". My "certainty" comes from, among other things, education in strongly religious church schools, not a single member of staff of which could provide any convincing reason for believing in a god. That included the vicars. Every passing day without any reason at all to believe in a god, any god, makes me more certain - but I'll still change my mind if someone gives me reason to.

>Now the inference is that you don't believe in ghosts (another one).

Correct, I don't believe in ghosts. Introduce me to one, and I'll believe. Introduce James Randi, or Paul Daniels, or Penn and Teller to one, and I'll believe, come to that. (Funny, isn't it, how a lot of serious sceptics of things like faith healing, spoon bending, ghosts and other wacky stuff like that are professional magicians? Usually because they recognise the techniques of stage conjuring being performed by charlatans who claim its for real)

>Don't you think there's a basic inconsistency in denying the validity of others' (religious) faith while seemingly having turned your own views into conviction?

I do not deny the validity of others' faith. I merely point out that it is precisely that - faith. No evidence asked for, and none given. I strongly believe, and state as often as anyone will listen (not often...), that I would defend anyone's right to believe in leprechauns if they want to. But I don't see any inconsistency at all in my pointing out that a belief in leprechauns is a little, ah, eccentric, while simultaneously "believing" myself in, say, relativity.

There is, I think, a category difference between "believing in" a god, and "believing in" science. Science requires that you believe the evidence. Gods require that you believe DESPITE the evidence. It's a pretty strong difference.

>To claim that you're certainly right undermines your own argument.

Ah, but I don't claim that. All I claim is that my view certainly WORKS. Your kid got leukaemia? Mine too. Tell you what - you try prayer, I'll put my "faith" in chemotherapy. AIDS your problem? Me too. You ask your god for forgiveness, I'll ask my doctor for AZT or whatever. Wife possessed by demons? Mine too. Tell you what, you try an exorcism, I'll get a psychiatrist to prescribe the standard drug treatments for schizophrenia. The weird thing is, one time in ten thousand, your way will work. But I wouldn't bet on it. There's no such thing as a sure thing - but science comes a LOT closer than any religion.

>Let's simplify. Do you think the view that "there probably isn't a God" is an intellectual cop-out - or is it a rational position?

Personally? "There probably isn't a god" seems to me a bit weak. Quite apart from anything else, *whose* god isn't there, probably? There are so damn many of the things knocking about in the past and present belief systems of the world that it's difficult to keep track of them. For instance - do you believe in Odin? Jupiter? Apollo? Shiva? Amaterasuomikami? If you believe in all those, congratulations on covering Norse, Roman, Greek, Hindu and Shinto theologies. A career awaits you as an Electric Monk . If you choose not to believe on ONE of those gods, think about why - and that's most likely the reason I choose not to believe in yours.

More to the point, there's not just no evidence FOR a god, there are perfectly sound reasons why we as a species would concoct the idea, reasons which go far beyond just as a crutch to make ourselves feel better. But I've rattled on at length about the theory of the bicameral mind elsewhere, and it's late and I'm a little tired.

>(and poor old Jade! OK, she's pretty thick, but I never heard any suggestion that she's taken in by religion, or that she's intolerant in a malicious way.

Nor did I imply either of those things. I'm just observing that it's slightly worrying that sooner or later Jade is going to be asked the question "do you want control over interest rates to be passed to a central bank in Brussels, thus depriving the bank of england of the power to control inflation and the chancellor of the exchequer of much of his ability to affect the running of our economy?" - and her answer will MATTER. But, like I said, that's democracy, "the least worst electoral system in the world", as Churchill put it.

>The problem with democracy comes down to DNA's 3 spaceships - the iffy group's the middle group. Not those who can't think, or those who can think, but those who think they can think)

I love that idea - although I think the real problem with democracy is that *nobody* really knows anything!

Anyway, it's late...

H.

fiction - all available data points to this

i have no idea whether god is fact or fiction but my view is that if it is fact, it is not an entity i'd chose to worship. if it happened the way it says in the bible then i dont consider GOD to be a particularly nice being. as an all powerful all seeing all knowing deity doesnt it strike you as a little odd that he did not forsee the whole apple/serpent thing? which leads me to believe we are part of some cruel experiment(if GOD exsists)

So you're not absolutely denying the existence of a God. Instead you're asserting that there is no logical necessity to assume a God, and therefore he doesn't exist, because he needn't exist.

You've got me wondering whether everything that exists is necessary to explain something else. Isn't that Kierkegaard, or somebody?

I'm gonna leave this one here, and Lurk around waiting for Hoovooloo to say something else somewhere else that I can really disagree with.
Maybe that's a bit ambitious. Let's aim for something I can actually understand, for starters.

See ya!
P.

ok say you take a block of wood an chuck it. i agree its gonna make a loud "BANG" but it aint gonna make a table! you get me... i dunno but the whole big bang thing dont work for me.

I do get you, emmm's. This is a common Creationist argument. It's often phrased to include the image of a tornado blowing through a junkyards and spontaneously building a jumbo jet.

Now, OBVIOUSLY that's nonsense. But the REASON it's nonsense isn't the idea of complex structures arising spontaneously from simplicity. The reason it's nonsense is that that kind of thing doesn't work on a scale you can see. The building blocks of jumbo jets don't spontaneously attach themselves together in regular, useful form if they just happen to pass close enough to each other. BUT ATOMS DO.

Like you say, if you chuck a block of wood, it isn't going to make a table.

But the weird thing is, if you "chuck" atoms together, they DO just make tables. Or rather, big, complex molecules. That's how chemistry works. It's against common sense, because common sense is based on what you can SEE, and you can't SEE chemistry going on. If you could, you'd most likely be complaining that you can't make a table by throwing a block of wood...

It's a deeper understanding of the physical and chemical mechanisms underlying things like reproduction and photosynthesis that means that the "gaps" people use a god to explain are narrowing all the time. Anyone who's still protesting that order can't spontaneously arise from disorder is deliberately ignoring widely available and provable facts, for some reason.

H.