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

It was a fascinating interview. The atheist seemed very defensive, and understandably so.

I think I can relate to what Barrett was putting forward. Infants do seem to read 'meaning' into the natural world around them. It takes twenty odd years to educate meaninglessness into people....and then they seem worse off than when they started, somehow.

mikey2

'It takes twenty odd years to educate meaninglessness into people....and then they seem worse off than when they started, somehow.'



What world do you live in? Certainly not the one I grew up in. I was fifteen before I came to the shocking realization that a lot of people around me actually *believed* in a god. For as long as I had been self-aware, I had figured that actual religious belief (as opposed to the habitual going through the motions that seemed to be a quaint tradition) was something that had disappeared generations ago.

And, I've yet to meet someone who lost their religion who didn't feel they were better off for the loss. Losing one's religion is much like losing one's poverty. Why would anyone lament such a loss?

I am also a little saddened by this idea that lack of faith makes you something less. I suppose it is core to religion and its reinforcement/propagation process, and that it is rather futile to fight against once it has set in.

Countless religious scholars have discussed how reason is the enemy of faith, and attempts to come to knowledge about the object of faith are misguided. That reason is essentially the wrong tool. I think if God were something obviously true, then faith could never become as strong as it does, nor drive people so far. The deliberate isolation of ideas about God, such that they are unfettered by worldly concerns, seems crucial to the process.

Thinking about it this way, the virus analogy seems more apt than ever.

-What world do you live in?-

My question exactly. I took me many years to escape the utter meaninglessness of religion. What did it was realizing that it was based entirely on solipsistic egoism, the idea that for something to be true, it only had to satisfy my own imagination.

Eventually, I decided to follow Galileo and give up the idea that the universe revolved around me.

It may well be that we are born with a disposition to believe in god, we've offered many reasonable explanations for this and have backed them up with evidence many times on these threads. None of these things impress those with a perfect faith in themselves.

'It may well be that we are born with a disposition to believe in god'

I think we may be born with a disposition to want reassuring, happy things to be true. I remember mentioning to a Mediaeval Studies professor that I wanted the King Arthur stories to be true. She responded 'Why?' I was stumped. Finally I've had to satisfy myself with 'It just seems to me that it would be a neat world if the King Arthur stories were true.'

It would be nice if we lived in a world in which we all were embraced by the invisible but omnipotent arms of an all-loving deity, but the evidence just doesn't indicate that the truth is anything like that. I suspect that we are all born with a poster on our internal office wall like that of Agent Mulder: 'I want to believe.' Some, however, have a bigger poster that says 'I want to know, with a knowledge I can teach to others.'

What's this nonsense about meaninglessness? Everyone knows the devil has all the best tunes....and that includes poetry, naturellement.

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:

....Shaky...A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Simple minded boring dualistic nonsense. Science and reason versus religion. Atheism versus theism.

We have art, laughter, madness, love, death and passion. So who the hell needs religion?

-'It just seems to me that it would be a neat world if the King Arthur stories were true.'-

What a great idea! I want Him to come back with Excaliber to smite those who vex me.

I'd know Him when I saw Him, he'd be the one not all covered in sh*t.

He's be announced by the sound of trumpets. Or coconuts.

Oddly, that had never been one of the King Arthur stories I'd dreamed of being true.

I remember being taught in primary school that King Arthur and his knights slept under a mountain or hill or something....and if ever England was ever in peril they would come back and SAVE us..... Ring any bells?

'Ring any bells?'

Yes.

The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sleepers

The Hidden Imam http://wsu.edu/~dee/SHIA/HIDDEN.HTM


Is there someone else I should be reminded of?

come and see the violence inherant in the system

help help im being repressed

bloody peasant

ohhh that says it all

Anonymous gifts from watery tarts is no basis for a system of government.

Actually, it might work as well as anything else we've tried.

i dont call myself an emperor because some bint lobbed a scimitar at me

>>meaninglessness<<

I think my irony meter just exploded

~~~~~

Credulity is innate to human beings. It is advantageous to a social animal with a lengthy infancy to be trusting of the adults, as it is normally beneficial for the group to 'follow the leader'

Which is not to say the adults or leaders are necessarily always right

Nor is it likely the species would have prospered in the absence of creativity and sceptical intelligence

Re 'meaninglessness' see http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/supertramp/the+logical+song_20133850.html

Consider this following statement, (not exactly full of the joyful wonder of infancy):

<>

Education in my country, when exploring the meaning of life, culminates with studying the ideas of the 'great' philosophers, who end up going round in circles (like water draining out of a bath) because the notion of a Creator God went out of fashion with the likes of Nietzsche.



Mikey2

Hi Mikey,

Can you explain how a Creator God would be any less circular?

Gif

And...

>Education in my country, when exploring the meaning of life, culminates with studying the ideas of the 'great' philosophers, who end up going round in circles<

What a complete abomination of truth. Proper education about such things that give meaning to people's lives, (apart from never culminating in anything, (typical mindset of the faither), involves the rich mosaic of our cultural heritage such as great music, great poetry and literature, magnificent art, brilliant scientific thinkers.. sharp witted humourists....need one go on.

Such achievements enrich our lives beyond measure and give joy as one can study all the many aspects of this rich heritage, and go deeper and deeper into the great variety of thinking, viewpoints, insights. There is no culmination in some simple minded conception of dualism such as good and evil, God or no god etc etc There is always more art to be created, more discoveries to be made, more ideas to be thought about, more ways of relating and loving one's fellows.

How sad to have such poverty of mind to depend on such a childish conception of existence to give meaning to one's life.

(Canadian friends don't believe this perversion of mikey's of education at its very best here).

'There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt on in your philosophy, Horatio..'

m1/2
(re the Bartlett/Wolpert item)

>>It was a fascinating interview. The atheist seemed very defensive, and understandably so.

I somewhat agree - But then I'm never impressed by Wolpert as a broadcaster or writer. But, as an artifact of Today's adveserial style, he was placed in a somewhat artificial position. In terms of neural biology, Barrett wasn't saying anything earth-shattering. All old-hat and uncontroversial. The only point of difference is as to whether the findings say anything about the existence of an actual god. They don't.

I think I can relate to what Barrett was putting forward. Infants do seem to read 'meaning' into the natural world around them. It takes twenty odd years to educate meaninglessness into people....and then they seem worse off than when they started, somehow.

Yes...but you can relate to it because you are acculturated to the idea of a Christian god. I have to cavill with the last bit. For me, the game was up for god by eleven (probably before), with the final blow struck during a Divinity lesson taught by a priest. You may beg to differ...but I certainly don't *feel* any worse off for it.

m1/2

>>Education in my country, when exploring the meaning of life, culminates with studying the ideas of the 'great' philosophers, who end up going round in circles (like water draining out of a bath) because the notion of a Creator God went out of fashion with the likes of Nietzsche.

I'd almays mistakenly assumed you mere British, m1/2. It's a tragedy that philosophy isn't taught in Britain as, you say, in your country. It gives wonderful tools for thinking.

As for god going out of fashion after Nietzsche...Nah! Nietzsche killed 'im.