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

<>

Resources?

Well, you're right for the first two letters of your reply!

RF

<>

Sorry, I already knew before I came to this thread, that he's a Mormon... And I've no intention of falling into the trap you tried to set. IMO, Mormons are not Christians, but they are a group which its origin in Christian ideas. However, there are many differences.

Vicky
http://www.catholic.com/library/Distinctive_Beliefs_of_Mormon.asp

That being said, I respect NeoPathFinder and his arguments which are coherent, and thoughtful. He's getting a shellacking, but that's to be expected here!

>> I respect NeoPathFinder and his arguments which are coherent <<



RF

too right!

My reply was to Vicky but a little more subtle than the smiley fest of RF

<>

Let me guess, you're going to say religion?

Current wars are caused, as wars always are, by the desire for resources and territory. That some leaders of war-mongering countries, especially the USA, choose to *use* religion in order to get their unwilling population good and worked up, doesn't mean religion has got anything to do with it, as I am sure you well know.

When I noticed this thread title, my initial response was, 'Almighty Thor, here we go again!'

Then as I read the initial post, I considered two possibilites: Prosyletizing Troll or Astonishingly Ignorant.

I have yet to arrive at a definite conclusion, although after a quick read through your subsequent posts I'm tending toward the troll definition.

However, I've decided to give benefit of the doubt, as a non-believer in good standing, and treat the initial question as if it were posed by one sadly lacking any training in reason, critical thinking, or logic.

With this motivation, I charitably offer the following, despite my better judgment and rapidly fading hope... --


First of all, let's deal with your question:

>>>"What is it about God/religion that you object to?"<<<

Do you see how your question assumes the pre-existence of mutually agreed upon definitions?

This, you see, prevents it from being a meaningful question, and thus it cannot be answered.

A troll would pose such a question, thinking it was clever and tricky.

A merely ignorant person, asking honestly, would simply not have known the question relies upon underlying premises, which, if left undefined, renders the question meaningless

For example, I could substitute 'glargk', for 'God' and not affect the meaning at all. There is none, unless/until 'glargk' is clearly defined, and the definition mutually agreed upon

To a certain extent, the same problem holds for your non-specific use of the word, 'religion'.

While it may be relatively safe to assume 'religion' has a common and coherent meaning, there exists a rather huge variety of superstition, as I'm sure you are aware. Or maybe you are not...

Anyway, there are, for example, religions which profess no god-belief whatsoever.

In fact, some people rather bizarrely insist atheism is simply another species of religion.

If an atheist were to consider non-belief as a religion, it would hardly be rational for an atheist to object to it.

While I don't personally agree that, other than for tax purposes, atheism can be honestly considered a religion, I also don't have any problem considering the possible existence of religions to which I would not object.

That part of your question is easily made less incoherent, simply by adding a qualifier, such as 'some', but it would remain incumbent upon you to provide further qualification in the body of your question.

Finally, please, for the love of nobody in particular, stop with the howlers, such as "what positive evidence do you have of the non-existence of God?".
Such nonsense makes you sound stupid, which I'm reasonably hopeful you are not
And please, do a little reading: A821107 ; A254477 ; and perhaps A455924 would be a good start.

Then, and only then, if you are really interested in sincere debate, kindly demonstrate your sincerity by re-phrasing your question in a meaningful manner.

On the other lobe, if you are only interested in promoting your irrational religious delusions, and other ill-founded notions such as 'intelligent design', I'm sure you will be treated with the respect you and your beliefs deserve.


Apologies if any of the above has been dealt with in prior posts to this thread, and has unfortunately escaped my notice. I respectfully ask that if the problems I explained have, indeed, been sufficiently addressed, henceforth the thread title be altered to reflect this.

Adding a postfix like would be helpful.

Actually RF, I think most wars are about resources. The lack of or greed for more. Sometimes that's not enough to motivate the lumpen proletariat so it gets dressed up in religion.

Religion/nationalism/patriotism are all ways of getting people to do things they wouldn't want to do and absolves them of guilt.

Lots of post in the interim that I can't respons to - so I'll just respond to the response to my own:

>>Saying "It's just nonsensical" isn't a valid logical argument, you need to show the logical contradiction that makes it nonsensical.

Indeed. I only had time to post a starter for ten. The longer version is something along the lines that idea of god as described by believers doesn't make any sense. There are various arguments for this - but for starters, Epicurus:
If god is all powerful and wholly good - why is there suffering?
If god can end suffering but chooses not to, he is not good.
If god wishes to end suffering but can't - then he's impotent.
If god is neither willing nor able to end suffering - then why call him god?


Atheism has proven to be a very poor basis for morality - Communism being a prime example.
As I said, Atheism is a 'necessary-but-not-sufficient' basis for ethics. Morality can only decided on by humans - it's how we think it's best to run our lives. Since there are no ready-made, authoritative rules, there will always be differences of opinion. Messy and failure prone though it is, the only way forward is a negotiation amongst ourselves. (I call this 'the democratic conversation'.) Obviously totalitarian political systems militate against this. So does religion. However, religion has a further disadvantage over totalitarian politics in that at least with the latter the arguments are rational: 'You will do it this way or else I will kill you'. (To which the counter argument is 'Not if I overthrow you first'). Religious argument amounts to 'God wants this' vs 'No - god wants that': neither side has a leg to stand on.

And if we're going to be so foolish as to equate Atheism with Communism, I'm going to have to mention the many Germans who supported the Nazis out of Christian conviction. Or, in present times, the Christian wing of the BNP. Or the genocidal Serbian Orthodox fascists who'd go to church on Sunday before hopping in a jeep and driving over the mountains to take potshots at Sarajevan civilians and back in time for dinner. . Etc.

>>Define materialism? Materialism is a philosophy that holds that the only thing that can be proven to exist is matter, and basically that therefore matter is all that exists. (Or, matter and energy, if you prefer)

Good. Yes, I'm a Materialist. Sometimes it's mistaken for 'consumerist'. (Matter *is* energy, of course.)

Ah sh....ugar

Sorry Ed - the "Sh" wasn't aimed at you.

I don't believe in neopathfinder.

Do you believe in the flying spaghetti monster?

RF

No. You bloody heretic.

The flying ANT spaghetti monster.

Being an errant pedant, I've had to correct the grammar of the subject line.

<< I've had to correct the grammar of the subject line>>

That *is* better....

I have a feeling I'm going to be rehashing or repeating a lot of things other people have said, but:

I cannot be 100% sure that God or some sort of spirituality exists, but I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt (you can insert the usual fairy, teapot, unicorn comparisons here). In the case of many particular religions, for example many forms of Christianity, I feel I can be certain almost to the degree of logical proof, since they are internally inconsistent or say things about the world that simply aren't true.

I would say I am an atheist, but if you prefer to describe me as agnostic because I'm not absolutely certain then that's your call. I am a materialist in the sense that I do not believe in spirituality.

I don't think you can claim that Communism's attrocities are based on Atheistic philosophy. Atheistic philosophy is one thing: "I don't think God is real". To derive any morality at all from that is really stretching things - instead you need other starting points. Communism's morality to me is primarily a reaction to unfairness in the world, and can be summed up with "the revolution begins demanding justice, and ends by wanting to wear a crown".

By contrast, most religions have rather large volumes of divinely sanctioned text giving a pretty thorough ethical breakdown of shalts and shalt nots. Wars in the name of (or OK'd by) religion are usually backed up by vast reams of theological exposition explaining why its in keeping with God's rules.

I don't want to go over the details of why evolution is right again. It is also something which is well beyond reasonable doubt. Its something that has been observed directly on a limited scale and its been observed in fossils on a massive scale. Moreover, if life exists, then evolution has to happen to it. The same as it happens to many, many other systems.

I'm sitting here, taking a break from writing computer code which uses evolutionary principles - selective pressure combined with mutation - in order to produce finely tuned results. I could not have achieved these by design, because the maths is simply unsolvable.

Evolution isn't just right and creation wrong when it comes to life: evolution is beautiful, elegant and a mathematician's joy, whereas creation is small-minded, uninspired, insipid, on a par with bad fan fiction. Its a bad story liars made up instead of admitting they were to lazy to look for the truth.

Why have I been anti-religion in places? I have come to suspect this is mainly the result of having tradition and ceremony (ugh) forced down my throat in the name of the Church of England.

Also, I feel God is a poor, get-out easy answer. Too much like people, too much like what we'd want it to be, too lacking in scope and imagination, a barrier to thinking of better explanations.

In case anyone is actually interested:

'Theory of Evolution is a fact'!!!

http://www.miamiherald.com/851/story/424069.html

>>Being an errant pedant, I've had to correct the grammar of the subject line.

2 Comments:

'That is the kind of pedantry up with which I will not put' - Winston Churchill.

From 'The Golden Girls'. The feisty Doroth is at a society function:
Dorothy: 'That's a lovely hat. Where did you get it from?
Society Lady: 'Oh, my dear! - We *never* end a sentence with a preposition.'
Dorothy: 'Oh...OK. That's a lovely hat. Where did you get it from - bitch.'