Religion Explained

Ronald Bailey | January 12, 2006, 2:12pm

Philosopher Daniel Dennett has a new book coming out, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, in which he takes a stab at trying to explain how religious belief arose among our primitive ancestors and why it persists today.

The Scientific American review of the book puts it this way:

In Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Daniel Dennett, director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, has embarked on another of his seemingly impossible quests. His provocatively titled book Consciousness Explained made a persuasive effort to do just that. More recently, in Freedom Evolves, he took on free will from a Darwinian perspective.

This time he may have assumed the hardest task of all--and not just because of the subject matter. Dennett hopes that this book will be read not just by atheists and agnostics but by the religiously faithful--and that they will come to see the wisdom of analyzing their deepest beliefs scientifically, weeding out the harmful from the good. The spell he hopes to break, he suggests, is not religious belief itself but the conviction that its details are off-limits to scientific inquiry, taboo.

"I appreciate that many readers will be profoundly distrustful of the tack I am taking here," he writes. "They will see me as just another liberal professor trying to cajole them out of some of their convictions, and they are dead right about that--that's what I am, and that's exactly what I am trying to do." This warning comes at the end of a long, two-chapter overture in which Dennett defends the idea that religion is a fit subject for scrutiny. The question is how many of the faithful will follow him that far.

My bet is that the answer to that last question is, not many. Still, it looks like a good read.

See Reason's interview with Dennett here and my article on Freedom Evolves here.

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Comments to "Religion Explained":

zach | January 12, 2006, 2:32pm | #

Before the chorus starts up about how pointless and futile this is, let me just say, it's not. I used to be a committed, young-earth creationist Christian (albeit as a teenager) and I was eventually won over by good old-fashioned reason, over a period of years. Maybe it wouldn't have taken so long with a book like this.

Warren | January 12, 2006, 2:34pm | #

they will come to see the wisdom of analyzing their deepest beliefs scientifically, weeding out the harmful from the good.

Yeah, good luck with that.

linguist | January 12, 2006, 2:36pm | #

Still, it looks like a good read.

It does! Thanks for the tip!

budgie | January 12, 2006, 2:42pm | #

While I am an anti-theist and my patience has been used up and thus not fit for the task of coaxing the faithful back from the dark side, I admire and appreciate all attempts by others to do so. After reading the review, it seems that this book can be put into this category.

Mr. Nice Guy | January 12, 2006, 2:44pm | #

I think we all have a fierce need to know beyond the unknowable. It's impossible to know that something lies beyond death, yet people pretend to, some with fevered conviction. Some are willing to even kill to validate this blind knowing.

On the other hand, most atheists, to me, are angry people. They're bitter because they pretend to know that there is NOTHING beyond our mortal shell.

Pretty fucked up.

budgie | January 12, 2006, 2:46pm | #

Sorry...omit "and my patience is used up" to fix first sentence. I should preview :(

Ed | January 12, 2006, 2:49pm | #

It's funny how religious proselytizers chant, "Find Jesus (or insert imaginary deity here) and you will be free." It's exactly the opposite, as the bloody history of mankind demonstrates. The mass of humankind has always feared and distrusted absolute freedom. Even in its imperfect form, the United States is an historical aberation, a nation "snatched from the jaws of history." A new dark age is not inconceivable. It wouldn't take much. I'll bet the Romans never saw it coming.

Jennifer | January 12, 2006, 2:55pm | #

On the other hand, most atheists, to me, are angry people. They're bitter because they pretend to know that there is NOTHING beyond our mortal shell.

Nah, we're just angry because we're tired of people insisting that we can't possibly be happy and/or moral without a belief in something beyond our mortal shell.

StupendousMan! | January 12, 2006, 2:57pm | #

Mr. Nice Guy:

Where did you get that impression of atheists? I would guess most atheists would disagree with you.

Generally atheists wouldn't say they had knowledge of the absence of any god etc. they would say that the lack of any evidence makes the probability very low. On par with the probability that Santa exists. Let's see how pleasant you are when arguing with a believer who wants to legislate according to their Santa beliefs. No more milk on Sunday for you!

budgie | January 12, 2006, 2:58pm | #

"On the other hand, most atheists, to me, are angry people."
True at times, but the atheists I know tend to be far more trustworthy and reliable folks than your average child of the book. Two tendencies make this so: they focus on this world with its agreements and promises and explanations without the promise of seventy-two virgins in the next world to cheapen the here and now, and their arguments are refreshingly free of the ramblings of nomadic desert tribes. Minor details I know.

MP | January 12, 2006, 2:58pm | #

On the other hand, most atheists, to me, are angry people. They're bitter because they pretend to know that there is NOTHING beyond our mortal shell.

Better than being delusional.

Dylan | January 12, 2006, 2:59pm | #

Mr. Nice Guy,

Yeah, I'm with you on both counts.

Vocal aetheists do often come off as spiteful people -- they look down on those they feel have blindly convinced themselves there's a higher power, but when it comes down to it, their conviction that there isn't a higher power is equally blind. My gut has always told me if you're gonna have faith, it's better to have faith in something than in nothing.

That still doesn't, however, make me any more comfortable with the oppressive dogmatism that has charactarized a lot of organized religion through the ages.

bill | January 12, 2006, 2:59pm | #

For anyone interested in the formation of religion I highly recomend Julian Jayne's "The Origin of Consciouness in the Breakdown of the Bicarmel Mind".

GILMORE | January 12, 2006, 3:01pm | #

I think this comment =

"'Dennett defends the idea that Religion is a fit subject for scrutiny. The question is how many of the faithful will follow him that far.'

My bet is that the answer to that last question is, not many. "

...is unbelievably condescending. Seriously. This is absurd. People who subscribe to religions don't necessarily drop their fucking brains and curiosity at the door. There is a attitude on this board that is totally unwarranted and based in nothing other than pop-caricatures of what 'religion' entails. As though they are all some monolithic "god says!" club. DOnt you think thats a little simplistic? Making condescending generalizations about 'the faithful' reveals an undercurrent of bigotry here.

http://www.seismosoc.org/about/ES_Jesuits.html

Warren | January 12, 2006, 3:03pm | #

most atheists, to me, are angry people. They're bitter because they pretend to know that there is NOTHING beyond our mortal shell.

Are you sure you're not projecting your expectations onto them?

My own experience is that organized atheism can be as bad as organized religion. And the "victim atheists" can definitely be bitter. However, most atheists I know (including myself), came to their beliefs from their own unique philosophical path, and practice each in their own way. They are certainly capable of finding joy in life (indeed sometimes more so because they don't have to contend with guilt).

I also think that on average, they are of higher moral character than devout believers, but that's definitely my prejudice.

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 3:05pm | #

As a skeptical non-theist who wouldn't mind if every church, temple, and mosque on the planet converted to full-time bingo halls tomorrow...I have to agree with Gilmore.

Some of you are being bigoted putzes.

budgie | January 12, 2006, 3:06pm | #

"Vocal aetheists do often come off as spiteful people -- they look down on those they feel have blindly convinced themselves there's a higher power."
I disagree. My vocal atheist friends just want to be left alone. They don't appreciate being constantly harrassed by those who wish to fix them.

Ed | January 12, 2006, 3:06pm | #

Some of the happiest, healthiest, most well-adjusted people I've ever met are atheists. I think the "angry atheist" is a fictional character based on just one famous atheist, Madalyn Murray O'Hair. She's every theist's favorite whipping girl, but she's hardly an official spokeswoman. That's not to say all atheists are rational beings. Some are simply violent nihilists or rebels without a clue. Or college students.

April | January 12, 2006, 3:07pm | #

Completeley anecdotal, but I'm an atheist, and I'm pretty happy and optimistic.

I agree that people have a "fierce need to know" beyond what is knowable. And I think that is why religion exists. Religious people get pretty uptight when I theorize that man made God in his own image, rather than the other way 'round, but that's my theory and I'm stickin' to it unless someone can prove otherwise.

Having said that, I like to believe that my deceased siblings' spirits hover around those of us who remain, just to say hello now and then. It's completely irrational, and I recognize it as that, but I like to believe it all the same. I think religion is kind of like that. We know better, but we can't help ourselves.

jet | January 12, 2006, 3:08pm | #

Dennett is by no means the first person to try to explain religion from a scientific perspective. Emile Durkheim, for example, wrote THE ELEMENTARY FORMS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE more than 100 years ago. In fact, Dennett is not even the first person to try to explain religion from an evolutionary perspective: Pascal Boyer's RELIGION EXPLAINED was published several years ago.

theCoach | January 12, 2006, 3:08pm | #

I am a big fan of Dennett, and look forward to this book.

" To whatever extent we were ever at the mercy of our genes, we no longer are. Instead our genes are now at the mercy of our brains."

- Ronald Bailey (from the review of Freedom Evolves)

That seems like a silly oversimplification of Dennett, and quite a bit of cherry picking going on in the review. I am glad you liked it, but, just a warning to other Reasonoids, a liberation utopian, Dennett is not.

StupendousMan! | January 12, 2006, 3:09pm | #

"it's better to have faith in something than in nothing."

"Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."
-Devil's Dictionary

MP | January 12, 2006, 3:09pm | #

People who subscribe to religions don't necessarily drop their fucking brains and curiosity at the door.

I'm sure a vast majority of fundamentalists question their beliefs all the time.

April | January 12, 2006, 3:10pm | #

"I'm sure a vast majority of fundamentalists question their beliefs all the time."

Yeah, but the vast majority of believers of God are not fundamentalists.

TJ | January 12, 2006, 3:11pm | #

"...but when it comes down to it, their conviction that there isn't a higher power is equally blind."

Riiiight. And all ideas have equal worth, all opinions equally valid. That's the new age way to think, isn't it? My notion that the Sun is being pulled along behind Apollo's chariot is just as valid as those who think it isn't. ;-)

John | January 12, 2006, 3:16pm | #

Stretch | January 12, 2006, 3:16pm | #

My vocal atheist friends just want to be left alone. They don't appreciate being constantly harrassed by those who wish to fix them.

That's fair enough, but I really don't find the vast majority of religious people constantly harrassing anyone, much less trying to "fix" them. There seems to be this idea that once someone believes in an organized religion, they automatically and fervently go around proselytizing.

I can see how such an impression gets started, since such people are the ones who get noticed, but in my experience it's absolutely false. If anything, I've found just the opposite, that believers offer a restrained condescension, preferring not to speak to deaf ears and content to let us heathens continue down our paths to hell. Even that seems unfair to most of the religious people I've met.

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 3:17pm | #

"I'm sure a vast majority of fundamentalists question their beliefs all the time."

Yeah, but the vast majority of believers of God are not fundamentalists.

And, speaking for myself, I don't make a point of meditating upon the validity of skepticism and the value of a naturalistic outlook on a daily basis, either.

budgie | January 12, 2006, 3:19pm | #

"My bet is that the answer to that last question is, not many. "

"unbelievably condescending."
Ever been to a Christian bookstore or seen the sales figures for the Left Behind series?
No one is talking about every last religious person when they condescend to the faithful in general by calling them on their hallucinations or point out that it's creepy to act upon the voices inside their heads. It's just the trend toward stupidity and suspicion of anything that reeks of independent reasoned thought among such large chunks of believers that makes them easy targets. No, if the fundies I know couldn't sit through a movie that questions their faith I doubt they would would read even a blurb on Dennett's book.

Native NYer | January 12, 2006, 3:20pm | #

April, if you think their spirits are hovering around sometimes, wouldn't that NOT make you an atheist?

Not to be critical, sometimes I get that feeling as well about some departed relatives :^)

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 3:21pm | #

It is very interesting how atheists manage to live in such denial in that most of them go around blithely believing that there is any such thing as moral standards or chaos without God.

Funny, order and moral standards seem to exist outside of the reach of any particular religion, or outside of religion for that matter.

Or is this the "I'm a more moral person than an atheist because I'm afraid God will send me to Hell if I kill him and take his money, while he doesn't kill me and take my money because...um, I dunno, he's a chump," thing?

John | January 12, 2006, 3:22pm | #

It is odd how atheists always point to fundamentalists as if that is the only variety of believer. It is also interesting how many atheists are former fundamentalists. Ask around sometime and you will be shocked how many professed atheists are former fundamentalist Christians or how many fundamentalist Christians were once militant atheists. It is as if some people can't keep things between the ditches intellectually speaking and are driven to one extreme or another.

Stretch | January 12, 2006, 3:23pm | #

Riiiight. And all ideas have equal worth, all opinions equally valid. That's the new age way to think, isn't it? My notion that the Sun is being pulled along behind Apollo's chariot is just as valid as those who think it isn't. ;-)

There's a difference between something provably false and something fundamentally unknowable. If you want to talk about bible stories or personifications of a deity, then maybe your point would be more germane. But the fact is that the existence of a higher power is not provable or unprovable, so it's no more silly to believe than it is to not believe.

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 3:23pm | #

No one is talking about every last religious person when they condescend to the faithful in general by calling them on their hallucinations or point out that it's creepy to act upon the voices inside their heads.

Aside from one schizophrenic, I've never met a religious person in my life who had hallucinations or voices in his or her head. Pre-judge much?

jive miguel | January 12, 2006, 3:24pm | #

$1 trillion = the weight of ted kennedy's head in gold

Mr. Nice Guy | January 12, 2006, 3:25pm | #

Trust me, I allow myself to be pretty condenscending towards certain religious segments. I have a beef against those who believe that a "God" exists to be their Santa Claus or their avenger. To me, this is all just childish wish-fulfillment.. it's extreme arrested development. Sad.

And I've mocked Christianity quite a bit on this forum. My hope is that IF there is a God, He is one of pure love. Ergo, it would be impossible for Him to be offended. If not, my ass is in some serious trouble.

linguist | January 12, 2006, 3:25pm | #

they look down on those they feel have blindly convinced themselves there's a higher power, but when it comes down to it, their conviction that there isn't a higher power is equally blind...

The point you're making is that both theists and atheists exhibit a kind of FAITH. That's what I hope is discussed in this book. Isn't this effect a result of humans being universally adapted to having FAITH? Why, I don't know, but I think it's fascinating to ponder.

budgie | January 12, 2006, 3:27pm | #

"There seems to be this idea that once someone believes in an organized religion, they automatically and fervently go around proselytizing."

Oh yeah...you're right. I almost forgot about the atheists who wear ties and and ride around my neighborhood on bicycles and keep knocking on my door to tell me how to fix myself. Yeah they come by and harrass me all the time ;)

April | January 12, 2006, 3:28pm | #

Native NY, exactly. Which, in a roundabout way, is my point. People want and need to believe in that otherness, and they make myths around it to feed that need. As I said, I think it's irrational. And yet, I do it.

The difference between me and believers is that I doubt. I guess.

Maybe I'm just an ambivalist.

John | January 12, 2006, 3:28pm | #

Eric,

Thanks for giving me an example of exactly what I was talking about. You don't want to kill people because you think its wrong? Why, because you said so. Without God, there is only the will to power. Once you kill God, the only alternative is the abyss and the will to impose your own standards, whatever those may be. That is certainly one way to look at it and not illogical. What is illogical is to pretend that there are "order and moral standards seem to exist outside of the reach of any particular religion." Why? That is at best another way of saying you believe in God. I call it beleiving in the moral standards God as opposed to the omnipetent God of Christianity, but each requires just as much faith. At worst just a meaningless tautology; there are standards because there are.

TJ | January 12, 2006, 3:29pm | #

It is very interesting how theists manage to live in such denial that most of them go around blithely believing that moral standards could not be developed without God. It is amazing how these people manage to live in a world of such intellectual development without recognizing it's potential. I often wonder if any of them ever read Kurtz (or Dawkins) and how if they did it went so utterly and completely over their heads.

It is hysterical to think that this otherwise intelligent person is puzzled by why many people refuse to believe in the concept of a personal god. The only explanation I can think of is that he has managed to live in complete denial of the concepts of death and existential anxiety.

StupendousMan! | January 12, 2006, 3:29pm | #

"I've never met a religious person in my life who had hallucinations or voices in his or her head. Pre-judge much?"

Well then why exactly are they religious? If you haven't had some sort of religious experience why believe in a particular religion at all?

Oops, sorry, was that too angry? Guess I shouldn't be asking questions at all.

Jamie Kelly | January 12, 2006, 3:30pm | #

"Dennett is by no means the first person to try to explain religion from a scientific perspective. Emile Durkheim, for example, wrote THE ELEMENTARY FORMS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE more than 100 years ago."

See also "The God Part of the Brain" by Matthew Alper.
http://www.godpart.com/

AgnostoLibertarianTechnoGeek | January 12, 2006, 3:31pm | #

"The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not."
-- Eric Hoffer

"We don't know and we don't care."
-- The Church of the Apathetic Agnostic

John | January 12, 2006, 3:33pm | #

TJ,

Please enlighten us and the rest of the world by your theory of ethics that exists without a metaphysics. The evolutionary view that we are all trained apes reacting to our DNA doesn't count because if we have no free will, then there can be no ethics.

budgie | January 12, 2006, 3:34pm | #

"Aside from one schizophrenic, I've never met a religious person in my life who had hallucinations or voices in his or her head."

Consider yourself lucky.

"Pre-judge much?"

Occasionally, but I am blessed to live in the U.S. where the fundie data sample is huge. Check out the bible sometime. There are lots of very explicit stories in there about people hearing voices in their heads, and Christian history is rife with other examples. It seems to be pretty standard stuff, something akin to winning the prayer lottery.

Dylan | January 12, 2006, 3:34pm | #

TJ -

And all ideas have equal worth, all opinions equally valid. That's the new age way to think, isn't it? My notion that the Sun is being pulled along behind Apollo's chariot is just as valid as those who think it isn't.

That's not what I said. And I didn't mean to offend the atheists on here (especially by misspelling it in my first comment). When I said "vocal" atheists I meant people who are almost religious about it -- and are condescending if not outright hostile towards people who might believe in a higher power. I've met people like this.
When it comes down to it, we only can know so much, even through science. There's always going to be an unknown out there, and being convinced that it consists of nothing takes just as much a leap of faith as being convinced that it consists of something.
But that something doesn't have to consist of folk legends. Of course I don't think a belief in something that is verifiably false, like the moon being pulled by Apollo, is on the same level as astronomical science.
That was kind of my point -- religious people can still have faith in God or whatever while accepting scientific fact.

fyodor | January 12, 2006, 3:34pm | #

Tiger got to hunt
Bird got to fly
Man got to ask himself why, why, why
Tiger got to rest
Bird got to land
Man got to tell himself he understand

Kurt Vonngegut Jr in Cat's Cradle

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 3:36pm | #

they look down on those they feel have blindly convinced themselves there's a higher power, but when it comes down to it, their conviction that there isn't a higher power is equally blind.

There's a point, here. To claim that you know that an omnipotent being (say, the Big Hoaxer God of the Creationists) isn't hiding out there somewhere in the universe is silly. Aside from "strong atheism", you can also take the agnostic road ("Hell, I dunno"), or the skeptical road ("I don't believe it until I see it").

I'm talking about the semantic difference between disbelief and nonbelief of course, but unless a fight over how many angels can split a hair breaks out, it's not that pedantic.

MP | January 12, 2006, 3:37pm | #

That is at best another way of saying you believe in God.

Funny how one can write of hundreds of years of of secular moral philosophy by saying "they're just theists in disguise".

And people wonder why I have such disdain for most folks with strong religious convictions.

April | January 12, 2006, 3:38pm | #

John, I find it equally interesting that believers think morality cannot exist without God. Why is God a prerequisite for morality? Isn't it possible that humans created myth and religion to give a shape to some common sense of morality that is innate?

I posit that morality comes from within, and not as a threat from without.

Native NYer | January 12, 2006, 3:39pm | #

TJ | January 12, 2006, 3:40pm | #

"But the fact is that the existence of a higher power is not provable or unprovable, so it's no more silly to believe than it is to not believe."

There are billions (trillions? infinite?) of "unprovable" hypotheses. Over the ages, thousands of gods have been proposed by man to exist. Is there no way to assign probability to their validity?

Occam's razor comes to mind. Or common sense, or rule utilitarianism, or ...

John | January 12, 2006, 3:40pm | #

Well MP,

What are those secular theorists doing but pointing to first principles that they beleive are first principles on "faith"? I still waiting for someone to explain to me how the world is not chaos without a God, whether you call that God, Yalweh, Bob, or first principles. Rather than just making smart ass comments and blindly pointing to "secular theorists" like a caveman pointing at a witch doctor, how about answering the argument?

Jamie Kelly | January 12, 2006, 3:41pm | #

Answer to theists who believe morality comes from Jesus and shit like that:

Percentage of the U.S. population considering itself atheist or agnostic: 16.
Percentage of U.S. prisoners considering themselves atheist/agnostic: 0.2
Percentage of the U.S. population considering itself Christian/Jewish: 71.
Percentage of U.S. prisoners considering themselves Christian/Jewish: 84.
Source: Federal Bureau of Prisons

ChicagoTom | January 12, 2006, 3:42pm | #

George H. W. Bush on 8/27/1987:
"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

"Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I'm just not very high on atheists."

Silly reactionary athiests, what on earth would make these people angry and or bitter.

But things are better these days right? Athiests are treated with much more respect and dignity in these more enlightened times

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 3:43pm | #

Once you kill God, the only alternative is the abyss and the will to impose your own standards, whatever those may be.

To my knowledge, that's correct, at least on an abstract level.

What is illogical is to pretend that there are "order and moral standards seem to exist outside of the reach of any particular religion." Why?

Because order and moral standards empirically do exist outside of the reach of any particular religion. Or do you really believe that evil chaos reigns over the majority of the world that doesn't accept whatever particular religious beliefs you have?

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 3:44pm | #

And people wonder why I have such disdain for most folks with strong religious convictions.

"I'm good so God won't spank me" is not that strong a religious conviction, to be fair.

John | January 12, 2006, 3:44pm | #

Jamie Kelly | January 12, 2006, 3:45pm | #

"Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I'm just not very high on atheists." - George W. Bush

That's because he was high on booze and coke at the time.

Stretch | January 12, 2006, 3:45pm | #

Oh yeah...you're right. I almost forgot about the atheists who wear ties and and ride around my neighborhood on bicycles and keep knocking on my door to tell me how to fix myself. Yeah they come by and harrass me all the time ;)

I never claimed they did. I only said that the vast majority of the religious aren't actively trying to convert people. Since you live in fundie country, I guess you have a different perspective. As for me, I've been hit by the JW's a few times, but they were easily dismissed compared to the hasids I ran into in NYC. Maybe it was my beard (funny, I don't look druish), but those guys just wouldn't leave me alone. However, compared to the amount of jewish people (even just the practicing ones) I've met it's hardly worth mentioning.

Jennifer | January 12, 2006, 3:46pm | #

Morality is probably an evolutionary construct that developed along with our intellect. For example, all societies have rules against murder; you don't have to be religious to see that a society won't last very long if its members are allowed to kill each other any time they feel like it. So, even assuming there ever WAS a society which said "We have no problem with murderers; if you want to kill someone you dislike, go right ahead," that society would have died out pretty quickly.

Matt | January 12, 2006, 3:46pm | #

TJ, you are very, very good.

ChicagoTom | January 12, 2006, 3:47pm | #

I've met many people who would never admit to worshiping a god yet they are big believers in "what goes around comes around".

My wife doesn't believe in heaven or hell or God in a "traditional sense". She believes that there probably was some kind of force that created everything, but that said force doesn't play any role in day to day life. But she believes that all people have souls, that spirits/ghosts roam aruond us, spirit guides, etc (anything you read in a Sylvia Browne book).

I know that the two don't go hand in hand nor are directly related, but for some reason I find these two beliefs on her part rather puzzling. I don't see how the one seems absurd (traditional religious beliefs) but not the other.

MP | January 12, 2006, 3:49pm | #

What are those secular theorists doing but pointing to first principles that they beleive are first principles on "faith"?

One's beliefs in what is right and wrong is usual grounded in either what is best for the self or what is best for the collective. There is no reason for it to be ground on the dictates from above.

Stretch | January 12, 2006, 3:50pm | #

There are billions (trillions? infinite?) of "unprovable" hypotheses. Over the ages, thousands of gods have been proposed by man to exist. Is there no way to assign probability to their validity?

Occam's razor comes to mind. Or common sense, or rule utilitarianism, or ...

As I said, talking about a specific personification of god is completely different than talking about the potential existence of any sort of higher power.

JB Allen | January 12, 2006, 3:52pm | #

John -

I think Thomas Jefferson's attempt at separating Christian ethics from Christian metaphysics was admirable and worthwhile. And I can't help but wonder what kind of Christian needs the promise of Sugarcandy Heaven to be compelled to act in accordance with one's principles. Put another way, what ethical system is really worth its weight in salt if it requires carrot-and-stick methods to back it up?

Jamie Kelly | January 12, 2006, 3:52pm | #

"I posit that morality comes from within, and not as a threat from without."

Morality is what happens when reason tells us that we cannot claw each other to death and survive; that we are forced by our nature as rational people to develop a code of conduct that allows us to live among each other without the use of brute force. That's a broad brush, and the devil's always in the details, so to speak.

John | January 12, 2006, 3:53pm | #

Those standards exist for one of two reasons; either they are there because humans made them up, or they are there because there is a higher power. If human beings made them up, there is nothing to say why one set is any better or worse than another set. That very well maybe true. It is not that I blame people for being atheists. Hell, I doubt every day. Its that, I wish they would just face up to the reality of a universe without God. Just because it is unpleasant doesn't mean that it is not true that there is no God. What I hate is people who sit around and make fun of those who believe in God when they themselves live in complete denial of the consiquences of their being no God; niehlism without the abyss.

Evan | January 12, 2006, 3:54pm | #

Eric & Dylan:

It's simply irresponsible to equate atheism with various theist belief systems.

Let's take a simplistic example, and see how it hashes out: There's 3 people, staring out at an empty desert plain. First guy looks out and says, "I believe there's a big green & orange elephant about 100 yards west!".

The second guy looks out at the empty plain and says, "Well, me, I believe that there's a 50-foot tall pile of glowing pennies right over to my left."

The third guy looks out at the empty plain, and says, "I believe that there's nothing out there."

While there's no evidence, outside of storybooks, to support the first two guys' beliefs, the third guy has scientific, observable evidence that his belief is valid. Thus, it is with Athiests. Being atheistic is not, in terms of observable scientific reality, the same as being theistic. And I think it's fair to impose that standard of judgment (observable evidence) here. Sure, if you want to detach from that standard, and float around in relativistic fairy-tale land, then, sure, athiesm is no more or less valid than christianity, islam or the Great Church of the Bogeyman. But is that really where we want to take this discussion?

Matt | January 12, 2006, 3:54pm | #

Hey Ron Bailey,

" To whatever extent we were ever at the mercy of our genes, we no longer are. Instead our genes are now at the mercy of our brains."

- Ronald Bailey (from the review of Freedom Evolves)

Arent our brains built from our genes? I dont see how our brains re-mixing our genes breaks us out of deterministic genetics logic. If you accept DNA as the irreducible unit, determined to replicate (see Dawkins "The Selfish Gene"), than our DNA building a complex organ system, which ultimately analyzes itself through technology, then, with that knowledge, creates a 'better' self. Nothing there contradicts Dennett, Dawkins, or Darwin. As I see it. Please tell me how?

budgie | January 12, 2006, 3:54pm | #

"Under that scenerio you are left with at best a kind of crude ultiltarianism; this or that is wrong or right because it does or does not perpetuate the species."

Not really a bad way to go actually. I don't really see what's so scary about that. The notion of species perpetuation has a light and a dark side of course. On one level, it could involve short-sighted navel gazing, wherein chaos reigns. On another level, we could all kind of agree that certain outcomes to the way we behave are more deisrable than others, kind of a golden rule or categorical imperative. I'm not that conversant on the historical philosophical arguments that have been made about what should or must undergird a moral system, but I really don't see the need for an abusive and vindictive father figure to oversee it all. Before anyone jumps in an says "but God is not abusive or vindictive," go just a couple of pages into the Old Testament and on through the book of Job and then tell me otherwise.

Jamie Kelly | January 12, 2006, 3:55pm | #

Most importantly, though, morality is a guide for living on Earth, not for collecting rewards like virgins and new bodies in heaven.

Cuddles | January 12, 2006, 3:55pm | #

"Under that scenerio you are left with at best a kind of crude ultiltarianism; this or that is wrong or right because it does or does not perpetuate the species."

Well, I guess I'm a Crudalist then.

Stretch | January 12, 2006, 3:55pm | #

I take the tack that morality is simply the extension of the individual survival instinct as applied to a larger group of people. God need not apply.

Jennifer | January 12, 2006, 3:55pm | #

Just because it is unpleasant doesn't mean that it is not true that there is no God.

The opposite is also true--however unpleasant you find the thought of a godless universe, that alone does not mean a god exists.

Jamie Kelly | January 12, 2006, 3:57pm | #

"If human beings made them up, there is nothing to say why one set is any better or worse than another set."

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. One is better if it conforms to man's nature as a rational being. That's why atheists don't believe in kicking your neighbor's head and stealing his shit, then fucking his wife.

TJ | January 12, 2006, 3:58pm | #

"I still waiting for someone to explain to me how the world is not chaos without a God, whether you call that God, Yalweh, Bob, or first principles."

On this I agree. There was an "organizing" event, although it's not likely the way most folks think about organization. The Big Bang, or something like it, had to happen. What caused it? I don't know. Did Spinoza's God do it? Is it intrinsic in the behaviour of a universe full of matter, and if so, where did this universe come from? Did a "god" create it? If so, who created the god? Who / what created the god that created the god? How far down do the turtles go? Fun questions.

John | January 12, 2006, 3:58pm | #

You miss the point. The reason for a God is not to say that we should be moral or go to hell. Indeed, there is no real clear vision of an afterlife in Judism. The reason why there has to be a God is so that human have some reason to know that the principals they are following are correct and not just some evolutionary construct or a construct of their own wills. The enlightenment thinkers did a marvelous job of trying to separate morality from metaphysics and pretend that they could arrive at morality on their own. Unfortunately, David Humme pointed out how hopeless their task was.

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 3:59pm | #

It's simply irresponsible to equate atheism with various theist belief systems.

Either requires certainty about something for which no evidence exists (or as some religious people frame it, no evidence can exist). Either is mistaken. They are not equivalent, though.

The third guy looks out at the empty plain, and says, "I believe that there's nothing out there."

Which is not the same as "I don't believe that there's anything out there." A fine point, but a point.

Phil | January 12, 2006, 4:00pm | #

To catch John in his own intellectual trap, most believers believe that it would be wrong for them to kill someone even if they believed God was telling them to; ergo, there are agreed-upon moral and ethical standards that exist -- or at least can be and are conceptualized and perpetuated -- without the need for a deity or metaphysic of any kind.

I often wonder if any of them ever read Nietzsche and how if they did it went so utterly and completely over their heads.

Does the fact that I don't believe in deities require me to accept Nietzche as an authority on, or the final word on, well, anything? No, no it doesn't.

Jennifer | January 12, 2006, 4:02pm | #

The reason why there has to be a God is so that human have some reason to know that the principals they are following are correct and not just some evolutionary construct or a construct of their own wills.

What are you talking about? You don't need to believe in God to see that murder can't be tolerated in society. You're also relying on a false dichotomy: either something is correct, OR it is an evolutionary adaptation. What? What have they to do with each other?

To see how pointless that is, try applying it to the biological need to eat: do we need to eat because it is "correct," or because it is an evolutionary construct? It's a pointless and meaningless question.

John | January 12, 2006, 4:03pm | #

Jennifer,

You are right, it doesn't mean that God exists necessarily.

TJ,

Jamie Kelley,

Athiest don't kick you in the head because they think it is wrong but really have no reason to think that it is wrong other than their own wills. In the atheist's world, if he were honest with himself, the Muslim next door who does kick you in the head for being a non-believer is just as right.

Pirate Jo | January 12, 2006, 4:03pm | #

April,

It is absolutely possible that morality comes from within, but if it does there is nothing saying that your morality is any more moral than mine or anyone elses. Ultimately morality coming from within is just another way of saying "will". Under that scenerio you are left with at best a kind of crude ultiltarianism; this or that is wrong or right because it does or does not perpetuate the species.

Well, what if that scenario IS the truth? Not a comfortable one, but it's lack of comfort wouldn't make it any less true. Certainly reason and observation could be applied to these various moralities and it would be obvious that some work better than others.

Stretch | January 12, 2006, 4:04pm | #

The reason why there has to be a God is so that human have some reason to know that the principals they are following are correct and not just some evolutionary construct or a construct of their own wills.

1. Why is this important? If the rules that allow us to live in a "moral" society are are an evolutionary construct, why is that a problem?

2. God or no, I don't see how the simple existence of a deity proves that the princples we follow are actually correct. Maybe we've got it way wrong.

linguist | January 12, 2006, 4:05pm | #

Oooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me!

We're going back and forth about atheistic belief and theistic belief, and there's another discussion about genetic determinism.

How about this: the reason humans evolved a universal proclivity to "religion" or faith, is that we DO need a morals system. And whether we call is Jebus or Vishnu or Bob's Code of Ethics, it needs to be something that keeps rogues in check within a society. It's ALL rule by carrots and sticks, folks! Some people don't murder their neighbors because they believe they'll suffer in the afterlife. Some don't do it because they believe that a human life is a sacred thing in and of itself. But both beliefs pull on the same part of the brain that we somehow developed so we COULD live in a society and thereby survive.

That's my theory, anyway.

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 4:05pm | #

The reason why there has to be a God is so that human have some reason to know that the principals they are following are correct and not just some evolutionary construct or a construct of their own wills.

OK, I'll grant, "I must believe some supernatural force blesses my view of morality or I won't consider it worth holding" is distinct from "I'm good so God won't spank me."

John | January 12, 2006, 4:05pm | #

Jennifer,

Why can't murder be tolerated in society? Who says so and why? Murder is tolerated in lots of societies. There have been many societies through the years that had blood feuds and tolerated revenge. I am sure you wouldn't have liked to have lived in them, but the folks who did probably wouldn't want to live in our society either. Who are you to say that they are wrong? You just understandably don't like it.

Cuddles | January 12, 2006, 4:06pm | #

To catch John in his own intellectual trap....

yeah, that was a tough one.

Kwix | January 12, 2006, 4:07pm | #

John,
I still waiting for someone to explain to me how the world is not chaos without a God, whether you call that God, Yalweh, Bob, or first principles.

Jennifer's observations that:
Morality is probably an evolutionary construct that developed along with our intellect. For example, all societies have rules against murder; you don't have to be religious to see that a society won't last very long if its members are allowed to kill each other any time they feel like it.

If you want a perfect example of this, look at the "unenlightened" masses known as chimpanzees. They have a highly structured, moral if you will, society. Somehow, I don't think that the great "Bob" has spoken to them. I don't think they are Buddhist either. Why do they feel "moral" outrage at injustice? Maybe they are just trying to be good for Santa, eh?

God | January 12, 2006, 4:07pm | #

Guys, I have your ISP addresses and won't foget what you've written here.

When you come before My throne (which for some of you will be next week while I see the half a bee isn't due for another 65 years while shtupping a college girl) you will repent too late of your materialistic views while suffering in the pit of boiling pitch.

Have a nice day!

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 4:07pm | #

Athiest don't kick you in the head because they think it is wrong but really have no reason to think that it is wrong other than their own wills. In the atheist's world, if he were honest with himself, the Muslim next door who does kick you in the head for being a non-believer is just as right.

Not by the atheist's standards, and presumably not by any common standards they shared.

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 4:09pm | #

When you come before My throne (which for some of you will be next week while I see the half a bee isn't due for another 65 years while shtupping a college girl)

I always knew they'd be the death of me...

Rimfax | January 12, 2006, 4:10pm | #

Ronald Bailey's comment about "not many" of the faithful participating in the scrutiny of religion doesn't necessarily rely on casting all theists as fundamentalists. My experience suggests that those who are nominally religious are even more reluctant to discuss or examine religion than the fundamentalists.

John | January 12, 2006, 4:11pm | #

Linquist,

If you are right, the best thing to be is the person, the superman, who can rise above all of those constructs you mention and make their own rules through their own will. The idea is not to be in the herd, but to be ahead of the herd and outside of and beyond the herd and its morality. That is why I say, don't be an atheist unless you have read and appreciate Nietzche

MP | January 12, 2006, 4:11pm | #

Murder is tolerated in lots of societies. There have been many societies through the years that had blood feuds and tolerated revenge.

Are those the atheistic nihilist societies?

rafuzo | January 12, 2006, 4:11pm | #

Probably one of the funniest occurrences in my young life was witnessing a chorus shouting match in Harvard Squayah, between a few evangelicals trying to proselytize and the bunch of nitwit black trenchcoat-wearing rocky-horror-loving goth-types they were ostensibly trying to convert. "God saves!" they yell. "God doesn't exist!" they yell back. "Jesus is the path to peace!" they yell. "Jesus is a fictional character!" they yell back. What was funny was that this was, except for the clothing, you couldn't tell who was yelling what, and who really believed it.

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 4:12pm | #

Why can't murder be tolerated in society? Who says so and why? Murder is tolerated in lots of societies.

Murder is by definition killing not tolerated in a given society. Pretty much every society will allow (or even require) killing in some circumstance, but all of them limit the circumstances. Completely pacifistic or rampantly murderous societies don't last.

April | January 12, 2006, 4:13pm | #

"If human beings made them up, there is nothing to say why one set is any better or worse than another set."

Of course there is! It is what we, as societies, agree upon. Moral specifics change and evolve as societies change and evolve. We collectively agree (or disagree, obviously, but come to general conclusions) upon what behaviour is necessary, acceptable, disagreeable, criminal, unacceptable under any circumstances, etc. Even Christianity is subject to some of this ebb and flow.

There is nothing to say that God is responsible for putting those agreements in our heads.

John | January 12, 2006, 4:13pm | #

Are those the atheistic nihilist societies?

MP

That is not the point. The point is that they made up the rules and there is nothing to say that they were wrong in doing so.

Ectoterrestrial | January 12, 2006, 4:14pm | #

I'll second Mr. Nice guy's view. I got this impression from the most vocal athiests. The ones who get on TV and start bitching and moaning and foaming at the mouth about the stupidity of human psychology, how people are idiots, etc, etc. It is as if their anger is what drives their beliefs. This strikes a chord in most people of being unwise.

Because the American definition of a classified group is "the behavor of their representatives on television", I therefore conclude that athiests are angry, under the American Standard of Televiewed Objectification. q.e.d.

Its like the "quack watch" guy taking on psychics on the Larry King Show. He's just so angry and unwise that the psychics can dodge his questions and still come out looking like they won a debate.

Athiests need calmer, wiser representatives. We know you are out there. My wife is one. She's just too busy being a humanitarian and doesn't care about getting on TV and fighting.

someone | January 12, 2006, 4:14pm | #

Budgie,

>and their arguments are refreshingly free of the ramblings of nomadic desert tribes.

hee hee.

On the other hand, I'm an atheist who's encountered a few atheists like Mr. Nice Guy described. They are rather disheartening people.

For myself, I believe in all sorts of things not amenable to science, but I try to keep them in their proper context. To paraphrase some nomadic ramblings, render unto Caesar that which is his, or something. That is, attempts to understand the material world must be amenable to science, and it is valid to try and persuade others of that which has been validated by science. Revelations acquired whilst in a trippy head space and uncanny events that make us wonder/believe if there is a reality beyond what is knowable are cool and all that, but they are also matters of faith that should not be proselytized about, nor used as a basis for public debate, public policy, or law in a modern, free-ish society.

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 4:15pm | #

"rampantly bloodthirsty societies", rather.

Allah | January 12, 2006, 4:15pm | #

Speaking of religion:

Hajj Death Toll Now 345
Muslim pilgrims trip over luggage during rush to finish symbolic stoning ritual in Saudi Arabia

I can picture the Onion photoshop job now ...

linguist | January 12, 2006, 4:15pm | #

If you are right, the best thing to be is the person, the superman, who can rise above all of those constructs you mention and make their own rules through their own will.

I don't see why that necessarily follows, John. I'm talking about survival of the species, so in fact it is best to stay IN the herd and obey its rules, whether your herd is Muslim, Christian, or atheist.

Phil | January 12, 2006, 4:16pm | #

That is why I say, don't be an atheist unless you have read and appreciate Nietzche

Replace "atheist" with "Christian" and "Nietzche" with "Bertrand Russell," then ask yourself both why anyone should care, and why you feel repeating the word Nietzche is like, all, "TRUMP CARD, SUX0RZ!!!!"

John | January 12, 2006, 4:17pm | #

Of course there is! It is what we, as societies, agree upon. Moral specifics change and evolve as societies change and evolve. We collectively agree (or disagree, obviously, but come to general conclusions) upon what behaviour is necessary, acceptable, disagreeable, criminal, unacceptable under any circumstances, etc. Even Christianity is subject to some of this ebb and flow.

Okay April, so if we all vote on it, it must be right? That is just a fancy way of saying that whatever man decides is right is right.

Jennifer | January 12, 2006, 4:17pm | #

John, what did you think of Kwix's example at 4:07? I'm kicking myself for not having thoughy of that first; it has indeed been shown that chimpanzees have "moral codes," and they will ostracize members of their pack who violate those codes. Was this morality a gift from a chimpanzee god, or behavior that social, hierarchal animals would evolve, do you think?

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 4:18pm | #

That is not the point. The point is that they made up the rules and there is nothing to say that they were wrong in doing so.

And yet every religious society thinks its right in doing so because of supernatural blessing. Can they all be right, what with the tremendous variety of religious beliefs out there (and over the course of history)? Which God is necessary for all that moral justification?

Curious | January 12, 2006, 4:18pm | #

Allah, was Bert the Muppet one of the fallen faithful?

MP | January 12, 2006, 4:19pm | #

The point is that they made up the rules and there is nothing to say that they were wrong in doing so.

I say.

April | January 12, 2006, 4:19pm | #

Heheh...MP, I'm thinkin' not!

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 4:29pm | #

"Thanks for giving me an example of exactly what I was talking about. You don't want to kill people because you think its wrong? Why, because you said so. Without God, there is only the will to power. Once you kill God, the only alternative is the abyss and the will to impose your own standards, whatever those may be."

Yeah, man, the Crusades would have really super-duper sucked if they'd been conducted by atheists.

And 9|11...boy, it's a good thing those fellas were Muslims, because if they'd have been atheists, well, they'd have brought the abyss to New York, let me tell you.

Phil | January 12, 2006, 4:29pm | #

John, would you kill a complete stranger if you sincerely believed God was telling you to do so?

Rimfax | January 12, 2006, 4:29pm | #

John,

So, before mankind "discovered" the Abrahamic god (presumably the one asking for your cash), what was the moral authority? Was "he" posing as Zeus, or crossdressing as Isis, or pulling an all-around Sybil routine? If so, did "he" get tired of the ruse, did the "heat" blow over, or did "he" decide that we were mature enough for the real God experience?

Also, if the whole "ethics in the DNA" concept denies free will, how does being created by an omnipotent and omniscient being allow it? Was God making our souls with one eye closed so that a little free will could creep in randomly? Did "he" roll dice for us like rolling up characters in a grand cosmic RPG? Was Calvin (the theologian, not the cartoon character) far more right than he ever feared he could be about predestination?

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 4:30pm | #

Athiests need calmer, wiser representatives.

Maybe...but it strikes me as more important that religionists get calmer, wiser representatives. There are rather more of them.

April | January 12, 2006, 4:30pm | #

John, yes! That is exactly what I am saying! (Hu)man, not "God," made up morality, not the other way 'round. That's how I see it, anyway, and I don't understand why it's such a heretical notion, or sad in any way.

linguist | January 12, 2006, 4:33pm | #

Also, my theory would account for April's statement that morality could be internal. Why not? If we evolved to have a set of morals, those who didn't abide by the rules would have been punished harshly. Is there any reason that over time those things couldn't have become ingrained in the development of our brains? There must be a reason for universal taboos murder, cannibalism, and incest. (Of course all of these are tolerated in certain circumstances, but on the whole they are universally reviled.)

Another postulate that would come out of this line of thought is the possibility that religion is actually the foundation of human society.

Maybe now all of you understand why I'm not so harsh on theists: we all have beliefs. Man is a rational animal AND an irrational animal, but always a social animal (some posters here notwithstanding.) I'm a true agnostic, I worship the god of Sit-on-Fence. :-)

GILMORE | January 12, 2006, 4:33pm | #

Comment by: MP

�I'm sure a vast majority of fundamentalists question their beliefs all the time.� (read: Sarcasm)

Comment by: me

Dude, 1) you are now calling �the faithful�, basically all �fundementalists�, which is nonsense. �fundamentalists� , you will agree, represent the smallest (if most vocal at times) segment of the religious world. So you are basically making a mountain out of a molehill.

And more importantly, b) yes, in fact some fundamentalist sects have *as part of their orthodoxy* the need to constantly test and reaffirm the nature of their beliefs. Look at the study habits of the Hassidm. Argument and disputation about the meaning of certain concepts and exploring alternative readings is in fact built into their religious system itself. In the 16th-18th centuries, Jesuits, were arguably the leading intellectual force in the world, and founded hundreds of universities.

This generalization of religion being somehow essentially anti-intellectual is absolute bigoted rubbish.

JG

Evan | January 12, 2006, 4:42pm | #

Eric:

"Either requires certainty about something for which no evidence exists (or as some religious people frame it, no evidence can exist). Either is mistaken. They are not equivalent, though."

Again you try to frame it in terms of black and white: mistaken, or not mistaken. This is why I call it irresponsible. It's simply not black and white. In terms of observable evidence, christians are certainly more mistaken than atheists are, would you not agree? And since you cannot prove a negative 100%, I think you impose too strict a standard on those who believe that there is no god. If "no evidence can exist", then this conversation is pointless, as is everything. If you frame something in those terms (it cannot be proven), then it has no value in a logical, rational debate.

Kwix | January 12, 2006, 4:48pm | #

Linguist,
How about this: the reason humans evolved a universal proclivity to "religion" or faith, is that we DO need a morals system. ... It's ALL rule by carrots and sticks, folks! Some people don't murder their neighbors because they believe they'll suffer in the afterlife. Some don't do it because they believe that a human life is a sacred thing in and of itself.

I am not so sure of the carrot and stick analogy. The reason I refuse to murder my neighbor has more to do with my belief that it would be wrong to commit on him an act I would not want done to me. Not that I believe that human life(as a whole) is sacred or anything. In fact, I figure that if all humans were not here the planet would be better off. I suppose my morals may be societally driven, but not because of fear of being imprisoned or executed. Perhaps it is a DNA/speciest survival thing.

This is why I am an agnostic/skeptic. I don't know, and I can't prove it.

MP | January 12, 2006, 4:48pm | #

you are now calling �the faithful�, basically all �fundementalists�, which is nonsense. �fundamentalists� , you will agree, represent the smallest (if most vocal at times) segment of the religious world. So you are basically making a mountain out of a molehill.

I don't think most religious people seriously question thier beliefs. The ones that do turn into either fundamentalists (because when faced with the logical connundrums, they fall back on faith) or they forsake religion. Anyone who accepts religion as their central guidepoint and makes it a fundamental part of their lifestyle is in my view a fundamentalist.

In the 16th-18th centuries, Jesuits, were arguably the leading intellectual force in the world, and founded hundreds of universities.

It is not the existence of intellect, it is how it is applied. Some very smart people believe some very foolish things. Take the bloodthirsty neo-cons for example...

Pirate Jo | January 12, 2006, 4:49pm | #

Regarding atheists as former fundamentalists: I can see a potential connection there. If you were raised in a really fundie, quack religion, you would be confronted much more often with contradictions between what you were taught and what you needed to do in order to live a happy, normal life. So you would question these teachings, reject them, and end up being angry about it later, because you had to un-learn so much ridiculous garbage (replace your homeschooled young-earth teachings with science that everyone else knew by the time they were your age) and catch up with everyone else.

On the other hand, if you were brought up in a mainstream religion that didn't interfere with your ability to live a normal life that much, you may never have had any reason to question those issues.

GILMORE | January 12, 2006, 4:51pm | #

"In the 16th-18th centuries, Jesuits, were arguably the leading intellectual force in the world, and founded hundreds of universities."

MP = It is not the existence of intellect, it is how it is applied.

You demonstrate this point excellently.

JG

Cuddles | January 12, 2006, 4:57pm | #

This generalization of religion being somehow essentially anti-intellectual is absolute bigoted rubbish.

Of course, the generalization of religious people being somehow essentially anti-intellectual is absolute bigoted truth.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 4:58pm | #

Yeah, Gilmore, the problem is that your examples hearken back hundreds of years.

Nowadays the major religious leaders (at least as judged by ectoterrestrial's wonderful televised yardstick) are happy to stick their fingers in their ears and sing "Oh say can you see..." at the top of their lungs.

van | January 12, 2006, 4:59pm | #

>Also, my theory would account for April's statement that morality could be internal. Why not? If we evolved to have a set of morals, those who didn't abide by the rules would have been punished harshly. Is there any reason that over time those things couldn't have become ingrained in the development of our brains? There must be a reason for universal taboos murder, cannibalism, and incest.

I think April is on the right track (definitely agree that man created god in his image -- seems beyond obvious to me). And there probably is an internal dimension to morality. But, morality is inherently social -- it evolves through the interaction of humans with one another. And it varies because of the interaction of human societies with their material environments (including the presence of other human groups competing for resources). There is no need to resort to explanations based on biological evolution. Humans essentially stopped evolving biologically at the point that they became human. Suggesting that morals are a result of biological evolution is essentially endorsing a Lamarkian perspective, that learned traits are heritable.

linguist | January 12, 2006, 4:59pm | #

The reason I refuse to murder my neighbor has more to do with my belief that it would be wrong to commit on him an act I would not want done to me.

Right! Another example! Isn't this really just the Golden Rule/what goes around comes around/karma belief? In which case, the carrot and stick analogy does apply. :-)

Yakov Smirnov | January 12, 2006, 5:00pm | #

"I'm sure a vast majority of fundamentalists question their beliefs all the time.�

In Russia, beliefs of vast majority of fundamentalists question you.

Lurker Kurt | January 12, 2006, 5:01pm | #

It is what we, as societies, agree upon.

What about the Nazis? They agreeded that Jews and Slavs where sub-human and therefore killing them was not murder.

How horrible it was for us to force our morality upon them.

P.S. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I am an apatheist myself.

Yakov Smirnov | January 12, 2006, 5:02pm | #

"Right! Another example! Isn't this really just the Golden Rule/what goes around comes around/karma belief? In which case, the carrot and stick analogy does apply."

In Russia, Golden Rule carrot and stick analogy beats you into meek submission.

NoStar | January 12, 2006, 5:02pm | #

This former non-believer felt the presence of God and I could no longer call myself an atheist. Sorry, I can't share it with you all, but your time will come.

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 5:03pm | #

And since you cannot prove a negative 100%, I think you impose too strict a standard on those who believe that there is no god.

No, those who assert that there definitely is no God set the standard themselves and set it equal to the theists.

Many Creationists, for instance, describe a God that deliberately constructed the universe to appear billions of years old, but only did it 6000-odd years ago. If the concept is "omnipotent entity that can utterly hide its own existence and all evidence of its handiwork", then you simply can't argue from evidence that it certainly doesn't exist. You can sensibly argue that there's no reason to believe in such an entity and or even that it's absurd to worry about such a ridiculous concept, but you can't disprove it.

To re-use the empty plain example and mix it from something Carl Sagan used as an argument...If one guy argues that an invisible dragon is lurking out in the apparently empty plain, watching the deeds of both men, the second guy has no way of proving that it's not out there. If he goes out and looks for it, the first guy says it silently flies away. If he looks for footprints, the first guys says it doesn't leave any. The second guy has every reason to declare the first guy full of shit and dismiss the whole concept of the invisible dragon, but he's never managed to disprove it.

Nor is it necessary for him to. That's the point of skepticism. You only accept as fact things that can be demonstrated. You don't have to disprove every wild idea - you just have to demand proof.

I'd recommend Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World for a good overview of the concepts and application of skepticism and the scientific method.

linguist | January 12, 2006, 5:03pm | #

Suggesting that morals are a result of biological evolution is essentially endorsing a Lamarkian perspective, that learned traits are heritable.

Actually, recent studies question the idea that evolution stopped at the point we became human, but I want to make sure you understand I'm NOT saying we evolved this in Lamarckian terms. Rather, we already had the precursor of it (see the chimps discussions above) and when it came about, however it did so, it was a result of evolutionary pressure CAUSED by living in social groups, which I'm guessing we probably did before we were homo sapiens.

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 5:04pm | #

In Russia,

Good grief, even the real Smirnov doesn't do that schtick anymore.

T Bone | January 12, 2006, 5:06pm | #

Well, John, it's not all abyss. There's beauty, of course--which, thankfully, doesn't need a metaphysical basis for it's existence.

How can there be order instead of chaos without God? Well, now that God is dead, we can de-anthropomorphize 'him', reduce the concept to it's various parts, and then go from there. I'm sure most athiests hold certain ideas or faiths that could be said to be a part of a theist's conception of God. So, the world doesn't have to be 'put to order' in order that it have meaning.

One way to explain this universe and its order would be to posit 'all possibility' (or all possible worlds) and then, through the strong anthropic principle, state that only those worlds with the conditions for order, complexity, and life--and thus consciousness--will be able to be experienced. Our universe, ordered as it is by thermodynamic laws acting within a 'good' physical framework, is in this view the most improbable spec in the sea of 'all possibility, which is mostly chaos.' It's a metaphysical argument, sure, but that's no reason for most athiests to discount it (some would, though). It posits no 'god in the image of man' which is the thing that primarily bugs them. Instead it posits a sort of mathematical idea.

How can there be meaning in such a world? We create it. We have freedom, the possibility to change the world, shape the future. What more could one ask for? In this view meaning is not given, but found or created--and thus struggled with. It is uncertain, as is all knowledge.

Also, why does 'morality comming from within' leave us with only a crude utilitarianism, and not an extremly well refined, highly effecatious utilitarianism? I'd call the top-down moral framework of most religions crude (even if, at times, historically necessary).

van | January 12, 2006, 5:06pm | #

John,

>It is absolutely possible that morality comes from within, but if it does there is nothing saying that your morality is any more moral than mine or anyone elses.

Yes there is. Other people say it, by agreeing or disagreeing and evolving social means of sanctioning behaviors that go against social norms about what is moral or not moral.

Kwix | January 12, 2006, 5:07pm | #

Posessing faith that there is are gods is the same as faith that there are no gods. Neither one is inherently provable and therefore either one may be right or wrong. To have a belief in something that is not proveable requires only faith and nothing more. The problem with faith is that it's irrationality is impossible to debate and it's belivers will do any number of things to uphold thier beliefs in something that is not proveable.

Virgins sacrificed to Pele, slaves sacrificed to Quetzalcoatl, crusades launched in the name of the Christian God, prayers five times a day to Mecca and Hwang Woo-suk's genetic fraud were all performed based on faith of something not proven.

Religion is not inherently wrong or right but is instead based on faith which, by its impervious nature is fallible.

Cuddle | January 12, 2006, 5:08pm | #

Humans essentially stopped evolving biologically at the point that they became human.

huh? how has evolution "stopped"?

van | January 12, 2006, 5:08pm | #

>That is just a fancy way of saying that whatever man decides is right is right.

Say it fancy or say it plain -- it's the truth either way.

Rimfax | January 12, 2006, 5:09pm | #

GILMORE,

Do you realize that you are trying to refute a generalization with isolated examples? You are right in objecting to painting all theists with the broad stroke of "fundamentalists", but your counterexamples are all generally considered fundamentalists.

One question that remains: Do nominal theists tend to question or test their beliefs?

van | January 12, 2006, 5:10pm | #

Linguist,
>Actually, recent studies question the idea that evolution stopped at the point we became human

Can you give me some cites? I'm very interested in this question. Thanks.

Pirate Jo | January 12, 2006, 5:12pm | #

">That is just a fancy way of saying that whatever man decides is right is right.

Say it fancy or say it plain -- it's the truth either way."

Unless of course he chooses something that doesn't work. We talk about that stuff here all the time. The Drug War, for example. Reason rules at the end of the day, although it may end up being a very long, long day before we get it figured out.

van | January 12, 2006, 5:15pm | #

>>Humans essentially stopped evolving biologically at the point that they became human.

>huh? how has evolution "stopped"?

Well, the theory is that our flexible and creative intelligence superceded biological evolution as a means of adapting to environmental challenges to our survival. For example, when population growth led to environmental depletion by hunter/gatherer societies, they adapted by settling down and developing horticulture.

Another Yakov Smirnov | January 12, 2006, 5:16pm | #

In Russia ... Good grief, even the real Smirnov doesn't do that schtick anymore.

In Soviet Russia, Smirnov's schtick does you.

Eric the .5b | January 12, 2006, 5:22pm | #

Well, the theory is that our flexible and creative intelligence superceded biological evolution as a means of adapting to environmental challenges to our survival.

Natural selection still applies to us (and will continue to do so until we can cure or mitigate every physical infirmity and until cosmetics render us all drop-dead gorgeous).

Number 6 | January 12, 2006, 5:24pm | #

John-replace "God" as the source of moral knowledge with "man's conception of what god wants", and you'll be closer to an intellectually honest argument.

Pirate Jo | January 12, 2006, 5:25pm | #

"Well, the theory is that our flexible and creative intelligence superceded biological evolution as a means of adapting to environmental challenges to our survival."

Near-sighted people used to be mown down left and right by saber-toothed tigers, since we couldn't see them until they were five feet away. Now that we have contact lenses and lasik surgery, we live long enough to reproduce.

Stevo Darkly | January 12, 2006, 5:26pm | #

"Actually, recent studies question the idea that evolution stopped at the point we became human"

"Can you give me some cites? I'm very interested in this question. Thanks"

I can't give cites, but I'm familiar with the idea. Basically, the process of natural selection becomes much less significant once human beings became able to manipulate their environment, instead of vice versa. Human societies also become increasingly effective at taking care of, or even "fixing" the defects of, members of the species whose genes render them less "fit," so their genes are no longer selected out of the breeding pool.

In other words, the ability to use tools mitigates against natural selection, and the development of language and information technology (like writing) means the transmission of memes becomes more important than the transmission of genes. So the engines of physical evolution go into idle, as it were.

Number 6 | January 12, 2006, 5:27pm | #

Oh, and anyone who has spent time around Jesuits (and I've spent plenty) can tell you that belief in a deity is not inconsistant with intelligence or rationality.*

*This is not an endorsement of religion, nor am I religious, unless finding appeal in the notion of Spinoza's god makes me so.

van | January 12, 2006, 5:30pm | #

>>That is just a fancy way of saying that whatever man decides is right is right.

>Say it fancy or say it plain -- it's the truth either way.

Not that I believe all moral codes are equivalent, because I don't. I absolutely believe that morality which forbids murder, for example, is far superior to morality that permits cannibalism. However, I don't believe there is any God out there to send those heathen cannibals to hell. And I wouldn't judge a cannibal from a cannibalistic society as immoral, but merely as a product of a culture with an inferior morality. The point of interest is, why has cannibalism been an accepted practice in some societies?

Stevo Dorkly | January 12, 2006, 5:31pm | #

I just realized I completely 180-degree misread the question I tried to respond to. Also, other posters are way ahead of me. Never mind.

vabs | January 12, 2006, 5:34pm | #

As to the question of religiosity and intelligence, try reading a little Walker Percy sometime. What a brilliant and beautifully humane man he was -- and he converted to Catholicism as an adult.

GILMORE | January 12, 2006, 5:35pm | #

Cuddles =
"Of course, the generalization of religious people being somehow essentially anti-intellectual is absolute bigoted *truth*."

You get this from where, exactly?

The facts doesnt support you here, cuddles. Did you miss the earlier link about fun with Jesuit Seismologists?

You guys are indeed bigoted, in that you take the most cartoonish, southern redneck bible beating sister fucking Left Behind reading secretly-repressed-homo, and use it as your starting point or something. It does not fly in the face of reality.

As dude pointed out in statistics above - you are basically saying 70-80% of the country is 'anti intellectual'. I'd be curious what that means exactly.

You basically are saying, 'im much superior to THAT, tho i am not much interested in what THAT really is.'

What could be more anti-intellectual?

JG

Timothy | January 12, 2006, 5:36pm | #

Replace "atheist" with "Christian" and "Nietzche" with "Bertrand Russell," then ask yourself both why anyone should care, and why you feel repeating the word Nietzche is like, all, "TRUMP CARD, SUX0RZ!!!!"

Or replace atheist wish "Jewish" and Nietzche with "Solomon Maimon".

I, personally, have always found Sartre and Kierkegaard better reads and more informative that Nietzche. But maybe I'm just a crappy atheist, maybe I need to live a monastic life of wearing a hairshirt and reading Zarathustra all day.

van | January 12, 2006, 5:36pm | #

Stevo, ain't no never mind about it. You gave a really good explanation of the concept, thus contributing to the edification of the H&R readership.

linguist | January 12, 2006, 5:37pm | #

van,

The one that comes first to my mind is the Greg Cochran/Jason Hardy study on Ashkenazi intelligence and disease. Due to specifics of population isolation, it appears that there has been observable evolution within that population (toward higher IQ, and toward certain disease susceptibility).

linguist | January 12, 2006, 5:42pm | #

That study also implies that, in fact, SOCIAL pressures can be a huge influence on selection, and therefore on evolution as it is going on today.

Timothy | January 12, 2006, 5:44pm | #

Also:

Dear everyone,

Orders emerge.

Love,

Hayek, von Mises, & Bestiat

Timothy | January 12, 2006, 5:47pm | #

That study also implies that, in fact, SOCIAL pressures can be a huge influence on selection, and therefore on evolution as it is going on today.

It would not shock me if this were the case. Nor would it shock me if the same sort of thing happened in social higher primates like chimps and gorillas.

Cuddles | January 12, 2006, 5:49pm | #

Van,

but isn't adapting to environmental challenges to our survival just one of many possible selection methods? So Natural Selection as is commonly understood might not apply to us as much as it did in the past, but there are plenty of other ways to "select".

For example, modern medicine and technology have made it possible for people with hereditary diseases or conditions to live full, productive lives, when in the past they would have died off at a young age, if not birth, leaving no offspring. These "survivors" pass these "bad" genes on to their kids, who are also able to live full, productive lives. Jump ahead 10 or 20 thousand years and what do we have?

poco | January 12, 2006, 5:55pm | #

Is John Juanita? Got that "baiting" vibe at the beginning.

John, aside from your contradicting yourself about whether God exists, why is it OK for you to doubt and not for others?

Don't read Nietzche until you've seen Hitchcock's Rope. And the atheists (and potheads) need Carl Sagan back. (Did he have kids, and if so, are they geniuses too?)

Cuddles | January 12, 2006, 5:56pm | #

To answer my own question, I would say we have a human population literally dependent on technology for it's survival.

fyodor | January 12, 2006, 5:58pm | #

DILBERT: Why do I seem to be the only honest one around?

DOGBERT: Your kind tends not to reproduce.

Cuddles | January 12, 2006, 5:59pm | #

damn tags! that should have read:

literally dependent on technology for it's survival.

van | January 12, 2006, 6:08pm | #

Thanks Linguist, I'll check it out.

Cuddles and Linguist,

First, I should say that all of my encounters with evolutionary concepts have come from a social science perspective, so I'm not pretending to have a lot of knowledge about the particulars of biological evolution. But I think I have the concept down, which is not so hard. I also admit to having a "true believer" quality to my interest in social evolution.

I have encountered the concept of "genetic drift" before, which I believe referred to sort of microevolution of things like intelligence or disease resistance among smaller populations. When I said that humans have essentially stopped evolving biologically, I didn't mean there were no selection pressures on our species anymore. I meant no fundamental evolution is occurring -- like, we're not evolving new traits, just perhaps refining existing ones. And definitely, to the extent that evolution is occurring, it would be social pressures and technological developments that would exert the selection pressure since we have managed to overcome so many of the natural threats to our survival.

Now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure why I brought it up -- because I read linguist as saying that morality is biologically evolved -- I'm not sure my point was even germaine, truthfully. I think I need to go back and read the barrage of posts that preceded my first post and do some thinking.

Off I go...

Yakov Smirnoff | January 12, 2006, 6:10pm | #

"Good grief, even the real Smirnov doesn't do that schtick anymore."

I do relationship humor now.

Another Yakov Smirnoff who until recently mispelled my name as "Smirnov" | January 12, 2006, 6:20pm | #

In Soviet Russia, relationship humor does you.

Cuddles | January 12, 2006, 6:25pm | #

re: social pressures

I've always wondered if our relatively hairless bodies were a result of that.

What if for some crazy reason humanity collectively decided tomorrow that any male over 5'2" tall was an abomination unfit for mating? Would we end up with a new species of pygmy humans in the far off future?

Hakluyt | January 12, 2006, 6:35pm | #

Organized atheism? That's an oxymoron.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 6:41pm | #

My hope is that IF there is a God, He is one of pure love. Ergo, it would be impossible for Him to be offended. If not, my ass is in some serious trouble.

Uncannily spot-on summation of the problem athiests have with religion, and the problem fundies have with atheists: It's all about fear. Atheists who crap-out on the basest of Christian corruptions simply have no idea who such a God really would or could be.

It's not about 15th Century justice; it's about free will...

Evan | January 12, 2006, 6:41pm | #

"What if for some crazy reason humanity collectively decided tomorrow that any male over 5'2" tall was an abomination unfit for mating? Would we end up with a new species of pygmy humans in the far off future?"

Only if humanity was able to continue this practice without fail for hundreds of thousands of years. Good luck on that.

wayne | January 12, 2006, 6:52pm | #

Humans are herd beasts, hence it is obvious why our "morals" demand that we be good members of the herd: no killing, no stealing, no screwing your neighbor's wife without his consent, etc. I imagine cows would have much the same "morals", and tigers probably would not.

Why anybody believes it necessary that there be a God involved in the process to justify human's morality baffles me.

John, talk a little more plainly, don't use so many double negatives, like most atheists I am not real smart and when I have to diagram a sentence to understand it... well, let's just say I start to begin liking the idea of crucifying a certain bible-thumpin' poster.

Jennifer, this is new for me. I am in complete agreement with you.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 6:55pm | #

The state as god is certainly a common mot�f, bordering on clich�.

Once I ruminated that society may have led to an end of natural evolution in humans in front of a biochem PhD.

She rather quickly disabused me of that notion. Just because saber-toothed tigers aren't eating us any more doesn't mean we aren't continuing to change as a result of our environment.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 7:03pm | #

Why anybody believes it necessary that there be a God involved in the process to justify human's morality baffles me.

Wrong god, and hence wrong strawman, not that you intended one. Instead think about reasoning beauty, truth, love, justice -- and even the impossible contrast between void and physical reality -- not a big old guy with a beard and a scowl waiting for you to die.

How about, how anybody believes it unlikely that there may be an Entity involved in the process of creating the independant and limitless free will that's obviously transcended simple evolution with fantastic abstract concepts baffles me.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 7:05pm | #

She rather quickly disabused me of that notion.

You gave up easily, didn't you?

Phil | January 12, 2006, 7:10pm | #

This former non-believer felt the presence of God and I could no longer call myself an atheist. Sorry, I can't share it with you all, but your time will come.

This is one of those things that tends to piss off atheists and other freethinkers and make them angry: "I am the secret keeper of secret knowledge, and you'll see, oh yes, you'll all see." Pure, arrogant, narcisisstic claptrap. Michael Penfield demonstrated thirty years ago that a feeling of "the presence of God," or even pure religious mania, can be induced by stimulating the temporal lobe. It is a large leap from that to "therefore God exists."

Bonar Law | January 12, 2006, 7:11pm | #

There have been several posts about Yakov Smirnoff (sp?) and his jokes about the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union is just as much an example of "organized atheism" as the 9/11 conspiracy is of "organized religion." If you reply that "my form of atheism isn't related to the Soviet version," then I reply that "my form of religion isn't related to the religion of the 9/11 terrorists."

Kwix | January 12, 2006, 7:14pm | #

Mediageek,
Just because saber-toothed tigers aren't eating us any more doesn't mean we aren't continuing to change as a result of our environment.

I totally agree with this. Since man learned to use tools we have been modifying our environment but that hasn't stopped the "evolution" process, merely changed the ratio of "Mother Nature" to "Man Made" environmental changes. Granted, now that technology development is increasing at a greater rate than ever before we can indeed compensate for poor genes like we have never been able to in the past, but that doesn't mean that evolution has stopped just that we now have a bigger role in the direction it takes.

Phil | January 12, 2006, 7:23pm | #

You could say that, Bonar Law, but you'd be on flimsy ground. None of the atheists I know are Communists or Marxists; all of the theists I know are believers in one of the Abrahamic religions.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 7:24pm | #

"I am the secret keeper of secret knowledge, and you'll see, oh yes, you'll all see."

Yeah, that's an easy target alright. Knock it off, fundies, you let your own side down.

a feeling of "the presence of God," or even pure religious mania, can be induced by stimulating the temporal lobe

Maybe God should stimulate the sacroiliac instead. Should God exist, I wonder what exactly in the human machine should provide experiential evidence of such existence, if not a physical mechanism -- and that physicality based entirely on the chaos of an irrational quantum realm.

Some scientists are foolishly smug: Finding that emotion is tied to biology doesn't eliminate the product of emotion any more than it explains why it exists.

And about impossible and wholely human abstract concepts arising alongside say, a hypothalmus. Would they be moot too, simply because every one of them over the history of time involved a physical origin?

Shit, we don't even know what physical reality is. How can we justify shunting spiritual expression just because we think we do?

jp | January 12, 2006, 7:26pm | #

Some thought experiments:

God exists. It (god) hates humans and does things specifically to torment us. Fortunately for us, it is also not omnipotent. It's just powerful enough to cause a lot of trouble.

Several gods exits. They don't get along. One is a mean tormentor, one is a loving protector, one doesn't care about us at all, and one values us only as entertainment.

God exists and is immensely powerful, but has the intelligence of a poodle.

There are multiple gods that are geographically disposed. North America and Europe, for example, have different gods watching them.

Gods come and go. Sometimes they are very interested in what's going here and meddle quite a bit. Then they may spend long periods in other parts of the universe, leaving us to our own devices.

etc.

:-)

NoStar | January 12, 2006, 7:29pm | #

Phil,
Re: "This is one of those things that tends to piss off atheists and other freethinkers and make them angry."

As a former atheist of 42 years, don't you think I know this? What's the point of knowing where the buttons are if you don't push them every now and then?

Phil | January 12, 2006, 7:33pm | #

Finding that emotion is tied to biology doesn't eliminate the product of emotion any more than it explains why it exists.

Nobody here has claimed that it does. Certainly not me. The temporal lobe thing may indeed be the divinely-designed mechanism for perceiving the extant deity. Or it might be a biological fluke. The confluence of existing evidence tends to make me think the latter. YMMV.

Shawn Smith | January 12, 2006, 7:35pm | #

Phil,

I remember (and I could be wrong, here) that NoStar was the one who had the scary recording of ghosts a while back. He wouldn't tell us exactly how he got the recording, and was dismissive of the JREF million dollar challenge. If my memory is accurate here (big if), his "secret knowledge" may be part of that experience.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 7:39pm | #

The confluence of existing evidence tends to make me think the latter.

To paraphrase, in the beginning God created Man. And Man, being the gentleman he is, promptly created God.

Even a perceived God has a marvelous sense of humor ... and, I suspect, of timing, stealth, irony. That's why we're talking about him like this! YMMV.

Johnny Clarke | January 12, 2006, 7:45pm | #

God told me He doesn't exist.
So there.

Phil | January 12, 2006, 7:55pm | #

Shawn, can't say as I'm familiar with that event. In any case, even if ghosts existed -- which they don't! -- it would say absolutely nothing about the existence of a deity. I'm fairly certain that "ghosts" are not part of the tenets of any of the world's major theistic religions.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 7:58pm | #

"You gave up easily, didn't you?"

If you by this statement, you mean that I was willing to defer to someone who I would consider an authority on the topic, yes.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 8:01pm | #

"Maybe God should stimulate the sacroiliac instead. Should God exist, I wonder what exactly in the human machine should provide experiential evidence of such existence, if not a physical mechanism -- and that physicality based entirely on the chaos of an irrational quantum realm."

God's got my digits. He* can give me a call or ring the doorbell any time he pleases.

*And none of this "God sent us to talk to you about Him" hogwash, either. If God has infinite power, then a little five-minute chitchat over a cup of Chai should be no biggie for Him.

NoStar | January 12, 2006, 8:01pm | #

Shawn and Phil,
The ghost recordings was not from me.
I did share a ghost story about my dead wife coming back to talk to me and to show me where to find some of her jewelry. The last thing she did before she left was say, "There's someone I'd like you to meet." As I felt her presence leave, I felt God's spirit envelope me.

Anecdotal, sure. Reproducible scientific evidence, nope (except for me when the feeling of God's presence overcomes me during prayer.)

And one other thing; I have a gift of finding pain plus healing and removing pain with my hands.
My migraines are ended within minutes of prayer.

Even the most scientific among us make personal decisions on anecdotal evidence of a personal nature. Science is a great tool, but it, like all tools, has it's limitations (not to mention missapplications.)

I won't try to prove to you God exists, but I'm not willing to give up the relief I've been given knowing that He does.

Jennifer | January 12, 2006, 8:06pm | #

Where did this "humans have stopped evolving" business come from? Yes, the use of tools and certain aspects of medical technology have given us some ability to control our environment, but there are other other environmental factors beyond our control.

There are still diseases out there, and some people are more likely than others to die from them. There are fatal allergies that kill some people before they can have children. For that matter, all of us here now are descendants of people who did NOT die in the 1918 flu epidemic. The fact that we haven't noticed any obvious forms of evolution throughout our history doesn't mean anything--on an evolutionary scale, there hasn't been enough time for any noticeable changes to arise.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 8:15pm | #

"Where did this "humans have stopped evolving" business come from? Yes, the use of tools and certain aspects of medical technology have given us some ability to control our environment,"

The ability to control our environment to a very high degree is practically instantaneous. From mud huts to air-conditioned skyscrapers in a few hundred years. That makes evolutionary change look like it's taking longer than the second coming of Jesus.

To a certain extent, I think that the human body isn't adapted well to human civilization. Physically speaking, we're tailored to be hunter-gatherers out in nature who do a lot of running. Our bodies have more than one innate mechanism designed to maximize energy intake and then store it the way Scrooge McDuck stores gold coins.

But we're really not optimized to walk on concrete sidewalks, sit in cubicles, and clatter away on keyboards.

Still, don't misread this post as any form of "noble savage" fantasizing. I'd rather live in a world of cars, iPods, Hollywood blockbusters, and big box retailers than be stuck out on the tundra hunting Wooly Mammoths. (Well, unless I could do it for fun. With a very large double rifle chambered in something obnoxious like .700 Nitro Express...)

Jennifer | January 12, 2006, 8:16pm | #

Speaking of modern human evolution, I saw another news story today about how sperm counts throughout the world--in human men and other species--have been dropping because of some common atmospheric pollutant that's chemically similar to estrogen. So look around you--anybody you see who is ten years old or younger was conceived from a sperm cell that apparently CAN survive an environment flooded with artificial estrogen.

Environmental pressures resulting in a bit of natural selection. Who knows what that will lead to a couple hundred thousand years down the road?

Jennifer | January 12, 2006, 8:19pm | #

Physically speaking, we're tailored to be hunter-gatherers out in nature who do a lot of running. Our bodies have more than one innate mechanism designed to maximize energy intake and then store it the way Scrooge McDuck stores gold coins.

Yes, but even so, some of us have the ability to eat relatively large amounts of food and stay skinny. Which makes us more attractive, which makes us more desirable as sexual partners and more likely to bear children and blah blah blah.

There are different forms of selection going on that what existed a hundred thousand years ago, but that doesn't mean there are NO forms of selection going on.

It's not that there's no more natural selection--it's just that it's not as "natural," if you get my drift.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 8:21pm | #

I also think that with the coming biotech revolution, we're going to see a lot of genetic modifications made capable that would take millions of years to evolve.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 8:27pm | #

"Yes, but even so, some of us have the ability to eat relatively large amounts of food and stay skinny. Which makes us more attractive, which makes us more desirable as sexual partners and more likely to bear children and blah blah blah."

Yeah, but that's a cultural thing. As I understand it, in civilizations past, being somewhat rotund was considered sexy, as it was a physical indicator of one's ability to find and manage resources. Being fat meant being wealthy. A gut was the pre-modern equivalent of a Rolex or a Benz.

"There are different forms of selection going on that what existed a hundred thousand years ago, but that doesn't mean there are NO forms of selection going on."

No argument there.

"It's not that there's no more natural selection--it's just that it's not as "natural," if you get my drift."

Right. It's no longer a matter of being able to store energy as fat reserves to ward of starvation, or having stereoscopic vision, which makes for being a more effective hunter, or being able to fight off a saber-toothed tiger. It's much smaller stuff.

Phil | January 12, 2006, 8:28pm | #

nd one other thing; I have a gift of finding pain plus healing and removing pain with my hands.

And you're not sharing this gift with chronic pain sufferers around the world? You selfish person.

For that matter, all of us here now are descendants of people who did NOT die in the 1918 flu epidemic.

This statement is true if and only if every single person who died in the 1918 flu epidemic had not yet produced offpspring. Which a moment's thought will tell you is . . . less than likely.

anon2 | January 12, 2006, 8:29pm | #

Regarding religious people being anti-intellectual: Empirically, it's obvious that people can believe weird things in one area and be perfectly rational in others. Religion has been around a long time, it clearly had some benefit in the past (although that benefit wasn't evenly distributed ... more Catholics than Shakers, etc.). Perhaps its benefit still outweighs its drawbacks. Remember, something doesn't have to be true to be helpful.

There are tons of people smarter than I who believe in God. As a percentage of people, though, the smarter the sample, the larger percentage of atheists. Why? Perhaps God has a sense of humor and is just fucking around.

I think it's highly unlikely that it's important to know or believe in Jesus because he's the son of God and God really really really wants you to know him. It would have been trivial for God to throw coming out parties on all the continents simultaneously so that everyone could know Jesus, but the propagation of Jesus is exactly what you'd expect of merely human transmission. Does this make me angry? Do I get extra anger points if I point out that I don't believe in Xenu, either?

It doesn't bother me in the least that NoStar is no longer an atheist for his own personal reasons. If God exists, it's trivial for him to bring me over. I don't know everything and never will. I still think that the God of Abraham's behavior in the Old Testament is childish and a bad example for people to follow. If I'm wrong, perhaps I'll be tormented for eternity. Big deal. In the meantime I have a great family, a fun job, good friends, etc.

Let me guess, my non-chalance is just veiled anger, and I'm a great example of an angry atheist.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 8:30pm | #

Also, some things that would be an advantage to a hunter-gatherer are a downright liability in the modern world.

Out on the tundra, an innate ability to sense and comprehend lots of sensory information is a good thing.

In the modern world, it's means you've got ADD and you can't get any work done because the sound of the ventilation system annoys the hell out of you.

Phil | January 12, 2006, 8:33pm | #

I mean, don't you think it's amazing that this fantabulous deity never bothered to reveal his immense wonderfulness to you and your wife before she, you know, died, so maybe you could share his superrificness together?

I don't mean to belittle your loss, for which I truly do emphasize, but you would hardly be the first person to find otherwise difficult-to-find comfort in religion after the loss of an irreplaceable spouse.

Cuddles | January 12, 2006, 8:35pm | #

Where did this "humans have stopped evolving" business come from?

that's what I've been trying to figure out myself. Even among the people I know who "believe" in evolution, a lot seem to think that all past events were somehow just signposts along the way to TODAY, and that humans were the whole point of it all. I also think most people have a hard time grasping the immense time periods involved.

Ruthless | January 12, 2006, 8:41pm | #

All are welcome to meetings of the Free Inquiry Group in Cincinnati. Here was our last meeting:

Some Recent Speculations on the�
Nature and Function of Religion�

Speaker: Professor Bill Jensen

�� Why are humans religious? What is the origin of the religious impulse? Is it biological, psychological or cultural in nature or all three? The talk will summarize some recent attempts to answer these questions by such diverse writers as the Australian philosopher David Stove, the American anthropologist Stewart Guthrie, and the Canadian philosopher Paul Thagard.�

Our next meeting will be Jan. 24th, and will discuss NOMA, Nonoverlapping Magisteria, something from the mind of the late Stephen Jay Gould.

Jennifer | January 12, 2006, 8:43pm | #

This statement is true if and only if every single person who died in the 1918 flu epidemic had not yet produced offpspring. Which a moment's thought will tell you is . . . less than likely.

No, think about whichever of your specific ancestors--be they your grandparents, great-grandparents or whatever--which ones were alive but had not yet reproduced in 1918? Had they died, you of course wouldn't be here. Go back a bit further, and you're also descended from people who didn't die in the Black Plague.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 8:45pm | #

"If God exists, it's trivial for him to bring me over."

Disagree. There doesn't seem to be a way to empircally prove God's existence, therefore having a belief in him is going to be squishy and emotional.

I don't doubt that No Star saw or felt something that changed his life. And I've met other people who've had similar experiences that led to similar changes of heart. But I think he's right that you can't really translate that into a form that can just be given to someone else.

I know people who seem to feel some sort of spiritual connection when going to Communion. To me, it's always been a bit of bread and wine and nothing more.

But that's ultimately the conundrum presented by religion. It's all about feelings, faith, and belief. If religion sticks to that realm, it's looked down upon for being irrational. But when people try to force religion into a rational or scientific framework, it gets it's ass stomped for the same reason.

*shrugs*

I suppose that one day I might have some sort of experience that can only be explained supernaturally, but until then, I remain vaguely Christian, but not really caring much one way or the other.

If being religious makes you happy, fine, go for it.

If being an atheist brings you joy, that's great too.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 8:46pm | #

God's got my digits. He* can give me a call or ring the doorbell any time he pleases.

*And none of this "God sent us to talk to you about Him" hogwash, either. If God has infinite power, then a little five-minute chitchat over a cup of Chai should be no biggie for Him.

Wow; hostile.

And if the Infinite did deem to violate your free will, tell me, who would you then become? Ironically, probably a speaker-of-tongues of some stripe...

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 8:47pm | #

"And if the Infinite did deem to violate your free will, tell me, who would you then become? Ironically, probably a speaker-of-tongues of some stripe..."

What the fuck are you yammering about?

Stevo Darkly | January 12, 2006, 8:59pm | #

I happened to run across a quote yesterday that is semi-appropriate to post here:

"One drawback to being an atheist is that you have no one to talk to while you're having an orgasm."

I might have serious posts later. Right now, work and sleep vie heavily for my attention.

van | January 12, 2006, 9:02pm | #

"Where did this "humans have stopped evolving" business come from?"

Again, I said "essentially stopped evolving," the point being that we didn't have to evolve into a new species to survive ice ages or massive population growth and the depletion of natural resources. Rather, we changed our environments, again and again, to survive as a species. I was saying that humans have been humans since we were humans, basically. A human infant from the Neolithic era, transported to the present in a time machine, could be socialized just as if he were born now.

Yes, I realize that there are myriad bacteria and so forth that weren't around then and would probably get him. But in a discussion of human nature and the capacity for/origin of morality, it's relevant to point out that the genetic inheritance of modern humans is the same of that as prehistoric humans, just as Native Americans were the same species as the Europeans who brought them the pox.

And on that note, I don't think Linguist and I were actually in disagreement. Clearly, we are an inherently social species and have inherited certain behavioral traits that facilitate social cohesion. But the tremendous capacity for variety in human behavior demonstrates how flexible we are compared to other species. I do agree that in general morals are based on what is beneficial for the group, and that probably has some biological basis. As for the origin of the 'god' concept, I agree with April that god conceived as big-man-in-the-sky is man projecting himself on the sky. As for earlier, more naturalistic monotheistic religions, in my opinion those were the stories men told themselves back when nature was dangerously inexplicable. As our species gained more control over the environment, those pagan religious concepts went by the wayside and we began projecting ourselves out there somewhere, probably because we saw how we were gaining control but I dunno...maybe we feared it? Or just couldn't see it for what it was? Probably both. I think that the tendency of the religious to argue that there can't be morality without god points to the former, but there's some of the latter in there too.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 9:03pm | #

I mean, don't you think it's amazing that this fantabulous deity never bothered to reveal his immense wonderfulness to you and your wife before she, you know, died, so maybe you could share his superrificness together?

I don't mean to belittle your loss, for which I truly do emphasize, but you would hardly be the first person to find otherwise difficult-to-find comfort in religion after the loss of an irreplaceable spouse.

(You meant empathize?)

Anyway this appears hostile and closed-minded too: God owes us atheists too, dammit, and he owes us now, otherwise we take our ball and go home. No natural unfolding process from an unfathomable, natural universal model we say we understand and value, no option for becoming something we didn't use to be, or even dying in complete despair. What we want is us, the way we were, the way we intend to be.

On the contrary, I'm betting all forms of existence must occur if this universe is to be truly objective. Why doesn't God stop the Hitlers and Husseins?

Why should He?

I suppose it's natural for an atheist to adopt the simplest definition of God in order to argue against It. And it's interesting how classic theology explains existential aspects of a hard life even better than Darwin's blind evolution ever could...

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 9:06pm | #

What the fuck are you yammering about?

Wow. Hostile. Those motherfucking fundies.

About how limited a view you have, obviously.

GILMORE | January 12, 2006, 9:09pm | #

Me=

...In the 16th-18th centuries, Jesuits, were arguably the leading intellectual force in the world, and founded hundreds of universities.

MP=
It is not the existence of intellect, it is how it is applied.

I agreed. The example I'd given before i thought was making a relevant point. Maybe no one read the link.

this one http://www.seismosoc.org/about/ES_Jesuits.html

Excerpt
"It may be intriguing to some that a religious order dedicated so much effort to a science like seismology. From the very early years of the its foundation in the 16th century by Ignacio de Loyola, the Society of Jesus dedicated itself primarily to educational work through its many colleges and universities. From the beginning of these institutions science was an important subject in the curriculum. A key figure in this development was Christopher Clavius (1537-1612), Professor of Mathematics in the Collegio Romano. Clavius was instrumental in incorporating a serious program of mathematics, astronomy, and natural sciences not only in his own college but also in all Jesuit colleges and universities (MacDonnell, 1989). Secondly, in the 17th and 18th centuries a number of astronomical observatories were established in these institutions. In a number of these, meteorological observations also were made. Finally, in a particularly notable page of this history, Jesuits were appointed Directors of the Astronomical Observatory in Beijing, China (Ud�as, 1994). This tradition forms the background of modern Jesuit scientific work. Since the middle of the 19th century, as many as forty geophysical observatories were created by Jesuits around the world and in many of these seismological stations were installed (Ud�as and Stauder, 1991
...
A series of circumstances and interests involved Jesuits in the development of this new science from its inception. This interest, certainly, was consonant with the tradition of Jesuits in science dating from the 16th century, which developed, as has been mentioned, out of their work in colleges and universities. The character of seismology as a public service to mitigate the destructive effects of earthquakes was another influential factor. Especially in undeveloped countries, Jesuits were in many instances the first to install seismographic stations and to carry out seismicity and seismic risk studies."

A point may be made that this kind of tradition has certainly flagged.

Its also interesting to note that for hundreds of years, it was the intellectual 'faithful' that pioneered sciences that were providing the world with the facts that helped caused the average non-intellectual to subsequently reject religious people as universally 'living in a fairyland'. Ironic?

But i think referring broadly to 'the faithful' as being disinterested in intellectual pursuits as consequence of faith is just wrong, and frankly just ignorant. It's defining a large group of people (the majority, in fact) in terms of its lowest common denominator. What if you did the same analysis of people who have no interest in religion? I doubt you'd find any statistical jump in the IQ. Mooks are mooks, and they are legion.

although i find putting the disclaimer in distateful, i am myself god-free. i do find religion & all social mythologies facinating and like reading about them. I also live in a very multicultural environment and have a lot of direct contact with people of all faiths, ranging from mild to hardcore. Example of recent events in my neighborhood =

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/livewire/000486.php

Doesnt help my point, but its certainly hilarious.

Anyway, if people want to read anything good, the books of Karen Armstrong are highly recommended as a starting point. "The Battle for God" is a must-read right now to understand the role that 'fundamentalism' has played in each of the Abrahamic religions over the last 100 years... which certainly helps to understand the current fuckpot the world is in right now.

JG

van | January 12, 2006, 9:11pm | #

>Also, some things that would be an advantage to a hunter-gatherer are a downright liability in the modern world.

>Out on the tundra, an innate ability to sense and comprehend lots of sensory information is a good thing.

>In the modern world, it's means you've got ADD and you can't get any work done because the sound of the ventilation system annoys the hell out of you.

True. Just because we adapted culturally and technologically to survive doesn't mean those adaptations are best suited to our biological endowments. Anthropologists such as Marvin Harris and sociologists such as Nolan and Lenski will tell you (well, Nolan would but the others are dead) that civilization didn't do much for human freedom either. Back when the bands were tiny and there was no capacity to store surplus food, social hierarchy was minimal and the tribal headman didn't have much beyond his own persuasive skills to get people to act together rather than go their own way. And if someone did want to go his own way, he was generally welcome to try it. So when tribes got too large for comfort they tended to split up.

Akira MacKenzie | January 12, 2006, 9:18pm | #

It is very interesting how atheists manage to live in such denial in that most of them go around blithely believing that there is any such thing as moral standards or chaos without God. It is amazing how people manage to live in a world of nihilism without the abyss. I often wonder if any of them ever read Nietzsche and how if they did it went so utterly and completely over their heads.

Gee John, that's a nice image of humanity you've got there. We're all just wild animals ready to rape, murder, and pillage without your celestial tyrant hanging over us, ready to consign our apocryphal "souls" to eternal torment (So, much for being infinitely forgiving, huh?) if we step out of line. Obviously we're just too savage and sinful to concoct morality and ethics by ourselves. You need to have some system of cosmic justice, lest the morality we create is somehow meaningless. We need "judgement" from a being who for some reason doesn't deem it necessary to make its intentions (much less its existence) clear and obvious to all of his alledged creations, despite his equally alleged omnipotence.

It must be so nice to be better than us poor, heathen, atheists.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 9:18pm | #

"About how limited a view you have, obviously."

No, you aren't making any logical sense. If you make sense, there's no reason for me to ask you to clarify.

God gave you a fucking brain.
Use it to make sense.

Cheers,
mg

Akira MacKenzie | January 12, 2006, 9:26pm | #

And if the Infinite did deem to violate your free will, tell me, who would you then become?

Excuse me, but why would God proving his existance violate "free will?"

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 9:27pm | #

"Excuse me, but why would God proving his existance violate "free will?""

It doesn't.

Unless He's a Godless Red.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 9:32pm | #

Incidentally, I'd like to point out that rather than attack my argument on any sort of rational grounds, 6Gun would just rather accuse me of being an immoral atheist, and just leave it at that.

Hmmm...

Akira MacKenzie | January 12, 2006, 9:37pm | #

Incidentally, I'd like to point out that rather than attack my argument on any sort of rational grounds, 6Gun would just rather accuse me of being an immoral atheist, and just leave it at that.

Yeah... I get that vibe with him (or her). As much as I disagree with John's tired and cliche "you-need-God-to-be-a-moral-person" argument, at least he communicates his thoughts well. I don't that degree of clarity from 6gun.

Pissed-off Buddhist | January 12, 2006, 9:39pm | #

Does this book look into belief not exactly in a paternalistic god but in other types of faith, such as belief in karma? I've met many people who would never admit to worshiping a god yet they are big believers in "what goes around comes around".

That's not what Karma is. Karma doesn't come into play until somebody dies. You're thinking of "petty vengence"

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 9:40pm | #

Akira, that's because logic and clear communication are the Devil's nipples.

BobMissesSuck | January 12, 2006, 9:40pm | #

John, I know I'm late to this discussion, and no one will probably see this, but I have to say that your dismissal of atheists is sad.
It's not that I'm denying the consequences of a universe without God. It's clear, however, that the reality of God is not determined by how I perceive, accept or deny those consequences.
I PERCEIVE those consequences as not nihilism and the abyss, but rather mankind elevating itself, gradually and with many setbacks and stutter-steps, beyond our origins. Struggling towards our potential by standing on the shoulders of our ancestors, and providing a foundation for future humanity to increase worldly happiness and beauty.
I don't hate the religious, and I'm not proselytizing for atheism. Every thoughtful person has their "long dark night of the soul", and I'm glad you found a path through it. But don't dismiss my path, please.

The Wine Commonsewer | January 12, 2006, 9:48pm | #

that there is any such thing as moral standards .......without God

Sorry man, that's an entirely bogus remark. Ask my kids if they've been taught morality and you'll discover just how bogus. Oh, wait, I'm not exactly an atheist, just a non-believer so maybe that doesn't count.

Hold that thought though, got to go stick up a 7-11 before they make the cash drop....

Katie, get the shotgun

The Wine Commonsewer | January 12, 2006, 9:49pm | #

I think that guy had an article about the book in Atlantic Monthly that I was trying to read on the can last week. It just didn't get very interesting. Maybe I need to take another look.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 9:54pm | #

Incidentally, I'd like to point out that rather than attack my argument on any sort of rational grounds, 6Gun would just rather accuse me of being an immoral atheist, and just leave it at that.

Sorry you're so insecure, MG, as to try and make a false and preemptive assertion like that. I'm not attacking you, just illustrating that your point includes the same indignant, wounded, righteous, stererotypical style you'd use to erect a lame, strawman God and condemn fundies of the same attitude.

You're wrong. I never said or implied you were an immoral atheist. What I think is that that's a characteristic defense atheists use to defend themselves against a very cheap religion. It's the height of bad taste to even breathe a word about religion in postmodern American secular culture, right? Well, I'm not even remotely religious.

You blew a gasket and I found that it was simply due to your inability to reason yourself around the notion that you aren't owed a damn thing. Not by this universe, and certainly not by a God you'd make demands of in order to prove itself.

If you and Akira need to paint primitive fundie gods in order to slam views more open than your own, fine. But it's you who's engaging ad hominem...

I'm pretty sure you can both figure it out.

MP | January 12, 2006, 10:00pm | #

It's the height of bad taste to even breathe a word about religion in postmodern American secular culture, right?

It is only bad taste to proselytize...and this includes atheists.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 10:19pm | #

Another irony of activist atheism is that in condemning religion for containing predictable examples of smallmindness, atheists leave themselves no room to accept that the smallminded simply never got the defining God thing right in the first place.

Probably this shows that God won't be categorized by mortals, not that God doesn't exist. Pat Robertson only disproves Pat Robertson's god.

Unless the atheist believes there are perfect, transcendant beings who are infallably plugged into the Godhead -- and they obviously don't and never will -- what exactly do they expect to find?

Akira MacKenzie | January 12, 2006, 10:24pm | #

6Gun. If you get to a point, make it. Otherwise, you're mindlessly rambling just like the New Age loons who post at the JREF forums.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 10:26pm | #

You mean spoon-feed demanding children, Akira?

curious george | January 12, 2006, 10:28pm | #

You are right...most religious faithfuls will probably not be reading through this book. However, I wonder how many books of people trying to convince him of the truth of religion he spends his time truly reading and taking to heart?

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 10:34pm | #

Akira, he doesn't need to get to a point, because we're insecure atheists who can't possibly understand what 6Gun is talking about.

Evidently, despite my admitted belief in God, I'm just another small-minded atheist jerk, and we're all hellbound, so you might as well warm up the bus, because we're all gonna ridin' to Hell.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 10:37pm | #

So if it's not righteous indignation it's the victim gambit, MG? Right.

MP | January 12, 2006, 10:38pm | #

atheists leave themselves no room to accept that the smallminded simply never got the defining God thing right in the first place.

So are you largeminded or smallminded? Middleminded?

And the Godhead? Is this the Matrix?

Pat Robertson only disproves Pat Robertson's god.

Does 6Gun dispove 6Gun's god?

what exactly do they expect to find?

Is this a "humanity is incapable of truly knowing God" argument? And if so, how do you know this?

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 10:46pm | #

"You blew a gasket and I found that it was simply due to your inability to reason yourself around the notion that you aren't owed a damn thing. Not by this universe, and certainly not by a God you'd make demands of in order to prove itself."

Really?

And here I thought that, you know, God being an omnipotent being who has all of the answers, and who has widely advertised this in a little book called the Bible should, perhaps offer up a few answers when he's asked a question.

But thus far, no dice.

And now you tell me that God (despite knowing all, despite having told us all that He knows all, and that through Him we can find answers) doesn't owe us anything.

Seems like false advertising to me.

And besides, 6Gun, who are you to claim to know the mind of God?

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 10:51pm | #

"So if it's not righteous indignation it's the victim gambit, MG? Right."

No, jackass. What Akira and I have been telling you for the last couple of hours:

Get.
to.
the.
point.

Thus far all you've done is cast disparaging remarks at anyone who deigns to disagree with your wonderfully cryptic postings.

I mean, is it really too much to ask you to make sense?

The Wine Commonsewer | January 12, 2006, 10:55pm | #

warm up the bus, because we're all gonna ridin' to Hell.

Media, no bus for me, I'm on a sled with greased runners.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 10:58pm | #

TWC, are you sure? This bus has an integrated grill and open air deck. We could certainly use your culinary and oenophilic abilities.

Akira MacKenzie | January 12, 2006, 11:02pm | #

You mean spoon-feed demanding children, Akira?

No, I mean make sense, gorram it.

Akira MacKenzie | January 12, 2006, 11:05pm | #

warm up the bus, because we're all gonna ridin' to Hell.

Express elevator to Hell, goin' down!

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 11:06pm | #

On a somewhat related note, it's been my observation that many fundamentalist and evangelical Christians are unable to wrap their head around the concept of a moral atheist. Both John and 6Gun have illustrated this point quite wonderfully in the course of this thread.

But it's quite obvious that it's possible to lead a moral and irreligious life. After all, religion doesn't have a monopoly on "Treat others as you wish to be treated."

And from there it's only a step or two away from recognizing that if one has certain inherent natural rights, that those rights would most obviously extend to other humans.

From there, it's not even a hop, skip, and a jump to the Zero Agression Principle.

So, if there really is no morality in atheism, then I have to ask, what has restrained my atheist friends from killing me?

After all, they have no fear of Hellfire and Brimstone, yet, sadly, on the whole they've led more moralistic lives than some of the Christians I know.

How is it that someone who has no belief in a higher power can lead a moral life, and yet some people who are fundamentalists seem to have such a problem with impulse control, even with the threat of eternal, soulful damnation hanging over their heads?

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 11:18pm | #

Seems like false advertising to me.

Then maybe that's just a teevee god.

And besides, 6Gun, who are you to claim to know the mind of God?

I'm suggesting that the atheist not imply he knows the minds of those who honestly speculate on the notion of God, and that they be given the latitude and respect the atheist expects. Like somebody said, there's proselytizing atheism, which I happen to think is also frequently bitter and reactionary.

This discussion has erected largely Christian opponents. I really don't care if God made man or if man made God, or if Christ was the "Son of God". Neither structure has an objective, functional, absolute meaning or understanding -- you can no more explain in this life what "God" is than you can grasp what it could possibly mean to have a God/man live on earth.

What counts is what you do with your responsibility to the highest ethic and principle. That's your God. And if its figurative to him or her but not to you, ease off.

The universe actually seems to support simultaneous parallel views. I just try to choose the one that allows for a principled reason for existence and an ongoing, improving conciousness. That's admittedly vaguely Christian, but hardly (or rarely) religious.

I'm actually saying that aside from hope, I have no idea what the mind of God could be, and that's the point you should concede for more non-atheists instead of shoehorning them into convenient stereotypes.

Pursuant that, God probably owes you nothing ... which should nicely dovetail with what I assume is your faith in an entropic, random, Darwinian universe? I just don't see that model disproving either God or Its purpose. In fact, I think such a model enhances the experience of growing closer to God.

Akira MacKenzie | January 12, 2006, 11:20pm | #

So, if there really is no morality in atheism, then I have to ask, what has restrained my atheist friends from killing me?

Careful, this is the part then the fundamentalist brings up the Soviet Union as prima facie evidence that atheists have murder in their hearts and blood on their hands.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 11:23pm | #

Two things:

1) I'm not an atheist (as you continue to imply.)

2) I never thought I'd see the day when a Christian would use post-modern rationalization as a defense of his faith.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 11:25pm | #

"Careful, this is the part then the fundamentalist brings up the Soviet Union as prima facie evidence that atheists have murder in their hearts and blood on their hands."

Communism is a religion.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 11:26pm | #

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 11:27pm | #

Communism is a religion.

Everything is a philosophy...

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 11:27pm | #

Oh, and 6Gun, where have I ever indicated that I think that evolution disproves God's existence?

That is a moronically paranoid conjecture created out of thin air by luddite, fundamentalists hypocrites.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 11:29pm | #

Two things:

1) I'm not an atheist (as you continue to imply.)

2) I never thought I'd see the day when a Christian would use post-modern rationalization as a defense of his faith.

Heh. I'm not a Christian, at least not traditionally...

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 11:35pm | #

Oh, and 6Gun, where have I ever indicated that I think that evolution disproves God's existence?

Fair enough. By evaluating my posts you ascribe me a religious POV that follows and reinforces your biases. Evidently I do the same to you.

That is a moronically paranoid conjecture created out of thin air by luddite, fundamentalists hypocrites.

And that, of course, is utter victimizing, baiting, fearful horseshit. Come on, man. Don't make moronic, paranoid, conjecturing assumptions you can't begin to support. Unless you're playing with ironic sarcasm, you're a real hoot.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 11:35pm | #

"Bullshit. I'm no more a fundamentalist than you and I know and appreciate many highly ethical atheists. Hell, I may be one myself."

Again with the postmodernism. *yawn*

"Now if you want me to call you names to make your point, fine: you're a backwards fundamentalist atheist who claims a high relative moral ground so as to slam your own apparitions."

Wow. I'm utterly shocked that it only took the better part of an evening to cajole you into making a concrete statement.

"You may debate dishonestly and appeal to the crowd, but so far I've made no moral call about your character and you know it."

How have I debated dishonestly?
Where?
Show me.

"On the other hand, you appear to fearfully and consistently make me the moralistic phantom of a small, anti-religion mentality."

Whatever, dude. You're the one who was demonizing me as some sort of Godless boogeyman.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 11:40pm | #

"And that, of course, is utter victimizing, baiting, fearful horseshit. Come on, man. Don't make moronic, paranoid, conjecturing assumptions you can't begin to support. Unless you're playing with ironic sarcasm, you're a real hoot."

Victimizing?

Hardly.

Fearful?

Whatever.

Baiting?

Perhaps.

Horseshit?

Not in the least.

The current hatred that fundies have for evolution is born of the same origins as the hatred they had for heliocentric theory in the Middle Ages. You're the one who has brought up evolution as some sort of secular monster that's out to get the faithful. I didn't even bring it up.

You did.

6Gun | January 12, 2006, 11:44pm | #

Wow. I'm utterly shocked that it only took the better part of an evening to cajole you into making a concrete statement.

How have I debated dishonestly?
Where?
Show me.

Nah, I'm all out of patience with the mendacity. You admit baiting a discussion and than demand I sift thru all your rubbish again? Find another fool.

mediageek | January 12, 2006, 11:47pm | #

Whatever, dude.

In the end, you failed to offer any sort of spiritual illumination, which is a bit of a downer.

Akira MacKenzie | January 12, 2006, 11:50pm | #

In the end, you failed to offer any sort of spiritual illumination, which is a bit of a downer.

You were expecting illumation out of spirtualism? May a suggest a lamp instead?

mediageek | January 13, 2006, 12:01am | #

Not from 6Gun.

But it's one of the fundamental things that just irritates the shit out of me.

If God is omniscient, how come those who claim to be closest to Him are so often lacking in an ability to shed light on the topic at hand?

Why is it that I haven't gotten satisfactory, rational answers?

And any time I ask for answers, I get venom hurled at me?

6Gun | January 13, 2006, 12:01am | #

In the end, you failed to offer any sort of spiritual illumination, which is a bit of a downer.

Along with cajole, spiritual illumination is an interesting choice of words.

Where I come from enlightenment involves states of perception and intent. Obviously I'm no more responsible for those than I would be to prove God to you. Assuming anyone or anything should.

Bad enough I so disappointed your sensibilities with my 'fundy hatred'. Now I'm responsible for helping you keep your strawmen propped up, sorting your posts for you, and pouring warm milk down your gullet.

mediageek | January 13, 2006, 12:03am | #

"You were expecting illumation out of spirtualism? May a suggest a lamp instead?"

Heh. I already carry a Surefire G2 Nitrolon with me everywhere I go, so I think I've got that angle covered. :)

6Gun | January 13, 2006, 12:05am | #

Why is it that I haven't gotten satisfactory, rational answers?

And any time I ask for answers, I get venom hurled at me?

Damn, but you're dense. Because you're a self-pitying brat who refuses to take responsibility for crapping your own pants. How hard can this be?

GILMORE | January 13, 2006, 12:08am | #

RIMFAX =

"your counterexamples are all generally considered fundamentalists."

huh? so by demonstrating that even fundamentalist sects have intellectual prominence, i'm not proving that it's not ok to slander the majority of mildly religious as being ignoramuses?

or do i misunderstand?
JG

mediageek | January 13, 2006, 12:10am | #

"Where I come from enlightenment involves states of perception and intent. Obviously I'm no more responsible for those than I would be to prove God to you. Assuming anyone or anything should."

No, because you can't prove God's existence to me. Of that I'm sure. But I find it perplexing that you can be so sure.

What do you get out of it?

And why would God choose to enlighten some, and not others? (And none of this "He works in mysterious ways" bullshit.)

"Bad enough I so disappointed your sensibilities with my 'fundy hatred'. Now I'm responsible for helping you keep your strawmen propped up, sorting your posts for you, and pouring warm milk down your gullet."

This makes no sense.

mediageek | January 13, 2006, 12:11am | #

"Damn, but you're dense. Because you're a self-pitying brat who refuses to take responsibility for crapping your own pants. How hard can this be?"

Thanks for proving my point.

6Gun | January 13, 2006, 12:43am | #

Okay, one last time. Try. To. Follow. Along. 'Cause I'm going to bed.

I said: Where I come from enlightenment involves states of perception and intent. Obviously I'm no more responsible for those than I would be to prove God to you. Assuming anyone or anything should.

To which you replied:

No, because you can't prove God's existence to me.

No, mediageek, here's how that actually flows:

-You claimed/postured to be supremely disappointed that I could not enlighten you, thus questioning my ability, thereby effectively making some sort of triumphant mediageek point;

-I countered by attempting to make the point that your braying that your tremendously limited view of a God requires that either He or some suitably enlightened soul -- of which none exist, naturally, at least not in the Christian sense, this presumably being a Christian "fundie" God we're trying to dispense with -- come along and, using your lens, make you See the Light.

-Then you jump, naturally, to that such proof cannot occur because either there is no God, or no proof for God;

Mediageek, it's simply not about a cheap "proof" for God. It's about your relative enlightenment and your decision to find it, that being enlightenment. As I attempted to call to your attention. After you raised the point pursuant my failing you.

See? If I'm implied responsible for your state of enlightenment, and you refuse said enlightenment -- whatever the hell that could be -- nobody really gives a shit if I or Cameron Diaz can "prove" God.

Next:

But I find it perplexing that you can be so sure.

Sigh. Have you been following? I said: The universe actually seems to support simultaneous parallel views. I just try to choose the one that allows for a principled reason for existence and an ongoing, improving conciousness. That's admittedly vaguely Christian, but hardly (or rarely) religious.

But to you, to support your fear and bias, I'm a maddening fundy. And I'd better get with the "fucking" program and diffuse your angst/being pissed off/what have you. That righteous indignation thing. Amazing.

And why would God choose to enlighten some, and not others? (And none of this "He works in mysterious ways" bullshit.)

Okay, follow closely. I said: Now I'm responsible for ... pouring warm milk down your gullet. IOW, You may want to do your own work and stop projecting onto folks beliefs they probably don't have, mediageek.

"Bad enough I so disappointed your sensibilities with my 'fundy hatred'. Now I'm responsible for helping you keep your strawmen propped up, sorting your posts for you, and pouring warm milk down your gullet."

This makes no sense.

Oh, it makes a lot of sense...

6Gun | January 13, 2006, 12:56am | #

One more throw at this:

And why would God choose to enlighten some, and not others? (And none of this "He works in mysterious ways" bullshit.)

Why would God choose to enlighten some and not others? (Always interesting to find the nonreligious attempting to grapple with predestination.)

Anyway, do you want an experience in complete, mind-blowing, knife-in-the-gut free will or do you want a money-back guarantee? Or non-existence?

We're simply not getting out of the contract. Either we're men or we're somebody's cosmic pulltoy. I don't think the latter is an option you'd really want if you had the choice.

Troy | January 13, 2006, 12:56am | #

I wonder how I could get in personum jurisdiction over god? Considering he probably doesn't like it when people consider him even an iota of something less than omnipotent, I'll assume his omnipotent.
I think this makes service of process a snap. Hell, I just print the summons and complaint and... like... lay it on the table or something and he is served.
I'd charge him with criminal non-support of his children. Since there is about 5 billion people, I could get 5 billion counts. Criminal non-support is a class 6 felony and I can get 2 years for each count. Make him serve the sentences consecutevely and I got god behind bars for 10 billion fucking years.
Serioulsy though, why can't we impose ethics on god? Why should god be allowed to be excluded from behaving ethically? He is a willing agent after all. How come thieist have never proffered a satisfactory answer to the Euthyphro question? Come to think of it, why can't I impose the criminal law on god?
And once you accept that the answer is yes, by many yardsticks, he comes up short. He fails Mill's harm principle. He fails Scheitzerian life affirmation. If I apply the golden rule to my experience, then I must treat god with utter indifference and never make any contact with him.
So, if there is a(n ethics enforcing) god, I sleep very comfortably knowing I'm going to hell cuz I think my moral are better in he is THE big dick. If it a George Carlin god, "It just is..," then I still don't need to worry.
And if there isn't a god, ... well then I still win cuz I took the part of Pascal's Wager where you get to have fun.

Troy | January 13, 2006, 12:59am | #

... as is evidenced by all the typos.

Timothy | January 13, 2006, 1:05am | #

I declare mediageek the winner by unanimous decision. I totally asked Ahura Mazda, God (Allah), Jesus, The Holy Spirit, Enki, Vishnu, Loki, Odin and Thor. They all, like, totally agree.

"One drawback to being an atheist is that you have no one to talk to while you're having an orgasm."

I usually talk to my girlfriend. Sometimes I talk to Xenu.

pdxcott | January 13, 2006, 2:03am | #

As an atheist I always hear from the religious - "how can you live knowing there's nothing after this life", or "what stop's you from doing what ever you want". My answer is always "Me".

Maybe the religious need religion to give a reason to go on or not kill their neighbor - and the non-believing don't?

Perception seems to come from within.

Phil | January 13, 2006, 6:25am | #

No, think about whichever of your specific ancestors--be they your grandparents, great-grandparents or whatever--which ones were alive but had not yet reproduced in 1918? Had they died, you of course wouldn't be here. Go back a bit further, and you're also descended from people who didn't die in the Black Plague.

No, Jennifer. It is entirely within the bounds of possibility for someone's great-great grandparents to have given birth to a child in 1916, then succumbed to the flu in 1918. Were that the case, that person would, in fact, be a descendant of victims of the 1918 flu.

All you're proposing is a tautology: "Everyone is descended from people who did not die before reproducing." Which has nothing to do with the 1918 flu or the Plague and which is both an obvious and nonrevolutionary observation.

Phil | January 13, 2006, 6:35am | #

I hit "Post" too soon. Think about it this way, Jennifer -- if what you say is correct, your post could be rewritten this way:

"Every single victim of the 1918 flu died before having children, therefore all people alive today are the descendants of people who did not die from thee 1918 flu."

Do you honestly think the part of that sentence prior to the comma is correct?

theOneState | January 13, 2006, 10:16am | #

Oh, God, I feel so dirty. I'm gonna go read the Corner.

Timothy | January 13, 2006, 10:26am | #

"Every single victim of the 1918 flu died before having children, therefore all people alive today are the descendants of people who did not die from thee 1918 flu."

Phil: but the child in your hypothetical example would've been two in 1918, and thusly have lived through the flu.

mediageek | January 13, 2006, 10:31am | #

Yeah, but why did they live through the flu?

Could be any number of factors...

stronger immune system
weaker strain
or didn't catch it at all

mediageek | January 13, 2006, 10:58am | #

"-You claimed/postured to be supremely disappointed that I could not enlighten you, thus questioning my ability, thereby effectively making some sort of triumphant mediageek point;"

The point being that you claim to have knowledge that others do not. If you have said knowledge, then why not attempt to enlighten? Incidentally, I seem to recall you have particular disdain for evolution.

"-I countered by attempting to make the point that your braying that your tremendously limited view of a God requires that either He or some suitably enlightened soul -- of which none exist, naturally, at least not in the Christian sense, this presumably being a Christian "fundie" God we're trying to dispense with -- come along and, using your lens, make you See the Light."

Why would God create a human who, even after making a good faith attempt (and while this thread may not qualify, many of my other encounters and attempts at understanding God would) still finds his questions regarding the nature of existence and being unanswered? Questions, as they say, raising more questions than answers.

"-Then you jump, naturally, to that such proof cannot occur because either there is no God, or no proof for God;"

If you were to press me, I'd tell you that yes, I believe there is a God. But there is no proof. There is no quantifiable, empirical evidence of this. Unless you have some, in which case, you really ought to share with the whole class.

"Mediageek, it's simply not about a cheap "proof" for God. It's about your relative enlightenment and your decision to find it, that being enlightenment. As I attempted to call to your attention. After you raised the point pursuant my failing you."

But you cannot prove this. Why am I expected to take at face value that you have access to some higher plane of spiritual enlightenment?

I've often found that people who claim to have such enlightenment charge for it.

"See? If I'm implied responsible for your state of enlightenment, and you refuse said enlightenment -- whatever the hell that could be -- nobody really gives a shit if I or Cameron Diaz can "prove" God."

Then of what use are you to the discussion at hand?

"Sigh. Have you been following? I said: The universe actually seems to support simultaneous parallel views. I just try to choose the one that allows for a principled reason for existence and an ongoing, improving conciousness. That's admittedly vaguely Christian, but hardly (or rarely) religious."

Bit too new-agey for my tastes.

"But to you, to support your fear and bias, I'm a maddening fundy. And I'd better get with the "fucking" program and diffuse your angst/being pissed off/what have you. That righteous indignation thing. Amazing."

Given your disdain for science, for evolution, for advances in treating psychiatric disorders, and that in the past you've defended Scientology, you're certainly not a fundy in the popular definition of the word, but you are a goddamn weirdo.

"Okay, follow closely. I said: Now I'm responsible for ... pouring warm milk down your gullet. IOW, You may want to do your own work and stop projecting onto folks beliefs they probably don't have, mediageek."

And who are you to claim that I haven't?

Jennifer | January 13, 2006, 11:37am | #

It is entirely within the bounds of possibility for someone's great-great grandparents to have given birth to a child in 1916, then succumbed to the flu in 1918. Were that the case, that person would, in fact, be a descendant of victims of the 1918 flu.

But the child who was born in 1916 did not die, but grew up to become your ancestor. From an evolutionary perspective, once you've had kids you no longer matter; what matters is whether your kids survive and grow up to have kids of their own.

Phil | January 13, 2006, 12:42pm | #

Phil: but the child in your hypothetical example would've been two in 1918, and thusly have lived through the flu.

Yes, and . . . ? Jennifer's original statement was:

For that matter, all of us here now are descendants of people who did NOT die in the 1918 flu epidemic.

Take this timeline:

Great-grandfather born 1880
Grandfather born 1910
Great-grandfather dies 1918 of flu
Father born 1945
Me born 1969

Given the third statement in that timeline, I am, in fact, the descendant of someone who died in the 1918 flu epidemic.

Again, Jennifer's statement is only true of people who had not already reproduced by 1918, which is, as I said, completely unremarkable. We are all descendants of people who did not die before reproducing? Well, duh.

Sorry if this is double-posted, but revised to add: If that's the tack you're taking, Jennifer, then there is nobody alive today who is the descendant of someone who died in 1918 whatever they died of. Flu, polio, cancer, or car accident.

ALSO FUCK THE GODDAMNED REASON SERVER. JESUS CHRIST.

NoStar | January 13, 2006, 12:44pm | #

Phil,
I do use my gift of healing, but going up to strangers and saying "I can help with that pain you have if you let me touch you" is a good way to be arrested.

As to why God didn't reveal himself to me before my wife died, I think it was my own pride and arrogance that prevented me from experiencing his presence.

NoStar | January 13, 2006, 12:46pm | #

theCoach | January 13, 2006, 12:48pm | #

Long since dead I am sure, and I am not sure I actually comprehended much that came before, but some small points:

I would describe myself as an atheist that believes that the universe is probably entirely described by a set of materialist rules. Given enough computing power, and a complete knowledge of those rules (and I think we are pretty close) we could run a simulation that for all intents and purposes was exactly like our real world. Obviously, that makes it possible for people to inject a state or rule into that simulation, what would appear to anyone in that simulation as supernatural.
So, I am not discounting the possibility of God, it just seems to me that any evidence that it exists has other better explanations.
In this sense, it only makes sense to argue about specific types of Gods or (supernatural) intrusions into our natural world.
And in that sense, I think it is worth asking John, let us assume for the sake of argument that some God is the only source for morality (for the record I have no idea why that would be), how do you go about knowing what that morality is, and what evidence do you have that your knowledge of that morality is legitimate?

At some point you have to get to that point where the supernatural intersects with the natural world, supplying the information.

Is it through an old book, or is it in some kind of relevation through faith that happens to individuals?
If the former, I think there are a lot of better explanations, if the latter, what are those rules, and how can we judge your version over another's?

6Gun | January 13, 2006, 12:49pm | #

Given your disdain for science, for evolution, for advances in treating psychiatric disorders, and that in the past you've defended Scientology, you're certainly not a fundy in the popular definition of the word, but you are a goddamn weirdo.

Of course, the rest of your rubbish warrants no reply, but this is just a little intriguing, and plasters a big red target on your ass.

I have no disdain for science, moron, as science is a discipline. Fuck your baiting strategy. I have plenty of disdain for a scientist, who having proved the Church wrong for finding the earth the center of the Universe, has unique dispensation to offer asinine commentary on God ... or even the nature of reality, when he and his peers know damn well that that reality is based on the vagaries of a quantum realm that makes no "scientific" sense. Among other things.

Ditto evolution, jackass. I'm a proponent for evolution and nothing I've said should even suggest otherwise.

About advances in psychiatrics, that's another nice choice of words, isn't it, prick? Obviously, what's offensive is the damage done by psychiatry -- such being just another area for human fuckups -- that gets my ire. Cheap shot, geek, but then that's you, isn't it?

Scientology? I suppose while you're desperately publishing all of your best smears, why not use that one too. Scientology is a scam. Don't tie me to it unless you meant to be misunderstood, liar.

Which brings us to "goddamn weirdo". Next.

6Gun | January 13, 2006, 12:52pm | #

Given your disdain for science, for evolution, for advances in treating psychiatric disorders, and that in the past you've defended Scientology, you're certainly not a fundy in the popular definition of the word, but you are a goddamn weirdo.

Of course, the rest of your rubbish warrants no reply, but this just plasters a big red target on your ass.

I have no disdain for science, moron, as science is a discipline. Fuck your baiting strategy. I have plenty of disdain for a scientist, who having proved the Church wrong for finding the earth the center of the Universe, has unique dispensation to offer asinine commentary on God ... or even the nature of reality, when he and his peers know damn well that that reality is based on the vagaries of a quantum realm that makes no "scientific" sense. Among other things.

Ditto evolution, jackass. I'm a proponent for evolution and nothing I've said should even suggest otherwise.

About advances in psychiatrics, that's another nice choice of words, isn't it, prick? Obviously, what's offensive is the damage done by psychiatry -- such being just another area for human fuckups -- that gets my ire. Cheap shot, geek, but then that's you, isn't it?

Scientology? I suppose while you're desperately publishing all of your best smears, why not use that one too. Scientology is a scam. Don't tie me to it unless you meant to be misunderstood, liar.

Which brings us to "goddamn weirdo". Next.

NoStar | January 13, 2006, 1:01pm | #

theCoach | January 13, 2006, 1:03pm | #

Jeebus | January 13, 2006, 1:17pm | #

Wow. 6Gun's kind of a dick, huh?

6Gun | January 13, 2006, 2:02pm | #

Wow. 6Gun's kind of a dick, huh?

A dick and a fundy apologist. I'm a walking atheist-maker.

Bart Simpson | January 13, 2006, 2:38pm | #

God, Schmod! I want my monkey-man!

wayne | January 13, 2006, 2:38pm | #

6Gun,

"Pursuant that, God probably owes you nothing ... which should nicely dovetail with what I assume is your faith in an entropic, random, Darwinian universe? I just don't see that model disproving either God or Its purpose. In fact, I think such a model enhances the experience of growing closer to God."

It ain't up to me to disprove God, or any other claim that you, or anybody else makes. It is up to you to prove your case. You haven't done that. All this babble about God is just superstition, nothing more. The fact that it is wide spread superstition means nothing of importance.

Morality needs no God for its invention. The Bible, and other mythic tales were almost undoubtedly invented, in part, to codify commonly accepted morals.

Akira MacKenzie | January 13, 2006, 2:46pm | #

Going back to the "you-can't-be-moral-unless-you-believe-in-god" meme, James Randi wrote the following along with some great comments on Pat Robertson and the West Virgina mining disaster today:

SIR ARTHUR'S DUMB QUESTION

Quoted in a South African newspaper, December, 1928, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle asked this question, prompted by a comment about that strange notion that people really die:

It is surely clear that if this view prevails it really knocks the bottom out of all religion, as we understand religion. If there is no afterlife, why should man strive to improve himself? It is a waste if all his efforts end in annihilation.

Surely no better example of Sir Arthur's lack of social conscience can be found. I have frequently been asked, "If you don't fear Hell, why would you behave in an ethical manner?" My response has always been that I'm insulted by the presumption that fear should be my only motive for living a moral, caring, existence, and that I live that way because the preservation and comfort of my species is a need built into my programming, and I wish to further my species by being a positive influence. That's hard wiring, not an adopted stance; I take no credit for it, since none is due. Spike Lee said that, too: Do the right thing. I'd add that one should make every effort to determine that it�s really the "right thing," as well.

Conan Doyle appears to have had no respect for his fellow humans, or for the world he'd leave behind. That's a frightening feature of the religious: they can't wait to get out of the real world and into Heaven, so they abandon the rest of humanity. Conan Doyle also saw religion as a controlling force, ruling through dread; in that view, he was correct. But there's no "annihilation" involved, Art; you left us some great stories, some cornball ideas, and a lotta laughs. Thanks.

Silver Surfer | January 13, 2006, 3:13pm | #

It reminds me of that movie where at the end of the universe, God takes off His virtual reality helmet and goes, "whoa, that was cool."

linguist | January 13, 2006, 3:22pm | #

My response has always been that I'm insulted by the presumption that fear should be my only motive for living a moral, caring, existence, and that I live that way because the preservation and comfort of my species is a need built into my programming, and I wish to further my species by being a positive influence. That's hard wiring,

That's very interesting! So Randi takes a position similar to mine. I've been thinking more about the "hard wiring" of morality. It may be that it's similar to the hard wiring we have for language. Every human is born to absorb rules of the language to which he/she is exposed. Obviously this is a trait that has evolved, though it's hard to see it because it's housed neurologically. I can imagine that morals might work in the exact same way. The hard wiring means that the rules can't be modified; rather, there is perhaps a set of possibilities that break down into yes/no choices which, once set, define a system of rules we would call "morality".

6Gun | January 13, 2006, 3:49pm | #

It ain't up to me to disprove God......or any other claim that you, or anybody else makes.

Correct. That would be proving what seems to be a negative.

It is up to you to prove your case.

Which case is that? That atheists engage the same nonsensical biases and fears as the fundies they hate?

All this babble about God is just superstition, nothing more. The fact that it is wide spread superstition means nothing of importance.

Now you're off on a post hoc tangent. So prove it. Not prove God doesn't exist, prove that a belief in the intelligent origin of an ordered, designed universe is superstition. Yep, maybe that's nearly proving negatives again, but the point is that your view that God = superstition simply doesn't follow from your correct observation that God isn't proven. You can't even "prove" atoms are real.

Morality needs no God for its invention. The Bible, and other mythic tales were almost undoubtedly invented, in part, to codify commonly accepted morals.

Agreed. Hopefully the honest atheists of the world can now step off that easy canard and get serious about a debate about a rational God. Erecting a Santa (complete with his hordes of fundy elves) is rubbish.

NoStar | January 13, 2006, 4:03pm | #

Silver Surfer,
The theory that the universe is a holographic construct is one that I find exciting as well.
Plato may well be right in that what we see and experience is only an approximation of the reality that exists in what we think is the spiritual world aka heaven.

The Wine Commonsewer | January 13, 2006, 4:04pm | #

Media, since you put it that way, I'm on the bus. I'll bring red wine as well as mesquite for cooking steaks.

6Gun | January 13, 2006, 4:34pm | #

Now that we've cleared the intellectual cheap seats, can anyone fathom why Genesis is a nearly perfect account of the origins of a Big Bang universe? An ancient, wholely unscientific document, supposedly written by superstition, organized within a "book" by alleged cultural blindness, and preserved by bigotry and intolerance for thousands of years, is a veritable blueprint for the early Darwinian Universe.

Right down to the first particle. God, but I love the irony. That the Hated Document from the Hated Fundy has, for some forever mysterious reason, an account that preceeded Darwin by thousands of years. And is still valid.

And can anyone reason why atheists, being the self-contradicting, science-preaching types they are, resort to yet another criticism that relies for its existence on the very thing they're trying to disprove, namely a narrow biblical literalism?

Delicious. We may want to take this up with Hawking, or maybe even Einstein. I'd grant that you can't prove God, but they suggest that believing in God is no more an act of faith than believing in the universe!

Meanwhile, the "science" of quantum physics -- the stuff you're made of and existing in -- as much resembles eastern mysticism as it does science. You're not real; you're a probability.

There are few things more amusing than an atheist backed into his own corner...

curious observer | January 13, 2006, 4:36pm | #

>That's very interesting! So Randi takes a position similar to mine.

???

Seems to me that Randi argues against the hardwiring of morals and you're arguing for it, if you're saying that there are rules that can't be modified. Or maybe you didn't explain yourself well?

Jeebus | January 13, 2006, 5:14pm | #

"can anyone fathom why Genesis is a nearly perfect account of the origins of a Big Bang universe?"

Wow. Can anyone else fathom what 6Gun must have been smoking when he wrote this?

"...account that preceeded Darwin..."

Actually, it's "preceded." When you point other people's spelling mistakes here, as you did above with Phil, it kind of makes you look like an arrogant prick. And it may eventually end up making you look like a stupid, arrogant prick, if you yourself can't spell. Just some friendly advice.

linguist | January 13, 2006, 5:57pm | #

My response has always been that I'm insulted by the presumption that fear should be my only motive for living a moral, caring, existence, and that I live that way because the preservation and comfort of my species is a need built into my programming, and I wish to further my species by being a positive influence. That's hard wiring, not an adopted stance; I take no credit for it, since none is due. Spike Lee said that, too: Do the right thing. I'd add that one should make every effort to determine that it�s really the "right thing," as well.

Randi and I are both arguing for hard wiring. That first sentence is difficult to parse, but I believe the paraphrase is, "my response has always been 2 things: 1, I'm insulted, and 2, I do this because my morals are internal and hard-wired."

6Gun | January 13, 2006, 6:41pm | #

Wow. Can anyone else fathom what 6Gun must have been smoking when he wrote this?

Here you go. Parse aawaiey, tuffguy.

http://oregonmag.com/GenesisScience.htm

Akira MacKenzie | January 13, 2006, 6:56pm | #

...can anyone fathom why Genesis is a nearly perfect account of the origins of a Big Bang universe?

Because it doesn't, fucktard.

NoStar | January 13, 2006, 7:09pm | #

When the Static State universe was the accepted model, it was used to discredit the biblical version. The Big Bang theory is more in line with the Bible.

Hey, the real reason for this post is:

I GOT 300!

6Gun | January 13, 2006, 7:10pm | #

That's good, Akira. Care to elaborate, or is this just so self-evident that us fucktards need only push our desks to the back of the classroom?

How about that fucktard Hawking? Does he know what he's talking about, suggesting that science justifies a belief in God?

peanut gallery | January 13, 2006, 8:07pm | #

"'Yes, but even so, some of us have the ability to eat relatively large amounts of food and stay skinny. Which makes us more attractive, which makes us more desirable as sexual partners and more likely to bear children and blah blah blah.'

'Yeah, but that's a cultural thing. As I understand it, in civilizations past, being somewhat rotund was considered sexy, as it was a physical indicator of one's ability to find and manage resources. Being fat meant being wealthy. A gut was the pre-modern equivalent of a Rolex or a Benz.'"

Don't misunderstand Jennifer's motive for choosing skinniness, attractiveness, and sexual appeal as her example. Consider her apparent need to to discuss her sexual and physical self on this forum, as evidenced by her frequent references to how she behaves sexually with her boyfriend and her stripper past. She's also pointed out that she is skinny on more than one occasion. Face it, the woman is an exhibitionist who loves an opportunity to remind people how sexy and good-looking she is. She enjoys putting images of herself naked and performing sexually into the minds of the HnR readers. This is yet another example.

I'm only pointing out the obvious here. I'm sure Jen won't mind because her exhibitionism is a facet of her more general love of attention. I'm actually contributing to her cause by posting this. Didn't I put images of a naked, sexy Jen into the minds of the people who read this post?

NoStar | January 13, 2006, 8:18pm | #

P. Gallery,
Images of Jennifer showering have been in my head for days now. You comments neither increased nor decreased their frequency.

Jennifer | January 13, 2006, 8:31pm | #

Wow, every time I leave a thread everything starts to get interesting.

mediageek | January 14, 2006, 12:08am | #

"How about that fucktard Hawking?"

Stephen Hawking is a fucking Quake Master.

bonkstaff | January 14, 2006, 10:42am | #

religion is a product of entheogenic drug use or trance states (either consciously or spontaneously induced) that create a mystical, transpersonal experience. its that simple.

Again | January 14, 2006, 12:59pm | #

"I disagree. My vocal atheist friends just want to be left alone. They don't appreciate being constantly harrassed by those who wish to fix them."
And yet somehow Christians having the same attitude toward the attempts of Dr. Whatshisface above are being their wicked fundamentalist selves.

As an atheist, I think people ought to be allowed to freely believe in whatever freakin' gods they want to, without know-it-all atheists giving them crap about it. How those beliefs cause them to act toward others in civil society is fair game of course. Still, for all the blood on the hands of organized religion (and there's tons), there's a not unsubstantial amount of truly good things that have happened due to religion as well: Codes of ethics and laws, language, literature, art and architecture, charity, philosophy, music, hope to the oppressed, etc., etc., etc. And also remember, there's plenty of atheists with hands drenched in blood as well.

To deny all of the good things that have happened because of religion is equally as foolish as denying all of the awful things that have happened because of religion. I recognize that religion has quite often been a force for unquestionable good in the world. I don't see that as any reason to believe in God, but it's a decent reason not to start sewing scarlet 'C's on the shirts of Christians (or Muslims, or Jews, or Hindus, or Bhuddists, or whatever).

Strap a bomb to your chest or try and teach intelligent design in schools? Well we have a problem. Worship a particular god of your choice? Feel free.

Keith | January 14, 2006, 2:40pm | #

One pet peeve of mine is when atheists tag Christianity in particular or religion in general for being the cause of more wars and death than virtually anything else. Nonsense. If you want to rage against machines and attempt to topple something that causes pretty much every war, start a campaign against nationalism.

Dr.Dipwad | January 14, 2006, 7:35pm | #

Keith is correct re: the bad rap that religion in general and Christianity in particular receives for starting wars. The tenuous reasoning that would lead to such a conclusion should also lead simultaneously to the conclusion that atheism has an even worse record (in so far as it is central to Stalinism, Maoism, and their various spinoffs).

Dr.Dipwad | January 14, 2006, 8:04pm | #

A broader point:

Some posts above seem to indicate a popular view that Christianity is not, already, an analytically self-examining faith. That view is false.

It is, however, a popular stereotype. I guess maybe it originates in Hollywood portrayals of Christian clergy. I'd guess that 95% of such portrayals are of wacky workers of faux miracles, adulterous pastors, pilfering and wealth-obsessed televangelists, dishonest and power-brokering bishops, and so on; the only portrayals of clergymen who are honest, sane, and good company are invariably also of clergymen who're in the process of losing, or have already lost, belief in Christian doctrine.

Add to such portrayals the testimony of former young-earth-Creationists (who sometimes lose their faith entirely before realizing that their fuddled pastor's literal view of Genesis 1-2 is an extreme minority view in Christendom, not essential to any of the creeds, and owes more to the ignorance of the pastor of his own faith, than to the ignorance of Christians in general about reality) and it's not hard to see why some say: "Christians not only don't think about the things they don't think about; they rarely bother to think about the things they DO think about." (Paraphrase from Inherit the Wind)

But it's a false accusation. From St. Augustine to the myriad Christian thinkers of the last hundred years (Oswald Chambers, G.K.Chesterton, C.S.Lewis, and less well-known folks like Dallas Willard over at USC) Christians regularly examine the origins and credibility of various aspects of their faith.

Not all clear thinkers are persuaded by logic and evidence to accept Christian beliefs, surely! But plenty such persons have found Christianity to be a requirement of their reason, not contrary to it. And these are the persons who, having accepted Christianity not because it was the faith of their parents, or of most folks in their nation, or of their spouse, but because they simply concluded it was true, are most often found examining Christian traditions with the same honest microscope.

graves | January 14, 2006, 8:29pm | #

St Augustine of Hippo argued for a type of God-gene explanation for faith in the 4th century. He argued that humans are created with a God-shaped void in their hearts and are driven to fill that void.

On a second note, lack of evidence in favor of a proposition is not evidence against that proposition (negative existentialist proposition). In other words, if evidence is not found that proves or shows that God exists, this does not count as evidence against the existence of God. It is a matter of faith and is therefore not a testable proposition. St. Thomas Aquinas may have attempted to remove the existence of God from the realm of faith, but the question of the existence of God remains in there.

polymath | January 14, 2006, 8:57pm | #

Dr. Dipwad is the only person on this entire thread who is making sense to me. It seems undeniable that religion is COMPATIBLE with science, and that it is possible to be an intelligent, moral, and intellectually honest Christian just as it is possible to be an intelligent, moral, and intellectually honest atheist. [I single out Christianity among other religions simply because, as a well-educated Roman Catholic, I know it well enough to be confident that it is intellectually respectable; I am not making a statement either way about other religions.] But there are an awful lot of atheists and an awful lot of Christians who don't really believe this and so react emotionally and overgeneralize from bad examples and end up slandering the other group.

joshua corning | January 15, 2006, 2:28am | #

just sort of a clean up of the stupid things I have read:

man has evolved to belive in gods not biology.

Evolution never stops. People still die for a reason and people still have babies for a reason. And these reasons have a pattern that favors certian genes over other genes. Eye glasses and agriculure have not changed the fundementals of natural selection.

Organized atheism? That's an oxymoron. ahmen.

We have not evolved to be happy but to desire happiness. If you don't belive me then shoot up some heroin every day and see how many viable babies you make.

If the 20th ceantury has proven anything is that man is perfectly capable of commiting atrocious acts agianst his fellow man without the need of religion.

and where the hell is Thoreau is all this?

anon2 | January 15, 2006, 8:14am | #

Dr. Dipwad, There are certainly some anecdotal cases of people accepting Christianity "not because it was the faith of their parents, or of most folks in their nation, or of their spouse, but because they simply concluded it was true", but they're the exceptions, by far. Since they're the exceptions, I think using "plenty" to describe them, is misleading.

According to the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, one person in 17,000 in the U.S. has some type of albinism. Since there are about 300 million people in the U.S., that's over 15,000 people with some type of albinism. If anyone were to be arguing that people with albinism didn't exist, that number would certainly be "plenty" to show otherwise. On the other hand, if one were to be arguing that albinism is common, then "plenty" is no longer correct.

Polymath, sure, it's possible to be an intelligent, moral and intellectually honest Christian, but it's also possible to be an intelligent, moral and intellectually honest Marxist (e.g. young Thomas Sowell) or even Lamarkian. People can have all sorts of mistaken beliefs and still be intelligent, moral and intellectually honest. That doesn't mean that Marxism or Lamarkianism is intellectually respectable. Intellectual respectability is hard to define, and is largely a numbers game. I'm sure most people would say that Christianity is intellectually respectable. I'm sure a lot of people would say Marxism is intellectually respectable.

But, by and large, people accept Christianity specifically because it was the faith of their parents, is a popular faith in the region in which they lived their formative years or because it's the religion of their spouse. Christ, if he existed at all, simply didn't appear to all the humans on the earth, merely to ones who happened to be in a small portion of the world. The various Christian sects have different ways of explaining away such huge favoritism (I call it favoritism, because if it's really important to your status in the afterlife to know Christ, people who met the guy have a huge leg up over people who were on a different continent), but the atheist's explanation is exceedingly straightforward: religion comes from and is propagated by man.

Religions evolve. They appear to evolve at more or less the same speed that other cultural aspects evolve. Mainstream religions are compatible with science, because the ones that weren't have been consigned to the dustbin. Christianity has been with humans a really long time if you're a young earth creationist. On the other hand, if you believe the anthropologists, Homo sapiens sapiens have been around 195,000 years and Abrahamic religions have been important to much less than 1% of the population. During the time of Abrahamic religions, the tenets have changed greatly, not just the Old Testament versus the New Testament, but things like whether charging interest for loans is acceptable.

The speed at which new species have evolved, and how that speed has varied with regional differences is one of the ways in which evolution became apparent even before science had figured out the mechanism (genes). There's no need for God to come in and create new species here and there; they evolved. The speed at which religions mutate and evolve is strongly suggestive to some that there's no need for God to come in and create new religions here and there. It's certainly possible to believe in genetic evolution explaining the origin of species and disbelieve in cultural evolution explaining the origin of religion, but the evidence points to the latter.

Not only is it true that "not all clear thinkers are persuaded by logic and evidence to accept Christian beliefs," but it appears that in general, the more proficient one is in the hard sciences, the less likely that person is to believe in God.

However, even if there's no God, belief in Gods was incredibly important to the human race. My personal belief is that overall, humanity would be better if we gracefully transitioned away from belief in Gods. To a large extent that's exactly what is happening. Each generation can believe in a God who is keeping with the previous generation's science and can conveniently overlook just how different his God is from the God of his great grandfather.

science | January 15, 2006, 12:40pm | #

Not that I disagree with your main points, but ...

"Not only is it true that "not all clear thinkers are persuaded by logic and evidence to accept Christian beliefs," but it appears that in general, the more proficient one is in the hard sciences, the less likely that person is to believe in God."

That is just plain made up. It is a statement based on faith, a prediction based on an emotional preference for that to be the case rather than something based in empirical evidence. Beliefs are tricky things. They don't always engage the rational function directly. We can justify almost any belief we hold after the fact.

Just saying.

Jeebus | January 15, 2006, 1:24pm | #

6Gun said: "Here you go. Parse aawaiey, tuffguy.
http://oregonmag.com/GenesisScience.htm"

OK, I was busy doing other things for most of the weekend and this thread is probably dead, but if 6Gun or anyone else is still around I just want to point out how absurdly stupid this web page is. 6Gun offered it as evidence that "Genesis is a nearly perfect account of the origins of a Big Bang universe." The author takes vague passages from the Bible, then goes through convoluted and very generous interpretations to reach the conclusion that (with one exception) "Genesis perfectly describes the universe from the beginning to today." He conveniently ignores the fact that, based on his comically loose criteria for "perfectly describing," Genesis could just as perfectly describe countless histories of the universe. There's absolutely no actual predictability or testability here. Of course, anyone who's actually read Genesis would already know that 6Gun's claim was completely absurd; but thankfully he was kind enough to show us a web page that proves it.

wayne | January 15, 2006, 3:12pm | #

What did you say, oh um, sorry, I was daydreaming that Jennifer were showering together, and she was all soaped up and slippery and we were laughing, and then she dropped the soap...

wayne | January 15, 2006, 3:42pm | #

"On a second note, lack of evidence in favor of a proposition is not evidence against that proposition (negative existentialist proposition). In other words, if evidence is not found that proves or shows that God exists, this does not count as evidence against the existence of God. It is a matter of faith and is therefore not a testable proposition."

There is a lack of evidence for a lot of things: the sun being pulled along in its orbit by a chariot driven by a lesser god, leprechauns, pixie dust, intelligent design, sex after marriage; just any number of things. So, I guess by your reasoning one ought to be thought quite an intellectual for believing in all of the above.

graves | January 15, 2006, 4:00pm | #

Re: leprechauns, and pixie dust

You miss the point, which is that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated definitively one way or the other, and it is therefore confined to the realm of faith, not science (or its Trojan Horse, Intelligent Design).

The rationality of that faith is an entirely different proposition. One might be well served to consider the position of the great French (how often do those words appear next to each other?) mathematician Blaise Pascal (Pascal's Wager http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/wager.html has a refutation of Pascal's Wager, and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/ has a detailed examination of the Wager).

anon2 | January 15, 2006, 5:10pm | #

Sorry, but the link filter has bitten me too many times, so I'm not providing many links in my posts now. I'll have to assume you weren't aware of the Wikipedia summary. Perhaps you disagree with the summary, but I didn't write the page, nor is it the only place I've read of such studies. If you want to think that a lot of people are making up the inverse correlation between hard-science work and belief in God, that's fine, but now what you have a few references, perhaps you can further explain your belief that such an inverse correlation is made up.

Transpower | January 15, 2006, 5:34pm | #

I disagree with Dennett. It is simply impossible to derive ethics from physics or biology. Proof: there is no justice in physics or biology. However, there is justice--at least partially--in human civilizations. Therefore an outside Metaphysical Realm must exist to supply us with ethical values. Of course, this realm doesn't have to be supernatural, mystical, or irrational. It can be a perfectly natural and rational aspect of existence. Like the physical realm, the Metaphysical Realm is quantized. Each unit may be considered a "soul" or "metaphysical control unit." Ethical humans have souls; non-ethical humans do not. It is the non-ethical humans on this planet who initiate force, theft, and fraud, and thereby cause all of our problems. Supernaturalists cannot account for evil; atheists cannot account for goodness. Only a rational metaphysicalist can. See D. B. Larson's Beyond Space and Time for a thorough, scientific explanation of all this.

MainstreamMan | January 15, 2006, 6:36pm | #

anon2
"If you want to think that a lot of people are making up the inverse correlation between hard-science work and belief in God, that's fine, but now what you have a few references, perhaps you can further explain your belief that such an inverse correlation is made up."

I do believe that the summary at the link you provided and the studies it sights have little to say about talent/work in hard science and religiousity. IQ is not the same thing. Nor are any of the sighted studies exactly good examples of hard science or even respected soft science (skeptic ain't exactly a top-notch peer review journal guys).

I am with science (the poster) on this one. Just cuz there is a study or two to support your position don't make it so. .. but more important, those studies should be targeted towards your particular point to provide support when it is there.

Same goes for the frequent google lists on hit&run. Just cuz you can google a list of sites that support a position, doesn't mean that position is logical, correct, or credible.

science | January 15, 2006, 7:11pm | #

anon2:

Thanks for the link.

I change my charge from "made up" to "hardly supported by the little research available that addresses the question directly."

Most of what is linked by wikepedia are surveys (fairly low on the scale of evidence) with very broad questions about how important religion is to ones life, and don't really define belief or any reasonable concept of "proficient" in hard science. GPA, Mensa membership (nor even NSA membership), or school affilitation, and the like are not very rigorous proxy measures to use in a study addressing this question, nor is the lack of strong belief in a "personal" god (the most consistent question asked of these people, and much more narrow than I would be interested in since it lacks elaboration regarding how these scientists do think on the issue). It is just not the same as lack of belief (or willingness to consider) religious ideas or conviction in an atheist viewpoint. Most of these studies, by the way, found more than half of the scientists affirming religious beliefs.

But I stand duly corrected. Not made up. Just lacking appropriate skepticism.

6Gun | January 15, 2006, 10:51pm | #

There are certainly some anecdotal cases of people accepting Christianity ... but they're the exceptions, by far.

While not immediately germane to a discussion of God and religion, this is an unbacked claim and smacks of proof by popular acclaim. Regardless, I tend to think that neither would be important were we to accept, even if just for the sake of this argument, that God existed.

Christ, if he existed at all

-snip-

the atheist's explanation is exceedingly straightforward: religion comes from and is propagated by man.

Religion is indeed propagated by man. Christ himself implied a question about his claimed divinity, while biblical principle makes no mystery about proclaiming religion to be in service of man. But your statement appears to make the common mistake of reasoning away a spiritual component after the mechanical action behind it becomes known: Since the brain is now known to be an entirely physical entity, there can be no spirit; since we understand the historical cause and effect of religion, there can be no God.

At any rate, Christ lived; suggesting otherwise is simply misinformed. Roman records of the time cross correlate a substantial amount of state and private data that clearly confirm that Christ was a concern to the ends of the Empire, and it does so within a large architecture of fact easily recognized by the standards of rigorous analysis. This body of evidence is independently confirmed by additional historical material that ran to roughly 200AD and involved immense additional cross correlation. All in all, you can cite either references or original material from a list that includes but is in no way limited to Clement of Rome, Hermas, Papias, Polycarp, Ignatius (his letters to Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, Smyrna, and Polycarp) Aristides, Quadratus, Athenogoras, Theophilis, Melito, Minucius Felix, and Justin Martyr. Even the heretics (who were heretical about the divinity of Christ and not his person) confirm these facts. I'll spare us more detail but you may want to consult the literature. I'd also suggest studies from Dr. Cage, professor of philosophy at the University of Nevada, Reno, among others.

Not only is it true that "not all clear thinkers are persuaded by logic and evidence to accept Christian beliefs," but it appears that in general, the more proficient one is in the hard sciences, the less likely that person is to believe in God.

Again, you seem to confuse a religious, Christian, man-made God with the entire concept of God. Further, I can just as credibly assert that the only scientifically mature view is that the universe embodies an order that clearly points to design. I believe the finest quantum minds will not argue otherwise.

My personal belief is that overall, humanity would be better if we gracefully transitioned away from belief in Gods. To a large extent that's exactly what is happening. Each generation can believe in a God who is keeping with the previous generation's science and can conveniently overlook just how different his God is from the God of his great grandfather.

While again potentially confusing religion with God, this is false as stated. The secularization of the West is simply not keeping up with the Christian conversion rate in Asia, and right or wrong, the religious status of the Mideast, Africa, and elsewhere.

6Gun | January 15, 2006, 11:06pm | #

Predictably, Jeebus does indeed parse into the slimmest of arguments:

I just want to point out how absurdly stupid this web page is. 6Gun offered it as evidence that "Genesis is a nearly perfect account of the origins of a Big Bang universe." The author takes vague passages from the Bible...

These "vague passages" are nothing less than a verse by verse recitation of the creation account that appears in Genesis. How do you invalidate this account merely by misstating its context or location?

...then goes through convoluted and very generous interpretations to reach the conclusion that (with one exception) "Genesis perfectly describes the universe from the beginning to today."

I'm confused. How is this thesis convoluted? Excessively generous?

He conveniently ignores the fact that, based on his comically loose criteria for "perfectly describing," Genesis could just as perfectly describe countless histories of the universe.

Again, you're saying nothing of substance. Should Genesis describe "countless histories of the universe"-- and should you mean by that the physical universe that's the subject of this point -- how would you explain that this ancient account is, era for era, completely consistent with the evolution of a Big Bang universe? Or countless Big Bang universes? (There is no biblical claim for this being the exclusive universe that I'm aware of...)

It seems that whenever one wants to try and blow holes in the notion of God, the first thing they do, as I predicted, is use the most literal interpretation of the very thing they reject as being illiterate and subjective...religion.

Jeebus | January 16, 2006, 10:35am | #

6Gun,

It seems abundantly obvious that you're being deliberately obtuse, so I'm going to give you one more benefit of the doubt then not waste any more of my time.

"These "vague passages" are nothing less than a verse by verse recitation of the creation account that appears in Genesis."

Yes, obviously they're direct quotes of scripture (from a particular translation of Genesis). And just as obviously, the vagueness I was talking about is in reference to their descriptions of the natural world, not their accuracy as scripture quotations.

"I'm confused. How is this thesis convoluted? Excessively generous?"

You can pick essentially any of his examples and see how convoluted and generous his interpretations must be to make an even remotely plausible claim that they describe the history of the universe in a substantially meaningful way (to say nothing of it being a "perfect" or "nearly perfect" account, as you and the author creatively claim). I'm not going to waste my time going through them one by one; one example will suffice:
-----
Gen 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

Most scientists believe life began in the waters that had gathered themselves together under the firmament. All biological theories indicate that life evolved from less to more complex types. Single celled plants came first.... The evolution of trees after grass perfectly fits all known science.
-----
First, there's actually remarkably little here in terms of actual substantive claims - just that God made the earth bring forth various plants, which would be the painfully obvious to anyone living at the time the Bible was written (and who had a religious worldview). But let's pretend as the author does that it actually does make precise, substantive claims about the history of life on earth that wouldn't have already been obvious to anyone. Single-celled plants did not "come first," even if we generously interpret photosynthetic bacteria to be plants; so this claim is factually untrue. And it takes a generous interpretation to read this quote as meaning that trees evolved more recently than grasses; one is mentioned before the other, but given no mention of time an equally if not more reasonable interpretation would be that they were created together. (The author also does this with the first quote about the heavens and the earth; and he blatantly equivocates on the meaning of "earth," because there he takes it to mean our planet but a few verses later it suddenly means all matter prior to the Big Bang. That certainly qualifies as convoluted and generous, if not flat-out dishonest.)

The fact that Genesis is "completely consistent" with what we know about the history of the universe is a result of the fact that Genesis is so vague that it is consistent with a huge range of possible histories. A statement such as "In the beginning, there was some stuff. Then some shit happened, followed by some other shit. There was some light and dark in there, and some plants and animals too" is completely consistent with the history of the universe, but only because it contains very little of actual substance. To call it a "nearly perfect" account of the history of the universe would be the height of intellectual dishonesty, and such a claim with respect to Genesis is only slightly less dishonest.

Well, it turns out I've already spent too much writing this. So let me finish by saying it's good that you have such an active imagination; that makes life much more interesting. But I've made absolutely no attempt to "blow holes in the notion of God;" I've only pointed out the obvious fact that your claims about Genesis are untrue. You seem so intent on setting yourself up as a victim, and setting religious belief in general up as under attack, that even if those attacks aren't there you're perfectly happy to make them up.

6Gun | January 16, 2006, 11:08am | #

Well, Jeebus, if we're preempting one another's comments with personal criticism, your limitation is the predictably boring snarkiness, shifting goalposts and narrow unrealistic expectations of the typical omniscient and arrogant yet miserably misinformed advocate of an entirely random univese. Why are you guys like that?

And why do you lack the perspective and humor to realize that whatever Genesis is, it's not -- nor could it possibly be -- writ by the very hand of God?

But when you get around to contrasting the Genesis account with say, backs of immense turtles (or popping into existence from pure void) and the like, or when you wish to debate the structure of this reality as say, a Hawking might view it, you let me know. Then you'll be serious. Until then you come off as just another poorly reasoned, anti-Christian secularist.

The point, obviously, isn't whether Genesis is a word-for-word description of the universe's molecular biology dropped -- as I believe I said -- into an Iowa cornfield for a fundementalist to discover. Such would be flagrantly supernatural, get it? Again, atheists amusingly expect either Santa or to be dragged kicking and screaming into some odd enlightenment only they'll know when they feel it.

The arrogance is annoying but the immaturity is even more so. But what really takes the cake is the dimness: Were Genesis a library of science books, what would your life look like then?

I asked what it was. I inplied that Bible-bashers argue pathetically limited, ill-informed cases. I suggested that there is mystery and meaning in the one thing you hold in highest disdain.

For the third time: It seems that whenever one wants to try and blow holes in the notion of God, the first thing they do, as I predicted, is use the most literal interpretation of the very thing they reject as being illiterate and subjective...religion.

I really don't care what it is myself. I care only that nothing in more than three hundred comments offers the slightest evidence against a designed, ordered, and infinitely mysterious universe, to say nothing of illuminating the very abstract concepts that make us transcendently human.

Jeebus | January 16, 2006, 11:46am | #

No, 6Gun, the point, obviously, is that you explicitly called Genesis a "nearly perfect account of the origins of a Big Bang universe," and that this claim is blatantly false. This claim has nothing to do with stories of turtles, or of claims by Hawking. It would be hard to come up with clearer examples of shifting goalposts and intellectual dishonesty than what you're displaying here. My response was to a specific claim you made, and now you're pretending that I was responding to all of the drivel you've spewed on this entire thread.

And for the second time, I've made absolutely no attempt to "blow holes in the notion of God." You seem to be suffering under the delusion that I'm a hard-core atheist, and that's not true. Nor am I a "Bible-basher;" I simply have a much more realistic notion of what to expect from the Bible than you apparently do, based on your claim I quoted above. I was responding specifically and directly to this rather fantastic claim that (to quote you once again, since you seem to have a very short memory here) Genesis is a "nearly perfect account of the origins of a Big Bang universe." Maybe some others on this thread, or some atheist you know, or the voices in your head, are making other arguments. I'm not. It's surprisingly simple to understand if you can trouble yourself consider it honestly.

And with your talk of arrogance, immaturity, shifting goalposts, boring snarkiness, your attributing to me views that no one could honestly claim I hold based on my posts (such as that I interpret Genesis as having been "writ by the very hand of God"), and your grouping of some amorphous group together as "you guys" to make your misleading representations more convenient, it's clear that we can add hypocrisy to the rapidly growing list of your glaring character faults.

anon2 | January 16, 2006, 12:31pm | #

science,

It certainly does appear that in general, the more proficient one is in the hard sciences, the less likely that person is to believe in God. I know of no survey or study that suggests otherwise and a few that support that statement, e.g. Larson & Witham. Unsurprising, unchallenged results aren't going to have a lot of followups, so it's unlikely that there's going to be a lot of research in this area.

Surveys may be low on the scale of evidence for many things, but the question at hand is belief in God. What do you suggest is better? In each of the surveys mentioned in L&W's correspondence, more than 50% of the people replied. If you stipulate that all the people who didn't reply would have replied with a belief in personal God, the personal disbelief percentages would still be very much higher than that of the U.S.

Although L&W's correspondence doesn't include it, I believe the specific question asked was:

A. CONCERNING THE BELIEF IN GOD

1. I believe in a God in intellectual and affective communication with humankind, i.e., a God to whom one may pray in expectation of receiving an answer. By "answer" I mean more than the subjective, psychological effect of prayer.

2. I do not believe in a God as defined above.

3. I have no definite belief regarding this question.

That was the question asked originally in 1914 (or perhaps 1916, I've seen both dates used), so that's what L&W asked. It's true that a different question could have yielded different numbers, but it's unlikely to me that any wording would eliminate the inverse-correlation.

A much larger survey had a 75 percent return rate, and it contrasts beliefs of social scientists with natural scientists. I haven't seen Ecklund's survey questions, so it could be that her claims:

Nearly 38 percent of natural scientists surveyed said they did not believe in God, but only 31 percent of the social scientists gave that response.

Among each of the two general groups, one discipline stood out: Forty-one percent of the biologists and 27 percent of the political scientists said they don't believe in God.

are unfair and that she wasn't asking about "belief in God" in general, but some more specific belief (e.g. a God who answers prayers). But assuming she's not using deliberately contorted survey questions, forty-one percent non-belief is still much higher than that of the U.S. in general.

A synthesis of the above, more studies, other correlations and even anecdotal evidence is what causes me to believe that "it appears ..." If there's any evidence that suggests that there's not such an inverse-correlation (whether that's evidence that suggests no correlation or evidence that suggests a positive correlation), I'm eager to read it. I've been wrong before, I may be wrong now.

Stevo Darkly | January 16, 2006, 1:59pm | #

6Gun -- I thought you made some decent points earlier about the possible nature of God, up earlier in the thread, before you got kinda hostile with mediageek.

But this "Genesis is a nearly perfect account of the origins of a Big Bang universe" idea is a tarpit of goofiness that you're better of abandoning.

I once had the same thought when I was a kid in Catholic grade school, because I knew that life started in the seas, then moved onto land. But the description in Genesis has to become pretty stretched to fit the current scientific description -- stretched until you have to consider it a metaphorical account so vague and symbolic that it could interpreted many other ways also. And it's not even in order. It talks about the appearance of life on Earth before it discussed the formation of the first stars. Wouldn't you expect a literal account of How Everything Began to follow a chronological order?

And the more specific you get, the more wrong it gets. Example: The Web site says:

The evolution of trees after grass perfectly fits all known science.

Actually, the first trees appeared on Earth 370 million years ago. But grass -- surprising as it may seem to us, who are used to seeing it as ubiquitous ground cover -- is a relatively late-comer to the evolution of life on earth. The first grasses showed up about 300 million years later than the first trees, truth to tell.

6Gun | January 16, 2006, 3:16pm | #

Stevo, assuming we could even define, grasp, or identify it, I don't think its reasonable to advocate for any direct supernatural intervention, communication, or other interaction with a God in this physical universe. (Conversely, the existence of a universe itself may be called "supernatural" -- along with everything flowing from its origin -- in the sense that none of it really should, by logic, exist at all. Does a God-gene harken back to that built-in logical instinct? Do we know physical reality doesn't make sense?)

So how to define the "supernatural" threshold, and thereby, God? Did the Big Bang occur in God's mind? Did God precede the Big Bang? At some point doesn't it all get a little semantic?

Pursuant this (when not demanding what the f**k do I mean and then misstating me) mediageek naturally accuses me of newagism, but there's nothing intentionally obscure about any of this: Contrast void with existence and what lexicon would you use?

I didn't claim that Genesis was definitive to the point it argued for the existence of God. I'd just like to learn (1) why atheists predictably use Christianity's worst examples to press frail cases, (2) why abstracts such as beauty, love, honor, the question why, and a God-concept even exist, and (3) what atheists will ever do with origins.

Yes, if Genesis accounts a largely useful, step-by-step creation story, it does so with uncanny usefulness when grasped within its obviously figurative context. But at the most it's merely a superior creation myth. I'd just like to see what reductionist atheists will do with it while typically bashing Christianity.

Lastly, when a scientist can offer so much as a theory why physical reality exists -- and how its fundamental mechanisms interact in such a faithful manner -- then secularists will have my attention. Meanwhile, it seems the more we think we know, the less we actually do. At some point, atheism might want to admit that.

TallDave | January 16, 2006, 6:10pm | #

I bet this book is a bestseller in the Mideast.

For burning, that is.

Stevo Darkly | January 16, 2006, 8:08pm | #

"How profound! How obscure!" -- Lao Tzu

6Gun | January 17, 2006, 10:07am | #

"How profound! How obscure!" -- Lao Tzu

Perhaps.

"In speaking of the existence of God we should underline that we are not speaking of proofs in the sense implied by the experimental sciences. Scientific proofs in the modern sense of the word are valid only for things perceptible to the senses since it is only on such things that scientific instruments of investigation can be used. To desire a scientific proof of God would be equivalent to lowering God to the level of the beings of our world, and we would therefore be mistaken methodologically in regard to what God is. Science must recognize its limits and its inability to reach the existence of God: it can neither affirm nor deny his existence.

"From this, however, we must not draw the conclusion that scientists in their scientific studies are unable to find valid reasons for admitting the existence of God. If science as such cannot reach God, the scientist who has an intelligence the object of which is not limited to things of sense perception, can discover in the world reasons for affirming a Being which surpasses it. Many scientists have made and are making this discovery.

"He who reflects with an open mind on what is implied in the existence of the universe, cannot help but pose the question of the problem of the origin. Instinctively, when we witness certain happenings, we ask ourselves what caused them. How can we not but ask the same question in regard to the sum total of beings and phenomena which we discover in the world?"

-- Pope John Paul II

6Gun | January 17, 2006, 3:43pm | #

Jeebus, we know hasty pride impairs objectivity and civility, and in limited forums rhetorical escalation occurs when views and character are thought impugned, but I intended no hypocrisy. (I certainly don't have a problem mouthing off against the usual atheistic bias and ignorance, or treating it to the same abuse it historically delivers, but I would then have no problem being set straight when I do it poorly. I'd rather dish ridicule as well as anyone ever could.)

Further, If you point out that you're not part of the usual tribe that resists POV's contrary to its own quasi-scientific secularism, that's naturally acceptable. If you feel you have a perspective that's consistent with nature and that mine isn't, fine. I'll let the underlying natural characteristics of the quantum Universe left off the debate table stay there -- presumably in order to simplify things, I've already been called a newager. And if Genesis accounts an origin myth as elegant as any other -- contrasting big turtles or body Thetans or even spontaneous eruptions of matter and energy from a void -- but still deserves ridicule and scorn because while it does so, it fails to come across with the goods on say, fundamental particles or God's street address, I understand.

And if I must be taken at precisely and only my specific words in a limited context in order to qualify my intent, I can handle that too. I've never been accused of perfect clarity or grasping all facets of a debate at once.

It's just that to be respected in your views you may want to reconsider taking a hyper-competitive, opportunistically narrow, personal, rhetorical, transparently parsing high ground in order to condescendingly take others out of context so as to say they're absurdly stupid, willfully obtuse, time-wasting, dope smoking dicks who can only lie to make points you're apparently personally convinced simply can't exist.

If it exists, omniscience probably isn't that impolite.

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