There's still probably no God

I have no problem with the ad.

No real issues except for the use of the word probably, which would assume a high probability for there being no god anwhere in the universe, or perhaps anywhere in the multiverse.

What percentage are they assigning to this likelihood?

And how much more advanced than us would they have to be to qualify for god status? 

As an Anglican warden, I welcome the debate.

I have no problem with the ad.  I saw a couple of people interviewed last night on the telly.  One of the people behind the ad said it's mainly to stimulate discussion, which being the case, he's accomplished his goal without having to drop so much as a dime on bus ads yet.

They also interviewed a Catholic Priest, who also has no problem.  The priest concentrated on the use of the word "probably", and said that's all the opening he's ever looked for in doing his job anyway. 

From what I've heard, the more main stream non-fundies are pretty sanguine with the whole business, and also see it as a chance to stimulate discussion.

"Do ants think we are gods? Do they pray to us? And if so, why dont we answer them?"

I'm kind of an old testiment god to my ants.  A mix of Elohim with a touch of Goebels thrown in for good measure.   

Hey, they get in my pantry.   

The United Church joins the fray:

The United Church ad, created by Toronto-based Smith Roberts Creative Communications, encourages readers to choose between the original message and theirs, which reads: "There's probably a God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Rev. Keith Howard, executive director of the church's Emerging Spirit Campaign, said the United Church wants to encourage conversations on religion as well as direct people to wondercafe.ca, the United Church's online discussion site.

 http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/579530

Canadian Press

The ads seem to be founded on the same category error that undermines the arguments of people like Dawkins, Dennet, and Harris.  This link to Terry Eagleton's review of Dawkin's work has been posted before, but it remains relevant: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html

Having said that, I see no real problem with the advertising campaign, though I'm not sure how atheists would feel about seeing Christian propaganda on the buses they have to take to work every day.

If people keep dragging up that nonsense from Terry Eagleton, I'm going to keep linking to sensible responses to it.

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2006/12/14/Dawkins/ [11]

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/10/eagleton_vs_dawkins.php [12]

http://atheism.about.com/b/2007/05/22/terry-eagleton-vs-richard-dawkins.htm [13]

http://www.blacksunjournal.com/religion/282_rebuttal-to-terry-eagletons-critique-of-dawkins-the-god-delusion_2006.html [14]

Jesus never took a bus. He crossed the street to get to the other side.

And the Jeezer said we could move mountains with faith.

"... anything you can imagine we already know how to do." - Ben Rich, former Head of the Lockheed Skunk Works

Didn't we have this sort of discussion more than two years ago? Besides many other times...

But I just found my true confession [18] in that thread, about how I discovered that God was a fraud. It was a spiritual experience that has nourished me ever since. Anyone who hasn't tasted spirituality minus deities and fairy tales should give it a try. Mystery, quest, and awakening are not just for the God-servants.

I see 'em. Some Bible study group. I also see ads for some big evangelical Christian event every year. Don't like 'em.

Then it could be that Tommy is a terrible god as far as the ants are concerned. For the ants, Tommy is Mors, Pluto, Orcus(Roman) and even Morana(Slavic) Whoa is you, Tommy

The ads do not categorise anything, based on what I've read.  They are a simple statement of perspective. 

As for whether Dawkins is refuted by Eagleton, I think Eagleton provides a shining example of the logical emptiness of theist arguments for the existence of God.  His primary technique is straw man argumentation, in which he makes claims against Dawkins (e.g. theological illiteracy) which he proceeds from without providing evidence. 

Eagleton's arguments are little more than restatements of assumptions. Those that pretend to some more serious standing are primarily ad hominem attacks unjustified by evidence. The theological illiteracy charge is one example among many. For anyone familiar with Eagleton, it is also naked hypocrisy. Frankly, it is not possible to have a serious discussion with such people.

The distinction between religion and spiritualism is one that I freely admit to being unable to get a handle on.  It is not from lack of trying.  Rather, it seems that the definition of spirituality is vague in the mind of almost all who hew to the concept, and at variance with how many others claiming the same belief see it. To some, spirituality is similar to the deism of Thomas Jefferson, for others it is more akin to simple poetic wonder (which I do believe in, but without the magic bits that spirituality entails).  As such it is not something which can be argued against in a general way.

 As for how atheists would feel if there were religious ads all around, I can proved direct evidence from personal experience on that.  I find it objectionable but unavoidable.  I can't imagine how anybody has failed to notice the privileged position of religion in society, the free ride churches receive in terms of their use of public space, their tax exempt status, references to God in the constitution, their legal permission to use the education for purposes of religious propaganda and the like.  The proposition that atheists do not daily have their noses rubbed in the superstitous belief of others is just silly. If anything, these ads are merely offering religious believers a taste of soemthing I have experienced every day since I abondoned religious belief as an adolescent. If those who object are willing to take their beliefs behind closed doors and abandon their special privileges, I'm prepared to negotiate on my support for the bus ads.

In most threads of this sort, the claim is made that atheism is merely another dogmatic system of belief.  This is an odd argument, to say the least.  The principle premises for every atheist I know are that there can be no real belief without reason and that the working assumptions necessary to daily life are all subject to sceptical inquiry and refutation. The refusal of these ads in some communities is good evidence that such a position remains subversive in supposedly secular Canada, the affection of liberal intellectual rhetoric by religious believers notwithstanding.

To address a question from Frustrated Mess on another thread, since closed.  I do not propose that religious institutions are the only source of "oppression" or that "there there would be an end to colonization, conquest, and (wo)man's inhumanity to (wo)man" without them.  I do believe that it is one of the principle sources of oppression and those other things, and that its absence would mean an end to one of the most universally observed and powerful tools used by oppressors, colonizers, conquerers and the inhumane.

I think the Church was influential at one time. But they werent all that powerful. Henry the VIII ordered hundreds of monasteries and abbeys razed to the ground, monks murdered and driven off, and their lands taken from them. And the Vatican was powerless to stop it.

I think today the tools of imperialism are dozens of rightwing make-believe think tanks, an electoral system invented before electricity, the IMF, the BIS, WTO, nuclear weapons, NATO, and not necessarily in that order.

I never liked them much because it was always so unbalanced but now that the other side of the belief is coming out I will smile when I read the bible study quotes because it will remind me that there probably isn't a God anyway.

What I really can't wait for, though, is someone putting up there probably is no god ad right beside the bible study quote ad

Fidel:

The Church wasn't all that powerful? The only way Henry VIII pulled it off was to duplicate the Catholic Church in every regard but papal authority, installing himself as the head of the church and state.  Even then, the Church was not defeated in its resistance to his actions until long after Henry was dead.  The Bishops and Priests retained enormous authority over secular affairs and were, when all was said and done, the moral authority legitimising his rule in the eyes of his subjects. Protestantism was only secure in England after Elizabeth and it wasn't a whole lot more benign than the Catholic Church.

As for the forces of imperialism, the religious right is the principle organizational force that carried George W. Bush to power and kept him there. He and his henchmen sincerely believed that God was on their side, and they had that view reinforced by scumbag preachers whose moral ambiguity would have been at home in Medieval Venice. More to the point, those scumbag preachers mobilized millions to vote for and agitate on behalf of the Republicans. Does anybody seriously believe that religion is not a powerful force in US politics?

In the so-called West, religion has less overt power than it once did, but it still exerts enormous influence on millions of people. Its role in the developing world is appalling.

The same is true of other religious traditions than Christianity or the other Abrahamic-Mosaic traditions. Without the moral authority of religious figures, the historical blood feuds enshrined in religious texts or the various bizarre justifications for bloody conduct passed down through generations from mystical Bronze Age figures, many longterm, festering, hideous conflicts would be tractable, or at least comprehensible.

And they murdered a lot of Catholics in the process. Mary, Catherine of Aragon's daughter, Henry's Spanish wife, turned England Catholic again. She died and Elizabeth, her half-sister, made them Protestant again. More Catholics murdered. The Stewarts tried it on with Catholicism again but were unsuccessful. And half they time they were plotting the murder of their own leading to power grabs. The Royals were a treacherous bunch of illegitimate bastards and high-priced prostitutes. Skull duggery and mass murder were second nature for them.

By many an opinion, it wasnt the priests who needed quartering,  gutting, and stringing up, it was the inbred blue bloods and their genetic baggage. They were quite mad. Nicholas was no better. They had warnings that Europeans were fed up with the royal horse shit when Ferdinand was assassinated and social unrest in various places. They did nothing while Russians were hungry. The Romanovs didnt care. Why? Because their power was absolute.

And I forgot to list the CIA and SAS and the Gladio terrorist factions since WW II. They've all got to go. Eyes on the prize, lefties.

"Why? Because their power was absolute. "

And in every instance it was legitimized by the claim of divine right, backed by the authority of the Church, and enforced by threat of excommunication. It was that threat that was the principle problem confronting Henry.  He was only able to pull off his coup because the Church had become so nauseatingly corrupt that even illiterate peasants living in fear of damnation could see it. If he had not set up a parallel institution he would have faced open rebellion.

Mary, by the way, executed more than a few Prods. Don't forget that bit.

Eye on the prize indeed, lefties.  And the prize includes a world free of superstition and the unaccountable power of corrupt preachers.

Yes, and the Church did excommunicate Henry. They didnt agree with his marrying six different women. And you say Mary had a few Prods murdered. That was Mary's decision not the Church. And the royals often went against the wishes of the English, many of whom wanted to remain devout Catholics anyway.

When dissolution of the monasteries occurred, poor people up and down England lost what was the medieval equivalent of social services. That wasnt the Church's decision, and neither was British enclosure. The poor and landless were terrorized by the lords' mercenaries and king's soldiers for centuries after Henry through to John Locke's "liberal" private property laws.  

Not sure where you're going with this. You seem to have concluded that my distaste for religion means I view corrupt, murderous aristocrats as blameless pawns of the Church.

Ain't the case.

The interplay of secular and church power was (and in many places remains) complex and driven by motivations that weave an extremely tangled web.  Ordinary people were and are invariably the victims of these intrigues.

And secular authority is well able to screw people without divine imspiration.  They just seem to find it easier with the divine seal of approval.

Where we are going is off into the rhubarb. The Romans dropped the ball with imperialism, which led to the dark ages, the first of two general dark periods in Europe. Ignorance and general all around decay and rot were even more prevalent in those times, and so priests and monks became keepers of the written word. It wasnt power they bestowed upon themselves so much as it was down to the brutish imperialism before that there were no public education systems. Priests and monks became all powerful with simply being able to write letters of communication, keep records, land titles, draft the barbarians' repressive laws for them and so on etc But Nero through Henry to William, there were more bad times than good for Europeans. It was the insane blue bloods holding them back more than the Church. Henry was jealous of the grandeur of French courts. They tried to help him learn how to eat with cutlery, but farm animals had more sense. He needed neutering like the rest of them.

In any event, you cant ban religion. It's like whiskey or rum - people want what's verboten. Ignore it and focus on good public policies for freely accessible education, health care, and democratic elections. Sew the seeds and reap a harvest

Terry Eagleton's criticism of Dawkins is a good one. But holy crap, this thread is not about metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. It is about an advertising campaign that is letting people know it's ok not to go to church and not to listen to bigots like the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

And in case you weren't yet convinced, the Christians are hitting back:

Yup:

Catchfire:"Terry Eagleton's criticism of Dawkins is a good one."

If by good you mean clever by half and rife with an abundance of stock-in-trade caricatures of the views he condemns, I have to agree, it's a classic.

Unfortunately, his arguments are logically bankrupt and fallacious.  It is not enough to make claims, one has to support them.  He does not.

The counterr-campaign was always a given. These are not people who are ever going to go quietly.  Their racket is much too sweet to let go without a fight. 

Eagleton's criticism of Dawkins may be "good". Not so his criticism of Dawkins' views.

I find people tend to believe in God for a number of reasons -

*  they were raised that way, and made the choice not to reject their upbringing.

*  it makes them feel good, knowing they'll go to Heaven, for which the only price they have to say is "love Jesus", or whatever they say.

 *  because their social group is church-related and they like their social group.

*  because church is a good place to hand out business cards, for some people. 

*  because of something that happened that was sufficiently anomalous (outside the normal laws of physics) or such a huge coincidence (e.g. one friend who found himself believing in God because on 2 or 3 separate occasions he was saved from death by a doctor whose last name was 'Dinkelberry', and he thought that was an indication of "something".)

by "sufficiently anomalous (outside the normal laws of physics)" i mean something like a 'missing time' experience.

* because it helped them recover from drug addiction.

 but what is the connection between belief in God and belief that we have a "soul", some genuine entity that continues after our bodies deteriorate and we're thrown on the proverbial compost pile ?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

http://LASIK-Flap.com ~ Health Warning about LASIK Eye Surgery

The desire for immortality.

GONG! None of the above for me

I think some of the reasons people dont believe in the possibility that there is a god, or perhaps multiple civilizations in the universe that would appear to be gods to us by comparison could be:

- fear that there is something greater than phony majority governments

- fear that someone somewhere is keeping tabs on the Earth and our solar system in general

- fear that there is someone or group of beings out there, but that they dont care about us. At least not until there is no one left to murder on this planet and the banking cabal and NATO try colonizing space

- their local chapter of atheists serve free beer and wings at meetings, and they dont want to rock the boat

- they already worship at the altar of Russell, Darwin and Dawkins, and they're having none of this big-huge universe stuff 

Ah, ridicule and caricature, the best friends of theology. You've been studying Eagleton's polemics.

Let's be clear about one thing; not believing in a mystical god or gods with powers outside the laws of physics does not preclude belief in highly developed civilisations on other worlds with understanding and powers that seem like magic to us.  They are not the same thing.

To be even more clear, the probability that there is anything resembling the god who putatively handed down the Mosaic laws in all their bizarreness, is approximately zero (to many decimal places).  I'll agree to assign the other a Bayesian prior non-zero probability pending further analysis.

Anyone who fears that there is something greater than phoney majority governments is already sufficiently unhinged that they believe in a wide array of hallucinatory phenomena, including but not limited to god, angels, fairies, large talking rabbits and Conservative economic theory.

Fear that someone is keeping tabs on the Earth and our solar system in general is fairly commom (including on babble, in its milder manifestations) and appears unrelated to religious belief. I am not just an atheist I am a hypothetical anti-theist (you get another 10% off the franchise price if you can define that properly) for reasons that follow from my extreme distaste for all arbitrary authority.

As for "fear that there is someone or group of beings out there, but that they dont care about us. At least not until... ", I am pretty sure that if there is someone out there with the powers that you ascribe, they are unlikely to care much about our little lives at all. Since most of the murdering is done by religious believers of one ilk or another,  the rest of your point is just odd. I'm guessing that is intentional.

The bit about free beer is fair comment.  What the hell, it beats singing dreary hymns. As a vegetarian, wings hold no temptation.

I have never met an atheist who worships Russell, Darwin or Dawkins.  Russel, who was a raving fundy who toward the end of his life would show up at scientific meetings waving a Bible over his head and bellowing "The Book! The Book!", would have been enraged by the suggestion. I have met a few self-styled atheists who worship Marx, Lenin and Mao, but that is really just another flavour of religious mania. For the very large majority of atheists of my aquaintance, it is about refusing to worship and inisisting on critical thought. That is certainly what it is about for Dawkins, and all indications are that it is what Darwin was about as well.

The big universe stuff does not require or justify religious belief. The universe is full of wonderous things and glory; religion trivializes them. The universe is beautiful enough on its own terms that it does not need magic or some cosmic muffin on a cloud to explain it away. I teach my kids to value beauty, to love poetry, to paint and make music, because these things reflect the sense of wonder that all humans experience when they survey their environment on the small and large scale. God has nothing to do with it.

Well I've read your notes to us, Peter, and so far both you and Michael Nenonen have stated your assumptions about religion, and about how the widespread belief in an afterlife originated. And you're both wrong as far as I'm concerned. What can I say other than neither of you seem to have the facts concerning things you tell us neither of you believe in. I dont believe in capitalism, and that it's a monumental failure and dead end for humanity. But I can at least layout an argument filled with facts to support my personal opinion on the matter. You have nothing. Do your homework, and dont be lazy about it.

Wouldnt it be easier to look into the matter and comment from there? Michael Nenonen pointed to Becker's comments about cultural fear of death and dying as a motivation for people to create religion and belief in an afterlife. I think he was on to something. But for a long time, death was common place. Economic class distinction at one time didnt save people from sometimes experiencing death prematurely and for various reasons. Sometimes they lived just long-enough to relate the experience to people around them. The first mystical experiences were very real as far as early man was concerned.

Ah, invective and angry insult, the handmaid of faith.

And for what it's worth, Henry VIII was excommunicated for reasons only peripherally related to his bed-hopping, before he got around to lopping off his second wife's head.

TTFN

Not angry, just disappointed that you take the time to compose  these paragraphs for people like me to sift through in order to find something worth replying to. Henry was a mass murderer. I'm actually disappointed the Church didnt excommunicate him for being a megalomaniacal psychopath. That he was an amoral serial adulterer is besides the point.

Thanks for the clarification.

So if there is so little worth replying to, why exactly have you replied so often?

Fidel thanks for post #29, it cracked me up; so tired of the stupid condescending assumptions as to why someone would have faith, its nice to see it reversed for a change

Well here is another claim to fact I have a problem with:

That ordinary people wrote the bible and edited and re-edited over the centuries isnt all that earth shaking.

What Bayesian factors are you including in this calculation? And, what would it prove or disprove in your mind?  Because Bayes' theorum represents more than a 50-50 coin toss that we are alone versus Dawkins' own conservative estimate for a billion Earth-like planets with life on them.

[thread drift]

What I do understand is that some babblers have pointed to religion and silly belief in god being a detriment to the overall pursuit of democracy and battle against imperialism in general. That's valid and perfectly reasonable point of view as far as I can tell. But there is very little chance of convincing religionists of this view, that there is no god, and religions is just a toolf of imperialism. Very little chance from a scientific point of view, because science is not focussed on such a narrow pursuit. There is so much more to discover in leading up to such a conclusion. Not in our life times. It's folly.

OTOH, there are issues surrounding imperialism for which actual evidence to prove it as a full frontal attack on present day imperialism exists and in abundance. And I gave the example of the 9-11 truth movement. But we are often told that this is a nonsensical approach. It's a waste of time, they say. [/drift]

Well, it is certainly disproof of the contention by fundamentalists that the Bible is the literal word of God, although that really is beside the point I was making.

Say what?

Accepting, for the sake of argument, that you actually care what I was saying:

Bayesian estimation is a system of statistical theory that deviates from the more widely employed system (called frequentist statistics) in a number of imprtant ways.  One of the important distinctions involves the assignment of prior statistics based on incomplete information and their subsequent refinement through repeated experimentation. Assignment of a non-zero prior means that I accept that there is a finite probablility that such things exist. That I use a Bayesian model means that I don't know with any degree of certainty what that probability might be.

For what it's worth, I think it is highly improbable that there are no worlds with life on them out there.  I also believe that intelligence has also probably evolved through natural selection on other worlds. As a critical rationalist (like Dawkins) I treat these propositions as testable hypotheses, not established facts. Estimates of the probabilities have changed over the last few decades as new information has come in about frequency of planetary occurence and other such stuff. Dawkins has made no claim that his estimate is final or precise (in the statistical sense).

Please, if you feel there is nothing here worth replying to, don't feel compelled.

Well now you're saying something completely different and agreeing with scientists when they say that life on other worlds is highly likely. As I asked before, how much more technologically advanced than us would those life forms have to be for our early ancestors through to ourselves to have considered them gods? Ten thousand years more advanced? One million? Ten million? Types I to III or even IV wrt Kardashev's scale?

We've already concluded that there is a high likelihood for a billion Earth-like planets out there, Or at least, Richard Dawkins' says it's a conservative estimate given what they understand now about the universe. And what they understand now is that about everything we see all around us is ~ 5% of all known universal energy. A large part of it isnt even categorized yet. Someone famous once said that the universe isnt just more than we can know, it's stranger than we can know.

No. In no respect, shade or implication is what I said different from what I said previously. It clearly differs from your interpretation of what I said, which I don't begin to comprehend. 

I have always, or at least for many years, agreed with this, your assumptions about my opinions notwithstanding.

That is neither known, nor given present technology and knowledge of human evolution (in several senses) is it going to be knowable for the forseeable future.  It is, however, subject to informed speculation, which is good fun, intellectually stimulating, and helpful in proposing structured experiments on related subjects.

It is not at all clear, given the precarious state of affairs on the one planet where we are entirely certain that what we call intelligence has evolved, that intelligence is not an evolutionary dead end.  It may turn out that evolution of intelligence involves long-term emergent risks to genetic lines that ultimately kill off intelligence before it gets much beyond where we are at.  I doubt that, but it is not possible to discount entirely.

Indeed. Strange and wonderous both, without any reference to divinity.

So what you're saying is, you don't know either but are afraid to admit that you dont know. You, like Ernest Becker, Richard Dawkins and many more, simply don't know. Is that so terrifying?

Repeat these words often: I don't know. And print them on something to refer to later when in doubt.

It's Me D wrote:

Fidel thanks for post #29, it cracked me up; so tired of the stupid condescending assumptions as to why someone would have faith, its nice to see it reversed for a change

"Stupid condescending assumptions"? Whom are you angry with?

I stopped believing in God when I was about 12 when I realized that had I been born next door, I would be worshipping a different God. And yet, such values as right and wrong, good and evil, selfish and selfless, keeping promises, etc., seemed to be common to all of us. Humanity and reality had so much more to offer than God(s).

I think Peter3 also has a good point. There's a small issue of democracy.

Imagine some tinpot dictator, unelected by anyone, who takes credit for everything good in the society, blames the people for everything bad, and expects strict obedience to His will on pain of nameless terror.

I don't believe He exists. But if He did, we would be dutybound to mobilize, rise up, and overthrow His evil rule.  No?

Fidel: 

Jesus wept (a literary allusion, no more than that).

Like Dawkins, et al. I freely admit that I don't know a great many things, about many if not most of which I am interested in knowing more. Unlike religious believers, I don't claim to know about things for which no real evidence exists.

The proposition that not believing in something because there is no credible evidence is equivalent to or leads inevitably to being afraid of not knowing is odd; I'm being polite here.

By the (I would argue) trivial definition of knowledge you are apparently employing, I cannot know that fairies don't exist, that Goldilocks and the Three Bears is not a work of news journalism or that there is no planet made from green cheese orbiting some far-off star. What frightens me is that so many people think this is a meaningful point of departure for discussion about what we do or do not know.

I do not know whether there are highly intelligent, technologically advanced civilizations whose capabilities would seem magical to us, out there in the universe. I have seen no compelling evidence that this is impossible, and there are solid arguments based on observed phenomena that lead me to suppose it could be. The probabilities increase as the number of specifications about what life elsewhere might look like falls; if we are talking about life that has evolved intelligence on par with ours or greater, the liklihood goes up. If we are just talking about intelligence of any sort, it goes up again.  The existence of life (in the sense of self-replicating information systems with at least the complexity of cyanobacteria, to pick an entirely arbitrary cutoff) is quite probable.

duplicate post created by some ghost in the machine, deleted by Peter3

But that would be interfering in the affairs of the fledgling democracy - for the alleged dictator to force their will on citizens of a world which he or she or it created and left alone for people with free will to decide how to proceed. Maybe we should rise up and overthrow the tyrants as an exercise in creating our own democracy? And if we fail, then let it be a lesson in Darwinian law. And if we destroy ourselves, then it would be making way for something more intelligent to take our place.  But the hand-held walk to our first day of college was folly, I think.

Well I was trying to be polite as well. Because there is no law that says when confronted with ideas that arent compatible with our own that we should resort to passive-aggressive insults. Besides, I'm immune to such remarks.

But when you think that I'm making mock of your personal opinions, your reply reads like a school girl asked out to the prom for the first time. [edited for lack of wanting to encourage discussion about the birds and bees and sexual assaults]

Like the detective that cant find a serial killer after the trail has gone cold, you choose to write off the witnesses to the crime as idiots not worth questioning. And I think that is typical of the imperialist attitude we've inherited from oppressive people who had no real interest in religion or scientific pursuits in general outside their own material views and personal well being. In fact, our ancestors were first-hand witnesses to their own belief systems, and they have left clues as to why they came to believe what they did. And the first reaction here is not uncommon - that ancient people, wallowing in their own ignorance, were afraid of life and death. So this is what our ancestors are reduced to by non-scientists of babble: fearful wimps who were lucky to have survived at all. And here we are today as testament to their weaknesses and fearful living.

You want to have all bases covered and admit to nothing - make no claims against what I and others say could be possible - and as long as it doesnt involve fairies or magic or the possibility for civilizations thousands and perhaps millions of years more advanced than your own, then it's okay with you. Just checking. 

due to a burst of light from supergamma photons ...

I lift up my eyes to the mountains,
From where will my help come?
My help will come from the Lord,
Creator of heaven and earth.

No more shall the downtrodden look to the mountains for their salvation. The source of their help is inside them and beside them - not above them.

That's a new one. And describing a sexual assault, but all in good fun eh.

And Thanks, unionist. It must have taken several moments of your time to  post those helpful and insightful comments.

Tricia Marie, that post is now edited to remove the remark you found offensive.  Back to the thread topic ...

It takes me a long time to come up with original thoughts.

How long does it take you to link to other people's religious "insights"?

Can we have a separate thread for feuding vendetta specialists and their diversionary ramblings?

The word "probably" in the thread title ought to be removed. God's servants on earth - the "ex"-Nazi Pope and his recently rehabilitated proto-Nazi Holocaust-denier Bishop Richard Williamson - continue to offer incontrovertible evidence that either God doesn't exist, or if He does, He is an evil bastard indeed:

Holocaust-denying bishop promises to review evidence

Perhaps unionist could post that information in an already existing thread dealing with that same subject matter, like here for instance?

Quite the resume that fellow has.  Anti-aircraft gunner, infanteer, and apparently, a member of the Nazi party.  I must have skipped over that particular part of his history, but thanks for digging it up.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

Why I reserve judgement and remain uncertain

by Fidel of the babblersphere

If there is a God, he's not very popular among some of us. But we shouldn't be angry with one another for failing to prove or disprove the existence of a single God or any number of god-like entities in the universe. It's a tall order, but as scientists will do with big problems, they tend to break them down into smaller problems in hopes of solving them. How small should they be?

At the turn of the last century, physicists discovered that Newtonian laws stopped working not only when trying to measure the very large(speed of light - Einstein) but Paul Dirac and others knew that they didnt work when measuring the very small(sub-atomic). Their first clues were that light emitted from atoms didnt seem to follow rules of the old theory of science. For those of us who dislike the idea of the dual nature of quantum mechanics, the new science since the 1910's, Dirac discovered what he thought is a sub-stratum to the universe that is non-dual and without polarity.Dirac imagined that if it's possible to become one with the singularity of a neutrino universe, one could travel anywhere in zero time ie. the speed of thought.

"The people alive today will learn to travel faster than the velocity of light. ...With the additional four forces [of the universe] we're working on, it shouldnt be a problem. ... Nature wants to tell us how" - Boyd Bushman, retired Lockheed engineer

And it's interesting to consider that people of ancient cultures used light as the highest description of things that they held dear to them. In regard to comments like Ernest Becker's - that the first peoples lived in fear of death - there is probably some truth to that. We know that wild animals tend to hunt at night by cover of darkness, and people probably learned to associtate darkness with bad things, death coming in the night and so on. By the same token, death was a more common occurrence for our ancestors than it is today. We can imagine our ancestors having a wide range of experiences with death. The odd time, they may have lived to relate their near death experiences to one another or perhaps been inspired to record the experience in wood carving, or a painting depicting shadows, the spirit world, and sometimes bright light. But death, for a long time, was unavoidable. For millenia, the end of life was as common as the sunrise and part of the circle of life. And today we have people who recall vivid near-death experiences in medical emergency rooms around the world with greater frequency than every before. And common among all of them is the description of bright light and swirling vortex toward what some say is an intense light, so bright and intense as to defy description.

"I am the Truth, the Light and the Way"

Fidel, you shouldn't worry about my gentle jibes at Pope Nazinger.

After all, he's infidelible infallible.

Oh, sorry Fidel, you wanted some posts that you believe are "on topic"?

Here's another page (link deleted) from the same "Gnostic" forum you just linked to. Don't click on it, please. It's a discussion between the very religious and spiritual participants in this piece-of-shit forum as to whether Jews are responsible for the current economic crisis, as to whether this was foretold by the Protocols, etc.

Is the whole thing ghost-written by Benedict Nazinger and his College of Cardinal Sinners?

Some Truth. Some Light. Some Way.

There is no God. And if one appears, let us rise up and overthrow Him.

I wouldnt mind your gentle jibes at the Pope so much if they were expressed in one of the existing threads dealing with Pope Nazinger and Holocaust denial in general. I might even join that particular conversation and make with the old rock'em sock'em on the Popezinger myself. But I'm reluctant to do it here in this thread focussed on the current debate about whether there is a god or not.

If you're sincere, then delete your link to that anti-Semitic forum, and I will do likewise. Do it now.

Okay, I get it now. Link removed

Don't give up, after all Moses was a basket case!

Or how about these.

Seven Days Without Prayer Makes One Weak.

Sign Maker On Vacation
Come Inside for Message

Souler Energy Used Here

Seven Days Without Prayer Makes One Weak.

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2008/12/dont-give-up-mo.html

Thank you.

We found a biblical tract in our door from a neighbour who is a Jehovah Witness. Being good neighbours, we left an atheist tract in his door. Now he wants to meet over coffee. His purpose is to save my soul and convert me to his faith. Should I accept his invitation and attempt to convert him to atheism?

Insist on decaf.

Hey why dont you two get a thread?

I can't think on decaf. We have a thread, Fidel. Let me ask while we have you hear, though. What would it take to convert you to atheism? You seem like an intelligent and rational guy, so it doesn't make sense you believe in a God. You've overcome your beliefs in the Easter Bunny and Samta Claus, so why not go the extra mile and free yourself entirely?

Nostalgia. More powerful than caffeine.

Where did I say I believe in God? If you read a few posts on this particular subject matter, you'll realize I said no such thing, you twit. 

You don't? You sure do sometimes sound like a dogmatic believer. Hmmmph. Maybe it's some other type of religion.

It sure isnt "green capitalism" or any other political oxymorons to that effect.

Oh, Fidel,  such a trap to step into. But your political orthodoxy is capitalism. If it is not green capitalism, that is up to you and whatever rationales, religiously dogmatic or not, that you use to support your faith in the capitalist consumer model.

Wasnt it you or a generic poster like you who led the cheer for Liz May and her Liberal Party counterparts' "carbon tax" a few months ago?

After all this time you still can't read. Oh, dear. No, it was not me. I merely expressed an environmental protest vote for the Greens. I am not a religious supporter of any party. Unlike you. You are a religious supporter of the NDP  - a pro-market, consumer capitalist party. You pray in a church with an altar to your devil! How's that for ironic, Fidel? Or is it really Friedman?

Oh for Christ's sake. You posted endless drivel about carbon taxes and green this, green that and rabid attacks on the effective opposition NDP non-stop. For a party whose platform wasnt as green as the NDP's until a few years ago, they didnt have much else going for them except to pull votes from the NDP. Tories with composters, An-y way ...

Meanwhile, baaaaaaack at the ranch ... 

Such capitalistic venom for the common man! I'm almost embarrassed by your childish outburst, but not so much that I wouldn't tell you you're full of shit (I prefer the non-sexual epithets). I was equally critical of both the GP/Lib carbon tax as I was the NDP plan. Either/Or is bullshit as is your pretense at being anti-calitalist while being a religious supporter of the NDP - a party as devoted to big business and mega-projects as any other.  Perhaps it is your inability to come to terms with the true nature of your faith that has you so edgy.

Hey guys, this is supposed to be about me, remember?  Don't make me come down there!

You're full of shit as usual about the NDP, FM. I've replied to your bullshit directly in countless other threads, and you have a habit of slinking off without providing any substantive backup to your false claims, innuendo, and general all around misleading bullshit. Lots of words but never anything of substance from you. Follow the money, it leads to the same two wings of the big business party every time.  

Fuck off or post something on topic, one or the other.

I want you to "come down here" and show us your ugly face.  Until then, you are nothing but a illusion in the minds of pathetic people who can't face reality.

_______________________________________

Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

And the anger continues to bubble. 

You are full of shit yourself, Fidel. I don't slink off, but admittedly I get bored of your pathetic self-delusion that you are anti-capitalist while supporting a capitalist party and the capitalist consumer economy. 

The only false claims and innuendo is your own in arguing I supported Green policy on the carbon tax which demonstrably false. It is true I was critical of the NDP, and rightly so. I was critical of the GP.

Follow the money? The money stinks. But the money is corporate, it fills the shelves at Wal-Mart, it builds the McMansions, it fills your belly everynight and the NDP supports it as do you.

You don't oppose capitalism. You oppose the Liberals and the Conservatives and that's a lot like rejecting Methodism and Lutheranism for Presbyterianism.

And I am on topic. I've discussed religion in every post. So fuck off yourself.

NOW the "Frustration" becomes evident. This idiot has finally realized that he doesnt subscribe to any of the views of the contributing columnists to Rabble. FM is so frustrated with the leftist ideas expressed on this site that he's resorted to steering this thread so far into the rhubarb that he really has no idea what thread he's in or that it even matters. He's determined to finally get his shots in on ol' Fidel, because I'm the object of his rabid disaffection with the left in general on this night. His warped view is that of a political chimera hybrid, something between a little red schoolhouse conservative and those people who think composting and free markets in hypocrisy will save the world

http://www.HeyMistaWeSureCouldUseAManLikeHoybetHooverAgain.us.gov 

If you two don't cut out this stupid slugfest you'll both get brief time outs.  Your embarrasing yourselves and inhibiting rational discussion from anyone else.

Ah, Fidel, or Friedman, whatever, you are going off the rails. Quite the narcissistic one aren't you? I bet you think this thread is about you, don't you?

You know Fidel, it is possible to have an interest in the background of something without subscribing to it . You would know that if you were not a faux anti-capitalist.

And what is with the phony links? It's soooo  grade seven. Grow up.

ETA: Cross-posted on the mod. I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. I won't do it again.

I'm out'a this thread until the adults start replying again.

Okay.  I am replying.  So, you can come back now, Fidel!!  

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

Pity about what happened after the NDP bomb was dropped on this thread; seems its totally diverted things. Fidel I just wanted to say that I appreciated your posts (until FM dropped the NDP bomb on the thread).

Time for a brief rant:

I don't understand why a discussion on "religion" or "spirituality" must be totally swamped with comments about fairies and Santa Claus and  Ratzinging the Pope... it seems there are two things people are criticizing with these comments: on one hand unionist has a problem with the Catholic Church (and I'd venture organized religion in general), this is a very legitimate beef which I certainly agree with and which Fidel appears to support (neither of us is here to advocate for Catholicism, we're here to talk about God); on the other hand Peter3 has some issue with imagination, being very upset about fairies for some reason, theres plenty to take issue with in this rejection of human imagination... however neither of these critical positions has much to do with this discussion about God, nor with the previous discussion on the subject of the Soul.

I'm doing a very poor job of this but I just want to make a heartfelt appeal to the massive anti-religion crowd which has formed in this thread: Can you try and seperate your criticism of relgious institutions from general criticism of faith? I know that there is a better discussion just waiting to happen if excellent and intelligent posters like unionist didn't feel a need to undermine discussion of God by turning it into a discussion of organized religion. I'm just speaking for myself but I'm not a member of any Church and I don't know why, as a person of faith, I have to answer for every action commited by every person of every faith... in the specific as opposed to the general question of faith itself... that standard is unreasonable and cannot serve to help us to have a real discussion about God...

It just sucks being a leftist with spirtual beliefs and always being told these two things can never co-exist in one being; it isn't true and as such its a statement of dogma on one side or the other. 

Thanks. D.

Ha!!  Good point.

I'm taking my niece to see a lecture by Dawkins tonight.  I was just going to take her out for pizza but, when I heard Dawkins is going to be at the Univ of Minnesota tonight, I decided a little "mind food" would be good before dinner.

_______________________________________

Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

What if God Disappeared?

Hilarious!

I hope you're not having fish. Remember, Cod does not exist.

Well there's this...

...son and holy ghost to follow.

There's still probably no God (and there are very few cod left), but we have photographic proof of the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (pbuh).

Whoa, you'd have a hard time nailin' that thing to a cross.

Before you flatter me any further, know thou what I believe:

Religion (organized, or not) is bad. It's divisive, and deceptive. It separates people into believers and non-believers. And it seeks and provides phoney explanations for real phenomena. Perhaps worst of all, it offers hope as a substitute for action.

The more we know, the less we need to believe.

I agree that most religion has been used this way most of the time. But there is another kind of religion and hope can be also inspire and sustain action. 

Consider this from Hugo Chavez:  

Unionist, there's nothing you say I disagree with.  Pretty much reflects my own feelings.  I can't help but wondering though, about that psychological hole that seems to exisit in some and not others, but appears irrespective of intelligence, and is filled by some sort of religion. 

I guess I see it as a sociological curiosity, but in my work I do have to muck about somewhat inside peoples heads, and my clients end up talking about that stuff.  I don't bring it up, but of course I'm respectful, and will try to work with everyone within the context of their own beliefs.

But "perhaps" and "probably" arent very precise or very scientific terms.

I can agree with that.

Sure, and sometimes it's filled with rage or nationalism or chauvinism or go-get-a-weapon-and-murder-all-your-neighbours or golf or whatever.

Sorry, oldgoat, I'm not buying that. People get religion from their parents, with statistically insignificant exceptions. And so, the merry-go-round of xenophobia and futile faith goes on.

That doesn't mean you have to talk people out of their faith. Not at all. But make sure you respect the people - not their asinine ideas. People deserve respect. Bullshit does not.

Chavez is brilliant. Whether he believes in that Christ crap or not, he has an aim - to mobilize the people for good. He attempts to use their faith toward a good end. If he can do so, I applaud him. Until then, I will remain skeptical, because of the horrors that history has demonstrated.

I saw the ad on the subway yesterday and took a picture.  :)

Well yeah, I take people where they're at, and that includes the context they've put around themselves and which has been put around them. 

The hole can be filled with all sorts of crap.  Actually, I'm just curious about the hole more than what people put into it.  Maybe that's another thread. 

These insignificant exceptions make up the majority of babbles tiny "religious" community, as previously testified by myself and Jacob.

I wholey agree on this, thats why I was flattering you upthread as you noted, despite the bullshit you post on this subject

I am curious as well, let me know if you decide to start that thread! 

Let's continue here.