London Bombings

[QED]

Soon after the news channels started covering the four bombings on the London Underground and Bus last week, all the media channels started wheeling-in Christian and Muslim spokesmen for comment.

What am I to make of this? I am always arguing the danger of letting people grow their own set of rules around imaginary concepts so making it a no-go zone for reason and logic. This I've pointed out provides a loophole through which fanatics are able to invade the minds of people accustomed to the unquestioned acceptance of whatever it is that they're being told by their spiritual leaders.

In every other sphere people are expected to justify their beliefs and actions. But this single exception is made for religion. I deplore this fact.

[harvey1]

How can we NOT start off as a clean slate? It makes no sense that when we are born our slates are not clean.

The issue isn't what knowledge we are born with, the issue is where do we start our quest for knowledge. For example, if you found out tonight that you were in the Matrix for your entire life up until a few minutes ago, you would immediately question the whole story of your birth and childhood, etc.. Now you would be facing a different history than the one you believed was the case. Why can we say that such a scenario is not likely? Well, it's because the moment you started looking at all the evidence around you, you became satisfied that all this evidence coheres to such an extraordinary degree that it is by far the more simple solution than saying you were born hundreds of years ago inside the Matrix.

I realize that this example will look extreme and folly to you, but philosophers give heavy consideration as to whether we are brains in a vat. They don't do this because they couldn't get a job delivering pizza, they do it because such philosophical situations help determine whether humans are capable of knowledge, and if so, how certain can we be of our knowledge.

why should the past have any great effect on what we believe today?

It's preposterous to think otherwise.

So, are you saying that we should completely rule out the existence of aether simply because the concept has repeatedly been battered around in history? Should we completely rule out atomism too? I think we shouldn't rule out philosophical theories unless we can show now that they are not tenable based on what we know today. It makes no sense to rule out a current belief based on what we know today for no other reason than the philosophical belief has been battered around under different pre-scientific frameworks. In fact, I don't see any problem in periodically reviewing many of the bygone philosophical beliefs. That doesn't mean we have to give each of them heavy and lengthy consideration, but there's no reason not to keep them in mind. Who knows, the current conceptual landscape may change and then suddenly the aether idea might make sense again.

[NGR]

Well, if someone can give me a reason why the consistent atheist is in contradiction with her atheist views, then I don't see why we cannot discuss this interesting character. She is alive and aware of her surroundings. She understands that all the b.s. morals of religion fed to her are based on myths. She doesn't have to listen to atheists who are a generation or two deduced from those religious morals. All she must abide by are her own opinions in how they directly affect her. If you can show me how her views are contradicted by an objective need, then I'll be quick to drop discussing her.

The only view that is necessarily consistent amongst atheists is that of a non belief in a God. Any other attributes you assign to the individual are your own constructs.

Man is a social animal and apt to form groups as a result. For a group to survive and prosper rules are required and mankind is perfectly able to formulate rules that ensure that chaos does not reign supreme. Why would input from some imaginary friend be of any particular value?

But, somehow or another I think I'm about to hear why you were wrong afterall for making this qualifying statement...

Dang saw right through me.

There's no such thing as a clean slate. We need knowledge in order to comprehend the world, so our current slate is based on that original slate. In terms of humanity as a whole, our original slate where we first began to investigate the world was under the assumption of religion. Our slate as human beings depends, I suppose, on what our parents taught us at a young age. The key is that we don't know if our collective slate (both as humans and as individuals) is correct or not, so we must go about the process of re-building Neurath's ship. We do that by looking at what we have been given and from that we re-make our ship as we are actually sailing.

I beg to differ. We are not born with any notion of God. As our intellect develops and our experience grows we will at some time ask the question "why am I here and what does it all mean". Of course in just about any society on Earth long before that intellectual growth follows its natural course we will be assailed with the local variant of religion, colouring our world view accordingly. Clearly from an individual point of view we start out with a clean slate. From a collective view we are buried in sea of mythical religious ideas that have evolved with the growth of civilisation and the enlightenment provided by scientific investigation.

I don't see this is a valid means by which to reason, NGR. From a purely skeptical perspective, why should the past have any great effect on what we believe today?

In my opinion consideration of those earlier beliefs gives us a clearer perspective on current beliefs. God was invented to fill the gaps in our knowledge of the world around us and to provide a salve for our mortality. There is nothing objective about religion, it is all subjective. That's why humans can worship a mountain, thunder, the Sun or a man with a white beard and derive the same benefit or lack thereof with equal perceptivity.

This sort of contradicts your argument that we start off with clean slates. If we, as you suggest, start off with clean slates (or we can imagine what having a clean slate would be like), then what does it matter what was believed before?

The clean slate comment related to the individual not collective humanity. See above.

Why not just look at the evidence before us and make a determination of what we believe based solely on the evidence.

The problem is that there is no objective evidence for a God which leaves us all at the whim of subjective interpretations of whatever any individual construes as evidence.

However, speaking from a theist perspective, I visualize God as a phenomena that is encountered in the world. That Phenomena is subject to all sorts of different interpretations. Strangely, there are many common features in the major religions when describing God. So, that in my view would lead me to believe that religions are describing an objective experience and not a fictional phenomena.

The phenomena is not encountered in the world its encountered in the mind. Self awareness brings with it the realisation of inevitable mortality and religion is the minds way of dealing with that psychological stress. The God constructs produced have similarities not because they describe reality but simply because the minds that create the constructs are similar.

You are close to a consistent atheist perspective. Now, after you've just educated the atheist youth of your community of this view, what do you do when the little brats come back to you showing you how much money they stole?

If you mean that I don't believe in the existence of a God then you are correct. If you mean that my lack of a God belief would automatically mean I rape and pillage the neighbourhood then we shift into your fantasy world. Behaviour has a lot to do with the personality of the individual and the sense of empathy that I have previously mentioned, and rational minds can be made to comprehend the necessity of community spirit and thought for others. Such behaviour should be and in responsible households is, taught to children at an age before they would understand the God concept. Imaginary friends and fantasy threats and rewards are not needed to influence social interaction.

The insist to you that the universe doesn't give a rats arse about what they just got away with and they assure you that there is no way they could get caught. They aren't interested in your ole fashion Christian morals which you or your parents were raised. How do you convince them that they are wrong in stealing from others just as long as it benefits them and there is no chance they can get caught?

I'm not sure of your point here. Many parents face the realisation that despite their best efforts in brining up their children either in an theistic or secular household, the kids are rebellious and undertake actions that place them at odds with society. Sometimes you can do nothing more than be there for them when they run up against the inevitable consequence of their action, and hope that what trouble they get into is minor. Welcome to the wonderful world of parenthood.

[QED]

I beg to differ. We are not born with any notion of God. As our intellect develops and our experience grows we will at some time ask the question "why am I here and what does it all mean".

I'm sorry to say that according to harvey1's theory, the very existence of this question would seem to prove the existence of god. I often wonder just how valid this question is. We certainly don't feel that we have to explain how we come to be the person that we are, living in the country we do. We just take it that someone like us had to be born in a country like ours and that's all there is to it. There is a far more dramatic version of this when we consider someone like Prince Charles, born to the Queen of England. What from his perspective is the "meaning" of this? Of course the answer is absolutely nothing.

[harvey1]

to say that according to harvey1's theory, the very existence of this question would seem to prove the existence of god.

What do you mean? I would agree with that statement if we consider the complexity involved in the world to have intelligent beings to ask such a question (but not just that question but any question would suffice). However, being able to ask the question itself does not require God existence as far as I know.

I often wonder just how valid this question is. We certainly don't feel that we have to explain how we come to be the person that we are, living in the country we do. We just take it that someone like us had to be born in a country like ours and that's all there is to it. There is a far more dramatic version of this when we consider someone like Prince Charles, born to the Queen of England. What from his perspective is the "meaning" of this? Of course the answer is absolutely nothing.

This would be an excellent example of the weak anthropic principle. In this instance you would not be using the WAP to explain why Prince Charles is the prince, but he would need it to explain to him why it is him who happens to have this unique position in the world. Personally, I'd rather be rich and anonymous, but that's just me.

Just as a refresher though, the WAP does not answer why it is that there are people or galaxies or such that are capable of having life. This is often where people confuse WAP for science.

[harvey1]

The only view that is necessarily consistent amongst atheists is that of a non belief in a God. Any other attributes you assign to the individual are your own constructs.

You mean the only belief common among atheists and agnostics, right? An atheist is someone who believes there is enough evidence in the universe to reasonably conclude that God doesn't exist. The agnostic is someone who sees the evidence as non-decidable on this issue.

Man is a social animal and apt to form groups as a result. For a group to survive and prosper rules are required and mankind is perfectly able to formulate rules that ensure that chaos does not reign supreme. Why would input from some imaginary friend be of any particular value?

If the universe has no intrinsic meaning, then please explain to me how meaning arises in the universe. It is like saying that there is no such thing as an actual truth that exists which cannot be reduced to some state of affairs. If someone says that all truth is reducible to a state of affairs, then what humans also believe falls in the same category. You can't all of a sudden have propositions of "truth" pop out of nowhere just because humans are around. If truth is reducible to a state of affairs, then even when humans are around truth is reducible to a state of affairs (in fact, that's all that truth is, a state of affairs). Similarly, if there is no meaning in the universe that cannot be reduced to a state of affairs, then even when humans come around the same story exists. When you talk of meaning you are in fact talking about a state of affairs (e.g., chemical stimuli in the brain, firing of neurons, or what have you). This is not real meaning, it is a physico-chemical configuration. Hence, when an atheist says there is meaning, what they really mean to say is that there are particular physico-chemical configurations that exist in the gray matter of brains.

Notice, this does not apply if meaning cannot be reduced to a state of affairs in the universe. In that case, meaning is real and it can be discovered (just like truth can be discovered if it too is not limited to a state of affairs).

I beg to differ. We are not born with any notion of God. As our intellect develops and our experience grows we will at some time ask the question "why am I here and what does it all mean". Of course in just about any society on Earth long before that intellectual growth follows its natural course we will be assailed with the local variant of religion, colouring our world view accordingly. Clearly from an individual point of view we start out with a clean slate. From a collective view we are buried in sea of mythical religious ideas that have evolved with the growth of civilisation and the enlightenment provided by scientific investigation.

That's not my argument, though. I agree that we are born with very little knowledge of the world (although we possess some knowledge such as the ability to suck for milk, etc.), but the problem with this view is that we are not born with other knowledge that also allows us to evaluate which knowledge to keep and which knowledge to shed away. Without this evaluative knowledge, we could never evaluate what was true and what wasn't true. Hence, the correct starting point to any human investigation comes at a time when we know how to evaluate propositions and use our reasoning skills. Now, your argument seems to be that any knowledge is up for grabs since we are born with this clean slate, however the problem with that is that your evaluative knowledge cannot be up for grabs otherwise what would you possess in order to know what was correct and what was in error? Since you cannot go to a clean slate state (and re-learn everything from scratch), you have to go back using what you currently believe and then find out what is true (Neurath's ship).

As an example, imagine a new class of students who have tested exceptionally in the world for their aptitude and interest in science. These are the elite scientists of the next generation. The problem is that they read your post prior to getting to the Academy that has been created to welcome the new minds of the world. On their first day of class they immediately tell the instructors that they don't believe anything unless proven right then, right now. They would insist that the instructors show them from a clean slate. Such situation would be impossible to teach since the teachers couldn't teach experience and the years of study needed to produce proofs of theorems, etc.. We just expect the student to take it on faith a certain amount of knowledge so that they can learn. Eventually they'll learn later why certain approaches were taken in science or why certain theorems are regarded as correct.

In my opinion consideration of those earlier beliefs gives us a clearer perspective on current beliefs. God was invented to fill the gaps in our knowledge of the world around us and to provide a salve for our mortality. There is nothing objective about religion, it is all subjective. That's why humans can worship a mountain, thunder, the Sun or a man with a white beard and derive the same benefit or lack thereof with equal perceptivity.

Well, this view is tainted by your own prejudice against religion. An ET civilization could say the same thing about everyone of our beliefs, including our scientific ones. It is just the nature of advancing one's beliefs that we find that our former beliefs were at best approximations to the observations being made and that they did at least function as filling in the gaps to our knowledge. Of course, that's what the claim to knowledge does for people, it fills in the gaps of our knowledge until we learn later that it was only an approximation. I don't think you can take a philosophical concept and disregard it simply because it acted as knowledge as some point in the past, even to the point of abuse. Aether is a perfect example of such abuse and yet there's talk of another aether in the form of zero point energy. It's always the nature of philosophy that many of the ideas get re-circulated. They don't usually come back in the same form, but they are adjusted to the new paradigms of the day.

In the case of God, this is a philosophical notion that has been superior to atheism every step of the way. Just when atheists thought they could finally catch up, discoveries were made (e.g., the Big Bang, singularity theorem, coincidences in the physical constants, etc.) that pushed atheism back in the hole from whence those ideas have been crawling out from.

The problem is that there is no objective evidence for a God which leaves us all at the whim of subjective interpretations of whatever any individual construes as evidence.

Says you! There's a great amount of evidence (major coincidences in the physical constants, singularity theorems preventing a infinite old universe, the nature of mathematical law in scientific processes, etc., etc.). It is not considered objective by the atheist because the atheist has a good imagination to think of ways that this evidence can be refuted. However, this is more of an attribute of human imagination more than it is a refutation of God's existence.

If you mean that I don't believe in the existence of a God then you are correct. If you mean that my lack of a God belief would automatically mean I rape and pillage the neighbourhood then we shift into your fantasy world. Behaviour has a lot to do with the personality of the individual and the sense of empathy that I have previously mentioned, and rational minds can be made to comprehend the necessity of community spirit and thought for others. Such behaviour should be and in responsible households is, taught to children at an age before they would understand the God concept. Imaginary friends and fantasy threats and rewards are not needed to influence social interaction.... Many parents face the realisation that despite their best efforts in brining up their children either in an theistic or secular household, the kids are rebellious and undertake actions that place them at odds with society. Sometimes you can do nothing more than be there for them when they run up against the inevitable consequence of their action, and hope that what trouble they get into is minor. Welcome to the wonderful world of parenthood.

Well, this is the topic which should focus on here, but your other statements have that air of superiority that I think needed to be responded to. In any case, you didn't answer my questions. After you've just educated the atheist youth of your community of this view, what do you do when the little brats come back to you showing you how much money they stole? How do you convince them that they are wrong in stealing from others just as long as it benefits them and there is no chance they can get caught? How do you respond to what they say to you here?:

Geez, NGR. There you go again talking about the end of the world with us becoming sociopaths. We aren't going to go out and kill anyone. We do emphathize with the people we took that money, but they are rich people. They probably won't even know its missing. In fact we know they won't since we know someone who notices that they pay no attention to how much they own. So, ease up grandpa. Thanks for the atheism lesson when we were young. I feel so much more free, our actions wouldn't have been considered as smart without you.

[NGR]

I'm sorry to say that according to harvey1's theory, the very existence of this question would seem to prove the existence of god. I often wonder just how valid this question is. We certainly don't feel that we have to explain how we come to be the person that we are, living in the country we do. We just take it that someone like us had to be born in a country like ours and that's all there is to it. There is a far more dramatic version of this when we consider someone like Prince Charles, born to the Queen of England. What from his perspective is the "meaning" of this? Of course the answer is absolutely nothing.

I think pondering such questions is part of being sentient. At some stage in our lives we think of our mortality and question the purpose of our three score years and ten on this dust ball called Earth and wonder just what it all means. Why a significant number of people think it should mean something beyond the cycle of life that is clear to us all, I don't really know. A lot I think has to do with satisfaction. Most people are not satisfied with their lives to some degree and always look for more. More material wealth, better looks, more excitement, more life generally. From an early stage in history the God construct was invented to fill the need we have for some control(even in a pseudo fashion) over the path of our lives and ultimately to get around the mortality aspect of existence. Strange creature we humans, no?

To get back to the London bombings, I'm sure there are more than a few individuals that were caught up in the bombings lying in a hospital bed recovering from the attack and wondering why them. What does it mean that they, with all life ahead of them, should suffer the arbitrary maiming and disfigurement brought on by the delusional mind of a religious fanatic. There will also be those that have survived the blasts when someone a couple of metres away did not and in typical survivors guilt syndrome wonder why them. These pondering's are brought on of course by significant traumatic events that we all hope never to experience ourselves, but the meaning of life in general is something that we can all ponder, at a far less traumatic and leisurely pace.

You mean the only belief common among atheists and agnostics, right? An atheist is someone who believes there is enough evidence in the universe to reasonably conclude that God doesn't exist. The agnostic is someone who sees the evidence as non-decidable on this issue.

I see we agree totally. So please from now on don't sully your consistent atheist with artificial baggage of your own concoction.

If the universe has no intrinsic meaning, then please explain to me how meaning arises in the universe.

It doesn't or at least hasn't yet.

It is like saying that there is no such thing as an actual truth that exists which cannot be reduced to some state of affairs. If someone says that all truth is reducible to a state of affairs, then what humans also believe falls in the same category. You can't all of a sudden have propositions of "truth" pop out of nowhere just because humans are around.

No it isn't. Truth is simply conformity to reality.

If truth is reducible to a state of affairs, then even when humans are around truth is reducible to a state of affairs (in fact, that's all that truth is, a state of affairs).

Truth equals reality, check.

Similarly, if there is no meaning in the universe that cannot be reduced to a state of affairs, then even when humans come around the same story exists. When you talk of meaning you are in fact talking about a state of affairs (e.g., chemical stimuli in the brain, firing of neurons, or what have you).This is not real meaning, it is a physico-chemical configuration. Hence, when an atheist says there is meaning, what they really mean to say is that there are particular physico-chemical configurations that exist in the gray matter of brains.

Meaning can have a couple of well... meanings. As an atheist I see meaning in a beautiful sunset. It has meaning in the sense that it has significance- it invokes a sensory response of say awe and beauty. A theist has the same response. In terms of the Universe I consider it has meaning in the same way as the sunset albeit it may arouse a difference sense response from me. You as a theist might well see a similar significance in the Universe that I do however on top of that you see meaning as in the term intent. I see no intent in the Universe.

Notice, this does not apply if meaning cannot be reduced to a state of affairs in the universe. In that case, meaning is real and it can be discovered (just like truth can be discovered if it too is not limited to a state of affairs).

To date your attempts to show meaning(as in intent) in the Universe have consisted of simply pointing out that it has order which in my view lacks meaning(as in significance).

That's not my argument, though. I agree that we are born with very little knowledge of the world (although we possess some knowledge such as the ability to suck for milk, etc.), but the problem with this view is that we are not born with other knowledge that also allows us to evaluate which knowledge to keep and which knowledge to shed away. Without this evaluative knowledge, we could never evaluate what was true and what wasn't true. Hence, the correct starting point to any human investigation comes at a time when we know how to evaluate propositions and use our reasoning skills. Now, your argument seems to be that any knowledge is up for grabs since we are born with this clean slate, however the problem with that is that your evaluative knowledge cannot be up for grabs otherwise what would you possess in order to know what was correct and what was in error? Since you cannot go to a clean slate state (and re-learn everything from scratch), you have to go back using what you currently believe and then find out what is true (Neurath's ship).

The whole clean slate argument that I made related to the God construct and nothing more. Here and in the following paragraph you have gone off on an unrelated knowledge tangent. We are not born with a God concept but have it thrust upon us generally very early in life. But why have a God concept in the first place. Well we can't escape it now because it is part of the fabric of society but if we started today with a clean slate and all the accumulated knowledge of humanity sans God, would we drag a God construct out of the closet to explain anything. Sure we have lots to learn about the Universe but we now have a structure(scientific method) in place to investigate such matters. A few thousand years ago, upon being confronted with an unknown aspect of the world we were prone to say "God did it". Now we simply say "we don't know lets investigate further". Based on such a paradigm shift why would the supernatural explanation for the Universe be even contemplated?

Well, this view is tainted by your own prejudice against religion.

Well I don't hide the fact that I think religion is a real ball and chain for humanity and the cause of untold misery through history(London bombings anyone?) and of course has no basis in reality but I do think it is not all bad. One of the main reasons for religion in the first place is to console an individual. The fragility of the human mind is unfortunately an overriding aspect of our species and a system of emotional support is certainly of benefit to many regardless of that systems veracity. I think it is just unfortunate that this consolation comes with the abandonment of reason.

An ET civilization could say the same thing about everyone of our beliefs, including our scientific ones.

Well I imagine they would have a few disparaging comments to make about our religions. They may even be quite affronted by our lack of knowledge for their giant invisible hypnotoad, life giver to the Universe and wellspring of their existence. Come to think of it they may simply vaporise the planet to rid the Universe of us heathen humans. As far as our scientific accomplishments surely we must have got a few things right. One thing for sure they could give us a leg up in the interstellar travel discipline.

It is just the nature of advancing one's beliefs that we find that our former beliefs were at best approximations to the observations being made and that they did at least function as filling in the gaps to our knowledge. Of course, that's what the claim to knowledge does for people, it fills in the gaps of our knowledge until we learn later that it was only an approximation. I don't think you can take a philosophical concept and disregard it simply because it acted as knowledge as some point in the past, even to the point of abuse.

The thing you keep forgetting in regard to Gods past or present is that they are all personal. The God construct fills specific needs for humanity no matter what age we speak of. Those are consolation, positive intervention in our day to day lives and the provision of a future beyond death. If a God does not provide those benefits then it is irrelevant to humanity. People of thousands of years ago happily underwent various rituals, undertook animal and human sacrifices to pacify and influence their God and believed with all their being that they had a personal conduit to their God. Unfortunately their God turned out to be what we now understand is a physical object called a mountain, thunder or the Sun and regardless of the awe our ancestors felt for such objects we know their worship was misplaced.
Of course it matters little what they worshipped because the returns that they received were coloured by their delusion. The consolation was self induced, they just new that the mountain God was looking out for them so no matter what the adversity, they had that warm fuzzy feeling of support. When the river flooded despite their prayers to the contrary well the mountain God is angry with us. We don't know why he is angry but clearly we have done something wrong. That mountain God sure works in mysterious ways. As far as the afterlife is concerned well there is an automatic win here as no one can report the results of their efforts. Ring any bells harvey1?

Aether is a perfect example of such abuse and yet there's talk of another aether in the form of zero point energy. It's always the nature of philosophy that many of the ideas get re-circulated. They don't usually come back in the same form, but they are adjusted to the new paradigms of the day.

In the case of an aether we are talking about a physical characteristic of the Universe that is subject to empirical research. A God is supernatural and transcends space and time and empirical research is irrelevant in such a matter.

In the case of God, this is a philosophical notion that has been superior to atheism every step of the way. Just when atheists thought they could finally catch up, discoveries were made (e.g., the Big Bang, singularity theorem, coincidences in the physical constants, etc.) that pushed atheism back in the hole from whence those ideas have been crawling out from.

Religion is a self fulfilling delusional disorder that has plagued mankind's psyche since consciousness first developed. It is hoped that evolution will eventually breed it out of the gene pool but unfortunately I think it will take some time.

Says you! There's a great amount of evidence (major coincidences in the physical constants, singularity theorems preventing a infinite old universe, the nature of mathematical law in scientific processes, etc., etc.). It is not considered objective by the atheist because the atheist has a good imagination to think of ways that this evidence can be refuted. However, this is more of an attribute of human imagination more than it is a refutation of God's existence.

Scientists spend a great deal of time and effort delving into the nature of the Universe and publish many leading edge papers every year on what they learn. Strangely enough they never come forward with a "eureka we have found God" comment. It takes a lot of imagination for a theist to troll through such papers on a regular basis to ferret out some skerrick of info that he can distort sufficiently to hang a God shingle.

Well, this is the topic which should focus on here, but your other statements have that air of superiority that I think needed to be responded to. In any case, you didn't answer my questions. After you've just educated the atheist youth of your community of this view, what do you do when the little brats come back to you showing you how much money they stole? How do you convince them that they are wrong in stealing from others just as long as it benefits them and there is no chance they can get caught? How do you respond to what they say to you here?:

I thought I answered this before. I would continue to point out to them that there is value in positive social interaction and that respect for others and their property is worthwhile behaviour if chaos is not to ensue. What would you do harvey1?

[harvey1]

To date your attempts to show meaning(as in intent) in the Universe have consisted of simply pointing out that it has order which in my view lacks meaning(as in significance).

My definition of human meaning: the intent of a sender whose message can only be understood if the sender has sent a message that would take human capability to understand. It's obvious that you think the universe itself is meaningless even by your definition (significance), it seems. But, if meaning or significance is purely a subjective property inside the mind of the individual, then this raises many problems for society. For one, sociopaths and psychopaths are entitled to their view of meaning as much as the next guy, which I would argue shows that the term "justice" and "morals" are on very shaky ground. I think in your philosophy, there is no moral objectiveness in the London bombings. It was the terrorists own individual expression of doing what they found meaningful. Who are you to condemn what they did under your own subjective frame of reference? Afterall, it is just a configuration of gray matter in your brain which differed slightly from the configuration of gray matter in the terrorist brain. There is no justification for one configuration or another, it just "is." How do you avoid this conclusion based on your own subjective definition of meaning?

The whole clean slate argument that I made related to the God construct and nothing more. Here and in the following paragraph you have gone off on an unrelated knowledge tangent. We are not born with a God concept but have it thrust upon us generally very early in life. But why have a God concept in the first place. Well we can't escape it now because it is part of the fabric of society but if we started today with a clean slate and all the accumulated knowledge of humanity sans God, would we drag a God construct out of the closet to explain anything. Sure we have lots to learn about the Universe but we now have a structure(scientific method) in place to investigate such matters. A few thousand years ago, upon being confronted with an unknown aspect of the world we were prone to say "God did it". Now we simply say "we don't know lets investigate further". Based on such a paradigm shift why would the supernatural explanation for the Universe be even contemplated?

Notice though, you isolate one particular belief of all the collection of beliefs that humans are also fed as a young children. To isolate one specific belief means that you have already decided that this one belief needs to be isolated. You made that isolation not on the basis it was starting from a clean slate (otherwise you would have to included all the other beliefs as well). This is my objection. You cannot isolate a belief based on a justification that it is starting with a clean slate, while including all the rest that would also fall under the clean slate justification. There must be some other justification that you are using to isolate the God belief and it isn't the clean slate justification. So, what is it? Well, it is your own conception based on an atheist paradigm. Now, I say the atheist paradigm is wrong and I've given good reasons in this forum why I think that is the case. So, we don't have good reason to isolate the God belief in our set of beliefs as a belief that we ought to junk.

As far as your justification using the scientific method, I don't deny that humans aren't learning more of the world around us. The former beliefs passed down from eons ago are in need of constant revision and discarding. However, the God belief deserves as much right to be considered for improvement as any construct. We improve scientific ideas without casting aside a particular scientific concept (e.g., gravity), and similarly we are well within our rights to improve on our concepts of God and religion. This is what you miss. In fact, I would say you are just being prejudiced in your isolation of the God belief simply because it doesn't strike your fancy. My contention, though, is that you have not thought it through using all the modern concepts at our disposal. Or, for many others, they simply refuse to think it through because they want to believe they are right about God not existing. Perhaps they want to distinguish themselves from the crowd of people they don't think as smart as themselves, or perhaps they are enjoying their own unique set of subjective morals, or perhaps they like imagining all sorts of silly possibilities which make them feel smarter. I suppose there's many reasons to be an atheist, but one of them is missing--which is that the arguments are better. They are not.

Well I don't hide the fact that I think religion is a real ball and chain for humanity and the cause of untold misery through history(London bombings anyone?)

This is like saying that science is a ball and chain for humanity and the cause of untold misery through history (Hiroshima anyone?). I find that to be an argument that overlooks a lot meaning that people have gained by being religious in their lives. Just think of all the old ladies who miss their deceased husbands, or who miss their deceased sisters, or what have you. It is very clear to me that if atheism were prevalent, old age would not be enjoyable years to watch the grand kids grow up, it would be the time of life when you watch for grandma to jump from the Brooklyn bridge.

and of course has no basis in reality but I do think it is not all bad. One of the main reasons for religion in the first place is to console an individual. The fragility of the human mind is unfortunately an overriding aspect of our species and a system of emotional support is certainly of benefit to many regardless of that systems veracity. I think it is just unfortunate that this consolation comes with the abandonment of reason.

Of course, this is your prejudice showing again. Remember, you haven't thought it through in my view. So, it's very easy for you to think of the mass majority of humans as stupid. I find it very sad that a small percentage of people look down on the rest of humanity with so much intellectual superiority floating around in their heads. Very sad.

Well I imagine they would have a few disparaging comments to make about our religions. They may even be quite affronted by our lack of knowledge for their giant invisible hypnotoad, life giver to the Universe and wellspring of their existence. Come to think of it they may simply vaporise the planet to rid the Universe of us heathen humans. As far as our scientific accomplishments surely we must have got a few things right. One thing for sure they could give us a leg up in the interstellar travel discipline.

Don't be so sure of their contempt for religion. You simply do not know what they would believe and it is not wise to venture a guess.

The thing you keep forgetting in regard to Gods past or present is that they are all personal. The God construct fills specific needs for humanity no matter what age we speak of. Those are consolation, positive intervention in our day to day lives and the provision of a future beyond death. If a God does not provide those benefits then it is irrelevant to humanity. People of thousands of years ago happily underwent various rituals, undertook animal and human sacrifices to pacify and influence their God and believed with all their being that they had a personal conduit to their God. Unfortunately their God turned out to be what we now understand is a physical object called a mountain, thunder or the Sun and regardless of the awe our ancestors felt for such objects we know their worship was misplaced.

All of their beliefs were struggling with an understanding of nature, not just their beliefs on God. They found meaning in those beliefs in God, and I think their lives were all the better for it. Similarly today, we find meaning in a belief in God, and our lives are all the better. However, our notions of God have improved drastically, and that is something we can all take great pleasure in. We are gradually coming into contact with God through our persistance to learn about the divine will in the world.

Of course it matters little what they worshipped because the returns that they received were coloured by their delusion. The consolation was self induced, they just new that the mountain God was looking out for them so no matter what the adversity, they had that warm fuzzy feeling of support. When the river flooded despite their prayers to the contrary well the mountain God is angry with us. We don't know why he is angry but clearly we have done something wrong. That mountain God sure works in mysterious ways. As far as the afterlife is concerned well there is an automatic win here as no one can report the results of their efforts. Ring any bells harvey1?

Absolutely. The path was paved at an early stage of human development to learn about God. Keep in mind, if there wasn't a God, we could just as well lived in a universe that there's no way that one could believe in a God. For example, I can conceive of a universe where the evolutionary path favored worshipping children. As children got older they would no longer be worshipped, so more children would be needed to keep their worship at an all time level. This would certainly encourage having children and I think natural selection would be pleased. I don't see how you can possibly rule out such a world. Fortunately, we live in a world that does have a God, and there were good reasons for people to develop a belief in God. Just like today we have good reasons to believe in a God. And, more reasons keep coming forward. The atheist has no reason to why that is (e.g., coincidences in the physical constants, big bang, etc.). They just go along saying an expletive every time some new reason to believe in God pops up. They are simply on the wrong side of the tracks and need to stop their resistance to a very natural concept that even nature teaches throughout our investigation of it.

In the case of an aether we are talking about a physical characteristic of the Universe that is subject to empirical research. A God is supernatural and transcends space and time and empirical research is irrelevant in such a matter.

God is order. We find more about that order through scientific investigations. For example, we have learned that the universe is such that it is extremely unlikely and this requires either a God or some state space big enough to explain the unlikeliness of our universe. The state space is not only preferred by atheists, they won't even consider the possibility of a God. Now if that isn't a prejudice based on unwarranted reasons I don't know what is. If God were a certain color of skin, I'd say they were racists.

Religion is a self fulfilling delusional disorder that has plagued mankind's psyche since consciousness first developed. It is hoped that evolution will eventually breed it out of the gene pool but unfortunately I think it will take some time.

Ha ha. If anything has been bred out is atheism. Of course, the genes keep mutating once and a while so we just have to put up with those occasional genetic defects.

Scientists spend a great deal of time and effort delving into the nature of the Universe and publish many leading edge papers every year on what they learn. Strangely enough they never come forward with a "eureka we have found God" comment. It takes a lot of imagination for a theist to troll through such papers on a regular basis to ferret out some skerrick of info that he can distort sufficiently to hang a God shingle.

No, actually it's pretty straightforward and easy. The atheists don't like to call too much attention to what they found. You see, they don't like God because the carnal mind is at enmity with God. That's what you do not see.

I thought I answered this before. I would continue to point out to them that there is value in positive social interaction and that respect for others and their property is worthwhile behaviour if chaos is not to ensue. What would you do harvey1?

I'd tell them about God and that morals are not just human constructs that we can choose to believe or not. I then would tell them that if they do not follow morals, then they will reap the consequences because there are principles in life that will see to it that they do. I would ask them to consider this even though they would pay the least bit of attention to me (afterall, they're bratty kids).

I think your explanation would be laughed at too. Although, they would have nothing to consider later in life as they are sitting in some jail cell. Unfortunately, I think there are an increasing number of non-religious people in the world, and they are adopting what I label as the consistent atheist approach. I realize that you're quite moral and a good person, as well as every atheist here. But, you do not realize the consequences that atheism would have on the world. Well, I fret not. I think these things have a way of working themselves out. But, I hate to think that way, since I already have a long list of such items (nuclear weapons, environment, etc.).

[McCulloch]

• A series of bombs explode in London’s underground killing at least 50 people.
• At least 10 Iraqis have been killed and many others wounded in three suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad.
• More than 50 people have been killed this week alone.
• At least 26 Iraqis, almost all of them children, have been killed by a suicide car bombing in south-eastern Baghdad.
• A bomb blast in Baghdad in September last year killed at least 34 children.

Is there any sense of proportion? Why are the killings in London deemed to be more newsworthy?

[harvey1]

Is there any sense of proportion? Why are the killings in London deemed to be more newsworthy?

I don't think you really want to know the answer to that question (cough***white people***cough).

[QED]

It's obvious that you think the universe itself is meaningless even by your definition (significance), it seems. But, if meaning or significance is purely a subjective property inside the mind of the individual, then this raises many problems for society. For one, sociopaths and psychopaths are entitled to their view of meaning as much as the next guy, which I would argue shows that the term "justice" and "morals" are on very shaky ground.

I keep forgetting to call you on this sort of argument which is clearly an appeal to consequences. Whether the universe has meaning or not, the fact that it might be considered worse off in one case does not justify it being restricted to the other.

As to why the London bombings are more Newsworthy, harvey1 is showing his lack of knowledge about racial demographics. 30% of Londons population is non-white, with only 9% of the UK's whites living in the city compared to roughly 50% of all Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and other Asian races. This secular mix is very much reflected by the victims from what I can tell.

BTW, If the bombers had left a note, I think they could have said something like this:

We have the great western scientist Alfred Einstein and the part-time philosopher harvey1 to thank for showing us that god does not play dice and sits instead in judgement of all events taking place in his glorious creation. This shows us how very unjust it is for the imperial infidels to pass judgement on us by appealing to their puny and subjective notions of right and wrong -- of which only god alone can be the judge. Our confidence in his infinite mercy allows us to carry out his will in the knowledge that we will please him by following the path he has set us on. This mercy will allow him to judge those we are about to bring before him so that he may grant them his richest rewards or condem them to eternal suffering as he sees fit. God is great!