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Quantum
08:50 / 16.07.03
I'd say religion is more being replaced by apathy and occasional bursts of panic, rather than atheism as such Leap
True, but the respectable intellectual default position is materialist atheism. Ask a guy in the street if they believe in God and they'll mostly say "Umm..." ask an academic or journalist and they are more likely to say "No" or "It depends what you mean by God...".

There aren't that many Theologians any more.
 
 
Lurid Archive
10:07 / 16.07.03
In my experience it is the opposite nowadays, atheism is the default position and theists are considered loonies - Quantum

I know what you mean, especially in the UK where the established church is religion for agnostics. But...the House of Lords has church representatives and any ethical committee seems to involve religious groups as a matter of course. Which is to say that the "loonies" have certain rights of representation that others do not.

The US, of course, is an entirely different kettle of fish in that religion really drives the politics there. In god they trust, I believe.

IMO, seeing religious people as "loonies" is a product of religious tolerance, which is why I see it as a positive thing on the whole. If you really accept the validity of many diverse religious traditions then it is harder to take seriously the usual claims of traditional religions to higher truths and certainties. Perhaps the biggest challenge for established religions is maintaining identity without being exclusionary. I have no idea how that might be possible, as it seems to be at the core of established religion (rather than the personal variety).
 
 
Quantum
15:01 / 18.07.03
Yeah, historically the church has sway but it's perceived as outdated in the UK now (thus the crisis in various churches about attendance, modernisation etc.).
Perhaps the biggest challenge for established religions is maintaining identity without being exclusionary
I agree, they're faced with a culture of inclusion but have to retain their exclusion to maintain their identity, a difficult cleft stick.

In god they trust, I believe.
But does God trust them? ;-)
 
 
alas
17:15 / 18.07.03
I think the default position of most of us in the land of "in god we trust all other cash" (as old bumperstickers used to have it) is a kind of personal religion. Like "I believe in my own personal understanding of God, and it's all to do with being at peace with all people, loving all people (and yet not really caring about what happens to them, physically, financially, materially), and cats."

something like that.
 
 
Tom Coates
06:51 / 28.07.03
You could make an argument that compared God to colour - in that we believe that we're seeing colours that are actual features of the outside world, but they're brain-generated differences that allow us to assign aesthetics to our survivalist need to be able to tell the difference between healthy things and unhealthy things (etc). Deism could be a comparable experience with regard to morality and history - an illusion created by our minds to provide a context for survivalist needs not to fuck each other over. In which case, if it wasn't for the suggestion of sociopathy, you could probably make an argument that atheists are just 'God-blind' in an equivalent move to colour-blindness.
 
 
Ganesh
07:11 / 28.07.03
True, but one can objectively measure the wavelength of light reflected by objects, and thus quantify their colour in a more universal sense. There is no such way of objectively quantifying the existence of God.
 
 
delacroix
08:25 / 29.07.03
You can objectively measure the wavelength of light reflected from objects, but you can't fundamentally justify why Red should begin and end at such and such a frequency. 'God', and, let's say, 'Eros' are terms, yes? Like 'Red'. Red is something you can define, as long as you set and obey the rules for its definition, but it's an absurd and pointless practice, really.

(A God is a thing felt, and something sought by mortals, isn't it? It seems a little passive and consumerist to talk about belief, as if it was something you find in a cracker jack box. Jesus, what would it be worth? I hear a lot of folks say they don't believe in God when they haven't looked. If there was a God, why would he hand His presence over without asking for so much as a prayer? Shouldn't his autograph be quested for, like that of any other celebrity?)
 
 
Quantum
08:36 / 29.07.03
Shouldn't his autograph be quested for, like that of any other celebrity?
Most celebrities aren't filled with endless love, or omnipresent, and traditionally God isn't media shy. Why would he hide?
 
 
delacroix
05:41 / 30.07.03
> Most celebrities aren't filled with endless love, or omnipresent, > and traditionally God isn't media shy. Why would he hide?

Jeri Hall is filled with endless love.
God seems very media shy indeed.
Just because an entity is busy doesn't mean s/he's hiding. If I'd wanted to meet, say, Mother Teresa when she was alive, I'm sure I could have done it.

But if I met her and then said "You've been hiding from me." That would be surreal, and a bit arrogant, I think.

She had no reason to hide. I've never seen her. She was real.
 
 
Jub
07:49 / 30.07.03
Delacroix - what fantastically absurd reasoning!

erm, let me get this straight, just because you never met Mother Theresa when you could have (and, yes, I know this was an example), even though she wasn't hiding from you and she was real, means that all things that aren't hiding from you that you don't look for are real?

Please tell me this isn't what you're saying. It reminds me of the beginning of Sarte's 3rd Meditation when he's proven that he doubts, and that thought is "clear and distinct", and that therefore his other innate clear and distinct idea of God must be of equal weight, therefore God exists!

Dodgy as fuck.
 
 
Quantum
09:45 / 30.07.03
(delacroix- not Sartre, Descartes, and that's not exactly what he said but point taken)
God seems very media shy indeed.
Erm, God TV? Go to Google and type 'God'. Not many media shy beings have their own TV channel (or bazillion channels to be more accurate).

Mother Theresa was in Calcutta, not omnipresent. Since God is right here, right now, he's either a) hiding b) nonexistent or c) imperceptible to me. The idea that he's busy, or shy, or likes you to work to get his autograph strikes me as extremely anthropomorphic- He's not a person, traditionally, and not as petty as we are.
 
 
Ganesh
09:55 / 30.07.03
Just as insecure as us, though, judging from the acres of 'praise' He seems to require merely to avert a 'smiting' jag...
 
 
delacroix
19:14 / 30.07.03

I'm not arguing that God exists and we know this because Mother Teresa blah blah blah, I'm saying that these criteria we've set up are silly.
Atheism of any kind seems like a slothful spiritual position. Why slothful?

A) Just because I've never met Him and have never seen any evidence that He exists, doesn't evidence his nonexistence.

B) "Why should he hide?" Well, just because he's not banging down your door doesn't mean he's hiding.

We were talking about God, and the Gods, and who they are, and that makes sense ot me. But to discuss whether or not they exist is nonsensical to me, because most people who would discuss such a question haven't gone and LOOKED for them. Or him. Or whomever.

So actually that whole Cartesian idea of the purity and ultimate trustworthiness of thought as a road to an undoubtable interior voice is a standpoint opposite mine, because the quest for... communion with a God is like a quest for "communion," if you like, with any other celebrity, media shy or otherwise. It's personal, and physical, and can't be done in a library, and the comradeship of erudite writers avails one little.

If you want to meet the gods, I bet you have to go and look.
True theology resembles an episode of Scooby-Doo, I guess I'm saying.
*swigs deeply*
 
 
Lurid Archive
20:35 / 30.07.03
A) Just because I've never met Him and have never seen any evidence that He exists, doesn't evidence his nonexistence.

This argument is dealt with upthread. You can't use an absence of evidence to introduce uncertainty in a question like this. No one operates on this principle in generality. Better known as the Young Ones, "well it doesn't say you can't smash the VCR to bit and pour washing up liquid in it."

But to discuss whether or not they exist is nonsensical to me, because most people who would discuss such a question haven't gone and LOOKED for them. Or him. Or whomever.

Do you accept that there may be atheists who have looked? If so, what is your position with regards to them?
 
 
delacroix
05:06 / 31.07.03
"Do you accept that there may be atheists who have looked? If so what is your position with regards to them?"

Their journey is probably a lot more engaging and soulful than the atheist's who never looked beyond the library. If this hypothetical atheist wanted to speak or write about his/her quest, and the void s/he discovered, I'd personally be more interested in reading about it. The absence s/he found at the end of his/her journey would be a soulful absence, and could not help but have a poetry to it, since human time and energy and life was invested in its discovery. And, to me at any rate, that infuses this void, this absence of God, with a kind of divinity. I wouldn't argue it with said atheist, though. Unless s/he seemed to want to argue it.

But anybody who looks for something finds something. Maybe not the something they looked for, but something.

That's my interpretation of seek and ye shall find.

And anyway, I was only saying that I felt like the way we use the word "belief" is consumerist, because if belief is a thing of value, how could one expect it to come without sacrifice or adventure? And would anybody want it to?

There are also plenty of people who don't value belief, because they're... into other things. I've found that when I ask such people what their beliefs are, they shrug. They have a few opinions. It's rare to find passionate agnosticism. But where there's smoke there's fire, and the most passionate and hostile atheists (I've met a few) have in them also, I think, a longing of corresponding intensity. For what? Who knows? Something more than the lonely business of thought, I'd bet.

That's all I'm saying. Evidence for and against the existence of whoever, feck it, I'm a crap logician anyway.

Are there any passionate agnostics out there? .



(And yes, Sgt. Jub Lo Mein, all things that aren't hiding from me that I don't look for are real, because their "not hiding from me" postulates their existence, and I'm assuming that by "real" you mean "extant." Unreal things are neither hiding from me, nor are they not hiding from me. I hope to elevate my reasoning from "fantastically absurd" to "phantasmagoric.")
 
 
Jub
05:37 / 31.07.03
Doh - of course not Sartre. Soz.

So, delacroix, if you're saying that Atheism is lazy because it doesn't look into the possibility, and that if one does look into the possibilities and "finds" something (even if it wasn't necessarily what one set out to do) then that's proven something?

I know you're not trying to prove anything, I'm just curious how you would set these criteria? Or would you not at all?
 
 
Quantum
09:29 / 31.07.03
Agnosticism is lazy, Atheism is effectively faith in materialism. I can't think of an atheist who doesn't adopt an alternative position instead, and it's almost universally scientific literalism.

There aren't any passionate agnostics because by definition they don't know one way or another- it's the default position in a way.
Do you believe in God? "Yes!" (Theist) "No!" (Atheist) "Erm, I dunno..." (Agnostic). You can't be passionately uncertain.

Just as insecure as us, though, judging from the acres of 'praise' He seems to require merely to avert a 'smiting' jag... Ganesh
:-) "For I am a jealous God..." That's Old Testament God though, like the New Man of the 90s the New God is full of mercy and love and stuff, nary a pillar of salt to be seen.

delacroix- I looked *hard*, was an Atheist for a long time and then became a magician. Atheism isn't slothful, it just looks in the wrong way- looking for evidence of God as though He were a rare creature or a hypothesis. Rationality can't prove Deism, as it's inherently irrational (cf. Hume's take on Miracles; a Miracle is a violation of natural law by God, there's loads more evidence of natural laws being followed, so even if you witness a miracle it's more likely you are hallucinating or mistaken. Thus it's always more rational *not* to believe in miracles)
But the whole question is framed in a narrow manner- the Theist/Atheist distinction is more accurately 'Are you a Christian?'
 
 
Lurid Archive
10:22 / 31.07.03
Atheism is effectively faith in materialism.

You have a point, Q, though I think it is a tad reductionist. Also, as we know, we disagree on the use of the word "faith". To me, "faith" is not synonymous with "the adoption of a working hypothesis", and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone there.

I can't think of an atheist who doesn't adopt an alternative position instead, and it's almost universally scientific literalism.

Not sure what "scientific literalism" is, though my experience as an atheist is that while I rarely delineate my philosophical position, I am often told what it *must* be, and that is usually a straw man.

Thus it's always more rational *not* to believe in miracles

Depends what you mean by "miracle", doesn't it? Even scientific revolutions are based on overturning, or at least revising, established facts. Given sufficient evidence, I am happy to believe in something extraordinary. Without evidence (or at least a personal reason), accepting something on faith sounds awfully like being a dupe. Like accepting the presence of WMDs in Iraq, for instance.
 
 
Tom Coates
13:38 / 31.07.03
In my experience, most atheists go on a profound search for meaning in their lives, they want to know why they're here and if there's any purpose to their activity that they can be judged against. In my experience, almost all atheists look at all the information they have at their disposal and come to the difficult and unsettling conclusion that everyone feels the same way with regard to needing meaning or structure or purpose and that some people have invented an undiscoverable, unknowable thing to fill that void for them. Atheists choose not to believe in these things because they believe there is no sense in them. They still might desire for a sense of value in their lives given from outside - validation, maybe, or a sense of certainty - but they just can't swallow the stories uncritically.

I don't believe that religious people OR atheists are intellectually, morally or spiritually lazy - although I do personally believe that religious people believe in something that isn't true. Agnosticism does seem to me to be a vaguely lazy intellectual position - and a comfortable unthreatening one at that.
 
 
Quantum
14:36 / 31.07.03
Atheism as faith in materialism- perhaps I should rephrase that to say 'Belief that scientific method procures truth' or some such. My point is that most atheists believe there is no God because there is no evidence for the God hypothesis, and they require evidence to believe things. No evidence, ergo no God.
Scientific literalism is just the belief that science describes the world pretty accurately, and that truths should be literal and not metaphorical. For example, the fact 'one centilitre of water weighs one gramme' is true in a way that 'Angels have wings' is not.

my experience as an atheist is that while I rarely delineate my philosophical position, I am often told what it *must* be, and that is usually a straw man. Lurid
Often true, there is as much variety between Atheists as Theists, but the position often entails other beliefs. Most theists will believe in objective moral truths, most atheists will believe in truths derived from scientific method. Maybe that's just my mental representation of them as a priest and a scientist though...
Hume's definition of a miracle was a violation of a natural law by the intervention of God. "Given sufficient evidence, I am happy to believe in something extraordinary." His point was that there could never be sufficient evidence. Either you reformulate your natural law to explain the event, in which case it's no longer a miracle, or you weigh up the evidence and decide that the 'Miracle' was false. Extraordinary events occur all the time, miracles are a special case- a burning bush is unusual, a burning bush with the voice of God is a miracle.

In my experience, most atheists go on a profound search for meaning in their lives,Tom
In my experience too. A lot of people who believe in God inherit that belief with the religion they're taught, so theism is a default position for them. A lot of atheists rejected theism after carefully considering it and finding it wanting (not to say there aren't default atheists who've never questioned their position).
 
 
Quantum
14:40 / 31.07.03
Examining my own motives I am starting to realise I respect someone who's considered their views much more than someone who hasn't, whatever those views are. Whether someone believes in God or not, I'll respect them if they've spent some time and effort thinking about it- kinda what Delacroix was saying, it's the laziness that's objectionable.
 
 
Tom Coates
15:50 / 31.07.03
My point is that most atheists believe there is no God because there is no evidence for the God hypothesis, and they require evidence to believe things. No evidence, ergo no God.
Scientific literalism is just the belief that science describes the world pretty accurately, and that truths should be literal and not metaphorical.

While I think there's a lot of truth in this, I also think that it betrays a larger problem (maybe just in the language that it uses). I don't think of science as an unmediated process that reveals truth, but I do understand that it has a parallel relationship to logic and argument. There's a danger that we set up in opposition 'scientific' and 'religious' views of the world, when I would argue that disctinction is only made on this subject - and that if someone tried to argue something to you with no evidence that excused itself from every standard or plausible objection in order to make something that couldn't be challenged, only "experienced", then we'd laugh them out of court. It's not a 'scientific position' to say that there isn't a cow falling past the window behind me at this moment or that there isn't a sentient potato that controls the world's armies telepathically. Saying that such things were so ludicrously unlikely as to be not even worth considering is not the position of someone beholden to a scientific ideology - it's just obvious.

It's profoundly important to me that this isn't represented as a battle between people who are 'sciency' and people who are 'religious' - each with their own weird vested interests and a relativist ideology behind them that says they're both valid approaches to the world. The grounds of atheism are fairly simple routines of human argument - "if there is no way of distinguishing 'god' from an infinity of possible but invisible entities, then it's as likely to be real as an invisible sex pixie". It's no more difficult than that...
 
 
Lurid Archive
17:13 / 31.07.03
Though to be fair, Tom, the position you are describing is really the bedrock of science. True, there is arguably more baggage in science, but the elements are recognisably similar.
 
 
Quantum
08:34 / 01.08.03
Lurid took the words out of my mouth/keys from under my fingers. The assumption is that the simplest explanation to fit the facts is true (Occam's Razor) and that's a pragmatic rule we adopt rather than something that is necessarily the case. The theist is asking different questions, like 'Where did all this come from?' or 'What's the meaning of life?' etc. which aren't easily explicable by scientific method.

"The grounds of atheism are fairly simple routines of human argument" Tom
Atheism is essentially a rational position, theism is often motivated by emotion. If you have a religious experience you are likely to believe in god even if you can't explain it rationally, because people are ruled by their head *and* their heart.
The science/religion dichotomy is historically recurrent for this exact reason. Science is a rational domain, religion an emotional one- can you think of anyone who's become a theist from intellectual debate? I can't.
It's profoundly important to me that this isn't represented as a battle between people who are 'sciency' and people who are 'religious' - each with their own weird vested interests and a relativist ideology behind them that says they're both valid approaches to the world Tom
I like the shark vs. tiger metaphor, it depends on what realm they're in. I don't think the two deal with the same issues, so I think they are both valid approaches to the world, just different aspects of it. Obviously prayer won't help you find a cure for cancer, but equally neuroscience won't help you find meaning in your life.
I can see why you don't want to represent this as a conflict between two equal stances, but basically it depends on your point of view. It seems obvious to you that there is no god, but it's equally obvious to a priest that there is a god.

However, you often get people (theologians) attempting to rationally justify theism. I think that's a mistake, as a quick examination of the idea rationally shows it's only as likely or unlikely as invisible sex pixies or the telepathic potato general. :-)
 
 
Quantum
09:17 / 01.08.03
Having said that I just thought of an argument for god-

What if it was discovered in the future that stars in a galaxy were functionally equivalent to neurons in a brain? So that galaxies were sapient? And that these vast consciousnesses could communicate with each other by quantum entanglement (or hyperspatial communication or whatever, to subvert the speed of light delay- otherwise they'd think on a timescale of aeons) and also communicate with their constituent parts? Since we would be like microscopic beings in comparison, if they could communicate with us it might seem like a religious experience as we attempt to process it in terms we can understand. These culturally determined experiences might manifest as spirits, or angels or demons, dependant on the viewer.
Further, these galactic consciousnesses could be in their turn components of a universal mind that related to them in the same way they relate to us. That would neatly fit the idea of angels as the intermediary between god and man etc.

Now, note that I don't claim that this is the case, and that I am sure this argument would not appeal to most theists. BUT it is a (remotely) plausible scientific hypothesis- consciousness arising from something functionally equivalent to a brain (or superior), God as the universal mind. Now, evidence for and against this theory could be collected in principle, and you could rationally decide whether or not to believe it, but at the moment we don't have the means to determine if it is the case, and won't for a long time.

So the believers could be right, that there is a 'god', and just express their ideas in mystical terms because the scientific understanding necessary to explain it has not been developed yet. Maybe in a few hundred years science will have progressed to a stage where it can explain how consciousness arises from physical systems, and might discover that there are disembodied consciousnesses, or other weird shit that the religious types have been saying all along.

Then what? Atheism would be seen as a laughable historic view held by the savages of the time (us) in the face of massive evidence in the form of personal subjective experience. Even though it seems obvious to atheists now that there is no god, that might change dependant on cultural and scientific progress- atheism is as culturally determined as theism was in mediaval times.


All of which is an elaborate way to show that it could be more likely there is a god than there are invisible sex pixies.
 
 
Lurid Archive
09:31 / 01.08.03
I don't think that argument is anything new, Q. Lots of explanations fro god are rationally possible, that doesn't make them likely. Its kinda like drawing a map of australia before you have discovered it.
 
 
Tom Coates
11:21 / 02.08.03
No - that doesn't work for me. My main problem is that it's not only an issue of whether it's possible to justify beliefs in various ways - ie. yeah - fine, base your beliefs on god on your emptional responses to the world (and let's forget for a moment that there might be any biological or scientific reason for the way we feel about things), but that it's also an issue of what you're prepared to give credence as a BASIS for FURTHER argument.

If you're prepared to say that 'emotionally' you feel there is a god and that because of that Muslim people are wrong or women shouldn't use birth-control or gay people should be vilified (or the corresponding stuff - that THEREFORE we should be moral people or THEREFORE we should donate money to the poor), then that's where you lose me. Base your personal beliefs on emotions as much as you like as long as you don't then try to make those emotional reactions the basis of anything resembling an argument or a position! That's when it becomes untenable! And if you're not able to connect that reaction with your arguments and your policy-making or your reactions to the world, then where is the value in religion anyway?

I'm afraid I don't think that people's individual emotional reaction to the universe around them is enough of a basis for law. I think you need argument and reason as the structuring principle.
 
 
Lurid Archive
16:40 / 02.08.03
I'm afraid I don't think that people's individual emotional reaction to the universe around them is enough of a basis for law. I think you need argument and reason as the structuring principle.

But surely, when you come down to it, your principles and morals are based on a emotional, intuitive feel for what is self evident. Of course, you then argue from that position and if you are at all concerned with convincing other people, you try to choose simple principles that others will hopefully accept (the fact that there may be a darwinian reason why this is possible doesn't seem overly relevant to me).

Religious people often reason and argue - they structure their conclusions and argue with their faith as a starting point. Emotion is a starting point for them just as it is for everyone.
 
 
delacroix
19:56 / 02.08.03

I don't believe there's any such thing as rational thought. Thoughts, naked of mythology, relgiion, symbolism, etc, would seem to be the stripped down and essential character of all art and science, but it's not so. The specific, somewhat elusive, character of logic is a kind of personal, divine force, with its own system of metaphors. It's in the same family of myth, cousin to it in a way.

We've talked about anthropomorphic traits, and how conceptions of the extant God tend to come packaged with unlikely human characterists, such as compassion, or anger; it seems to me that Deist indifference, while it seems physical and routine, is also anthropomorphic.

("No, because indifference is the emotional state of the senseless roving planets, Delacroix. It is non-emotion." To this I say perhaps we cannot conceive of "non-emotion," we can only invent a new emotion, called "indifference," one which seeks to imitate the emotional impotence of unspirited matter, but cannot. If "indifference" was truly a non emotion, you couldn't bracket it by a character's name in a script and expect the actor to play it. As in

DELACROIX (Indifferently)
No wine for for me, thank you. (Under his breath) Besides, Merlot is cliche.

)


Further, the traits of "existence" and "non-existence" are human traits.

How? Well, they're metaphors that take the form of logic as opposed to mythological forces. "Non-existence" is an idea-metaphor for Death, or what succeeds Death (even if nothing does, there's no way to describe nothing without a void-placeholder. Said placeholder is a convenience of discourse, and isn't real.)

Therefore, to say that God possesses this trait "non-existence" anthropomorphizes Him unrealistically.
 
 
Tom Coates
22:38 / 02.08.03
Firstly I'd like to apologise for some of the sloppy thinking in my last post in this thread - as I finished writing it I realised that some of the latter points weren't phrased in a very convincing way. I'll take another look at the issue later and try to articulate my position a little better. In the meantime - and seriously not wanting to lower the tone of the discussion - I found this site today - 300 proofs of the existence of God - which is a spoof and includes such proofs as:

ARGUMENT FROM CREATION
(1) If evolution is false, then creationism is true, and therefore God exists.
(2) Evolution can't be true, since I lack the mental capacity to understand it; moreover, to accept its truth would cause me to be uncomfortable
(3) Therefore, God exists.

ARGUMENT FROM FEAR
(1) If there is no God then we're all going to die.
(2) Therefore, God exists.

ARGUMENT FROM THE BIBLE
(1) [arbitrary passage from OT]
(2) [arbitrary passage from NT]
(3) Therefore, God exists
 
 
Linus Dunce
12:39 / 03.08.03
God is love.
 
 
SMS
18:49 / 03.08.03
I wonder exactly how important God is to religion. I don't doubt many of the things taught in Christianity, like the existence of the human soul (subsisting or not), of sin, and of virtue. I don't doubt the importance of prayer, sacrifice, and meditation. I don't doubt Christianity (taken some ways) as a wonderful philosophy. I also think the Hindu version Karma is very real.

A number of other things, like miracles, resurrection, afterlife, the Wiccan version of Karma, and such could also be true, although these are more difficult to believe.

Yet it doesn't seem that God Himself necessarily exists even if nearly everything else to do with religion exists or is true.
 
 
Quantum
10:19 / 04.08.03
(thanks for that site Tom-
ARGUMENT FROM INTIMIDATION
(1) See this bonfire?
(2) Therefore, God exists.
I fell about laughing)

I don't believe there's any such thing as rational thought....
Therefore, to say that God possesses this trait "non-existence" anthropomorphizes Him unrealistically. (delacroix)
Clearly you don't believe in rational thought, but I can assure you it exists 1) 'non-existence' isn't an ascribable trait, 2) what would be a realistic anthropomorphisation? 3) saying something doesn't exist doesn't anthropomorphise it. Despite what you say about indifference, take for example 'pink quarks don't exist'- in no way does it treat the pink quarks as human.

I think you need argument and reason as the structuring principle.(..as a basis for law) Tom
Religious people often reason and argue - they structure their conclusions and argue with their faith as a starting point. Emotion is a starting point for them just as it is for everyone. Lurid
As Lurid says, rational argument is most often used to justify our position rather than decide it. We argue for what we think is right, but we only 'know' what is right by how we feel about it.
I don't think religion is a good basis for law (seperate church and state!) but morality surely is- our law reflects a common morality, which is based on what we think is right, which is basically emotive.

However my point was that religion tends to deal with the realm of feeling, science more with the realm of thinking- they are methodologies concerned with different subjects, so the conflict between them is irresolvable. Using scientific thinking to discover things about god is inappropriate in the same way using prayer to discover things about gravity would be.
It's easy to say religion is irrational, but also easy to say reason is heartless.

I wonder exactly how important God is to religionSMatthewStolte
Pretty important I reckon. Some divine being is pretty much required for any religion to be meaningfully called a religion.
 
 
alas
14:09 / 04.08.03
I got a very weird screen full of strange error scripts when I first tried to reply, so who knows if this will go through...

. . . it's the laziness that's objectionable.

A little late in the game, I just want to say that this leitmotif of the conversation is quite Puritanical. Which I find amusing in this context.

"I've worked harder to get where I am than you have." Well, how do you know? Some people make everything look easy, no? Like my friend Ken who's a Buddhist and dropped out of a Philosophy program to open a drum shop. He's one of those people who always seems to know.

And, anyway, what's so great about work?
 
 
Quantum
07:53 / 05.08.03
That's right, we are slaves to the protestant work ethic. I in no way meant mental laziness...
Never mind *working* hard, do you think it's better to *think* hard about things or not?

(PS- as it's nearing 100 degrees and I am stuck in a hot office, I can tell you nothing is great about work, nothing.)
 
  

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