religulous

Actually, when you get brain damage you cause a new universe to be created... according to one of the multiverse theories anyways (the quantum one). If you believe that, at this point without any proof or confirmed measurements you're not rational. You're just arguming along the lines of wishing will make it so. It might actually be true, but there's not a shred of proof at this point.

Look, my objection to atheism simply stems from the fact that you're making a claim without evidence and then, just like so many religious people throughout the ages, have claimed that every other POV is not the "one true" POV. There are some interesting models (multiverse, M-Theory, etc) but at the moment they're completely untestable and to believe one of them to be true at this point is not rational. You're choosing to believe, based on what you perceive, that there is no god. Fair enough, that's your perogative. I simply choose not to make judgments based on faith.

Functionally, I'm a humanist. I believe that we're our own best hope. "god helps those who help themselves"... without the god part.

BTW, have you ever read the Netonian Santa Clause bit? Bloody hilarious. I believe that there's a relativistic santa one too.

 

And Tripp misses that theories like the multiverse theory at least are compatible with physical law and can be deduced from mathematics. The same is not true of Santa Claus or god.

 

Tripp. This is the part you don't get. The claim of atheism comes from the utter lack of evidence for god. There just is not point in claiming there is one without evidence.

 

That may be what Deepak Chopra says. Have you been watching "what the bleep do we know?

No physicist would tell you brains create universes. It just doesn't work that way.

 

People will treat each other badly with or without religion. But religion kills the capacity for critical thinking. Religion also creates artificial differences between people, in addition to the natural ones, thus increasing the level of strife.

And it's because of the lack of critical thinking skills that people buy the crap that politicians feed us during their campaigns.

And this is precisely why we know it's untrue! Because people have such a desperate need to create these myths we can understand their origin without resorting to anything in the real world.

We know there's no evidence for god or the afterlife. And we have the perfect motive for creating false myths about god and the afterlife. The clear conclusion is that god and the afterlife are just that: myths!

You make my point for me.

Buddhists have a healthier view of the world than monotheists do, but they still believe in the supernatural.

Actually, relativity came with suggestions for how to test it, the classic one being to observe a star close to the sun during a solar eclipse. The test was duly performed and gave relativity it's first experimental confirmation.

God is not testable because god, by definition, exists outside of both space and time, as well as outside of nature and able to distort nature itself.

Is Deepak Chopra the idiot behind "What the Bleep Do We Know"??? That movie has done more to damage science than all the televangelists in Texas. I have met people who cite that movie as proof of every kind of new age stupidity. They are convinced that if one physicist says it, then "science" is on their side. The guy belongs in a looney bin. In particular his assertion that thinking about something makes it happen is particularly dangerous.

 

I don't know if he was directly involved with the movie but he is also responsible for spreading that woo. It is painful to see quantum physics as another place for god to hide. I think us biologists did a better job of stamping him out of our field.

 

Funny, unfounded claims is my objection to theism. To me, atheism is a rejection of ridiculous beliefs, not a statement of faith. And the one true point of view? It's called reality. Sometimes I'm not a huge fan of that, either, but there's not much I can do about it, since I've rejected the option of wishing it away.

 

They are at least compatible. My only objection to them is that they are completely untestable, so at this point they can't be used as a foundation for the materialist POV. If strong evidence can be exhibited for any of the versions of these theories then I'll gladly adjust my stance. Until then I'll take a wait and see attitude.

I completely agree!!!! THAT'S WHY I'M AGNOSTIC!!!!!!

Maybe I've just been expressing myself really poorly. Is that it? I'm not a theist!!! To some degree I suppose I've played that part in this discussion, but I've never said that there is a god. I'm just not willing to catagorically deny the possibility. Like I stated earlier, if there is such a thing it's almost certainly quite different to anything that the human mind has conceived.

I'm hoping that they do become testable. I've never said that they will never be testable, just that they aren't right now. Should we be exploring them? Absolutely, the implications either way could be quite profound.

 

I found this paper, by Paul Davies, interesting. I have to admit that this is difficult subject matter for me, as I'm not a physicist, nor am I a particularly strong scientist (I've got a degree in Geology, but I'm a programmer by trade).

Paper

 

Oh yeah this clown can use the "F" word in an argument, that leaves us all in his intelectual wake.
What is his user name here on PriusChat?

 

I think that you're confusing cause and effect here. Most people are ruled by emotions and thus make decisions based on those emotions. Blindly accepting religious dogma certainly shows a lack of critical thinking, but I'd wager that that is a second order effect. It's the dominance of emotion, rather than religious dogma, that results in a lack of critical thinking. Probably most of us here were raised in a christian environment (hyo, wasn't your dad a minister?) and yet here we are. Critical thinking stems from seeing things as they are, not as we want them to be. Sadly, most people don't do that. People that accept various religious dogmas are really at a disadvantage (see the Russian reaction to the Mongol invasion as a prime example).

People also have a very strong desire for food.

None-the-less it tells us something about the human mind. What is the evolutionary advantage of religion? or for that matter beauty?

Which I find intriguing since originally Buddhism didn't contain such things. Why did Buddhists feel a need to add spirits and the like? It seems a perfectly good philosophy without those distractions.

Wasn't that that idiot book called "The Secret"? What a POS. My dad's a shrink and he gets more questions about stupid book than anything else.

 

What page did you find that one on? The religious types stopped commenting on this thread quite a while ago. I wonder if they're still reading it.

 

Yes, he was. I'm impressed you remember that. I've critiqued many a sermon over the years, and the better ones had what I called "that onwards and upwards to heaven ring" to them. I've read scripture from the pulpit, participated in church plays, sang in the choir, and even led youth group for a couple of years. So, 'good' people can go 'bad' even with the best upbringing. I certainly haven't rejected being nice to people, or many other fine typically Christian attributes, but I'm definitely not one of the dyed-in-the-wool flock. Interestingly, Dad himself has had a change of heart recently. "I should have listened to you years ago", he told me.

 

My thesis is that there is no evolutionary advantage to religion. Religion is an unwanted side effect of a type of thinking that under primitive conditions has an evolutionary advantage.

Consider the panda's thumb (see the book of the same name by Stephen Jay Gould): Evolution gave the panda an appendage reminiscent of a thumb on its front paws, which serves to strip the leaves off of bamboo. As side effect it got a similar appendage on its rear paws, which serves no purpose whatsoever. Religion is the "thumb" on the panda's rear paw. We got it as a side effect. The ability to jump to conclusions on scant evidence gave us a survival advantage in a world of dangerous predators, but that same "ability" made us jump to unwarranted conclusions not justified by evidence.

As for Buddhism, I'm not speaking of the spirits and gods added later. I am speaking about the central assumption of reincarnation. Buddhism's goal is to end the cycle of rebirth. That itself is a supernatural belief.

 

Just like the ones that underlie scientific materialism?

I'm in the process of reading The God Theory and I'm finding it to be an interesting read. It's certainly challenges the foundations of materialism and naturally takes a quite different view. The author maintains that it's consistent with "the corpus of scientific knowledge" and it clearly embraces things such as evolution (it's quite different to ID, which he also discredits), multiverses, etc. He just starts from a completely different proposition. Basically, he sees consciousness as the fundamental substance of the universe, versus matter/energy. It's a rather short book (150 pages) and even my slow-reading arse got through half of it in less than 2.5 hours (the only book I've read faster was Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation). Anyways, I think it would be interesting to hear what you hardcore materialist types think of it.

 

Ha ha. Yeah, we're a rotten lot. Never trust a skeptic.

That's interesting about your da. If you don't mind me asking, what's his worldview now? What denomination were you raised in, BTW? I was raised southern methodist and announced at around age 13 that I was done with church. My parents pretty much stopped going at that point (me mum went out of guilt at xmas and easter for many years afterward) too.

 

Where is the evidence? What does that even mean?

 

This sounds like the new age tripe wherein pyramids and crystals are said to "capture the energy of the universe," and where "energy" no longer means the capacity to do work, but seems to mean a sort of non-material opium: something that makes the speaker feel good about the world.

"Consciousness" is not a thing, from which to build anything: It is a biological process. That is, rather than being the stuff of anything, consciousness is matter in interaction. In other words, it is pure nonsense to assert that the universe is "made of consciousness."

There is a prodigious quantity of crap out there, all dedicated to the proposition that fairy tales are just as likely to be true as the most well-verified scientific principles.

 

uh.... no. It's certainly not that.

Well, of course it is when you simply define it in such a way as to fit into your world view.

There is. However, your belief in scientific ideas that are not verified in the slightest puts you in that camp as well. It is irrational to assume that the laws of physics just are and are purposeless and that that's the foundation of the universe... when there is absolutely NO evidence that that is the case. You've just replaced religion with materialism. They're just sides of the same coin. Materialism has become quite dogmatic, and yet it's founded on a principle that must be taken on faith. Sound familiar?

Now, that doesn't absolve the religious crowd either. They've dreamed up all sorts of nonsense and done some pretty naughty things in the name of the defense of their ideas. All of it quite irrational.

 

Just saying something doesn't make it a valid point of view. You are saying that the point of view making a claim but lacking evidence is equal to the point of view that asks for evidence. This is a fallacy. The onus for evidence falls on the point of view making the claim.

There is no evidence for consciousness as a substance or god for that matter. So far there is evidence only for materialism. The rest is wishful magical thinking.