A Must Read!

[leo9]

I don't claim to understand anything about quantum mechanics. There are scientists who are studying quantum mechanics who don't know all that much about it. It's confusing, seemingly contradictory and exceedingly difficult to work with in the first place. What I do know is that anyone who claims that quantum mechanics "explains" anything about their belief system knows even less about it than I do. There's enough information about it that they can pick and choose bits and pieces of different hypotheses and claim almost anything they want, even if those hypotheses have not yet been tested or have even been discarded as unworkable.

I'm with you here. Quantum physics is the buzz-word now, as "vibrations" were to the Theosophists, because it sounds scientific without actually committing you to any testable facts. The most one can honestly say is that, for example, the theory of quantum entanglement might provide a physical mechanism for action at a distance without a known carrier. That's a long way from proving it happens.

We're basically talking about a being who is outside of the universe, is all-knowing and all-powerful, are we not? By definition, that is supernatural, or above natural. If god is actually a part of the natural world, then he is subject to natural laws, making him no more of a god than I am.

There's a grey area here. People have built what amounts to a religion out of Lovelock's Gaia theory, that the Earth is an organism, and speak of Her as worshippers do of their god. But I agree that gods as I and most people think of them are by definition outside physical laws; if "supernatural" sounds too like "superstitious" then let's say "spiritual".

How about an experiment involving prayer? Would that qualify?
According to this study, which I understand is one of the best designed studies of its type, "Not only did prayer not help the patients, those that were told they were being prayed for experienced more complications."

I can see a flaw in the design right there: if I were told I was being prayed for, I'd take it as meaning that my condition must be really bad, with consequent ill effects on my clinical outcome. They should have randomised which were told they were being prayed for, and which actually were. The better designed studies have been double-blind, and some have found positive results. Let's just say that more research is needed.

Since atheism does not involve attitudes, beliefs or practices of any kind, much less religious, I fail to see why you insist on calling it a religion.

I agree that's stretching the term. Let's just call it a belief system.

One of the reasons I rely so heavily on references to the Judeo/Christian religions is because I have NOT lived among people of those other religions or nationalities. But if you cannot see the religious suppression and infiltration going on all around the world then perhaps you should pay more attention to the media. Public schools in Australia are required to have religious classes, which apparently can be taught by anyone, whether qualified to teach or not. I've already mentioned Texas. I haven't the stomach to do so again. The lawyer defending that woman condemned to stoning in Iran had to flee the country in the hopes of getting his wife released from prison, where she was being held to force him to cave in to the religious courts. All over the world such religious atrocities are occurring, every day. It's the religions of the world who are doing the persecuting, not the atheists. We only wish to keep religion OUT of public life, and keep it in the churches, temples, mosques or whatever.

And I agree. But if that's all, why the vehement attacks, the reiteration that anyone who believes in an afterlife or a divinity must be motivated either by cowardice or venality?

But who is actually seeing this? What evidence do we have that anyone has actually seen anything like the afterlife?

There is an entire school of painters who insist that they can see all the colours of the spectrum in, for example, a blue sky: and they paint it to prove it. But it's only their perception, and the fact that their paintings look real to many other people isn't evidence, because that's only subjective too. So shall we call them all liars, as well?

If I'm right, he isn't there, so no one to ask. If you're right, there's no way I'll be getting close to him. After all, I don't think he's the greatest.

But maybe he doesn't mind?

Bertrand Russell was asked what he would say if he found himself in the presence of God, and replied "Lord, you did not give us enough evidence."

But I recall another story of a Zen master whose new student complained that he had not taught him anything. They were walking among lilacs, and the Master said "Can you smell it? There, you see, I haven't kept anything from you!"

To those who feel it, the world - and the glorious simplicity of science - are all the evidence we need for divinity. To those who are tone-deaf in that range, there is no music, and nobody can prove there is.

Still an appeal to emotion, though, not evidence.

You say that like it's a bad thing