Originally Posted by
gneiss 
So I finally just got around to reading the actual link in the OP. Pretty interesting. To me, people who believe absolutely that there is no God can be lumped into the same group as people who believe absolutely that there is a God. Neither of them have evidence for their beliefs.
The difference being that in one case, no evidence that a thing exists ends in the conclusion that the thing exists. In the other case, no evidence that a thing exists ends in the conclusion that the thing does not exist. My beliefs are grounded in the lack of evidence, as surely as my belief that Russell's teapot is not orbiting the sun. To put it in more serious terms, my lack of belief that there were WMD in Iraq was based on the lack of evidence of WMD in Iraq.
Richard Dawkins does make a good point though: intelligence has evolved as species have become more complex and is subject to the laws of physics. Basically, if something intelligent created the world around us, where'd its intelligence come from? To suggest it was just *there* violates the way we understand the world to work.
Dawkins is restating a theme from a slightly different angle. Proclaiming the existence of god simply leads to a more complicated question: Where did god come from?
Of course, maybe we don't understand it properly yet. Maybe our intelligence hasn't evolved far enough.
It's possible (can't disprove a negative), but I suspect we haven't evolved far enough to let go of the comfort religious belief brings people. I think that human beings are fearful critters who don't want to die - nothing illogical about that. These giant brains developed a wonderful mechanism for managing that fear - our imaginations. I can't not love that very adaptable and astonishingly unique evolutionary trait, but it can (and has) gotten away from us with destructive results.
On the one hand, I discovered the show "Heroes" recently during my long nights, and I love it. It's a great escape - lots of opportunity to explore hope, fear, defeat and triumph though the safety of fiction. On the other hand, really believing that the fiction is real, or could be real, is a frightening prospect. The election of a U.S. President who took biblical prophesy seriously was simply terrifying to me.
So I don't especially believe in God, but Karen Armstrong made a great point in the first article: cosmology was meant to help deal with the world around us, not explain how it works. By asking religion to conform to science, we ask it to do something it was never meant to do, and probably can't do. Whether that matters is up to you individually.
Actually, I think that religion in general was meant to explain the origin of world, the origin of human beings and the numerous natural events that people experienced but could neither control nor explain. Religion was science. For many people, it still is. It is not the fault of science that science has been, and still is, perceived as a threat to religious beliefs. Conforming to belief is a characteristic of religion. Science is skepticism. I think it is fair to demand that religious adherents provide evidence when those adherents make statements such as this:
YouTube - Fox News shows murder and blames it on the godless
Now, since this is a recovery forum, put that in the frame of achieving your sobriety goals. However you choose to get and stay sober, maybe there's a little element of Armstrong's argument in it. A particular program works for someone because it helps them make sense of their addiction, the circumstances under which they use, and their plans to remain sober. And in some way it gives them comfort when they are tempted to use. Even in the most strictly rational brain, little traces of Mythos can be found, helping deal with the external environment. And likewise even in the mind of the most deeply religious people, Logos floats around somewhere to analyze the external environment.
Is there any harm in Linus's security blanket if the blanket actually provides comfort for Linus? No, but Linus's blanket does not attempt to describe the world, its origins or dictate moral behavior. Linus's blanket does not require Linus to ignore evidence in favor of myth, abandon critical thinking or attack other blankets. It hasn't been trying to designate who has the right to marry, or trying to control stem cell research, and no war was ever waged in its name. Linus's blanket does not offer the promise of life after death in exchange for loyalty, does not discriminate against anyone for any reason and is not an anchor for FOX news. Possession of Linus's blanket is not insisted upon as a prerequisite for holding public office, and it does not care to try to compete with science. I have no problem with Linus's blanket.
That took a long time to write. I wonder if this thread was locked in the meantime?
Me too.