Daniel C. Dennett
Co-Director, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University

Daniel C. Dennett

Dennett is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. His most recent book was "Breaking the Spell."

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Not Yet The Majority But No Longer Silent

There are many more atheists and agnostics in the country than is generally recognized. For instance, we atheists and agnostics are as numerous as Southern Baptists, and we are also the fastest growing category–-faster even than the Mormons and the evangelicals.

Why, then, are we atheists in general so unnoticed, and why is this changing? Since atheists, in general, think there are much more important and interesting topics to discuss than whether or not God -- which God? -- exists, we seldom raise the issue.

But recent trends in America have suggested to many of us that this diplomatic reticence has been exploited by sectarian ideologues, evangelists, politicians, and others intent on maintaining the illusion that we are a negligible fringe community, so we are encouraging those who agree with us to come out of the closet .

I use the idiom advisedly. A few decades ago, homosexuality was looked upon as so shameful that few dared declare themselves, and as a result, most homosexuals had to lie their way through life, for fear of losing their jobs, their reputations, their friends and family.

How times have changed -- and for the better! It is now possible for homosexuals to be elected to Congress, to star in television shows, to be honored for their accomplishments and treasured by their friends. Could an atheist be elected to Congress? Probably not now, but if we can just raise the consciousness of Americans to the fact that some of their best friends are atheists, this will change.

In July, 2003, I wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled "The Bright Stuff", where I drew attention to a budding movement among atheists intent on copying an idea from the homosexuals’ excellent campaign: the hijacking of a perfectly good word with an established meaning, gay, and putting it to use with a new meaning, as a consciousness-raiser.

The term "bright" was chosen by two brights in Sacramento -- Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell -- who thought we freethinkers (atheists, agnostics, et al -- needed a fresh name. In the aftermath of my op-ed piece, I’ve read quite a few articles and thousands of messages about the term “bright.”

Most people who bother writing don’t like the term -- including many brights (as I persist in calling them). It’s rude, disrespectful, antagonizing, they say. In other words, it’s just like “gay” (hey, you heteros, how do you like the implication that you’re glum and gloomy?).

I am still not convinced that it was a mistake to go with bright. These things take time. Had Geisert and Futrell chosen some bland, mealymouthed term most would have forgotten it by now. The “in your face” quality of the term is, in my opinion, a piquant, but mild, antidote to the prevailing practice of hyper-deference paid to religions but to no other institution in the country. And I have reminded those who find the term objectionable that just as the antonym of gay isn’t glum, but straight -- another happy word -- they are free to choose a peppy antonym for bright. I recommend super, since, unlike us brights, they believe in the supernatural.

Of course when gay was first promoted in its current use, many in the gay community loathed the term, and some still do. But eventually it won, and it created a way of talking that was vivid and healthy. Gay pride. Gay rights. Gays were encouraged to come out of the closet, and the nation was amazed to discover how many of its favorite sons and daughters were gay. That changed everything. It’s probably impossible to gauge how big a role the term played in the benign revolution in American attitudes towards homosexuality, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

Whether or not the term bright catches on over the years, I think the movement to encourage brights to identify themselves (in whatever terms they like) is on a roll. Young people and old people write to me about their joy and relief when they discover that they are not alone.

It is still too early, probably, to elect a bright to Congress. Candidates will continue to grit their teeth and tell their fibs about their “faith” in order to get elected, and many who see through this but recognize a good candidate when they see one will continue to button their lips and vote for these tellers of white lies -- including many who are themselves deeply religious but don’t believe you have to be religious to be good!

It would be better if we could simply wade through all this hypocrisy and acknowledge that there is simply no truth at all in the standard myth that without religion a person cannot be a good and honest citizen. We have discovered that Catholics and Jews (and gays and lesbians) can be excellent guardians of the public trust, and in due course we will recognize that not only are brights electable but that we have already elected, and honored, many thousands of closeted brights to high office -- including the Presidency -- in our past.

In my op-ed piece, I included some advice:

"If you're a bright, what can you do? First, we can be a powerful force in American political life if we simply identify ourselves. (The founding brights maintain a Web site on which you can stand up and be counted.) I appreciate, however, that while coming out of the closet was easy for an academic like me -- or for my colleague Richard Dawkins, who has issued a similar call in England -- in some parts of the country admitting you're a bright could lead to social calamity. So please: no 'outing.' "

I do think this is very important. I have received many anguished messages from brights living in red states who believe (correctly, I surmise, but I don’t know) that if they were to come out of the closet, they would be driven out of business if not out of town. So we must be patient, and gentle, and let people keep their faith–-or lack of it–-to themselves.

In the meantime, can we public atheists have productive conversations with believers? Certainly. We can discuss every issue under the sun, and particularly the great questions of ethics and public policy, respecting each other as citizens with honest disagreements about fundamental matters that can be subjected to reasonable, open inquiry and mutual persuasion. As I said in my first posting to On Faith, we all need to agree to live by the principles of rational discourse. That, and common courtesy, is the only rule we need–-just as in science.

As long as those who are believers will acknowledge that their allegiance gives them no privilege, no direct line to the absolute truth, no advantage in moral insight, we should be able to get along just fine.

By Daniel C. Dennett  |  December 30, 2006; 11:07 AM ET Save & Share:  Send E-mail   Facebook   Twitter   Digg   Yahoo Buzz   Del.icio.us   StumbleUpon   Technorati  
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Posted by: ro422ck | June 25, 2007 2:53 AM
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Recently I came upon a column that I had set aside by Sally Quinn in the AZ Republic "Immoral options are only choices left in Iraq" telling of her experience as a young child years ago of returning to the US from Korea on a Army medevac plane with wounded/dying military personel. It tore me up...especially considering what is going on now in Iraq in which the "Bush gang" fails to even mention the thousands of mutilated men and women who have yet to be counted in the mounting 3000 dead GIs.
During the Viet Nam era I was assigned to Walter Reed Hospital (WRAIR)in experimental surgery and needed to periodically visit the Forest Glen center near Walter Reed that "housed" Nam wounded with severe chronic war injuries, eg devastating wounds to the head, amputees etc. I visited with many of these people...those who were capable of communicating that is....and became aware myself of the untold horrors of war. I can sympathize with the experiences of Ms. Quinn!

Posted by: Roger Jaenke | January 31, 2007 9:52 PM
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Daniel Dennett is simply awesome.

Posted by: John | January 30, 2007 7:11 PM
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Well said Elaine!

Posted by: Paladin7 | January 30, 2007 2:13 PM
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A few days ago, someone I don't know, Ernest Reinhart, posted a comment about the importance of recognizing how others perceive your words. That has great significance not only for the issue of the word "bright" (I'm comfortable with it myself), but for the constant reference to the gay model for seeking greater acceptance and open participation in society. We don't have to refer to them to prove that we're not prejudiced, but we don't have to take on the burden of others' prejudice against them either.
There is still discomfort and much worse among the general public when it comes to sexual orientation. For atheists to keep pointing out that gay people are now more accepted than they used to be and that is a model for atheists is the most misbegotten rhetorical device imaginable. We need to remain focused and disciplined to keep our cause from being confused with other issues.

Posted by: Elaine | January 22, 2007 9:52 AM
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Wow. This has been a long and interesting thread. It's good to see debate on these issues. Isn't the Internet wonderful!

I am hopeful that the widely held connotation for the term "Bright" will become positive and useful over time. After reading this thread, I have some doubts but I certainly applaud the concept and have long recognized it's necessity.

I do not believe in God. While I am certainly willing to call myself an atheist, defining my outlook by stating what I am not is woefully incomplete. As defined at the site (www.the-brights.net ) it makes sense to try and grow a word that simply means one who pursues natural rather than super-natural explanations for the universe around us.

It is predictable that many who prefer supernatural explanations for life, the universe and everything would see the promotion of the term "Bright" as a vitriolic attack on their intelligence. I also hear atheists and agnostics rejecting the term for the same reason. Whether it's "Bright" or some other word (Dennett invites suggestions), there does need to be some acceptable word that holders of a naturalistic view can rally around. We need a word with deeper meaning than a simple "I am not this" or "I am not that". It most certainly won't happen over night but it does need to happen. Regardless of the word, getting freethinkers to promote political concepts with anything resembling one voice is going to be like herding cats. However, the simple premise of promoting the freedom not to believe should be an easy sell with freethinkers far and wide.

I can understand how believers might feel that the term "Bright" is a sleight, but I am not losing sleep over the talk of vitriol. Atheists do not enter debates in churches, mosques and synagogues about what Christians, Muslims and Jews should call themselves. Besides, if a group of people wish to call themselves anything that means something besides "not you" what business is it of yours. Is the pious, moral superiority of believers so great they feel deserving of a voice in this matter? Also, construing the word "Bright" as a sleight to you is nothing compared to the disgusting premise of Christianity and other religions which hold that simply because I do not believe, I am deserving of eternal punishment. How vitriolic is that?

Posted by: Paladin7 | January 19, 2007 11:28 PM
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While reading " Words that Work " by Dr. Frank Luntz, I came across this paragraph that we can all learn from.
" You can have the best message in the world, but the person on the receiving end will always understand it through the prism of his or her own emotions, perceptions, prejudices and existing beliefs. It's not enough to be correct or reasonable or even brillant. The key to successful communication is to take the imaginative leap of stuffing yourself into your listeners shoes to know what they are thinking and feeling in the deepest recesses of their mind and heart. How that person perceives what you say is more real at least in a practical sense than how you perceive yourself."

Posted by: ernest reinhart | January 18, 2007 9:18 AM
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I can reccommend a book that seems (I'm only in the third chapter) to show that the more theology you know, the more appealing atheism is. It's called _A History of God, The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam_, by Karen Armstrong.

Armstrong knows a good bit about theology. She was a nun for some years, and spent all her spare time at the convent studying theology. When she realized she wasn't getting any closer to God, she gave up the religious life and let her belief "slip quietly away."

She continued to study the history of religion, however, made several TV shows about it, and has now written this book. It's an honest history of monotheism (I'm enough of a history buff and student of religion myself to know she's not pulling the wool over my eyes), and it clearly demonstrates (so far) that religious beliefs are man made.

I reccommend it to believers and non-believers.

Posted by: John Conolley | January 12, 2007 12:03 AM
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"our lack of "theological knowledge" - an oxymoron if there ever was one"

Not to be a nit-picker, or anything, but the deterioration of the English language really bugs me. An oxymoron is a phrase that seems to contradict itself, but actually has a point, such as "jumbo shrimp," or "cold fire."

"Theological knowledge" is not an oxymoron. It's a contradiction.

Posted by: John Conolley | January 11, 2007 11:41 PM
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I have enough faith in atheism and atheists to believe there MUST be some intelligent ones out there SOMEWHERE...
-------------------
Thats it is it? Nothing left? Well goodbye then, it's been truly excruciating.

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 10, 2007 1:06 AM
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I have enough faith in atheism and atheists to believe there MUST be some intelligent ones out there SOMEWHERE...

Lord knows the law of averages would strongly suggest so at this point.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 10, 2007 12:55 AM
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I can't believe you repeat the absurd notion that just because you "feel" one thing is more likely than another, you can speculate about "pure statistical probabilities". A statistical probability is established through observation and testing (numbers!) and is not something you simply assert!?
--------------------------
Come along, this isn't hard:-) If a body of irrational people talk disingenous crap, and I replace 50% of them with honest rational people, the total disingenous crap generated from the group will fall. I don't need to know specifics about the total volume of the group, their tendency to talk crap, or the relative increase in honest and rationality introduced by the replacements, to know that this is absolutely and unequivocally true.

I notice you avoid the rapture question. There are only two reasons for this.

1) You know we'll all have a good laugh if you do subscribe to such an disturbed idea.
2) You actually beleive it, but are justifiably embarrased.

Either way anything other than a no leaves your credibility, well what few tatters are left, further diminished.

Mr. A. give us a good laugh tell us about the rapture and jesus, you've really got nothing else to say. Why continue to deny your lord?:-) Our eternal salvation rests in your hands. Guess we are screwed then ... if your success to date is anything to go by:-)

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 9, 2007 11:27 PM
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Sorry, but it's prejudice unless it's established on the basis of facts and evidence under some kind of fair and objective standard, with right of appeal. Full stop.

I can't believe you repeat the absurd notion that just because you "feel" one thing is more likely than another, you can speculate about "pure statistical probabilities". A statistical probability is established through observation and testing (numbers!) and is not something you simply assert!?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 4:17 PM
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I value the constitutional prohibition against religious tests for public office. I'd have to have a pretty serious reason to advocate for abrogating it. And I would have to have — you know, that evidence stuff — solid evidence of a clear and present danger. The attitude expressed above is called prejudice.
-----------------------
Not at all. You are confusing prejudice with a rational judgement of a persons competence. Prejudice is a baseless discrimination, the kind of discrimination I mean is not baseless at all, and is of course the kind of fact based discrimination we all engage in daily. Or do you make no judgements whatever about the relative skills, competencies and abilities of those you interact with? Remind me never to hire you ... for anything:-)

For example, what if your religious belief led you to the conclusion that eating the livers of small children was vital to their salvation, and yours? Would that be OK? An extreme example, sure, but really not terribly far removed from the book of revelations.

Religious beliefs, held with sufficient conviction are a danger to the public. Just ask those that died on 9/11. If you think that Jesus is returning and you are going to be raptured, you are operating at very low level of mental health, and are frankly dangerous. The more powerful your position, the greater the danger. This is really very simple, pure statistical probabilities.

That you are having such trouble grasping this simple concept has me wondering about YOUR mental health:-) Do you REALLY want people that believe outrageous things, absent any evidence whatever (we at least got agreement on that right?), running the worlds most powerful nation? Maybe you do:-)

Do YOU think Jesus is returning and that you are going to be raptured? If not why not?

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 9, 2007 3:36 PM
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Oh, there is a logical statement.
Maybe Anon has the ability after all.

he says
Brian's belief that
Genocide advocates are a danger to others

shows that Brian does not believe in the separation of church and state.

Could you repeat that?

We are supposed to take Logic criticism from someone who doesn't even know his own name?

Posted by: Jamesq | January 9, 2007 3:34 PM
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Where, oh where, are the True Atheists, the Mighty Reason-Warriors as of Old?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 3:25 PM
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"You seem to be confused about what statistics ARE. We don't need specific numbers to know that fewer drunk drivers would result in fewer road deaths it's that kind of statistical thing."

Yowza! You didn't really say that!? That's just too fat a target. As penance for previous sins I'm holding my fire — but I expect to be given credit for it!

"If you beleive in the literal return of Jesus Christ, the rapture and the holy genocide of unbeleivers, AND are in a position of power, you are a danger to yourself and others."

I value the constitutional prohibition against religious tests for public office. I'd have to have a pretty serious reason to advocate for abrogating it. And I would have to have — you know, that evidence stuff — solid evidence of a clear and present danger. The attitude expressed above is called prejudice.

But of course, that can't be, because you're all about reason, empiricism, facts, and evidence, you atheist you!

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 3:11 PM
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Ache-a-holics Anonymous's Problem

Brian

I think you hit on Mr A's problem.

It was so obvious, so right in front of our noses, that we didn't see it.

We assumed he was not brilliant, as he had represented himself to be, but just of regular intelligence.

The clearly correct conclusion is that he has
Fatal Logical Defiency Syndrome.

It's not that he doesn't *want* to make a salient and logical response to your points.
It is that he is not *capable* of doing so.

it's not his heart, lord, it's his mind.

maybe its all the Iranian beer I've been feeding him (or her).

Posted by: James | January 9, 2007 3:00 PM
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If it is a statistical thing, where are the statistics? You make no conclusions without data, right? Show us the data!

Or is the truth that you guys are no more fact-based than anybody else?
-----------------------
You seem to be confused about what statistics ARE. We don't need specific numbers to know that fewer drunk drivers would result in fewer road deaths it's that kind of statistical thing.

It's really quite hard to miss the point here, but you are doing an amazing job:-) Let me spell it out, while narrowing your options for disengenous equivocation.

If you beleive in the literal return of Jesus Christ, the rapture and the holy genocide of unbeleivers, AND are in a position of power, you are a danger to yourself and others. Or do you disagree?

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 9, 2007 2:39 PM
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Love means never having to say you're sorry. Brian knows I am naughty, and in fact he likes it... He likes it a lot.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 2:27 PM
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If I missed the point, what rational verifiable point were you making, exactly?

"In fact, there is some evidence that GWB already sees himself as doing the bidding of a 'higher' father."

Fine — so produce the evidence, evidence guy. If he simply meant he pondered whether he was doing the right thing, there is nothing whatsoever sinister about that, and if you are threatened by it you're delusional. If he said God phoned in a target list with coordinates, I will be happy to acknowledge that you were right.

"I am disturbed by his obvious faith and proximity to the launch codes for thousands of nuclear weapons."

And your evidence is what? You reach conclusions based solely on evidence, right — not prejudice, hatred, peer pressure or a febrile imagination, right? What is the evidence?

"By reducing faith in such apocalyptic myths, generally, the overall risk is reduced. It's a statistical thing."

If it is a statistical thing, where are the statistics? You make no conclusions without data, right? Show us the data!

Or is the truth that you guys are no more fact-based than anybody else?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 2:20 PM
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Again an attitude borne out of faith. 'Serving one's GOD'. Hinduism avoids this sort of direct incitement, but makes up for it with racism / caste

When people in power invoke GOD, then we may expect irrational decisions.

PAkistan and India have nuclear weapons because they are a muslim and hindu states - simple.

Posted by: Raman | January 9, 2007 2:02 PM
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Based on your repeated self-description, I assume you now will present us with clear and convincing empirical evidence supporting your assertion of a causal relationship between opinions on God-existence and nuclear proliferation.
---------------------------
Erm ... no.
---------------------------
Will you demonstrate conclusively that a secular Iran would eschew nukes, or show how it would define its strategic interests differently in any way?
---------------------------
Erm .... also no.
---------------------------
And will you produce the evidence to prove your provocative claim that "millenial dispensationlists" have "their finger on the US nuclear trigger"?
---------------------------
Erm ..... no again I'm afraid.

You rather missed the point of my post entirely.

If society is permated by people with a persistent sense of doom, and apocalyptic visions of the end, the odds are clearer higher that one of them may be in a position of power, and that they may mistake themselves for the hand of god and pull the trigger on his behalf.

In fact, there is some evidence that GWB already sees himself as doing the bidding of a "higher" father. I'm not sure what his position on the "end times" is, but I am disturbed by his obvious faith and proximity to the launch codes for thousands of nuclear weapons.

By reducing faith in such apocalyptic myths, generally, the overall risk is reduced. It's a statistical thing:-)

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 9, 2007 1:47 PM
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Anonymous

Nice, qualified, wishy-washy apology
(better than nothing though)

BUT
once again

it comes with

an affirmation of your
totally undemonstrated
superior intelligence,

Posted by: James | January 9, 2007 1:36 PM
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I asked in good faith but followed up in bad faith. After a barely perceptible twinge of conscience — and after contemplating the manifold absurdities of this discussion for about a nanosecond and a half — I just lost it. Mea culpa.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 1:28 PM
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Bremer smuggled it across the border.

There are perks to being the big Poobah.

(by "there" I meant the region).

BTW, are you a man or a woman?
I'm bi, so it doesn't really matter much.

Also
my "Good Faith" comment in the last post referred to your suckering Brian with your uncharacteristically sweetly phrased question about whether he had theological training,
and when he responded
implying that he was a fool.

Bad Faith. Entrapment. You should be ashamed.

Shame on myself for not warning Brian: your guile was obvious from the start.

Posted by: James | January 9, 2007 1:21 PM
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You know, all them "eye" countries sound alike: I-rakk, I-rann, I-rabia...

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 1:18 PM
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Whatever. But WHERE is Brian's supposed reasoning concerning God's existence? I missed it entirely (maybe it was just too subtle).

[P.S. Bremer...Iranian?? (I assume you're trying to work while carrying on this flirtation, so I understand the distraction.)]

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 1:14 PM
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To Mr. Anonymous

It buys us, first and foremost,
that

Contrary to your claims over and over again on this post,

1. You have NO knowledge from the academic discipline of Theology that casts doubt on Brian's reasoning concerning God's existence.

LOGICAL CONCLUSION: a human who had any shame would stop making statements like "do you know what you guys sound like, given that you don't have a doctorate in theology."

It also leads to the inescapable conclusion that your repeated claims to superior knowledge and reasoning have NO SUBSTANCE. They are, in fact, substance abuse.

2. It also buys us
Confirmation of the fact that
• you repeatedly avoid directly facing substantive questions.
• you repoetedly throw in Red Herrings to divert attention from your tortured "reasoning."

In short, it buys us the privilage of knowing that every comment you make is not to be trusted, most likely not made in good faith**, and primarlily meant to prop up your inflated view of your own wisdom.

It makes me feel better to have that conclusively demonstrated.

BTW, the beers tonight are going to be Iranian beer that Paul Bremer brought back from his stint there.

Posted by: James | January 9, 2007 12:59 PM
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If it will advance the conversation, I am more than happy to stipulate as follows:

[a] James and Brian speak infallibly on all matters pertaining to God-existence.

[b] God-existence is wholly irrelevant to the validity of any and all assertions made by Anonymous.

What does that buy us?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 12:20 PM
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Did Brian (or any of you) engage in reasoning? Did I miss something? Dang! I would have loved to see that.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 12:12 PM
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Based on your repeated self-description, I assume you now will present us with clear and convincing empirical evidence supporting your assertion of a causal relationship between opinions on God-existence and nuclear proliferation.

Will you demonstrate conclusively that a secular Iran would eschew nukes, or show how it would define its strategic interests differently in any way?

Will you explain the God-existence connection behind India, Pakistan and DPRK going nuclear, and Libya and the former Iraqi regime trying to?

And will you produce the evidence to prove your provocative claim that "millenial dispensationlists" have "their finger on the US nuclear trigger"? [NB: Moonbat web sites do not constitute "evidence".]

Or do you cling desperately to such moonbat beliefs because they give you meaning, identity, a sense of belonging — and of superiority?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 12:08 PM
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The Anonymously Artful Dodger

Not only will anonymous not tell us his name,
he won't answer the most straightforward question.

How bout that for ground rules:
when asked a question, don't pretend you were asked a different question.

I didn't ask you whether it matters whether God exists (though Brian illustrated quite vividly why it does, and showed the poverty of your spiritual imagination - i.e. you can't imagine iraqi[s and iranians could be hurt by Bush's god-sanctioned war).

I asked you to demonstrate with ONE SPECIFIC POINT
where our lack of "theological knowledge" - an oxymoron if there ever was one - leads us to reason fallaciously regarding the existence of god and the effects of such belief.

You apparently can not. Do you know who Paul Tillich was?

So far, no comment that you have made illustrates that you have any special theological knowledge, let alone knowledge that casts doubt on Brian's reasoning.

Posted by: James | January 9, 2007 12:04 PM
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Only fundamentalists and their opposite number (those with a compulsive need to identify as atheists) care whether or not God exists. So God does not exist. Big deal.
-----------------
There is some merit to your comment, but is not the whole story. Atheists have recently begun to care passionatley about the existence/non existence of god, because those with belief in god have become increasingly irrational and dangerous.

If the thought of millenial dispensationlists, waiting with bated breath to be raptured, all the while with their finger on the US nuclear trigger does not worry you, then I submit your survival instinct isn't working.

If you remain unmoved by the possibility of tens of thousands of Iranians being incinerated in a US first strike, because their theocratic politicians insist on building a nuclear weapon, then I submit your sense of empathy needs an overhaul.

The existence or non-existence of god is suddenly important (as opposed to simply a fascinating topic for discussion) because lives are at stake.

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 9, 2007 11:00 AM
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May I respectfully propose the following policy for this forum.

Anyone demanding that another participant demonstrate the existence of a third entity shall first submit clear, convincing and unimpeachable proof of [a] the first party's own existence; and [b] existence of the second party (i.e., the participant of whom said demand is made).

If either the party of the first part or of the second part cannot be shown to exist, then such demand shall be deemed utterly null and void, inasmuch as any effort to fulfill it would be unproductive and a waste of valuable time in a (paradoxically) pointless universe.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 10:46 AM
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Only fundamentalists and their opposite number (those with a compulsive need to identify as atheists) care whether or not God exists. So God does not exist. Big deal.

God never claimed to exist. God says, "I am." God is being. If anything is, God is. If not, not. Whatever.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 10:31 AM
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Existence is overrated.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 9, 2007 10:18 AM
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Anonymous Theology

Waiting for Anonymous to give us
ONE EXAMPLE

of where our deficient theological lernin'
gets in the way of us having an opinion on

whether God, the big guy, exists.

It is like waiting for Godot, isn't it?

All we need is something like:

"Tillich said that the Courage to be is tantamount to...."
or
"St augustine's argument regarding angels dancing on the head of a pin was critiqued by Buber quite incisively."

But so far - a big NOTHING.

Nothing from Anonymous. Nothing from God.

No word from Godot.

Maybe tomorrow.

Posted by: James | January 9, 2007 9:49 AM
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Dewey and Abstraction

Funny John, my daughter went to a down'the line dewey "progressive" school, and she turned out way above average in abstraction ability.

i run a very dewey-influenced adult ed center, and people here are making abstractions ALL the time.

im Massachusetts, it is the standardized test anti-progressive people who are eliminating abstract thinking.

Posted by: James | January 9, 2007 8:52 AM
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"Oh, well. I asked the 'brights' to define intelligence for me. No response."

Ayn Rand, who was always handy with a new definition, defined intelligence as the ability to deal with a wide range of abstractions.

I can't think of a better way to define it.

Unfortunately, ability to deal with any abstractions is getting mighty rare in this country, thanks to John Dewey and his "experiential education," which trains children that concretes are all.

Posted by: John Conolley | January 9, 2007 12:29 AM
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*Sigh* It was so much easier when they just said “the bible said it, I believe it period” instead of trying to translate that statement into pseudo intellectual babble (Tongues?).

Posted by: bd | January 8, 2007 8:03 PM
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Nooooooooo anonymous

the keg is On tap!

I told you, you are fun to play with.

Posted by: James | January 8, 2007 5:29 PM
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Does this mean the beer is off?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 8, 2007 5:22 PM
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Brian
You ARE very patient to argue with Anonymous.

He is not to be taken seriously. He tells us that we are missing the wisdom of the great theologians because we haven't studied theology.

I have studied philosophy, religion, and history at two of the best colleges in the country,

and heard hundreds of speakers on philosophy and religion here in Cambridge, and interviewed Harvey Cox for a public program,

and I can tell you that anonymous
has NOT said one enlightening thing in this whole discussion.

His highest level theological contribution is
and I quote,
"God is Love."

Get real indeed.

Posted by: James | January 8, 2007 4:35 PM
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And it wasn't the Holocaust, it wasn't slavery, it wasn't colonialism, it wasn't the French Revolution, it wasn't the Inquisition, it wasn't the Crusades, it wasn't Darwin, it wasn't Galileo, it wasn't Luther — no, friends, what caused Brother Brian to lose his faith was an unassuming ranch hand from Crawford, Texas!
------------------------------
Lets not give him too much credit:-)

The Iraq war was the catalyst that caused me to question my faith, to start to dig into the foundations. All the items you list above were simply additonal black marks against the concept.

In the final analysis, I lost my faith because, faith cannot stand up to rational scrutiny.

And yes, theology is nonsense. I don't need to study fairies to reject their existence, or read every tome on UFO's to know with a high degree of certainty it's rubbish.

You want theology to be real, because it's the miasma of smoke and mirrors that allows the pan generational fraud of faith to persist. It seems frankly, a kind of security blanket for you. Sorry, I'm not buying:-( You are welcome to it though.

Did you look at the cargo cult link? They've got it all prayer, signs, wonders, messiah and an apocalypse. Religions sprung fully formed from the minds of humans in living memory .... and we should trust writings thousands of years old? Get real:-)

Good night all.

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 8, 2007 4:18 PM
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I wonder if you guys have any idea what you sound like?

"We have lots of opinions on God or gods that we're only too eager to share — but we're self-taught, we don't even find the study of God a serious field of inquiry, and truth be told we don't have the first bleedin' idea what we're talking about! But man do we have opinions!"

You mock others' sincere beliefs, and then turn around and say you "believe" in things you know to exist!

And it wasn't the Holocaust, it wasn't slavery, it wasn't colonialism, it wasn't the French Revolution, it wasn't the Inquisition, it wasn't the Crusades, it wasn't Darwin, it wasn't Galileo, it wasn't Luther — no, friends, what caused Brother Brian to lose his faith was an unassuming ranch hand from Crawford, Texas!

Posted by: Anonymous | January 8, 2007 3:50 PM
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To Raman and Gandhi and God

To your question:
I think the world woould be better off without God as an operational term. It is a useful metaphor, and the cultural history of the world and of humans requires that we keep understanding it in new ways hiistorically, politiically, and philosophically.

But using God for personal solace: I hope humanity grows out of that.

Gandhi IS obviously a fascinating man, and a fascinating persona. He clearly believed in SOMETHING.

One doesn't have to believe in God to have Faith and Hope. And one certainly does not have to believe in Jesus.

Hindu conceptions of God are much more multi-varied and complex than the Christian concept, no?

Posted by: James | January 8, 2007 3:15 PM
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I am getting TIRED of agreeing with Brian. Brian, say something crazy!!!

Theology is a very dubious discipline. "Religion" as a department can study history, beliefs that exist, practices, etc: there is some empirical data.

I suppose you could say Theology is like Philosophy. I was a Philosophy major at a well respected college, and I say "barely."

Anonymous will say there are worse disciplines. Well, that is damning with faint praise, ain't it.

I am here in Cambridge, the intellectual capital of the world, and I must admit we do have a divinity school here at THE UNIVERSITY. But you have to remember that Harvard was founded in 1635, when everyone "studied theology", and tradition is very important at Harvard.

BTW\
anon - you ask "how can you believe in something that exists?
I think Raman answered you, but I chalk that up with some of your great comments like "God is Love."

Posted by: James | January 8, 2007 3:08 PM
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Anonymous:
Brian, just curious (if you're willing to share) whether you (like most self-identified atheists on these forums it seems) are essentially self-educated on theological matters?
--------------
Short answer yes.

Long answer, I just don't like the term theology, it's not a real subject, it is similar to alchemy or astrology, clear nonsense. How can you study something that has no informational content that can be verified?

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 8, 2007 2:54 PM
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Anyway, why do you have to "believe" in something that exists?
------------------------------------------
I do not get the point. Quite literally, why should one believe in something that does not exist?

But then as i said - i did not get the point

Posted by: Raman | January 8, 2007 2:47 PM
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James:

Interesting that you brought it up James. Gandhi is an very interesting case. I am an Indian (but that does not make me an authority on Gandhi!).

He seems to have been a phenomenon. Even if we sift through the halo that invariably builds up around a persona such as he, i think he is quite astounding. And yes he had great faith. (Hindu - but i believe that is purely incidental)

I like your definition of spirituality. I suspect it may not be easy to achieve that though.

Just a little point - Do you think it is necessary to have even that little bit of GOD - as Gandhi had. Does it give us some sort of Solace?

I used to think Gandhi was a product of his times. India was turbulent then (as now!). But imagine Gandhi being born this day amidst all the present day evils like the situation in the middle east. I like to think he would have been an atheist!.

Still i would like to know what extra bit has the 'faith' in the 'infinite' would ultimately give us?


Posted by: Raman | January 8, 2007 2:43 PM
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"I do think we have to believe in the Universe, and in nature."

Sounds pretty dogmatic.

Anyway, why do you have to "believe" in something that exists?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 8, 2007 2:40 PM
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Spirituality and God

thanks Raman for the good questions. (i was stunned to see the "real anonymous" asking reasonable questions, so i am glad you cleared that up.)

I believe it is *reasonable* to posit a trait called "Spirituality." (see the current Harris post as well), including the elements I listed.

When I said
• A sense of relation to something greater than yourself (nature, the universe, God, gods)"

i CERTAINLY did not mean one HAD to believe in God.

I do think we have to believe in the Universe, and in nature.

I think some people have little or no sense or feeling for their relation to nature, for instance.

I would say those people could be more "spiritually developed."

I myself DO NOT believe in God, but like to think I am spiritual (of course: that is why i defined it this way, to make myself look good).

I agree with you about God, BTW. the only concept of god that makes sense to me is "the infinite, that which can not be put into words." but of course that makes no sense on a certain level. i don't believe in a supernatural entity or a creator of the world.

some people whom I know (of) who seem(ed) highly spiritual did also believe in God. martin luther king for instance. gandhi.

slight disagreement with you: i think i know some people who have faith but are not dogmatic. but i do agree that faith has a strong relation with dogma.

Posted by: James | January 8, 2007 2:27 PM
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Sorry that was me

James:
• A sense of relation to something greater than yourself (nature, the universe, God, gods)

I have trouble with this one. No offense meant - but is it a trojan horse?

1) If you believe in God (in the sense of this sentence) how would you relate to him?

2) How does this god affect you / us?

3) If you are talking about the universe and not GOD, then the universe is open to analysis, whether we chose to do so or not.

I am afraid the definition of GOD often does not leave scope for analysis. If we accept that, then viola - we have the trojan horse - Faith.

After faith enters, dogma follows (for some people) and we are back to square one

Posted by: Raman | January 8, 2007 2:16 PM
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James:
• A sense of relation to something greater than yourself (nature, the universe, God, gods)

I have trouble with this one. No offense meant - but is it a trojan horse?

1) If you believe in God (in the sense of this sentence) how would you relate to him?

2) How does this god affect you / us?

3) If you are talking about the universe and not GOD, then the universe is open to analysis, whether we chose to do so or not.

I am afraid the definition of GOD often does not leave scope for analysis. If we accept that, then viola - we have the trojan horse - Faith.

After faith enters, dogma follows (for some people) and we are back to square one

Posted by: Anonymous | January 8, 2007 2:14 PM
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Brian, just curious (if you're willing to share) whether you (like most self-identified atheists on these forums it seems) are essentially self-educated on theological matters?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 8, 2007 2:14 PM
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It does not require a religion or GOD to help us decide what is good or bad.

Otherwise, it would appear that people are good merely because they would miss out on heaven / burn in hell.

The presence of morals requires the human to have an encompassing view of things - a wide horizon.

Go ahead and teach your children religion without imposing FAITH (complete belief - no questions) on them. They will soon grow out of it - like Santa Claus. Regression towards normal - of the thinking mind.

Only when FAITH is imposed, the trouble starts.

At some point all of us are non-believers. We chose to ignore certain portions of our religious texts - out of necessity / propriety / impracticality. Try to adopt a take all - or leave all approach to the scriptures and see for yourselves.

Posted by: Raman | January 8, 2007 2:00 PM
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Brian, it sounds as if you’ve fallen into the belief-in-belief trap. I .e., someone who professes religiosity is ipso facto moral, good, or at least well-meaning.
-----------------------
No not at all. I think faith and religions in general are BAD. Exposure to lots of them throws their contradictions, inconsistencies and incompatability into a very harsh and unflattering light. Most modestly intelligent people would come to the conclusion "a pox on all their houses". Which is what we are after I think, it also innoculates you against mutated strains of the virus.

Once you consider religion in general is nonsense, it's hard to buy into a different version.

There is are exceptions though. Heavily mutated strains of religion like, communisim, nationalisim and extreme capitalisim are the AIDS of religions. The sneak in past the immune system because they don't look like a religion, but they are and they are even more lethal.

Thinking for ourselves, rigourously questioning all authority and giving the state the frequent finger are the only way to keep yourself healthy:-)

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 8, 2007 1:15 PM
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Brian, I want to be respectful of your personal journey. So that we all can understand where you're coming from, I wonder if you could indicate the level of humor or irony intended in the above statement? Thank you.
------------------
Utterly bone dry of humour. Bush claims to be a christian, and is directly responsible for the deaths of easily 100,000 completely innocent people, and may be indirectly responsible for the death of millions before this is over.

The questions :
How could a christian ...
How could god allow this in his name ...

and questions of a similar nature simply could not be ignored, and the responses to them are so trite and such terrible slop. My eventual conclusions were that all religions are nonsense, at their core. Although good people find meaning, and do good things on the periphery, frequently in spite of them. These same good people would do these things independent of their religions.

In fact of course, we see this exact thing, plenty of atheists are involved in red cross work, doctors without borders and the like.

People are intrinsically good to their own ingroup, but we have a genetic predisposition to attack those in the out group. Our in and out groups have become so large, and our predisposition to attack the out group is still so powerful, that we do the crazy things we do. War, religion and nationalisim are simply expressions of our hatred of the out group.

Hence a wonderful father and loving parent, can head off to gas jews without a qualm. If there is one evolutionary trait we need to rise above, it's our irrational hatred of out groups. If we don't, the religions may well get their armageddon:-(

Check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult and think long and hard about the substance of your own faith.

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 8, 2007 12:51 PM
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Brian, it sounds as if you’ve fallen into the belief-in-belief trap. I .e., someone who professes religiosity is ipso facto moral, good, or at least well-meaning.

Consider this conundrum: If a “casually religious” Muslim, for example, can be presumed to be “good,” shouldn’t the true believer (e.g. the one who hijacks and airplane and flies into a large building full of innocent people) be even better? Or put another way: Are the people who accept the teachings of their “moderate” theologians without carefully reading the book upon which those teaching are based better than those who take the book that says “Kill the infidel” literally?

Not wanting to (pray tell) single out any particular religion as fundamentally pernicious, I suggest you Google “The Skeptic’s Annotated Quran/Bible/Book of Mormon.” There are enough contradictions, conundrums and hateful passages to keep you busy trying to figure out the meaning of “doing the work of God” for quite some time.

Posted by: Richard E. | January 8, 2007 12:39 PM
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"Five years of GWB made me re-examine the whole superstructure of my faith very, very critically indeed."

Brian, I want to be respectful of your personal journey. So that we all can understand where you're coming from, I wonder if you could indicate the level of humor or irony intended in the above statement? Thank you.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 8, 2007 12:07 PM
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My point was that we because children and adults are exposed to this claptrap continuously, our efforts would be best spent refuting these ideas -- not exposing our children to still more of them.
--------------------------
I actually advocate comparitive religion classes myself. My own experience has been, that as exposed to more and more varieties of christians, my faith was forced to become more tolerant.

Here were real people, serving god and loving their fellow man, nothwithstanding being catholics or 7th day adventists or lutherans or whatever.

Then I bumped up against some muslims who were pretty much the same, and then George Bush hove into view. Five years of GWB made me re-examine the whole superstructure of my faith very, very critically indeed. Then I took an intellectual wrecking ball it, reading everything I could on religion and rants against religion.

In particular the roots of christianity in pagan religions was a compelling argument against faith, and the existence of cargo cults. Look that up sometime, if there is a religious expression that highlights graphically how people will beleive anything, cargo cults are it.

So in summary I think exposure to lots of religions presented in context, as cultural myths, innoculates a child against the full blown illness.

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 8, 2007 12:01 PM
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To James: I think we probably do agree.

To be a little less evangelical about this, if you listen and watch for them, you’ll see young children exposed to nonsensical concepts such as “God,” “prayer,” “heaven” and “sin” before their young minds are intellectually capable of recognizing this hogwash for what it is. (Hence the child abuse.) Further, when implanted this early, these ideas are difficult to expunge -- especially when the exposure continues through life.

My point was that we because children and adults are exposed to this claptrap continuously, our efforts would be best spent refuting these ideas -- not exposing our children to still more of them.

The latter course of action, in fact, encourages a kind of religious tolerance that cannot be justified in light of the demonstrable egregiousness of religious belief. (Oops! There I go waxing evangelical again.)

Posted by: Richard E. | January 8, 2007 11:27 AM
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Richard,

I think we agree and just have a miscommunication.

What I am advocating is that parents say to their children, at an age appropriate time:

lots of people in the world believe in one type of god or another.

we don't, but when you grow up you should make up your own mind.

further, god -belief is an important part of the world's cultural and political history, so it is good for all citizens in a democracy to understand the beliefs, history, and effects of religion and god-belief.
let me know if you have any questions.

I TOTALLY agree that Brainwashing into fundamentalism or religion of any kind IS a kind of child abuse.

james

Posted by: James | January 8, 2007 10:51 AM
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Richard E.,

Am in receipt of your gracious declaration of war.

While it is extraordinarily thoughtful of you to include me, and I would love nothing more than to engage with you on the glorious field of battle, I'm afraid that previous commitments compel me to offer my sincerest regrets.

By all means kill a couple of Christers for me and impale their empty heads -- O Champion of Children! O Defender of the Peace! O Mighty Reason-Warrior!

Posted by: Anonymous | January 8, 2007 10:27 AM
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James sez “Children as they are growing up should learn about belief/non-belief systems all over the world.”

People who have no business at all indoctrinating your children with religious nonsense will incrementally brainwash them with this tripe in ordinary day-to-day discourse with them, eventually instilling the notions that some of this stuff really exists: “Let’s pray that … ” “Thank God that …” “heaven … hell … sin.” etc. Since other people are already doing this to our children, there is no need for a parent to expose them to other belief systems -- except, perhaps, to show how murderously intolerant of each other the competing religious systems are.

The fact is, we are at war, and religion is the sworn enemy of reason, science, day-to-day morality among men, world peace and human dignity. Anything less than protecting your children from this relentless onslaught if irrationality and hatred is parental malpractice.

Posted by: Richard E. | January 8, 2007 10:14 AM
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Anonymous

What did you say?

It is my civic duty to make sure that people don't take you seriously.

Beer tonight?

James

Posted by: James | January 8, 2007 9:47 AM
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James,

Our relationship seems to have become the central focus of your (meaningless) existence. I can't tell you how flattered I am, but at the same, with respect, it kind of gives me the willies.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 8, 2007 9:42 AM
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God (pardon the expression) Anonymous,

You are amazing.
And at the same time, so banal.

For someone as brilliant as yourself, you have very little imagination or creativity.

And for the 6,000th time, you state no position (other than hitching your star to meaninglessness) but ask what you clearly consider to be a brilliant question.

Anonymous, meaninglessness is you.

Once more as well, Brian gives us a very sane and humane and humor-full retort. You ARE patient, Brian.

Anonymous: don't read this next part. It will just cement your easy cynicism.

for the others on the post
here is ONE list of spiritual qualities that are probably good to have. Meaning IS tough. Anonymous would like us to hand it to him.
Mature adults need to, as Brian said, work it out for yourselves.

Brian and Raman, if you have any comments on this list i'd be interested. None of them necessitates a God or a Creator.
Elements of Spirituality

• A sense of the meaning of life (and death)

• A sense of relation to something greater than yourself (nature, the universe, God, gods)

• An inner moral sense of right action towards others and towards nature

• Sympathy for the lives, and suffering, of other living beings, (and for yourself!).

• A reverence for creation, both natural and human, and a nurturing of the creative imagination

• Comprehensive self-knowledge and understanding.

• A developed, cultivated and broad-based
appreciation of beauty (an understanding beyond your own prejudices and experience)

• Rich experiences outside the realm of the senses
(e.g. dreams, imagination)

• A sense of the “One-ness” of all things


Posted by: James | January 8, 2007 9:06 AM
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Yes, initially it is difficult to comprehend the insignificance of everything. Then as comprehension trickles in this becomes a glorious insignificance. The beauty is in the evanescent nature of life

Posted by: Raman | January 8, 2007 8:34 AM
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To restate: It is immoral to bring a child into the world if the probability of a purposeful universe is no greater than 50/50 — yes or no, and if no, why?
---------------------
Ah I see what you mean, to reword. Given that our existence is meaningless, isn't it wrong to bring children into a meaningless world?

It's a tough one, especially if you come from a lifetime of religious upbringing, that has driven deep ruts into your mind as regards how to think about these issues. This is not a snide aside at you Mr A., I'm talking about my own experience.

I can only reiterate that you need to find meaning in your own life. What you are going through, is getting a sense of proportion about where you fit in the wider universe, and it's not terribly flattering is it? A passing asteroid, supernova or blackhole could wipe out the entire human race, perhaps the planet and potentially the entire solar system. Makes a tsunami seem like a nasty paper cut.

I'd recommend you read Douglas Adams "Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy" series, puts this entire question a humourous context. I mean what else can one do but get on with it, treat those you encounter with respect and have a laugh enroute?

Every one of us alive today is the end product of billions of forks in the road. I reckon we are pretty lucky to be here, and I'm happy to have flickered into existence at all, however briefly. I mean what were the odds?

Besides, an eternity with god doesn't sound terribly appealing, although the sources I'm baseing my opinion on are pretty flaky. Maybe it'll be amazing, we'll just have to wait and see:-)

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 8, 2007 7:28 AM
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Ha, more tap-dancing by the pseudo-atheists!

To restate: It is immoral to bring a child into the world if the probability of a purposeful universe is no greater than 50/50 — yes or no, and if no, why?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 8, 2007 6:05 AM
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just curious how you justify subjecting another human being to existence in a pointless universe?
------------------------------------------------

Take for example the myth of the Santa Claus. Tewll every child until he or she is 10 that Santa lives in iceland and visits every christmas. Then one day - pop - tell them there is no Santa

Just like that tell them there is GOD in the heavens. And one day what happens - You cannot show them proof? Then they will feel let down

Some studies have shown that some children take it very badly when told Santa does not exist.

The universe may be pointless or purposeful. We have no control over that. Better the truth than fantasy

Posted by: Raman | January 8, 2007 5:05 AM
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James, just curious how you justify subjecting another human being to existence in a pointless universe?
------------------------
What do you mean by justify? The world is as it is. I can't justify the state of the universe, I'm not responsible for it. How do religious people justify telling children things they cannot possibly be certain about, and presenting it as trancendent absolute truth?

Which is worse?

Telling children there may or may not be a god, that some people think there is and others think there isn't.

Or telling them there absolutely is a god, who will burn them in hell for eternity unless they do X,Y and Z?

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 8, 2007 12:46 AM
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Re Anonymous

Am beginning to feel this is getting nowhere. 'Devil' - Who?. Taunting gets us nowhere.

'Violence (verbal / otherwise) is the last resort of the incompetent

'Juvenile deity - What does that mean?'. Is there an adult deity then?

Posted by: Raman | January 7, 2007 11:23 PM
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Anonymous

As Martha said to her husband in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,
"George, you're so f**king convoluted."

I am fairly good at logic, but your sentence above makes no sense in any logical universe I have ever inhabited.

Perhaps it is just that your unbelievably superior intelligence is over my head.

And I mean "unbelievably" literally.

Posted by: James | January 7, 2007 11:12 PM
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James,

Are you trying to pick me up, you devil?

Anyway, it is you who are totally dependent upon a juvenile deity to sustain your precious unbelief.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 7, 2007 10:40 PM
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Anonymous

If I had to spend eternity in conversation with you, the universe would be pointless.

It takes an impoverished imagination, no human sympathy, no aesthetic capacity, and no ability to love (it's really hard to love a daughter)
for a person not to be able to find some points in living without the juvenile crutch of a made up deity.

Wanna have a beer later?

Posted by: James | January 7, 2007 10:18 PM
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James, just curious how you justify subjecting another human being to existence in a pointless universe?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 7, 2007 9:17 PM
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Re Richard E and Raman

I am not sure exactly what Raman meant,
but I meant to say
that children as they are growing up should learn about belief/non-belief systems all over the world, not to convince them to adopt one, but so that they have an idea of the range of ways people have dealt with metaphysical and spiritual issues.

It's fine to tell your child you are an atheist.

It is probably not a good idea to indoctrinate them into atheism, or Mormonism, of Sufi-ism

(i am an atheist, btw. this is what we did with my 19 year old, who is a confirmed atheist - she may just have been imitating her parents, but she is an independent thinker).

Posted by: James | January 7, 2007 8:24 PM
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When you engage in faith instead of reason, you’re abdicating the part of your intellect that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. So “bright” is an intellectually appropriate term for atheists, and “dim” is a more accurate term for those who need an intellectual crutch to get through life.

Regarding how dims (“supers,” euphemistically) should be treated, the very practice of religious tolerance encourages them to enact their pathetic superstitions into law. If everyone were rational, there would be no theists -- and there would be no one calling himself an “atheist.” Therefore, atheism is a religious belief that is entitled to the same degree of respect as all the others.

So, every time a dim feels the need to shove his religious beliefs in my face (self-righteously expecting me to grin and bear his well-meaning nonsense, usually) I reply in kind with a reason why his beliefs are irrational, hypocritical, contradictory, destructive or whatever his utterance warrants -- in the hope he will realize that the best way to experience the feigning of “religious tolerance” by me is to keep his beliefs to himself.

That is “coming out of the closet.”

Oh, Raman. The above policy also applies to those who would foist their beliefs on your children. Superstitions taught at an early age are difficult to unlearn (or unteach). And, as Richard Dawkins noted, teaching children religion is the worst form of child abuse.

Posted by: Richard E. | January 7, 2007 7:26 PM
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Yes James

The best thing to tell children will be to respect all gods - That is for the time being till they grow up to decide for themselves..

And NEVER preach faith. Faith - accept whatever said as true. No questions. That is the root cause.

Instead teach them - to rationalize.

When they are adults they will have a healthy outlook to other religions (they will not say their GOD is the BEST GOD)

And they will NEVER do something blindly. That will prevent the development of people who fly aircraft into buildings. These fellas give up their present life for their GOD (definitely irrational).

The child's brain is like the computer. We put in the operating system. Better put in things like LINUX (Rationalism: Open source: Free thinkers) rather than Windows (Owned by GOD/ Theologians/ Blind Faith). Atleast rationalism will help them modify their behaviour as life unfolds.

One can, it seems, question anything on earth, but GOD. That's what faith teaches us. I wonder about the GOD who needs such protection from HIS OWN CHILDREN

Sorry for the long post though....

Posted by: Raman | January 7, 2007 2:03 PM
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The Mormon Apostate

Of my three siblings, one is still an active mormon and 2 aren't. My active brother is younger than I, so I can beat him up if he gives me trouble (actually, we are polite and respectful and don't talk about religion).

He is a "smart" Mormon, and my older sister argues with him a bit, so though he is still pretty orthodox, he knows how to moderate his rhetoric out there in the real world.

My sister, the first-born, went through a struggle with my parents when she apostasized. By the time they got to me, the third (and a boy) they were tired of arguing. Plus I was far from a juvenile delinguent.

My Mormon uncle in Utah just sent us a family history about our Danish ancestor converts who came to New York in 1867 and then took the wagon train to the Promised Land.

Posted by: James | January 7, 2007 1:55 PM
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Yes, my Mormon heritage goes all the way back: my great grandfather was in the Jail with joseph smith when Smith was killed.
--------------------------
Wow!!! Do you still have any contact with your family? How do they feel about your views on god?

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 7, 2007 1:42 PM
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Raman

Very nicely put.

The moral thing to do with children

is NOT to indoctrinate them into any fundamentalism

but rather

to teach them that there are people all over the world who believe in many different gods, or no god (e.g. Buddhists)

and all these people are about equally moral.

Further, it is an element of richness in human life to learn about what all the other humans are doing, and

It is a spur to genocide,war and ignorance to believe that only belief in Daddy's god will get you into heaven and help you avoid going to hell where all the non believers will be.

You also accurately point out the vacuity of Anonymous's position of God is Love/Energy/House Plants.

I suppose that "moderate" position is better than saying
God is the Guy who tells me I am supposed to kill you because you don't believe in HIM.

But it adds nothing, as you say, to the realization that all mammals are moral.

Most apes obey the 10 commandments about as well as most humans, for instance.

Posted by: James | January 7, 2007 1:18 PM
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Ex Mormons and Fundy's

Yes, my Mormon heritage goes all the way back: my great grandfather was in the Jail with joseph smith when Smith was killed.

As a 19 year old college freshman, I had to decide if I was going to become a Missionary, as all good 19 year old boys are supposed to do, so they don't get hooked on sex and drugs and rock and roll.

I looked at my Secular Jewish room mate, who was much more moral, evolved, senitive, concerned with the world's injustice problems, than I or 99.9% of the Mormons I knew,

and I said to myself:

You mean, I am supposed to tell people like this that unless they convert to Mormonism, they lose their chance to go to the best heaven (mormons call it the Celestial Kingdom), where all of those uniformed, blindly obedient, cult-like regular Mormons are going to be,

and I said, if this is the kind of God and the kind of universe and the kind of reward system that the Church believes in,

I can't sell it to the general public.
So I became a snake oil salesman instead.

Now I am addicted to Bach, reasonably decent wine, and trying to get social justice for my Gay friends. (I am 59, have a daughter at Juilliard and have been a good citizen and out of jail for 40 years post-mormon. I run a major adult ed center.

Posted by: James | January 7, 2007 12:55 PM
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Theists, whenever consecutively questioned, end up in blank dead-ends such as love. Why can't we say goodness? In other words they mean - God = morality.

Spare a thought to the countless other people with totally different gods in china and India who are nevertheless moral.

Different gods same morality. Are we missing something here?

The only common factor is we are humans and mammals. We care for our and love our young and as an extension our family and fellow human beings

God does not equate to love. You can have enough of love without invoking god.

After all those books, bible, Koran whatever the Incas had etc... we end up with God = Love. Then why write such voluminous books and build up such rituals.

Posted by: Raman | January 7, 2007 12:46 PM
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2. There is some literary/historical/cultural merit in the Bible etc (let me tell you as an ex Mormon, there is NONE in the Book of Mormon).
-------------------
An ex-mormon eh James? Wow you got the real thing. Ex fundy, charismatic myself:-)

How long have you been off the myth?

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 7, 2007 12:39 PM
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To Brian

I truly sympathize with you in your effort to get Anonymous to take a position: as I said before, ANY position.

We now get two brave assertions from our brilliant Mr Anonymous.

1. God is Love
2. There is some literary/historical/cultural merit in the Bible etc (let me tell you as an ex Mormon, there is NONE in the Book of Mormon).

Regarding 1:
A is Almost right.
Actually
God is a House Plant in a Ranch House in Maplewood New Jersey.

Now totally seriously, I am quite sure that Love exists. As the pablum pop song says
"I believe in love."

With all due respect,
to say "God is Love" and leave it at that
says absolutely nothing.
Probably worse than nothing
because it confuses any substantive discussion.

After we stipulate Love, what does "God" add?

2. It is an unbelievably obvious statement that the Bible is a very important document in our literary/historical/cultural tradition.

The Book of Ecclesiastes (sp?) is brilliant. The creaton story is embedded in everyone's mind, etc.

But WHAT does that tell us, beyond the obvious.

We all agree I guess: we should read the Bible the same way we read other mythologies/faux histories with literary psychological merit.

we have all known that for Centuries.

Brian's arguments go against what most westerners have believed for centuries.

Anonymous's truisms do what truisms always do.

Posted by: James | January 7, 2007 11:25 AM
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God and love are two names Christians use for one and the same reality. (Did you miss that part?)
---------------
Yes I've certainly come across it, and it's clever rethoric, but it doesn't really get us anywhere.

You still MUST explain how you came upon this information, I have had many of these conversations, and thought long and hard about the subject myself. Yet I have yet to hear a compelling case made. By all means surprise me.

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 7, 2007 5:53 AM
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You say, "Do you know what 'bulk' means?"

As between the baby and the bath water, I'd say the baby is the bulk, which you say to throw out, but then say not to. Write back when you decide.
------------------
It's an indication of your desperation if you have begun to latch onto the semantics in my metaphores:-)

As it happens I think the metaphorical bath in this case IS a swimming pool. In the bible, the koran and the book of mormon, the "water" outweighs the "baby" by orders of magnitude. Still there is some good stuff in there, and it's fascinating cultural literature in it's correct context.

However, if we accept a book of Bronze Age myths as a guide to morality, then we are required to kill unbelievers, apostates, witches, cheeky children, and Sunday labourers. As all such cases cause unjustified suffering, however, they are in fact the most immoral of acts. Consequently, we can see that our own moral intuitions are a much better a guide to morality than any authority.

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 7, 2007 5:47 AM
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1) Love
2) Don't. Gotta better one?
---------------------------
No I absolutely do not. I fully concede we cannot be certain if a god exists or not, but you also concede that neither can you. Lets start from that point.

Were we differ substantially is on probability. Even if we take as given that the existence of a god, creator of the universe, but otherwise completely undefined, is 50/50, the real problems arise when you begin to layer on detail.

For example, your contention that god is love. I submit that the natural world (disease, death, random natural catastrophe), and how humans occasionally treat each other mitigates very strongly against this probability. Now there are "arguments" to explain why this is so in the context of a loving god, but they are contrived and convoluted and require far more explanation than the obvious "sh1t happens" of the materialist.

Each new attribute or property you ascribe to god, drops the probability that much lower that this specific construct exists.

Hence I keep on trying to get you supply specifics and argue why you think such and such is so, and you keep retreating to vauge, wispy constructs that frankly, the average "Ted Haggard Class" evangelical christian, or typical muslim would find heretical and suspiciously "new age". Only a few hundred years ago, both groups would have insisted on your execution for holding such poorly defined views of god.

Finally, my inability to define god is not MY problem, I've got almost nothing to work with. This is the theists problem, and it is a doozy.

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 7, 2007 5:38 AM
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You say, "Do you know what 'bulk' means?"

As between the baby and the bath water, I'd say the baby is the bulk, which you say to throw out, but then say not to. Write back when you decide.

You say, "OK, a thread to pull on....etc."

God and love are two names Christians use for one and the same reality. (Did you miss that part?) Please feel free to substitute whatever names make you happy.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 7, 2007 5:14 AM
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1) Love
2) Don't. Gotta better one?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 7, 2007 4:57 AM
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You say, "In fact much of what is in the holy books is so obscenely wrong, we'd be wise to ditch the bulk of them ASAP."

But you JUST SAID, "we don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water do we? We can keep the love, and ditch the xenophobia."
----------------
Do you know what "bulk" means? Look it up, you'll see why your response is silly.
----------------
Ding ding ding!! Congratulations! That's 100% Grade A traditional Catholic moral theology. It's called natural law.
----------------
Gee. You are surprised? Even catholic theologians are humans, they can observe the universe and come up with an explanation. Their's has the disadvantage of being nonsense of course, but still, kudos for observing the blindingly obvious and ascribing it to god:-)
----------------
You say, "Certainly their love and existence is orders of magnitude more tangible than that of the big 3 monotheistic gods." Except that God is love, and who abides in love, abides in God. Love does not exist apart from God, because God and love are two names for one and the same reality. The manifestations of love you describe have no reality apart from God.
-----------------
OK, a thread to pull on. How can you possibly know this about god? Did god speak to you? Did god speak to a friend of yours? Did god speak to a long dead person, who passed the information on to some other long dead individual who wrote it in a book?

How do you know god wasn't lying, or the myriad of intermediate messangers weren't lying, or even making the whole thing up?

So two important questions here.
1) Define the god you refer to.
2) How do you know the properties you have just defined.


Posted by: brian coughlan | January 7, 2007 2:40 AM
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Dear Anonymous

Good. Glad your are staying around. I am getting to like you. You are fun to play with.

Posted by: James | January 6, 2007 11:57 PM
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James,

You say I "don't believe anything yourself that you will state an affirmative position on." What? Have you already forgotten that, in response to Brian's challenge about the Holy Spirit, I quoted the Nicene Creed to affirm my belief?

You say I "set yourself up as smarter and wiser than the rest of us." If I'm smarter and wiser, blame it on God.

P.S. Sorry, but you don't get to disinvite me.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 6, 2007 7:40 PM
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Brian,

You say, "Why bring sky fairies into it? Why is this so hard for you to get?"

But of course it is you who has the fixation with sky fairies and keep dragging them in. (Why?) "This" is hard for me to "get" because you won't answer the question.

You say, "Our morality is rooted in our evolutionary history. This is a testable explanation which fits the facts and is observable in other species. We don't need holy books or 'revelation' to tell us what is right, or what makes stable and healthy human societies, it's in our genes."

Ding ding ding!! Congratulations! That's 100% Grade A traditional Catholic moral theology. It's called natural law.

You say, "In fact much of what is in the holy books is so obscenely wrong, we'd be wise to ditch the bulk of them ASAP."

But you JUST SAID, "we don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water do we? We can keep the love, and ditch the xenophobia."

You say, "Certainly their love and existence is orders of magnitude more tangible than that of the big 3 monotheistic gods." Except that God is love, and who abides in love, abides in God. Love does not exist apart from God, because God and love are two names for one and the same reality. The manifestations of love you describe have no reality apart from God.

You flatter yourself if you think I find your non-answers traumatic. I have no idea if God, man or the universe exist. But I do know these are the only questions that matter, and I am unwilling to sleepwalk -- or to anesthetize myself by smirking at the great unwashed and their sky fairies.

Now tell me I'm very, very bad.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 6, 2007 7:39 PM
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Anonymous: Give it a Rest Indeed

Your convoluted and distored reasoning just pollutes the conversation.

you don't believe anything yourself that you will state an affirmative position on.

You set yourself up as smarter and wiser than the rest of us and go on to disprove that proposition with everyword, even "and" and "the."

As Brian correctly states, you studiously avoid describing your God, or anything that you believe in.

And your nihilism is much more depressing and inhuman than that which you ascribe to Brian and others.

Posted by: James | January 6, 2007 6:48 PM
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You say, "You need to find meaning in your OWN life Mr. A." I must? Why? How rational is it to find purpose and value in my puny existence if I am certain the vast universe has none?
----------------
I seem to have really hit a nerve here. I can find value in me, the people around me, my life. What I enjoy, the challenges life presents. Why does it have to be connected to something "transcendent"? Isn't the awesome fact of your existence enough? Our existence may be puny, but we can still enjoy it can't we? Why bring sky fairies into it? Why is this so hard for you to get?
---------------------
Dr. Dawkins acknowledges that humans have the capacity to thwart natural selection. You have choice and freedom of action.
-----------------
Yeeeeeesss, and your point is what? We thwart our genes on a daily basis, but we don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water do we? We can keep the love, and ditch the xenophobia. We can have sex, yet keep family sizes down. We can eat, but steer clear of fatty foods. We can submit to our empathy to help people in need, and amplify it to extend that "local" impulse to include the entire human family.

The sheer scale and complexity of human society is testimony to our ability to thwart our genes. No argument there. Hey, you asked a specific question, don't ask if you can't handle answers that address the actual question.

Our morality is rooted in our evolutionary history. This is a testable explanation which fits the facts and is observable in other species. We don't need holy books or "revelation" to tell us what is right, or what makes stable and healthy human societies, it's in our genes. In fact much of what is in the holy books is so obscenely wrong, we'd be wise to ditch the bulk of them ASAP.

In a nutshell, it is as the Buddha said, do unto others, as you would have them do unto you:-)
---------------------------
What actual evidence or rational basis do you have for believing anyone loves you? What evidence do you have that those you love exist?
-----------------------------
They are good to me? They miss me when I'm away (or so they say), they appear glad to see me when I'm back. They send me gifts, they phone me. As to if the exist, well I can see them, touch them, hug them, hear them.

Certainly their love, and existence is orders of magnitude more tangible than that of the big 3 monotheistic gods. You seem to be talking yourself out of your faith Mr. A., am I getting through?

You go off on these wild philosophical tangents, when really all most atheists are looking for is simple. Conclusive proof that god, really any god, exists. If you can provide that I'm yours, no REALLY, I mean that.

Yet, religites cannot even meet this minimal hurdle and then get all hot and bothered when we object to this nonsense being trotted out as truth, with layers of detail no less!!! God is all loving, ooooh god is all powerful, ooooh god is actually three persons in one. ROTFL:-)

Give it a rest:-) You can blow all the philosophical smoke you like, yet your god (which you have studiously avoided describing) is almost certainly a pan generational fraud like every other god before it. I'm genuinely sorry that this is so traumatic for you.

Posted by: brian coughlan | January 6, 2007 5:34 PM
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Brian,

Thanks for proving the point splendidly. You require God to be a sky fairy, because a mature understanding of God threatens your identity.

You say, "You need to find meaning in your OWN life Mr. A." I must? Why? How rational is it to find purpose and value in my puny existence if I am certain the vast universe has none?

In any case, if I am certain my puny existence is finite, what conceivable rational basis is there for perpetuating it? There is none. Zip. Nada. You know that every excuse you could come up with is nothing but a desperate rationalization, so you convince yourself the alternative is a "sky fairy" (how precious). Put up or shut up. There is no purely rational basis for delay. Either get it over with, or acknowledge there is some intrinsic or transcendent reason you don't.

Your appeal to evolutionary imperatives is particularly hilarious. Even your own personal sky fairy Dr. Dawkins acknowledges that humans have the capacity to thwart natural selection. You have choice and freedom of action (and if you don't, why have this conversation?).

What actual evidence or rational basis do you have for believing anyone loves you? What evidence do you have that those you love exist?

You say, "Life just IS." Duh. Pass the bong, man.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 6, 2007 4:40 PM
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Thank you, Brian, for the link to the Dawkins site. It is awesome to find out how many freethinkers we are.

Posted by: Tammy Irwin | January 6, 2007 3:41 PM
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"...our own feelings about injustice..."

You acknowledge a universal understanding of justice and universal "feelings" about it. The source of that understanding and those feelings is what, exactly?

Pure evolution baby. Cats, Dogs and practically all mammals exhibit crude but identifiable forms of love, self sacrifice and altruisim. It's a survival trait which we share with them.

You need to find meaning in your OWN life Mr. A. In those you love, and those who love you. In what you enjoy, in your work and in your play. Life just IS. You don't need some invisible sky fairy to define you.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 6, 2007 3:38 PM
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Brian,

"...our own feelings about injustice..."

You acknowledge a universal understanding of justice and universal "feelings" about it. The source of that understanding and those feelings is what, exactly?

"...a supernatural construct remotely like any of the big 3 gods..."

Atheists are so insecure that they insist on a God that allows them to retain their non-believing purity.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 6, 2007 2:40 PM
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Hey James, appreciate the vote of confidence:-)

You should join the rest of the atheists here :

http://richarddawkins.net/home

You religites are welcome too:-)

The worm is turning:-)

Ciao.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 6, 2007 11:51 AM
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Observation: Re Gordon and Brian

I appreciate Gordon's attempt to cast light on these issues, and you said some smart things, G. But I found my mind having to do all sorts of twists and turns to follow your reasoning: proving negatives and then turning them back on their heads etc. It did remind me of the tortured arguments that Catholic theologians have about Limbo and angels.

Brian's comment on your post was like a breath of fresh air.

The logic was direct, impeccable, and understandable even by me (I must do one little brag and admit that I got an A in logic).

The major resonating point that Brian made, though certainly not a new one, is
"A casual glance at the world and our own feelings about injustice explodes the idea of the monotheistic gods."

While trying to be respectful to fundamentalists, Dawkins' argument combined with Brian's is really unrefutable by a reasonable, logical, evidence based mind.

Posted by: James | January 6, 2007 9:46 AM
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Gordon : Regarding your rebuttals.

1:The default position is certainly to be agnostic about something unproven. At best that puts all the major supernatural constructs on par with fairies or UFO's. Hardly a compelling conversion story:-)

2:We can only reason from what we know. A casual glance at the world and our own feelings about injustice explodes the idea of the monotheistic gods. You are left pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and claiming that "we don't understand God". Yeah, no kidding. By your reasoning absolutely anything could exist, including a completely evil god who tolerates good for "mysterious reasons". It is by far the most facile response to this compelling argument I have yet heard.

Evil and good exist, these words have meanings. There occurrence appears totally random, and the most reasonable conclusion is that this is so.

3:See above
4:You dismiss this argument to easily. If I stand on a shore throwing rocks into the water, the more rocks I throw the more convinced I am that each next rock will sink, just all the rocks before. Each discovery by science is like a thrown rock, the next one MIGHT reveal god hiding behind it, but the likelihood is that the explanation will be natural just like all the millions of others.

You are like a guy standing beside the thrower shouting "OK, that rock sank, but God will make the next one float!!!". Guess what, God is running out of rocks to hide behind.

I should also note that several millenia of pondering the nature of god have revealed exactly nothing. While a mere 300 years of science has explained vast amounts, and in enormous detail. I know where my money is:-)

Anonymous, your comments are philosphical and have little to do with my major objection, that complelling evidence for a supernatural construct remotely like any of the big 3 gods is present. If you'd care to discuss that sure, otherwise I'm pretty much in agreement with your other points.


Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 6, 2007 1:55 AM
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If you go to the main page of the On Faith discussion you will find an interesting tabulation of the religious affiliations of the representatives in Congress.

Those with no religious affiliation number 6 in the house and none in the senate. This represents 1.1% of congress as opposed to 14.1% in the population as a whole.

So it would seem that atheists, agnostics and pantheists are very poorly represented in Congress.

Posted by: Ted Swart | January 6, 2007 1:43 AM
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Jim -
Martooni already made it clear that your four "arguments" aren't worth the time to examine, but you seem to have missed his point.

For those that might think you have actually said something, let me take apart each of them:


= 1. The neutral position is to not believe
= in the existence of a thing. It is incumbent
= on the person proposing the existence of
= something to give the argument.
= No successful argument is given,
= thus God does not exist.

Perhaps the reason Martooni stopped before he started: The neutral position is to make no belief conclusions. To believe that a thing does not exist is *not* neutral. This type of shallow thinking pervades the rest of your four "arguments".

Ignoring that first bit of idiocy: If a god exists, that does not logically require that anyone be able to prove it. If no successful argument can be given, then those proposing the existence of a god have no valid basis to expect you to agree with them. But it takes a pretty dim person to think that this proves their god does not exist, much less that no god exists.

I doubt anyone can prove that Hippocrates actually lived and wrote the Hippocratic Oath. But at best that leaves us "agnostic" about whether he lived. It does not prove he never existed. Similar statements can be made about many others on the fringes of recorded history.


= 2. The problem of evil shows that one
= popular view of god (all powerful and
= good) can not exist (incompatible with
= evil).

This follows *only* if a divinity that is both good and all-powerful agrees with your assessment that evil should not be allowed. Perhaps our understanding of good is different from the good nature of that divinity. Having made every effort to be a good parent, I occassionally thought it good to allow my child to experience the pain of poor choices. Others may judge this was "not good". My point is that "good" is too squishy a term to hold the weight this argument places on it.


= 3. Alleged objects with contradictory
= descriptions do not exist. Examples
= include the 4 sided triangle. God's
= alleged nature is contradictory,
= therefore he doesn't exist.

No.

EITHER this is a restatement of the #2, in which the only valid conclusion here would be that the claim of both good and all-powerful is false (except that this is not contradictory in the sense of a 4-sided triangle).

OR you are making a totally unsubstantiated statement that all generic descriptions of a Transcendent Creator are contradictory. If this is the case, you left out the key part of the argument.

At best it appears that this argument could be used to prove that specific claims about a god are false, but it proves nothing about a general claim that a god exists.


= 4. All of the historic roles of god are
= now better explained in other ways
= (thunder for example is explained in
= meteorology). The god-concept is
= useless, thus by Occham's razor, god
= does not exist.

First: Occham's razor never proves the correctness of any idea. It only makes an assumption about which idea is likely to be the most useful for further investigation.

Second: This argument starts with a huge unexamined assumption that "all of the historic roles of god are now better explained in other ways". Certainly there are alternate explanations for many things, and these are more comfortable to those who prefer to believe there is no God. But issues like the origin of morals and ethics are not "better explained" by anything else yet. Nor is it yet apparent that the 20th-century creation myth of abiogenesis is any better than the ancient creation myths.


= I'm not claiming these are good arguments,
= but you don't even examine them.

I am mildly pleased that you were bright enough to avoid claiming these were good arguments. That you thought they were worth posting still seems pretty dim.

- GordonB

Posted by: GordonB | January 5, 2007 11:33 PM
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How can a rational intelligent person simultaneously believe that the universe has no purpose or value yet his own puny existence does?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 5, 2007 10:53 PM
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Dear atheist friends, do you believe you exist, and if so, on the basis of what evidence?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 5, 2007 10:50 PM
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one must begin with the knowledge that the entire body of religion is based on nothing more than assumptions and, as we know only too well, many assumptions have been proved wrong.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 5, 2007 2:42 PM
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Anonymous, My Savior!!
thank you for relieving my torture.

We finally have a position from you, rather than just your vaunted hole-poking.

Here are two of your positions, and I quote:

Postion 1. "Okay. Here's my position: I haven't the slightest idea, and I'm trying to come up with a reason I should care."

Well, that's clear. Cynicism and apathy are two time honored strong positions.

Your second big one: "here's my real position: No intelligent person sleepwalks through life without agonizing over the fact of his existence."

So, 'Life is hard." That is what you have to add. I am glad I waited.

and finally, you give us this pearl:

"Any living intelligent person who is certain that he does not have a soul is lying."

And any intelligent person who is certain that Unicorns and Tooth Fairys don't exist is also lying.

You finally confirm what has been obvious from the beginning.

You have no interest (ability?) in contributing substantively to this conversation.

All you are interested in is showing how smart and wise you are compared to the rest of us.

You get an F. for Failure.


1.

Posted by: James | January 5, 2007 10:39 AM
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Anyway, what's your deal with the Holy Spirit?

I find that many religious people are like republicans, disingenous liars. However, they hesitate to cross this particular threshold given there is a specific verse in the Bible, that strongly suggests you will be damned for eternity if you deny the holy spirit.

You have to laugh at the level of detail about the nature of god the bible claims to know about. I mean HOW? Different question, I digress:-)

If a poster is too superstitious to cross the line, all their talk of open mindedness should be considered so much disingenous bull crap:-) So whats it to be?

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 5, 2007 3:13 AM
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Now Brian, you know that earlier post was a private communication between the two of us...

Anyway, what's your deal with the Holy Spirit?

Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem: qui ex Patre Filioque procedit. Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur: qui locutus est per Prophetas.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 5, 2007 1:52 AM
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No, wait, here's my real position: No intelligent person sleepwalks through life without agonizing over the fact of his existence. No intelligent person assumes he needs advanced degrees to be a physicist or a brain surgeon, but when it comes to the most important questions, everything he needs to know he learned in kindergarten. No intelligent person clings to childish notions of God just so he can reject them. Any living intelligent person who is certain that he does not have a soul is lying.
--------------------------------
Gee, not much to argue with there, except that the "childish notions of God" are the majority prevailing view. The wispy ephemeral constructs of the theologians (the study of God!!! No data, no tests, no results, could there be a dumber subject??), although equally bogus, are accepted by only a tiny minority of the rabidly and dangerously religious.

However, I thought THIS was your real position :

Anonymous:
Brian, I am proud as punch to be a dogmatic, sexist, genocidal neo-Nazi, homophobic bigot and a fundie thumper Christer Jesusland Taliban Christofascist. Please call me more names, because I deserve it. I am very, very naughty. Tell me how naughty I am, Brian! Tell me!! Get very, very, very angry with me! Only you can stop me from spreading my pernicious and posionous stuff! Only you can put an end to my arrogance and hubris! Let the hate flow! Let me have it! Talk trash about President Bush! Please! Brian!
-----------------------
Or was that just nonsense?
Deny the holy spirit already so we know where we stand, or are yah scared? Are yah a big fraidy cat of the nasty ghost in the sky?:-)

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 5, 2007 1:38 AM
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My poor tortured brother James says:

"Make a claim. State a position.
for instance, there is (or is not -
ANYThING!) a relation between intelligence and belief."

Okay. Here's my position: I haven't the slightest idea, and I'm trying to come up with a reason I should care.

No, wait, here's my position: It depends on what you mean by relation, what you mean by intelligence, and what you mean by belief.

No, wait, here's my real position: No intelligent person sleepwalks through life without agonizing over the fact of his existence. No intelligent person assumes he needs advanced degrees to be a physicist or a brain surgeon, but when it comes to the most important questions, everything he needs to know he learned in kindergarten. No intelligent person clings to childish notions of God just so he can reject them. Any living intelligent person who is certain that he does not have a soul is lying.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 5, 2007 1:07 AM
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I cannot imagine more important questions.
---------------------------------
Frankly, neither can I, but theology is obviously not the route to answer those questions. Isn't one of the definitions of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome?

Mr A. Theology is to Philosophy what Astrology is to Astronomy, or Alchemy to Chemistry. It's the nonsense dreamed up when humans had little idea about how the world worked, how things fit together. Why keep flogging a patently dead horse?

I notice you don't address the key question, what has millenia of theology revealed about the universe? It would be cool to hear your views on that.
-----------------------------------------
I love the so-called "brights" who insist they find nature and the universe endlessly fascinating, yet are absolutely incurious about how they got here and indifferent to where they're going.
------------------------------------------
On the contrary, I personally am intriuged, but that surely doesn't mean I have to give credence, or even respect to every crackpot theory trotted out by religites?

Here is another quick one. If you are genuinely not religious, and are merely "poking holes" in the pure and honest spirit of enquiry, lets hear a denial of the holy ghost. That generally flushes the superstitious out the woodwork:-)

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 5, 2007 12:54 AM
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Brian,

"Theology is a non subject, the stale recycling of ideas that are millenia old, the assertion of details that can never be confirmed or disputed."

Many thanks for illustrating my earlier point and giving me the opportunity to reiterate it: An opinion without benefit of education is merely an uneducated opinion.

"So why waste our time?"

Waste of time? I cannot imagine more important questions. I love the so-called "brights" who insist they find nature and the universe endlessly fascinating, yet are absolutely incurious about how they got here and indifferent to where they're going.

"I am also a big fan of education where the subject has ... you know .... facts."

So it's not just theology, but you also oppose all of the arts, literature and poetry (and for that matter math, computer science etc.)?

You say that I, Anonymous, "object to challenging these assertions"? Where on earth is your evidence for that, evidence guy? Poking holes ain't censorship.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 5, 2007 12:19 AM
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Mr Anonymous and Brian

Once more, Brian gives us some substance.

Anonymous gives us BS.

Not a word of substance in it.

Mr A (how evocative the initial)
you say this is the first time you trumpet your superiority.
It has been drippingly obvious that you so regard yourself in every empty post you have written.

But you have given none of the rest of us a reason to so regard you.

This post, like all your others, does nothing to rebut the arguments of Brian or myself.

And where is the substantive point in either of your last two points. "Anonymous is educated and you're not" is, characteristically, just blather, not substance.

Make a claim. State a position.
for instance, there is (or is not -
ANYThING!) a relation between intelligence and belief. Anything of substance that can be agreed with or disagreed with, other than your unevident intelligence and erudition.

Posted by: James | January 4, 2007 11:39 PM
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James, my dear confused brother, when — out of the most charitable motives — one helpfully attempts to point out what one judges — correctly or not — to be faulty reasoning, only the most insecure wretch would leap up repeatedly to accuse that person of putting on airs.

Now, I do indeed feel that you need to worship my superiority and erudition — BUT that is the first time you have heard me say so in this discussion. Like somebody said above, stop deliberately misrepresenting my words.

As for my supposed misrepresentation, I drew an inexact yet extremely effective analogy. So revoke my rhetorical license. And by all means please do wake me up the moment any of you manages to contribute a substantive point.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 4, 2007 11:19 PM
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You say, "Of course when it comes to the question does God exist, we are all amateurs." Actually, thousands of brilliant professional philosophers and theologians have employed their reason, intellects, and all the available evidence to ponder and debate the nature of God for a very long time.
---------------------
Such an excellent point. Humans have pondered "God" for millenia. Tell me, what have we learned?

Do we know what he wants?
Do we know if he cares?
Do we know what he's like?
OK, a basic one. Do we even know if he exists?

Your comment below covers it off nicely:-)
---------------------------------------
Look, I have no idea what God would be if it existed, or what it would have to be in order to exist, or whether it may have existed, or may yet exist.

--------------------------------------
Not a terribly productive line of enquiry then:-) Compare the results of scientific enquiry garnered in only the last 300 years. Wow ... religion gets it ass kicked as regards explanations about the universe. Huh.

Mr. A. (may I call you Mr. A.?) Theology is a non subject, the stale recycling of ideas that are millenia old, the assertion of details that can never be confirmed or disputed. So why waste our time? Philosophy is another subject all together, and certainly far more interesting, but I don't object to that. I am also a big fan of education where the subject has ... you know .... facts.

You say you don't know what God is, or even IF God is, either. Great we are in agreement on that point. However, I object to the bald unsupported assertion that a supernatural construct exists, with layers of detail and specifics. All Loving, All powerful, died for our sins, one yet three etc. You seem not to have a problem with that, and even to object to challenging these assertions.

Given your comments, that seems something of a contradiction, why protect what you can patently see is untrue?

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 4, 2007 11:17 PM
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Anonymous has No Name
and No Substance
YET again

For the um-teenth time
Anonymous has skirted any substantive issues
that have been raised

(like how he fudge my argument on
the correlation of intelligence and belief
to make it seem like I was making a correlation
between intelligence and
God's existence)

and instead is spending all of his (and our) time trying vainly to be clever by derogating Brian's intelligence.

I for many have gotten infinitely more substance out of Brian's thoughts than I have out of
Anonymous's
Add Hominium (oh Mr A, is it spelled ad hominem?)
squibblings.

How bout really addressing the point I made to you above about how you deliberately misrepresented the argument about intelligence and belief.

Or maybe you weren't intelligent enough to understand the distinction.

Sorry to be so frank, but Brian is actually trying to make substantive points, and doing so much more effectively than you,
while you are just trying to demonstrate how superior and better educated you are than the rest of us. Not doing too good a job either.

Posted by: James | January 4, 2007 10:31 PM
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Of course I acknowledge that Dennett is a philosopher, but I refer to the majority of "bright" posters on this thread.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 4, 2007 10:13 PM
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Brian,

Greetings. I wonder if you may have heard of an area of human endeavor called education. (I'm trying very hard to act naughty 'cause I know you like it.)

Somebody warned me about people like you (and James) who think education is vastly overrated and an atrocious time-waster.

You say, "It's not like there is a body of evidence we can address to formulate a position on the characteristics of God." Then you immediately contradict yourself. You say you look to the universe and the world for evidence, and then you formulate your own position.

But an opinion that is reached without the benefit of education is, needless to say, merely an uneducated opinion.

You say, "Of course when it comes to the question does God exist, we are all amateurs." Actually, thousands of brilliant professional philosophers and theologians have employed their reason, intellects, and all the available evidence to ponder and debate the nature of God for a very long time.

Look, I have no idea what God would be if it existed, or what it would have to be in order to exist, or whether it may have existed, or may yet exist. I have but the flimsiest evidence that you yourself exist (and you very easily could be just a devilish bit of software). And I have no idea how probable it is that I myself exist, and if I do, whether perhaps like you I am just a piece of kludged code.

One thing is for certain, though: Uneducated amateurs produce uneducated amateurish answers. (Then for a wholly undeserved boost to their self-esteem, they nickname themselves "brights".)

I wonder if Brother Dawkins ever has offered the least proof that he himself exists — or do you simply believe in him?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 4, 2007 10:03 PM
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Intelligence Definition

First, "A", excuse me, in my last post I meant Anonymous.

Now to your points about intelligence.

I gave you a definition of intelligence.
If you don't like that one, go to Wikipedia. They have a reasonable study of the Concept.

it's not a perfect concept, but it is a lot clearer than the Concept of God. Or of Pornography.

So if one is going to say intelligence doesn't exist because the concept is fuzzy, we certainly have to say God and Pornography don't exist. I know pornography exists, being God-less.

The measurement is certainly *not entirely* subjective. If you took the five favorite intelligence tests and gave them out, you would get pretty good correlation.

Your characterization in point to, that since there is no concurrance then atheists on this post are dishonest or cowardly, is, with all due respect, bizarre.

I happen to be having a beer after work with all the atheists iin North America, and I guarantee you we will come up with an ironclad definition of intelligence for you.

What country did you say you live in?

Posted by: James | January 4, 2007 4:20 PM
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Intelligence Studies

Once again (let me count the ways) A distorts the question or misreads it.

The proposition was NOT
Scientists do not believe in God
THEREFORE God does not exist.

The Proposition was:
Intelligence and Belief in a Personal God
are negatively correlated.

This could be true, and God could actually exist.
Duh.

I presume elite scientists are more intelligent than I, and I know they are more intelligent than anonymous.

So they are a *sub-group* of the more intelligent people we can use to test our proposition, I believe. If you don't *think* so,throw them out.

Lots of other studies cited on the site I referenced have done correlation studies BEYOND just scientists. But you knew that. You were being cute, I know.

Posted by: James | January 4, 2007 4:10 PM
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James @January 3, 2007 10:16 AM

Sorry for the delay in responding.

I expected two things: a definition of 'intelligence' (not a link about studies on religious opinion); concurrence by the atheists on the board that is is indeed the definition that will be discussed.

I must admit that this is a bit unfair: (1) there is no strict definition of intelligence. That of course makes its measurement subjective; (2) There will be no concurrence since, if you will pardon a blunt way of putting it, the atheists on the board are rather dishonest and cowardly. Let me clarify: the preferred tactic, of the atheists on these boards, is to state "since you can't prove a negative, it is incumbent on the theist to prove his position". I disagree with that of course: If you believe in 0 rather than 1 (or 100), you must prove that 0 is correct.

Posted by: A | January 4, 2007 3:40 PM
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The term "brights" just doesn't work - when you are trying to replace a negative image ("Atheist")with a more positive one, a term that smacks of arrogance is counterproductive. Try "free-thinker." It connotes open mindedness and independent thinking, free of dogma. That is how I came to not believe in any of the multitude of gods, even though my parents pushed one of them. For the current athiest "vogue" to continue, a more positive and descriptive term could only help.

Posted by: AmericanFlyer | January 4, 2007 9:21 AM
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If you ask an intelligent person a yes/no question whether he believes in something about which he is entirely ignorant, what is his response likely to be?

I don't know?

Of course when it comes to the question does God exist, we are all amatuers. We can only give our best guess. It's not like there is a body of evidence we can address to formulate a position on the characteristics of God.

Look at scale of the universe. Try a few prayers. Look around at the injustice in the world. Reflect.

My conclusion? There is no God. Now, you tell me why you think there is one.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 4, 2007 8:09 AM
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How can an intelligent person — who knows that mastering a field of study requires years of formal education as well as disciplined, determined effort — expect that there is one and only one special body of knowledge that will just appear in his brain through magical revelation?

Is such a belief rational?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 4, 2007 7:50 AM
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If you ask an intelligent person a yes/no question whether he believes in something about which he is entirely ignorant, what is his response likely to be?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 4, 2007 7:44 AM
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None of the studies established whether the interviewees actually knew what they were talking about.

(P.S. I love the idea of simply asking science majors whether they believe in God and then drawing conclusions from that. You could just as well ask English majors to explain nanotechnology, and then conclude that nanotechnology does not exist. It's just so utterly absurd I could scream — and in fact, I am screaming at this very moment.)


Commenting on the existence of invisible friends requires a course? I don't think so.

It just requires native intelligence ... the more intelligent you are, the liklier you are to reach the obvious conclusion, nothwithstanding all the nonsense religites spout.

Oh and you are BAD, a very bad man. Or woman.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 4, 2007 5:44 AM
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I'm a 'closet' bright. Being an atheist in Missouri is not that far from being a Jew in Nazi Germany. But at least I don't live in Kansas!

Posted by: Mike | January 4, 2007 5:21 AM
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James,

A new survey of art history majors concludes that dark matter is a form of Mayan dance ritual.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 4, 2007 1:05 AM
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Hi Rick McGirr:

Just wanted to say thanks for expressing your negative views on the term "brights" so clearly. No matter what anyone says it carries with it the connotation that those who are not atheists/agnostics/pantheists or what have you are dim.

I agree with every word you say. 'Tis a shame that the term has seen the light of day. One of the contributors to another discussion suggested that the term "godless" (nice internal play on the word) would have been much better and there are many other possibilities. Spoiling a good idea with a bad choice of label makes no sense and is not very bright. Why didn't they hold a vote on different possibilities for a suitable name? I can see that they did not want to restrict support to atheists and wanted to include agnostics, pantheists and so on but "brights" simply does not do the trick.

Posted by: Ted Swart | January 3, 2007 9:33 PM
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Okay, I've checked (and then re-verified) all 40 million sites (actually, about 7% were either down or stale links).

None of the studies established whether the interviewees actually knew what they were talking about.

(P.S. I love the idea of simply asking science majors whether they believe in God and then drawing conclusions from that. You could just as well ask English majors to explain nanotechnology, and then conclude that nanotechnology does not exist. It's just so utterly absurd I could scream — and in fact, I am screaming at this very moment.)

Posted by: Anonymous | January 3, 2007 7:15 PM
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I am an atheist. I don't mind being called an atheist, even though the linguistic implication of the word "atheist" is a negative one. I'm very negative about the history of the churches and the pain and death they have inflicted, particularly among races exploited by European missionaries during the just-completed millenium. I prefer to be referred to with a term such as "atheist" because it is simple, factual, and reports my personal history of having rejected mainstream, traditional religious claims and thought. After agreeing that there is no god, I think there's as much disagreement among atheists as there is among any multiple groups that one might see as 'at odds with each other'. I've always resisted being trendy, peppy, commercial, plastic, petty, shallow, deceitful, arrogant, obnoxious, clique-y, dismissive, condescending, rude, separatist, and being lumped in with a bunch of people I don't know. The term "Brights", as I've seen it applied, is all of these and more.

Mr. Dennett, your comparison of "Bright" to "Gay" is off the mark, although well-intentioned. The meaning of the word "gay" is somewhere along the lines of "sad," or "gloomy," but not necessarily. Just because one is not gay, in the old sense, one does not have to be unhappy. "Gay" intones an elevated state, perhaps a temporary one, as in "the gay '90's (no, I'm not in the "gay is a choice" camp). But the un-gay, again in the old sense, don't necessarily have to be gloomy and sad.

But terms used to describe someone who isn't bright tilt very steeply towards the bin labelled "stupid, dumb, slow, retarded, etc." No matter what I think of religious people, I would never want them to think that I see them as stupid for their beliefs. There are many intelligent believers, Francis Collins, for example, who debated Richard Dawkins in the pages of Time magazine. To 'diss' the lot of them with such a moniker is nothing short of elitist.

So count me among those who dislike the stupid term "Brights", do not intend to use the term to describe or define myself, and dislike and even resent being called a "Bright".

Posted by: Rick McGirr | January 3, 2007 11:05 AM
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INtelligence Definition

Thanks AM - your desire for definitions makes perfect sense.

Here is ONE site that cites a few studies.

http://kspark.kaist.ac.kr/Jesus/Intelligence%20&%20religion.htm

You can check THEIR definitions of intelligence (as can we all, we don't have to take my word for it)

which I suspect will vary slightly.

Probably the most important question is how they MEASURE intelligence.

IQ tests are more useful than their reputation, but not the only way.

The Scientific American survey looked at the correlation of Scientists with a BS in Science with belief. To me it is a logical assumption that BS Science grads are more intelligent than the general public, at least in the scientific domain. But judge for yourself.

Same issue with the elite scientists in the American Academy, 90% of whom do NOT believe in a personal God. I would guess they are VERY intelligent, but I don't know if they could write poems as well as Anonymous can.

BUT: many studies exist, and most of them are not just with scientists. Check the site, or google Religion atheism intelligence and you'll get 40 million hits.

Thanks for your insistence on evidence. How refreshing.

Posted by: James | January 3, 2007 10:16 AM
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Re Brian, Anonymous, and Hate

Brian, my sympathies.

I have been trying to get a rational, salient, responsive-to-the-facts response out of Mr A for a while.

So far the most cogent statement of his beliefs I have been able to obtain is:

"Huh? Forty million......Oh--okay, now I get it. I've been punk'd!!
You and your friend really had me going! What a putz I am. Ha ha ha."

(by 'Anonymous", jan 2 , 2006

by far NOT his best poetry.

Posted by: James | January 3, 2007 10:06 AM
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James @Posted January 2, 2007 9:24 PM

Thank you for your response.

Now if I can get consensus from the forum, in particular the 'bright' ones, that this is indeed the definition of intelligence, we can proceed and discuss any correlation between intelligence and atheism.

Having a scientific background, I prefer to get the definitions and assumptions stated BEFORE the fact.

Posted by: AM, Vienna, VA | January 3, 2007 8:12 AM
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Anonymous @ January 2, 2007 9:29 PM

You mean they are rather dim?

(Sorry, I couldn't resist).

Posted by: AM, Vienna, VA | January 3, 2007 8:07 AM
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Let the hate flow! Let me have it! Talk trash about President Bush! Please! Brian!

Who said anything about hate? I'm just defining you as your holy scriptures define you. Are you not the salt of the earth? The chosen? The elect? From the other side, that sounds awfully like arrogant bigotry. If you don't subscribe to that, you aren't reading your scriptures right and would be well advised to ditch the whole thing.

Frankly, you seem confused about tolerance in secular society. We must certainly tolerate each others difference and respect each others space. However, tolerating the INTOLERANT is a recipe for disaster. Secular society must resist ideoligies that make claims about absolute truth, and make repeated and observable efforts to restrict the freedom of the rest of us.

As for Bush, anyone that has a good word to say about that monster ... nuff said.

Mind you, a sense of humour is a good sign .... there is hope for you yet:-)

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 3, 2007 12:50 AM
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Brian, I am proud as punch to be a dogmatic, sexist, genocidal neo-Nazi, homophobic bigot and a fundie thumper Christer Jesusland Taliban Christofascist. Please call me more names, because I deserve it. I am very, very naughty. Tell me how naughty I am, Brian! Tell me!! Get very, very, very angry with me! Only you can stop me from spreading my pernicious and posionous stuff! Only you can put an end to my arrogance and hubris! Let the hate flow! Let me have it! Talk trash about President Bush! Please! Brian!

Posted by: Anonymous | January 3, 2007 12:25 AM
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So, the discussion should focus on making our time and place better -- not on denigrating others belief systems.

... and there is the blind spot Greg. Religious belief systems are irrational, dangerous arrant nonsense for which you place the burden of disproof on others. Yet you and your fellow travellers appear utterly incapable of grasping this. You guys don't like it when I call a spade a spade. I don't like it when it you insist you have the absolute truth, THE VERY ESSENCE OF THE BIG THREE MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS, and acme of arrogance and hubris.

I do not consider middle easterners "rag heads" but many of your religious fellow travellers do. This is your problem to resolve, retreating into denial about it does nothing for your credibility.

Finally, many religious people are dogmatic, sexist, genocidal bigots. This is an inescapable truth, a cursory glance at the islamic world confirms this. Christians don't get a free pass either, their "moderation" is a strictly recent, and largely involuntary, development. Many are not (dogmatic, sexist, genocidal bigots) of course, but your religious texts inevitably push you in this direction. As a secular humanist it's my duty to combat the spread of such pernicious and posionous stuff. Sorry if that puts you out.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 2, 2007 11:23 PM
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Well, I've read all the posts up to mine and I have to say this: As an atheist for nearly 53 years I never needed a label..not even atheist. I find "bright" to be somewhat arrogant sounding and unnecessary. We all, theists and non theists alike, can discuss the philosophical merits of each others "beliefs", determinations, whatever you choose to call them until we are a mass of melted verbiage. In the end we are all human. Unless we all become little mirrors of one another in thought and deeds, we will always have differences...some will have religion and others will do well without it. What we all need to do is to cease the indoctrination from either side. I have never attempted to "sway" someone to atheism and I can never be "saved" for JC. I think that atheism can come to one without all the arrogance I'm beginning to see. I've already seen enough of it from the religious side ( please don't read this as a gross generalization of all religions because it comes from personal experience) and would find it beyond distasteful were it to become a hallmark of a-theism.

Wykdchiba, a decent human with no need for god/gods et.al.

Posted by: Wykdchiba | January 2, 2007 9:58 PM
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Flash:
Anonymoua ia oue New Deity!

Having seen him show with great consistency how much more intelligent he is than all the other posters on this site,
and how incisively critical he is of other posts,

I think that he just might be, you know, that Ineffable Omniscient Being we have all been searching for.

We can forgive his bailing out and making incomprehensible remarks when his positions have been demolished because, as has long been noted, Deities work in mysterious ways.

BTW
can anyone tell me what
"Huh? Forty million......Oh--okay, now I get it. I've been punk'd!!
You and your friend really had me going! What a putz I am. Ha ha ha."

is that a rap song I should know?

Posted by: James | January 2, 2007 9:45 PM
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To AM, Vienna, VA: I'm not sure we have the creme de la brights on this line.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 2, 2007 9:29 PM
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Brian, the fact that you relate religion and belief to rape, slavery and the like, while using phrases like towel heads tells me all I need to know. You don't want to enter into a civil discussion. I know you not, but you seem pretty angry. How you can lump people into categories in the manner that you have defies all logic and reason. Maybe you're simply trying to stir things up, maybe you actually believe what you've said. Either way, your supposed solution is to let 10 to 14 year olds decide what they choose? You're kidding, I hope. It seems that your choice is to force me to teach my children there is no God. Sorry, I live in a free society where that choice is given to me, not you. Teaching children about life, including faith, is my parental obligation. Once adults, they can choose freely where they go. At least in my household, it doesn't seem to have created any monsters.
You see, just because you don't believe doesn't negate God. It simply means you don't believe. As for all here who don't believe, that us their right, and I believe over the course of the last week, for the most part, it has been a good, although somewhat stressed, discussion. No one is changing their mind. That's OK. I simply posted because I thought it healthy to discuss the matter with others who thought differently than I. I have learned a good bit from the discussion, but I have not changed my mind about faith in God. I really don't think anyone expected anyone else to change positions -- again, just good healthy discussion. I think, based on the last week of threads, that if we discuss other issues besides faith, that we likely have more in common than not. So, the discussion should focus on making our time and place better -- not on denigrating others belief systems.

Posted by: Greg | January 2, 2007 9:25 PM
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Defining Intelligence

Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

defines intelligence as

the ability to
a. solve problems (how do you figure out if God exists? for example)
b. make products (like theory of evolution, Aida, Guernica)

Posted by: James | January 2, 2007 9:24 PM
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james,

Huh? Forty million......Oh--okay, now I get it. I've been punk'd!!

You and your friend really had me going! What a putz I am. Ha ha ha.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 2, 2007 9:24 PM
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Oh, well. I asked the 'brights' to define intelligence for me. No response. I suppose that they are either ignorant of the definition or too arrogant.

Posted by: AM, Vienna, VA | January 2, 2007 9:16 PM
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Intelligence and Anonymous

Let me get this straight:
there is no such thing as intelligence?
everyone is equal in "intelligence? well, i suppose if there is not such thing...
there is no such thing as belief in a personal god (one who has effects on our personal lives)?

Are you a postmodernist?

I feel like I need to lead you by the hand through those 40 million web sites I pointed you towards.

If the "elite scientists" were the only sample, we would only be able to make conclusions about elite scientists, not intelligent people.

But the 40 million web sites cover a much broader sample than that.

We are supposed to trust your "research methods" (which we have never seen evidence of) more than the research methods of Scientific American and Nature and the 40 other studies cited at the second site i noted above.

And once more (!!) there are 40 million sites, the sum of whose content says that if there is anything like intelligence, and anything like a belief that religion and god are very important, which any commonsensical person knows, they are negatively correlated.

Posted by: James | January 2, 2007 8:48 PM
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James,

Oy, not this elite scientist thing again. The premise is that this group is an accurately representative proxy for the entire population of highly intelligent people (global? US?). Has the truth of that assumption been conclusively demonstrated through empirical means? Might there possibly be highly intelligent individuals in other fields who are not even eligible for this group?

And, of course, asking people whether or not they believe in God is the most ridiculously unproductive activity I can imagine. It's an unanswerable question — at least in a human lifetime, since that's how long we'll have to discuss our respective definitions for God before we can get anywhere. The idea that you just tally up yes/no responses is (frankly) idiocy.

But the most important issue (per my earlier post) is whether the people you're surveying have the slightest idea what they're talking about. You (James) can test your hypothesis only by controlling for the degree of religious knowledge and education on the part of the subjects. Someone on a par with Stephen Hawking can be an utter ignoramus when it comes to, say, the IRS code — or theology.

Anyway, I'm all-knowing?? First I heard of that, but thank you. I'm flattered, but I would be grateful to anyone kind enough to point out my errors in a civil way. If anybody can explain away the concerns I've expressed in this or the previous post, I'm all ears.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 2, 2007 7:57 PM
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Anonymous Help

I just googled
"intelligence religion"
and got 40,900,000 hits.

try it yourself.

guess what: they all said Highly Religious People tend to be those of the Highest intelligence (just kidding again).

One of my moron friends on this site suggested I try it.

Posted by: James | January 2, 2007 7:47 PM
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Intelligence and Religion

Since Mr. Anonymous doesn't like the data point I cited, here are a couple more out of many many others, for those who, unlike Mr Anonymous, like to do their own research.

1. the study cited by Dawkins and widely reported, of the Elite scientists who are members of the American Academy. I know IQ "doesn't mean anything", but many presume these elite scientists are more intelligent than Mr Anonymous.

Over 90$ do not believe in a personal god.

2. At this site
http://kspark.kaist.ac.kr/Jesus/Intelligence%20&%20religion.htm

are given the results of research by Scientific American and by Nature Magazine with substantially the same results.

Anonymous has no name and no data. He doesn't like one data point and he ignores many others that reach the same conclusion.

He is so all-knowing himself that he doesn't need to concern himself with a breadth of data that is available to him and any moron who knows how to google.

Posted by: james | January 2, 2007 6:57 PM
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Labeling is one of our problems.
Agnostics, or rather, Atheists, Brights, Freethinkers, Heathens, Heretics, Infidels, Nullifidians, Secular Humanists, and Skeptics, so many labels for such an independent thinking group.
I feel that we are a lot like the Democratic party, and probably many are, in respect that we cover such a broad spectrum of ground it is really difficult to pick a topic to get us all to rally around. The republicans usually pick a hard right (winged) topic and suddenly all the republicans are at attention. Dems, and the non religious, are just not as organized, or rather we don't all react in the same way that republicans do, especially when needed to, when a left or liberal topic is uttered. You definitely hear a lot more about us now than in the past, so we are gaining ground. When I say that, I mean insofaras to be more accurately counted. It's not like we are taking over the world......or are we

Posted by: Doubting Thomas | January 2, 2007 6:53 PM
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Re: Are More Intelligent People less Religious?

James' latest attempt to link "religiosity" (whatever that is) with intelligence is amusing.

James cites as "evidence" a blog post that tries to correlate "national IQs" (country averages) with the results of a public opinion poll.

In other words, these are not data for individuals at all, but rather averages for countries whose populations and demographic makeups diverge wildly (to say nothing of divergent concepts of religion). Some of the populations are huge. In some cases religious identity is inseparable from ethnic identity, with all the significance that entails. Needless to say, this exercise is incapable of yielding any valid statement at all with respect to James' hypothesis.

The post that James cites notes helpfully that "IQ data for each individual country needs to be taken with a grain of salt." (Hey, no kidding.)

The English version of the poll question was: "How important is religion in your life—very important, somewhat important, not too important, or not at all important?" Precisely what does that question mean to different individuals of different faiths in different cultures after being translated into 46 languages and 17 dialects? Nothing that means much.

Beyond this dubious "analysis", the bottom line is that any investigation that fails to control for the subjects' competency — their depth of religious knowledge and education — is utterly useless for purposes of evaluating James' hypothesis.

At the risk of veering into ad hominem territory, it's worth noting for our readers that this "study" was conducted three years ago by a guy who says he was "waiting for Christmas Eve deliveries at my girlfriend's office, kind of bored". As for impartiality, the name of the author to whose post James links directly is (you guessed it) "godless".

Aye, the godless are such freaks for hard data. (Not.)

Posted by: Anonymous | January 2, 2007 6:25 PM
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Thank you for the comments Anon.

"The orthodox (small-o) Christian definition of faith is freely-given assent to a revealed truth"

I have problems with this formulation as well, mainly with the concept of revealed truth. Which revealed truth should you choose? Kabbalah? Quakerism? Zen Buddhism? Tibetan Buddhism? (perhaps some mish-mash of the above?)

I think that the common answer to this is that you follow your own personal revelation. However, I have troubled squaring the fundamental ignorance of man with the truth of one of his revelations. If you want to prove to yourself that something feels right to believe, I think that you often can (especially if you are young), regardless of the truth of the proposition.

A buddhist friend of mine in college (raised buddhist, not temple-going) believed in reincarnation. Why? Because he had meditated about it and through introspection had seen the truth of the proposition.

I don't have the citation for it, but I once read that most Born-Again Christians become Born-Again before they are 18. Are these children's minds really independent enough for them to decide on the revelations of Jesus? OR is it more likely that they want to fit in: to please parents and friends.
Note that while technically there are three options for the child, one of them is a no-go:
1) I take jesus into my heart!
2) I haven't taken Jesus into my heart yet!
3) I refuse to take Jesus into my heart!

I of course support option 3. (option 4+: converting to other systems of belief, is nearly as much out of the question as 3 until the child grows up, and can change his surroundings).

In short, I have severe reservations about whether or not "revealed" truths are in any significant way "true".

(on a different note)
I think that parents have a right to raise their children in any manner they please, so long as they do no lasting harm to their children. The most obvious cases of harm (incestual rape, physical abuse), no one would advocate. However, when the damage done is psychological, I think people are (rightfully) more cautious in calling it abuse.

Where would you draw the line? Certainly many children ARE (in this sad barbaric land of ours) indoctrinated with a fear of hell. Although some may eventually to deal with it rationally (and others may never really think its true), it is a terrible burden to lay on any child.

Lets take a practical example here: "If you masturbate, god will kill kittens." Of course, that's a joke, but the real version is worse: "If you masturbate, you will go to hell." So when (most) children reach puberty, and the sexual urges start coming, another item tags along: shame and guilt. While some shame and guilt are necessary for a healthy life, it is my opinion that the extensive shame and guilt attached to such a trivial thing as masturbation is more than absurd, it is tragic.

Posted by: Alan R | January 2, 2007 6:00 PM
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Well, the atheists and the religious seem to have been accounted for as far as the clever naming scheme goes, but what about me and mine? Those who believe in both science and God, and that believe that the idea that they are somehow contradictory premises is a simplistic and incorrect assumption, based on one side of the debate as a lack of imagination and on the other as a lack of reason. That all that exists was created by a loving God using the tools of infinite space, infinite time and complexity as an emergent property of less complex systems. You're all jerks. Ha ha. Happy new years everyone.

Posted by: BeatitudeSputnik | January 2, 2007 5:39 PM
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Brian's post raises a fundamental and important issue. I hope your delicate psyche will survive Anon's piercing rebuke.

An amplification on Brian's point:

What is perhaps the Worst element of parental indoctrination of children is

Instilling the Fear of Hell and Eternal Damnation in kids.

I consider this a form of child abuse. Think about what such teaching contributes to the psychological health of a child!

It is, I would surmise, also closely tied to the desire of many religious fanatics to kill, or at least brutally dehumanize, those Infidels who might challenge their chance of excaping this eternal torment.

It is truly barbaric. Not quite as bad as selling your daughter into sexual slavery, but oidous none the less.

Posted by: James | January 2, 2007 4:51 PM
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Brian shares, "Yet the most religious in the US are the exact same people keen to 'kill all rag heads'. George Bush being exhibit number 1."

Thank you, Brian, for elevating the level of discourse. Thank you so much for exemplifying reasoned, principled, fact-based argument as against ignorant prejudice and febrile hysteria.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 2, 2007 4:27 PM
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That is the belief system I hear in church on Sunday and the belief system that I teach my children. If more simply followed it, the world would be a better place, no?

Sure, it would be a glorious utopia. Yet the most religious in the US are the exact same people keen to "kill all rag heads". George Bush being exhibit number 1.

As regards the indoctrination of children, insisting that they brush their teeth, or clean their room is not the same as telling them sacred lies. That you are certain that a specific kind of supernatural construct exists, when you cannot possibly be certain of any such thing.

At one time a father could kill, rape or sell his progeny into slavery without fear of repercussion. Children (and women) were in a very real sense mere possessions, no different from a cart, or a cow or a pair of shoes.

Throughout the last 300 years, in effect since the Enlightenment, this sense of ownership has been steadily eroded (in the teeth of resistance from the most persistently religious) to the point where children in some countries are rightly considered to be individuals with the same rights as any other person.

With that in mind, perhaps there are grounds for more robust societal action? Would society allow parents to FORCE their children to smoke, drink alcohol or engage in any potentially harmful activity? Certainly sex below a certain age, and of course incest is already criminalised in all developed countries. Is religious indoctrination not worse for a 14 year old girl, than safe consensual sex with a 15 year old partner ... ?

If we really believe that religious indoctrination is dangerous, doesn't it blur into the same category as enforced female curcumcision, or enforced marriage? Shouldn't society at least have a helpline (along the lines of those currently available to report physical or sexual abuse) for children who reject parental religious indoctrination?

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 2, 2007 4:11 PM
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Are More Intelligent People less Religious?

Is the Pope Catholic?

One more highly scientific site for us to check the evidence on this subject is

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/001527.html

Very smart site.

The NEGATIVE correlation of religiosity and intelligence that this site cites based on their data is -.889.

Wow. That is high.

(For those of you believers out there, Negative Correlation means..... just a joke).

Remember, Some women are taller than Some men.
and Some believers are more intelligent than Some atheists.

Posted by: James | January 2, 2007 1:51 PM
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Andy, are you suggesting parents don't have the right to teach their children their belief system. Didn't think so. You also assume alot about me and mine. So you know, I was raised a Catholic, and am a Catholic. I do live, and have always lived in an overwhelmingly protestant community. (Southern WV) The schools I went to were public, and religion was not taught in our schools. (I am now the Board of Ed president of that school system.) I have raised my children in my belief system, not only regarding faith, but also in the importance of education, of honor and intergrity, in treating everyone with dignity, in equality, in the value of hard work, etc. Are those OK with you?
Your comment is particularly interesting since my twin boys are now 20. On Sundays when they're in from college I go to their room, ask them to go to church, and if they don't, I go with the rest of my family. My two younger daughters complain I'm not being fair. My response is that their adult brothers are adults, and must decide on their own what they will do. I raised them as best I could, now they must decide. I also told my two daughters they would recieve the same courtesy when the became adults.
No, I don't force faith or belief on my children any more than I force them to go to school, get an education, clean their room, and do all the things responsible parents do for their children. I offer them the opportunity, talk to them about it, and direct them as best I can. They then decide.
As parents, we may teach them about religion if we please, this is a free country. At least in my household, they are taught to be free thinkers, ask questions and decide for themselves. I am pleased to say they believe.
Your point seems to be that I should teach them not to believe as children. Is that any less indoctrination? No sir, that is not your decision to make about my children. It belongs to my wife and I. You may and should raise your children as you choose. That's what a free society is all about.
Last thing -- Jesus' message is one of peace,love, caring and forgiveness. That is the belief system I hear in church on Sunday and the belief system that I teach my children. If more simply followed it, the world would be a better place, no?

Posted by: Greg | January 2, 2007 1:37 PM
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I would like to see some one post the "principles of rational discourse" and site where and how they arose. Every time I mention the necessity of civility and the need for abiding to a set of principles in "argumentation" I am asked to provide one convenient source which I cannot do.

Posted by: ernest reinhart | January 2, 2007 1:27 PM
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I think that these latest American existentialist revolutionaries are (as well as arriving almost a century late) unclear in exactly what it is they are actually trying to achieve.

It is established that decision makers and power brokers at the helm Abramic religions will not allow trivial things like truth or reason to intervene with their respective state-endorsed agendas.

Entering into rational debate with moderate fringes will possibly allow useful discussion with those moderate fringes.

Radical disorganised action is an option; independent cells of intellectual reason can be started by individuals or groups and are in no need of high level organisation. The truth is master, truth that can be proved or disproved using reason and science.

Who cares if they are called 'Bright' or 'Atheist' or ‘Naturalist’? Naming the movement is a manifestation and such a dangerous phenomenon as since well before the Brights were, the truth is.

Every conscious being uses reason to make sense of its environment; they only ever leave this course of action when they are convinced that it no longer suits their own personal agenda.

Nothing will be gained by interfering, act as an example and let things take their course.

http://www.myspace.com/taowithattitude

Posted by: Lao | January 2, 2007 12:26 PM
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re Anonymous and Dawkins

Dear Mr A: thanks for correcting my rusty latin.
I will add "hominem" to my list of frequently mispelled words.

My request as a follow up was that
since you criticize Dawkins' level of theological understanding,

i was asking:
can you give us a specific example, say in his criticism of St Augustine, where Dawkins was off the mark in his Theology and his arguments because of his deficient knowledge in this area?

Also, a good deal of D's book deals with questions like Intelligent Design, and the Argument from Design, which have clear overlaps with scientific understanding (and logic), perhaps even more scientific than theological in my little mind, so D is the perfect guy for those areas.

I thought his refutation of the argument "the universe is so complicated it must have been designed by a God" was quite cogent. Didn't you?

Posted by: James | January 2, 2007 11:51 AM
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regarding comments from some of the christians that have posted on the site, especially Greg way up near the top of these notes.

GREG states that people are NOT forced into christianity! I find that very difficult to understand, he like others were probably sent to a school where christianity was the faith taught at school, or sent to church by parents, or of course taught at home that there is indeed a god. Which bit of indoctranation does he not understand. When i was a child i did the sunday school bit as did many othr children. But as you got older and asked questions, you were told you had to have faith and beleive in the word of god!

Well i have read some of 'gods words' over the years, what moses said in different situations alegedly. Well if having faith in god means you have to kill family members if they like allah a bit more than jesus, or wipe out the male population of a foe, and all the non virgins then you can keep your god and be done with you.

then the argument from the christians is something like 'these are different times now and we wouldnt do that!'. Well as i see it, if the word of god doesn't matter now in some bits you don't like very much or embarrasses you, why can you say the rest is true now? :o)

Posted by: Andy Flynn | January 2, 2007 11:38 AM
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James, I also feel the need to clarify, since you misquote me: I'm very happy to acknowledge Dawkins' intellect and brilliance as a practioner and explicator of science. I was referring only to the level of theological understanding to which he addresses his anti-religious polemics.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 2, 2007 11:27 AM
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James,

No, it's not called "ad hominum", actually, but you can look up the spelling at your convenience.

In any case, since I've been the object of numerous personal barbs from your general direction, I figure it's just fair play for your idol to take a few.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 2, 2007 11:06 AM
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of course atheists can be elected here joey-
all they have to do is make sense and and have concern for their constituents and get elected.
we just dont seem to have an excess of atheists in the public service sector-

americans are so reactive against right wing conservatives right now that they even voted out very moderate republicans in the current congress which goes into session this week-

all they need is the desire to serve- the political scene is ripe for them- whats the name of the post again?
o yes- atheism enjoying a cetrtain vogue right now
if that is indeed true- an intelligent one should pop up and seize the opportunity

Posted by: victoria | January 2, 2007 10:59 AM
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Alan, thanks for your thoughts. A quick reply to a couple of your points:

Alan says, "The primary issue that I have with faith is that it is antithetical to doubt."

The orthodox (small-o) Christian definition of faith is freely-given assent to a revealed truth. By that definition, faith coexists with doubt. I cannot freely give assent to something that I know (i.e., have no doubt) to be true. Knowledge extinguishes doubt, but faith cannot. In this life there always will be doubt, but we are free to choose to have faith while doubting.

Alan goes on to ask, "If you believe something without proof, how [does?] the evidence for/against your faith ever get worse?"

A believer cannot in good "faith" and conscience give his assent to an assertion that either reason or empirical evidence conclusively demonstrates to be false. In that case, however, if the assertion is well established in tradition, and many who have gone before him found some truth in it, it would be foolish for him not to reflect on what that essential, perhaps underlying, truth may be. And I'm sure you agree he ought to treat any new information with skepticism.

Concerning Dawkins and poetry: I should have clarified that I meant not lyrical language per se so much as the idea that truth can find expression in mythical, figurative, metaphorical or even fantastic language. Dawkins is a materialist absolutist who maintains that science explains everything. Anyone who has ever loved another person knows that is untrue. Perhaps science needs champions, but human ones would be more effective.

You're right to say that there is theological daylight between Ratzinger and Dawkins. However, there is less than some suppose. The pope certainly does not believe that God messes with the weather when the farmer prays for rain and beachgoers pray for sun. He does believe that contemplating who are created to be causes us to act differently than we would do otherwise, and in that sense God intervenes in our lives.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 2, 2007 10:57 AM
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Martin,

If you go to The Brights' Net website, you see clearly what we stand for:

[[The Vision]]

Persons who have a naturalistic worldview should not be culturally stifled or civically marginalized due to society’s extensive supernaturalism. Rather, they ought to be accepted as fellow citizens and full participants in the cultural and political landscape.

-------------

And we're also not defined by what we're against, but what we DO believe in ("we have a naturalistic worldview"):

[[What is a bright?]]

* A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview
* A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements
* The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview

-------------

Are you sure you're really a member?!

Posted by: Fabio | January 2, 2007 10:08 AM
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Re

The Anonymous Vs. Dawkins feud:

Mr A: I expected enlightenment from you, as you and God promised.

Instead I get an epithet - 4th grade mind and no poetry - directed at Mr Dawkins.

You are much smarter than I am, but isn't that called an ad hominum argument.

There is no substance to your criticisms.
Just name calling.

You have shown no convincing evidence for your own poetry appreciation capabilities, BTW.

Dawkins has often noted the importance of humanistic and aesthetic dimensions to human life.

I would ask him for a poetry recommendation before I would ask Anonymous, great poet that you are.

Posted by: James | January 2, 2007 9:46 AM
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Anonymous posted:

"As I pointed out above, the Pope doesn't believe in the God that Dawkins doesn't believe in. The God Dawkins aims to disprove is a fourth-grade God.

Furthermore, Dawkins is a man for whom the concept of poetry is utterly incomprehensible."


I disagree, for the pope certainly believes in an interventionist god, who responds to prayer and times of need. I am purty darn close to certain that, at least, the pope believes in Miracles, and believes the Miracles to be powered by god.

And that is certainly a God that Dawkins disbelieves.


Secondly, to say that poetry is "utterly incomprehensible" to Dawkins is not merely unfair, but fairly silly. (I hope of course, that you mean Dawkins in particular, and are not trying to make a blanket statement about pugnacious atheists). Let's look at some of Dawkins own words:
"The boy lay prone in the grass, his chin resting on his hands. He suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a heightened awareness of the tangled stems and roots, a forest in microcosm, a transfigured world of ants and beetles ... "

Perhaps not the lyricism of Eiseley, but certainly, a sense of wonder for nature pervades the passage. A sense of the profundity of the universe is commonly taken to be a religious sensation, and perhaps for your definition of religion it is. To me, it can merely be transcendent beauty, but I do not think my loss is great.

[A little plug here for Eiseley, who not very many people have read. He was a wonderful example of someone with a nonreligious appreciation for nature (and his poetry AND prose are still wonderful).]

I have some other comments as well:

1) Dawkins does not argue that all formulations of religious belief are false; he claims, actually, to be "attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented." It is pretty clear, though, that Dawkins does not include a sense of wonder at the universe in the box of religion

2) The religious positions that Dawkins does attack convincingly (fundies of any book) are NOT rare, and DO pose a serious problem (as I think most people here would agree).

Although I do think that many Christians (and other believers) are reasonable and willing to revisit their fundamental assumptions, there are also far too many who are NOT. And so, given that there are in fact Christians who believe in this simplistic, literalist (4th-Grade) fashion, I do think it is important to argue against it (this is no straw man). Furthermore, I think most people here will agree that literal interpretations of the Bible are not the best for moral edification (given some of the horrific passages in the OT). That said, I have no problems with allegorical readings of the Bible, or Aesops Fables, or Ulysses.


3) Although dogmaticism is crime in fundamentalist Christianity, and not theism, I think that, epistemiologically, faith (meaning acceptance without proof) primes one for dogma.

Some people argue that atheists are similarly dogmatic. And some are, but I think that enshrining doubt and skepticism as values is more likely to dispell dogmas, Marxist, Christian, or otherwise. Actually, atheist is far too loosey-goosey a category. "Skeptic" is much closer to what I perceive as ideal.

The primary issue that I have with faith is that it is antithetical to doubt. If you believe something without proof, how the evidence for/against your faith ever get worse? Of course, most of the time faith is not rational, it is emotional, and the reasons for changes of faith are usually emotional, and not rational (this is an unsupported claim begging to be falsified). A Scientist might claim a material basis for the universe, might expound the virtues of the scientific method, but, if he is worth his salt, he will be willing to question the validity of his approach.


Posted by: Alan R | January 2, 2007 9:40 AM
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All this hassle seems so funny for a Northern European. What, in U.S. atheists can't be elected? (Yes, I'm referring to the original article, not the mud-slinging...).

I think we have an atheist president here in Finland, but how could I know whether she really is bright or super (I don't read gossip). To us it makes no difference because it makes no real difference anyway. Still, more than half of us Finns are members of some church. Their choice.

Moral and ethics go with the community/legislation and with individuals. We don't need churches and gods anymore to keep us on the track because we have the society.

Whether a person prefers knowing to believing should not affect to his social status and possibilities.

Posted by: Joey L | January 2, 2007 7:55 AM
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Dr. Dennett:
I support the Brights movement and am in fact a member, but there seems to be something a little peculiar about the nature of the organization. What exactly is that we stand for? You might say that we stand for rational thought and the application of science. But who is not in favor of rational thought and science? It seems to me that we are defined more by what we are against than what we are in favor of. We are opposed to the use of revelation and faith as means for attaining truth and are particularly opposed to those who would impose their particular faith on the rest of us. Is that sufficient to build a movement around?

Posted by: Martin P Cohen | January 2, 2007 7:24 AM
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Attention all individuals adopting a naturalistic worldview (freethinkers, agnostics, secular humanists, atheists, etc.): If you haven't by now, please take a moment to read about the Brights movement at www.the-brights.net before posting comments (Supers and fence-sitters are encouraged to check it out as well!).

It is far too easy to inadvertently contribute to the erosion of the relationship between Supers and Brights.

I for one, am a teapot agnostic "flavored" Bright. And I view the path to truth as being cobbled with tentative explanations. These explanations are therefore always subject to revision as new evidence sees fit.

Let the inquiry begin!

Posted by: Adam Pettway | January 2, 2007 2:30 AM
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I signed on with the "brights" movement early last year. Contemplating signing on with them gave me the courage to finally admit to myself and others that I really have no reason to believe in a god. Growing up as a fundamentalist preacher's son, I had reason and ample opportunity to learn a bit about the bible and faith and belief. But too many things never made sense, though I tried to force them to make sense.

For any who have not yet checked out The Brights site, http://www.the-brights.net , the term "bright" is used as a noun, not an adjective. While I don't have anything against other terms (I particularly liked "naturalist" and Dave's suggestion, "realitarian") it seems "bright" could work, too, if given a chance.

Posted by: Stan Yoder | January 2, 2007 1:01 AM
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BTW, Dawkins explicitly has said that "if, by 'God', you mean love," his argument doesn't apply. Well, Christians in fact do mean by "God", love, because the first Christian theologian, St. John the Evangelist, said precisely that — and said it is all you need to know.

Again, Dawkins is just operating at a childish and uninformed level.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 1, 2007 11:35 PM
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James,

As I pointed out above, the Pope doesn't believe in the God that Dawkins doesn't believe in. The God Dawkins aims to disprove is a fourth-grade God.

Furthermore, Dawkins is a man for whom the concept of poetry is utterly incomprehensible.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 1, 2007 11:24 PM
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Anonymous,
Love your poems.

Thanks for enlightening us once again. Good to have one fully informed and incredibly intelligent participant in these discussions.

Please enlighten us once more:

Which major arguments for the existence of God did Dawkins leave out of his book? (You did read his book, didn't you)?

Which theologians promulgated those arguments?

And what are the flaws in Dawkins' responses to the arguments he did deal with?

C.mon. We all want to know. Enlighten us.

Posted by: James | January 1, 2007 10:50 PM
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Aw shucks, thanks, James.

BTW, if you're going to start culling bogus academic programs, there are plenty of candidates ahead of theology.

Anyway, you do have to admit it's weird how people who are highly educated in their own specialized fields — but who lack any formal theological education beyond the fourth grade — have not the least compunction about pontificating on any and all topics within that realm. Are anthropologists that quick to pop off about physics, or music scholars about macroeconomics? Just curious.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 1, 2007 9:55 PM
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WARP 10: If you want to get technical: Because I lack a fish hook – this also doesn’t mean (or prove) that a trout exists or that I am even human and live on the Earth. So???

I strongly disagree with your definition of empiricism. Empiricism has always included the entire realm of mathematics and logic for its tools-- along with sensory information.

Both scientists and the mystics (including theologicans) have always employed mathemtatics and logic....

However, mathematics and logic only work when their are accurate INPUTS. The analogy is to a computer and the Garbage In-Garbage Out principle: Feed a perfectly working and logical computer bad inputs – and you will get garbage out. Which is why the Catholic Scholastics during the Dark Ages used great learning (employing mathematics and logic) to deduce what hell was like, that the earth was the Center of the universe, etc [and yes, brilliantly deducing this based on biblical verses...] The problem was their inputs, not their reasoning....

ANN replies: I don't disagree with any of this, except (1) not very many mystics give a hoot about logic though some did, apparently, (2) the medievals didn't use math as a method -- few were interested in induction, though by the end of the 13th century there were some, and (3) you out-of-date characterization of the Middle Ages as "the Dark Ages"is really passe. Historical studies are seeing more and more clearly the origin of Western science in some of the late 13th and later theologians. I also note that while it is true that much of their reasoning included biblical texts as data, certainly not all did, especially not the later ones like Aquinas, Scotus and Occam.

Credit must also be given to the medieval Muslim and Jewish theologians for the appreciation of reason that came to be typical of later Christian theologians. The Muslims were really pioneers,at least in observing nature, and their scientific influence lasted for centuries. Avicenna, one of the greatest of metaphysicians ever, was also a doctor and his medical treatise was used in the West even past the medieval period. A truly extraordinary thinker.

WARP 10: However, even though I can accept a black box whose contents I do not understand, I must still be able to judge the outputs as spectacular and beyond explanation of natural laws.

Meaning, there must be evidence that our reason tells us that either their are miracles, else a person (or groups) actions must demonstrate something very exceptional is going on.

ANN O.: ISTM that miracles, like every other object of our empirical experience (I mean, for instance, should a man with two broken legs start to walk) is contingent and can never be totally compelling because, as with scientific generalization, there might always be some other cause which is operating which we are not aware of.

Yes, we do get into questions of "probability" when we talk about miracles (by definition they probably aren't really miracles). But the meaning of "probability" itself is almost totally problematic to me. You know some philosophy of science -- maybe you can help we with it. Sure, I know about the mathematical laws of probability as applied to data, but to me those really are just filled-in formula which happen to say how many instances of a certain kind will result in how many instances of another certain kind given a certain context. Or what? Help! In other words, there is no such thing or force as "probability".

Or what?

As to the speaking in tongues, St. Paul himself didn't think much of it. Said they should keep it to a minimum:-) Which brings us to the Bible. I've gotten interested in the Bible only in my old age, and have learned a great deal from the new scholarship -- including that of N.T. Wright who is participating in the blog. He's prodigiously informed and knows linguistic analysis which obviously helps him to interpret Scripture as pre-Wittgensteinians wouldn't have. He is, of course, controversial.

Being a Roman Catholic I was never burdened with the fundamentalist's notion of any sort of literal interpretation of Scripture. It seems to me that that has done more harm than anything to the cause of religion in the West. There are, it is quite true, severe problems in interpreting Scripture in any coherent way -- the worst to me being the image of Jahweh as thug in the early OT. But for me it remains a great source of wisdom, even the works by the primitive writers.

And a very Happy New Year to you -- and all the members of our feuding blog :-) (And thanks particularly to Sally Quinn.)

ANN O.

Posted by: Ann O. | January 1, 2007 7:51 PM
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Overall, these are great words from a very conscious mind.

Posted by: david Viramontes | January 1, 2007 7:36 PM
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Mr. Conolley, I appreciate your reply:

"I'm pretty sure they're not faith. Mark Twain quotes a schoolboy as saying, 'Faith is believing in something you know ain't so.' "

Perhaps, but schoolboys are famously naive. Twain also said "Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."

;-)

Posted by: Alien Among You | January 1, 2007 7:27 PM
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"Theological Training"

Dear Anonymous

Many intelligent people question whther Theology is a real field, with any scholarly content.

Come to think of it, many believers question whether science is a real field that tells us anything about the world.

choose your poison.

Dawkins IS a scientist, a brilliant one. Scientists are trained to evaluate claims of truth and come up with the best way to test hypotheses.

The question of the Existance of God is, among other things, a question like the existence of Quarks. Or String theory's 11 dimensions.

If there is no testability to the claim that God exists, God is meaningless.

So Dawkins seems uniquely qualified to evaluate The God Hypothesis.

Of course, he is not as learned or intelligent as you, nor are the rest of us on this site.

Posted by: James | January 1, 2007 6:48 PM
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As far as I can tell Richard Dawkins has zero theological training -- zero!!

It's like Bill Gates analyzing the works of Beethoven.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 1, 2007 5:33 PM
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We have people pontificating about science who have no idea what they're talking about, and a whole lot of people pontificating about theology who have no idea what they're talking about.

Any chance of someone commenting who actually has a substantive academic background in both?

Posted by: Anonymous | January 1, 2007 5:25 PM
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"Of course, you might not recognize your own beliefs as a form of faith (that concept having such negative connotations in enlightened circles), but what else are they?"

I'm pretty sure they're not faith. Mark Twain quotes a schoolboy as saying, "Faith is believing in something you know ain't so."

And while I don't run everything I believe through a double-blind test, I do try very hard to keep my beliefs in line with reality.

That's not faith.

Posted by: John Conolley | January 1, 2007 4:44 PM
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Greg: BRAVO! A voice of true reason.

One need look no further than to the despotic regiems throughout history of many athiests and many so-called religious leaders alike to realize they are cut from the very same cloth. What we need to beware of is "true believers" of any kind who look down upon and will grind their opponents into the dirt. Greg is right: it's all about power.

An individual's belief or faith or lack thereof is merely one of multiple tribal characterists that allow or compel us to divide and conquer other tribes. God or nature (take your pick) make us that way. Our challenge as humans is to recognize it and not give in to it.

There are better ways.

Posted by: Alien Among You | January 1, 2007 3:13 PM
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Can you let a former Catholic priest-theologian-become-humanist-psychologist put in a dime's worth? I used the Dr. handle, since I just noted another Steve reporting in; the handle does apply with my Ph.D. in psychology-don't call me Bright.
After reading dozens of the earlier (many quite good) posts, I conclude that many (most?) of you would enjoy some extensive, organized and humorous input on a truly important matter that continues to roil much more than necessary.
I do not have time to address the many scattered points here, but I invite all to download a free copy of my 184 paperback book, Imagine No Superstition at www.imagineNOsuperstition.com.
Enjoy the book and a great '07!
Steve Uhl

Posted by: Dr. Stephen Uhl | January 1, 2007 3:07 PM
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Can you let a former Catholic priest-theologian-become-humanist-psychologist put in a dime's worth? I used the Dr. handle, since I just noted another Steve reporting in; the handle does apply with my Ph.D. in psychology-don't call me Bright.
After reading dozens of the earlier (many quite good) posts, I conclude that many (most?) of you would enjoy some extensive, organized and humorous input on a truly important matter that continues to roil much more than necessary.
I do not have time to address the many scattered points here, but I invite all to download a free copy of my 184 paperback book, Imagine No Superstition at www.imagineNOsuperstition.com.
Enjoy the book and a great '07!
Steve Uhl

Posted by: Dr. Stephen Uhl | January 1, 2007 3:04 PM
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Steve,

"Divided quibblers." That is a great one. Very funny!

But, seriously, I think the comparison with the word "gay" is misleading. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay), at least, nobody actually came up with the term and started lobbying for its use. It arose organically, naturally--one might almost say by natural selection.

People with a naturalistic worldview are just not going to "get with the program." It's just not in our nature, and I'm not so sure that is a bad thing.

Posted by: Rob | January 1, 2007 2:15 PM
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On the terms atheist, agnostic, and bright, I considered myself an agnostic, since an atheist makes what seemed to me to be an untenable claim of the non-existance of something. Recently, though I decided that it is not irrationaly to say, for instance, that there are no unicorns, even though from a philosophical point of view I can't prove that proposition. If the term "bright" sticks, it's fine with me, and I am registered with the Brights.

One of the biggest services such a movement can provide is to show that there are many others like us. Children, and adults too for that matter, should be aware that the stories they hear aren't the only possible stories. It is always troubling to me to hear people who obviously have never talked to anyone they don't agree with.

A couple of the posters say that science can't answer "Why?" To me this is typical of people who believe in made-up concepts. They attach great importance to the ability to answer meaningless questions. It's like creationists saying that evolution can't explain original sin. So what?

The only drawback to being a materialist as far as I can see is that there is no vindication. You don't get to say "See, I don't exist afterall!"

Posted by: John Krehbiel | January 1, 2007 2:08 PM
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Aarmin,

I'm with you on the agnostic thing. That frustrates me too. But I think some kinds of agnostics are okay. Have you ever heard of the term teapot agnostic (just Google it if not)? I would include those people, though I think their qualification is rather pedantic. Certainly wouldn't want to exclude Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins from the fold, would we?

Posted by: Rob | January 1, 2007 2:02 PM
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I suppose if the category of non-believers need a positive label, "Bright" is as good as the many others floating about. I was never comfortable with "atheist," feeling it carried too much negative connotation with most people. "Agnostic" tends to be misleading. "Secularist" did not sound right; "humanist" was too general. For a time I thought "secular humanist" was good, but many thought it redundant. "Skeptic" and "Cynic" serve for some purposes.

I don't believe in any supernatural beings and long ago abandoned all religious doctrine. I'm not sure I need a banner to identify me, but "bright" will do as well as any other. Maybe, as Daniel Dennett says, it may take more time to catch on.

Posted by: Juan Bernal | January 1, 2007 2:02 PM
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Note, however, that my answer to this question (which is irrelevant in this context and I provide it only to make the point) may make me more or less of a "scum" to you, but the opposite to someone else who might disagree with me. Since I cannot be both at one time, I am neither.

Of course, labeling is always the first step taken by one faith in its natural progression towards dominating another. (I use the word natural with full deliberation.) And we are all guilty of it, naturally.

Absolutely, and as promised I DO apologise unreservedly. Your original post had a distinctly religious and homophobic flavour when read through my own unique filter. Hey, I'm only human.

I don't agree though, that the application of such a label to people who denigrate others for no other reason than difference, is irrelevant. It is, to poach a phrase, the whole of the law and the prophets for a genuinely secular global society. It is I would a hazard a critical criteria for our survival as a species.

I reject and despise those who would harm or demonise others purely for their difference. People must be free to worship whatever they like, in whatever way they see fit as long as it harms no one else, thats my only creed.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 1, 2007 1:35 PM
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ON alternatives to the term 'Bright'.

How about 'Realitarian'?

Posted by: Dave | January 1, 2007 1:29 PM
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Steve;

What you say doesn't wash. Those of us who are uncomfortable with the choice of the word "brights" cannot simply switch off our discomfort. No matter what anybody says the term carries with it the connotation that brights are bright and those who are not atheists,agnostics, pantheists et al are simply dumb. I am often appalled at the crude way in which atheists disparage believers and the use of the term brights simply speaks too loudly of this attitude for many of us to avoid being discomfited.

I suggested in another post that "lights" would have been a much better choice since those who are non-believers have an obligation to throw light in dark places. There are many other possible choices which would have been better such as "taboo-breakers". If you have read Sam harris, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett et al you will surely have noticed that they all draw attention to the manner in which discussing religion openly tends to be taboo.

When you say:
"How about cooperating in the initiative instead of free-thinking of other, potentially more clever choices?" it is not as easy as you make out. There are many of us who feel strongly that the choice of label which as been made is a poor one and may do more harm than good in following through on an idea which appears to be a very good one. I think DZ is correct when he says that "brights' is simply too "arrogant".

Fortunately the atheist/agnostic cause does not stand or fall on the success of the "brights" initiative.

Posted by: Ted Swart | January 1, 2007 1:27 PM
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"Some people, homophobes, racists and sexists for example, ARE scum. Thats a perfectly sensible attitude, or do you disagree?"

I disagree with the exclusivist mindset that includes homophobes, racists, and sexists, and a few other categories of -ists read in these postings. From that, alone, however, I cannot conclude that all these people are scum anymore than a deeply religious person--in the traditional sense--might conclude that you are scum based on your beliefs and comments.

"Tell me, do you think the biblical position on homosexuality is correct?"

I'm not sure what the true biblical position is; but if you mean is homosexuality somehow unnatural (i.e., not in accordance with nature), the answer is no, I don't believe so.

Note, however, that my answer to this question (which is irrelevant in this context and I provide it only to make the point) may make me more or less of a "scum" to you, but the opposite to someone else who might disagree with me. Since I cannot be both at one time, I am neither.

Of course, labeling is always the first step taken by one faith in its natural progression towards dominating another. (I use the word natural with full deliberation.) And we are all guilty of it, naturally.

Regarding the "brights" (an unfortunately telling term), don't be surprised when we (yes, "we") begin persecuting the non-brights as we have ourselves been persecuted. Actually, "begin" is the wrong word; the onslaught is in full progress; naturally!

Posted by: Alien Among You | January 1, 2007 1:05 PM
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I'm now convinced that "Bright" is not a good choice. How about calling ourselves "Divided Quibblers"? While the "Bright" term does catch some of the correlation between intelligence and a naturalistic world view, the "Divided Quibblers" term better captures the stronger negative correlation of atheism with cohesion and agreement.

Posted by: Steve | January 1, 2007 1:01 PM
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Awe, the certainty of science. Now, wasn't it scientists who posited that the proton, neutron and electron were the samllest particles of matter. For the longest time science had no idea that black holes even existed. Debate rages over what extinguished the dinosaurs. Why is Mars the way it is, when water apparently existed in liquid form in the past?
The reality of science, is that it is always moving one step forward and two back as we learn more, get better ways to measure, and gather more data, which causes us to ask quesitons we hadn't even thought of yet. (I am particularly fond of the current debate in physics about gravity, and its possible relationship to other dimensions -- which we cannot see or measure, but which the physicists nonetheless posit exist. It is truly mind bending. The physicists involved are brilliant!) The true beauty of science is that it is willing to accept that it doesn't know all, that much of what it puts forth is theory, and that it acknowledges that with better tools, comes better understanding. It is truly unscientific to conclude something as profound as it is highly improbable that there is no supreme being, when science has no way of making that determination. Science has no measure to determine if there is life after death, what form that life takes, nor can it measure God. It has no measure to determine if there is a soul. It concludes there is no God because it has no emperical data to support it. Yet, take space science as an example. In the last 50 years, think of all the new science we have discovered because we improved telescopes, and actually traveled to our neighborhood planets. Think of all new ideas arising as we find out more about black holes, something we didn't even know about all that long ago, yet they existed nonetheless. Correct?
No, the hypothesis of whether God exists cannot be proven (or disproven)with the current level of science because we have no tools to measure God, and we don't even know what to measure. The scientific method, as I understand it, is not useful for proving (or disproving) something unless we can test the hypothesis. How do we measure God? With what tools? Where do we look? I say that 100 years ago you could not prove the existence of a blackhole, even thought they surely existed. They absolutely did, because we can observe with our tools proof that they exist. Even at that, we have many questions about them that we cannot answer, because we can't measure. I fully suspect, and believe that space scientists are in agreement, that the next 100 years will reveal to us alot more that we didn't know existed, and raise questions we didn't know we had. So, for any scientist to reject a notion or idea, even one as big as God, because it cannot be currently proven, isn't very scientific. The scientific truth is that at our current level of knowledge, with our current abilities, we have no tools with which to measure whether God exists or not. It cannot be scientifically ruled in or out. God simply can't be scientifically measured. So in scientific parlance, God is a hypothesis, that cannot curently be tested to determine if the hypothesis is correct or not, or somewhere in between.
A few concluding points. First, science is not as pure and srtaightforward as many suggest. Scientists are people too, and are vested in their work, for the science of it, for fame, for money. They make a hypothesis, and many fight for it to the bitter end. Competing scientists even become lifelong rivals (maybe even enemies) when competing theories clash -- scientists are fallible too.
Next, make sure, instead of addressing the entire thought here, that if you chose to critque this thought that you pull out one line and beat that one point to death.
Finally, stop suggesting that religion is dangerous. The little 80 year old lady praying in the pew, visiting the sick, and, living her life is no threat to society. And most religious are just like her. The religious are not any more dangerous than the secular, who have their own agenda, which they push forward. (Lets see -- drug runners, arms dealers, slave traders, etc). World War I and II were land acquisition wars, as were Korea, Vietnam, the Spanish American War, etc. Most wars are about power, control and land aqcuisition. England (the government) came to America (once it realized that it existed, and exactly what they had here)not to spread the Gospel, but for profit.
Religion (as distinguished from faith)has done its share of very bad things, I concede that point. Some individuals in religion have been particularly bad -- using religion for secular goals. But religion did not cause the wars of the 20th Century. Further, religion did not bring us the tools by which the wars are fought. Churches don't build bombs. That would be science and engineering. Remember the bomb, tanks, missles, etc. Usually, when you cut through all the crap, money and power are behind the bombing -- not faith. Not always, but usually. (I include in that thought the current clash in the Middle East -- which is much more about power, control and land than religion.)
The scientific method is a remarkable tool we as humans use to learn about our environment, and to grow. But that knowledge is a two edged sword that has brought with it danger and destruction. The scientists who created the bomb knew it -- "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." J. Robert Oppenheimer. He also said, "Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it."
I appreciate the value that science has brought to humanity. It has made our world better. We must continue to use it to our benefit. I also believe in God because, well, I do. And I believe the good faith brings our world far outweighs the bad. Nor can I scientfically prove God exists -- but I don't need to. It is personal to me, not needing any validity, but in my heart. If that makes me dangerous, well, then duck and cover.

Posted by: Greg | January 1, 2007 12:31 PM
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I am 59 years old. I was raised as an atheist even though my mother was very religious. I am quite comfortable with the word 'atheist'. 'Bright' is just arrogant. I prefer to be called the same thing now as I have been called every time I am discriminated against.

All I want is to have the religious freedom we have been promised our entire lives but have never experienced.

Posted by: DZ | January 1, 2007 12:15 PM
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How about "natural" as in "I'm (a) Natural"? Found at onelook.com: 'adjective: existing in or in conformity with nature or the observable world; neither supernatural nor magical (Example: "A perfectly natural explanation")'

I wonder if the 'The Brights' considered it.

Posted by: huti | January 1, 2007 11:25 AM
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Come on people, quite haggling over "Bright" and get with the program! It is a fine word with positive connotations and plenty or room to adapt another meaning. The new, distinct meaning will emerge thru usage, whatever the word. How about cooperating in the initiative instead of free-thinking of other, potentially more clever choices? Now, when you hear "gay" the homosexual connotation completely overshadows the former, "light-hearted" meaning. Let's strive for similar success with "Bright". You should be more concerned with pulling together to avoid a Christian Taliban than with squabbling in the ranks.

Posted by: Steve | January 1, 2007 11:09 AM
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Though I registered with 'The Brights' it has more to do with expressing solidarity than being happy or approving of the term. In fact I am very comfortable and proud to be known as an atheist. It would not be wrong to think that in India the shear number of believers far outstrips us by margins not dreamed of Stateside. This has never prevented me since 1971 (the year I lost all faith) to state openly without any qualms that I am an atheist.

I wish that instead of 'bright' the word could have been as close to, if not 'atheist' itself.

I do not approve of 'fence-sitters' and hence would leave agnostics out of the perview as much as supers.

Posted by: Aarmin | January 1, 2007 10:26 AM
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I'm signed up as a bright, despite my reservations, because I respect Dan Dennett's opinion about so many things, and I do think atheists need a more positive public image.

I just don't know why they didn't use the equally positive and more accurate term, naturalist. The word naturalist describes the central feature that one is trying to get at, which is not belief or disbelief in any particular proposition, but rather a rejection of supernaturalistic explanations.

Like bright, it also is a double entendre, whose more common meaning has positive connotations. Who doesn't like a nature lover? Makes me think of Walden Pond--how comforting!

Since it already means what we want it to mean, a little push would be all it would take to move the term into more common parlance. I guess the effort to make naturalist the new "gay" wouldn't have generated as much publicity. One of the goals, I gather, was to bring the issue before the public eye. Still, I think it has probably been a net negative in terms of public perception of non-believers.

Also, the whole idea of identifying oneself with a group by using a label makes me somewhat uncomfortable. It tends to make one think in terms of us versus them. This makes it more difficult to take an objective view of things. I prefer to state what I believe rather than who I identify with, or worse, who someone else would identify me with. "I do not believe God exists." or "Supernatural explanations make no sense to me." seems better to my ear than, "I am an atheist/bright/naturalst."

Posted by: Rob | January 1, 2007 10:11 AM
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No longer silent -- except on TV, particularly the news divisiona and cable news, where Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are persona non grata, and Chris Hitchens is only wheeled out to blather about his beloved Right-wing politics or Clinton's sex habits.

Posted by: Gene in Times Square | January 1, 2007 10:00 AM
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Cruel but fair.
Bravo Tim!

Posted by: Realist | January 1, 2007 7:53 AM
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To Ann O and her admirers:

I find these postings by Ann rather sadly humorous. They are such beautiful examples of someone "not knowing enough to know you don't know enough". (the other side of the coin, "knowing just enough to be dangerous")

Some of the best were:


"Scientific method, which, of course, generally requires math"
(or her claim that "all science" requires math)

No, it doesn't. (look up the definition of scientific method anywhere) this is a typical judgement from someone who knows nothing of science or math and has studied neither

"Most medieval theologians -- Jewish, Christian and Muslim -- *LOVED* logic"


They were enamoured with what modern logician call tautologies, NOT logic. The logic they espoused would not stand up to any modern rigorous analysis, but rather they are loaded with circular reasoning. A freshman logic student would have Thomas Aquinas in tears!


"paradoxes (a cop-out word for contradictions)"


Scientists don't just lump any inconsistencies into the term "paradox" as an excuse to "exclude" them from their hypothesis. When inconsistencies are found they lead to more investigation using scientific method and, when new facts are uncovered, may actually change the existing paradigm. Something that "faith based believers" seem unable to do (unless the pope or their preacher tells us that god changed his mind, again).


Relativity and quantum mechanics contradict each other.


Woefully wrong. Relativity theory LED to quantum mechanics. They describe completely different scales of space time.


Science can only measure empirical truths, and some truths cannot be measured that way

Again, woefully wrong as well as misleading. The same religious apologist that says this will then JUMP on ANY pseudo scientific claptrap that promotes any claim that spirit, or soul, or prayer CAN be measured empirically. Look at the Templeton Foundation! The claim that some things do not allow themselves to be analyzed by empirical methods because they are of transcendental nature or "of another realm" is too convenient and, again a tautology. Anne and her ilk would really be comfortable with those medieval theologians.

Yes, it IS logically impossible to PROVE a negative. But it IS possible to show that the probability of something is SO REMOTE that it is so improbable as to be just as good as impossible.


It's ironic how someone can "sound" so reasonable and maybe drop a few famous and recognisable names, and people will be mislead and think these people actually know what they are talking about!!


The most DANGEROUS PEOPLE are those like Ann O. of faulty reason and knowledge that pose as reasonable and knowledgeable people. The most narrow minded people I know claim to be open minded and accuse detractors of NOT having an open mind. Like Carl Sagan said,"It's important to have an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out." So, if what one's claim is so outrageous that I deign to disagree, they would argue that MY mind is closed to THEIR interpretation. No, it's just that MY brains have not fallen out like theirs.


No, I'm not going to be "respectful" or "too kind", I'm going to "call a spade a spade". No, Anne doesn't "rock", as Victoria claims, but Victoria has fallen for Anne's "line" and "reasonable tone" without actually understanding how erroneous those claims were or how faulty her logic. Critical thinking and reason are incompatible with faith, read Martin Luther. OR, on the flip side, read Thomas Paine, the primary intellectual founder of our country (by the way, he WASN'T a "filthy little atheist" ...quoting G. H. Bush (who plagiarized Teddy Roosevelt), but rather a deist who wrote a pamphlet "The Age of Reason" explaining why the bible was fallible and unreliable that has been vilified by so many for his stand on religiosity).


Oh, and unlike the other people you have been bandying these words with, I AM a scientist.

ONE LAST THOUGHT...

As far agnostics saying that atheists are in the same vein as religious people because they are so adamant in the opposition to a god's existence that they have the equivalent of "faith" that a god does not exist, I again say that while a negative cannot be proved, it can be put into the realm of such low probability that is is as good as disproved. An atheist has just examined the evidence and realized that the probability of the existence of a supreme being is SO REMOTE as to be extremely improbable, therefore rejecting the notion. We do this all the time as we go though life. But when religion raises it's ugly head, common sense flies out the window. While I have no negative feelings towards the name "brights" I STILL prefer "freethinker" because, as stated earlier, it opens the topic from views on either intelligence OR religion, merely stating that the person in question prefers to think critically and freely on ALL subjects.

A must read; Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion", it'll be good for your souls!!

"Humanitarian" comes from the Roman "HUMANITAS", look it up, it's an enlightening concept.

Posted by: Tim | January 1, 2007 7:34 AM
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-While I'm not enthused about the term "bright" mostly because it seems raher immodest, I have for the last 6 months been very open about my atheism. While I feel I must be guarded at work where all my colleagues are PhDs and scientists I have had quite an invigorating year. I have studied philosophy and theism for decades and now wonder what all the confusion was about. There is niothing to be defensive about if you can explain your point of view rationally, and patiently. I've two sibling that are ministers and they now stand up for atheists in their churches too.

So to all of you brights out there take a vacation to a blue state this year and gain a different perspective. Go to Berkeley and buy a flying spaghetti monster bumper sticker. When I visited my nephew there last summer I felt that I was certainly in the majority- and of course I felt pretty smug and really wanted to be in your face about it to my annoying sister but that is just because she has no sense of fair play herself. In the end I've found myself feeling that knowing the superioity of rationality while striving for patience and civilty is the best course. Seriosly study cosmology, math, evolution and genetics and you'll be annoying the believers without having to become caustic. Or do what I did, I bought 50 MYO fossils and gave them as gifts to my brothers.

Posted by: Tom | January 1, 2007 6:24 AM
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I confess that religion, the whole idea of it, bores me stiff. What I object to is paying for the beliefs of others with my tax money. We athiests, or brights, or what have you, should insist on keeping religion out of the schools and away from public life in general. It would be nice to see an end to property tax exemptions for churches and to the financing of "faith based initiatives.". And no vouchers, such as they have been wanting, for those home schoolers, 95% of whom are religious fundamentalists.
People can believe what they want to, just don't make me pay for it.

Posted by: Hattie | January 1, 2007 5:31 AM
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i submit for your approval that the science of consciousness simply hasnt been discovered yet- i worked with a man for awhile who was one of 5 people on the planet in his field at the time (1987) and was a specialist in artificial intelligence and was (may still be) working on a program to teach computers how to dream- (1987) perhaps some day science will have mastered the seen and can move on to the last frontier- the unseen

humbly

Posted by: victoria | January 1, 2007 4:28 AM
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ahhh well- i hope that the worst thing said about me is that i misspell my name- im also known for no caps - its my homage to archy the cockroach

yours for rhyme, crime and reason
viectrio

Posted by: victoria1 | January 1, 2007 4:15 AM
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Anonymous:
The anti-religion posters in this discussion might be a whole lot more persuasive if any of them actually knew something about the subject.

Like what? Do I need to know every detail of Buffy the Vampire Slayers universe to come to the conclusion it's fiction? How is the bible any different?

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 1, 2007 4:07 AM
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Of course, you might not recognize your own beliefs as a form of faith (that concept having such negative connotations in enlightened circles), but what else are they?

Oh absolutely, I couldn't agree more. I may be completely subjective. Though,I'm at least aware of the possibility, which is more than one can say for most religious people.
------
Regarding your calling another poster "scum," you may have proved my point.

Oh I don't think so. Some people, homophobes, racists and sexists for example, ARE scum. Thats a perfectly sensible attitude, or do you disagree? Tell me, do you think the biblical position on homosexuality is correct? If yes, then I think you are homophobic fascist scum. If not, I stand corrected and apologise unreservedly. Your move:-)

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 1, 2007 3:51 AM
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Someone wanted to know why the "god-free" (much better than "brights;" thanks) are so hostile to the god-ridden.

Here are some of my reasons:

The priests that convinced me your loving god was standing by to send me to hell, thereby keeping me in a state of terror day and night.

The "good, god-fearing" man that made my childhood a hell of violent abuse.

The many loving Christians who threatened to beat me down for being an atheist.

The many Christians who have tried to tell me what my beliefs are, because it's impossible for me not to believe anything.

The president who says atheists are not citizens or patriots.

The previous president (Reagan) who disenfranchised me by saying he didn't want the votes of atheists.

The--

But enough. I'm starting to feel hostile.

Posted by: John Conolley | January 1, 2007 3:46 AM
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Anonymous and others,
I appreciate your response. And I'm glad you appreciate the difference between my position and Dawkins.
I consider ANY ideas, not supported by evidence, to be patently ridiculous. Since our mind is our basic means of dealing with reality, I consider any "faith-based" beliefs to sabotage the functioning of our mind - to short circuit our ability to think.
And I would suggest that anything of that nature needs to be attacked aggressively. And since the United States is more irrational re. religion than most western societies, this is an issue of critical importance.
I have to say I don't have the same experience as you re. most Christians' approach to the subject of materialism v. religious beliefs. Most, I think, haven't studied philosophy -- and the ones who have tend to embrace this dichotomy. Indeed, it's endemic in the history of Western thought (also manifested in other false alternatives, e.g., soul-body split; moral v. practical; etc.).
Any dogma that posits supernaturalism, effectively splits man in two and pits one side of his nature against the other, hence mind v. body, etc. Christianity is noteworthy in this regard (e.g., their historical antipathy to sex, pleasure, earthly happiness, etc.).
The important distinction among those who hold these ideas is also different than you suggest. Yes, Dawkins insists on the truth of what he can establish (because there is evidence). And he and I would insist on the unacceptability of that for which there is no evidence.
But, in practice, it is the free-thinker who says live and let live -- even if you are wrong. It's the Christian and Muslim "moralists" who have to wipe out the unbelievers. If that's not the case, then what exactly is it that the 2nd coming, the rapture and tribulation are all about?? And the Old Testament is an orgy of murder, incest, war, etc. --Hence, the intolerance of the true believers. And then you have the whole horrific history of Christianity: persecutions, the Crusades, Galileo, burning people at the stake, opposition to anesthetics and other modern advances that alleviate human suffering, prohibition of behaviors they don't like, demonization of people and behavior they don’t approve of, and worse.
Modern Christians typically get around these outrageous ideas and bestial historical acts by selectively eliminating them from their current belief system. That doesn't change the actual nature of Christianity -- it only means these people are diluting the doctrine in the attempt to make it more palatable to modern minds.
But, then, what is it that these "modern" Christians think they are ascribing to?

Posted by: Richard | January 1, 2007 3:30 AM
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Brian: Is it possible that you missed my point--by miles? Perhaps, just perhaps, you are blinded by your own faith.

Of course, you might not recognize your own beliefs as a form of faith (that concept having such negative connotations in enlightened circles), but what else are they?

Regarding your calling another poster "scum," you may have proved my point.

Posted by: Alien Among You | January 1, 2007 3:26 AM
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Hi,

I have to admit that I have not read through the entire string, but I read enough to make a few comments. Hopefully these were not addressed by other posters.

1) I don't like how the doctor puts ahteists and agnostics together and then shortens his usage to just atheists. On several occasions in my life I have been an atheist, and at other times an agnostic. They were not the same states of mind. I suggest that, as many other people have stated, being an atheist takes the same type of intuitive leap as one that espouses a belief in God, even if it be a "courageous" step for those to go against the norm of society. Not all people that believe in God do so because they are mentally sluggish or just go along with societal norms. So for all us once and future agnostics out there, please separate the doubters from the unbelievers. I'm not bright enough for your mixed usage.

2) I do like the doctor's admonition for open, rational discourse without name-calling. Kinda quaint, isn't it?

3) There were several postings on the statistical significance of a negative correlation between intelligence and the belief in God (which turned into religiosity, which I might add are not reflexive of each other). Setting aside the person who said that any "fool" knows that correlation does not necessarily mean causation (class act there), the statistics still require an intuitive leap--made by those who could be biased--to interpret the results of such studies as meaning there is no God. There are several implicit biases even in posing the question which one must factor into the results. First, one must believe that being smart equals being good. Second, one must also believe that these IQ tests have adequately captured such a good quality. Many new studies suggest that the traditional IQ test does not properly account for the multiple intelligences manifest in human beings. Third, the studies must be able to show that any of these findings are not somehow affected by outside events that may affect answers people provide. Fourth, the testers themselves would have to rid themselves of any perceived bias towards intelligence or their views of a God and ensure a reliable version of "double-blindness." Now I am not saying that the studies did not try to address these issues, but I seriously doubt any of those that are using these results in this post to support their cause know whether or not they were addressed. In addition, I could easily say lower intelligence means lower belief in God if I include non-human beings and extremely limited functioning humans into the study. A belief in the divine is a human trait based on our very ability to critically think and comprehend.

4) A Baconian approach to the scientific method involving pure empiricism is the only true way to stay within facts as we know them, as is my interpretation of espousing rationalism and empiricism. However, this approach is not how we move forward as humans, scientifically or otherwise. Intuition and looking outside of just what we see is fundamental to science as it is for religion. And until you get rid of people's penchant to ask why and to hope (intuitive gestures for sure) and to see more or less than what is before you, you will never get rid of some people's belief in the existence of a God or other people's need to have a community centered around that belief. Religion is a metaphor that puts the experience of humanity (past, present, and future) and its relationship with the cosmos into perspective in a way that no scientific method can. Please don't get me wrong. In conversations I have with believers about these topics, I identify myself as a scientist. Science is the centerpiece and fulchrum of human understanding of our physical universe. But there is no raison d'etre behind science. It just is. It is the human agent that gives science a sense of delight and wonder, just as it is the human agent to do so in religion.

4) I think it is possible to believe in a God that might or might not affect our everyday lives and still believe that a human's moral obligations rest solely on human reasoning and cultural imperatives. Moreso, I believe that it is possible that humans are ultimately responsible for their own actions and must be able to explain their motives and actions within a cultural context that does not include overt presuppositions of first causes. I fail to understand the reasoning the concludes that moral obligation to other humans and the environment has anything to do with the existence or non-existence of a God. Can someone explain in tiny words for me?

Posted by: J | January 1, 2007 2:00 AM
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Anonymous wrote: "The variation between individuals in all races is so great for the overall averages to be meaningless."

That is total BS stemming from Lewontin's work in the 70s, because it ignores the correlation between individual feature variations, which under statistical cluster analysis reveal that races are, in fact, genetic reality.

The fallacy of the reasoning behind Anonymous' claim is elaborated in this 2003 paper:
Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy, BioEssays Vol.25 No.8, August 2003, pp:798-801
http://www.goodrumj.com/Edwards.pdf

A suggestion to Anonymous: next time do some research before exercising your Post-button-click-happy finger.

Posted by: Quince | January 1, 2007 1:47 AM
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The anti-religion posters in this discussion might be a whole lot more persuasive if any of them actually knew something about the subject.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 1, 2007 1:30 AM
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It more importat to rescue the poor people brainwashed from birth by the Christian mythology. The Abrahamic religions are all pretty bleak, with the Muslems being the ones most able to transcend the Bibical mishmash. The Torah is one endless tail of peoples who fail their faith over nad over; but still believe that they are the choosen peoples of a mean vengeful cruel old man GOD. The Christians have such a deluded philsophical basis that the strongest case is it's sheer ridiculus premises. That they could go from a vengeful GOD like Jehovah to eternal blessings by brutalizing murder of the SON of GOD is an amazing jingolistic feat! That the core story if from a man who persecued the followers of Jesus until he fell off his horse and hit his head; whose basis of faith is his defense of heresy from the closest followers of Jesus; combined with the rants of Peter and John who seem to have hated Jesus teachings on humility, women emancipation, and support of the non-Jewish peoples is an amazing feat as well.

How could so many be so deluded for so long? The answer obviously has been its value in supporting the Ricj and the Powerful while keeping the poor and the desperate tamed and focused on the next life rather than the injustices of this real life.

We must break this mindwasting crime, using the very techniques developed to keep the masses controlled!

Posted by: Leo | January 1, 2007 1:12 AM
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Yikes, I only just noticed that another poster preceeded me, sharing the name of Victoria.

This may be a little silly, but just to let everyone know that I am not that person.

Even tipsy with champers, I would know how to spell Victoria correctly.

Happy New Year, godless ones!

Posted by: Victoria | January 1, 2007 12:50 AM
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in para 3 above i meant of course

"why brag"

Posted by: james | January 1, 2007 12:47 AM
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On Faith

Believers say, proudly,
+Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"

like that is a good thing.

It is good to hope, certainly, within reasonable limits.

But what brag about considering non-evidence to be evidence, and about believing what you have no evidence of. Unicorns are a relevent example here.

If one wants to have faith, after examining its consequences for yourself and society, that is your right.

But it makes little sense to me to Brag about basing fantastical and supernatural beliefs - like the resurrection, say - on faith.

"I believe unbelievable things based on no evidence. Aren't I admirable?"

Posted by: James | January 1, 2007 12:43 AM
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Dennett's "out of the closet" parallel with homosexuals as "gay" is enlightening. Parading homosexuals perverted a good word, applying it to a generally un-gay, unhappy demographic. And "bright" is equally perverse: it's dim, not bright, to live in your head instead of in God's world.

Thanks for that balanced commentary Willis. I think we can pass on advice from gay bashing homo phobes though. I think Fred Phelps has a spot for scum like you, why not check his site out? I bet you'd love it.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 1, 2007 12:41 AM
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Prejudice against atheists is not as bad as prejudice against blacks or gays or women, perhaps, but it is still widespread, it is still pernicious, and we all have an obligation to take part in the public discourse and promote understanding rather than prejudices based on ignorance.

Actually it's much worse. We need a parade.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 1, 2007 12:38 AM
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Alien Among You:
What unites all of you is that you all have FAITH. What separates you is that you have faith in different ideas. Are you more alike than different; or more different than alike? I suspect the former, and have faith that the answer to this question is fundamental to most others.

No, this is persistent nonsense. The default position is NOT to beleive stuff until it's proven. Hence all religions incorporate the ridiculous meme "Faith is good". What could be more irrational and dubious than beleiving stuff, really important stuff, absent tangible proof? Yet this is lauded as positive and praiseworthy in religion. Why?

James, nice post:-)

You can add per capita murder and prison rates to those statistics : http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

The US does orders of magnitude worse than the "Atheist" countries. What does it tell us? Thats a tough one, these correlations are always tough to fully source. However, it does rebut the idea that religious belief makes for a better society. Sorry.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | January 1, 2007 12:35 AM
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To me, brights seem dim in what they profess to believe in. They weren't bright enough to resist Hitler. They aren't bright enough to engage in such humanitarian activities as believers support with their money and hours. And they exit the closet not so much to illumine the public as to ventilate their rage against the correlation of belief in God and success in persuading people to vote them into power. Historically, they seem unaware of rationalism's poor showing in the competition to be good news to humanity.
Dennett's "out of the closet" parallel with homosexuals as "gay" is enlightening. Parading homosexuals perverted a good word, applying it to a generally un-gay, unhappy demographic. And "bright" is equally perverse: it's dim, not bright, to live in your head instead of in God's world.

Posted by: Willis Elliott | January 1, 2007 12:26 AM
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Anonymous

The next time you hear someone say atheists are immoral and a threat to society, and should not get elected President, challenge their assumptions.

The next time you hear someone say that societies can't get along without religion, challenge their assumptions.

Prejudice against atheists is not as bad as prejudice against blacks or gays or women, perhaps, but it is still widespread, it is still pernicious, and we all have an obligation to take part in the public discourse and promote understanding rather than prejudices based on ignorance.

Posted by: James | January 1, 2007 12:20 AM
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James,

I'm very happy to accept all of your conclusions.

What do I do with that information?

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 11:45 PM
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C'mon Anonymous:
Just think a little Harder.

Hypothesis: Religious Societies, where belief and religiosity is high, are more healthy than societies where a great majority of the population do not believe.

How would you test that? Look at societies where belief is low, and see if they have fallen apart.

If they have not fallen apart, your hypothesis is shaky if not disproved.

Both the UN report and Paul's research (and a number of other sources you can find easily on Google if you care to) show that far from falling apart, there is a pretty strong NEGATIVE CORRELATION between Belief and Societal Health.

That doesn't prove atheism makes you healthy, but it casts great doubt on the hypothesis that religious societies are healthier. They just aren't. If you find contradictory data when you do your own research, tell us about it. All you have done so far is criticize me for citing UN and Creighton U Journal findings and drawing logical conclusions from them.

If you find a flaw with the logic about, lay it out and let us all judge.

As far as individual morality, i have told you that many studies I myself have looked at, and many books by respected scholars, have presented lots of data showing atheists are just as moral as believers. NOTE: I did NOT say MORE moral than believers. there are Obviously many very moral believers. My brother for instance.

You say i leap to "breathtaking conclusions."
my conclusions are
1. religious countries are NOT healthier than atheistically dominated countries.
2. Lots of data indicate that atheists are just as moral as believers.

You challenge these data-supported modest conclusions, which by the way go against conventional wisdom and therefore need to be said, without any evidence of your own, and without looking with all the evidence that is out there in the public domain.

Google Hauser Harvard Moral.
Google atheist moral religion
you will get 129,000 hits that you can investigate yourself and reach your own conclusions.
But the UN did not make up their data, and neither did MR Hauser.

Posted by: James | December 31, 2006 11:09 PM
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Hi everybody, I do not have time to read all the opinions, but I want to post mine...

I decided some 2 or 3 years ago to "come out of the closet" as an atheist. I was never embarrased, don't get me wrong, but for many years I tried to avoid talking about religion - until the time I decided enough is enough.
I had/have a few heated arguments (I was/am always calm, the heat was always coming from the other side....)with some people and that was/is OK with me. I am not trying to convince anybody to become an atheist, but I do not enjoy when people try to convert me, mainly because they think it is wrong to go without religion -some times I was told that I will go to hell....
In any case, religions do not have the monopoly of moral values, goodness, honesty, etc.

Personally I do not like the term "bright" to label atheists, I rather call myself a freethinker or a secular humanist ... or an atheist.

Happy New Year to all!!

Posted by: Graciela Blaum | December 31, 2006 11:01 PM
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Richard,

I honestly think it should have been clear that the whole purpose of my post was to point out that your position differs from Dawkins's — not to suggest the opposite.

I'm not sure what other response you expected, but I won't bother to try to persuade you of my own "patently ridiculous beliefs". I don't subscribe to your trash-talking of religion, but I'm glad to see that — unlike somebody like Dawkins — you at least acknowledge the truth that human reality encompasses more than just the biochemical processes going on between our ears.

Contrary to your assertion, most Christians do not insist on the false dichotomy that you rightly criticize. Ironically, it is materialists like Dawkins who do insist on it.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 10:58 PM
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Again, I appreciate the citations. I was simply asking for an indication of good faith that one of the forty books to which you referred me actually would address my questions.

On the basis of the actual evidence you've deigned to share, it's a bit rich for you to ridicule others for opinions that "have little to do with observable facts".

You made three assertions:

- There is a negative correlation between intelligence and belief in God.

- It can be demonstrated that atheists and believers are equally moral.

- There is a negative correlation between societal health indicators and prevalence of belief in God.

You then leapt to breathtaking conclusions (before backpedaling when challenged). The fact that all three assertions tend to flatter your own prejudices is indeed grounds for healthy skepticism. But the real issue in all three cases is that it's nigh impossible to fathom anyone reaching valid and meaningful conclusions for such nebulous hypotheses.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 10:27 PM
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We are still a blind, ignorant race of beings who don't have any idea what lies beyond our small experience of existence as dust mites. All this bantering about believing this or that or not believing this or that is largely jockeying for tribal dominance. If a more highly developed being from an unimaginably more complex experience were to encounter you, asking them what they "believed in" would be ludicrous, no? We have a lot more growing up to do, let's hope we have a chance to do so. We still live under nature's laws, not our religion's laws. Nature's brutality compels us to grasp for metaphysical power in response. Understanding (and I don't mean knowledge manipulation for gain) and the imagination are the only things of value. And they must used together.

Posted by: chris | December 31, 2006 10:12 PM
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Anonymous,
I never said I agree with Dawkins. Even though, recently, he's probably the most prominent skeptic on the public stage, why does that indicate to you that he's 100% right?
It's interesting that your comment utterly fails to address any of the points I made.

Posted by: Richard | December 31, 2006 9:48 PM
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What unites all of you is that you all have FAITH. What separates you is that you have faith in different ideas. Are you more alike than different; or more different than alike? I suspect the former, and have faith that the answer to this question is fundamental to most others.

Posted by: Alien Among You | December 31, 2006 9:24 PM
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>Greg said:
>Good day Darkie. Did you read everything I wrote, or just that one line?

I read the whole post and then proceeded to read a bunch more posts below it and then probably above it and then I replied. My initial response was to you, but after that it got generalized intermingled with specific again. Mea Culpa. I see that you probably didn't support the Iraq war. You made that clear and I drew it into the discussion, thereby muddying things hopelessly. I apologize for ranting about Iraq in your direction.

In essence I was responding to your implication that your Sunday experiences in no way reflected the complaints that you were reading here and therefore they seemed invalid (I may be stretching here, but I think I'm okay with that summary of your earlier post. That's how I read it). I was pointing out that my experience frequently was of the annoying variety and that inside and outside the church doors didn't match well enough in the public sphere. As to expecting something for being Christian, our politicians who use it as a bludgeon certainly expect something.

As to your last point, why does it make me angry? It mostly annoys me greatly. Anger I save for when I really need it because it is hard on the body. But the answer is many reasons. And yes we are all faced with opinions every day that we don't agree with. It'd be a pretty eerie day if that didn't happen, frankly. It'd be like some kind of horror flick. And yes the constitution applies only to the state, but it extends into the private realm, hence laws about non-discrimination in hiring and renting and real estate sales which are all in the private domain. But is it within the rights of a shopper to publicly berate a shop clerk so she can play her role as a soldier in the "war on Christmas"? Technically, yes, but it isn't civil or helpful to society. Especially given that the Christmas holiday was carefully layered over a pagan one to destroy the original Winter Solstice version of it and somehow that gives Christians the exclusive license on it. Sorry, that's just annoying. Chalk annoying lack of historical knowledge and trumped up fake threat/martrdom crusade thing for my raised neck hairs on that one. Yes, the speech is protected and if the person just said off the top of their head that they would prefer Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays, it'd be fine. Social pressure is way more powerful than the government in controlling individuals. That's why it matters that there is organized rhetoric behind it. Ignorant rhetoric on top of it. We celebrate Christmas. We hang the Celtic wreath and the Celtic Holly with their green promise of spring and the endless cycle of the seasons and give gifts like the Romans used to :-) As a holiday it way predates Christianity, the people in charge just keep changing the name.

As to knocking on my door, that's my castle and the only person I want doing that is the tinker who sharpens my knives. I get equally bristly with telemarketers, just for the record. And I was really very nice to the pair of Mormon nuns who came last time. We were all very polite and they confessed that University neighborhood was a tough one and I agreed that it probably was and they moved on. The ones that insist on arguing because they fear that THEIR soul is on the line in this transaction...look out.

You know, about the guy who hands out the bibles...I have to honestly say I don't know why he gets to me. He really does though. He wears this really nice designer suit and he is standing on campus surrounded by jeans and sweats so he really stands out. Maybe he seems corporate or something. He just gives me the willies and I actually freeze when I'm walking along and look up and see him. I'll have to think more on why. I certainly own several bibles, they don't bother me at all sitting there, so it isn't that. Christianity is a religion of the poor. Perhaps the contrast, the theft by the wealthy? Hm, if i were a Hindu, I'd have to claim I knew him in another life.

As to the pledge, well, that IS the State. It didn't have the word God in it originally. It was "one nation indivisible". Everything that was changed during the McCarthy era should have been changed back just for good measure, and that would include the formalization of "in god we trust" on currency (it appeared sporadically before then, but wasn't mandated.) Honestly though, for the longest time as a child, I really, truly assumed those words meant money was our God. So because that still makes me laugh, I can live with that one. The pledge one gets to me more than it used to given that it seems some factions want to start a holy war (if not bring on the apocalypse) and drag the rest of us into it. That scares the crap out of me, so yeah, it makes me angry.

Posted by: Darkie | December 31, 2006 9:22 PM
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If Dennet and other "brights" think it's a wise PR idea to label themselves such, they need PR help. By defining themselves as such, they tacitly label all who disagree them as "dumbs."

Not a good PR strategy. But I imagine that PR and reasoning with others is the least of Dennett's, Dawkins' and other vocal atheists's concerns. Perhaps it's all really about expressing anger toward those they consider not worthy to have power.

BTW, I am not a Christianist or anti-atheist. Just a person with experience in persuasion.


Posted by: Mousie Cat | December 31, 2006 9:08 PM
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Re Atheist Countries

Anonymous:
If you don't like Holland and Japan and Norway, do your own research.

Those were just 3 of the Many countries the UN Report and Gregory Paul researched. As I remember, he compared the US to 10-11 Developed European Countries, and with many others.

There is clearly alot more research to do on this topic. Paul stipulates that. But the early research casts doubt on the long held thesis that
Non belief in God leads to Societal Collapse.

There is also plenty of research on individual morality. You wouldn't trust my citations, so I invite you to look into it yourself.

Posted by: james | December 31, 2006 9:03 PM
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Re: Atheist Morality

Anonymous writes: "How confident should I be that these sources will satisfy (or at least directly address) the specific questions I posed?"

The reason I gave you the citations I did was so you could check for yourself. You would be a fool to believe me.

Again, if you google "morality atheism religion" you will get about 100,000 references to the topic so you can even research further. Again, don't trust me. Trust yourself. Google.

Everyone knows that correlation doesn't prove causality. Even me. However...

The prevalent thesis about morality is that if a society stops believing in God, the society goes to Hell. These reports AT THE LEAST show that countries that have stopped believing in God DO NOT go to Hell, but in fact they in general are more healthy than highly believing societies.

To many logical people, that tends to cast doubt on the necessity of belief in order to have moral and healthy behavior.

Posted by: James | December 31, 2006 8:54 PM
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Holland and Norway are tiny countries, and Japan is a radically different society and culture that not long ago deified its emperor. The idea that a comparison with the U.S. means anything, much less the sweeping conclusion you draw, is absurd.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 8:52 PM
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I am a this. I am a that.
You think this. You think that.

What exhausts me most about theological debate is how much effort is spent informing one's opposite what they think. Agnosticism comes in handy there. I don't know what you think or what your life has taught you until I listen to you. In my experience, knowing how you FEEL and what you have LIVED through ultimately trumps belief statements by a mile. So I listen for that.

I (agnostic Unitarian Universalist) participate on a forum where a Christian (Word of Faith) was being ganged up on. She was talking about being delivered from demons. I experienced her as sincere and vulnerable. I remembered my loving, good Nazarene relatives. They were utterly intolerant doctrinally, and spent EVERY Saturday night for more than a decade sitting with abandoned people at poor nursing homes, singing old hymns. I could volunteer for the rest of my life and not come within a mustard seed's-width of their kindness. So anyway, I defended her right to express herself, to voice her faith and feelings any way she wanted. It harmed no one, but it brought out a lot of anger. We forum participants needed each other more than we needed to "win", however, so we just kept going. Kept listening, talking, trying to understand each other. Recently when someone new took potshots at our demon-believing member, the group rallied to embrace and defend her.

Hating and labeling (any label, scholarly or popular) yielded to the experience of love.

I know that love is the point of life. The motivation or explanation for it is secondary to doing it.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 8:49 PM
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James, I'm sure I don't have to repeat that data like the UN report you cite don't show anything remotely resembling causality.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 8:44 PM
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James, I sincerely appreciate the response and the citations. How confident should I be that these sources will satisfy (or at least directly address) the specific questions I posed?

You ask me to have faith in your assurances on account of your claim to have researched the matter. I hope you'll forgive just a tiny bit of skepticism on my part — in the interest of science.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 8:39 PM
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boy Martooni, that was really uncalled for. What did I say to so rile you?

Surely you know if you make the same unsupported claim several times, someone will call you on it.

Did you note my post contained four numbered argument summaries which I suggested to you to consider, which had been drawn from my and others' posts above?

It is okay if you say those were each too brief a summary to be worthwhile analysing. Maybe that is what you are saying. And that's fine, I'm not putting any extended argument into these posts. Just trying to suggest areas for further discussion, and not impolitely post a too-long post.

Sorry to get that far under your skin.

Posted by: jim | December 31, 2006 8:38 PM
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I am of the opinion that bright or dim has anything to do with a persons belief as you have both kimds that believe in many different religions as well as none at all.
As to why this person does not believe in the book written by men of old and forever reinterpreted is based on the following:
The Bible says in 2 different places that a man who sleeps with a married women-both die. Deuteronomy 24:16 says that a child shall not die for the sins ofT the father.
Yet the God of the Bible allowed King David who not only had sex with a married women but then like a Mafia boss took out a hit on her husband and had him whacked to not only live , not only keep the Kingdom, but to keep the object of his crime, Bathsheba, but then CAUSED the DEATH of his son because of David's action, breaking his own law of child not to be put to death for sins of father. Then the fool smiled on Solomon who turned around and built altars to other Gods proving this God was a stupid baby killin liar.

As for Jesus
LUKE 4:24
24
And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country

And yet anyone that Has read the Bible Knows that at least 2 prophets-Samuel and Nathan were not only given HONOR in their own country at their own time BUT by THEIR KINGS

13
And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven ( compare this to below from 2 Kings)

2 Kings 2:1
And it came to pass, when the LORD would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal.


Jesus said that he was one of the Lords mentioned in the saying " The Lord said to my Lord" which appears in Psalm 110

1 The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

2 The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.

3 Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

4 The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. ( a Priest like Mel- not the Messiah or greatest- or My Heir,)

The above seems to inidicate that Jesus was ignorant or a liar.

But you are invited to visit
http://www.religionquestioned.com which has an offer to shut down based on false information taught Christians about O.T. Messiah message

Posted by: Saul | December 31, 2006 8:35 PM
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Heather

I'm really sorry to hear that. I hope youve been able to land on your feet somewhere else.

The situation you describe,especially since it's the govt, is a very scary thought. Given all the other things that have gone on in the federal govt, I shouldnt be surprised, I suppose.

Good luck to you

rjr

Posted by: rjr | December 31, 2006 8:29 PM
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RE Moral Atheists: addendum

the "UN report referenced above is the 2005 Human Development Report.

I also invite you to google Gregory Paul, Journal of Religion and Society, where MR Paul gives you plenty of data on homicide, abortion and other measures of a healthy society

Posted by: james | December 31, 2006 8:23 PM
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Re Anonymous and Moral Atheists

Mr A says that I am "empirically challenged" in saying that atheists are demonstrabley as moral as believers.

There are about 40 books at the Harvard Book Store about the human origins of morality. Google some: a couple of good ones are the one by Marc Hauser, harvard prof of biology, and Peter Singer, our most prominent ethicist. But again, google the topic and do your own research *the science of good and evil( is another good source. all well reviewed books (admittedly inthe liberal press) with plenty of scientifc research and reasoning.

the UN report and other sources show that in countries like Holland and Norway and Japan, where the percent of people who say they believe in god is about 15, homicide, abortion, STDS, and many other measures are significantly better than in the US, which has the same wealth profile and where 86 percent say they believe in God.

Mr A, if you can claim a more valid scientific method than these three and many others, demonstate it to us.

Regarding healthy societies: two sources.
one is the UN report on Human Development 2005 (google it)
another is in Creighton University's Journal of REligion and society by Gregory Paul, google those two names and you will get the reference.

If your actual research, rather than your beliefs, shows something different, report back to us.

I have done a lot of research and believe me this is what I find.

IMO, Hauser's scientific thinking is more convincing than yours.

Posted by: james | December 31, 2006 8:19 PM
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Richard Ryckoff: Speak for yourself, but people like Dawkins absolutely are materialists.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 8:19 PM
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Jim...

"You just baldly claim no one can prove or disprove god. You've not even taken the field, yet."

I would say you're still stuck in the stables yourself. I know where the track is. I just don't like to run in circles.

I am also assuming that you are trying to make a point by actively ignoring mine.

I've already stated that as an agnostic, I've chosen not to make any conclusions on things I cannot prove or disprove, because any conclusions drawn from what can't be known can't be trusted.

Now... if you have some secret knowledge that definitively proves or disproves the existence of some higher power that may or may not be responsible for creating or managing or otherwise interfering with our universe...

PLEASE... tell us. What do you know that we don't? If YOU are so freaking smart, tell us what the proofs should be to determine the existence or non-existence of God and we'll try them out.

It's not like philosophers and theologians haven't been wrestling with this very same conundrum forever. As far as I know, not a one of them has ever come up with a conclusive test that would put this question to bed once and for all.

So get to it, Jim.

Where's the test?

I'll do the work... you just tell me what we gotta do.

C'mon genius... I'm waiting....

Posted by: martooni | December 31, 2006 8:19 PM
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One part of the "bright" agenda that I definitely have a problem with is a certain hostility I sense toward Christianity. Sure some Christians can be narrow-minded and may even try to make unwelcome efforts to convert you. However, unlike Muslims, Christians aren't generally out to kill anyone who disagrees with them. I think the "brights" need to put aside their anti-Christian animus and wake up to where the true threat to their freedoms is coming from.

Posted by: Alan | December 31, 2006 8:15 PM
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>Scumps said:
>If you think you have the supernatural power of free will,

Ah, thank you for explaining. Now I understand where you are coming from. I don't agree, but I am not in a position to argue in the deeper realm of philosophy you in, having just now heard of the notion and never having read Dennett's book. I had always assumed that predetermination was a strictly Christian thing (having known three devote Christians who believed in it) and I didn't imagine that you were turning it on its head and saying not believing in God meant you had to believe in predetermination. Predetermination=God for me previously. There is either a Master Plan of God's or there isn't had been my thinking. I hadn't imagined a Master Not-a-Plan thing.

But at least you cleared the mystery up for me. I do think you are redefining "God" out of scope of any dictionary to use it in that manner and I assume were just trolling by doing it. I suspect the caller to the radio talk show I overheard had no clue what she meant and was parroting but I could be wrong. She said it with too much vitriol for it to be so deeply rooted in philosophy of being.

I guess I'd say if you think free will is supernatural then, yes, I guess I believe I'm supernatural. If that's my only choice. I think though that you are just equating intelligence with the supernatural and intelligence is pretty cool, so I can go there too if necessary. But all of this stuff is all well out of the world of useful, everyday thinking and doesn't get the cows milked as we say.

But, you know, I think even my cat (who just now chose to jump up on the chair) has free will and she doesn't strike me as supernatural, even though I'm a biased observer and may be inclined to elevate her there. Her choices are limited to "napping more", "begging to be played with", "asking to go outside" ,"seeing if the food dish has anything more interesting than last time checked" , and "patrolling the perimeter of the walls for mice if not" but still she certainly seems to take a moment to ponder which is next (usually while adorably licking her foot). Oh, on that note, since she also scolded me for the weather being cold, I fear she may worship me since that implies she believes I control the weather and therefore nature. So, I may have been mistaken when I insisted I was not worshiped. I'll try to be a benevolent deity in that case. I think I am.

But since I was predetermined to write these words... I guess I'm predetermined to stop right now.

Oops, guess not. Didn't answer your other point... I don't care if Baptists believe in the Trinity or even that they cannibalize Christ on occasion. I draw the line (and I think it important for other nonbelievers to draw the line) at religious laws that hurt people, especially the vulnerable. For example: laws against easy access to contraceptives and honest sex advice harm young people by making them parents way too early. Their early children run a high risk of being imprisoned and would be much better off born when mom and dad are old enough to raise them more skillfully. Why should society and these kids suffer because Christians were told by their religion that sex is evil and insist that we as a state just blame teens for being teens rather than solving the problem? This is just one little example. Realize for us how incredibly aggravating it gets to have to work around these psychosis religion gives people about certain topics just to accomplish the simplest things. That's where our attitude comes from. It's pure frustration. Baptists can believe whatever they want, but if they want to take those random beliefs and use them against other people in the public realm... totally different thing.

Posted by: Darkie | December 31, 2006 8:10 PM
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Sabawoon Afghan:

What is your point? Is this recital meant to end all debate because the Koran is the source of all truth?

Posted by: Alan | December 31, 2006 8:08 PM
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1. I do call to witness the Resurrection Day;

2. And I do call to witness the self-reproaching spirit: (Eschew Evil).

3. Does man think that We cannot assemble his bones?

4. Nay, We are able to put together in perfect order the very tips of his fingers.

5. But man wishes to do wrong (even) in the time in front of him.

6. He questions: "When is the Day of Resurrection?"

7. At length, when the sight is dazed,

8. And the moon is buried in darkness.

9. And the sun and moon are joined together,-

10. That Day will Man say: "Where is the refuge?"

11. By no means! No place of safety!

12. Before thy Lord (alone), that Day will be the place of rest.

13. That Day will Man be told (all) that he put forward, and all that he put back.

14. Nay, man will be evidence against himself,

15. Even though he were to put up his excuses.

16. Move not thy tongue concerning the (Qur'an) to make haste therewith.

17. It is for Us to collect it and to promulgate it:

18. But when We have promulgated it, follow thou its recital (as promulgated):

19. Nay more, it is for Us to explain it (and make it clear):

20. Nay, (ye men!) but ye love the fleeting life,

21. And leave alone the Hereafter.

22. Some faces, that Day, will beam (in brightness and beauty);-

23. Looking towards their Lord;

24. And some faces, that Day, will be sad and dismal,

25. In the thought that some back-breaking calamity was about to be inflicted on them;

26. Yea, when (the soul) reaches to the collar-bone (in its exit),

27. And there will be a cry, "Who is a magician (to restore him)?"

28. And he will conclude that it was (the Time) of Parting;

29. And one leg will be joined with another:

30. That Day the Drive will be (all) to thy Lord!

31. So he gave nothing in charity, nor did he pray!-

32. But on the contrary, he rejected Truth and turned away!

33. Then did he stalk to his family in full conceit!

34. Woe to thee, (O men!), yea, woe!

35. Again, Woe to thee, (O men!), yea, woe!

36. Does man think that he will be left uncontrolled, (without purpose)?

37. Was he not a drop of sperm emitted (in lowly form)?

38. Then did he become a leech-like clot; then did ((Allah)) make and fashion (him) in due proportion.

39. And of him He made two sexes, male and female.

40. Has not He, (the same), the power to give life to the dead?

Quran Chapter: 75

Posted by: Sabawoon Afghan | December 31, 2006 7:57 PM
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Yoyo:

What exactly are you attempting to clear up? Did you think I was unclear about the difference between atheism and agnosticism?

Posted by: Alan | December 31, 2006 7:53 PM
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Alan
Lets clear this up once and for all.
The Oxford dictionary defines
Agnostic: A person who believes nothing is know
or can be known of the existence or nature of
God or of anything beyond material phenomena.
Definition 2: A person who is uncertain or
non committal about a particular thing.
Atheism: The theory or belief that God does not
exist.

Posted by: yoyo | December 31, 2006 7:47 PM
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Frank Logan makes an excellent point. The plain fact is that the Pope does not believe in the God that people like Richard Dawkins decry.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 7:41 PM
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Anonymous,
You are quite mistaken that atheism implies completely a deterministic universe.
Atomic radiation, which is controlled by quantum indeterminacy, directly affects the macroscopic world in unpredictable ways, such as mutations. So how could there be absolute determinacy?
Atheism is a metaphysical belief which only requires that there is no god, but could be combined with other beliefs which include free will. Likewise forms of theism could exclude free will. The concept of free will is used by Christianity as a way of justifying sending people to Hell; their God would be the worst monster ever conceived otherwise.

Cheers, Jack

Posted by: Jack | December 31, 2006 7:40 PM
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Peter Jackson, in the above post, illustrates the ignorance of most religionists, i.e., those who believe in myth, magic and superstition. The idea that it is EITHER other-worldly hocus-pocus or materialism is the false dichotomy that Christians, etc. have to rely on to maintain their patently ridiculous beliefs.
A rational philosophical approach IS NOT materialistic. We have a spiritual side to our nature and IT IS A PART OF REALITY. It is our consciousness. Ideas are not material, they are abstractions. Note that the human qualities he lists, love, feelings, character, friendship, etc. are elements of human nature, here on earth! Talk about a straw man -- what atheists would deny any of these? This type of tactic is typical of the anti-intellectual approach of these fantasists.
Our ideas, goals and highest values are properly uplifting and "sacred," in a non-mystical sense. "Sacred" needs to be divorced from religion and placed in a proper earthly context.
Philospophy, if derived from the nature of reality and the nature of man and woman, will provide the noblility and grandeur that life deserves.
Unfortunately, we still have the presence of religion, which is merely pre-philosophy. Primitive man, when he couldn't comprehend or rationally explain natural phenomena, fabricated "gods" of thunder, lightening, storms, the sun and moon, etc. I would suggest that it is the lack of rationality that is behind the historical fact that most wars are religious (Can you think of any wars that have been started by free-thinkers, skeptics, the intellectually curious or scientists?).
These primitive ideas (whether christian or muslim), utltimately, are on the way out -- it's just taking longer than it should.

Posted by: Richard Ryckoff | December 31, 2006 7:39 PM
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Martooni and others keep saying, "Because nobody from either camp can provide proof to refute the other side. If you have the proof -- real proof for either case -- you have every right to shout it from the rooftops."

I'm surprised you keep saying this; you must not be carefully reading the comments. Several posters have offered refutations of the existence of god, but you keep ignoring their arguments, and claiming that neither side can prove their point.

Possibly you want to believe neither side can prove the point, rather than giving critical analysis.

Scanning above I see the following:
1. The neutral position is to not believe in the existence of a thing. It is incumbent on the person proposing the existence of something to give the argument. No successful argument is given, thus God does not exist.

2. The problem of evil shows that one popular view of god (all powerful and good) can not exist (incompatible with evil).

3. Alleged objects with contradictory descriptions do not exist. Examples include the 4 sided triangle. God's alleged nature is contradictory, therefore he doesn't exist.

4. All of the historic roles of god are now better explained in other ways (thunder for example is explained in meteorology). The god-concept is useless, thus by Occham's razor, god does not exist.

I'm not claiming these are good arguments, but you don't even examine them. You just baldly claim no one can prove or disprove god. You've not even taken the field, yet.

Posted by: jim | December 31, 2006 7:33 PM
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James criticizes those whose "opinions have little to do with observable facts." However, he sounds a bit empirically-challenged himself.

He claims that "atheists are demonstrably as moral as believers". I wonder precisely how you go about demonstrating that (ostensibly demonstrable) hypothesis? What is the control group? The test group? How do you unambiguously define the categories "atheist" and "believer"? How do you reliably classify individuals as exclusively one or the other? By what means do you quantify an individual's "moral"? How do you control for the many, many other variables among individuals of the human species? And please don't reply with pseudo-scientific sociology mumbo-jumbo. According to James it's a matter of hard science.

James further claims that "societies with high religious belief are also less healthy in terms of homicide, abortion, STDS and many other measures." Presumably James wants us to fill in the blank and leap to a conclusion that some kind of causation is at play. No can do, James. We base our opinions strictly upon observable facts. What are the facts and evidence conclusively establishing and explaining such causation? You are not forming your own opinions out of thin air....are you?

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 7:32 PM
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I wanted to second Martooni. As an agnostic myself, I dislike being lumped in the same category as atheists. Atheists can be every bit as strident and narrow-minded as theists. If there were such a thing as a "bright" agenda, I would probably disagree with most of it. Although religion isn't for me, I can see the important role it plays in certain people's lives and I'm not really interested in challenging anyone's beliefs as long as they leave me alone with mine.

Posted by: alan | December 31, 2006 7:20 PM
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In counting athiests, it would be interesting to count "believers" whose belief in God is so metaphorical as to be indistinguishable from athiesm. Many Neocons, for example, hue to religion because they think is is necessary for social order. Many educated Catholics I have met meet that definition.

When you get to these fringes of parsing beliefs, I'm left thinking the differences are often linguistic and cultural and we would be better off looking ways to see how we agree than looking for small differences to separate ourselves from another.

Posted by: frank logan | December 31, 2006 7:16 PM
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I didn't come here looking for a p!ssing match, really.

Just wanted to clarify that agnostics are not atheists and that in my book (which is secular one), if you are an atheist or theist, you must have faith to be either -- faith in yourself and your knowledge of the universe, or faith in a higher power. Because nobody from either camp can provide proof to refute the other side. If you have the proof -- real proof for either case -- you have every right to shout it from the rooftops.

All I'm asking is that if you don't, please quit acting as if you do. I'm not an agnostic because I was born that way (was born Catholic, actually). I'm an agnostic because I was encouraged to question the status quo and when I did, found it lacking satisfactory answers. I really could care less who or what (or whether) you believe in. You are free to do so (or not) and I am free to sit on the fence. None of us are any better or worse than the next for making those choices.

And Brian... I sorta got your point, but 50.0001% is barely good enough for horseshoes and hand grenades. Until one gets into the higher percentiles (maybe the 80s, probably the 90s), I think it would be more appropriate to refer to them as agnostic. By definition, atheism and theism both require a very high confidence one way or the other about the existence of a higher power.

Just like you can't be a "little bit pregnant", you can't be an atheist and say that there's a possibiliy there might be a God, and you can't be a theist and believe there's a chance the opposite might be true. That's where agnostics come in. We can get away with being a little bit pregnant, a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll.

Posted by: martooni | December 31, 2006 7:02 PM
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to anonymous
It's so much simpler than you state.
Put simply...if you believe in the supernatural
then you're judgement of reality is questionable.
If you're smart you'll question the existence of the
supernatural,rather than assuming it exists.
An atheist believes god and the supernatural are make believe,and sees no reason to believe such
fantasies.

Posted by: yoyo | December 31, 2006 6:59 PM
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Re Peter Jackson's Post

Peter, you are living in your own mind.

A lot of the most spiritual people i know are atheists. There is more discussion of the science/evidence aspects here because this discussion is about whether God exists, and what kind of God it is.

Religion is either neutral or deleterious to high spiritual values. Those include connection to nature, wonder at the beauty of the universe, sympathy for the suffering of other humans, appreciation of beauty.

Atheists are demonstrably as moral as believers and societies with high religious belief are also less healthy in terms of homicide, abortion!!yes, STDS and many other measures.

your opinions have little to do with observable facts.

Posted by: james | December 31, 2006 6:55 PM
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On Faith... Not Yet The Majority But No Longer Silent. DANIEL C DENNETT...more atheists and agnostics in the country than is generally recognized....In scanning the comments up to here most acknowledged atheists seem to believe in science, the intelect, and intelligence at the expense of other faculties of our human and Spiritual nature. They stressed physical, material things and forces that can be seen, measured and counted. They say non-material things do not exist or a matter of opinion and are not worthy of consideration.
This includes things such as love, inner feelings, character, friendship, subjective thinking and the subjective meaning and communication of much behavior.
By denying the meaning and existence of our inner human nature and our inner Spiritual nature, a major part of human living, science creates very unbalanced, undeveloped, unnatural, inhuman individuals, society and culture.
When the individuals and their society have inner human problems such as random violence and sex, alcoholism, corruption, divorce, road rage, etc., science is unable to solve these problems which are steadily growing and destroying society all while business and science are growing ever greater.
We will not be the first culture to be destroyed by material success and breakdown of character and society.

Posted by: Peter Jackson | December 31, 2006 6:45 PM
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It's astonishing how hysterically wrong the so-called brights/atheists are when it comes to characterizing and denouncing what they imagine other people believe. Most are wildly misinformed and evince a reckless disregard for the truth. Their bizarre, hateful caricatures have not the slightest relationship with reality.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 6:35 PM
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Poch Suzara say that "it remains our task (of atheists,agnostics et al) to bring more light into the world of darkness."

Just reading these words suggests to me that those who chose the word "brights" would have been far better of to chose the word "lights". It is indeed the task of atheists and agnostics to bring more light into the world and free those enslaved by the dark cloud of formal religion. I am glad I am not alone in thinking the choice of the word brights is most unfortunate. To suggest that those who are not brights might like to call themselves are "supers" wouldn't really help. The damage is already done since the word bright does disparage those who are not yet non-believers.

Posted by: Ted Swart | December 31, 2006 6:29 PM
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This section of the Washington Post website is absolutely worthless. The (lack of) quality of intellectual debate here is proof either that:

1) The person of the year ("you") is an idiot.

OR

2) Most people are incapable of having a civil, intelligent debate about belief and disbelief.

Posted by: guez | December 31, 2006 6:08 PM
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First, let me say I'm an athiest. Second, I should mention that I was raised Catholic, and although I disagree with the belief of God, I think we should all be accepting and respectful of each other, and not denigrate each other based on our religious beliefs.

Using the word "bright" to describe athiests is disrespectful to those who believe in religion. It sends the message that athiest think they know better than religious people, and that those who are religious are dimm/stupid/etc because of their belief.

Using the word bright to describe athiests will never lead to athiest being accepted by religious people. You are essentially saying you are better/more intelligent than them, and it will only lead to them hating/rejecting athiests more than they already do (and that includes politicians, who will be more eager to distance themselves from athiests).

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 5:48 PM
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Dear Mr. Dennett
Here is my letter to Richard Dawkins and Paul Kurtz. With all good wishes, Poch Suzara
September 11, 2006
Free Inquiry Magazine
Amherst, New York, USA

For: Paul Kurtz and Richard Dawkins

Gentlemen:
Skeptic or Bright or Atheist

I hardly see any value in identifying myself as a “skeptic” or a “bright.” Why hide inside a dark closet? What value is there for more inquiry after having already discovered the truth? Each and every one of us was born free from religion. Even before sacred books were written by inspired authors of God – babies were already coming out of their mother’s womb not as a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, but as atheists. In fact, we are all born atheists, not sinners; we are made sinners by religious education.

If I am against slave trading and say that slavery should be abolished and the slave traders accuse me of being negative, then so be it. But do I really need to use more proper terms so as not to offend such a gang of criminals - the slave traders? In our world today, the religious traders are the criminals. For the sake of faith peddling, they continue to cut each other’s throats. With weapons of mass destruction today, they are even ready and willing to reduce our planet earth into a lunar landscape! In the meantime, the reinforcement of religion exists everywhere. In schools, colleges, universities, radios, newspapers, magazines, movies, television, billboards, marquees, and currencies, etc. Indeed, the communion of saints integrating, while the communion of atheists disintegrating.

Down through the centuries, the religious traders have done much to convert every one to live in guilt, in fear, and in hate of each other. Indeed, from infancy to senility, to promote the belief that evil comes only from those who do not believe in God. It seems to me clear that with the power of knowledge behind us – the superstitious should be the ones retreating, and the atheists not the ones flinching away trying only to find more polite ways of identifying themselves in public. Bertrand Russell wrote: “If we must die, let us die sober, and not drunk with lies.” One such horrible lie is that reason can bow before faith; or, that knowledge can retreat before superstition.

Sacred lies and other ecclesiastical falsehoods are over. Thanks to the atheists who walked out of their dark closets. In the meantime, there is nothing at all negative about Atheism other than it deprives the religious traders and faith peddlers of their vast sources of tax-free revenues.

As atheists, we have more crucial roles to play in this world. With courage, we must continue to show the way for the minds of men, hearts of women, and the lives of children to learn to live under the direction always towards truthfulness. If this were not the case, it nevertheless remains our task to bring more light into a world of darkness.

With all good wishes,
Poch Suzara
Bertrand Russell Society, Philippines
P.O. Box 3036 Makati City

Posted by: Poch Suzara | December 31, 2006 5:29 PM
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Good day Darkie. Did you read everything I wrote, or just that one line? I fully acknowledged the flaws of democracy, as well as majority rule. I think I said so. I think I specifically referenced Iraq which I opposed from day one. I went back to read it to make sure of what I wrote. I said:
Well, as in all things in a democracy, the majority does get to decide what happens. That is how it works. Does it always work well, or fairly? No. But that is how it works. Does it always reach a just result. No, but that is how it works. At times, the results are tragic -- see Iraq. I don't know of another way to do this. We wrote a constitution, set up a government, and off we went. Those with the most votes get to make the rules. Being a member of the minority political party in the US over the last fifteen years has been frustrating, annoying and at times agonizing. Having to put up with a leader who I didn't like (to put it mildly)from the "git go" for now, what, six years, has driven me crazy.

So, you are unfair in your characterization of my point. I don't think I promised anything. I think I said democracy does not always work well, or fairly, or justly. At times, the minority viewpoint is diminished.
As for expecting anything for being a Christian, not sure where that came from. I don't think Christians expect anything from any of our fellow humans for being faithful. Don't expect to get to the front of the line, or better food, or the best seat. That's not the point of it, at all. Not a pat, or a nod, or anything. Faith is its own reward.
Again, the point -- why are you so angry? Because someone mentioned Jesus. Would you be mad if they asked you about the game? Or politics? What movie did you like. We all are subject to being asked questions about issues we don't want to discuss, don't care about discussing, etc. I get junk e-mail all the time. Not going to blog about how angry I am about it -- I just delete it. The free society aspect of all this subjects us to many forms of unwanted communication -- it is a cost of free society. In the public arena I oftentimes have to listen to others speak words freely that I don't like to hear. I simply move away if I can. I hate being approached on the street by anyone, or having a peddler at my door. I certainly detest political commercials (love my DVR). Yet, it is what it is -- aren't people supposed to be free to speak?
Now about the judiciary (and the consitution.) They are clearly designed to protect the individual, that is certain. But only against state action. At the mall, a decidedly capitalist place, without state control, the proprietors can allow Christmas or not. If someone who is a believer fusses about "Happy Holidays", isn't that the same as you fussing about "Merry Christmas"? Why is your speech more protected or valuable than theirs? In the public forum, all speech must be tolerated, or else we all lose. In the state forum, however, there must be a wall to protect all. We must not allow any faith to become the state religion. (prayer in school, for example) That is distinguished from policy. We must recognize that everyone who is in our society has certain beliefs that are the basis for their opinions about policy. Deciding whether certain behaviors, or scientific endeavors will be permitted is policy, not religion. The majority gets to decide those things, regardless of why. Again, I may not like it, but it is that way, and it was intended that way. The Constitution protects freedom from state religion, not freedom from all religion. Just as Big Business can lobby congress for tax breaks, Christians and atheists can lobby Congress on their issues. That is the essence of it all.
In the end, we either believe in free speech and protect it, or not. We either believe in the right to wroship freely, or not worship, adn protect it, or not. And that freedom does include "Have you recieved Jesus" questions. If that one is not allowed, what else can't we say?

Posted by: Greg | December 31, 2006 5:23 PM
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Martooni said: And Ben... please don't try to inject the freaking "tooth fairy" into this. It takes as much mental energy to deny theism as it does to embrace it, and maybe even more energy to straddle the fence. But to toss the "tooth fairy" into the conversation is simply disingenuous and not worth the energy to consider. In fact, it smells like troll poop.


No, it is intellectual honesty. People can and do evaluate claims. Naming the claim 'God' does not grant an automatic exemption. I can evaluate the claims of a Tooth Fairy's existence and I can evaluate the claims of Caesar's existence and I can evaluate the claims of God's existence.

We are disagreeing on semantics. To me, the word atheist means that I don't believe a God exists. This would cover anyone from 50.0001% to 100% sure that a God did not exist. If you are uncomfortable with the term, that is fine. But don't claim that atheists need to be 100% sure in order to call themselves atheists; they don't. No more than one needs to be 100% sure the tooth fairy doesn't exist in order to claim the tooth fairy is a fictional character.

Posted by: Ben | December 31, 2006 5:01 PM
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"As long as those who are believers will acknowledge that their allegiance gives them no privilege, no direct line to the absolute truth, no advantage in moral insight, we should be able to get along just fine." Daniel C. Dennett

This is the critical point. I regularly attend a Philosophy Cafe and I've noticed that it is only those with an open mind, both supers and brights who continue to go month after month. Those with strong doctrinal commitments tend to flare up during their first one or two meetings and are then never seen again.

The type of philosophical and respectful discussion that I enjoy with open minded supers who simply interpret their experience in a different way to me is quite different to the dogmatic beliefs adopted by most denominations, and within the Christian tradition the evangelical churches in particular.

While as a philosophical concept I do not accept that "faith" even in its watered-down esoteric form is a path to genuine knowledge, I am able to enter into a dialogue with those who do not build a impenatrable wall around their own brand of doctrine. I would like to see an alliance of all free thinkers whether they are atheists, agnostics, deists or for my want of language, what I will call non-dogmatic theists.

Fundamentalists I oppose on a political level, non-dogmatic theists I only debate on a philosophical level. I welcome the election of non-dogmatic theists and atheists alike. However, nothing would please me more than to see the current situation reversed so that one day "fundamentalists" will be given so little respect by the population as a whole that they will find it as difficult to gather as many votes together as others of such irrational and dogmatic extreme faith such as communists or facists.

Posted by: Graham | December 31, 2006 5:00 PM
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I suspect that someone who insists loud and long that all must believe as he does or be damned (or persecuted, or burned at the stake)is not so sure of his own faith as he claims. And I suspect also that the religious fanatics who are making so much noise believe more in the Devil and his power than in any version of a benevolent, loving God. Certainly, they see him (Satan) everywhere and seemingly do not trust that God has the power to deal with him without their vociferous assistance.

On a more positive note, I recommend that all read "Religion Explained" by Pascal Boyer, an approach to religion from the perspectives of cognitive science and anthropology, much like the type of investigation described by Dr. Dennett in "Breaking the Spell".

Posted by: Jerry | December 31, 2006 4:57 PM
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What do you know, Brian? You got all the answers?

ALL of them? Every single one? Please share

All right Martooni, all right. In principle you are correct. The existence of God can be neither proven nor disproven. However, thats not the whole story.

The proposition is not a 50/50 deal. I'm not sure what it is for a generic creator of the universe, but the more detail you (ok not YOU) layer onto your Deity, the lower the probability of it existing. Hence my pink unicorn analogy, lets face it, thats pretty unlikely ... yet is an all loving, all powerful triune, son sacrificing, virgin born, risen from the dead "one" God that much likelier? Thats all I'm saying.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | December 31, 2006 4:56 PM
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It seems to me that it's just as difficult to not believe as it is to believe. The first obstacle one has to overcome is the belief that any individual human being can know everything there is to know about the existence of God. You can't KNOW, you can only accept on faith that God doesn't exist. To deny the possibility that God exists is to assume that man can know everything. If we know everything, then we don't need scientists to discover what we don't yet know. Yet as every day passes more and more is revealed to us through scientists, philosophers, and others not involved in academia. I'm alive today because of a drug that was unavailble just five years ago. Is this miracle drug the result of divine inspriration or mere;y of the intellectual abilities of a group of people. I don't "know," but I have faith that God had a hand in providing this good thing to his people. That faith requires little more effort than the faith that God was not involved does, and I sleep better.

Posted by: John S. Yarbrough | December 31, 2006 4:49 PM
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Posted by: Ben | December 31, 2006 4:48 PM
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PS: I am a scientist; I hold post-graduate degrees; I have consistently scored very high on the SAT's and IQ tests.

I'm sure compartmentalisation makes all of that possible. Its absolutely feasible that individual religious people are highly intelligent, look at Francis Collins. However, on average the probability is, given a random atheist and a random religite, the atheist will be that bit "brighter":-)

That said, having to spell this out for you doesn't suggest your as "bright" as all that ... :-)

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | December 31, 2006 4:48 PM
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Brian... you've apparently missed my point that agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve. That was it. Atheists believe that there is no God/gods/whatever, and theists believe the contrary -- which is all find by me. To each his own. I was only trying to point out the difference between "not knowing" and THINKING you know.

What do you know, Brian? You got all the answers?

ALL of them? Every single one? Please share.

I sure as hell don't. And if there is any one thing I know, it's that I know that nobody knows -- or can't provide the "bloody glove", in any case.

I did try to inject a little common sense (and maybe some bad humor) into the discourse, but I did not imply that either atheists nor theists NEED to prove anything, because in my humble opinion, neither side possibly CAN.

In other words, God may have an unlisted telephone number or he may just not have a telephone -- or not be answering it. Or.... "Hello... this is God... I'm very busy managing the Universe. Please leave your prayers for Earth and its inhabitants at the beep..."

And Ben... please don't try to inject the freaking "tooth fairy" into this. It takes as much mental energy to deny theism as it does to embrace it, and maybe even more energy to straddle the fence. But to toss the "tooth fairy" into the conversation is simply disingenuous and not worth the energy to consider. In fact, it smells like troll poop.

I will say again... I am an agnostic, not an atheist... the main reason I am the way that I am is because I have not seen any convincing evidence from either side to make me 100% sure that either side is right, or can even possibly BE right.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that anyone who thinks they "know" for sure, one way or the other, has either met God in person and got His autograph and a commemorative t-shirt and 100K "enlightenment points" on their karma card, or they've managed to unravel all the mysteries of our universe and have PowerPoint presentations to prove and explain it. That, or they're just a great big wind bag that stinks of troll poop and cheap whiskey.

Posted by: martooni | December 31, 2006 4:46 PM
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(I made the anonymous post about free will and atheism.)

Darkie, by "god" I don't mean a creator that is worshipped. I simply mean an entity behaving outside of the realm of physical causality. Maybe "god" is not the best term, but it doesn't matter. Such an entity is supernatural by definition and believing in the supernatural is a major problem for an atheist. If you think you have the supernatural power of free will, how can you criticize, say, a Baptist for believing that the Holy Trinity is the origin and controller of all things? Supernatural is supernatural. As Willim James said in his discussion of consciousness, you can't be just a little bit pregnant.

If you read Dennet's books, you will see that free will - and all "intentional" design - dissolves into an absurdity when you take a completely rational approach to these matters, just as the concept of God the Creator does so in a rationalist's approach to the origin of species. You end up having to accept that your every thought and action derives from a kind of evolutionary process of competing neural activities. (This basic evolutionary concept of behavior was offered earlier by B. F. Skinner who emphasized the role of one's history with the environment in the process.) Free will becomes as much an illusion as is creationism.

Posted by: Scumps | December 31, 2006 4:38 PM
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I understand that one of the theses of this blog is that I am not terribly intelligent. (it is good to know that we do not resort to name calling -- correct me if I am wrong, but apparently the need for name-calling, against me, was eliminated by making it an assumption).

I have also followed the discussion by the poster who has all the studies that prove that atheists are more (on average) intelligent. Setting aside a discussion on statistics, can the 'bright' ones provide me the definition of intelligence?

PS: I am a scientist; I hold post-graduate degrees; I have consistently scored very high on the SAT's and IQ tests.

PPS: I, empirically, do not correlate scoring well on a test with intelligence.

Posted by: AM, Vienna, VA | December 31, 2006 4:26 PM
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Anonymous said:
>You may not believe in any god but yourself, but you certainly believe you are a god.

That is the most bizarre thing in the world and I've heard it expoused before and had time to think about it and can't put it down to anything but religious propaganda/soundbite-itis.

I for one do not believe I am a God. I believe I have control over my own life but I'm assuming that isn't sufficient to constitute Diety-hood in your mind. If it is, then I feel very sorry for you and your out-of-control, random life and I dearly hope it improves.

I DO believe I have a responsibility to contribute to a just, fair, and progressive society so that my country and city can outlive me and the world will be a better place when I exit than when I entered. I guess that means I believe I have some control of the world I live in, but no more than anyone else does, and frankly a lot less than possible when I see amazing people like Mother Teresa and Nelson Mendela. They do make me feel pretty underpowered in the world control department. I don't think of them as Gods, so you can't imagine I think of myself, with far less influence, to be one.

Let me pull up a dictionary: God -- a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes.

Well, I can assure you that no one worships me, or if they do I wish they would email more often so I can keep track of their whereabouts. I don't even worship myself, not that that would qualify me as a God by itself by definition.

Really, what in the world leads you to the conclusion that atheists believe they ARE God. I really honestly want to know the reasoning since it is so impossible to grasp.

Posted by: Darkie | December 31, 2006 4:06 PM
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Anonymous @ December 30, 2006 12:36 PM

You posted "As an employer I was predjudice against many religions and for good reason."

How and Why did you know an applicant's religion? To begin with, it's illegal, unless the applicant volunteers it. It is my experience that noone does.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it appears to me that you are merely stating a personal prejudice; you are not conveying experience.

Posted by: AM, Vienna, VA | December 31, 2006 4:05 PM
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Paradigms (in the Kuhnian sense) involve not just evidence, but probability, as one writer above noted. The paradigm with no supernatural elements, first causes, etc., fits the evidence much better than the teleological, supernatural origin paradigm. Much better. It needn't be fullproof, merely more probable.

If one drops the idea that simple things must have come from, or were "created" by, something more complex, than the choice of the atheistic paradigm is not intellectually difficult. Emotionally, of course, may be another story.

Posted by: Joe Lapsley | December 31, 2006 4:01 PM
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For me, Doug Rasmussen's post says it all. I acknowledge my sense that there is more than meets the eye to this wonderful and awful universe, yet I am uncertain at who or what it is. Given the evil of nature and of man, I cannot believe in a benevolent deity. But I would feel arrogant in stating that there is no "god". Live and let live, but I agree that dogmatists are very, very dangerous.

Posted by: MichaelK | December 31, 2006 3:53 PM
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To Darkie,

Ah, your mention of Job, and evil. You might be interested in C. G. Jung's take on both. A nice little capsule version of Jung's thinking can be found in his autobiography, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections."

Interesting, to my knowledge, no atheist, Christian, Jew, or anyone else, has ever named their son "Job."

------------------------------------------------

Greg, thank you for your good wishes. More than anything else, I like being an American, and I think you do too.

Posted by: Michael Karg | December 31, 2006 3:39 PM
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Congratulations again, Professor Dennett! I am former Catholic priest with an MSW and JD. I am thrilled to be either agnostic nontheist (Michael Shermer's term, an agnostic/practical atheist (Steve Uhl's term) or a good old plain atheist. It really matters very little. There is very little that one knows for absolute certainity (Newton and Eistein found that out)and only takes evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt" for the state to execute someone. We certainly have more than amble "beyond the reasonable doubt evidence" that there is no god, only nature.
I am not thrilled with the term "bright" and I don't think much is gained by comparing it to the term "gay" for homosexual. I'll stick with atheist or perhaps, agnostic nontheist.
It is high time we stand up and let the world see what a sham Christianity is but doing it civilly. We can be better "Christians" they are!
Why is there so little attention paid the total lack of historical/archeological evidence for any of the events in the Old Testament and the strong evidence (or lack there of) for the fact that Jesus never even existed?

Posted by: Bill | December 31, 2006 3:34 PM
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To Martooni:

Do you point out this 'leap of faith' people make when they talk about the Tooth Fairy being a human invention ? The fact that many parents take the tooth and replace it with money does not mean ALL of them do. There is a logical possibility that some of the teeth may indeed have been taken by a tooth fairy. Therefore, one must remain agnostic and cannot claim to disbelieve in the existence of the tooth fairy.

Posted by: Ben | December 31, 2006 3:10 PM
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Nobody can prove that "God" exists.

Nobody can prove that "He" (or "She") doesn't.

I must take issue with this carnard. It is NOT up to the atheist to disprove God, rather it is up to the Theist to stump up the evidence for their completely irrational belief.

If a person insists that invisible pink unicorns that fart yellow gas will torture me for eternity unless I strap a foxes testicles to my head, Am I really under any obligation to disprove their assertion? Would the theists among you consider yourselves beholden to run around researching this particular Deity, and associated rituals?

Thats exactly how I feel about Jesus, salvation and that wispy bastard, the Holy Ghost. It's all bollocks, and I'll happily retract if someone can produce the evidence.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | December 31, 2006 3:09 PM
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You have only two logical alternatives: Either you believe in a completely deterministic universe with no place for free will or you believe in at least one god. If you think you have free will then you cannot be an atheist.

Wow! I think you just invalidated several millenia of philosophy. Not.

I happen to subscribe to the idea that everything could be predicted if we had absolute knowledge of all inputs .... we don't of course, which means, in every practical day to day sense, we have free will.

However, what this train of thought does mean, is that God is a total monster. Notwithstanding his complete knowledge of all inputs, he allowed creation to play out in the catastrophic way outlined in major christian theology. Had he simply bounced a few atoms in another direction, Adam and Eve would have made different "free will" decisions and we wouldn't be in this fix.

Of course the universe is completely deterministic:-) But we don't see the whole picture, thus cannot possibly predict the outcomes, and thats what makes it fun:-)

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | December 31, 2006 3:00 PM
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An agnostic is neither a believer nor a disbeliever, but rather a person who is unwilling to make a "leap of faith" in either direction (which, in the absence of any conclusive and definitive evidence from either side, seems to me a very big leap -- not that there's anything wrong with that).

Agnostics may be called "wishy-washy", but we can never be accused of "blind faith", which is a requirement for both atheists and theists in order to make their "jump" to either side of this argument. "Blind faith" requires one to reject any possibility that one may be wrong in his/her assumptions/reasoning, and therefore must reject any arguments contrary to one's position -- otherwise the house of cards falls down, children touch themselves inappropriately, and kittens die.

So the atheists believe in the empirical method, the theists try to discredit the value of empirical methodology, and agnostics like me are left scratching our heads wondering why both parties just don't shut the hell up and buy the next round.

Nobody can prove that "God" exists.

Nobody can prove that "He" (or "She") doesn't.

So shut up already...

Toe-may-toes, toe-mah-toes, I say we call the whole thing off and enjoy a few nips of the "nectar of the gods/un-gods" and sort out the underpants tomorrow morning.

Posted by: martooni | December 31, 2006 2:59 PM
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"You may not believe in any god but yourself, but you certainly believe you are a god."

What a bunch of Hooey!

The "religious" are the most arrogant and stupid creatures who walk the earth. Their only desire is to murder those who decline to believe in the Big Invisible Daddy in the Sky. they claim rules all things.

Posted by: David Ehrenstein | December 31, 2006 2:49 PM
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Thanks for the thoughtful article, Professor Dennett. While I do or don't believe in "god" depending on the day of the week, I applaud the notion that atheists and agnostics need to come out of the closet. The literal minded Christians who are threatened by this will just have to get used to it -- although I'm sure we will have to listen to them screech and quote bible passages for some time to come.

Regarding the term "bright," though, whoever chose that label wasn't real bright IMHO. It's antagonistic right from the get go. I like freethinker better. Marketing is important. Just ask the "pro-choice" folks.

Best wishes for a happy New Year.

Posted by: James | December 31, 2006 2:47 PM
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You have only two logical alternatives: Either you believe in a completely deterministic universe with no place for free will or you believe in at least one god. If you think you have free will then you cannot be an atheist. You may not believe in any god but yourself, but you certainly believe you are a god. That is, you believe that your actions are not determined by a chain of physical causes and effects that go back to the beginning of time. And, sorry, quantum level uncertainty won't fill in for free will that works to achieve specific ends. We may see what appears to be true randomness at subatomic levels, but there is no logical way to accrete those bits of randomness into directed free will. These ideas may be old hat to many atheists - oh, sorry, I mean brights - but I bet many are not thinking through the implications of their beliefs.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 2:36 PM
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C. Gray:

>How odd. The Christians who instructed me as a child explicitly rejected the concept of Hell.

You are the very first Christian I've met who doesn't believe in Hell, or at the very least utilizes the Devil as the reason for the existence of evil. How does one explain evil or the Book of Job in that case? Nevermind, not critical. Any God who could be provoked into tormenting one of his most faithful is a God I'd personally avoid garnering the attention of but to each their own. Not believing in Hell does take the stick out of the carrot and stick of Christianity. Very interesting, but I think, very rare. Perhaps I have taken "If you don't accept Jesus as your personal savior you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven" as an implicit threat that hell is the other option. Silly me.

>Seriously, I routinely hear as many dogmatic, mean-spirited and wildly inaccurate statements from self-proclaimed "brights" as I do from the most annoying bible-thumping fundie.

Ah, so people are all the same, no matter their religion or lack thereof. What a nice idea. If one could get everyone (religions included) to acknowledge that enmasse the world would be a much nicer place.

You probably also aren't one of those confused people who gets angry at the use of "X"-mas, but then sticks a fish on your car. Hint: they are the same thing, the X and the fish.)

Posted by: Darkie | December 31, 2006 2:23 PM
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Posted by: Anonymous | December 31, 2006 2:12 PM
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Yeah, Parker, Allan Bloom thought freedom makes it impossible for us to be human. Thanks for bringing that up.

Posted by: SqueakyRat | December 31, 2006 2:12 PM
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Heather .... glad to help:-)

C.Gray Says :
Seriously, I routinely hear as many dogmatic, mean-spirited and wildly inaccurate statements from self-proclaimed "brights" as I do from the most annoying bible-thumping fundie.

Sure, people are people. However the point the other poster made is valid. Monotheistic religions are dogmatically mutually exclusive, in fact, they even fragment into mutually exclusive camps WITHIN the various major religions. So the poster is right, you are screwed from the outset where one of the parties has an absolute position which is not based on evidence.

Religion has to be faced down, and repeatedly highlighted as the dangerous arrant nonsense that it is.

It never fails to amaze me that atheists are considered arrogant because we won't to subscribe to someone's pet mythology. To the religious that claim I'm arrogant, I say, "show me the evidence and I'll beleive it, what's your excuse?".

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | December 31, 2006 2:11 PM
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>Greg wrote:
>the majority does get to decide what happens.

Ah, but there's the rub. In the U.S. of A. there is another branch of governance called the Judicial. Their purpose is to protect the rights of the INDIVIDUAL by listening just to their situation and determining if that single person (or minority group) is due some extra process to give them equality. Hence the attacks by the Right on "activist" judges. The Christianists are working hard and overtime to remove this fundamental protection for the minority so they can enforce their views (10 commandments (which they can't even list themselves) in public spaces, creches on public squares, restrictions on health care for woman, gutting of science, and boy, I could go on and on here...) That is why it is important for those who support the constitutional right to having religion kept out of secular law to pay attention to the erosion of our rights. Atheists have a special interest in this, as you might imagine.

No one thinks you shouldn't have a good time at church on Sunday, just don't expect anyone else to think more of you for it. I had a great time at the last football game I went to but I don't think I should go door to door telling people to buy season tickets. I don't think I should be trapped in an office with someone asking me if I've accepted Jesus as my savior (although I shut the last one up by saying: "No, but I can see you'll be making my life hell, so who does that make you?")

Your church may be a place of peace and social binding. That's great. But our politicians have taken that exact rhetoric and, with far too little criticism from the supposed peace-Jesus-loving Christians who live by those words, led a crusade against a foreign country and have killed now somewhere between 150,000 and 600,000 innocents. So, your oasis is great but when the doors open and the people spill out, it'd be better if those people could act on even a modicum of that belief. From where a lot of us sit, they just use the words as weapon against criticism and make a power grab that costs us all dearly in money and moral credibility.

Next time someone knocks on my door or stands in a fancy suit on one of the pedestrian malls handing out bibles or yells at the shop clerk for not saying "Merry Christmas" or complains because I use the original words to the pledge, can I give them your email and say "Greg promised this never happens, so please talk to him"?

Posted by: Darkie | December 31, 2006 2:00 PM
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**Religions have carefully designed their theologies to make this [civil debate] impossible. The debate always starts out with "oh, you don't believe, so you must be going to hell"**

How odd. The Christians who instructed me as a child explicitly rejected the concept of Hell. In fact they did so repeatedly (complete with extended quotes from the Bible) until it became a particularly boring Sunday school subject. They must have missed the design committee meeting. (OTOH, they had little success convincing me of their theology, even as an impressionable kid).

Seriously, I routinely hear as many dogmatic, mean-spirited and wildly inaccurate statements from self-proclaimed "brights" as I do from the most annoying bible-thumping fundie. And at least the fundie will always admit, if pushed, that Christians can be as sinful and wicked as other human beings (original sin and all that). Whereas many "brights" seem to be obsessed with convincing others that religious people are either all ignorant, malignant or both. On top of that, the fundie really believes he is doing me a personal favor by trying to convert me, while the "bright" is normally just venting wildly about the awfulness of the terrifying fundies.

Getting back to Dennett's main point, he's absolutely right. If atheists remain "closeted" and refuse to publicly admit their beliefs, negative perceptions of atheists by believers WILL persist because they will go unchallenged. And those in public life who do so are, in fact, lying to their constituents, which cannot do anything good for the political process.

Posted by: C.Gray | December 31, 2006 1:49 PM
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I find it impossible to believe in anything supernatural without feeling kinda silly.
Gods and ghosts and devils and fairies are all in the mind and nowhere else.
It's so medieval.
But its easy to think like this if you've been brought up religiously.
Religion makes dummies of us all.

Posted by: yoyo | December 31, 2006 1:46 PM
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Brian Coughlan -- thanks for making me laugh.

Posted by: Heather | December 31, 2006 1:43 PM
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Edxmd said: Has matter/energy always been present or did it appear de novo at the time of the "big bang"? Matter/energy always being present is a concept difficult for me to grasp. If matter/energy presented itself at the time of the "big bang" how was it caused? Are scientific explanations or hypotheses given to explain the origin/or eternal presence of matter/energy? Do atheists accept the possibility of a non metaphysical "super intelligence(s)" as a causative agent?

Matter energy may have always been present or it may have come into existence. I don't know.

There are a few scientific conjectures that attempt to explain the origin of our universe. One of the strongest is Guth's Theory of Inflation:
http://www.discover.com/issues/apr-02/cover/

I accept the possibility of a 'super intelligence.' I also accept the possibility of a 'super Keno machine' generating fundamental constants for a new universe in the multiverse every so often. The possibilities are limitless.

Posted by: Ben | December 31, 2006 1:42 PM
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RJR / Brian M.

RJR -- Thanks. It has ruined my career. The only thing I am afraid of in this entire world is cults and I just ran into too much brainwashing/indoctrinated people in the intel community (perhaps administration too) who take religion and beliefs to the extreme making them worse than the terrorists themselves. If there is extremism that is justified it is extremist for moderation. This should be the "war" for the US.

Brian -- thanks for making me laugh.

Posted by: Heather | December 31, 2006 1:41 PM
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The big problem I have with "atheist" is that it requires me to acknowledge the theists -- to credit their superstition by using it to define my posture.

I don't like 'brights' either -- let's let the faithful die quietly, not empowered by this discussion. It's completely predictable that not a single one of them will discard their faith after reading this long article, nor am I likely to acquire faith from it. At the end it's just a waste of bandwidth.



Posted by: burninbush | December 31, 2006 1:37 PM
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Jim

Your description of agnosticism as "waiting around" is a bit broad-stroked. I characterize myself as agnostic because the whole concept is meaningless to me. I don't care if there is a god, or not. It has no relevance in how I live my life. I can't say that there is or isn't one and I'm fine with that. I'm not waiting for an answer, or feel the need to make a decision one way or the other.
I do have an academic interest in religion, however. Historical, sociological, philosophical etc..It's hard not to, given the impact it's had on human history.

Posted by: rjr | December 31, 2006 1:34 PM
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A question for atheists (that is, no metaphysical answers please):

Has matter/energy always been present or did it appear de novo at the time of the "big bang"? Matter/energy always being present is a concept difficult for me to grasp. If matter/energy presented itself at the time of the "big bang" how was it caused? Are scientific explanations or hypotheses given to explain the origin/or eternal presence of matter/energy? Do atheists accept the possibility of a non metaphysical "super intelligence(s)" as a causative agent?

Posted by: edxmd | December 31, 2006 1:32 PM
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Just got back from mass (fairy tale theatre to some of you). It was a particularly moving experience today. Perhaps because of the last few days of reading the thread here. During the mass, I heard no judgment of nonbelievers, saw no persecution of the unchurched (as we say here in the mountains), nor hatred or vitriol spewed forth at anyone. I heard a message of love, hope, and family. I worshipped freely, with my faith family, before the altar of our Lord. If that offends anyone, well, so be it. In the meantime, many around my community chose not to go to church, do not worship God, and live a life much like mine. OK. It is not my place to judge what they do. This is a free society, founded on principles involving a right to worship freely or not, to speak ones mind or not, to engage in public discourse with others about issues affecting us all or not.
As I looked throughout the church, I saw many with whom I disagree about social issues, about fiscal issues, about everything in politics for that matter. Yet, a cross word has never passed between us. I respect them as a fellow human, trying to get through life as best they can. I accept that they do not believe as I do on many things, but we do worship together in the family of Christ.
What I still don't seem to be able to get through my thick skull is the notion that the faith belief system is so offensive to some here. Why is that a problem? It seems to center around the notion that people of faith force their belief system on others through political discourse. Well, as in all things in a democracy, the majority does get to decide what happens. That is how it works. Does it always work well, or fairly? No. But that is how it works. Does it always reach a just result. No, but that is how it works. At times, the results are tragic -- see Iraq. I don't know of another way to do this. We wrote a constitution, set up a government, and off we went. Those with the most votes get to make the rules. Being a member of the minority political party in the US over the last fifteen years has been frustrating, annoying and at times agonizing. Having to put up with a leader who I didn't like (to put it mildly)from the "git go" for now, what, six years, has driven me crazy. Still, thats the way the ball bounces. Those I support win sometimes, and they lose sometimes. I support them because they believe in the things I believe in. That is how this works. So, in a society where the overwhelming majority of people profess a belief in a higher power, God, whatever you want to call it -- one might expect that their belief system would dominate. Again, does it always lead to the best result. Not for me it doesn't. Yet, that does not change the fact that I can be civil in my discourse, kind to those who oppose me, and work to better this society of ours.
Michael, isn't it amazing that in the vastness of the internet world that you bump into kindred spirits, sometimes in the oddest places. To you and yours, good life and good luck.
I hope that this discourse has taught us all that even in our disagreement, that if we look hard, we can see the human on the other end, trying to live day to day, making it as best they can. I hope we can agree that each has their own right to life, libery and justice. I hope we can agree that even in disagreement, we can, and should work toward a better time and place -- Peace and joy to all in the coming year, whatever you chose to believe.

Posted by: Greg | December 31, 2006 1:24 PM
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This post is mainly for the agnostic/atheists here, and on why I do believe it is rational to move from agnosticism to outright atheism.

I moved from agnostic to atheist, not because of any fundamentalism, or clear non-existence proof, but from a pure scepticism that any god-concept has anything to offer me in my life, or in my intellectual worldview. God has no duties left to fulfill, as I see it.

First, I DO think one can disprove all the "gods" so far envisioned by humans. The Christian loving god concept is blown away by the existence of evil argument, just for starters. That's as strong a dis-proof of an all powerful merciful loving god as I can imagine.

Lots of the Christian beliefs are undermined for me simply by studying the origin of the bible (Hebrew and older folk tales gathered and selected by Constantinian-period human men, with more material added later by "copyists".)

But honestly, for me the main movement from agnostic to atheist came because I ran out of anything for God to do! All the traditional jobs and duties of any god are eliminated.

1. I no longer believe in an afterlife, so god is not needed for running heaven/hell/purgatory/limbo etc. Plus, no after-death judging job is left for him either.

2. I do not believe any god-concept created the universe or even one little thing in it. Nor will any god-being end the world, so those traditional duties of god are gone for me.

3. I believe I am a biological being, made by my mother and father, one of a long line of creatures stretching back many millions of years, and there is no more reason to think I have a soul than any of them. I believe all thinking happens between the ears, with neurons and other similar cells. Perhaps some other organs play a role, but it's all bio-soup for me, no epiphenomena, nor mystical thinking substance. Thus there no god duty of ensouling for me.

4. Since reading Plato, I no longer think any god had anything to do with making the rules of morality. Are morals good because god made them, or did god make them because they are good? The point being, if god made them, then any arbitrary thing (like even torture) could have been made good by god. But that's absurd, so if there's any kind of good at all, it is prior to or independant of god's will. So the god-concept has no ethical work to do.

What's left? I have no needs in my worldview for any god-concept to fill. So why wait around as an agnostic, open to the idea that a god-concept might enter my life. There's no need for a god concept left to fulfill. No duties, so no need to hold open the possibility of god. Thus, my atheism.

Posted by: jim | December 31, 2006 1:24 PM
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To use the word “bright” to designate us - non believers-, as a group, seems a little presumptuous because it implies that we consider the rest of the people as less gifted: less brilliant or less intelligent than us. Being bright is a quality, unlike being gay which is an attitude.

Jose it is presumptious, but it is also a very useful meme. Religion spreads because of powerful memes such as "Faith without evidence is good", "Those who do not beleive will go to Hell and suffer eternally", "Those who beleive will go to Heaven and enjoy eternal happiness".

This is powerful stuff to counteract, and it has millenia of cultural momentum behind it.

The meme "Non-Beleivers are, on average, more intelligent than beleivers" is a good meme, and it also has the benefit of being true:-)

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | December 31, 2006 1:17 PM
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Heather

Sorry to hear about your experience here in DC. I live and work on the outskirts of DC (PG County)and often get curious looks when I say I'm agnostic. The looks got even curiouser while I was reading a book on Byzantine theology. Some of these same people then go on to tell me that they don't believe in the church and follow their own spiritual path.

There is a lot of deep religious conviction here, as well as a lot of politicking. I just ignore it and move on. If it's something that affects my career, for example, then I figure that I really don't want to work there, anyway.

So, take comfort in at least knowing there is one sympathetic soul in the area:)

Posted by: rjr | December 31, 2006 1:16 PM
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I’m not a believer. Neither I’m I an Anglophone, so excuse my writing.
Generally in Europe no one is afraid to call himself atheist or agnostic, in fact laicism is one of the emerging identity signals for the western European community. The profound religious beliefs of G. Bush are often considered to be a negative factor that makes him more “dangerous”, just as it happens with fundamental Muslims.
To use the word “bright” to designate us - non believers-, as a group, seems a little presumptuous because it implies that we consider the rest of the people as less gifted: less brilliant or less intelligent than us. Being bright is a quality, unlike being gay which is an attitude.
I humbly consider myself as a “doubter” or a “cartesian”, not because I share the philosophical ideas of Rene Descartes, but in the sense that I believe the only method to search the truth is through rigorous reasoning after starting without any previous conviction. If with those premises we don’t reach a clear idea of our existence and the nature of the world around us so be it: one more reason to respect each other.
And yes, everybody out of the closet, there is nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of.
I even propose to form groups, internationally and in our countries, and ask for the same rights as any religious confession. Since, to be considered as a social group, we need to clarify what we stand for, I propose:

• We believe that, if there is a God, He is not the monopoly of any religion.
• We believe that there should be no interference between religion and politics
• We believe that, with or without religious convictions, there is a need for ethical behaviour.

Posted by: Jose Mosqueira | December 31, 2006 1:10 PM
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I am finished with any 'religion' and anyone who strongly identifies exclusively with one. But I will never be an atheist.

Heather, we are all atheists about every God but our own. You seem to agree that god is simply an unknown entity, but you are almost certainly an atheist about Zeus, Diana, Elvis and possibly the "big 3" monotheistic gods too.

You sound like an atheist in every respect but name ..... join .... ussss ..... join ussss Heather ....

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | December 31, 2006 1:09 PM
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The 9/11 terrorists were religious believers.
I'm sure that most people agree they were deluded in their expectations of a place in paradise with 72 virgins.
America's president speaks to what he calls the Higher Power when he needs counsel and direction.
Yet look at the disaster in Iraq.
In his beliefs he's not much different from the terrorists. Like them he's been indoctrinated into a religion and a belief in a skygod (by Billy Graham no less).
Religion,as the Brits say,causes more harm than good.

Posted by: yoyo | December 31, 2006 1:03 PM
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I am an Ignostic (note, Ig not Ag.)
An Ignostic can be an Ignostic Christian, Hindu,Jew,Buddhist, Agnostic, Atheist or any appellation. He can even be just an Ignostic.
He may believe in something that was read or told to him, (by definition,this is what faith is) but in all honesty to himself, he admits not really knowing. An example: an Ignostic Christian may believe in a god on a throne in the sky, but if truly honest with himself says: "I believe in such a real being, but his existence cannot be proven by me or anyone else. "However, it's my right to have such a belief."
I have a published book - "A Search for Original Christianity" that covers the subject of the knowledge of not knowing.
Because I believe in the teachings of Jeshua ben Joseph and Gautama Buddha. Ergo, I am an Ignostic follower of those two teachers.

Posted by: Charles Stewart | December 31, 2006 1:02 PM
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Paul R Cooper Says :
I call myself agnostic because atheist is as absolutist as fundamentalist true believer--I cannot prove that God does not exist, but I am skeptical.

It's a question of probability. Is it very probable that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God created the world?

Mosquitos? Sickle Cell DNA mutations? Saddam Hussein? George Bush. World War II? The Holocaust?

Ten minutes honest reflection shows that the probabilities are heavily weighted against the existence of such a God. So sure, there may be an all powerful force that created the universe, but it's not good. Or there may be an all loving totally merciful entity that hasn't got complete control of the universe, but then why call it God?

However it is almost certain, if logic and the definition of words is to mean anything, that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God does not exist.

Posted by: Brian Coughlan | December 31, 2006 1:01 PM
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Evan Stewart said: I can agree that believers of any faith may go to far as to assume and demand that they have any privilege in society if the privilege be to civil leadership or even public respect of their beliefs.


No. People can assume and demand public respect as individuals - absolutely. People can assume and demand public respect for their right to have their own beliefs - absolutely. The beliefs themselves should only get public respect based on the merits for the belief.

Posted by: Ben | December 31, 2006 12:57 PM
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