Paul ’s Comments (group member since Sep 12, 2010)

Paul ’s comments from the Atheists and Skeptics group.

Interesting one. I'd love to find some stats on what effect candidates' religion, or lack thereof, is perceived to affect their electoral chances. Obviously, the US has an issue with this, it's pretty much a non-issue in the UK (in fact I get the impression that a candidate foregrounding their religious conviction would lose votes). I know some European countries have the word 'christian' in their names (Germany's Christian Democrats, etc) and I get the impression that's more to do with the party's origins than anything, although I may be wrong.

Dutch wrote: "Telling a Wiccan there is no such thing as hexes, curses, or even good spells is like telling a Christian there is no god. They really feel tight to their connection with their religion and feel as if you are invalidating all that they believe because they invested so much time and trouble to be a part of something they thought was on the right path. "

It reminds me of some of the conversations I have with my sister. She's one of these "I'm not religious but I am spiritual" types, she thinks there must be something out there and watches too much daytime TV so picks up some ideas that she throws at me as 'proof' of whatever.

A recent one was that she'd heard someone trot out the "since energy can't be created or destroyed something must happen to our souls after we die" shtick. Now, Julie is actually pretty smart, but very uneducated (she pretty much left school at 14 and has largely avoided education for the forty years since), so I had to come up with an response that wouldn't need a lot of background knowledge, and was quite pleased with my answer. I told her that the important thing about the mind (which is what she meant when she said soul, the thing that you perceive as you) isn't the energy so much as the pattern. A candle flame is energy, and that energy is never lost but dissipates into the environment, its heat spread out into the space around it - but when the candle is burnt out the pattern of that flame disappears. The same for us; we are the pattern of energy formed by the synapses in our brain, so when the physical body stops operating the energy is lost.

Will wrote: "Can you imagine how big the pope's ego is?"

Only as big as it needs to be; he is, after all, god's representative on earth...

And a belated HI from me, welcome!

Hmm. I think this kind of thing is why so many people think philosophy is so much hogwash. As someone with only limited experience of philosophy (and therefore really only commenting on the simplified argument as the full logical one was making my eyes bleed), the answer seems fairly obvious.

Logical absolutes ARE dependent on the physical universe. We are evolved into a universe that can only exist because of the inflexibility of physical laws, from which we infer the laws of cause and effect and all that flows from it. Logicality.

But perhaps I'm too simple to give full credit to the argument...

ah, latin american catholicism; the fusing of two sacrificial traditions to make something altogether stranger than the sum of its parts!

Is part of the problem of definition that many people (theists and some atheists alike) confuse atheism which, as stated above (and in that excellent vid shared by Will) is a lack of belief with the secular humanism which so often goes hand-in-hand with atheism and is a philosophy, or a collection of philosophies?

Will wrote: "Very Informative!

I'm confused by what you mean when you say Christians stole it, though."

true, it hasn't really become a christian festival in the way that christmas and easter - both ancient pagan festivals - have.

nice one. have you seen all the "why christians shouldn't celebrate halloween" vids? what a bunch of morons.

Will wrote: "That does make sense, but I don't see why that would make you take issue with saying there is "no way of proving or disproving the existence of a deity."

We're almost getting into Absence of Evide..."

I suppose it is an argument about how much can be demonstrated by lack of evidence, and how much evidence is needed to demonstrate different things. 'Solid', 'real world' objects are the evidence of themselves (although even then a solipsistic or Matrix/mind of god argument can be made ), while theories need evidence to support them. Indeed, they need evidence to become theories in the scientific sense.

So if you're envisioning a deity as a 'thing', it should exist in the real world and there should be evidence of it. If there is no evidence then, while it cannot be disproved it can be dismissed - like Russell's teapot. I think that god is often used as a theory - especially amongst fundamentalists. However, the lack of supporting evidence means that as a explanation for anything it remains only a hypothesis, and a bad one at that. So, unless evidence is forthcoming, it can be dismissed. There's more evidence in favour of ghosts and alien abductions than there is for any god, and that is weak to the point of laughable.

Of course, the concept of evidence has to be accepted for this argument to hold water, and that's usually the way proponents of any supernatural phenomenon get out of it - it's "beyond science", "outside our reality" or "beyond our understanding". However, I think that our senses and our sense, augmented by tools we devise, are the best way we have to understand the universe and everything in it. Anything else is solipsism.

I guess it can also be argued that nothing can be proved 100% (a reputable scientist should NEVER use the word 'proved'), even physical reality or Cogito Ergo Sum.


Sorry, I seem to be very verbose today. I guess this is just stuff I've always got going around my head, along with the Monty Python and Simpsons quotes.

I've always been torn on this. I think Richard Dawkins put it best when in The God Delusion when he talks about what he calls Temporary Agnosticism in Practice and Permanent Agnosticism in Principle. 'Perfect' agnosticism (50% probability either way) is a middle position, with True Believer ("I do not believe there is a god, I know") at one end and its polar opposite at the other, with various points in between. As he points out, while there are plenty of people at 100% belief (although I'd argue that in reality most of them fall short of what they profess) it is logically problematic to be a pure atheist and "know" there are no gods, with the difficulty of proving a negative, so most atheists are just short of that.

I do take issue with you saying that there is "no way of proving or disproving the existence of a deity", though. My own atheism stems from an early realisation that the concept of 'the supernatural' was meaningless. A god, by definition, has to be supernatural (or it is simply a very powerful natural being, who has evolved in the universe along with everything else) but vitally must interact with the physical world and therefore leave evidence. Therefore "proof" should be possible but, as it is not forthcoming with so much effort to find it, my position is of sceptical atheism.

Hope that makes sense!

Trevor wrote: "Of course, prayer doesn’t make a lot of sense if one believes in an omniscient god. He would have a perfect plan and He is hardly going to go changing that perfect plan just because you asked, even if you ask really nicely. He might well be able to move a mountain just by being asked, but why would He? Surely he put the damn thing there for a reason and your reason in asking probably wouldn’t be as good as His for putting it there in the first place. ."

This is a paradox I've never heard a christian apologist able to answer. The usual response is to say it's all part of the "mystery" or god's plan...

Will wrote: "Do they have other videos doing the same?"

I've been looking but can't find the one I've seen. I'll post it if i do.

That actually makes me feel sick. How screwed up are those kids going to be?

Saw this the other day. at first i thought it had to be a joke, but looking at the uploader's comments he's serious. if mentally unbalanced...

the guys on the second one are great, they string together actual comments from cristian websites and commenters.

Superb! thanks

Non-interactive, but quite mind blowing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxXf7A...

it reminds me of that old story, The Crazy Pensioner Who Cried Apocalypse...

Outstanding! That reminds me, I must catch this week's on the iPlayer before it expires

Wonderful. What struck me was the inanity of some of the questioners; "Do you see a pattern? Would you like to say more about that?", which could possibly be characterised as journalistic laziness, but it contrasts starkly with the sharpness and sensibility of the responses. Okay, among these fifty are some of the greatest minds on the planet, so maybe that's unfair.

Nah. Fair contest, i think.

Fair enough, that was simply my statement. And I do think someone's level of morality is defined by their beliefs and their actions.

Perhaps 'evil' is a bit strong for her ideology, and 'poisonous' would have been better chosen. So it's a good job for her cat that it was of the mind rather than the flesh.

(I confess she wasn't entirely without merit; the way she stood up to the House Unamerican Acivities Committee was impressive)