I know what you mean, but I still wouldn't bet on organised religion lasting with my own money

Overall I'm saying we'll have to wait and see - there could be a religious resurrection even if it did nearly die out. And just look at the amount of rich and otherwise sensible folk who go in for Scientology! That has to be like the Masons for celebrities or something, kind of a 'Look we keep it weird so we don't get 'ordinary' millionaires signing up, alright?'

What you were convinced by was a quasi scientific argument. Nobody who understands and respects genuine scientific method would ever base a statement regarding the truth or falsehood of religion on science.

I am frequently disappointed by the apparent glee with which (supposedly) scientifically minded atheists sell out their own empirical principles to take a cheap pot shot at their (supposedly) dogmatic and confused foe. It is far more scientifically valid to believe in both the Big Bang and the all knowing personal God that created the universe, than it is to believe that the Big Bang proves there is no God.

There's a good piece here about good and bad arguments for atheism http://www.philosophynow.org/issue73/73tallis.htm
Its slightly let down by the invalidity of the argument against agnosticism, but the author had to meet a word limit, or I'm sure he'd have straightened it out.

Thank you.

I'm someone who believes in the existence of a force or being that produced the singular and caused it to explode.
I follow evolution and believe it exists - both over small periods of time (eg bacteria) and longer periods (eg apes->humans). For me, neither is mutually exclusive.

I've studied some of the religions and looked at them and their message and purpose. Most of the 'rules' appear to help people along in this world and to help each other along. The problem I see is that people take small things out of context or make mountains out of molehills. Religion isn't the problem, it's people. There are those who wish for power and glory, or have their own agenda and utilise religion as a vehicle to further their own needs. Those people who blame religion for the world's problems fail to see the truth: even if there was no such thing as religion, people would hide behind other things to achieve what they want.



IIRC, the jewish community in London did this. The Jewish rule says you should stay indoors on the sabbath and not leave the house. So what the Jews did in London was to make the entire area one giant 'house' or courtyard and therefore could travel and go out because it was still 'indoors'.

This echoes what I said earlier: people will always try to ensure their own agenda. The Jews didn't like the rule so they took steps to circumvent it, to please themselves.

I worry that although much of atheistic belief is based upon theories, proven or unproven, there is literally no basis for a theory that an all powerful being created made the universe/existence. I don't see how anyone could come to the belief that god made it all and attempt to convince others of this, when compared to the belief that a flying spaghetti monster made it all has exactly the same scale of possibility. One is fervently believed as a possible theory, while the other is derided as a parody or a joke. I can no more deny that god made the universe than I can deny that a flying spaghetti monster made the universe, or a small garden gnome made it, or a fish made it, or a terracotta brick, etc etc.....

I don't like to cite this too often, but hey....there might still be some who haven't heard of Russell's Teapot

Russell's teapot (and likewise the spaghetti monster) isn't a strong argument. Its premise is that all belief in anything that can neither be proved nor disproved through empirical measurement is equally absurd. This may suit the prejudice of the non believer. But to somebody who, like Wolf and Prof F and the many other thoughtful and intelligent people who suspect there is more to the universe than random chance, it is really a bit of a condescending straw man argument.

People who believe in Yahweh/Buddha/Kali/etc do so, not just because of an ancient book, nor just because their dad told them to believe, but because they have a natural (or supernatural) feeling that there is something out there to believe in. The precise texts and rituals of a person's chosen faith may be someone else's work, but the capacity to chase a wider scheme of meaning is innate to all of us. This is what Russell failed to take into account.

I am an atheist, but I find that unkind arguments that write off religion as a cheap illusion or a nasty brain worm take us too far in the opposite direction. When we argue too hard against the idea of a separate entity that brings harmonious meaning to the entire universe, we risk straying into a mechanistic, materialist view that strips even the human level of meaning. (Thus we end up with silliness like 'memes' a theory which exists in order to grant ideas, thoughts, beliefs and so on an existence separate from thinking and believing. It's like trying to say that a fist has an existence outside the hand.)

People believe in souls because they can't look into a mirror and see a meaningless lump of electrified jelly and bones that responds in certain necessary ways to particular stimuli while operating under an illusion of will. <-- This is intended as a kind of reverse teapot argument. Few scientists really believe that human existence is so vacuous as that, but you could reach such a conclusion from a selective reading of their works.

Just because you have a feeling that something is out there does not make it right, and professing belief because of a feeling does not lead one to make rational decisions. I could say that I have a feeling it's not going to rain tomorrow, and there's a good chance I would be correct. But to bank on those feelings and not take an umbrella with me also has a strong chance of me getting soaked! I'd rather rely on the theories, backed up by empirical data and scientific study, which leads the Met Office to give me a much better idea of what's going to happen.

I agree that we have a capacity to chase meaning in everything, which in all liklihood is a response to a hostile environment. Better to have a feeling that the rustle in the leaves is a poisonous snake and avoid it, than to believe that it's only the wind and be proved horribly wrong.

In attempting to define the universe, I would rather base my "feelings" on observable evidence and provable theories. If I was being brutally honest, I could create a tally list of evidence for god and evidence against god, and then choose which has more evidence.

I was referring to the fallacious assumption in Russell's argument that any two unprovable hypotheses are equally believable, and that the only reason for choosing one over another is habit.

As we are both atheists, I am not the right person to present an actual argument on behalf of religion. I merely wish that other atheists would treat religion with a little more respect, too often lately I see smug atheists presenting bad arguments and fooling themselves that they have the answers and anyone who disagrees is inferior. We may dismiss the possibility of religion teaching us anything from about God or creation if we like, but we can learn from it a lot about humanity (presuming, as I do, that religion is a creation of man rather than God). If we dismiss all of it and say that all religion shows us is how credulous some lesser people are, we are missing out on something I consider rather important.

As I already mentioned, it is not scientifically valid to make a list of 'evidence for god and evidence against god'. God is not a subject of science, and attempts to deal with the issue of the infinite through philosophy are doomed to fail. There is absolutely no sense in which it is more logical to suppose the universe spontaneously arrived from nowhere than that a being chose to create it, and vice versa. By all means, pick a hypothesis and believe it with all your heart, but never fool yourself that it is proven.

Logically speaking therefore, if the teapot is a valid analogy for religion, then it is equally so for atheism.