Dunatis Posted:

In that case it becomes an argument in semantics Log in to see images!

Not entirely, there’s still value to applying science to the various descriptions of God people come up with… if you can refute a popular one then … well to be honest they’ll probably ignore you or demonise you because their faith trumps logic and evidence, but you might manage to convince a couple of fence-sitters.

Frankly that’s the part I find most obnoxious about religion – they’ll say in one breath that they know they’re certainly right because they have faith, that certain things are sinful and dirty and wrong because god told them so and that people who disagree are condemned to an eternity of torture and fire. Then in the next breath they’ll be saying that their religion is about tolerance and love, and that it’s the atheists who have closed minds and are spreading hate.

That and the fact that (to quote Dawkins) religion teaches people to be satisfied with not understanding. That “god did it” is an acceptable explanation. Really makes me laugh when people say anything to the effect of “without god your life is meaningless” or that denying god means you can’t have any awe in the world. I honestly can’t understand that – surely there is more awe to be had when there isn’t an easy answer, when we can look at the cosmos and not think we have some special status in it. Truly see ourselves as a small part of something greater, without collapsing our world view to the point where a divine creator of everything would take special interest in what human beings are doing.

I’ve gone off on a tangent, but I might as well go all the way off on one, the Pale Blue Dot speech from Carl Sagan always feels like a perfect expression of what I mean here. (If you prefer, there’s a Youtube version, but it doesn’t have the explanation of where the eponymous image comes from)

man-man edited this message on 06/13/2009 4:19PM