Current mood:

arrogant

My Damascan Road's my transistor radio
The Templeton Foundation asks "Does science make belief in God obsolete?"
Well, duh.

Stephen Pinker's answer is spot on.

Yes, if by...

"science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge (including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and white lab coats.

Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be moral?

Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we live, the less reason there is to believe in God.

Of course modern day professional theists try to deny that religion was ever supposed to have any explanatory value; they've turned theology into sophistic word games.

Why did God deem some acts moral and others immoral? If he had no reason but divine whim, why should we take his commandments seriously? If he did have reasons, then why not appeal to those reasons directly?

Exactly. If something is a "sin" there should be actual *reasons* it's a "sin." Not to mention the fact that nobody can claim to know what God's opinions is, since they're only working from an old muddled book of stories and/or voices in their head.

William Phillips is one of those religious scientists.

On the first question: a scientist can believe in God because such belief is not a scientific matter. Scientific statements must be "falsifiable." That is, there must be some outcome that at least in principle could show that the statement is false.

Okay, if I can hold a belief that isn't falsifiable, I believe the Invisible Pink Unicorn said you were an idiot. And why does he believe his brand of nonsense? Besides the silly anthropic argument, he gives this:

I believe in God because I can feel God's presence in my life, because I can see the evidence of God's goodness in the world, because I believe in Love and because I believe that God is Love.

Well... alrighty then!

Mary Midgley babbles pure pomo nonsense.

Kenneth "Waterfalls" Miller makes an astounding claim and asks us to just accept it please:

The categorical mistake of the atheist is to assume that God is natural, and therefore within the realm of science to investigate and test. By making God an ordinary part of the natural world, and failing to find Him there, they conclude that He does not exist. But God is not and cannot be part of nature. God is the reason for nature, the explanation of why things are. He is the answer to existence, not part of existence itself.

Okay if something is "supernatural" how do we know anything about it? Does it interact with reality at all? If so, it's fucking natural. If not, how can anybody claim to know anything about it- including the fact that it exists? Dark matter is invisible to us, but we can dimly see it's effects and we know it exists... the "supernatural" has failed to make any dent anywhere.

I'm so sick of and done with religion. Not going to go out of my way to read about it any more. I spent over a year studying it and I've come to the conclusion that the emperor really does have no clothes. It's bullshit. Utter bullshit. When some rational evidence comes my way that changes my mind, fine, but until then, all religion is bullshit and all believers are delusional.

I'm going to spend my time on language and pop sci other more interesting topics. I'm so fucking done with religion.