The Most Astounding Fact (Neil DeGrasse Tyson)

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Even Dawkins admits there my possibly be god(s)-- but reiterates the odds appear to be vanishingly small (but not zero).
.........
............
Atheist/gnostic:  this person believes that you can know for certain that there are no gods. Rare individuals-- I've not discovered any who fits this category.

I think Dawkins is just applying a proper scientific approach.

According to your reckoning, I am Atheist/gnostic:  this person believes that you can know for certain that there are no gods. Rare individuals-- I've not discovered any who fits this category.

Since I don't think I am a rare being, I disagree with your definitions. My definition is that anyone who says "can't know for certain" is agnostic not atheist.

I believe there are no Gods. I think they are a poor man's attempt at a) putting up with pain and wretchedness and b)  the opposite - explaining wonderment and joy and c) investing power in an object (eg. rain dances etc).. I don't see why that is needed so I have no reason to iinvent a concept that to me is meaningless.

Oh, I certainly agree all the typical gods as certainly defined by humans, especially those as defined by mouldy old books?   None of these exist-- especially not as depicted.  Of that, I'm as certain as anythign else in this muddled life we call "reality".

But I cannot declare that for all 9 billion definitions of the word spelled "god".   (If there be only 9 billion-- there may be more-- I have not experienced the greater universe... 9 billion is a conservative guess, allowing approximately 1 definition per person, excluding the younger set, but including those who have lived and died already.)

Of course, few folk are all that concerned with undefined gods-- and these may well exist, too.  Who can say?   

This is why I call myself "agnostic" with respect to the word "god". 

You may honestly call me "gnostic" with respect to bible's god-- all three major versions of it, including all 9 billion minor variations (see above).     In that the bible itself, being the basis of these gods, is severly and fatally flawed-- no such being can exist as described within it's pages.  Same for the theistic descendants of the bible, too:  quoran, bom, etc.

[Roland Deschain]

I was briefly involved in a conversation with a fundamentalist Christian over this issue, whereby he would not accept that children are born as atheists (his definition was a denial of the existence of gods, and he used all these fancy links (there were freakin' loads of them) from online dictionaries, but I digress), yet on repeated asking by myself and others, completely failed to give his own opinion on what a baby is born as, and instead mired the whole conversation to a halt with his insistence on everyone accepting his viewpoint (the guy is one of those "special" fundamentalists you see so often who like to deflect open dialogue on what they may find uncomfortable).

My thoughts on it are that we are born without the knowledge of deities. Simple and succinct. Yet deceptively so. It is natural for children to grow up with adults rather than on their own, and so they pick up on the beliefs of the adults around them. If you bring them up within your religion (assuming you have one), then the odds are that they are not going to leave, especially if they are never exposed to any other viewpoint for the rest of their lives, as let's face it: most of us are sheep in at least one respect. If you bring them up explaining to them only verifiable facts, as in scientifically proven, then would they come up with the concept of a god all by themselves? What if they grew up completely by themselves with no concept of either science or religion (not that they are mutually exclusive), and by some great fortune, managed to survive in the wild, what would they believe?

You see, it is unnatural for a human child to grow up without adults around, so the natural thing would be for them to grow up being exposed to what their parents allow them to be exposed to, and anything else that may slip through the net, which in some cases is a lot. If we were to consider the most unnatural way for a child to grow up, and also the least ethically-sound from a study perspective, then we have to consider what we are and what our natures are. We question all the time, whether we voice that or not, and have an innate desire to know why things are the way they are. Religion has been around for a long time, and evidence of reverence for the female form is one of the oldest, along with reverence for nature (or at least that part which provided us with food). I believe that religion grew out of the two: firstly our need for understanding; secondly our reverence for that which gives us life.

All of this leads me to believe that the default religious position for a child is that they have no knowledge of any deity at all, and that the human imagination needs to anthropomorphise things so that they seem less scary in the absence of true understanding. This appears to be the only logical position to take, but we are left with defining what a child is in terms of religion. A child does not believe in any god, but then they have no concept of that theoretical god, so I believe that agnostic or atheist, by any definition above (bar one partial one of "atheist"), do not make the grade, therefore leading me to the conclusion that a new word is needed to define "No knowledge of (a) god(s)". Again, to me this appears to be the only logical position.

[Swatopluk]

That would follow my 'not-set(yet)' concept.
Looking for The Deeper Meaning of Liff?

Since there seems to be no human group in history we know of naturally developing without coming up with some 'religious' beliefs, there seems to be a bias in favor of such a thing*. There is no 'knowledge' of gods indeed in the newborn but a tendency to come up with something 'god-shaped' later. The adults around will mainly influence the shape. What is far more rare is that a child will come up with a 'doctrine' of its own, i.e. go beyond a set of often vague personal beliefs into a formalized one that can go forth and multiply (and compete with other doctrines). This does say nothing about the reality of deities but a lot about human psychology.
Would any of you provide some newborns for a double blind study?

---
Bob, I think you ran into some classic logical fallacies, esp. shooting the messenger but also they etymological one while referring yourself to both. You claim that dictionaries are biased because those who wrote them were biased in disfavor of atheism (I personally know some people who worked on reputable dictionaries that would take offence there) and are outdated. I do not claim that any definition of the term is the one and only and the makers of those multiple dictionaries would likely agree** or they would not put several different on the same page. There are also a lot of terms that are now generally accepted as neutral that started out as insults. For example: gothic (both architecture and literature), baroque, romantic, protestant. Of course it goes the other way too, an originally neutral term becoming an insult (negro and liberal maybe the most prominent, the latter as a result of a deliberate campaign).

*often (falsely) used in discussions about 'proof of god', already by Greek and Roman philosphers, e.g. Cicero (de natura deorum).
**no, that is not an argument at authority but about the way of reasoning.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Two words:  feral children.  Google for examples, but these kids demonstrated no desire to create deities for themselves.

As for the "god shaped hole"?  There is a nice, evolutionary explanation for that, too-- google the "god helmet" and pay attention to the discussion of the brain's functionality with respect to the effect.

It seems in a self-aware, but social species, the need for some mechanism to induce a cooperative mental attitude is high, or the species would perish (we are not all that physically powerful). 

But having a strong sense of empathy or "other" than ourselves, permits us to engage in powerful social interaction, that can lead to selfless cooperation.   Good for the species.  Sometimes, not so much for a given individual.

But DNA is blind to the individual-- it's a species-driven engine only.

Examples:  cycle-cell anemia.  Bad for the individuals-- as high as 20% in some populations-- good for the species-- as individuals with partial cycle-cell anemia (without the negative symptoms) experience a somewhat higher resistance to malaria.   

So look at it this way:  The blind and uncaring process of natural selection is "happy" to "sacrifice"  20% of the population to gain a 3-5% (a guess-- I know the resistance improvement is very low) improvement in resistance to a very common disease. 

DNA just "wants" to make more DNA, and does not "care" about consequences.

So a "god-shaped hole", if it increases even slightly, the whole species' ability to survive?  By increasing-- even by a fraction of a percent-- the social cooperation within said species? 

That trait will, sooner than later, get spread throughout the population.

Even at the cost of sacrificing a fairly high percentage of the individuals involved-- so long as the species as a whole enjoys a ever-so-slight advantage.

... meh.

Think of an ant colony.  Think of the countless worker ants who are sacrificed daily, such that the whole colony thrives.  These are sterile workers-- they play no direct role in DNA replication.   Yet, by contributing to the survival of their same-DNA queen?   They actually increase the survivability of their DNA by a large factor.   


So the "god shaped hole" argument, to me, says nothing with regards to actual gods.

Apart from that, if these [gods] do exist?

They(it) are(is an) uncaring monster(s).   

One by which all others pale in comparison.   (I had a YouTube I was gonna insert, but it's been removed.... drat)

[Aggie]

Two words:  feral children.  Google for examples, but these kids demonstrated no desire to create deities for themselves.

From the small number of cases that I'm aware of, they are rarely well-documented enough to constitute more than anecdotal evidence, and the ones who are documented do not comprise a large enough sample size to be statistically significant, IMHO. Many modern examples are more accurately described as abused and locked-up children, as opposed to the classic Mowgli image of a wolf-raised wild child.

All of this leads me to believe that the default religious position for a child is that they have no knowledge of any deity at all, and that the human imagination needs to anthropomorphise things so that they seem less scary in the absence of true understanding. This appears to be the only logical position to take, but we are left with defining what a child is in terms of religion. A child does not believe in any god, but then they have no concept of that theoretical god, so I believe that agnostic or atheist, by any definition above (bar one partial one of "atheist"), do not make the grade, therefore leading me to the conclusion that a new word is needed to define "No knowledge of (a) god(s)". Again, to me this appears to be the only logical position.

I agree with this.  The closest terms I can think of to match are 'naive', 'innocent' or 'ignorant'.  I think the first, in the biological sense, fits best. Not exposed to a stimulus, so therefore not-set (as Swato phrased it).

I'll concede that God as a concept is primarily (perhaps exclusively) a cultural artifact, and that in no case would I expect to see an anthropomorphic god produced by the mind of a human raised entirely independently of humans.  Early concepts of god(s) were nothing like the monotheist OOOs that currently hold dominance in Western and Middle Eastern cultures.  If you want to play loose with the concept of deity and include something along the lines of an imaginary friend or guardian-spirit? I would not be as surprise to see such a thing... except that a child raised in absence of human language would probably be incapable of forming such concepts.  Without language, it's probably tough to get past the sense of 'self' and 'other'; such a person should be able to discern 'bad-other' from 'good-other'.  If one is operating primarily on physical stimuli and not cultural memes, I could see it being a fairly short leap from understanding that large noises in the trees are generally caused by large beings in the trees to speculation that very large noises in the sky (thunder) are possibly caused by very large beings in the sky, with zero concept of 'divinity' involved.

Once humankind was able to communicate with language and orally propagate ideas from generation to generation? It's almost inevitable (IMHO) that in a pre-scientific state, gods would be invoked to explain things.  What we are sitting with today is the current state of a 30,000-year-old evolving meme, with all the expected branches and spontaneous mutations you'd expect to see in an evolutionary tree.  

That I, as an individual, can sit here and concoct a God to my liking and personal understanding, using information and ideas  (usually) dating back as far as written language from multiple cultures, has much to do with the current state of human affairs.  This is why I favour using the scientific mindset to investigate god: Science has _{well, purports to have}  the humility to change the explanations and models we are using as the old ones are superseded, and relies on independent verification of results. If a published result doesn't seem credible, some scientist somewhere else in the world will get off their arse and try it for themselves. I personally am of the opinion that this is very possible with regards to the human perception of the divine, and get a little frustrated when atheists denounce spirituality, but are not willing to spend a few decades finding out for themselves.    The major difference between scientific knowledge and spiritual experience is that the latter is entirely subjective, with a dearth of empirical data, so the only way to personally verify the validity of it is to experience it for yourself*, and compare it to similar results obtained via different methods (some of which are highly focused on achieving transcendence, yet completely exclude the concept of god from the resulting experience).

The problem with an armchair atheist uninterested in theology denouncing god is the same problem as a creationist fundamentalist with very little scientific education denouncing evolution - they don't get it and really aren't willing to put the time in to understand it. Likewise, the new-atheist spectacle of respected scientists giving their opinions on god (and freaking holding conferences about it!) is to me as guffaw-inducing as rounding up Tenzin Gyatso, Joe Ratzinger, Rowan Williams, Ayatollah Sistani, Thomas Monson, Yona Metzger, Shlomo Amar, Farzam Arbab, Gustavo Correa, Sammy H. Bhiwandiwalla, David Miscavige, Harold Klemp and their ilk for a conference discussing erroneous conclusions in science.  Giving credence to Lawrence Krauss's opinion on God is like asking the Archbishop of Canterbury for an informed opinion on the scientific merits of current cosmological theories.  Or, to use another example, like asking Pope Benedict XVI to independently verify that it's possible to create copernicium in the laboratory. In science (self-educated prodigies like Edison and Einstein notwithstanding), we rarely give credence to 'discoveries' made by those who haven't gone through a rigorous training process and years of study. Why, then, are skeptics willing to take opinions on God from typically uneducated and under-exposed beyond-novice non-practitioners?

I should point out, however, that getting advice on God from agents of any of the major faiths is a great idea, provided that you are the sort of person who trusts published results for safe-use trials by agrochemical and pharmaceutical companies.  Any large corporation / organization has too many other motives and objectives at stake to be trusted with the truth.  

_{*Spiritual experience does not constitute evidence for God, as it's entirely possible that the common experience described is due to some quirk of human physiology, and that spiritual practice is a way of tweaking the mind to exploit that quirk.  However, if doing so has a statistically significant effect of improving the human experience, they why the hell not do it? I also do not dismiss the possibility that we may very well be born with or without the ability to relate to the divine - as Bob alludes to, it's not necessary for an entire population to be subject to a fitness-decreasing condition to derive a larger specific benefit.  I'd be willing to argue that a genetic basis for perception of the divine is maladaptive in terms of passing on one's individual DNA; many traditions encourage celibacy.}

DNA just "wants" to make more DNA, and does not "care" about consequences.

So a "god-shaped hole", if it increases even slightly, the whole species' ability to survive?  By increasing-- even by a fraction of a percent-- the social cooperation within said species?  

That trait will, sooner than later, get spread throughout the population.

Even at the cost of sacrificing a fairly high percentage of the individuals involved-- so long as the species as a whole enjoys a ever-so-slight advantage.

... meh.

This makes a lot of sense in the climate in which we actually evolved, in terms of genuine genetic change.  I'm not talking particularly about cooperation, here, although that does come into it.  An even more powerful driver for hunter/gatherer or nomadic humans would be to fill that god-shaped hole with a warrior god who promoted xenophobia and extermination of conspecific competitors outside of one's own tribe.  Tribes whose god promoted war and rape would have a genetic advantage over pacifist tribes. This assumes an environment at which humans had reached a natural carrying capacity according to their technology, and did not need to engage heavily in trade. Only in these circumstances does such a god make genetic sense, and since the tribe would be rather small and engage with each other face-to-face for the most part (or perhaps periodically with recently split sub-populations) a moral/cooperative god would help but would not need to be the primary image.

As we moved to agricultural societies and developed urban centres, it would have became necessary to emphasize a compassionate or 'friendly' image of god who promoted peace amongst not just one's tribe but with the surrounding populations. Why? Crops - and permanent dwellings - are vulnerable to destruction by fire, and constant raiding between agricultural societies would become maladaptive quite quickly. Taking over another society's cropland is still adaptive in this context, so wars were still commonplace, but a skirmish can cause more destruction that it did in the days of small hunter-gatherer or nomadic bands, who could more easily move to a distant part of their territory for a while until things cooled down. Small raids by a very small number of warriors could result in a burned village or a ripe crop in ashes.

With regards to early cities, they simply wouldn't function if the dominant impulse is violently expressed xenophobia. The story of the Tower of Babel kind of supports this, if you take it in the context of being a nomadic people's mythological warning that their god is displeased with multiethnic collaborations. The Old Testament YHWH in some of his descriptions is quite 'congizant' of the fact that exposure to other belief systems is a threat to his dominance, and is quite a good example of a self-protecting memeplex (Karen Armstrong* points to evidence that the confusing and variable image of God in the Bible is the product of the amalgamation of historically disparate writings; under some conditions, it was more favourable to avoid war with your neighbour by cooperation and religious tolerance, but when conditions permitted it was often better to smash your neighbours and expand into their territory; in the latter periods, a hardline xenophobic warrior-god was a better fit and was so promoted by the contemporary powers-that-be).


_{*I'm re-reading the unfortunately-titled The Case for God, which is admittedly has had a big influence on me lately.  FWIW, the 1-star reviews on Amazon (criticism always being the most interesting assessment of a work) are quite hilarious, as she's appeared to have pissed off both the theists and the atheists.  This was my favorite, I think:}

Nowhere in this book did I see any instance of proof other than the belief of a deluded bunch of people. I suggest everyone to read this book, because we need more atheists.

_{Highly recommended.}

[Griffin NoName]

Looking for The Deeper Meaning of Liff?

Indeed. I just recorded MP's Meaning of Life off the TV - need to watch it again to re-affirm my soul.

Would any of you provide some newborns for a double blind study?

- would a 2 yr old do?

It seems rather strange that everyone (not merely the siblings here) endlessly discuss whether god(s) exist, when there is no fixed agreement on what god(s) actually do. If we got that clear, we would know whether god(s) existed !!  

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

The Meaning of Life.  A wonderful movie, I think-- best watched more than once, to really get at the nuances.

I do so love the various by-play of the conversations within each scene... remember the machine that does nothing but go "bing!"?  

Aggie:  I rather like Karen Armstrong myself, although I've only skimmed her stuff here and there, and read several of her more interesting (to me) essays.   I suspect she'd be a really good Toadfish.

I quit reading her words, when I lost the final trimmings  (and respect) of pure faith (i.e. faith that has no rational basis or evidence supporting it's claims).   "You just have to have faith" is all too frequently tossed out like it has some sort of profound meaning.

It doesn't.

I have to remind people who do that, that the pilots of 9/11 had deep and abiding faith-- more faith, in fact, than the people tossing out statements of faith demonstrate (in that they were cheerfully willing to die for their actions, unlike many of the most "you have to have faith" proponents).

Once I realized that faith based on nothing is not worthy of respect?  (or practice)  I quit reading books that tried to convince me one way or another.    And I put down Ms Armstrong's books about the same time, even though I do respect her scholarship.  

But I do recommend them for anyone who is interested in history of modern systems of faith.

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

Griffin:  I agree-- the definition of what means the word "god" is a varied and individual as ... fingerprints.

Which is why I claim there at least 9 billion different god-concepts floating about the human-created aether.  



Something I have observed is this:  why do these gods always seem to hate the exact same things that the gods' zealous followers hated already?  

Is that not a wee bit too convenient?  

Why, yes..... I think it is...

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

And that reminds me of Iaasic Asimov's short-short:  The Nine Billion Names of God (or was it Author C Clarke who wrote this?  I forget.... just a sec...)

Okay, it was Clarke-- and here it is, lovely and complete:  Nine Billion Names of God

Worth the 10 minutes or so it'll take you to read it....

[Swatopluk]

I was talking about this:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XsVALQtGIZM/TGEuxuoZAqI/AAAAAAAARks/tQw5FfE4vdk/s1600/Pan-32220%2BAdams%2B%2526%2BLloyd%2BDeeper%2BMeaning%2Bof%2BLiff.jpg
not this
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519KBR2JR1L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Just to be clear (although I thought I already was): 'god-shaped hole' is just a shorthand for in 'need' of 'something beyond the material' not limited to an antropomorphic separate entity. A sense of 'what I can see and touch is not everything there is'.
And at no point did I state that this means anything about a reality of that that is expected to fill that hole. I also do not believe in Feng Shui in the spiritual sense but can oberve in myself that some ways to arrange the furniture somehow feel better than others without a manifest reason. I read an article recently that found that instinctively people prefer to put their beds on the side of the room the hinges of the door point to. The guess is that it is because that way the door for a moment blocks the line of sight towards the bed, when someone enters the room. That leaves the person in the bed a moment longer to react than would be the case otherwise. But few people consciously think that way. They just put there bed where 'it feels right'.
People do not usually think: 'We need people to believe there is a constant watcher that will punish them, if the violate rules becasue that will make them more inclined to obey those mutually benficial rules'. Somehow such idea of seems to develop in all human communities. In the case of isolated people something else comes into play. People deprived of the contact with other living beings (humans preferred but animals can substitute to a degree) for extended periods of time begin to hallucinate. And those hallucinations seem to always include the presence of something living. Either of something that is not actually there or something coming alive that objectively isn't. (non-fraudulent) Religions we know the origin of also seem to get started by such people. That is one of the standard cases-against-god made today.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

It seems rather strange that everyone (not merely the siblings here) endlessly discuss whether god(s) exist, when there is no fixed agreement on what god(s) actually do. If we got that clear, we would know whether god(s) existed !! 

Not only what they do but what they are. Generally most traditions call it unknowable, but I feel that is a cop-out for "we can't reconcile our definition with the world, and since it must exist we can't know it".

It becomes -again- a discussion about definitions, be it the meaning of the word 'god' or the meaning of the word 'atheist' and 'agnostic' which are clearly derived from the first, and as every person has a different opinion of what 'god' means, the definitions of 'agnostic' and 'atheist' are also many, which is another of the reason for my discomfort with the word, the word is loaded and loosely defined, and because without a clear definition there is no clear way to discuss the subject.
---
IMO opinion the word should simply be avoided and use more succinct definitions, that will avoid bad feelings (considering the loaded nature of the subject).

Personally I am convinced that an OOO type of deity is simply incompatible with the universe as we know it and under that definition I am a hard atheist.
I consider the possibility that a very powerful being or beings may or not exist and may or not influence our universe in which case I would define myself as agnostic about their existence.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Wot Zono 'as said.   In a nut'shell.

[Griffin NoName]

[youtube=425,350]lS0b4QCpFGc[/youtube]

Possibilian

Also, Sum - book by David Eagleman

[pieces o nine]

Great link, Grif!   

[Aggie]

Thanks Griffin.  Had a quick look at his site, and some things resonate there. I'll take some more time to explore it and watch the video soon.

Aggie:  I rather like Karen Armstrong myself, although I've only skimmed her stuff here and there, and read several of her more interesting (to me) essays.   I suspect she'd be a really good Toadfish.

I quit reading her words, when I lost the final trimmings  (and respect) of pure faith (i.e. faith that has no rational basis or evidence supporting it's claims).   "You just have to have faith" is all too frequently tossed out like it has some sort of profound meaning.

It doesn't.

I have to remind people who do that, that the pilots of 9/11 had deep and abiding faith-- more faith, in fact, than the people tossing out statements of faith demonstrate (in that they were cheerfully willing to die for their actions, unlike many of the most "you have to have faith" proponents).

Once I realized that faith based on nothing is not worthy of respect?  (or practice)  I quit reading books that tried to convince me one way or another.    And I put down Ms Armstrong's books about the same time, even though I do respect her scholarship.  

But I do recommend them for anyone who is interested in history of modern systems of faith.

I'll pay attention to this as I continue my re-read. The first portion of the book is, as you indicate, largely historical (which is her specialty).  I've started or browsed several of her other books, and they've failed to catch my attention, but The Case for God clicked with me enough that I've bought several copies of it and given them to friends.  The only other books I've been so enamoured of are Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and, if I could easily find used or discounted copies of it, The One-Straw Revolution (oh! Never mind, there's a pdf available).

-

Ah, faith is a confounding thing that for the vast majority of my life made absolutely no sense to me. Sometime last year, it started to click for me that it's a method of spiritual practice, similar to meditation.  I'd equate the two to the degree that saying "you have to have faith" is analogous to "you have to meditate".  Neither is true, of course, but certain religious traditions emphasize these techniques as being essential to their methods. Faith itself doesn't have any particular value, but the actual and constant process of having faith can support your spiritual practice and make you more receptive to some of the irrationalities that crop up along the path.  

If you take the phrase "you have to have faith" to mean that if you have faith, everything will work out peachy, then it's a fat load of bunk (IMHO). Faith does seem to be a good tool for active spiritual practice. Perhaps this should be obvious - it's difficult to work toward perceiving the divine and remain completely skeptical at the same time.  I'm fairly adept at holding mutually exclusive assumptions simultaneously, so I didn't find it too much of a stretch to start with the assumption that the perception of the divine is possible, and then use faith in and focus on god as a technique to help manipulate my mind in that direction (while keeping some rationality and objectivity about the whole process). Traditions that don't describe the ineffable as god (such as Taoism or Zen Buddhism) can dispense with explicit faith as a tool for practice, although I suppose you've still got faith in the system.

I am not sure there's much value in faith for the average layperson, but I am not in a position to comment as following a religion without aspiring to mysticism doesn't resonate for me.

Forgive me if I'm not being particularly clear about all this, as it's from my best recollection of where I was at last summer. I've largely abandoned any serious spiritual practice for the last seven month or so, but am on the verge of getting back to it (hence the extensive pseudotheological rants of late). God's an addictive drug, and I've been jonesing.  

Not only what they do but what they are. Generally most traditions call it unknowable, but I feel that is a cop-out for "we can't reconcile our definition with the world, and since it must exist we can't know it".

That certainly applies today, but during the time periods when most of these traditions originated there was little conflict between the supposed attributes of god and the contemporary understanding of the world. It tends to be the intersection of old ideas about god with new ideas about how the world works that causes the conflict.  I don't see it a cop-out, personally; if we are talking about something other than material reality, then it's not surprising that the language we have developed based on material reality is inherently inadequate. As far as the modern scientific outlook is concerned, something that can't be described precisely with the appropriate jargon and cannot be investigated in terms of empirical data isn't something worth investigating.  I'm comfortable with god = nothing, however.  

I'll tell you one thing, though... if you asked me to state clearly and rationally what I've learned from my spiritual practice to date, I'd be at a loss. I can tell you I have a much greater understanding of the whole shebang than I used to, but it's not something that translates well into speech.  I think that's really the point of the exercise - to work towards gaining an raw understanding that is completely outside of language and empirical evidence.  The supposed perception of the divine may very simply be exploration of the areas where thought and language become completely inadequate.  Socrates used a non-theological and rational method of dialogue to get to the same place. Gods are not a necessary part of the process.

[IMO opinion the word should simply be avoided and use more succinct definitions, that will avoid bad feelings (considering the loaded nature of the subject).

Suggestions? I've heard New-Agers use the term 'Source', which I feel is a better and more impersonal term, but also carries its own set of implications. As you know, I favour the g-word specifically because it's a loaded term; using it in a non-traditional way does seem to have a way of opening up discussions about what it means.

Given the harm that centrally-dictated ideas of God can cause, I really would like to hear more widespread discussion regarding those nine billion concepts of god. At this moment of time (and indeed, for the last several hundred years), much of the tension between religion and science comes from the fact that religion is focused largely on preserving a traditional view of how the world works to keep a relatively static idea of god, while science is devoted primarily to the discovery of new knowledge and ideas. If religion was more open to discussing new ideas about god....  well, who knows? I don't expect this to happen any time soon, as it's too much of a threat to established power-structures.

[Griffin NoName]

Jonathan Miller

[youtube=425,350]zOBnmqavp-Y&list=PLE4400CDAD6D242CC&index=1&feature=plpp_video[/youtube]

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I've often contemplated the idea that within each and every adult human, there exist some notion as what the word "god" means to them.... call it X (the meaning).

Whether they think this X is real, or an idealized concept, or a complete unknown, or just a pretty (or ugly) myth of past cultures, I think that each X is more or less unique-- not unlike the person who's mind conceptualized this X in the first place.

Obviously, there are many points of congruences with various versions of X, else organized religion would be impossible.

And a typical person's ability to ignore incongruities between their X and the discussed X of others is... simply amazing.  But does have limits-- else there would never be any religious wars.

I always wondered what sort of experiment would demonstrate that each person, no matter how much they would like to think their X is the same as other's X, is actually unique.... perhaps a deserted island? 

In that you take a group of people who all practice the same religion, attend the same religious institution, and place them on an island together.   Plenty of resources, so the experience does not devolve into one of pure survival. 

Leave them there for a time.

Come back, and see:  how many schisms occurred within the religious practice?  How much did the religion drift from it's mainland/parent group? 

Obviously such a thing would be completely unethical to do deliberately.

But there is the old joke about the fellow, who was quite a devout believer, who was stranded on an island, all alone.   

Now, he comes from a strong tradition of hard work-- so during his stay of many years on the island, he was busy building all sorts of things to make his life a wee bit more comfortable:  a house to live in, a barn for the foodstuffs he gardened, a shed for the tools he'd made, and of course... a church to worship in.

At long, last, he was rescued.  He was quite proud of his achievements, and before leaving the island, gave his rescuers a little tour:   

"There is my house, much improved from my first effort.  Over there, is the barn, and there is the workshop."  he pointed out each construction.

One of the rescuers pointed to a series of buildings, each one seemingly less maintained than the next.   The first, best-looking building was clearly a house of worship.  The others' purpose was not clear. "I see you made yourself a church.  Very nice. But what are those other buildings next to it?"

"Oh.  Those.   Those are where I used to go to church... "