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Wise words from Dara.
Quote: default position is that something has always been and always will be there simply because there is no such thing as literally nothing...
That's how I felt until about a month ago when someone put it differently, he said something like humans could never understand 'no thing' so we'll never understand how that could be possible. It has to be really though. I keep changing my mind about it.
Quote: No, CB, atheists are passionate about the need for humans to grow up and search for the truth for themselves
Not really. They want someone with a white coat and an authoritative voice to tell them something is so. Then they'll believe it. When another person in a white coat tells them that was all wrong and something else is true - be it 10, 100 or 500 years later they'll believe that as well. Very few actively search for any sort of truth - it requires time and most don't have that luxury or the inclination.
Many are only concerned what's going to happen on the next episode of their favourite soap! 
Quote: I think Garths explanation sums it up very well.
I would sum it up like this (Star Trek mode): there may be a God but not as we know it, Jim!
Quote: Add the internet and you end up with:
I like the cartoon, Mike! 
Sometimes you read or hear something that brings you up with a jolt because it is contrary to how things are normally expressed. This is one from a Tom Waits song, The Day After Tomorrow, about an upcoming battle.
You can't deny
The other side
Don't want to die
Any more than we do
What I'm trying to say,
Is don't they pray
To the same God that we do?
Tell me, how does God choose?
Whose prayers does he refuse?
Who turns the wheel?
And who throws the dice
On the day after tomorrow?
It's the line 'whose prayers does he refuse?' that caught me. From childhood we are told about god granting wishes if you pray - not about refusing them. I suppose that is what he did to the Jews, in fact. They must have prayed for their lives but he refused them in favour of the Nazis.
Quote: No, CB, atheists are passionate about the need for humans to grow up and search for the truth for themselves
Not really. They want someone with a white coat and an authoritative voice to tell them something is so. Then they'll believe it.
Or a white colour. Religion is exceptional at removing the capacity for critical thought 
Quote: Many are only concerned what's going to happen on the next episode of their favourite soap!
Many institutions place great importance on keeping people dumb.
Quote: They have their evidence - it is the world around us. They don't need any more - that is why it is called faith and not science. For many, science may explain the 'how' but religion answers the 'why'.
Oh, come on, Mike. You usually talk a lot of sense but surely you don't think there is strong evidence for anything of the sort!
I know there are a lot of beautiful things in the world but there are also some obscenely ugly and disgusting atrocities too. Where is God?
When we were children we had faith that there was a Father Christmas...
I've said this before too: Religious believers need to ask themselves if they could cope in a world without religion or is the concept of a Godless world too terrible to contemplate.
My point is that this dread of a Godless world is surely bound to colour their judgement and feelings.
I suggest that is very often the case.
Quote: Where is God?
You know the answer gcarth, he gave us free will - what a ridiculous get out clause.
Quote: Religious believers need to ask themselves if they could cope in a world without religion
And think for yourself? God forbid 
Hello gcarth
Quote: Very few actively search for any sort of truth
How can an athiest search for the truth about God if ther is no eveidence and they do not believe there is a God.It would be like me going to the bottom of my garden looking for Fairies which I know do not exist. other than those that live in Brighton. (8o)
Quote: I've said this before too: Religious believers need to ask themselves if they could cope in a world without religion or is the concept of a Godless world too terrible to contemplate.
My point is that this dread of a Godless world is surely bound to colour their judgement and feelings.
I suggest that is very often the case.
You are worrying me Garth, we are becoming more and more like twins............ (8o(
Quote: They have their evidence - it is the world around us. They don't need any more - that is why it is called faith and not science. For many, science may explain the 'how' but religion answers the 'why'.
Oh, come on, Mike. You usually talk a lot of sense but surely you don't think there is strong evidence for anything of the sort!
You obviously misunderstood my post. The mere existence of the world is, for a lot of Christians, evidence that God exists. Full stop. End of. They don't need any other 'proof' and that is why you cannot rationalise with them. I will repeat - that it is why it is called a 'faith'.
Newton and Darwin were devout christians and held that religion and science were not mutually exclusive. Many of the early sciences were actively encouraged by the Catholic (and later the Protestant) church as an exploration of god's wonders. It was only when sciences started to show the falsity of the claims of many of the religious hierarchy (note: claims of the hierarchy, not biblical statements) that problems arose such as age of the earth, evidence for the flood etc. Even now many top scientists are devoutly religious and consider science and religion to be two different entities that can co-exist.
Quote:
I know there are a lot of beautiful things in the world but there are also some obscenely ugly and disgusting atrocities too. Where is God?
And that is something Christians wrestle with almost daily. Yet they still hang onto their faith. There was a very good (and amusing) documentary a few months ago with Andy Hamilton exporing the notion of 'evil' and 'the devil' that highlighted the dilemmas this introduced for the church hiearchy: how can an omnipotent and all-powerful God be outwitted by Satan to introduce such evils in the world. So the church inteoduced the concept of 'original sin' and man's free will to overcome it.
Quote: I've said this before too: Religious believers need to ask themselves if they could cope in a world without religion
Man has been worshipping god(s) or spirits for as long as they have tried to control the environment, so if it wasn't Christianity it would be something else. In that respect your question is redundant.
Quote: Not really. They want someone with a white coat and an authoritative voice to tell them something is so. Then they'll believe it. When another person in a white coat tells them that was all wrong and something else is true - be it 10, 100 or 500 years later they'll believe that as well. Very few actively search for any sort of truth - it requires time and most don't have that luxury or the inclination.
No CB you are imposing the need for a belief set on people so if they do not believe in a God then you move science up to that position.
I neither believe in a God or move scientists to a God like state. Read the Dara quote again. Good scientists know that everything is not know and they also know that a theory is just that a theory it is not an absolute It has to be tested to see if it describes and predicts what it says it does. Suppose the Big Bang Theory is disproved, it is not the end for science, it just means one theory was not correct. That is the beauty of science and why it is not a belief. You do need to stop ascribing belief sets onto areas that are not appropriate for them.
Not believing in God does not mean you have to transfer the whole belief thing to another item.
Quote: That is the beauty of science and why it is not a belief.
Agree with your comments strawman. Science is dynamic, religion is static.
Interestingly though, Fritjof Capra's book the The Tao of Physics draws very good parallels with modern physics and Eastern religions, not that I subscribe to any 'Gods", at least in the conventional sense.
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