I think that no matter what you believe, that everything requires faith. And yes, that means you Athesists! Nobody was around when the world was created and so no one can say it was done by this or that or whatever… We have science, but that obviously only explains so much…

Anyway my point is that no matter what you believe, it requires faith… because no one knows everything… unless you are God… that is of course if you believe in God…

Everywhere I go I seem to come across irritating folk like Mike here who just shrug their shoulders and say “Hey, Athesism [sic] is just another belief system.”

No it’s not. Atheism is, like the science it grows out of, based on a look at the facts presented. In many of the traditional areas of faith - miracles, origin/creation stories and so on - science has crept in, examined the evidence, placed up suppositions as to what is actually going on, tested them and improved the stories until a reasonably robust set of rules to explain the state of the world has taken form, then moved on to the next bit of unknown. This is scientific understanding. This is why doctors are able to fix a hole in my mother’s heart by sticking a tube in her thigh. This is why we are able to send rockets to the moon and not think that we would annihilate the Sun’s pining lover. Religious faith has fallen back in front of its progress leaving God in the gaps (or flat out denied it and made people look crazy - see “Creationcists” [sic]) . Where ever science’s limits are, people of faith rush in to seize upon the scrap and say “Aha! Science can’t explain that. God made it. Put that in your amoral pipe and smoke it, athesist!”

I’ll freely accept, as will, and frankly as must, any free-thinking Bright, that we don’t at present have any idea what happened before the Big Bang (everything there after for pretty much the next few billion years is also largely conjecture, but which stands up to peer review quite well). As such it is impossible to deny the argument that there may have been someone to push the big red button marked “Start Universe”. Goddamnit, (or, to even the sheet, Darwindamnit - nope, doesn’t work, damnation is a religious thing) the universe may well have fallen out of the arse of a colossal universe crapping toad for all we know.

Be that as it may, in all other respects, the god of the gaps has subsequently come to nought. The sheer multiplicity of forms of religious belief should be the first marker that there is something up with the whole idea. Disregarding the 1000s of fairly unimportant faiths (until one of their followers sticks a bomb on my train, of course), simply a scan across the main ones should point out a few problems; the Abrahamics (Judeo-Christo-Islam), Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Shinto (okay, only applies to Japan, but there are a 125m of them), dogmatic state atheism (hello Chinese Communists), Confucianism, the list could go on. After-life/no after-life; batter women/don’t batter women; don’t covet graven images/stick little statues of the bugger everywhere. The rules simply cancel each other out. Oh well, perhaps among these pretenders that make a mockery of “God” there is one true faith? If that were true, we’d be able to examine the groupings and a clear winner would emerge.

I’m still looking.

“Aha, Mr Athesist! You are confusing Religion with belief! Churches have nothing to do with the true face of God!” Fine, so it’s a one on one relationship we have to have, right? I’m okay with that. Not everyone can manage it, but those that can, well, can.

So these people with a cosy little hotline to their own personal Jesus, Mohammed or what ever would presumably benefit from this. That’s why they’ve been chosen to be able to have the relationship (I can’t be in this group because, despite being agnostic growing up - I had to be to accommodate my love of ghost stories, but then I realised the supernatural was just stories). Except that praying, talking on the hotline, has never been revealed to have ANY benefit to anyone whatsoever.

So what are the Mikes of this world left with? Doggedly defending the notion that a god of some kind is out there, we just can’t see, touch, taste or smell him, and the only ones that can hear him can’t prove it in any way. But all the same he might be there. If I believe in him, that’s enough to mean he exists. Just like the invisible purple spaghetti eater.

Like I say, He might have been there to push the button. That much we don’t know - but he sure as some-imaginary-place ain’t here. So get off that fence Mike.

I don’t really want to enter in to a debate with complete stranger but oh well…. I’ll try to keep this short and simple…

First of all, why am I “irritating?” All I did was write a short paragraph on my thoughts after reading Nick’s article… Sorry if I have an opinion that doesn’t agree with yours but I was hardly ramming anything down anyone’s throat. Oh yeah and I think saying that I was “doggedly” defending an idea could be considered slight overkill. (In case you don’t know, I’m being really sarcastic here.)

Secondly, I believe in science and although we as humans have made an amazing amount of discoveries
(especially in the past 200 years), there are still so many things out there that we don’t understand. Yeah we have heart surgeons fixing peple through their legs, but how come they can’t cure the common cold? 500 years ago we were saying that the earth was flat and any expert on cartography would have agreed to that… Up until a few hundred years ago the concept of “germs” was unheard of and Doctors were making “cures” out of horse urine and manure. We as humans are getting smarter everyday but we are far, far, far, far away from having things figured out. Yeah some religious nuts may have said that cause we don’t understand it means that God created it… But did I say that? Nope.

I can’t can’t see, touch, taste or smell Australia, but I believe it exists. So why does the concept of God have to be any different?

Yup there are a lot of different religions out there and I’ll bet that if I go to the downtown area of some large city that I can find a person claiming to be Jesus, or the founder of a new religion.. Does that mean that Christanity, Islam, or Judaism is wrong? Does that mean they are right? No, it just means that there are people out there making false claims, just like they might do about the used car they are selling. It’s up to each person to decide for themselves so I guess that cancels your argument about religions canceling each other out…

It is up to each person to decide what they believe, don’t believe, or might believe.. I don’t really care what other people think I may, may not, or might believe… but then again maybe Im just an irritating, doggedly fence sitting person….oh well!

Sorry Mike, I do owe you an apology for being unnecessarily aggressive in my attitude - my opening salvo was spurred by having spent my lunch hour reading a very entertaining but nonetheless irritating thread where atheists and agnostics butted heads. Finding your response to the video later the same day put me straight back in the same mental space.

I have to agree wholeheartedly with Nick’s sentiments concerning keeping religion out of the school lab, though I would personally prefer to see more teaching of comparative religion at schools as it is actually the key to unlocking much of current events - for example, an awareness of the difference between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims gives a texture and understanding to the politics of the middle east that sometimes seems lacking even in our leaders; understanding the enmity following the partition of India along religious lines helps get a feel for the relationship of the two most recent nuclear powers - as well as helping giving kids a chance to see the numerous and conflicting claims and counter-claims various strands of religion make that does a lot to reveal how they do indeed seem to cancel each other out.

Your argument, Mike, stumbles when you say that you “believe” in science. Unlike ‘our’ (Judeo-Christian) God, science is entirely indifferent to your belief. In fact, it’s hard to judge whether it is actually possible to believe in a method of enquiry. Your follow on argument then bizarrely goes to support my point. Yes, 500 years ago we did think the world flat and that the sun moved through the sky, (and churches tortured people for suggesting otherwise, but that’s not really a fair criticism - it was just the fashion at the time) but smart folk observed the movement of “heavenly bodies”, made speculations about other bodies and lo! we ended up at that moonshot I was talking about. 1000 years ago Muslim scholars were indeed postulating early germ theories (and 1000 years before that, so were Roman philosophers) but it couldn’t be critically examined until technology caught up. In the meantime, this gap between the idea of germ theory and the proof was exploited by religion and illness was portrayed as God’s wrath writ small. Microscopes came along and allowed us to see, not the fingerprints of a vengeful deity, but micro-organisms and infection.

But then perhaps your point was that there are still things we can’t explain, like how gravity actually works, or the precise way in which dogs have separated from wolves, and perhaps what we think we know now will subsequently prove to be wrong (oh go on, take your pick). Yep. You’re absolutely right. Some of it will be wrong. Part of the way the scientific method works is by making mistakes, but another part of it is to find people to come out and challenge new ideas, try to refute them and even perhaps disprove them. This happens all the time. It’s not that science is “wrong”, indeed, it’s what makes science “right” - it affirms its status as “work-in-progress”.

Beacuse, unlike religious claims to “the truth”, the claim by science is that “this is the best current explanation for this phenomenon until a better or more detailed one comes along.” What’s more, if I wish to challenge a scientific claim to the “best current truth”, if the method has been followed correctly, I can go and check for myself.

In practice I don’t go and check for myself - instead I delegate my need to check up on the all the facts to people who I trust or whom carry sufficient credibility that I am able to take their word for it.

I’m sure that Australia, and by extension the people of Australia, would be deeply happy that you believe in it, but, once again, in reality they are indifferent to your belief. They are and will continue to be. What you in fact mean is that there is sufficient credible evidence around - maps, television documentaries, books, photos, Russell Crowe and the Minogue sisters, bar staff in London - to make not believing in Australia a preposterous proposition. And, at the end of it all, were all this not enough, you could just hop on a plane and go there for a little experiential confirmation (and probably some well deserved R ‘n R. Actually, while you’re down there, you could check out the aboriginal creation myths - something to do with a rainbow snake and water pouring from frogs mouths).

On the other hand, as lovely a bloke as the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to be, he, as the head of the state church and so presumably one of God’s men on earth, can do no more to demonstrate the reality of God to me than the shouty bloke in the brown overcoat I see around Bristol telling me that I am going to rot in Hell. How do I know he can’t? Because if he could, he would have done by now - it’s his job. Since, after 2000 years of trying, the best the Christian authorities have come up with to prove the existence of God is a book of dubious origin that they have to share with two other major religions and countless fakes (from the Turin Shroud to the Cardiff Giant), I would say that their claim to have an objective truth is looking shakey. So that’s one reason why Australia and God are different.

Why should the onus be on religious belief to make greater efforts to prove itself? Well, unlike Australia, which would doubtless go on creating great rugby players, hopeless gassy lager and girls with bad skin and strong arms regardless of what you or I believed, religion tends to make demands of people. Sometimes really rather unpleasant demands. Yes, that may be the acts of the people in the religion rather than the religion itself, but the fact remains that religion is often used as a lever to make people do nasty things. Before you pull the old “Stalin was an atheist and a bastard” line it is important to point out that Stalin was simply a bastard. He wasn’t a bastard because he was an atheist. Torquemada on the other hand was quite definitely a bastard because of his religious beliefs.

So, if religion is going to tell you what to do, or tell other people what to do to you if you don’t do what it says, then it better have a very solid reason for doing it. Which to date, no religion has satisfactorily managed to present.

As for your point that it is for everyone to decide for themselves, that is precisely the banal fence sitting of which I accused you the first time round. This whole statement that it cancels out my argument is entirely non-nonsensical and irrational. It doesn’t cancel it out - it simply tries to ignore it. You make a point that underlines my whole thesis vis-a-vis religion is its own enemy. Yes, there are some nutters out there in parts of your city that doubtless have daft beliefs - Raelians, Branch Davidians, Aum, the Moonies, the list goes on - but the fact is that they have no lesser claim to reality than lovely Rowan Williams (the A-B of C), Jonathan Sacks (Chief Rabbi in UK), that bloke in Rome or {scratches head wondering about global figure heads for Islamic faith - oh, they don’t have one - it’s the way their church is arranged} A N al Other. They simply have fewer followers. You, on the other hand, dismiss them as having “false beliefs”. On what grounds? Where are your criteria?

What vexes me so about the live-and-let-believe attitude you and plenty of others espouse, and in some respects it is quite admirable, is that it is neither one thing or the other. I don’t get the sense that you “have God”, but clearly neither are you an atheist. You profess to not being able to know, which I’d hazard places you in an agnostic position. However, by default you seem to align yourself to not knowing the Judeo-Christian god (ref ‘false beliefs’ and your references to creation and omniscience in your first mail) which really just underlines the fact that you have been indoctrinated, presumably during your childhood - another of religion’s unpleasant habits.

In the final analysis, it is impossible to say whether or not God exists. As previously discussed, there are limits to what it seems possible to know (the big bang is, as far as can be presently conceived, one such maximal horizon) outside of which there remain gaps quite large enough to accommodate any number of gods (or toads) but as far as the evidence to support any of the theories regarding those gaps goes, there is nothing. Fence sitting is irritating because it smacks of laziness, of a mind that has not critically evaluated the evidence before it or got the strength to commit to a definite set of beliefs.