Some people want to believe in the delusion of beauty; some want to believe in the delusion of equality. Some things need not be 100% objectively true to be worth believing in.

– Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Of course, that assumes two things:

1) that all people who have faith in irrational concepts are beholden to a religion or ideology external to themselves,

2) that leaders of said religions are cynics and opium-peddlers in the Marxist sense.

Assumption #1 is false because there are many irrational beliefs, such as my own, which have very little to nothing to do with organized religion. Assumption #2 is false because, for good or for ill, the leaders of such things really do often believe what they say to be The Truth. Osama bin Laden, for example, probably fervently believes that he is the Fist Of God. As alien as that concept is to products of Western Liberalism and the Enlightenment, it’s not so hard if you step back and think of secular idealists driven by the same sort of insanity: Che Guevara is a good example, or Adolph Hitler, or Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin, militia survivalists, so on and so forth.

I’m not Christian, so your arguments of brainwashing have little to no effect on me. If people want to pretend, like me, about universe fairies, so be it. In terms of scientific, objective, naturalistic reality it is hogwash. That’s identical to saying, however, to saying that pork isn’t kosher. It’s hogwash and non-kosher by the definition of the analysis scheme being used. This also doesn’t prevent universe fairies and pork from serving beneficial pragmatic uses when applied appropriately.

Probably the other reason you and people such as Tony are in
shock at my bold statements is that for most of the history of
christianity and just about any other religion, anyone who dared
to disagree ended up in serious trouble or outright dead.

And don’t worry, I know it isn’t just the christians doing this -
draw a picture of Mohammed and get instant death threats and
an airliner full of passengers into your skyscraper. All in the name
of a loving God, of course.

Already I can feel the hatred, pity, fear, anger and whatever else
from every religious person who reads my words, despite their
claims to be about peace and love. You’ve had 2,000 years of
domination in the world, of course it is shocking that someone
dares to stand up to your mythology and dictatorship – not only
because someone is going against the grain, but also because
you have been brainwashed for so long that saying the Emperor
Has No Clothes is a real culture shock.

So say what you will about me, but I am no troll. I am just speaking
for so many who can’t or won’t say what they are really thinking -
that religion is an outmoded concept based on ancient misinterpretations
of the world and psychology that has been hijacked and cleverly
utilized by those in power over the masses, so many of whom
just blindly accept what they told.

The Matrix is more right than ever about how the world works.

This is a gross mis-characterization of history. A sociologist would say that this statement is bad science.

While it is true that a number of “so-called Christians” have leveraged the dogma of their particular religious denominations to increase their own political or economic power, this is also true of every other religion… and (more to the point), every other sociological construct that involves enough people to abstract and distill power from a group of individuals and embody it in a leader or cabal of leaders. This includes guilds, democracies, theocracies, clans, business organizational units, political action committees, *any* grouping of people that allows trust to be transitive or distributive and power to flow outside individual responsibility.

Now, a libertarian would argue that this means that essentially just about every social construct is bad because it can be misused, but this completely ignores all of the advantages of people working in groups.

Abstracting power from a collection of individuals and putting it at the control of one (or a few) leaders allows an economy of scale and efficiency that does not exist among a collection of complete equals. This is why people band together in social constructs in the first place. And while there are plenty of horrible examples of misuse of power by social constructs, there are also plenty of examples of brilliant use of power by social constructs. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I’m going to feed the troll, but what the hey. Let’s say I like the color blue, and you like the color green. Now, the fact that I like the color blue, and may think your opinion of the color green incorrect in my case, I can grant that people is people and indeed for you the color green may be better. I have my opinion, you have yours, and the price of rice in Peoria remains unchanged.

The moderate religionist like Tony will go “well, I’m a Seventh-Day-Bah’ai-Tantric-Catholic, and you’re an Agnostic-Atheist-Freethinker-Skeptic-Cynic-Solipsist, and the price of rice in Peoria remains unchanged.” Despite the fact that he has a religion, he can see it as a personal choice that, should people disagree with him cordially, it doesn’t much matter.

Then along comes someone with a bucket of tar and a broad brush who declares that all religionists are fundamentalists and, when a moderate religionist politely disagrees, complain that the religionist isn’t fundamentalist enough.

I’m a deist, and I don’t consider you a fool for being an atheist any more than I consider Dr. Plait a fool for being an atheist or I consider Tony a fool for being a Catholic. I consider people fools not based on their ideology, but on their actions. You can believe in the Great Turtle A’tuin or even the Warhammer Chaos gods if you really want to but as long as you’re civil and you don’t try to teach science as religion or religion as science, I don’t much care. When you go about stereotypically painting others as a stereotype due to the Great [Un]Holy Culture War when there’s evidence not more than a few scrollwheel turns away to disprove said sweeping hyperbole, on the other hand, I can’t be quite so forgiving.

Meanwhile a select number of so-called Christians have made a
fortune and wielded serious power over the ages all because of
this one claim.

Man, how can I get in on this scam?

It’s fair that you don’t have the background in Christianity that you do in astronomy/science. This article is a blend of the two, and I appreciate your “disclaiming” comments upfront. It’s certainly an *interesting* viewpoint, even if it’s not representative of the Church or many of its members.

At least Einstein was smart enough:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24598856/

I am personal friends with one gentleman who was sexually abused by a priest in Chicago. He reported the priest to his parent, who took him out of school. The priest remained in the parish. The parents then wrote to the diocese bishop, who lovingly called the boy a liar and a heretic. This is in 1984.

The family left the church and has remained religious, but refuse dogma of any sort. They only attend mass.

It is interesting to note how different each person experience with the Catholic church has been. Science on the other hand lays down rules which can be tested and read by anyone without the need of ‘special’ interpretation. E=mc2 is pretty straight forward, even if you don’t understand the implications therein. Forgiving the Church because each Pope can ‘interpret the canon as they see fit’ is unforgivable and misleading and just crazy.

IF the church discredits the bible as just a metaphor, then why use that book as a reference for life. I think “Green Eggs and Ham” is a blast to read, but I don’t base my belief about food on it.

All of this is meaningless. Dr. P stated that he was looking for opinions – they is also not science. While I find the article interesting, it too is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. With approximately a billion people giving the church money every Sunday and then some, I have no sympathy for nor agree with arguments to support it.

I do not condemn faith, but it isn’t science. Ardent, fire-breathing belief in god, in my opinion is personally limiting and self-indulgent. It is driven by fear via the ego (pardons to Freud) to do the right thing or be punished. My 4 year old son knows that without god, thank you very much.

It is simply a matter of research to find out what the *official* stance of the church is. The catechism of the catholic church is available online from several sources (also as a big honking book – not *that* one)

to wit:

“In case of necessity, anyone, even a nonbaptized person, with the required intention, can baptize”

“As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, … [various arguments] … allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism.” [similar arguments exist in this section regarding the fate of others including "good" people who are not Catholic or even Christian - no mention of hell or burning ]

“In order to discover the … authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. “For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression.”

Google “catholic literal bible” to see what their stance is on literal interpretation of the bible. [the church *warns* that the bible should *not* be taken literally]

With the exception of some misguided induhviduals, these Catholics are not the fundamentalist idiots you’r looking for.

Regards,

Guillermo

People confuse public statements of their local priest or bishop as Catholic dogma; this is not necessarily the case. Unlike many other Christian denominations, local priests and bishops don’t have declarative authority, that comes from the Pope. And the Pope himself doesn’t generally *declare* dogma, he interprets it. Major tenets of the faith can’t be changed except by declarations of papal infallibility, and has happened only once since papal infallibility was established as part of the canon in 1870 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility for more on that).

Think of the Pope as the Supreme Court, the catechism as the Constitution, and you’ll get the idea. Catholic dogma is a “living document”, as each Pope interprets scripture differently.

“Forced baptism” would actually be a crime in the church. Not that priests haven’t done it, I’m sure it has happened. But it’s definitely the sort of thing that would get said priest in very hot water with his bishop.

The entire Catholic catechism is available at the Vatican web site, and I guarantee that 95% of Catholics today haven’t read it, don’t understand it, and assume that what their priest taught them in Sunday school 40 years ago was in fact dogma… when it wasn’t.

Papabear, I agree with your addition as well. People of faith who are looking for proof of their faith probably do not have the amount of faith the claim to. Thank you for your comment.

I was taught by Marionist nuns and brothers. Other orders may have taught different things.

After all, what is an Ood except a reflection of ourselves?

My comments were targeted at the select few, a small minority I am sure, of those people who attack all that has anything to do with religion and the followers of religion, simply because they themselves subscribe to an unfounded belief that all people who believe in God are idiots.

All faiths, at some point in the past, are guilt of terrible crimes and actions. As a Catholic, I do not stick my head in the sand and ignore those events. I am also not happy with the Catholic Church’s stance on many issues today, but my hope is that the Church will adapt to the modern world. Though many would argue that will never happen, the Church has done so in the past, even if it was at a slow pace. While such changes may be viewed by non-Catholics as small and insignificant, within the Church they are ground-breaking. The Church has in the last few decades moved in more or less the right direction, even if it is not as fast as some of us would want.

I also know, having read some history on the Catholic Church, that many of the current or former practices of the church, such as not eating meat on Fridays, was started for non-religious reasons.

But you can not ignore the good that the Catholic Church and other faiths have done in the world. Those anti-religious people I refer to earlier do just that.

I totally agree with on the point of experience. I had the fortunate situation of being part of a very modern parish. That was all I knew. Everyone was active in the CYO, and the Pastor, while in his sixties, was very approachable and easy to talk to. He did not condemn people for their beliefs, even they went counter to Catholism. I never thought much about this, because this was how I thought all Catholic parishes were. I am sorry that was not the case.

I also agree with your point about how Religion and Science are mutually exclusive. I get annoyed and angry when I here people trying to disprove the existence of God through the use of Science. But I get equally angry when I hear religious people try to use science, history, and archeology, to justify their beliefs. If you believe in God, then you do not need to prove it. If you prove it, then it’s not faith any more.

I do find it interesting to try and found the historical events that may have been the basis for say, the story of the Great Flood. But to use that as evidence that God flooded the entire world to do away with sin is wrong. The Great Flood story is a biblical myth, probably based on some true story thousands of years ago. People of faith should stop trying to prove it and instead focus on the message of the story.

You see, this is why I don’t post too often, because then I get started and can’t stop.

http://www.reporternews.com/news/2008/may/14/catholic-church-faith-in-god-alien-life-ok/

And before anyone points it out, yes I know I screwed up my geocentrism analogy, but you know what I meant.

How can there be a conflict between God and evolution, science did not exist then. The Bible as all religions was written by a man not the hand of God.

There is truth of course (theology) a good start, and a good example of this would be: and God created two great lights in the sky, well of course the Sun could be described as a light but the Moon, well that’s more of a mirror, but changes little when looked at in the context of the language etc.

Be honest with yourselves being atheist requires as big a leap of faith as being a believer, as there is no empirical evidence either way, other than we are here and reality is very real, and Christians among other people of faith tend to be open minded and in my opinion can make and have made some of the best scientists.

As for the unbaptized go to hell, well if you think about this logically as we are taught, how about people who have never had a chance to know God, tribal people for example well they too are God’s children, and surely some and/or many are good people. I don’t actually believe anyone is in Hell no matter what they have done, they are held in purgatory maybe for an unimaginable time and will eventually make it through.

I have been accused in the past by some of the anti-religious people who post here, that I am wrong. That it is impossible to believe in God and know Evolution is correct. That in trying to do so, I am neither true to my faith or my knowledge and understanding of Science. Talk about a closed mind.

I won’t argue that you may have been told that by one or two in here… but it’s been my experience that the vast majority of posters here don’t believe that at all. I am not religious. Don’t believe in God… but do not in any way think it impossible to both believe in God and accept evolution.

To any of the truly scientific minds here, we view the two as completely mutually exclusive. One truly has no bearing on the other. The conflict only arises when the ID side of religion comes into play, because it is in direct conflict with scientific observation… and again, I think the vast majority here are of that mind, and only even care about religion when it goes out of its way to push an anti-science agenda on the public.