(& thanks Kuhnigget for your post 117.)

Can you provide proof that you exist? Or is it merely belief?

Former atheist & philosophy Professor Anthony Flew who went onto accept that God exists has an answer for this:

“To the question, “how do I know I exist?” a professor famously replied, “And who’s asking?”
- Philosopher and author, Antony Flew, P.181 ‘There is a God’, Harper One 2007.

Interesting though isn’t it that a number of atheists such as Professor Flew, Laura Schlessinger who was a former editor of ‘Skeptic’ magazine before converting to Judaism and becoming a prominent radio talk show host & even C.S. Lewis the renowned Christian apologist and author of the ‘Narnia’ series among others, have reflected some more on their former atheism and decided against it and in favour of religion after all.

Now, honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t claim to be the greatest mind in history or anything and I can see the case for both atheist & religion sides here. I’ve also read widely and from both sides of this debate and I think at times both sides and many individual sources and commenters have had their flaws, fallacies, misunderstandings and strawmen. No one here I think can cast the first stone being without sin. (Logical, metaphorical, personal & bias-wise.) But I guess what I am trying to say is just:

“Its NOT that simple.”

Far greater minds than ours have struggled heavily with this issue and come to differing conclusions. It is one of the great philosophical questions – perhaps the greatest. It isn’t just a simple and straightforward and clear as the videoclip here & many atheists seem to suggest.

I do think the videoclip is overly stereotypical and reflects an overwhelmingly negative one-sided biased perspective against those who are religious – a category I wouldn’t necessarily include myself in. I do think they have made a straw man caricature and failed to properly see the other side of the coin.

Myself, I just don’t know, not really. I find some atheist arguments convincing and they do argue well and logically in a rather cold sort of way but when I ask myself quietly “is there a God?” something deep inside me replies “yes.”

I’m sure that sounds silly and irrational & it doesn’t really get it across properly and as I’ve noted I’m really not sure but hey, that’s where I’m coming from.

As for quoting Einstein and others, well as I said before, I’m not meaning to be a troll or rude or disruptive or anything but merely to offer a few words of wisdom and alyernative perspectives from folks who I freely acknowledge to be much smarter than me that provide a bitof extra context for this whole matter. I’m amazed some people seem to be so offended and so furious with doing that. While I can understand you’ve had other religious “trolls” here before please try not to over-react and assume that anyone who thinks differently and disagrees with you is one of them. That’s all.

As I don’t speak canary, I’ll defer to ignorance on the second half of your point. For all I know they could be tweeting about differential equations.

Perhaps, but they are of no use to us for answering the unanswerable, just like religion.

But by the law of contraposition, the statement, “religion is not great at answering the unanswerable” is logically equivalent to the statement “religion is great at unanswering the answerable. It’s just logic.

That is not what the law of contraposition says. The law of contraposition says “p then q, not q then not p”, or “p then no q, q then not p”.. First, there is no “if” or “then”, there is no one thing that implies the other. Second, it would be “not answer”, not “unanswer”. Saying that something is not answering and saying it is unanswering are two entirely different things.

And it’s true – why else would 60% of Americans not believe in the theory of evolution if religion were not damn good at unanswering it?

A true conclusion can still result from an illogical argument. “Illogical” does not automatically mean “false”.

Depends what metric we’re using for “good.” If the metric is accuracy, than religion and random are equal. Since there can be no correct answer to an unanswerable question, all wrong answers are equally valid, as they’re equally wrong.

As I already stated, random answer generators are more likely to produce a correct answer than religion is because it is able to cover a much larger subset of possible answer spread more evenly over the range of possible answers.

If, on the other hand, you factor in quality of narrative, I’m afraid religion wins. I mean, to answer the fundamental unanswerables, religion has wrathful Gods and vengeful demons and smiting and begatting and all kinds of action-packed stories.

You apparently have not looked at many random generators. I have seen some pretty cool plots and characters come out of those things, far more interesting than most religion stories IMHO (and most movies, actually).

No, it doesn’t logically follow. Not answering and unanswering are two different things. Although it is true that religion is quite good at, and in many cases tries very hard to, unanswer the answerable, it is not necessarily the case. For instance canaries are not good at answering the unanswerable, but neither are they very good at unanswering the answerable.

As I don’t speak canary, I’ll defer to ignorance on the second half of your point. For all I know they could be tweeting about differential equations.

But by the law of contraposition, the statement, “religion is not great at answering the unanswerable” is logically equivalent to the statement “religion is great at unanswering the answerable. It’s just logic.

And it’s true – why else would 60% of Americans not believe in the theory of evolution if religion were not damn good at unanswering it?

Compared to a random answer generator it is a terrible way since it only comes up with a tiny subset of possible answers.

Depends what metric we’re using for “good.” If the metric is accuracy, than religion and random are equal. Since there can be no correct answer to an unanswerable question, all wrong answers are equally valid, as they’re equally wrong.

If, on the other hand, you factor in quality of narrative, I’m afraid religion wins. I mean, to answer the fundamental unanswerables, religion has wrathful Gods and vengeful demons and smiting and begatting and all kinds of action-packed stories.

Ask the same unanswerables of a random generator and what will you get? “The color of hubris?” “A tincture of Dada?” “Minneapolis on a stick?” Yeah, that’ll fill the pews.

While I, and many others, would certainly agree that the !Kung practices you refer to “ought to be” considered infanticide, I am afraid I must loudly and clearly dispute your view of when a “human life” “begins.” For most medical and legal purposes, a “human life” is said to “end” when the human body/brain can no longer support the level of activity that gives rise to an integrated, self-aware, human personality. In infants, this arises slowly, as any observant parent, unblinded by religious nutballery, will know. In full-term infants, it takes several months before they become noticeably aware that they are separate beings, distinct from their parents/caregivers, and there is no “magic moment” that is rationally defensible in the biological development of a human person, just as there is no developmental “magic moment” when a child ceases to be a child and becomes an adult.

It is true that, upon conception (and even before), there is something “alive.” However, to maintain that (cue my channeling Sam Harris) a ball of 150 cells, lacking ANY neurons can somehow suffer its own destruction, or if you must, “death,” CANNOT BE LOGICALLY OR RATIONALLY SUPPORTED IN ANY SENSE WHATSOEVER.

To believe that a 3-day old blastocyst has moral interests capable of trumping our concern for an otherwise normal 9 y/o girl with 3rd degree burns on over 70% of her body, a girl whose suffering might be relieved through embryonic stem-cell research that “Salaam-Shalom-Peace” would prohibit, is in fact, a moral invalid them self.

I will throw a bone out there for the pro-life types. As a general rule of thumb, I consider an infant to be a human being worthy of my moral concern from:

a. the time it comes out, or,

b. from such time as recognizably human brain-wave activity can be detected while still in utero.

(note that the above in no way trumps my moral concern for the legitimate health and well-being of the mother)

This raises a legitimate moral, and perhaps legal, concern. The “age of viability,” usually considered to be the time at which a newborn can survive outside the body of the mother, is being continually pushed back by advances in neonatal medicine. Infants born as early as the 23rd week have survived to go home with the parents (after spending a considerable time in the neonatal ICU of course).

If it would be murder (as I think it is) to kill a 23-week “preemie” in the neonatal ICU, that does raise, as I said, a legitimate legal and ethical question of why it would be legally/ethically permissible to destroy an infant at the same stage of development which is still inside the womb (provided the health and well-being of the mother is not endangered). I do not pretend to have an answer, and if anyone else’s answer invokes the presence of an immortal, immaterial, supernatural, human soul (for as Thomas Jefferson said, one is then essentially talking about “nothings”), then as far as I am concerned, they have nothing useful to contribute to a grave moral and ethical dilemma.

No matter what answers you or I could come up with, I feel that such a grave decision should be left up to the consciences of the concerned parties (primarily the pregnant woman and her partner, if the relationship is a healthy one) and the best medical advice of a compassionate, expert physician.

Fair enough. But if religion is not great at answering the unanswerable, it logically follows that it is also great at unanswering the answerable.

No, it doesn’t logically follow. Not answering and unanswering are two different things. Although it is true that religion is quite good at, and in many cases tries very hard to, unanswer the answerable, it is not necessarily the case. For instance canaries are not good at answering the unanswerable, but neither are they very good at unanswering the answerable.

No – it’s a terrible way to come up with the answer to the unanswerable. But it’s a great way to come up with an answer to the unanswerable.

Compared to a random answer generator it is a terrible way since it only comes up with a tiny subset of possible answers.