<p>Periodically some great scientist or thinker comes to the amazing realization that there is actually no way to prove that God exists. 90% of religious people nod and say, “And?”</p>
<p>I recommend Richard Dawkin’s God Delusion to those who are sitting on the fence. He makes a devastatingly convincing argument. Those who don’t believe God exists don’t need this book. To those who are convinced God exists, this book is pointless.</p>
<p>I love Alan Watts’ marvelous hypothesis that God is a timeless consciousness who created the Universe for his own entertainment. As you can imagine, being all and knowing all gets pretty boring, so God periodically plays a grand game of hide-and-seek with himself. He pretends to be the quarks, the neutrinos, the electrons, the protons, the atoms, the elements, the compounds, the stars, the planets, the rocks, the trees, the bugs, the animals, the people. He divides his consciousness into almost infinitely many pieces and hides them inside all of these things, and then they play for billions of years, seeking one another. And when they have found each other again, and all have become one, then God knows himself again, and the delightful game starts all over again.</p>
<p>At some point of life any book become pointless as we start believing ourselves much more than we can ever believe others. Everybody is different, there is no right or wrong, we have our own experiences and our belief system is based on them. As long as you have fun with your life and few others around you, do you really care how we all happen to be here?</p>
<p>The God Delusion is stimulating reading but falls far short of proof, which Dawkins himself admits. In it he calls himself not a pure atheist, but rather a deist with atheistic leanings, for to his credit he realizes that one can not disprove the existence of God any more than one can disprove the existence of anything that one can not detect. However, he does catalog just about every way people deceive themselves into perceiving God and imagining that they know his intentions, when in fact they’re just projecting their own hopes and fears onto the invisible emptiness.</p>
<p>In other words, Dawkins is very good and creating and knocking down strawmen, and he gets a lot of satisfaction in doing so.</p>
<p>Mantori,</p>
<p>What an interesting perspective! I will have to add Alan Watt’s works to my reading list.</p>
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<p>The religious create the strawmen themselves, and they’re pitifully easy to knock down. Hundreds of millions of people do it in their own minds daily. Dawkins just wrote a book about it.</p>
<p>The trouble is that the religious won’t just admit that it’s all imaginary, and I don’t mean that disparagingly. I mean that there is simply no objective proof of the existence of God. I’m choosing my words carefully, so please follow along before you object.</p>
<p>Religion requires faith; it’s the very definition of religion, in fact. If you don’t have faith, then you’re not religious. Put another way, if you require proof, then you’re not of a religious mind. You’re scientific.</p>
<p>Dawkins and those who think like him are merely applying the rules of scientific thinking and saying, “Not only can you not prove the existence of God, but you can’t even provide evidence for God being a more likely explanation for the world’s existence than something I make up off the top of my head.”</p>
<p>So perhaps I choose to believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster brought man to life through the delicious touch of his noodly appendage. Whether it’s believable or ludicrous to you, it is no more or less provable than the Judeo-Christian creation story, and all I would ask is that religious people acknowledge this: “We believe it because we choose to believe it. We can’t convince you, because there is no proof. We can only provide reasons to believe and then hope you’ll decide to have faith, too.”</p>
<p>Think how much better the world would be if all religious people—indeed, all people—adopted that attitude.</p>
<p>It is a logical fallacy to claim that something is false because it cannot be proven, and vice versa.</p>
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I take “no proof” to mean “no definitive scientific evidence”. There are logical arguments that can be constructed, but do not contain definitive scientific evidence. So maybe I only partially agree with this? Not sure if that counts.</p>
<p>Yes, I think we’re talking the same language. Evidence can be significant without constituting proof in the strictly logical, scientific sense. Some people find that evidence to be so credible that they take the leap of faith and choose to believe. The very same evidence leaves others cold. This goes for many things, not just religion. If that weren’t so, we’d all have the same views on politics, economics, etc.</p>
<p>As you say, mantori, faith is not based on science. So for DAwkins to prove that it isnot, is a strawman argument. It argues against the stance of some (by no means all) religous people, who choose to build scientific arguments. Yeah, they are strawmen, and he’s arguing agianst them ,and then arguing that they represent “faith.” It’s a terribly simplistic way to argue, but i’m sure it amuses him.</p>
<p>It’s the kind of stance, born of lack of knowledge, that, for instance, really thinks that fundamentalism represents all Christianity, for instance (I hear this all the time on CC). Swiping at low-hanging fruit makes for best sellers.</p>
<p>It works both ways. Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth wouldn’t have been a best-seller if its theme was “the Bible proves that people will coexist peacefully on this planet for many years to come”.</p>
<p>I don’t get why it matters if there is a God or not, or what put the universe in motion. It’s here.</p>
<p>It matters because he demands your unfailing fealty in order to prop up his fragile ego, you insolent little snot. Bad human! Bad human!</p>
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Well, people are concerned with whether or not they will cease to exist in a relatively short amount of time.</p>
<p>Well, we are all going to die. I guess we will find out when we’re on the other side whether there is heaven, hell or just six feet under. Not much I can do about it one way or the other. It won’t affect how I live my life here.</p>