Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
• a longer profile of yours truly
• my calendar
• Nature Network
• RichardDawkins Network
• facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter
• Atheist Nexus
• the Pharyngula chat room
(#pharyngula on irc.synirc.net)
The river of my title is a river of DNA, and it flows through time, not space. It is a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues.
Richard Dawkins
Regulatory evolution of the Hox1 gene
Evolution of sensory signaling
What should a scientist think about religion?
Upstream plasticity and downstream robustness in evolution of molecular networks
Stay abreast of your favorite bloggers' latest and greatest via e-mail, via a daily digest.
« Tropical breakfast | Main | Another significant poll that will change the universe »
Category: Pointless polls
Posted on: August 19, 2008 9:23 AM, by PZ Myers
What do you think? Would the world be better off without religion?
Of course, religion is only a symptom: what would really make the world better off would be if people were smarter and made important decisions rationally. That's even less like than growing out of religion, unfortunately.
Comments
Posted by: Penny | August 19, 2008 9:32 AM
The aussies are obviously an enlightened race - the poll was Yes 63%, No 37%, with 2086 votes cast before Pharyngulites started on it!
Posted by: Chris | August 19, 2008 9:34 AM
Too bad. I was hoping for a "Hell, yes" option...
Posted by: Seth | August 19, 2008 9:51 AM
I definitely agree that religion is just a symptom of brainwashing and rampant zealotry but its such an easy target. Plus I like to think that people, even the religious nutjobs wouldn't be quite so nutty if they had been better raised and better educated.
Posted by: Brachychiton | August 19, 2008 9:53 AM
The aussies are obviously an enlightened race
I like to think so! But it could also be the effect of World Youth Day in Sydney. (Further down that page there's a pretty strong reaction to the rules against causing annoyance to pilgrims.)
Posted by: SplendidMonkey | August 19, 2008 10:16 AM
Except about smacking children, unless smacking means something else down there. And what's a "middie"? the consensus is that 8 constitutes a binge.
Posted by: taylorbad | August 19, 2008 10:16 AM
"Imagine there's no religion..."--John Lennon
Posted by: amphiox | August 19, 2008 10:33 AM
Before I could honestly answer "yes" to that question, I need to figure out what would most likely (if anything) take the place of religion if it were to vanish.
Considering human nature as it is, I have this sinking feeling that everything will end up functionally more or less the same as it is now.
Posted by: Scaurus | August 19, 2008 10:37 AM
The thought alone that there can be a world without religion is utopian. As atheists we have to learn to live with religion as an important part in the lives of most people. People will not become rational, and even if they do they might not become less religious. We cannot design a new world, because from the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight can be made.
Posted by: Nick Tacik | August 19, 2008 10:42 AM
Person: "So where do you get your morals if not from the bible?"
Me: "Let me ask you something; if it was conclusively proven to you tomorrow that your god didn't exist and that the bible was a load of crap, would you kill and rape whomever you wanted?"
Person: "Yes that's correct."
I've had this conversation quite a few times, and it's been the only time I've really ever thought, 'Well at least religion is good for something'. Still, of course the world would be better off without it.
Posted by: King of Ferrets | August 19, 2008 10:44 AM
If you're going to crash polls PZ, crash mine! (I shall eventually get you crash my polls PZ!)
Posted by: chancelikely | August 19, 2008 10:45 AM
Given that the largely irreligious Europeans seem to be going in for homeopathy, astrology, crystals, Holocaust denial, and other nonsense in large numbers, I don't think a world without religion would be an improvement. People have a pretty strong need to believe in something stupid.
On the other hand, I wonder if astrologers could acquire the centralized power and ability to get people to do silly and dangerous things that religion has had for centuries. Perhaps it would be an improvement to switch out powerful purveyors of nonsense and replace them with weak, decentralized ones.
Posted by: Scaurus | August 19, 2008 10:47 AM
The world would be better off without politicians, yet we do not have polls on whether the world would be better off without politics.
Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 19, 2008 10:59 AM
Does that count substitutes for religion, like dialectical materialism?
Anyhow, isn't the question whether or not the world would be better off if social fictions were expunged? With others, I'd say yes, but wouldn't limit such fictions to religion.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Burt Humburg | August 19, 2008 11:02 AM
Well put. Thank you.
BCH
Posted by: Ralph Stewart | August 19, 2008 11:03 AM
The Census Bureau seems to be suggesting that womans continued education beyond high school is a form of birth control. The possibility that the educated, hopefully rational, population will not grow seems real. Sort of a "green" way of population control.
Religions that keep women dumb and reproducing seem to have a better plan for success. It success is measured by number of souls in a shared delusion.
Posted by: Andrés Diplotti | August 19, 2008 11:04 AM
I answered "yes", but then I thought better about it.
What the world would be better off without is people taking religion so damn seriously.
Posted by: Alan Chapman | August 19, 2008 11:27 AM
To #9: People who assert the claim that morality can't exist without a god are also, by definition, claiming that no rational argument exists for ethical conduct, or they're simply incapable of making one. Furthermore, if one acts based upon expectation of reward, or avoidance of punishment, from a god then the actor is not making a moral judgement.
The person who claims that he would rape and murder without god is not being truthful. Such a person would quickly find himself exiled or dead and those are sufficiently compelling disincentives in most cases.
Posted by: Snitzels | August 19, 2008 11:31 AM
Would removing religion from the world really inspire more people to educate themselves? I'm guessing not. Perhaps what we need is more education and religion would settle for being a side dish.
What we could use is less fanatics, but then they do serve as a constant reminder of what a big dose of crazy can do to people if they aren't careful to try to remain balanced.
Posted by: minusRusty | August 19, 2008 11:37 AM
Bingo!
And I really wish more atheists would realize that little bit of reality.
Posted by: Doubting Foo | August 19, 2008 11:41 AM
It's not religions I have a problem with, it's the kooks that follow them!
Posted by: Sinbad | August 19, 2008 11:44 AM
[W]hat would really make the world better off would be if people were smarter and made important decisions rationally.
That would require the majority here to give up their silly economic (and related political) notions, which ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Reality-based policy simply can't compete with liberal dogma 'round here....
Posted by: Doubting Foo | August 19, 2008 11:48 AM
It's not religions I have a problem with, it's the kooks that follow them!
Posted by: Patricia | August 19, 2008 11:51 AM
Votes 77% yes - 23% no, 4110 votes.
The other interesting thing was 82% of those voting are against Purity Balls... er, what are those?
Posted by: CW | August 19, 2008 12:02 PM
I believe the pharyngulist canonical response is: KnittingPosted by: Dale Husband | August 19, 2008 12:06 PM
The aussies are obviously an enlightened race
Uh, Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis is one of them!
Posted by: RickD | August 19, 2008 12:19 PM
It is hard to answer this question. "A world without religion" could be so many things.
People ask the question "What would take the place of religion?" Well, anything that "takes the place" of a religion is itself another religion, isn't it?
Anything else - an epistemology, or a code of ethics, isn't "taking the place of religion". Accepting the question "What would take the place of religion?" puts one halfway down the path to the usual nonsensical arguments whereby creationists argue that evolution is itself a "religion".
Posted by: Mooser | August 19, 2008 12:19 PM
what would really make the world better off would be if people were smarter and made important decisions rationally
That is the stupidest thing I have ever read on this blog.
Follow that line of thought, and you will go directly to Swift's "A Modest Proposal".
But I'll let you decide what "smarter" and "more rationally" are. Oh, I'm intelligent enough, I suppose, but I've got a real humility problem you seem to have freed yourself from.
Posted by: Will | August 19, 2008 12:30 PM
"The other interesting thing was 82% of those voting are against Purity Balls... er, what are those?"
Purity balls are evangelical 'don't lose your virginity!' things. A father will take his daughter (very rarely a son) to a two or three day abstinence sex-ed evangelical style program. At the end, they have a whole father-daughter grand ball where the daughter pledges to her father not to have sex until she is married, and gets a ring in return.
Obviously, they only care about this for the women, so there are almost no male-centered programs or pledging slavery to the father. Horrible things all around. Especially when they take no-nothing 5-year-olds (quite often) to these things.
More Info:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/us/19purity.html
Posted by: El Herring | August 19, 2008 12:54 PM
Would the world be better off without religion?
Well, my response to that would be the following quote (and I wish I could remember where I got this from):
No situation in the whole of human history has ever been improved by the sticking into it of an ecclesiatical nose.
If anybody knows who the originator of that quote was, please tell me because it's been bugging me for years. It might be Heinlein, but I can't find any reference to it on the Net or anywhere else. It's certainly a good one though.
Posted by: El Herring | August 19, 2008 12:56 PM
Damn, I meant ecclesiastical of course. My "s" key misfires often.
Posted by: John | August 19, 2008 1:02 PM
There will be religion as long as there are people uncomfortable saying "I don't know". I really think the atheistic/skeptical end of the spectrum primarily boils down to an ability to accept one's own lack of knowledge.
In other words, where a naturalist can see and accept a certain question as unanswerable (whether temporarily or permanently so), a supernaturalist is uneasy with such a conclusion, and substitutes something more satisfying.
So I think that as long as people experience discontent with mystery, there will be supernatural beliefs.
Posted by: BobC | August 19, 2008 1:22 PM
"Would the world be better off without religion?" is equivalent to asking "Would the world be better off without stupidity and insanity?"
I clicked YES, which is now 80% of the vote.
Imagine an entire day without one suicide bombing. Imagine biology teachers able to teach evolution anywhere in America without fear of harassment. Imagine the explosion of human progress in a world without supernatural woo-woo.
Posted by: Patricia | August 19, 2008 1:27 PM
Thankyou for the answer Will.
What a rube I am. I thought a purity ball would be something to put in the wash to kill cooties. Leave it to the fundies to come up with another sexist celebration.
Huzzah for the 82% against!
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | August 19, 2008 1:35 PM
Calm down. They don't go in for any of these in larger numbers than Americans.
To the contrary: the most religious people are the generally most gullible ones. If you already believe that miracles happen all the time, believing in spoon-bending in addition to that isn't difficult, and if God arranges your fate, why shouldn't he arrange the stars so you can see it beforehand. Plus, I have anecdotal evidence in the form of a relative :o)
Posted by: True Bob | August 19, 2008 1:35 PM
And here I though a purity ball was the result of a good bath.
Posted by: McDuff | August 19, 2008 1:43 PM
Depends what you mean by "religion".
Would the world be better off eliminating the idea that God/Fairies/Gaia is a causal mechanism? Probably, although it's hard to say precisely.
Would the world be better off without the sociological mythologies that form the fabric of society, of which religion is an inevitable and irrevocable part? I certainly doubt it.
While religion is almost certainly "wrong" in the sheer factual sense that the world was not created by Odin from the body of his father and that praying to Allah will not make the rains come any quicker, the processes by which religion arises are so intrinsic to the human experience that it's hard to work out how the world would get rid of "religion" without getting rid of people too, or at least fundamentally changing them into a different species, which probably amounts to the same thing.
The new-atheist conceit that I find most grating is the idea that human beings are essentially rational creatures who would be so much better off if they would just start thinking straight. While I see the merit of the idea, I wonder whether people have ever met a human being. We are - all of us - delusional by nature, existing in a construction of hallucinations which, yes, are influenced by the outside world but which are representational enough to work, not to be accurate. Our prejudices and expectations influence how we see even simple things, and we struggle to convey our internal conceptions meaningfully even to people who share our own frames of reference, let alone people from entirely different cultural contexts. We build our societies on myths and stories, on convenient fictions and representations of reality.
We're a species predisposed by the goo we're made of towards being delusional storytellers, and somehow we're expected to believe that taking away people's delusions and stories is going to work?
We should mock, challenge and denounce religion, and always be on the lookout for those who would abuse the nature of their religious stories to abuse their place in society. We should not allow religious motherfuckers to insist that they and they alone are the gatekeepers of morality and good conduct. But eliminate religion? Such a world wouldn't be full of human beings and, so, it wouldn't be much fun.
Posted by: Sinbad | August 19, 2008 1:53 PM
To the contrary: the most religious people are the generally most gullible ones.
As opposed to atheists, 21% of whom believe in God?
Posted by: Aquaria | August 19, 2008 2:01 PM
Sinbad must have lost an argument to one of the liberals here, and badly. There, there, little man, no need to have such a hissy fit.
Posted by: Aquaria | August 19, 2008 2:05 PM
Posted by: El Herring | August 19, 2008 2:06 PM
McDuff: I think that's the first time I've ever seen religion equated with "fun".
Sure we can have plenty of fun in a religion-free world. In fact I think it would be a lot more fun. It's only the religious mindset that tends to bring everything down; always seeing only the negative in everything not sanctioned by their religion, screaming "blasphemy" and crying victimisation at every turn if their feelings are hurt, damning us all to hell if we don't tow their particular church's dogma, restricting our sex lives because of their own suffocating puritanical mindsets, viewing us as "ungodly", "infidels" or even sub-human, unworthy of their attention or even worthy only of death (current UK news story) etc. etc.
Oh yes, life could be a great deal more fun without any of that, thank you very much. I might actually be allowed to live my life the way I want to.
Posted by: Shaggy Maniac | August 19, 2008 2:18 PM
@36 by McDuff
I largely agree with this argument. If by "religion" we mean belief in or experiences attributed to the supernatural, then I think the sad fact is that this comes quite naturally to human minds as a function of the inference systems that comprise the same (see Boyer, _Religion Explained_). Even if one could somehow eliminate religion by the flip of a switch, it would arise again spontaneously unless the switch fundamentally changed the way human minds rely on inference, are attracted to counterintuitive concepts, etc.
Posted by: Aquaria | August 19, 2008 2:26 PM
No we don't. It might never go away, but minimized to the point that it's irrelevant and obviously the domain of the nutso? That is already happening.
When given a chance, atheism rapidly begins to eradicate religious thought. How's religion doing in Sweden, Japan, Germany, France? Dying. Relegated to that place where people can pity, or even point and snicker. It didn't take long for any of them to get there. We could get there, too, if we didn't have such pessimistic, defeatist baggage like you hanging around.
Posted by: ElectricBarbarella | August 19, 2008 2:44 PM
Bumper sticker I've seen, paraphrased because I can't remember it fully, and it is often attributed to Ghandi:
"I do not have a problem with your Jesus, but with His followers instead".
Sums it up.
toni
Posted by: Max Verret | August 19, 2008 3:06 PM
"Minimize theism to the point that it is irrelevant".
I guess that would mean that you would minimize the human imagination, the human will, the hard-wired universal necessity for theism to the point of irrelevance. Let me try to see what we would be left with. Perhaps, scientific robots that could not think outside of the natural order. Yes, no epistomology, no metaphysics just meditation on how marvelous it is that those pre-tetrapods who managed to climb out of the swampy waters could have developed into the magnificant creatures we are today.
Evolution is fine. I believe in it but I don't think we have the last word on the evolution of humankind or the cosmos. There's no such thing as a missing link; there are thousands of missing links. And when we do have the last word, neither you nor I know what things will look like.
So, in the meantime I will continue to read Dawkins and suggest that you read some of the notable theistic apologists - Plantigna, Phillips, Ward, etc.
Posted by: banjobum | August 19, 2008 3:28 PM
. . who would soon be replaced by powerful centralized purveyors as soon as the more determined and power-seeking versions replaced their more naive targets.
Posted by: azqaz | August 19, 2008 3:33 PM
ElectricBarbarella, could it have been Ghandi's quote...
"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ." Ghandi
Posted by: BobC | August 19, 2008 3:37 PM
#44: Let me try to see what we would be left with. Perhaps, scientific robots that could not think outside of the natural order.
Outside the natural order is what? An unnatural order? A magical order?
It sounds to me like you're trying to defend supernatural woo-woo, and you're calling anyone who doesn't believe in your woo-woo a robot.
Posted by: ElectricBarbarella | August 19, 2008 3:42 PM
That's it! That is the quote. :)
Toni
Posted by: SteveM | August 19, 2008 3:42 PM
...the hard-wired universal necessity for theism...
there's your mistake right there.
Posted by: chuko | August 19, 2008 4:05 PM
Religion is much more than a symptom, a consequence of not thinking rationally. It's an attack on rationality; religion is a major cause of the lack of free thought.
One of the central aspects of religion is the promotion of faith and divine knowledge. Those are attacks on rationality.
Posted by: Joshua Bowers | August 19, 2008 4:17 PM
#44: Nothing you say in your first paragraph logically follows from the removal of theism (or any form of woo) from society. Dawkins argues in Unweaving the Rainbow that one can still hold an awestruck wonder of the universe without need of a religious lens to view things through.
Further, you would need to demonstrate that the loss of religion would necessarily decrease the human imagination; I am not an neural-scientist, but I do not think those parts of cognition are linked in the way you think they are. Certainly this is not the case, given that people can be quite imaginative without subscribing to woo.
Posted by: Kseniya | August 19, 2008 4:55 PM
If anyone's lacking imagination (not to mention logical coherence) it's Mr. Verret @ #44. Perhaps he'd like to demonstrate the dismaying lack of imagination demonstrated by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Carl Sagan.
Mr. Verret, perhaps your mind needs the crutch of a theistic belief system in order to function adequately, but that need is neither hard-wired nor universal.
Posted by: Andrés Diplotti | August 19, 2008 5:01 PM
#44
Yep. Pretty much in the same way Western art died when people stopped believing in the Muses.
Posted by: BobC | August 19, 2008 5:09 PM
#44: I guess that would mean that you would minimize the human imagination
#44: outside of the natural order
#44: there are thousands of missing links
If anyone has no imagination it's people like Max Verret who would use supernatural magic to solve scientific problems. How easy it is to invoke God. That requires no imagination and no thinking at all.
What requires imagination, thinking, and hard work is solving those problems without Verret's woo-woo, or what he calls "outside the natural order".
Posted by: Nikhil | August 19, 2008 5:29 PM
For the benefit of everyone who thinks it's "Ghandi"... It's not. The correct spelling is "Gandhi".
Posted by: Didac | August 19, 2008 5:35 PM
Now the poll goes 82 - 18. After all, I think religion is much needed by people as bikes by fishes.
Posted by: Norman Doering | August 19, 2008 5:38 PM
Scaurus wrote:
How about a poll on if we need "religious politicians"?
Posted by: gaypaganunitarianagnostic | August 19, 2008 6:01 PM
Nazism and Stalinist communism were treated as state religions. A difference without much distinction. Religion is not the only enemy, but also the attitude of orthodoxy.
Posted by: J.R. | August 19, 2008 6:20 PM
Another pointless poll.
http://js.polls.yahoo.com/quiz/quiziframe.php?poll_id=38382
Posted by: Max Verret | August 19, 2008 6:32 PM
"Requires imagination, thinking and hard work to solve {scientific} problems". Going from A to B requires problem-solving skills; to suspect that there might be a C requires perceptual insights and abstract reasoning, not necessarily imagination per se'. If I can marvel at the "awestruct wonder of the universe" without the prism of religion, how much more of an imaginative wonder it is if I can envisage an overarching divine integrating force in the midst of that wonder. Given the universal presence of a religious institution along with family, economical, political and educational institutions in just about every culture known to mankind, a reasonable and rational person could well conclude that these institutions are indigenous to human society and is probably "hard-wired". That is what leads beyond the natural order. However, if one is wedded to the exclusivity of the natural order woo in explaining the human experience, all of that is, sadly,lost.
Posted by: BobC | August 19, 2008 6:37 PM
#60: overarching divine integrating force
Your use of fancy words like "overarching divine integrating force" doesn't make your sky fairy magic any less childish and idiotic.
Posted by: SC | August 19, 2008 6:41 PM
You're right, it is an imaginative wonder, since it's purely a figment of your imagination. Glad to see you're starting to recognize that.
Oh, and: "overarching...in the midst of..." Work on that.
Posted by: Max Verret | August 19, 2008 6:59 PM
Re: 62
That's the beauty of the divine, SC, its over, under and within. God is omnipresent
I can imagine many atheist in Paradise and that's not even a "figment of my imagination". In order to forfeit salvation you would have to know God and reject Him, Her or It. If you don't know God then you're home free.
Posted by: Katkinkate | August 19, 2008 7:07 PM
Posted by: Dale Husband No. 25
""The aussies are obviously an enlightened race"
Uh, Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis is one of them!"
Yes, but he had to go to USA to find like-minded people.
I don't think we could totally do away with religions. People would just re-invent them. What we need to do is find a way to restrict the fundamentally extreme believers to a very small proportion of the population to restrict their political power over everyone else.
Maybe by putting a stop to treating religion as a favoured entity and removing tax benefit status. Then only true believers would donate their money to religion instead of anyone wanting a tax write-off. That should restrict their political power a bit.
Posted by: SC | August 19, 2008 7:09 PM
Over what, Max? On the top of the world, lookin' down on creation?
Posted by: Kseniya | August 19, 2008 7:11 PM
Ah! More sophomoric silly string from Mr. Verret! How can he claim these impulses are "hard-wired", and reject materialism in the same breath? Fascinating. And he keeps using the word "universal". It does not mean what he seems to think it means.
What we have here is a man in love with his own "imaginative wonder." Congratulations, Max, you are very imaginative to have imagined an overarching (and integrating, no less) divine whatchamacallit. Good on you, dude.
What is hard-wired is our tendency - ok, need - to make sense of the world and explain our experience, and our tendency to seize upon the easiest or most appealing explanation, regardless of its plausibility or veracity.
One word: Thor.
Posted by: scooter | August 19, 2008 7:15 PM
McDuff @ 36
I don't think there's anything intrinsic about religion at all. I think it exists out of momentum, and ignorance.
Most of the people in the world are Chinese, and most of them do not practice or believe anything that could be described as a religion. They do have some ritualistic behaviors that have been mistranslated as 'Ancestor Worship' but that's because the Chistian kooks didn't understand the tradition.
The Mongols conquered the entire world without praying to anything.
There's nothing intrinsic about religion, the evidence doesn't support such a claim, and all that God Gene stuff is silly.
I liked a lot of what you say in your post, but the last line is baffling, I don't get it.
Posted by: Azdak | August 19, 2008 7:16 PM
Well that's a load off my mind! I'll be saved due to a technicality. As in life, so in the afterlife...Oh, and there'd better be a billiards table!
Posted by: McDuff | August 19, 2008 7:28 PM
El Herring @ no.40
And, indeed, if this was the only notable definition of the word "religion" then you would have a point. But since "religion" encompasses so many varying aspects of human existence, and since it shares its bed with so many other forms of human patterns of thought, this is not the case.
Religious groups do, indeed, practice a tribalistic in-group/out-group dualism. And so do many ethnic and nationalist groups, sometimes mixed in with a religious soup but mostly just because they're the wrong colour or talk funny or are just different in one of the ways that make people fundamentally uneasy around different people. There are so many examples of people behaving in a despicable manner that have nothing to do with religion that you have to question the sanity of saying that "eliminating religion" would make the world a better place. And, to be fair, I am here equating "religion" with "fascism" and "racism", just in case you thought I was religion's number one cheerleader in disguise.
The point I am making is not that intolerant and authoritarian bullshit is all sweetness and light for everyone, but that "religion" is part and parcel of the way we, as a species operate. Those of us who don't assign our tribal identities on religious bases do it via some other arbitrary criteria, and I'm not convinced that any of them are any good. Is it somehow better for someone to irrationally throw their lot in with the group "Americans" because of an accident of birth than to throw it in with the group "Hindus" because of an accident of thought? If not, then you'd better have some pretty firm evidence that tribalistic behaviour is a result of religious thought, otherwise "eliminating religion" won't make a single dent in behaviour that I'd say is caused, fundamentally, by people being dicks to each other and picking the reasons afterwards.
Perhaps you should stop thinking of "religion" as being simply authoritarian fundamentalism and maybe you'll begin to understand why it can be fun. If you've never been to Valhalla, my friend, you've never lived.
Posted by: lkeithlu | August 19, 2008 7:42 PM
Religion is a vehicle that carries tradition and social cohesion from one generation to the next. Wouldn't it be cool if we had some other vehicle, not based on the supernatural, that did the same thing? I'd hate to get rid of religion (I'm an atheist, but clearly people, including people I love and respect, get comfort from it) and leave nothing. It would be interesting how we would evolve, replacing religion with something else that doesn't try to control or manipulate using fear. I know this doesn't describe all religions, but enough of them do.
Scary thing, football (HS, college and NFL) comes pretty close in the Southern US.
Posted by: scooter | August 19, 2008 7:42 PM
Verret @ 60
You should try Mark Twain, it's just as good, and requires less adjectives.
Oh yeah, a sunset at sea, on LSD is pretty cool, too.
Posted by: JoJo | August 19, 2008 7:42 PM
Scooter #67
The Mongols did pretty well in the conquering business, but they didn't come close to doing the entire world. No Mongol hordes came near Africa, for instance.
Posted by: BobC | August 19, 2008 7:47 PM
#69: There are so many examples of people behaving in a despicable manner that have nothing to do with religion that you have to question the sanity of saying that "eliminating religion" would make the world a better place.
A world without religions would not be a perfect world, but most certainly it would be better. For example, I can't imagine there being daily suicide bombings without Islam. I can't imagine any harassment and threats against biology teachers without Christianity.
What's the worst thing that has happened to America in the 21st century? The 9/11 attacks of course. Without the religious belief in heaven there would never have been terrorists flying planes into buildings on 9/11, and without 9/11 we would never have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan where we are still wasting lives and money 7 years later.
Every effort must be made to completely get rid of all religions, no matter how hopelessly impossible that may seem.
Posted by: scooter | August 19, 2008 7:48 PM
JoJo #72
wow, I did kind of exaggerate that one, huh?
not sure what I was thinking,
duhhhhh
The only guy to conquer the world was Cagney
Posted by: Max Verret | August 19, 2008 8:20 PM
Re: SC #65
"Looking down on creation"?
What does that mean in a ten, possibly eleven, dimensional universe. It has deceptive meaning only in a three dimensional world. Of course the human brain has not "evolved" to the point where it can imagine a ten demensional world but that is the one in which we live. So, we're talking about a God that exist in a cosmological environment which can't even be conceived except mathematically. That God can't be proved or disproved by science; that has to be accepted within an experience of faith. I do believe that if man survives long enough, the brain will catch up with the science. This is a position that is both reasonable and rational. You may need to bring yourself up to speed. I refer you to some of the more credible apologists; Plantigna, P.Z Phillips, etc.
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | August 19, 2008 8:43 PM
To the poster who asked about middies:
Standard beer glasses vary between Australian states.
Wiki has a chart of the usual sizes. In NSW, the middy is the smallest commonly used glass at 285ml, or about half a pint.
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | August 19, 2008 8:48 PM
Clarification:
NSW=New South Wales=the state in which Sydney is located.
Posted by: El Herring | August 19, 2008 9:02 PM
McDuff #69:
What's that supposed to mean? Have you been to Valhalla?
Religion is not "fun", it is not meant to be fun, its followers do their utmost to have as little fun as they can, and also want to ensure that the rest of us don't get any either. Your arguments are ridiculous.
I'd have put that the other way round, if they need to be related at all, which I doubt. You seem to be saying that religion is an unavoidable consequence of human behaviour. I disagree. If that were so then we'd all be religious. Human behaviour is what it is, and of course at its worst it can be evil and disgusting, but nothing perverts like religious belief. "For good people to do bad things, it takes religion."
And please don't use that condescending "my friend" on me please, I detest that obnoxious cliche. I decide who my friends are.
Posted by: JoJo | August 19, 2008 9:05 PM
So God does compactification. You realize that means that God is limited, since the ultimate compactification is to one point.
No one can prove if God does or doesn't exist, ya gots ta believe. Otherwise known in the psychology biz as "magic thinking." Belief in God, as with any other superstition, is very near the border of psychosis. I'm giving theists the benefit of the doubt here, psychology
is not my field.
And if you wish really, really hard, Tinkerbelle will live.
Posted by: SC | August 19, 2008 9:43 PM
Let me see if I have this straight: No one can presently establish the existence of your deity scientifically, but one day our brains will catch up with "the science." What science?
Don't refer me anywhere. Explain, in English if possible, what in science is pointing to the existence of a deity, and of your god specifically. What is the science with which our brains will one day catch up? Right now you sound more like Carlos Castaneda than a theoretical physicist or mathematician. Have you taken your shtick to one of the more mathematically-oriented science blogs? What was the response?
Posted by: Alverant | August 19, 2008 9:46 PM
I found an interesting article on MSNBC (also carried by other news outlets) called "Supernatural science: Why we want to believe". Basically it says that people want to believe in some kind of magical being and there's only room for one "set". People who go to church often usually don't go for astrology and people who believe in astrology are less likely to be a regular attender of organized religion. Unfortunately the article falters by giving religion special consideration.
For example: "Why are people so eager to accept flimsy and fabricated evidence in support of unlikely and even outlandish creatures and ideas? Why is the paranormal realm, from psychic predictions to UFO sightings, so alluring to so many?"
Last time I checked, religion is also supported by flimsy and fabricated evidence. So why single out people who've seen UFOs? Here's another quote.
"Believers were the least likely to buy into the paranormal."
Doesn't believing in religion AUTOMATICALLY mean you're buying into the paranormal?
Actually I think the article is heavy handed and not well written. They imply that belief in a god and belief in a ghost are completely separate but never say it. They are also quick to dismiss those who don't buy into an organized belief in the paranormal as kooks. People who don't believe in any paranormal, like Atheists, aren't even mentioned. The gist of the article seems to be, "people want to believe in the paranormal and if they don't join a system of paranormal belief, they'll pick one up as they go along".
Posted by: truth machine, OM | August 19, 2008 10:51 PM
If I can marvel at the "awestruct wonder of the universe" without the prism of religion, how much more of an imaginative wonder it is if I can envisage an overarching divine integrating force in the midst of that wonder.
That's like saying that a meal cooked by the world's greatest chefs would be even more tasty if you dropped a steaming turd on top.
Posted by: truth machine, OM | August 19, 2008 11:06 PM
Basically it says that people want to believe in some kind of magical being and there's only room for one "set". People who go to church often usually don't go for astrology and people who believe in astrology are less likely to be a regular attender of organized religion.
Even if these claims about what is usual or less likely weren't so blatantly false, the fact that there is an overlap would put the lie to the absurd claim that there's only room for one set. The article itself states the truth: "studies point to an interesting conclusion: People who practice religion are typically encouraged not to believe in the paranormal, but rather to put their faith in one deity, whereas those who aren't particularly active in religion are more free to believe in Bigfoot or consult a psychic." -- that is, the church discourages people from believing in other dogmas; they wouldn't have to if there were only room for one.
Last time I checked, religion is also supported by flimsy and fabricated evidence. So why single out people who've seen UFOs?
Ahem. "Christians and New Agers, paranormalists, etc. all have one thing in common: a spiritual orientation to the world," and "Since people have been people, experts figure, they have believed in the supernatural, from gods to ghosts and now every sort of monster in between."
Read the article, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26268698/, rather than going by Alverant's gross misrepresentation of it.