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Don't know why my first posting was referred but anyone wanting the straight inside scoop about Scientology can find it in an excellent piece of investigative journalism by googleing the Life Magazine article that was published in 1968. It will tell you all you need to know about it.

Court finds church guilty of fraud. Ooh, if this sets a precedent the courts are going to be very busy.

What if the New Atheiist sect turns out to be a fraud ?

What if the New Atheiist sect turns out to be a fraud?

What, you mean if it turns out that they don't totally deny the possibility of the existence of gods and that their notorious militancy boils down to writing a few books and articles?

Oh...

I like the view held later in life by CEM Joad (1891-1953), who believed Christianity to be "the least implausible explanation of the Universe", and our place within it.

That'll be the Christianity with talking snakes and donkeys, virgin births, resurrections, walking on water, fiery chariots and stuff then? Okey dokey. I'll take it as implausible, but I'm not convinced that we can't do a *lot* better than that nonsense.

"As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss" (Chomsky)

...and appeal to the capricious whims of a space pixie is *so* much better...

Posted: Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:17 amÌýÌý ÌýPost subject: Orwell and God
I'm guessing here, but I suspect Orwell himself would listen carefully to - and maybe even be sympathetic to - an argument that many decent human beings will not reject the idea of Tooth Fairies, Father Christmas, Heaven, God etc, because they simply (& intuitively?) don't know.

When our guinea pig died and we were burying it in the back garden, our distraught youngest son asked me a direct question :

"Daddy, has Georgie gone to Heaven ?"

Without hesitation, I said "Yes".

Of course, my cold rational human mind said to me : "You have absolutely no idea , do you - and you suspect not ?"

But my human mind - my humanity - is made up of more than just cold, rational thoughts in my head...and I don't think I'm alone in that belief...Orwell, among other extremely unshallow people, might well keep me company in that belief.

Am I just saying this because I (kind of) subscribe both to the Joadian idea that the Christian faith is "the least implausible explanation of the Universe", and the Chardinian idea that 'we are Spiritual Beings having a human experience, rather than Human Beings having a spiritual experience' ?

God knows...and maybe Orwell does too now ;)

Which is all very well when you're talking to a child, but if you're making specific truth claims, you need to back it up with a bit more evidence. I tell my kids that "heaven" is when people think nice things about you after you're dead. If Georgie has that, that's all that matters, and it's all I hope for myself.

Let's be honest here, as fallible human beings, we haven't a clue - it all comes down to faith (whether religious or not).

Wasn't it Pascal who said : "Faith has it's reasons of which Reason knows nothing" ?

post 12 in this thread is a wonderful demonstration of faith being the catalyst for un-thinking. Throw your hands in the air and sigh 'it's all hopeless, we unworthy ones can't do anything good ourselves, let's just switch off our brains and trust to [insert fairy tale being of your choice, I recommend the FSM].' How fortunate that there are those who don't take the mentally lazy and unsatisfying option, but instead ask curious and/or critical questions. Who take the trouble to investigate, try to find out. And thereby help us learn things that enable us to improve the world (when applied constructively, which I'll admit, doesn't always happen). With posts like those by U14188778 it's no wonder that believers don't pull their weight anything when it comes to helping us understand the physical world. Ballast on progress they usually are, in their unconstructive, negative world view.

Not quite sure, Peter, how you conclude that my thoughts on Reason & Faith demonstate a "catalyst" of unthinking laziness. For me, the extent of my own human fallibility & ignorance makes me work all the harder at both my Faith & my Reason.

Moral philosopher, Cyril Joad, puts it far better than I ever can :

"If we put the past of life at one hundred years, then the past human life
works out at about a month, and of human civilisation (giving the most generous
interpretation to the term "civilisation") at about one-and-three-quarter hours.
On the same time-scale, the future of "civilisation" - that is to say, the
future during which it may be supposed that man will continue to think - is
about one hundred thousand years.

"By any reckoning, then, the human mind is very young, and it is not to be
expected that it should, as yet, understand very much of the world in which it
finds itself. Indeed, there is a sense in which the more we know, the more we
become aware of the extent of our ignorance. Suppose, for example, that we
think of knowledge as a little lighted patch, the area of the known, set in a
sea of environing darkness, the limitless area of the unknown. Then, the more
we enlarge the area of the lighted patch, the area of the known, the more also
we enlarge the area of contact with the environing darkness of the unknown. In
philosophy, then, as in daily life, cocksureness is a function of ignorance,
and dunces step in where sages fear to tread. The wise man is he who realises
his limitations."

That's why science relies on doubt, and "faith" is correctly recognised as one of the most narcissistic of the vices. It is science that expands that circle of light, not "faith". At least Cyril Joad accepts that the universe is billions of years old - it's a start. But philosophy only gets you so far - science is what you need to get things moving properly.

Your faith in science, HP, is sincere - but sincerely wrong in my view.

Faith & Reason go hand-in-hand - you can't have one without the other - like genetic & environmental factors.

I like Mark Twain on faith. 'Faith is believing in something you know just ain't so'.

Faith & Reason go hand-in-hand - you can't have one without the other - like genetic & environmental factors.


I would like you to expound this statement, as it seems to me fairly ridiculous.

"Fairly ridiculous", WBB ? Ummmmm...

Take the Mind-Body problem (instead of the Faith-Reason problem) :

Mind & Body go hand-in-hand - you can't have one without the other.

There's a Dualism, but there is a philosophical problem, as you know.

Same with the Faith-Reason problem.

My "ridiculous" comment, WBB, was just an honest stab at understanding the problem a little more. That's all.

There seems to be a great deal of hostility towards faith here. Quite understandably if you define it in the same way as Twain. The book of John for example defines it differently. If you look at John 20:30-31, belief is supposed to be a response to evidence and the book as a whole has an overarching theme of seeing leading to believing leading to life. Faith is trusting the evidence of witnesses or seeing by proxy.

Attacking faith on the basis of Twain's definition would be a bit like saying you don't believe in Christianity because you don't find the god of the gaps credible; Christians would turn around and say 'Good for you, neither do we, now what do you think of JEsus?' You don't believe in blind faith? Well good for you, neither do we.

Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles should come around my office at about a quarter to five on a weekday evening when the dead come back to life.