Reply to a Muslim (2)

I seem to be making progress with this lady. Again I won’t post her e-mail but you can gather what her comments and questions were from my reply:

Thanks for this.

I look at the Wikipedia a lot. “Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the scientific study of mental processes and behavior. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals’ daily lives and the treatment of mental illness.”

Personally I think psychology tends to comprise of statements of either the obvious or the false, and is often practiced by people who are trying to work out their own problems. I’m quite physicalist about it all, though emergent properties such as “qualia” are certainly interesting.

I think you feel anger towards the god thing because this particular metaphysical question is tightly linked to people’s feelings of security – that’s why they are willing to believe things without any evidence. But we can be stronger than that. We don’t need all the answers to live happy lives – all we need is reason and humanism.

Hope you have a nice day.

Gavin

Atheist extremism

We should be wary of extremism in anything, and currently there is a rise in what might be called atheist “extremism”. How is this defined, why is it happening, and should we be worried about it? Let’s see what we’re talking about.

Atheism is based on reason, so we are talking about people becoming extremely reasonable. Also becoming more vocal about their position. Previously they just used to stay quiet. Shouldn’t they just continue to stay quiet and let irrational people believe what they want? No. The reason atheist extremism has become justifiable is that in this day and age religious extremists (and the “moderates” who lend credence to their views) can potentially kill all of us at the touch of a button – and that is not only what many want to to do, but it is written into their faiths as an explicit instruction (viz. to kill infidels). Those muslims, in particular, who do not want to do it are not following their faith to the letter. Not many people seem to realise this.

So for this reason (and for many others, actually) “atheist extremism” is justifiable. We should continue to try to release people from dogma through reason and humanism, and if we can free just one person then that’s better – for all of us – than none at all.

Moon Landings

Alongside the Flat Earth people and all the other conspricy theorists we also have of course the Moon Landing people. Their claims are easily refuted through evidence (as usual). The only thing that gets to me about the moon landings is I think the Americans should have erected a “flag of Earth” and not of the USA. Although it was they who invested all the effort and took the risk, given that it was the moon, they should have had wider vision. But of course it was a flag of the USA (and the mission took place at all) because of the international political climate at the time.

Flat Earth Society

I remember writing a humurous advert in my student advertising days focusing on the Flat Earth Society (before I became entirely repelled by the fatuous widespread lying and exagerration of the advertising industry). Interesting to see that this society still exists! It’s pretty funny, but can there be any hope of wiping out religion, for example, when even a single person above the age of 5 still believes things like this..?

Reply to a Muslim (1)

I’m currently enjoying a correspondence with a muslim lady who is a doctor. I won’t post her e-mails, but here’s my latest reply, responding to her points:

Good morning,

Thanks for this, I’m pleased to see some references in your mails and I think you make a few clear points here, even though I don’t agree with many of them.

The second article draws a distinction between “spirituality” and “religion” but I think both are wrong and I remain unconvinced that “spirit” is even really a meaningful term. “God” is not clearly meaningful either, when you think about it. Nonetheless, if there are improvements for patients who are “spiritual” this would be down to psychosomatic reasons.

Re. prayer, if you are saying it is a waste of time, I totally agree with you. It’s disgraceful how much time people spend passively praying (which has been proven to have no effect) when they should be doing something constructive to help. It’s absurd.

The trouble with religious people is that they tend to start out with a premise which they already believe (for irrational reasons) then try to find evidence to support it, and often bend evidence when it doesn’t fit, instead of suspending all belief until there is a good reason for it.

Re. truth and things being obvious. I’d say it’s true that I am sitting in my bedroom now. It’s obvious that 1+1=2. I’m sure if you were asked whether it is true that you went out and committed a robbery last night, you’d have no problem answering in the negative. I am aware that there can be a great deal of nit-picking over such concepts (I have a first class degree in philosophy from Durham) but for our uses as human beings the concept of truth is satisfactory.

Prior to the 3rd Century B.C. people did believe the earth was flat. This was an incorrect assumption proved wrong by evidence (scientific method) largely by Aristotle. Nothing wrong with that – we should believe what most evidence supports (and follow Occam’s Razor) but retain an open mind, ready to update should new evidence come along. We should not believe things which are counter to current evidence.

We are still looking for answers to many questions. Only the scientific method can provide them. If it doesn’t destroy itself because of its conflicting mystical beliefs, mankind is on an exciting journey of discovery in this wonderful universe…!

Gavin

Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?

Despite its somewhat shocking (but nonetheless valid) name, this site really is excellent. Although the author sounds uncannily like the teacher from Beavis & Butthead, he is apparently Marshall Brain, of www.howstuffworks.com fame. His videos almost have me laughing out loud – he so easily exposes the ludicrous, self-contradictory and morally repellant content of the bible. I do urge you to check this out, even if you have not been mindwashed by religion, just for the entertainment value.

Religion

Religion is wrong on pragmatic grounds among others, because it encourages belief without evidence, and where there is belief without evidence there can never be universal agreement. (Richard Dawkins explains this virtue of evidence actually in a beautiful letter to his daughter.)

Season’s Greetings

There is actually such a thing as a great Christmas song…