AJ Philips,

Feel free to respond to my comments, or not, based on however you wish to interpret my critique of atheism. My posts above speak for them selves and I don't feel like elaborating further, unless there's a serious challenge.
I'm also frankly tired of having the Sokal affair trotted out as though I was somehow implicated.
I have Sokal's book and as I've pointed out to George before, Sokal spends a great deal of it qualifying his position, so that he ends up, in my book, as somewhat sympathetic.
The affair shall no doubt go down as an infamous embarrassment like the Ern Malley business, but it hardly invalidates the field.
Postmodern theory is too often dismissed as nonsense by those who don't understand it.
I'm happy to accept that some people simply don't believe in God and it's not an issue. That's me in fact. But 'atheism' is a discursive fashion with little or nothing to recommend it politically. Terry Eagleton calls it liberal rationalism and I think that's spot on.

Poirot,

You are so right.

>>Pascal says something about true wisdom being reached when one embraces a childlike state<<

I don’t know about Pascal, but this is what I copied many years ago from a wall on the Evans (Mathematics) building at the UC Berkeley campus:

"If you would know TRUTH be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you will see HIM playing with your children." (Khalil Gibran).

Squeers,

>>the time of simple faith is long gone and we've created our own earthly responsibilities<<

I think these quotes are not about the TIME but STATE of simple faith. If anything, it does not precede but coexists with an awareness of one's earthly responsibilities. When Pasteur wrote that confession he was not abandoning his responsibilities as a pioneering microbiologist.

Similar insights are in the Bible, in Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, the Buddhist wisdom as in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16112#279921, and elsewhere.

My favourite metaphor is the NT’s Nativity Narrative where the news about that “special baby” was delivered to simple shepherds “directly” (by angels) but the learned magi had to “read the stars” - i.e. do philosophy (and science) - to get the news and find their way to Him.

The Bible is silent about those who fall in-between - too “rational” to hear the “voice of the angels” directly, but also too this-worldly, materialistic, to bother about the meaning of (their) existence. They, of course, cannot return to the naive simplicity of the “shepherds”; they can only try to work their way through to an understanding and acceptance of the simple wisdom of Poirot’s Catholic lady or Pasteur’s Breton peasant on a higher level, i.e. stripped of culture-dependent (and mostly childish) interpretations. Paul Ricoeur calls this the second naiveté.

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Dear George,
 
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Thank you for your explanations and clarifications. I am pleased to see that we understand each other now.

However, in another vein, you observe :

«  …  you cannot find in science, be it QFT or what, “evidence” for your “belief in afterlife” since this belief by its definition refers to a dimension of reality that is outside the reach of science. »

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Unfortunately, what you uphold here seems to me to be untenable. To my knowledge, there is no evidence that "belief in afterlife" refers to some "dimension of reality" as you state it does. I understand that "afterlife" is just a concept, a theoretical construct - and only one of many at that. Belief in it can only be a belief in that one particular theory. As far as I know, it has never been shown to have any connection with reality whatsoever.

Also, lack of evidence of "afterlife" does not necessarily signify that it is "outside the reach of science". It only signifies that it is just a theory until proven otherwise.

Given the excellent track record of science to date I see no reason why we should exclude the possibility of science finding some evidence of "afterlife" if it is a reality - and by "reality", I mean "something that exists independently of ideas concerning it". For the moment, all we have are ideas concerning "it". Nothing else.

It appears that the oldest human skeleton found to date is that of the Australopithecus fossil called "Little Foot" discovered in the Sterkfontein Grotto cave in South Africa in 1997. According to the latest estimate it is thought to be 3 million years old.

Perhaps scientists could start working on this poor chap's soul. I suggest this for the simple reason that it should not upset any of his relatives.

It could be an interesting challenge.

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Dear Banjo,

>>there is no evidence that "belief in afterlife" refers to some "dimension of reality" as you state it does.<<

“Belief in afterlife” : note that I used quotation marks to indicate that it is a state of mind (that you obviously don’t share) and not something there can be a (scientific) evidence for, or a (scientific) theory that can be “objectively” scrutinised. Also, we have long established that you do not accept that reality could have a dimension that is out of reach of (natural) science by its very definition, so obviously afterlife does not make sense to you, evidence or not.

Regarding the statement "the time of simple faith is long gone and we've created our own earthly responsibilities, which we culpably neglect." - this is not forever!

While the article claims: "We have inherited the Judeo/Christian concept of time being linear", this is nothing but a concept: time itself is not linear, as beautifully portrayed by Ecclesiastes (chapter 1:3-11):

{
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
}

Simple faith is currently hindered because contemporary generations are toying with natural science, but this has already been the case before, for example in the Hindu Nyaya-Vaisheshika philosophies, now barely remembered, and the burden of this current scientific fashion, too shall pass.

Dear Peter,

As you cling with hope to the phrase "Lamb of God you take away the sin of the world", I wonder whether you can be similarly inspired by this great statement: "Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen"

Squeers,

I would agree that what you’ve said has been pretty clear and speaks for itself. It was these factors that helped lead me to believe that you wouldn’t narrow down what it was that you were referring to, and thus part of my motivation for requesting that you do was to see if I was right. You could have stated in less words what you were referring to (explicit, implicit, or strong atheism), than what it took tell me that your posts speak for themselves. I suspect that your ideas require the notion of atheism to remain as vague as possible, or be a caricature of what it actually is. In a sense, I think you are actually just attacking a label.

<<I'm happy to accept that some people simply don't believe in God and it's not an issue. That's me in fact.>>

Okay, great, so you’re happy to acknowledge that you’re an atheist (but would prefer not to use the word); an explicit atheist at that, now that you’ve gone to the extent of stating that you don’t believe in a god. This (and implicit atheism) is what I have been referring to all along.

<<But 'atheism' is a discursive fashion with little or nothing to recommend it politically.>>

It is what these quotation marks suggest that I need to get to the bottom of.

So is it just the act of stating that one is an atheist that ties all those attributes you mentioned to them? It sounds as though you have trapped yourself in a position in which you cannot use certain labels to describe yourself, even if they’re accurate. I don’t think this is conducive to productive and honest discussion.

Incidentally, how is applying the label to oneself any different to stating that you don’t believe in a god? Surely there are a myriad of implications with that too. Millions of theists, for example, would interpret that as you expressing a hatred for God. Does that suddenly mean this becomes true; or does the fact that you haven’t used a label protect against that?