David, you're taking the narrowest possible view of religion that simply doesn't hold for the vast majority of those who profess to be religious.

I realise you're applying a particular heuristic to analysing the problem and there's nothing wrong with that, except that I think you need to apply a new heuristic to choosing which heuristic to apply :).

Banjo, whether Mary and Jesus existed as individuals isn't really relevant to my point, since there is absolutely no doubt that the tendency of people to extrapolate patterns or explanations to try to make sense of their observed reality has existed for a very long time.

Moreover, there's no doubt that creative people have reported sometimes having trouble fitting their own forms of experience into grounded reality. I've mentioned John Nash (who died recently, sadly) before as an example of such a person.

Let's assume for the argument that what we call bipolar and schizophrenia are not disorders of processing, which is what we treat them as today. What might they otherwise be?

Back in the 60s, when Penzias and Wilson were working on a new set of equipment for satellite communications they found a "noise" in their equipment which drove them nuts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_cosmic_microwave_background_radiation

Given the work on the quantum nature of consciousness, I'm drawn to wonder whether people like Nash are perhaps simply extraordinary antennas who are able to detect a form of "noise" that most of us are taught to tune out? Nash famously said that his "delusions" came to him in the same way that his mathematical ideas did, so "of course I took them seriously".

He tried to fit them into his particular frame of understanding, which was, at the time, the mathematics of probability. What might the frame of a Nash have been in Roman Judaea? Or in 17th Century France, when Blaise Pascal had his own famous revelatory epiphany? There are any number of examples.

Dear ConservatiseHippie,

I have avoided calling you names. You have a different opinion from me. That does not make me close minded. I would appreciate the same courtesy from you.

Certainly I have limited knowledge. We all have. We make value judgments from the knowledge we have.

Certainly there are intelligent, successful people who are religious. There are intelligent, successful people who are non-religious. Does that mean in one case their religion is the cause of their success and in the other case their lack of religion is the cause of their success? The success of religious people does not mean they are full of crap, but their religion might be.

An intelligent, successful person in a religious community might be a complete hypocrite as far as religion is concerned. He or she may believe in none of it but must pretend to believe in order to be a success in that community. Such a person might actually be a better person than the sincere religious believers.

Dear Craig,

I have the narrowest possible view of religion? How is it narrow? I regard anyone who professes or practices a religious faith as religious. I recognise any form of religious observance as religious whether it involves invoking demons or is is a service in a Unitarian church where members of the church are not required to believe in anything. I don't make distinctions as Yuyutsu does picking out some religious people as 'truly religious' which makes other religious people not truly religious. I regard those unaffiliated people who have a sense of the spiritual as religious. Possibly I have the broadest view of religion of anybody involved in this discussion.

Hi David, I'm not sure how to proceed in having a conversation if the entire discussion is to do with your reactions to the idea of religion as a valid way of parsing meaning in the world.

Let's take it as read that your view is that religion is bunkum, perhaps?

My last comments were nothing to do with religion, per se, other than as a possible explanation for the religious experience. Do you have anything to add to that?

Davidf, I apologise if you think saying you were closed minded is calling you a name. It wasn't my intention to offend you.

My definition of closed minded is: lacking tolerance or flexibility or breadth of view.

I'll bow out of this discussion now and possibly meet you in another discussion thread in the future.

Dear David F.,

<<I regard anyone who professes or practices a religious faith as religious.>>

So anyone who professes to be a witch is a witch, anyone who professes to be a policeman is a policeman and anyone who professes to be a scientist is a scientist? Perhaps their grandchildren too?

We were discussing the authors of the book of Joshua and seem to agree that they were criminal fraudsters of the worst kind, who shamelessly placed words into God's mouth to forward their nationalist agenda. Indeed you should be upset about them, indeed you should complain - but why do the rest of us deserve your fury, including those who do not even relate to that tradition?

<<I complain about religion because religion claims that delusions actually exist.>>

Existence itself is a delusion (for in reality there is nothing but God) and a modern idol - for something to be told exists, is not a compliment!

The very question of God's existence is relatively recent, of no religious import and only born out of the corrupting influence of the age of science. Those who claim that God exists, either do not understand the implications or are sacrilegious because they attempt to reduce God's name to that of an ordinary object. Even that flotsam down the toilet exists and they wish to compare God with THAT?

Rather than at religion, which claims nothing (because it's a practice rather than a theory), please direct your complaints at others who believe that delusions exist, especially that harmful delusion called "nation".

Dear Craig,

I am a bleeding heart appalled by the cruelty of humans to humans.

In Australia the government has put asylum seekers in offshore detention centres and has made it illegal for those who have been there to speak about the conditions. I am horrified that this is acceptable to the Australian public. Few protest. I feel one reason few protest is that the detainees are largely Muslim, and few people identify with them.

When I came to Australia, the government was supporting PNG in its attempt to put down the Bougainville rebellion. Australia was condemned on several occasions for the blockade. Most Australians don’t even know about it. The high command of the PNG army was composed of fundamentalist Protestants, and the Bougainvilleans were a mixture of different religions. The dispute was due to the objection of the Bougainvilleans to the destruction caused by the Panguna mine. MRA, a Protestant evangelical group, has played a part in getting the Bougainvilleans to accept the mine in the first place. Religion played a great part in the conflict.

In the lead up to World War 2 Australia was reluctant to take in Jewish refugees from the Nazis. They could have saved lives by taking some in. I think the objections were based on the feelings, largely dispelled by the Holocaust, of Jew hatred at that time the dominant Christian view.

The divisiveness and hatred promoted by religion exacerbated the situation in all three instances.

No religion is composed of monsters, and religion has promoted some very good things.

However, I feel that the evils sanctioned and encouraged by religion far outweigh the good that religion has done.

What is the religious experience? In the Bible there are occasions of people speaking to God, and Paul had a vision on the road to Damascus. My feeling is that religious experiences are either fiction, fraud or psychotic episodes.

Sellick’s religion is based on a king’s wanting a divorce.

Besides being a bleeding heart I also think that there is no reason to believe in any sort of supernatural entities or phenomena.