Yuyutsu and David f

Keith Ward's lecture "Why there almost certainly is a god: doubting Richard Dawkins" is directly relevant to your discussion.

Can we deny that historians explain even though they appeal to motivation and purpose something alien to science except in the metaphor?

Here is the link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l2KdiNbgHxo

Thank you, Grateful, for linking us to a fallacy-filled discussion from an intellectual light-weight. An example of just how dreadful Keith Ward's rebuttal to Dawkins is can be seen at 46:08 (http://youtu.be/l2KdiNbgHxo?t=2765) where Ward invokes the Special Pleading fallacy - something we had just finished discussing.

Do you have any discussions of substance to offer? Preferably one's that actually address Dawkins' arguments instead of beating up on straw men?

Dear Grateful,

Perhaps your spelling of Keith Ward's lecture as "Why there almost certainly is a god" with a small-'g' for 'God' was intentional - or perhaps it was a Freudian slip: because this is what Ward's long, winding and unfocused lecture is really about, not about God with a Capital-G.

Unlike Ward's idea, a materialist for me is one who appreciates the material, one who considers it to be of value. Only someone who values the world could care this way or the other how it was created.

Compatible with Ward's conclusions, the (non-physical) creator of this world could even be some minor god, perhaps a baby-god for whom this world is a toy or perhaps s/he could be some mad (perhaps even evil) scientist from another time-space dimension - this gives me no incentive to love and worship him: it's all to do with science and nothing to do with religion!

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Dear David,

I try to follow a religious path - I care not for such primitive social attributes which some ignorant people (of both the believer and unbeliever varieties) mistakenly consider "religious".

Meanwhile, you are nearly 91 years old. I wish you enduring health, but you know well that you will not remain in this world for very long.

Apparently you still seem to value the ephemeral, which is not a rational to do, especially at your age. You certainly don't need my permission to continue doing so. Enjoy it while you can.

Dear Yuyutsu,

You are right. I value the ephemeral because that is all we have. I hope to live long enough to enjoy my 91st in October in the company of some of my wonderful descendants. Many humans prefer to be enslaved by the superstition and ignorance of religion because they find the realisation that there is nothing more than the ephemeral frightening. At the same time other humans face that realisation and find the joy that is possible in this world. Two of those were Epicurus and Protagoras.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/

"The philosophy of Epicurus (341–270 B.C.E.) was a complete and interdependent system, involving a view of the goal of human life (happiness, resulting from absence of physical pain and mental disturbance), an empiricist theory of knowledge (sensations, together with the perception of pleasure and pain, are infallible criteria), a description of nature based on atomistic materialism, and a naturalistic account of evolution, from the formation of the world to the emergence of human societies. Epicurus believed that, on the basis of a radical materialism which dispensed with transcendent entities such as the Platonic Ideas or Forms, he could disprove the possibility of the soul's survival after death, and hence the prospect of punishment in the afterlife. He regarded the unacknowledged fear of death and punishment as the primary cause of anxiety among human beings, and anxiety in turn as the source of extreme and irrational desires."

http://www.iep.utm.edu/protagor/

"Protagoras is known primarily for three claims (1) that man is the measure of all things (which is often interpreted as a sort of radical relativism) (2) that he could make the "worse (or weaker) argument appear the better (or stronger)" and (3) that one could not tell if the gods existed or not."

Yuyutsu writes: "Meanwhile, you are nearly 91 years old. I wish you enduring health, but you know well that you will not remain in this world for very long.

Apparently you still seem to value the ephemeral, which is not a rational [thing] to do, especially at your age."

A fascinating revelation.

So even when someone speaks of noble pursuits such as ridding oneself of the ego; even when one attempts to - an indeed believes that they have - achieved a higher state of enlightenment and being than the rest of us (one in which gender must remain ambiguous, presumably because it is of no importance when one exists on this higher plane); and even when one tries not to be materialistic (while earning more money than most of us could possibly dream); even then, religious belief still just boils down to a primitive fear of death.

Why am I not surprised?

As far as I'm concerned, and if there really is such a thing to be attained, then the lack of death anxiety displayed by david f at his grand old age is what it really means to have achieved a higher state of being. Not some rubbish a bored and long-dead Hindu guru dreamt up.

I reject the notion of sin. But if there were anything that should qualify as a sin, it would be to waste the one and only life that we know we're going to have by treating it as if it isn't important, or were simply a stage to wipe one's feet before the real party starts. There's nothing enlightened about that.

Yutsie: perhaps s/he could be some mad (perhaps even evil) scientist from another time-space dimension.

Given the state of human activity concerning Gods. I believe you may be onto something here.

Yutsie: which is not a rational to do, especially at your age.

You seem to be invoking that old people have a fear of dying & therefore would/should turn to a Spirit to allay that fear. Not so. Older people when getting close to the day actually look forward to being gone. Recent studies by some Academic have found.