Category: Religion

Posted on

Lisa

Lisa was a friend of mine. We spent about six years going to air cadets together. And then, when I was at university she died.

Eventually I hope that some of the communications in this site are about people who influenced me. People I am proud to have known. People I remember.

Lisa and I lived in the same village. I think she was a year older than me. We didn’t socialise in the village. We met when we ended up at the same air cadet squadron. In those days the Sqn put on a minibus to collect kids from the “villages” so we could get to parade nights. Eventually, once we were older, we ended up giving each other lifts into town so we could attend cadets. We would chat a lot and discuss the latest episode of “Happy Days”. Lisa was also a campanologist. I have no idea if she was religious or not, but on Sunday’s that was her thing. Once for my birthday she bought me “Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols” on tape. Quality.

One day when I was at university I met my dad for lunch and he told me that Lisa had died. She was playing football and collapsed. They didn’t find out what happened. I was slightly shocked at first but I accepted it. I was sad. Of course I was. The pain I felt was at the thought of losing the person I had spent quite a bit of time with. But I knew it would get better.

Lisa’s funeral was in the village. There was quite a large contingent from cadets there and the church was packed. People were sitting in the aisles. After the service her coffin was lowered into the ground outside the church. I didn’t go and look. For some reason I had a “Home And Away” quote in my head: remember them as they were, not as they are. I have no idea where it really came from but I did watch Aussie soaps at that time. That evening our group went out in Sawbridgeworth and celebrated the life of Lisa in the traditional fashion.

I have occasionally been to speak to Lisa. Once I went after the tenth anniversary meal of the cadet squadron. Rich and I left our dates at my parents house and ran down to the graveyard to speak to Lisa. I was quite drunk. I haven’t been to the grave for a long time. Life has been busy and got in the way really. I intend to visit over the Xmas period while I’m in the village. Hence this the other day:

I can’t encapsulate years of friendship in this communication. But I can at least write a little. I still think of her. All of my readers needn’t worry. I don’t go to speak to her or her “soul”. Once you are dead, that’s it. The end. Nothing more. It’s a nice idea that we live on but one that reduces our real life to a time of fear. Embrace life and accept the truth. I go to speak to Lisa (I do very little actual speaking), to remember and keep her alive in my heart.

Lisa sent me the coolest Christmas card I ever got. She used to work in the printers workshop in the village. On the front was a snowman I think with a red scarf. Inside the card read:

Wishing you a piss poor Christmas and a fucking horrible new year.

Posted on

The Extreme Rule – A Gaussian Explanation

Why do nutters make the headlines? Why is it reportable if a 13 year old kid decided to go and fight for Islamic State? There are plenty of people who have decided to go and fight, it shouldn’t surprise us that one of them turns out to be a youngster. It WASN’T news. People lied about their ages and signed up for WW1, that was seen as patriotic [different issue though].

The crazy 5% of our population seems to inhabit 95% of our news time and concern. This is pathetic. The news reporting for the Islamic killer kid should have been more realistic, along the lines of “This kid has decided to do go to Syria and fight for a cause he believes in but there are approximately twenty million children who haven’t”.

Crazy person drives down the wrong carriageway on the motorway, it happens and makes the news. The reporting is never “out of 200 million journeys this has happened only once”.

Here’s a diagram to show what I mean [with apologies to Karl Gauss].

Gauss Again
Gauss Again

The continuum in the top graph is meant to describe how there are stupid people who do stupid stuff and there are nutters who know what they are doing but do it anyway. 95% of the population are somewhere in the middle.

The media seems obsessed with crazy or stupid people who, by definition, do crazy or stupid stuff. This is made even more evident by the amount of this shit on the internet. There is never a realistic version explaining that actually this is a rare event and we shouldn’t be bothered by it.

Humans have a very poor “risk calculating” ability. We are unable to understand probability correctly. Partly because it actually gets quite hard and complicated and partly because we are shielded from correct interpretation of risk by a culpable media.

Some things we don’t seem to understand:

  • Flying is safer than crossing the road
  • MMR is safe
  • The difference between relative risk and absolute risk
  • Crime is falling
  • Education is a good thing [the stupid are celebrated]
  • Weather is not climate

A final hurrah before I go and do some ironing:

Q: If you have twenty people, how many different soccer teams could you create from those people (if you specified which position they played in)?

A: 6,704,425,728,000

Wow, that’s a lot you should say.

Q: If you have twenty people, how many different soccer teams could you create from those people?

A: 167,960

Q: Suppose you were the captain. How many different teams could you create from the remaining nineteen people?

A: 92,378

See, you are useless at numbers and probability.

Posted on

Remembrance Day 2014

First Remembrance Day Parade for me last Sunday. I received my No.1 uniform the Wednesday previous and had some minor adjustments to make on the belt. After that I needed to find braces (not allowed to wear a belt – no loops). Essentially, I ended up marching through Maidstone town centre at around 10:30 heading to the war memorial.

Amusingly the vicar taking half of the service, it was shared, was called Ian Parrish. It is something that will make me giggle for a few years yet! It turns out he used to be in the Army. I’m not sure I quite understand how those two jobs can lead into each other but he’s not the first ex-military vicar I have met.

I chose not to sing during the national anthem along with not taking part in any of the prayers or hymns. You might not have realised but I’m quite not-religious and also struggle with identifying with a country or even the hereditable head of state. See some musings here.

Here’s the important part, photos, I’m the one in the middle, in blue. Please don’t confuse me with the Navy officers next to me!

Over The Bridge
Over The Bridge

And another, but not a full facial!

Eyes Right
Eyes Right

 

Posted on

A Slight Explanation

Earlier today or if I publish this after many revisions it’ll be early on 21 Sept 2014 I tweeted the following:

I thought I ought to give some clarification about why I said this. I think I feel slightly guilty and that the tweet may have come across as not considered and plain offensive. It probably is still offensive, if you are easily offended, but it was considered. I spent the weekend in Coventry. I saw the Ricoh stadium, a massive Tesco store and the Transport Museum [home to Thrust 2 and Thrust SSC].

I was invited to the christening of a friend’s children. These friends are people I see about once a year. I have known them for ages [since College] and I always look forward to their company and listen to what they have to say. This communication is definitely not about questioning my loyalty to them. I remember at their wedding the vicar asked the whole congregation to promise that they would be there for the couple in a time of need. I promised and would keep that promise, even now, ten years after the wedding. I didn’t really have to make that promise though. These people are the sort of people I would help out and look out for without the need to make a promise in front of the zombie cult alter.

The christening took place in a village church to the south west of Coventry. I turned up and there was singing in the church, five people playing guitar, piano, bongos and bass while singing. It set a reasonable tone. There were two projector screens on the walls giving words and information. The vicar seemed good fun and wore a Madonna style microphone so we could hear him. In terms of a service this was probably as modern as the Anglican Church gets. It was happy and friendly. People were singing out loud and dancing and raising their hands when they sang to god and putting effort into it all. I could imagine the more “cold and dreary” traditionalist hating this all. The church was a lovely very old building and was decorated well.

Here’s my point. I saw the best the modern church can offer. It left me cold. I was not moved at all. Not a tiny bit. In reality I felt slightly sorry for them. Their whole beliefs are built on lies. The historical evidence for Jesus is pretty slim, as for him being the son of god, well, let’s just say they jumped the shark with that one.

And so Jesus said . . .

Was how one of the readings began. Well, that’s all well and good and the lessons are probably perfectly good moral lessons, but why don’t you use Star Trek or Dr Who? They are all three as made up as each other. Saying that Jesus said it doesn’t make it true. And, so to my conclusion of that hour spent in a lovely church:

I just don’t get it. I don’t see how they can believe. I don’t understand why they think these things happened. I just don’t get it.

This was the best a church can offer and it was still shit.

Here’s two proper human achievements. Something we can all celebrate and take lessons from:

Thrust 2
Thrust 2

and

Thrust SSC
Thrust SSC
Posted on

Continuum

I intend for this to be a short communication. It is something that I often think when faced with many headlines proclaiming things to be wrong or right trying to give a sense of black and white.

A good simple lesson to remember for pretty much any issue you could face is:

It’s probably a continuum

Murder is wrong. Yes, most often, but there are grey areas, it could be argued that it is justified sometimes and the law takes account of that.
Stealing is wrong. Yes, but there are grey areas, the law takes account of that too.

As humans within a social structure we like to have rules and laws and we think we need them to maintain a cohesive structure. However, we do not apply these rules blindly. We use our sense of right and wrong (not given to us by god) and we decide on a case by case basis. It’s what our court system or individual judgement is for.

As an example:
I will set a detention if someone does not complete their homework to a good standard and on time. I would, however, be considered a bastard if that student had just lost a close family member and still punished him. I use my judgement to decide whether the punishment is morally correct to be applied.

Another example:
I might want to wear a political badge at work. Maybe it says “Save the NHS”. I don’t think that should be too much of a problem. Now suppose I was backing a slightly harsher political view “Stop All Immigration”. Should I be allowed to wear that? You can see there is a line or at least a point where the message says too much. That line might move from time to time. It’s hard to quantise where the line stands, it comes to judgement and it may be the case that one type of message is allowed and another similar isn’t.

The application of the rules is carefully considered and applied with a sense of fairness. We can not have fairness if we apply the rules rigidly.

Sometimes the rules are applied differently from time to time and each case is judged on its own merits. We like to “draw a line” we like to have hard and fast arrangements so we know where we stand but life isn’t like that and we should all appreciate that there is no “line” and even if we could say there was it would be wobbly and move around.

I think most about this argument when I hear of racism or discrimination. Let’s say there are counties where a black person isn’t allowed to sit at the front of the bus. How black do you have to be? How white do you have to be? The colour of us is a CONTINUUM. If I am white but have a black grandfather does that mean I can’t sit near the door of the bus. What an utterly ridiculous and pathetic way to classify people.

How about a place where homosexual people aren’t allowed. How homosexual do you need to be? How can they tell? Sexuality is a scale from strongly heterosexual to bisexual to strongly homosexual [it’s a CONTINUUM]. If you have had sex with someone of the same sex once does that make you gay? How many times would make you gay? This is another ridiculous way to classify people.

Nationality is another of these. If I am Scottish and live in Scotland I can vote in the upcoming referendum. How far into Scotland do I have to be born? If I was born in Longtown I would be English. If I was born in Gretna I would be Scottish. Where is the line. If my mother was giving birth and she straddled the border where would I be born. The matter of a couple of miles or even inches determines my entire identity? What a load of rubbish. Just ask the people of Alsace.

When this sort of argument is used it is called a FALSE DICHOTOMY. In mathematics answers are generally correct or not [although there ARE grey areas in mathematics]. On the whole your answer to a mathematical problem will be a dichotomy – correct or not. Whether you are blue eyed or you are not is a FALSE DICHOTOMY. How blue do your eyes need to be? What if one is not blue but the other is? What if you have specks of green in your eyes? It’s a ridiculous concept.

We seem to spend so much of our energies defining things using black and white statements and yet most of the time we ignore the grey areas. Every time we do humanity struggles.

Posted on

The Worst Reason

This communication deals with some ideas I have been having recently and I hope I put my argument across well.

In life and society we sometimes give people special dispensation from our general rules because we see there are special reasons. We allow disabled people to park closer to shops, we allow single dwellers to pay less council tax, we allow the poor to pay a lower rate of tax, we allow the young and the old to have cheaper travel. You get the idea.

It is right that we have varying rules and that we shouldn’t treat everyone the same. I think this is right because of my moral structure and that there is evidence to show that these actions improve the quality of life for those people. The justification for these dispensations is good.

If you are reading this you are probably aware that I don’t “believe” in a god or gods and therefore do not follow any form of religion. See the communication directly preceding this one. As there is no god everything that hangs on this premise is mistaken. All of the rules and societal requirements we have are unjustifiable using religion, holy books or holy men’s rantings. Some religious ideas are good but they can be derived from a general principle of “do good” and “do no harm”, principles which are humanistic rather than from a sole religion. If your argument for behaving a particular way ends with the line:

It says so in this good book

Or

My preacher/imam says so

then it’s time for you to appraise what else the book says.

I think it is wrong to make dispensations from our normal laws and rules for religious reasons. In fact, I think that dispensations for this reason are the worst form of dispensation and incongruent with a liberal society.

This communication and my view on these things was formed from the following events:

  • On a run one day I passed a building site. There were 4 people working on the site at the time and three of them had bright yellow safety hats on. The 4th person had a turban on. It would appear that he had special dispensation to wear this turban, probably for religious reasons. I do not understand this argument. If there is good evidence to show that wearing a turban gives as good protection as wearing a safety hat then I am ok with that but if the evidence doesn’t exist then why does religious requirements get a “free pass”?
  • In some places of work people ask for special dispensation to go to prayer at certain times during the day or they have rules about certain types of food. I do not understand why these religious reasons are special and can’t be questioned. Could I ask for dispensation from the canteen to avoid serving any form of pasta because I follow the Flying Spaghetti Monster? My argument for this is just as robust as any other religious argument.
  • I think it is morally wrong that dispensation is given to some abattoirs to avoid our rules on humanely  slaughtering animals because a religion requires animals to be killed in a certain way. If I can show you two slabs of meat, one slaughtered normally and one slaughtered using religious requirements and IF you can tell them apart then I would be seriously impressed. Mind you this still would not justify your reasons for wanting animals slaughtered inhumanely.

I am not using this communication to ridicule individual beliefs, oh, damn, I am! Oh well. Societies’ laws should be based on humanistic consensus and that is why we have a government and democracy here in the UK, for all its flaws. Over the last thousand years we have produced a decent liberal society even though we are a constitutional theocratic society because people who make the laws understand that religion should play no part in creating laws. As soon as laws are created for religious reasons we have lost our way [just read Leviticus].

If you want to use a religious reason to excuse a certain behaviour or to allow you to break the rules of our society then I will use the Church of the FSM to justify the rules I want to break. The argument is precisely the same. If you want to claim the FSM is not a REAL religion then I ask you to define what you mean by REAL religion.

Religion should play NO part in dispensation from laws and rules. It’s not an excuse.

Religion – Not An Excuse

Just in case some of you become offended at this then please consider what I have said. I haven’t called you stupid, I haven’t said you are wrong and I haven’t ridiculed your religion. I have said I don’t believe. My argument is that religion is not a reason for dispensation. Oh, look! I have given special dispensation to religious people in this post script. Tell you what: Your religion is wrong. It is not the truth. It is not the path to eternal life. Your preachers are wrong. It is not a reason for doing anything. There is no god. Get over it. You shouldn’t get special treatment because you believe in Zeus or whatever you call your god. Join our society and behave within its rules or leave.

Posted on

Evidence – How To Change My Mind

Let’s take something that is quite obviously a load of rubbish: Homoeopathy. I will now state the following:

Homoeopathy does not work

My reasoning for homoeopathy goes as follows:

  • Implausible (there is no prior plausibility that suggests HOW it should work)
  • No good scientific evidence to show it works

I want to make the following clear:

I would love for homoeopathy to work. It would revolutionise medicine and curing people and it would also create whole new areas of physics for us to learn about.

However, the evidence does not show it works. The gold standard of medical trials, double blind random controlled, all show negative. See my “discussion“.

If you can show me the evidence and it needs to be good evidence then I would be willing to change my mind. I will shout it from the rooftops and I will become your cheerleader. I will work tirelessly for your cause because it would be so wonderful.

If you can show me the evidence I will change my mind.

I think that’s quite a simple rule to live by. It does mean I have to be able to evaluate the quality of evidence and I could make mistakes there, but I am willing to correct myself.

If what you are suggesting is a quite remarkable “new thing” then the evidence needs to also be quite remarkable to persuade me. If what you are suggesting adds to my current understanding then it will take a normal amount evidence. This is not to say I am closed minded. I would love to be wrong about many of the things I currently know are not true. It would be a brilliant and happy thing to be shown good evidence for something you say is true. As I mentioned earlier I would happily change my mind. Here’s a list of types of evidence ranging from very bad to good:

  • Anecdote [NOT evidence. NOT even interesting]
  • Testimony [NOT evidence. Human memory is remarkably poor at recalling what happened]
  • Human Experience [NOT evidence. We can only explain the world within our understanding]
  • A single experiment or non-blinded medical trial [an interesting start but NOT fact]
  • Results of single experiment reproduced by teams working separately [Good evidence]
  • A medical trial which is controlled [still more interesting]
  • Results of different reproducible experiments leading to same conclusion [this can go in stone]
  • Results of large scale double-blinded placebo controlled medical trial NOT paid for by pharmaceutical company [expect the results to lower efficacy a bit over time but this is a good treatment]

The wonderful thing about this process of requiring evidence, oh I know, let’s call it the scientific method, is that it does not rely on me believing. The truth is there whether I believe it or not. A scientist working in Japan should come to the same conclusions as a scientist working in Brazil. The scientific method leads us to knowledge whatever our social and cultural background.

A good place to start when faced with something you understand to be quite fanciful is to ask for the VERY BEST evidence for the thing. If this is poor, then walk away. Do NOT accept the following argument:

Oh, the effects are subtle and can’t be measured.

If the effects are that subtle that they can’t be measured by scientific means then they don’t exist. We observe our world and we do our best to understand it and measure it. If you can’t measure it then it deserves to be rubbished. Just because someone believes it dearly it doesn’t mean it’s any more true. Aren’t we doing them an injustice by not educating them?

Posted on

Purpose

Hey, this is another communication on the theme of “things that Parish is trying to explain using his rather limited writing ability”.

In this communication I will try and explain my thoughts on what our purpose is. Why we are here. What it is we are meant to do. By “we” I mean us as individuals and as a cohesive [ha ha] world society.

Firstly, let me explain just how insignificant we are. We live on a tiny planet orbiting a pretty boring star in a galaxy of 300 billion stars. To give you an idea of how many stars that is, it is around 9510 year’s worth of seconds.

Humans are rather terrible at visualising large numbers, or understanding how significant numbers can be [it’s why betting companies and lotteries are so profitable]. We mostly work in numbers the size of us. We are generally comfortable with numbers up to around a thousand and then after than we lose all conceptual understanding. If you talk about a million or billion then people think they have a good understanding but they don’t. A million seconds is somewhere around 13 days worth of seconds. A billion seconds is around 31 YEARS. That’s quite a difference. To give you an idea of how insignificant our numbers are the sun fuses 620 MILLION TONS of hydrogen EVERY second and is still going to last for BILLIONS of years.

As far as we know there are over 170 BILLION galaxies in the observable universe. Spend a few hours thinking about just how large and amazing the universe is. I guarantee you will develop a headache and feel slightly ill. The chances of life elsewhere is total, it is clear we are a tiny part of this universe. We are insignificant. We can control our environment and probably some aspects of the solar system. Other than that, we essentially don’t exist. We do not matter. The universe does not care about us. There is no god or gods. Religion is an incorrect view of the world. That conclusion leapt out of nowhere, but I think it is valid. God did not create the world for us. God does not send his rules to us. There is nowhere for god to be. God is a human creation to ease our sense of uselessness.

Let’s bring things down to a more human size and consider “purpose”.

Ultimately, there is no purpose. We, as modern humans, have existed for such a short amount of time [~100,000 years] and we might manage to exist for quite a while, but the evidence is that even if we last for a billion years then eventually the Sun will grow and kill us all. Interstellar travel is essentially impossible. We have no “universal” purpose.

So, the universe doesn’t care what happens to us. We can’t change that. So now we need to be more mundane.

We exist on Earth. The dinosaurs ruled this planet for a few hundred million years. We’ve managed ten thousand [of civilisation] and have only just managed at that. We seem to be very good at killing ourselves. It is arguable that the Earth does not care about us. Our visit to Earth, so far, has been fleeting and yet also so damaging. So, we look to biology for purpose. Essentially my biological purpose is to propagate my genes. To ensure that my part of the species carries on. That is my ultimate biological purpose. Everything I have do leads to that point. I eat and breathe solely for the purpose of helping my genes survive. The problem of purpose is added to because I am conscious and able to think in abstract terms.

Humans are not the only animals able to think in abstract terms but we are the only species who do it so very well. We are able to question and discover. It is quite remarkable that we can do that and it has taken 4 billion years to get to that point. We are a fluke of evolution. One that will occur over and over again in this universe [large numbers etc].

We have biological purpose. We also have no absolute morals [no god]. Therefore the morals we have come from within and what we are taught. Some are the result of being animals and some are the result of having thought.

I have two children. My biological purpose is complete. I do not need to exist for biology any more. However my purpose is not complete. I think it is my purpose to do the best I can for society, for humans in total. Now, given no absolute morals it is hard to argue for any particular purpose, but I use reason and hopefully logic to reach some conclusions about what we are for. Once I accept that my family need others to help them survive I look to the society that will provide this. I will consider society to be the human race as a whole now. Everyone on the planet [and those currently in low Earth orbit].

I have a duty to do the best I can to maintain a good society around me so that my genes have the best chance of maintaining themselves in this world. As a human with feelings I also want the best for my children and for all humans around me. It is therefore imperative that I work for the best of society. This is how I create my morals and views on all things. I start from a point of “what is best for us?”.

My ultimate purpose is to contribute to a world where my genes [children] have the best chance of living their lives to fulfil their purpose to breed and to contribute to society to maintain and improve the lives of all. I need no god or gods. I don’t need the promise of ever after life [how terrible] and I don’t need the fear of hell. I just know my purpose.

I am uncomfortably aware that my purpose is entirely selfish and internal. There is no ultimate purpose, only that which we discover for ourselves. Many are uncomfortable with this, but they should explore this. Doing good for the sake of doing good and understanding that it is just for you and not some supernatural dude in the sky is something we should all get used to.

Posted on

An Atheist Answers

I recently looked at a tweet in my timeline:

I am an atheist. Let me see if I can answer these questions. I will do my best to not turn the question around but actually answer the question to the best of my ability.

Quoth I:

Some Questions Atheist Cannot Truly and Honestly REALLY Answer! Which leads to some interesting conclusions…

1.       How Did You Become an Atheist?
2.       What happens when we die?
3.       What if you’re wrong? And there is a Heaven? And there is a HELL!4.       Without God, where do you get your morality from?
5.       If there is no God, can we do what we want? Are we free to murder and rape? While good deeds are unrewarded?
6.       If there is no god, how does your life have any meaning?
7.       Where did the universe come from?
8.       What about miracles? What all the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus? What about those who claim to have seen saints or angels?
9.       What’s your view of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris?
10.   If there is no God, then why does every society have a religion?

I answer these below.

How did I become an atheist?
I’m not sure I was ever that religious. I was taken to church on Christmas Eve by my mum. I did, at times, attend Sunday school and I read a cartoon version of the bible. So I was certainly exposed to church and religion as a child but I was never really indoctrinated. When the Gideons came in to school and gave me a bible I ate each page so at the age of 12 I wasn’t that fussed by god and stuff. When I joined the Air Cadets I made a pledge to God, The Queen and Country but wasn’t that fussed about the God bit. I attended church as part of the ATC and have been to funerals to say goodbye. I don’t think my default position was ever God, I was looking for evidence and never found it. [that’s not actually true, one Xmas eve midnight service I was almost called to God because the church looked beautiful but then I was very drunk and although the church was pretty that doesn’t mean God exists]. Whenever I think about religion and God I get angry at how it suckers up people who lack a certain train of thought, it preys on everyone. It is quite obvious to me that there is no rational evidence for the existence of God. If it is discovered I will happily believe. Until then, the burden is on those who believe to convince me with rational evidence.

What happens when we die?
My heart stops, my brain functions die away as the oxygen is used up and I cease to exists. After that my body will slowly disintegrate and I will become part of the Earth again.

What if I am wrong and there is a heaven and a hell?
I guess this depends on which brand of religion wins the great battle. If it’s christianity then I’m sure that God will forgive me and understand my questioning and accept me into heaven. If it’s another brand then surely the compassion preached by religion will accept my mistakes. Can I really be sent to heaven for questioning the lack of evidence for God? Perhaps the more fundamentalist Christians and Muslims will condemn me to ever lasting pain and torture.
I would like to point out that while I have answered the question my answer to the previous question pretty much rules out the existence of any afterlife. The afterlife is just a human invention to easing the pain we feel when those close to us die.

Without God where do you get your morality from?
As much as I grew up and currently live in a country with a largely Christian culture I don’t need to be told that to kill someone would be wrong. I also don’t need a book to tell me right from wrong. My personal morality is probably quite different from the overarching social morality which exists within the laws of the country in which I reside. I can reach my own conclusions about morality by thinking about it. My general rule is to not do harm to others.

If there is no God, can we do what we want? Are we free to murder and rape? While good deeds are unrewarded?
No, no and the knowledge itself is it’s reward. A longer answer: Our social laws exist outside of religious instruction. As a member of society I accept the law of this land and the morality it implies. I don’t always agree with it but I accept it. There was once a time when the law was “god given” but to be honest it was just the interpretation of god’s law by a human being and so open to problems [it was once acceptable to kill witches, evidence of witches having supernatural powers is remarkably skant and so it is no longer legal to kill witches, a triumph of reason over god]. I do not want to murder or rape. I want to do no harm to others. I don’t need god to tell me that. I also reap my own rewards of doing good, I tend to be treated well by others. I don’t need the promise of life-every-after to make me do good things, I can’t imagine anything much worse than living forever.

If there is no god, how does your life have any meaning?
My meaning comes from trying to learn and understand the cosmos but more so from the love I get from my children and getting a thank you from someone.

Where did the universe come from?
I don’t know and to be honest I’m not that bothered by that. I do find it amusing we seek answers to the questions WHY and HOW when sometimes you shouldn’t think in those human terms. In science terms we know that the big bang is our best explanation of the START of the universe but not the WHY and HOW. I will just say that if God did create the universe then why does that mean that I have to follow the writings of some dessert people from two thousand years ago?

What about miracles? What all the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus? What about those who claim to have seen saints or angels?
What about miracles? When miracles are investigated they turn out to have very Earthly origins. Humans are brilliant at fooling themselves all the time. People can claim to have a Jesus connection or having seen saints or angels but I don’t think they fully understand the working of our minds/brain. People can claim everything they want. Until they can show demonstrable evidence I’m not interested. I feel as though I have a connection with Thor, am I ok or deluded? If I grew up in India you would be asking if I felt a connection to Shiva or other gods. It’s quite cultural.

What’s your view of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris?
These guys are necessary to help people learn to think rationally and see the problems of religious arguments. They pretty clearly try to explain why beliefs are wrong, they don’t try to mock those who have those beliefs.

If there is no God, then why does every society have a religion?
Not every society has religion, Buddhism can be considered a religion but it is devoid of our notion of god. Some religions have many gods. Some gods have been supplanted in common culture. Which god are you talking about? Humans are story telling great apes who concocted tales of supernatural beings to explain the things to which we had no answer. Over the last 2000 years we have made leaps and bounds into understanding so much of the wonder of our world that the notion of answering Why? and How? with the answer God should be dismissed entirely.

 

I am not an eloquent writer or purveyor of ideas so my arguments may not come over as the subtlest or best worded. I have tried to answer these particular questions to the best of my ability and in a small space. I have also tried to keep to the question and not end up writing at a tangent to the subject. I have also tried hard not to question the particular beliefs that have lead to these questions.

I don’t expect people who are strongly religious to accept my answers, but I have answered these questions as honestly as I can. I am unsure what particular conclusions I am meant to find but they probably aren’t the ones the website writers wanted.

The final word comes from the Ricky Gervais character Derek:

Derek
Posted on

Easter Already

The new year has just started which means that the next commercial event to darken these shores is Easter. Christmas is past. Our mid-winter festival and feast to celebrate the dark nights and cheer ourselves up is now history. The burgeoning pressure of consumerism has passed for another nine months.

Time then to get the eggs, bunnies, chickens and chocolate on display.

20140112-125902.jpg

 

Wankers.

Privacy Policy Proudly powered by WordPress