Italy will not appeal.

Sam Harris’s statement for atheism seems to be a reaction to a trend in world influence by fundamentalist religious views. Is this a polarization before choosing, or a consolidation before taking over? By fundamentalist, I mean those advocating for take over of government and control of all people by religious oriented political entities in the name of a God mandated war for control.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a bare majority of the world’s people, precisely 50 percent, were Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or Hindu. At the beginning of the 21st century, nearly 64 percent belonged to these four religious groupings, and the proportion may be close to 70 percent by 2025.

If religion continues on this trend, atheists, agnostics, free-thinkers, philosophers, secularists, freedom lovers, and just plain workers are doomed to endure another ‘dark age’ in which all reason was suppressed for centuries. When religion takes up the gun, reason and progress loses.

To Hondo
I thank you for your explanation of your quotation: John 1:1-5. I found a variation of verse 3 in an other bible, where ‘him’ (Him?) was replaced by ‘the Word’. John apparently sort of fuses ‘God’ , ‘the Word’ and ‘Him’ together.
Although you explained how these verses are to be read, a meaning only appears when one thinks God is a reality, which I don’t.
There are several statements in your explanation that brings further questions to my mind, one of which is the following: You talk about *our sinfulness*. This Christian belief that ‘Man is a sinner’ of course is a part of the ‘-Man is a sinner- , -Christ died for our sins- , -*His Salvation Plan*’ package-deal. But it is not true! A newborn human child IS NOT A SINNER. And most of them will not become one during their lifetime. I find it reprehensible to state ‘Man is a sinner’, it is an undeserved harrasment.
I ask you to consider the following: You stand next to a crib with a 2 days old boy or girl in it. Could you say loudly into the childs face: ‘You are a sinner’?
I am certain that I could not do that.

Religion As A Source Of Violence

Any belief system, not just religious, that is exclusive and not inclusive poses dangers - more so, when they have demeaning teachings that portray various social groups in a negative way. These teachings induce the followers with a sense of hatred and mistrust towards the other social groups who do not fit in with the belief system in question.

Atheists just like theists are all capable of harming others, but, because of the exclusive, tribalistic, and totalitarian nature of religion and its ossified teachings, those who adhere to these faiths, perpetuate their intolerant, tribalistic views - this causes conflict. In my opinion, the ones who are usually the least infleunced by tribal, cultural, and religious barriers, are often the most peaceful.

Nazism was not Atheistic

Nazism was not an atheist regime. It was created by Christians and promoted by Christians throughout Europe, USA(Father Charles Coughlin), and Canada even. Anti-semitism at the time was a Christian virtue. Point 24 of the Nazi regimes version of the constitution stood in defence of ‘Positive Christianity’. The same positive Christianity that many fundamentalists promote today - anti-secularism, anti-homosexuality, anti-abortion, anti-godlessness, and some no doubt still have anti-semitic views. Nazis pushed God belief from its foundation to the very end. The Nazis also used anti-semitic teachings such as John 8:44 and Matthew 27:25 as justification for their hate of the Jews. As for the deaths during the 20th century resulting in what some may claim as atheist regimes, well, they are forgetting the advancements in technology, weaponry, and they are also forgetting to mention the many theists in these regimes who supported the political/economic systems that their leaders had adopted. I never hear much said about the mass persecution and slaughter before the establishment of Lenins communism, the countless minority groups who were persecuted, slaughtered and displaced by order of the Russian Orthadox Church and the Tsarian government. I rarely hear much said about the continuation of violence and slaughter that has persisted throughout history to the present day in almost every country because of God belief/superstitious thinking, I do hear many excuses though, maybe this is one of the reasons why religious violence never ceases.

Comment by David: “The two ideologies of the twentieth century, Nazism and Communism, were committed atheist regimes which slaughtered many more people than any religion.”

Sorry, your claim that Nazism was nonreligious is just flat-out wrong. Hitler had a belief in a Judeo-Christian God and the Nazis used Christianity as a basis to support their actions, especially in their ideal of all things good and “Aryan,” which also helped make their case against the Jews. The Nazis’ long-term plan was to make the Catholic church an arm of the party and government to help control the masses.

This wrap-yourself-in-religion strategy is used by Karl Rove and many other Republicans today.

This is a truly depressingly dumb article. Where to start?

Religion As A Source Of Violence

The author seems to want to blame religion for violence. Did the last century not happen for him? The enlightenment gave us many good things. It also gave us Auschwitz. The two ideologies of the twentieth century, Nazism and Communism, were committed atheist regimes which slaughtered many more people than any religion. Orders of magnitude more. Perhaps there just might be a connection between the faithless ideologies of these regimes and there entirely murderous outcomes.

The Nature Of Belief

Personally, I don’t have a problem with atheism. I do have a problem when people start to refer to people who disagree with them as ‘worse than that. They are the responses of a madman or an idiot.’ These are the arguments used by the nazis and communists. If you did not agree with them you were mad. You were worthless. You were dead.

We are violent not because we are religious or atheist. We are violent because we are men; because of who we are. Having faith or lacking of faith does not immunise us to that.

Faith And The Good Society

This section is like reading those who said the Soviet Union wasn’t really socalist / communist (believe me, I am a socialist, from a family of socialists – working class, industrial south Wales: like drinking it’s sort of compulsory). Another quote: ‘Nazi crematoria was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity’. It was also influenced by prevalent eugenic ideas – which were advanced as obvious, reasonable ( in the US as well, where I understand you kept on sterilising people with mental health problems well into the twentieth century – particularly black people with mental health problems) That was reasonable at the time.

God gene – Another quote: first world society apparently lack such a gene. I don’t believe there is such a gene but taking England, where I now live and which is classically an unbelieving society, on the last census over 70 percent of the population identified themselves as Church Of England (for the record I am not Anglican). Do figures mean nothing to this guy?

The problem with all this stuff is the utter lack of doubt. That has been a murderous error in our past and a sensible moral person should, I believe, attempt to avoid it. This guy is convinced of his rightness – those who disagree are ‘a madman or an idiot’. The Russians were as convinced in the twentieth century. So were the Germans. And that’s where we should leave this dreadful nonsense.

David
July 2006

Re: Comment #14895 by slomo on 7/22

Atheism, specifically, is not dogmatic, though it is assertive. Agnosticism is not dogmatic, and is not assertive. Theism is dogmatic by specifists, but not dogmatic philosophically. Islamic theism, Christian theism, and Judaic theism are dogmatic in each specific schism of those formal religions.

Some atheists are adamant and abusive in their assertiveness, but some dogmatists are gentle in their insistence on the truth of their dogmas.

One size does not fit all.

In my theme that Truth is God, I allow that if it is true that Jesus, born of a young human female, was God and came to earth in a human form to save the ignorant, sinning, members of the species, Homo sapiens, and guarantee them a Heavenly experience forever after they die, Christians are right, and both Jews and Muslims are wrong, as well as are all other religious beliefs that do not acknowledge that. But, if God would not or could not come to Earth in a human form, then Christians are wrong, but some other concept could be right.

Of course, after considerable reflection of reason, I find that incredible and do not believe it. I find it far more credible that Mary got pregnant from a sexual encounter with a human male and lied to cover it up. If is fairly difficult for me to believe that millions of otherwise intelligent humans could believe it, but far less credible things are believed and some quite reasonable ideas are rejected en masse. I can also see the utility of a political embrace of the Christian concept in a nation dominated by people who cling to that superstition.

I also question that Sarah, wife of Abraham, gave birth to a kid in her old age. I find it far more credible that she got a surrogate to have that kid, like she tried in the case of Ishmail, who was born by Hagar, her maid after having sex with Abraham with his wife’s assent. Only the afterthought by Hagar to claim her child prevented Sarah from displaying Ishmail as her own with the birthright from Abraham. Had that been brought off like the later virgin birth of Jesus, Judaism would cover the Arab world like lichens on an oak tree.

But, if either, or both are true as presented in the Holy Scriptures, then who am I to question truth? My theory that Truth is God, would still be valid. Christians, Jews, and Muslims can believe in their own versions as true, without questioning the Truth of God. I can believe that there are things that I do not know that are true and things claimed as true that are not. Further, I can accept that I may be wrong. For that reason, I am not dogmatic. I do accept that there is one and only one God, thus I am muslim. Though I do not accept all the rituals and claims of all the Muslims, I do accept the Shahada as true after honest questions are answered to my satisfaction. I do not accept the virgin birth claim, nor the birth to a 90 year old woman claim, or the multiple god-forms of the Hindus. Vague ideas of a Great Spirit are beautiful in concept and practice so long as they do not lead to slaughter of innocents in their practice and presentation.

Wally (#14907) makes a very good point about how a person can’t be pressured into accepting salvation. It is truly an individual decision because God created us with free will. We are free to accept Jesus Christ as our Personal Savior, and we are free to reject Jesus. I would, however, add one thing to his comment. Wally said, “...please do not forget that the true spirit of the message is faith…”. I believe, based on my understanding of the Bible, that the true spirit of Jesus’ message is hope.
Mark 1:14-15 says, “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!’” The notes in my Study Bible say, “These first words spoken by Jesus in Mark give the core of his teaching: that the long-awaited Messiah has come to break the power of sin and begin God’s personal reign on earth. Most of the people who heard his message were oppressed, poor, and without hope. Jesus’ words were good news because they offered freedom, justice, and hope.” If, by faith, we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we too would receive the freedom, justice and hope offered by Jesus.
Romans 10:8-12—-“But what does it say? The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, ‘Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’ For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”

Re: Comment #14948 by Dave Summers, M.D.  on 7/23

Then said a teacher, Speak to us of Teaching.

  And he said:

  No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

  The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

  If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

  The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.

  The musician may sing to you of the rhythm, which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear, which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.

  And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither.

  For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.

  And even as each one of you stands alone in God’s knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.

From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

RE: Frank’s comments #14792, dated 7/22/06

“Nothing but truth is immortal”; a more eloquent & reasonable
claim, in my view, has never been penned to denounce religion.
And both of us, Frank, failed to mention its source—Robert
Green Ingersoll, 1833-1899, the world’s most eloquent agnostic, whose visit to our planet has ended but whose words & TRUTHS are eternal.  Hopefully religionists, clerics, priests, rabbis & other alleged “leaders” will acknowledge truth’s virtues, uphold reason’s power and admit sacred-text lies & deceptions, then embark on the secular humanist mission to save ourselves (“no god or deity will save us”) and our planet.  Thanks, Frank, also Susan-28, for responses to what I now regard as “my chosen post,  whate’er the cost” (Garrison’s 19th c. antislavery words & vow) to proclaim the merits of freethought, truth, reason, the equality of humankind, scientific methodology and the path to worldwide peace & goodwill, before the planet becomes engulfed in that “flame that burns in its own destruction”, which, in tribute to the Lebanese genius, Khalil Gibran, we acknowledge as the Earth-annihilating threat of supernaturalism or religion.

Bravo for Mr. Carnegie (#14834) witing that Myron (Comment14795) and Gary (comment 14739) “seem to be in accord, They both hopelessly demand proof of the ‘God’ Hypothesis” Many others have made the same point, but Mr. Carnegie goes further and notes,  “Love is an abstract concept, with charity and compassion we demonstrate it. Pride, arrogance, conceit, anger and harshness are absent from love. these faults are the royal road to a hellish life and only the ignorant follow that course..”

This is wisdom. These are not admonitions for the individual to take up or put down religion, as I read them, but a prescription for behavior for religious and nonreligious alike if in fact either side wishes for peace and progress.  Let’s hope the writers of (Comment14795), (comment 14739) and many others took note.

To Hondo who writes, (#14867) “The vast majority of the comments show that much of the world doesn’t know Jesus, or understand the Good News of His Salvation Plan. The world is full of darkness, and many people choose not to seek the One True Light,.”

To Hondo, and other Christians of good faith, I say, please do not forget that the true spirit of the message is faith, to be arrived at by the individual, when the individual is ready and willing. This is a process that can not be hurried, rushed, or pressed by other people, and when others try that, they are working more for their own ego than the salvation of others, and defeats the message more than advances it.  It builds churches, constructs idols, leads to discord, but disrupts and destroys faith and true wisdom. This is my message to Christians.

To Atheists? Read my message to Hondo and bravos to Mr. Carnegie here again, and consider carefully before you engage in your own campaign demanding wholesale conversion, enshrinement of your own personal truth as the truth that all must follow, and begin your own arrogant stride down the ignorant road of pride, conceit, anger and harshness.  That road does not lead to empowerment, peace, nor progress, especially if you are a minority group. It merely alienates you further. Build bridges by accepting others as who they are, don’t burn them, and then the intolerant bridge burners in the Christian community will be revealed as who they are in all their spiritual ugliness, a process occurring very rapidly as we write.

And before condeming “the religious left,” find out who they are (talk2actioin, interfaith alliance) and maybe even find out something you didn’t know about their real (not semantic) campaign against the horrible Dominionists. And as for Dominionists….

To Mr Cruise #14838 who wrote:
“Hitler never once professed Atheism”
No, Hitler was not an Atheist, he was an opportunist. Hitler professed many things, but he was also famous as a man not true to his word. All of your quotes of Hitler on religion must be put into context and read for what they are: calls to put down others through intolerant behavior, manipulate the beliefs of others for his own gain, to create discord, so to divide and conquer. Read a little Ian Kershaw for a very good treatment on Hitler’s manipulation of the religious parties, and how the whole project to incorporate Christianity into the “Nazi Project” fell through pretty quickly, when Christians found out (too late) what the whole thing was about. But being fooled by opportunistic leaders is not a uniquely Christian trait. Many churches did, however, mount the only successful campaign against the first stages of the Nazi eugenics program—euthenasia of the elderly and mentally disabled.

There it is—Nazi’s turned to another State God: Science. Bastardized Science yes, stripped of all humanism, but it should be a cautionary tale for those that praise science while condemning others as “unenlighted children” with great intolerance. This plays right into the hands of the Dominionists, who follow the Hitler playbook on gaining power.

No, the states that made Atheism the official “correct thought” were the communist states, as noted by many here, and the Party is still in business in China today, among other places. People should pause a bit before condeming religion when Iran, a theocratic state, looks to China, an atheist state, as great model for running a government.

When those without power are all too happy to fuel discord and hate and intoleration as the Dominionts do the same, the powerful are only too willing to step in and take advantage.

So when Sam Harris writes that toleration of any religion at all is completely wrong, and that only a utopian moment of happening where everyone wakes up one day and realizes that “the (T)ruth according to Sam Harris is The Truth!” it not only is a tad bit silly, it shows grave political naivete dangerous to any movement seeking to advance progressive, humanistic causes.

Wally asks:  Why do athesits exhibit this same, extreme need to proclaim their views stridently, denigrate all others, and in general act in the same way the religious far right does, minus the ability to actually organize your own people into a coherent plan of action that makes much difference except in the world of internet blog rants?

The problem is that dogmatic atheism is as much a religion as any other.  It requires as much faith to be certain there is no G_d.  It usually places great faith in “Science” and the area of thought it circumscribes:  atheistic positivism requires no answer for the hows and whys of the Big Bang; it assumes that the physical constants are in fact constant; it asks us to take on faith phenomena that we could not possibly observe without years of prior training (indoctrination?) yet ridicules others whose years of long preparation have led to empirical evidence of a different sort.  More importantly, it punts on questions of ethics and morality.

The foundations of “Science” as a guiding philosophy are based firmly in a hatred of nature and a desire to control everything, utterly.  Francis Bacon, often called the “father of modern science,” advocated a vicious control of nature, often using the language of the existing penal system:  According to Carolyn Merchant, who studied Bacon:  “Much of the imagery Bacon used in delineating his new scientific objectives and methods derives from the courtroom, and, because it treats nature as a female to be tortured through mechanical inventions, strongly suggests the interrogations of the witch trials and the mechanical devices used to torture witches.”

Finally, the actual practice of science is rife with politics.  I should know, since I make my living as a “scientist”.

Re: Comment #14834 by Alastair Carnegie on 7/22

Alastair, thanks for the kind remarks about what I do and write about. I am wondering if you are related to the late Andrew Carnegie. When I read the rest of your comment, I wandered if he was the grandfather you spoke of. Then I remembered that Andrew had only one child, a daughter, Margaret. She had four children. Normally, they would not carry the Carnegie name. Let it be a mystery to all who might wish to guess.

I am glad you liked my post. I was afraid that someone may detect the error that crept into it. Nobody has yet, so I will not go over it again unless someone calls me on it.

To Sam Harris, the atheist:  The understanding of Jesus is not correct because the knowledge about him is incomplete.  The concept of God is also incorrect.  This letter corrects both.  We live in an infinite universe that has functioned flawlessly for billions of years.  The only way this is possible is if the source of the universe is an infinite field of intelligence.  Order always requires intelligence.  INTELLIGENCE IS ALWAYS A CHARACTERISTIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS. (Neither one of these can or will exist without the other.)  That means that the source of the universe is consciousness, or to be precise, a field of consciousness/intelligence.  (Since scientists will say the universe is energy, it makes sense to say that the source of the universe is a field of consciousness/intelligence/energy.)  Now one would ask, what did this field of CIE create the universe out of.  There was only one thing it could create the universe out of—ITSELF!  That means that nothing exists in the universe but consciousness.  That means the stars, birds, moons, worms, crickets, etc. are created by that field of consciousness which manifests everything including us—self-aware beings.  Now if someone wants to say that this field of CIE is God, I won’t argue with them. What I will do is present them with knowledge that is thousands of years old that will allow them to conclude that this is reasonable and sensible conclusion and also how it can be confirmed.  There is a body of knowledge that is called “Veda.”  It’s the oldest body of knowledge on Earth.  It is in the Sanskrit language, the first language and it is not man-made.  Veda comes directly from the Creator, whatever it is.  It’s been said that Man was using only 5 or 10% of his brain. That’s been proven to be wrong.  But it is true—and proven—that we only use a small percent of the brain’s potential.  Mental potential is dependent on how much of our consciousness potential we have.  Most people will not understand this concept.  Since the entire universe is nothing but consciousness, and the physical world functions extremely efficiently, it makes no sense to think that each human being would be creating its own consciousness.  IT makes much more sense to think that what the brain does is partake of some of that infinite field of consciouness.  It is an organ designed and created by that field of consciousness/intelligence/energy for human beings to have.  Question:  Is there any evidence that this is true, evidence that would confirm this?  In the ancient Vedic literature are phrases that do this.  One of them is quite interesting.  It also implies that humans are not only created by that field of consciousness but are also engaged in the creating of the universe.  The statement:  “I am That.  Thou art That. All This is THAT.”  THAT is that field of consciousness.  This is the experience of someone who has gained the full state of consciousness called “Enlightenment.”  So to continue with the concept of God and confirming his, her or its existence, more knowledge is necessary.  The place to start is with consciouness.  There are seven states of consciousness and right now most of humanity is only aware of three states:  waking, dreaming and sleeping.  The next four are: Transcendental, Cosmic, God and Unity.  The Transcendental is a transitory one.  It is experienced while practicing specific forms of meditation.  The one that has been confirmed to be the most effective is called Transcendental Meditation.  Around 700 studies have been done on the practice and the findings published in major science journals and can be found at http://www.tm.org.  A fully accredited university named the Maharishi University of Management teaches this and the related Vedic knowledge.  (http://www.mum.edu).  The 7th state, Unity Consciousness, is the highest state and the conscious experience is one of being united with that infinite field of consciousness, which in terms of human consciousness, is called “Pure Consciousness.”  It is, as one might suspect, at the deepest level of one’s mind and this is why it is called “transcendental.”  It is the area of an individual’s mind that is least active.  It is, however, able to be experienced and permanently established in one’s awareness, in other words, to be “united” with it.  They see the process of creation happening and realize that they are “THAT.”  Their individual consciousness is connected to, is involved with, the infinite and universal field of consciousness that is creating (or manifesting) the universe, microsecond by microsecond.  IT is a state of bliss, infinite wisdom and great intelligence.  At the same time, one is filled with great joy and gratefulness.  When one gains this state, one is united with the Home of the Laws of Nature and since the experience is one of being THAT, one has the ability to command them.  This means that one can defy gravity, or to levitate or fly.  They can do other things as well.  All faculty at the Maharishi University of Management do this, in two domes, one each for men and women, twice a day.  All residents of Vedic City do this, too, if they’ve lived long enough to develop their mental potential, (a.k.a—their consciousness).  One has to practice the Transcendental Meditation technique a few months before they can be taught the “yogic flying” technique, which is one of the techniques called “Sidhis” and be successful.”  Everyone is born with this ability.  Someone who gains the state of Enlightenment is a “yogi” and every one has the ability to become enlightened and therefore a yogi.  All they have to do is develp the potential of the brain to permanently function with maximum brain wave coherence within and between the hemispheres.  How long does this take?  That depends on how the brain functions right now, the person’s karma and how diligently one follows the routine to purify, perfect and integrate the mind and body.  Jesus gained this state.  Do search for “St. Issa.”  There are quite a few yogis, past and present.  THere are books about this knowledge.  A few websites about the Transcendental Meditation programs are: http://www.tm.org, http://www.alltm.org, http://www.uspeacegovernment.org, http://www.mum.edu, http://www.victorybeforewar.org, http://www.tesp.org, http://www.mou.org, http://www.globalcountry.org, http://www.globalgoodnews.com, http://www.permanentpeace.org.  Do search for “Jesus Lived in India.” (There’s a book with this title, from Penguin Books.)  Do search for “Bubbling bliss of yogic flying.”  If you want to read about the experience of bliss that TM meditators have, send me your email address and I’ll forward it to you.  Read magazines about consciousness.  Visit the library. All of this knowledge is available. All one has to do is look.  To learn how to practice the TM technique, find a TM Center, sometimes known as “Peace Palaces.”  We are building 3,000 of them around the world right now.  This knowledge will soon bring and end to the wars. IT’s been provent that when the number of yogic flyers flying in groups is the square root of 1% of an area’s population, the crime and violence rate in the area declines.  We need 8,000 in one group or smaller groups scattered around Earth.  We’re working on this right now.  You can join in if you want by learning the TM technique.

To G Bile—I, too, was confused by what John meant by these verses the first time I read them. We’ll go through them, verse by verse, to gain a better understanding.
Before we start looking at the whole passage, we need to look at John’s use of the word “Word.” I’ll quote from the notes in my Study Bible.
“The Word was a term used by theologians and philosophers, both Jews and Greeks, in many different ways. In Hebrew Scripture, The Word was an agent of creation (Psalm 33:6), the source of God’s message to His people through the prophets (Hosea 1:2) and God’s law, His standard of holiness (Psalm 119:11). In Greek philosophy, The Word was the principle of reason that governed the world, or the thought still in the mind, while in Hebrew thought, The Word was another expression for God. John’s description shows clearly that he is speaking of Jesus (see especially 1:14)—a human being he knew and loved, but at the same time the Creator of the universe, the ultimate revelation of God, the living picture of God’s holiness, the One in whom ‘all things hold together’ (Colossians 1:17). To Jewish readers, ‘the Word was God’ was blasphemous. To Greek readers, ‘the Word became flesh’ (1:14) was unthinkable. To John, this new understanding of the Word was gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ.”
With that in mind, let’s look at the verses. Verses 1 and 2 are saying that Jesus was with God in the beginning, at the creation, and that God and Jesus are one and the same. Christians understand that to mean that Jesus was God in human flesh, come to earth as the Perfect Sacrifice for our sins.
Verse 3 means that everything that exists, anywhere in this universe or any other, was made through God out of nothingness. We exist because God made us.
Verse 4 says, “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” This verse refers to the everlasting life that is freely given to all who accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. That life that God offers us, through Jesus Christ, is a light that illuminates our path so that we may follow God’s will for our lives. That light reveals to us our sinfulness and our desperate need for salvation. That light also removes the sin of darkness from our lives. In this context, “darkness” refers both to sin, and also the world around us. The world is so full of sin, it is like a dark room. We need the light of Jesus Christ to find our way in this world.
Verse 5 means that Jesus, the true Light, is not understood by the world, even though His Light is here in the world, available to anyone who calls on His name. I believe that the 1100 comments posted on this blog illustrate Verse 5 very well. The vast majority of the comments show that much of the world doesn’t know Jesus, or understand the Good News of His Salvation Plan. The world is full of darkness, and many people choose not to seek the One True Light.

Sam Harris, excellent job!  The world needs more philosophers who are as outspoken and eloquent as you. 

Unfortunately however, there is little hope that the human circus will drop the scripture any time soon.  Civilizations seem doomed to fail until the time that superstition and religion becomes an embarrassing old artifact.

to G Bile - In the beginning Abraham worshipped the word YAHWEH - supposedly it was “Yahweh-God-Jehovah”
The word was so holy that it could not be uttered or mentioned.(isn’t this ridiculous?)
So Abraham invented Yahweh-God-Jehovah a ferocious God, a God that does not abide by his own rules - with all his accompanying fallacies and idiosyncracies.
The word “Yahweh” is mentioned in the holy bible many many times.
Jonathan

Hitler never once professed Atheism.

Hitler was Theist, and so were 98% of the German populace. Italy, Croatia were also highly Christianised, all chums with the Nazis. Many of Hitler’s henchmen were practising Catholics. Franscian Friars were also in charge of the Croatian death camps.

Hitler was most certainly a Christian. He defended the faith and criticised those Christians who debased it - just like many Christians do today. Hitler also hated the conflict between the protestant and catholic church.

“If in Germany before the War religious life for many had an unpleasant aftertaste, this could be attributed to the abuse of Christianity on the part of a so-called ‘Christian’ party and the shameless way in which they attempted to identify the Catholic faith with a political party.”

“Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends. In truth, we cannot sharply enough attack those wretched crooks who would like to make religion an implement to perform political or rather business services for them.”

“which make this kind of religion seem positively monstrous according to Aryan conceptions. The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took to the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties - and this against their own nation.”

“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without religious foundation is built on air; consequently all character training and religion must be derived from faith.” - Adolph Hitler

Today we have Pope Benedict XVI who is also waging a merry war against Secularism:

Pope’s Trip to Spain to Further Efforts Against Secularism - http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-07-07-voa22.cfm

Hitler also probably believed that he was the second coming:

“. . . the luxury, the perversion, the iniquity, the wanton display and the Jewish materialism disgusted me so thoroughly that I was almost beside myself. I nearly imagined myself to be Jesus Christ when he came to his Father’s Temple and found the money changers.” Eckart described Hitler as “brandishing his whip and exclaimed that it was his mission to descend upon the capital like a Christ and scourge the corrupt.” - Adolfs close friend and mentor Dietrich Eckart.

“In the years to come I shall continue on this road, uncompromisingly safeguarding my people’s interests, oblivious to all misery and danger,
and filled with the holy conviction that
God the Almighty will not abandon him who, during all his life, had no desire but to save his people from a fate it had never deserved, neither by virtue of its number nor by way of its importance.” - Adolf Hitler, January 30, 1945 - still pushing his god belief.

Priests plan jumble sale to save Nazi church for posterity: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2078310,00.html#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=World

If Hitler had won the war, no doubt Christianity would have been reinvented, history would have been rewritten, Hitler would have probably been portrayed as a saint or a saviour. Nazi Christianity would have become just
another branch of the Christian family tree.

Myron (Comment14795) and Gary (comment 14739) seem to be in accord, They both hopelessly demand proof of the ‘God’ Hypothesis, to share a little blasphemy with them. Dear Frank Goodman Sr. as in his many Comments, especially (13635) is a Gentleman Contributor to this blog, that I admire. I guess he has researched and pondered ‘truth’ as he concieves it, much of his life. Truth is important. Somehow or other, humans have evolved or been blessed with sufficient intelligence to ponder such questions. In my view the quest for truth is the most noble of human aspirations. Truth may be planted in filth and ugliness, but surely truth is crowned with beauty. If beautiful poetry, music, or art, lifts the human spirit, may we not call those manifestations ‘spiritual’ and strive to cultivate knowledge of such ‘spiritual’ topics. Love is an abstract concept, with charity and compassion we demonstrate it. Pride, arrogance, conceit, anger and harshness are absent from love. these faults are the royal road to a hellish life and only the ignorant follow that course. My Grandfather many years ago asked me a favour, he said “Soon my life will be over”....“Nonsence you are fit as a fiddle” I responded. “Please listen, when I am gone there will be nothing left of me, and even my contribution to the pool of human wisdom may be ignored, but you may be able to pass on just one observation and perhaps improve upon it”.... “What observation is that Gramps”  I asked, I will do my best. “Just this lad; speech is mankind’s greatest friend” he added “and promise me you will never make speech your enemy, it is a terrible one!”
The internet has made our communications so much simpler, please pass on My grandad’s motto. When he did die a few days later, run over in a tragic road accident, it made me glad to remember those words. Also rather shocked to recieve copies of so many newspapers with his front page obituary and photograph. from all over the world.

The bible is nothing but an encoded story of the ZODIAC, “the greatest story ever told”.  Watch and learn:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6410112404402873027&q=jordan+maxwell

nice meeting you as well Frank and Dave, feel free to email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or come visit us over at http://www.5gigawattlizard.net if you ever wanna chat. Lizard dicusses politics technology religion and SUV’s, hehe.. maybe we’ll get to dig together again someday, meow for now..

Hondo in comment #14755 on 7/21 quotes from the Holy Book: John 1:1-5.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood.”
Could you please explain what this means, sentence by sentence, because I understand not a single one of them. If you do not know what these sentences mean, it would be wise not to quote them.

Comment #14739 by Gary is as concise an explanation of the difference between atheism and religion as any written to-date. The simplicity of his explanation should make even the most devout follower of organized religion stop and think about what he/she is actually doing with their life. They are like a small child playing with a “make-believe-friend” riding in their “make-believe-car”. They stop for “make-believe-tea” and encourage real adults to join them in their “make-believe-tea” (sounds and looks like communion in a Christian church).

It is time for educated intelligent human beings of all nationalities, races and gender to realize that they are the only ones that can correct the problems that now plague the earth we live on. Prayer and reading the scriptures don’t provide any more transportation of the nourishment needed for real-solutions of real-problems than the “make-believe-car” and that cup of “make-believe-tea”.

Re: Comment #14744 by Dave Summers, M.D.  on 7/21

“Nothing but truth is immortal”.

Amen! In sentiment and principle, I agree. Please do not define mortal too assiduously or you nullify your contention.

The operative here is also worship. I would admonish one not to worship what cannot be understood. Scientific inquiries as to why sugar is sweet and lemon juice sour are OK, and so is a philosophic discussion of truth, but results of the inquiry should not be enshrined and worshipped without the possibility to adjust when new information becomes available. To make a religion of your statement is not necessary and would be shown to be futile. Idols come in many forms, some of which are of the mind.

It always disturbed me when I read in the Qu’ran that idol worship is not permitted, then find Muslims going to a city, Mecca, as a pilgrimage. I find that the mosque is held in special esteem by the faithful. I see them idolize the book in which it is recorded that one must not worship such things.

Humans worship in various degrees, idols of all kinds. The Constitution of the United States is a document that is worshipped in America. The Declaration of Independence is worshiped. So is the flag—all of them in their time. The pledge of allegiance to a piece of cloth and then to the nation for which it stands puts the flag before the nation and the nation before justice in violation of the promises in the documents.

I used to be a Unitarian, until I was criticized for some of my views in a congregation to which I contributed substantial financial support in my time. I found atheists, agnostics, deists, theists, pantheists, and monotheists in the Unitarian Church. I found Unitarians married to trinitarians who attended Unitarian services. I found communists, socialists, democrats, republicans and libertarians, but no rabid conservatives, frothing liberals or polytheists. There were some fanatics who claimed to be against fanaticism. I agree with the main concerns addressed by various Humanist Manifestos. I knew personally some of the signatories of the first Humanist Manifesto and met others.

Thanks, Dave, for your thoughtful contributions to this discussion. And a special thanks to Susan 28, for her unique ways to love and to admonish. I thank Sam Harris for introducing us. I even thank those who disagree with us, for if it were not for the disagreement, we would have nothing to talk about and would be talking only to ourselves. That is worse than autism, Asperger’s, Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s. Love takes many forms, but Truth is One, manifest in infinite ways.

In all likelyhood by Divine Retribution, I have been by vocation and avocation both an Artist and Mathemetician. In my view God is just an immaginitive expansion of the concept of “Infinity” I have strong misgivings about the existance of infinity, but it is a very usefull mathematical concept. Therein lies it’s virtue. George Ferdinand Ludwig Phillip Cantor immaginitevly postulated an infinite sheet of ‘graph paper’ on which were tabulated top and left side, all the countable integers. Russell’s Teapot, is tame compared to such a vast sheet of paper. Cantor was able by this inspired conjecture to solve the millenia old Ancient Greek riddle, namely, “why is it, that an infinite number of fractions exist between any two successive integers, are there two infinities?”
Cantor demonstrated that if fractions were tabulated in a matrix, using the integers top and side as numerator and denominator then all the integers and fractions would be catered for, despite many duplications of value i.e. the diagonal are all integers 1/1 2/2 3/3 etc, also 6/3=2 7/14=1/2 etc. by mapping this infinite list one to one, with the set of whole integers, the connundrum is solved, the entire set is ‘countably infinite’ there is no need of extra infinities. Cantor’s ‘transfinite’ Aleph Null, Aleph one etc. series, conjecture, I leave for the curious to investigate for themselves, with one ‘tip’ (Think ‘Binary’ and tabulate an anti list, add the list and antilist together) The point of this illustration is that we can never concieve ‘infinity’ nor prove it’s existance, but outlaw the concept and censor every schoolroom textbook, we will soon be back in the stoneage!

One followed by a hundred zeros is named a Googal, it is about a million million million million times larger than the number of atoms in the universe. one followed by a Googal zeroes is not even a scratch on infinity, so how ‘big’ is this universe? God, by definition is ‘Infinite’ so we might reasonably conclude that all of God’s material creations are contained in a Divine Teapot! perhaps just floating about. Naturally this time it is not too small to observe with our most powerful telescope, The Teapot is too large! I rest my case, now “do you like lemon or milk in your tea? one lump or two?”

Here’s my question—

1) Why do athesits exhibit this same, extreme need to proclaim their views stridently, denigrate all others, and in general act in the same way the religious far right does, minus the ability to actually organize your own people into a coherent plan of action that makes much difference except in the world of internet blog rants?

2) In the case of actual real world religious conflict, as in right now, what is your solution to mediating such conflicts between warring parties? Wade in and tell both sides to the conflict that they’re both superstitious idiots, you have absolutely no respect for either side’s belief systems, cultures or traditions, they should undergo your “Become Atheist in 10 easy steps,” and all will be well?

In the 20th century, the Atheist nation states that pursued such a policy usually have to make use of a very large contingent of thought police to enforce that. Any thoghts on a hiring policy and guidelines for correct determination if someone does not have “correct thought” and the punishment that would merit?

3) If a candidate is running in a district in the U.S. where most people either think of themselves as religious but don’t go to church, or religious and do go to church, as is the case most often, what do you recommend:
a) Advocate that all cultivate and maintain a healthy toleration for the beliefs of others, respect for the dignitiy of the individual’s right to choose the faith of their own, or just be Atheist and chill out, and maintain the proper and healthy separation of church and state as set down in the 1st Amendment,
(OR)
b) Tell them they’re all stupid, idiotic, superstitious folk that should just abandon everthing they think, and adopt your manner of thought as the ONLY correct manner of thought and..VOTE FOR ME! I’m SUPER-ATHEIST!

And would you be surprised if the voters don’t like option (b) much?

Are you suprised that the religious bigots are only too happy to distribute what you guys write, without edits, as a proof that you have this thought control agenda and a self righteous determination to insult anybody that disagrees with you? And then falsely tar all liberals with the same brush?

And here’s another question—Athesists like to rail against some kind of warped psychology of religious people, even saying they have this need for a “daddy figure” in the form of a God.

But what about this: Atheists have unresolved psycholigical issues not with a “daddy” figure or a “mommy” figure, but with their actual “daddy and mommy”? In other words, they are caught in this unresolved cycle of endlessly replaying an unresolved teenage rebellion. In other words, never grew up and never got over it, they just want to whine on and on, but this time dressed in the trappings of psuedo intellectual (whatever)?

Or maybe I am not being fair. Maybe you have been disrespected by intolerant religious folks. So your formula for solving that personal inability to “stay strong in the faith” of Atheism is believe in this forumula:

Meet disrespect with disrespect, generate atmosphere of hate and mutual recrimination, results in utopian thought paradise of peace. Is that it?

I keep seeing these comments like “I was never comformtable with myself for thinking such things until I read your article, thank you very much.”

So, is this like the Atheist version of a revivalist tent meeting? Except the Atheist “minister” pounds on volumes of Darwin and Einstein and everybody yells, “amen brother!” ???

Just curious.

BTW

APPLICATION
Zen Teacher Ch’eng-t’ien was asked by a student, “How should I apply my mind twenty-four hours a day”
The teacher replied, “When chickens are cold, they roost in trees, when ducks are cold, they plunge into water.”  The student then said, “Then I don’t need cultivated realization, and won’t pursue Buddhahood or Zen mastery.”
Ch’eng-t’ien responded, “You’ve saved half my effort.”

NO MISTAKE
Someone asked T’ou-tzu, “How is it when there is not mistake moment to moment?”
And T’ou-tzu replied, “Bragging.”

re: Frank and Dave

Frank: actually Truth is much more personal to me than God which is why i embrace the former and reject the latter. when i say the word God “makes it personal” i mean “casts God in the role of a (separate)person”, ie: not something by which we’re enveloped, but something with a separate will to which we’re juxtaposed, and are potentially compelled to “obey”, which is abandoning ourselves to the will o’ the wisp as opposed to active participation in - or *with*  the Truth of our own will.

but you still haven’t addressed my question of what does all the micro-descriptive/predictive/proscriptive/coercive dogma of the world’s organised religions have to do with the concept of overarching “Truthness” that we both embrace?

Dave: yes i’d sign it and will. i hung with the Portland Humanists while there last year and had more common ground with them on the highest percentage of issues than any other group of people that have ever occupied a single room at one time, and sensed more genuine care than in any church, and all over 60; it was weird to have more in common with them than most people my age yet also encouraging that the “old guard” that spawned my generation wasn’t *totally* clueless, and they seemed to be encouraged by my presence as well. but the total evaporation of the age gap, the total non-heirarchical kinship despite our vastly varying experience was awesome. i really felt like i was playing for the same team despite our diversity of age and race, which is rare especially across generations. no creed to bind us or limit us, but for a shared sense of giving a darn and commitment to exploring ways to express it. good stuff.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood.”—John 1:1-5

This is the truth about Jesus, and the foundation of all truth. I pray that God would open all of our hearts and minds so that, through this truth, we could all be saved.

RELIGION
“Religion” is to the “World”, like a horrible infectious pandemic plague, that robs ‘peoples’ reasoning power and ‘converts’ them to ‘irrational’ robot-like mezmerized fools!
“Religion” accumulates wealth from every possible source, including school children’s pennies, inheritances, government gifts, and every type of investment; and, all dividends, being tax-free, ‘they’ re-invest for gains in other profit sources from which they continually amass great quantities of money.The money is then used to facilitate the spread of their discease via every possible means, including ‘buying’ lobbyists, and
purchasing all sorts of ‘media outlets’, such as Radio and TV stations, newspapers, magazines, and publishing companies. And those poor ‘irrational peoples’ and their progeny are, and have been surrounded, and are trapped in an ever tightening
‘gordian knot’ from which, without the benefit of our “rationality” they will continue to suffer the degradation of having to beg their ‘captors’ for forgiveness for their “original sin”, and
chance being raped as the cost of their atonement!

RE: Susan-28 & her comments #14657 and Andrew’s comments    
    #14684, both dated 7/21/06

Like Humanist Manifesto I & II, HM III has multiple signers, many of whom prefer different wording, connotations. etc. yet agreed
w. the overall essence of the finalized composition & signed to
support the document.  Your observations, Susan, are somewhat similar to those of critics who signed.  What’s obvious, however, is absence of supernatural nonsense, lack of contradictions (by which “sacred” texts are known), emphasis on objectivity & science, equality of all humans, etc. & yes, the evolutionary hypothysis (based on a multiplicity of observed facts in biology, comparative anatomy, geology. etc.), NOT on obvious biblical fables, dreams, hunches, errors, wishful thinking, yearning, etc.
Clearly, based on the history of humanism w. virtually no
“inhumanity to man”, peace prospects are far more promising
for secular humanism than is the case—the centuries of
atrocities—for the mythological nonsense of human-invented
supernaturalism (the combined delusions of reference, persecu-
tion and grandiosity—that “dtr. of hope & fear explaining to ignorance the nature of the unknowable”).  Thus I think, you too
would sign it!

To Andrew:  As one who shares the nontheism or skepticism of
both Harris & Dawkins, I submit that the emphasis of faith on
“evidence of things not seen” to favor existence of a “God” is far
more “boring” than that glory of science which unveils truth, has
augmented multiple discoveries, fostered the major advances of
modern medicine & technology & generally uplifted the human
condition.  On the other hand, a Supreme Being, drenched &
camouflaged in “faith”, is not, does not exist, is a mere figment
of human imagination, is human-invented and hence is subject to error.  What, other than known human traits or behavior, would explain the Allah, Yahweh, Trinity, Godhead & other differences among these allegedly “monotheistic” gods?  Like beauty, all are in the eyes [minds, wishes, intentions, etc.] of the beholder.  And like a “hell” & a “heaven” & a “satan”—a “god” does not exist, EXCEPT in human minds.  Yet history confirms that even false hope may & does supersede “no hope at all”, and
still a “god” was/is a nonentity & had/has nothing to do with either tragedy or triumph.  Nontheists don’t bother to “curse that which is not”, but many “believers” do.  Witness the world scene!  Also, consider why tsunami survivors (post-catastrophe) & victims (pre-demise) would praise or worship an omnipotent/omnibenevolent “god”.  And if they admitted that “all prayers die in the air which they uselessly agitate”, the bended-knees & verbiage would best be abandoned.  Nontheists in unison, “rest our case”, backed by the best & brightest of all time—who “competed w. eternity” and won, yet they were convinced at all times that, “Nothing but truth is immortal”.

Well done Mr. Harris,
I accept your way of thinking. Not until recently had I actualy made that same statement When I was asked, and responded that I was an atheist, the whole world just tumbled. As it was, the receptionist who was asking, gave me the dirtiest look, and as she leered at me, I felt like I was dirty and suffering from some dark evilness.

Throughout the ages, religeon has done nothing but seek to distort nature. What MAN naturally does, and has the ability to do on his own has been taken away from him. We are made to believe that without some heavenly entity interceding for us, we cannot survive. Well, look where this religion has taken us ! I grew up in a country where hate was the norm. If you were of a certain religion, we were taught to hate you, your family, and the street that you lived on.
Now for me, I am at peace and I depend on myself ONLY ! I must say, it is “heaven” to know one controls ones own thoughts. And therefore, ones own mind.

Re: Comment #14653 by susan 28 on 7/21

Susan, you like Truth because it is less personal to you than a God who cares about you.

Yet, what is more intimate and personal than Truth? Truth was involved at the moment of your conception at a quite intimate time for your parents. It was quite personal for you that the particular sperm and ovum were selected in a moment of Truth. Truth is with you as you perform your body functions. Truth is active in your pituitary when it secretes the juices that make you tick. Truth hovers over you in your sleep, while lurking, also, within a distant volcano erupting. Truth was active when your genome was designed to make you possible, and when it was assigned to give you personality. Try to imagine a time or place in your existence when Truth was not with you in the most intimate association.

Truth never took a recess.

It reminds me of the congregration where the preacher intoned, “God is peeeerfect! Everything is peeeerfect! All God’s chill’n is peeeeerfect!”  A hunchback in the back of the church stood up and shouted at the preacher, “What about me?”  Preacher, without a pause, intoned, “You is a peeeeerfect hunchback!”

In Truth, everything is what it is. What we call imperfection is deviation from a concept of a norm or expectation. But without your own ‘imperfections’ you would be someone else. At least, you would be a different you than you are with them.

I thank Truth for placing all that I need within my reach. I feel close to Truth when I contemplate my own life and existence. Truth brings dangers, and allows me to seek my place of safety. Truth allows me to take what I need and reject what I do not want or need. Truth even allows me to accept some things I do not need, but which give me additional comfort and joy.

I find Truth to be far more intimate and close to me than my closest friend or lover. Now that is personal.

I will never cease to be amazed at the tenacity with which christian believers cling to their faith.  A faith that, if they spent any real time objectively researching the facts of their religion, they would jettison as excess baggage.

In the end, atheists et al, have nothing to sell:  No pie in the sky gods, no afterlife, no heaven to be reunited with their loved ones.  All they have is reason and logic, and what has been learned from HUMAN history. 

Believers on the other hand, have to be able to prove everything.  You are the ones who are trying to sell everyone on the one god, on jesus, on the ressurection, on your perfect way of life.  And your steadfast beliefs are the cause of pain in the world. 

So I put it to you:  With all that is wrong in the world (our current middle east crisis included, with the chosen people no less), whistle up your god right now and get him down here to solve our myriad problems. No more criticizing atheists and others of non-belief, it’s time to ante up.  Get him down here right now.  And don’t bother to quote me the usual verse from the bible as an excuse.  This god of yours is an absentee parent.

Anything less, and it’s time for all of you to back off and take a long hard look at your belief system, and your non-existent god.

Re: Comment #14704 by Jonathan on 7/21

“It could be that there is no such thing as truth.”

I simply ask, how could that be true if there were no truth?

Frank - It could be that there is no such thing as truth. (It’s not real - it’s a dream) Sometimes an individual’s mind must remain in an undecided conflict. But we have a personal conscience with which to weigh the facts and arrive at a conclusion.
One can lie to others, but one should never lie to one’s self (so how do we jerk the lies out of one’s erroneous mindset ?
That is why some people say; I don’t believe anything I hear and only half of what I see.
Do my eyes deceive me?
How could I have been so wrong?
What a waste of time out of my personal existance.
Someone asked Gautama Siddartha; please Budda can you tell us the truth? He answered; I have reached a point in which I do not believe anything, at all. So we have a statue of Budda throwing both arms up into the air - obviously throwing all cares to the wind.
Jonathan

HASN’T THIS BEEN ANSWERED BEFORE?

Go debunk C.S. Lewis then come back and rant.

All of this Lennin and Lennon junk is 60’s retread.

I bought Sam’s last book and it needed more diatribe.

I hope this one is better and attempts to counter the responses he knows are out there.

Com’mon… Is God real, How could a good God, etc., are old attacks.  Earn that PEN award and come upwith something original.

Simply denying God exists is boring.

Make the case He’s DUI or unworthy of His throne, but that He’s not even there?  That’s like the closed-eye kid with his fingers in his ears yelling LA LA LA LA.

Easy to do, but not a very valid response to the evidence everyone knows is there… but cannot deal with the logical progression after acceptance of the supernatural.

I’d rather hear Sam take on God like Satan in the Book of Job than merely whine about suffering in the world. 

Accuse Him, but don’t say He’s not even there.

It’s rude.

I know you didn’t appreciate it in the lunch room in Jr. High!

Re: Comment #14663 by Jonathan on 7/21

“Truth is only so; when it is proven to be absolutely proven by scientific analysis - as a Scientific Fact.”

This is a common belief. But, science deals with matters of fact, not Truth, per se. Matters of fact are events and descriptions. Popper identified scientific inquiry as dealing with what could be negated. That qualifies under Hume as ‘matter of fact’. Truth is absolute certainty in the Hume dichotomy. Truth qualifies because it cannot be conceived that there is no Truth. True or not true are matters of fact. Though it can be conceived that something is not true, it cannot be conceived that it could be true that there is no such thing as truth.

You make a common error in confusing true with truth. Something cannot be true or not true without truth. But, truth would exist as truth, if nothing else were true. If there ever was or ever is a condition such that nothing is true except that it is true that there is nothing but truth, truth would be the only existence. In the dichotomy of true/not true, something else and truth is the only other possibility. And, it cannot be true that there is no truth without it being true that there is nothing but truth, which is impossible. Even an omnipotent God could not eliminate an omnipotent God. That is your “essence of reality”.

This is one of the most beautiful, elegant, and long overdue theses on the ridiculous notion of the contemporary god, (and I happen to be quite a spiritual person.)

How odd that I can have an unshakeable faith in a loving energy in our universe ... and agree with just about every consonant and vowel in the above discourse.

Good work, Mr. Harris.

To all who are confused about TRUTH.

As I see it - a statement or reference to anything “as being truth - plainly True.” (not fiction)
Truth is only so; when it is proven to be absolutely proven by scientific analysis - as a Scientific Fact. (the essence of reality)
Not particularly owned or defined as truth by emotional and religious, wishful thinking concoctions - truth being different from one version to another as best suits individuals.
It is only - True (or) False
To make anything interesting one must “Lie” a little - that is why religions are always based on absolute lies. What Fools these mortals be.
Jonathan

btw Dave:

i read Humanist Manifesto III and did like it but it was a bit ambiguous, as with its embracing of “beauty” as someone here mentioned, as well as things like “strving for the common good”, which i’m also all for though some people have a pretty twisted (imo) vision of what that means. i think he meant it as “give aid and comfort to the poor”, but the assumption of that as “common good” has been roundly attacked by neo-cons et al. my own definiition of common good is hammering the dna of every carbon-based lifeform on the planet into something so vastly different than what it is now that we’d scarcely recognise “Nature” in its current form, which is something the Humanists seem to reject. such is the ambiguity of such terms, though i think “as much happiness for each individual on the planet as possible” is a good place to start and we can hash out the details as we learn and grow. if that’s what he meant, then i’m right on board. but with evolution cranking out motivated individuals who believe that not allowing them to impose their will on others is an imposition on *them* (i call it the “bullies’ rights” movement) combined with the herd instinct, i don’t know how much hope there is. societites seem always ultimately to evolve into ant-hills despite all efforts to the contrary.

re: Frank’s #14603: “I thought “dillattante” was one of your special rules of spelling.”

hehehe “too shay” *wink* 

“I hope you are not as the perfidious goat who choked to death trying to swallow a doughnut hole. Don’t choke on a name or a word.”

perfidious *ss is more like it but as i said i grok the concept, i guess my concern is over common vernacular understanding (correct or otherwise) of God as a separate personage and the social unrest that causes that makes me cringe. as the Christian God said to its believers (via “prophets” of course), “My name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you!”. therefore i think impersonal terms like “Truth” would avoid the drama that comes from personifying Deities. as soon as it becomes personal it attains a Will, and then the game of follow-the-leader begins, and we all know where that leads.. so when i hear the word “God”, the intellectual discourse of people like ourselves notwithstanding, i think of the vernacular meaning of “separate being with a will that must be obeyed and can only be verbally conveyed by prophets whose word carries the force of law”.

conversely, i think religious pundits might have a harder time selling their agenda with the phrase, “you must obey me because ‘Truth’ said so”, or “my word is Truth”; the former sounding absurd because Truth is not a being and the latter requiring trust in the person saying it; a trust which, because it is being solicitied by a human, must be earned as opposed to simply being “accepted” because “God said so”; and human truths must be logically defended, as you have successfully defended your Truth theory to me. “revealed” truths, on the other hand, may be pulled from our arses with impunity.

the fact is that people - and not just perfidious *sses like myself - *do* get hung up on words - and twist them - which is why i think we should strive to express ourselves in the most direct, commonly-understood terms possible; this coming from someone who minces words for fun, but when it comes to the fate of nations i straighten up and fly right, such as when i write representatives and the like.

back to my original question though: what does objective Truth have to do with the subjective moral proscriptions and even diet restrictions of religious dogma? what does Truth have to do with going to church on sunday to worship an idol?

that seems to be where religion blows up: it states something like “our religion embraces Truth; it also says be nice to each other; it also says no pork and/or no fish on friday, so if you eat fish on friday, you’re against being nice to people and are a spreader of lies because our religion is about Truth and being nice to people and it says no fish on friday”. kind of a poison-pill thing, like the proverbial rider on the appropriations bill; if you’re against the rider you must be against the bill. people use the same tactics in their politics as they do in their sacred texts. the inventor of the paperclip knew not what he’d wrought..

seems to me that “Truth is God” could fit on an index card, as could “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. those would seem to render the remainder of their respective sacred texts redundant, except that would negate the tribalism and force people to look inward for their identity .. i find it no coincidence that a Christian movement is called “Identity”. that’s what religion’s about, despite its protests; objectivity has nothing to do with it.

Re: Comment #14572 by Lin on 7/20

No Lin, we are not referring to the same thing. You mean belief, which can be whatever strikes your fancy and induces you to commit your mind to a tenacious hold on that mindset. By truth, I mean what is outside my mind, or the mind of any physical being, which cannot be altered in any way by any physical, mental, or providential intervention. Mentally perceived probability is included in the perception and unalterable, though subject to a good educated guessing game by sapient beings, such as man.

Truth is represented in the mind as coded processes called thinking. The truth is not the coded process any more than the computer program I use to type this response is my thinking. I use this medium to communicate to you and whoever reads about what goes on in my mind. What goes on in my mind represents my coded communication with Universal Truth to access meaning of being and existence. I cannot give that to you. I can only urge you to approach that with your own mind. You cannot approach it through my mind nor through any other medium of access to reality. Your own mind is the only route for you, and it seems to imply to you that your truth is different from my truth. Since truth is outside our mind and control, it cannot be yours or mine, but Truth Universal, accessible to all who have the capacity to comprehend it, whether human, or some other sapient being on this, or another planet in this, or another galaxy in this, or another time and place. Minute details of what is true, as well as, complex coincidence of true elements seem beyond the capacity of this biological computer immersed in a salt solution, called a brain, to process.

As I said in an earlier comment in this forum, Truth is the acme of all being. There is no non-truth. That is, there is no concept that does not resolve as true. That may seem strange as you can remind me that some statements, assumptions or beliefs are not true. But, it is true that they are not true. That is how it is perceived that truth rules what is not true.  The set of all mental concepts that are not true is a universal null set encoded within the mind of a sapient being. The encoding of the null set of not-true is the access to knowledge of what is not true as ‘true that it is not true’. Not-true can only be usefully encoded as something true. This, not that, is the way we differentiate among concepts. The simplest concept is true. Thus Truth, which is one, is The God. All that is true flows from Truth Universal. Any concept that is true is the simplest and most direct manifestation of Truth Universal.

Many look for a complex and incomprehensible God that forbids scrutiny. A God who can perform any miracle and defy any physical condition or being is the God of most religions. Just believe in a ‘revealed’ God. But, the God most people believe in cannot be revealed, does not reveal itself, and might punish you if you reveal what you know about that God to other sapient beings, if it is not as represented by God’s Vicar on Earth, another human who claims access to truth that the rest of us cannot acquire.

Your God is in your mind, not a concept of a transcendent being that would very well exist without you, but as your truth, that you own lock stock and barrel and nobody can take it away from you. You would neither sell your concept nor give it away. If you are a Priest, Pope, preacher,  imam, or other guru, you can rent your knowledge of that God to other people, give away the use of the knowledge, or conceivably abandon it as useless.

The capacity to work with and around Truth Universal, without what we recognize as thinking, is a lower life form. The capacity to think about it and to contemplate the alternatives and to chose to act with a conscious purpose constitutes a sapient being who functions at a higher level of cognizance, though some physiological functions are not directly conscious to the discriminatory mind.

Re: Comment #14470 by susan 28 on 7/20

I thought “dillattante” was one of your special rules of spelling.

I hope you are not as the perfidious goat who choked to death trying to swallow a doughnut hole. Don’t choke on a name or a word.

God is not that bad as a name or a concept. It is the baggage she carries, or is it he, or it?

In Arabic, Allah combines the definite article, ‘Al’, with ‘lah’ to imply one and only one God. The word ‘illah’, is any god, which we would render with a lower case ‘g’. ‘La illah Allah’ means ‘No god but The (one and only) God’. Allah, in Arabic, is used for The God in any monotheistic religion. Arabic renditions of the Christian scriptures and the Old Testament all use Allah for God throughout.

The key is the concept, not the word or name. Nothing beats Anselm’s “God is that than which nothing greater could be conceived.” There are atheists, but no ‘atruthists’.

RE: Comment #14394 by Frank Goodman, Sr.  on 7/19 at 6:26 pm

Yes, Frank.  Truth is universal.  Universally personal.  It is an ideal - like beauty.

What beauty means to me - and what beauty means to you are no doubt widely different things; however, you cannot say your vision of beauty is “more beautiful” than mine nor I yours.

Works the same way with truth.  Your truth is not my truth.  Einstein’s truth is not my truth.

My truth is based on my own particular set of experiences - as is yours.

I seek no truth other than my own.  Try as you might…seek as you might - you still have your very own truth.

Hence my statement - there cannot be only ONE truth - not until there is only one human being.

RE:  Comments of Jonathan #14426 (7/19), Wonderwheel #14413 (7/19) & Susan-28 #14169 (7/18)

Sam Harris has instigated an ongoing exchange of ideas, but the
most significant development from our dialogue, in my view, should be (1) acknowledging fact or reality-constrained truth and (2) agreeing on or suggesting resolutions for ending the
centuries-old sectarian conflicts, disputes, wars, genocide, etc.
(faith SHOULD end if the flow of human blood must always be its
partner—not omnibenevolence, omnipotence, omniscience, etc. but in perpetual recapitulation of crimes instead).

I suggest to Jonathan re: #14426, that atheists, skeptics, non- theists, & agnostics also must “come out of the closet” if peace is to prevail in the 21st century, as humanism’s leaders now
recommend.  No longer should morality be “hijacked by faith”,
as Dr. Paul Kurtz has emphasized.

Comments #14413 by Wonderwheel, with Buddhist emphasis &
disagreement or concurrence with various statements by Harris
are thought-provoking, but I wonder if W would prefer fostering
worldwide dissemination of Buddhist ideas or non-supernatural
ideas instead of the ideals of Humanist Manifesto III of Dr. Kurtz
et.al. (presuming that Sam’s Atheist Manifesto lacks W’s full
support).  Centuries of “faith & infidel” conflict + the perpetual
Middle East turmoil seem to have exceeded the human tolerance level already—w/o more of the same online—yet I agree, a
variety of creeds & creeedless views may be meaningful.

Susan 28, re: #14169:  Although I have insufficient clinical info to give you a proper label, your government & 3rd party payors for healthcare are known to steer patients toward GP or family
practice care & AWAY from specialists.  Moreover, even some MD’s & DO’s, of all ages, are known to disregard all that’s neurological, psychiatry being favored, but insurance companies earn more by deliberately abandoning patients who have emotional disorders (w. your government’s approval!). So,seeing a competent neurologist, interested in hereditary, endocrine & metabolic or genetic entities (where pediatric neurologists often excel but adult neurologists also may be experts) may prove to be helpful.  By that approach the most appropriate brain studies are more likely to be ordered, OR even excluded to obviate costs of “trial & error” (which occurs far more than CMS & HHS “experts” realize).

MBobMean, comment #14338:

to just point out a few things…

sam does not employ a logical fallacy.  The Problem of Evil, as it is often called, does not either.  as you stated, you think its logically inconsistant to argue that because god is loving, bad things cant happen.  well, this really just hinges on YOUR definition of “love” - which apparently doesnt involve a concern for well-being…  there is nothing logically inconsistent with arguing that love is not just affection for another, but also deep concern and charity for another’s well-being.

the POE, when worded correctly, simply points out what many refuse to understand - and that is that if there is an all-powerful being who loves you, then he would prevent you from experiencing suffering.  we all know that this is obviously not the case, as a recent Harvard study shows concerning the efficacy of prayer. 

you are trying to argue that just because god loves you, it does not logically follow that he would try to help you.  well, my friend, if this is your argument, you are only bolstering what is obvious to the atheist - that god, though defined by many as “loving”, does not actually care about you. 

a simple example follows: if your mother was walking down the street, and you (who happen to be the strongest man on earth) were standing 5 feet from her as she was approached by a man who was about to mug her, would you help her?  You are arguing here that just becasue you love your mother does not mean that you would help her???  What definition of “love” are you employing then?  I think this is obvious to most who really do love someone - one would undoubtedly stop the mugger from harming their mother - especially if it was a guarantee that neither of you would be hurt by doing so. 

moving on… you then say:
“The idea that we could have a god who would allow us to be what ever we choose and then, alternately to say as Harris here does that he should intervene willy nilly is inane and silly. In the absence of evil you cannot quantify anything that you could call good. “

so god cannot give us free will and also intervene at the same time?  wrong.  these two propositions are not mutually exclusive in any logical sense…  given our free will, god would not be performing some logical impossibility by taking cancer from a patients body.  in other words, we are able to have free will and be helped out whenever possible - which in god’s case is possible ALL THE TIME, as he is omnipotnent. 

also, there is no significance to saying that good could not be quantified without the existence of evil.  “good” and “evil” are just words we use to describe things that are pleasent and unpleasent.  So, if the world was filled with purely pleasent things - its not as if life as we know it could not exist.

Myth buster;
[ Eating flesh, in China ]
A random report of cannibalism in China in 2000 AD

Not only flesh - people eat, beetles, grass, worms, ants, “manna” which is a gelatin like substance, that surfaces where ever there are large deposits of minerals, underground - oil, etcetera.
Anything they can find - when they are starving!
The report might be a malicious rumor (or) it could be an isolated Case, in fact. However; there was a tribe in India that actually ate people. Scouring European territories, which is only a hop and a jump, from India - an invading ungodly people, actually drank wine and blood from the hollowed skulls of their Victims.
History recorded - this Vicious primitive tribe, would tie their victims to a stake, slice strips of flesh from their live bodies, roast them and eat them, like bacon, while their live victims watched.
Their ancient practice, long since discontinued ! They are still there and they smilingly boast; We ! Are the ones, who eat people !  Bizarre; that religious people “facetiously” make church ceremony, symbolically drinking blood and eating flesh, calling themselves “Christians”.
Sometimes; wise, knowledgeable, intelligent people, deny themselves the truth. In preference some continue their Religious practices for cause (holding the truth) for themselves only. It is quite common of Catholic priests, as well as all the protestant “Prophets of doom.” They continue to live and worship, and build fortunes, within the confines of the entire make believe falsehoods, and religious fairy tales.
In the Catholic church - only the priest drinks the wine!  Catholic people don’t even get a whiff’ of it. What they get ! Is a good feeling of “Euphoria” from the smell and smoke emitted by the exotic “Frank incense” burned, at the altar. This dopamine incense burning practice began at Hindu and Oriental Buddhist temples.
The “Ecumenical council” of the Vatican, are descendants of the Tartars, Attila the Hun, and Genghis Kahn, and his grand son, Bahtu Kahn, therefore Dominican “Vatican.” (The Vatican Money market etc.)
Descendants are still there, in the “Tartar Republic.” The Tartars, in their time, were, the largest grain producing and exporting, market, in the world.  They founded the twin Cities - “Buda” and “Pest” across the river from each other. (now called Budapest) They effectively established the Central European Market in France.
Pope John Paul’s real name is “Karol Vojtyla.”  As my last name is “Arabic” much more so, than Spanish. (the ancient town of Sandoval - means Holy Valley - which is now, Valencia Spain.
Worst of it, is; that the Last Supper ceremony, is done in the name of “The Father, the Son, and The Holy Ghost.”  Like India’s “Brahma Vishnu & Siva”. The Catholic prime evil, is the Vatican money market, in Vatican City, in Rome Italy.
If all this were not so; the Pope would not have to ride in a bullet and bomb proof “Pope mobile.” Too many people know the truth and they don’t like being dominated by (Dominican, Bahtu Kahn) a religious deity, that practices social imposition, among the poorest most destitute people of the World.
In deep Theosophy studies of religions - Catholic priests, invariably find’ or stumble, onto the truth, while preparing for many years, for the priesthood. So, it is clear - they know the truth’ better than anybody.
Cannibalism in China may be an isolated case!
But here in America, religious people (religiously and methodically) do the Cannibal Ceremony (at least - once a week!  Unleavened bread, and wine assimilating human flesh & blood !  “The ceremony of the last supper.”
The last supper of blood and flesh, was Instituted by “Sheesh” Jesus, (not his real name) whose religious dogma emanated from India, as historically recorded in the Hindu “Atharva Veda” (Divine knowledge) known as the book of “Abraham.” Moving the first “A” in Abraham, to the last, as is done in Hindu language, Abraham becomes “Brahma” (accordingly) Brahma, is the Hindu God, creator of the Universe. The Hindu scriptures, are composed of 18 books, 18 “Vedas”.  These books contain all the biblical stories, as reduced to one single bible. Including the Lord’s prayer. (in India, called, The Kaddish)
With no further interest or research, religious fanatics, immediately “deny all this” in its entirety.
Refusing to “disbelieve” is actually “resistance to change.”  It may take several years or never/ever, to undo the religious mental fixation - pre positioned by a religious mindset. - Religious indoctrination (with brain washing).

I only read and write in search of world peace - with knowledge and understanding. Doing research among my six sets of Encyclopedias, several Bibles, plus, my personal library - I also - Frequently stumble unto truths, which I am not even looking for. The last supper - eating bread and drinking wine - assimilating human Flesh and Blood, is an abomination; it is a sin against humanity. 
Contribution by Jonathan - Jonathan’s World Peace Journal

I apologize if someone else has already addressed this, but none of the statistics in the Manifesto are cited. From what source (or sources) were they gleaned?

While religion can certainly be a source of violence, one could speculate that those who are so inclined will rationalize such belligerence with whatever is at their disposal. In some or many cases, religion may simply be a factor or even just an excuse, rather than the sole cause of violent action.

Generally well-written piece, though.

“Faith and reason are at home together when we don’t turn to an image of God or Buddha outside of ourselves by which to identify ourselves, but we turn to our mind to discover the identity of the one who is within the doors hearing the knocking.”

i like that, it imparts some sense of self-responsibility, as opposed to the schizm of a separate personage calling the shots; the ol’
“hey if it was up to me i’d let you go, but God sez i gotta kill ya” thing which makes me suspect mythic dogma as a symptom of a lack of self-integration (BPD) at best and denial at worst. 

re: Harris: i think we have a terminology issue here, i think he means “faith” and “religion” as the same thing. so when he says there is no God he means “myths aren’t literally true”. Sam would probably accept the “Truth is God” thing, if he didn’t choke on the word “God” (as i do too). but it seems to me that Sam would probably accept the notion of an Einsteininan universal truth.

(relieved that no-one called me on the
“dillattante” thing after bragging about my spelling, pride cometh before the fall, hehe).

Re: Comment #14375 by susan 28

Truth is! Or Truth IS!

What about, ‘IS Truth?’

No matter how you cut it, the name, God, excites more people than does the term ‘truth’. The absence of a real concept of God, suggests that we turn to truth absolute, to find an anchor for our belief, faith, and actions.

When Moses asked God, of the burning bush, what he should tell his people what God is, God answered that he should just tell the Children of Israel that, “I am that I am.” That is a reflexive in English for the same in Aramaic, or whatever language Moses spoke. Narrowly translated, it means “I exist.” Colloquially, it could mean, “None of your damn business, just do as I say.”

I took the phrase, “Truth is God” from Ghandi, who used it. Ghandi said, “There is no god higher than truth.” The rest is construction of the justifications for the tautology. For more of my earlier thoughts, go to http://www.fdgsr.com/per/ or http://fdgsr.com/per/believer.html

There are millions of Atheists throughout the world’s nations.
It just so happens that Atheists do no go around knocking on doors to converte others to our intelligent and determined way of thinking.
Atheists fare better - when they keep quiet about it.
jonathan

Reply to Sam Harris’ “An Atheist Manifesto”
http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/

First, a somewhat sophomoric joke:

Q: What do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with an atheist?
A: Someone who comes to your door for no reason at all.

*

There is a meaning in the madness of that joke for those with ears to hear.  Who comes to your six doors and for what reason?

*

This is a response from a Buddhist who feels that both theism and atheism are one-sided views, both part correct from their sides but both therefore part wrong. 

I certainly agree with Sam Harris about some of the inconsistencies of religious belief and the downright violence of conduct based on the absurd premise of taking religious myth as fact, still, in my mind he goes too far in throwing out the baby of reality with the baptismal bath water.  Yes it is obvious to me, as he says, “that much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy,” still that does not confirm any atheist conviction nor does is guarantee that atheists know any better how run a country or avoid atheist taboos and superstitions.

The core problem is that both theists and atheists don’t speak the same language. When either theists or atheists get control of state power, if they are zealots and fundamentalists (yes there are fundamentalist atheists such as totalitarian-minded communists) they will use that state power to oppress others who disagree with them. This connection between fundamentalist theists and atheists can be seen in Smith’s comment, “While fundamentalists justify their religious beliefs with extraordinarily poor evidence and arguments, at least they make an attempt at rational justification.” 

Atheists believe that rational language is all that is needed, so they ignore the sources of conflict in the human imagination that arise from the deep image-making roots of consciousness.  Theists on the other hand tend to believe that irrational feelings, along with the imaginings that make sense of those feelings, may be taken literally as presented to their consciousness, and not only taken literally by oneself, but should be adopted by others who may even be being moved by their own feelings and imaginings in other directions. 

By saying “One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world’’s faith.” Smith shows that he doesn’t understand the well springs of faith nor does he seem understand the difference between faith and beliefs.  Beliefs can be shaken and changed or given up. But faith is lost or found in a different context than belief. Faith is what leads a person to consider what is going on in life on the basis of birth and death.  Faith is what leads a person to question catastrophes and their meaning for human life.  If that questioning doesn’t lead to an experience of awakening, then it is the fault of beliefs getting in the way, not the faith. 

For example, Smith says,”people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering.”  That is erroneous. It is people of belief who assure one another that God is not responsible, because that is their belief.  People of faith don’t have such assurances about God and their faith leads them to search while in the condition of not having any assurances.  Belief creates assurances, faith opens the mind regardless of or in spite of the assurances of belief.  People of faith experience what God’s responsibility means without any assurance that God will meet or satisfy their picture of the characteristics for God.  Faith is why the mystics of all religions have no quarrels, belief is why the true believers have quarrels with other religions or with atheists. 

The Biblical God is definitely a fiction, but it is a mythic fiction that arises from the inherent archetypes of the mind, including the dark, mysterious, and profound areas of the mind called the unconscious.  Any atheist who thinks such a fiction can be taken off the air like a T.V. sit-com or drama knows nothing about the grip of the archetypes on the emotions and imaginings.  Smith wants to reassure himself by saying “As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor” but that statement is simply not true as for “we all”.  It is a flippant denial that presumes the God of Abraham is not Zeus or Thor.  It doesn’t recognize the tremendous archetypal influence that the “father God” has even today though he goes by a different name in Christian, Jewish, or Islamic circles.  Simply changing the name doesn’t make the God go away or make him into a different God.  To paraphrase Jesus, to know a God you have to look beyond the name to the fruits, that is, to the function and activity the God takes in the realm of human dynamics and relationships.

Smith assumes that “The incompatibility of reason and faith has been a self-evident feature of human cognition and public discourse for centuries.” However, as Siddhartha Gautama Buddha demonstrated 2500 years ago in his explorations of human cognition, there is no fundamental incompatibility of reason and faith. The incompatibility is between reasonable and unreasonable beliefs, or diametrically opposed beliefs that both seem reasonable to their bearers.  Smith confirms this by saying, “Either a person has good reasons for what he strongly believes or he does not.” Of course, Smith is the arbiter and judge for what is a “good reason.”
                             
Smith correctly notes a dangers in the observation that “Religion is the one endeavor in which us-them thinking achieves a transcendent significance.”  Still this confuses religion with transcendence.  For example, the transcendent significance of nationalism and patriotism are ignored.

Essentially, Smith presumes that religion has either no reasons or bad reasons for its belief and atheism has all good reasons for its beliefs because he defines what is or is not reasonable to meet his criteria.  This type of self-serving premise is unreasonable as it assumes the conclusion..

As stated earlier, in the social realm the conflicts between beliefs arise when someone believes their beliefs should be socially enforced on others.  In other words, when someone doesn’t accept that pluralism is the reasonable basis for society.  Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, has said what makes clear sense to me: that in the social context, religion should be a personal affair and governing society should be on humanitarian pluralist grounds that do not oppress the individual’s religion.  Here’s how he says it.

“Therefore, for the individual, the concept of one religion and one truth is very important.  Without this, one cannot develop genuine faith and follow it faithfully.  With regard to the community, we obviously need the concept of several religions and several truths — pluralism.  This is both necessary and relevant.  This is the way to overcome contradictions between several religions and several truths and one religion and one truth.  Thus, I believe that one has one religion and one truth on the individual level, and one has several religions and several truths on the community level.  Otherwise it is difficult to solve this problem.” (from Live in a Better Way by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, pp. 132-133.)
     
The countries that Smith praises as least religious are in fact pluralistic societies that allow for the variety of the nonreligious as well as the religious, which reasonably accounts for their successes, rather than their being nonreligious countries. 

Yes, I agree with Harris that “If we want to uproot the causes of religious violence we must uproot the false certainties of religion.”  That is a logically circular argument. Likewise if we want to uproot the causes of violence having nothing to do with religion we must uproot the false certainties having nothing to do with religion.  It is false certainties framed in us-them contexts of every kind, e.g., religious, tribal, ethnic, national, etc., that lead to violence, not religion per se which is only one arena where false certainties are the cloth that people wrap themselves within.
       
When someone comes to the door of your senses what false certainties do we have about them? Perhaps the certainty that they are an “other” is one that is false? Do we presume that God or Buddha will look like one thing or another and fulfill our expectations? If the knocker at the door doesn’t meet that picture do we reject God or Buddha?  What if the greatest mistake we make as human beings is to presume with false certainty that God or Buddha is an object outside the door who comes knocking for a reason? 

God or Buddha isn’t a person with characteristics to be identified like a suspect in a line up. Faith and reason are at home together when we don’t turn to an image of God or Buddha outside of ourselves by which to identify ourselves, but we turn to our mind to discover the identity of the one who is within the doors hearing the knocking.

Re: Comment #14365 by Lin on 7/19

The truth of your religion depends upon the condition that what you believe is true. If not true, your faith supports nothing, but perhaps your comfort until you die when it will not matter anymore.

It there is a God, it is true that there is God. If it is not true that there is a God, it is true that there is not. And vice versa.

Truth is universal. Truth is stronger than what is believed in any system or discipline. Your faith serves to keep you comfortable when in doubt. The faith of Islam is supported by five pillars. The first is, in fact, a pedestal - No other God but The God. The rest are public demonstrations to announce belief and faith. Christians have that same support in that they trust their books of the Bible. Jews also trust their ancestors and the authors of the Holy Writings. Buddhists trust the word of the Buddha. I trust in what is true, whether I know it or not. Like Einstein, I do not believe that God shoots craps with the universe. I do not have to know all that is true, in order to accept Truth as God.

Re: Comment #14325 by eben stevens on 7/19 at 12:01 pm

tisk,tisk !

i wonder if the author of #13 593 has noticed

#3520 ?

Comment #3520 by eben stevens on 2/11 at 8:43 am

...on miracles…
the only merical ever wrought by religion is that intelligent, rational people should believe in it.

Answer: Yes! True.

“Errors are deviations from a curve of expectations.”

  Brilliant! Hmmm, or curve of intent perhaps? Either way I love it.. Think that’ll get some Lizard Love.. Proper syntax for an entire post in your honor!

  Just one thing, Frank: Although “Truth is God” is a perfectly sensible metaphor, the notion itself seems more logical/rational than “faith” related. Why not nix the meta-tag? It could be shortened to simply “Truth IS” - which itself, though, ummm.. true.. seems like stating the obvious and of little practical use - but it is self-evident that everything else would be logically subordinate to that, which would seem to render religion moot since religion is subjective. In accepting it I don’t view it as accepting “Islam”, but simply a logical premise.

  So the question is: How do you derive all the dogma, prohibitions/proscriptions and all-around *rules* of *any* religion, let alone Islam, from a simple acknowledgment that “Truth exists and precedes all”? How do you get the quantitative “certainty” of Islam from the qualitative “fact” of Truth? And why call Truth God? Why not just call it “Truth”? Or truth.. no need to inflate Truth’s ego (that self-important b*stard ).

WARNING: Personal Discussion Tacked Onto On-Topic Post Like a Scool Prayer Rider Tacked Onto a House Appropriations Bill:

  The Aspie hypothesis is just that, of both some psychologists I’ve seen as well as my own understanding of myself based on personal experience, and the fact that autism runs through my family like a mad river. But I’ve never been CAT-scanned, so I don’t know whether or not the “CAT” would catch a “fissure” , however, I have a first cousin with full-blown autism on mom’s side and one recently (neurologically) diagnosed Aspie whom we’ve always suspected on dad’s side, so the dice were loaded for me but I’ve never been “wired up” because I’m normal enough to pass, basically,  and in my childhood Asperger’s wasn’t a household word, which is why my cousin only now got diagnosed. I wouldn’t mind getting scanned just to put the matter to rest but it’s a moot point for all practical purposes. But understanding it does give me insight, so cool beans. Supposedly also “borderline personality” is often co-morbid with it and that pathology seems to apply to me as well and there were circumstances in my infancy which are textbook precursors.

  Can you say “intellectualisation”? Hey it cools my jets and who knows oneday my petulant dillattante butt might make the breakthrough of the century.. having delusions of manure here..

Everyone’s truth is different - that’s a fact.

Therefore, there can be no ONE TRUTH - until there is just one human being.

Religion is the epitome of groupthink.  Groupthink is the most dangerous weapon in the human arsenal.

How utterly useless a cause to impress upon others to dispell their truth for another.  To make it a goal is deplorable.

It’s the equivalent of reducing a gourmet smorgasbord to a bowl of undercooked oatmeal that’s been left out in the sun for three days to ripen. 

Mixing politics and religion is tantamount to packaging that oatmeal and selling it as the latest, greatest health food on the market which experts recommend you eat three servings of a day to be fit and insurable.

Grossly unpalatable.

Human beings have the ability to remove themselves (and their mythologies) from the palette of nature altogether - and nature itself would be no less beautiful, viable, diverse or intelligent.

Well, Sam you’ve got a nice logical fallacy there, as you did in your book which I read last summer.

That because God is loving bad things can’t occur.

That fallacy is the “Problem of Evil” and like any good sophist, you’re as wed to it as any evangelical fruitcake is to their mistake belief that the bible is inerrant.

Reading this stuff or reading say Jerry Falwell is to turn a coin over and over and over so quickly that one can no longer determine who is heads or tails, and to realize it really does not matter.

The problem of Evil is a tinker toy of thought, a panty raid of reason.  It is neither a proof, nor has it any probative value any longer.  It is obviated entirely by free agency.

The POE is a model, you control the data, you get the results you want.  I control it, I win.

IN that sense, it’s meaningless.

Sam’s shocking, horrific scenarios only confirm free will, not the value or lack of Sam for religion. 

The idea that we could have a god who would allow us to be what ever we choose and then, alternately to say as Harris here does that he should intervene willy nilly is inane and silly.  In the absence of evil you cannot quantify anything that you could call good.

Sam’s premise is also only interesting if this is the only life we have to look forward to:  if this life is all that matters, than death and suffering are too horrific to matter. 

Well, actually, they aren’t.  If you follow this entire logic them death and pain are meaningless if there is no god, do you know why?

Because if the individual is the sum and measure of all things than pain and death are only interesting in terms of the self, they cannot be shared or experienced externally and are therefore irrelevant in dialogue.

Also, at the point a being dies they ceased to exist since they are really only relevant to themselves and in fact, one has to ask:

In Sam’s view can he determine when a person dies if they ever existed at all?  Not really, not completely because the measure for that life is now gone.

So how can we assume that the world is important and we are interesting?

Well, we only are if there exists an objective, third party observer.  In the absence of same, life is meaningless so trying to get everyone hopped up over his horror stories about raped babies is simply inconsistent with his own logic and philosophy and wholly irrational based on what he professes to believe.

Mean Bob Mean

tisk,tisk !

  i wonder if the author of #13 593 has noticed

  #3520 ?

Re: Comment #14151 by Dave Summers, M.D.  on 7/18

I spent about 40 years of my life in medical laboratories. I associated with a parade of physicians and nurses, as well as, administrators and boards of directors, commanding officers, and other charlatans who paraded their expertise and errors before ‘God’ (Who is Truth).

Every day we swept up the diagnostic errors from the laboratory floor and incinerated the evidence as infectious waste. We, in the laboratory, judged our results by analyzing our statistics in terms of sensitivity, specificity, predictive value, error, standard deviations, coefficients of variation, and plain stupid mistakes. We fired the inattentive, proud, arrogant, potty mouthed, and dynamic malcontents, and kept the indolent, submissive, passive aggressive, and persistent workers. We processed errors every day as though they were our main concern.

Susan 28 is within the range of standard deviation of normality, though she is far from the mean and nasty certainty of normal or abnormal. That is why she is ‘borderline’. The distribution curve of glucose in a diabetic encroaches upon the normal distribution curve for the non-diabetic. Borderline is a guess and by God assumption that we do not know for sure. There is no badge of identity for Susan that she is ‘borderline’ Asperger’s any more than there is a certainty that the doctor is right because he graduated from medical school with a 75 average and passed the state board exam after the third try.

If it were not for deviations and mistakes, lawyers would starve, or work for a living.

We, as humans, live in a world run by Truth, who is God. We submit to Truth by choice, or by God. Errors are not mistakes. Errors are deviations from a curve of expectations. We climb the mountains of information and reach the pinnacle of certainty only by avoiding the insecure foothold on fact and falling into the chasm of error. When we reach the summit, there is nowhere else to go. It is heaven on earth. To be at the top of esteem of others is a rare spot of comfort, and insecurity.

I love the ‘frankness’ of Susan 28. It gives me comfort in my old age that someone comprehends what I say, though with a disclaimer that she is not sure. It beats the demand of the fanatic, that I prove that Truth is God.

It reminds me of the story about the preacher who went to Heaven and at the gate found a long line awaiting processing of credentials. He strode up to the front and reminded the clerk that he was a preacher of the gospel and does not need to wait. She told him that everyone is equal before God and that he would have to wait in line. About that time a figure in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging out of his pocket strode right through the gate. The clerk nodded and and went on with the tasks. The preacher again approached and asked about the ‘doctor’ who went in without processing. She said, “That is not a ‘doctor’, that is God. Sometimes He thinks He is a ‘Doctor’.

Dr Dave: i’m “borderline personality” not as in “uncertain” but as in “unconfident” resulting in a desire to see everything in black and white and a dislike of ambiguity leading to a tendency to “split” things and people into categories of “all good” or “all bad”, ostensibly due to some unsatisfied need for maternal reassurance in infant/toddler stage of development. i do indeed have this trait, which makes it hard to function in a life which is basically defined by compromise and uncertainty.

so i crave certainty, which may be why it took longer than it should have for me to reject religion and why i continue to cling to the paradigm even though i know better. i’m susceptible to the lure of easy answers (mommy make everything ok etc.. childhood equivalent of “revealed knowledge”?) even though i know there aren’t any.

this leads me to think maybe “Borderline Personality Disorder” (which if caused by what they say it is could apply to all of us to one degree or another) could be a cause of religious fanaticism. the greater the BPD the the lower the sense of self-integration and the greater the desire for a “big parent in the sky”, and the greater the rage against anyone who tries to burst that bubble.

Sam, of course faith is not rational.  Faith is a kind of stepping off the edge—more like what we think of as hope—trusting that the power of the universe is benevolent.  No need to step off the edge if you can explain everything rationally, now, is there? I think the problem is with those who claim to have faith, but try to explain their faith “rationally.”  Would you not agree that there are some things in life that cannot be explained rationally?  Or do you perhaps make a “god” out of reason in the same way that you accuse religious persons of doing with faith?  You seem to lump religion, dogma, beliefs and faith all together.  Moreover, you don’t seem to distinguish that religion is a means of explaining the “why” of things; not the “how,” which is science’s domain.

As for the family of that little girl:  perhaps they prefer to believe that even what appears to rational, limited, human minds as a heinous crime may, in the grand scheme of things, somehow contribute to the building up of something good.  And perhaps they need their “faith” to help them survive this terrible experience.  Why would you begrudge them this?

Do the statistics that suggest religious parents for the victim in your scenario tell us that the rapist is also religious?  Or is he perhaps an atheist?  In either case, would you say his behavior is more rational than that of the little girl’s parents?

And, Sam, why are you so angry?

Mr. Livers,
It is tempting to assume that you are an university professor with either a strange kind of humor or in the midst of an experimental study on pseudo- logic. Anyway, your story in comment #14067 reminds me of a similar story I once read, I think..

*Two men are sitting on a bench in the park. The sun is shining brightly. One of the men, a construction worker named Gary, starts asking questions to the other man, named Jozua, who was a preacher.

“Hey, what do you do all day?”

“What do you mean?” Jozua asks.

“I mean, I know you read a Book and write and all those sermons, but ... I mean, what do you do aside from that?”

“Well, I preach, and I ... “

“No, no, no.  That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, what did you mean?”

“I want to know what you do, like, in essence.”

“Oh.” Jozua thought for a minute.

“I don’t know,” he said.  “I guess I just Praise the Lord.”

“You just Praise the Lord?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?  What for?”

Jozua thought again.

“Because I was born into His world, and ... that’s what I’m supposed to do, Praise the Lord.”

“Right, but that still doesn’t answer my question.”

“Well, what do YOU do, then?” Jozua asks.

“I work.  I work in construction.  I try to build on what’s been given me.  It seems to me, Jozua, that you, and people like you, don’t build anything.  All you do is forbid.  And that doesn’t help anyone, least of all yourselves.”

“You will go to hell, Gary.”

“No, I will NOT go to hell, Jozua, I will go home now.”

Gary got up off the bench and held out his hand to Jozua. But Jozua had his eyes closed, his hands folded together in his lap and he was mumbling something .... *

I cannot remember where I read this story, but maybe I just made it up myself.

RE: Susan-28 & Frank’s comments, #14111, 7/17/06

“Borderline” anything accentuates obscurantism, guessing, even
appeal for comprehension; Susan 28 (may her force, jargon and
intellect uphold her!) may reply to Goodman’s “frankness” or not,
but I’m reminded of the “borderline” trait of innumerable “faith-
heads” (1) whose zealotry demarcates, abuts with or is indistinguishable from the dereistic thinking on certain closed wards and (2) who repetitiously evade, ignore or pretend a “zulch” for reality or “that which is”, to retreat instead to “that which is not”, “that which has not begun to begin”, or “that which has not yet begun to begin to begin” - that sheer non- existence that identifies their “God”, whose only truth is a god-  IDEA, HUNCH or IMAGINATION alone; and either the Cosmos or
Fate or Destiny may “bless” or console or guide more readily &
far more realistically.

But, as S-28 knows, Asperger’s Syndrome she is not, nor is she
a Willi nor would her brain MRI show an “opercular sign”, while
Sylvian fissure, cortical & cerebellar anomalies also are unlikely.
She may have prominence of Heschel’s gyrus, the hippocampus & splenium and if “borderline” implicates “MR”, that she’s not
either (wonder if she identifies w. or extrapolates by Newtonian
calculus!?  Susan-28 need not answer, at least not for me).

Ok, buddy, maybe after you actully understand the Christain belief, you can slam Christians. Just because you pray, doesn’t mean you get what you want. That’s not God, that is a year round Santa Claus. God is so much more that you can possibly imagine, and you actaully think that He should give in to every whim of everyone who prays to Him?
As to all the disasters there are, just because there is indeed a God, doens’t mean this life is going to be perfect and happy. And God never said it would. That’s is what Heavan is for. And it’s true that only Christian can get in. After all, why would anyone let anyone who slammed them all their lives be included in the happiness they created? But of course, anyone can become a Christian, so it’s possible for someone like you to turn around and become a Christian.

Frank: to wrap up the personal: yes, that’s about right. i collect facts like Rhubarb collected golfballs; the closest i come to “wisdom” is pattern-recognition. i share my observations in the hope that those with the ability to make value judgments will share their conclusions with me - your “Truthiness” theory is the closest i’ve heard to something i can grok - my questions are my gift to the world, as it probably benefits more from the answers than i do. people are golfers, afterall; i’m just a crazy cat in a bush off the green.. hence i post.

from where i sit, religion is a kind of high-order collective self-mirroring; some kind of bizarre neurotypical bonding ritual, an abstraction of our personal vision of hell or heaven depending on how we “build” it as Chris says.

so: free will? objective fact or high-order abstraction? it “feels” like we have it but i suspect we are just the waves, not the gravity. did your fact/certainty post answer this question? i couldn’t quite tell, forgive me if that’s due to my obtuseness..

Re: Comment #14078 by susan 28 on 7/17

I’ll try to sneak in one more personal with sufficient redeeming philosophic content to pass muster with the gatekeeper.

Your admission of ‘borderline Asperger’s’ is interesting. That explains your difficulty with symbolism. It also describes your excursions into infantile fantasy and frivolity. You collect things. Like your codified spelling and writing structure. Instead of bottle caps, coins and stamps, you collect strange ways to write. Glad you are not outright autistic, or you could not be on this site with your good humored comments. I have known some autistic and Asperger’s. They are all interesting. They are the closest to adult in their seriousness, but still kids in their mind. They tend to freak out at trivial attempts to reason with them.

Harry- proving: it’s not whether yer good or evil, as long as yer a God tipper!!

“Thus, you do not know what ‘the truth’ is, but you must have confidence in truth and what is true.”

YES!! I DO!!  so i’m not an agnostic, i’m just GREEDY!!!  i can live with that!! 

and i blast greed so much..  it remids me of Billy Jack.. he (Tom Laughlin) has a new movie and website wherein he says that if we want to know our faults we don’t need a therapist we just need to take an inventory of everything that bugs us about others.. yep..

and no no offense taken, Frank, i treasure your..errr.. Frankness!!

Frank: Brava, baby, ya got me dead to rights!!

i’m 44. 28 is my b-day.

the non-use of capital letters is sheer malfeasance for its own sake. a jab at convention. even though i’m aware of the utility of capping sentences, it’s just so much fun not to. plus it’s easy and i’m lazy. same with not indenting.

there’s only one place i use them, and that’s for proper nouns referring to people other than myself. i lower-case “i” as an act of humility, but were i to “tip my hand”, it would be found that even this is passive-aggressive. i’m trying to set an example that others should be humble too, but it’s veiled conceit/contempt: “see how humble i am? i lower-case myself but capitalise you, as you capitalise yourself, you self-important b*astard!!”.

i cap certain city or country names, or brand names, depending on how much i like them and how lazy and/or rebellious i’m feeling that day.

i’m borderline asperger’s and quite certain that i’m a borderline personality as well. i’ve certainly married my (rapprochement) struggle and not progressed beyond the terrible 2’s emotionally.. i, i, i.. it’s all about me.. a former Mistress told me to count the number of times i use “i” in a writing..  it’s alot.. i said “let me serve you Mistress”; She (mandatory caps for them, it’s actually where i acquired the lower-casing thing too, everything i do is derivative, i am the dj, i am what i play..) said “susan, you’re about as submissive as my CAT” .. DIS-missed..  and rightfully so..

i do play to win and usually do but victory is bittersweet.. i whipped my friend’s dad in chess when i was 8.. he was mean to me after that..

and yes religion is a smorgasbord for me as is all philosophy, not one of them fully satisfies but between the lot of them i manage to get thru dinner.. i understand Crowley took a similar stance and my “28” thing is a hersey on his own numerology.. we destroy our idols.. i think it’s called “devaluation” in BPD vernacular..

i’d have been the one to toss the silverware in Hell and eat with my fingers, but would take pity on those around me who were married to their fixed belief in silverware, and would throw food at them.. never let it be said that if my enemies were on fire i wouldn’t P on them to put it out.. i would!! aren’t i nice??

head in oven, feet in the fridge, back against the wall to eliminate the need for rear-view mirrors.. in theoretical China, there’s no word for love..  but i’m slowly turning japanese.. 

“If you can’t use the tools of the trick, let someone else feed you, and if you begin to choke on your own errors, claim disability.”

::nodding::  the Truth hurts..  (whatever it is..)

but.. my spelling? i pride myself on that!! good spelling is one of my fave vices.. oh and the “s instead of z” thing is an affect as well.. like the “ou” thing.. euro-snobbery.. although the “ou” thing just suits me.. “flavour” and “colour” sound so much more.. savoury though you’d think i’d enjoy the utilitarianism of American “z” spelling.. it’s what it sounds like afterall.. i’d probably use it were i in europe, as it is i get to be “traditional” and still be rebellious, win-win!!

Excellent commentary. Fear is one of the missing ingredients over the debate of what is? Morals change as cultures change, ethics remain the same whenever. “Life is death, death is Life.” or something like that.

Blesssings to all who are at least thinking.

Two men are sitting on a porch.  The sun is about to go down.  Soon it will be completely black, and no one will be able to see.  One of the men on the porch, whose name is Chris, is a construction worker.  The other man, whose name is Samuel, is a university professor.  Chris says to Samuel,

“Hey, what do you do all day?”

“What do you mean?” Samuel asks.

“I mean, I know you read books and write and all that stuff, but . . . I mean, what do you do aside from that?”

“Well, I give lectures, and I . . . “

“No, no, no.  That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, what did you mean?”

“I want to know what you do, like, in essence.”

“Oh.”  Samuel thought for a minute.

“I don’t know,” he said.  “I guess I just live.”

“You just live?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?  What for?”  Samuel thought again.

“Because I was born into this world, and . . . that’s what I’m supposed to do, live and contribute something to the world.  This is the only world we have, the only world we know.”

“Right, but that still doesn’t answer my question.”

“Well, what do YOU do, then?”

“I work.  I work in construction.  I try to build on what’s been given me.  It seems to me, Samuel, that you, and people like you, don’t build anything.  All you do is tear down.  And that doesn’t help anyone, least of all yourselves.”

“Go to hell, Chris.”

“That’s all right if you hate me.  I don’t hate you.  I don’t hate anyone.  I have to go, though.”  Chris got up off the porch and held out his hand to Samuel, who refused to shake it.  “God bless you,” Chris said, and walked away.

Where was God when in Iraq thousands innocent Iraqee civilians were killed in order to ‘free’ them (more than 100.000 civilians in 2003 –that is before Fallujah- according to Roberts et al: Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey, Lancet, Oktober 29 2004).

This brings us again to the Epicurus paradox (Epicurus 341-270 BC), the same who is mentioned by Harry Rout #13951:

“God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, he is weak—and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful—which is equally foreign to god’s nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?”—Epicurus (from “The Epicurus Reader”, translated and edited by Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson, Hackett Publishing, 1994, p. 97)

Re: Comment #14018 by susan 28 on 7/16

As an agnostic, you have a few levels of dichotomy to deal with.

Agnostics claim that they do not know if there is God or not. They come in two species at that level.

One: Don’t know and don’t care.

Two: Don’t know and it bothers them.

I guess you are a ‘Two’.

Then there are two of those ‘Two’.

One: Too dense to understand.

Two: Afraid to think about it.

I guess you are a ‘Twosy Twosy’.

You say that you believe in Truth, but don’t know what ‘the truth’ is.

You do not have to know what there are two of to know what two is. You don’t have to know 6 billion people by name to know that there are about that many people in the world. You may not get your mind around the number, but it is useful. That is a guess anyway. There is, certainly, a finite number of that size, but you could never count that high in a lifetime, and you could never take in the identity of the concept without a useful code, such as 6 times 10 to the 9th power.

I say that you can know what truth is, though it would be a chore to know everything true. Hume distinguished between matter of fact and matter of absolute certainty. His example of absolute certainty left me limp with simplicity. His example of matter of fact was simple. If you could comprehend that a matter could be true or not true without a conflict of your reason, you had a matter of fact. If you could not comprehend the opposite or non-matter without a contradiction, or extinction, it was a matter of certainty. Probability ever so high could not produce certainty, though it is practical to approach certainty by means of probability in all matters of fact.

As for truth—I cannot conceive that there is no Truth. If nothing were true, there would be no truth. But, it would still be true that nothing is true. If it is true that nothing is true, there is truth. So even if there were no truth, there would be something true. I cannot comprehend that. My belief Truth exists.

Anselm defined God as “...that than which nothing greater could be conceived to exist.”

His ontological proof of God failed for the same reason that a snake cannot swallow itself. Yet, his definition did not fail.

To know what Truth is, just realize that truth covers both what is and what is not. It is true that a is not b. The value of a may equal the value of b, when they are symbols for values, but a is not b. It is true that you are you, whoever you are. Susan is a symbol for you. In social context, you and I are equal, but I am not and could not be you. You are you and I am I. When you say something is true, you recognize that truth is involved, but Susan is not truth, nor am I truth. But Truth is.

You must distinguish the difference between something true and truth. There is truth and everything true. Truth is above and greater than anything or everything true. Thus Truth is transcendental to everything true. Truth is not an object, thing, or condition. Truth rules all that is and all that is not. Even God requires Truth, but if Truth is not God, Truth does not require God. If there is no God, it is true that there is no God, but if there is no Truth, there is certainly no God, but it would still be true that truth exists. Truth needs only Truth, a god who is not Truth needs Truth and could be conceived not to exist. You can be an atheist, but not an atruthist. But, if you know that Truth is God, you are not an atheist.

Truth is the spiritual home of all that could be, but is not, all that was but is not now, all that is, all that will be, and all that could be known. That is all I need to know about truth. If that is not God, there is not God. But if Truth is that than which nothing greater could be conceived to exist, then Truth is God. Truth is the word symbol for the transcendental monistic guarantor of all that is true. Most people call that God, but cannot get their minds around the real concept. Thus, you do not know what ‘the truth’ is, but you must have confidence in truth and what is true.

My father died in 1977 at the age of 79. I am 78. My mother died in 2003 at the age of 102. I expect to outlive my mother. At least, should live another day, inshallah. If I cannot live another day, I will live the rest of this one.

Thanks Susan. I was afraid you would be offended by my last post.

Mr. Livers…...you have my sympathy sir, like yourself I was raised and brainwashed by abusive parents….they forced me to go to church and read myths from their silly Bible…..even tried to tell me that our wonderful planet is only 6000 years old.
Thankfully…due to a strong gene I was able to escape the clutches of their god faith and begin thinking outside of that small religious crucifix…..so sir I do truly have great pity for you…..all I can suggest is that you climb down off the cross….because we need the wood.

PS….I was having a Jack’s and Coke with God in my local strip joint the other night….it was the night that all hell broke loose in Lebanon…
sorry….again I am responsible for preventing him from helping all you religious folk….que sera sera…..anyway, he said he doesn’t like you, but he wouldn’t tell me why….he just smiled and and tucked five bucks into the young girls knickers.

Frank: i identify as agnostic.. i agree that God is Truth i just don’t know what the Truth is. but i care a *great* deal.. i care so much it drives me mad.. i wish i *didn’t* care, that seems like the ultimate peace, like your dad’s “aspirin” analogy, in other words, to annihilate *relativity* ..

i experimented with S/M for awhile with that very goal in mind and there were moments of transcendance due to the very *extremity* of the pain which blotted everything else out, but when you wake up the next morning instesad of being in “exquisite agony” you’re just in common, garden-variety *pain*.. and reach for the aspirin, hehe ..

i love that aspirin story, though.. your dad sounds like a really wise man, bet he’s proud of ya..

I wonder if Susan is 28 years old, or number 28 after 27 other Susans in her genealogy. If that’s her age, she is far too young for such lofty thoughts. If number 28 in a long line of Susans, she may be old enough to be my grandmother. Actually, judging from her grammar, she is in kindergarten, and from her spelling, she is a teenager. Her non-use of capital letters in appropriate places puts her on My-Space or LiveJournal.

All kidding aside, Susan is a very credible pragmatist and must have digested William James’ philosophy without chewing. Religion for her is a smorgasbord of choice, like the feasts in Heaven and Hell, take your own morsels and leave the rest to others. If you can’t use the tools of the trick, let someone else feed you, and if you begin to choke on your own errors, claim disability.

I bet Susan plays a good hand of Bridge. She counts up the points and bids her hand. Then she plays to a bluff and bluffs to a play. She is an expert at the finesse. She never drinks while playing and never plays while drinking. Like the guy with his head in an oven and his feet in the refrigerator, she is, on the average, very comfortable.

Thanks Susan. We need you.

To Christopher Livers, re: 7/15 faith-headedness

Numerous freethinkers (incl. nontheists, atheists, agnostics and
skeptics), scientists & especially Nobel Laureates are passionately serious about their conclusions that most religions defy truth & reason (notorious for unreason!) and are nothing but the NONSENSE of human yearning.  May I suggest your daily reading of freethoughts at http://www.ffrf.org, where many
atheistic or nontheistic, faith-free intellects of eloquence have been compiled by the “Freethought Today” Editor & staff?

“Hope springs eternal”, even when it’s false or deceptive, with
ulterior motives of brain-drenching & control of minds & money.
Is amnesia a factor in your failure to address 500+ yrs of Crusade, Inquisitional, genocidal & atrocious misery, clamor,
woe & strife of the time when Catholicism ruled the world, aka
the Dark Ages??

Many years ago, an old Catholic priest, who was a future in-law, asked me if I believed in God. I said yes, but since the absolute is basis, not apex, the spiritual absolute is the essence we rise out of and fall back into, not a state of grace from which we fell and seek to return. He crossed himself and walked away.
The problem with atheism is that it doesn’t give people something to focus on and it doesn’t explain consciousness. Theists think consciousness created order out of chaos. Atheists think order created consciousness out of chaos. They both equate consciousness with intelligence. Intelligence is a process of making distinctions and judgements. Consciousness is the source of that ability, not a consequence of it.
As for focus, the advantage of monotheism is its lack of ambiguity. Dualistic philosophies may do a better job of explaining reality, but they make poor political tools. How can you go to war with a religion that is always looking at the other side? Christianity was a marginal religion before Constantine decided to use the cross as a war totem. In fact, Jesus’s own symbol was the fish, not the cross. Likely because he lived at the dawn of the age of Pisces. Like all movements, it crossed the political spectrum from being a tale of social insurrection, to being a tool of civil indoctrination.
Spring to winter is evolution. Winter back to spring is revolution. The time will come when this edifice does crumble and what grows up to replace it will eventually grow old and hidebound and the reset butten will have to be pushed again, but that is nature. Definition is limitation and vice versa.

Harry:  yea, tourist.. that feels about right..

Christover: i do strive to walk the path of the mythical character of the Jesus of the Gospels, but i do it because it resonates with my personal vision of what i’d like to see the world become. like the (non-biblical) parable of heaven and hell: both had long tables with sumptuous feasts but the silverware was too long. the hell-dwellers were starving because they could not feed themselves (must have been a “high society parable where people were too proud to use their fingers, but anyway..) but in heaven they feasted away on the bounty, by feeding *each other* ..

i too see the world being more ejoyable for all if we adopted this christian ethic, which has been perverted by the “apostate” christian church which views poverty as a “curse upon the sinful”, excessive wealth as a *badge of virtue*, and doing anything for the poor beyond *praying* for them as tantamount to aiding and abetting the *devil*, despite Jesus’ suggestion to sell possessions to aid the poor. all in all religion is an apology for whatever we desire our culture to be, and the fact that people can twist christian dogma into a blueprint for monopoly capitalism is a case in point. it “sublimates accountability”, which is what makes it dangerous: we can say, “hey poor dude, if was up to me i’d hook you up but.. “God” said that would only encourage your sloth and i didn’t write the rules” (as if..).

so this is why when i am able to pull together the strength of will to do good works that i do *not* credit a God, nor beg forgiveness of one when i do “bad”, because once you play the God card, the game can get really crazy, sometimes for better sometimes for worse.

i do what i “feel” are good works in hope that people will emulate them, and when i offend someone i apologise to *them*, not to God, so as to keep accountability where it belongs and not encourage doging issues with (easily twistable) dogma.

the twistability of words (as opposed to actions, which are “self evident”) is what makes Sam view dogma as a powder-keg, and i agree 100%, despite its ability to “unify a culture” .. cultures can get quite out of hand and consequently i’m not a big fan of them.. at least if we keep craziness (and accountability for it) individual, peson-to-person rather than person-to-culture, then the buck stops there and you don’t have whole populations sacrificing dissenters at the altar of their “sacred vision”.

i think christianity was a valiant attempt at selling altruism to the world, but as soon as you start basing things on “revealed knowledge” then you’re leaving them open to “interpretation”, and as we’re seeing happen with christianity today and as it happened in Rome and England before us, dogma’s just more words to twist into a global-elite agenda. if Jesus does exist he’s slapping his forehead a la Homer Simpson about now..

where there is a Christ, an AntiChrist is never far behind.. as the Tao says, everything creates its opposite..

Mr Christopher Livers on 7/15:
I read your comment as an appeal to live a loving life.
Every atheist will agree with you on that! But your argument that this should be copied from some supernatural example, “a loving God”, is where we disagree.
You state: *If God is good, if God is loving, then why do innocent children suffer and die?  The atheist has no answer to this question, just as the believer has no answer.*
Atheists do have an answer: we have disease in our world, hereditary ailments, we have natural disasters, accidents AND we have uncaring parents, bad people, criminals, who don’t mind harming children (or grown-ups). Not a supernatural being should look after them, but WE do.
Atheists do not sort of ‘secretely’ admit that there is a God, and then go on accusing Him of all sorts of dubious behavior, spoiling the warm and loving feelings believers strive to have for Him. Our MORTAL souls just deny the existence of supernatural beings.
You also mention “the religious foundation of non-violence”. There are certainly many inspiring examples of man and woman that support your claim. But don’t deny the “the religious foundation of VIOLENCE”, examples of that are easily found also.

It is OK to try to find consolation in a ‘dream’, but don’t spend your life just ‘dreaming’ or you will miss what is going on.
Understand that we all inhabit a small planet in a small galaxy, that on this planet our lives started, that we must cope with the nature that surrounds us, giving good and giving bad, and that some day our life will come to an end.

Re: Comment #13927 by Christopher Livers on 7/15

My father used to take aspirin for toothache, headache, and other aches. He had an explanation about how it worked. He said that it caused so much pain all over your body that you could not notice the pain where it used to hurt.

He also defined religion as a belief in evil. You got comfort in knowing that others suffer more from evil than you do. He did not originate the phrase, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” But he voiced it and lived it. It gave him great comfort and the will to live a virtuous and fruitful life.

Religion in our species is just that: a comfort against the calamity of life and death. We ask, “Whence came I?” And, “Where am I going?” But, we seldom ask, and never answer the question, “What, in Hell, am I doing here?”

We have a vision of Truth, a concept of Truth, and a love of Truth, but true religion is a hard sell. To believe in Truth over all is so difficult, that we must invent gods of all descriptions to substitute for our ignorance of Truth and our unwillingness to submit to Truth. We say, “Submit to the Will of God!” But, cannot translate that to, “Accept Truth!” When we cannot accept that we will die, we invent a Hereafter to receive our conscious being when the body is buried out of sight of the living. We invent a Heaven for the good and a Hell for the bad. We even define the good for our own system of belief, and the bad for all others.

I never understood how a spiritual remnant of myself could suffer a physical pain of Hell, fire and brimstone!

Islam comes closest to acceptance of Truth in the Shahada. But, most Muslims spend their lives ignoring Truth as it is and substitute several volumes of assumptions to apply when they refuse to accept Truth or cannot comprehend the manifestations of Allah.

Christianity makes a complete substitution for Truth by applying a set of garbled words and incomprehensible scenarios as “...the word of God.”

Judaism completely links Truth to the lives of their ancestors as though no other people were worth remembering and no other history is relevant. The suffering of non-Jews is deserving of the wrath of G-d, and the expectations and hopes of non-Jews is anti-Semitic.

Hindus make a huge joke of God and all that is true. God even takes many forms and they find no problem in a belief that God has girl friends. When Ghandi declared that “Truth is God.” they killed him.

American Natives surrender to the will of God by living under the auspices of ‘The Great Spirit’. They could get by with anything knowing that The Great Spirit approved.

Atheists rise above Truth by ignoring it.

Agnostics sink so low that they don’t know and don’t give a damn, know and don’t give a damn, or couldn’t care less.

An Atheist Manifesto

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her.

Moira Hindley, she did just this, and her partner in crime, Ian Bradey, tape recorded the pitiful pleas of the children for their enjoyment. Why just a ‘man’? And pertinent to this hypothetical observation, is this man, a man of devout and moderate behaviour? or a psychopathic atheist? Perhaps this sentence should read, ” Somewhere in the world a psychopath of no religious convictions has abducted a little girl…” Logic is required here, No man of religious conviction would abduct and rape a child or anybody for that matter, and a man or woman that does such an act can by definition have no religeous convictions whatsoever. They are therefor by definition atheists,(those who ‘profess’ religious convictions and perpetrate such acts are defined as ‘veiled atheists’) We deduce from this that a few atheists (veiled or otherwise) abduct and rape children. That is all.

I no longer call myself an atheist…..and nor am I an agnostic…..I am a ‘Tourist’.....hi ho!
David Hume, the great English skeptic philosopher pointed out to theists that science cannot disprove god but god most certainly cannot be “BOTH” all loving AND all powerful….. the great Chinese Philosophy of Taoism(Daoism), says the Tao is all powerful but treats all things in the universe with utter indifference….including the lives of little children…..thus Eastern philosophy and it’s affilliated religions have rarely had the problems that the three Hebraic Religions(Judaism, Christianity and Islam)....even Hinduism doesn’t have a problem understanding “Evil”....they have Kali Ma.
If there is some strange “Super-Being” he/she has no concept of love….certainly not in the Biblical/Koran sense.

My favourite singer/composer is Tom Waits…...
on his Mule Variations album he has a song, Georgia Lee…..it’s about a young black American girl who was found murdered….the chorus is most profound…...

“Why wasn’t God watching,
Why wasn’t God listening,
Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee.”

Here in Australia, recently, we had a poor eight year old girl sexually assaulted and strangled in a large shopping center toilet….at her funeral (Catholic), the priest told all that she was in the arms of god now…..!
Is god all powerful? Perhaps.
Is god all loving? Of course not…only complete idiots believe that part of the story!

As Epicuris said of the Greek Gods over 2000 years ago…..they may very well exist…..but all the available evidence proves they have no interest in the human world….they don’t care about prayers or wars…..love or hate.

Alas, we know why god wasn’t there for any of the Georgia Lee’s of the world!
Que sera sera.

The atheism of Sam Harris is nothing new.  He makes the same arguments that have always been made against belief in God.  He claims to be supporting atheism from a moral standpoint, as if rationality will solve all human problems, even existential problems, such as death and suffering.

He starts off his article by regurgitating a line from Dostoevsky.  If God is good, if God is loving, then why do innocent children suffer and die?  The atheist has no answer to this question, just as the believer has no answer.  All the atheist can do is complain that the believer has no answer.

It is true that faith is not based on rationality, but that is the point.  When you believe in God, you are not concerned with arguments.  Instead, you are concerned with how you feel.  Harris makes the claim that people believe in God simply because it gives meaning to their lives.  Yes, that is exactly right.  Belief in God does give meaning to people’s lives and it does give consolation, and this has absolutely nothing to do with reason.  When you feel at peace, when you feel love in your heart, in your immortal soul (the same immortal soul that Harris scoffs at), you do not care about what reason tells you.  If you rely solely on reason, you probably will become an atheist.  But there is more to life than dry rationalism.  I wonder if Mr. Harris has ever read a work of literature or listened to music.

As far as violence is concerned, Harris discounts the religious foundation of non-violence.  Look at Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  These were the leaders of twentienth century non-violent movements.  Gandhi was considered a saint.  He was a devoted Hindu who embraced all faiths.  King was a Christian who relied on prayer as guidance in his struggle for civil rights and putting an end to the Vietnam war.  Both men were assassinated for their peaceful, relgious beliefs.

Faith in God does not lead to violence or terrorism.  It leads away from that to reconciliation.  Since human beings are not ideal beings, they do not always live up to the moral truth of relgious belief.  That is when the violence takes place. 

Instead of invoking atheism, which almost no one takes seriously outside an academic setting, people should continue in their religious beliefs, striving to reach the love and perfection described in the Gospel.

Christopher Livers

Jonathan: thanks for the mythbusting i seem to remember consensus being that it was a Thomas that wrote it. there’s a great myth-bust called “myth of the historical veracity of Jesus” over on http://www.sullivan-county.com that covers alot of popular theories, don’t have the exact link on hand.

Dr Dave: i’ve always had a pretty rough time of it and pretty much cursed my folks for bringing me here for most of my childhood and only now learning to forgive, not especially enamoured of the place i must say but also realise that others’ mileage varies greatly. procreation’s a crapshoot that’s my issue with it.. also agree that in my case making others happy is what gets me off the most, though not sure everyone’s wired that way.. i have, nonetheless, had some good times resulting indirectly from my quest for oblivion, makes for some great house music and some bangin’ parties happy people tend to make terrible trance dj’s, they have no motive to leave this dimension; you want a tortured mind on the decks if ya really wanna go for a ride   my sets suffer when i’m in a good mood, people say, “whattsa matter tonight susan?” and i say “nothing i had a great day that’s the problem”, hehe.. just need to make sure i don’t go all Van Gough on my buttocks, i need that left ear for the monitor

To Susan 28;
Someone searched and analyzed, who wrote Revelation?
By comparing the grammar and the trend of his thoughts, it is believed that it was little John, blood brother to Jesus Christ(not his real name). John was the youngest of the apostles.

In Revelations chapter 22 verse 16 - Jesus Christ said; I Jesus have sent my Angel to testify unto you these things, in the churches; I am the root of David, the bright the morning Star. (This is Catch 22) The morning Star appears on the horizon (Summer & fall) at 5:30 AM a few minutes before sunrise. (visible to the naked eye)
Modern Astronomers found that “the Morning Star” is not Jesus - it is not a Star at all. It is the planet “Venus.”
These guys had no holds on prophesising and writing hemongious lies. Ancients believed that Spirits of Pharaohs and Kings became stars when they died - therefore - Catch 22.
Jonathan

To Susan 28, RE: “nothingness, a void, black holes, ?meaning of
                  life/living, etc.”

Tennyson’s “De Profundis” - “...Live thou, & of the grape & ivy berry, choose—Not matter nor the finite infinite; but this main miracle, ‘that thou art thou’, with power on thine own act[s] & on the world”.  And, isn’t the Ingersoll observation meaningful??  “The time to be happy is NOW; the place to be happy is HERE;  the way to be happy is to make others happy”, knowledgeable always that “nothing but truth is immortal” (“life is evanescent, ever transient” [fr. one of my own poems], “yet with eternity we must compete…”, one of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays’ ideas for happiness in one’s occupation—strive to be the best of all time, not merely with one’s contemporaries; & if that seems overwhelming, remember the wisdom of Gandhi: The joy is in the striving whether a goal is reached or not.

right on Frank, yea, probability predictions..

i wish we could genetically engineer that 5th level, unfortunately that would require intent and intent requires the very assumptions that can’t be proven *without* the 5th level..

c’est la V-Twin!!  hope that baby’s got floodlights..

Re: Comment #13753 by Harry Rout on 7/13

Harry, I like this comment. It resonates with a ring of truth seldom heard from the bells of freedom in the world of the mind.

I suggest that you go a little deeper to the third or fourth levels of your cerebral cortex and find the link to truth of the genome.

You would surely find that truth of the function of the genome came before the genome. At the first level of the cerebral cortex, it is recognized that truth of fact came before the fact, and at the second level, truth of all scientific discovery came before the discoveries. At the third and fourth levels, a link is made to the function of logic as a route to truth, not a guarantor of truth. There is where our conflicts begin. We want guarantors, not faith. We tend to claim certainty, when all we have is belief. Here is the link to God as Truth, la raison d’etre for all that is.

It is still belief that sustains our conclusions, even when the logic is perfect. It is the function of philosophy to sort out our beliefs and assign levels of probability to their functions so that we can live comfortably with truth (Truth), our creator and sustainer.

I cannot get to a fifth or deeper level yet to link truth to reality with absolute certainty. If my deeper levels of reason are missing, a future generation of my genealogy will hopefully evolve a level where certainty will emerge. I go to my grave with the comfort of faith in my evolved level of reasons. C’est la vie. Vive l’evolution!

Thanks for your astute and concise comment.

Jonathan: it could be that the number in Reveleation - matching Solomon’s “take” as you say - was to mean that it would be a religious ruler who enriched himself at the public’s expense, who was big on judging others but fell short himself. a hero of an “apostate” (deviating from Jesus’ teachings) church that achieves secular power.

but ya, great post on the non-mysterious, even secular, origins of religious myth. guess the writer of Revelation was one of those anti-tax types

To Mr. Sam Harris:
I am not an overly emotional, or sentimental man. But your Manifesto brought a tear to my eye. Wonderful. Inspiring. I think its time we all starting getting more visible - more vocal. Thank you, and please keep up the good work.

Our DNA…..our genes…..do not care as to what we believe….whether it be in some silly god or some foolish meglomaniac who allowed himself to be crucified 2000 years ago…..or whether we believe that a giant purple striped fairy is running the Universe and we’ll all be reincarnated on the banks of the Ganges as Hindu ascetics…..we humans are merely temporary homes for our genes….nothing more and nothing less…..but these many silly superstitious belief systems have been useful to their cause…
so there is nothing to worry about….evolution is very slow but it’s going well.

The Universe is all powerful and it doesn’t care about us…..and it certainly doesn’t love us!
Good luck with that.

actually, being a bio-machine, and knowing all things are ultimately connected and that “empty space” probably doesn’t exist on an absolute level (though i crave for it to, crave Frank’s “empty set that is real”), i’m inclined to surmise that free will itself is an illusion, that it’s the universe that is conscious and we’re just sensory units ourselves. this could be where myths like “the church as the body of christ” come from.

Frank love that “empty set” thing, quoted you over on the Lizard, hope you don’t mind..

i’m obsessed with “nothingness”, the absence of all relativity to the point where perception ceases and for all practical purposes consciousness along with it, even if by way of “total” consciousness, and that’s what my dj handle, “susan 28”, is about.

i created the “28” myth myself as a heresy on traditional numerology: in standard numerology, one adds the digits of one’s birthday and truncates the second digit to get one’s “life number” (this ensures that it is never zero). so calculated normally mine would be 1, which, though flattering to my ego as a singularity and matching my personality as a self-diagnosed Asperger kiddie (nature’s autocratic dreamers), did not suit my pop-culture agenda. i wanted an *invocation*, not a description: i wanted zero.
2+8=10, drop the 1 = 0. 

the “28th current”, as i call it, is oblivion.

my prayer:

*invocation*

i pray to the black void itself for the children, those innocent victims of Nature; those casualties of denial; those prisoners of delusion. pray for the death of Nature. beauty spreads faith like a disease, mocking Truth; it comes steely like a politician spewing lies in broad daylight, demanding allegiance. suffer it not, but brush the scorpion from your back and brave the Current! it serves no purpose but pain. let it burn! let it rage until soul is no more, mind not even a memory, memory not even a dream.. let all be consumed. let the nighmare end forever, live forever, die forever.. let all be one, ’til one be nothing.

(“scorpion” reference from The Crying Game parable of the scorpion that stings even at its own expense, powerless against its own nature)

28

Who is the Anti Christ?

Writers of the Bible inserted, that the number of the beast (Anti Christ) is 666.
In so doing they created the most mysterious definition of the Anti Christ.
Mankind has inquisitively pondered over this mystery for 2,000 years.
In doing analysis and research I came to one conclusion – 666 can be contrived and be concocted as the identity of several persons, in several ways but (still mysterious) with out any proof whatsoever.
Here however is the “true version” as presented in the King James Bible.
In - 1st KINGS CHAPTER 10 VERSE 14 it says; Now the weight of Gold that came to King Solomon, in one year’s taxes was Six Hundred and three score (twenty per/score) and Six Talents of Gold. ( This totals 666) six hundred + 60 + 6
There is no mention here of any beast or Anti Christ and there is no mystery about this verse. It is clear that 666 talents of Gold are just that! < 666 >
The number must have been selected at random – there is no such person.
Therefore; we can dismiss the search for a person with the number 666 - like many other mysterious verses in the bible, the writers merely sought to mystify the identity of the Anti Christ (there is no other worthwhile explanation).
Jonathan

The ‘first stuff’ debate has been derailed a little by a lot of ‘You said, I said’ comments and even by American politics, which I, not being an american, like to avoid. So in this comment I switch my topic:
Niece doesn’t care that I believe that I am a bio-chemical machine. Well I don’t care either, but what does it mean? My legs, arms, organs are all biochemical machines, so is my brain. Actually every cell in my body is a biochemical machine of considerable complexity and together they are .. me.
But there is even more: countless foreign cells and organisms live (happily?) inside me. These are bacteria and the like, some of which are descendents of organisms that lived in my mother and were passed during pregnancy. Most of these guests are dear friends, some let me use the bathroom a lot and some don’t care if I die from our getting together. The reason that I mention these other cells/organisms, is that I do not consider a body as something ‘pure’ or ‘sacred’ or such. 
The organization of my cells, their special abilities and the control circuits of my nervous system and my brain make me live my life, or maybe: make me live their life, because I consider I and them inseparable.
Now some people seem to think that we also have an ingredient, which they call ‘soul’. And, if I am correct, this soul could be considered the ‘driver’ and the body is the ‘car’. Why bother to postulate such a soul? One thing this soul delivers is that, in Niece’s words: we *are not at the mercy of a cold and uncaring universe!*. (I borrow the use of * * from Pascal Bercker, thanks). The supposed mechanism in this is that this soul will not die but, if proven ‘worthy’, will have ‘eternal life’ in a place called heaven, where it will be close to someone wonderful, called God, and his likewise wonderful companions. Obtaining this eternal life is actually what gives the time to be spent with a body its ‘purpose’. Personally I think this eternal life is as a ‘life sentence without the possibility of parole’, but religious people seem to think it must be wonderful somehow or another (or maybe they don’t think much about it and hope for the best). So this soul is a necessity, otherwise there could be no later reward and no ‘purpose’. 
With the delegation of ‘me’ to such a soul, several questions come to my mind. The first question is ‘how did soul and body come together’?  I can think of many possibilities: Someone in the heavenly kingdom watches every pregnancy in the world and injects the newcomer with a freshly created soul or picks one from the shelves of the soul-hatchery or whatever, at the appropriate time. When this ‘appropriate time’ is, could lead to fascinating religious debates, actually already has. There is not much factual evidence about what is going on in the heavenly kingdom (and its surroundings?), so details are hard to fill in. The process could also be automated by the Creator, something like: when a body is started by sperm and egg and developing, in the netherworld a soul is started and the soul/body complex is sent on its way.
How do soul and body work together? We know that our brain does a lot of processing of signals coming in from our sensory organs. Also our brain sends signals to muscles, glands and other organs and is able to store information. Now things get interesting. In the afterlife, where our soul will be for eternity, we will be reunited with our loved ones, who have passed away before us (the hope and balm that religion provides!). How will we recognize them? Do we still have our memories, our character traits, our (questionable ?) habits. Do we still have sensors, eyes, ears etc. in heaven. Or does it all work completely different on the other side?
(A small detour: Some say that the heavenly kingdom is only for the worthy. Suppose that your parents have died already and that at a (good!?) moment a bus hits you a little too hard. Ok, you have been good and the ‘pearly gates’ open. You go in and there you are reunited with your mother, but your father, your LOVING father, is nowhere in sight. Wouldn’t that spoil ‘eternity’ a little?)
Back to memories. Memories are stored in the brain in ways that are certainly not yet understood completely. After death, a soul, without the memories about his ‘life with his body’, won’t have much pleasure from all this ‘reuniting’, because there is nothing ‘to talk about’. So apparently somehow these memories are transferred to the soul, or maybe the soul makes a ‘backup’ on a regular basis (how would this be in a person who is demented when he deceases?). It also could be that these memories reside completely in the soul, together with our morality, love and religiosity (and so on). Brain research however finds all these things very much represented in the neural structures in our brain. Recently experiments with Psilocybin demonstrated that enhanced states of ‘religious experience’ can be ‘chemically’ induced.
Our sensory organs can only pick up a tiny amount of what is going on in our world. A lot of very specific signal processing in our sensory organs and our brain, combined with memories of personal experiences, gives us a very limited, subjective and mostly inaccurate view of ‘reality’. To quote Niece once again: *None of what you experience is real, it’s a dream, and you create your own reality.  Yes, you do, whether you know it or not, you’re that powerful!*
Fortunately, the reality we create, makes it possible to eat, drink, sleep, have children and live for some decades. This is because most of ‘our reality’ is in important aspects compatible with ‘living’. We don’t suddenly imagine that we can fly, when we are standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon (but we might wish that we could, at least I do). Now some people think that they must create some more ‘reality’, because they think that it is of utmost importance to ask questions like: *where do we come from?*, “why are we here?, Where are we going?*, etc. The reality they create is characterised by ‘God’, ‘soul’, ‘satan’, ‘heaven’, ‘angels’, ‘eternal life’, ‘sin’ and so on.
Time to conclude. I believe that I am a biochemical machine. My body and my brain is me. A brain is an enormously complex machinery, about which much is known and much is unknown (not unknowable!). The reality I create suits me fine. It does not include a ‘God’. If your reality does: WHY ??

Re: Comment #13638 by Hondo on 7/12

I do not agree with you, but I would defend to my death your right to your own belief. I understand that, though you are wrong in your assumptions, you are not a liar. You do not intend to deceive anyone except yourself. Like William James, you are a pragmatist, even if you do not admit it. You know that if you do not believe and are wrong, you will suffer untold misery in an afterlife. But, if you believe, and are wrong, there is no penalty.

After the usual brain washing by the ‘faiths’, it takes courage to accept truth. And Truth as God is a hard sell. Few can accept truth when it hits them in the face, obstructs blood flow to the heart, or proves that the brain is a defective organ for true reasoning without a well honed program of logic and good sense.

Thanks for you confession of ignorance.

Thankyou for your kind words Susan.
Of course when I talk about “religion” I am speaking about all forms of religion…..all types of progressives….atheists/theists and scientific and political…..from Christ, Mohommad, Marx, Bush, Blair, Howard, Bin Laden…..from Communism and Neo-Liberalism…...fascism and democracy. A Religious Healer examines all belief systems….all dogma…..including everything I am typing here…..true freedom comes from just seeing…..
As much as I enjoyed Sam’s book and agree with much of what he wrote, particularly the crippling effect of Political Correctness and the push for religious tolerance…..I completely disagree with his FAITH in Reason….
his belief that the world will be a better place if we stamp out religious faith and replace it with faith in human reason. Sam skims over the great monsters of the twentieth century…Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were not “Religious” but they were most certainly “religious.”
The common LINK between Religion and religion is the belief (faith) in human progress….all humans who believe in Progress believe that history has both meaning and an END. For Religious believers (Christians, Muslims etc.) Is that some super being(s) will end history and give us a new world(heaven)....all be it with a little bit of violent assistance from us. Those who have “faith” in human reason….many scientist and most political thinkers including
Mr.Harris, believe that Science/Technology can end history…..create a New World. Of course both Religion and religion are wrong…..they bastardize Darwin’s Theory of Evolution….they become to anthropcentric and place the Human Being on top of the evolutionary pile….they try to make us the guardians of the planet…..
they foolishly believe that we were placed here to run the Earth….thus….most atheists end up up becoming Neo-Theists…..and like Sam they get caught up in the pathetic remains of 19th century Enlightenment…..Hegel, Descartes, Kant and sadly even the great atheist thinker himself, Frederic Nietzsche….who was unable to let go of the very thing he fought so hard against.
If you wish to change the way you think about all the many forms of religion I have mentioned, I suggest you read John Gray (not men are from Venus Gray) but the English Proffessor of Economics.
“Straw Dogs” by John Gray; 2002, Granta Books, CIP catalogue 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

Against Humanism.
“Those who ignore the destructive potential of new technologies can do so only because they ignore history. Pogroms are as old as Christendom; but without railways, the telegraph and poison gas there could have been no Holocaust. There have always been tyrannies; but without modern means of transport and communication, Stalin and Mao could not have built their gulags. Humanity’s worst crimes were made possible only by modern technology.
There is a deeper reason why ‘humanity’ will never control technology. Technology is not something that humankind can control. It is an event that has befallen the world.”
            Straw Dogs - John Gray
You see Science/Technology is progressive but the human condition, particularly in an over-populated world where resources are fast running out….is never progressive.
Thankfully our own greed will finally help this beautiful planet recover from the human creature, Climate Change, war, starvation and disease will ease the human burden on this planet and our population should fall to about 1 billion people within the next 100-150 years…. so as you can see it is looking positive for the planet and life on it…..at least until the sun gives up the ghost….ha ha!

My comments may seem out of place here, but I will make them anyway. I am a Christian conservative and I love God with my entire being. I have accepted His Son, Jesus Christ, as my Lord and Savior. I have experienced God’s love and mercy, and I have witnessed the miracles He has performed in my life. In no way do I profess to have all the answers; there are many questions I intend to ask God when He calls me home. I don’t judge any of you because I am a sinner who has been saved, not because of anything special about me, but only because God is a merciful God who loves me. I am trying to follow Jesus’ command to love others as much as I love myself, and so I pray that each of you would open your heart to God’s love. God bless you!

Re: Comment #13622 by susan 28 on 7/12

You are one of a few who respond to my argument that Truth is God. Of course, God is not a person in the sense of a conscious will with likes and dislikes and a propensity to lie to himself to promote his own importance. And Truth as God would not tempt Abraham to kill his own son in a sacrifice to Truth.

But, I just want to comment on your observation that we can mathematically represent “8 dimensions”. Actually, we can mathematically represent any finite number of dimensions, and surmise that they are infinite. However, there is no practical use for an exponent greater than a four for any practical problem in observation or even in reality. The physical world seems to be content with no more than four dimensions, if you include time.

In the Einsteinian formula, E = M times C squared, the four physical dimensions are represented, because C contains distance and time. Though Einstein assumed a constant, C, in no way did he prove it. Only an assumption that the speed of light is a constant allows the law of conservation of energy and only the law of conservation of energy justifies an assumption that the speed of light is a constant. An expanding universe allows for an increase of mass, energy, and the speed of light along with all the space needed for whatever happens. Note that the speed of light resolves to plus or minus the square root of distance light seems to travel in a given time. So which direction does light travel? What about time? What is the direction of time, forward or backward? I don’t find these answers in any holy book of religion.

ya Frank, seems like every generation diametrically opposes its parents..

i’ve pretty much settled on the Truth thing myself.. best definition i can get my brain around.. maybe can’t perceive it all, since we’ve already been able to mathematically represent, what, 8 dimensions now? and we’re only wired to grok 3 - 4 if you count time - but if i have “faith” in anything, it’s truth.

i guess if i have a “creed” it’s negative utilitarianism (damn the pinpricks!), i’m a transhumanist, better living thru removing our heads from our arses and Substance P and friends from the equation altogether.. gimme paradise or gimme me *more* paradise, that sort of thing..

Dave: thanks, Doc, i needed that awesome frikkin Jeffy quote, he really did have it sussed..