Just continue extending the reach of science. Those you speak of will die and there will be fewer and fewer to replace them as science provides more and more and better and better answers to the questions that religion now addresses. It’s a self correcting mechanism, but will take a lot of time.
Sure, and I don’t think you will find anywhere that I have challenged that. What I’m saying is that there is less and less room for religion as time passes. In the distant past the gods ran everything on a day-to-day basis. That’s not the case now and the gods get less and less important to the working of the world as time goes by.
I have no reason to doubt that people will keep chipping away at the operation of the brain and a reason for those spiritual experiences will be brought to light. Their onset might always result from some random cause, such as a cosmic ray striking a neuron in just the right way, but once caused how they proceed is, and the history of science supports this view, amenable to a scientific explanation.
I don’t believe that you can point to any place I’ve been intolerant. You are free to blather about your OBE without any attempt on my part to restrain you.
I don’t know if your plan will work. The Christians are schooling their own children and homeschooling is becoming more and more the thing to do. Actually home schooled children do much better in all catagories than public schooled children. So the Christians are replacing themselves as they go off and die. I really don’t think there will be enough time for science to take over before the Christians get all heated up from the articles like the one I posted. Remember the title: “Science Must Destroy Religion.” That is pretty inflammatory already.
Also given that science can’t define consciousness. The research now being done points in the other direction. The direction of consciousness survives the death of the body. This is on-going research with more than a dozen universities involved. The researchers of some of these studies have already announced that consciousness lives beyond the death of the body. So I don’t think you are going to be very accurate on this point either. I think science needs to be considering how they can co-exist with religion before it’s too late. Just my opinion.
Sure. There are blips in the path but that path is generally toward less belief in religion. In the Christian world the US is definitely the exception. Islaam is about 600 years younger than Christianity and is about where the latter was in the 11th century so there is a ways to go there.
As to that title “Science Must Destroy Religion”, what is it? A book, magazine article or what?
Aaaand Revenant Threshold with the hole in one. We can’t take Lekatt seriously because he decries scientists as immoral and deceitful while backing up his claims with tales of how scientists somewhere (WHERE, GODDAMNIT. CITE.) are proving his claims. Which is it, Lekatt? Does only the science which supports your skewed world-view count?
Lekatt, buddy–not only do the men of the cave think you went into the light only to return blind, but those of us who know the light is as real as a loaf of bread kinda wonder.
Even many of those who think Harris has a good argument agree that he might be just a tad extreme. He wants an active project while I’m willing to let it happen as it is quite likely bound to do.
More likely either we will give up religion, or be destroyed by it. Humans are far more powerful than in the past. In the long run, I believe that either we will largely give up religion, be thrown back into a Dark Age by wars and disasters caused by religion, or be rendered extinct by it. Madness and power lead to disaster when combined, and religion is madness.
Hopefully, since that would mean the elimination of religion. But since truth doesn’t always win it’s not a sure thing.
This website has links to some interesting articles on neurotheology. The site is maintained by one of Dr. Persinger’s associates.
Dr. Persinger is the man who invented “the God machine” a few years ago. It stimulates the brain to create a sense of the presence of “someone.”
Persinger has not made assumptions about the “presence” that people sense while wearing the helmet.
Who knows where science will lead? I don’t want to be closed to any possibility. Some of you don’t seem to be very scientific in the assumptions you make about the mystical.
Why not? I mean, isn’t that the point? I would be very surprised if Persinger didn’t have some discussion of the possibility of artificial/genuine “presence” at least in his studies. And assumptions would then lead to further work into that, ideally.
The internet gives the illusion that everyone’s in an intimate little gathering with everyone else.
It’s meant as advice, not abuse. Tomndebb’s Catholic. He’s arguing with you but he’s not the enemy. Neither am I. I have a physics degree, and I believe that the mind is not just an illusion created by particles bumping into each other, and that God is real, and that we all exist eternally in His mind; but I think you will help your cause more if you–read great works of philosophy or something–however you do it, tighten up your arguments.
Someone noticed! You made my night.
::Happy dance::
This may sound corny, but I don’t judge anyone by what they tell me they are, because their actions speak so loud I can’t hear what they are saying.
Now I have read a lot of philosophy, it was my minor in college. I don’t belong to any religion, what I talk about and write about on my site is what I have experienced personally. I know it is different, That is what makes it meaningful.
So, stop and consider what your actions say when you claim that a researcher–one who has made no attack on any religious belief and has made no claims to have disproven anything in the spiritual realm–is trying to “fool” people simply by carrying out primary research.
All your talk about being open to information pales in comparison to that simple act of a knee-jerk display of prejudice.
Lekatt
I’m well aware that atheists are outnumbered in the US and that theists aspire to more political clout. If your friends get sufficient power, we can join the ranks of the other countries run by the “believers” on sound, “faith-based” principles and live in disease and poverty and ignorance. We can force our women to dress in the Christian version of a burka and stop educating them since they don’t need it for their proper place in the world. Education in general can take a back seat as more knowledge than it takes to read the Bible or other holy book is really unnecessary. And people like you can flourish.
Having a religious majority is like having syphilis; embarrassing, difficult to eradicate, and terribly dangerous if left unchecked.
Have you read the pulp magazines, sometimes called yellow journalism. Ones like “National Inquirer”. They have headlines that read: “Cow jumps over the Moon,” “Woman gives birth to a 50lb baby,” “Aliens landed in New York.” They run false headlines in order to grap the attention of prospective readers. Then when you start to read about the story, you find it really doesn’t say much at all about what the headline claimed. Then if you continue to read you will usually find near the bottom some kind of disclamer, a few words of backpeddling. I was in the Ad/Publishing/Typesetting/Printing business for over 40 years of my life. I saw most of it if not all. Ad makers use this kind of hocus all the time.
Ok. The headline read; “Out-of-body experience recreated.”
“Experts have found a way to trigger an out-of-body experience in volunteers.”
Then when you read the article you find out it really has nothing to do with out of body experiences. It is about a virtual reality experiment designed so some one can look through a set of goggles and see himself as if he were out of body. Even that was false. Then we went on to talk about fake hands and various other things, then finally the disclamer, sorry couldn’t find the disclamer.
But the ad accomplished what it was written to do, I have seen it pop up in no less than 6 other places on the internet. Only about 50% of people ever read beyond the headline.
You are free to believe what you will, of course. But I have lived long enough to know a ringer when I see one.
