The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True - by Richard Dawkins

[ant]

Oh stop picking on Sonoman

I must say this:
It seems that ultimately the downfall of the atheistic meme will be athesim itself
It's actually abundantly clear when you thnk about it.

Men like Dawkins and Sagan both wish(ed) that one day the exalting of the natural world will somehow surpass a religious perspective that includes a reverent worship of a Universal Creator.
Rather than get excited about a god we can't see, we instead should get excited about nature, marvel at its blind design and complexity, revere its Darwinian purposelessness, and be in awe of the illusions of meaning it grants to all its intellegent creatures.

But "like a thief in the night who chides his victims for lacking the items he has taken from them" the secular religious atheist can not truly replace what has been asked to be placed aside in the name of science

The something that is being asked to be revered in an evolutionary worldview can not provide meaning to the human experience. What seems to be the highest distinction between Man and animal is his innate yearning for transcendence. A desire to connect with something far greater than himself. A "spiritual " quest, if you like.
And from this we sense the same quest in each of our fellow sufferers.
Our spiritual nature, our common quest rooted in a belief in one divine source is what brings us together.

Athesim utterly fails here. It utterly lacks the ability to rally the human spirit
It's passive and docile. Ultimately, it seeks and cares only for its own interests.
That's why it's unresponsive to human needs, or at least woefully sluggish
As a collective, it needs more spirit (oops!) or it will utterly fail as a meme.

[President Camacho]

Human... can't wait until intelligent life is discovered beyond planet earth or they discover us. Watch God retreat again.

I look at Elephants and see how they care for the bones in their elephant graveyards. How they take the tusks from their dead and scatter them in the forest, how they place branches on the deceased, and I wonder...

I can agree with Ant that humans have a need that isn't yet completely fulfilled by science. There is the letter of the law and awe which are in science's favor. There is plenty of magic in the natural world for the mystics but there isn't the 'hope' of some magical place that dead people go, a reward system in an afterlife, or a supernatural being that is looking out for you while making your enemies burn in hell. Science can only rip this down and can't replace it. Law, immortality, and magic, though, can be readily supplied today.

[sonoman]

35 years I went as an atheist with an atheist's mindset that science-explains-all. Well, maybe those few times my missionary aunt came to visit on her trips to and from Bolivia, (she was one of those First Encounter missionaries) I sat with praying to Jesus which forever affected my naive little brain or so I suspect atheists would think, even though if at age 20, already dropped out of Berkeley and into the beginnings of the '60's counterculture, first to bring peyote in quantity to the U.C.B campus in 1961, taking acid before Leary did, stuff like that, my psychedelic art work, and if you asked my opinion about God then I'd had to repeat my Berkeley peer's yell to passerby's on the streets of Berkeley, "God's a snail!" and laugh and not think about it at all with any seriousness and certainly no respect for dimwitted people needing Daddy for security blankets.

But then it all changed within three days. Why "three days"? I know why but to you atheists reading this, reading Ant's wisdom? You are where I was before being woken up to a whole new dimension in reality that I had previously dismissed as illusion. Turns out the illusion is the reality atheists think is so solidly in place despite their knowing by now that only force fields exist to create an illusion of "solidity". And nobody knows quite what or how force fields work. How many of them there are and yet atheists discount a spiritual dimension..not a logical conclusion from the available data.

The elephant graveyards, the wolves and coyotes howling at the moon, probably many other religious rituals being done by animals that we are not aware of in our secular society or were ever aware of even during the patriarchal religious societies because they had broken the natural world/spiritual world connection. Is evolution right? Do species evolve, change form to meet new conditions? Do religions evolve? They seem to, whenever things go south with their societies big time, you get these new religious visions and that's happened again now with a new religious vision that unites the natural world with the one nobody said it could, Christianity, through Celestial Torah Christianity's revealing God's Cosmic Plan where Creation evolves life into Humanity into eventually God. Elephants are on their way..as the full meaning of "humanity" is not confined to species form.

[DWill]

That famous quote from Hamlet--"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy"--which of us here is really saying that notion is all bunk? In fact, science encourages the idea that possibilities are limitless. It's just that in the here and now, science (and by that I mean a disciplined search for the evidence of what is real) can be used to eliminate and point the way. We can make our task simpler by provisionally ruling out some proposals that evidence doesn't support. We can do that if what we're examining can be falsified, but if it can't be, it's not fodder for science anyway. That leads us to consider what some call spiritual truth, which seems to be based on deduction or holistic appraisal. We all unavoidably use that, too, but with some it's much more limited or less trusted than it is with others.

[Dexter]

Athesim utterly fails here. It utterly lacks the ability to rally the human spirit
It's passive and docile. Ultimately, it seeks and cares only for its own interests.
That's why it's unresponsive to human needs, or at least woefully sluggish
As a collective, it needs more spirit (oops!) or it will utterly fail as a meme.

Atheism does not have "its own interests," and is obviously unresponsive to human needs, it is non-belief. Do your non-beliefs provide these things?

You are presumably in atheist in regards to most or all of the world's major religions, and most that have ever existed, i.e. you think they are false. But you are supportive of these false beliefs because it provides community, apparent meaning, etc., right? Well, I don't have a problem with it either, as long as they are not harming anyone else. But be honest, you agree they are false beliefs -- at most, one of the stories out there can be true.

Most believers don't say, "well, I think there's something greater out there." They have specific beliefs and claims.

[geo]

Human... can't wait until intelligent life is discovered beyond planet earth or they discover us. Watch God retreat again.

Yep, God will retreat for some. Others will incorporate the newly discovered alien life forms into their belief system. Not hard to do. Certainly there are plenty of believers who accept evolution. Even the Pope has accepted it.

But then come the literalists, many of whom will deny the discovery, even after mountains of confirming evidence. Or they will rationalize. . . God created us, but not these other life forms. They're impostors, not really God's creatures. Basically xenophobia informed by literalist thinking.

[ant]

Since we seem to be playing "what if?" then lets ask,

What if the ET's discovered believe in a God?

Are you going to explain their belief away and declare a galactic victory in the name of naturalism?
On what basis ?
What's true for us is true for all
Memes are universal
Evutionary forces are identical universally
There is no god, Mr ET, because we don't have evidence for Him
ET is also delusional but just doesn't know it like us earthling atheists do.

Any answer given here obviously is anthropocentric to the extreme.

I think someone like Camacho is anticipating a discovery of an alien civilization that is atheistic!
Yes, that's it! Any intellegent Alien civilization MUST be atheist!

[sonoman]

It's only because this site is in the hands of atheist fundamentalists that these pointless discussions keep going. Atheism is irrational and always will be because it's a philosophy based on not looking at any contradicting evidence, just like any fundamentalist belief system. Ant and I, as theists could go on and on pointing to the gigantic volume of human reports of spiritual experiences, we could cite brain studies showing how it was I had the same physical experience as Muhammad when we both received spiritual revelations, and I could present the Holy Grail which I did actually, where it comes from, what it is, and it's all pearls before, well, you know what. Just there to be trampled on by lesser minds that are so out of touch with half of their brains they seem to crave their healing by seeking out theists to attack with atheist ideology, the failed ideology that still, remember?, has never given a rational explanation how by using yesterday's knowledge of things is guaranteed to hold up in the future, i.e, the atheist ignoring the logic of history and the logic of infinity. It's the only way the fundamentalist ideology can be held--ignore logic. Keep blind faith in dogma: "There is no God because we can't put God on a lab table and measure Him. What we can't measure, doesn't exist."

The measurement really is how deep the atheist head is stuck in the sand. Why am I here? It's broken record land and frankly, these anti-theist comments constantly thrown out here that demand rebuttals are just getting too boring to continue. I'm taking a break. I hope some of you atheists go find some LSD and see if that will break through your disability. It's been proven to help with alcoholism, why not atheism? Both addictions wrapped around lack of Spirit that can be broken with determination.

[Chris OConnor]

I'm taking a break.

[LevV]

I recently came across an interesting book of essays that, I believe, reveals a more accurate picture of the atheist world than that held by some of the participants in this thread. The book is called “Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life” by Louise Antony http://www.amazon.com/Philosophers-with ... ns-Atheism
Since I’ve only read a few of the essays I will include the publishers description from the back cover.

“Atheists are frequently demonized as arrogant intellectuals, antagonistic to religion, devoid of moral sentiments, advocates of an “anything goes” lifestyle. Now, in this revealing volume, nineteen leading philosophers open a window on the inner life of atheism, shattering these common stereotypes as they reveal how they came to turn away from religious belief.

These highly engaging personal essays capture the marvellous diversity to be found among atheists, providing a portrait that will surprise most readers. Many of the authors, for example, express great affection for particular religious traditions, even as they explain why they cannot, in good conscience, embrace them. None of the contributors dismiss religious belief as stupid or primitive, and several even express regret that they cannot, or can no longer, believe. Perhaps more important, in these reflective pieces, they offer fresh insight into some of the oldest and most difficult problems facing the human mind and spirit. For instance, if God is dead, is everything permitted? “Philosophers Without Gods” demonstrates convincingly, with arguments that go back to Plato, that morality is independent of the existence of God. Indeed, every writer in this volume adamantly affirms the objectivity of right and wrong. Moreover, they contend that secular life can provide rewards as great and as rich as religious life. A naturalistic understanding of the human condition presents a set of challenges – to pursue our goals without illusions, to act morally without hope of reward – challenges that can impart a lasting value to finite and fragile human lives.

Collectively, these essays highlight the richness of atheistic belief – not only as a valid alternative to religion, but as a profound fulfilling and moral way of life.”