🚀 go-pugleaf

X-Orig-MsgId: <kuszoux7ks8.fsf@buphy.bu.edu>

sw1nghell@aol.communists (SwingHeil) writes:
> It's a shame that people go on living their life for an empty thing
> such as religion. There's no reality to it. Think about it.

You still have to think about your arguments, too.
If religion is an "empty thing", then what is life without
religion? More to the point, what makes your non-religious
actions any less meaningless?

> Religion was created by
> society. If we were made in the image of god, we should be this
> perfect, flawless creature. Obviously, we aren't.

Standard argument: we were given free will.

> Think about this... There was once a
> child in Europe (Scottland or Ireland I believe) that was abandoned
> by its parents and left in the wild. Amazingly enough, it survived
> and lived to be
> about 13 or 14 before captured by civilized humans. This child never
> had any
> idea of a god. The only way we are introduced to god is via society.

That seems a valid argument for society's giving the concept of
god, but the counter-argument will be that the primitive heathens
need to be educated in the ways of the Lord[1]. BTW, there are, perhaps
to your amazement, many people who survive in "the wild" with
no concept of a diety. Typically they are even more superstitious
than xtians, though.

[1] then you argue, "if no one can comprehend the Lord, how do
you know what he's saying?" Then they say "blah blah blah, it's
in the Bible". Then you say, "how do you know the bible is valid?"
And they say, "how do you know it isn't?" And so on, and so on,
and you end up wasting several years of your life on
alt.atheism.moderated for no good reason, really.

> The only thing keeping us from proving that there is
> no god is that the religous people say, "well, the reason you
> can't explain it
> is because god made it and there's no other reason."

The reason you can't prove it is that it's a negative proposition.
In order to prove the non-existence of god, or the Invisible
Pink Unicorn (PBUH) for that matter, you'd have to exhaustively
search the entire universe simultanteously; otherwise, it might just
be "hiding" from you. Furthermore, it's claimed that god isn't
made of physical stuff, so no wonder you can't find it.
Philosophically, or logically, it is up to the person who makes
a bizarre claim to prove it because, for reasons like those above,
you can't prove a negative. Same argument holds for aliens,
UFOs, conspiracy theories, and so on.

> Bah. Brain-washed and
> pathetic these people have become. There is nothing in this
> universe that can't
> be explained scientificly. If we can't do it today, we'll be
> able to in another 2000 years.

Maybe, maybe not. What does it matter, anyway?
Scientific truth isn't necessarily the Real Truth, either.
It's often steered by our prejudices as well, and it may
change over time as our perspective on things changes.
For arguments along this line, read Thomas Kuhn's
"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". For instance,
it's observed that, typically, younger people make the
revolutionary breakthroughs in science -- Newton, Einstein,
most of the quantum theorists, etc.; the reason presumably
being that they aren't too set in their ways of the current
scientific "paradigm" to make a creative leap. Notice
the similarity to your argument that society shapes
religious beliefs. Science is also very much a social
endeavor.

-- 
While the brown ale he quaffed,
Loud then the champion laughed,
And as the wind-gusts waft
The sea-foam brightly,
So the loud laugh of scorn,
Out of those lips unshorn,
From the deep drinking-horn
Blew the foam lightly. --Longfellow