[Debate] Is God real? [Religion] (445)

134 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2007-09-12 13:33 ID:GQ+13QT5

God isn't real. Google for "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Here's the abridged 4 chan version:

"There is no such thing as a Muslim Child. There is a child of Muslim Parents. There is no such thing as a Christian Child. There is a child of Christian Parents.

My specific hypothesis is about children. More than any other
species, we survive by the accumulated experience of previous
generations, and that experience needs to be passed on to children for their protection and well-being. Theoretically, children might learn from personal experience not to go too near a cliff edge, not to eat untried red berries, not to swim in crocodile-infested waters. But, to say the least, there will be a selective advantage to child brains that possess the rule of thumb: believe, without question, whatever your grown-ups tell you. Obey your parents; obey the tribal elders, especially when they adopt a solemn, minatory tone. Trust your elders without question. This is a generally valuable rule for a child. But, as with the moths, it can go wrong.

Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them.
Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.

Sociologists studying British children have found that only about one in twelve break away from their parents' religious beliefs."

"It would be a severe disadvantage, for example, when hunting or making tools, to keep changing one's mind, so under some circumstances, it is better to persist in an irrational belief than to vacillate, even if new evidence or ratiocination favours a change."

Douglas Adams:

"Religion . . . has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that'.

Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be."

Andrew Mueller:

"Pledging yourself to any particular religion 'is no more or less weird than choosing to believe that the world is rhombus-shaped, and borne through the cosmos in the pincers of two enormous green lobsters called Esmerelda and Keith'."

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson

"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." George Bush Snr.

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