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<p>Well we believe we’ll be judged for what we do in this world. That’s why we don’t cheat, steal , lie, kill etc. and it wouldn’t be wrong.
If we’re just going to die and thats that then there would be no morality. We’d just be trying to take unfair advantage of others. And i’m not going to take this foolish discussion any further. It is illogical to think there is no God.</p>
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<p>Ah, religion’s anti-intellectual superoxide dismutase against the phagocytes of uncomfortable truth.</p>
<p>To everyone who says religion is a sham, pointless, etc…
How can a belief in something more powerful than yourself be anything but good? Every day the love of God changes thousands of lives for the better. Broken houses have been reunited through faith. People with no hope for their future have found hope. Children leave Sunday School with a happy heart and all sorts of ideas of how to help others. This isn’t an attempt to push my beliefs (pro-life pro-death penalty nondenominational Christian) on you, but an attempt to get you to think.</p>
<p>And no, you should not lie about your religion to get a job at the church. People are there to learn about the love of Christ, not run the risk of being contaminated by atheistic manifestos.</p>
<p>And if you ever doubt the existence of God, just look to the heavens, day or night. How could that not be the work of a Master?..</p>
<p>Ah, atheism’s attempt to sound like they know everything through the use of a vocabulary that does nothing but make you sound like a know it all…</p>
<p>Wth? Actually SOD is a common enzyme found in almost every type of life on this planet – one you learn about in high school? Like, it gets covered by SAT Bio?</p>
<p>Only religious people who are paranoid about evolutionary biology would be ignorant of such common knowledge.</p>
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<p>Not mine … oh wait, it was an exception, God works in mysterious ways, w/e. That just raises the p-value for the existence of God. To like 99.9999999999999.</p>
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<p>been there, done that. </p>
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<p>That wonderful phenomenon called emergence? </p>
<p>You really should try it.</p>
<p>Take for example, Conway’s game of life, in which you can construct chaotic and complex dynamic systems from a few basic axioms…</p>
<p>A master, maybe. The Christian God, prolly not. Speculation without further evidence is pointless. Further evidence will come from scientific inquiry, not priests.</p>
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Agreed. Atheists are people who think they know everything and consider themselves intellectually superior to others</p>
<p>It is religious people who think they know everything. The secret to all your problems is a single library approved by a political council 1600 years ago! Look at that, the beauty of nature! Readily explained by a tiny, tiny god. Tiny, because every time science discovers something really grand about the universe, the purists have to cry, “no wait! That’s not our god! Our god is smaller!”</p>
<p>Dawkins atheistic writings are not useful to society, theyre a poor attempt at philosophy and nothing more than rants that promote bigotry instead of tolerance(hence the coulter comparison). The only people who defend Dawkins are ignorant dogmatic atheist. Even Dawkins has pulled off the pedal a little referring to himself as a “cultural christian” (how can you be culturaly something you believe to be evil?) and being apart of the Atheist for Jesus movement (which is great imo as Jesus transcend any man made religion).</p>
<p>Thankfully the theist answer to Dawkins, John Polkinghorne is much more interesting and intellectually stimulating with no dogmatic hatred in his writings. His last book Questions of Truth was simply amazing and dealt with Dawkins like a fly.</p>
<p>“The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist…”- Michael Ruse</p>
<p>No, his writings draw directly upon scientific coursework, namely the secular explanation of religion as a meme. And as the literature on such a comparison increases, it works better and has more experimental confirmation than religion has ever experimentally confirmed for itself. </p>
<p>No really theologists think they’re really smart when they try to come up with some profound metaphor or suggestion on how this is God or some elaborate argumentative proof for the existence of God, but really, their arguments never go beyond proving a <em>specific</em> God, or anything experimentally falsifiable. </p>
<p>There is one very cogent argument for atheism. It’s in picture form.</p>
<p>[xkcd</a> - A Webcomic - The Data So Far](<a href=“http://xkcd.com/373/]xkcd”>xkcd: The Data So Far)</p>
<p>Defeat it.</p>
<p>LOL now your mentioning memes? A made up concept, lol. The God Delusion does not draw upon the scientific method, it is simply an atheistic rant. If you believe in memes something that has not been empirically proven, then you have no right to judge those who believe in God or the invisible pink unicorn.</p>
<p>You obviously, like every other 19 year old, have a lot of maturing to do when it comes to your beliefs and opening your mind to others beliefs. That okay, God knows how many times I look back and have a good laugh at myself at my way of thinking when I was 17 to 19 and how I thought my way was the right way. As I said before oh to be 19 again</p>
<p>Galoisien, believe in God or don’t, I don’t much care, but you don’t do yourself any favors when your sense of morality says that it’s ok for you to lie to an employer who is hiring in good faith. You inquired into that when it came to lying about you being a UVA student, and now you’re inquiring into this when it comes to a potential job at a church. I don’t think that moral codes necessarily have to come from religion / God, but I’m perplexed as to what yours seems to be.</p>
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I have a problem with this point. I think you’re totally wrong about this, but I’m not sure it’s a good thing to try to convince you (or anybody else) of it. To me, really critical thinking either brings you to religion or to the abyss. But I’m not sure I want the people who can’t bring themselves to believe in God to truly understand the consequences of the abyss–I’m afraid of what they might do.</p>
<p>galoisen if we ever meet we can become con men who spend all our time plotting to betray each other</p>
<p>Professor Dwokins is a great scientist but HE DOES NOT LIVE IN THE REAL WORLD. He lives in an academic “ivory tower” as he always has and always will. Attacking the belief structures that keep the mob from tearing civilization apart is just stupid. </p>
<p>When you attempt to formulate societal paradigms that will replace beliefs that have ordered and advanced civilization for thousands of years, remember half the human race is below average in IQ, hates intellectuals, and can shoot better than you.</p>
<p>For social animals, nothing is more real than the consensual belief structures that bind individuals to normal behavior.</p>
<p>The actual existence or non-existence of a “supernatural” element to the universe is totally irrelevant. Religion works.</p>
<p>The majority of Swedes are atheist. Where are the riots?</p>
<p>Whether there is a God or not is irrelevant to the dilemma that our young friend galoisien has – whether it’s ok to intentionally deceive someone (who is looking to hire a Christian in good faith). Seems that there doesn’t have to be a God for that to be not a very nice thing to do.</p>
<p>@lockn - Sweden doesn’t have many riots because it has an extremely high standard of living, and their government distributes wealth more, resulting in a small gap between the rich and poor so not much crime. I doubt religion has much to do with it. </p>
<p>Galoisien, it seems like you’re just up for an argument because we can’t really help you with your problem - you know it’s dishonest, but the question is, are you ok with that? If the answer’s yes, then take the job. But why would you want to mentor Christian kids anyway? i’ve noticed you’re particularly outspoken about religion on this forum so I’m guessing you wouldn’t enjoy this job?</p>
<p>To answer the question, no I wouldn’t pretend to be religious to get a job…if working at a church was my last resort, I’d just be honest. Just get a different job if this becomes an issue.</p>
<p>The God Delusion is a rant how? It’s not supposed to be a paper – it’s a cogent explanation for laymen who haven’t read evo bio textbooks and aren’t into the linear algebra or differential equations of evolutionary game theory.</p>
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<p>You religious folks are so narrow minded.</p>
<p>Genes are made up too – arbitrary coding regions of DNA that happen to be organised and selected together. For that matter, so is the concept of “species”. I mean, take the invisible hand? Do you really think there’s a hand that’s invisible? (OMG, it’s God, amirite??) Or is it just a personification of an abstract concept?</p>
<p>The religious response to intellectual ideas is to incite ridicule – nice defense mechanism.</p>
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<p>OMG let’s draft the nash equilibria for this game</p>
<p>In the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, the viable nash equilibrium (arguably an ESS) is to cooperate. =)</p>
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<p>Since evol. bio investigates the origins of social structures, I think he prefers other forms of societal organisation and “group-selected” memes to regulate society.</p>
<p>Also, it’s Westernly-biased to assume that religion is what’s keeping the mob from tearing civilisation apart. And oh look, the PRC is atheist. Most Chinese (except old grandmothers) are free of the virus of religion. Now on the other hand, religion has torn civilisation apart quite consistently. </p>
<p>Now religion may encourage altruistic and cooperative values – supposedly – but there’s good evidence religion actually “piggy-backed” on these values (that had a group-selection advantage anyway) in order to spread among humans. Altruism and cooperation evolved before religion.</p>
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<p>OMG let’s draft the nash equilibria for this game</p>
<p>Because you realise that in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, the viable nash equilibrium is to cooperate, right?</p>