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I was very young (maybe as young as 10) when I first heard of "Pascal's Wager". Even at such a young age it struck me as very silly reasoning; or lacking in reason, I should say. (I should also mention that I was still very much under the influence of religion...
It's a waste of time to discuss "The Empty Wager" as anything but a novel statement to dampen intelligent discourse. It's purely a statement that you could (usually) get a child behind because it has no depth. It's a very floral and cute thing to spout out but believers should try something with some substance- which would excuse the divine entirely, so, I would guess that is why we still hear of Pascal's notorious wager.

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A rational person can knowingly will himself to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence? Ah, but true Christians have plenty of evidence in the form of life-changing experience. The Bible is true. The evidence of God is clearly seen in creation. (Romans 1:20) The god of this world has blinded the eyes of those who refuse to believe. (2 Corinthians 4:4) Pascal was only trying to remove that blindfold in the same way any good person would warn others to flee from a burning building. I am thankful for his efforts. Trust Jesus and live or reject him and die in your sins; it is a choice we all must make either willingly or by convincing ourselves that it doesn't exist.

Great job Sam! I have only one additional thought. Pascal did not live in a time when there was 33,000 denominations in the "christian " church and that many of those denominations hold incompatible views on doctrines that are considered necessary conditions for salvation.

I think the rhetorically most efficient way of countering a person who envokes Pascal's Wager is to say "thank you for rejecting Christianity and Islam". After all, these faiths reject the idea that mere belief in God is sufficient for salvation. Christias are supposed to believe that even the fiercely God-believing Muslims and Jews will necessarily go to hell, and that even devout Christians can only be saved by the Grace of God, which is arbitrary from our point of view. So where Christians and Muslims would agree with the negative part of the wager - that rejecting God sends you to hell - they fully disagree with the positive part, that accepting God sends you to heaven regardless of religion.

Even if you have not bothered to read my other posts; let me ask you:
Is Pascal's empty wager half empty or half full?

Obviously Pascal was an agnostic. He was intelligent enough to dispel the Biblical God concepts but also intelligent enough to be uncertain as to what might have been created by something that might not be explained by the probabilities of any understood mathematics.

Pascal did not know that television or airplanes would be common in our century. He probably wouldn't give them much odds of being possible... but we know that they are. That is because they can be made by Man. Man has yet to create life from inorganic chemicals. Man may never be able to do so. Knowing much about DNA, stem cells, etc has not enabled man to create any high form of life yet. When man can do so I'll bet on there being no creator or at least give that idea greater odds...before that I won't believe in anybodie's god ...but I won't eliminate the fact that a creator, by my own limited definition, may exist. My definition is that if Man can't ever do something then som,e supreme being might have done so because there is after all lots of life on Earth.

I am wot I am.
--Popeye the Sailor Man--

I forgot to mention that in addition to the two Pascal wager conditions there may be a third condition and that is that every living thing was created by Artificial Intelligent Design. This opens up another possibility as to who or what we can pray to or curse for anything we like or don't exactly care for about nature.

I admit that I can't prove or disprove this possibility. I can't prove or disprove the other two either. Pascal didn't think about it because he only knew about natural intelligence before there were computers that had hard drives with minds of their own sand irrelevant pop ups to curse at.

A wager is a bet... and in this sort of bet who is the dealer? I am an atheist but I am also a skeptic. As a skeptic I do not logically believe in anything that I can't prove myself except for a few laws of physics, and thus I only believe in the Laws of physics that were proved and the basis for all practical engineering. They basically include only the laws of Newton and Ohm. Everything else is up for grabs. Now I see lots of problems with what you write Sam...even though I am an atheist. Much of the devastation and murder attributed to religious differences might also have been motivated for economic, nationalistic or political reasons with religions being used for excuses to fool the gullible.

Neither Darwin's theory of Evolution, in serial steps on a flow chart or Behe's theory of intelligent design by mathematically miraculous parallel steps can prove or disprove the concept of a creator. In spite of this with little knowledge of these theories debates are held that have little to do with rational inquiry, secular humanism or Pascal's wager. This is because logically there may not be a yes or no answer to either the Pascal bet or the certitude that a theory must prove anything to be true or false about creation or religion. Even when we can understand something with a good degree of scientific certitude we must allow for the
"don't know and don't care case" that really makes our hypothesis irrelevant.

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I don't think it is fair to attack Pascal's wager without first examining the rest of his Pensees. It is very clear that the wager is not intended to create belief. It is merely a hot poker to get people to seek. People will not be convinced to have faith from other people. It can only come through reading the Bible and discovering God's grace for themselves. If the fear of God triggers someone to seek answers to life's questions, then I think the Wager does exactly what its author intended.

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Another problem with Pascal's Wager is that it expresses lack of faith!

Assume there is a God.
You come before him on Judgment Day and say
"Hey, Dude, you were the safe way to bet."

Where do you think you will end up?

Whoever bets on God dooms himself exactly because he merely BETS on God.

That's NOT faith, Dude!

Is it just me or can Sam Harris make anything put in parentheses sound offensive?

Sam is brilliant as usual.
But for...uh, Jupiter's sake.
Get another photo of him for the site!

Sam is brilliant as usual.
But for...uh, Jupiter's sake.
Get another photo of him for the site!

Sam is brilliant as usual.
But for...uh, Jupiter's sake.
Get another photo of him for the site!

Pascal's wager falsely assumes only two courses.
What if there is a "GOD" but the way to salvation
is not in believing in GOD based on faith, that may
actually get you into hell. The way to heaven may be
learning the physical laws of the universe GOD created and belief in him is irrelevant.
With all the scientific inaccuracies in the Bible not to mention its condoning of slavery and second class treatment of women it can easily be argued that it is more the work of the devil than GOD.

One thing that proves to me how ridiculous religion is: I was baptised as a teenager and I really beleived in what I was doing. After I grew up, I realized how stupid the whole religious system is. According to the Bible, I am going to heaven. I professed my faith in the appropriate way, therefore I have my ticket to enter eternal bliss. I continue to live my life in a way that does not harm others and I help wherever I can. The fact that I have not been going to church doesn't matter- all I have to do is make a deathbed confession and I'm covered. Or, some religions say I'm not covered- the convicted murderer who goes to the prison chapel each day to pray may get in-- or not. How stupid! And, if there was to be a God, won't he take whoever he wants? There is just no way any of this can be true!

Well Said.

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11. Women who love too much by Robin Norwood

12. The Casanova Complex by Peter Trachtenberg

It goes without saying of course that in this day and age of sexual "revolution" there are female versions of the Casanova, women who cheat their partners and there are men who love too much. Men and women are truly equals both in virtue and vice.

Since my suggestions for reading (to get a balanced view of sexuality) was deleted on another thread, I post it here (as much of it as I can remember):

1. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

2. Siddharta by Hermann Hesse

3. Mount Misery by Samuel Shem (a hilarious take on Freudian psychoanalysis)

4. The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm

5. The Road Less Travelled by Scott M Peck

6. An apropos to Lady Chatterlee's Lover, (essay) by D H Lawrence

7. Sexuality (essay) by C S Lewis

8. Books by Patrick Carnes: Don't Call it Love, Out of the Shadows, Betrayal Bond...

9. The Book of Proverbs (The Old Testament)

10. The Ramayana (Hindu Epic)

After posting my initial comment, I took a look to other commentators. I think that many rationally proned people would agree with me, and I most certainly do not want to offend any person that feels otherwise, but each time somebody defends his or her faith on account of a man or god, whose accountability rests on the far past (like Budha, Jesus, or whoever)saying I am a Buddhist, or I am a Christian, etc, I cannot help but think in the following comparison, I imagine a person two thosuands yeras from now, proclaming: I am a Mickey Mouseian, or a Donald Duckian...Can just we grasp whatever we could from God HEAR AND NOW without resorting to some past, unprovable and alien experience?

Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
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www.foroplanetario.com.ar

Sam Harris is, together wih Richard Dawkins and a little bunch of first line scientific writers,one of the few that is confronting the madness of a belief structure that has, systematically and inexorably, led to innumerable colective catastrophes. He is worried, very much so, and with outstanding reason.Religious belief as has been preserved by organized religions, is a calamity that has to be confronted by rational minds all over the world.The clash between those beliefs and super-advanced technology will provoke further holocausts, poisoning, in way to that final destiny,our daily lives in every possible manner. 100% support to Dr. Harris work.

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Suppose I said the following:

"I have had an epiphany. I was visited in my sleep last night by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He told me that every night before sleep we should repeat 'spaghetti is awesome' 9 times whilst hopping on one leg. The mighty one said that if we did not do this then we would go to noodley hell after our deaths but would go to noodley heaven if we did. Pascal's wager implies we should do as I profess - it's a good bet."

So why don't we? The fact that the above proposed behaviour's only possible source of credibility is derived from Pascal's wager is telling.

Let A + B denote the union of the sets of statements A and B.
If X(Y) is the threat 'you will suffer after death if you don't believe the statements Y but go to heaven if you do' then Pascal's wager implies we should believe both A + X(A) and Not(A) + X(Not(A)). In other words we should believe A and Not(A) simultaneously!

It should be clear that adding threats to any statement does not make that statement any more likely to be true.

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PS: On a Muslim thread I had already mentioned that when two people fall in love (provided they continue to cultivate love actively after the intense romantic phase has passed), they act instinctively just as Jesus taught (even if they are atheists or behaved like bonobo apes before) - they want to remain together for the rest of their lives, remain faithful to each other as a given (feeling completely ripped apart if the other partner cheats), are able to deal with temptation from outside and are not even tempted themselves (or if tempted they are able to overcome it and say "no" to it) no matter how beautiful the other person nor how seductive a game another plays (for they find beauty in the one they love and love is what gives anything value and lasting beauty); and stick with each other through thick and thin, through sickness and sorrow until death does them apart.

Most people understand the value of a lasting companionship (centuries of stable relationships and families practised because it was forced by society) and hence choose to settle for one partner for the rest of their lives whether they are believers in God or not. They choose to invest their creative energies in pursuits other than chasing and conquering attractive members of the opposite sex, which religion tells us is an insatiable need arising from the false ego, and has nothing to do with a legitimate human need for contentment and complete happiness of the human being.

Those who preach hedonism and bonobo ape sexual behaviour as religion get their following of course. But whether such hedonistic materialism serves the best long term interests of the society has been disproved by the modern day chaos stemming from quarters practising extreme sexual liberation. The Indian sex guru Rajneesh is a case in point and has a lesson to teach too: he carried the 'sex as religion' experiment to the very extreme and despite all the impressive psychological techniques used, created the perfect disaster.

As creatures with free will, we can choose the chaos of our liking of course.

Dear CHAM

I'm going to give a go at the questions you raised, tricky as they are. My delay in the response is due to being caught up with other urgent matters, not because I was spending all the time thinking these issues through!

I do not think anyone denies the fact that ALL human beings have a legitimate need for one sexual partner. The problem starts when sex is equated with love, i.e sex is love. Sex is NOT love. Sex is merely an instinct and as such needs to be regulated and tamed like any other instinct. Noboby applauds a glutton. But the society tends to applaud successful skirt/pant-chasing Casanovas, females who lure the most men into their sex toilets. (The Buddhists tend to refer to casual sex as using the toilet.)

The Bible makes it clear in the very first chapter of Genesis: "It is not good for man to be alone." According to God's plan, sex is an integral element in a companionship in the context of a loving, and committed relationship. So that point is not even up for debate.

The question is: what about those who need a legitimate sexual partner in a meaningful relationship and are not married, or what about married partners who love their partners and expect faithfulness. How does one find sex within companionships in a society which offers sex as recreation? Young sultry seductress, whether married or not, get far more sexual partners than they need and yet their need remains insatiable. Those who are not sultry seductresses or young enough, find no partners at all as a result. Men get the best of such "liberation" on the part of women because they aren't exactly excited about sex which involves committment.

Religions merely give instructions on how everyone in the society could have that legitimate need for sex satisfied in a meaningful relationship - in a companionship which is based on love and committment. Love and committment is after all not a fickle feeling, but a choice one makes to answer that legitimate need and one should not have to depend on answering one's legitimate need like winning a lottery. But if the society adopts as norm bonobo ape sexual behaviour as "liberation," then satisfying legitimate needs of a lifelong relationship and stable family becomes a matter of winning the lottery. But "liberation" from what to what purpose is the question. Just as human beings, (unlike animals), eat more than they need, they similarly crave for sex with more than one partner even though they don't need it. In the animal, sex remains a pure instinct. But we all know that in human beings that is not the case. Sex can be used as a power tool (done mostly by women who are endowed by nature with extremely seductive bodies), men do it in other ways, and in general human beings use the sex instinct in a whole lot of other ways that are not found in animals.

As for Catholic priests and mandatory celibacy: I do agree that it opens the door to all sorts of problems. All of the Apostles of Jesus were married. Paul, who was not an Apostle in the lifetime of Jesus, was the only one who was celibate. Mandatory celibacy for priests was introduced much later in the Catholic church.

As mentioned in my earlier post, we need a realistic solution to the sexually liberated society of today. A proper sex education very early on highlighting the use and abuse of sex; and returning to the practice of early marriage is one important way to answer the legitimate sexual need in a meaningful way. Evolving more and more into bonobo ape behaviour is certainly not the ideal nor the answer, even if the rigidity advocated by religions may not always be realised. It is necessary to keep the highest ideal in mind and try to work towards it as best as possible rather than make the lowest denominator (bonobo ape sexual behaviour)as the new standard.

If religions can't explain the difference between black and white, who can? Of course religions realise that white is not the level at which human beings live, but that is what one is supposed to aspire towards. At least Christianity recognises that we are all sinners in need of mercy and forgiveness while we work towards living the life Jesus proclaimed God had in mind for the greatest happiness of human beings, whom God created and loves, more than human beings love themselves.

Just my thoughts for the moment.

Best wishes
Soja

I think Sam Harris is an educated and reasonable man, yet I think the evidence he sees leads him to the wrong conclusion. I am a Christian, and though this may not be the place for me in the eyes of many here, you can't just have a hundred people in the same room agreeing on the same thing without outside accountability, or parity of beliefs.

Wrong conclusion 1: religion has no value to the world. I would counter that Christianity is the one true religion, because it's not actually a religion with rules and customs followed incessantly; it's a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Jesus did everything needed to provide a living testimony for everyone (not just Jews, Americans, Europeans, etc.). Blaming Him or God the Father for the sinfulness of mankind and the evils they have wrought is not going to provide any answers. If a Muslim terrorist kills people because he thinks Allah receives warriors and martyrs with open arms, he has been deceived, because any god worthy of worship does not condone murder as worship.

The danger I see with atheism is that there's no acceptable moral conduct in its philosophy that isn't shaped somehow by the Bible. Case in point: if right and wrong are simply what we make of it, who decided what was right or wrong to begin with? Even religious folk snap and kill people, so how do we figure that we could figure out what was correct for ourselves? We could follow the code of conduct for the animal kingdom, and many actually do in their lawlessness (tongue in cheek), but I don't think the human race functions well without a standard morality. Is that possible? Probably not with human sinfulness, but that doesn't mean morality is useless.

I also think of natural selection and the theory of evolution, and I have trouble thinking that science is the supreme authority over mankind. Same with philosophy. Without a higher power to create and govern incredibly complex lifeforms such as ourselves, it's hard not to think of picking up a box of Lego's and shaking them into building a castle. The chances of that are nearly impossible to attempt. I can't shake a box of loose Lego's into forming a train, or a police station, or a car...why think nature just bumbled its way until it got it right? Somehow the chances of natural selection occurring probably outlast even the 4.5 billion year lifespan of the Earth - that is, in that space of time, it's hard for such a small chance of life forming through evolution.

What it really comes down to is this: The Bible explains clearly those who don't believe in it, what they value instead, and why they do. And from what I see in nonchristians, they confirm the Bible's words. In that light, nonchristians are the ones who look uneducated. I was a nonchristian myself for 17 years, so I can understand the opposite view that none of us have seen God, prolly not in the last 6,000 years. But the Bible is enough for most people who follow Jesus.

I think that Christianity implores more peace and love to others, as well as a reason WHY, that other religions and philosophies don't have.

I do my best to question everything in terms of not blindly believing what I'm told. And believe it or not, there are millions of educated, well-meaning Christians whose only crime is not doing enough. If you believe religion is a poison or deficiency, you have admitted the lesser status of the majority of the world. Reason and morality do poorly in converting the homeless, the sick, and the dying. Atheism has its limits too. Pascal's wager wasn't meant to singlehandedly convert people; it was using simplified terms to support belief in a God. NO ONE should base their faith on that wager, because it CAN be seen as a fearful decision and an insurance policy for the next life. True faith, and true change is not out of fear or ridicule...it's out of love. God is love. Too often, religion and atheism are ridicule. You won't win many over to your side through that. Therefore I contend that atheism is not the answer to a divided world in itself.

I think Sam Harris is an educated and reasonable man, yet I think the evidence he sees leads him to the wrong conclusion. I am a Christian, and though this may not be the place for me in the eyes of many here, you can't just have a hundred people in the same room agreeing on the same thing without outside accountability, or parity of beliefs.

Wrong conclusion 1: religion has no value to the world. I would counter that Christianity is the one true religion, because it's not actually a religion with rules and customs followed incessantly; it's a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Jesus did everything needed to provide a living testimony for everyone (not just Jews, Americans, Europeans, etc.). Blaming Him or God the Father for the sinfulness of mankind and the evils they have wrought is not going to provide any answers. If a Muslim terrorist kills people because he thinks Allah receives warriors and martyrs with open arms, he has been deceived, because any god worthy of worship does not condone murder as worship.

The danger I see with atheism is that there's no acceptable moral conduct in its philosophy that isn't shaped somehow by the Bible. Case in point: if right and wrong are simply what we make of it, who decided what was right or wrong to begin with? Even religious folk snap and kill people, so how do we figure that we could figure out what was correct for ourselves? We could follow the code of conduct for the animal kingdom, and many actually do in their lawlessness (tongue in cheek), but I don't think the human race functions well without a standard morality. Is that possible? Probably not with human sinfulness, but that doesn't mean morality is useless.

I also think of natural selection and the theory of evolution, and I have trouble thinking that science is the supreme authority over mankind. Same with philosophy. Without a higher power to create and govern incredibly complex lifeforms such as ourselves, it's hard not to think of picking up a box of Lego's and shaking them into building a castle. The chances of that are nearly impossible to attempt. I can't shake a box of loose Lego's into forming a train, or a police station, or a car...why think nature just bumbled its way until it got it right? Somehow the chances of natural selection occurring probably outlast even the 4.5 billion year lifespan of the Earth - that is, in that space of time, it's hard for such a small chance of life forming through evolution.

What it really comes down to is this: The Bible explains clearly those who don't believe in it, what they value instead, and why they do. And from what I see in nonchristians, they confirm the Bible's words. In that light, nonchristians are the ones who look uneducated. I was a nonchristian myself for 17 years, so I can understand the opposite view that none of us have seen God, prolly not in the last 6,000 years. But the Bible is enough for most people who follow Jesus.

I think that Christianity implores more peace and love to others, as well as a reason WHY, that other religions and philosophies don't have.

I do my best to question everything in terms of not blindly believing what I'm told. And believe it or not, there are millions of educated, well-meaning Christians whose only crime is not doing enough. If you believe religion is a poison or deficiency, you have admitted the lesser status of the majority of the world. Reason and morality do poorly in converting the homeless, the sick, and the dying. Atheism has its limits too. Pascal's wager wasn't meant to singlehandedly convert people; it was using simplified terms to support belief in a God. NO ONE should base their faith on that wager, because it CAN be seen as a fearful decision and an insurance policy for the next life. True faith, and true change is not out of fear or ridicule...it's out of love. God is love. Too often, religion and atheism are ridicule. You won't win many over to your side through that. Therefore I contend that atheism is not the answer to a divided world in itself.

Or as I once saw it written:

"God does not believe in atheists.
Therefore atheists do not exist."

Just three things:
1. If you are prepared to claim that God does not exist, at least be honest with yourself and ask yourself if your REAL motivation for doing this is because it's easier than having to deal with your predicament if God actually does exist. Why? Because then you would be forced to do something about it.
2. If you are prepared to claim that God does not exist, at least be honest with yourself and decide whether what you are saying is that it is ACTUALLY thus not possible for God to exist. As...er...'Jesus' wrote earlier in this thread: "You take it as a 100% certainty that there is no Hell or Satan. But nothing - let me repeat - nothing is 100% certain."
Can you in all honesty tell me, with 100% certainty, that God does not exist? Can you PROVE that? If so, I'd like to hear how...
3. Can you prove that any actions of humans performed in the name of God are actually God's will? Can you prove without a doubt, for example, that killing in the name of God is what God wants?

If, as some have suggested, using Pascal's Wager to incline people towards (Christianity) makes God far smaller than he may be, isn't summarising how you view a potentially infinite God by pointing to any actions of anyone who claims to be acting in his name, also reducing the scope of God just a tad?

Don't, for example, discard the value of my opinions but wanting to quickly classify me as a Christian, when I am not one of the "sheeple".

Dear CHAM

Thanks for your response. I needed to take a longish break from The Post On Faith forum for reasons beyond my control. I will post a detailed response to your post addressed to me - soon.

I take it you are American. I wish you, Sam Harris and all Americans who visit this thread, a Happy 4th of July! Have fun! Long live the American dream for ALL Americans!

Best wishes
Soja

I speak as someone who believes there is a God.
Mr. Harris makes yet another sincere comment on insincerity and hypocrisy. To pretend to believe in a God through fear of being punished if there does turn out to be one, well, that's simply abhorent. Living a lie. Just Mr. Pascal's sense of humour, perhaps.

Greg,
You are in the wrong discussion. This thread is for people who have chosen reason and common sense. Come back when you are wearing big boy pants.

Greg,
You are on the wrong website. This website is for people who have chosen reason and common sense. Come back when you are wearing big boy pants.

It's nonsense to talk about violence perpetrated in the name of God. Of the millions of people killed in wars and persecutions of the 20th Century the smaller fraction were killed not because of wars between different religions but because of wars over resources, politics.

Communist societies which were officially atheist killed far more people in the last 90 years than theistic governments. Estimates between Russia, Red China and the rest are around 100million people. On top of that we have abortion, a product of a less religious society, which must have killed even more people when considering surgical abortions alone.

However even all that suffering compared to the infinite suffering the damned choose in the fires of Hell by rejecting God is but nothing.

I still think Pascal's Wager holds true.

You cannot judge or comprehend an omnipotent being with your puny little brain and to think you can is moronic. Most of the people above are lying to themselves to salve their own consciences so how would they be any worse off forcing themselves into religious practice. After all perhaps true and sincere belief only comes after one makes an effort and tries.

Dear Soja,

Research may say that people are happiest in a committed relationship, but not everyone has been so lucky as to find a partner they can spend the rest of their lives with. The biological drive is immense, the need for affection, if even for a short encounter, overwhelming. The Catholic Church priests can speak well to that.

The elements that you mentioned are part of life. If we could stop vilifying people and open our arms to them to help them, maybe we could make this world a better place.

A good place to start is by throwing out the god that requires a black and white look at the world.

Civilized society should take heed to Sam Harris's and Richard Dawkins's philosophies if it expects to survive. Religion will be it's demize.

Civilized society should take heed to Sam Harris's and Richard Dawkins's philosophies if it expects to survive. Religion will be it's demize.

Sam Harris is the last Bodhisatva in Buddhism

I find that when I look around and see the narcissism in our world and in my community, that it stems from primarily religious believers. Almost 80 percent of those who live in the US have some sort of belief in a God or higher power. It is my understanding, from what has been demonstrated to me, that many "believers" have a built in anti-morality device. With all the proclamations of morality and moral leadership, Christians are free to commit sins because they have a way out. I do not believe that this is a conscious decision, but more a de facto state of being. Christians are more free to commit crimes against their fellow man because God will forgive you for your sins.

As far as a committed sexual relationship, I've never read anything where Mr. Harris has said that humans cannot have a healthy monogamous relationship, or that they were bad for anyone. He has simply stated that perhaps the focus of faith should be less on a natural act, such as sex, and more on healing the wounds of a nation divided. Or helping your fellow man to eat, find housing, find a job, or even be responsible about sex. Abstinence and monogamy are wonderful concepts, but only on paper. The reality is that most kids will lose their virginity before their 20th birthday, and 35% (more or less) of husbands in committed marriages will have an affair. In the US, 53% of marriages end in divorce, most of them in southern communities with high rates of regular church attendance.

I would like to make one statement about atheism. I am an atheist and a believer. I believe that there is no god. I believe that mankind has a duty to be responsible to itself, that all individuals must take care of one another. I believe that in order for us to continue to improve our world we need to put aside our foolish beliefs in cosmic superheroes and put our faith in humanity. If all of us wake up everyday and make a commitment to be personally responsible for our own deeds, thoughts, etc, we would see the goodness of man.

Dear Mr Harris

In the debate with Rick Warren, you said the following:

"Our morality, the meaning we find in life, is a lived experience that I believe has, to use a loaded term, a spiritual component. I believe it is possible to radically transform our experience of the world for the better, very much the way someone like Jesus, or someone like Buddha, witnessed. There is wisdom in our spiritual, contemplative literature, and I am quite interested in understanding it. I think that meditation and prayer affect us for the better. The question is, what is reasonable to believe on the basis of those transformations?"

In the essay above you wrote, "What have been the psychological costs imposed by Christianity’s anxiety about sex these last seventy generations?"

I'm glad you agree in the very least religion isn't all about hating everybody and going on murderous rampages. As for the "anxiety about sex for the past seventy generations," in Christianity and other religions (the only exception being for Muslim males) surely you are aware that monogamous marriage (and all societies in the past got girls married as soon as they reached menarchee and the young men were not much older than the girls whom they married) is considered the norm, and only sex outside marriage is condemned and not sexuality per se? Is atheism with unlimited sexual permissiveness (someone referred to bonobo ape morality with serial polygamy and polyandry as the ideal solution, ?with or without the paedophilia and homosexuality of the bonobos) the answer to HIV/AIDS and other STD; teenage pregnancies and teenage mothers with women stuck in a cycle of poverty as a result; high rate of abortions (I happen to believe a human being becomes a human being in development at the time of conception/implantation in the womb and not at the time of birth); single parent families with revolving door fathers; high divorce rates due to adultery (not everyone are hardened enough to accept adultery as a matter of course and react badly to being cheated); women my age (nearly forty eight) who are forced to remain single because finding a partner would take a miracle due to the fact that men my age would like to have only recreational sex with women young enough to be their daughters or granddaughters; sexual addiction in various forms because sexual permissiveness and constant sexual stimulation is seen as a sign of freedom and liberation and proof of virility?

Studies have shown that committed relationships are best for human happiness, something that religions have always claimed and incorporated as a moral law.

I'm not a sexual prude and I do believe that we need to find a realistic solution to the fact that there are no more marriages arranged by parents for all women when we reach menarche or after divorce or failed love, which is a fact of love of life these days and human beings need to be given a second or third chance at happiness with another partner if necessary. But tell me what happiness sexual liberation for the sake of liberation has brought.

Might you then be more open to the wisdom that someone like Jesus taught with regard to these matters, long before there were studies to prove that committed lifelong monogamous relationships based on love and mutual fidelity serve human happiness best?

Soja John Thaikattil
Sydney, Australia

I wish to clarify that I do NOT mean atheists cannot be selfless or good. Some of the best persons I have known/know are atheists, and some of the worst have been believers. I'm only making the point that religions provide the best basis for a common morality and personal examples of selflessness set by founders of religions like Christianity and Buddhism for instance, who gave clear instructions to their followers to imitate them. That is quite different from the individual morality that is inevitable when there is no religion. Which human being has the right to impose their own morality on another, if each one has the right to be right about their own idea of morality? A homicidal psychopath would have as much right to his morality as anyone else.

I wish I could find the selflessness that atheists so love to claim is commonplace because it is the natural state of the human being. But I have found it mostly in books written by them and on these posts. In real life I look around and see mostly narcissistic materialists who don't care in the least about their fellow human beings. The empathy, the selfless love...where is it? It is hard enough for people who believe in God and eternity to choose goodness and many times they don't. Religions have an explanation - the free will with which God does not interfere. Please show me the world sans religion where selfless love and service is commonplace and I would love to live there!

Pascal's Wager should be re-badged as The Coward's Wager. It is the wager of someone who has the intellect - as Blaise Pascal surely had - to strongly suspect that something is "suss," but who does not possess the courage to voice his doubt or disbelief. This pusillanimity eventually leads to the Inquisition and the Taliban, where the deluded and the plain insane control every facet of one's existence.

AJ - I think the next step is ... where do we go from here?

This is the age-old question. If there is no meaning to life, what is the point of living? On a strictly pragmatic level, you’ll be dead soon enough, so why hasten the end? You might as well enjoy yourself while you are here. Religion might counter that such a narcissistic POV would lead to selfish, even evil behavior, such as raping and pillaging. Perhaps. Yet morality and empathy appear to be part of our evolutionary history and biology (Hauser, M. D. 2006. Moral minds: how nature designed our universal sense of right and wrong. Ecco, New York.), suggesting otherwise. Because we are social animals, this inner morality and empathy actually do give our lives meaning beyond our own specific circumstances, though I’ll get to that later.

In “Slaughter House Five”, Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time. Though the universe will end due to an unfortunate accident by Tralfamadorians testing rocket fuel, Billy also learns that individual moments are essentially timeless, and he can choose which of those to dwell in. Were it only so for most humans. When we get unstuck in time we usually get stuck in a very specific place; aka the loony bin. Nonetheless, most of us have had such transcendent moments that are almost over before they happen, will never recur in exactly the same manner, and yet are of a kind. They tend to make us pay attention to what is important.

I was in the Pine Nut Range one fall afternoon, with white, fluffy cumulus scudding overhead, casting moving shadows and sunlight on the far hillside, covered in Piñon Pine and Juniper. For some reason it was transcendently beautiful. I knew it would never be exactly like this again, with the laughing Piñon Jays and that moment carried by the wind forever. It was so rich and so poignant, and yet, I also knew that such similar moments had happened before in this very same location, on a late fall afternoon, through millennia. They were not exactly the same, but they were, in a sense, timeless. And I understood if we make a choice, we can imbue many of the moments with that richness during our short stay.

I also knew what was most important and what would surely end with our lives; the people we care most about. That is such a sad, utterly lonely state of affairs. However, just by caring, we make both their lives and our lives better. We can pay attention to those special people. Because we have such a short time, we must pay attention. We can also make choices that make the world a better place for those living now and in the future. Life is really not all for naught. There may be no eternal salvation waiting for us if we do good things (or hellfire if we do bad), but those good things do have positive effects on our world and the living.

to Soja John Thaikatill

Nietzsche is dead.
God lives
in the imagination
with Santa and the Easter Bunnyrabbit.
and of course the FSM.

Just an observation regarding the balance of this noticeboard. I read through many posted comments before I found any that proposed a contrary perspective. No doubt there are those out there that have the time available to carry out a statistical analysis of the above comments.

I agree that there is no way to prove God's existence. Even if spiritualism is only caused by a flow of neurotransmitters through our living brains it feels authentic. We can second guess ourselves with arguments that LSD and psychosis can provide experiences that can feel authentic but at some point we must pragmatically decide if we are alive or on an acid trip. Of course, we may be wrong in any case.

"God is dead." - Nietzsche

God's reply: "Nietzche is dead."

To: John Conolley (USA)
From: Soja John Thaikattil

God and Poetry

Your religion is rubbish,
An atheist poet once said to me.
But why? in surprise asked I.
You have no poetry, replied he.

So? What makes you such a fool? queried I,
Everything they say at your atheist club
Is not the Gospel truth;
To believers the world owes some of its best poetry.

I have God and poetry in this life;
And in the next I have more God and more poetry.

© Soja John Thaikattil 2007
POSTED MAY 6, 2007 7:47 PM

Sam Harris,
Pascal did not intent to manipulate the people. He had a profound knowledge and he tried to share it with others just as Sam Harris has a knowledge ( conviction) which he tries to convey to others. There is no difference between Pascal and Harris in the action undertaken. The only difference is the opposite view points. If Sam Harris had Pascals's profound knowledge, he as well would sing the same song. The bottom line here is that humans are (involuntarily) singers. Each of us must sing a song: divine or human ideals, we are free to choose the theme of the song we sing. While Sam Harris joins the choir of "no god" there are others who choose different choirs with divine or human ideologies. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and all other totalitarians had nothing to do with divine choirs. They were from Sam Harris choir. The damage their ideologies caused to humanity is not ancient but recent. Again before you choose a song to sing (which we must) make certain you are not making false tunes. Your tunes Sam Harris do not sound classical. Your tones are today's pop.
Tessa

Sam Harris,
Pascal did not intent to manipulate the people. He had a profound knowledge and he tried to share it with others just as Sam Harris has a knowledge ( conviction) which he tries to convey to others. There is no difference between Pascal and Harris in the action undertaken. The only difference is the opposite view points. If Sam Harris had Pascals's profound knowledge, he as well would sing the same song. The bottom line here is that humans are (involuntarily) singers. Each of us must sing a song: divine or human ideals, we are free to choose the theme of the song we sing. While Sam Harris joins the choir of "no god" there are others who choose different choirs with divine or human ideologies. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and all other totalitarians had nothing to do with divine choirs. They were from Sam Harris choir. The damage their ideologies caused to humanity is not ancient but recent. Again before you choose a song to sing (which we must) make certain you are not making false tunes. Your tunes Sam Harris do not sound classical. Your tones are today's pop.
Tessa

Hi Ladies!

Happy Mother's Day to ALL of YOU!

Hello Gentlemen!

Happy Mother's Day to ALL the lovely LADIES in your lives too!

With love,

Malini

Another cost of religion I'd add is the deaths of countless children who die because of delayed or denial of medical care because of their parents' religious beliefs or belief in the power of prayer. In the rare instances when such parents are prosecuted, the case is always defended as a case of freedom of religious practice - the PARENTS' religion. The child doesn't live long enough to have divergent religious/nonreligious views. Even when such parents are convicted, they get the lightest sentences of all homicide cases [children who kill parents, even after horrific abuse, receive the longest of all homicide cases].

Here's the thing - there is precedent for holding First Amendment freedoms & rights in abeyance until the child reaches legal majority. We don't allow parents to vote a child's vote, or take property the child owns as a gift, or bind children in contracts with other parties [there are exceptions when there's a contract involving the child's work, as in entertainment, but in most families this is not relevant].

So why not treat the choice of religious activity to the adult as we do with the vote? The Amish do this already, and they are one of the fastest-growing religions in America.

Hi Bernie

It is wonderful that you are posting your selection of poems again. I enjoyed all three of them(posted 21 April 2007 5:35 & 9:32 PM and 28 April 3:55 PM). And yes it was nice to read your 'Scotch' too.

Hi Sam
"There is no harm in beliving in a religon"

Tell that to the poor girl who was stoned to death in Iraq, the luanicy must stop.

Keep it up Old Boy

I think the next step is ... where do we go from here? It is one thing to be an advocate for change (although there is certainly a Don Quixotesque futility to this proposition). It is another to define meaning and purpose in the absence of god(s). Certainly Darwin and Dennett and Hawkings move us along the path, but consider ...

Humans are so fragile, so destructive, and so susceptible to catastrophic loss (religion being among potential causes, with or without wars, disasters, disease, climate change, mass delusions, etc.), and our history so brief, how do we define our purpose, the meaning of our existence? If there is no "life after death" (and all known evidence would suggest this is our only "existence") and we have no rational or reasonable expectation to be around as a species in, say, 1,000, 50,000, 500,000, or 5 million years from now, what are make of our existence?

The problem with taking the red pill is that it is that it only leaves the question unanswered, and it can be very bleak and lonely out here ... which is probably what lead us down the path of religious self-delusion in the first place.

I cannot make myself believe in God, as my rational mind will not allow it (thanks in part to Mr. Harris). I also see nothing in mankind that suggests we as a species will survive our existence ... and must acknowledge that perhaps Nietzche was right.

The poet, Shelley, as might be expected, put it very well:
"This is the pivot upon which all religions turn: they all assume that it is in our power to believe or not to believe; whereas the mind can believe only that which it thinks true. A human being can be supposed accountable only for those actions which are influenced by his will. But belief is utterly distinct from and unconnected with volition; it is the apprehension of the agreement or disagreement of the ideas that compose any proposition. Belief is a passion or involuntary operation of the mind; and, like other passions, its intensity is precisely proportionate to the degree of excitement. Volition is essential to merit or demerit. But the Christian religion attaches the highest possible degree of merit and demerit to that which is worthy of neither, and which is totally unconnected with the peculiar faculty of the mind the presence of which is essential to their being."

Pascal's wager is inherently flawed in that it assumes that God/Goddess/Gods is/are as sectarian and narcissistic as the vast majority of those who believe in he/she/it/them actually are. If God/Goddes/Gods is/are at all forgiving of honest error, he/she/it/they will not damn me to an eternity of torture. In fact, if he/she/it/they do move in mysterious ways, then he/she/it/they may very well have created me with my capacity for disbelief for his/her/its/their mysterious purposes. These people have created a concept of God that is as petty and sectarian and sadomasochistic as they are. If there is indeed a God/Goddess/Dieties Plural, and he/she/it/they can't forgive honest error, then we are ALL in a lot of trouble no matter what we believe in.

As always I marvel when people who claim to be religious take such crass views of it, and there are few things as crass as Pascal's wager. We might as well choose which religion has the least frightening vision of hell, as we're all destined to end up in somebody's hell (unless we can manage to simultaneously believe in every religion in existence.)

My goodness Andy! I thought your only connection with Scotland was the great Scottish name you are blessed with.
But here ye are sounding like a true native Scot! Ye’ve got the accent bang on!
How many talents d’ye have at all!

And Andy, I second your vote on Sam. It’s better he occupies himself writing books for us rather than take up time reading these lengthy blogs, especially if any of us should catch fire as Sam seems such a compassionate lad I’m sure he would douse the conflagration by all means available and not excluding in the manner Leona suggests!
So don’t light up or even lighten up as Leona has it or the prospects are ye’ll burn!

Bernie, no apollo needed. Witty badinage among friends to lighten up the daily blog is welcome. I'm honored tae've clashed words wi'ye.

I vote we leave Sam in peace to finish his thesis.

Andy, I sincerely hope you will accept my apologies for the scorn and disrespect I've shown towards you so far which was all down to ignorance.
It has just hit me what a wonderful writer you are and so erudite.
If you could sustain the literary fireworks to booklenth I'm sure it would sell well!

Kind regards,

Bernie:
The Prophet Sam is (or would be) missing something - remember the antediluvian BBC radio star Arthur Fallowfield - "I think the answer lies in the soil!"

Janine:
Sam is (or would be) well advised to check out your quantum philosophy and see "What the Bleep?!" Something to be treasured there certainly is (or quiz? - by analogy with bits and qubits). As for selling the One, one feels the call (as astronaut Story Musgrave said about Mars) ... but, as you say, the Koran ... does anyone else see the analogy to that more recent work of, er, inspired prophecy, Nietzsche's "Also sprach Zarathustra"? How does one insert the subtle knife (as in the Philip Pullman trilogy) and top the Abrahamic monster with a single clean stroke (as in "Apocalypse Now")?

Bruce:
Sam is (or would be) mistaken to think this is just Buddha. The transcendental ego was the central star of Kant's "Kritik der reinen Vernunft" (1781) and became an object of discussion in the whole tradition through Hegel and the idealists, Husserl and the phenomenologists, and Heidegger and the existentialists, not to mention Schopenhauer the orientalist (with his cosmic "Wille" that spawned Nietzsche's will to power) or Freud the monotheist (and his disciplinarian superego - such a reduction ad absurdum!). Buddha deserves honorable mention for his ultimate self-help psychology, but Buddhism is godless, and quite rightly so.

One wanted to read some philosophy and here one is blogging off again ...

Sam who doesn't believe in God believes nonetheless in an intangible psychological something called the Buddha Nature-the true inner transcendental self for which there is no empirical evidence. Does the Buddha Nature exist? Sam would say yes and if you want to know it exists you have to experience it directly. The same holds true of God a being vastly more powerful and incorporeal than the transcendental self. God can be known through experience. I know the Buddha Nature and I know God the knowledge of which is the Buddha Nature contemplating its source.

Pascal's Wager calls to mind lessons in informal logic (if A and B, then C)...toss this one out to those who are persuaded by Pascal:
P.1: IF Absolute power corrupts
P.2: AND God has absolute power
THEN God is corrupt.

Mr. Andy Ross--I enjoyed your attempt to create a new and improved concept of god (maybe you should make it read like an ad for your new and improved product!)...however, how likely is it that the religionists will forgo the god-monster(s) found in their "holy books" ? Unfortunately, it's more than a re-definition of the god concept that's needed...they cling to their holy books while the rest of us choke, and unless humanity wakes up and takes those books and relegates them to their proper library space in the fiction section, they will not change their concept of god, because the books don't, won't allow it--especially the koran.
As for my own psychic economy, it runs smoothly on a non-pious notion of quantum interconnectedness...we're all connected by a quark of humanity...energy that cannot be created nor destroyed, and like Heraclitus' river, ever flowing and changing.
If the religionists cannot be cured of their dereism, that river could disappear, so get out there Andy and sell sell sell that shiny new ONE!

J.

Leona, Although ye say ye don't believe in God ye sound very religious for as is well-known, certainty is the exclusive preserve o' religious fundies.
Even so, here's hoping ye're right this time as, fr'instance, what on earth would the Lord Sam make o' the heady exchanges between Andy an me and now you!
Heaven forfend! And ministers o' grace defend us and keep the Good Lord Sam outa here!

Bernie, thanks for your prayers to John Paul, and may my impending cure be offered as a humble submission in his bid for sainthood.

The God of the Abrahamic tradition is about as real as Santa Claus. But people believe, and this anthropological phenomenon cries out for explanation. Just as each human spins an "I" from the thoughts that swirl in the brain, so many humans spin gods from the mysteries and pious hopes that surround their psychic swirls.

Is this some kind of psychic necessity? Do people who rail against gods have other pieties that play the same role in their psychic economy?

I think they do. I think labeling such locii of sacredness in the Gedankenwelt with words like "divine" and "gods" clarifies things. Even the iconoclasts hold their holies holy. Let's call them as we see them.

My innovation is to discern the existence of a hotline to God (One for all) in each cranium and invite us all to respect G's role in the natural order and primacy over the human self. Thus we move toward planetary consciousness and put all our little me's in their place.

My recommendation is to downsize the old gods and invest in the new One.

Thanks again for holding up the mirror for me to shadowbox against - this is one of the functions of the shiny new God in my scheme.

Over and out.

How can one choose to believe in a god? Could an adult choose to believe in santa claus?

Folks, I am certain that there is no God. The only thing I am more certain of is that Sam Harris is not reading any of these posts. You address HIM like a kindly, all knowing deity and truth is he wouldn't take the time to piss on you if you were on fire.

Lighten up!

Och Andy, ye've got it real bad, poor wee sowl that ye are!
For years my auld Grannie went through much the same wae painfu' bunions until we aw prayed tae the late Pope John Paul for a miracle and sure anuff it worked!
Now although she still has the bunions the pain's gone!
Only half a miracle right anuff but as wae half a loaf ye havetae say that's better than nuthin ataw! And even half a miracle isnae tae be sniffed at in your case! So mind and let us know how ye get on for if there's a result it wid go a lang way tae making auld John Paul a saint!
Now wouldn't that be nice!

Douglas Hofstadter is the greatly renowned author of "Gödel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" - a celebration in richly elaborated puns and psychic gimmicks of all kinds of the astonishing work in mathemagical logic of Kurt Gödel (the young man who in 1931 torpedoed the mighty ramified theory of types developed in the years 1910 to 1913 in the three fat volumes of Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, a.k.a. Sir Bertie or Lord Russell) and the divinely recursive and hence amazingly analogous loopings in the music of J.S. Bach and the engravings of M.C. Escher. GEB appeared in 1979 and now Douggie has struck again, this time with an endearingly readable work entitled "I Am a Strange Loop" in which among very many other things the parable of the imaginary but very tangible marble in a box serves to illustrate the elusive metaphysics of "I" - and hence, for me, of course, the no less elusive goose chase for God. My take, in a nutshell, is to project the central idea from a similarly idiosyncratic classic published in 1976, namely "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes, and weave from the intriguing complementarity of their twisted strands an Idea Whose Time Has Come, namely that God and I jointly inhabit my cerebral hemispheres and coexist in divine dialog, eternally singing dialectical hosannas to the polymorphous phenomenology of our multifaceted reality. Amen!

Well now Andy, with Andy Ross as a moniker I’d normally not hesitate to go into your website but…but…is that your real name? For all we know you could be the very same Mr Filthy McNasty that my dear auld mammy was forever warning me about! I mean tae say what’s all this about you being a strange loop in the sense of Douglas Hofstadter (who he?) And even if such a loopy loop is ‘formally explicable as a Gödel loop or even a G-loop (G-spot?) perhaps to tickle the divine itch that causes the pearl tae loop the loop (did the earth move for you as well) so that ye need tae fondle it and test icle wickle its properties.
And only then ye can gie me the treatment so richly deserved!
And ye say all that's jist because o' Sam's flatness!

If ye don't mind Andy I'll wait for Timmy tae go in there first! He's braver than I am. Aye, if we don't hear fae Timmy again we'll know the reason why!

Bernie, the post ends with a link - geddit?

The piece is far from satisfactory and the quality of the argument might politely be described as sucking. But somewhere in it is a glimmer that betrays the inexorable pull (the suck) of the religious tendency, or perhaps one should say the tickle, the itch of the divine, or even the anthropological sand, as it were, that causes the pearl (God, the marble in the Hofstadter sense - read his new book!) to grow in the true believer. I need to feel it to fondle it and test its properties. Only then can I give it the treatment it so richly merits. Trust me, my brain is still hard-hatted. I just want to contradict Sam, to escape the flatness of his position, which reminds me of Victorian utilitarianism (a philosophy that Marx I think rightly described as "shallow syncretism").

Anyway, let me compliment you on your taste in poetry. Such worthy sentiments!

I went back to check on the quote Sarah Prescott gives from Warren in the debate, and she is absolutely correct. And this along with the post from Alan following is indeed a shocking indictment of the consequences of belief. Whom would a God truly rather spend eternity with: One who is compelled to love out of empathy with human beings with whom he/she shares life; or one who would only do what is believed to be commanded by a book that is believed to be the word of a God whom it is believed would condemn anyone to a Hell for no other reason than not believing it?
A God that would allow people to kill each other for centuries over differnces of belief in Him is at least severe neglect for a supreme being and doesn't speak highly of his omniscience that He couldn't make Himself more clear, and at most is a pretty good argument against there being one at all.

In response to Alan who is criticizing Sarah Prescott, as a former evangelist Christian, I have to strongly agree with Sarah. Even if Christianity were true and we ended up in this Heaven they talk of, swell, THEN WHAT??? If having something to look forward to is what makes life worth living, then what's the point of an eternal afterlife in some Stepford Christian Gulag where you have nothing to look forward to?

Gawd luv ye Andy! I've said a wee prayer for ye. Ye sure need all the help that's going! Now izat no' nice o' me?
Where did ye post yer manifesto?
And are ye telling the truth! I mean is it really brief n thoughtfu'?

Get well soon!
Aw the best fae Bernie.

Hi Jesus, Hi Timmy, Hi Bernie,

Glad to see Sam is still posting and that you're all biting.

Yesterday I posted a brief but thoughtful manifesto on me and God, to explore an idea. Here a taste.

God and I

We live in reciprocity, God and I. Two persons, one spirit, a dialectical trinity.

I am a person, a strange loop in the sense of Douglas Hofstadter. Such a loop is formally explicable as a Gödel loop or a G-loop but is not yet easy to understand. Adding gloop to the G-loop to deepen the mystery, indeed to celebrate it and anchor it in mystic and baffling paradox, is the traditional role of religion.

I say banish the gloop, diminish the strangeness, give God a nonparadoxical role in the dialectical triad, and rebuild the psychosocial order on a more rational basis as follows.

God is my other. Each of us is an embodied soul for whom other humans are generally separate and less accessible. I have an inner life that no other human can share fully, and so does each of us. But God shares it, by definition. ...

God and I are buddies in spirit. One spirit animates us. The spirit is the substrate for personality but is not itself personal. The spirit is the universal medium in which we all move and have our being. Words and concepts for spirit are numerous and mostly imperfect. Brahman, the godhead, reality, consciousness, nature, the absolute - the list is long and not very helpful. ...

On this view, God is the immediate, ever present, phenomenal manifestation of our psychosocial interconnectedness in a medium of fathomless potential. ...

Behind all this fundamentalist theology is a hard claim about reality. Subject and object and equal and opposite. If I am a person, there must be an objective reflection of that fact. The constellations of objects that surround me must allow intepretation as faces of the other. ...

In short, God is an idea we seem to need to complement the psychology of personhood and provide a stable foundation for describing and hence understanding and regulating a psychosocial order. That order can be tangled and gloopy or it can be clean and reasonable. The new fundamentalism can help us clean it up.

http://www.andyross.net/gaiberg.htm

I think you should have typed "deluded" before atheist and should have typed "truth" instead of "harmony" (or after it).

On April 19, 2007, Andy wrote:
"I've never met an atheist whose arguments against God's existence I couldn't tear apart."

I'm guessing you've met a few in your life, so it seems statistically likely that you could tear apart the arguments of every atheist. Please start tearing and then we can all be deluded together in peace and harmony.

On April 19, 2007, Andy wrote:
"I've never met an atheist whose arguments against God's existence I couldn't tear apart."

I'm guessing you've met a few in your life, so it seems statistically likely that you could tear apart the arguments of every atheist. Please start tearing and then we can all be deluded together in peace and harmony.

Now I am completely convinced myself on the religious issue.

1. Religion is invented out of fear of death.

2. Any bible is man-made collection of moral guidelines by people from ancient times.

3. Christians (especially) are doing the right things for the wrong reasons. Sometimes their wrong reason have been hurting mankind more than it helped and they refuse to admit the toxicity.

4. Religion gives false hope to people. Non religious people have very limited hope and that should be normal except that no one likes the situation with no hope. In daily life, having hope ( even if it is false) is a much easier position in dealing with daily problems.

5. Very slowly, this stubberness of religious stance ( especially Christian) is changing to the more practical and realistic one: teaching class by female deacons and female priests, accepting homosexual activity as biological difference, not a mental disease or sin, accepting abotion as women's choice, accepting evolution as the essencial part of biology and natural science history. More supporters and acceptance for leaders like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, who never had had any chance even to talk in public in the past.

6. At this rate of change, there will be a better understanding social environment for differences among people without condemning one another. Current religion must find the next level to survive or they will be dimisnished to a social club of different kind.

Hello fellow free-thinkers, I just recieved my copy of Christopher Hitchens' new book "god is not GREAT," subtitled "How Religion Poisons Everything." I'm only a couple of chapters into it, but Mr. Green might want to add this one to his motivational reading list for others to enjoy.

Sam, we are all waiting for your next book!

Right on Doug! There are even strong hints in the NT that Jesus had knowledge of and was influenced by what the Buddha taught.
And all in all, even though I think it would be terrible to have to live many lives, when considering that among other things we now know for sure the earth is not flat but round and even that the Universe began 13-15 billion yrs ago, Buddhism makes more sense than Judaism, Christianity or Islam in that we can hardly be judged for all eternity on what we get up to in one fleeting life that doesn’t even register on such a time scale.

Forgive for waxing lyrical again but sometimes, as here, the poets do say it better!

I hold that when a person dies
His soul returns again to earth;
Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise
Another mother gives him birth.
With sturdier limbs and brighter brain
The old soul takes the road again.

Such is my own belief and trust;
This hand, this hand that holds the pen,
Has many a hundred times been dust
And turned, as dust, to dust again;
These eyes of mine have blinked and shown
In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon.

All that I rightly think or do,
Or make, or spoil, or bless, or blast,
Is curse or blessing justly due
For sloth or effort in the past.
My life's a statement of the sum
Of vice indulged, or overcome.

I know that in my lives to be
My sorry heart will ache and burn,
And worship, unavailingly,
The woman whom I used to spurn,
And shake to see another have
The love I spurned, the love she gave.

And I shall know, in angry words,
In gibes, and mocks, and many a tear,
A carrion flock of homing-birds,
The gibes and scorns I uttered here.
The brave word that I failed to speak
Will brand me dastard on the cheek.

And as I wander on the roads
I shall be helped and healed and blessed;
Dear words shall cheer and be as goads
To urge to heights before unguessed.
My road shall be the road I made;
All that I gave shall be repaid.

So shall I fight, so shall I tread,
In this long war beneath the stars;
So shall a glory wreathe my head,
So shall I faint and show the scars,
Until this case, this clogging mould,
Be smithied all to kingly gold.

John Masefield

Pascal's wager is silly to the point of absurdity, yet many jingoistic Americans (and some others!) prefer this kind of emotion-based pseudo-logic to any kind of true search for truth, (which may be difficult & frustrating at times.)
As far as the Buddhist doctrines of Karma & Rebirth, while some Buddhists may distort these Teachings true meanings, there is a great deal of wisdom in them. Actions do have consequences. (Karma), present lives do influence future generations. (Rebirth)
Buddha taught that we should not believe something because we read it in some so-called "Holy Book" or because some Sage says it's true, he included himself & his own Teachings in this. (Reference: "Kalamma Sutta")
He said we should only believe it after investigating & determining the truth of any given Teaching for ourselves, for only then will it be of true value to us.
The cold, ugly fact is; most current members of Homo Sapiens are lazy, stupid & ignorant, some even to a suicidal degree. Intelligence is almost an evolutionary redundancy; the majority of humans who continue to breed large families & teach their childeren ridiculous fairy tales about some invisible god running the universe, are the vast majority of the human population. What hope is there against this? My belief, while only my opinion, is that Truth will eventually prevail, if we do not destroy ourselves first. Jesus was right, the Truth will set us free!
Keep on trucking Sam, don't let the fools win!

Let's just say morals would not be objective, so they "may as well" be disobeyed. I mean, in a universe without a point, why bother? I disagree with the above post because subjective morals cannot be an incentive for being good. Godlessness makes morals only practical, not real. And I bet there'd be a lot more lying and cheating and other immoralities that won't get one arrested if there is no creator we owe anything to.

Also in the Warren/Harris debate, Warren stated, "If death is the end, shoot, I'm not going to waste another minute being altruistic." What a shocking indictment of what religious belief makes of people. I wonder how some might feel if they knew that if their minister didn't really believe in God or heaven that he really wouldn't give a damn about them?

It raises the scary question of just how people would behave if their beliefs were proven false. It all relates to the argument they make that you can't be a good person without belief in God and without it anything goes. But I once heard Susan Blackmore give a simple response to this kind of argument. She said, "So if you didn't believe in God you wouldn't love your children anymore?"

Obviously, our moral behavior is not dependent on believing in supernatural beings. It comes from experiencing life in this world. The only commandment needed is "empathy" which summarizes in one word all the golden rules from Buddha to Plato to Jesus. I don't really think people like Warren truly believe that people would all go nuts if they stopped believing. If they did, they'd be admitting how compassionless they are that they would need the promise of eternal reward or the threat of eternal damnation in some afterlife genocide before they would give a damn about human beings. Maybe Susan Blackmore's question needs to be put to them more often.

People who believe don't need evidence, they just believe. I can argue that if you don't believe that when you die you will find out the terrible consequences of your unbelief, or I can tell you that there is a real alternative to your pointless existence and at the time of death disappearing of the face of the universe as if you were never there in the first place.

You can choose, but I can't. Simply put I just believe and all I can do is thank the God who gave me the power to believe for that power and desire that he gives you the same power. I'm no more deserving than you, but unlike you I have hope for the future and you don't.

So get a life, ask Jesus to reveal himself to you and you can be blissfully happy like me. In the meanitme I promise not to try and frighten you into believeing.

Atheists ask "is it rational?"

Theists ask "is it moral?" because rationality means nothing to them. But as soon as you ask "is it rational", an irrational idea that (may) lead to morality falls apart anyway.

Steve Cornell:

"without [this questionable supposition], all moral conclusions are merely subjective human opinions without any binding authority beyond what a culture attributes to them. And, at this point the question, “Who are you to impose your morality on another?” becomes fair game."

It could be said that the questionable supposition that god exists is, itself, merely a subjective human opinion without any binding authority beyond what a culture attributes to it.

Theists are existentially prepubescent: their rationality is too underdeveloped to support decisions more profound than furniture shopping level, and they posit an ineffable sky wizard to cover for their helplessly dependent ethical infantility.

To say it in spiral dynamics (google) terms: they're blue, atheists are orange.

Brian,

I suspect we have a different concept of "Universe". I'm not talking about the big-bang sub-universe having always existed. The Universe (the actual universe, not just the word) must be absolutely everything, and the word must mean absolutely-everything. If the word "Universe" means anything less than that, then the 'infinity set' of absolutely everything is not commonly understood when using "universe".

A very big explosion, and universal origin, are certainly distinct concepts. I'm saying that the first is possible, the second is impossible. Combining the concepts of absolutely-everything-universe and our extrapolation that objects-require-origin, is like saying "a boundary of infinity"; it's impossible by definition. The big-bang pertains to our sub-universe, never the absolutely-everything universe. Even when, or if, a final quantitative description of the big-bang event is solved (details to be ever-doubtable if not built as a completely axiom-structured proof), the absolutely-everything-from-nothing original-cause 'question' will still be standing there, for the next layer of step-closer-to-the-asymptote questions and hypotheses. Truth is about knowing/having that asymptote.

If you honestly think that the universe (the absolutely-everything universe) has not always existed, then scrutinize this (as mildly as you like :-):

It is impossible that absolutely everything (the only 'all' universe) came from absolutely nothing. (I have to include the 'absolutely's, because "It is impossible that everything came from nothing" just doesn't get the idea communicated)

If that is not clear, then perhaps we should explore the anatomy of truth (as in, the completion of a question). If the absolutely-everything universe has not always existed, then any from-nothing notion, regardless of the words that are employed, is the same thought/concept as those who call their in-the-beginning creator the word "God".

Can you hold the concept of infinity ? :-)

Ron

It is almost 6 years since I left churches altogether. Everyday I realize how absurd I have been by looking for something non existent.

I now think clearly why I was so absorbed in religion in the past. It was a wishful thinking. "I wish there were an entity like God" This wish has been amplified and fortified by a support group called churches. Since it is fortified so much by the leaders, it almost accepted as "fact" or "truth".

This is where the true problem (as noted by Sam Harris) starts. Then this group of religious congregation will do "Anything" to justify their factual ground for faith which is merely an assumption. Religious leaders are the main cause of manipulation through "fear tactics" among others like a life insurance salesman. Since human is a feeble creature, it is not that easy to get out of this comforting support group who gives all the false hope they want to hear. It really doesn't matter whether they are fundamental Christian or so called heresies that it is so difficult to get out or think clearly once you start the first step into it.

I am 50 years old now and I am back on my feet and logic and the sense of reality. I even got my right feelings and emotions back. I told my children that I am not forcing or influencing them in one or the other, because I hope someday they will find the answer. I ask them to have an open mind and climb every mountain and think.

However, I will say this. If anyone still wants to live in a fantasy world with false hope till death, any religion or Christianity is perfectly fine, just be careful not to hurt other people with unproven fact. These clubs will provide with all the convenience to enjoy "this " world: friendship, feeling of righteouness, support group, laugh, sometimes satisfying feeling of mockery of othr people, mental strength, wedding places and guests, emotional support when some one is dead.....you name it they provide. It is like in Disney World where all the fairy tale characters seem alive when you are inside. So if you can live inside the Disney World till death, maybe it is not so bad, and maybe it is the best living if I don't care what happen outside the castle.
Don't we all live like a fairy tale prince(ss) with king and queen and gold and feast and victory over evil etc forever if possible? That is one of may reasons that more people join the Disney Club by paying million's of dollars.
But once I saw the outside the castle, I wounldn't want to go back there even if I may enjoy fantasy, my " soul" look for the real self in this real world even if it has all the problems of the world.

and now a brief one to Ron- the big bang is clearly not functionally equivalent to 'god did it', because the big bang is the result of science and logical inquiry, whereas 'god did it' is what every fool has told himself since language came into being, and has more to do with childish fantasy than with being an explanation of anything. Moreover, the only reason physics can't say more about what happened at the precise moment of the big bang is that unified field theory is not yet understood; this is the same reason we don't know what happens at the center of a black hole.

At any rate, the idea that the universe always existed is a totally indefensible claim, and doesn't hold up under even mild scientific (or philosophical) scrutiny.

Craig,

Great questions you ask; those resonated with my past condition of question-obsession.

The final solutions I found (solutions, because the nagging profound questions finally ended) to all those you listed, and more, after grappling with several sciences and the endless scientific and religious viewpoints and assumptions I grew up with, is summed up in the following:

The essence of all of existence is:

Always-Existed,
Always-Now,
Cause-Effect Flow,
Dualistic/Paradoxical,
Force-Field Continuum

I have nearly written a book about why these are the 'asymptotic' truths (besides the oversimplified It-All-Just-Is/Isn't), but I cannot do all that here, except brief concepts.

"Always-Now", about the common assumption/illusion of Time, was the inevitable conclusion of primarily the following:

1) 'Time' requires change/motion, and an observing knowing memory mechanism. No memory = no time. Stop the entire universe = no time. However, "Always Now" does not mean the past did not happen - that would be absurd.
2) When is existence ever other than now ? The entire universe is a flowing cause-effect 'movie' playing on the screen called "Now".
3) The truest state I experience is simply BE, which has no time element.

Regarding Always-Existed, in an earlier post I mentioned how a universal origin is impossible; the universe has no option other than to have always existed. And the "big bang" is not a universal origin, it's an explosion of pre-existing energy. The use of "Big Bang" as origin 'explanation' is identical to "God did it"; the infinite-loop merry-go-round question of imagined origin remains unanswered in both cases.

And "Force-Field Continuum" handles, in a non-mathematical summary, the end of questions like "What is the smallest particle ?', "How do all those countless (radio) waves and 'particles' pass thru one another, and across voids, no less ?", "What is the final smallest sized building-block ?", "How is that superposition works so well ?", "How does flowing energy travel networks, form memories, and become neurological structure ?", "Why are zero/nothingness and infinity always found together ?", and "What is thought ?".

But the progression of truth-of-consolidation is a funny thing; it is a personal journey of solving a very complex layered maze of questions and cognitions (the journey of one's own neurological maze). The result is not immediately comprehendible by others in a different state of mind, nor needs to be.

As Allan Greene said in these posts: learn, learn, learn. There are complete solutions to the oldest of 'mysteries'. Existence is infinitely amazing indeed. The funnest part is actually applying it to living one's life, clearing the mind, creating, and contributing by sharing understanding.

Ron

Thanks Sam for being a Buddha of the day along with Richard Dawkins, and the other think alikes!

Buddha really means an enlightened one.

I hope your group will be able to drive some sense into those stubborn, closed minds of our era. It is the ones with your frame of mind that will ultimately help in saving our lovely planet earth and its inhabitants, I mean man, animal, nature, and the rest one day.

Good luck Sam; and I wish you and your pals the best!

With love,

Malini

Very well said, and another thing about the wager, if you were to guess about God and what not, then which religion should you take the wager on? It seems no matter what religion you have, you are going to end up in hell according to someone else's religion anyways.

Regards,

Daniel

An excellent analogy Gina!

I don't think anyone has pointed out the fallacy that Pascal's wager is less like flipping a coin and more like playing the lottery. It's true that when you purchase a lottery ticket - which is very inexpensive - that you will either win or lose, but the likelyhood that you are throwing away your money is overwhelming.

hi craig-

well, I'm a mathematician and not a physicist, so I can only give you my best understanding, but here goes:

1)the big bang should be thought of as follows: imagine that everything in the universe existed on the surface of a deflated balloon, and then someone started inflating the balloon. So, an epicenter for the big bang in this picture would correspond to a central point on the balloon's surface, which obviously doesn't exist.

2)the density would presumably be, divide all the mass in the current universe by the theoretical size of the pre- big bang universe. I'm not sure if this sort of calculation is possible, though.

3)if you think about how miraculous it is that humans, with our relatively primitive understanding of physics, are able to produce as much energy as we are from the small amount of mass used in an atomic explosion, it shouldn't be too hard to believe that a more complicated process could account for something like the big bang.

4)i think the age of the universe is supposed to be 10-15 billion years or so.

5)all interactions in quantum field theory can be reduced to those of quarks, electrons and force particles. According to string theory, all these particles can be realized as different 'vibrational modes' of strings... this may or may not be true, but it's certain that modern quantum field theory doesn't explain the universe (since it's not possible to include gravity), so some string type theory (i.e., particles should be replaced by objects that are not 0 dimensional) must be true. You can check out www.superstringtheory.com for more detail.

Never mind Pascal on wagering!Damon Runyon was a much more knowledgeable authority on betting with his truism “All horse-players die broke”! Makes a great deal more sense when ye consider even the omniscient Deity itself still lost when betting his pal Satan that a decent lad such as Job could be tortured into changing his nature!

So from being in the position where even the result is known before it happens and yet still to get it wrong, surely you must all agree that betting is a mug’s game and so shouldn’t bet at all!

the net effect of the jews getting a "home" in the desert as the reader above defended, has been war, separatism, racism and continued ignorance. The entire world would be better off if we stop thinking we need our "own" place. The jews like all groups, talk about assimilation as if its immoral.

The "separate but equal doctrine" was the mantra of white supremacists of yester-year. Same story, different color.

All groups try to separate so they can wallow in their dishonesty, discrimination and hatred of outsiders. Although many try to mask it as positive and community oriented, it is what it is---discrimination against outsiders and high pressure tactics against their own to prevent honesty.

thanks to sam harris and people like him, who speak out for the truth. The truth will set you free, not war, not "god" and not lies.

Hi, Bernee Bee - I'm getting that message too - just a nusiance so far.

PS Dawkins did well with O'Rielly, who seemed to not even try to slip him up.

It isn't just you, but I don't know what it means, either. Good to know it's not just me, I guess.

Every time I try to log on I get a message saying "Stack overflow at line 50"
What does it mean? Is it just my computer or is anyone else getting this message?

- MEDIA ALERT -

RICHARD DAWKINS ON TV TONIGHT (Monday)

8PM EDT

THE O'REILLY FACTOR - FOX NEWS

I see we’ve another powerful voice on the side of reason v dark superstition. Great stuff Keith! An impressive post and one I’ve saved for future reference.

DOUBLING DOWN ON PASCAL'S WAGER...Sam's answer is absolutely right on target. As usual he slices and dices the religionists with reason and logic until they are spinning in their own fantasy world. As Pascal understood we are each dealt two cards in life, one for what may be (afterlife) and one for what is (real life). The real life card is dealt face up and how you play it affects not only your own happiness and satisfaction but also that of your fellow players, rational living means that you live and work in an environment where others are free to reach their own goals and where the common good (moving primarily through the engine of science) increases as the game continues.

The religious or afterlife card is of course face down, as Pascal rightly noted you will never know it's value until death occurs. At which point religionists beieve the game continues and their card is revealed, for some the King of Kings, or for others a virgin queen holding a free pass to paradise. But what if it is blank? Or worse the joker? It matters not to religionists of all stripes who are amazingly quick to discard the card of life and put all their energy into hoping to someday play the card of religion.

Pascal should have doubled down. The card of life is a fantastic opportunity to play and win for yourself, your family and society a wonderful creative, rational existence in which all will prosper and live life to the fullest. When Pascal had to make his finding, most men believed in a primitive afterlife based on the best observation possible with the naked eye, heaven and hell were acceptable ideas as so much was unknown about the physical world. The amount of information from that time forward has exploded and the world is now immersed in more valid and ever increasing knowledge than one man can possibly hold in his mind. Pascal could have easily held all the scientific knowledge about the universe in one hand when he was asked to consider his wager.

Now those who believe in the card of religion do active harm to everyone else. They have always harmed other religionists but now attempt to turn back progress, stop rational living and destroy the world created by 300 years of advancement from the age of enlightment onward. The bet has changed. There is indeed a huge amount to lose by discarding the card of reality. And the card of religion is less and less valid every hour.

Today only a fool would take Pascal's bet and sit calmly, holding an unknown, while watching the world slowly be destroyed by others. Is it time to upset the table? Certainly it's time to point out that your religious game playing is having a terrible effect on my rational life. It's no longer an even bet, the stakes are completely different now. What a shameful end we will come to if the proponents of religious life are successful in pulling us back into the dark ages where they seem most comfortable, whether through nuclear apocalypse or a world war based on paradise, neither outcome seems to be that far off from our present day perspective. KC

Hi Brain,
When it comes to physics I am a layperson
and admit that my questions could cancel themselves out on the basis of simple logic. I'll rephrase these questions based upon your clarification.

1: Once the Big Bang ocurred staring from a
pinhead
in size would not this result in an epicentre
in
terms of the visible mass or relative lack of
mass density at the explosion point implying an
epicentre - has the position of the epicentre
been postulated/calculated as an approximation?

2: Do we have a calculation for the density of the
of the pinhead beginnings of the universe or is
the term density not applicable to the pinhead?

3: When I said, why is the universe infinite when
it started out as a pinhead... I am
using the notion of the universe many people
believe (its immense!) when obviously and from
your standpoint it started somewhere near a
pinhead size. Many people find this hard to
believe or even preposterous...

4: I believe there is conjecture about the age of
stars and the age of the universe amongst
astrophysicists? I this the case and why?

5: The idea that electrons, protons etc., are made
of strings is intriging... these strings are
formations...? So that means these strings
also comprise other formations...?

6) New question: -

I'll come back to the other questions at a
later date.... The one about Einstein was
off the mark and perhaps controversial because
it would imply the Universe is bounded in some
way - a paradox I can't fully grasp...

Regards,

Craig

PS I do not know any of you including Timmy.

All holy books are a balance of good and evil. This only shows God's justice, we always have a choice to choose good and reject evil. Eve might have been inferior by birth but marriage made her an equal part of the same body.Woman might be the weaker sex but in God's eyes a woman can do his work unlike any man.

Hi Brian.

I'll get back to your reply soon.

Regards,

Craig

Craig-

just a brief reply to your question of science above... as someone who spends quite a bit of time thinking about math and physics, I can say that many of your questions can be dismissed based on insufficient understanding of physics. For example, you can't ask the question 'where is the epicenter of the big bang', because spacetime itself, and hence the concept of 'location', didn't exist before the big bang happened. Secondly, the universe is not 'infinite'... it can't have infinite size. It started off (theoretically) as a small pinhead, as you say, and then expanded with some finite velocity, which implies that it must be, still, of finite size (which is why people still talk about the universe expanding). Similarly, 'no such thing as a straight line' refers to the warping of spacetime in the presence of matter, and doesn't have anything to do with the supposed size of the universe. Finally, all the electrons, protons, etc are supposed to be made of strings (hence, string theory, which you can get a layman's account of in Michio Kaku's book 'Hyperspace'.)

the answers are out there- you just have to look around a bit.

lol

Sam,
This resounding question in your heart if God exists, God can answer. The real question is, do you want His answer? When you are ready, you will ask Him.

Hi Craig,

I appreciate you comments. I'd just like to clarify one of my points.
You said:
"You're completely within your rights to call the Bible hogwash but I don't understand how you can completely dismiss it. Jesus was at least a humanist and he did convey a message that was extraordinary for its time."

"Hogwash" to me means, not true, and pretty much useless.
Certainly the character of Jesus in the bible is a humanist. But he is a CHARACTER. Most likely an amalgamation of many hero characters and self appointed messiahs of the day. Highly unlikely that he was an actual person, and not at all likely that he was the son of God. But I will grant you that the CHARACTER of Jesus is a humanist. And the philosophies he espoused were inspirational and extraordinary. If someone were to remove the good parts of the teachings of Jesus, turn the other cheek, charity, selflessness, love thy neighbor, etc. and put these philosophies into another book by itself, that did not back up these philosophies with the authority of divinity and the word of God, then that would be a good and useful book. Because those parts of the message of Jesus give me shivers. They are truly wonderful.

But take all of those wonderful philosophies, and attach them to the bible, and call it the word of God, and it immediately becomes hogwash. Useless. No good can or ever will come from it. In fact, the opposite is true.

And those good philosophies and morals are hardly unique to Jesus. Many philosophers have espoused the very same moral outlooks as Jesus but they did not do it from divine authority. They are therefore useful. We can get these great insights from other sources, and we know that they are good because they resinate with our own altruistic human nature, not because we are told that God commands it.

For every good word in the bible, there are a hundred repulsive hateful words to negate the good. And so the bible will remain forever in my mind as hogwash. And if there's anyone that I owe an apology to for making that statement, it is hogs.

Consider that Pascal's wager is about the possible cost of denying the Christian god. However, Dawkin's remark that most of the Christian's are atheists about all other gods except one -- the Christian god -- leads to an interesting extension of the wager.

If we can't prove that any god is non-existent, including the Christian god, then by Pascal's wager we should believe in all gods, because we might be wrong about any, all or a subset of them.

It is not just a choice of the Christian god, but a choice of all other hypothetical gods that the person opting for the belief side of the wager must accept.

Ah, but then, how to reconcile the conflicting practices and beliefs of these religions where they conflict with each other?

Putting this wager in the context of all other religions and "gods" shows how inane the belief in any gods really is.

04-22-2007
Sunday

I've been reading over all these marvelous posts of all these marvelously insightful and interesting folks on this site.

Here's some thoughts.

1. Atheism literally means, lack of belief, unbelief, nonbelief. Theism means, literally, belief.

2. Agnosticism means, literally, lack of knowledge, nonknowledge, un-knowledge. Gnosticism means, knowledge.

3. The assumption at the heart of theism (belief in a god or gods or in multiple gods) is that there's some "sphere" other than the sphere in which we all live, the sphere with which we daily interact. That is, there is some "area," some "locality," some "place" other than the one and only world with which we interact daily.

4. The assumption at the heart of atheism is that there is no such "sphere" or "area" or "locality" other than the one and only one world in which we all live and with which we daily interact.

5. The assumption in point 3 is a "super-naturalistic" assumption. That is, it is an assumption of something "other than" the natural world.

6. The assumption in point 4 is a "naturalistic" assumption. That is, it is an assumption of the existence and validity only of this natural world.

7. While the history of philosophy tells us that there are innumerable diverse "trends," in an ultimate sense, they break down and are confined into two trends. One might loosely be called, idealism, and one might looosely be called, materialism.

8. Idealism in philosophy means, consciousness determines being. Materialism in philosophy means, being determines consciousness.

9. If consciousness precedes being and determines it, the obvious next question is, what precedes and determines consciousness? Point 3 above would imply, god, or perhaps multiple gods.

10. If being precedes consciousness and determines it, one may, or one may not, assume there "must" be some "obvious next question," namely: what "precedes" and "determines" "being"?

11. But, if "being" -- i.e., matter, material reality -- exists forever in some way, some shape, some form, albeit changing and inconstant and in flux and transition continually (as Heraclitus held), then the very so-called question of what "preceded" being (matter, material reality) is an unnecessary question.

12. The assumption of theism (belief in a god or gods) is that there must be some sphere "other than" that sphere or world or natural reality with which each of us daily interact. The assumption of atheism (nonbelief or unbelief in a god or gods) is that there is no sphere or natural reality or world other than that sphere, world, natural reality with which each of us interact.

13. Theism assumes there "must" be an endless progression till we end up with Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover."

14. But atheism makes no such assumption.

15. Theism is based in the philosophically idealist premise that "consciousness determines being." And ultimately, consciousness, in theism, drops out of the sky, in the most literal sense, and is the product, in the most literal sense, of god. There is no way, for instance, of explaining the purest kind of Platonic "forms"-based idealism other than some resort to god or gods. Ultimately, such "forms" as were envisioned by Plato had to have originated "somewhere else," and the only place such "forms" could have originated had to have been with the invention of the later student of Plato, Aristotle, the "Unmoved Mover." That was later taken by the Christian Catholic philosopher and Aristotelian, Aquinas, as being god.

16. But in the materialist worldview, such an Unmoved Mover is utterly and completely unnecessary, for, first of all, all matter, all material reality, all natural reality, is suffused by a kind of permanent inconstancy or movement, as, again, the ancient Milesian philosopher, Heraclitus, taught, and secondly, matter always existed in some way, shape, or form, as modern astrophysics seems to teach us. It has always "been there," as it were, although in radically different "modes," shapes, forms, types, kinds.

17. Matter and energy are mutually "inter-transposable." Einstein taught us that. Pair creation and pair annihilation occur at subatomic levels; modern small particle physics has taught us that. Now, the most contemporaneous sort of physics is telling us there may be, at the most irreducible level, strings. But, so far, while the math seems to work, the nuts-and-bolts experimental physics-based technology is not yet up to the point of either being able to confirm, or deny, this postulate, and there is in the past 100 or so years, since particularly Einstein's 1905 revolutionary papers, and in the history of the past 100 or 105 years of the history of physics, this sort of ongoing "lag" between theoretical postulates and, on the other hand, the ability experimentally to confirm them right away. (Einstein in some of his theoretical postulates was so far ahead of his time that it took in some ways 70 or 80 years after he first postulated them to figure out if they were right. Michio Kaku in his fascinating book, Einstein's Cosmos, goes into this interesting fact. Karl Marx in one of his many intelletually insightful metaphors, spoke once of something he called "cultural lag." There is in modern physics a kind of "intellectual lag" between the postulating by the brilliant theorists and, on the other hand, the "catching up" by the experimentalists in the technology, and where string theory is concerned, they've still not, so far as I'm able to discern from reading and listening to physicists like Brian Greene, for instance, "caught up" to being able to "test out" string theory yet, but again, the math seems to work.)

18. But still, in some basic sense, there's no objective "need" for there to be a "world" other than the world with which we daily interact.

19. Here, there is a practical component to our approach to these issues. Our interaction with the natural world comprises, as it were, a kind of "testing" and "confirmation of" said natural world. This runs up against the old solipsistic idealism of folks like Bishop Berkeley who argued, nahh, we have to make no assumptions of our ability to "have" or "possess knowledge" of "anything."

20. Berkeley was an empiricist, but a kind of gut pure "idealist" in philosophy. His position led to pure subjectivism and to the disappearance of objective factual reality.

21. The problem so far as I can discern with Hume is, Humean skepticism was so skeptical that it could not even, in principle, be said to be "valid" in its own terms. That is, if one is a logically consistent Humean skeptic, there's no way one can even validate or "prove" or "confirm" Humean philosophy. That's the innately ironical difficulty with it.

22. If one at least accepts that there's a natural world beyond which, and outside of which, no other "world" or "sphere" "exists," with which we daily interact as his/her basic precept/premise, then, at least, each of us has some kind of hard "rock" on which to stand, philosophically speaking.

23. But if we revert to the kind of "pure" Humean skepticism so characteristic of the great skeptic himself, we ultimately seem to end up being skeptical of our very skepticism itself. Where does this get us, intellectually and philosophically speaking? Nowhere.

24. I am a rank subversive in America. I like Marx, I like Engels, I like Lenin, I like Trotsky, and I quote them. In America, that makes me unemployable, with dwindling material resources, facing eventual homelessness, because I am atheist, materialist, and in politics, left-wing radical, living in the bible belt. But irrespective of these difficulties, it seems, from the standpoint of internally logical consistency -- the only standpoint that has ever made sense to me, and the only standpoint that has ever appeared to me to be principled -- that Lenin made a good point in his 1908-1909 book, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, when he said, look: we interact daily with our natural world, and that very interaction is our proof or confirmation of its existence, and if we go so far in our skepticism as Hume went, we end up nowhere. Lenin was basically saying, we can "know," but "knowing" (knowledge) means, "comprehending by interaction with our natural world." There is no world other than our natural world, or, at least, with that world with which we interact. To make an assumption beyond the existence of said natural world is immodest. That was Lenin's basic precept.

25. So where does consciousness originate? The French child psychologist, Piaget, argued that formation of concepts in children came by children's interaction with their social and natural worlds. Conceptualization, for Piaget, did not fall out of the sky. It was not a Platonic "form" "invented" by Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover." To argue for the precept of an "Unmoved Mover" ultimately must get us back to some kind of theism in any case and at any rate (which is why, I might here add, Ayn Rand's view expounded in her famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, which I've read, is ultimately theist, not atheist, even though all these Ayn Randists out there like to present themselves as atheists). "Movers" are not "unmoved," first of all, and, secondly, "Unmoved Movers" are not "personalities," in the Judaeo-Christian-Mohammedan dogma. Movers are, rather, the infinite concatenation of circumstances and components comprising matter at all its infinitely diverse momenta in time.

26. In this sense, matter is exactly as Heraclitus argued.

--Allan Greene

Dear Bernie Bee and Timmy-Thank you for everything you've contributed to this conversation so far. Bernie, the poems, quotes and articles you've shared are great as always ; Timmy, you said what I failed to say when I posted the other night to that poor confused Doug who isn't sure if he's an atheist or not.

It's been a pleasure reading you both again, and I thank you.

Timmy, d'ye no' feel a wee shiver o' recognition here n there on reading Craig?
Is it possible...could it be...you know who?
I mean tae say he was quite anxious for you tae respond tae his posts... sorta reviving an auld love affair that had bloomed elsewhere!
We'll know for sure soon anuff I suppose!

Hello Timmy.

It is refreshing to hear that you are not certain and that you think most scientists are not certain. That was the reason I asked the questions. Not many have replied so far.
We are quite close in outlook. When it comes to people's devotional sentiment I focus on similarities or parallels and when it comes to fundamentalists say 'I have my own spiritual beliefs' but will listen to yours. Many people accept the Big Bang theory without question. It makes logical sense from their framework of reference or perceptions. It is not to disimilar to the 'Flat Earth' believers who didn't understand enough about an invisible force called gravity or had explorers that had circumnavigated the Planet. I'm open to other theories that include a more mystical viewpoint. I think maybe the universe has a curvature and from that viewpoint we are unable to see beyond that boundary at present because of our miniscule size and limited propulsion systems so far. The universe appears to be expanding from our tiny viewpoint. Ironically, while some religions repudiate mysticism they also speak of an omnipotent God. I have presented some information on 'collective psychologies'. Many people would prefer to base their lives on snetiment rather than thinking. That is their nature. Intellectual discourses mean nothing. That's why it is important that leaders of philosophy and spiritual
discourses are careful to promote similaries and unity rather than division that Religions, etc.,
do through sectarianism or lessen feelings of respect towards one another. Your completely within your rights to call the Bible hogwash but I don't understand how you can completely dismiss it. Jesus was at least a humanist and he did convey a message that was extraordinary for its time. The intellectuals turned it into their own outlook. Religions by and large are arcaic. So is our present economic system but it rules and is slowly but surely leading us into an abyss. May your intellect continue to expose the worm ridden dogmas of religion that opens peoples minds and hearts.

Interesting posts Craig.

I'm not sure how to respond to your certainty question.
I am not certain of any of those things. Neither are scientists. These are all just theories. I don't know of anyone who claims to be certain of these things. Our problem, is with the people who's answer to all of those questions, is "God".

I don't know for sure that there is no God. What I do know is that if you meet somebody who claims to know who God is, and what God wants, they are most certainly full of it. In other words, the only thing that I am certain of, is that nobody knows how or why we got here.

I stand by my assertion that the bible is hogwash. That is my opinion, having read it. I do not concern myself with offending believers and driving them closer to their delusion by expressing my opinion. Nor do I think that in doing so, I am going to de-convert believers.

I believe that religion is primitive, and will one day be replaced by an honest spirituality relating to the mysteries of the universe. And we will get there sooner if people like myself, Bernie Bee, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins etc. speak freely and frankly about our opinions. The silence of non believers is the only reason why religion is still around. That silence, until very recently, was necessary if one did not want to be ostracized and or persecuted. Fortunately for the future generations, that is no longer the case.

The goal of this conversation is not to turn believers into non believers. It is to turn silent non believers into vocal non believers. It is about the lifting of the taboo. The generations of the future are counting on us to speak up. So here I am. Speaking up.

i would also add that religious beliefs have not only the sort of societal costs that Sam mentions, but very profound personal costs; namely, believing that sexual pleasure is bad, and therefore abstaining; or simply the innumerable hours wasted sitting in church or thinking about God...if indeed there is no creator, then these few moments of existence are all we have, and time spent fantasizing about eternal life could be put to better use at maximizing one's experience in this one.

Dear Burnie,
I have read "In God's Name" and "Sex in History'" and other similar books. I am well aware of the role of religions, the burning of women, children and men at stakes in their tens of thousands, the horrible and awful tortures of people
and they way these vile 'priests' (mainly) destroyed the lives of people with such cruelty. Political leaders are doing this today and backed by the underlying religious values as well. I was a rabid leftist and atheist. I have shifted to a spiritual viewpoint and see the extremes of State Capitalism -
Communism and Market Capitalism - the religion people are having when they are not having religion.

Previously I eluded to the Intellectual class and Intellectual eras in various world regions as dominant value systems in unison with Warrior, Merchant and Manual Worker Classes - 'collective psychologies.'
Without the intellectuals human advancement in science, inventions, medicine, engineering, philosophies and religions would not be possible.
Whether religions are spiritual or not is another debate.
The intellectuals manipulate the world with there minds, whereas the warrior mentality is one of overcoming physical limitation - scaling the mountain, fighting the battles - learning the discipline of ballet. Without these classes society could not exist - as we know it.
It is the Intellectuals who created the Bible and setup controlling centres of Monastries, Nuns and priests, or allahs etc., to promulgate their beliefs. It is the Intellectuals who reigned supreme at various times and left their legacy.
Today the Commercial class uses the intellectuals or academics to created their production machines, manipulate the stock markets and above all bring about the untrammeled accumulation of wealth to them. Most intellectuals or academics do not rail against or can not rail against the Commercialists or provide open debate because the Commercialists own the media. They do not bite the hand that feeds them. The intellctuals who commanded the religious doctrines had a very powerful way of controlling people. There is no more powerful a sentiment than devotion that is turned towards 'God.' Naturally the Intellectuals of past who had not the benefit of hindsight of developed science
were restricted in their knowledge. They also were human and they created beliefs that were meant as social control. Heaven and Hell and the Devil were potent stocks of the trade. Similarly, today the intellectuals are being used by another 'ism' or capitalism to to further the ends of the accumulators of wealth. Their economics does not take into account the negative side of the ledger and market economy ignores the cost to the environment until it becomes an issue of blatant destruction or even survival. Present market economics is a religion in its own rights and fails to implement the best utilization of resources so that we might all move together in human welfare. This debate about Religions is very necessary but is mistaken if the woes of the world or dilenmas we are facing is limited to 'evil religions' or the dogmas that the INTELLECTUALS' created in the past. It is very important that the intellctuals on forums like this do not fall into the trap or set up another forum of division between people and especially just to satisfy their intellectuality - a trait of human nature.

Craig, the Third Reich lasted for approx 11yrs.
The Dark Ages, when Christianity held sway, lasted for eleven centuries.
You should search for a copy of Carl Sagan's devastating indictment of that period in his "Demon Haunted World" where to take one instance, whole villages were left without a single female, even female infants were found to have the mark of the Devil and duly immolated.

If it weren't for brave freethinking souls these bloodthirsty religionists would be still at it even to the same extent as the mad mullahs who still have same power these days.

Dear Burnie,

All the 'smelly diseases put together'
add up to a great deal more suffering and death than
all the Crusades and wars put together - your comments are extreme...

Today is relatively peacful as compared to the past
era of the Warriors. If the ration of wars and death
were to be extropolated into todays terms then there would have been somewhere around 2 Billion deaths from wars, which is not to say the millions of peolple who died in recent wars is no less an indictment on human existence.

PS Thanks for the poem.

Dear Burnie,

I agree mostly with what you say but
sense you are taking what I said literally - Oh dear! The Bible has some historical content and I am
not going to be pedantic in that sense.

Regards,

Craig

PS I hope Timmy will respond as well.

Dear Robert,
Thank you for the poem - 'A Grain Of
Sand.'

I love that poem and its intuitive nuances.

I hope others will also respond about their
certainties on the nature of physics and
its Universe.

Regards,

Craig

Craig, the Bible is not a historical document. It is an anonymous work of fiction and much worse than mere hogwash when you consider it has been the cause of more misery, grief and suffering than all the smelly diseases of the world put together.

Dear Timmy,

The Bible is a historical document, contains stories
mixed with mythology about the life and lives of people who introduced spiritual notions and some
practices that confronted the brutal reality of
Roman rule. It is a remarkable story if one sees Jesus as another human being with spiritual outlook.
The metaphors in the Bible have parallel with other religious/spiritual teachings. There are logical inconsistencies in the Bible and it was used and created by the Intellectual class to control people with a powerful sentiment. The Ten Commandments parallel the 10 observances and abstinences found
in India long before the Bible manifest.
When one describes a book of religious significance as 'hog wash' this only drives the devoted further into their boundaries. By all means use rational arguments to highlight the
inconsistencies of the Bible. Aspects of the Bible I can appreciate and take on board.

Craig, there's a good chance you may find the answers to all those puzzling questions in the following:

A Grain Of Sand

If starry space no limit knows
And sun succeeds to sun,
There is no reason to suppose
Our earth the only one.
'Mid countless constellations cast
A million worlds may be,
With each a God to bless or blast
And steer to destiny.

Just think! A million gods or so
To guide each vital stream,
With over all to boss the show
A Deity supreme.
Such magnitudes oppress my mind;
From cosmic space it swings;
So ultimately glad to find
Relief in little things.

For look! Within my hollow hand,
While round the earth careens,
I hold a single grain of sand
And wonder what it means.
Oh! If I had the eyes to see,
And brain to understand,
I think Life's mystery might be
Solved in this grain of sand.

Robert W. Service

People of various persuations that include many scientists, rationalists, physicists, atheists, and
from all walks of life - stand their ground - or are very certain about their beliefs. I have some questions of a mysterious nature and would appreciate an attempt from those that are certain about things to attempt some answers from their perspective.

1: If the universe started out from a 'big bang',
where is its epicentre?

2: What was the molecular density of the pinhead
sized universe?

3: Why is there conjecture about the age of stars
verses the age of the universe?

4: Why is the universe infinite when it started
out as pinhead?

5: If the universe is infinite why did Eistein
imply that their is no such thing as a straight
line - if one trvelled fast enough and long
enough they would return to where they started
by following a straight line trajectory?

6: Where did the actual star dust come from?

7: Atoms are made of electrons, protons, etc., -
what are the electrons, protons, etc., made
of?

8: What are radio waves made of apart from being described with properties?

9: What is consciousness? - not what is awareness?

0: Is consciousness a substance?

11: Is consciousness everywhere just not bound by
our brains or box of bones?

12: Does consciousness come from matter or matter
come from Consciousness or are mutually
related? - one and the same thing on either
side of the coin?

13: Does relative knowledge paradoxically limit our understanding of other layers of reality?

OK that will do for now.

Thank you

Here is somebody sounding off much as you do Timmy. Mathew Parris is an ex MP and presently a brilliant journalist for the London Times newspaper.
I thought his article in today’s paper (Saturday) would go down well on here, so here it is:

SHOUT YOUR DOUBT OUT LOUD, MY FELLOW UNBELIEVERS

Christianity was part of my upbringing and education. Because I am fascinated by moral philosophy, enjoy reading the Bible and, as Private Parris in the Boys' Brigade, detested military drill, nautical knots, whiting-up my sash and polishing my brass belt-buckle, I have acquired a reasonable grounding in the other skill you could shine at in the BB: religious knowledge. I think religion, like politics, is tremendously important.

The trouble is, I'm sure religion is wrong. This drives me as a columnist into a curious dilemma. My subject is of interest mostly to those of my readers who are liable to be offended by me. One is left writing for a minority audience predisposed to take umbrage at what one says. Those who don't care for religion don't care to read about it

The dilemma was brought home by readers' responses to a column I wrote on Maundy Thursday, inveighing against claims that a French nun has recently been cured of Parkinson's disease through invoking the name of the late John Paul II, and that this alleged miracle could lead to the possible canonisation of the late Pope. I have been deluged with letters, almost all from Christians, and overwhelmingly critical of the column.

Three strands of opinion in particular emerge from this fascinating pile of letters. The first insists that miracles do occur, that saints may be invoked and that the successful invocation of putative saints may be grounds for canonisation. Such assertions have been made by a number of Anglican correspondents. I should remind them that their own Church had something to say on this more than 400 years ago. Article 22 of the Thirty-Nine Articles states: "The Romish doctrine concerning... invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded on no warranty of Scripture." I rest my case.

The second strand is more tentative. "Why rule out the possibility?" sums up the thought, variously expressed to me. Things do occur for which there is no available explanation in Nature; in such cases is it not perfectly rational to accept that the divine explanation is at least a contender for the truth?
For the answer to this, I need only go back two-and-a-half centuries, to the greatest philosopher our islands ever produced: the Scot David Hume. Hume took a cool view of "the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvellous".

A miracle, began Hume (On Miracles, pt I), "may be accurately defined, [as] a transgression of a law of Nature by a particular volition of the Deity".
But "there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves." Forced to choose between doubting the evidence, and believing in a divine suspension of the laws of Nature, only someone already convinced that divine intervention occurs could opt for the miraculous as an explanation. Miracles cannot therefore be evidence of a divinity: belief in a divinity must be the evidence for miracles.
In consequence, Hume concludes (hinting at atheism with such sly elegance that no Edinburgh pharisee could pin it on him): "The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one."
But stop. Why should Hume, or Richard Dawkins, or lesser polemicists such as me, bang on about this? For heaven's sake, wail many of my correspondents (and this is the third strand in my pile of letters), what are you getting so het up about? You don't believe. Fine. Well why not shut up, then? Tell us about things you do believe in. Surely it is those who believe who should be proclaiming. How can one be a passionate non-believer, they ask, hinting that, like Saul, I may be battling against my own inner faith.
Proselytisers for atheism such as Richard Dawkins will be as familiar as am I with the lament. I heard it most memorably from a Conservative Chief Whip (urging me to pipe down about homosexuality) who remarked to me that he had never believed in God, but felt absolutely no imperative to jump to his feet in church and broadcast this fact to his astonished constituents.
How do we reply? An ad hominem response would be to remark that when the Church had the upper hand it was happy to persecute, imprison or behead non-believers and fight crusades against other religions. Now it has lost its boss status it simply asks us to keep our opinions to ourselves (but still wants laws to criminalise us for mocking its pretensions).
On the back foot at last, it discovers (first) a brotherhood between all its sects. Then as the situation deteriorates Christianity discovers within itself a respect first for Judaism (suddenly we are all "Judaeo-Christians"), then women with a Christian vocation, then for divorcees, and finally finds a common purpose with religions such as Islam, too (the "faith" community). Needs must.
And as the Devil (or falling church attendance) drives, these "members of the faith community" cease enforcing their moral imperatives upon a secular world and retreat into whimpering about their "freedom of conscience" to carry on persecuting the minority groups upon whose sinfulness they can still find a consensus. Freedom of conscience, my eye! If only there were an afterlife: Martin Luther would have loved Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor's protests. They don't like it up 'em.

As mainstream Christian church attendances fall farther still I predict that the Church of England, and finally the Roman Catholics, will be driven to conclude that they cannot even afford to make enemies of homosexuals, unmarried couples and family planners, and start welcoming them in too. I expect they'll call it the "love community". In truth it's the "can't afford to be choosy" community.
But there I go again. Getting passionate, fighting dirty. But we have a better argument than "you'd do the same to us if you could" — though they would, and until about half a century ago they did.
It is that they will again, unless we non-believers are watchful, and energetic and — yes — passionate. I hate ending up in scraps with nice Anglicans arid thoughtful Catholics because the Church of England and intelligent Catholicism are not the problem. They are the best kind of Christians, but the best lack all conviction. It is the worst who are full of passionate intensity. Look at the evangelical movement in America, and to some extent, now, here. Look at the Religious Right in Israel. Look at fundamentalist Islam. What they share, what drives them, the tiger in their tanks, is an absolute, unshakeable belief in an ever-present divinity, with plans for nations that He communicates to the leaders, or would-be leaders, of nations. They are the very devil, these people, they could wreck our world, and their central belief in God's plan has to be confronted. Confronted with passion. Confronted because, and on the ground that, it is not true.

Disbelief can be passionate. Sometimes it should be. Agnosticism can be passionate. A sense that we lack certitude, lack evidence, lack the external command of any luminous guiding truth, may not always lead to lassitude, complaisance or a modest silence. Sometimes it should provoke a great shout: "Stop. You don't know that. You have no right."

I hit you, earlier on, with a burst of the admirable David Hume. But he was not always right. "Opposing one species of superstition to another," he wrote, "set them a-quarrelling; while we ourselves, , during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy." No, David. Listen instead to Nietzsche. "This eternal indictment of Christianity," he said, "I will write on walls, wherever there are walls."
We who do not believe must be ready with our paintbrushes, our chisels and our cans of aerosol spray. Disbelief can be more than an absence of belief. It can be a redeeming, saving force.

Hey Bernie, nice to see you again.

I am one who believes that spirituality will grow, not dwindle, as religion subsides. An honest spirituality about the meaning of it all, and the origin of the universe, and the source of love and passion.

Atheism and spirituality are not at all conversely related. In fact I consider myself far more spiritual than your average believer. Bernie you said "Only thing is, claiming to be atheist, most folk would understand that as categorically ruling out all possibility of the numinous and of anything which cannot be scientifically explained."
This is the misnomer that must be changed. And calling yourself agnostic won't help. When you call yourself an agnostic, you are saying that you have not written off the hogwash in the bible, and that it might actually be true for all you know. This misrepresents your position more so than calling yourself an atheist. Better to add a caveat after "I am an atheist", than to call yourself an agnostic. I long for the day when one can say "I am an atheist" and not have it taken as, "I am a nihilist".

All the best to you Bernie.
See you around.

Well Timmy (How are ye? Good to see ye posting again) anyone who knows me would hardly say I was overly polite or politically correct but I now see I'm more your kind of atheist than agnostic!

Only thing is, claiming to be atheist, most folk would understand that as categorically ruling out all possibility of the numinous and of anything which cannot be scientifically explained.
In a way that is on a par with the excessive zeal in past ages of politically enforced religious observance and could be seen as the new bigotry.

I mean if Twenty First Century science has proved anything, in addition to discovering things, it is that there is much that is hidden about this world—-including the possibility that it is a world whose origin and explanation are supernatural. Check what the late, great, Richard Feynman had to say on understanding quantum mechanics.

And for many the death of a dearly loved child would be unbearable without the consoling thought that there is something more to this world.
Look at this haunting attempt at reconciling such a loss. You can almost feel the father’s grief for his 7yr old child reaching out to us across the centuries. Doesn’t sound Islamic?

This house hath been an angel’s dwelling place;
As the immortals pure from head to feet
Was she who stayed with us a little space,
Then, as was meet,
On her immortal journey went her way.
So wise was she, yet nothing but a flower,
Only a child ----- yet all the world to me;
Against the stars what love hath any power!
Or was it she
Went softly in her own appointed hour?

14th century ode in style of Hafiz

To Shona, et all,

I wouldn't be too concerned about capitalization of the word God. I also capitalize Harry Potter, and Rambo. Even fictional characters get their proper names capitalized, why should God be any different?

This conversation however, is constantly muddled by the definition of "God".
Ask people if they are agnostic about God and they will give you a definitive answer that is woefully ambiguous. Myself, I am agnostic about the possible existence of a "God" like presence. I am however a hard core ardent atheist when it comes to "God". (of Abraham)

This is why I call myself an atheist. I can always further clarify that I do not completely discount the possibility of something like "God", due to the fact that none of us knows the origin of the universe. But if I call myself an agnostic, people might think that I give one ounce of credence to the Jewish, Christian or Muslim God, which of course, being of sound mind, I do not.

I urge all people who call themselves agnostics to clarify exactly what they are agnostic to. Jesus being born of a virgin? God gave Israel to the Jews? Really? Are there really some people out there who are wishy washy about these inane posits? I really don't think so. Most self described agnostics are simply, overly polite, politically correct atheists. Grow a spine. Get that fence post out of your ass. You are an atheist. Buddhists are atheists. Please join us in title. Agnostics are useless as tits on a bull.

If you still call yourself an agnostic. Please start an argument with me. I would love to straighten you out, you chicken sh*t atheist you.

04-21-2007
Saturday

Dear All:

I neglected titles of books I should have mentioned, and also websites. I mentioned titles of books in an earlier post, but left some out. So here are some more.

Read Chapman Cohen's 2-volume work, Essays on Freethinking. It's hard to get ahold of, but try.

Read Professor Peter Gay's magnificent two-volume work on the Enlightenment. Volume one was entitled, The Enlightenment, An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern Paganism. Volume two was entitled, The Enlightenment, An Interpretation: The Science of Freedom. Again, these were authored by him in the 1960s and early 1970s, and so may be hard to get ahold of, but try.

Read Professor Peter Gay's compilation and edition of writings of great Enlightenment thinkers and philosophers of the era of the Enlightenment, mainly the period 1690-1790. It's entitled, The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Anthology. It's very good.

Also, read Professor Isaac Kramnick's excellent compilation of writings of Enlightenment thinkers and writers and philosophers. It's entitled, if my memory serves me right, The Portable Enlightenment Anthology.

And Professor Kramnick also wrote himself a very good book on the separation of religion and government here in the U.S.A. It's entitled, The Godless Constitution. Get it and read it.

Every book Gore Vidal wrote -- both his novels and his nonfiction writings -- can teach you a lot. I learned a lot from his writings. His 7-novel American Empire series, which is what he himself wanted it called, is fascinating. Vidal meticulously and carefully researched all the actual historical people who appear in his historical novels, and he carefully and meticulously researched the facts of the eras about which he wrote. His novels are novels -- works of fiction, -- and so, he moves some stuff around, which writers of novels have the liberty to do. But he tells you in either "afterwards" or "forewards" when he does this. His American Empire series (and that was his preferred title for the series, as he states in his memoir, Palimpsest, not "American Chronicle" series, which the publishers and media substituted as the "nicer" and more "respectable" title) is, not in the order in which he wrote them, but in the chronological order of how the actual historical eras happened: 1. Burr; 2. Lincoln; 3. 1876; 4. Empire; 5. Hollywood; 6. Washington, D.C.; and 7. The Golden Age. All his novels touch on the key issues in the world: religion versus secularism, class and class division, great power and great wealth, sex, race, caste. His novels on ancient history are fascinating, too, and they include: 1. Creation; 2. Julian; and his hilarious novel, 3. Live from Golgotha. Some of his other novels include the really frightening and chilling novel, 4. Kalki. His novels, Kalki, Julian, Live from Golgotha, and in some parts, Creation, all touch on issues of the influence of religion in politics historically, although each addresses the issue differently.

His nonfiction essays are great sources of education and knowledge as well. His fattest book is, United States, Essays: 1952-1992. It contains 3 huge sections each of which is subdivided into his essays for each of the 3 main categories. Vidal has described himself as a man of the Enlightenment, and it certainly shows in many of his essays. You can learn a great deal from reading anything he wrote.

I have only with what I've mentioned of Vidal's works scratched the surface, too. He is a self-described atheist and secular humanist. He is also in politics a self-described defender of the "old American Republic" against the "new American Empire." He's a tough civil libertarian.

Vidal's approach to religious influence in politics is described in his 1992 essay, "Monotheism and Its Discontents." He said in there that historically, he'd always seen himself as a man of the Enlightenment who held to the basic Enlightenment precept, live and let live. That is, the basic libertarian precept of the Enlightenment was, everyone is free to operate so long as he or she does not harm another, impose his or her way of operating on someone else. But, Vidal said in his 1992 "Monotheism and Its Discontents," the modern religious right-wing does not hold to that precept here in America. They seek to vigorously impose their sectarian religious agenda into tax-supported politics, tax-supported government, get laws passed everywhere they can that impose their religiously sectarian agenda. They seek to prohibit or restrict abortion, same sex marriage, buying of alcoholic beverages, gambling, every kind of private and personal individual behavior. So, Vidal said in his 1992 essay, he proposed a war on the monotheistic fanatics in simple self-defense of the classical and traditional Enlightenment he'd always supported.

Sam Harris does not say exactly this in his 2004 book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, but he says something similar to it, because his argument for "intolerance" of irrationalist and irrational beliefs is not really anti-Enlightenment. Rather, it's an argument for going back to the time when the Enlightenment thinkers polemicized vigorously against irrational and irrationalist beliefs, and when others influenced by the Enlightenment polemicized vigorously against such irrational beliefs. There is recognized in this a distinction between the legal concept of equality of all before the law, as encapsulated, for instance, in the American Civil War Constitutional Amendments, the 13th, particularly the 14th, and the 15th Amendments, and, on the other hand, no equality in the public square for stupidity, irrationality, and idiocy, and no immunity in the public square for stupidity, irrationality, and idiocy. That is, equality before the law for all belief and unbelief and nonbelief systems does not automatically translate into the concept of equality in terms of how science approaches different belief systems. What makes a way of thinking scientific is, whether or not it is in principle testable. That is, can we actually in principle test it out, confirm or disconfirm it, and is there some method by which we can test it out. And if there is not in principle some method by which we can test it out, it deserves no credibility in the public square where issues are argued out. It may deserve equality before the law, as in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's application of the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to every single locality within the borders of the U.S.A., but it doesn't deserve equality in the public sphere or public square where ideas are argued out and debated out and fought out. That is a careful distinction which must always be drawn.

So in a sense, there is a similarity between what Vidal argued in his 1992 essay, "Monotheism and Its Discontents," and what Sam Harris argues for in his 2004 book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. I think both men are men of the Enlightenment, but they simply word their arguments in slightly different ways.

Other readings to read: the great American 19th Century novelist and writer, Mark Twain, was one of America's great and foremost freethinkers and secularists and atheists and also anti-imperialists, much like, in politics, Vidal is. Like Vidal is today, Mark Twain was in the 19th Century an anti-racist, an anti-imperialist, a defender of the best in the American Republic against concentrations of power and wealth and against the disposition of the U.S. to invade other people's countries and other people's territories and to impose its racist system in other people's areas. Twain's greatest novel was, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the New York Times "Observer" columnist, Russell Baker, was right when he differentiated between Twain's novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, saying that the former was a true children's book, but the latter was not a children's book at all, but actually a book for adults, and, more than that, for adults who had had some experience in life. The latter is permeated by slashing sarcasm and slashing satire on the most evil and pernicious irrationalism in American life, race and race distinctions and racism, but it also attacks religious bigotry and religious nonsense as well. Twain's funniest attack on religion was his hilarious novel, Letters from the Earth, his satire on the bible. His short stories are also masterpieces of hilarity and satire. While Gore Vidal is right to see in the writing style of Twain and his own, Vidal's, writing style, real differences, the basic outlook on religion and on politics of the two men was and is very similar. Both were and are compassionate, secular, humanist, atheist, and in politics, radically democratic with a small "d", radically republican with a small "r", anti-imperialist and anti-Empire, anti-racist, anti-bigotry, opposed to sexism and cruelty and irrationality and hypocrisy. Get ahold of as many books by Twain as you can get, and read them. You will learn a lot. But read them carefully and read them in places and environments that do not make it hard for you to concentrate. They are worth that effort.

There have been recently republications of great satirists of the Enlightenment. Possibly the greatest was the Deist writer, Voltaire. Voltaire was French, but he wrote often very funny novels and novelettes that were great satires. While he was not atheist, he was secular, freethinking, non-Christian in his religion, non-Jewish in his religion, non-Islamic in his thinking, and, as I said, he adhered to the European 18th Century philosophy of Deism, which was a kind of religion that held there was a creator who was, however, completely non-involved in the affairs of that creator's creation and more or less set it up to work on its own like a clock and walked away from that creation. Voltaire's funniest novels were, Candide, and Zadig. Both were written in the context of clergy-dominated, Catholic-dominated, feudalist landlord-dominated, king (monarchy) dominated France of the 18th Century, and Voltaire in them was poking fun at the society in which he lived and at the social and philosophical and similar attitudes prevailing in the society in which he lived. I read Candide for the first time in French and in English in a high school French class, and it was the first genuine satire I had ever read. I found it wonderful, because, primarily, I "got" that it was a satire; partly, that was due to my having a wonderful French teacher who was not only a good teacher, but was a pretty woman and, I think, I was a high school boy with a crush on her, and that helped me learn in her classroom. In any case, years later, I re-read Candide again, and laughed just as hard at it. I also read Zadig, and laughed at that, too. Voltaire in many ways wrote like the American satirist, Mark Twain. And again, you will get a laugh out of reading his novelettes and novels. You will also learn from his short stories and laugh at some of them, too. Try to get ahold of his writings that contain both his nonfiction and his fiction, both his short stories and his novels and novelettes, however.

The sense of irony is very important in trying to understand everything. America has, as Gore Vidal has written, a prejudice against irony. But that is a prejudice that deserves to go away. One of the really great historians in America was the late Isaac Deutscher. Deutscher was not originally American. He was Polish. He was a man of the political far left in the 1920s, a man of the Polish Communist Party. But he was expelled from the Polish Communist Party because he sympathized with the anti-Stalinist politics of Leon Trotsky in the 1920s Soviet inner-party dispute. Not only was he expelled, but other Polish Communists were expelled because they were anti-Stalinist. Deutscher ended up leaving Europe and he ended up teaching history at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the U.S.A. He had an acute understanding of the history of both the European Left and the Soviet Union and the socialist revolution that formed the original Soviet Union in 1917. But he approached all these issues in terms of an ironical sense of history. He even came out with a famous collection of essays entitled, Ironies of History: Essays on Contemporary Communism, which is one of the more interesting and perceptive collections of essays on contemporary communism with a small "c" and contemporary Communism with a big "C". Deutscher's masterpiece, however, was his 3-volume biography of Leon Trotsky, approaching Trotsky as a kind of secular and unreligious prophet. Deutscher was a man of secular, but also Jewish, background. One of his most insightful essays was entitled, "The Non-Jewish Jew." In this essay, Deutscher approaches the positive and negative in the history of the Hebrew people's religion. He looks at that in the history of Judaism that made some elements in it obscurantist, medievalist, backward, and some elements in it progressive, enlightened, forward-looking. He argues that in the history of the Hebrew people's religion, there were thinkers who combined in their attitudes an element of profound respect for learning, knowledge, books, and that insofar as this profound respect for learning, knowledge, books, spilled into all areas of life, it often led to many of the most brilliant people of Jewish heritage breaking away from the medievalist, feudalist or pre-feudalist, religiosified elements in the faith to a secular, rational, enlightened, pro-science, pro-scientific attitude.

Deutscher was a brilliant scholar, but a man deeply influenced by Marxist method in his thinking. However, his way of being influenced by Marxist thinking was to approach all history, all life, in terms of irony, which is really what is meant in Marxism by the dialectic, or by a dialectical approach to reality and matter and society and history. I think Deutscher had this rich and ironical concept of approach to history. I do not agree with any notion that lumps all Marxists and all Marxism with the irrationalism of Stalinism, for instance, for Stalinist irrationalism in both its specifically Stalin-inspired incarnations, as well as its Stalin-like incarnations (horrendously totalitarian bloodletting Stalinists like Ceaucescu, Pol Pot, and Stalin, and somewhat more liberal and not as blood-letting Stalinists like Ho Chi Minh, Tito, and Castro, for instance, but still all bureaucratically repressive and authoritarian in their attitudes and dispositions) embodied not a "socialist" or "Marxist" disposition, but, rather, in the authoritarianisms of all Stalinisms, a kind of theoretical and practical counter-revolution backwards against the original Marxist disposition. That is why I think it's incorrect to ascribe to the communism with a small "c" of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Deutscher, and other anti-statist and egalitarian-minded communists with a small "c" the irrationalism of Stalinism. Deutscher was a man of the Enlightenment, because, I think he correctly noted, Marx had been a man of the Enlightenment, albeit a 19th Century Enlightenment man. The Marxism of Marx came out of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, to some degree the French and German and European Revolutions for democracy and republicanism of the 1830s and 1848, and also in some sense out of the English industrial revolution in his, Marx's, thinking. Marx studied the Enlightenment thinkers, particularly Adam Smith, the great political economist of the 18th Century Enlightenment, but other Enlightenment thinkers as well. He was deeply influenced by the more radically democratic with a small "d" and radically republican with a small "r" ideas of Enlightenment-era, and 18th Century democratic revolutionary era. In Deutscher's 3-volume biography of Leon Trotsky, written primarily in the 1950s, his concept of Trotsky as a secular prophet of modern 20th Century times derived from both a holdover biblical concept of prophecy combined, however, with the anti-religious and atheist and secular view of the Enlightenment, influenced by secular humanism, materialism, atheism, and approaching history and the world purely in terms of this world, not some other world allegedly existing other than this world. Deutscher clearly saw great Marxist thinkers and writers as people of the Enlightenment, people influenced by the radically democratic and republican earlier revolutions, people influenced by the kinds of secular socialisms and secular communisms that emerged out of these modern democratic revolutions of the bourgeoisie. Marx passionately supported, for intance, the Northern side in the American Civil War, seeing in the Northern side in that conflict the socially revolutionary side predisposed to abolish the slavery-based system despite Lincoln's own hesitations and reluctance. Marx had himself participated in 1848 in the European democratic revolution, as had his colleague, Engels. They favored democratic republicanism as over and against feudalism, monarchy, and the older influences of the clergy and organized religion in politics. They favored separation of religion and government. So they also harked back to the 18th Century democratic revolutions.

The 18th Century democratic revolutions were, in ideas, profoundly influenced by the Enlightenment that preceded them. One of the greatest modern historians of the 18th Century democratic and republican revolutions is, R. R. Palmer. I would characterize Palmer in his political views as either liberal or democratic with a small "d," and he's clearly sympathetic with the ideas of the democratic and republican types about which he's writings. His real masterpiece of historical writing was his two-volume work, The Age of the Democratic Revolutions, which deals and addresses all the Trans-Atlantic Ocean democratic and republican revolutions of the 18th Century -- the American Revolution of 1775-1783, the French Revolution of 1789-1795, its aftermath, the Irish Revolution of 1798, the Haitian Revolution of the early 1800s, the Italian liberal and democratic movements of the 1790s, the German Enlightenment writing of that era.

One of the all-time great books on the sort of lineal continuity between the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the age of democratic revolutions, the later 19th Century movements for democracy, republicanism, socialism, and the 20th Century socialist movements and revolutionary socialism, was the great 1941 book by the late American writer and genius and real main American man of letters before Gore Vidal, the late Edmund Wilson, entitled, To the Finland Station: An Essay on the Writing and Acting of History. Wilson's great work went into the way in which history was written about by some of the early precursors of the democratic-minded and republican-minded historians, than into the history-writing of such democratic and republican historians, then liberal and Marxist historical writing, then the influences of the 18th and 19th Century democratic and republican revolutionary movements on the writing of history and on how historians approached the writing of history, and on the formation of the thought of Marx in the 19th Century, and then in the 20th Century, the thought of Marxist writers and activists like Trotsky, Lenin, and others. Wilson also addressed the way in which different kinds of thought, including democratic, republican, and socialist thought, came out of the French Revolution in his great book, and how this had an enormous impact on subsequent generations of thinkers, writers, historians, activists in politics. The phrase, "to the Finland Station," refers to the railroad station in Petrograd, Russia, to which Lenin returned from his European exile in 1917, the significant event that led to the eventual Bolshevik Revolution later on that year led by the socialist and Marxist-minded left-wing workers and intellectuals in the Bolshevik Party of Lenin, of Trotsky, and other brilliant Marxist activists and thinkers. Wilson clearly argues that these thinkers and writers were men who originally were intellectually inspired by not only the 19th Century materialist and atheist and secular humanist radicalism and socialism of Marx, but the Enlightenment materialism and atheism of the 18th Century through the democratic and republican and early socialist thinking of the 18th Century as well that emerged out of the French Revolution, as well as the 19th Century scientific materialism embodied in Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, as well as Karl Marx's Capital. Wilson was arguing for the perspective of a kind of linear or lineal continuity between the earlier Enlightenment, democratic, and republican radical ideals and views and the later secular socialist and secular communist views.

A good book on philosophy is the book by the late University of California at Berkeley philosophy teacher, Herbert Marcuse, which he wrote in the 1940s, entitled, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. The typical view of Hegel as some kind of embryonic totalitarian in miniature bandied about by liberal scholars in the U.S.A. is pretty well demolished by Marcuse's work. Marcuse shows persuasively and convincingly that in his politics, Hegel was probably more of a liberal parliamentarist in his thinking, and that Hegel's concept of the state was a parliamentarist constitutionalist sort of state of a liberal type. However, Hegel got his explosively revolutionary concept of the dialectic from the experience of the French Revolution, and his radical philosophical work, Science of Logic, written originally in 1812, basically expounded a concept of history influenced deeply by that concept of dialectical thinking. His concept of dialectical thinking was one imbued by and infused by a deepgoing sense of sharp discontinuities and disequilibria in thinking and in how progressions occur. Hegel did not have a concept of linear continuity, or linear progress, but of progress or continuity imbued by and suffused by sharp stoppages, discontinuities, disequilibria, disparities, or, to use the late American biologist, and paleontologist, and evolutionist, Stephen Jay Gould's word, punctuations.

This concept of the dialectic as operative in matter and in material reality came to powerfully influence Marx's concept of how history operated. It also, however, came culturally and intellectually to influence modern thinking in many ways. The view in modern physics, for instance, of pair creation and pair annihilation at the sub-atomic level stems from hardnosed, empirical observation of the data. But the cultural environment making it possible for that sort of view of how reality at the most subatomic and minuscule level operates and operated was, I think, originally made possible by the intellectual creation of Hegel, in terms of his seeing reality operating in terms of a dialectical mode of operation. Hegel, however, was a pure idealist in philosophy, and held that spirit or mind permeated all and how everything operates in reality. Marx turned that around and said that matter was fundamental, and preceded consciousness. Marx's famous definition of materialism was, "Being determines consciousness," while his definition of idealism in philosophy was, "Consciousness determines being."

The American philosopher and atheist, John Dewey, was not Hegelian, but his pragmatic liberal-minded philosophy was sort of influenced in a way by the dialectic. However, in the West, dialectics and the concept of sharp discontinuities has tended not to be so influential in the West, particularly not in the U.S. or in England. Key in the interesting argument or debate on interpretations of how evolution in biology operates that went on for years between the late Stephen Jay Gould, the still living Niles Eldredge, the still living Richard Lewontin, and, on the other hand, the still living Richard Dawkins, the still living John Maynard Smith, and similarly minded thinkers and scientists and writers, is, in some sense, an underlying friendliness to the concept of sharp discontinuities as operative in material reality on the part of Gould and Eldredge embodied in their evolutionary interpretation, punctuated equilibrium, as opposed to the view less friendly to the concept of sharp punctuations and disequilibria of Smith and Dawkins. "Googling" articles in New York Review of Books on various books written by Smith or Dawkins or others reviewed by Gould, for instance, is interesting, because that debate spilled over onto the pages of New York Review of Books, and one learns a lot from reading the diverse sides in this interesting debate among evolutionary biologists, all of whom were atheists and nonbelievers in religion, it must here be stipulated, and all of whom were, in fundamentals, men and women of the Enlightenment in their intellectual roots and intellectual sources.

Best for now,
Allan Greene

Chas Melmed [see above] quotes your question "What is the net effect of so many Jewish settlers believing that the Creator of the universe promised them a patch of desert on the Mediterranean?"

Mr. Melmed counters with:
"Part of the 'net effect' is that there is a Jewish homeland for Jews, believers and non-believers. Religion is nonsense but the 'net effect' is not always all bad all the time."

To which I reply; Yes, it is. Take your argument one step further. Suppose those Palistinians, who are so opposed to sharing that slice of desert - were not caught up, along with the Jews, in a religious war. Only then might this "homeland" actually be shared. Yes, Mr. Melmed; sadly the net effect of religion IS always bad.

Having been one of the lucky ones, and raised as an Atheist, I am so glad to witness this movement with the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins at the forefront.

Its like coming out; in fact, it is easier for one to flaunt that they are a coloured gay than it is to be an open Atheist.

I'd love to start a support group in my area.

One thing that strikes me odd, and with all due respect, is that many Atheists spell god with a capital 'g'. Even so far so to spell satan, heaven and hell as proper nouns. Yet human or animal are accepted in lower case. Now that I think of it; if Christians, Muslims and all of them can have capital letters, why can't we? I now declare that Atheists can too, so I edited previously mentioned.

Is this due to an Atheist's respect for his fellow humans and their Imaginary Friends, or does the brainwashing go deeper than we think?

The Rev.R.Albert Mohler, Jr., recently in a column supported the probability of a biological
basis for homosexuality but he still considers
it sinful. If it is sinful, then why does God
create homosexuals? Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry once wrote, "We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans and then
blames them for his own mistakes."

This same query was stated so well way back in
(342-270B.B.)by Epicurus: "The gods can either
take away evil from the world and will not; or
being willing to do so cannot;
or they neither can nor will; or,
lastly, they are both able and willing to do so.
If they have the will to remove evil and cannot,
then they are not omnipotent. If they can but
will not, then they are not benevolent. If they
are neither able nor willing, then they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if
they are both able and willing to annihilate evil,how then does it exist.?"

There are 4 collective psychologies. The warrior, intellectual, merchant (commercial) and manual working classes. One of these classes is dominant in an given era and they coexist. Today in most Western societies the commercial class dominates. They are good at production systems and accumulating wealth = capitalism. There has never been so much production and yet the gap between the rich and the poor grows continually. The dominant class in merry old England and France was the Intellectuals that emerged from the warrior era. Along came the arts, scientific endeavor, phi8lisophical treatise and more knowledge of engineering and principles of physics. The intellectual class also manifest through religious doctrines, seminaries, etc., and were dominant in their value system. Eventually, as is the case today of these classes becomes very exploitative and brings about the demise or compromise of the other classes. Today the rule of money and the materialist outlook that backs them is bringing about the demise of Intellectuality and of course the have-nots. That is not to deny the value of the commercialists who contribute greatly to material development up to a point. But like everything that lacks balanced outlook a breakdown will occur. What has this got to do with atheism.
Athesism as another 'ism' is a great counter to the negative legacy of religions and their dogmas.
Intellect should never be surrendered to doctrines of faith that lack a rational basis or extol people to destroy one another in the name of God.
However, another one of the paradoxes is that intellectuals often argue incessantly with one another and believe that objectivity is the only answer. That of course is another dogma. I believe that well intentioned atheist should not declare with certainty that there is no such thing as God
but leave there minds open while debating matters.
After all, we started out as apes that had a lot of discovery and learning to do that included seeking a divine power or 'God'. Some would opine that we are moving out of the God phase of human existence because religions will be shown to be what they are. More to the point we are moving towards a more spiritual appreciation of existence along with our material sciences (if we survive). If the goal of atheism is to render spirituality defunct in social development then this is a disaster of proportions as any dogma ridden, women hating, superstitious, idol worshiping, religions. The Intellectual era of past and their religious forms are now rightly facing a challenge from rationalists. The doctrines of many religions were more about social control not only extolling the virtues of 'God'. Such a sentiment to control is very powerful.

Great elaboration on this poor argument for Pascal's Wager! I couldn't have said it any better myself!

I'm always so pleased when I read your material!

Excellent work Sam!

04-20-2007
Friday

Dear Other Folks
Besides Sam:

I also want to commend and thank Sam Harris for his subsequent follow-up book, Letter to a Christian Nation, the follow-up book to The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. When Sam Harris wrote in his second book that his most "disturbed" responses came from Christians who would cite him chapter and verse from the bible, that was illuminating, to me, living in bible belt Florida here in the U.S.A., and it reinforced and reconfirmed the evidence of my own senses living here as to the organic equality between the irrationalism of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) Christian, bible-thumping fundamentalism with its Muslim counterpart in the Near East.

I disagree with the implication which seemed to appear in The End of Faith, and which some posters in response to Sam here posted, that the irrationalism of Near Eastern Islamic fundamentalism is somehow "more" irrationalist than Christian, Protestant fundamentalism. The key point that Sam Harris made in his books that the only reason Christianity in the West cannot today get away with stoning to death homosexuals, adulterers, or having beer drinkers flogged, while in sections of the Near East and in sections of North Africa and in sections of other parts of the planet such practices continue being carried out is precisely due to the fact of some semblance of modernization corellative with industrialization that has come to those parts of the world in which Christianity used to be dominant. Industrialization and modernization brought with them the use of science. And science irrespective of its original intentions pushed back and back and back the boundaries of the unreason and irrationalism innate and organic to organized Christianity.

It is often forgotten amongst those Americans who, for instance, favor the Christian Dominionist theocrat, dogmatic fundamentalist, evolution hater, First Amendment Establishment Clause's Madisonian and Jeffersonian implications hater, and nuclear missiles overseer, president G. W. Bush's armed imperialist invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as a "way" of "stamping out" fundamentalist irrationalism in the Muslim world, that in the course of the Roman Catholic Inquisition in Europe, upwards of a million people were killed, often sadistically, over fake and fraudulent "issues" of what appeared in books. And while there is a conventional tendency in anti-communist America to equate "communism" with "Stalinism," it is also forgotten that the eminent communist enemy of Stalinism, and himself child of the Marxism which itself was a child of the Enlightenment, Leon Trotsky, wrote a biography of Stalin wherein Trotsky wrote the illuminating point about Stalin's having gained his education in a Russian Orthodox Christian church-sponsored seminary. Trotsky in his biography of Stalin came out and said that that experience impelled Stalin to come out hating everybody. The implication was not that the Marxist variety of atheism turned Stalin into a hater of masses of people whom he later murdered, but, rather, that the earlier experience of inculcation into the irrationalism of religion did so. Stalin simply transferred a sort of personality disorder gained from the inculcation of irrationalism from his Russian Orthodox Church-sponsored theological seminary "education" (more propertly miseducation) into his later materialist atheist Marxism. But as many distinguished Marxist writers and academics -- such as, for instance, the late Isaac Deutscher -- have amply shown, one can be a Marxist and simultaneously a rationalist, and a non-dogmatist, and preserve a sense of the best of what the Marxism of Marx (classical Marxism) inherited from the best of the bourgeois Enlightenment.

In this regard, in America, it is, too, often not commented on that, ironically, the very sorts of libertarian kinds of thinking in America that have their roots in the bourgeois Enlightenment share those roots with Marxism, socialism, and the communism of anti-Stalinists like Trotsky, and Isaac Deutscher, Paul Mattick, Karl Korsch, and, in his Marxist period, the late Sidney Hook (before he broke from Marxism and became a liberal), or the still living distinguished academic and scholar, Eugene Genovese, in his Marxist period, before he broke away from Marxism methodologically.

Sam Harris is no Marxist. He is a liberal. I am not one to castigate him for that, however, on the issue of his defense of the Enlightenment, because the Enlightenment is terribly in need in today's irrationalist world of defending against all its irrationalist detractors, including, sadly and unfortunately, the American bourgeois media ownership, who have seemingly abandoned the rationalist democratic, rationalist republican, rationalist liberal, and rationalist libertarian, thinking of their much more revolutionary forebears of 1775-1783, and their anti-slavery forebears of 1831-1865. Today, they seek to shove the irrationalism of religion down the throats of masses of Americans at exactly the same time as they create the material preconditions for hardship and impoverishment by destroying every semblance of economic and job and income security for millions upon millions upon millions both here in America and much more worldwide.

But Letter to a Christian Nation did perform the admirable public service, in my view, of showing that every kind and every form of the 3 traditional monotheistic religions -- which Gore Vidal in his 1992 essay, "Monotheism and Its Discontents," contained in Gore Vidal's own excellent collection, United States, Essays: 1952-1992, called "three inhuman religions" -- possess within each and all the ability in embryo and, to use a favorite line of the anti-abortionist theocratically disposed extremist right-wing, in tendency, to stone people to death, or cut off the arms of little boys who steal from markets because they might have stolen with the use of the hand on the arms cut off or broken.

Additionally, monotheism is not alone in such practices. In some sections of India, for instance, where more rabidly fundamentalist varieties of the polytheistic (multi-god-based) Hinduism prevails in the legislative and judicial and police establishments, living human women are still thrown onto flaming funeral pyres of dead husbands, and this is sanctioned by the religiously fundamentalist variety of Hinduism.

Jihad is not sanctioned by all varieties of Islam, but it is sanctioned by some varieties of Islam.

And there is here in America a variety of Christianity called, Christian Reconstructionism (not to be confounded or confused with Jewish Reconstructionism, a humane, compassionate, liberal, and virtually atheistic secular humanist variety of Judaism) which favors a Christian religion-united government here in America in which the stoning to death of homosexuals and lesbians and the bringing back of slavery of black people and the death penalty for adulterers will be imposed as law. The Christian Dominionists, who try to present themselves as more "moderate" than these Christian Reconstructionists, are, however, doing everything in their, the Dominionists', power to get sanctioned in law and in public legislation and court decrees decisions against abortion, against gay people, against what amount to issues purely in the medical and scientific sphere, exactly as, for instance, in Indonesia currently, a more moderate variety of Islam finds itself outflanked on its extreme right-wing by an extremist variety of Islam seeking to get imposed in public law and public legislation and public court decrees sharia law, the traditional qu'uranic Islamic law.

And Sam Harris is right to also point to that extremist right-wing Jewish settler-based movement on the West Bank of the Jordan River who have by their actions led by the most fanatically right-wing of the Zionistic elements frustrated and deliberately sought to frustrate every single movement in the direction of any negotiation or peaceable compromise between the Israeli state on the one hand and, on the other hand, the Palestinian Authority. Here in the U.S., in New York City, in fact, of all things, a religiously Orthodox Jewish sect whose members visited the conference of primarily Holocaust deniers in Iran and came back found their synagogue burned to the ground in the Brooklyn, New York, area. They do not deny the Holocaust, but they do state their feeling that the government of Israel have used the Holocaust to that government's advantage in its dealings with the rest of the world, and this Orthodox Jewish group has regularly burned Israeli flags in a Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn. As said, recently, articles appeared on line stipulating their synagogue was burned to the ground. I do not share the denial of the Holocaust contained in the vicious Nazi and Ku Klux Klan-inspired diatribes and rants of elements like David Irving or David Duke, and I do not share the vicious equation of Zionism with the Hebrew and Jewish people put across by the leader of Iran or by Nazis and Klansmen. But this Orthodox Jewish group pinned the blame for the burning to the ground of their synagogue on right-wing Zionist apologists for Israel with terrorist inclinations. And right here in the State of Florida, some years ago, a man named Goldstein, apparently inflamed by right-wing pro-Israeli Zionist propaganda, stocked bombs, guns, explosives in his house, and was only discovered fortunately by accident before his intended blowing up of all Islamic mosques in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.

The Ku Klux Klan here in bible belt Florida as well as in the rest of the bible belt Southern states long carried and still carries the Christian cross and burns it as its symbol. It long sported regalia and clothing with the Christian cross prominently displayed on that regalia and on their white and sometimes black and red sheets and hoods. The Order and the Christian Identity and Aryan Nations organizations were all influenced by a pre-Civil War black slavery-justifying and black slavery-justifying theology that came straight out of the bible story of Ham in the bible, and the more rabid of the Christian fundamentalists to this day still hold this ideology and theology. Indeed, these people organized white racial riots against school integration in the 1950s and helped murder racially integrated civil rights workers in the 1960s before they switched their issues over to bombing abortion clinics and shooting down abortion clinic personnel here in the bible belt and in other parts of the U.S.A. They switched party labels from Democrat to Republican starting with Strom Thurmond in 1964, and extending up through Trent Lott and and Jesse Helms. The Democrats used to be called the Dixiecrats because they were hardcore racist segregationists who lost their white racist segregationist base to the Republicans in the 1960s and 1970s, exacerbated by Nixon's Southern strategy, and inflamed and influenced by the religious right-wing Christian Protestant Baptist fundamentalists' power grab to seize control of the Republican Party over a period of about 30 years, a move that largely succeeded, and made the bible belt Southern states that were once called the Solid South of Democrats into Solid South Republicans. But the reactionary and right-wing theology and politics remained. The only thing that changed was the party labels.

To a large degree, however, the Democrats have no more seriously challenged this than the Republicans have.

The U.S.A. does not challenge today and put forth its bourgeois Enlightenment roots. The Ayn Randists pretend to, but they whitewash and support every American imperialist military aggression and put forth militarist imperialism as their principled position, in diametrical opposition to, at least, their allegations that they do not support the use of armed force or coercion against those who do us no harm. But on the left, most of the left also whitewashes and panders to the religious irrationalism in this country, as in other countries as well, and Sam Harris is right to point out that in his book, The End of Faith, although Alan Dershowitz is as clearly pandering to the religious irrationalism of pro-Israeli Zionism in his, Dershowitz's, campaign to deny tenure to a left-wing Jewish and socialist-inpired professor, Norm Finkelstein, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, as are those right-wing Zionist, clerical-fascist Jewish settlers on the West Bank.

My main beef is with the notion that the irrationalist beliefs of religion alone inspire the horrendous state of today's world. While I share Sam Harris's view that no amount of whitewashing or pandering to the irrationalism of those irrationalist beliefs should ever be done or made, and while I share Sam Harris's view that some of the "vanguard" elements of right-wing religious fundamentalism worldwide -- Christian, Jewish, Islamic -- who do specific violent terrorist actions are often from privileged backgrounds, I think Sam Harris misses the "resonance" factor pointed to by secular humanist and atheist and also anti-imperialist and radical defender of the old American democratic republic, Gore Vidal in Gore Vidal's books, particularly Vidal's 2003 book, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated, and the implications of that resonance factor. Vidal was right to say that the American media did not tell the world or admit to the world that millions all over the world after 09-11-2001 actually did not dislike what had happened. The population of the U.S.A. alone was kept in the dark by American media that there were, sadly, millions and billions around the world who liked what happened to our people on 09-11-2001. This popular "resonance" factor among millions and billions worldwide who are not at all privileged or middle class or well-to-do stemmed, Vidal argued, from decades and decades of how largely banking and corporate capitalistic imperial countries of the West have blithely and glibly treated most of the rest of the world, including in militaristic terms, and in his book, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated, Vidal lists in a large chunk of his book the innumerable American military interventions and invasions into other people's countries and lives from 1947 on of which many Americans are simply ignorant. Vidal could also have added the extraction of super-profits from relatively small investments into other people's countries over decades and decades going back at least a 80 or 90 years from American banks and corporations, extractions of super-profits that essentially keep non-modernized and non-industrialized large segments of the rest of the world, and with that, keep innumerable millions and billions in the rest of the world in desperate conditions.

Here is where, I think, Sam Harris, in missing the "resonance" factor, also misses the factor the socialist, Karl Marx, pointed to in his famous materialistic atheistic socialist statement about religion when Marx said: "Religion is the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions, the cry of the oppressed; it is the opiate of the people; the demand to give up illusions about our condition is the demand to abolish a condition demanding illusions." It may be true that those who do those suicide bombings may come from relatively privileged backgrounds; but the approval of those actions is on the part of millions and billions of the desperate, and that is where the overturn of global social and economic structures making for desperation that makes many worldwide approve of the horrendous and terrible actions of 09-11-2001 and other horrible actions happen -- where the overturn of such material social and economic conditions seems a very important and good response, and makes Marx's statement far from irrelevant in this debate and dialogue. It may be that the vanguards of religiously irrationalist fundamentalist movements who are willing to bomb abortion clinics and kill abortion clinic personnel and kill gay people and stone women to death and cut off the clitorises of girl children in Nigeria or some other parts of the planet or throw living human female widows onto the flaming funeral pyres of dead husbands in some sections of India -- that some of these individuals come from relatively middle class and not desperately poor classes and conditions. But that in no way suggests that the resonance factor of approval of these hideous actions and other hideous and horrible actions of a similar sort throughout the world exists in a vacuum disconnected from the horrendous economic and material conditions of innumerable millions and billions of people on planet earth, as well as millions right here inside America who vote in elections for Republican religious rightists even though they are voting for people who openly favor cutting off all social and economic benefits for the masses of poor and impoverished and working and oppressed and exploited peoples.

That ignoring of the resonance factor is my main caveat in political and economic terms with Sam Harris's otherwise great books. I think Harris did the right thing in forthrightly defending reason, rationalism, science, logic, common sense, worldliness, the Enlightenment, the values of science, democracy, republicanism, against the religiously irrationalist enemies of those values and against the ideologies that are opposed to those values.

But I think when Sam Harris lumps all Marxisms, for instance, with the irrationalism of Stalinism, or, for instance, when Hitlerite National "Socialism" is taken at its word as being "socialist" when, in point of practical fact, Hitler in coming to power in Germany de-nationalized previously nationalized German industries (nationalized under the left party of Germany, the Social-Democratic Party, during its times in power, and also nationalized under the bourgeois German regime of Bismarck which found itself threatened on its left in the 1870s and 1880s and combined the stick of the anti-Socialist repressive legislation of that period with the carrot of beginning social insurance and economic insurance programs to try to cater to the growing influence of left socialism among German workers) -- when such things happen, and when the right-wing anti-socialist and anti-communist ideology of Nazism is taken as equal to the left-wing ideologies of socialism and communism, by liberal bourgeois atheistic ideologists and writers like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, that does not arm rationalism, or reason-based people, for our defense of reason and rationalism and the values of the Enlightenment. It disarms us intellectually and culturally and in terms of our ideas.

Living here in bible belt America gives one perspective on these issues. One sees here what bible belt theology united with politics means in practice. I witnessed the Largo, Florida, city commission fire their city manager of 14 years about a month ago for doing nothing but declaring himself trans-gender. I witnessed bible thumping preachers get up and advocate doing precisely that. I lived here in this state in 1994 when a right-wing religious fanatic, Paul Hill, killed personnel at a Pensacola, Florida, abortion clinic. I just read the other day of how the U.S. Supreme Court denying medical doctors and their patients the right to make medical decisions in the case of intact dilation and extraction -- demagogically called partial birth abortion by the right-wing religionist irrationalists here in America, a designation bought into by the American capitalist media who are theocratic in their dispositions -- now threatens women's lives, and I signed Planned Parenthood's desperate call for support and also shared that call with many friends, for Planned Parenthood is right in this matter. I also listened on television to the irrationalist rant of the student who gunned down 32 of his classmates at Virginia Tech, and noticed the prevalence of religious allusions in his rant, but I also noted the presence in his rant of his stated experience of having been bullied in high school, and I later read the witnessing testimonies of his former co-high school students that he had, indeed, been bullied in high school; in one statement, in fact, this South Korean kid had been told by a racist ignorant American fellow student, "Why don't you go back to China?," thereby demonstrating the enormous ignorance of enormous numbers of Americans. I do not think this sort of thing justifies mass murder; but I do think that if we want to grasp, through the methods of science, reason, rationalism, secularism, why such horrible actions happen, we have to forthrightly embrace the difference between our subjective reactions and responses and, on the other hand, hard facts, and we have to face hard facts when hard facts have happened, and try to get a grasp on the way in which hard facts play into the formation of seriously disturbed personalities.

Well, this letter of mine is done.

Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins in Richard Dawkins' fine book, The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett in Daniel Dennett's fine book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, have all deeply inspired me to write these letters of mine on Harris's fine books. I urge everyone to read and re-read Harris's two books, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, and Letter to a Christian Nation. I urge everyone here to read Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. I urge everyone here to read Daniel Dennett's book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

But don't limit yourself to these books. Read Gore Vidal's books, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated, and his later book, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta. Read Gore Vidal's early 1990s memoir, Palimpsest, and his most recent second memoir, Point to Point Navigation. Read Gore Vidal's 1992 essay, "Monotheism and Its Discontents," contained in his 1992 collection, United States, Essays: 1952-1992. Read Tariq Ali's great 2003 book, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads, and Modernity. Read Jennifer Michael Hecht's fine book, Doubt, a History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation, from Socrates and Jesus Through Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson. Read David Eller's really good book, Natural Atheism, which has a slightly different "take" and "kind" of atheism than that in Sam Harris's fine books. Read the mid-1990s book by Gerald Larue, Freethought Across the Centuries: Toward a New Age of Enlightenment. Read the late Corliss Lamont's book, The Philosophy of Humanism. Read Stephen Jay Gould's books, particularly his wonderful book on the misuses of science and the fraud of racist irrationalism in science, The Mismeasure of Man, particularly his later edition of this book from the 1990s with its polemic against Hernnstein and Murray's Bell Curve. Read Gould's earlier books, The Panda's Thumb, and Ever Since Darwin. Read Michael Ruse's edited collection of essays, But Is It Science?: The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Controversy. Read the late Kai Nielsen's book, Ethics Without God. Read Ludwig Feuerbach's 1842 book, The Essence of Christianity. Read the Ayn Randist, George Smith's book, Atheism: The Case Against God. And then, read Karl Marx's book, The German Ideology, and his two-page essay, Theses on Feuerbach. And read his colleague, Friedrich Engels' book, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, and Engels' book, Anti-Duhring: Herr Eugen Duhring's 'Revolution' in Science. Read Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged. Read Leon Trotsky's 1930s pamphlet, Their Morals and Ours: Marxist Versus Liberal Views on Morality. Read Bertrand Russell's great books, Why I Am Not a Christian, and History of Western Philosophy. Read the Marxist, Lenin's, 1908-1909 book, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Read the 1908 German Marxist, Karl Kautsky's, book, Foundations of Christianity. Read 1980s books by Professor G. A. Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus, and Did Jesus Exist? Read the late John G. Jackson's book, Christianity Before Christ, and his marvelous short pamphlet, Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth. Read Charles Darwin's great 1859 book, Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, and his later book, Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Read Sigmund Freud's great booklet, The Future of an Illusion, and his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Read Albert Einstein's short book introducing relativity for lay people entitled, Relativity: The Special and General Theory. Read Erich Fromm's great book, Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud.

Read everything you can get your hands on. Do not limit yourself to the qu'uran, the bible, the torah, your religious books. Read, read, read, read, read. Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn.

That is my advice to everybody.

Warmest wishes to all,
Allan Greene

The use of PW is convenient and easily remembered. It does not require introspection and any deep thinking. Believers feel they must have a quick defense, and this arrow is the first one found in their quiver.

Interesting slip. Actually, he read the END OF REASON, aka the BIBLE, and then wrote THE END OF FAITH. Nevertheless, I think you missed the major crux of E of F. Sam will NOT be ‘blessed’ because there is no God to bless him. You imaginary friend is, well, imaginary.

Oooooops !

Should be END OF FAITH ... Sam Harris (2005)

Sam Harris is a very intelligent and well-read man. Although he is an atheist, I think God (but not the Muslim diety Allah) will bless him for his courage, convictions and honest persuasion. It was a pleasure to read his book END OF REASON ...

Thank you again, Sam - for your lucid articles and all the comments about how you help many of us to be finally, definitely and completely liberated from all the false beliefs insidiously attacking us from many sides. It all applies to me in full. I was vacillating; it was a painful struggle, for a short while, but blessedly no longer, thanks principally to Sam & co.

And thank you, Dr. Fred, for your succinct and pungent analysis of the ugly characteristics of this god, described in the OT for anyone who has eyes to truly see and comprehend. I was amazed (but why should have I been, really?) at how your views echo mine. Certainly, many of the other comments are excellent also, but yours stand out, to me anyway (April 18, '07, 10:43 pm). It is heartwarming and comforting to finally not feel alone any more in holding beliefs that still clash so often with those of one's entourage [neighbors? whatever].

I like Walter Kaufmann's take on Pascal's Wager. Here's a passage from his book 'Critique of Religion and Philosophy.'

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0691020019/ref=sib_dp_srch_pop/103-4646007-8887869?v=search-inside&keywords=pascal%27s

Hi Sam.It amazes me that this is still being discussed.I tumbled to this fallacy when I was 12[and I wasn't the smartest kid in my school].

A far and away safer bet than Pascal’s dodgy wager, an absolute certainty in fact, has to be the one put forward by the philosopher Emperor Marcus Aurelius who assured us: “If God, all’s well: if haphazard, don’t you be haphazard also.”

So Sam and the rest of you heathens can relax, for in the end all will be well (how could it be otherwise when ye consider not a one of us asked to be born!)

Oh, if only the goal wasn't to win the arguments. Given that opposing we-must-be-right-to-survive sides have their states of mind fully justified (and the human mind can justify anything), the Gaud game is really just an endless source of entertainment. The end condition of the god game is, of course, final global silence on the entire concept and all of its fractals and tentacles. And who honestly thinks that global silence about anything, especially an ancient world-wide implant labeled God, will ever be achieved with 'everyone' still alive ? That's on the scale of improbability of the whole planet waking up 'tomorrow' completely free of their past, their habits, and their fears, looking only to a new and clear future.

Also, we should not be too concerned about the large-estimate number of 'Christians' seeking world-peace-if-we-all-would-just-believe-the-same. Nearly all 'Christianity talkers' I've observed in 40+ years act like God is meaningless/powerless anyway, i.e. talk christian yet walk athiest. This was the reason I finally freed myself from 35 years as a free-thinking 'Christian' in pain.

Acceptance of Pascal's Wager proves the shallowness of one's belief. PW proves the real reason someone believes, i.e. fire insurance. Only an inept,incompetent god could be so easily deceived?

Like just about all else about the Western Christian religious tradition, Pascal's Wager comes across as deceptively benign, and even convey (falsely) a certain air of vulnerability - all the Christian metaphors using sheep, for example. But this is only a smokescreen - by turns sloppy and naive, or else more articulate and elaborate, depending on the emotional and intellectual level of the target audience - covering up more malign, predatory realities. I refer particularly about the assumption that adopting the Christian faith/mythology - or really any other as well - is a safe bet involving no cost.

What?! No cost??!

Individually,socially, and ecologically the cost is quite high!
Individually, it is to be tallied in the many people who sacrifice their sexuality, compassion, and creativity of their best years, the many who stay in loveless marriages (often contracted under equally loveless religious circumstances), and the unnecessary conflicts between children and elders over fashions, activities, etc. based on religion. Socially, what about the draconian and punitive correctional policies rooted in religious attitudes; the denial of access to contraception, adequate sexual/birth control education and crisis care, or worse, quelling of the badly needed stem cell research that would benefit so many here and now. Ecologicaly, the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic cosmology has fostered the idea of conquest of nature, with results I need not recite here. Only one final observation in this vein: The mass clearing (slaughter/holocaust!) of forests and the mass extermination of top-order predators, thus seriosly disrupting the eco balance, to make way for the pasture of sheep and other "good" or "nice" or "benign" - meaning non-threatening - livestock animals is a deceptively pastoral picture. The grazing and pasturing modes of sheep are among the most destructive to topsoil and the plant cover that holds it together in place.

So the gamble is not that "benign" especially when incurring all these costs turns out to be for naught, for mere fantasy.

J. Joaquin Duran,
Monrovia, CA

04-20-2007
Friday

Dear Sam:

I think you, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, have collectively performed an enormously important service in defense of the Enlightenment. I do not think the best ideas in the Enlightenment need defending. But, sadly, history often being a matter of movement forward interspersed with retrogression and reaction backward, issues which were once thought to have been visited and settled long ago recur, and we have to re-visit them all over again. That is the reason why your superb and lucid polemics in defense of reason and Enlightenment are very important, a public service, and necessary.

I am atheist, as you are. I guess my main caveats are not over atheism. I certainly have no caveat over your demolition of Pascal's Wager, by the way. Any believer holding to the superstition or mythology of an omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnibenevolent (all-good) god would have to ask himself, or herself: hmmm, if my god exists, and I am to encounter him on judgement day side by side with some atheist friend who simply honestly lacked belief in him, and if I only believed in him on the basis of Pascal's Wager, am I really stupid enough to believe that, being all-knowing, my god would not see through my own con and own scam, and realize, ironically, that my atheist friend was, at least, being more honest in his or her attitude while he or she was alive? To me, that is the issue that knocks Pascal's Wager into a cocked hat. If you believe in an all-knowing god, do you honestly think your all-knowing god is going to operate on the basis that your adoption of belief simply out of selfish, and basically ethics-unconcerned and ethics-lacking, concern for your own petty skin, is the appropriate way to proceed? This attitude of those believers who say, believe or go to hell, is what I call the "Might equals right" basis of belief. I live here in the bible belt in Florida, and I see these bumper stickers on cars that read "Darwin's burning in hell." I think, why? Because he was a compassionate and gentle man who came, in part, to his nonbelief and atheism because of the cruelty he saw in nature, which no amount of convoluted notions of an all-good and all-powerful god could explain to him? Or because, again, he was a compassionate and gentle man who agonized over the death at a terribly young age of one of his female children, a little girl, because of a horrible disease, and again, no amount of convoluted beliefs in an all-good and all-powerful god could explain to him why such an entity would allow the death of an innocent child? Or, again, because he hated passionately slavery, favored wiping slavery off the map in the American Civil War, even going so far as to write to a clergyman friend of his that if it took one and one-half million men's deaths to wipe slavery off the map, it would be worth it? Darwin was not only a scientific genius; he was, from an ethical and moral standpoint, light years ahead of most of the Pascal Wager-believing believers whose only reason for believing is to save their own skins. He was an enlightened man on the right side of many profound social and political issues of his day. And he realized that no amount of nonsensical beliefs in some kind of simultaneously all-powerful and all-good creator could in any way, any shape, or any form adequately address the enormous evil and cruelty and suffering in our world.

But where I have some differences with you, Sam, and with other atheists of your brand of atheism, is not over atheism. My difference lies roughly where Thomas Henry Huxley's rationalist atheist difference with Darwin lay, in where Huxley argued with Darwin that for evolution to operate, it was not necessary to have natural selection as its imperatively necessary corollary, which is the imperatively necessary corollary Darwin gave it. Huxley, having grown up in a rationalist atheist family, never felt the compulsion to answer the clergy's arguments of a religion-believing childhood, but Darwin, who once was a religion-believer and god-believer, did feel compelled to answer those arguments. And Darwin developed natural selection as his answer.

Evolution, however, came out of Darwin's monumentally hard work and painstaking notes and observations of plant and animal life over many, many, many years, first on the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle in the early 1830s, then over many more years of checking and re-checking his, Darwin's, observations against more observed data in the natural world. The most revolutionary point in evolution, in my view, was not natural selection; rather, it was Darwin's view that life came from life, life developed, life came from other life forms, and, as a consequence, no creator was necessary in this process. Modern astrophysics has, in innumerable ways, expanded on this insight to explain our universe and our cosmos entirely naturalistically, with absolutely and utterly no need in the "mix" for any creator whatsoever. Neither Darwin in his day, nor modern astrophysicists in our day, "started" from the precept of atheism. Rather, both Darwin in his day, and modern astrophysicists in our day, "started" only from the precept and presupposition that we must confine ourselves to looking strictly at the data of the natural world, its similarities and differences, and then from that, deduce in a logical and empirically (experientially-confirmable and testable) verifiable way what logically or reasonably follows from what we see and observe.

I think you, Sam, were right as against the late Stephen Jay Gould (who was himself also atheist), who tried to argue there is no innate conflict between religion and science. I think on that, Gould was mistaken.

But on so much else, I disagree with Daniel Dennett's negative judgment about Gould that Gould repeatedly misexplained evolution. I think Gould have a solid and good picture of evolution and comprehended it well in its naturalistic variety. In this, I think Gould approached evolution the way Darwin did as Darwin matured and got older. Naturalism and naturalistic approaches to explanations of life and of the cosmos and matter do not require entities called creators outside the natural world. That is precisely what naturalistic explanations are about.

God-believers assume the existence of that for which they have no proof. But naturalists start from the premise of a natural world as being the irreducible bottom line. That world may change unendingly and fluctuate and be inconstant -- manifesting inconstancy as its only "constant," ironically, as the ancient Heraclitus taught. But that in no way alters the fact that it was never "created" in the first place, but in some way, some shape, some form, some "mode," it always simply was, and always simply existed. God-believers assume the only alternative is that in some way, everything had to have been created. But those atheists holding to a strictly naturalistic view of the cosmos, of life, of reality, do not possess that assumption of believers. We simply "take" as a "given" what nature presents to us.

Still, today it is desperately necessary to restate the precepts on the basis of which the original bourgeois Enlightenment "philosophes" and thinkers argued, and to state them rigorously and in a tough-minded way. And you, Sam, have done that admirably and well.

I commend you for doing so, and hope you will never stop doing so, as I commend your co-thinkers, Richard Dawkins, and Dan Dennett, similarly for doing so.

Warmest wishes,
Allan Greene

as a former christian i very much appreciate sam harris and his intellectual firepower. i have found that jesus is just not real and have moved on.. keep going sam!!!! corgelc@yahoo.com

Thanks Sam for showing the onesided logic of Pascal's apologetic reasoning.

The following are the theological atattributes of God and how they illogically fall apart:

As a Christian, you are now following a supreme God who created the universe. The following are some of the main superlative facts you need to know about God (Yahweh):
He is omnipotent (Having unlimited power and authority).
He is omnipresent (He is present everywhere).
He is omniscient (Having total knowledge).
He commands billions of angels of which just one could destroy the world.

As a Christian, you are part of large and diverse group totaling over 2.1 billion members that has a worldwide yearly budget approaching one half of a trillion dollars.

HOWEVER

You now know Satan (a fallen angel) is your only and main adversary who leads a small rag-tag army (1/3)of other fallen angles (demons).

Satan has very limited power (Just what little power and control God gives him).
Satan has no earthly members. (Just a few “Dabblers”).
Satan has no budget.

AND YET

According to God’s own word the Bible (especially the Book of Revelation) God, with all the above supreme attributes, is losing a battle He created and even sacrificed His only begotten son to win.
You, as a Christian, will one day stand before your God at the Great White Throne Judgment and be asked to “give an account” of why you, as a mortally limited and sinful human, screwed up. From there, most of your members will be given total blame for the lost of creation along with unforgiven sin and be cast into The Lake of Fire to be burned and tormented forever.

HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND THIS?

It is a divine Mystery

(The theological term used by the Catholic Church for our mortal lack of understanding.)

Religion (Christianity) is a social commentary on the western human mind. Its story contains our fears and hopes, but mostly it justifies our existence in a parental myth. Our stories and fears as children stop their destructive disintegration as they become socially organized in a church or sect. Not to "analyze Heaven" creates religions dogma and a pseudo truth (a great oxymoron).

There's too much in these posts to read in one sitting, but I hope the author of the following quote will visit www.richarddawkins.net, and sign on to engage in the forums responding to posted articles. The quote I refer to is "I've never met an atheist whose arguments against God's existence I couldn't tear apart. I wouldn't use Pascal's Wager to defend my beliefs, though."

PLEASE sign on - your input is needed. An engaging religious debater is sorely lacking, and I'd really like to see you take them on.

For my part, I'm an atheist. Religion is flawed in so many ways that Pascal's wager is only a tiny peice of the picture. I haven't seen an arguement in favour of religion that hasn't been torn apart. Yours must be good indeed.

Humans revolve around a Nucleus be it far or near. Just as 'our' planets revolve around the sun, bees around a flower, lovers around each other and many others the cycle of evolution also has its Nucleus.
Evolution is a function of Creation and abides by the law of physics as we thus far understand them.
Religions also evolve as science and intellects reveal the limitations of practice and thinking. Religions are particularly adaptable. Once it was believed that a person and women in particular would not receive the rewards of heaven unless they obeyed the church or their husbands. In certain cultures today this is laughable. We are currently at a juncture where the evolution is denied by certain religions because their scripture only refers to Creation - but in time this will give way to a greater understanding of evolution that is also limited by many rational atheists who think evolution is primarily about biological changes. Whereas in time there will be an understanding that the is 'Evolution of Mind' and biological evolution is a part of this. The materialist give us half of the equation in terms of material sciences and the "religious people" with their dogmas thrown into the mix, give us the
creation part of the cycle. Cycles are everywhere.
Macro and microcosmic. Do you see. Some people see only ice, whereas others see ice has another layer and another layer.... All cycles involve some form of Nucleus. That is why spiritual aspirants approach life with 'subjective approach and objective adjustment as they propel themselves towards the Cosmic Nucleus or Supreme Controller..
I am getting off the subject but then from my viewpoint the subject is just another labyrinth in the wilderness.... but valuable in showing some of the dogmas of religion.... if not science....

Erick writes:

"If the Christian who uses it states that if he/she is wrong they would be unaffected, but if the atheist is wrong they risk losing paradise for eternal torments. BUT what if they are wrong in picking the incorrect religion. They risk burning in some other god's hell, thus being in the same position they thought they had weasled out of."

The other downside for Xians if there's no god is that they wasted a lot of time and effort in their lives living and promoting a lie, time and effort that could have been put to use doing something meaningful.

Henry Jones

I checked out your site. Frightening stuff. Not at all surprising though. Logical.... And depressing... But I remain hopeful. Your work is important. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennet, Steven Weingerg.... Their work is important.

And none of us have any delusions that this conversation will change the dynamics of religio-world politics in our life time, or even in our children's lifetime. None of think that we are going de-convert religious believers with this conversation. But we know that the future needs us to have this conversation now. And it needs us to have it publicly, and as often as we can. Our lifetime will not be as rational as we are, but our children's children's children might see significant strides in secularism. More importantly they might see a new, open minded, and individual spirituality and relationship with the universe that replaces doctrinal religion.

To Steve Cornell,

“But without God, all moral conclusions are merely subjective human opinions without any binding authority beyond what a culture attributes to them. And, at this point the question, 'Who are you to impose your morality on another?' becomes fair game. Who is qualified to declare his opinion superior to another? And, on what basis would he do this? Why is peace better than war or love better than hate? If I say one is superior, does that make it right? If I get enough people to agree with me, does this make it true for all? Is it all a matter of what increases happiness and decreases suffering? If so, whose happiness?”

First question: What is God? Can you give us your definition and give us proof, empirical proof, of his/her/its existence? Please don’t give us any further wishy-washy argument. We want facts. If you are someone familiar with the age-old arguments for the existence/non-existence of God, you wouldn’t have talked about moral conclusions having no binding authority without God. You appear to be someone who is ignorant concerning morality; please read this, from Dr.Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute:
“The idea that morality is impossible without faith in God must be challenged. It implies that man has no reason or purpose to be moral; it implies that no rational standard of morality is possible; it implies that in questions of morality man must suspend reason and blindly submit to faith or blindly obey some authority's 'revelations' or 'mystical insights.' To imply that we have no earthly reason to be moral is profoundly immoral. The purpose of morality is to discover and teach the principles that lead to life, achievement, happiness, success, joy. There is only one means to discover and understand these principles: reason. A proper morality, one for living on earth, requires rationality and independence of soul, not faith and obedience to self-appointed interpreters of an alleged omnipotent being. A proper morality looks not to the supernatural but at man's nature and the reason why he needs values--and then defines the values he must reach and the virtues he must practice to reach them. Properly understood, not only does morality not require faith in God - morality is incompatible with faith in God. The moral is the rationally accepted and chosen, not the mindlessly believed and followed.”

“Who are you to impose your morality on another?” Well, in a civilized society, we have laws enacted, for the purpose of ensuring order and peaceful co-existence. Does that answer your question? Would you not consider laws as absolute moral standards, once they have been enacted?

“For there to be evil, there must also be some real, objective standard of right and wrong” – where did you derive this idea? The laws of a country will make distinctions between what is right and what is wrong about human behavior, but you are assuming a wrong and an evil are the same thing. But are they? Excessive alcohol consumption that leads to abuse of others may be considered an act of evil, but excessive alcohol consumption is in itself not against the law and so it is not a wrong in the context of the law. BTW, what is evil, in your definition? Natural disasters, to many people, can be considered “evil” but we don’t use the term “wrong” to describe them.

And with regard to your reference to bible or scripture, would you agree that the Bible God has been portrayed as a malevolent psychopath, a genocidal maniac, a sadomasochist, a hypocrite, a liar, a capricious egotist, a freak with a barbaric taste for young, male animal meat and blood, etc? Why should anyone be stupid enough to worship such a God? Some Christians have discovered, to their consternation, the true image of their God after reading the Bible and as a result have given up their Christian beliefs. You will, too, if you are honest and understand what you read.

Bravo again Mr. Harris! Though it seems like an endless up hill battle, your books and writings offer much needed wisdom and clarity. Sometimes I am just ABSOLUTLY AMAZED that there are so many people who remain brainwashed. I mean come on, how come we here all see it but so many don't. Do religious people not see that gods have come and gone through out history and each time the believers all said that the previous gods were false and that their God is the one true God. Do they not see that they are doing the same repetitive thing again?? I just don't understand why it is so blatantly obvious to the people here but most others don't see.

And also I don't like being called atheist or defending this with words like "reason" or "logic", how about obvious. I like the word obvious. If I must be labeled call me an obviouseist. Mr.Harris you must have endless patience to do what you do. Thanks for your efforts.

To "Jesus",

“Granted, religious belief can have some unsavory consequences but so can irreligious belief (eternal hellfire comes to mind”. It is apparent that you are living in a world of fantasy or arguing from baseless suppositions, when you raised the point about “eternal hellfire”. Where is the evidence that hell exists? In your dreams/imagination? While there is evidence aplenty that religious beliefs have led to wars and human misery, irreligious beliefs have done nothing of the sort. People who do not believe in the supernatural tend to be those who are living with reality, with what is actually happening around them. And such people, being pragmatic, also tend to weigh things logically or rationally.

You can try twisting and turning, but Pascal’s wager is a no-brainer, and many people who are able to see the forest for the trees can see through the argument. Granted, we can never be certain in many things, even in the physical world, much less about things believed to exist in the metaphysical world. But you, like all other believers of God, Satan, Heaven or Hell, are not precluded from exercising your imaginative prowess. So if you want to think that Satan and Hell exist, that’s your prerogative. Other people, and there are lots of them, prefer to live with reality, not in imaginary things; hence they prefer to exercise their judgments based on evidence they can see, not on what they cannot see.

Your cost-benefit analysis is a clear example of an imaginative stunt, a circus act, not worth reading by people who have no belief in your imagination.

My research reveals that religious belief can lead to brain damage. I believe most of the schizophrenias to be the direct result of the indoctrination of children with religious concepts. Efforts to fend off such psychoses produces the ubiquitious neurotic syndromes we see throughout theist society. The concepts of supernaturalism and self-sacrifice are very toxic to the human brain. Supernaturalism damages the prosencephalon, self-sacrifice is destructive to the rhombencephalon. The two concepts together deal a powerful and pathologic injury to the human brain. The result is both cognitive and emotional dysfunction.
The indoctrination of children with religious dogma is child abuse!!

The whole Pascal's wager thing was a ruse by Rick Warren. So I wasn't too interested in any dancing around trying to refute it. But I did go back and read the "debate" (hah!) and what struck me in it was what Tim A alluded to in his post:

Tim A.:
"Common grace" was the belittling phrase that Mr. Warren used to explain Mr. Harris' godless altruism. It is telling that an atheist's good works better demonstrate the notion of unconditional love than the brand of altruism espoused by a Christian icon.

We need to find an effective counter that atheists' "altruism" has anything to do with god, the bible, or any of that iron-age hokus pokus.

True compassion and love for fellow creatures, with its attendant drive to do good for others, is the biologic imperative, not any artificial belief in magical beings with no basis in reality.

Please let science prove this!!!! Then maybe we can shut them up once and for all.

In any case, my children are being brainwashed by me, their atheist mother, to use REASON and COMPASSION in all their words and deeds. For now, it's the only path to salvation!

Early on, when I was first introduced to Pascals wager, I rebutted, "If this god of yours created us with such great intelligence, Surely this god must know that it is against reason to beleive in him." (I'm paraphrasing here, it was many moons ago) Now take this as a wager. Surely, a loving god, as commonly described would never punish a subject that has utilized the given gift of reason, therefore If god exists(which it doesn't) I'll bet we're all going to heaven.

Here's my wager:

If there is no God, the atheist loses nothing by not believing in him, and conserves the time and effort that would otherwise be spent in trying to discern the nature and demands of that non-existent God.

If there is a God, he is either benevolent and forgiving, or malevolent and vindictive, or insane, or indifferent.

If he is malevolent and vindictive, or insane, it would be foolish to trust his promises, or base one's life on dubious claims made on his behalf, any of which may be lies or exaggerations. Better to enjoy what you can of this life and leave God's evil intentions or freakish caprices to himself, since there is no rational assurance he will let you off the hook and no way to curry his favor.

If god is benevolent and forgiving, trusting your good-faith reasoning about his likely non-existence should not cause him to exact a grotesquely disproportional punishment for that skepticism - indeed it is highly unlikely that a loving God would set up such a vicious scheme, to punish mere struggling humans for honest error. Such an idea of "love" is beyond belief.

If God is indifferent, he is of no more concern to us than a non-existent God. We may safely act as though atheism were true, for nothing we believe regarding him could affect our future. He will do what he does, and it is beyond our calculation.

So probability, reason, morality and plain self-interest favor unbelief, or at least indifference to the God question. Pascal was confused. Probably because he reached his conclusion before he "reasoned."

Thanks again Sam

Our youth will soon be required to face Gobal warming, terrorism, erosion of freedoms by ours and other governments and possibly one of the worse: religion which robs one of his/her human potential. The key ingredient of brain washing (religion) is fear and belittling. Our hope that our youth will be able to cope, is probably very much dependent on discarding religion as we know it today. Sam is so talented in concisely exposing this nonsence and without malice and that is why he is MY HERO. keep it up Sam, we love you. Johnrdeee OKC

I so do wish everybody would take Pascal's Wager at face value, because then I could become an overnight multi-millionaire selling horseshoes over the Internet.
The story has it that there was this horseshoe nailed over the entrance of Bohr's summer cottage. A visitor asked the distinguished physicist "Surely, Dr. Bohr, you do not believe in such superstitious nonsense". And Bohr replied: "Of course not! But they say it still works even if you don't believe in it".
Thank you Sam for destroying my chances at a livelyhood. Now I have to rely on my other scheme: a toaster that faithfully reproduces the face of the Virgin Mary on every toast.
Luv U

It's called
ARGUMENTUM AD IGNORANTIAM

An argument that a proposition is true because it has not been shown
to be false, or vice versa. Ad ignorantium arguments are also known
as "appeals to ignorance." This fallacy has two forms:

1. P is true, because it has not been proven false.
2. P is false, because it has not been proven true.

Hi Sam....I've really enjoyed your latest book, and especially the posted comments. I wish that I had some faith in the possibility that religion, exposed for what it is, would die a natural death.I really believe that the overwhelming majority of people are too brainwashed, and in need of answers for their existance, to accept reality. The simple fact that we do not know why we exist, just drives people nuts. Then, the best salespeople of the century, move in to provide the answers, for a price. Throw in a few options, such as everlasting life, eternal peace, etc., and what do you have....b.s. in robes.

Ho Sam1

Maybe you could circulate a little video footage
showing us what you wear and how you walk.
You know, like L.W. at Cambridge!

I think Buddhism sells better than atheism (cold comfort): it embraces compassion.
Man doth not live by intellect alone!
All you need is love!

May you be well and happy!

Papillon

Bravo Sam! Thanks for including the message from my hero, Robert G.Ingersoll. You too are one of my heroes.

Here's where I think you go somewhat wrong and matters are more complex than you have let on in the following quote:

" It is true that people often believe things for bad reasons—self-deception, wishful thinking, and a wide variety of other cognitive biases really do cloud our thinking—but bad reasons only tend to work when they are unrecognized. "

An ethologist such as Dawkins will tell you that behavior has evolved in the same way other properties of living creatures have evolved -- and insofar as behaviors are driven by nervous systems, these nervous systems are by no means "neutral" with respect to the TRUTH. It is unlikely that "bad reasons" will go away any time soon, and it is likely that behaviors pursuant to bad reasons have often increased fitness of the animals in prior millennia. Bad reasons *can* "work" even when recognized!

Our minds naturally distort our views of our environments. These are not inherently "bad" views as you suggested. It has been useful (in fitness terms) over the eons to have false beliefs of various sorts and I believe that many irrational tendencies are still "hard wired" into our brains. (Just which irrational beliefs might have enhanced our fitness as we evolved should be an extremely interesting research topic.) By and large, healthy people are more optimistic than they should really be if the TRUTH were said. Unwarranted optimism is an important aspect of the mental health of many animals including ourselves.

The problem arises when people's inherent and once well adapted biases are no longer appropriate to the modern environment. Logic forces us to recognize how dangerous this is. Our (animal) minds, however, are not prone to "believing" this in an active sense.

If we are not to go the way of the Dodo, we are required to accept, sometimes enjoy, our various irrational biases about the world while, at the same time, comprehending and correcting (when necessary) for the biases that evolution built into our nervous systems. This is a harder job than recognizing and correcting unjustified beliefs.

It requires that we, each of us, must live two lives, one full of irrational optimisms, etc., the other responsive to logic and science. When the environment is unsafe (guns, global warming, religious bigotry, hatreds), logic must dominate. To stay happy in marriage, however, logic should perhaps be relaxed so as not to kill the joy of having married the perfect mate!

People must come to understand that we are animals with a history which predisposes us to certain disorders of logic and yet the gift of logic both equips us to recognize these disorders while having produced technologies sufficiently dangerous to wipe us out.

One can be a good scientist and argue both the futility of eliminating the animal in people and the necessity of behaving rationally in the current world of the big bomb. Being a healthy human animal AND a rational human being is a dance which requires a lot of education and a lot of humility. Neither is in great supply in the USofA these days.

To Doug Porter- Any of the atheists I have read or conversed with admit readily that there's a good deal we don't know (but also a good many are exasperated at the numbers of people who refuse to find out what we do know). You can absolutely be an atheist and yet believe what you do, as per your insightful post above. One thing many of us have done is dispense with using the word "god", unless we are describing what those connected to organized religions believe, or what the ancients believed. We tend to substitute words like "the cosmos", or "universe" when we want to ponder what you have described as "all that there is". You may even be a pantheist (I may be, too), but rather than confuse people I say I've seen no good reason to believe in anybody's version of god thus far.

I'll leave you with a cool quote I found in "The Varieties of Scientific Experience", the posthumous publication of Carl Sagan's 1985 Gifford Lectures. In the editor's introduction, Ann Druyan writes "His argument was not with God but with those who believed our understanding of the sacred had been completed."

C'mon, some of you posting who think it's a simple issue of athiesm vs. theism:

There are actually a number of positions that interpret reality, "all that is," in various ways. There are millions of people who hold them, and clearly don't believe the Bible as literal or revealed, or in "the God of the Bible." (Some have posted above.) They DO believe there is more to us than matter--that there is a "spiritual" realm with only partial overlap into this physical world and life. If you read carefully, you see that Sam is open to such a possibility himself.

As far as I'm concerned, that is the most important direction for these issues of discussion to go. "Mother" makes a great point that hate (which usually grows out of fear) is as ugly and unproductive among "unbelievers" as it is "believers." Rather, let us seek hard to meet the "other" where he or she is, and find points of common ground to build from, and yes, argue (compassionately) from!

If you don't consider the other's emotional state, you can never truly "win" an argument. As the need for Sam's writing shows, emotion trumps logic.

Howard

Pascal's Wager is easily refuted by anyone taking 5 minutes to think about it. My favourite refutation comes from Smith, the author of "the Case for Atheism". It goes something like this:

If there is no God, then the atheist is fine.

If there is some kind of distant, Diest god that did not bequeath us with souls, then the atheist is wrong, but it is of no consequence.

If there is a just God, the atheist is wrong, but a just God would not torture billions of souls for all eternity for being brought up in the "wrong" religon or for not believing in things on insufficient evidence. So again, there is no negative consequence for the atheist.

However, if there is an unjust God, then the atheist is in trouble, however, the Christian, under this scenario is not neccessarily any better off. An Unjust God might damn everyone to Hell anyway, or perhaps would delight in only sending it's believers to Hell as a cruel joke. How can one trust that an unjust God would treat you fairly, or even humanely?

With Sam Harris on our side and all the freethinkers posting here as well, who cares about hell ? We will turn the place into a health spa in no time ! Every day 'brimstone-tanning' and lively discussions in the 'jacuzzis'. My, that beats listening to harp music on a cloud anytime.

For those of us who reject the notion of a higher power (god,buddha,mohammad, etc.) the immediate problem is having the courage to stand up against any form of magical thinking, whether christian,judaism, muslim, etc. How do we effectively nullify the power of those who insist on relying on "spiritual messages from one high". Sam is on the right track but what about the rest of us!

Another flawed assumption in Pascal’s wager is that there are only two options; to believe in God (presumably we are talking about the Judeo-Christian God, Jehovah) or to believe in no God at all. In fact there are and have been, through history, many many Gods, most of whom seem as ready as Jehovah to condemn disbelievers to some version of Hell or eternal suffering. If you are wrong in electing to believe in, say, Jehovah, this does not necessarily mean that there is no God. It may be that the correct God was Zeus, or Poseidon, or Quetzalcotl or any of hundreds of others (who would each, presumably, be very angry at the choice to wrongly believe in Jehovah). It becomes apparent that the more angry Gods that you reject (by believing in Jehovah) the more likely it is that one of them might be the real one with the power to actually condemn you to eternal misery.

On the other hand, in the same way that a jealous husband would be more upset if his wife left him for another man than if she simply left him, a jealous God (as some Gods have been portrayed) might be more upset at someone who abandoned him for a false God than for no God at all.

In short, if you’ve elected to believe in any particular God, odds are you’ve picked the wrong one, and pissed off the real one(s). Atheism seems the safest bet.

=================================================
Pascal's Wager's other problem:

If the Christian who uses it states that if he/she is wrong they would be unaffected, but if the atheist is wrong they risk losing paradise for eternal torments. BUT what if they are wrong in picking the incorrect religion. They risk burning in some other god's hell, thus being in the same position they thought they had weasled out of.

FIN

=================================================

For those who call themselves agnostics and criticize atheists, I'd like to know a little more about your agnosticism.

I have no doubt that you are agnostic to the notion that there may be a creator of the universe entity, who (which) guides our lives as well of the life of all things in the universe. Given how little empirical evidence we have regarding the origin of the universe, many who call themselves atheists, including myself, consider ourselves helplessly agnostic to that notion. Although highly doubtful of it.

So I have no doubt that you are agnostic to the possible existence of an entity like "God." But are you agnostic to God with a capital G? Are you agnostic to the doctrine of Jesus being born of a virgin and the resurrection? Are you agnostic to the certitude that this "creator entity" is God of the bible, and gave a parcel of land to the Jews, and spoke to Abraham and Moses, and killed everything on earth when he got angry?
Are you really agnostic to that God?
I think you are every bit the atheist that I am to that God.
And that God, is what we are all talking about here in this conversation that Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have started. Capital G - od.
So I call myself an atheist. Because it is an important distinction.

The possible existence of an omniscient creator entity is not what is causing all of the problems in the world that Harris and others are concerned about. It is God with a capital G.

So unless you are agnostic to Bible God, you are an atheist. Buddhists are atheists. Come down off your overly polite, and politically correct, high horse you, "I am an agnostic" people. You are muddling the conversation and delaying the next enlightenment.

It is absurd that anyone, religaholics or athiests, mention a creator of the universe at all. Universal creation is impossible (it is impossible that absolutely everything came from absolutely nothing, and Physics' big-bang isn't something-from-nothing creation). Therefore, it is beyond absurd to spend an entire lifetime on Earth in the agreement-interlocked assumptions that a creator-friend is the best bet. But then again, who honestly thinks believers can be talked/reasoned out of their 'consolation loop'; the hollow side of truth is their darkest fear.

There is another strategy to dismantle the god-demon.

Well done Sam! Some of the worrywart replies, although entertaining, have been predictable, i.e. the person who styles himself as "Jesus." In my late pre-teens, back in the early 1940s, my doubts about the well intended, but sadly mistaken dogmas of my parents, were summed up in my discovery of the writings of Henry L. Mencken. One thing he wrote was something like: "Theology is an attempt to explain the unknowable, by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing." That said it all for me and I never looked back. Think of all the time I would have wasted trying to shore up a faith in the supernatural, or to rectify my lack thereof. Keep up the good work. Why don't you consider debating O'Reilly? I would buy tickets to that one. I'm sure you would be able to withstand his attempt to shout down the opposition. Actually, I like O' Reilly, but he suffers from the burden of his Catholic upbringing, and would just not "get it," like many of the responders to your current piece.

Pascal's Wager is a matter of history. His bet was Ok of his time. But, we live in a more modern world. Discoveries today allowed me to prove God scientifically. See my book, "The First Scientific Proof of God." It is found at most bookstores including the bookstore at authorhouse.com. I also teach this proof and many other subjects at http://georgeshollenberger.blogspot.com/

George Shollenberger, Author

Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths call to love your neighbor as yourself but so few followers follow this simple guide for living with each other.

It is truly amazing how many people get pulled into these trite sayings. This is just another example of too many to list that screams the need for people to learn critical thinking—especially, early in their lives. What are fallacies? How do you identify them and argue against them in typical situations?

Our current educational system, way too focused on fact-based and internet-obsolete information, is horribly remiss in teaching our soon-to-be citizens even the basics of intelligence and wisdom.

If we continue our “no child left behind” “strategy,” we will find that no child has been led forward, producing a whole country of people who are full of obsolete information and who do dot know how to do the disciplined thinking called for by the world of today and of tomorrow…

Always happy to read your words Mr. Harris. In complete agreement with your assesment here, although I wish you would address, at some point, the existence of right and wrong (of morality). You seem to assume that such things exist objectively, but I find a proof for the existence of right and worng as improbable and illogical as a proof for the existence of god.

There is a GOD!!! And he comes in the form of a Mr. Sam Harris.....Haliluia....Praise be to mr harris

When I became convinced that the Universe is natural -- that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world -- not even in infinite space. I was free -- free to think, to express my thoughts -- free to live to my own ideal -- free to live for myself and those I loved -- free to use all my faculties, all my senses -- free to spread imagination's wings -- free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope -- free to judge and determine for myself -- free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past -- free from popes and priests -- free from all the "called" and "set apart" -- free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies -- free from the fear of eternal pain -- free from the winged monsters of the night -- free from devils, ghosts and gods. For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought -- no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings -- no chains for my limbs -- no lashes for my back -- no fires for my flesh -- no master's frown or threat -- no following another's steps -- no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.

And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain -- for the freedom of labor and thought -- to those who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains -- to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs -- to those whose bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn -- to those by fire consumed -- to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.

Let us be true to ourselves -- true to the facts we know, and let us, above all things, preserve the veracity of our souls.

If there be gods we cannot help them, but we can assist our fellow-men. We cannot love the inconceivable, but we can love wife and child and friend.

We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know. We can tell the truth, and we can enjoy the blessed freedom that the brave have won. We can destroy the monsters of superstition, the hissing snakes of ignorance and fear. We can drive from our minds the frightful things that tear and wound with beak and fang. We can civilize our fellow-men. We can fill our lives with generous deeds, with loving words, with art and song, and all the ecstasies of love. We can flood our years with sunshine -- with the divine climate of kindness, and we can drain to the last drop the golden cup of joy.

Regarding PETE's Post April 19, 2007 9:04 AM:

That's a very good sentiment and one that seems the most difficult and important to address.

Sam et al.'s writings help shed light on the problems of rationality and the (perhaps) unintentional negative results of human religions. The first step to fixing a problem is recognizing the problem.

I very much enjoy these and the many recent articles and books that cogently articulate questions and perspectives about faith and encourage all of us to reconsider even a little about what we may have become predisposed to thinking.

I was raised as a Roman Catholic and spent 5 years of my late youth studying to become a priest. Ironically, it was this incisive study that led me to realize with my peers of the time that much of what we learn dogmatically as youngsters needs constant reinspection and revision by teams of well-meaning and careful people. Religions of all varieties are slow to change and adapt to new knowledge and understandings. This seems to be a natural outcome of the nature of religious belief. It is necessarily conservative so as to help maintain stability and comfort in the believers. But all religions do change over time; they do evolve. They must, or they perish.

As Joseph Campbell so often eloquently shares in his lectures and books, human's need ways to deal with the most difficult questions in life. These means do evolve in time and I believe that all of us who read these articles and contribute to these forums of exchange are integral parts of this evolution. It is necessary that we argue and question and try to understand each others' positions so that we can form our ways of dealing with the unknowables in life with less strife between us.

As others have pointed out here, purely rational thought does not feed the needs that most people have when dealing with the hardest aspects of life. With either no (or the tiniest exception), all cultures develop a set of myths comprised of rituals and shared (often ad hoc) conceptions that comfort their people through the most poignant times of suffering, injustice, or joy. So it seems that we cannot simply ask people to stop believing what they do. We must help people evolve their beliefs to something more tenable for the decades that face us.

As expressed repeatedly here in this forum and in the debates, people who have come to believe strongly in something so important and soothing and culturally binding in their lives usually believe it to their depths and are not swayed in the least by rational argument. We must be pragmatic if we want to change people of faith. Convincing a faithful people that their lives might be based on incorrect assumptions or beliefs would be like moving their tap roots to open air for them. They cannot allow it for fear of (spritual) death. I am hoping we can find a gentle way to transplant people, to give them a new fertile area to grow, replete with the means for handling the unknowable, the horribly sad, and the overwhelmingly joyful.

My thanks to all of you for sharing your thoughts and ideas on this.

Sam Harris is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Send us more, and more!!!

Great job once again, Sam.

And in response to those who have offered their definitions of religion, permit me to present one more:

Religion-A collection of rationalizations to fit any occasion.

If one considers the many gods that have been worshiped and applies Pascal's wager then you will choose to worship the one that threatens you with the most vicious punishments for failing to believe in Him. In other words, you will worship the most jealous, sadistic, megalomanical, and insecure god.

If memory serves me, Pascal was a brilliant mathematician but a neurotic mess in daily life. He was high strung and suffered from what we would call today "nervous breakdowns". He reportedly died in a "religious ecstasy". In fact, he was simply raving.

But of course there is a God and we really have Free Will and God really is testing the moral principles our individual Free Will has produced (totally free of all environmental restraints and personal history, etc., of course).

The Bible and its various interpreters who proclaim themselves to speak the Word of God tell us what to believe so that we may enjoy(?) eternal harp music with 72 virgins (or white raisins of equal value).

But to follow that advice is to fall God's clever test, for those who do so have proven their moral weakness and wretched dullness, and will be either cast eternally into Hell or reincarnated as laboratory fruit flies. Only those willing to follow the evidence and explore the real world have proven themselves worthy of God's embrace, should any God-like entity exist.

Sam, I am almost in total agreement with everything you say. I am really new to Atheism as I have one last hurdle to clear to be fully convinced that I am Atheist. I seem to remain opened to the possibility that there may be something that we are all a part of, call it reality, call it "truth', call it "being", call it "everything" or "all that there is". To call it the name "God" seems to psychologically separate one from this self-inclusive "all that there is" mentality of which we are all a part. This name, "God" makes us think in terms of some separate masculine being judging and watching over us. Definely this is out of an insecure need for an eternal and imaginary parent. These days, I tell people that, "yes, I believe in God but my definition of God is far from the traditional way." I tell them that I believe that God is everthing, and everything includes you and me. So, there is no need to say the name God because as soon as you do, you mentally separate yourself from the reality of oneness and allness. There is no reason to worship or pray to anything, it is only necessary to "be" your part in the oneness of "everthing". A cell on your body just does its part in the sustaning of you. Your cells could think of you as God, but you don't want it to stop what its doing and worship you every sabbath day. Nor would you want it to think that it is a separate being from you. Maybe that's what cancer cells do. So, my question is, AM I AN ATHEIST? Don't you believe in what I just expressed, or is this nonsense. Maybe I have some more reality and truth to attain before I get there. Could you help me by defining what it means to say that Atheists don't believe in God. What God? What is the definition of this God in which there is no belief????? Thanks.

The absurdity of Pascal's Law lies in the presumption that beliefs conjured up in the mind of men are de facto truths in the mind of God. The absurdity of atheism lies in the presumption that since God cannot be proven by scientific methods conceived by men, God does not exist. Somewhere between Pascal and Sam Harris there is a zone of truth that is agreeable to both God and man. That is the region my book, "The Phaeton Continuum", attempts to explore.

Sam: Good stuff!

Recently I read in NATURE:

"Siding with evolution does not really pose a serious problem for
many deeply religious people, because one can easily accept
evolution without doubting the existence of a non-material
being. On the other hand, the truly radical and still maturing
view in the neuroscience community that the mind is entirely
the product of the brain presents the ultimate challenge
to nearly all religions."

--Kenneth S. Kosik (Nature vol 439, p138)

Knowing of your interest in neuroscience -- what is the timetable for a serious proposal of the "still maturing" view Kosik describes?

Thanks for your bold work. I generally agree. However, for the many who will not be able to release their faith, there is a need for some process to fill the vacuum created by reason. I believe that Bishop Spong is on the right path, but as a temporary "adjustment" for so many who cannot live without a faith of some kind. The social cost is too great for them, especially if they live in the Southern/Mid Western part of the USA. Many must go through an interstice for adjustment. We must however keep our eye on the "lead dogs"like Sam Harris and others.

Think mankind has suffered long thru out history
of his ignorance of his being and suroundings,[and makeing up all kinds of belief's]its time that we as an enlightened creature face the reality that we are here only { like rest of life]
as long as the environment permits us,and some day will be extinct as the Dinasuars etc. Thankyou
fellow mankind for makeing it possible to have as
comfortable stay as possible on this planet;

Has no one ever considered that supporting Christianity is contributing to the death of hundreds of thousands? Consider the gay teenagers who commit suicide because they are taught to believe that the very essence of their life (love, sexuality) is shameful, dirty and reviled by all. Consider the multitudes of missionaries in aids ridden countries who hand out speeches about abstinence rather than a condom. The way I see it, supporting a murderous entity just because it "works for you" is no better than supporting the Nazi party because it brings you business. And anyone who supports either has got a great deal of blood on their hands.

Thank you Sam. When I talk to believers, I often hear:
1. Belief in an anthropomorphic god is necessary to make morality and ethics accessible to people.
2. Religions are responsible for most, if not all of the good that happens in the world (caring for poor, sick, etc.)

Both of these points are bunk. 1, I've seen more human dignity and morality shine through reason and creativity than fear of a Big Man Sitting In Judgement.

2, look objectively at what has helped people. The Green Revolution. Inventions, ranging from vaccines to bicycles to mobile phones. These things are outside the mechanism of giving a tithe to a church.

When will we understand on a mass scale the cynical manipulation of people by the earthly mechanisms of religion?

As Harris points out, Pascal's Wager works only if god accepts that people lying about having belief in him is a sure ticket to heaven.

Pascal may have been great at math, but his famous Wager is a theorum based upon a false hypothesis.

I am a avid reader of Sam's and Richard Dawkins' work. I agree with them up to a point. However, to 'convert' the people of the world to unbelieve their fantasies, myths and faith, that help keep them hanging to life, is not a realistic goal. Even they have a hard time holding onto their converts. We can point out the inconsistencies and contradictions that make up their beliefs, but most of the time we will not be able to shake them from what is deeply embedded inside of them

Comfort for many people is believing that they will enter heaven, that Hitler went to hell (and Ghandhi for that matter). In the RW Christian talk-radio show that I listen to, people are concerned that some of the murdered students & teachers at Virginia Tech were not going to make it to heaven because they weren't born again. They are even upset that the Christian minister, during the convocation, didn't mention Jesus Christ and that the Muslim cleric went first (so childish).

It will take an event of armeggedon proportions (maybe more than one), and the non arrival of their respective messiahs to shake their foundations. It will take the rapture to not occur. Even then they will look to the future for the next eschatological sign (the next 'judgement day' is 2012). Born agains were disappointed when the Y2k hysteria didn't bring on the angels heralding (with their trumpets) the arrival of Jesus.

These debates are great, but they end up in a stalemate, because the religious person cannot see reality (they don't refuse to see it, they just can't-it's almost like a disability like autism or alzheimers). That's the only sense I can make out of it.

Unfortunately, we are just going to have to evolve this one out. But that doesn't mean we stop debating.

Even thirty years later I am still amazed after having realized one Sunday on my eleventh birthday at church with my family, Santa Claus has more plausible logic for his existence that this yarn that is being spun before me. Surely they really don’t believe this? My own father who was doing the spinning seemed to. So I kept it quite to myself. Then Sam came along and I realized that despite the horror of my closest friends and family I have to speak out. Human civilization may depend on it and I cannot think of a better cause.

Fear is the fuel of religious preservation. Dispel these ridiculous notions of our past. Press on despite the inevitable attacks. Religion is just not real folks.

I guess I’ll have to give up Santa Clause too.

Thanks again, Sam, for your clear & forthright observations. When I first read Pascal's Wager and the irrational verbiage on "a first cause" and "proofs" of a nonexistent "God" while in college, my conclusion then as now, was/is nonsense, dissertations on fear & ignorancee, wishful thinking and finally protective arguments against truth & reason to avoid charges of "blasphemy" and escape execution by fearful, ignorant, anti-science conformists -- all of whom retained the power or the machinery of governance to impose their delusions on the masses. Not unlike the Biblical & Quranic verbiage of vengeance, jeolousy, envy & undeserved, godly attributes of beneficence & omnipotence to justify the murderous genocide, infanticide, homicide & often, suicide of believers, all such unreason & nonsense are designed to control individual minds, families, villages, cities, nations and ultimately the world.

Matt Goethals,

Scientists have presented conclusive evidence that "religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history." I'm quoting from an article in the New York Times, "Darwin's God." (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ei=5090&en=43cfb46824423cea&ex=1330664400)

Believers will simply spin any scientific discovery to suit their ends. In this case, they allege that this proves that religious faith is a built-in feature of the human brain.

I'm afraid that the faith-head is as immune to scientific evidence as s/he is to logic.

Sam,

You are a brilliant mind and I commend your efforts in leading the fight for "reason."

As a neuroscience P.H.D. I'd be interested if you can begin to PROVE religions faults by detecting a correlation between our neurochemistry and the IRRATIONAL NEED for faith.

Our mind is such a powerful tool. So much of our demise can be broken down to neurochemistry - as we saw recently at Virginia Tech. If the atheist front can prove that God is a byproduct of a mental "weakness" or even an "addiction," I think that would be a tough piece of evidence to dispute.

Cheers,

Matt Goethals

Response to Mark Adams:
So what are those advantages (of religion)? IMHO about the same as belonging to a fraternal organization like the Lions or Optimists or the Chamber of Commerce. I suspect a vast number of people in the USA, and perhaps elsewhere, are involved in some religious group or other because they value the social aspect.
By social aspect I mean the ability to converse with like minded people with similar values, people you feel you can trust in a sense as an extended family, where people look out for each other and don't have to go though a ritual investigation to feel comfortable with a member of the same group with whom they are just becoming acquainted. Of course wolves cleverly hide among the sheep with similar intentions as pickpockets at a convention , whether they are selling insurance or molesting the Sunday school class.
Religious institutions also provide a place where norms of behavior can be maintained and passed on to the next generation, concepts that we don't want the government taking responsibility to teach because each culture has a slightly different take on them. Even as we thrive as a cultural melting pot we don't want cookie cutter citizens. So the personal choice of religious affiliation is a very important aspect of personal freedom.
The Mormons have name for it: "Social Mormon", as opposed to committed believer, and within that culture it is a put-down.
Until society can find a way to replace the social and educational aspect of religion, we are probably stuck with it, for better or worse. Of course the carrot and stick that traditional belief systems incorporate help enforce the norms that make civilization possible without intrusion of universal surveillance.
The biggest disadvantage to tolerating belief systems is not so much the system itself but the people who use it to further their own ends, whether personified by the local pastor whipping up the congregation to fight some perceived evil, or at least put more money in the collection box or governments using it to justify misbehavior on a grand scale. I recall a chaplain at the Air Force Academy, quoted in a local newspaper, upon being asked about the participation of the cadets, "If you are going to drop bombs on people from thirty-thousand feet in the air, you had better have strong religious beliefs." I'm paraphrasing because I don't recall the exact words. So without religion it wouldn't be possible to get people to fight each other? Oh, darn!

.....but when faith lost it's ability to hate the faithless, hate was still needed, so the job was offered to the faithless and they fell victim to this temptation for they had also learned to hate. Though theirs had been in secret, they could not give up the chance to bring it now to the light.

Trading the torch did not put out the fire, instead it burned yet brighter, with secrecy and stealth behind it.

Mother

I remember the wager from my intro philosophy class years 50 years ago, and wrote down the following in the margin next to it: "Christian philosophers: People frantically engaging in a senseless quest for uncertainties." If there was one chance in 10,000 God exists, belief in a spook in outer space is still not worth hedging anybody's bet, especially when there are so many religions to choose from. A lifetime of psychological religious bondage is simply not worth it--- thousands of painful hours sitting in church listening to some nut at the podium calling us sinners, talking about angels and hell each and every week, then molesting a small child during his time off; still I guess that's better than strapping a bomb to one's body, and walking into a crowded market in Iraq. In any event, I'd rather use my church time and my thinking time more productively. Life is too short.

Sam, you continue to be my hero. Your work is incredibly important and so desperately needed in a world that is increasingly polarized by religious zealotry. Please keep writing, talking and convincing - through your eloquence and undeniable clarity we might yet avoid a repeat of the "dark ages"

Steve Cornell,

Such thoroughly worthless tripe you spew.

As was once said by E. Haldeman-Julius: "... the Bible was a collection of books written at different times by different men -- a strange mixture of diverse human documents -- and a tissue of irreconcilable notions. Inspired? The Bible is not even intelligent. It is not even good craftsmanship, but is full of absurdities and contradictions."

Just Say Know to Religion

I'm into my second reading of "End Of Faith", and I'm depressed. What chain of events has to occur to undue 2000 years of the human virus religion? What "miracle" can reverse a cancer of the mind? I guess I'll hold onto the last item from Pandora's box, HOPE!

Sam,
You are forever my hero! You have brought me out of the closet, unafraid, into the light of reason.
You have given a voice to many that have been hidden and silent for far too long. It is time we step into the ring, raise the level of discourse and project a clear and honest path for Humanity. This is our moral duty. No longer will not-theists and un-believers be relagated to edges of an almost-civilized society. The real civilation of human beings is still in it's infancy. Fight the good fight. Challenge the Myth!

Once again, nicely done Sam I Am...

The global bet on differing magic books has got to stop. Even in the aftermath of the hideous insanity we have all witnessed at Virginia Tech we cannot bring our collective selves to even acknowledge the role religion played in the shootings (per his "manifesto"). Whether the believer is (purportedly) sane, or the student in question, nobody is willing to question the influence of religious dogma in his particular derangement, let alone everyday policymaking. If the student had referenced Imus, or Bush, or Pelosi as his antagonist there would be coverage, but religion as part of the psychosis? Mums the word...

What has to happen to expose religion to the light of reason?

Here's my take on Pascal's wager:

If God exists, surely God will favor the people who are not led astray by superstition and accept claims based on faith. Superstition and faith are the tools which empower the Prince of Lies (and all con-men).

So, on the small possibility that there might be a God, my eternal life is assured by rejecting superstition (e.g. The Devil).

On the other hand, if there is no God, I win again, because I have not wasted my one and only life in pursuit of superstitious belief.

I win either way!

I've solved Pascals wager!

Time and again I'm struck by the gaping chasm of logic that separates rationalits from theists. Even a quick browse through the posts in this forum reveals the convoluted, tortured, question-begging, ad hominem "arguments" of believers.

Is it any wonder that belief in the supernatural is typically inversely proportional to one's education level? My hope is that a few believers will see the logical flaws in their argument before they waste the only life they will ever have on this beautiful, fragile planet. Failing that, I hope that once they die and their bodies decompose, their molecules will be recycled into something that doesn't spout so much crap (a platypus--the darling of creationists-- might be a good start).

Thank you Sam. Reading your works or listening to you is like therapy for my belief-assaulted nerves!

Okay,as ever, excellent essay from Sam Harris, and one of the only reasons I still check out this site(occasionally).

I really should keep my 2 cents out of it, but I don't wanna!

Steve Cornell starts his post (which is much longer than necessary) off with the classic "Most people believe in God" business. Well, following that logic, since a growing number of Americans have big fat asses, I need to be off to McDonald's already, because I'm well below the current national average for a woman my age.

Sam...

I so enjoy your writing that I can only hope that you are neglecting your studies, at least enough, to write another book.

Blake

It's always struck me as odd that Pascal proposed the wager in the first place. Surely he had a better sense of logic than that. Was he kidding? Was he so caught up in religion that he actually believed in the wager?

It's been discredited so easily and so often that I'm surprised people still bring it up any more, although not *terribly* surprised, given how poorly people are taught to reason these days.

I did get something new out of this article, which is the flawed assumption that people can will themselves to believe things. I hadn't thought of that. So, thanks!

As a kid when I'd ask my father why he went to church, he'd say, "What if they're right?" Didn't know it's Pascalian antecedent at the time, but dad's answer contributed to my leaving the fold. That and various descriptions of heaven. Why wager over something not worth winning? Besides, the law of conservation of matter assures that we'll be around after death, a comfort to us recycling fans. The case for an immortal soul? Dismissed due to lack of evidence. Thanks, Sam, and keep up the great work.

As a kid when I'd ask my father why he went to church, he'd say, "What if they're right?" Didn't know it's Pascalian antecedent at the time, but dad's answer contributed to my leaving the fold. That and various descriptions of heaven. Why wager over something not worth winning? Besides, the law of conservation of matter assures that we'll be around after death, a comfort to us recycling fans. The case for an immortal soul? Dismissed due to lack of evidence. Thanks, Sam, and keep up the great work.

In reading the responses to Sam Harris, it makes me hopeful and proud to know there are quite of few other people capable of analytical critical thinking. Mark 1 for education.

Emerson: The educated man ceases to be religious.

Thank you Sam!!! You give me hope for our future existance in a world full of blind ignorance.....

Marc

Sam,

Your message here is one of your best. Pascal's wager is used by many people who don't know that Pascal stated it in simple terms. Many think it is their own personal idea. Some such folks believe in a "New Humanism", which includes using religious leaders, clergy and rabbis and calls them humanist teachers rather than hypocrites. True atheists can not tolerate these cowards, who want to bet on both sides of Pascal's wager and expect to have 100% chance of winning. Obviously as you point out, they are only fooling themselves.

Bob Wexelbaum, W2ILP

Good job. I love reading all things Harris. So relaxing, comforting.

I wish someone out there would write a book/direct a movie about the carnage religion has wrought in this world. Everytime religion mixes with politics then war, genocide, slavery, are sure to follow.

Now more than ever, we have to snub faith and those people of faith. I like the suggestion that intellectual elitism should be at the helm of our decisions as nations. The other alternative is having 'the Apocalypse' dictate our foreign policy as we have now.

John:

Taking Pascal's Wager is a crass bargaining maneuver for the best "deal". Fire insurance it's been called. Why would a just god reward anyone for for such self-interested deal making? It's one of the silliest arguments for belief I have seen. This is one tiny example of the mass of illogical propositions proffered by religions.

Sam, Thanks for the great work you do bringing enlightenment to our country.

You all sound like cult followers. Believing and praising anything Sam Harris says as if you worship him.

That second to last paragraph really summed it up nicely. You cant look at a situation and say 'well this is the best chance of success' and then somehow actually believe its true. If the facts worked in favor of the belief...you wouldnt have to come up with this 'best chance of success' strategy. It wouldnt be necessary.

By the logic of Pascal's wager, shouldn't Christians also believe in Allah just to be safe?

Thank you Sam, for being such a courageous and articulate spokesperson for the cause of reason.

My father died tragically and suddenly in August 2004. He was a catholic and my sister is a devout born-again christian.
My sister says that her faith helped her through her grief as she has the belief in re-uniting with dad again when she dies.
I pointed out to her that when dad was alive she was trying to convert him to her religion not in the least because she was concerned that if he didn't become 'born again' he wouldn't go to heaven and end up in hell.
She conveniently forgot this when he died and now believes that he has gone to heaven anyway because he was a 'good person'.
I, on the other hand do not believe in heaven and have no such fancifull notions of seeing my father again (much as I would like to.) But then again I have never lost a minute agonising over the flip side of the coin that he is roasting in Hell, or his spirit condemmed to this life because of the circumstances of his death.
Linda Harris

sam-
your message is clear, concise and much needed. Please get more TV time! We need to end these dangerous religious fantasies.

The stranglehold religion has on us in the 21st century has its roots in the Middle Ages. Life was pretty crappy for just about everyone, but along comes a charasmatic figure, who promises you eternal happiness and everything a human could possibly want, if only you will live your life according to (most usually) his dictation.

One only has to read the Anglo-Saxon document, "Letter to Virgins" to understand how this works.

The bottom line is people can not bear the thought that this life is all there is, or that it is worthwhile. They must substitute fantasy and empty promises of an afterlife, instead of making the best of the one life each of has.

Albert Camus said it best: "Your duty is to live and be happy." Deceptively simple, but parsing the words reveals its complexity.

Thank you Sam, for lifting the burden of my ideas for 40 years. You have validated positions I have held since I was in my 20s.

Spectacular! Amazing! Breathtaking! Illuminating! Revealing! The truth will always triumph, no matter how long it might take.

Eloquently put, as usual. Thanks Sam.

i might just add that that is precisely why certain traditions have such crazy interpretive strategies, why someone like bishop spong (who has no metaphysical commitments whatsoever) wants to remain "christian." changing a few beliefs and definitions of what "god" means (or whatever) is a helluva lot easier than changing communities, or undoing a personal history imbued with religious faith of some sort.

what seems is always crucially missing from these atheistic sorts of propaganda (i am an [agnostic] atheist, by the way), is the notion of embodied knowledge. people aren't disembodied spectres believing in propositions, but are culturally embodied social creatures whose belief-systems are inexorably tied to socio-political tastes and personal histories. while pascal's wager and other nice purely logical tropes will satisfy some minds (very few, actually), it misses the point entirely with other people. what sort of life are you asking a person (or a family, or a community, or a nation) to give up when you ask them to give up their faith? while i agree about the problems that *some* religious notions have, there are many that are innocuous and even a boon to our world. moreover, everyone believes in things which cannot be empirically verified. believing in a creator god of some sort is certainly not foolish. we live in a universe which, they tell us, is composed of something like 95% of "dark matter"--which no one knows anything about. i'd say that our claims to certitude and "empirical" evidence need to be tempered by such understandings. notice that i don't discount empirical evidence. i happen to think it's the best way we've got to see how the world works. but we are woefully blind as a species not only to most of the "matter" of the universe, but our evolutionary background stipulates that our epistemology is just developed enough to allow us to survive. just as the eye is blind to an enormous amount of "what's out there," to our epistemology is almost certainly limited in a majorly deficient way. we need, i think, not give amnesty to discussing religious propositions in the public square, but also to be modest about what we really know. like eschatological prognosticators of religious traditions, every generation thinks they've "arrived." people don't believe in the gospel, pray five times a day, etc., because they've worked out the logic perfectly, but because this "religion" (which cannot be reduced to a mere set of beliefs) has taken hold of them in a very visceral, cultural, embodied, political, and social way. think about one's favorite musical artist. mine is the jazz musician, john mclaughlin. there is a very personal history why i love his music, which stems from a very personal history that goes deep into my childhood, involving my love for guitar, my dad, and other subtle (and unconscious) issues. certain olfactory elements are involved, certain friendships were forged during that time which remind me of a certain song, a certain flavor of life is represented by certain sounds, etc. i left a life of religion for certain very personal reasons, too, not all of which were intellectual. but there is a void in my life which cannot be replaced. my marriage is strained, friendships are different (not necessarily worse), etc. there are trade-offs, and it's certainly not the case that giving up "propositions which there are no evidence" for a life utterly different will be a pay-off in the end. most people can't imagine their lives being different, and like things the way they are. that doesn't mean they're correct, helpful, or even healthy (a lot of women, after all, stay in abusive relationships), but this means that also that the issues involved go *much* deeper than can be expressed simply by "propositions."

There are also other possibilties than just "there is a God and you should believe in HIM or not" you are betting on.

There could be a lot of Gods that would be angry with you...
Or God (or the Gods) hates you because you just believe in him(or them) because you want to be saved and he (or them) would like you if you use reason, even then, when it leads to disbelief...
Or we all merge into one soul in loving embrace...
Or God doesn't care about humans
Or God saves only women this year and men the next and after that women again and so on... *g*
Or...
Or...

Thus Pascal's Wager is just the choice between different hells. *lol*
As a Bright I think it's funny but if you are a believer you probably are terrified of choosing the wrong hell right now.

Rainer

Sam, you best be around for some time and are you touring the country anytime soon? Please do, especially everywhere gargantuan crosses stand and born again Jews are migrating. FOR THE LOVE OF PETE WE NEED LOGICAL THOUGHT AND SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE ASAP

:O)

Sam,

As always very precise and stimulating. But let me add to the few Xtian apologist on here, all of us are wagering on one set beliefs. Christians are wagering that Islam is false, Muslims are wagering that Judiam is false, etc...

What I am tired of is Xtians writing how non-believers are closed minded and void of kindness and love. What a bunch of crap! What we are is, fed up and tired of the nonsense Xtians try to push down our throats, and people like Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, are giving us a larger voice.

Its time to fight back with reason and logic, its time for the world to change!

another genius Sam Harris analogy:

"faith is like a pickpocket who loans you your own money on generous terms." "Your resultant feelings of gratitude are perfectly understandable, but misplaced. You are the source of the love that you attribute to Jesus

nt

Thanks again, Sam! Keep it up, dude.

Pascal's Wager has always made me laugh. But nothing about religious defense makes me laugh harder than the "logical" ontological argument. Now there's a real howler!

The premise of Pascal's Wager is that a person has the choice to believe in the best possible scenario and would be stupid not to.
If this is really the case then the best case scenario would be for me to believe that I AM God!
Why settle for less?

It reminds me of a Hindi film of more than 50 years ago where a theist tells an atheist to be practical of worshipping God. If He does not exist, no harm is to come but,if He exists and you deny His existence then he will catch you by neck.
Belief in God is because of ignorance, inherited ideas and a lack of self-confidence and the need for some bigger force to help in difficult times. Many corrupt people worship God because He can save when he is caught. No insurance company can come to rescue to a bribe-taker, blackmarketeer, etc. In the presentday world uncertainties and insecurity force the weak to go to God.
Sam must continue his efforts even though the task is very, very difficult.

At the age of 78 years, a UU with Quaker roots, I concur with much of Sam's views and the freedom we can enjoy as we try to live rationally in and irrational world.

Steve Cornell...how shallow can we get... What group of people does this kind of drivel gain a foothold with? As history has well shown, and as religious apologists have demonstrated for centuries, it makes little difference whether or not countless lines of pseudo-reasoning have been unambiguously and undeniably debunked with crystal clarity. People like you just keep digging it up and sullying the streets. Let's move on as Harris recommends we do...as a species.

Previously I wrote that religions are full of dogma and as a result atheists who subscribe to the veracity of science and evolution tend to deny creation. Many of the comments made are totally predictable and nothing new. Here is something new at the expense of being labeled a fence sitting synthetical. The are four collective psychologies.
The warrior, intellectual, commercialist and manual worker collective values. One is most dominant in a given era. The intellectuals often manifest not only as scientists or inventors but as religious leaders.
They use the sentiment or devotion of people for God or God control to set the social beliefs or normalities. This does not mean that "God" does not exist. This does not mean the Bible is wrong in using metaphors to describe a religious leader or notions of God. It is critically important to understand the nature of collective psychologies and their bearing on social evolution. It is now mainly commercialism or the religion of money that dominates Western society in particular. The Bible has some answers and so does science. Evolution is a function of creation. Intelligent Design includes evolution. Evolution on vast scales of time and micro scales of time (not adaption). Evolution is a part of the laws of physics that in turn are a part of creation. For everything we do on a physical and mental plane the positive is canceled out by the negative - this is physics. The only real progress is spiritual movement. However, many intelligent people fail to see this
but that is also a part of the paradox and unboring nature of life and death, hot and cold, black and white and shades in between.
PS - The Bible talks of Creation but does not say there is no such thing as evolution - that idea is an interpretation by religious sects.

To be labeled a "non believer" by Christians(others groups as well) is to be placed in an instantly defensive position. I find it disrespectful of Christian accusers to so cavalierly consider any position outside their own as non belief. Masking misbelief seems to be the major accomplishment of the "non believer" tactic/labeling.
Perhaps R.C. Metcalf's next book will bare the title, OPPS?
Thank you Sam for creating this forum for a different brand of "believer". BE

You are truly a brilliant man, but WATCH YOUR APOSTROPHES!

Don't let people start thinking you're just a blogger by not proofing your internet publications, dude.

With respect

David Wright
Superkings
http://www.superkings.org

The big problem with religious people is that they don,t even bother to ask were their dogmas come from. ALL of them come from "paganism". Monoteism started with Sarastro in Persia.
Marduk,Quethzacoalt,Thor, The flying spaggetti etc.. should take care of Sam Harris.
Congratulations Sam.

Steve Cornell,

What superior morals do you refer to when talking about Sam and Richard's books?
Any of the morals they espouse, I find to be common morals among all men,
Can you quote something from either of their books that backs up your claim that they are morally superior? Based on the number of people who have read their books, I'd say they are very much in touch with common morality.
Only the church preaches a superior morality. A dictated morality. And you need to omit all of the slavery, war and misogyny from the bible before you get anything even close to common morality.

What baseless comments you make.

Do Buddhists believe that the God of Abraham created the universe in 7 days?
Do they believe Jesus Christ his son was born of a virgin?
If not, Buddhists are athiests too.

There is nothing cold or empty about disbelieving a proposition that is void of evidence.

As for pascals wager? More perforations than a tea bag.
One can not simply, choose to believe, if one does not believe.
What lame god would fall for that?

Harris and his atheism

If you believe in God, you’re in the majority. You’re also the target of best selling author Sam Harris. In his books, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, Harris is a man on a mission against God. If you believe in God, Harris invites you to consider atheism. “The atheist,” according to Harris, “is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to ‘never doubt the existence of God’ should be obliged to present evidence for his existence — and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day.”

Harris (the popular publicist of atheism) is not alone on his mission. He merely follows the footsteps of Richard Dawkins, (the academic guru and Ayatollah of atheism). In Dawkins’ new book, The God Delusion, he shakes his tiny fist in the face of Almighty God. His book is full of enough venom and condescending ridicule that it’s hard to take him seriously. His broad stroke analysis and rantings against the bible are ironically based on strongly held moral assumptions.

Interestingly, both Harris’ and Dawkins’ books are full of moral appraisals and readers are somehow obliged to see things through their moral grids. Of course, as might be expected, they both gloss over the question of why their moral positions are superior. Or, more accurately, they avoid the question by changing the subject. Yet they write as if an absolute standard of goodness and duty exists. Both men also wiggle around the issue of whether such a standard is possible without God.

But without God, all moral conclusions are merely subjective human opinions without any binding authority beyond what a culture attributes to them. And, at this point the question, “Who are you to impose your morality on another?” becomes fair game. Who is qualified to declare his opinion superior to another? And, on what basis would he do this? Why is peace better than war or love better than hate? If I say one is superior, does that make it right? If I get enough people to agree with me, does this make it true for all? Is it all a matter of what increases happiness and decreases suffering? If so, whose happiness?

Reading Harris and Dawkins, I continually found myself asking. “Says whom?” Without God, all their statements about right and wrong are simply alternative choices without moral superiority. If Harris and Dawkins were logically consistent, they would suppress all notions of moral superiority—something neither one is willing to do.

Further, if Harris and Dawkins followed their own logic, they would admit that evil is only an illusion. For there to be evil, there must also be some real, objective standard of right and wrong. But if the physical universe is all there is (as both men believe), there can be no such standard. How could arrangements of matter and energy make judgments about good and evil true? So, there are no real evils, just violations of human customs or conventions. How hard it would be to think of murderers as merely having bad manners.

Finally, Harris, Dawkins and their fellow atheists must also admit that human beings are not importantly different from other animals. According to the atheist, humans are simply the result of blind chance operating on the primordial ooze, and differing from animals by only a few genes. Yet, the wonders of human achievement and the moral dignity we ascribe to human beings just do not fit with the claim that we are no different than the animals. They fit better with the scriptural conclusion that humans are creatures uniquely made in the image of the benevolent and righteous God. And these men assume a moral framework that attributes higher understandings of humanity. In fact, they consistently (and illogically) borrow the assumptions of theism to argue against it. They reject things in the bible considered by them inhumane and expect us to assume a basis for their moral conclusions. Worse yet, they use biblical categories of morality to reject the bible.

The bible these men reject speaks openly of both evil and benevolence. One does not need to upgrade her view of the world when reading scripture. No rose colored glasses are needed. Yet the scripture offers a larger and more satisfying frame of reference for understanding the complexities of the world. It reveals to us a world God prescribed (the goodness and innocence of Eden); one he permitted (the violence and rebellion of Cain) and a world he will providentially make new (the new heavens and earth).

Steve Cornell
For more:
http://thinkpoint.wordpress.com/tag/blaming-religion/

Thanks, Sam, as ever, for your refreshing common sense.

My take on the Pascal wager is as follows.

There is no point, to me, in believing in God, because in order to do that one must first have some concept, image, or picture of what is being believed in. Any definition of God is false, because God is beyond definition - by definition! God may be there or God may not be there. My belief or lack of belief in God making no difference either to me or to God (a being so undefinable can hardly be involved in the highly definable activity of rewarding and punishing), I may as well choose non-belief, as it causes me a lot less problems than belief.

Apologies to those who read this first on Bruce Burleson's atheist/Christian discussion forum, now sadly defunct through lack of interest.

Good article. I couldn't have said it much better, myself.

Well put article.

None other than the Apostle Paul, an unquestioned, "inspired" authority to virtually all Christians, lends support to the "cost of belief!" In I Cor. 15, Paul deals at length with resurrection in general and that of Christ in particular. As an aside: I left the Christian fold years ago, having been highly educated theologically. But I am not a materialist, and I believe (on decent evidence!) in an afterlife--a "resurrection" in the sense of spiritual continuation. Paul's belief was probably similar in that regard--he doesn't speak of an empty tomb, nor of Jesus' physical BODY after the Resurrection--just "appearances" to many. (He was writing before the Gospels were written.)

He goes much further than I am willing to, and connects Christ's rising with forgiveness of sins for believers, and no forgiveness if he was not raised (vs. 17-18). The key: he wraps up with, "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied" (I Cor. 15:19, New RSV). He affirms there IS a present loss if Christ was not raised, contra Pascal.

Atheism offers cold comfort.
It doesn't sell well, because
Man cannot live by reason alone.

The core of Buddhism is compassion.
Stephen Batchelor ("Buddhism Without Beliefs")
shows that "Karma" and "Reincarnation" are dispensible in Buddhist teaching.
Love is all you need.

I offer 100-1 on a wager that Jesus won't come back in the next 10 years, nor that there will be an apocalypse or "rapture". Believers, what better way to express your faith!! I know you don't need money when He comes back, but at least you can prove that you believed in him by backing him, while Satan sticks another poker up my a**.

Any takers???? $100 maximum per person please.

Superb, thorough post. Thanks for all the good work Sam.

Great points.

Even if you could convince yourself to believe in the first place wouldn't the "omniscient" God of choice know you were faking it?

Either you believe or you don't. Pascal's wager is silly in the extreme.

Nice try, Jesus, but your retort is essentially the same moribund argument put forth in 1988 by Lycan and Schlesinger, in their article defending the Wager.

Go back and read Sam's comment that "...there are many questionable assumptions built into this famous wager." One of them is surely that the penalty for unbelief is ETERNAL damnation, and hence, bears an infinite cost. We must remember that Pascal proposes the wager in the first place because he himself admits that no one can have knowledge of God. How, then, can Pascal presume to have certain knowledge of the rewards and penalties attending to (un)belief in God?

There has always been an air of smug presumption surrounding such wagers as Pascal's. What does it mean, for example, for the saved to experience "eternal bliss"? I heard a friend and colleague speculate rather sarcastically that it must entail sitting on puffy white clouds and listening to harp music for an eternity, after which he mused, "If I had to endure harp music for just two hours straight, I would swear I was consigned to Hell instead!" Similarly for young Muslim males who believe that rewards for martyrdom include the defloration of 72 virgins. Isn't deflowering just one virgin a somewhat overrated experience?! And oh, by the way, I wonder how Muslim WOMEN feel about the proposition...

RAmen.

Let's face it. The two camps are mutually antagonistic. Religion is full of dogma but paradoxically there perhaps is another dogma of science or cult (culture) that believes everything can be explained by pure reason. Science is great in helping us overcome many dogmas but also has its boundaries. That boundary is the physical world or the limits to human instrumentality. Ironically, it is the subtlety of the mind itself that can perceive beyond the physical plane and taunts us with the unknown or mysterious. For instance, the creationists insist that there is no evolution by using the Bible as the source of all knowledge which is limiting. The evolutionists by and large believe there is no God because the veracity of science indicates this. Why can't evolution be a mechanism of creation? Why do the materialist philosophies and commonly the atheists think that matter is the sunnom bonom of existence. Is is possible that there is evolution of 'Mind Stuff' over a very long period of time we call evolution? The mind stuff powders down into the five fundamental factors - aerial, etherial, gaseous, liquid and solids and constitutes and environment upon which the entities begin to evolve. We reflect upon a mental plate and that mental plate reflects upon the all pervading consciousness. Did you think consciousness only resides in our box of bones upstairs. One things for sure our existence is one of paradox or has a paradodoxical nature that usually divides our thinking. Devotion is a two edged sword. We would be devoid of our humaness and reason for existence without it. You know, devoted to science and reasoning. Devoted to our loved ones or country or football team, monarchy etc. Perhaps devotion is a gift from God or should be seen at least as a spiritual value. Did we create the fundamental factors? As humans we only recreate. Generation, Operation and Destruction are not our ultimate preserve.

You are brilliant, no doubt. You, however, need a new proof reader. "Readers" in paragraph one is not possessive.

Sam-

Great article as usual! I've read both your books and can seriously vouch for every point and anecdote in them. I was a born-again, evangelical, fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christian for over 35 years before I finally found the truth. After five years of my own personal research I finally came to the conclusion that religion is simply myth disguised as truth. And that is what makes it so dangerous.

Normally logical, reasonable human beings somehow lose their ability to think for themselves when they step inside a church, synagogue or mosque. They've been brainwashed into thinking that their religion actually contains truth even though the evidence says otherwise. They suspend their disbelief in favor of the emotional security of ignorant fantasy.

The problem is that ignorance is tyranny.

Thanks, Sam, for forcing the issue. Only open, public and honest debate will give us the courage to fight for freedom from tyranny.

TRENCHANT!!! Thanks C. Fournier for uncovering the single word that best describes Mr. Harris's writings!

I deeply appreciate Sam Harris' brilliant writings and this discussion. I am hoping to add to this debate through my own book on human nature, which I see as a precursor to any questioning of whether god exists. If it is in our nature to need supernatural beliefs, then Pascal's Wager will always attract many people. And, if these people gather in song and support each other through life's challenges, and look like they are having a grand old time, they will always convince many others to join them.

In my opinion, it is not eternal salvation that enlists people to accept Pascal's wager, but rather our social nature and our desire for connection. As in the game of "musical chairs," we all want to find a place within the social order. It is in our nature to seek to join groups of people who are likeminded in some way - and to unconsciously adopt the beliefs of those we seek to join. This is the same mechanism that creates baseball, basketball, football and soccer fanatics. It certainly looks like many fans believe in their sports teams at least as much as others believe in god!!

Hence, my own writing is more directed to what I see as underlying causes for our intense attraction to religion. And that seems to have little or nothing to do with either logic (Which Sam so eloquently demonstrates) or with god.

Oh, and Dan Hennessey?

You presumably know what "projecting" means.

Read the comments here again and try to put your biases aside for two minutes.

You say: "A horrible sense of bitterness toward the emptiness of life without God seeps through most of what is expressed here."

I defy you to quote a single comment here that embodies bitterness or a sense of the 'emptiness of life without God.' And if you can't, or if you have a hard time doing so, then try examining the assumptions that prompted you to write it without good cause.

Such a life might make you bitter, and might seem empty to you. But that's a different matter.

And ease up with the pejoratives: "intellectually juvenile," "glib," "adolescent," etc. This is the tack many right-wingers take, the presumptive assumption of "maturity." If you want to pass a useful ten minutes, ask yourself why you use such language. Who did you learn it from? Why is it at all relevant here? How do you feel after you use it? Safe? Superior? Saved?

I'm making these up. You tell me.

Sam Harris' gift for clarity and succinctness has helped me out of a paralyzing limbo.

Many thanks to Sam Harris. I am both glad and saddened that we are contemporaries. I hope history puts you and Dawkins in your rightful place. I am saddened because i will never see how it turns out.

In a recent round table discussion with fifteen or so fundamentalist theologians I was quizzed as the new comer. I relayed my religeous history from Catholicism to Bud'dhism expressing my obsevation of mans quest to seek a higher power, either within or without. They suggested I had a Zen slant to my religeous expression. I responded with, "Bud'dhism has made the most sense to date, but I'm open to reason." One very concerned gentleman asked if I knew Satan, to which I said "Yes, he's the backbone of Christianity!" That very much disturbed the group. I hold respect for them yet I thought them lost as they did me. Then I read "The End of Faith". It grounded me , relieved I now have clear direction. Now at 60 I thank you Sam Harris for your work and its clarity on what has been a lifelong quest.

Sincerely, Llaim

I have always been amazed that anyone takes Pascal's Wager seriously on any level. You cannot, as I keep trying to persuade my wife, choose belief. Belief chooses you: it is an emotional state first, after which it generates your "thoughts" and "opinions."

Our everyday experience proves this over and over. Something shocking happens (good or bad), and we say "I don't believe it." We mean: I know, cognitively, that it happened, but it's either too good or too terrible for me to engage with fully emotionally--yet.

Pascal (to the extent that he meant it) seemed to suggest that belief was the equivalent of "pretending to agreement." This is not only untrue, it's obviously untrue.

And isn't this feigned, willed faux belief exactly the kind of false "faith" the Christian god is supposed most offended by? Oy. Please.

Andy,

Atheists are not trying to put dents in believers. We are really quite a peaceful bunch; no denting of people allowed. We leave the denting of believers to other believers, then we sit back and mourn the violence.

We wonder why the people of the world have been turned against one another for the sake of indefensible beliefs that they inherited from their parents. For those searchinf for a better way, atheism offers a practical choice.

By debating Mr. Warren, Mr. Harris demonstrated, once again, how twisted belief and religion can be. Toward the debate's end, Mr. Warren spoke this disturbing claim: "...this life is a test, it's a trust and it's a temporary assignment. If death is the end, shoot, I'm not going to waste another minute being altruistic."

From this statement, I inferred that Mr. Warren believes that: 1) He should only help others because his God wants him to; 2) Helping others is tied to his afterlife reward; and, 3) If death IS the end, helping others is a waste of time.

"Common grace" was the belittling phrase that Mr. Warren used to explain Mr. Harris' godless altruism. It is telling that an atheist's good works better demonstrate the notion of unconditional love than the brand of altruism espoused by a Christian icon.

Why is it intellectually juvenile to embrace intellectual and emotional independence, to finally distance ones self from the opressive, 'sadistic, vindictive, petty, heartless, judgmental, psychopathic, schizophrenic, prudish, angry, spiteful deity of the major scriptures'? My guilt evaporated when I finally eliminated this fantasy from wasting my time and other resources. It never ceases to amaze me that so many still belive that the bible (and probably other religious tomes) are unerring when their many foibles have been well documented! It's been proven that praying gets no more than 50% of wishes answered, the same as flipping a coin and though praying can be psychologically benifitial, but no more than praying (on a regular basis) to a fire hydrant!

The thing that makes me madder than hell is the dishonesty that the religious crowd dispenses in the name of GOD. Take the Dover, Penn believers who were pushing a book to be taught to kids by teachers & adults who had never read it and astoundingly didn't even know what evolutions was! But were sure willing to shove that book and it's poor writing (by authors who didn't even have backrounds in biology or paleontology) down the throats of those students!!! That religious people delibertly choose to stay uninformed shows that their faith is very tenous.

And why does god need so many splinter groups? Is it because they're just social cliques? Religion is psychology on the sleeve. Ever since we became able to preconcieve our own mortality we've been obsessed with circumventing it and religion is the mechinism we, in part, invented to address that paranoia.

It is truly a sad commentary that in the over six thousand years of recorded history the human race is still no furthur in beliefs other then the same ones used by shaman's in pre-agricultural history.
We have progressed remarkably in so many other areas of knowledge; but are still afraid of the dark, death and the true meaning of life.

When I was seven, I did this little piece of "art" in all caps, Old English style. What's represented by the lowercase letters here were black and the capital letters were in blood red:

beLIEve

I thought it incredible that the word "lie" was right smack-dab in the middle of the word “believe”. Of course, everyone knows this, but my young imagination conjured up some big conspiracy (probably Catholic, I was in Catholic school at the time) to deceive us and tell us so in the code of our very own language, if we were smart enough to see it. My parents and everyone around me hated that I'd drawn it--actually getting a bit angry about it--and I was told I'd been "thinking too much." So, I knew I was on to something.

I've grown up. And I've been thinking about it a little too much again. My mind seriously hasn't changed. People really are deceiving themselves with religion and those in power are more than willing (hell, they are downright giddy with excitement as they reap the collateral profits from all the "collateral damage") to kill the planet in the process.

Sam, I am an avid follower of your work and have used your arguments, which are as impeccable as they are well-worded, many times. You are an incredibly talented writer as well as an amazingly sane voice that drills right through the insane premises as well as the make-believe promises of religious thought systems. Thank you.

Thank YOU.

~Nita

It's not much of a wilderness considering how many bloggers blog whenever Sam decides to write for this site. Compare the numbers between the more recent 'pious' posts.

Someone might want to do a statistical analysis as to which writer gets the 'better response'. I am not all that good with stats so I will pass on that. Maybe the more mathematical minds can say yes or no with any certainty that atheism is truly a wilderness notwithstanding the numbers quoted in End of Faith.

Write on Sam.

Why is it intellectually juvenile to embrace intellectual and emotional independence, to finally distance ones self from the opressive, 'sadistic, vindictive, petty, heartless, judgmental, psychopathic, schizophrenic, prudish, angry, spiteful deity of the major scriptures'? My guilt evaporated when I finally eliminated this fantasy from wasting my time and other resources. It never ceases to amaze me that so many still belive that the bible (and probably other religious tomes) are unerring when their many foibles have been well documented! It's been proven that praying gets no more than 50% of wishes answered, the same as flipping a coin and though praying can be psychologically benifitial, but no more than praying (on a regular basis) to a fire hydrant!

The thing that makes me madder than hell is the dishonesty that the religious crowd dispenses in the name of GOD. Take the Dover, Penn believers who were pushing a book to be taught to kids by teachers & adults who had never read it and astoundingly didn't even know what evolutions was! But were sure willing to shove that book and it's poor writing (by authors who didn't even have backrounds in biology or paleontology) down the throats of those students!!! That religious people delibertly choose to stay uninformed shows that their faith is very tenous.

And why does god need so many splinter groups? Is it because they're just social cliques? Religion is psychology on the sleeve. Ever since we became able to preconcieve our own mortality we've been obsessed with circumventing it and religion is the mechinism we, in part, invented to address that paranoia.

How childish a proposition! A God has started an experiment on a universal scale. He has to be all knowing otherwise he wouldn't be God so the conclusion of this experiment is already known to him, so we can't really surprise him and of-course he has all the attributes of us mere mortals like pride and conceit which we can tickle with our little prayers so that he can randomly grant our wishes (anyone thought of random chance probability etc) and to think that we will cling to these ideas when we are past our 5 year of existence is amazing...

It's worth noting, on top of what Sam wrote, that, a priori, it's just as likely that a deity exists who will *punish* you eternally for believing (or living a Christian life or whatever) as it is that a deity exists who will reward you for doing so. So the "calculation" suggested is really totally flawed.

It shows an interesting blind spot in the views of many believers that Pascal's Wager should sound the least bit plausible. Much of the time I see Christians talk as though there are exactly two options, atheism and Christianity, and disproof of one entails proof of the other. (Similarly, many seem to feel that disproof of evolutionary theory entails proof of intelligent design/creationism.)

Again, Sam Harris is a voice in the wilderness. Thank God for Sam Harris! Oops — there I go again .... tripping over the superstition I like to claim I don't have —see how insidious the conditioning is? In the spirit of Voltaire, Ecrasez l'infame!!

Thank you for all you have taught us in the past year Sam.

Today a Jehovah's Witness knocked on my door and I invited him in and we spent an hour in respectful conversation. He left deep in thought and promising to come back next week.

A year ago I would have not bothered because I did not have the material, skills and knowledge I needed to challenge him to reason carefully nor to present it respectfully.

You are making a difference Sam ... keep it up please.

You suggest that, "the greatest problem with the wager—and it is a problem that infects religious thinking generally—is its suggestion that a rational person can knowingly will himself to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence."
The reality, however, is religion is fueled by fear of the unknown (lack of evidence). This fear is the product of hundreds of thousands of years in the evolution of the brain. We function,still, primarily, from the old brain--the old brain takes the wager because that is the instinctive route. The rational part of the brain has to first transcend this fear. Once that is accomplished, such a ludicrous bet would not be contemplated.

I've never met an atheist whose arguments against God's existence I couldn't tear apart. I wouldn't use Pascal's Wager to defend my beliefs, though.

It's funny that the atheist community can't even make a significant dent in those believers who do think Pascal's Wager is an adequate defense. You people are silly!!!

Once again, Sam uses what I can only describe as bait-n-switch tactics. Pascal's wager was applied by Pascal with respect to Christianity, yet Sam claims that one gives up too much by falling for Pascal's ploy... just look at "the social cost of millions of Muslims believing in the metaphysics of martyrdom?..., etc." The most he says here about Christians is that they suffer with "anxiety about sex." That is hardly the case, as I discuss in my book.

I think Ray Walker got it right when he wrote (above) "Is your god so stupid he can't tell it isn't true faith but merely a pragmatic insurance policy?" This is exactly why most Christian thinkers, qua Voltaire, find Pascal's wager to be inherently flawed.

Pascal's wager certainly doesn't provide evidence for the existence of God, but this does not mean that no evidence exists, as is Sam's unending mantra. Historical, archaeological, philosophic and scientific evidence exists. The question is... how much do you care about truth (i.e. a concrete, unchanging, scientific reality that provides the foundation for our universe... i.e. that truth that all scientists are seeking and that science is predicated upon)? No one has all the answers regarding this ultimate reality, yet each of us must weigh the evidence and decide for ourselves which direction the scales tip. How much evidence have you, the reader of this post, allowed yourself to examine? Have you studied the evidences only as they've been decribed by freethinkers? Someone who is honestly seeking true answers will be forced to consider both sides of any issue. If anyone would like to continue a discussion on this subject, go to the forum section of www.samharris.org and respond to the thread initiated by RC Metcalf (me). I'll be happy to engage honest, respectful individuals in meaningful discussion. All the best, RC Metcalf (author of LTACN: Counter Point)

Nothing to add but my sincere appreciation for your continued calm, reasonable and eloquent dialogues with believers. Every one of them ends with the believers having nothing more than the equivalent of Pascal's Wager to support their claims. I fear the problem is not with logic for most people, but this habit of believing in revealed truth. Most believers could not tell you a thing about Pascal, but he seems like he was a smart guy, so he must be right. Linus Pauling was brilliant also, but dead wrong about some things. 'My preacher told me Einstein said "God doesn't play dice with the Universe". Einstein was a smart guy, so he must be right'. Most people would not go on to investigate what Einstein really thought about a personal god. I have dismissed Pascal's Wager numerous times to believers. They just change the subject and work on some other nonsensical argument.

Dear Sam,
Thank you for all the good work you are doing for this world. Now, if only we could have a President as brilliant as you!

Infinite rewards for right desires is Pascal's promised gainer. "What are right desires?" is where the stasis is. All collect--or not--per the "second opinion," after passing from the screen of life. Pascal's logic works until one has to elect right desires. Kant's questions, "Is there God?" and "Am I immortal?" indicate a next step for all: researching evidence of Being. Without Being, no value to wager beyond the Hobbesian civility-cooperation metric; with Being, what are right desires? Lack of awareness in soulfield/biofield of Deity is not lack of proof of Deity; however, transecting miracles such as the Wafer of Light demonstrated at Garabandal, Spain, in the early 1960s, are presumed insufficient by the disinterested biofield. The onus of investigation classically or majorly (i.e., across many major world religions) presumes genuine investigative intent along recognized protocols. That biofield changes and psi occur per such sincere praxis is indisputable (vide Buddhist-science data at "Life and Mind" conferences). However, the "I-Thou" apparently asks a good-faith/real effort, much as any other field of human endeavor. Thus, "state-specific science," Dr. William A. Tiller's experiments ("Some Science Experiments with Real Magic"), etc., tend toward suggestive evidence; however, the protocols of e.g. Saint Teresa of Avila's "Interior Castle" or Reverend Mary Baker Eddy's "Science and Health," or Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi," or Aivanhov's "Light Is a Living Spirit," or Colton's "Watch Your Dreams," or Prophet's "Climb the Highest Mountain," or Free and Wilcock's "The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce?", or Kharitidi's "Entering the Circle," or Murro's "The Path of Virtue," or McTaggart's "The Field" provide arenas of states-specific investigation, which more enable sincere agnostics to decide for themselves.

I couldn't agree more. Besides which, based on what Pascal stated, believing is the same as merely stating you believe. To me, it seemed like he said if you ignore your instincts and blindly follow this, you will go to heaven. And should it all turn out to be false, you have nothing to lose. But doesn't that demean the very religion he is trying to defend? I think anyone who fools themselves into claiming they believe in any god is far worse than anyone who is brave enough to profess their disbelief in any god.

Thanks, Sam for helping me.
Dan :-)

The other flaw in Pascal reasoning is he only considered the possibility of one God. If he had included all of the posible dieties, then the odds are much worse. I don't know how many possible Gods there are but I'll bet there are hundreds maybe even thousands when you consider dead gods. If you set up a table with using the same gaming theory, with all the possible gods and consequences, then you are not optimizing your position by beliving in the Christian God.

Keep up the work Sam. I am trying to do my part by engaging in discussion when ever the opportunity presents itself

Thank you Sam.

Although I admire and respect the man and his writings, the greatest argument against the existence of God may not be the books and articles of Mr. Harris. No, the best argument is (or, rather, was) Cho Seung-Hui. By now, everyone knows who Cho was: the mass killer of Virginia Tech, a raving paranoid suffering from narcissistic, solipsistic delusions and driven by a persecution mania. Cho brings to mind the famous essay on omnipotence and evil by J. L. Mackie, published in 1955 in an Australian journmal, "Mind." Mackie saw belief in God as inherently illogical; he suggested that if God is omnipotent, omniscent, and wholly good (as monotheistic religions claim), yet evil exists, these two premises are logically inconsistent. As it is expressed in the vernaclar, the question becomes, "Why does such a God allow evil to happen to 'good' people." The answer that God allows us freedom of will simply won't do. If, as some apologists have argued, there is nothing incompatible with omniscence in man's ability to select any logically-possible world, why didn't God choose to create that one logically-possible world in which all of us choose good? The current occupant of the White House doesn't help matters much when he urges the survivors and families of victims of V.T.'s fallen to seek refuge in "a loving God." This only suggests that George Bush is a dangerous lunatic who puts his faith in supernatural mumbo-jumbo.

Where is the mean-spiritedness and horrible sense of bitterness that Mr Hennessy saw? I read the entre blog and all I saw was unfearful writers happy in their freedom

When I think about Pascal's wager, the "either/or" part creates dissonance. If one does NOT believe, fine. And if one truly believes, thats fine as well. But if there is a creator who is omnipotent, and if the nonbelievers are truly destined for something less than "heaven", then I think one has to grant that this omnipotent creator would know that the "believer" (who was believing only because he hedging his/her bet) was not a TRUE believer, and would end up with (at least) the same eternal fate as the nonbeliever. So, while the Pascal wager may sound cute and have a certain appeal to a shallow thinker, it really offers nothing at all. This is an interesting topic of course, but what really concerns me is the violence and carnage that is being inflicted upon others in the name of God. How anyone who understands the miracles of nature and science can believe that any God would be vengeful, hateful and compel them to murder innocents in His name, will forever be beyond me.

Sam,

All the world's people so desperately need to continue to hear from you, and often!

Thank you so very much for the honest truth and eloquent brilliance you heroically shed upon this ignorant earth so horribly filled with twisted purveyors and deluded consumers of ancient myth and dangerous superstition.

Oh, dear.

Dan, Dan, Dan. It seems you may be projecting your own despair onto those of us who have grown past it. "Held hostage by the prison of a hardened, closed mind" indeed. Describes most non-liberal christians I've ever had the misfortune of living with and running into. Life free from the fear of a god is actually finally exciting, with almost limitless possibilities. Can't blame a god for the unpleasant, can't give a god credit for the pleasant; I just have to take responsibility for creating the best situations I can. And improving them if they're not optimal.

Despair? Been there. Done that. Deconverted. Finally free.

By the way, thanks again, Sam, for your insights and courage. Keep up the good work.

Respected Sam,
Well said. All over the world, questions are arising against the socalled gods and beliefs. As a Periyarist and rationalist from India, I am proud about you. Yes ,well done Sam. 'End of faith ', in this century we are going to see. Congratulations Sam.Expect more and more from you.

V.Nehru,
State President,Rationalists' Forum, Tamilnadu(State),India.

Sam:

You've done it again. With unerring simplicity, you have revealed the so-called Pascal's Wager for the head game that it continues to be. It is a comfort to know that one's intelligence is on a path uncluttered by superstition and suspension of reason.
People who believe in a supernatural being may find comfort and safety in the thought of a provident and loving god, but this requires the intellect and, indeed, intuition to close down. This world, known or unknown, has great beauty and order. For me, that evidence is reassurance enough.
Thanks, Sam.

All well and good, only: 1.) For those who believe, no proof is necessary, for those who don't believe, no proof is possible, and 2.) per John Boswell, you cannot use logic to debate with those who do not use logic. I think the Biblical allegory would be something about throwing pearls before swine, or more contemporarily, you're preaching to the choir, Mr. Harris (and we appreciate it nonetheless). As others have above, Pascal's Bet (merci M. Catania) is a philosophical non sequitur -- you simply can't have true faith AND use religion as a safety net. And the quote I think you may have been hunting for belongs to David Hume (1711-1776) "Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous."

Sam you express these ideas with such refreshing clarity its like breathing fresh clear air.
And I'm struck by all the other positive comments
by like minded grown ups.
If we always speak up and identify ourselves as who we are...we might do some damage to the groupthink madness that surrounds us.
Its not so much the emperor has no clothes,is it?
Its more like the clothes have no emperor.

Superlative eloquence as usual Sam.

When I was about 15 I took Pascal's wager (not knowing it had a name). I realized a few years later that it simply was a mechanism that could be exploited by anybody (not just Christianity) to control people. I abandoned it because it is immoral and cowardly.

Sam,

I disagree. Granted, religious belief can have some unsavory consequences but so can irreligious belief (eternal hellfire comes to mind). Pascal’s wager is merely a cost benefit analysis, one that you’ve sorely miscalculated. Somehow, you’ve placed the cost of religious strife higher than the cost of incurring Satan’s wrath for all eternity. This is foolish. Now I’m sure you’d respond with something like: “But there simply exist no evidence for the existence of Hell or Satan, let alone God. As a result, you should not even consider the possibility of going to Hell when you decide to believe (or disbelieve) in a given religious proposition.”

But this is where you fall into fallacy, Sam. You take it as a 100% certainty that there is no Hell or Satan. But nothing - let me repeat - nothing is 100% certain. Therefore, there is a minuscule, infinitesimal probability that Hell and Satan exist.

Now lets return to our cost benefit calculation. Eternal Damnation should obviously be awarded a cost factor of infinity (hence the word ‘eternal’). This is the cost of religious non-belief. Lets grant, for the sake of argument, all the negative consequences of religious belief a cost factor of the highest finite number you can think of. (The finite nature of this number assumes that the human race, the only known practitioners of religion, will someday go extinct on planet earth.) Now we assign probabilities. We give the extremely small probability to the possibility of eternal damnation. Accordingly, we give the extremely large probability to the possibility of religious strife. Now we multiply. Clearly, any number multiplied by an infinite quantity, no matter how small, will yield a result greater that the product of two finite quantities. Thus, the cost of non-belief is greater, to an infinite extent, than the cost of belief.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Another excellent article from Sam. Though I wanted to emphasize a small point about the wager. Firstly, it seems highly dubious to me for any theist to retreat into a position where belief in God is the product of a bet or probability (recalling that, for the wager to work, it only requires an infinitesimally small chance of God existing). In short, believing in a perfectly moral God for mercenary reasons is dodgy and deceitful. The response to this may be that if mercenary reasoning leads to genuine belief, then alls fine and dandy. However, in my experience, the real problem with theists, as Sam has repeatedly pointed out in his books and articles, is dogma, and comfort with contradiction, misnomer and paradox. An acceptance of the wager as the basis for belief in a perfect designer, not to mention its plans for your eternal salvation, tends to confirm this.

Thanks to Sam Harris for another consise de-bunking of a common misconception among Christians; who are motivated by fear and non-thinking self preservation at all costs.

The limitations of such intellectually juvenile attitudes toward the possibility of the existence of God creates great sadness in my heart. It's truly heartbreaking to hear such limited capacities for thought expressed with such a sense of mean-spirited-ness. There is mercy enough to keep you from such glib despair in God's economy, which you disdain because you've not experienced it. When and if an individual approaches even a beginner's level of intellectual and spiritual maturity, such cavalier attitudes concerning the spiritual beliefs of others finally fades away. Hopefully, some who have commented here will grow beyond the adolescent attitudes expressed in this space, and discover the freedom there is when one is no longer held hostage by the prison of a hardened, closed mind. A horrible sense of bitterness toward the emptiness of life without God seeps through most of what is expressed here. Openness to the wonder of the universe is still available. Look up. There is hope beyond the despair so evident here.

Wow! Barrett's statement. Cost: only your integrity throughout the single, most preciously small window of existence you get.

Sam Harris is my hero. Just like Carl Sagan. But I fear "belief" is somehow tied to genetics or IQ. Frustrating. It will change. In a thousand years. Sam can help it along.

Actually, it was Pascal's wagger (head, tale, tall I believe). Cost; only your integrity throughout the single, most preciously small window of existence you get.

Sam you the man!
It's good to find
that there are
people like yourself
that are not deluded
by mythology.

Mr Harris, I enjoyed your commentary just as I have enjoyed your two books. I am sure that you are familiar with the following, usually attributed to Nobel winning phyicist, Stephen Weinberg. When asked for his thoughts on morality, he replied, "Well, I believe good people will tend to do good things, and evil people will tend to do evil things. But for good people to do evil things, Ah, that takes religion."

Does Harris ever rest? He churns out articles, diatribes, polemics, and essays quicker than the pious can even read them.

I was strolling through the bookstore at my university the other day (the University of Illinois at Chicago, Mr. Harris, if you care to stop by -lol) and saw "The End of Faith" as a required reading for a metaphysics course. Bravo, Mr. Harris! One can only hope that ever younger and younger citizens will be exposed to the dogma-busting prose that is Harris, Dawkins, and Dennett; only then, it seems, can we culture a generation to question manifest absurdities before they become ignorance rooted truths.

Please knock out another provocative book, Mr. Harris; the steady drumbeat of intellectuality will soon become intolerable to the silence of nescience.

Thanks for the article and all of the excellent comments! I always knew, on an inner level that this argument was nonsensical. Now I'm armed and ready when a christian throws that curveball at me again. What a weak point it makes!
Most christians are capitalists that would agree, "time is money". How much time and money do they waste with all that worship (and tithing).

Sam "Beautiful Mind" Harris strikes again to my utter delight.

Ultimately all religious belief is based in fear; fear of a meaningless universe, fear of death, fear of the temporary and unpredictable nature of existence.

It's one thing to conclude (as tenuous as that is) that there might be some kind of 'organizing intelligence' behind the creating, maintaining, and dissolving of all forms in existence... it's a whole other thing to believe for one moment that this 'intelligence' has any similarity at all to the sadistic, vindictive, petty, heartless, judgmental, psychopathic, schizophrenic, prudish, angry, spiteful deity of the major scriptures.

Isn't it all just an infantile and transparent anthropomorphic projection of dull, narrow minds who wrote these so called 'holy books'.

I'm sure that this omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient incomprehensible Being is more concerned -really neurotically fixated- on what we humans are doing with our genitals at any particular moment then handling the infinitely complex multidimensional matrix, and substratum of the universe.

Also - why on earth would this supreme, all- powerful Being suffer from such an underdeveloped sense of self that it would have to demand blind belief and absolute allegiance from us to feel good about itself, and feel relief from it's childish insecurity.
Does any of this make sense to any critical thinker out there?

"Le Pari de Pascal": That's what we say in French.

Parier = To bet

In Texas, where I live, we have to go to to New-Mexico if we want to bet. It is illegal in Texas.

Mr. Harris. Please start a new century of enlightment. We need it badly.

Well stated Sam! I try to keep up with as many of your essays as I can. You have a great way of countering these unsubtantial propostions. Recently, Ayn Rand Institute put on a conference at UCLA regarding the current Islamic movement. It was quite interesting. I was especially taken by one of the panel member's, a prior Muslim, critique of her once fellow believers. She questioned, as you have in the past, what it takes to be a "radical" muslim. Is it the person who blows themselves up in the name of allah? Is it the person who supports those who blow themselves up in his name? Is it the person who does not denounce those who blow themselves up? Or, is it the person who believes that muhammad had no faults? If you think that the "radical" fulfills the majority of those questions, then I think you will find that you are talking about a much greater number of Muslims than most people want to believe are "radical". Once again, your position on religion holds true. It is quite possibly counter-humanity to hold a belief in a God that cannot be proven.

I also hear the Pascal Wager logic (read "illogic") applied when justifying faith in religion. I really cannot believe that educated people allow themselves to favor this type of reasoning. It would be equivalent to suggesting A=B, B=C, therefore A<>C. Anyone who scored more than 90 points on a standardized IQ test would realize just how wrong this simple expression logic is. But to a Christian, or anyone of religious faith, it makes perfect sense.

On a related note, given Sam's reference to the Newsweek article, Rick Warren also suggested that we wouldn't have the Bill of Rights without Christianity. This is absurd. Does he incorrectly assume this is true because James Madison (father of our constitution) was a Christian? Most early Americans were Christian, but some drew more from history, law, and philosophies than of faith. The Magna Carta and habeas corpus were significantly more influential in writing the Bill of Rights than Christianity.
If you read up on James Madison (and Thomas Jefferson since he contributed greatly to the Bill of Rights in opposition to the Federalists), you will find that he was tremendously in favor of the complete separation of church and state. He realized that government's only role in society is to ensure our basic human rights, not instill religion in our minds.

Additionally, several founding fathers including both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin claimed to be Deist, not Christian. Thomas Jefferson went so far with his disdain toward organized religion as to support Denis Diderot’s famous expression, “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

Trenchant thoughts. And, by the way, reading your books, articles, and interviews has inspired me to jettison my former, unconscious guilt and fear of identifying myself as a non-theist. It also put my wishy-washy agnosticism mostly to bed. Thanks.

Great job Mr. Harris.

Those Nigerian email solicitations look like a better deal than Pascal's Wager. One, we know that humans had to compose the spam that keeps winding up in our computers' mailboxes, while we don't have any evidence that a god exists and has offered a human anything. And two, we know that large amounts of money in foreign bank accounts exist (though you won't ever get any of it this way!), whereas we don't have any evidence that a heaven exists.

In other words, Pascal's Wager looks worse than a blatant scam.

I wager that Xtians are wasting this life for the promise of the next. I'd rather bet my life on this one true reality, than wish for eternity slobbering at the foot of a fairy-tale idol.
Its really sad that such a large percentage of sheeple are so ignorant and so scared of dying.

Sam Harris you amaze me! Absolutely fantastic response.

Pascal's wager seems laughable to me. Belief in God has reduced itself to a low cost insurance policy? As usual religion summons up an old comrade (fear& Intimidation) to corral the sheep.

My first exposure to Pascal's Wager was at about age 25, over 50 yrs ago. My immediate reaction was it was cowardly. My comment to the person was, "Is your god so stupid he can't tell it isn't true faith but merely a pragmatic insurance policy? I thought your god was supposed to KNOW what's in your heart. Seems hypocritical to me."

Ray Walker

The other ridiculous aspect of using Pascal's wager to justify belief in religion is that an omnipotent God knows each person's motivations for belief. God would presumably not reward a person who adopted a belief solely to avoid the consequences. Therefore, if someone recommends that we adopt a religious belief to avoid damnation, they are in fact condemning us to damnation! What's up with that?

"What is the net effect of so many Jewish settlers believing that the Creator of the universe promised them a patch of desert on the Mediterranean?"

Part of the "net effect" is that there is a Jewish homeland for Jews, believers and non-believers. Religion is nonsense but the "net effect" is not always all bad all the time.

Right. If i could, through mere desire, convince myself that i was going to heaven to see my childhood kitties when i died, i would do it. but i cant. i havent tried very hard, but as dishonest an idea as it is, it is a very comfortable one. maybe one day, when the fear of death becomes greater than the evidence against religion, i will be able to. but for some reason (intellectual honesty perhaps, or the fear of not enjoying sam harris' writing, or perhaps not wanting pat robertson to have been right about anything, ever) i dont want this to happen. even though i really liked my kitties.

We are, and all animals, born Atheist. It takes time, training and culture to add fantasy, that is religion, as " fact " into our way of thinking. Fantacy is instilled in our early childhood and then into adultship with books, movies. TV and religion. Let us label religion as " wish fulfillment ".

I'm sure that Pascals Wager makes a great deal of sense to every moral infant who hears of it.

In 6000 years of recorded history, nobody has ever seen a god. Out of the thousands that humanity has conceived through the centuries,none
has ever been seen, or sensed, or heard.
A close look at the Old Testament will show that most of the basic religious ideas of the hapirou(
the ancient name of the hebrews)come directly from its egiptian sources; commandment, last judgment, among them, and other come from Summer;
like the sacrifice of the first born or the killing of the egiptians first born in the night of "pass over". Why anybody has to believe in an invisible psychopath?

I could never understand why religionist use Pascals wager to try and convince people to join their myth. Is this the kind of shallow believer they hope to attract or is it the type they secretly are?

I've heard many discussions on "P's wager".
A more modern denial of God was offered by
Bertrand Russell's famous china teapot.
He said that it is just as likely that a teapot
is in orbit around the earth deserving
reverence as creator. Either way, the advantages
of religion still outway the negatives. (boy, am I gonna get some mail on this).

I have always hated Pascal's Wager. Here's my comment to Christians who use it: Based upon Pascal's Wager, then would it be safer to believe in a One True Church or in "generic" Christianity. After all, they say that if I am not a member of their particular church, I am doomed, even if I am part of your "Christian" church. So based upon Pascal's Wager, any given Christian would best choose a "One True Church" and join. Of course, they wouldn't do that... and as a Pastor, you can imagine my struggle getting people to THINK. I'm probably in agreement with Sam Harris a LOT more than people would think... and I'm a pastor.

I don't believe in belief. Thank you, Sam Harris.....

Wow, what a great summary of the problem with Pascal's wager. Way to go Sam!

There is no god but Poseidon. Sam Harris is his messenger.

Very well said, as usual, Mr. Harris. I've noticed that every apologist for religion who tries to justify belief in a personal creator uses Pascal's wager as justification when backed into a corner by reason and lack of evidence to support such belief. It is nothing more than accepting, "a proposition purely out of concern for future gratification." Unfortunately, they will never know of their error since when the brain dies, the self ceases to exist.

Thank you for making the case that belief has costs. I hoped that I would find it in Newsweek's letters to the editor (under my name preferably), but it didn't get printed. Hopefully this argument will get into the mainstream. People need to be aware that their beliefs encourage them to hurt their fellows in many ways, from active persecution for having different beliefs, to passive denial of groups of people from the benefits of the human condition.

There is one other serious problem with Pascal's Wager. The Wager is not 'unbelief vs. Christianity' as Pascal would lead us to believe. It is actually unbelief vs. ALL other religions. After all, why should Christianity be given any priority over any other religious belief?

When the wager is put in a correct and honest fashion, one can see the falsity of the proposition.

I greatly hope that our numbers are growing. Thank you for your enlightenment, Sam Harris.

Right on.