Interesting take...

[Rench]

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6397336? ... lp00000592" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

-Rench

[DerGolgo]

I've spent my life reading/hearing about people who "found god", and how wonderful and whatnot that is.
Going not just the other way, but the priest turning apostate, that is refreshing to behold.
Maybe some people will look at this and think Well, if someone who has thoroughly studied faith like a priest can loose his own faith, maybe atheists aren't quite the badevil morality-free monsters I always thought they were.
Let's just hope he doesn't go on a killing spree or something. You know they'd use that ammo up to and including for legislative purposes.

[Bigshankhank]

Well, at least he acknowledges that there is no way to ascertain what "living without God" for a year means (extrapolating the comment about questioning his sincerity), but I still wonder how one really does that as just a thought experiment? At any rate, one of the things my wife and I struggled with is she took the position, as a devout atheist, that religious folk are all nuts blindly following a mythical being with no capacity for rational thought. While I am not religious in the sense that I follow any particular religion nor believe in the great bearded sky wizard version of god, I believe that there is something in the creation of the world that should inspire a sense of wonder and dare I say magic, which I would call the work of a supreme entity. But I grew up in a catholic home, attended catholic school most of my life and have studied, at least from a philosophical point of view, religions around the world, so she and I came to a balance where she understands that <most>people of faith simply have a joining bond with one another but that it doesn't prevent them from seeing outside that world view. And of course, in my experience most people I've met who refer to themselves as one religious denomination or another tend to be dilettantes and are only doing it out of a sense of obligation. So I try not to hold it against them.

[Bigshankhank]

I would also say that this ties into the thread about traveling, and opening oneself up to another viewpoint by seeing how others live. It's too easy, especially nowadays, to look at the internet and think whats happening in West Africa is nothing more than those savages deserve, ditto the same thought for St Louis, SE Asia, Crimea, whenever people are seen to be living in a different manner than middle america, including middle america.

[Rench]

I particularly enjoyed the final Q/A, about each learning from eachother. There are idiots and prosthelatizers on both sides, but the mass in the middle, the Silent Majority to steal a phrase, on bothered sides, are rational people trying to find answers. I dig.

-Rench

[DerGolgo]

I recall a pretty neat elaboration on seeing the world with a sense of wonder. It was by Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate and notorious and vocal atheist.
The idea that science is one special aspect of the world and can, therefore, not have all the answer, is flawed.
Science is knowledge of the world. That's all it is, knowing about the world. Not believing, not guessing, not conjecturing, not assuming or demanding. But observing the world, figuring out how and why it works based on what can be observed.
I won't bore you with repeating what I wrote about this only eight years ago: http://www.utmc-forum.org/pub/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=6516" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Cold, hard science, if anything, helps to marvel at the world. I know it let's me see the magic, where I define magic as magnificent and amazing stuff that just impresses me in all the ways I cannot comprehend.
Science is why I can marvel at the ongoing repetition of the number Pi appearing in nature. Yes, it's all just because of circle, I know. I know because of science.
Science lets me marvel at how everything I touch is made from the same three things, just in different arrangement. Protons, neutrons and electrons. At how, actually, I can only ever bring the negative electric fields around the nuclei of my own atoms into so much proximity with other such negative electric fields, but no real matter ever really touches other matter.
With these same electrons, it shows me that, fundamentally, the universe is undecided and quite loopy, when the electrons are blasted through the double slit.
Science tells me where, in my head, exactly, and in yours, and in that strange fella from Turkmenistan's head, we make moral judgements about people we see*, and that the little, involuntary expression I make when I'm happy to see someone is the same expression the little girl from Sudan or the grandfather from Peru make**.
Science shows me stars, and planets around stars other than the sun. It shows me the very bang of the big bang, the noise itself, from the cosmic microwave background, and it shows me how a bee will transfer genetic material from one flower to another. How and why exactly a child is so easily befuddled when you hold your hand in front of their eyes***. That an infant will recognize a human face, but cannot distinguish skin-color or other features of ethnicity ****.

The majesty and grandeur of it all is too big for me to describe, as verbose as even I am. I don't know any poet can. Scientism is just another word for preferring certainty and sure knowledge over any
substitute, while also humbly admitting the limitations to that certainty or surety. Considering what messed up stuff there is to know, I cannot find much fault there. It may not always be pleasant to know. But it's honest.



Citations and stuff (because SCIENCE ):
* the Right Temporoparietal Junction
** there are certain microexpressions that are universal, even the blind who have never seen anyone make such an expression display them, according to the work of Dr. Matsumoto. I think I recall happiness about encountering someone is one of them.
*** Object permanence, the ability to conceive that an object exists even when it is not perceived through the senses, is a feature the brain doesn't fully wire up for until about age two, younger kids only get to enjoy bits of it. See Dr. Piaget's theory of cognitive development.
**** See Dr. Piaget's work once more.

[guitargeek]

I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it wasn't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

[Bigshankhank]

I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it wasn't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

Let the record show that on this day, January the 4th in the year of our Lord 2015, our esteemed senator from Oklahoma did indeed make a reference to Harley.
Ok, maybe not the motor company, but still...