1. Q: How can you prove to me that God doesn’t exist?A: Don’t need to. You’re making the assertion that one exists; the burden of proof rests on you, or on the person that convinced you of your position. I am not convinced that God does not exist, as I was never convinced of his existence in the first place.

   Meanwhile, even if a God were proven to exist to me, I have enough knowledge of both Judeo-Christian scripture and science to know that said proven God is not the Christian, Jewish, or Muslim God. Nor Hindu, Greek, Sikh, Roman, Zoroastrian. Maybe some flavors of Buddhist, but it’s not convincing without first proof of a God. (Yes, I’ve read their scriptures too; do you have any idea how difficult it was to find an English translation of the Adi Granth?)

2. Q: If nothing creates nothing, then how is the Big Bang theory real?A: The Big Bang theory doesn’t suppose that origin was nothing. It can’t make reactive predictions beyond the Planck epoch (the first 1×10^-43 seconds after the origin of the universe).
3. Q: If evolution is real, then why are humans endowed[sic] with a knowledge of a higher power at such a young age?A: Most of us (the human race) are repeatedly told of a God before we know that the sound “gahd” has a meaning.

   Additionally, when we are young, our authority is our father and mother. Then, as we grow older, we learn that our parents have to answer to someone, and they to someone else. We expect that there must be an ultimate authority, whether one exists or not, just from extrapolation.

4. Q: How can you disprove intelligent design without saying that it just doesn’t exist?A: ID doesn’t make a lot of predictions, but it does predict two things: First, that there should be unevolvable complexity in biological systems; second that, at some point looking backwards backwards, the tree of life should terminate at multiple roots, rather than one. Neither of these predictions pan out well: “irreducibly complex” systems have been repeatedly shown not to be unevolvable; the fossil record, when organized by phylogeny, traces origins to a single common ancestor.
5. Q: How could life come from non-living [matter]?A: Abiogenesis is a complex and fascinating topic on which research is presently being done. As such, no one is yet equipped to give you a clear answer.

   If, however, you are interested in a basic outline of one of the various theorems, I suggest cdk007’s video entitled “The Origin of Life - Abiogenesis” (embedded):
6. Q: If evolution is real, then where are the transitional fossils?A: Generally, in museums. You’ve been lied to if you believe there are none. There’s no cat-turning-into-a-dog fossil - nor does evolutionary theory predict such a thing - but if you know anything about evolutionary theory, you’ll know that every fossil (and life-form) is transitional. If you’re looking for fossil evidence of speciation events (which requires three fossils; an origin, a transition on one branch, and a transition on the other), just google for “speciation fossil”. The first article that comes up has an excellent set of links to entire groups (by phylogeny) of transitionals.
7. Q: Why would 40 people write 66 chapters to a book over the span of 1,500 years, just for it to mean nothing?A: The Bible doesn’t “Mean nothing”, even to an Atheist. The Torah is a history of the Jewish people from around 4,000 BC to around 500 BC; it contains the laws of a culture, the wisdom of its elders, etc. The New Testament contains the collected philosophy of the Gnostics (early christians). That the book also contains mystical nonsense is not deprecating to the quality of the other information held in the book. For a comparison, read some of the Roman archives from the same period; in their historical accounts, there are mentions of “miraculous” happenings and prophecy fulfillment at about the same frequency as there are in the Bible. That does not lessen the value of the true history that is also recorded in those pages.
8. Q: What will you do the day you’re left behind? (That is, if you live long enough…)A: I assume you’re talking about the “Rapture”. 144,000 people being taken bodily into heaven would be sufficient evidence for the existence of God for my tastes. I’d become a Christian, likely on the spot. I’d also have to figure out how everything in science fits into Christianity, as the presently promoted explanations are not convincing. In short, I might be a Christian, but I would still not be an ID’er. On the up side, given rapture, I’d have the opportunity to ask. Even if I couldn’t ask God, I’m sure someone in hell would know - whether I’d get a straight answer is another question, but I’d have eternity to verify, and I’m sure torment would become a drag after a while.
9. Q: How can Evolution be classified as science, when science only uses things that can be hypothesised[sic] and tested?A: Evolutionary theory makes predictions, which can be tested.

   For example, the generic form of one of the most commonly tested prediction of evolutionary geology is: if we dig to a certain depth, in a certain location, we should find a certain set of fossils. This particular test has been run several thousand times; each test has both confirmed the theory itself (we do find the fossils), and adjusted the assumptions we’ve made along the way (sometimes we find some of the fossils, but not others, and look for evidence of an extinction; sometimes we find that the rock is wrong, and we have to adjust our assumed geology of that location).

   A more specific test was in the chromosomal difference between humans and our closest cousin, chimpanzees. They (and every other primate species) have 24 chromosomal pairs, while we have 23. You can’t just drop a chromosomal pair without dying, so evolutionary genetics predicts that there must have been a chromosomal fusion, and that we should find the evidence of that fusion in one of our own chromosomes. Chromosome 2 ended up being the culprit, with not only the telomeres (chromosomal termini) and centromeres (chromosomal centers) in the right places to indicate fusion, but with matching of the component chromosomes to their counterparts in chimp DNA consistent with the rate at which chimp DNA matches our own overall.

10. Q: Why would Jesus endure what he did just for it to mean nothing?A: Given that, in the story, Jesus had Romans at his back, and kinsfolk that weren’t willing to risk undergoing the same torture to save him, I would suggest that, once betrayed, Jesus didn’t have a choice. A lot of people got crucified in those days. Some fled to avoid their sentence - and woe be to the criminal and those helping him escape when the Roman Soldiers got a hold of them. They weren’t known for being nice guys. Best case scenario, Jesus was attempting to protect his comrades by not resisting.

    There’s an old saying about Jesus: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord. I would add, “Legend”; as was stated above, in the answer to question 7, people in those days tended to mystify things. Remember, the Bible is not the word of Jesus, but the word of his Apostles, as handed down for at least one generation (3-4, in some cases) before getting put to parchment.

11. Q: If evolution is real, then explain Laminin and its [parallel] with Collosians 1:17A: I have to call you on this: you’re making a decidedly stupid parallel. Are you suggesting that a protein is God? You could suggest the same parallel between Col 1:17 and electrons; laminin physically holds most animal life together (cellulose does the same for plants), but electrons, they literally hold EVERYTHING together, aside from subatomic particles.
12. Q: Why did Darwin say before he died that [evolution] was just a theory?A: I Googled for: [Darwin quote "Just a theory"]. I couldn’t find the quote by Darwin you were referencing. Perhaps you could lead me to it?
13. Q: Why are so many biblical prophesies coming true, and how long can you pass this all off as coincidence before it’s too late? (ref: Matthew 24:27, “For as the lightning flashes from the east to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be”A: I’m unaware of the prophecies you are referring to. Specifics are in order.

    “As the lightning flashes from east to west” Does it? I haven’t heard of lightning move circumferential around the globe in any direction. I’ve seen it muddle in short bursts up in cirrus clouds, but that’s been going on for eons now.

14. Q: Are you ready?A: Am I ready for what?

Now, in ‘08, I can’t say that I feel the same way about the man.  I’m voting Obama now, incidentally.

The reason for my vote.

In 2000, 2004, and even as near as 2006, McCain had fundamental disagreements with the Bush Administration; he was respectful of his colleagues in the Senate, was incensed by the Republican’s “attack machine” method of political debate, and he generally had an excellent sense of humor. Strangely, though, the second he donned his “game face”
he aligned with the existing Administration, and adopted their attack machine as his own personal election winner.

His primary election success was based on his stance on the issues; a stance that, while it did alienate some of the conservative vote, appealed to centrists and even some liberals. That this stance was abandoned in favor of, essentially, the Bush Doctrine - this screams intellectual dishonesty. This screams, “I want the election, and I’m willing to swap my position to whatever it takes to get it”.

I understand the motivation: the Democrats have an inspirational candidate; it’s going to be hard to get any Democrat to defect, we’ll concentrate on solidifying the existing conservative base instead. Add to that, the republicans have a Nader-esque spoiler in the form of Bob Barr this year, when they rarely have to deal with spoilers of the Nader variety - at a time when a significant number of their base has been leaning towards the pre-McCarthy conservatism that the Libertarians have been appealing to. (The Ron Paul vote, around 2-3% nationally, IS significant when you’re considering the presidential race, which has been remarkably tight in the last couple of cycles). This is particularly damaging this year; much of the Green democrats have been both severely disillusioned by Nader and strongly attracted to Obama; Nader isn’t going to spoil the Dems nearly as badly as Barr is going to spoil the Republicans.

The problem with this campaign method - solidification of your base in light of internal attrition and the difficulty of oppositional attrition - is that it ignores the centrists that more or less make or break a campaign. The centrists, at the outset, agreed more with the even-handed McCain of ‘06 than the hamfisted McCain of ‘08. By attempting to pander to the moderate right, and by utilizing the Rovian political tactics against a candidate who’s platform rests partially on the idea that Washington’s politics are broken, he essentially lost the center and moderate left in one stroke.

At that note, McCain essentially helped Obama prove his point: every attack, every smear, was an opportunity for Obama to say, “Hey, see what I mean? This isn’t appropriate behavior for a politician. What happened here? We need to fix this. Help me fix it. Prove to the other politicians that this sort of appeal to fear and outright lying won’t win them an election.”

So, some of the smears that are kind of laughable.  The “Empty suit” rhetoric, for example.  Given that Obama appears to know what he’s doing, and McCain appears not to, this just looks like another typical example of Rovian transference tactic: get the public to scrutinize the other party on your faults, so that when it comes out that you have them, the effect is mitigated by the portion of the public that was convinced by your initial accusation.

It’s a brilliant - but entirely dishonest - tactic. I can’t think why the Dems don’t use it often, but the “moral” majority does. It couldn’t be because those with strong absolutist morals are relatively easy to emotionally exploit in that respect, now, could it?

The “Socialist” charge is equally ridiculous.  It essentially goes this way: Obama has been exposed to socialism, and has socialists’ support so he’s a socialist.  Now, the easiest failure of this argument is that exposure doesn’t equal agreement, nor has it resulted as such in Obama’s case - at least, not to any visible degree.

The implication is that an individual’s supporters dictate his politics. If you’re going to take this logical fallacy to its conclusion: Obama may have socialists / communists who agree on more points with him than with McCain, and thus support him - but McCain has Neo Nazi’s and other forms of fascists who agree with him on more points than they agree with Obama, thus supporting him.

Socialists are generally well thinking people with an idealistic flaw (that is, that people are selfless enough at the national scale to allow pure socialism to work - they just aren’t; pure socialism generally can’t work with anything but small populations for this reason - but in balanced hybrid with capitalism, it works rather well). Neo-nazi’s, on the other hand, are disgusting examples of the ideological danger involved in a eugenic mindset (that is, one race is superior, but in a way that nature apparently hasn’t caused to overtake the species).

In short, by invoking a sort of “guilt by association”, McCain’s campaign is playing a losing game, even if we play by his intellectually dishonest rules.

Below the fold are some points on the economy, and not really related to the election.  Read on if you’re interested.

I’ve been exposed - intentionally, by the way - to every governmental and economic system possible; enough so, at least, that I can tell you *why* neither pure socialism nor pure capitalism work in practice for a population the size of the US.

It fails due to the weight of self interest at a large enough scale.  Self-interest pretty much denies the benefits of hard work as the community grows; fewer of the benefits of your work reach the people you care about, and so, self-interest takes over and you simply don’t work hard.

Capitalism, meanwhile, fails in small populations for much the opposite reason.  A free market without the assumption of created wealth (something you have to assume if your goal is stability) is, essentially, a zero sum game.   for every winner there must be “losers”.  Capitalism thus fails in small populations because there are few individuals to spread the loss around on.  As population increases to infinity, the economy can support more winners, and the overall economic efficiency goes up.

You may question why it’s good to have winners: concentration of wealth is necessary for big projects to get done.  As more winners are supported at minimal detriment to the “losers”, their big projects end up benefiting all players (big projects result in wealth creation - as said, not an assumption, but a result).

The problems is that the inefficiency line of wealth concentration does get drawn somewhere.  I’m going to guess here that the median income ratio for corporate heads versus corporate employees (around 2,500:1 in many cases) is well above that line.  After it gets crossed, the “losers” of the game either stop playing, or worse - they start digging credit holes in order to appear winner-like.

You can see where I’m going with this.

Anyway, the solution is really a simple one, with very complex implementation details: a hybrid strategy of capitalism with socialist padding (such as the present state of the US economy), with good management of the knobs of such a system.  In the US it’s mitigated (almost on its own, despite every poitician wishing to look like he’s doing something useful) the credit crisis from being a complete economic disaster to resulting in an economic slump.  Yes, lots of people are homeless or hemorrhaging money in stocks - but the fact is that (first) the newly homeless are more victims of financial marketing than the economic downturn, and (second) those wall street failures aren’t causing wider economic strife - they’re causing the loss of a relative few personal fortunes, generally made by speculation in the first place.

Retirement funds and other long term mutuals, for example, aren’t doing poorly.

The reason, of course, is because of the partially socialist nature of the US Economic System.  In this case, it’s the insurance of the FDIC on personal savings; even full-on banking collapses don’t affect those who have less than $100,000 in their account - and as that’s some three years of salary for the median income, few of us have it.

The bailout is of dubious benefit, mind you.  It’d have been better to allow the collapse of those banks, and use the $800B to pay to non FDIC insured accounts (some do exist).  Meanwhile, the lending crisis affect the makers of McMansions and people looking to buy a new home.

Well, damn.  You have people who want to buy homes, and people who want to sell homes.  How long do you think it will take before a bank with a rational risk assessment policy fills the gap left by those who have stuck their hands in the campfire, and are now terrified of it?

I’m not belittling the condition of those now homeless due to predatory ARM lending - but I’m saying that their situation is partially the cause of the credit aversness of the banking industry, not the result of it.

That said, those who are at risk of losing your homes: call and renegotiate; a bank is way more interested in being paid in the long term than in high payments in the short term.

That’s it, really.

The accusation comes to light often enough that Atheists are immoral - even less moral than other religions that aren’t yours - because they don’t have a divinely inspired - or even a fixed - moral code.  In order to refute this, without actually defining the content of my moral code, I’ll now lead you down a quick logical pathway.

I will assume for the sake of argument that your religious text is divinely inspired.  It contains a moral code.

There are many other religious text - not divinely inspired, as per the assumption, but written by humankind - that also contain moral codes.  They may be inferior, for lack of divine inspiration, but they are serviceable for those that follow them.

These other religions are still around, sometimes for thousands of years.  So they must at least be serviceable enough to prevent societal collapse.

At this point, we can agree that it is possible for humans to write a moral code without divine inspiration that is at least sufficiently servicable to prevent societal collapse for societies following it.  This is exactly what the an atheist moral code would be.

So, no.  Atheists aren’t by definition immoral.  Sinful, by your standards, surely, but in no way immoral.

However, I do take some offense at anyone who decides it’s their business to inform me of my ’sins’.  It’s bad enough that you assume moral authority without some form of objective justification - but to judge another person based on your arbitrary rules is decidedly rude.

And, yes.  To this, I respond in turn.  I live by a set of rules - one of which is intellectual honesty.  I am inclined to, and often do force people attacking me with accusations of iniquity to question how often they lie to themselves.

It’s, unsurprisingly, a lot - even if they won’t admit it.  Hell, even with the rule in place, I have the occasional self-deception going on.  It’s one of those things that takes constant vigilance - but is pretty rewarding in a real sense when it comes down to it.

That is, when you avoid lying even to yourself, you tend to get a reputation for almost superhuman honesty.  Such a rep is a valuable thing in a society that, primarily, is based on trust.  Such a rep also tends to excuse the almost immediate smile accompanied by a polite ‘No thank you’, when presented with things like offers to accompany another person to church, crosses, pamphlets, etc.  I may be a heathen, but at least I’m honest.

When doing my debatey thing, I often come across the “Something can’t come from nothing” argument against Big Bang theory.  Here’s a few reasons it’s illogical:

1. Big Bang describes the events that occurred immediately after universal formation: planck, Unified fields, inflation, electroweak, quark, hadron, lepton, photon, and recombination.  Prior to that - the first Planck time after universal formation was kicked off, we don’t know anything - can’t know anything - because it occurred outside observable reference (that is, we can only derive the universe in reverse to a point; beyond that point, the laws of physics don’t work and the math fails).  So the first failure is in addressing that they think we’re talking about ultimate universal origin, rather than speaking about the universe’s history after that.  (sort of like telling one life story, but omitting the conception)
2. The arguer is assuming that there was ‘nothing’ before the events described by Big Bang.  As pointed out by (1), this isn’t necessarily true - is probably not true - because, as said, we don’t know the state of the universal system before the start of inflation.  If you’re going to assert that something can’t come from nothing, the only thing to say for it is that, obviously, something was there.  Don’t know what, but you asserted it.  Can be God if you like, but you, like me, would have to figure out what that something is made of - God included.
3. Generally, it’s followed up or used in support of, “so the only alternative is God.”  Leaving aside the false dichotomy here, we’re still claiming a something from nothing scenario: God speaking it into existence doesn’t change the fact that it’s still something from nothing - and reiterates the question: why doesn’t anything spring from nothing today?
4. It’s kind of fallacy that nothing can spring from nothing: virtual particle pairs spring from vacuum all the time, always in particle-antiparticle pairs.  I’m not a physicist, so I can’t really speak as to the application of this to universal formation, but I do find it interesting.  (I can say, however, that in Zero Point Energy, which is what describes this phenominon, the VPP’s are ‘borrowing’ energy from the baseline).

Fundie Muslims demand respect for their religion - in itself a hypocrisy.  Muslims, like any other religion, are obligated to disrespect the religions of others.  ‘Respect my religion’ means ‘follow my religion’.

That is, to a follower of a religion, disagreement with the Dogma is disrespect of it.  You can’t disagree with what’s written in the Holy Bible!  It’s scripture!  It’s Holy!  It’s Biblical, even! As such, dissent - a generally rational and useful tool for wrenching out truth and action - becomes heresy. While the punishment for this has waned in these enlightened days, it still breeds a certain closed-mindedness.  Even an attempt at humorous dissent - as this video is (a bad attempt, rife with light-hearted bigotry) - becomes something to despise.

So, I am certain that someone will cast this video as hate - as certain as I am that most people will find it either funny or cringe-worthy.  But it does speak a couple of basic rules on human behavior to me.  Tenative though they may be, here is the list.

The phrase, ‘methinks thou dost protest too much’ applies here; as loudly as fundie Muslims demand respect, have they respect for their own religion?  Or do they see their often violent outbursts of ignobility as a way to forgive their own transgressions against Islam?  Rule 1: The more loudly a person complains, the more likely they are guilty of the subject of the complaint.

Additionally, the more fundie Muslims in particular have a recent history of being loud and confrontational about getting the respect they ‘deserve’ just for adhering to their flavor of bronze age desert fiction.  Rule 2: Those who demand respect the loudest, will receive the least.

Meanwhile, governments (not so much the US yet*, but Eurpoe and Canada have been bad with this) bow down to pressure for ‘respect’, by giving muslims special privileges.  Rule 3: The squeaky wheel gets the grease - even when it’d be better to get a new cart.

Of course, fundie muslims can’t see with the objective clarity that an onlooker can.  They don’t see themselves as protesting too much - they see themselves as righteous.  They don’t understand why we shun their incessent cries for respect as we would a child crying wolf.  They’re frustrated.  It’s rather clear to most that Islam will not spread over the whole world**; we’re simply not listening.  Rule 4: Frustration comes from aspired, but persistently unachieved goals.

We’re tying our best to let you live in our countries, chill with us, be cool humans - and a lot of your more moderate types are exactly that: quite cool.  I’ll admit they’re not mentioned much here - but frankly, they don’t cause problems.  Rule 5: The most visible members of a class will be the representation of that class.

We (speaking unworthily for the secular world) would love it if Afghanistan, to pull an example, turned into an idyllic mountain-ribbed nation of prosperity in whatever form its culture devised.  It’d be a place to spend our tourist money, take snapshots of, meet quality people, and tell our friends about.  Rule 6: It doesn’t matter how paranoid you are; you’re not so important that ‘they’ are out to get you.

Lastly, and this one’s a biggie, it always seems to me that insularity breeds conflict.  When a class of people makes themselves separate from everyone else, it’s unaviodable to start using distasteful pronouns like ‘us’ and ‘them’.  ‘Us’ has this connotation that whatever ‘we’ think, it’s better than what ‘they’ think.  ‘Them’ has a connotation that ‘they’ are a threat to ‘us’.  As such, the initator of this mentality forces it on those they strike out against. Rule 7: The initiator of the ‘Us v. Them’ mindset automatically becomes ‘Them’.  And ‘They’ always lose.

Wow.  Got a lot out of a really bad video.  Go figure.

* The reasons for this have more to do with Christian Fundamentalism in the US than proper secularism.  After all, Europe is mostly secular.  So yeah, we’re doing the right thing, but for the wrong reasons.  Meanwhile, Christians get special priveliges here because they have the voting power to make it so.  I don’t think this is right, but I’m no more in a position to dismantle the natural result of a democratic republic with a Christian pluarlity than I am of a mind to become a dictator.  Fascism just tastes funny to me.  I’d rather see secularism become a majority voice.

** As said before, respect for religion = adherence to religion.  Demanding universal respect, especially in Islam, is demanding universal worship - which, let’s not fool ourselves, is a goal OF Islam.

You’re finally shutting down?

I’ll tell you, I had a lousy birthday: I got selected for a jury trial, which killed my birthday plans; I had to work on a Friday when I had specifically requested off for a nice long weekend with my fianceé; nothing went as planned - still we made the best of it.

Still, when a disinformationist such as your self shuts down; it’s an awesome birthday present.

Mind you the cause, death threats, not cool. But the results are nice.

Goodbye.

Please rate fairly and discuss on YouTube (not here).

I will not be attacking religion, nor shall I be harping on the fallacies of theism in general. No, today, I will be be philosophizing in an attempt to understand the need to believe.

In order to do this, I’m going to make an attempt to think like a theist; this requires me to assume that a God or Gods exist. I will be speaking in primarily that context.

I realize the tendancy to gravitate towards a strawman, or to derive cynical positions. I will attempt to restrict myself to some level of piety as far as it goes.

I also realize that it is impossible for me to completely remove my knowledge of reality and certain bits of information; as such, I’ll get that out of the way before I really get into the ’spirit’, as it were.

Often times, I hear that those who are indoctrinated into X-religion early are often X-religians. This ostensibly applies to Chrisitans, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc. While that rings true for the particular denomination, I don’t believe it also holds true for theism itself.

Once abstract thought kicks in in one’s teen years, it occurs to me that with the rebellious instinct, the ability to discern fact from fiction, and the knowledge that much of the scripture is in the form of parables, fables, and poetry, one might be easily able to reject theism without too much remorse.

Of course, only about a fifth of adherents diverge from theism entirely, and only another tenth rejects their particular denomination for a more deistic view.

In order to explain this, I was thinking of how God is defined: If we think heirarchically, we can think of God as the ultimate authority. If we think creatively, the master builder. If we think administratively, the primary resource.

Essentially, whatever God is, he’s responsible for all creation, and speaks for all mankind.

So, I’ll start small and work my way out.

In individual accomplishment, when something is done well, we often want to congratulate the person that did well on a job well done. Similarly, when something is screwed up, we usually want to give a stern talking to to the parties responsible.

In team accomplishment, when the team does well, not only is there external congratulations, but internal as well. If the team does bad, there is external judgement, generally focused on the team’s leader, as well as internal condolences and potentially punishment.

So, consider the team to be the human race, and the leader to be God: When we screw up, it’s God’s responsibility, and God’s punishment that must be faced, though we are remorseful for our error; when we do well, it’s to God’s glory and we may congratulate ourselves and each other.

Overall, you’ll notice, the balance is positive in life; we feel remorse at an error, but are not directly responsible for it - but individually, we get to enjoy our accomplishments and even feel good about praising God.

So, that seems a good deal, doesn’t it? Meanwhile, it gives us something else that we as humans seem to instinctively need: when we can’t - or are unwilling to - ascribe a win or failure to any individual - ourselves included - we get to praise or blame God. We have a target for our joy and frustrations, so that we can vent them - express our emotions. We can even bring a modicum of solace to ourselves as we know that an infallable God must allow these minor ‘failures’ as part of his plan.

Meanwhile, mostly in the Christian faith, is the idea that God loves each and every one of us. He created us as his special children, has a plan for all of us, and over all other things, loves us - loves you, personally.

Moving back to my secular home base, now.

On the first topic, that is, readily having a target for blame and credit: I feel the problem with this sort of thinking is that it denies intellectual rigor. The emotional need to find the source of success or failure is a driving force of investigation - the root discipline of police work, scientific endeavor, and everything down to high school homework. To subvert this primal need, rather than to tame and discipline it into curiosity, I see as a grave threat to the cerebral advancement of civilization.

As for the unconditional love of the most important character possible: Human beings are social creatures, and the idea that the source of all humanity - that special one that has been here and is responsible for all of it - is a wonderous and warm feeling, to be sure. I can see how it can be a strongly attractive force for belief - but it only truly works if one is either unaware or sufficiently convinced of the presence of this being.

In short, I think I see the point of the delusion of God for people; you need to hold someone responsible for all the good and bad things in the world, and better, you need to know that the bad things that aren’t your fault are also not something that is being done to you on purpose (they’re part of the plan). It’d also be nice if this ultimately responsible being shared a connection with you.

I understand. I get it. Knowing that what we call ‘good’ is an emergent property of interactions between members of a society may be hard to understand - as hard to understand as it is to fathom that what is refered to as ‘evil’ is an emergent property of competition for survival when resources are scarce. Shimming in God as the source of good and evil seems an easy, if poorly formulated patch.

Meanwhile, turning to an imaginary friend to act as a placebo for the need of love when one can just get out there to look for someone to love and be loved - you’ll think this is the ultimate in cynicism, but I see that as weak-minded and pathetic.