[extropy-chat] Atheism in Decline

[Daniel Fogelholm]

On Mar 5, 2005, at 8:05 PM, Dirk Bruere wrote:
>
> I have experience of Gods as interactive archetypes - not 'belief'.
> The fact that I define 'Gods' in a manner that is far less restrictive 
> than you does not make me an atheist.
>
> You are setting up a straw man by your apparently ignorant assumptions 
> as to what a 'proper' God should be.

I'm a wee bit busy but, since my previous post went unnoticed (?), I'll 
post the same link again and some other material that may be relevant 
to the discussion.

The most promising empirical explanation for religion today seems to be 
the cognitive science of religion. This fairly new science is perhaps 
best represented by Pascal Boyer's "religion explained" , Scott Atran's 
"In Gods We trust" and  "Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of 
Religion" Edited by Ilkka Pyysiäinen and Veikko Anttonen.

The link I posted earlier should illustrate this approach fairly well:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-03/religion.html  (then there's always 
google)

Moving on to how science is supposedly conforming a God endowed 
universe I'd like to introduce Victor J Stenger ( 
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/ ) into the discussion.  
 From his web-site (where there's a lot more, so don't be afraid to 
check it out):

> Why Science Can Now Prove That God Does Not Exist
>  In my 2003 book Has Science Found God? I provided a critique of 
> contemporary claims that science supports the existence of God and 
> found them inadequate.  In this book, I will go much further and argue 
> that science makes a strong case against the existence a God with the 
> traditional attributes of the Judaic-Christian-Islamic God. My 
> argument will not be based simply on the gross absence of evidence for 
> God. Not only is there no evidence for God, I will argue that the 
> evidence we have can be used to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt 
> that God does not exist. Not only does the universe show no evidence 
> for God, it looks exactly as it would be expected to look if there is 
> no God. In a final chapter I will show why it is preferable to live in 
> a Godless universe.

I'd be glad to hear what you people think of all this put together.