[ExI] No gods, no meaning?

[William Flynn Wallace]

At the other end of the spectrum well inside the very stupid area you have
Christian young earth creationists who make it no secret that regardless of
how much scientific evidence is brought against it in the future they
will continue
to believe in the literal interpretation of Genesis because it was written
by God and thus is the ultimate truth.   John

In my estimation, members of our group are in the top 1%, 5%, or something
and would not be described as 'needy' by anyone in their right mind.  But
see what John wrote:  many people are desperate for an authority to follow,
no matter what.  Very needy people that we cannot relate to very much, if
at all.

So I ask:  is religion playing a good role in their lives, or a bad one?
Bad might mean that they deny reality in other areas of their lives, are
way too credulous ($ to Nigeria maybe?), and so on.

Opiates of the people - necessary?

bill w

On Sat, Apr 25, 2020 at 9:46 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 7:31 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> > *In my view, both religion and science are about believing.*
>>
>
> Yes but a scientist's core beliefs are much more compact than his
> religious counterpart, namely "some things work and some things don't, and
> the ones that work are worth spending more of your time on than the ones
> that don't, so learn the difference with observation and experiment".
>
>
>> *> Again, this is highly dependent on the particular religion. [...] Take
>> these words, from the son of the founder of the Bahai Faith: "If religion
>> were contrary to logical reason then it would cease to be a religion and be
>> merely a tradition".*
>>
>
> Taoism and Buddhism in the form originally taught by Buda (before his
> followers turned him into a God after his death) are not really religions
> at all because they say nothing about God and make very modest claims about
> knowing the true nature of reality and leave that to science, rather they
> are states of mind that they think, perhaps with some justification, will
> make people happy. All true religions are stupid, but some are stupider
> than others and Baha'i is in the less stupid end of the spectrum, but no
> religion can harmonize a belief in a omnipotent benevolent God with
> Darwinian Evolution.
>
> At the other end of the spectrum well inside the very stupid area you have
> Christian young earth creationists who make it no secret that regardless
> of how much scientific evidence is brought against it in the future they
> will continue to believe in the literal interpretation of Genesis because
> it was written by God and thus is the ultimate truth.
>
> > *Interesting thought: Is Sagan's definition of science itself a static
>> belief? How could it ever change?*
>>
>
> Basically all science says is keep following an idea to see where it leads
> until it stops working and then abandon it and find a better idea; but you
> wouldn't want to abandon science as long as it's working, and if the
> scientific method stops working the only way you would know its not working
> is by following the scientific method, although you're going to have one
> hell of a time finding something better.
>
> John K Clark
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