<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>You
are certainly right that most educated people do not have a high
religious sense. All I am saying is that it is not incompatible. <br></div></div></blockquote><div><br><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">The only way the two can coexist in the</font></div><font size="4"> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">same </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">
mind is if they are kept in strict airtight compartments so that the
religious ideas and the intelligent ideas never have any contact with
each other. Thus for 6 days a week the intelligent geologist deduces
that the area above the layer of 359 million year old microfossils and
below the layer of 299 </div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">million year old microfossils<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> would be a good place to drill for oil, and then <span tabindex="0" class=""><span class="">on Sunday</span></span> sings the praises of God and a 6 thousand year old Earth.</div></span></font><br><br></div><div>Or another way than compartmentalizing:<br><br></div><div>In my case, I was soso on religion (said of all Episcopalians) until I went to college, and became rather evangelical - even thought about the ministry or even foreign missions (the ultimate sacrifice at the Baptist college and the one getting you the most campus prestige). But I went into grad school, etc. Taught Sunday school to older adults, was choir leader in the evenings, substitute organist, member of the administrative board, tithed our GROSS income, and so on.<br><br></div><div>When I got to about 30 I realized that I just did not believe much of it, esp. the magical parts. I split from the church, got divorced from a serious Baptist, and my attitudes have increasingly moved away from religion of any sort. I do retain much of what Jesus said re forgiveness and other moral philosophies, not that much, like the Golden Rule, had not been said by earlier people.<br><br></div><div>Maybe what happened was that my brain finally matured. It is known that it can take up to age 25 or even longer in higher IQ people for the neocortex to finally mature. Thus once I had full control of my reasoning powers and applied them to what I was teaching in Sunday school, it just all fell apart. I do not hate or despise religion or the people who practice it. I do view them as deluded or, as you say, compartmentalized.<br><br></div><div>I do admit to being at least slightly puzzled at the hostility that many religious people have towards atheists. Perhaps they are ignorant of or deny the studies showing atheists at approximately the same level of moral development. We now have people in the news saying they won't deal with anyone, like the Asian convenience store owners, who aren't Christian. Of course this is far from a Christian attitude, supporting the charge of hypocrisy they are often tagged with and richly deserve.<br></div><div><br></div><div>bill w<br></div> </div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Adrian Tymes <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:atymes@gmail.com" target="_blank">atymes@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><p dir="ltr">On Dec 11, 2015 3:12 AM, "BillK" <<a href="mailto:pharos@gmail.com" target="_blank">pharos@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> Some people have had 'near-death' religious experiences that had such<br>
> a huge emotional impact that it changed their life for ever after.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Which is relevant to psychedelics how? Near-death experiences can give a new perspective, sure, but no illusion of enhanced sensory capability nor inexplicable but supposedly profound insights.</p>
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