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Paluka just said this

"Nope. I believe that the only reason anyone believes in God is because they desperately want there to be one."

Which made me think of this:

Perhaps the biggest flaw in our society (and perhaps the history of mankind, although I don't know nearly enough to make that claim) is our utter inability to accept that there are things that we do not know. We suffer such discomfort in these situations, that we grasp for explanations that may not make the most sense, but make us feel the best.

Thoughts?

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Dids,


to get your thread back on track (the god vs no-god debate is stupid)

I would contend that its not mankind's inability to accept the unknowable and integrate it into his daily life which is most detrimental to his "progress" through the ages, for that desire to know, his creative drive, his need to *know* is perhaps one of hes most profound attributes, one of the very few distinctions that can be made between us and other animals. I would posit that it is man inability to critically examine why he knows what he knows. He simply accepts that his knowledge is truth, and refuses to consider what benefit is being served by knowing any particular fact. Man's base of knowledge has always been a self-serving instrument, meant to not only improve his life, but to help him adjust to his surroundings, both environmental and cultural. This is fine, and in fact is part of what being human is all about. Once this knowledge becomes a tool for mans complacency, or worse his enslavement, whether to religious or social ideology, that mankind is at his worse. Then knowledge becomes a justification for "immoral' behavior, a tool for those who are most willing to exploit others for their own gain.

This is especially true considering that most systems of knowledge are actually just belief systems put into place to fill the gaps of what is, at present, unknowable. Consider, 500 years ago, most of the population of the world knew that the world was flat, and that there was no possible way that earth was actually ball shaped. This was considered the enlightened belief, and anyone who said otherwise was osctracized as being insane or idiotic. If one also considers the notion of a geo-centric universe, it becomes very easy to understand that the idea that the divine plan placed the earth at the center of the universe fit very nicely into the conceit of medieval humanity. To which conceits does our knowledge serve today?

For what its worth, i do side with the athiests in the ongoing debate about the existence of god. I think for too long the idea of god and divine providence has served to explain away the ills of the world, which for the most part are human in origin. Its time for us to leave behind the old language of good and evil and begin to conceptualize of a truly human-born morality, and, while i certainly believe its possible to reorganize religious thought to promote such beliefs, i think the overwhelming magority of practitioners are unwilling to alter their beliefs from thier archaic origins. So while i think that, given the immense nature of this universe, and its infinite possibilities and mysteries, any existence of a god is utterly irrelevent to humanity, i think humanity is better served, at least at this point, in having a very strong, rational, KIND, and UNDERSTANDING athiest movement.


pjn