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An "expert" in theology? :) Is that like knowing what color the invisible unicorn is without looking it up? Or being able to count how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?

No, it's actually about being well read in a philosophical tradition that extends back many centuries and includes a great number of names that you'll recognize for their contributions to science and mathematics. Leibniz, Descartes and Pascal are just a few that come to mind. Regardless of what your position is on theism, it's a central part of philosophy and always has been. Many interesting questions have been explored primarily through the perspective of theology - questions about the universe and why it exists in the way that it does, questions about truth and knowledge and whether they and how they are attainable, and questions of morals and ethics and the dilemmas all people face. Many of the arguments from these thinkers are interesting in their own right and are relevant regardless of what world view you personally adhere to.

Dismissing any discipline that you aren't familiar with is a great way to stay uninformed. Philosophy may not have direct, profitable applications, but if you get acquainted with it you can avoid repeating rusty arguments that have been around far longer than this newfangled "science" everybody is so excited about. And along the way you might stumble across some interesting new ways to think about reality.

You know this isn't a scientific article, right, but an interview? Piltdown Man is a story, it explains how he came to realize that scientists were often wrong, and that school science often lags real science by 10-20 years. That's a very important observation. Science doesn't exist in vacuo, it is embedded in wider human systems.

But the fact that we aren't sure how life got started doesn't throw the rest of Evolutionary Theory away.

That's a Strawman. He doesn't say it does. He accepts evolution happens, he just doesn't accept that it is anything like a complete explanation for biogenesis.

Why is no-one mentioning the elephant in the room here? Everyone's jumping on his theism because they're atheists (lovely example of religious tolerance there) but no-one's asking in his world view how did the creator come to exist?

As a mystic you don't know what you're talking about: Both Theism (albeit Judaism, Christianity, or Islam) and Creationism are pseudo religions. They tend to have the opposite effects -- drive people away from God then bring them closer -- because they are in the business of selling Heaven Insurance. Furthermore I never said anything about New Age - it has its own set of problems.

The experience of the Source / Creator / God is available to _everyone_ IF they would first take the time to Know Thyself.

Likewise ALL things are consciousness but Science is too dumb to realize that (yet). Scientists worship the false gods of Materialism and Reductionism. As Peter Russell points in his excellent presentation The Primacy of Consciousness this myopic and archaic perspective is backwards.

  Scientists don't even understand what Life is because they completely fail to understand what Death is.

oh, and two more links for you buddy:

agnostic theism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
agnostic atheism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

so yeah, tone down the rhetoric a bit. get your facts straight first.

actually agnosticism is a position about knowledge, while atheism is a position about theism.

and the prefix a- means essentially not having.

a-gnostic = not having knowledge.
a-theist = not having theism.

a-gnostic is the position that you do not have knowledge. most people are agnostic. a lot of atheists are agnostic, _and so are a lot of theists_. though there are some fundamentalist theist who claim to have "knowledge" of god - those would be gnostic theists. likewise some atheists claim that they have positive knowledge that deities do not actually exist (e.g. that they are demonstrably figments of the cognitive biases in the human mind.). those would be _gnostic_ atheists.

thanks for playing, though.

come again.

You proved my point, "Spirituality is the process of adding "Truth" (aka just ideas or claims), without any predictive power or support from observations".

Spirituality is based upon gnosticism. That is, knowledge by direct experience.

Knowledge is justified true believes. They are justified if you can support them with evidence, and they are true if they correspond to reality. There are different kind of evidence, it can be personal experience, logical arguments, empirical experiments, etc. Personal experiences is the lowest form of evidence, because it is by nature subjective.

There are no proofs for experiences i.e. Prove that you love your spouse.

Bad example, I can actually prove that I love my spouse by the neurons fire in my brain and the endorphins (hormones) in my blood. But you are correct, that there are no objective methods to prove personal experiences, that is why personal experiences is the weakest form of evidence. Many people have personal experiences to be abducted by aliens, or personal experiences with Big Foot, or saw Elvis after his death, or "born again" Christians, and so on.

I would recommend starting with the beginning of ALL Wisdom: Know Thyself.

I agree. And the scientific method gave us this knowledge, more detailed and more supported by evidence then any method before. And the answer is: we are physical beings in a physical universe.

Church Father Clement of Alexandria said it best: " ... the greatest of all lessons to know one's self. For if one knows himself, he will know God; and knowing God, he will be made like God ... and that man becomes God, since God so wills ... "

Nonsensical nonsense.

You are a spiritual being in a physical body having a human experience.
You are significantly much, much more then your body. The real interesting question is "How much more?"
Some use meditation, others lucid dreaming, some music, others religion, etc. Use whatever works.
Condemning another man's path simply because it doesn't work for you is the height ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity.
Theism is only 1 of the 4 paths.

And every path led to nothing at all. Sure, people can induce hallucinations and dreams through very different methods, drugs (Native American), oxygen deprivation, dancing, and so on, but this all just proves the point that we are physical beings in a physical universe. You can chemically alter your brain and get neurons fire and get visions or dreams. So what? Nobody got a Nobel Price with that method, or got anything else from it.

You are a spiritual being in a physical body having a human experience.

Please prove that first. Otherwise it's just a religion.

Spirituality is based upon gnosticism. That is, knowledge by direct experience.
i.e.

Someone can tell you everything there is to know about playing the drums but until you actually DO it you will never fully understand it.

Why are you artificially limiting spirituality to "observations" ?? Transcendent experience have the ability to teach much greater lessons.

There are no proofs for experiences. (i.e. Prove that you love your spouse.) You will have your "proof" for God after you are dead, but by then it won't matter since you won't need proofs -- you'll just know. In this physical life unless you meet your Higher Self the closest thing to proof at this stage you will have while alive is to:

* Look in the mirror.

Eventually you will grok the basic principles of "The All is the One. The One is the All." but you'll probably dismiss that as being "too simple." If not, then there is almost nothing that can be done to open your eyes other then living.

I would recommend starting with the beginning of ALL Wisdom:

Know Thyself.

Church Father Clement of Alexandria said it best: " ... the greatest of all lessons to know one's self. For if one knows himself, he will know God; and knowing God, he will be made like God ... and that man becomes God, since God so wills ... "

Find your passion(s) (whatever that may be) and get lost in it. Eventually you will discover yourself and grok the great fundamental truth:

You are a spiritual being in a physical body having a human experience.

You are significantly much, much more then your body. The real interesting question is "How much more?"

Some use meditation, others lucid dreaming, some music, others religion, etc. Use whatever works.

Condemning another man's path simply because it doesn't work for you is the height ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity.

Theism is only 1 of the 4 paths.

--
First Contact is coming by 2024. Are ready for the next stage in Human development?

5, Insightful? What is wrong with you people? Responding to someone who is being a jerk does not automatically make what you say insightful.

In detail:
Sentence 1 is nonsense because not all strong opinion is religious.
Sentence 2 has a similar problem with the word "faith". It's also daft because the guy never claimed to have a carefully controlled study, and because opinion cannot be summed up by the false dichotomy "faith XOR carefully controlled study".
Sentence 3 and 4 are fine, except for the elephant in the room. Religions have a long history of telling everyone else what to believe, the practice often built into the religion itself. It has historically and in modern times been backed up with murder, rape, torture and full blown armed conflicts. There is no such tradition in not believing in god/s.
Believing the world will be a better place without theism and saying so is only intolerant against the backdrop of societies that assume that you can say what religious things you want but must say nothing against religion.

The thing that gets me is that the last sentence shows the exact sort of opinion the grandparent did i.e. "the world will be a better place without [people I don't agree with]". All that pretense for nothing.

Are your assertions based on a careful controlled study or are they an article of faith?

Um, neither. They are based on decades of anecdote from having theism used as justification to treat me like shit, just because their Invisible Sky Daddy doesn't like my life style.

But hey, nice try at making it sound like I'm blindly devoted to the opposition of religion.

Prove your smugness and faux-intellectual stance.

Stop any absurd emotionalisms - they're just biological tricks to manipulate you into doing what evolution needs you to do... but of course evolution is unguided so it has no "goals" and therefore "needs" nothing from you. Drop the phony concern for anybody but yourself. Once your kids are off on their own, you've done your part.... you and your spouse are disposable.... actually, there was no REAL reason for you to care about kids since they [a] sap your resources [b] will not extend your life and [c] you'll forget them the moment you die. Any pro-child ideas you had were invalid psychological/biological tomfoolery that distracted you from seeking more pleasure before you die. Other stuff is a similar irrational distraction - there's no reason for you to personally do ANYTHING to advance mankind since you'll die and get no pay-off. Heck, (I'm sure you think there's no "hell") just kill anybody who upsets you or gets in your way (if you think you can get away with it, if you think you might get caught it's probably not worth it, there's no MORAL reason not to) and take whatever you want (as long as you think youll get more benefit than any likely cost).

I just love all the people who live in a mostly-peaceful and civilized world built (largely) on centuries of belief in religion and morals derived from religion, who declare that "religion" is evil/expendable. First: "all religions are equal" is as non-sensical as "all philosophies are equal" (they are CLEARLY not - the SUBSTANCE matters). Second: if "theism is evil" as you assert, then be intellectually honest enough to leave ALL of it behind and only limit you behavior in ways you can tie to UNGUIDED and GOAL-FREE evolution (making no presumptions about even what might be "more evolved" or "less evolved" in the construction of your new "moral compass")

> Perhaps there is power in prayer, not sourced from some sky fairy, but rather from the way the energies we all receive and produce interact with one another.

You go and put down theism ("sky fairy") but then spout off some other irrational bullshit about "energies". We may not fully understand the universe, but making up random shit about "energies" (or "sky fairies" for that matter) does not get us any closer. Newton got us closer. Einstein got us closer. Watson and Crick got us closer. Shirley Maclaine? Not so much.

Every oppressive, paternalistic, misogynist, and backward shit hole in the World has a theocratic government.

How fortunate that religion was banned by progressive utopias like the USSR and the PRC.

It is worth noting that while some theists are also willfully ignorant and intolerant of other beliefs, that is hardly universal. I have also met atheists who are willfully ignorant and intolerant of other beliefs. The willful ignorance and intolerance seem to be the problem, not the (a)theism.

You seem to hate theism with a religious fervor.

I hate theism too. Somewhat the way I hate illiteracy. Though really quite a bit more, because religion is so often done to children, as that is its most effective vector of infection.

I do like it when the religious use "religious" as a derogatory term - like "atheism is a religion too" or your "religious fervor". Even the religious know deep down how silly it is.

Once the world is free of people who can't stand to have others believe differently from them, it will be a better place.

"Once the world is free of teachers who insist on teaching people to read and that the Earth is not flat, it will be a better place." Hmm, that doesn't quite work. Weird how ignorance is revered and should be "respected" (whatever that means) when it happens in the name of religion.

Without theism holding back science, there would probably have been a skin cell to stem cell answer for this already...

Thank 'god' for the dark ages and the 1000 years of darkness...

Qybixxx

You seem to hate theism with a religious fervor.

Are your assertions based on a careful controlled study or are they an article of faith?

I'll take someone who is deeply religious but believes "to each his own" over an atheist who thinks they need to tell everyone else what to (not) believe every day of the week.

Once the world is free of people who can't stand to have others believe differently from them, it will be a better place.

Yes. Once we rid the world of theism, the world will be a better place.
Necessary isn't necessarily nice.

Theism is evil. It is right to call it every time.

Yes, but you did not state it as an opinion.

lol.. It wasn't obvious? I said I wasn't going to take what you said in another post serious and ignore it because you were too lazy to address me directly.

That depends on what you mean by "hardwired." I would say it is due to instincts and self-preservation. Not wanting to get thrown in prison because you criticized your government is pretty damn rational, in my opinion.

Instinct? Isn't that the same thing as I'm saying? Because you exist- there are certain things thust upon you in your creation?

f you have a system like ours that is intended to guarantee people certain rights, perhaps not. But if society as a whole rejects the idea of a certain right, it could be considered mighty silly to say your right was infringed upon.

Not at all. Your right to self preservation is a right regardless of what society says. All they can do it prevent you from using it.

I thought you said rights couldn't be taken.

If society gives them, then society can take them. If they are endowed by their Creator or exist because you exist, all they can do it violate, infringe, or ignore them.

And furthermore, you have offered zero actual proof that my secular attitude is the reason that rights are 'taken.' History isn't on your side, either, as there were many people who believe as you do, and yet rights were violated all the time, and continue to be.

Your secular attitude? Is that what they are calling you evangelical atheist nowadays? I offered logic- but not logic that shows anything about secularism. I offered logic that shows how your knee jerk rejection of anything you think might be connected to theism and your inane attempts to push the subject from a firm (rights are above society and government) to an at will (society grants rights) is how people become oppressed. If society gives by blessing, then society can take by blessing.

So, please provide scientific evidence that not believing that rights are inherent somehow leads to tyranny. This isn't one of those silly "philosophical" questions, but one that asks for actual proof.

Can you not follow logic? And yes, the question of rights is most certainly a philosophical question.

Because it sure seems to be like it is people who don't care about certain rights that are the cause of these problems. I think people who accept the TSA, free speech zones, censorship, the NSA's mass surveillance, etc. are the problem, because they're directly fighting against certain rights.

Yes, the people who think the government gives rights and are able to take them away. Oh, do you mean that people who think rights are inalienable and come from a higher source than government are the ones cheer leading all that violation of their rights? Well, maybe there are some that don't care if your rights are violated, but they will bark a hell of a lot when it is theirs.

Poor form only in your opinion. Copying and pasting would've been barely any different from my perspective.

lol.. Of course my opinion. I'm the one you are trying to speak to aren't I? You are not a very clever troll are you.

Those rights don't exist in any meaningful form, except perhaps as personal desires.

What would cause a group of people, some completely independent from each other to have the same desires if it wasn't hardwired within them or part of their existence?

They may have been rights that people wished they had, but other than that, they didn't exist in any meaningful form.

So are you saying they disappeared and a claim that they are infringing on your rights would be fallacious?

More like, as soon as society recognized a right, they would be there for you to enjoy. Of course, your desire to have a certain right recognized would've been there.

You seem to be dodging the question.. did those rights exist before society granted them? Why would society grant rights if many people didn't have the same desires? Could it be because those rights are inalienable and bestowed by their creator as in exist because they exist?

Again, where do these rights come from, and in what form do they exist?

They are hardwired into people. They come from a power higher than society or government, they exist because you exist.

Saying it's "philosophical" means absolutely nothing to me, much like arguments for the existence of deities.

You should work on changing that. Your reasoning is the reasons rights are taken and why people become oppressed. I do not care about your hangups on deities or infatuation with theism's. Creator in this sense is the creation of you. Deities, Gods, Martians, none of that comes into play. They exist because you exist.

You can certainly believe in A god (or many) and not deny science but if you believe in God and believe in science you've deluded yourself on one front or the other. There is quite a bit in your holy book that contradicts science. For that matter, the two creation accounts in the first book directly contradict each other on many points and both contradict very well established science and are incompatible with the existence of fossils you can see with your own eyes.

Where theists get confused is they see this as science attacking their thing. Not at all. Their thing never enters into science, the scientific method begins with observing reality, speculating on causes for why that reality is how it is, then seeing if your guess as to how it works can successfully be used to predict behavior you haven't observed yet. Theism, Intelligent Design, etc can never be part of that framework because they get the order wrong and break a critical rule. They start with a speculated cause based on fancy and then observe reality instead of starting with reality and fantasizing causes based on it that can subsequently be determined are incorrect. That's the critical rule, the speculative part, the part you are just pulling out of your mind, it has to be possible to test it against the reality and fail if it is inconsistent. You can't prove there is no god and when you equate the rules of reality to a god's will it not only can't be dis-proven but becomes irrelevant from the point of science. It doesn't matter if conservation of energy and matter exists because it is reality or because that's how a god made it, it still works the same way and the math that follows is useful for exactly the same things.