no doubt. but when self evident manifests itself in blind faith in religious texts i cannot give it any credence. it is how zionists justify murdering muslim children, muslims justify mutilating female genitalia, and christians justify gaybashing. it's all fallacious, inhumane and defunct.

when i say self evident i am talking of a truth which can be verified regardless of faith culture or cognitive bias - like the reality of gravity for example. i have seen little in any religion which qualifies as universal truth, apart from the bits which say it aint nice to murder steal or rape.

there is a difference between actively submitting to your own cognitive bias and appreciating a truth which can withstand universal critique. its the old faith versus evidence argument, the space between learning and delusion and i can't even be bothered to humour it any more.

iq has been proven to increase across the generations - what was considered highly intelligent 100 years ago verges on sub normal these days. surely along with scientific progress this has to the death nail of religion?

I agree with your definition, but there are many people ~ including many highly qualified intellectuals ~ who really believe that there is 'a truth which can be verified regardless of faith culture or cognitive bias'. I find that hard to comprehend, I admit, but they seem very certain.

and they are as full of it as any of the other pseudo scientific religious apologists who think creationism is a quasi scientific verifiable truth.

i can come up with a cogent intelligent and elaborate argument which proves strawberries are from mars. it doesn't make me right.

the point about science is that the data and interpretation are available to everyone and will ultimately lead to the same conclusion because scientific knowledge is born of consensus. religion does not share this characteristic.

and being a highly qualified intellectual does not bring with it immunity from idiocy. i know many highly intelligent idiots.

one of my favourite terms is cognitive bias. i thing jung came up with it and it perfectly demonstrates that a delusion or misconception however intelligently conceived or argued is still a delusion or misconception and ultimately born of ignorance, which is what religion thrives on.

for anyone who does not like that tack i would invite them to research the campaign of misinformation by the vatican which actually led to people in the middle ages believing the earth was flat and orbited by the sun, despite the self evident and widely verified truth that people have understood axial precession and the complex dynamics, geometry and gravitational interrelationships of the solar system for many thousands of years, without which the detailed and most importantly dynamic mapping of the skies by mesopotamians, egyptians and the builders of angkor wat as well as south american civilisations would not have been possible.

The problem is, though, that those who believe, and who may be uneducated, will follow these highly qualified experts, because they trust their 'knowledge'.

JANIMAL SAID:

It's funny I think we were talking about that just a few posts ago, or was it me?

MONGREL SAID:

Never the mind - it's just that I think we are all trying to get to the same place you know. You did state that "in fact it has been proved" so that must mean that you believe in it somewhat? Yes? No? I certainly do just because of experiences I have had and not all in the last few years but as a very young child and a teenager as well especially on a full moon and with certain people or as you said "the power of the individual". Certain "individuals" have a much higher degree of potential in the area of ??? whatever the (*(&^^$ that is that happens when we "transcend" or whatever. It really is a silly subject to talk to with nonbelievers.

There are people that make you feel like you just had three shots of tequila with simply a touch

MONGREL SAID: I'm not so sure that this is true

mongrel - the proof lies in neurological research in institutes from mumbai to maryland. easy to find, and i'm short on time. so i believe in god in the same way as i do in adrenaline or the hypothalamus.

and i absolutely agree about your blank space assertion - humanity is so stupid it does not realise how stupid it is and how short it falls of its own potential. the proof lies in history.

ok - to clarify with a bit of background.

i've been interested in religion from a fairly early age. so, having a logically inclined mind i naturally went looking for proof - of god. i didn't find it in the ramblings of aquinas' causality arguments (which i thought were pure sophistry and drivel and only served to illustrate to me why the catholic church is such a profoundly evil edifice although they are probably the best attempt ever made in that direction) or in the greek philosophers, or anywhere else for that matter.

but i have still been reluctant to write off the majority of humanity as delusional, even mentally ill for believing in god. so i kept looking. and eventually i found god - in a book by sutapas battcharya, a high level hindu thinker and eminent neuro scientist and a bunch of spin off research.

battacharya was one of the first to attach electrodes to yogis' heads and say - go on, meditate, dude. initial interesting finds led him to repeat the experiment with state of the art magnetic imaging equipment which is used to map brain activity, and he identified that regions which appear to remain dormant much of the time light up like a christmas tree under higher states of meditation.

the next logical step was to ask - what does this mean for god and religion. several scientists put in the hours, and proved that religious experience happens in the social communication areas of the brain, which seems to make sense. a few steps down this line of enquiry led to the assertion that god is a concept neurologically generated by the brain. even that god now has a name - hipocanthus, i believe (forgive me i may be mixing up my terminology here). it all makes perfect sense to me. god is the result of an evolutionary tribal instinct.

which also makes sense of the rise of atheism - we are evolving out of religion. this ticks all the boxes for me - religious people are not deluded, or mental, they are just hanging on to an archaic evolutionary vestige of human consciousness. this seems further verified by findings that in people who find religion later in life actually cause the parts of the brain which deal with reason and logic to shrink.

i realise this is massively offensive to some people, but then so is evolution, isn't it? and sorry, but i don't have the time to give the references here which i know i should be giving. a couple of hours with our friend google will verify what i am saying.

full moon experiences aren't hard to explain - the moons gravity makes oceans slosh around, so why would it not affect our spinal fluids? and as for quasi telepathic experiences, which you seem to be talking about - i think there are many answers for science to find as yet. i have such experiences when playing music with people. there is no proposed mechanism out there yet, but since many animals are clearly sensitive to the earths magnetic field, and our brains generate electric fields (which is why brain scans work) then there is potential for us to 'affect' each others minds.

science doesn't have all the answers yet, but i think religion ran out of answers a long time ago. at least science has the potential to keep finding answers, so this is where i put my faith. because as a species, answers are what we need. science has given us penicillin, the internet and the large hadron collider. i don't think religion has given us anything of comparable usefulness.

Fascinating stuff, Janimal!

Janimal, Just to quicken this conversation a little I would like to mention a book that I read a few years back, "The Book of the Damned" by American Author Charles Fort. In this book Mr. Fort delves deep into hundreds of unexplained occurrences and then makes them public in one of the best selling non-fiction books of all times. Scientists today are still trying to discount many of the reports made in this book.

I suppose that what I am trying to say is that the human mind sees what it wants to see so regardless how objective we think we are or how much information we memorize we still have our own opinions to contend with and they simply don't go away.

I can't really agree with your last statement. Religion, as flawed as the general term may be, has given us a set of morals/ethics, which then led to the law, which eventually led to basic civilization. It was in fact the religion developed in the AD that chose to enslave it's people to an absent God.

I did not have any choice but to be interested in religion because it was thrown in my face 24 hours a day but just like you, at a very early age, I noticed something - These people, except the older ones, practicing religion were not devout to anything so it bothered me for quite a long time.

It was in fact a telepathic experience which led me to the other side of my family and initially introduced me to my heathen roots. A series of dreams that went on and on for months which eventually took me to my great Aunt who took me to my first circle.

I will give you one more example before I end this post. My wife had this boss who was out to get her. Now if any of you knew my wife then you would understand that anyone out to get her is just a worthless &*^&%^$^$, just because she is that kind of person. On Lughnasadh I asked the circle for help in destroying this man because he had been after my wife for over a year. Since that his director has been made aware of his inequities, abuse, lack of attendance and abusive policies towards clients and employees both, and all without my wife or I having to get our hands dirty. Coincidence? I don't think so simply because this guy has been up to this sort of thing for years. I am sorry that I can't tell you more otherwise it may endanger sensitive information on two or three different levels.