RE:

From: Vincent Campbell (v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Feb 07 2002 - 13:16:00 GMT

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    From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
    To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    Subject: RE: 
    Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 13:16:00 -0000 
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            <I was not aware that religions had the same shared attitudes etc.>

            At the most general they share things like the belief in revealed
    truth. Within some groups of religion are shared structures their beliefs
    e.g. the monotheism- indeed same god- of judaism, christianity and islam.
    within particular religions comes intended shared codes of belief/behaviour,
    from the ten commandments, to baptism etc. etc.

            <Religions do reject the notion of falsifiability, but not the proof
    of gods existence. "except by faith" etc is their proof, which i agree is
    not
    > scientific. If you do have a proof of gods non existance, i would love to
    > know as there are always god botherers around i would like to upset.>
    >
            I think you need to examine religions' claims more closely, to see
    how religion involves a fundamental rejection of real world evidence- it has
    to otherwise nobody would believe the silly stories of virgin births, the
    "power" of prayer, let alone omniscient deities. The whole point of
    religion is to deny the validty and credibility of the idea of testing
    claims in the real world, you must simply believe. Look, for example, at
    the circular remarks of faith healers when confronted by the obviouly
    unhealed people they get up on stage- basically it's not their fault (for
    being the worst kind of vultures), it's the fault of the sick people
    themselves for not believing enough.

            <What i meant by atheism having anti women components was as i said,
    that those of the reductionist sociobiological bent force roles upon males
    and female, with the females copping for the worst of it.>

            Well, I'm not sure that's true, after all if the sociobiologists are
    right, it is women who dominate human mate choice, or at the very least are
    as equally active as men.

            <One of my tutors pointed out that agnosticism may be the best
    choice - God
    > may or may not exist, but i will worry about it only when he knocks on my
    >
    > door.>
    >
            I think agnosticism is the worst kind of fence sitting you can do.
    It's a refusal to commit.

            Vincent

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