Breaking The Spell by Daniel Dennett (Darwin, beliefs, doom, evolution)

[Escéptico]

Originally Posted by mball1297

You don't have to affirm anything. It's just sad to me to see someone close their mind like you have.

Again, Matt, I have no idea what I can say other than it's fine with me. Like I pointed out in the OP, some folks think anyone with any qualms about dancing around the mystical maypole is emotionally stunted and insecure. Maybe the philosophical landscape looks really flat from your ivory tower.

[Escéptico]

Originally Posted by Troublemane

yes it defies logic, but thats the most important thing about belief! It cannot be logical!

Plenty of beliefs are logical. It's one thing to admit the sometimes counter-intuitive nature of science or statistics. It's quite another to believe whatever one likes, regardless of logic or coherence.

[mball1297]

I just bought the book yesterday, along with "The God Delusion" and "The Delusion of Desbelief". I'm sure you know the former there, and the second one is a response to the "New Atheism"'s attacks on religion. I'm reading something else at the moment, but once I get through these, I'll probably post some more in depth comments here.

[Rolling_Stone]

Originally Posted by Escéptico

Like I pointed out in the OP, some folks think anyone with any qualms about dancing around the mystical maypole is emotionally stunted and insecure.

You have given every indication that you are emotionally stunted. How many time have you appealed to sentiment to show the "superiority" of science? Karl Marx called religion the “opiate of the masses” and for some it may be, but people enamored by the power of science and the certainty it affords are no less stupefied. They may profess optimism, a deep-seated sense of purpose and a fulfilled life, but a cursory glance reveals it to be delusion based on sentiment: using emotion, as it were, to deny or obscure the emotional impact of their own logic. “To the unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair is man's only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good.” (UB) Pessimistic? Yes. Realistic? Absolutely! Deny or gloss over its hidden emotional impact and you deny the reality of your humanity and reveal to others your emotional immaturity--a fear of emotionally connecting with the facts. But then, someone living comfortably in a make-believe world has neither reason nor desire to escape.

It is what one believes rather than what one knows that determines conduct and dominates personal performances. Purely factual knowledge exerts very little influence upon the average person unless it becomes emotionally activated. This is why so many godless people are almost disparate to show that they, too, are “spiritual.”

[Jaiket]

Originally Posted by Rolling_Stone

This is why so many godless people are almost disparate to show that they, too, are “spiritual.”

Like Taoists and Buddhists?

[Sunstone]

Originally Posted by Jaiket

Like Taoists and Buddhists?

Those folks sound desperate to me.

[Rolling_Stone]

Originally Posted by Jaiket

Like Taoists and Buddhists?

Aren't you forgetting something?

[Jaiket]

Originally Posted by Rolling_Stone

Aren't you forgetting something?

This is a possibility.

[Rolling_Stone]

Originally Posted by Jaiket

This is a possibility.

Okay, then.

First, your comment was based on something taken out of context, but let's assume it wasn't. Second, what is "spirit"? Third, what does it mean to be "spiritual"? Forth, what does "God is spirit" mean? And, finally, are Buddhism and Taoism really atheistic in the sense the term is commonly understood in RF or society in general?