The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies. The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik.

Harris was understandably pissed.  It’s just unfair to put him on the same intellectual level as Pamela Geller.

That is, until I saw some of his posts on Facebook. He points to a video about Sharia Law in the U.K.:

It’s a terrible story, and no doubt people need to be wary of this development. But Harris appends this note:

Watch the whole hour. Love to see Karen Armstrong, Reza Aslan, Scott Atran and Chris Hedges tell them what Islam *really* is.

So for Harris these extremists represent all of Islam. That is, in fact, bigotry. Here’s the lowdown about one of the people in the video:

Omar Bakri Muhammad (Arabic: عمر بکری محمد‎ `Umar Bakrī Muḥammad; born Omar Bakri Fostock in 1958 in Syria) is an Islamist militant leader who was instrumental in developing Hizb ut-Tahrir into a major organization in the United Kingdom before leaving the group and heading another Islamist organisation, Al-Muhajiroun, until its disbandment in 2004.

For several years Bakri was one of the best-known, high-profile Islamic radicals based in London, and was frequently quoted and interviewed in the UK media. He vowed in December 2004 for example that Muslims would give the West “a 9/11, day after day after day,” if Western governments did not change their policies

He’s a radical. It’s not news whatsoever that there are Muslim radicals espousing this kind of rhetoric. It would be news if a moderate came out with this kind of statement. The fact that movements like this might be gaining power is not the same thing as: this is Islam.

But it’s worse than that – which goes back to the point made by Chris Hedges. On Harris’ posts come comments like this one:

As long as islam has a future anywhere we need to be worried. If we don’t come up with a final solution to the moooslim question, we’re all dead.

That comment got 4 likes. Another:

These fucking troglodyte camel jockeys are saying that THEY are advanced and the rest of us are in the Middle Ages ? WTF ???

These comments were barely called out, if at all. They just sat there. One person said to the Final Solution poster – “You’re getting ahead of yourself” – rather than: you sick, demented fuck. I didn’t realize the atheist community had this sort of antipathy towards religion. It’s scarcely different than the (incredibly depressing) responses to Breivik on Glenn Beck’s site.

Is Sam Harris responsible for the comments on his Facebook page? Well, yeah, partly. If he’s saying something so irresponsible that a radical represents all of Islam, he has to be there in the comments saying – hey now, that’s not what I’m advocating. He needs to understand the impact of his rhetoric. That’s what Chris Hedges was saying – Sam Harris creates an environment where hatred festers. Initially, I thought Hedges was overstating the problem. After reading the comments on Harris’ page, I think he might be onto something.

For me, and for the overwhelming majority of atheists I know, our atheism is a provisional conclusion, based on careful reasoning and on the best available evidence we have. Our atheism is the conclusion that the God hypothesis is unsupported by any good evidence, and that unless we see better evidence, we’re going to assume that God does not exist. If we see better evidence, we’ll change our minds.

Look at it this way. Are you 100-percent certain that there are no unicorns? Are you 100-percent certain that the Earth is round? I assume the answer is a pretty heartfelt, “No.” I assume you accept that it’s hypothetically possible, however improbable, that unicorns really exist and that all physical traces of them have disappeared by magic. I assume you accept that it’s hypothetically possible, however improbable, that the Earth really is a flat disc carried on the back of a giant turtle, and that all evidence to the contrary has been planted in our brains by hyper-intelligent space aliens as some sort of cosmic prank.

Does that mean your conclusions — the “no unicorns/ round Earth” conclusions — are articles of faith?

No. Of course not.

My trouble is this is almost insanely myopic. Human culture is only around 10,000 years old. The modern age of science is around 100 years old.  100 years – in the scope of the universe, or even this planet, it’s nothing.  To be dismissive of “evidence” when there’s so much evidence yet to be found seems so totally unnecessary to the point where it becomes as illogical as other types of faith.  In general, atheism seems to look backward at the evidence we have already, rather than forward about how much there’s left to be discovered.

When you consider that the universe could be infinite – including infinite multi-verses – it’s possible that unicorns have evolved…somewhere.  Our brains could evolve to the point where we can imagine a unicorn into being. If not humans, then a billion-year-old alien on some other planet. Eventually, we’ll be able to leave this star system and poll aliens on other planets about the existence of God.  In short, there’s such an absurd lack of evidence that it doesn’t seem worthwhile to carry the badge of atheism any more than the idea that the Earth is 6000 years old.

Currently, we don’t know if the universe is infinite – much like we don’t know if God is real. But they could very well be one and the same. If the infinite universe is real, this is like a God-like power where anything is possible.  There’s still the probability that some things happen and others don’t, but this doesn’t take into account the power of the infinite.

Here’s Neil DeGrassi Tyson on the infinite universe (and who seems like he’s in a really bad mood):

Graffin also has a PhD in zoology from Cornell.   When he is not on stage, he teaches evolution at UCLA.

Graffin is an atheist who doesn’t like to characterize himself as an atheist. “I bill myself as a naturalist because if you say you’re a naturalist it gives people a conversation point to talk about what you actually do believe in instead of when you say you’re an atheist and it’s really just a statement of what you don’t believe in,” he said.

Though the icon of his band is a Christian cross slashed out as if it was a cigarette on a no smoking sign, Graffin never outwardly attacks religion in his book.

His great-grandfather Zerr was a brilliant theological scholar, a legend in Graffin’s family, and Graffin alludes to a familial rift over Zerr’s strict fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible….

LaMonica: Voltaire said, “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”  Is that not your view of nature?

Graffin: *laughs* No, I don’t think so.  See that implies there’s a design and of course Voltaire was a deist and a famous one at that and I think he thought that there was some design but I would say that there is no design to nature.

Continues…

Gives me an excuse to post my life story:

While I’m here:

Christian theologians, Catholic and Protestant, reassured Germans that Nazism was in full accord with Christian principles. This was not a marginal effort; at the 1934 Oberammergau passion play, watching Jesus being hoisted on the cross, the audience saw a parable of the Third Reich, calling out: “There he is. That is our Führer, our Hitler!”

Hitler became Christ, the redeemer of Germany, thanks to a reinterpretation of the Gospels: Jesus was not a Jew, but an Aryan who came to redeem them from the Jews who sought their destruction. Karl Adam, the prominent German Catholic theologian, affirmed in 1933 that Hitler was the one “prophesied by our poets and our wise men” who suffered in his fight for Germany’s salvation. Adam continued in 1941: “Christ’s teaching was entirely anti-Jewish in its tenor (that is why he was crucified).”

It can happen here – when truth can be so easily rewritten by people in high power. It’s easier to argue that religion is the problem  – not the love thy neighbor/feed the poor of true Christianity, but what passes for mainstream religion.  The pope is refuting his own argument by showing just how corrupt religion can become. Once you allow unquestioning belief into your brain, you’re a step away from following a hideous politician.  For proof, watch the news.

So the pope covers up both Christian complicity in the Holocaust and child molesters. Bears repeating:

Should a 15-story mosque and Islamic cultural center be built two blocks from the site of the worst jihadist atrocity in living memory? Put this way, the question nearly answers itself. This is not to say, however, that I think we should prevent our fellow citizens from building “the ground zero mosque.” There is probably no legal basis to do so in any case—nor should there be. But the margin between what is legal and what is desirable, or even decent, leaves room for many projects that well-intentioned people might still find offensive. If you can raise the requisite $100 million, you might also build a shrine to Satan on this spot, complete with the names of all the non-believing victims of 9/11 destined to suffer for eternity in Hell.

There’s a difference between being an intellectual atheist and being bigoted about religion. Here he falls into the latter camp.

I too fall somewhat into that camp – part of me thinks any belief in one religion is a kind of fanaticism. How can the tenets of one religion describe the God of the entire universe/multi-verse? It’s fairly senseless. Some small part of believers must be open to the idea that, Hey, maybe the Buddhists are right, or the atheists. If you take the orthodox approach to any religion, they’re mostly demented. I honestly wish all people could drop their religion, no matter how moderate. But I also get that people can use religion to do good works or for personal growth. More importantly, freedom of thought should be a more-cherished idea than “these things should not be believed.”

The slippery slope is a terrible one, especially in the hands of the fascist-prone far-right. By Sam Harris’s logic, there should be no church or cultural center erected, given the ludicrous ideas of all religions when taken to their extreme. Never mind the proximity of the center to Ground Zero – Harris is arguing that Islam itself is problematic, which means it’s problematic wherever they choose to erect a new cultural center. Indeed, this could come back to bite Sam Harris when the freedom-hating right gets into power and bans atheists from public discourse. They could argue that Godless secularism is an “evil.” Just to provide a science fictional example – hindering freedom is a terrible precedent.

Islam is a young and, yes, fucked-up religion in some ways (”Allah commands his followers to slay infidels wherever they find them, until Islam reigns supreme”) – but please don’t tell me that the orthodoxy of Judaism has not also been intensely violent, drawing up lines on a map based on Biblical text. They’re fucked up, the lot of them. But the way for society to improve is to embrace the moderate elements of these religions. If he wants “frank acknowledgment of these unpleasant truths” from the Muslim community, treating them all as terrorists might not be the place to begin. Slamming the door in the face to moderates will just give further fuel to the jihadists, as has our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. In short, don’t go to war with people, whether it’s with the military or ideology.

Some ideologies need to be eradicated – war can be justified, but many of the people advocating that we bomb Iran would just as soon wipe away Islam – in a way, that’s the side Sam Harris is on. Muslims don’t deserve fair treatment. They should be banned from existing. Whether it’s one cultural center or many is irrelevant. That’s the slope he’s started. He should keep an eye on who’s running the show of this hysteria – the people who advocate a closed society. That he’s also jumped on board shows a similar closed-mindedness, which colors his views on atheism. They’re all fanatics.

He ends with:

The erection of a mosque upon the ashes of this atrocity will also be viewed by many millions of Muslims as a victory—and as a sign that the liberal values of the West are synonymous with decadence and cowardice.

I would think the reaction would be the exact opposite of what he’s stated. That we triumphed over simple bigotry. That we are not all Sarah Palin.

A philosophical position proposing that the hard problem of consciousness will never be explained; or at the least cannot be explained by the human mind at its current evolutionary stage.

I would consider myself in that camp, except that one of its main adherents is Colin McGinn, who says that consciousness will one day be reducible to something fully material.  Additionally, he doesn’t take the leap that everything is consciousness – as is believed by New Agers and mystics.  We’re “sealed off from other consciousnesses” (see 2nd video below).  I’m not yet fully ready to go down that path.  It is possible that the day we fully understand consciousness is the day we fully understand God – i.e. everything is mind.  Still, even if consciousness is one day fully understood, there’s still the question of the “why” – there may still be a sense of mystery.  Then there will be a New New Mysterianism.  However, my money’s on the uncompromising genius of this guy:

I don’t like his arguments here – based on the premise that God is “all good.”  That’s a limited, Western perspective about God:

If God is consciousness, then God would encompass both the consciousness of good and evil.  If we’re so unevolved to not understand the nature of consciousness, we’re also unevolved to understand the nature of evil, or death.  Perhaps if we really knew what was being accomplished by sinister acts, we’d cease to do them.  For instance, if we knew with certainty that we were all “one consciousness” there’d be a different impulse to harm other people. If we could harness consciousness to see someone’s true soul (whatever that might be) we’d interact differently.  If we knew that death wasn’t really the end, killing someone would become pointless.  Natural disasters would seem less tragic.

So talking about God using the good vs. evil argument is sort of like a monkey trying to use a computer.  We’re not there yet. Evil exists today because we have a very limited understanding of what evil might be. Just as we’ve yet to understand the true nature of consciousness, we have yet to understand the true nature of good and evil.

To the extent that it is a meaningful question, I have no reason to expect that science either eventually will, or even in principle could answer it. But I am not sure why I am supposed to care, except insofar as it’s interesting to mull over, if you go for that sort of thing. Suppose I allow that it is a genuine mystery—radically uncertain, even. It’s outside the realm about which we can talk meaningfully or offer evidence. So what? If there were some part of the world about which we couldn’t even in principle gather information, would I have to declare myself a basilisk agnostic because, after all, they might be there?

Trouble is God isn’t a thing like a basilisk.  Here’s a basilisk, by the way, a mythical serpent.

God is (potentially) everything – including good and evil.  It’s not an entity that answers prayers like a fact-checker.  God is consciousness, time, space, beyond our current understanding. To suggest that concept is not worth exploring – because it can’t be proven – is sort of a slap in the face of scientific inquiry. When have scientists ducked from a good challenge (don’t answer that)?  So, taking spiritual questions out of life doesn’t make life more concrete, it makes it less so.

I will admit that I am a weirdo who believes that what we imagine has the potential to be real.  A mythical creature doesn’t exist in Newtonian reality.  But maybe…one day.  We won’t need a helmet to access virtual reality.  We’ll be able to project it with our minds (possibly).  If matter is just energy, perhaps the energy of thought can one day become material. And once the imagined becomes real – everything becomes imagination.

That’s a science fiction story, though, and won’t fix my TV if it breaks.

He goes on:

I don’t know why there’s something instead of nothing, if the question is even intelligible, any more than I can prove I’m not a brain in a vat. These are interesting facts to reflect on in an epistemology seminar. They have very little to do with my ordinary assertions about how to get to The Passenger or whether the details of any particular cosmology seem persuasive, or whether praying to Mecca or confessing to a priest seems like a sensible thing to do.

Keep religion out of it.  Religious ritual has little to do with the debate about the possible existence of God, which is a far cry more important than something to merely be debated in an epistemology seminar.  No, the debate doesn’t give you directions to some place on the map, but neither does art or music.  The question of God is fundamental to human existence – proven, of course, by the interest in the new atheism.  Obviously, it’s a vital topic.  But the premise of much atheism seems to be that God is too unknowable to even bother thinking about, let alone believing.  What separates us as humans is the ability to think about these topics, so depriving us of this seems to trivialize a fundamental aspect of being human.

It’s also telling that he says, “I don’t believe in…psychic powers either.”  So he discounts all anomalous phenomena? There’s a whole host of puzzling and fascinating information about general esoterica.  If he’s discounting all instances of anomalous phenomena, how are we to believe it when he discounts all evidence of God?  Again, these types of topics are currently unprovable, but unprovable today doesn’t mean unprovable tomorrow.  Saying otherwise is a sort of arrogant view that what we know today is all we will ever know.  But that has never been the case with human knowledge and progress. To not keep looking – and to not acknowledge that it’s worth looking for – is anti-knowledge as well as anti-theism.

He ends, “There’s still no reason to treat God talk as anything more than another bit of human storytelling.”  That would suggest that storytelling is a triviality – which is why it seems like the new atheists suck the fun and magic out of – not just God – but life itself. It’s the condescension that gets to me: God is just a story.  There’s no such thing as just a story.  Yes, but you can say – God was invented, just like a work of art.  Until you can answer me why a particular work of art came to being, where in the dreamworld of the imagination it came from – not just the how, but the why – God is an inspiring topic and worth investigation. That’s my belief – not: God exists.  But: God is worth exploring.

God how I hate the condescension about spirituality here. Is the world going to end in 2012? Likely not. Is the concept of humans evolving to a new type of consciousness an interesting one? Yes.

A poster responded,

Since every “new layer” of spirituality so far has never been much more than another coat of paint on the structure of Stupid, I think the condescension is warranted.

Every religious person believes things that are as dumb and unprovable as the Mayan 2012 “apocalypse.” It’s just that most successful religions put a lot of those things in places and functions inaccessible to living humans. We normally avoid attacking such ideas in deference to everyone’s freedom to believe anything that doesn’t actively harm his or her neighbor, but if you do start the conversation, don’t expect to be treated gently.

I responded,

Atheism is unprovable. I actually think such an outright denial of spiritual issues shows as much willful ignorance as “the structure of stupid.”

My point of view: it’s a very big universe and humans’ current sense of perception is very limited. To not be open to the possibility of something else is – I don’t know – really fucking boring.

Here’s where it gets more interesting. I got into a long drawn-out dialog with an atheist that lasted well after the post had lost any more commenters. I’m posting our dialog here as Atheist and Believer. “Believer” brings to mind someone with unquestioning faith and that’s not really me, but I will admit that I want esoteric ideas to be true, just as the other commenter seems to want no existence of God.

A: Are you open to the possibility of atheism being on the money?

B: Of course.

A: What criteria do you use to determine which might be the right, or at least, more likely creed to be correct?

B: I can’t possibly have a criteria to say, “OK, now God has been sufficiently proven or disproven,” because there’s too much we don’t know right now – about both perspectives – to make a definitive statement. Until we’re able to travel to the 16th multiverse and see what exists there, we might be more informed. Right now, we’re not. My bias is my own enjoyment in exploring spiritual issues, rather than discounting them. I guess intuition plays a fair role, as does hope – which some might say clouds my judgment.

A: So, all beliefs of all kinds are equal in your vie? Belief in the Tooth Fairy, in Xenu and Thetans, in Zeus, in Jehovah, in Jesus, in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in Batman, in Harry Potter, in alien abductions and cattle mutilations, in vaccines causing autism, in 9/11 being an inside job and in flouride in the water being a Jewish plot to poison America – as well as in the nonexistence of gods or supernatural phenomena – which you called “fucking boring” and “willfully ignorant”?

I ask about criteria, because you say, “atheism is unproven”.

What belief of yours is “proven”, and, if none of them are, why are you so sure atheism is “fucking boring” and “willfully ignorant”?

If you don’t have any criteria to determine what is real and what is not, what is likely and what is not, what is consistent with what we know and what is not, then how do you decide on anything?

B: I didn’t say anything approaching that. I’m just saying you can’t make any definitive statements about the existence or non-existence of God. Sure, some things are more provable than others. But we’re not talking about the tooth fairy, we’re talking about God – and I think agnosticism makes a hell of a lot more sense.

And the term “flying spaghetti monster” is a perfect example of the kind of cynicism I’m talking about. The subtext is: if you entertain the thought of any kind of God, you’re a fucking idiot.

I’m sure atheism is more boring than theism because IF God exists and we can access it/harness it/whatever doesn’t this make life more “fun” than a world where it doesn’t? It increases life’s possibilities – atheism decreases it.

A: What is the difference in terms of probability of existence, between the tooth fairy and “God”? And which God is more likely – there are thousands of different versions of hundreds of different dieties? Are you agnostic about the tooth fairy? If not, why are you agnostic about God?

If anything, there is less evidence of “God” than of a tooth fairy. At least the tooth fairy leaves some physical evidence behind, even though adults usually accept the natural explanation that it is their parents leaving the coin, rather than a magical, invisible flying being?

How is that less credible than whatever your concept is of “God”? I ask not snarkily, but seriously. You make an assertion that one is more likely than the other, I ask, why? To me, the most rational position is skepticism, and it makes a lot more sense not to believe in the infinite number of things that do not exist, than to be agnostic toward all of them.

And, to single out one, just because it is a popular belief, for agnosticism, while disbelieving in all others (including all other versions of gods, like Zeus and Xenu) doesn’t seem rational at all. It is no more than the fallacy of argument from popularity.

History has taught us that just because a belief is widespread, doesn’t mean it is credible. Is that not so?

B: This would take a book to write but good questions. All I can say is my research into quantum theory, psychedelics tapping into other realms – which being a pure physical hallucination or something else is up for argument – the size of the universe, near death experiences… Yes, I’ll admit – I’m a little credulous, but I find the implications for these things too interesting to cast aside.

The tooth fairy doesn’t count – that’s a story. Let’s not bring religion into this either – the storybook versions of God. I’m interested in the actual concept – a Theory of Everything that could perhaps incorporate a spiritual underpinning.

Equating the Tooth Fairy – or any other fictional construct – with God is discounting the pages and pages of actual research on the potential of God’s existence by non-hacks and non-charlatans. For instance, books like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind_of_God.

I like this from Tolstoy: “Belief that everything originates in ‘matter’ is as silly as a belief in the Trinity.”

A: How does one conduct research on potential existence? And what is the outcome of that research? If no evidence has actually found of God’s existence, then pages of pages would suggest that the hypothesis has not stood up to research.

Can you point to a single citation – I’m not asking for you to write a book, nor to cite “pages and pages” of this alleged research – that provides a scintilla of evidence of the existence of a God?

And, if not, why is that belief any more credible than any other belief of any kind in anything? What research have you conducted in to quantum theory or psychedelics that is in any way relevant to belief in a God?

Then you say,

Let’s not bring religion into this either – the storybook versions of God. I’m interested in the actual concept – a Theory of Everything that could perhaps incorporate a spiritual underpinning.

That’s very interesting, but

1. atheism is about lack of belief in a God;
2. you called atheism “fucking boring” and “willfully ignorant”;
3. why would a Theory of Everything need to incorporate a “spiritual underpinning”, whatever that means, any more than the theory of relativity, of gravity, of evolution, or any other scientific theory?

You are aware of the fact that the scientific method has not found any evidence whatsoever of the existence of any kind of “spiritual underpinning” to anything, and no “theory” in science depends on it or even recognizes it as either necessary or real.

As Laplace apocryphally said to Napoleon, when he explained the motion of the planets without reference to God, “there is no need for that hypothesis.”

What role would this “spiritual underpinning” play? What would it explain that could not be explained by natural causes? It is a completely arbitrary, blind belief – precisely the kind of “willfully ignorant”, “fucking boring” thing you called atheism.

B: What can I say, I find the evidence compelling. I pointed to a book earlier. Fascinating stuff. No, it hasn’t proven anything, but Sam Harris hasn’t proven the non-existence of God either.

Take the fucking out of fucking boring, and all I’m saying is atheism is more one-dimensional than the alternative. The fact that God has yet to be proven using our current scientific method means perhaps that our tools of measurement are limited – which is why I think psychedelics have possibilities as a new tool of research: a different kind of microscope. DMT: The Spirit Molecule is fascinating as well – http://www.rickstrassman.com/DMT – a sober-minded and scientific account.

If God does exist – and it’s possible for us to tap into that “infinite” power because God is part of our own consciousness – then this has other implications beyond just what would be proven by a new scientific theory. Another book could be written about what this implies.

I mentioned religion because too often people mention the corruption of religion when defining their atheism. So it’s “Sarah Palin is why I don’t believe in God.” They have nothing to do with each other.

A: I don’t want to offend you. You have a very different worldview than mine, and the snarky comments can be very cutting and dismissive. But, I must ask, what makes you think that psychedelic drugs have any ability to reveal anything useful? If I cross my eyes, my vision is altered in a way that makes the world look different, but it isn’t a different “dimension”; it’s just a misperception of the world around me. The same world I was looking at before I crossed my eyes.

Similarly, if I take a powerful hallucinogen, it may screw up my visual cortex and cause me to see something different, just as crossing my eyes did. But again, it’s just a perception of the exact same physical world around me. Only now, I’m perceiving it (even more) poorly (than I usually do).

B: That’s why I said earlier that the veracity of psychedelic experience is up for argument. I can’t say I have limitless experience with different psychedelics, so I’m relying on the research of very smart people: Huxley, Strassman, Pinchbeck, Grof, others. It comes back to intuition again and many people say that they feel they have entered a different universe – it’s not just a fabrication of the brain, not just chemistry.

Given that we can’t travel the universe yet, traveling consciousness is something that should be open to serious study. We don’t know what may exist in other dimensions – or how to get there – but we do have some proof that there are other dimensions. Everything I believe is based on the possibility and the implications of that possibility. Including things like UFOs – if we’re going to get really far out. Who knows how an advanced intelligence a billion years more advanced than us might travel or appear to us. “What if” is so fascinating to me that I keep looking.

I also think skepticism is healthy but can also be a closed circuit because people come to a new idea with a preconceived notion about what is and what isn’t real and then look for clues to support that worldview. My preconceived notion is obviously being open to fringe ideas – perhaps to a fault – but skepticism can see fault even before further study.

Many new scientific ideas were considered fringe blasphemy at first. They jailed Copernicus. This started as a comment about how a liberal site is actually fairly conservative when it comes to ideas like this. A disbelief in God may be more reasonable, given our lack of firm proof, but there’s a whole lot more out there to be discovered.

A: You reveal a misunderstanding of skepticism. How many of those people are neurophysiologists, neurobiologists, neurochemists? We know that in many instances what people “feel” is an error of interpretation of sensory input.

An amputee “feels” an itch on a missing limb.

A dehydrated person lost in the desert “sees” an oasis, can even “smell” the water.

We know that we can generate a whole range of “spiritual” experiences in a laboratory, by applying magnetic fields or electrical impulses to specific regions of the brain. We can induce a feeling of “divine presence,” of being “out of body,” of ecstasy, fear, etc.

When you bring up Copernicus as evidence that skepticism equals closed-mindedness, you are misunderstanding the nature of scientific inquiry. First of all, the primary objections to Copernicus came from religious followers, not scientists (same with Galileo, same with Darwin, etc., etc).

Second, skepticism is an essential part of the scientific method. without it, there is no science. Skepticism is not rejection of the new; it is application of rigorous, consistent standards to the new – standards that have proven effective in weeding out false from valid assertions.

Third, failure to embrace every new idea is actually a virtue of science, not a failing. Science is about avoiding the error of believing false beliefs, not about failing to believe something out there that might be true. If it is true, in the scientific sense, then eventually the evidence will prove it so.

As I’ve said numerous times, there are zero examples of a supernatural explanation replacing a natural one, while the entire history of the past 200 years in particular, have been an accelerating process of replacing supernatural explanations with natural ones.

There is simply no evidence to support what you choose to believe.

Believe it if you will, but don’t pretend it is grounded in any kind of rational, scientific approach. It is just as arbitrary and irrational as any religious dogma.

Finally, to put this back in the context of a political and policy discussion forum – What we need is more skepticism in our society, not less. We need to train our citizens to apply rigorous and consistent scientific methods, aka critical thinking, in evaluating the claims of politicians against their performance, and the ideals of an ideology against the reality of its consequences.

Skepticism in citizens is an unalloyed good. It doesn’t reject hope or new ideas or better things; it just says, as we used to say about the Soviets, “trust – but verify.”

B: Yes, but “Flying spaghetti monster” et al. reveals a bias of skepticism, a closed-mindedness. As I said, skepticism is good, but it can be corrupted by fanaticism like anything. For some, skepticism is a belief system, which is narrow. Disbelieving before study even occurs – not saying you do that, but some do.

I’m all for the scientific method. I just think our current measuring instruments are limited and other answers are still out there. And regarding the “true” nature of psychedelic experience – that’s why it needs rigorous scientific study. Note: I pointed you to Dr. Rick Strassman, a scientist, and not Timothy Leary. The same goes for UFOs – universally ridiculed. But – my God – the implications are so astounding that it should be treated seriously.

Copernicus lived in a different time, but right now scientists do not have the freedom to explore some of the more fringe subjects for fear of losing funding. So there is a sort of “religious” kind of dogma dictating what can and cannot be subjected to scientific inquiry.

Curious, though, about the evidence that there isn’t a God. Aside from the fact that people mistreat each other, because that’s just one definition of what God could be: a benevolent, guiding presence. Think that’s a bit too easy. Just because science is revealing the vast complexity of the universe on its own does not mean some kind of divinity is not also at play. And science has yet to disprove all supernatural phenomena. It could – that might be the Theory of Everything – but we’re not there yet.

A: Straw man. You keep asserting that claims about supernatural phenomena, about UFOs, about psychedelic experience, have not been studies scientifically.

That simply is not true – in fact, these are among the most studied claims of all unsubstantiated claims – by scientists all over the world. Billions of dollars have been spent on research, funded by the military, funded by government science operations, funded by private eccentrics, funded by foundations.

All claimed evidence has failed to prove valid. Either anecdotes can’t be replicated, or natural explanations are readily available, or evidence was faked. It’s simply dishonest to claim these things have not been researched. Scientists reject them because they have been so exhaustively researched, and because evidence is so breathtakingly absent.

Forget scientists for the moment – millions of lay people over the years have tried their best to prove their beliefs, to capture reliable evidence of their beliefs.

They have failed.

There is NO evidence. At which point, the rational approach is NOT to keep a perpetually gullible approach, but to say, “time to move on to more interesting things.”

B: Now we’re going somewhere else. This isn’t true, especially re: UFOs -

All claimed evidence has failed to prove valid.

I don’t know how much you’ve read about the subject, but there are a huge number of cases that can’t be explained in rational terms. Some things have been explained, but all? There’s just no way to make that kind of blanket statement. World militaries have admitted that much of the phenomenon is unexplainable. To say there’s NO evidence does reveal the bias of a skeptic I was talking about. There’s absolutely no way you can make this definitive statement.

Check out Jacques Vallee’s journals. My favorite writing on the subject.

A: “There are a huge number of cases that can’t be explained in rational terms.”

In which case, why is that evidence in favor of UFOs?

Perhaps it’s psychic fields projected by mice, who are the true overlords of the universe?

Perhaps it’s sentient gas beings posing as weather balloons?

Perhaps it is the World Government poisoning the air with psychic fumes?

Or, perhaps, like the bazillion of claimed cases that have been shown to be the product of natural causes, illusory errors of interpretation, brain farts, or swamp gas, the small percentage of anecdotes for which we don’t yet have any evidence either way, may also be the result of natural causes, illusory errors of interpretation, brain facts or swamp gas.

One can’t expect to have a scientific researcher with measuring equipment on hand every time some claims to have seen funny lights in the sky.

Until there is clear evidence – and there is no reason that there would not be, if the phenomenon were real (and this applies to “God” as well), there is no reason to ascribe it to miraculous causes.

That is just the archaic “Goddidit” superstition of pre-scientific humanity. Anything we didn’t yet have a cause for, we ascribed to gods throwing bolts of lightning down to the Earth, or demons making people sick, or witches cursing villagers, or black people contaminating white people, or atheists bringing hurricanes down on American while prayer deflects (oh, wait, that last one is a current belief, and most of the others are still believed to one extent or another, even by “Westerners” like Sarah Palin with her witchdoctors).

There is no evidence of alien visitations, of angels or fairies or crystal power or dead spirits speaking to us or psychedelic trips being anything other than chemical hallucinations or gods in the heavens or anywhere else. None.

When you have some, come talk. Until then, your belief is no different than Sarah Palin’s – utterly irrational and arbitrary.

I say to you today, I am God. Prove me wrong. Wait, you don’t believe me? Why? Can you prove otherwise?

You know that trouble you had sleeping the other night? That was me.

You know that time you fell and hurt yourself as a child? That was me.

Everything you believe and attribute to other gods was actually me, using squirrel proxies and snail slime trails to intoxicate your cerebral corpus colossus and bamboozle your beezlebub so you’d think it was some other god.

Prove me wrong. Prove I am not your god.

And, since you cannot prove it, I command you to stop believing in all other things but me.

You’re not a closed-minded “skeptic”, are you? You’re not a priori rejecting what could be the greatest revelation of your life, are you?

I am your God.

Prove me wrong.

B: I don’t know how to respond to this one. There IS evidence. Not conclusive, but quantum theory didn’t exist 100 years ago, now it does. Our total conception of reality was rewritten. That can happen again and perhaps the new science will explain the old mysteries. I’ll be happy when it does.

But you are revealing your bias outright. What I see is: you don’t WANT to believe in these things because it gives you a little jolt of superiority to think that you’re rational and those with faith aren’t. What this boils down to is misguided faith in your own perspective and depth of knowledge. In fact, you are determining yourself to be God by making such sweeping proclamations as if you have the answers to so many unanswerable questions. That to me sounds more like Sarah Palin than someone who’s saying: the jury’s still out.

All I’m arguing for is the possibility. Not the existence, the possibility. It’s hardly a fundamentalist position.

A: Quantum theory has no bearing on either god or spiritual dimensions. None.

All I did was present you with the absurdity of saying that “God” is a credible assertion because I can’t prove it to be false.

My absurd claim was meant to illustrate that “God” is not a privileged assertion. Just like any other assertion, it does not need to be believed, or even thought credible, in the absence of any evidence, just because someone uttered it.

“God” is no more credible than saying that my left over candy from Halloween created the universe.

“Spirits” are not more credible than saying that the squirrel outside your window is controlling your thoughts.

That is what you refuse to consider.

That the only reason you think god, or spiritual dimensions, are any more credible than any other unsubstantiated assertion, is because it is popular, held by many people.

There is nothing that makes it any more credible than any other claim.

B: Well, I think there is more proof for God than there is that candy created the universe. So that’s where it does come down to faith for me: believing in something not yet fully proven, given some compelling evidence available. And yes, I think the magical complexity of quantum/string theory is part of that evidence.

I don’t believe in any of this because of its popularity. And in fact I was raised by some pretty militantly unmystical people. But, yes, I do think there’s something to be said for the power of collective belief and what that might signify. I don’t discount Jung’s theories of the collective unconscious and archetypes either. That said, I think my perspective is a little less deluded than your run-of-the-mill religious zealot.