[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by Soul Surfer

No I do NOT believe in any sort of God who meddles with the universe but I do find that the concept of God is a useful and simple mental model to guide behaviour.  Can you come up with a simpler and/or a better one?

Each to his own, but personally, I don't see it myself.

I see it as simply trying to create the kind of world I would like myself and my friends and family to live in.  I do not see it as having any supernatural entity watching over me, but that I should be unflinching in my self-criticism in striving to achieve that world.

I would though ask whether you do not at all feel uncomfortable preying to a God you profess not to believe in?  Personally, I have been (other than as a tourist) in a church maybe once or twice (and as often in a synagogue), and in each case I felt somewhat hypocritical in being there.  I assumed that the others who were standing alongside me did truly believe in the service they were taking part in, and in my superficial pretence to believe as they did, I felt I was actually belittling their own more genuine beliefs.  I was usually present there for the sake of a friend or family member, but I still felt like an interloper.

[Andrew K Fletcher]

Interesting experiment.

Take 100 thousand people, convince them that once they are dead, they are dead and there aint no such thing as life after death.

give them all a gun and tell them to fight to the death and see how many of them actually pull the trigger.

"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct."
K.I.S. "Keep it simple!"

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by Andrew K Fletcher

Interesting experiment.

Take 100 thousand people, convince them that once they are dead, they are dead and there aint no such thing as life after death.

give them all a gun and tell them to fight to the death and see how many of them actually pull the trigger.

Rather a naïve experiment, is it not.

There are many animals that will fight to the death, and there is no reason to believe any of them believe in life after death.

Life after death, like many aspects of religion, is retrofitted to explain or justify what people (being the animals that we all are) were going to anyway.