Ridicule of religious belief and evangelist atheism

I never heard the expression "evangelist atheist" before, although I guess you mean people out to spread the gospel of atheism. There are "hard atheists" who assert affirmatively that there is no God (generally based on philosophical reasoning rather than any empirical evidence) and there are "soft atheists" who just say there is no evidence of God and so there is no need to believe.(Agnosticism is something different -- the assertion that knowledge of something like God is not possible).

I think someone who is "evangelistic" (pushy) about their atheism is probably someone who fears religion and superstition, probably based on both personal experience and the study of the history of the behavior of religions. After that it becomes a matter of personality and maturity -- some use ridicule and sarcasm, others try to reason with the believer (good luck with either approach -- sarcasm merely reinforces the martyrdom complex and reason is generally not possible once the person reaches a certain age). The believer after a certain point has heard it all before and has his or her rationalizations all carefully in place.

Abortion and Contraception

Let me start with a general statement about religion and government.  I think religions have an obligation to try to influence the behavior of their adherents, and I think most of the time this works for good.  Do they have the right, however, to try to influcnce, let alone control, the behavior of others through law?  When the adherents of a particular relilgion are in the majority, we often see this, and it is seriously wrong in and of itself.

That doesn't mean the law doesn't step in and regulate things that relilgions teach -- the law, to use the obvious example of murder, makes it illegal, and churches endorse this.  I would say that because a religion supports a law does not make the law wrong, but it does make it suspect.

Being male, and a homosexual to boot, I don't have any personal involvement in conception and abortion, so I think I can look at it objectively.  Of course my belief in freedom, basically that anything that restricts individual freedom needs strong and maybe even overwhelming state interest.

There is a magical view of life -- that living things are endowed with some sort of life spirit or soul.  One can understand the emotional responses people have to the idea of preventing or ending a pregnancy if they think that way.  I can only say the view is unscientific, devoid of rational supporting evidence, and in some ways leads to all sorts of impractical results -- such that it is immoral to step on an ant.

What overriding public interest do laws against abortion and contraception achieve?  Stopping the killing of babies, I suppose, but is the foetus a baby?  At some point it becomes a baby (at birth seems to be the general view) and then slowly over the next few years, if not over the next lifetime, it becomes a person.

The criminization of abortion and contraception has some very bad consequences -- back-door abortions, deaths of teenage girls, family disruptions, unwanted children leading to later criminals, and so on.  Offsetting that are the dangers of abortion and the emotional problems to the parents that can happen later.  These need weighing, to be sure, and people need to try to avoid making these things happen.  I would say that it all depends, and, like all moral decisions, no absolute rule should be followed but instead compassion, maximizing good, minimizing harm, and not imposing our will (another way of saying "using") on others.



 

The Moral Obligation to tell the Truth

Honesty, which includes not just avoiding falshoods but also avoiding misrepresentation and failure to do what one promises to do, is certainly a virtue.  It is also the course of wisdom as it makes life simpler and does the most good -- usually.  However, there is no logical or biological argument that shows honesty is always good -- it is just a rule of thumb that has unfortunately been taken too far too often. 

Interestingly, it seems that almost, if not all, virtues, when taken too far, end up being vices, and honesty is not an exception.  Society has exceptions to the rule calling for honesty, the most common being the (quite proper) tolerance of "white lies"-- lies told to avoid the harm the truth will cause.  Sometimes it is just to avoid hurting someone's feelings, sometimes it is to avoid conflict (telling your wife -- if you are a married man -- that her new hairdo looks great, even though it doesn't, as otherwise you know you will get the silent treatment for then next few months).

I remember a time when I was in high school where the teacher insisted the definition of a white lie was one where one has no personal gain, but only wishes to avoid harming someone.  I argued otherwise, and, as this teacher was stubborn, didn't do so well in his class.  I argued that personal gain, or at least avoiding personal harm, is sometimes a perfectly acceptable reason to lie, such as when one knows the truth may create an enemy, and also when the person asking the question has no right to the answer.

"Are you gay?" Well, I usually have no problem with such a question, but there are times when I lie and assert my heterosexuality.  The person is invading my privacy, but if I tell them that, they will conclude I must be gay, since otherwise I would not be reluctant to answer.  When a poll taker calls me on the phone with one of those surveys, and it soon becomes apparent that the "poll" is not a poll at all but a sales attempt or a politically partisan effort to push a particular position or candidate, then I begin to lie through my teeth, partly to waste their time and partly to confuse the data.  Such things are dishonest going in and therefore have no right to the truth.

It is possible to imagine scenarios where truth is in fact a grave moral and ethical wrong, such as, say, having Ann Frank hiding in your attic and the Gestapo at the door asking if you have seen her.

Breaking of promises is another type of dishonest behavior, and can be classed as a species of lie.  The story is, Thomas Jefferson promised his wife, as she was dying, that he would never remarry.  So he didn't, but instead ended up committing the much worse offense of having children by a slave woman.  Now he treated her well and gave her and her children their freedom in his will, but I have to say that having sex with a slave is a form of rape and far worse than breaking a promise made to ease the passing of someone who really has no right to extract such a promise.

Carrying honesty too far, when the truth is harmful, then, is a vice, and using the dictum to always tell the truth as an excuse for imposing such harm is a double-vice.

This illustrates the problem with codes of ethical conduct -- there can be no solid rules beyond avoiding harm, maximizing good, and not using others, and these objectives themselves are not absolutes but must be weighed against each other in each particular situation. 

Vegetarianism

Since I seem to be on an ethics kick the last few posts, I guess I will talk a little about a few more difficult problems (I say difficult since it should be plain there is no simple answer and each person must do what they think best given the details of the situation at hand).

Whether or not to kill animals for food?  Ah, I would say killing a sentient animal for some other reason, such as for its pelt, is very problematic and can readily be discouraged, but food is more complicated.

In an ideal world it might be possible to raise animals for the purpose of slaughter, but to treat them otherwise much better than they would have in nature.  They would live longer than they do in nature and not incur the constant threat of predation, disease, and hunger.  I suppose -- but we don't treat animals that way.  Their comfort enters the picture only if it effects cost and quality.  We also often slaughter them young.  About the only time the humanitarians have any influence, it seems, is at the time of slaughter, where at least in many countries laws exist to make sure it is done painlessly and without terrorizing the beast (which is only observed casually, I have to say).  Islam is particularly horrid about this, and one of the reasons the religion repells me.

If one has a farm and can control the care of the animal, and then does the killing oneself, quickly, I guess this would be okay, if marginal, but how many of us can do that?

There are, of course, other reasons for avoiding meat, the most important probably being our own health -- and there is a moral question here as we have a moral obligation to take care of our own health and that of those dependent on us.  I think the case against meat is overstated by extremists here, as the meat available on the market is not healthy grass fed and finished meat, without hormones and so on.  However, with some attention to what one is buying these problems can be greatly mitigated (and in that case becomes a matter of only being moderate in our meat eating).  Besides, much the same problems exist with vegetarian fare as well, and there are nutrients a strict vegetarian is lilkely to end up defecient in.

It can be argued that some animals are better than others if one is going to break the rule of no killing animals.  It has to do with degree of sentience, and this is a hard one as we don't really know what "sentience" is or where it comes from, but it is pretty obvious that some animals operate entirely by reflex instincts while others experience the world and have emotions.  There seems to be no particular problem with killing an eating non-sentient life.  "Life" is not a magical property, it is just what we observe as organisms meeting whatever criterion one has for life, and it is not necessary to say one never kills bacteria or even insects.

In fact, I am persuaded by the evidence of the neurologists that sentience appeared with the pre-mammalian reptiles (way back before the dinosaurs) and was present in varying degrees in the dinosaurs, and hence is nowadays limited to mammals and birds.  There is of course no certainty in this, but one is safe to say any sentience found in other organisms (except maybe squid and octpuses) is so limited as to be disregardable.

We have an important ethical command to not harm other people emotionally, even when we are "in the right." For this reason let me close with the observation that if one is offered meat as a guest, one should consume it without comment.  Not hurting another or questioning their standards or judging them prevails over our responsibility to less sentient beings.

War is Hell

I understand this expression ("War is Hell") originated with Sherman.  No doubt he used it as an excuse for his atrocities, not descriptively, but as a rationalization.  Nevertheless, it expresses a reality that people don't appreciate, until they think about the more traditional understandings of perdition.

Irving Berlin, in his song "This is the Army" got it I think right on (for those who listen to the words carefully) with this verse:

Do what the buglers command.
They're in the army and not in a band.

This is the army, Mister Brown.
You and your baby went to town.
She had you worried
But this is war and she won't worry you anymore.

On the battlefront one forgets other worries.

Since the last few days I've been on an ethics kick, it seems I should address the most serious ethical question of all that the ordinary person is likely to encounter -- war.

There is the concept of a just war and all the others, and in history there have been few just wars, but they do exist.  The Romans built their empire on "just wars," and even had silly rituals they went through to persuade themselves (or somebody) that their going out and conquering someone and pillaging their property and enslaving the population was "just."

One of the Ten Commandments is against stealing, and I have to wonder how it is that this never occurred to the Israelis as they conquered and displaced the Canaanites.  I could insert a snide comment here but I will let the readers insert their own.

I think it is pretty clear that wars conducted to occupy territory and take slaves and property can be ruled unjust.  What about a war to resist someone else doing this?  The right of self defense is questionable as a right, certainly not without boundaries and conditions (such as one has no right to engage in unnecessary brutality in such cases).  Still, the rule of minimizing harm seems to say one cannot allow bullies and aggressors to do their thing with impunity.  The have to be resisted if at all possible and with war if necessary.  Otherwise such types would rule the world and the harm from that would be immeasurable.

Now, what if you have reason to conclude that another country is preparing an invasion -- are you allowed to act preemptively?  Well it seems reasonable that if this will prevent an even worse war later on, then again by the rule of minimizing harm, it would be ethical.

Now we get into some deep politics -- what if the preemptive action is worse than the war, or results in conquest (not all conquests involve outright annexation -- just changing the regime in power to one more to one's taste is a form of stealing).  The outcome of war is highly unpredictable and may (usually does) far more harm than anticipated by the study institutes.

The personal ethical question, of whether or not to be a soldier, and whether or not to support one's nations' military actions, is complicated.  For the most part the attitude obviously should be pacifistic -- oppose war and support measures to reduce its likelihood (ironically that almost always includes supporting defensive military preparation).

Patriotism, when not taken too far (as is the case with all virtues) is a virtue.  One loves one's country, one wants it to persist, one wants it to prosper.  Being at war is counterproductive to these desires, but may be unavoidable.

There is also the horrible set of questions as to one's personal behavior when on the battlefront?  I know myself I could never kill another person, no matter what, so I guess I am lucky I was never in that position.  Still, it is not for me to judge what others may decide to do.  I would just ask that they mindfully review the options in advance.

The Ten Commandments

It's informative sometimes to ask a person who insists they follow or are guided by God's Law what law in particular they mean.

Of course one often gets "the Bible." Well obviously the Bible has some laws in it, but it is not a law book.  Besides, Christians, at least, do not follow most of the Bible laws, found in the Mosaic Law.  Various explanations are given for this,  having to do with that Law having been "fulfilled," or replaced by the Law of Love.

I have no idea how anything Jesus did could have fulfilled the law, and as I recall he went out of his way to be explicit that nothing in that law was to be ignored or broken -- just that common sense was needed in its application (the Sabbath can be broken in emergencies is, as I recall, the example he gave).

When asked to see some specific laws found in the Bible, we of course almost always get the Ten Commandments.  One has to ask, since the Mosaic Law is fulfilled and since the Ten Commandments are obviously part of this, why just it, and not all of the Mosaic Law, is considered valid.

The Ten Commandments are of course on the whole an excellent guide, so long as not taken too literally (the common sense rule) and not taken as anything near a complete ethics guide (for example it does not prohibit slavery or discrimination or using legal process to force others to observe one's personal ethics).  It is also composed of "shalt not" commands, and there are some affirmative things that should be in one's basic ethical beliefs -- such as giving to charities, doing safe and healthy things, etc.

The Commandment having to do with the Sabbath is of course specific to the tradition, but there is no problem I see with mandating a day of rest.  That it has to be one day in seven as a minimum is a bit silly, and this probably should not be part of a basic law as it does not rise to the level of honesty and fidelity in marriage, let alone not killing people.

The Sabbath law has also had the perverse effect of forcing a seven day week on our calendar, which has made it resistant to decimalization and unnecessarily complicated the calendar.  A ten day week with two or three Sabbaths would in my mind be better.  Going to church on a Sabbath is also inconsistent -- it is supposed to be a day of rest.

The main problem is with the statement that Jehovah (YHVH) is said to be a "jealous" God.  That is an obvious hold-over from the days when monotheism was not established and the actual existence of other gods was still believed -- otherwise what does Jehovah have to be jealous of?  The real problem here though is not its illogicality but its implication of intolerance.

God's jealousy also leads to to the ban on idolatry.  It goes so far as to ban the making of images entirely -- something Islam has taken beyond common sense and is of course impossible in the modern world (photo id's for example).  The fact is that there is no such thing as idolatry -- no one thinks the statue is actually the god -- this is brought out in the defense of Christian icons -- they are aids for focus and art works incorporating religious feelings.  When the Buddhist bows to the Buddha, no one thinks the Buddha is actually present in the statue -- it is respect and tradition and things like that, not "worship." (One day I must do a blog on the meaninlessness of the concept of worship anyway).  Ask any Buddhist -- the Buddha is dead.

If I were to scan the Bible for ethics, I would probably concentrate on the Sermon on the Mount -- something to be read from time to time for its lack of hypocrisy, its common sense, and its affirmative commands (along with things not to do).  I will maybe deal with this another day.

Atheist Ethics

As I explained in the previous blog, I am, or at least define myself, as an atheist.

Some people think that implies an absence of ethical or moral standards, but most understand that this notion is silly.  Still, I hear it often enough that maybe a few words about it are in order.

I may be an atheist, but I am also a human being.  The Buddhists have taught me that compassion for all sentient beings leads to peace of mind and happiness; Kant taught me never to "use" another person and to test actions based on whether I would be willing to allow anyone else to do the same; Socrates, via Plato, taught me that I should be careful in deciding that things are right or wrong, as in the end we don't know the ultimate consequences of what we do.  Regardless of all this, one does what is right because it is right and avoids doing what is wrong because it is wrong -- we do not really need a reason -- the difficult thing is not this but somehow discerning what is right and what is wrong.

One thing an atheist doesn't have is an authority, such as God, telling me what is right or wrong.  Is it so bad, this having to make my own choices, knowing that there is no deity handing out prizes and punishments?

Authority driven ethics suffers the often explained problem that I will here ask again -- does God decide on right and wrong, based on his power or something like that, or is it instead that in his perfection and wisdom he just tells us, his already knowing?  The problem with the first possibility is, can God tell us to do evil?  The problem with the second is that if God cannot tell us to do evil, or always chooses the good, then doesn't that mean that good and evil are something separate from God, and indeed his superior?

So then do I just follow my conscience and do what feels right?  I think largely that is a good thing -- do what your conscience tells you -- but this also suffers the problem of authority driven ethics, mainly in the issue of whether or not my conscience has got it right and not must making me feel better about doing something wrong.

What is our conscience?  Where does it come from?  Well of course this is pretty obvious if you note that the details of conscience varies by culture and over time.  Today in most of the world slavery is considered a serious evil, but through history it didn't seem to bother most people.  Today teenage sex, especially with full adults, is strictly off limits, leading in some countries to bouts of hysteria, but classical cultures (at least much of Greece) thought it an excellent thing, at least for boys.  (Don't misunderstand -- I disapprove too as I think being introduced to sex too young spoils a lot of things for the guy as he grows up, but I don't think it the horror one sees in the United States).

So conscience (aka "how we feel about it") is a reasonably good guide but not perfect.  I think it is okay so long as we do it "mindfully"-- that is, we give it some conscious consideration whether or not it meets independent tests.  Mindfulness, of course, is a virtue to be exercised in everything, not just ethical decisions.

In the end, of course, each situation has to be considered on its own, with the objective of doing the most possible good and the least possible harm (pretty much what everyone who has thought about it concludes).  We do what we do with compassion and wisdom (charity is good but can do harm if it creates dependency).  It ain't that hard, at least most of the time.

Proving there is no God (Hard Atheism)

How can someone possibly say for sure there is no God, let alone think they can prove it?

I think maybe I have set the question fairly, but of course right away I need to point out I avoided the word "believe." I don't "believe" there is no God, I only "say" it (or think it when saying so out loud would be inappropriate).

Actually, I don't even "think" there is no God -- I just don't think there is one.  This is a slightly different statement -- the first one is an affirmative assertion and hence has a burden of proff, while the second is a negative, subject to the rule that you can't prove a negative (you can't prove Santa Clause doesn't exist, but we all know it -- however, I think that approach is a cop-out).

The thing is, so often believers (aka "theists") insist they will believe in God unless I can prove otherwise.  If someone said as much of the jolly fat man, we would see the logical fallacy, but logical fallacies seem to be allowed when it comes to God (more of them later).

There are at least three standards that if met constitute "proof." The one usually meant goes:  "Beyond all doubt, for a certainty." This is more than just an unfair demand, it is an absurdity.  If this is the test for knoweldge, we do not know and can never know anything, since no amout of evidence and logic could achieve such a thing.  Even mathematical proofs do not achieve that standard, as there is always the possibility that there is an unseen error in the reasoning, or a flaw in one of the assumptions (axioms and definitions).

A slightly more reasonable definition of "proof," to be used, I suppose, in deciding whether to send someone to jail, is "beyond reasonable doubt." This of course is the legal demand in most criminal courts.  What it says is you look at the evidence and any sensible person will be able to see what happened, and any that say otherwise are just being perverse.  "I know the sun will rise tomorrow." I think that statement meets this test.

In civil cases, however, there is a different standard of proof -- it goes, "A preponderance of the evidence." It is hard to give examples of this because this rule and the reasonable doubt rule have no clear dividing line.  They merge, as it were, along a fuzzy boundary.

The first argument I would present against God's existence is as old as the hills, and has never been refuted, and yet theists continue to fool themselves into thinking otherwise.  It is summed in the bit of nonsense about whether God can create a rock so big he can't move it.  I do wish the problem historically had used something different, since God is not a phyical being (I think we will all agree on that) so rocks make the issue seem trivial, and it is anything but trivial.  Spiritual or not, can God create such a rock?

Modern mathematics (mainly in Goedel's theorems) has shown us that in systems complex enough (and numbers or geometric shapes are complex enough) there must necessarily exist unprovable but true theorems.  Can God prove such a theorem?  That the answer necessarily must be "no" will be obvious to anyone who understand this, but that is going to be a minority.

Can God believe something that is false?  Of course not.  Can God tell a lie?  Can God do something less than perfect?  Can he do something evil?  The answers to these questions imply that God is just a machine doing the right thing all the time, who has no possibility of choice in what he does since anything less that perfect in all respects is outside his capabilities.

There exists a standard, highly dishonest, response to this -- we will redefine God and deny him absolute omnipotence.  He can do anything except what is against his nature to do, and it is against his nature to do anything illogical or imperfect or evil. 

You really in that case don't have much of a God left, but, as I already said, just a machine.

To digress a bit, I remember having a certain person defend the idea of eternal torment in Hell as punishment for sins committed in a short human life.  This sort of notion of course blies the idea of God as just, (but then any sort of eternal punishment, even extinction, is unjust in this context).  What I was told was that Hell is something God could not avoid -- it follows from the nature of sin and God is so perfect he has to torture people eternally.

Hard to not want to throw up at such things -- if God does exist I guess such people are lucky he is merciful, the slander about him that people invent.

All I can say when I hear theists bandy about words like "omnipotent" and then explain the self-refrerential contradictions that any sort of infinity implies is they don't think they need be logical when it comes to God.

There are, of course, other gods about besides the "God" of the Bible and Q'uran.  Threre is the Tao, who by definition can't be known, so we might as well ignore him.  Then there are polytheistic deities, as in Hinduism and Paganism.  They don't count either since they make no claim to being God but are merely gods, with maybe superhuman power, but not omnipotence.

I dunno if you should pay too much attention to what I say about reincarnation; I am not an expert, and can only tell you what I think based on my somewhat unique background.  I know very little about Pythagoras except his theorem and that he started a mystical Greek philosophical school.

There is a story in the Buddhist tradition of a Prince who was very much into the hunt, and spent all his time hunting and killing animals, and which the Buddha indicated, because of the Prince's desires, would probably be reborn a tiger.  Interestingly he is reported to not have said so in so many words but just with gestures.  The Buddha was not much into animal rebirths -- this is much more a Hindu idea, and I have no idea whatever what the Pythagoreans thought.

Pretty much everyone around here, including the Communists, "believes" in reincarnation, in the sense that the idea is part of the furniture and just taken for granted.  When you drill down, however, one finds differing theories and some skepticism.

Personally I am very skeptical, and get more and more so as I age.

First one knows that the teaching originated in India, probably as far back as the Harrappa cultures (sometimes spelled with just one "r").  Unlike many of the features of modern Hinduism, such as casts and the panoply of deities, the teaching of reincarnation is common to all the religious traditions originating in India, and hence one can conclude it was probably there before the Aryan invasions (which brought in the Indo-European deities).

This is not to say the idea that we are reborn (the technically correct term -- "reincarnation" has to do with coming back to earth as a new incarnation, not as a new person) has not appeared elsewhere.  It is found as a speculation in Greek philosophy in such people as Plato, but was not as far as I know a belief in Greek religion.  Some assert that the Greeks got the idea from India, but records of such Greek thinking predate Alexander, so I doubt it -- more likely the Greek philosophers thought it up on their own.

As found in popular thinking nowadays, both in India and in the Buddhist areas, the teaching can be seen to have two components -- belief in karma and belief in the immortal soul.  Karma, as we all know, is the tendency to accumulate brownie points for good behavior and bad marks for bad behavior in a cosmic account.  Expressed in a more sophisticated way, what it means is that our behavior changes us (our soul) as we live, for the good and for the bad, and this accumulates and eventually, as a part of the universe's cause and effect processes, leads to good or bad "luck."   They also lead to rebirth in a better or worse position than one's present life.

What is seen to happen when one dies is the body is gone, but the soul or spirit persists, and desperately desire ("grasps") to get back what it just lost -- sensations mainly (hence the "hungry ghost").  The positive karma one has gives one somehow a certain power to influence one's rebirth (which is pretty much the only way to escape the disembodied -- ghostly -- state) -- to something desirable (maybe a heaven) or something undesirable (maybe a hell) but more likely to another human -- again to high or low state.  The widespread notion of being reborn an animal is also considered possible, but not likely since once having been a human there are very few who have any desire at all along these lines, and it is our desire that motivates the entire process (sentient animals are, however, seen as a virtually inexhaustible source of new human souls).

Unlike the Hindu approach, where this is seen as immortality, the Buddha saw it as a horrible trap -- called Samsara -- where one is trapped in a cycle of suffering -- dying is suffering, being born is suffering, life is suffering (I tend to see life, even the painful parts, differently).  Therefore he is reported to have discovered the way out -- through enlightenment, which is achieved through a life of meditation and goodness (basically by becoming a Buddhist monk -- which doesn't guarantee enlightenment but which is pretty much necessary).  Most Buddhists would like instead to go to one of the Buddhist heavens.

Enlightenment nowadays is seen as peace of mind, happiness, understanding of the human condition, and things like that, but the early conception was a supernatural awareness and level of knowledge that included memory of past lives.  In such a state one can die at any time and enter Nirvana -- often rendered "blessedness." Some see it as personal extinction, or maybe something like the Transcendentalist concept of rejoining the cosmic ocean of mind, or maybe just entering a special heaven where one's karma doesn't eventually run out.  Portrayals of it for children usually depict a (to me boring) state of people sitting around meditating.

Now some problems.  First, there is the convincing and I think very true Buddhist teaching of "no self." All of the above picture sees us as having souls, or selves, but Buddhist teaching from the very earliest tells us that this is an illusion.  Even mindful meditation can persuade those who know to look for it that there is no soul, no self, but only a process not unlike a burning candle or a wave on the water, or an electro-magnetic particle/wave duality we call a photon.

Then there is the modern scientific understanding that what we call mind is really just brain activity.  This concept has its own problem (the source of what are called "qualia" or sensations and emotions as we experience them -- the brain doubtlessly produces them but what is it that experiences what the brain generates).  Still, that problem aside, how does all this survive the destruction of brain (we see that mind tend to disappear even while the brain lives if it has some degenerative disease).  Where does the mind go -- into space as a disembodied ghost? -- the possible mechanism is an absurdity.

The general view in Vietnam is that there are ghosts everywhere -- spirits so evil they have not been able to be reborn (although why not one of the hells?).  These are frightening and malevolent and not even mentioned out loud.  There are also good spirits wandering around who for some reason haven't been reborn -- shrines can be seen here and there for these, to give them comfort.  Ghosts tend to be restricted to where they can travel at normal human speeds, so, except maybe for Pure Land Buddhists, we are reborn on the earth and the ghosts on the earth are those of dead humans.

One problem is expressed in the question, "Where is Mozart." The observation is that each of the world's great artists -- composers, authors, painters, etc., is noticeable for a clear "voice" that (at least in Mozart's case) is readily recognized from the very beginning.  Even though we are told we forget past lives, if the spirit persists, one would think that Mozart would by now have been reborn several times, further enriching our musical heritage, but we see nothing recognizable as such.

My main problem though is simply lack of evidence.  There is no credible evidence for ghosts, nor for past memories.  Unfortunately study of such phenomena, if there is any reality there, has been contaminated by air-heads and frauds and parents eager to make a lot of money from their precocious children by feeding them stuff.  As a result, I don't think it is possible for there to be an objective study, and serious scientists simply don't.  The few who do and who get results are soon denounced and debunked anyway, maybe properly.

There is also déjà-vu. There are efforts to "explain" this wide-spread phenomenon, and I think most of the explanations are valid most of the time, but it is impossible to rule out the possibility that a residue really are memories of past lives.

A lump came to my throat reading about the reception of the refugees in Germany and Austria.  The Hungarians should be ashamed.

It is true that most of these are probably "Economic" immigrants -- meaning their lives are in no terrible danger and the main motive is to improve their lives and the lives of their children.  I just do not see anything wrong with that.

Germany and Austria are getting an influx of young ambitious people willing to take risks.  The saying is, "When the going gets tough the tough get up and go." A nation can only be helped by an influx of such people, especially as their work will pay the pensions of the otherwise aging German population.

Of course there are cultural differences and there will be acculturation problems, and a few of the Muslims coming in will be dangerous radicals.  They will deal with them and end up a richer, more vibrant, wealthier, more powerful and certainly more admirable society.

Well this discussion has had the benefit of showing me that miracles cannot be accepted.  I tended to say they are unlikely and need evidence, but actually we have to ask what would constitute a miracle.  God coming down and curing my medical problems might be called a miracle, but in a deeper sense it would be no such thing -- it would be God coming down and curing my medical problems.  It would seem God is a better doctor than those I've been seeing.

This is perhaps playing word games, as the sense of "miracle" is not something without cause, but where the cause is divine or spiritual and not mundane or human or physical.  Well in that case I don't think miracles occur.  It implies the existence of God, something that is counter to logic (another subject altogether) so that I am persuaded strongly he doesn't exist but is a human notion out of wishful thinking.  Given no God, then, no miracles.  Still, that begs the issue here, which is more of a "show me" situation -- if there are miracles, they don't get believed unless there is damn good evidence there is no other explanation, and even then they don't get believed because it could be simply a trick where I don't see the trick or some event I don't understand.  

There is also a theological problem with miracles -- they imply God interfering with the working of the world as He designed it.  This is certainly problematic -- the artist (in this case a perfect, infallible artist) going back and retouching his work.  And then there is the question of why God works miracles to prevent some evil or other (we assume that is his purpose) and yet allows all sorts of horrid things to go on and on and on -- like babies dying in the gutter.  Once we say God corrects some evils with special dispensations, we make God into an unjust, arbitrary, kind-of circus magician.

Skepticism is healthy, cynicism is not.  Skepticism is to demand evidence for things that are less than obviously true, and never accept things because they are "human." The universe is what it is regardless of our wishes and fantasies.

Anything is possible, that does not mean anything is real, nor does it mean we should accept explanations for things that do not fit with reality.  In such cases the appropriate response is just that we don't know.  I think miracles are impossible by definition -- anything we think is a miracle either has a more mundane explanation or is just a sample of technology we don't understand.  It is possible Santa Clause could pop into existence in my garage (according to what the quantum people tell us), and if he did so it would not be a miracle but just a quantum event.  If Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, it was not a miracle but just his ability to maneuver the universe to make him live -- a modern doctor might have been able to as well, or a future doctor.

All that said, the wise course is to withhold belief and wait for further evidence.  Odds are overwhelming a debunking will come along -- tricks and misunderstandings and delusions and pious frauds are far more common than violations of physics.

It is conceivable Jesus Christ could have gone unnoticed -- there were lots of miracle workers and would-be Messiahs about and the whole topic must have been something of a bore.  My attitude is that absence of evidence is not proof of absence, but it is damn good evidence.  The thing is that extraordinary claims (and the whole Jesus story surely is extraordinary) require extraordinary evidence, not just rationalization of absence of evidence.

The reason people persist in such irrational belief has to do with meme theory, at least this seems the most readily acceptable idea.  Once an idea gets hold -- and it can do so for reasons outside rationality (emotional appeal, childhood indoctrination, etc.), our minds leap at anything that allows keeping the notion in spite of anything -- at least some people's minds do -- hence Bigfoot, lake monsters, flying saucers, hollow earths, alien abductions, ghosts, demons, visions of the Virgin Mary, miracles, and on and on and on.

The religious memes also have a cute trick -- they make what is called "faith" into a virtue, sometimes near the paramount virtue, rather than the vice of superstition and believing what we want rather than what the evidence supports.  It is all feel nice stuff, and for sure believing makes us feel great.  I'm more interested in truth than joy, although I'll take joy when it doesn't require that I lie to myself.

Yes, Dorothy, there are truths in all religions -- this is probably unavoidable about any belief system of enough complexity.  I would also assert that that coin has an obverse -- that there are falsehoods in all religions.

One can reach one of two (at least two) conclusions from this.  One might be that religion in general is a waste of time and worrying about religious truth and untruth are even more a waste of time.  The other might be that revealing truth is not a valid function of religion, but instead religion serves other human needs, probably deriving from our need to serve and worship and be comforted by whatever straw we can grasp -- derived ultimately by the natural selection of our evolution.

When one gets deep into a study of some place and time in history, it becomes clear we know really very little of what actually happened and even less of the reasons why.  That is no reason, however, to fill in the gaps in our knowledge with fantasies and guesses and fictions.  When we die what we know dies with us, so the vast majority of human memory is lost forever, and we only have the little that gets written down, and it is filled with biases and omissions and exaggerations and so on.

People of the future will have a slightly, but only slightly, better time of it studying us than we have studying what went on in, say, ancient Rome.  We do have a somewhat more objective discipline of reporting history, but there is still plenty written that is untrue or misleading, and of course we will leave film and so on, but selection effects here too will prevent anything like a completely accurate record.

Thinking about it, it is amazing we know as much as we know and can see an overall picture regardless.  I would only say a great deal of care and humility is called for if we are to draw lessons from this history.

People claim miracles all the time; I doubt a real divinity would stoop to such performances, but even if so the burden of proof (that it is the truth) for a real miracle is virtually insurmountable, and given that we have no independent contemporary testimony the stories of Jesus are easily discounted.  

As far as "belief" goes, this is foolish of anything.  The best we can honestly do is hold the opinion that something is almost certainly true, and this level of confidence needs to be held in reserve for things like the sun rising tomorrow.  Religions make a virtue of "faith," when in fact it is a vice -- a giving in to our desire that something -- usually something we were taught as children while we were still uncritical -- be true.  

The value judgments we make (right versus wrong, beautiful versus ugly, interesting versus tiresome, valuable versus worthless, etc.), are hard to pin down and there is an old question as to whether they are human abstractions or have a real existence outside the human sphere.  For example, 2 + 2 = 5 is "wrong," so also is beating a child.  Does "wrong" mean the same thing is both of these cases?  Most people think not but in fact we don't really know -- there are schools of thought (Asian karmic notions being the one I'm familiar with) that would say both are errors in the "wrongness" sense -- they both go against something that consists of "right."

We can't, however, depend entirely on our feelings in these things -- people can be wrong about mathematical calculaitons as much as wrong about their behavior and what is good and bad behavior.  We instead have to check our calculations -- in the end see if they stand up under deductive scrutiny from basic principles -- axioms or postulates or whatever.

With behavior I think the fundamental postulate is the "golden rule" or concept of compassion for all sentient beings.  How does violence and inflicting hurt or pain on someone stand in the light of this postulate?  Obvious.  That doesn't mean one is a total absolutist in such things -- scenarios can be imagined where the failure to inflict pain does more harm than not -- but such scenarios are usually far-fetched and uncommon.

Our evolution was a different matter.  Here we managed largely by killing and being strongest and so on.  But evolution was simple biology -- in the end just a blind natural process without moral standing -- and is therefore misleading to use as a guide for behavior.  Out instincts bring us to strike out, to "defend" ourselves, to get revenge, to judge -- and this leads us into morally wrong behavior.

To my mind, then, any claim that it is better to inflict pain and hurt than not to has the burden of proof -- that the correct, moral response is always to avoid conflict and only with a huge preponderance of the evidence does one behave otherwise.