Jez wrote:


Sorry, you might be able to rationalize and pervert what Kurt Gödel wrote, but what he proved was very precisely defined mathematically. Moreover, you CAN find the true answers to many questions. That's called science, and, rhetorical games notwithstanding, the scientific method is the means by which we do precisely that. The trick is knowing what questions you can't answer, which answers you can't know empirically. Or as one of my undergraduate professors said, "Science is the study of that which we can measure. Beyond that is theology." Truer words were never spoken.

Moreover, if you define "religion" narrowly, making it exclusively about ritual and belief in God, then you preclude many "religions." For example, a fundamental tenet of Budhism is that there is no creator God; Budhism is explicitly an atheistic religion and would thus be (by definition) excluded by any definition which precludes atheism. But any reasonable definition of "religion," one which makes it a matter of what you believe by faith (i.e. beyond the empirical), would most certainly include both Buddhism and your atheism. After all, your atheism is NOT a lack of belief; it is a very specific belief, based not on empiricism (thereby on faith instead), that there is no Creator, no Sovereign of creation to whom all will someday answer. Even if you don't consider it "religion," how could that belief NOT be religious?

You see, Jez, it is quite impossible for anyone to have no religious belief. Even if you try to adopt a position that you have no opinion one way or the other, you are consciously choosing to believe that it doesn't matter, which is a belief you adopt by faith, not by empiricism, and which is therefore your religious belief.

So the question becomes, why do you believe what you believe? I understand your point about most peoples' religious belief being a matter of the chance of the location (actually in space and time) of their birth. For most people it is indeed just that. In general, and in recent times at least, someone born in India is likely Hindu, or Muslim if in Saudi Arabia. If you had been born some number of years earlier you'd likely have been Christian. Even today, I'd wager your atheism is more a function of peer pressure than your own deliberations.

But how is it that I, born two thousand years and half a planet removed from that Jewish carpenter's son, am so devoutly Christian? It certainly isn't because of peer pressure. Modern America is no less atheistic than Modern Britain. I suppose you could presume that I'm just a superstitious simpleton, but I would point out that it's Dr. superstitious simpleton. It's not a trivial question, why I or anyone would choose Christianity?

You see, I've asked those very same questions. "Why 'Christianity'?" "How can we be so convinced that we're right if that means that everyone else is wrong?" I've deliberated those hard questions and found answers that I could accept, answers that stand up to reason. And I suggest that you ask them too, but not about me. I suggest you ask them of yourself? Why did you choose to believe in atheism? What evidence, what reasoning convinced you that there is no God? What convinced you that, quite literally, everything was created by nothing? Deliberate your own beliefs, and honestly find out how confident, as opposed to how convinced, you really are.

Bon Chance!