Spudtater's Journal

There's a fantastic discussion with Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens (recording, mp3 format) on the Guardian blog. It's supposed to be about the proposed Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill, but as Stephen is stauntly atheist and Christopher describes himself as anti-theist, it descends at several points into a general bitchfest about religion. The religious among you may wish to give it a miss. (Though it's not nearly as vitriolic as the Dawkins stuff I linked to a while back).

But I take issue with one statement made in this conversation, and that is that all religious are inherently creationist; that they imply an argument from design. Even ignoring religions such as Buddhism, where the creation of the world is not discussed, and Taoism, which describes the how but not the why of creation, I think there is a large and oft-overlooked thread of spiritualism throughout most religions that considers irrelevent, silly or even insulting the idea that God has anything at all to do with the physical world.

In particular my thoughts turned to this article in the Scotsman a while ago: Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomer. The theologist and astronomer of the title basically shuns the entire idea of a God that meddles in the physical plane, either now or at the beginning of the universe.

I guess what I'm saying is that outspoken atheists, and especially the more famous of them, tend to be exposed only to the evangelising and fundamental of theists. It's easy to forget that this vocal minority is outnumbered by their more reasonable and less literal-minded fellow worshippers. And it's easy to pigeonhole religious people as rabid and irrational, a stereotype that alienates more people than it helps.

There may be more on this tomorrow. For now, goodnight.

Vaguely remembered from a documentary I saw ages ago. A professional magician was being interviewed, and it came up in the conversation that the last performance he'd done had been to some party of scientists. The interview proceeded something like this:

I found myself recalling this when thinking about my own gullibility. I often find myself, when confronted with a mysterious event, wanting to believe all manner of kooky explanations, from aliens to psychic powers to secret conspiricies. I have to make a conscious effort to remind myself that though there may not be any other straightforward explanation, that the world is complex and largely unknown; the best position to hold is that we simply do not have enough information about many events to make any sort of final decision about their cause. It's tempting to want to have a theory for everything, but some things, sadly, must remain mysteries.

Anyone else want to admit/deny being gullible?   8^)
Anything else to add?