Oh yeah, blame the Jews. It's all our fault. We schemed it, you know. And while you're at it, ignore the fact that the quintessentially Aryan Persians had a very similar bunch of ideas, which were equally prevalent at the time.

The scheming predates the Jews, Christians and Muslims. All…

...wandering round Rome with placards making a bloody nuisance of themselves.

I think it was more those friendly pagan sun and moon worshipers the Romans making a spectacle of them at the Coliseum.

Nature worship wasn't such a great idea either.

I recall seeing Tutaekuri wine in the supermarket once, presumably named after the Hawkes Bay river. It was clearly a small run done for export, judging by the back label with a London address. And it had a very happy looking dog on the main label.

I quite like that…

I'm feeling a bit like a chicken kebab today, but I blame it on overproof Fijian rum, not my segmented and shallow life, held…

Such feelings are pretty fundamental to us humans and I think we should recognise them more. As Yamis says, we do…

I recall seeing Tutaekuri wine in the supermarket once, presumably named after the Hawkes Bay river.

Yes – turns out the Dogshit River is lined with vineyards.

It was clearly a small run done for export, judging by the back label with a London address. And it had a very…

Do we ask ourselves... why do I feel horny?, why do I feel happy? why do I feel a sense of foreboding? why do I feel like a chicken kebab?

You feel like a chicken kebab? Man, that's existential.

but to have to come to terms with a personal being that might question us, challenge us, insist on being intimate with us and even require us to change -

I don't need to posit ghosties in order to explain the feeling of awe I have when I see Milford…

Darwin thought that the "moral faculties" had proliferated among early humans because a tribe of "courageous, sympathetic and faithful members…

The unselfish gene

In the mythical story of the captivity in Egypt (for which there is absolutely no documentary or archaeological evidence, incidentally) Pharoah wants to be lenient to the Isreaelites, but God…

The New Testament God is distant, but also non-partisan; you did not have to be Jewish to believe in him, which is one reason why Christianity became so successful.

Frankly, that's the worst part of the shift from the narrow religion of Judaism to the religion of Christianity. The universality…

Also the US is losing it's grip on global military domination not because it…

1. Is the Problem With Religion really that much of a problem any more? (compared to other problems)

2. Where religion does seem to be a problem is it more a symptom than…

Deborah, it's funny you make that 'god of the gaps' point, as it was almost an identical description for philosophy in one text I read – the gaps in our 'firmer' knowledge. Damn that Jap.

We really should just get over the fact that there's a lot of…

Am I to infer then from the material on this thread, that the true meaning of Tutaekuri is religion?

Ooooooh, you're going to hell for that one boy.

Er, no. Not what I meant ...

Ooooooh, you're going to hell for that one boy.

I'm not saying science is identical…

...both science and religion are just frameworks to be treated with skepticism at all times.

Most religions have shown themselves to be capricious and cruel at times. And most scientific theories end up debunked.

Scientific theories are debunked by other, more convincing scientific theories, which may be debunked in their…

Demanding that it have meaning beyond whatever you manage to imbue it with seems more than a little greedy.

I prefer the Buddhist term "attachment" over "greedy", makes it all sound less venal. But it seems to be something difficult to overcome. Letting go of everything one had, relationships etc.

If God is dead then so are we – we live a short and often brutal life and to top it off it's all for nothing.

Life is what you make of it. Demanding that it have meaning beyond whatever you manage to imbue it with seems more than a…

We really should just get over the fact that there's a lot of things we…

"Deus does not exist, but if he does I always talk to him." – Bjork from The Sugarcubes.

The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a…

But why bother inventing gods really? The childish comfort of personifying a teddy bear is understandable to a point. After that,…

Albert Einstein (Einstein, The World as I See It), engaging in the apparently foolish philosophical debate about God.

Dawkins deals with this explicitly. In context, the Eiensteinian God is basically the essence of the Universe, and not incoimpatible with knowledge. He quotes Einstein:

"It was, of course, a lie what…

>Not believing in God is no guarantee of goodness.

Of course. But there's a very large constituency in American society (see the Pew surveys) that believes that not believing in God is actually incompatible with goodness. That seems to be more the more acute point.

There's also no need to…

There. That'll do.

In the end, whether God exists or not, doesn't really change very much at all. We are still actually faced with all the same questions about our codes of behavior. We still don't know how we can come to know God's will, and it is…

Love the example about why is ok to label a child as catholic, but is not ok the say he is a postmodernist.

I think it is naturally and absurdly ok: a child can be catholic. It just has to believe what it's told, like any other catholic.

It seems to me that most philosophical debate about God actually gives the whole foolish concept a lot more time than it deserves, and is actually a rather cunning trap to frame the debate in terms favorable to believers, rather like most modern election campaigns.

Pretty much. But its also…

Not believing in God is no guarantee of goodness.

There's also no need to throw…

Beyond the existence of god or not, is just great to see people thinking about it, and the power we give religious notions. Love the example about why is ok to label a child as catholic, but…

It seems to me that most philosophical debate about…