Quote from: swogerino on March 05, 2016, 08:26:09 PM

Quote from: americanpegasus on February 22, 2016, 09:07:26 PM

Have you considered that the universe is a scary and cold place, and considering it in its true nature does not make one happy?

What makes a child happier: 1.) Believing a magical elf brings presents from the North Pole because of good behavior, or 2.) Understanding that presents come from mom and dad's hard work, and when you hear them worrying about money or fighting over it - you know in some small way you are a part of that stress?

The truth rarely bring happiness, merely a sense of intellectual relief. It also usually creates more questions than it answers, despite any temporary enlightenment. How many of us would ever leave the womb, if given the choice? It is warm and safe in there - and everything is taken care of. But outside that womb is where life happens and things get complicated.

Religion is like the intellectual womb - except this is one you have to choose to leave, and it's scary and takes strength of character to do so.

You can't keep holding somebody's hand their entire life. That's what Christianity does. It protects you from the harsh truth of reality and how you're going to die alone. It gives them a sense of happiness. It's less scary knowing that you're going to paradise rather than knowing that NOTHINGNESS awaits you after you die.

This is certainly one way of looking at the world. It's one of many conclusions one can reach about the universe especially if one chooses to adopt the assumptions of nihilism.

However, this is far from the only logical conclusion one can reach. There are reasons to think that the universe is far more complex then we currently envision indeed that for all our science our understanding remains infantile.

Quote from: CoinCube on March 04, 2016, 06:36:31 AM

Quantum Mechanics offers us a deep insight that the world is not as it appears to our senses. It is quantum mechanics that leads us to the conclusion that we may actually be living in a Holographic Universe. The idea the the the world around us indeed the entire universe is simply the projection of a deeper reality.

In his essay The Universe Anonymint draws our attention to the the holographic principle. Specifically the fascinating notion that when you combine the the holographic principle with the thermodynamic quantities of heat and mechanical work it is relatively straightforward to derive Newtons classical equation of gravity.

These ideas are difficult to grasp and at this stage they remain theoretical physics. However, there are a growing number of scientist who are taking them very seriously.

Below is a great introductory video on the topic. I recommend it to anyone who has difficulty accepting the possibility of a deeper fundamental truth and reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMBt_yfGKpU

When you have two logical but competing and mutually exclusive intellectual structures both unfalsifiable from their starting assumptions what is the logical next step? How does one rationally choose between them?

One approach is to examine what happens to the individuals who chose to adopt these intellectual structures. This is approach that led me to gather the various data highlighted in the opening post.

Quote from: CoinCube on March 01, 2016, 02:40:35 AM

Atheism is the acceptance of the following assumption:

Theism cannot be definitively and empirically proven and is therefore untrue.

This assumption leads to the rejection of religion when individual atheist decide that they are unconvinced by the available data. Acceptance of this assumption is an error for the following reasons:

1) Metaphysically because the choice (in isolation) voids the existing moral structure rendering the decision itself morally incoherent.

2) Biologically because a sound moral structure is necessary for a healthy life and rejecting traditional structures appears to reduce health, happiness, and fertility.

3) Anthropologically because religion is a critical and perhaps primary mechanism for overcoming our species-specific upper limit to group size which is set by purely cognitive constraints.

In addition we must consider that the assumption itself may simply be false. Specifically:

Theism may be correct and true even if it cannot be definitively and empirically proven.