Heaven Is a Fairy Tale Says Physicist Stephen Hawking

[Graham]

I'm not a believer, but my brother is (and how), and he once remarked that we would see our parents again. So I asked him under what circumstances would we see them - would the old man be down the pub, while mom did the housework, or would they be arrayed in shining raiment looking rather embarrasses? And what would we talk about that we couldn't/didn't talk about during our corporeal existence? And would we be stuck with them for eternity? Would I once again meet my old girlfriend Sue who I still fancy something rotten to this day? What about our old pets - would we see them? What about the sadistic bastard who taught me physics at school - would I get to whack him one the same as he whacked me?

By now my devout brother was beginning to dribble, so I let him off. The point is, he can believe all he likes, and good look to him, but I really do think his belief in Heaven ought to be based on something rather more rational than his simply stating that 'we will see our parents again'.

Graham

[Errata]

I actually just made it up... bad phrase I suppose but what the heck..

Seriously though.... oppression of women.... refusal to allow democracy until heads started to get cut off.... starters of most (if not all) wars.... you name it.... one or both of the 2 Rs are behind it....

Blatantly not true you say... what's "blatantly" not true? The idea that religion and royalty have started nearly every war in history? Kept Mr and Mrs Joe Bloggs down for as long as they could before graciously allowing us to vote and decide our own rulers? oooh thank ye Mr King sir.... oooh you're so kind Mr Churchperson sir....

Whatever...

What religion prompted Stalin to round up hundreds of thousands of Jews filling mass graves throughout the forests of Russia? Or told Hitler to exterminate 10 million human beings in less than 10 years?

What monarch blew up a church filled with black school girls?

What god mandated global warming?

Any time you use an absolute instead of a specific, it becomes "demonstrably not true"

Oppression of women? Did religion and royalty participate? Absolutely. Did they start it? No. Incredibly high infant mortality started the oppression of women. The shift from matriarchal to patriarchal societies (a shift demanded by the common man) started it.

I have no idea how religion started. No one does. It's that old. I know how royalty started. I know how the monarchies that we recognize started. People were dying. Raiders and barbarians were razing small villages, disease was rampant, the level of technology had no yet caught up with the amount of food a person needed for his family. And powerful men would stand up and say, in exchange for a part of your harvest, I will make it so you can farm full time. I will fight your battles. I will repel the raiders. I will give you a safe place to hide, I will do what I can to let you concentrate on this one thing.

There is nothing sinister in this. It's a business deal. It an exchange of skills. And are the Royals to blame for ignoring their subjects in favor of excess? Of course. Are the subjects to blame for allowing a defunct business arrangement devolve into slavery? Yes. There were Marie Antoinettes. But there were also Richard IIIs. And quite a few Catherine the Greats, lived in excess but with an absolute mandate for modernizing her people to rival Europe.

Nothing on this planet is black and white. We live in shades of grays. And we evolve at our pace. We shed our conventions at our pace and not a second sooner. Monarchs are on their way out. Religion is not yet. There are more who do not believe than before, and some truly great men and women are in that number. But save the vitriol. Religion has helped and it has harmed. And like monarchy, manifest destiny, and any number of other prominent philosophies and world views, it will go when it goes. And blind hatred will not get rid of it a second sooner.

[DirectorDave]

This debate is becoming quite funny.

First of all Science is not fact....Science is just the best theory we have at the moment until a new one comes along.

Religion is a form of Science......but a very ancient one. The religious texts we have today were written by the most intelligent people of their day.

I think people who believe in a grand architect are just afraid of their own mortality.

On NDE's we can't deny that they don't happen and people who go through them have some remarkable changes in their life's after them but a massive release of endorphins at a point near death is the probable cause not that it is a first step to an afterlife.

An argument with believers is one non believers just can't win......because the only way we can prove a God did not design all we see and know is if he parts the clouds and tell us all (Bart Simpson style please big yin) and says "I didn't do it!".

[Robert]

Since these discussions on religion tend to generate heat, it might be worth asking everyone :

Does it matter to you whether or not there is/is not a god? And if so, why does it matter to you?

[Errata]

Since these discussions on religion tend to generate heat, it might be worth asking everyone :

Does it matter to you whether or not there is/is not a god? And if so, why does it matter to you?

Well, everyone wants to be right, so it seems like it should matter if there is a god...

Somehow it doesn't really, to me. I believe in one, I don't care if others do, but since I also don't really believe in any kind of afterlife I imagine that if I found out definitively that there was no god, I would be sad but nothing would really change for me.

I think if I believed in some kind of heaven it would matter. Or hell. But I don't.

[Jonathan H]

Lxn

I belong to a small, yet far flung group called the League of Existentialist Neo-Pagans, and the name is meant to be both serious and playful.

It is not a religion or a cult, because, as we like to say, it does not seek tax exempt status, and never will.

It is more like the Masons, although I realize that for some people that analogy is a negative one.

Inspired by Buddhism, we believe in Reincarnation -- but you cannot recall past lives under dodgy hypnosis. You just have the reassurance that you were, and are, and will be again, and again.

Inspired by the historical Jesus (eg. he was an Apocalyptic prophet killed by a catapult) we believe in service and sacrifice.

We believe that all religions are a projection of the human imagination and that is why we choose to worship the Greco-pagan goddess Athena, who encourages us to be brave doers (eg. nothing to do with the people who are in forests practicing white magic or something?) Nor is it some leftist front, as by my count there are more Tories than not in my chapter, at least.

Athena, Buddha, and Jesus: The LXN.

If you have never heard of us that is because we are not into divine hustling, door by door, and not because we are elitist -- but rather because it is the the height of bad manners to bother people in their own abode with pompous prognostications.

[The Good Michael]

I have formed a similar group. It is called the Brewmads. It is a group of people dedicated to not belonging to any groups because of exclusion, accidentally or intentionally, caused by belonging to something. We are all travellers, although some travellers are stationary, who can discuss anything over a real ale without killing each other and without forcing our viewpoints on anyone, unless they belong to groups that we don't like (all of them pretty much). So far, no one has passed the requirements to be in this group because if someone else joined other than me, it would be truly a group and force us to abandon our rules, which don't really exist except as realized over the drinking of the aforementioned ale.

The naysayers out there might suggest that by belonging to this forum that I have already threatened the non-rules. By using an opposite name of 'good' from my true nature of 'whatever', I feel I have remained true to the charter. THe good thing is that only group Brewmad members can pass judgment. So far, I'm doing OK.

Mike

[babybird67]

hi Jonathan

I belong to a small, yet far flung group called the League of Existentialist Neo-Pagans, and the name is meant to be both serious and playful.

It is not a religion or a cult, because, as we like to say, it does not seek tax exempt status, and never will.

It is more like the Masons, although I realize that for some people that analogy is a negative one.

Inspired by Buddhism, we believe in Reincarnation -- but you cannot recall past lives under dodgy hypnosis. You just have the reassurance that you were, and are, and will be again, and again.

Inspired by the historical Jesus (eg. he was an Apocalyptic prophet killed by a catapult) we believe in service and sacrifice.

We believe that all religions are a projection of the human imagination and that is why we choose to worship the Greco-pagan goddess Athena, who encourages us to be brave doers (eg. nothing to do with the people who are in forests practicing white magic or something?) Nor is it some leftist front, as by my count there are more Tories than not in my chapter, at least.

Athena, Buddha, and Jesus: The LXN.

If you have never heard of us that is because we are not into divine hustling, door by door, and not because we are elitist -- but rather because it is the the height of bad manners to bother people in their own abode with pompous prognostications.

Do you have any leaflets? I might like to join you!

[johns]

What religion prompted Stalin to round up hundreds of thousands of Jews filling mass graves throughout the forests of Russia? Or told Hitler to exterminate 10 million human beings in less than 10 years?

None. Unless Communism and fascism are regarded as religions... some would say they are but they're not in the traditional sense.

What monarch blew up a church filled with black school girls?

None. I bet some of them would have done given half a chance, in the same way that monarchs of olde would send armies across the seas and rob what wasn't theirs and slaughter the locals in the process.

What god mandated global warming?

None. But it sure is warm where "he" would send us unless we obey his orders.

And powerful men would stand up and say, in exchange for a part of your harvest, I will make it so you can farm full time. I will fight your battles. I will repel the raiders. I will give you a safe place to hide, I will do what I can to let you concentrate on this one thing.

And those powerful men did do these things... and then not let Joe Schlub have a say in who the next "powerful man" would be.

Religion has helped and it has harmed.

Well we'll just have to disagree on this... My own personal opinion is that not 1 single atom of good has ever come out of any religion. A huge cathedral gets build while the local populace starve and live in hovels... Threatening to send folk to hell unless they obey... and so on and so forth..

I'm done.

[johns]

Since these discussions on religion tend to generate heat, it might be worth asking everyone :

Does it matter to you whether or not there is/is not a god? And if so, why does it matter to you?

It does matter to me.

I would hate it if there was a god... and I thought of all the nonsense that went on in the world and he (gotta be a bloke) stood by and did nothing while innocent folk died for no reason.

[Errata]

It does matter to me.

I would hate it if there was a god... and I thought of all the nonsense that went on in the world and he (gotta be a bloke) stood by and did nothing while innocent folk died for no reason.

Well thats the great caveat of any religion isn't it? My Rabbi told me that every religion was formed to answer three questions, and to specifically not answer a fourth.

1.Why are we here?
2.What happens to us after we die?
3.After I have done everything humanly possible, what else can be done to make my life better?

and then of course 4: Why do bad things happen to good people?

"the Lord works in mysterious ways" "God loved him so much, he called him early" There's even a whole biblical insert on a guy named Job for this.

And if you're gonna believe in a god of some kind, you have to resolve that one for yourself. And if you aren't going to believe in a god, well, you actually still have to resolve that one for yourself. Sh*t Happens is a good one, but not terribly comforting in a time of distress. Personally I would word it differently.

But I will say this. The majority of people I know who are atheists (and that's most people I know) make their argument against one specific kind of god. The god of the Christian bible. An all knowing, all loving, all powerful god. And I agree with them that there is no evidence that bears out the existence of this kind of god. No one in my religion told me G-d was like this. Now clearly, my religion is not in the majority. I don't think it's even in the top 10. But if most people are exposed to Christian god, and do not believe in that god, I hate saying that that person is an atheist. There are other gods out there, other archetypes. Some are terribly believable. But very few people can accept a god that is not their fathers.

It is an odd thing to say "I do not believe in the Christian god, therefore I am an atheist." That is exactly like saying "I do not like oranges, therefore I will eat no fruit." But that IS how it works. If you don't like oranges, you'll try a pineapple, or a banana. If you don't like the Christian god, thats it. Game over. And I don't know why. I'm not proposing that you atheists should give another god a try, I just think its fascinating how this works.

[Magpie]

A huge cathedral gets build while the local populace starve and live in hovel.

With respect, but cathedral building was a boon to any community in which it took place. Even a small cathedral provided years of work (and therefore money) to the local populace. It provided rare opportunities for young people to enter a skilled trade and provided already skilled workers one of the only venues to practice their trade. Once built, a cathedral continued to bring wealth and employment to a community because a community with a catheral formed the nucleus of a commercial centre.

[Magpie]

What religion prompted Stalin to round up hundreds of thousands of Jews filling mass graves throughout the forests of Russia? Or told Hitler to exterminate 10 million human beings in less than 10 years?

Well, Stalin spent several years in a seminary training to become a priest.

As for the Nazis, it's an open secret that the Nazi Party was built on a religious template with the express intention of creating a new religion.

What monarch blew up a church filled with black school girls?

That would be Vlad Tepes.

Well, sure they weren't black, and they weren't schoolgirls, but surely you aren't going to quibble about details like that.

[Zodiac]

Surely the most civilized, and indeed conclusive, debate on the whole question of the existence/non-existence of God!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfRkcJ0BLS0

Best wishes,

Zodiac.

[Natalie Severn]

Surely the most civilized, and indeed conclusive, debate on the whole question of the existence/non-existence of God!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfRkcJ0BLS0

Best wishes,

Zodiac.

Thankyou Zodiac.That looks like a small but elite group of complete barm pots.