Why is there religion???

[Brant Gaede]

Notice: I am the only authorized user of "animadversion" on OL, but I'm going to grant Stephen a license.

--Brant

anybody else will be animadverted upon

[PDS]

On 2/26/2015 at 0:45 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

Why is there religion??? It goes against rationality. It collides with fact. It causes otherwise normal people to be and do the dreadful. But it has always been with mankind, ever since when, most likely even before our race settled down and operated in agricultural mode.

It has existed in every kith, kin and tribe. In every language, culture and nation. It defies reason, yet it persists.

Why?????

Ba'al Chatzaf

Baal:  every major religion has exoteric and esoteric truths.    The esoteric truths are those that truly matter.   The exoteric truths are for the workaday types.

If "religion" were a banana, the real truth would be the banana and the truth for the public would be the peel.   What you are thinking of as "religion" is the peel.  Without the peel, the best part of the banana is eaten too fast, wilts in the hot sun, and is indigestible.    Just like a peel protects the nourishing banana underneath, religion provides a protective layer for core spiritual truths. 

If "you" can screw up your courage to use this life to peel back the banana peel, you will find nearly every religion contains the more or less the same core truths.   Aldous Huxley called those truths the Perennial Philosophy.

That is the purpose of religion. 

I think the question within the question you are asking is:  are there core spiritual truths, and if so, why would one believe any of them?

 

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, PDS said:

Baal:  every major religion has exoteric and esoteric truths.    The esoteric truths are those that truly matter.   The exoteric truths are for the workaday types.

If "religion" were a banana, the real truth would be the banana and the truth for the public would be the peel.   What you are thinking of as "religion" is the peel.  Without the peel, the best part of the banana is eaten too fast, wilts in the hot sun, and is indigestible.    Just like a peel protects the nourishing banana underneath, religion provides a protective layer for core spiritual truths. 

If "you" can screw up your courage to use this life to peel back the banana peel, you will find nearly every religion contains the more or less the same core truths.   Aldous Huxley called those truths the Perennial Philosophy.

That is the purpose of religion. 

I think the question within the question you are asking is:  are there core spiritual truths, and if so, why would one believe any of them?

 

The peel is poison.  Religious enthusiasm has produced  war, hatred, slaughter and tyranny.  Perhaps God made the Heavens and the Earth, but the Devil made sects and churches.

[PDS]

23 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

The peel is poison.  Religious enthusiasm has produced  war, hatred, slaughter and tyranny.  Perhaps God made the Heavens and the Earth, but the Devil made sects and churches.

Good point.   Imagine how one's stomach would react to eating a full banana peel.   It isn't/wasn't meant to be eaten whole...

[regi]

"So long as there are men in the world, 99 percent of them will be idiots, and so long as 99 percent of them are idiots they will thirst for religion, and so long as they thirst for religion, it will remain a weapon over them. I see no way out. If you blow up one specific faith, they will embrace another."

----H.L. Mencken

While this doesn't explain why men invented religions in the first place, it certainly explains their continuance.

[Peter]

Back to the philosophical. Religion is a product of our human lack of understanding. We not only don’t know it all, but we don’t know enough. A religious impulse includes mankind’s overwhelming desire to be able to explain the inexplicable. That aspiration to explain continues after our species is grounded in science, but unfortunately our budding science doesn’t have sufficient answers to explain how the universe began, or how our portion of the universe will end, or how OUR individual universe will end in death. And that UNKNOWING causes religion to provide an answer to assuage our fear. This religious impulse is not a product of the “lack of a higher intelligence quotient.” Many intelligent humans are irrational. So my brain and gut tells me religion is a product of the mind that refuses to accept reality. It is the mind preferring the irrational to reality.

 

The *trick* to a better religion is for it to explain non existence and to assuage fear of death but to NOT irrationally direct human rationality to live a preposterously, religious life. I can point at preposterous religions like The Amish, Muslims, or Evangelicals and a non believer of that religion understands me even if they profess a belief in some other less invasive religion. I think culture, family, nurturing and education have sway but what goes on in the individual’s brain is paramount. Whew. That Big Bang Theory really makes sense. I feel better now.   

Peter   

 

From, "The Missing Link," by Ayn Rand: I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. But a certain hypothesis has haunted me for years; I want to stress that it is only a hypothesis. There is an enormous breach of continuity between men and all the other living species. The difference lies in the nature of man's consciousness, in its distinctive characteristic: his conceptual faculty. It is as if, after aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies. But the development of a man's consciousness is volitional: no matter what the innate degree of his intelligence, he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become a human being by choice. What if he does not choose to? Then he becomes a transitional phenomenon - a desperate creature that struggles frantically against his own nature, longing for the effortless "safety" of an animal's consciousness, which he cannot recapture, and rebelling against a human consciousness, which he is afraid to achieve. For years, scientists have been looking for a "missing link" between man and animals. Perhaps that missing link is the anti-conceptual mentality.

end quote

 

Here is what Rand wrote about "acquired skills" in, The Comprachicos, p.156-158. TNL. "If, in any two years of adult life, men could learn as much as an infant learns in his first two years, they would have the capacity of genius.  To focus his eyes (which is not innate, but an acquired skill), to perceive the things around him by integrating his sensations into percepts (which is not innate, but an acquired skill), to coordinate his muscles for the task of crawling, then standing upright, then walking - and, ultimately, to grasp the process of concept-formation, and learn to speak - these are some of an infant's tasks and achievements whose magnitude is not equaled by most men in the rest of their lives." 

 

"The process of forming, integrating and using concepts is not automatic, but a volitional process - i.e., a process which uses both new and automatized material, but which is directed volitionally, It is not an innate, but an acquired skill; it has to be learned - it is the most crucially important part of learning - and all of man's other capacities depend on how well or how badly he learns it."

 

"This skill does not pertain to the particular *content* pf a man's knowledge at any given age, but to the *method* by which he acquires and organizes his knowledge - the method by which his mind deals with its content.  The method *programs* his subconscious computer, determining how efficiently, lamely or disastrously his cognitive processes will function.  The programming of a man's subconscious consists of the kind of cognitive habits he acquires; these habits constitute his psycho-epistemology."

End quote

 

Rand wrote: “The possession of a rational faculty does not guarantee that a man will use it, only that he is able to use it and is, therefore, responsible for his actions." ("Ayn Rand Letter," 27 July, 1972.

 

"Man's volition is an attribute of his consciousness (of his rational faculty) and consists in the choice to perceive existence or to evade it." (ARL, 27 July, 1972).

 

Rand wrote in her Journals (July 20, 1945):

"If men claim that the rational faculty is an innate gift (which it is, or rather its power is, just as the degree of any physical talent varies from birth) and, therefore, a man cannot be blamed if he is born with a mental capacity insufficient for his survival, and he cannot make it the standard of his survival-the answer is that he has no choice except to exercise his mind to the full extent of his capacity . . . .”

 

From “The Missing Link, Part II” (ARL, 21 May, 1973):

"But the development of a man's consciousness is volitional: no matter what the INNATE DEGREE of his intelligence, he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become a human being by choice."

End quote – I capitalized “innate degree” for emphasis – Peter

 

Rand wrote in "The Objectivist Ethics:"

"Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are 'tabula rasa.'"

 

Rand from "Kant Versus Sullivan:"

"The possession of means and their use are not the same thing: e.g., a child possesses the means of digesting food, but would you accept the notion that he performs the process of digestion before he has taken in any food? In the same way, a child possesses the means of "interpreting" sense data, i.e., a conceptual faculty, but this faculty cannot interpret anything, let alone interpret it "correctly," before he has experienced his first clear sensation."

 

Rand wrote:

"The process of forming, integrating and using concepts is not automatic, but a volitional process - i.e., a process which uses both new and automatized material, but which is directed volitionally. It is not an innate, but an acquired skill; it has to be learned - it is the most crucially important part of learning - and all of man's other capacities depend on how well or how badly he learns it."

 

"This skill does not pertain to the particular *content* of a man's knowledge at any given age, but to the *method* by which he acquires and organizes his knowledge - the method by which his mind deals with its content.  The method *programs* his subconscious computer, determining how efficiently, lamely or disastrously his cognitive processes will function.  The programming of a man's subconscious consists of the kind of cognitive habits he acquires; these habits constitute his psycho-epistemology."  AR

 

Ayn Rand wrote in *Atlas Shrugged*, pages 1020-1021, through the character of John Galt: ". . . as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining -- that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul -- that to live requires a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self-esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the image of Man, the rational being he is BORN ABLE TO CREATE . . ."

I capitalized “born able to create,” for emphasis

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, Peter said:

Back to the philosophical. Religion is a product of our human lack of understanding. We not only don’t know it all, but we don’t know enough. A religious impulse includes mankind’s overwhelming desire to be able to explain the inexplicable. That aspiration to explain continues after our species is grounded in science, but unfortunately our budding science doesn’t have sufficient answers to explain how the universe began, or how our portion of the universe will end, or how OUR individual universe will end in death. And that UNKNOWING causes religion to provide an answer to assuage our fear. This religious impulse is not a product of the “lack of a higher intelligence quotient.” Many intelligent humans are irrational. So my brain and gut tells me religion is a product of the mind that refuses to accept reality. It is the mind preferring the irrational to reality.

 

The *trick* to a better religion is for it to explain non existence and to assuage fear of death but to NOT irrationally direct human rationality to live a preposterously, religious life. I can point at preposterous religions like The Amish, Muslims, or Evangelicals and a non believer of that religion understands me even if they profess a belief in some other less invasive religion. I think culture, family, nurturing and education have sway but what goes on in the individual’s brain is paramount. Whew. That Big Bang Theory really makes sense. I feel better now.   

Peter   

 

The philosophy of Epicurus is a good substitute for religion.  It is a very good way of reconciling rational people with their inevitable death.  Much of what Epicurus wrote has been lost, but his philosophy was retained  in De Rerum Natura  by Lucretius.  

[PDS]

On 4/30/2016 at 1:26 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

The philosophy of Epicurus is a good substitute for religion.  It is a very good way of reconciling rational people with their inevitable death.  Much of what Epicurus wrote has been lost, but his philosophy was retained  in De Rerum Natura  by Lucretius.  

Agreed.   And if you combine the Stoic metaphysics with the Epicurean ethics and way of life, you would have a really cool combination. 

[moralist]

On ‎4‎/‎27‎/‎2016 at 4:53 AM, Guyau said:

Scatology is repeatedly on show here...

Of course God is regarded as scatology to government dope perversion abortion worshipping secularists. This is ironic when scatology is a defining characteristic of their own behavior.

Everyone makes their choice and gets exactly what they deserve as the results of their choice. 

[Guyau]

On May 29, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Guyau said:

 

. . .

In his best seller Sermons in Stone, Ellsworth Toohey predicts “a better world to come, where all men would be brothers” (PK VI 77). In his newspaper column, he speaks of anonymity and uniformity of brotherhood (ET III 238). This brotherhood is not a brotherhood of nobility or sainthood. It is a brotherhood of comfort, for people who are spiritually nothing by themselves (ET V 261; VIII 296). Saintly spirits, such as Dominique and Roark, are a threat to Toohey’s type of “humanitarianism” in which relations between people are more important than people (ET VIII 297; XIII 387).

Toohey is openly unkind to most every particular person he deals with. He preaches otherwise. “Kindness. That is the first commandment, perhaps the only one. . . . We must be kind to everybody around us. We must accept and forgive” (ET IX 312). Contrast with Roark’s first law (ET XI 349, 352). Contrast with the First Commandment.

In his early high school years, while still religious, Toohey talked about God and the spirit, but “he read more books on the history of the church than on the substance of faith” (ET IX 317). He excelled in original oratory and brought his audience to tears on the theme “The meek shall inherit the earth” (ibid.). Boys who were “suffering or ill-endowed” became his friends and spiritual wards. He consoled them with doctrines on the goodness of suffering, its moral superiority to happiness, the blessedness of belief over understanding, and the superiority of being a slower, less-inquiring student (ET IX 318).

At sixteen Toohey let go of religion and turned to socialism. Instead of God and the nobility of suffering, he talked about the masses. He preached love of the masses and profound self-sacrifice for them. He argued “that religion bred selfishness; because . . . religion over-emphasized the importance of the individual spirit; religion preached nothing but a single concern—the salvation of one’s own soul” (ET IX 319).

In a personal letter in 1946,* Rand related her idea of Jesus as proclaiming “the basic principle of individualism—the inviolate sanctity of man’s soul, and the salvation of one’s soul as one’s first concern and highest goal; this means—one’s ego and the integrity of one’s ego.” One great corruption of that individualism in Jesus’ teachings comes with the code of ethics put forth as the means of saving one’s soul: “One must love or help or live for others.” Who put forth this second doctrine? “Jesus (or His interpreters).”

One of the first books Rand bought after coming to America was Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ. Within this work, Nietzsche sets down differences he sees between the exemplar to be read from the life of Jesus and morality proclaimed by institutional Christianity. One difference is Christianity’s exaggeration of the amount of pity needed in the world. “Christianity is called the religion of pity. [cf.] . . . Pity makes suffering into something infectious; sometimes it can even cause a total loss of life and of vital energy wildly disproportionate to the magnitude of the cause (—the case of the Nazarene). . . . Pity wins people over to nothingness! You do not say ‘nothingness’: instead you say ‘the beyond’; or ‘God’; or . . .” (AC 7; further, 17, 18, 26, 32, 33, 39–43).

. . .

Notwithstanding Toohey’s omitting talk of God, his socialist sayings are generally warmly familiar to the religious. Hopton Stoddard found everything Toohey preached “in line with God’s law: charity, sacrifice, help to the poor” (ET X 335). Toohey continued to preach the blessedness of belief over understanding, belief over thought (ET X 388; GW VI 507; HR XIV 692). Mysticism and dialectical materialism, Toohey says, “are two superficially varied manifestations of the same thing. Of the same intention” (HR VI 600). Toohey is speaking for Rand when speaking of the continuity of religion and socialism. This idea was big with Nietzsche. “Who do I hate most among the rabble today? The socialist rabble . . . . The anarchist and the Christian are descended from the same lineage . . . . / Christians are perfectly identical with anarchists: their only goal, their only instinct is to destroy” (AC 57–58; see also D 132; Z IV “The Last Supper” 16; BGE 202).

Notice that Rand does not take religion to be uniformly against thought. Like Leibniz before her, Rand is pleased with the story and idea of humans being created in the image of God, specifically, in their capability for reason. “‘Man’s first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought’” (HR XIV 693). Though he would not say it publicly, Toohey in no way intends to carry that value forward: “‘We’ll have neither God nor thought’” (ibid.).

. . .

 

 

[Guyau]

.

Certainly, Nietzsche and Rand were right in seeing commonalities of content as well as historical continuities between Christianity and left-socialism. Victor Hugo and my own early views too* are cases of that unity. I'd amend the Nietzsche and Rand picture of the anti-this-world and the anti-life in the Christian embrace of God and in the Christian embrace of a mystical made-up supernatural realm more generally. I'd add that religious thinking can be of two minds, two loyalties: one, the express poetics, the other, the natural counterparts from which the mystical was woven. So one's love of God can also be, underneath, love of goodness. And where the religious speak of God's love for the world, I see also their own natural goodness in loving the natural world of human life and transferring that love to a mythic cosmos-spanning good personage they call God.

[PDS]

On 4/27/2016 at 7:04 AM, Guyau said:

Implication for further reasons, complicating ones, may be found in this perspective on theism v. atheism in Rand 1936, 1938, and 1943, from draft of my book in progress: [Deleted due to formatting problems.]

So instead, I'll put in this space a little rounding out of Schopenhauer's picture. He writes:

"It is just as absurd to grieve over the time when we will no longer exist as it would be to grieve over the time when we did not yet exist . . . .

"Epicurus considered death from this point of view and therefore quite rightly said, 'death does not concern us', with the elucidation that when we are, death is not, and when death is, we are not. . . . Accordingly, from the standpoint of cognizance there appears to be absolutely no reason for fearing death . . . . And it is actually not this cognizing part of our I that fears death, but rather 'flight from death' proceeds solely from that blind willing with which every living thing is filled." (Translation of D. Carus and R.E. Aquila 2011)

I love that Epicurus quote..."when death is, we are not..."

The zen philosopher Alan Watts said something similar that "when we die, we are not going to be placed in a dark room and 'undergo' death"...  A similar sentiment.   He said that death is like going to sleep and never waking up, just like birth is like waking up without ever having gone to sleep.  

[moralist]

6 hours ago, PDS said:

 He said that death is like going to sleep and never waking up, just like birth is like waking up without ever having gone to sleep.  

I see that from another location entirely...

Death is the wake up call to the sleeping.

 

Greg

[moralist]

On ‎5‎/‎4‎/‎2016 at 10:11 AM, moralist said:

Of course God is regarded as scatology to government dope perversion abortion worshipping secularists. This is ironic when scat is literally a defining characteristic of their own behavior.

Everyone makes their choice and gets exactly what they deserve as the results of their choice. 

 

[BaalChatzaf]

26 minutes ago, moralist said:

 

 

On 5/5/2016 at 4:59 PM, moralist said:

I see that from another location entirely...

Death is the wake up call to the sleeping.

 

Greg

Death is the cessation of biological function.  When an organism is alive it remains far from thermodynamic equilibrium.  When an organism dies it enters a state of thermodynamic  equilibrium with the environment.  Which is why corpses soon end up having the same temperature as the ambient temperature of the environment. 

Given that consciousness or sentience is a process that takes place far from thermodynamic equilibrium  the dead no longer or conscious or sentient.  That are meat  which cools off to the ambient temperature.  

If you ask me what my religion is I will answer thus:  I was brought up Jewish and retain Jewish moral sensibilities.  My actual and effective religion is non-equilibrium thermodynamics.   The two things I believe without reservation are the law of non-contradiction and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  All other generalities (including this one)  are opinions.....

[Peter]

Ba’al wrote: The two things I believe without reservation are the law of non-contradiction and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  All other generalities (including this one) are opinions..... end quote

Legacies, lineage, fitting tomb stones, and historical remembrance mean a lot to some people. I don’t want to be cremated. I like my bones. Many sentient beings want their opinion making bio-machinery to last longer or never perish. It is an extension of the fight or flight response that most higher animals possess but it is also a larger concept than that. Life extension will increase if current trends hold and the implantation of *mind* into another form is conceivable too. That does not conflict with your axiom of non-contradiction. If you woke up in another form and you could think to yourself, “This is me!” would you deny your continued existence?     

Peter  

[BaalChatzaf]

3 minutes ago, Peter said:

Ba’al wrote: The two things I believe without reservation are the law of non-contradiction and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  All other generalities (including this one) are opinions..... end quote

Legacies, lineage, fitting tomb stones, and historical remembrance mean a lot to some people. I don’t want to be cremated. I like my bones. Many sentient beings want their opinion making bio-machinery to last longer or never perish. It is an extension of the fight or flight response that most higher animals possess but it is also a larger concept than that. Life extension will increase if current trends hold and the implantation of *mind* into another form is conceivable too. That does not conflict with your axiom of non-contradiction. If you woke up in another form and you could think to yourself, “This is me!” would you deny your continued existence?     

Peter  

When it happens  I will let you know (If I can).   When I was younger and more observant I used to be a member of the Chavurah Kadesha (the religious burial society).  We prepared Jewish males for burial by washing their bodies and wrapping them in shrouds.  The Female auxiliary handled the female dead in a similar fashion.  The dead are at room temperature (colder if they were stored in a refrigerator).  The dead are very, very dead.  And there is no sign whatsoever of "mind" transplants.  We do not have a proper way of encoding mental events and there are no technologies even on the horizon for that.  I do not plan to hold my breath until "minds" can be stored or downloaded. 

[Peter]

Ba’al wrote: When it happens I will let you know (If I can). end quote

That reminds me of Houdini’s pledge that if it were possible to return from the “spirit world” he would notify his friend on a certain day and time, and at a certain location. He never showed. I find that hilarious and sad at the same time. Soothsayers, mediums, prophets, and those who claim extrasensory perception are silly, deluded dilettantes, or con artists.  

“Given world enough and time,” I can imagine with near certainty, the eventual ability of humans to record a near duplication of their own sentient consciousness in another form. How close are we to freedom from mental death? We have monuments, inscriptions, books, EKG’s, human cloning, mechanical simulations, etc., and are headed in the direction of continuance or replication. I think a duplication of consciousness will be created before death and then reanimated in another form.

In the meantime, I agree. "Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead."

Peter   

[moralist]

13 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Death is the cessation of biological function.

IF that is ALL you are... you are NOTHING more than a decomposing bloated bloviating government educated cockroach.

 

Greg

[Roger Bissell]

9 minutes ago, moralist said:

14 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Death is the cessation of biological function.

IF that is ALL you are... you are NOTHING more than a decomposing bloated bloviating government educated cockroach.

 

Very intelligent, very honorable people have believed that this life is all there is long before there was government education. 

Mind and values are biological functions, just as digestion and locomotion are. That doesn't make them insignificant or meaningless.

The significance of biological function is that without biological function there would be no significance.

REB

[Roger Bissell]

On 2/29/2016 at 10:38 AM, moralist said:

On 2/28/2016 at 9:08 AM, Brant Gaede said:

To protect the herd from people like you.

--Brant

and to keep the herd together: religion is the sheep dog, Mr. Wolf

 

Religion may well be the sheep dog, and Christ is the Shepherd...

...but only of the sheep... not of the goats.

 

Metaphors are so cool. Christ was the Great Fisherman, the Loving Shepherd, the Carpenter from Nazareth - probably a symbolic practitioner of dozens of more professions (though those are the ones that come to mind). But a Rational Philosopher and Lover of Life and Achievement of the Productive, Independent Mind? Not so much. 

I'll take Ayn Rand or Thomas Jefferson or John Locke or Aristotle over Jesus any day. They did not have much respect for the herd mentality of the sheeple, and they saw through cheap magic tricks which are fraudulent claims to the suspension of cause and effect. (Fishes and loaves, indeed.)

REB

 

[moralist]

15 minutes ago, Roger Bissell said:

Very intelligent, very honorable people have believed that this life is all there is long before there was government education. 

IF that is ALL they truly are... then they are just two legged talking cockroaches.

If there is no transcendence:

HUMAN = COCKROACH

But you are absolutely right to describe it as a belief... for it is a tenet belonging to the secular political religion of leftism. Its medrasas are government universities where liberals are stupid enough to go into debt just to be imprinted into radical America-hating jihadis.

Greg

[Roger Bissell]

8 minutes ago, moralist said:

23 minutes ago, Roger Bissell said:

Very intelligent, very honorable people have believed that this life is all there is long before there was government education. 

 

IF that is ALL they are... they are NOTHING more than cockroaches too.

If there is no transcendence:

HUMAN = COCKROACH

But you are absolutely right to describe it as a belief... for it is a tenet belonging to the secular political religion of leftism. Its medrasas are government universities where liberals are stupid enough to go into debt just to be imprinted into radical America-hating jihadis.

1

 

That's a new one on me. I've seen lots of kinds of reductionism - but nonbelievers are "nothing but" cockroaches? Wow. Profound. Reductive materialism, move over - now we've got reductive cockroachianism. 

REB

[Roger Bissell]

3 minutes ago, moralist said:

18 minutes ago, Roger Bissell said:

Very intelligent, very honorable people have believed that this life is all there is long before there was government education. 

IF that is ALL they are... they are NOTHING more than cockroaches too.

But you are absolutely right to describe it as a belief... for it is a tenet belonging to the secular political religion of leftism. Its medrasas are government universities where liberals are stupid enough to go into debt just to be imprinted into radical America-hating jihadis.

 

You must have a ball stuffing people who reject your mythic beliefs into the pigeonholes of leftwing and theocratic statism. As far as I know, the dozens of nonbelievers here on OL firmly reject both of those pet categories of yours. You need some new insult terms to apply to us. We reject both your fantasy supernaturalism and your assignment of nonbelievers to irrationalist groups that compete with yours.

REB

[moralist]

11 minutes ago, Roger Bissell said:

 but nonbelievers are "nothing but" cockroaches?

Not non believers, Roger... belief that something does not exist is no different from belief that something does exist. They're both the same kind of belief, except one is belief in what is true while the other is belief in a lie.

The only judge with the power to render the final verdict of what is true and what is false is the objective reality of the consequences of each of our own actions.

Greg