A touch late for me to be making this call but I thought, reenergizing this thread was worth it given the state of the weather today and its ruinous impact on my evening plan!  Sajha is an easy alternative obviously – my old excuse for having fun!

I did go through some of the posts above – my comments below:

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Neerman wrote:

“Do you see a difference? When you say You believe in your friend. You are not sure about him/her.”

So, not to believe in your friend will, by definition, make you ‘sure about him/her’ then?  And that’s me sorted then, because I choose not to believe in God or a god.  So I rest my case!

“BUT when you say you trust in your friend, you know exactly why do [sic] you trust him/her as you knew him/her so closely.”

I fail to see the logic in your analogy a la God vs the trusting friend – let’s not distil the finer meanings of the two words - ‘believe’ and ‘trust’, because that’s the linguist’s job.  But semantics aside, I don’t understand why believing in a friend is less valid than trusting him:  you trust your friend because equally, you believe in his friendship, his ability to be your friend and his loyalty to you so you can retain that trust for as long as it lasts.   Both actions are complimentary to each other and that blurs the distinction you are proposing between the two protagonists.

“So, my point is when you believe in GOD, ……….. You do not look for a reason to believe OK.”

No, you DO ‘look for a reason’ for your actions – they just can’t be random or irrational.  You go to toilet for example.  Why?  Because you had a few too many down at the pub and now your bladder is next to bursting. Going there for a pee is only a rational thing to do given all possibilities - you know, you would otherwise end up mucking up your trousers!  In The Hareeb’s case, he does not believe in God because doing otherwise will yield no outcomes, because for him, it’s irrational to invest his time and effort in something that is not real and only exists in the head.  You breathe, eat and sleep – that is real.  Why? Because you want to be alive – a choice you have no monopoly over, unless you want to commit suicide!  It is a requirement which we know has no alternatives.  Nature that is – real, no short cuts!  Going back to the toilet analogy again then - we have traits, instincts, some baser than others:  you ‘go out and have sex’ because it gives you pleasure and that is universal!  I find none of that sense of surety in one’s embracing belief in God.  Yes, some people do draw emotional comfort from it, and that’s fine as it is their prerogative.  Would that however qualify as a reason for doing so?  Still rational, even though you cannot prove its existence?  An excuse perhaps to go and commit yourself to something as inexplicable as my mucked up trousers! J

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Kinaara wrote:

“Man was created by god,(ignore the theories n evidences of our baje Charles Darwin for once) We being the creation of the almighty god, we are special if not "Perfect" .”

Man created by God - he must probably wear a funny tuft of daarhi and unkempt stubbles and is an invariably six foot tall hunk with taut muscles and a motley mass of impressive six pack!  Whatever the name of the Mel Gibson film!  The same old sermon but I agree, one cannot disprove it too, in much the same way you cannot disprove the existence of The Spaghetti Monster – Bertrand Russell’s Teapot that is!  Science doesn’t set out to debunk all that garbage – its purpose is not that but it gives you, despite its pitfalls, the best possible explanation, given the best available information.  And for the record, Darwin Baaje is no minion – he has yet to be proved wrong.

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Invisible wrote:

“In almost all the religion people believe in some kind of higher power a god.”

And many believe in The Spaghetti Monster and many other things too – if only the Gods of the organised religions (except Buddhism) didn’t invoke such hatred among their followers.  We would not have Crusades, Inquisition, instances of Arabs&Jews killing each other, muslim Terks killing Christian Armenians, 9/11.. just so much to recount.

“Man makes his own destiny”

He does indeed... he is a ‘self-made’ man.  Evolution that is.

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LootK,

Roger there... No religion indeed and then no sprinkling of the ‘salt-and-pepper’ too. J

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Aremite1,

Thanks for sharing the fictional piece – that was both Dawkins and Hitchens squished into the same PA system and the volume set to full blast.  And result was a massive, ear-deafening sound bite! J

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Nepe ji,

Thanks for sharing the piece... I have yet to read the stuff.  I am sure, there are some pretty interesting stuff.  I have read one or two Pinker books and I am a fan.  Ditto Hitchens.

Some waffles in passing:

“Faith is illogical.”

It is indeed.  Almost all of the organised religions lack the basis for rational verification – science has the edge over it in that respect, its failings and pitfalls notwithstanding; it ensures its credibility through both failure and success – refines its theories through testing and evaluating.  We find this process almost non-existent in religions’ case.  That to me is where the trouble lies. Most religions are monoliths that despise change.  There is no way you can compare the dramatic scientific changes of the last 100 years to any religious equivalent.  The Bible’s been canonised:  by definition it cannot change, it cannot be amended.  You can point to minute changes if you like (the Church of England relaxing its attitude to women and gay clergy for example), but in comparison to the towering ziggurat of nonsense that has remained for centuries, those changes really are miniscule.

“Faith has sustained itself enduring the attack of its most powerful enemy, the logic, throughout the modern history.”

Yes, through mostly scare tactics.  And its hold on many governments’ decision-making added to that and still does.

“Faith’s sustenance itself proves that it has some merits.”

I am less convinced about that.  Some merits yes but what are they?  Community harmony, a sense of belonging – maybe a useful tool but its global ills tend to cloud such achievements, miniscule as they already are.  That is a crass generalisation, I know but I have no better way to explain it otherwise.

“So my position regarding faith would be not to kill it but to tame it to keep/improve the quality of life in general.”

My own take on this is:  faith is a matter of personal choice.  I choose not to believe in all of it: life after death, pearly portals of the heaven and the dinky cells in hell.  If you want to believe, then that is fine as long as you do not assume the moral high ground to start preaching the superiority of your beliefs over others’.  Because if you do, then you are also displaying many of the traits which organised religion so distasteful.

My twopence worth...  too much for one post.  Have a nice weekend.