Smart honest funny man. Very wise and used his comedy to educate and entertain. I loved him very much. I was a huge fan. But some of his ideas and views I had my own views that went against his. But that was the great thing about his comedy even if you fully disagree with what he was saying he could still make you laugh.
We used to actually play along with our daughters imaginary friends. We allowed her to continue playing with them till she was ready to stop. I always thought it unhealthy to make a kid stop playing with their imaginary friends because a kid makes imaginary friends for a reason. They need something in their life they feel is missing and believing in something like imaginary friends to be real helps them get what they need.
Just like many people turn to God because they need something or someone to believe in because they are missing or need something in their life they can't get from others.
Believing in God is like having a parent that you trust whole heartedly is watching out for you and everyone you love.
It isn't bad to believe or not believe. But to make fun of or demand they stop believing or start believing in something is.
Wether one believes in a god or not isn’t relevant to the idea. We can use only science without morality or anything else to justify it. People suffer many biases and fallacies. Confirmation bias, selection bias, anchoring bias, reporting bias, sunk cost fallacy, dunning Krueger, it’s a long list that we could keep going of common cognitive bias.
The point is we each see the world from one perspective based on life experience and filter information based on our expectations of what we think the world SHOULD look like and ignore or invalidate things that would disrupt our world view as much as possible at a conscious and sub conscious level.
So wether you believe in a god or leprechauns or ghosts or believe in yourself or even simply believe reality is real and not a dream or simulation; you are being influenced by bias and someone else would look at the same data and think you’re a fool.
Religion and Atheism are the same. Both are religion. religion is simply a system of faith defining our world view. Without evidence science has hypothesis. I “think” not “I know..” and atheism is the claim to knowing their is no god- but one can’t prove a negative and thus there is no scientific means to knowing, therefore the conclusion there is no god is taken on faith.
Now- of bias both tend towards several. Self serving bias- “it’s easier/more pleasant to believe this than that.” “This answer suits me better..”
Bandwagon bias “all these people are saying this so..” “I want to fit in with these people so...” and etc. but spirituality is ultimately a personal choice one must decide for themselves. What if any beliefs they choose to hold are up to our own life experiences and biases and selves to determine.
So when it comes to “imaginary friends” most of us are our own imaginary friends anyway, living in our own “imaginary” version of the world where our biases shape the fundamental way we see and think and interact with the world. So regardless of belief or even existence of religion, the primary use of theology is in imparting cultural values and morality more than it is about anything else. Wether those things were created by a human or a supernatural being to do so isn’t really relevant on that context.
Well... some people will touch the paint. Many won’t. Just like some will believe in the sky person and some won’t. But if you place a sign next to a big piece of machinery saying: “High voltage. Do not touch. Touching will result in death...” very few people will touch that. So while it makes good comedy, when used as some sort of actual debate point about religion comparing the nature of existence and after life and eternal happiness or suffering to a wet paint sign is like comparing people petting a bunny with a sign that says “don’t touch this animal it is dangerous” to petting a 3 foot span spider with a sign saying the same thing.
well the difference is, the wet paint "hypothesis" can be proved or disproved by touching it. There is no "wet paint" to touch in God's case, so people really have no choice but to accept it
Quite literally they have several other choices besides accept it. They an of course, reject it. Beyond that they can question it as well. Both agnostics and the religious often question and search for some level of evidence they feel justifies belief or rejection. We cant treat the concept of a god scientifically because... it’s simply outside science as we know it. You literally cannot price there is no god, you can’t use science to prove a negative ever. You can only say findings support a hypothesis or not.
And we can’t use science to prove their is a god- not with our current science. No one has ever devised an experiment which could comprehensively search the totality of existence. The closest we would et would be to say science has no conclusive evidence of a god using the scientific method. So- it becomes more abstract. For example:
You also can’t use science to prove a person loves you. You can measure hormone levels and responses and apply various sciences to interpret those things- but we have no definitive and precise way to scientifically quantify love of any particular type. We can measure arousal, but a bumpy bus ride can also cause arousal without one loving a bus, and humans certainly can have sex or attraction without love. Likewise bonding hormones don’t denote love either necessarily. Our bodies also release those with inanimate objects, animals, family members, and romantic partners. So the line there an get blurry too.
So how does one prove they love another person asides to say they do? How do we prove another person loves us? We really ant do so objectively and with certainty. So instead of statistical ad scientific analysis we use our experiences and perceptions to satisfy our own burden of proof we find acceptable. A god is no different. Like a pen pal or online friend the only concrete physical proof you have they even exist is words that may or may not be written by the person they are attributed to.
With a pen pal or say- me, you know something has to be behind these words. You know they didn’t spontaneously pop into being. A series of events and chemistry and physics and history led up to this correspondence. We look at the universe and we know that things don’t just happen with complete randomness- or if they do there are a lot of coincidences. Physics tells us that certain things happen and we can repeat those things. There is much we don’t know though and probably never will.
So a one guess is as good as any as to how this all around us started. About the point of “genesis” at which the universe we know was formed and how that happened. We know there is some type of “beginning” to things, but what was it that in the still and nothingness started the fort movements and reactions that would become all that is?
It could be simply a force we don’t recognize yet, a reaction of elements that no longer exist or are extremely rare, some process we do not yet understand. Or it could be a simulation, or we could all be living in a science project or in “mold” on a huge giants wall, or a god or gods could have willed it or whatever. We do not know. No one knows. There is no answer and so there isn’t a wrong answer to the question at present. And in the end- religion doesn’t invalidate science or vice versa.
Wether a simulation or a creation of a divine or advanced or extra dimensional being- the universe is a system with observable rules. It makes sense. As much as we can empathize with a universe, any system we create would have patterns and rules, so a complex self regulating and long lived system like a universe has rules. Science is our study of what those rules are and how to make them work for us. Religion is a theology about who made the rules.
Science is less concerned with who made the rules as how they work and how to use them. Religion is less concerned with how rules work than who made them and why.
okay, but here's the thing. yesterday I was at the train station and there was a "wet paint" sign, but no wet paint. yes, I felt for it, but only because it didn't look wet anywhere.
Just like many people turn to God because they need something or someone to believe in because they are missing or need something in their life they can't get from others.
Believing in God is like having a parent that you trust whole heartedly is watching out for you and everyone you love.
It isn't bad to believe or not believe. But to make fun of or demand they stop believing or start believing in something is.
Bandwagon bias “all these people are saying this so..” “I want to fit in with these people so...” and etc. but spirituality is ultimately a personal choice one must decide for themselves. What if any beliefs they choose to hold are up to our own life experiences and biases and selves to determine.