All very true. It is really sad to see so many people still embracing irrationality in form of myths and religions (while, in my view, the former entail the latter).
When I was a child, I was, of course, told that a god, usually referred to as ‘God’, for there should be only one, live in heaven. I had better add that in German, my mother tongue, there is only one word both for heaven and for sky, namely ‘Himmel’. I wondered from time to time how that may be, how that could be, indeed, yet being a child, I was not able to get my thoughts straight on that matter. Thus, I had to continue to believe in what I was told. When I got older, however, the voice of reason awakened, and at the age of sixteen I eventually became an atheist because I read the Bible and the Koran—in effect, I was disgusted at the uncountable massacres and the floods of senselessly spilled blood. There cannot be more evidence than in these allegedly ‘holy’ writs that religion, in what form you will, is man-made. At the moment I am reading Christopher Hitchen’s book ‘God Is Not Great’, which makes this explicit in an astonishing way.

Needless to say, science does not have an answer to each question, however, that there is no natural explanation available for some questions at the moment does not mean that we shall never obtain it. Moreover, science does not, as religions tend to do, maintain to be infallible. On the contrary, it is, as Wilfrid Sellars once wrote in his famous (and complicated) essay ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’, ‘a self-correcting enterprise, which can put any claim in jeopardy, though not all at once.’ Theories shift, as new phenomena are discovered, conundrums dissolve, as new theories and new evidence become obtainable. If all that science has brought about were false, how come, then, that we procured all the working technologies (and, I’m afraid, new terrible weapons) whereof our forbears could not even conceive? So long as the world (understood as the Greek word ‘kósmos’, that is to say, including all entities) keeps going, so long as the world keeps changing, we will not come to rest with philosophy and science—and I think this is a good message, for would you think it desirable that there were nothing left to discover and invent?

Mayhap you would like to read and comment on my philosophical work. I would, in fact, be glad if you did so. To follow this invitation just visit me at my weblog http://markusschroer.wordpress.com/.

So long,

Markus Schroer

I was stunned and disgusted when I heard the “boos” during McCain’s concession speech, and it speaks volumes. These kinds of people really do scare me, and I hope Obama gets a security detail the likes of which no one has seen before.

As far as this country has come, I’m not convinced there aren’t hundreds of nutjobs out there, and McCain and Palin did nothing to prevent their idiotic voices from being heard.

For now, it sure feels great to let this victory sink in. The best man won, and I look forward to a period of recovery, renewal and peace.

Thanks again for your encouragement. It’s nice to know we have intelligent readers!

– APB

Are you coming back with more diatribes? Need folks fighting the good fight. Barnburner in the Hoosier state my friend. Well written comments you have.

The Left
http://www.crosspolemics.wordpress.com