(February 19, 2014 at 6:44 pm)FreeTony Wrote: OK, so this seems to be a Christian tactic, claiming materialism/naturalism is a religion which relies on faith. Firstly, I find it strange that a religious person would claim being religious is a bad thing.I think that it's another version of the "god-shaped hole in your heart" argument, wherein the theist insists that you must know that god exists and are simply in denial. They are arguing that the need to be religious is ingrained and therefore points to the existence of god.
The need to belong to a social group and to form bonds with allies (and conversely, to identify and overcome enemies) may well be ingrained in us, and perhaps religion is one of the ways that it manifests. Filling that "hole" with god is extremely appealing since many religions offer a fantastic reward for doing so (and some threaten a horrifying punishment for not doing so). But we fill it many ways, seeing as we separate ourselves by so many different criteria: nationality, race, sports teams, brands of goods, and so on.
Hence, Yahweh might be the New York Mets of the Godly Baseball League. It makes sense when put that way, doesn't it?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
