I think that this was a good video.  It could elevate to the status of super-awesome if it had a better voice over.

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“PROFESSOR ALBERT EINSTEIN: “It is well possible that behind our sensory perceptions hide entire whole worlds we have no idea of.”

einstein said a lot of things. even some things about god. both the atheists and the religious quote einstein.

quite a feat for a person to be quoted by both sides.

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I have been reading some karen armstrong material and came across this. thought it applied to this post. or not.

“I think these questions are tremendously important now because more and more people, especially those with a scientific bent, say we don’t need religion anymore. Science has replaced religion. You know, religion used to explain all kinds of things about the world. But science for the most part does that now. And people who are not religious say they can be just as morally upright.

karen responded:

They can. I fully endorse that. I don’t think you need to believe in an external god to obey the Golden Rule. In the Axial Age, when people started to concentrate too much on what they’re transcending to—that is, God—and neglected what they’re transcending from—their greed, pompous egotism, cruelty—then they lost the plot, religiously. That’s why God is a difficult religious concept. I think God is often used by religious people to give egotism a sacred seal of divine approval, rather than to take you beyond the ego.

As for scientists, they can explain a tremendous amount. But they can’t talk about meaning so much. If your child dies, or you witness a terrible natural catastrophe such as Hurricane Katrina, you want to have a scientific explanation of it. But that’s not all human beings need. We are beings who fall very easily into despair because we’re meaning-seeking creatures. And if things don’t add up in some way, we can become crippled by our despondency. “

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If my child got cancer, how the hell would it make me (or anyone else) feel any better to think there was a “meaning” behind it? I wish someone would answer that for me. I think it’s bs.

People throw this “humans need meaning” idea around an awful lot. If anything, I find it frightening; the whole idea that there is some other consciousness out there who/that has a “plan” for my life and those in it (over which I have no control) and doles out happiness and pain at its own whim.

No, I prefer to stay with the natural world, thank you.

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Researcher’s quote in post 3 has some interesting points.

Science has definitely replaced religion as the explanatory tool for what now falls into the bracket of ‘natural world’, though this is an odd distinction as it really just means ‘what we understand’ leaving that which we don’t understand being grabbed at by wishful thinkers in whatever context they find most satisfying - instead of it actually meaning ‘NOT of the natural world’.

So, science has replaced religions function in that respect. Now we are left with the debate about meaning.

Firstly there is no sense in which science does not add meaning. Really there is only a sense that science does not add the type of meaning people have been raised to recognise or emotionally desire.

If a volcano erupts and destroys a village it can be psychologically important to know that they were not being punished and in the same light if my child were to develop leukaemia it would help me to know that I or they were not being punished - then i would place all my hopes in the goodness of humanity and of the research that might cure them.

Pain and suffering is something we are all familiar with and for it to be used in this way is slightly immoral. I do not like the idea of the pain of others being used as a sub context for religious belief. I do not validate my own meaning in others suffering. It seems a slightly selfish way of supporting ones own ideas.

The pain and suffering occurring everywhere should not be used to support certain theologies, nor should certain theologies be used to explain it away. Even if some people do find it comforting.

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