Saturday, September 13, 2008

Flow Charting the Religious Stream of Consciousness

A flow chart is a chart with questions and answers. Like the children's Choose Your Own Adventure series, each answer directs you to a result or another question.
Let's kayak this flow starting with a religious question.
Does the supernatural exist?
If you choose "No", you must explain the origins of the life-coddling, harmonious non-eternal universe, the origins of consciousness, the origins of self-sacrificial instincts that transcend species, the origins of reason, the billions of reported miracles with no motivation but that those reporting them believed them, often corroborated by strangers with no contact, even by footage and medical records and the like, and why our brains have the faculty to experience the supernatural, and benefit from doing so, when all our other built-in observation faculties are there to help us perceive reality to survive, and when delusional thinking is extremely maladaptive. If there is a "God delusion", why is it built-in, adaptive and found in everyone? Especially since it can lead people to choose celibacy and early death?
Personally my own lifetime of empirical observation makes naturalistic thinking utterly impossible anyway. I've seen far too much to believe in a naturalistic universe.
If you choose "Yes", the next question is:
Do any supernatural entities have consciousness and free will?
If you choose "No", you must explain why the universe just happens to favor life and conscious life so overwhelmingly, why the conscience exists (again, beyond and in conflict with survival instinct, and trans-species), why so many millions have had independently corroborating experiences of communication and protection by unseen beings and so many millions have had independently corroborating experiences of attack by unseen beings, both often with material evidence.
If you choose "Yes", the next question is:
Are the most powerful supernatural entities for humanity or against us?
If you choose "Against us", you must explain why we are here.
If you choose "For us", that leads us to some questions for the next post.
Slan,
Serena

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Today's Atheist Fallacy: the False Dichotomy

Are you a reasonable person, or do you disagree? Is this an essay, or is it on a computer screen? Do you believe in reason, or religion? Do you attribute the behavior of the universe to natural causes,or supernatural?
Get your cold, stale false dichotomies while they're -- well, while -- well, anyway, there are plenty of false dichotomies around and plenty of people trying to sell them to you. If you are among the majority of people worldwide who have had supernatural experiences (no, Richard Dawkins, we're not talking about something done in a lab with electrodes), you are likely to meet many "new" atheists who pelt you with false dichotomies as part of a barrage of fallacies. Call them every time, even if the atheist screams and act as if he can't hear you. Call them. Say, "False dichotomy, false dichotomy, false dichotomy," until he stops to gasp for air and wonders why you haven't disappeared yet. Then you can show him gently what a false dichotomy is and how he has been using some.