Will we have the opiate as long as the pain is around?

[citoyenjoseph]

Will religion ever go the way of the Dodo Bird?  Or will it just persist....changing with culture?

Obviously, scientific knowledge doesn't change the religious.  Proof means nothing.  Why should fossil records matter to a starving family in the ghetto of Bombay?  All they have are their prayers and superstition and hope that things will be better in "the next life."  And it is a false hope.  Things won't be better for that family in Bombay...ever.  They will die poor, diseased, and hungry.

[Jeff D]

So long as human beings are human beings, with all of the "clever", amazing short-cuts and shortcomings in our brain wiring,

So long as we can dream, and hope, and imagine, and engage in fantasy, magical thinking, and fatalism (destiny, karma, fate, etc.),

So long as we remain mortal and aware of our morality and unable to indefinitely postpone or to cheat death,

There will be wish-thinking, and folk "knowledge" that isn't really knowledge, and superstition, and there will be something like religion . . .  as surely as State Lotteries and casinos and bookies will continue to rake in the cash.

We human beings (or large numbers of us, anyway) may outgrow some forms of superstition and wish-thinking and fatalism  (I'd prefer to think that a minority of the current human population believes that disease is caused by witches' spells, ghosts, demons, or dead ancestors).   But there seems to be plenty of room, and plenty of prospects, for future "religions" based on belief in some sort of supernatural something(s) that interact with this world or with human beings, whether they are gods, ghosts, djinn, unicorns, FSMs, or afterlife realms.  

All they have are their prayers and superstition and hope that things will be better in "the next life." And it is a false hope. Things won't be better for that family in Bombay...ever. They will die poor, diseased, and hungry.

But what if the prototypical poor families in Mumbai could be assured of receiving, and would actually receive, decent educations for the boys and girls (especially the girls)?  What if better jobs were available to the family members in their teens and twenties because the crushing traditions of the caste system and the inefficiencies and corruption Indian government bureaucracy were somehow eradicated or left behind?   Their prayers, superstitions, and false hopes are not necessarily all that they will ever have.

[nmblum]

Will religion ever go the way of the Dodo Bird?  Or will it just persist....changing with culture?

Obviously, scientific knowledge doesn't change the religious.  Proof means nothing.  Why should fossil records matter to a starving family in the ghetto of Bombay?  All they have are their prayers and superstition and hope that things will be better in "the next life."  And it is a false hope.  Things won't be better for that family in Bombay...ever.  They will die poor, diseased, and hungry.

Perhaps not  forever. .
Things DO change...and who knows that when the yoke of the Hinduism that pervades (still) every facet of Indian life, including the caste and caste system that institutionalizes the desperate poverty is overcome.... something reasonably positive will happen.
After all we all lived in caves once upon a time, sometimes a lot of us in one crowded cave..
And we died of starvation when our crops were stunted by drought or drowing, or when our patriarchs died and left us to fend for ourselves, against the more powerful cave dwellers....
And we were kept in sloth and ignorance until the need for our labor  (and having to pay for it)  replaced the age old system of immutable class....  
Bombay, as a euphemism  for the India in the thrall of Hinduism for 2500 years... is a tragic example of religion, superstition and fear  fostering and enforcing suppression and cant as a mechanism for perpetuating a social system that benefits very few compared with the now billion it ensures will exist in misery..
It has had a good run for those who profit by it at the expense of most, but its time is running out...
Two things are looming on the Indian horizon... one is that  the population control which is absolutely necessary to Indian survival as ANY kind of society, has finaly  reached the consciousness of the "haves" who realize that their own privileges are endangered without it. The process of having large numbers of humans born to be servants and indentured peasants is no longer paying off.

And then there is the slow but sure burgeoning of an Indian "center class" with, again for good or ill, bourgeois aspirations...
They want the Indian equivalent of the picket fence, the garage with the car inside,  and the educations, jobs, and two babies who will make it possible.
Bangalore, admittedly a rarified atmosphere in a sea of desperate rural areas and fetid cities dotted with unimaginable luxury, is perhaps a vision of the Indian future.
And I think.. perhaps   you have another idea.. that our own   class and caste of HAVES.. and decision makers , who decided to export consumer complaint departments, and catalogue orders to Mubai, Delhi  and even Calcutta, are somewhat responsible for this potential change..
Whether the change will bring idyllic contentment... it is not for us to say. We have had it all, and failed to be elated by it... but that doesn't mean that those who have never had a chance to be miserable in quite the same way, shouldn't have their chance... clearly it is their collective desire.
I personally have never found any beauty or even poignancy in   Indian poverty, with its disease, substandard housing, and sanitation  huge and hungry families,  teeming streets, tainted water supplies,  diseased and often fatally deformed children, famines, floods and religious tantrums even vaguely charming or inspiring... and I have always found American (and other Western tourists (and yes, George Harrison included) who painted pictures of the HAPPY PRIMEVAL natives,  under the glaring (and odoriferous) misery,  misguided to be as charitable as possible..
We are currently, in the West running around like chickens deprived of our heads over the question of whether Muslim women should be considered retrograde for their, or their male authority figures'  loyalty to the burka.
And we are vociferous in our condemnation of female circumcision in African Islamic cultures.
Yet we ignore the horror of the treatment of Hindu women who are from birth doomed to virtual slavery as children, as young wives, as the mothers of too damned many children, and at the mercy of the cruelty of their  equally pathetic  male relatives... whose only claims to any kind of human pretense of dignity is their "Shiva -Vishnu given" right to abuse and even kill their women...
It's time for some times to be a'changin'.... and one can only hope that it occurs without one of the explosions of rage, bitterness,violence and  terrifying bloodshed that has marked so much of Indian history... always at the expense of the lowest of the low ... before, during, and after the affliction of British colonialism.

NMB

[Herk]

I'm not a big believer in the longevity of homo sapiens, so forever is a time scale of unnecessary proportion.

But in modern societies, religion seems to be taking a back seat to the forward charge of the Light Brigade of knowledge. It's quite possible that India is no exception, though I am unfamiliar with the statistics.

On an only slightly-related note, I've become aware that India is now producing drugs for U.S. consumption and the first impression is that they are very ineffective to the point of being useless. I can't say I trust such a desperate country to produce such complex and controlled substances in some degree of quality.

[Blacksamwell]

I personally work with data entry production teams in Bangalore.  I've traveled there about 5 times so far and will go again in October.

I've learned that India is an extremely diverse society and whatever I think I "know" about what an "Indian" is is challenged at every turn.

I've noticed the growth of a new educated middle class in Bangalore full of young people fresh out of school who frequently acquire western habits and tastes along with their new affluence.  They don't all throw off the old cultural habits, but many of them do.  Still, you can't ever discount India's cultural history and we see it creep in and affect the ways our staff communicate with us and each other.  Oftentimes we're forced to work with a male supervisor when we know the real knowledge base and expertise is a layer down with the women on our production line.

So anyhow...  That's just one first hand view from one city in India dealing with people involved with one form of industry.  Diversity andchange.  That appears to be the norm in my experience.

[Blacksamwell]

On an only slightly-related note, I've become aware that India is now producing drugs for U.S. consumption and the first impression is that they are very ineffective to the point of being useless. I can't say I trust such a desperate country to produce such complex and controlled substances in some degree of quality.

Careful.  Indians, as individuals, have the same capacity for learning as the rest of us and the industry parks built in the last 5 years in India are world class.

The challenges involved with successful production in India are not much different than the challenges involved with successful production anywhere.

There may be reasons to be suspect of Indian pharmaceuticals.  But merely being located in India and staffed by Indians isn't one of them in my book.  I'd take pills from any ISO certified production facility in India without hesitation.

[nmblum]

I personally work with data entry production teams in Bangalore.  I've traveled there about 5 times so far and will go again in October.

I've learned that India is an extremely diverse society and whatever I think I "know" about what an "Indian" is is challenged at every turn.

I've noticed the growth of a new educated middle class in Bangalore full of young people fresh out of school who frequently acquire western habits and tastes along with their new affluence.  They don't all throw off the old cultural habits, but many of them do.  Still, you can't ever discount India's cultural history and we see it creep in and affect the ways our staff communicate with us and each other.  Oftentimes we're forced to work with a male supervisor when we know the real knowledge base and expertise is a layer down with the women on our production line.

So anyhow...  That's just one first hand view from one city in India dealing with people involved with one form of industry.  Diversity andchange.  That appears to be the norm in my experience.

I agree with your response to Bangalore... all of it, the certainly competitive level or creativity of the educated and ambitious young, and the obvious cracks in the lamina of tradition that  they have brought to images of India.
That. by the way goes back to the late 60s and 70s when the Indians participated with NASA  in certain experimental space craft  having established their own space program in Bangalore... which was already atypical for an Indian urban center, and became more so with the influx of  Indian physicists, engineers, astronomers, etc.. most educated abroad, and  all world class scientists.
(Bangalore also profits from its location, pleasant climate, and lovely ambience.... and most foreigners respond to its "uniqueness,")
But change does "move enormous slow," and so it has been in India...
And of course it is diverse.... and no generalities can capture either its essence or  the  potential. of what is a truly astounding country.

However, there is no denying... oh, how I hate. like a broken record,  to have to single out religion as a culprit, but.... but... there is really no way to overlook that   the longevity (the 2500 years of  uninterrupted dominion) of the traditional caste, caste, AND  male exalting  Hinduism  which is virtually one with the essentially still agrarian culture,   remains,  despite some alterations to its rigidity, a powerful deterrent to progress.

And then of course, there is always the problem of qualifying "progress..." which SHOULD mean  "onward and upward..."  more and better education for those who have traditionally been denied it, improved living conditions, and at the end of the rainbow... absolutely... well compensated employment... jobs.
But before that has to be population control.
And  while I would not like to be the one to tell a human being with nothing   worthy of pride  to show for his (truncated) stay on earth but his children, to stop having them... still, without some further attempts to limit India's population, it doesn't really matter how many Bangalore's start dotting the map: the Calcuttas will keep outpacing them.

NMB

[Herk]

Careful.  Indians, as individuals, have the same capacity for learning as the rest of us and the industry parks built in the last 5 years in India are world class.

I agree with you completely. But think, for example, how the Chinese have been caught sending us lead paint on toys. Are the Chinese stupid? I think not. For crying out loud, we were told that we couldn't buy drugs from Canada because they were substandard!

And we (Not me, but my partner) had no problem with drugs until they came from India. Whether it's incompetence or mischief I cannot say, but they did not work, have been supposedly sent in for testing, and a refund was given, amid phone conversations with company representatives.

Edited to add: some of the phone conversations I've had with people from India regarding computer problems have gone beyond the absurd.

[Martin Brock]

Yes. People want comforting fairy tales almost as much as they want pornography. It's a free country. Get over it.

[Lance Kennedy]

Just a comment on population in India, since several people seem to be keen to push population control.

In India, fertility ten years ago was 3 children per woman.   Today it is less than 2.8.   Replacement is about 2.5 (higher than the west, since mortality is higher).  At current rates of decline, there is no need to take extra or 'heroic' measures to bring the population down.  It would seem, according to current trends, that within a few decades, India will have a declining population, much like the developed world.

[nmblum]

Yes. People want comforting fairy tales almost as much as they want pornography. It's a free country. Get over it.

Whatever that means..

But aren't  you a "people?
Are fairy tales and pornography what YOU want?  
Why  is it   "the other guy"  who is at  t the heart of any problem?

As if the posts are tapped out on keyboards by fingers that have a mind of their own?


Norma Manna  Blum

[Phlegmak]

Will religion ever go the way of the Dodo Bird?  Or will it just persist....changing with culture?

Obviously, scientific knowledge doesn't change the religious.  Proof means nothing.  Why should fossil records matter to a starving family in the ghetto of Bombay?  All they have are their prayers and superstition and hope that things will be better in "the next life."  And it is a false hope.  Things won't be better for that family in Bombay...ever.  They will die poor, diseased, and hungry.

Religion will stay with humanity forever.  The cause of religion -- the human brain -- will continue to think in the way that creates religion.  Specifically, I mean: believing a mundane event is meaningful, superstitiousness, illogic, hero worship, need for a leader, need to belong to a social group, belief in an absolute morality, merged with the occasional lying.

[citoyenjoseph]

hero worship

It's interesting you mention that, because I have often thought that religious people, especially Christians, are obsessed with fantasy and heroes.  The obsession is obvious here in India, but even back in the States I've noticed Christians are particularly obsessed with Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, and other fantasy novels and films.  

Perhaps religion allows them to "live the fantasy" so to speak.  Most fundamentalist Christians walk around entertaining visions of the great apocalyptic battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.  They probably see themselves taking up magical swords and fighting side by side with angels to defeat the demonic hordes.

[Chachacha]

hero worship

It's interesting you mention that, because I have often thought that religious people, especially Christians, are obsessed with fantasy and heroes.  The obsession is obvious here in India, but even back in the States I've noticed Christians are particularly obsessed with Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, and other fantasy novels and films.  

Perhaps religion allows them to "live the fantasy" so to speak.  Most fundamentalist Christians walk around entertaining visions of the great apocalyptic battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.  They probably see themselves taking up magical swords and fighting side by side with angels to defeat the demonic hordes.

It's true that Christians believe weird stuff and Christian writers weave tales of fantasy to express the Christian perspective of the battle of good and evil, but simiar stories have been told long before Christianity, and all religions make up fantastic stories, so I'm at a loss to understand how the stories and beliefs of one religion can be considered weirder than what other religions and philosophies believe: virgins in heaven waiting to be used by and service martyrs; prophets or spiritual guides who have special knowledge and are worthy of being revered and followed; believing it is better to starve to death and die in the street rather than eat the cattle all around them; reincarnation; karma; not using condoms even when you know your husband has AIDS or has sex with women who have AIDS because the Pope says it's a sin, killing yourself, perhaps infecting a child or two and leaving your children orphans so you can get to heaven; believing your problems come from an alien soul inhabiting your body which requires lots and lots and lots of money to drive out; believing what I would think sane people would recognize as unbelievable tales about gods/God who do this and gods/God who do that; believing that humans can influence the gods/God by their prayers, sacrifices, or behaviors;  etc., etc., etc., all strike me as equally fantastic.

[Jeff D]

To any given human being, the myths, folklore, and religious stories of some human  culture will tend to seem bizarre in direct proportion to the unfamilarity of the myths, folklore, and stories.  But to, say, a visiting Martian "anthropologist with a good working knowledge of human history and language, all religions' myths and core beliefs might well seem equally bizarre.

I, for one, am not surprised by modern Christians' attachment to / fondness for the "superhero" aspects of Christianity and Christianity's ancestor and cousin sects.  The Catholic Church has a pantheon of miracle-working saints that remind me of the Marvel Comics universe.  And even in its many "original" (now lost, difficult-to-trace) forms, Christianity and the composite fictional / mythical character of Jesus owe a lot to the mythic hero, god/man characters that were so numerous in the pagan Mediterranean world of the time.  Jesus wasn't the only dying-and-rising god-man to defeat or cheat death, or the first to go through a 40-day "test" sojourn in the wilderness, or the first to exhibit super-powers of prescience and healing / exorcism / bending demons to his will, etc.  

The Gospel editors appear to have known, pretty instinctively, what well-known sources (stories about Elijah, Zechariah, and other prophets of the Hebrew Bible; Hellenistic mystery school religions; the 1st- and 2nd-century equivalent of adventure/romance/fantasy novels)  to borrow from in order to fill out the sketchiest of stories with interesting details to make the whole thing appealing to disaffected Jews and to pagan Gentiles, living in times of great political upheaval and personal and economic insecurity.

[Lance Kennedy]

It is difficult for those of us who habitually think in an evidence based way, to understand those who do not.

Religion is like the belief in astrology.   Apparently, there have been a total of about 25,000 published studies testing astrology.   They consistently show it is total bulldust.   Yet if you present this information to a TRUE BELIEVER in astrology, that person will come up with all sorts of weird reasons why 25,000 published studies must be wrong!

Religion is no different.   Evidence and good data is irrelevent to belief.   A person who chooses to accept a religious faith will ignore data thereafter.

[nmblum]

It is difficult for those of us who habitually think in an evidence based way, to understand those who do not.

Religion is like the belief in astrology.   Apparently, there have been a total of about 25,000 published studies testing astrology.   They consistently show it is total bulldust.   Yet if you present this information to a TRUE BELIEVER in astrology, that person will come up with all sorts of weird reasons why 25,000 published studies must be wrong!

Religion is no different.   Evidence and good data is irrelevent to belief.   A person who chooses to accept a religious faith will ignore data thereafter.

I laughed aloud ...because just today,  an acquaintance  asked me for "my sign."
When I replied that to all intents and purposes, I don't have one, (just as I don't have a god), he smiled, in that way that people  will who heave  the secret of life stuffed between their ears,  and said, "that's because you only spend time with people who think that astrology ends with a horoscope in the daily tabloid that you read.... *I*  BELIEVE in, and I practice, SCIENTIFIC astrology!!"
Well, now.
Luckily I had heard this before from a similarly deluded (about the nature of science) "scientific" astrologer, and didn't have to hang around to listen to what is as disturbing (but not as cute) as when one of my sons, (but he was only six, and not a representative of an international welfare origanization)    sat on a duck's egg for five hours because that's what a "real duck parent would have done."   .
He was ... although he and I didn't know it at the time... practicing "scientific" animal husbandry,  but  without any connection to the biological rules of species reproduction.

You're right :there are similarities between religion and all manner of fixation on irrational beliefs.....
However, most of them come and go; what astrology and religion share that is somewhat astounding is that they have both been around for so long.... antedating even the "oldest profession."
The "second oldest profession" seems to be taking advantage of human gullibility OR desperation, or both and adding  irrational convictions.

NMB

[Jeff D]

When I am asked for "my sign" or "my sun sign," I tend to use and reply with these three in rotation:

Refrigerate after opening

Slippery when wet

Danger! High Voltage

[nmblum]

To any given human being, the myths, folklore, and religious stories of some human  culture will tend to seem bizarre in direct proportion to the unfamilarity of the myths, folklore, and stories.  But to, say, a visiting Martian "anthropologist with a good working knowledge of human history and language, all religions' myths and core beliefs might well seem equally bizarre.

I, for one, am not surprised by modern Christians' attachment to / fondness for the "superhero" aspects of Christianity and Christianity's ancestor and cousin sects.  The Catholic Church has a pantheon of miracle-working saints that remind me of the Marvel Comics universe.  And even in its many "original" (now lost, difficult-to-trace) forms, Christianity and the composite fictional / mythical character of Jesus owe a lot to the mythic hero, god/man characters that were so numerous in the pagan Mediterranean world of the time.  Jesus wasn't the only dying-and-rising god-man to defeat or cheat death, or the first to go through a 40-day "test" sojourn in the wilderness, or the first to exhibit super-powers of prescience and healing / exorcism / bending demons to his will, etc.  

The Gospel editors appear to have known, pretty instinctively, what well-known sources (stories about Elijah, Zechariah, and other prophets of the Hebrew Bible; Hellenistic mystery school religions; the 1st- and 2nd-century equivalent of adventure/romance/fantasy novels)  to borrow from in order to fill out the sketchiest of stories with interesting details to make the whole thing appealing to disaffected Jews and to pagan Gentiles, living in times of great political upheaval and personal and economic insecurity.

 Yes.
That sums it up... but what continues to startle me (although clearly my response is artless, naive) is that we are not (or are we?)  as ignorant,  by virtue of time and place,  of how the world works as were our forebears, or are the  tribes who still haven't come out of the Amazon Rain Forest.
Those people didn't have Galileo, they didn't even have Lister.....
But we have t Mt. Wilson, and the Griffith Observatory, and the Hubbell telescope.... AND television AND the computer... and what one person know, or can show as fact, can be communicated to another half way around the world in an instant.
And the proofs of what we claim to know, at least about the  non-existence of supernatural influences, are available to anyone interested.
But the desire to know has to be more important, more inspiring than the desire to believe.
There really are no secrets anymore.... and if god is out there  trying to hold his face away from his acolytes as well as the rest of us,  for whatever purpose, it is  unlikely that he could  keep such a ploy going for longer than an afternoon.
Matt Tabai  is out there, with an expense account from "Rolling Stone,"  and given the financial bonanza that would come with even a questionable photograph , the paparazzi would have god's (putative)  picture on Fox News about 2 minutes after it was taken....
But so far nothing.
Nothing...
But still there is no detaching certain humans from their desire to take advantage of what certain brain development will allow them to adopt as a view of existence that seems more satisfying to them than reality..
Story:  have I told it before?
A beautiful iridescent  baby lizard, apparently comatose, was lying outside my kitchen door, early one morning... Suddenly, as  I was looking at it, wondering whether to prod it to see if it was alive, or simply to leave it alone, a much larger lizard  (really impressive looking) made its way out from under the steps, and curved its body around the smaller one.. and then also stopped moving..
And while I was looking at them,   taking note of what was probably motherhood in action,  and thinking of how to make my way around what was now a tableau,  a large bird swept down and right before my eyes, and mama's too, took the baby lizard in its beak and flew off.
Hmmm.
Later I described my shock  to my neighbor, who said..."Ugh, nature can be SO ugly...THAT'S what I don't understand about the charm that Darwinism has for some many people..."
No, I'm not moving... but the thing is that nature is not ugly... although it can be harsh...
Mostly it is what it is.

We are (courtesy of the bible that gave us dominion over all the animals on earth) destroying other species all the time, mostly in ways that are much  less lovely that the bird swooping down from its perch to take someone's Son and fly it off to ... well, why not a better life?Even perhaps with its lizard ancestors who are all waiting to embrace it and perhaps even plot on its  coming back one day for a Second Swooping.  
In other words why are some really ugly (and truly unbelievable) stories, regarded as  not only enough to be  indispensable  to  civilization as we know it, but beautiful enough to bring on tears, cries to the heavens,  the gnashing of teeth, the brandishing of weapons....  and death on the story's behalf?

NMB

[Herk]

It's interesting you mention that, because I have often thought that religious people, especially Christians, are obsessed with fantasy and heroes.  

I'm a firm believer in heroes.

Well, after a fashion.

I think that cultural heroes can be a great inspiration to young people and children (also young people) and help them realize that it feels good to help others.

My own generation's Batman and Superman and all the other ___mans and ____womans were great role models. Of course, from the age of five or younger we knew that they weren't real - but we still admired them.

Today, there are many anti-heroes, and the comics have become a thing of conflicted ids and egos and Batman is even darker than I remember him. I've seen the cinema stars from India - they apparently are quite enamored of stories about their gods - and if they didn't believe they were real it would be a bit more encouraging to me.

Today, my heroes are atheists - those stalwart folks who put themselves in harm's way for a world bereft of superstition. They receive death threats and are greatly reviled by many and it doesn't seem to slow them down at all. Funny, isn't it, that such things as a Ten Commandments plaque on a courthouse somewhere could cause so much hatred? That a billboard with an innocuous message could inflame so many?

[Chachacha]

When I am asked for "my sign" or "my sun sign," I tend to use and reply with these three in rotation:

Refrigerate after opening

Slippery when wet

Danger! High Voltage

[Phlegmak]

hero worship

It's interesting you mention that, because I have often thought that religious people, especially Christians, are obsessed with fantasy and heroes.  The obsession is obvious here in India, but even back in the States I've noticed Christians are particularly obsessed with Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, and other fantasy novels and films.  

Perhaps religion allows them to "live the fantasy" so to speak.  Most fundamentalist Christians walk around entertaining visions of the great apocalyptic battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.  They probably see themselves taking up magical swords and fighting side by side with angels to defeat the demonic hordes.

Well, I meant that humans pick and choose some individual people, usually men, to consider "great people".  They are then revered respectfully, and the person who disagrees with the respect is a pseudo-blasphemer, and the wrongs done by the hero are ignored.  For example, these people are hero-worshipped:

Karl Marx
Ronald Reagan
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Fidel Castro
Mao Zedong
Josef Stalin
Vladimir Lenin
George Bush, Jr.
Mohandas Gandhi
Mother Theresa
Pope John Paul, II

Regarding fiction, maybe you got something there, but I'm skeptical.  I mean regarding connecting popular fiction with religion.

[rrichar911]

Will religion ever go the way of the Dodo Bird?  Or will it just persist....changing with culture?

Obviously, scientific knowledge doesn't change the religious.  Proof means nothing.  Why should fossil records matter to a starving family in the ghetto of Bombay?  All they have are their prayers and superstition and hope that things will be better in "the next life."  And it is a false hope.  Things won't be better for that family in Bombay...ever.  They will die poor, diseased, and hungry.

Scientific knowledge / theory does not rely on proof, it relies on evidence.  Scientific proof does not exist.  

Fossil records are not proof, they are evidence.  

There is also this evidence that the universe is fined tuned to produce life.  The odds being infinity to one that it would happen by meer chance.  

You are operating under false assumptions.

Things won't be better for that family in Bombay...ever.  They will die poor, diseased, and hungry

That is hard to argue with, but what does it have to do with hope?  It has  much more to do with culture and economic systems.  

America has had prayers and what you call superstition, which didn't seem to slow us down, until now anyway.

[rrichar911]

nmblum typed

And the proofs of what we claim to know, at least about the  non-existence of supernatural influences, are available to anyone interested.

Exactly what proofs are these as to the non existence the super natural?  

I have not seen them.

The things I have seen proofs of, are all abstract, which in itself constitutes evidence.

If a certain man claims to be able to bend a fork with his mind, and fails to demonstrate it, does that constitute proof that forks cannot be bent with minds?

[rrichar911]

The reason Karl Marx called religion the Opiate of the people, was because he intended to replace the traditional belief in justice with social justice , which is it's exact opposite.  

The two are not combatable, thus the source of belief in justice religion must go.

[Jeff D]

If a certain man claims to be able to bend a fork with his mind, and fails to demonstrate it, does that constitute proof that forks cannot be bent with minds?

To claim that some proposition is "proven," is "not proven," or "can't be proven" is sometimes just a stubborn stance taken by individuals who would prefer to maintain belief -- or disbelief -- regardless of the quality and quantity of the evidence that is on hand and relevant to the truth of the proposition.

If one man who claims to be a mental fork-bender can't demonstrate the bending of forks with "mental energy" alone, that may not be "proof" of its impossibility (it's not logically impossible, in that we can imagine or think about mental fork-bending).  

But if claim after claim about the ability to do mental fork-bending, by not just one claimant but many, is carefully tested again and again and if no one is found who can bend forks (or spoons) with "mental energy" alone and without recourse to trickery, it becomes progressively more difficult for anyone to honestly claim that mental fork-bending is a real phenomenon.    At that point, claiming that there is not "proof that forks cannot be bent with minds" becomes a dishonest dodge, a debating tactic that is as thin as the roast beef at the boarding house.

My personal stance is this:  People who claim that "miracles," or "astral projection," or psychokinesis, or parthenogenesis in mammals, or resurrection of the body actually occur or ever occurred, . . . or people who make more mundane claims that some ordinary event X occurred at time 1 and at place A . . . have a practical problem:  To produce sufficient credible evidence to convince  me to give their claims "the time of day."  

The practical problem is that they, not I, have the burden of persuasion, the burden of coming forward with credible evidence.  With me, recourse to "witnessing," sincere "personal testimony," "tradition," and second-hand, third-hand, or nth-hand anecdote won't cut it.   If the claimant doesn't come forward with credible evidence, then I don't waste my time arguing about the claim, or about whether there is "proof" that the claim isn't true. The claim may not be disproven. But the claim is not remotely close to being convincing, let alone proven.

[nmblum]

The reason Karl Marx called religion the Opiate of the people, was because he intended to replace the traditional belief in justice with social justice , which is it's exact opposite.  

The two are not combatable, thus the source of belief in justice religion must go.

What are you talking about?
It is not in any way accept or  defend Marxism to ask how you arrived at the idea that social justice is distinguishable from  "the traditional belief in justice?"
"Traditional belief" does not define "justice," any more than "justice" defines "traditional belief."
"Justice" by definition means the fair, equitable, and reasonable  redress of grievance.
And "social justice," is merely to extend the arena from civil matters, to the greater arena of economics and politics, i.e. the distribution of land, resources, money, and the dominion of the powerful over the powerless
..
That was true before Karl Marx put pen to paper..... There  are many flaws in his thinking about how to solve economic and social ills, but he DIDN'T invent language.
And YOU can't reinvent it in the service of some peculiar thesis that you have in mind.

Norma Manna Blum

 
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[nmblum]

rrichar911"]nmblum typed

And the proofs of what we claim to know, at least about the  non-existence of supernatural influences, are available to anyone interested.

Exactly what proofs are these as to the non existence the super natural?  

I have not seen them.

To use your own reasoning, if you haven't seen them, (or don't understand the standards by which proof is established) that doesn't mean that they don't exist.

The things I have seen proofs of, are all abstract, which in itself constitutes evidence.

Since when has an abstraction constituted evidence?
In which court?
In what language?
"Abstraction" means "non-representational."
Or, in another sense, the consideration of a matter entirely separate from its concreteness, its attributes, its character, its context in history or geography,.... or its tangibility.
How do either conflate  in any way with any definition of EVIDENCE?

If a certain man claims to be able to bend a fork with his mind, and fails to demonstrate it, does that constitute proof that forks cannot be bent with minds?

No, it does not.
What suggests that forks (or anything else)   cannot be bent  by the mind is that there is, thus far, not a single example of it having been done by ANY MIND , ANYWHERE.
And the only times when it appeared to be a possibility bot the event and the bender have been exposed as frauds.
Unless you know otherwise.

Norma Manna Blum