Grow up or die !!!

I'm sure this seems incongruous to most, but if Rama or Krishna or Buddha or Zoroaster or Jesus were here today, as well they may be, they would all concur that the message of our time has nothing at all to do with religion and would teach us how to rid ourselves of that past and help the world move on, so that a safer future can be insured for ourselves and for our children.

As well they have and are doing, even through people like Maher. Just step back and look. Watch...

Though everything that was said could be of a true nature, I don't feel that people raised in a faith (religion) are just going to walk away from "it". No, they will be there praying to their version of "God" and disregarding those of other faiths. Maybe even killing them in their God's name thinking it's alright because they were heathens therefore, worthy of death and destruction. People have been doing this to each other for thousands of years. Only those that succeed write the history books and truth becomes slanted. Promoting "God" in what ever version is going to be around until the planet surface is nothing but dust and our species has either left the planet or gone way of the dinosaurs. Right or wrong , fact or fiction "God" is an "Albatross" hanging from just about everyone's neck where ever they reside on the planet. In my core belief, "God"is fiction. Religion keeps the population usually from tearing itself apart at the seams. But, religion is a paid for service. Not a gift from "God". Religion is very big business and power to those in that game, sham or however you deem to label it. Just another social club. People do need to see beyond the bounds of religion and learn to use the gift of common sense and just a little more logic. I agree with Mr. Bill Maher. TOTALLY. No better time to start "Growing-up" then the present.

Religions are another way for some people to gain power over other people and some are choosing not to belong to any organized religion despite having 'faith' there is some kind of God and afterlife. But there is always that danger if several people have the same concepts that they will form yet another religion. Something in the human psyche has trouble admitting: I don't know! And many don't trust themselves to find their path, they want a well marked road to 'enlightenment'. They choose to ignore the cul-de-sacs where their religious group has behaved
abominably toward others.

For some people 'scientific thought' becomes their 'religion', tho it is no less dogmatic than 'faith'.

Have you read "God's Debris: A Thought Experiment" by Scott Adams (yes,the creator of 'Dilbert')? It is less than 140 pages and i'm about 2/3rds of the way thru because it's the kind of book you want to savor: To read a chapter or two and then let them digest before you go on to the next. It puts forth some interesting ideas about religion and the nature of humanity and reality.

Thanks for the pointer to God's Debris. Scott Adams says the target audience for God’s Debris is people who enjoy having their brains spun around inside their skulls. He suggests that it is not written for people below the age of 14; I would raise the age limit to about 30. Sunday school is certainly part of our past, an era we shold be done with. The balance may be difficult betwwen having risen above the need for religion and that of playing the role of God.

The complete text for God's Debris can be found at:

view link

Maher is rather narrow minded, and does not examine his own statements. I noticed that when he was on Larry King and he said the USA's "two party system" is part of the Constitution... huh?

There is so much complexity that is lost to him. Example: how many kinds of scientific thought are there? how many kinds of "atheism"? there are those who call me an atheist because I do not anthropomorphize the Deity... there are those who call atheists "believers" if they seek to explain the apparent design of the universe....

It is all very fluid but Maher is frozen solid.

Perhaps simplicity and complexity are categorical illusions, the outcomes of limitations inherent in our system of symbols (in our language).

We label something "complex" when we use a great number of symbols to describe it. But, surely, the choices we make (regarding the number of symbols we use) teach us nothing about complexity, a real phenomenon!

Perhaps complexity and simplicity are not related at all, either quantitatively, or qualitatively. Perhaps complexity is not simply more simplicity. Perhaps there is no organizational principle tying them to one another. Complexity is often an emergent phenomenon, not reducible to simplicity.

The third possibility is that somehow, perhaps through human intervention, complexity yields simplicity and simplicity yields complexity (via pattern identification, the application of rules, classification, and other human pursuits). This dependence on human input would explain the convergence of the behaviors of all complex systems on to a tiny sliver of the state (or phase) space (sort of a mega attractor basin). According to this view, Man is the creator of simplicity and complexity alike but they do have a real and independent existence thereafter (the Copenhagen interpretation of a Quantum Mechanics).

It would seem that a complexity theory formalism can accurately describe both ambiguity and vagueness:

Language can be construed as a self-organizing network, replete with self-organized criticality.

Language can also be viewed as a Production System (Iterated Function Systems coupled with Lindenmeyer L-Systems and Schemas to yield Classifiers Systems). To use Holland's vocabulary, language is a set of Constrained Generating Procedures.

"Vague objects" (with vague spatial or temporal boundaries) are, actually, best represented by fractals. They are not indeterminate (only their boundaries are). Moreover, self-similarity is maintained. Consider a mountain - where does it start or end and what, precisely, does it include? A fractal curve (boundary) is an apt mathematical treatment of this question.

Indeterminacy can be described as the result of bifurcation leading to competing, distinct, but equally valid, meanings.

Borderline cases (and vagueness) arise at the "edge of chaos" - in concepts and predicates with co-evolving static and chaotic elements.

(Focal) meanings can be thought of as attractors.

Contexts can be thought of as attractor landscapes in the phase space of language. They can also be described as fitness landscapes with optimum epistasis (interdependence of values assigned to meanings).

The process of deriving meaning (or disambiguating) is akin to tracing a basin of attraction. It can be described as a perturbation in a transient, leading to a stable state.

None of this, nor your example, minimizes Maher's conclusion. Religion is nothing more than a series of steps representing dead ends. Evolution experiments with numerous dead ends before it yields a single adapted biological entity. DNA is far from optimized: it contains inordinate amounts of junk. Our bodies come replete with dysfunctional appendages and redundant organs. Religion is little more than inordinate amounts of junk. Lightning bolts emit energy all over the electromagnetic spectrum. Pulsars and interstellar gas clouds spew radiation over the entire radio spectrum. The energy of the Sun is ubiquitous over the entire optical and thermal range. No intelligent engineer - human or not - would be so wasteful.

It is easy to understand why we would want some sense of intelligent design until we've reached that point where we could comprehend intelligent engineering ourselves. It should also be "as easy" to take that step beyond our need for that external intelligent resource. Once there, it should be equally apparent that there is no need to assume the position of an absolute agent.

The bottom line is a statement of evolutionary design: Grow up or die !!! As long as we hold on to religion we are following dead ends. Let go and grow up. It is that simple !!! Religion simply means the death of the human race. It is a path that implicitly cannot suceed.

Can we make this transition? Yes. Will we? In all probablity. In time? Depends... For most of us here and now, probably not. What does that mean? There will be hell to pay !!!