Hitchens addresses Intelligent Design (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, October 23, 2012, 00:27 (4416 days ago) @ David Turell


> > That's why its *impossible* for me to make that jump: I can't help but presume that *any* judgment I have about God didn't come from some kind of social compunction.
> > 
> > Dhw's reasons may differ, but my *will to truth* demands that the case must be as *iron clad* as 1 + 1 = 2
> 
> As an evidentialist you will never have a complete answer. God is concealed, presumably by choice. He is back there behind a wall of quantum uncertainty. -Have any evidence of that? ->You either jump across the chasm or you don't. And you are right. Ever since humans began to think, they have assumed a divine level.-It's "jumping" that I find the grand folly of mankind. Our passions have proven disastrous: My theory of politics for example, (Libertarian Anarchism) operates under the observation that throughout history, it has been the acts of individuals either acting *as* government or *for* government that have had the greatest propensity for bungled action. -Who's more likely to jump? A man? Or a thousand men?-You can call me an evidentialist if you like: But don't forget I've followed Buddhism for a long time, and part of what makes me think 'God' is more likely an illusion is the observation that the meditative states described by Buddhism are perfectly mirrored--in Christian Mysticism. (And Jewish Kabbalah, but I've read more books on the former than the latter.) -If I can create the "feeling" of God, without invoking God, this is direct--"evidence"--if you will, that religious experience doesn't *require* a God at all. -So even in the experiential--the domain of the religious--the "evidence" is inconclusive.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"