Why do I bother?... Too many religious people still try to defend their patch from which they eke out a living with delusive arguments. In the past, original philosophers rarely tried to convert people to believe in a superior being to whom we supposedly owe our existence. Philosophers mostly tried to instil a sense of understood (also misunderstood) behavioural principles in order for all to survive either in peace and/or in support of each others — which showed this attitude was beneficial to do so. Some various ideas developed that smoothed the corners of conflicts so to speak — conflicts which have been arising from our naturalness and survival instincts. 

So here comes another religious dude, a certain John Haldane, a "Visiting Distinguished Professor of philosophy" who has his arms deep in the sauce of religion... John, I will say that religion and philosophy do not mix. Religion and sciences do not mix. Philosophy and sciences can mix as long as one understands the complex processes of sciences. 

Haldane tells us:

There is a general sense that it is not only intellectually rewarding but culturally enriching and socially valuable to engage in public discussion of fundamental questions of natural science, philosophy and theology.

Between them these three fields presume to cover the most basic and extensive sets of issues into which the human mind could enquire: the nature and origin of the cosmos, the nature of reality more generally, and the issue of whether there is a transcendent source of these, and if so what it is and what, if any, is its interest in human beings.

The claims of science properly understood do not extend beyond the exploration of nature, and when they are advanced as if they did reach into the domains of philosophy and theology, that is because they have been reinterpreted (sometimes knowingly but more often unwittingly) as metaphysical.

This is a common mistake on either side of ongoing debates about science and religion, with both atheists and theists maintaining that science can resolve the question of the existence of God.

Here,  John Haldane assumes that science can be used or not to resolve the existence of god. No. Science is not trying to do this. It does not have to. The idea of god is a fantasy. It's not a reality. There is no point trying to pull the pants of a fantasy with sciences. All the godly books and all the believers in the world cannot change the fact that religion and the idea of god does not make any sense in itself — even with the best of faith. We only believe because it's conveniently lazy and we've been indoctrinated like Pavlov's dogs, at individual and societal levels. 

Science tells the reality that we are evolved monkeys on a small planet. Full stop. Fantastic reality.

The idea of god, in whichever format, that tries to tell us that we've been created by a superior being who gave us the concept of sin because the "first humans" were idiotic sinners in paradise — and we've been chasing the rainbows of morality ever since — does not make any sense. This illusion works for simpletons and for people who don't ask questions — or do not accept the reality of science.

No matter how much we wish to delude ourselves, as an evolved species of monkey we need to find our own survival kits as groups, as individuals and as a species. There. That is as simple as that. 

We call these survival kits: philosophy, laws, relationships, understanding, education, management... We can do without the religious bit. We do not need the idea of a vengeful loving god who has invented a nasty hellish place so we can be damned forever should we not believe in his concoction. This is an idiotic concept.

Philosophy does not include religion. Philosophy is the seed of our understanding of what can make us content or can cause pain, at individual and at group level. With this, we can develop laws that are designed to minimise the hurt we could do to each others, accidentally or by choice, mentally or physically — or devise rules for the sporting arenas, in which inflicting pain becomes an accepted option to some well-defined degree. War is an unacceptable decision to inflict pain on others. 

This ability to rationalise pain and contentment is part of life as a stylistic management of our evolved status. 

Furthermore, to think of ourselves as specially godly, in opposition to the rest of our fellow travellers on this little planet is an insult to philosophy. God does not exist. God cannot exist.

John Haldane defends his patch with notions that are assuming of truth because of : "antagonistic view is mistaken and embeds an outlook that may in fact derive from elements of modern philosophy presented in different ways by Descartes and Locke. Anti-religious polemicists have taken up Jonathan Swifts's remark that, "It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into," but its implied corollary - that there is a prospect of reasoning people out of rational errors - may encourage the attempt to refute the Cartesian/Lockean idea that true enquiry can only begin with lowest common experience, and that may then make space for the legitimacy of the idea of special testimony, and even, so far at least as epistemology is concerned, of its most particular instance: Divine revelation."

Divine revelation does not make any sense. Anyway, why would a god choose to give his (god is a male) revelatory message to a tribe of Jews and not to a nation of Aborigines, say 24,670 years earlier? We've dealt with Jonathan Swift on this website before — and the quote mentioned by Haldane from Swift is on par with the common warning "do not to argue with an idiot because other people might not be able to discern who's whom".

In fact, I do not want to use reason to define god's existence or not. One cannot. One should only use our knowledge of the planet's history and of genetics in a chaotic universe — all of which goes against the divine revelation — to define who we are. Evolution is not a dirty word, though it cannot be use in the same sentence as the word "god" — unless in opposition. 

Yep. We are evolved monkeys. 

And unfortunately too often we show we're more immature, nasty and more loony that the others species of the same branch. We can improve though, but religion, including its ghastly theology, is not an improvement. It's a retrograde delusion in which the human species has been soaked in for far too long.

Gus Leonisky

your local atheist on a little planet...