Religion

As it’s the time of a large number of festivals (but don’t say Winterval!), people have been talking about the whole religion business, so let's get it out of the way.

I have a problem with religion:

1. There is no evidence to support their beliefs; so why should I believe?
   
2. A religion builds itself on claims of moral authority, and with promise of enlightenment imposes it on others in society. (*)

You cannot ignore everything that is done under the name of a particular religion, or assume that removing religion would solve all of the world’s problems. We’re much more grown up than that. What I am saying is that I am not prepared to suspend rational thought without good reason. Unsubstantiated claims of enlightenment aren’t good enough. If I suspend rational thought, that is a vulnerability that can be exploited. Hitchens says that religion makes good people do bad things, pointing to (somewhat humorously) genital mutilation - maybe that's the exploitation of the vulnerability in practise?

I will always use Occam’s Razor. The simplest claim that is reinforced by evidence is probably right. Notice the word probably. I use this when I say that there is probably no God. I can never prove otherwise (and it is a religion’s responsibility to back up their claims!). However, we have a whole load of evidence (~) to show we arose not out of Creationism, but as a process of evolution via natural selection. Until the Heabenly Jebus comes down from his Sky Palace with a portable laboratory and conclusively proves that a god exists, then I’m gonna go with what evidence we have.

Pascal’s Wager (that you should believe on the off chance god exists, then if the god doesn’t, you’ve lost nothing) is not a criticism of this stance, as it implies the suspension of rational thought. It’s also a fairly biased wager. I prefer the following:

There is probably no God.

• If I die and there isn’t – I’ve lost nothing, and also wasted nothing!
  
• If I die and there is – then I will simply say “sorry, you didn’t give me enough evidence to believe in you”. If I’m eternally damned from this stance, then this god is a right self-centred bastard and I would have been disgusted in my belief in that deity.

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Footnotes

* Interestingly, these claims have no evidence, relating back to point one.

~ I don't normally take evidence from Wikipedia - but the article is very good, and most likely because it's heavily moderated by a very highly regarded set of professionals and Wikipedians alike. Read this for a more detailed look.