Religion Is Defined As Social Systems Whose

I Am Confident That Those Who Believe In Belief Are Wrong. That Is, We No More Need To Preserve The Myth Of God In Order To Preserve A Just And Stable Society Than We Needed To Cling To The Gold Standard To Keep Our Currency Sound. It Was A Useful Crutch, But We've Outgrown It. Denmark, According To A Recent Study, Is The Sanest, Healthiest, Happiest, Most Crime-free Nation In The World, And By And Large The Danes Simply Ignore The God Issue. We Should Certainly Hope That Those Who Believe In Belief Are Wrong, Because Belief Is Waning Fast, And The Props Are Beginning To Buckle.

Churches Have Given Us Great Treasures Such As Music And Architecture. Whether That Pays For The Harm They Have Done Is Another Matter.

...but I Also Can't Prove That Mushrooms Could Not Be Intergalactic Spaceships Spying On Us.

The Problem Is That No Ethical System Has Ever Achieved Consensus. Ethical Systems Are Completely Unlike Mathematics Or Science. This Is A Source Of Concern.

Virtually Every Major Technological Advance In The History Of The Human Species- Back To The Invention Of Stone Tools And The Domestication Of Fire Has Been Ethically Ambiguous. If You Want To Reason About Faith, And Offer A Reasoned (and Reason Responsive) Defense Of Faith As An Extra Category Of Belief Worthy Of Special Consideration, I'm Eager To Play. I Certainly Grant The Existence Of The Phenomenon Of Faith; What I Want To See Is A Reasoned Ground For Taking Faith Seriously As A Way Of Getting To The Truth , And Not, Say, Just As A Way People Comfort Themselves And Each Other