I spent the morning reading the book mentioned in my previous post. It is going to take me a while to fully consider this one, what I will say is if the guy had read Sun Tzu (assuming it worked as well for his desire to have religion be a key part of schools* as it did for the Japanese when they went up against US businesses a few decades later), maybe made less/fewer emotional arguments** and knew is fallacies/not to try leading arguments, or, worse still, had more notions of the things underpinning
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm (they were not absent, far from it in fact) then things might have played out quite differently. He also has a strange relationship with the word infidel (I guess it was something of a faux pas at the time), and indeed I don't think I have ever heard someone claiming some flavour of Christianity use it outside of a historical quote. The chapter on the non religious failings of schools was also fascinating, all the stuff people talk about today of being taught to tests and methods rather than concepts was apparently going on in the 1940s too. I would have loved a frothing at the mouth rant from someone we imagine today would be found dead in their house with a lot of guns and family tree that would appear to be testing the idea of recursion but this is probably better. The analysis of how religion played out as time went on from the point it was stripped from schools is also of considerable interest. Equally as this would probably be before soundbite culture really took off he would probably appear somewhat more rational, give or take the fear of communism and socialism bit which may or may not have been understandable, than a lot of the shouty one line mantra types we and enjoy see today. Also good was the mention of "natural laws" as well as the more divine ones, though at the same time there was a clear line of thought that morality stems from religion, which I guess would be the less soundbite like/simple mantra version of the idea of objective morality which we discussed earlier.
*again I don't know US schools but looking at this then it seems it is all but absent, UK wise it is taught much the same as sex education which is to say a thing and somewhat clinical and as far divorced as pornography is from a video of things in a biology textbook. The condensed version being something like "this is Christianity, there are many types, here are some of their beliefs, here are some moral issues and how they argue them and what might be used to argue against them (pro abortion arguments using biblical passages was fun), this is Islam, there are also quite a few types, here are some of their beliefs, here is Hinduism..., here is Sihkism...., here is... actually it kind of stopped there (no Judaism beyond it is a thing, no flavour of paganism outside of history, Buddhism sort of but not in any kind of detail and that was probably it).
**with the book seemingly being to galvanise people into doing something, and thus not having to convert anybody I guess they can start from the assumption the bible is good shit.
That said I think my favourite bit thus far was when he described those wanting to get rid of religion as "inhuman potentates", granted somewhere around that was mentioned some Hitler and Stalin types which were not good dudes and were rulers (potentate is a word for ruler of a country, especially if they have great power that might be unchecked in a lot of cases) of countries.
It is not like a comedy CD or (unintentionally) funny film or something where I will say "go out and get this" but it has been fascinating to read. Certainly don't regret the £2 I dropped on it.
It's a wrong question.
Do you believe in the conventional gods like jewish muslim buddha "gods"?
Of course no I don't.
Do you believe in such a conception as God (from scientific point of view)? Maybe. It does make some sense.
If you are going to frame it like that then the question becomes tricky. I am going to struggle to word it so I will go an example.
Alchemy. The pursuit of changing common materials, most popularly things like lead, into gold.
Today I could probably get a nuclear reactor and some hard to come by material and a load of energy and actually turn some other metal into gold, at orders of magnitude more expense than digging it up.
To call the first style a science would be a stretch, though it did give us some nice chemistry equipment. I would then argue that the difference between the gods of ancient religions (including those still with us today/having existed more or less continuously since their inception) and the theoretical/non random creator of the universe is greater than that of alchemy and modern nuclear physics.
