For me, the two are mutually exclusive. Ill compare life on other planets to the indigenous people that inhabited America, Africa, Australia, the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, ect. All these people had their own ideas about where they came from and they had stories to pass these ideas from generation to generation. Were these people destined to go to hell because they werent yet exposed to the discipline that is organized religion, I dont think so. The American Indians were called savages on numerous occasions, yet their ideas about stewardship with the planet was both insightful of their role as part of the planets many ecosystems as well as intuitive about the connectedness of everything. This is much the same as what we now call Paganism, or the earth religion. All this came to an end with the conquers and their one god. I believe that if it wasnt for the exploitation of recourses and of people, organized religion would never exist. It would have never been powerful enough to engage is the world wide gentrification of spirituality. Does anyone here know anything about the Witch burnings?
My point is, in a universe teaming with life yet to be discovered we are in fact the only place where this one God idea exists. I can state that because implicit in the belief structure is the day of judgment, or Armageddon. We are on a time table now where as before with the Earth religions, time was on our side. The very very small window of time between the spawn of this idea about religion and its final judgment all predict that any other participants have already killed them selves off, or are destined too Besides, the idea that God is anywhere but in the minds of men is speculative at best, and actually not even that.
I have not read the book to which Jersey emt is speaking of but I can postulate for myself why the statement not only is the notion of a higher being irrational in some ways, it is actually a danger to society. would be true.
People are easily led into harms way when they stop questioning the orders and instructions of their leader. Faith in God lends itself nicely to manipulation because of the faith factor. Absurdities can be accepted as truths if you only have faith, and truth can be denied completely. Even in the face of actual factual evidence, people are still bamboozled by a type of spiritual blackmail. Again, Armageddon seems real and global warming is only an earth cycle.
I submit that if the one god never existed, Armageddon wouldnt either. I hope I made some good points here, this is a tough audience.
