ext_59025 ([identity profile] realthog.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] realthog 2011-05-30 03:41 pm (UTC)


when authorities on religion start making pronouncements on such things as evolution and expecting them to be believed, those who are outraged and horrified should at least admit the parallel case of experts in physics, or chemistry, or any physical science making pronouncements on the existence of the soul or survival after death and expecting them to be believed. Don't you think so?

I'm afraid not. If the consensus of physicists says something -- e.g., life after death -- is almost certainly physically impossible, I tend to assume they're correct. (I include the qualifier not because there's any reasonable doubt but because, in science, one always should.) I think it's then up to the defenders of the concept of life after death to explain -- without invoking yet further physically undetected entities -- how something can exist even though it's physically impossible for it to do so.

I would respect anyone who made a serious effort along those lines, however much I might feel they were engaged in a fool's errand. Dishonest clowns like Cameron obviously don't qualify; but I'd maintain that neither do the vast majority of theologians, who may pride themselves on their scholarship but really are just impressing themselves and their devotees with their apparent willingness to "take on the big mysteries" -- sort of like Robert Charroux, really.

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