A different "Truth Commission", an Int'l one that searches for any God.

Nope, this has nothing to do with torture.

This "Truth Commission" would be made of an international team of scientists. With every industrialized nation included. The best and brightest scientific minds from each nation.
Scientific experts chosen from every field of science. Mathematics, Geology, Physics, Astronomy, Paleontology, Chemistry ect ect.

Remember, modern technology is a remarkable thing as long as it's NOT STIFLED BY THE CHURCH.
(Google "super collider" if you think I'm full of BS)

The church lobbied and defeated a government funded super collider in 'Murikkka.

Fully funded by all participating Governments, this commission would be made up of hundreds, perhaps thousands of scientists tasked with the following..

1. The search for the existence of any "God".

2. The search for an afterlife.

3. The search for a human soul.

If they can't find a god or an afterlife or a soul then it is time to..

Debunk the claim that "the bible is the word of God". Or that the Koran justifies Sharia law.

Criminalize religious oppression and extremism.

Began to undo the damage that religion has caused to humanity.

.....................................................

OR

We can continue to sit on our hands and watch women lose the right to choose.

We can watch the disgusting violation of human rights solely caused by religious extremism and piety.

We can watch GLBT be denied their humanity.

We can watch a gay holocaust.

We can watch the stifling of progress.

We can watch religion protect the wealthy from the remaining 80% of us.

We can watch the stifling of science, medicine, logic, discovery. Super colliders, embryonic stem cell research, science education to name a few.

We can continue to watch the Christian, Jew, and Muslim eradicate each other until the sun expands and swallows Earth and our galaxy 6 billion years from now.

As a gay Atheist, I AM TIRED OF LIVING MY LIFE WITH RELIGION'S OPPRESSIVE BOOT ON MY CHIN!

If a proud gay Atheist like me were to ever utter a prayer to any god it would be..

Oh Lord, protect me from your followers.

Peace

:toast:

Silence has enabled this BULLSHIT TO RAGE for 10000 years.

YES I called religion BULLSHIT!

I'm an atheist too, but I don't feel religion has its boot on my chin. As I recall, the SSC in Texas was (foolishly) cancelled due to cost, not because it presented any threat to religion. That some opponents of such government spending may also have been religious does not justify an inference of religious motivation.

Abuse of religion has stifled so much progress. Just think where we might be now in terms of curing disease or solving pollution if it hadn't been for pious religious idiots suppressing scientific inquiry. From Galileo to stem cell research, these people have interfered with research that could be saving lives.

And why does God have to be such a secret?? I agree with many atheists: if there is a God, SHOW YOURSELF. If there is one and he/she does perform 'miracles', grow back an amputated limb! There's absolutely no empirical or physical evidence for any religion, but its misuse controls the human race.

:toast:

He's got a huge ego, but he writes fabulous books. I also like Dan Barker and John Loftus.

:toast:

In order to suppress that which you hate. For example "time to criminalize religious oppression and extremism." How would you define that? After all, one man's religious extremism is another's main stream religion (think of any of the evangelical Christian denominations here)

Furthermore, your proposal is almost guaranteed to set off a civil war in this country, do you really want that?

Not to mention the fact that you just might lose. After all, what came before the Big Bang, and how did it come about.

This is really not a can of worms that we should open.

It has my full support, allthough I feel it will reveal what many of us already know......that there is NO god and that the bible, koran, etc., are all man made books.

just tell religion to fuck off and keep my money in my pocket. Why spend all that money to try and prove a negative?

It's not as though the faithful will pay attention to anything they find.

It's not as though we can spend the money on far more useful things.

I say go for it.

And this is only half sarcastic.

I say I don't give a damn about religion, and I guess that translates to this nonsense as well.

People all around the world are starving and you want to waste money that fool's errand?

Or even most of the mainstream believers, no matter what sect or cult they belong to.

Look at the results of the examination of the Shroud of Turin - it was conclusively dated to the Middle Ages, but it is still treated as a holy relic and believers don't believe the test results. Even the scientists involved in the project differ on their interpretation of the tests, depending on their preconceived expectations.

Spiritualists, ghost hunters, ghost debunkers and skeptics have looked for evidence of life after death or proof of a soul for well over a hundred years. Again, generally whatever their beliefs in the beginning color their interpretation of the results, no matter how 'scientific' the instruments or the operators are. Believers will tend to continue to believe while skeptics will tend to continue to be skeptical. And both groups will use whatever results are found to support their point of view.

I wish your proposal could happen and could make a difference, but I am very much afraid it never will. We will all be better served to teach critical thinking and tolerance to all children so the extremist believers might learn to let the rest of us live in peace.

The religious community would not accept scientific debunking as proof of anything.

Not to mention that NOT finding something is never proof that it doesn't exist.

You know. That part about not "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. How do you propose to get around that?

And assuming that you do manage to bypass that, what happens when the other side uses the precident that you have now set to deny other rights, rights that YOU value, guaranteed by the Constitution? What then?

of pointy headed, over educated pencil neck geeks tell them there's no such thing as old tyme religion, that it's all a bunch of hooey designed to part them from their meager savings while keeping them under control. You see, these people just know all that stuff that's been dinned into their heads since birth has to be true. If it was true for grandpa, it's true for them, you see.

The only thing that ever shakes their faith is being buried in an avalanche of misfortune that their all good, all powerful and all wise god failed to do anything about.

Unless you want to instigate global catastrophe including a war fought in your own neighborhood, get used to having people believing in that stuff all around you.

Most of the time, they don't bother you and that's fine. If they do, you get to be rude, and that's fun.

The problem is that neither proposition ("There is a God" or "There is not a God") is amenable to test by experiment. That is, there is no observable by the presence or absence of which one can reject either hypothesis.

Experiment, after all, can support an hypothesis but can never prove an hypothesis. Experiment can, if properly designed, firmly reject an hypothesis. Thus, Einstein observed that all the experiments in the world could not prove him right, but it only took one to prove him wrong. So, to settle the matter by the scientific method, we have to take one of the two candidate assertions and design an experiment that could at least conceptually reject the statement.

Hypotheses attempt to predict the values taken on by observables presuming changes to dependent conditions. Identifying with scientific precision the dependent conditions is a philosophically dubious task. ("God" is, by definition, that which is independent of all conditions.) Don't ask me to guess what quantities might constitute the set of observables ...

I myself have come to the conclusion that the topic is not approachable by means of the scientific method. I find this unsurprising. Scientific knowledge is more than useful stuff ... I find it quite inspiring. But it does not tell me how to craft a beautiful song, nor how to love well. Scientific knowledge doesn't tell me how to live well and with meaning (but it sure can tell me a lot about how to survive). In short, there is more to know than science can provide.

I certainly relate to your frustration with the so-called religious folk who are so often in the face of reasonable people whose worst offenses are their choice of lovers and wanting to know more about the world around them, and thus find myself uttering your prayer on your behalf. But science will not rescue us from fanatics in the way you advocate.

Trav