American Politics, Tom Cruise & Superstitious Nonsense
A couple of weeks ago there was a bit of a stir on the teh internetz when some truly comical videos leaked from behind the sealed doors of Scientology. One was of Tom Cruise in a promotional video of some sort, and the other was of his acceptance speech on received an award for valour. Quite how one wins an award for valour when one’s personal achievements basically involve exploiting the insecurities of the gullible for astronomical quantities of cash is a little beyond me, but valour it was.
I have nothing against these videos. They are hilarious, and they show up Scientology for the brilliantly ludicrous nonsense that it is. They also offer an unparalleled opportunity to have a bloody good snigger at one of the most deluded loons since Michael Jackson giving free reign to a brilliantly vainglorious Messiah Complex. In other words, it makes them all look like twats, and it’s great. Is religious belief, something we think to be so profound and important, really such a trivial phenomenon that it can be generated by something this blatantly idiotic in such a short space of time? Splendidly, the answer appears to be ‘yes’.
And then I thought about the American elections, because religion is at the fore like never before. It reflects very, very badly on the American population as a whole that it would actually be impossible for a declared atheist to be elected president of their country. In fact, people have been falling so desperately over themselves to declare the depth of their religious convictions, whatever they might be, that something has managed to slip quite neatly through the net: Mitt Romney is a Mormon. I know this has generated plenty of discussion in the United States, so to say that it has escaped scrutiny is a little false, but it has been the wrong kind of scrutiny. People have questioned him on his beliefs and he has declared them immune to political examination and exempt from debate.
What far too few have pointed out is that they are fucking insane. And this is where Scientology comes in. I doubt anyone would have any issue with mocking Scientologists for the basic silliness of their beliefs. Aliens, volcanoes – I mean it’s just hilariously infantile. So infantile, to be honest, that it borders on being a learning disability. But Mormonism is no more than a slightly older version of something equally foolish: it centres around the self-declared deification of a certain Mr. Joseph Smith almost two-hundred years ago. It’s just as preposterous, but that hundred years or so has been enough to remove it from the sort of entirely justified derision that Scientologists have to put up with, to the sort of beliefs from whose questioning Mitt Romney can declare immunity due to religion. He thinks it is wrong to ask questions such as why his church permits polygamy and only changed its stance that interracial marriages were forbidden by god as recently as 1978. While, presumably, he was a living, practising Mormon.
So how old does a cult have to be before it is sanctified as a religion? Or is it a question of numbers? Ultimately, I reckon that Christianity will have to embrace and legitimise Scientology as a proper faith, rather than a joke. Why? Because they are qualitatively identical. All religions basically rely on a belief in magic – on believing in the occurrence of events which, judging from all the physical evidence we have before us on this planet, are impossible. It is about faith, not evidence, that is the fundamental tenet of the entire concept. The Christians will have to accept Scientology because there is no argument that can refute it that would no apply equally to their own superstitions*. That is why they have to accept the equally silly Mormonism.
Their mutual enemy is reason and evidence, and ultimately that will bring them together. For what are the Abrahamic religions more than an equally magical set of stories that have only achieved their exalted status in our society by dint of age and weight of numbers – they are in no substantive way different from Scientology. I watch Obama furiously professing his Christianity, Romney babbling on about Mormonism and Cruise doing a wonderful impression of Tony Blair’s demon eyes and I honestly can’t can’t see much difference.
Of course, the biggest problem with accepting religion into political discourse is not one based on the atheism, it is based on plurality. A leader has no place making ostentatious public displays of their beliefs not because they should be ashamed of them or that they are wrong, but because they are supposed to represent all of us. Declaring something a religious belief and hence inviolate terminates debate, and debate is democracy. Beliefs have no place in political debate precisely because there are too many of them. Faith can justify anything, no matter how stupid, be it the stoning to death of rape victims for adultery or the existence of alien souls in mystical volcanoes. Reason and premise, argument and evidence are the only bases on which to debate and conduct goverment.
Otherwise we will end up with a fucking Scientologist in charge one of these days – probably bewilderingly soon, actually. Go watch Battlefield fucking Earth and tell those fuckwits in the primaries to fucking well keep their faith to themselves in future.
Bob Dylan – With God on Our Side
Willard Grant Conspiracy – Evening Mass
Half Man Half Biscuit – God Gave Us Life
Crash Test Dummies – God Shuffled His Feet Yes, I actually do like this song, so fuck you.
*Unless of course any documentary evidence comes to light supporting the oft-repeated rumour that Scientology was born of a bet made between founder L. Ron Hubbard and Arthur C. Clarke some fifty years ago. That might change matters, as well as being hilariously funny.
Yep. Here’s a quote from Daniel Dennett that seems apropos:
“[I]f 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 [participate]. I certainly grant the existence of the phenomenom of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned ground for taking faith as a *way of getting to the truth*, and not, say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other (a worthy function that I do take seriously). But you must not expect me to go along with your defense of faith as a path to truth if at any point you appeal to the very dispensation you are supposedly trying to justify. Before you appeal to faith when reason has you backed into a corner, think about whether you really want to abandon reason when reason is on your side. You are sightseeing with a loved one in a foreign land, and your loved one is brutally murdered in front of your eyes. At the trial it turns out that in this land friends of the accused may be called as witnesses for the defense, testifying about their faith in his innocence. You watch the parade of his moist-eyed friends, obviously sincere, proudly proclaiming their undying faith in the innocence of the man you saw commit the terrible deed. The judge listens intently and respectfully, obviously more moved by this outpouring than by all the evidence presented by the prosecution. Is this not a nightmare? Would you be willing to live in such a land? Or would you be willing to be operated on by a surgeon you tells you that whenever a little voice in him tells him to disregard his medical training, he listens to the little voice? I know it passes in polite company to let people have it both ways, and under most circumstances I wholeheartedly cooperate with this benign agreement. But we’re seriously trying to get at the truth here, and if you think that this common but unspoken understanding about faith is anything better than socially useful obfuscation to avoid mutual embarrassment and loss of face, you have either seen much more deeply into the issue that any philosopher ever has (for none has ever come up with a good defense of this) or you are kidding yourself.”
Well the scary thing is that I bet we get to watch the growth of Scientology from hilarious cult to sanctified religion. They are powerful enough to do it. And if nonsense like that can be protected under ‘religious speech’ then religious speech is no longer worth a damn.
I’m no fan of Romney, but having been longtime friends with a couple of Mormons growing up, it stings a bit to see you comparing them to Scientologists. And bringing up the tired old polygamist label (which hasn’t existed for a very long time, and in fringe groups).
However misguided, Mormons do believe in the Bible, and believe the teachings of Smith extend from that. Scientologists just made up their crazy stuff from scratch.
As an avowed athiest, yeah, it’s all hooey, but present-day Mormons are nowhere near as wacky (or, from my experience, full of themselves) as Cruisers.
Well I don’t think there’s anything inherently stupid about believing in god per se. I mean, every time I get on an aeroplane I am absolutely convinced I am going to die, despite what my rational mind tells me.
But Mormonism is based on some dude a couple of hundred years ago declaring himself divine, which is a bit nuts. Mind you, as I said, maybe only more nuts than all the rest of them because it was far less long ago. Which is what begged the original question to begin with.
Right. It’s a matter of degrees of delusion, based arbitrarily on length of existence. I just bristle at hearing a couple of good friends (who also happen to have refined musical tastes) being called ‘fucking insane’, when they’re far from that. And never have they tried to preach, convert, or convince, not even once. They’ve just humanized the religion a bit more for me. Unlike Mr. Cruise and his ilk, who have done nothing but, um, ‘alienize’ their creepy cult.
It will be very, very interesting to see if your premise comes to pass, if they start arguing their way into the halls of power (if they already haven’t, on the down low), and using Christianity as the way to do it.
Oooooh! I’m so scared of the big bad Scientologists! In the final analysis, who gives a shit? The only difference between “hilarious cult” and “sanctified religion” is the passage of time. Several thousand years ago many people believed that the sun was god riding in a fucking chariot. Anyway, speech (religious or otherwise) doesn’t have to be “worth a damn” to be protected. I mean, religious speech hasn’t been worth a damn since Darwin published On the Origin of Species, but I have no desire to censor Scientologists, Mormons or any other goofballs who choose to make ridiculous conversation pieces of themselves. I also have no intention of letting them dictate the curriculum at my kids’ school, but they don’t need to be silenced for that to be prevented. Honestly, I live in East Bumblefuck, Virginia, surrounded by Republicans and born-again Christians, and my kid’s a first grader in the local public school where no effort whatsoever has been made to teach him anything about religion.
Low are Mormons, aren’t they? Y’know, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker.
I feel like religion is less of an issue in this election than the last. Although that might have been because it was a much more potent tool when wielded by Bush v Kerry than any pairing this year.
It’s not about censorship in that direction, C&B, just the opposite. It’s about being forbidden from querying someone’s beliefs because they are religious. It is also, to an extent, about laws criminalising ‘causing religious offence’ which, in Europe in particular, is not an entirely silly thing to be nervous of.
I actually want religious beliefs to be subject to the scrutiny and obliged to provide weight of evidence the same as any other silly ideas. At the moment they are becoming more and more difficult to question without the utterly ludicrous ‘well it’s my religion’ defence being used.
Isn’t that because they all know they have to make it really fucking clear how religious they are or they won’t stand a chance. So they’ve all covered that base.
I think it’s much more to do with the fact that the religious right overplayed their had somewhat and took a massive beating in the mid-term, and the fact that none of the candidates are very religious. If religion was a huge factor McCain would be hanging from a tree. Not that any candidate could ever say that they were agnostic (gasp!) or even atheist (geddim Job-Bob!), but other than Huckabee no one really wants to talk about it.
This is what I find a little scary. None of them strike me as all that religious, apart from Huckabee, who is just nuts, and maybe Romney, who has gone one about it a bit much. I do, however, find it scary, that their general ambivalence (which is something I am assuming, not something I am insisting is true) cannot possibly ever be declared openly.
You think Hilary is Christian? Is she fuck, and it really worries me that she can’t admit this without torpedoeing her campaign amidships.
Anyway,
What makes Scientology a vile religion is not even it’s evangelical nature (which I find a bit repulsive), it’s the fact that power within it ranks is directly tied to income. All the best crazy religions do this. It basically comes back to religion as an opiate of the masses. I don’t agree with Martin Luther but he claimed that your relationship with God was between you, God and whichever airline engineer built the plane you are on.
Catholicism, Scientology, and few sects of Islam (I’m talking to you ‘House of Saud’) essentially use the religion to preserve a social order in which rich people maintain power. Hence the fear of scientific exploration (which God states clearly in the Bible is a good thing. Never mentions abortion though…) as it rest outside the control of The Church (whichever, that may be) and may upset the balance. If your relationship with God is personal, what does it matter if the world is round or if stem cells can cure cancer, that’s between you and God.
Or, more to the point, how do you punish sin on Earth if it’s essentially between the sinner and god. And hence none of your fucking business.
Fuck! Cancel the justice system – not needed anymore!
Great Caesar’s ghost, ever stumbled on to a thread and felt a little out of your depth?
All I can say as an ex-Catholic who woke up one day and thought like Michael the mad Geordie in Alan Partridge: “stop telling me what to do!”
As you so rightly say, it comes down to one argument: evidence v faith and give me the pie in the face any day.
But I do worry about how late you guys stay up basically agreeing with each other – the evidence says 2.53am…
Ben lives in the States and I was up playing records.
This issue for me is this: no-one would have any problem saying that Scientology is bloody silly. Most people would be a little offended saying that Christianity is bloody silly. And Mormonism is a kind of in-between. Yet I can’t see any real difference from one set of myths and legends to the next – they all rely on faith and imagination in the same way.
So is it really just about age?
I think it is just about age. Christianity took hundreds of years to gain true acceptance in Europe, and those people of the Roman world who had grown up worshiping Zeus or the Emperor or their own farts or whatever else no doubt found the zeal and commitment of the early Christians a bit troubling and strange, as indeed it was. But then even the Christians had to make concessions, and ended up co-opting elements of the existing pagan rituals to make their own creed more palatable.
I’m convinced that secrecy plays into the distaste a great many have for LDS as well as Scientology. Catholicism is full of completely bonkers concepts, but they make them readily available to anyone that wants know about them. If I want to know that the Roman Catholic Church stole the Winter Solstice and Saturnalia, and turned them into Christmas, Easter, and a dozen other holidays and observations, I can pick up a Catholic Encyclopedia where they admit it themselves (even if it’s in small type). Sure, a person could pick up a Book of Mormon and learn about Israelites turning into American Indians, but it doesn’t really give you the inner workings of the church.
And that’s not to say that Catholics, Protestants, etc. don’t have ceremonies or elements of their faith that they are guarded about, but Scientology and Mormonism are both notoriously tight-lipped (and defensive) about a great many things. When you tell people that they can know what you’re about only after joining up, they’re bound to be suspicious.
Another part of what hurts Scientology is its own membership. When you have people like Jenna Elfman & Tom Cruise yelling wild-eyed at Matt Lauer or saying they’ll clear the planet of all those nasty Thetans or else, people get very nervous. Tom Cruise went from egotism to meglomania in what seemed like a very short time, from the public’s perspective. When you are deluded enough to believe only members of your religion can help victims of a car accident, something has gone wrong upstairs, and people can see that.
That aside, I think most religions are control mechanisms, and agree they are usually held in place to keep the populace concentrated on everything but what’s actually going on. A useful tool for a politician, really.
One other thing I will mention having worked in an office full of Mormons – they do believe in the Bible, but only so far as it corresponds with the Book of Mormon. If there’s a contradiction (and there are many), they view the BOM as the authoritative text. In fact, I was raised in a very strict religious environment as a youth, and I could remember far more scripture than any of the Mormons I worked with.
In fact, now that I think about it, Mormons also think that after they die they become gods and rule their own planets. Is that really so far removed from Zenu and Thetans? In 30 years, Scientology could very well be recognized as being just as religiously ‘valid’ as any other religion. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, except that it has nothing to do with the practical aspects of running a national government.
I suppose people like Obama throw the occasional reference to being religious in the pot because half the population thinks it’s important (or they think they think it’s important), and no politician wants to alienate potential voters.
Hey,
Sorry I’m joining this so late. You should give me a head’s up when non-musical topics are coming; you know how I like to shit-disturb on those
Your statement that “All religions basically rely on a belief in magic” is false. In all this discussion, I noticed there was no attention paid to the peculiarities of Buddhism, a religion that does not believe in a soul or in an anthropomorphic god, and whose chief prophet is on the record saying “Don’t believe in anything unless it makes sense to you”. Non-magical enough for you?
However, Buddhism also demonstrates the apparently inevitable slippery slope of superstition. Although the basic tenets of Buddhism are logical, within a few hundred years its followers started to dress it up with all sorts of bafflegab. Reincarnation, originally a simple statement of causality (if I tell you something, then part of me goes into you and starts a chain of events in future lives), was turned into this whole big hocus-pocus. Buddha said “there is no soul” so his followers invented a notion of “personality clusters” to compensate.
The history of Buddhism also shows that this breed of religious nuttiness that we see in Mormonism has been around a long time. Hundred’s of years after the Man Who Woke Up died, some of his followers claimed to have found some “secret” scriptures hidden in a cave. Shades of Joseph Smith, eh? Today, they make up one of the two major denominations of Buddhism.
Still, you are too hard on the concept of faith. Everyone practices it, even scientists. Science rests on the notions that the evidence of the senses is reliable and that all questions can be answered rationally through the scientific method. These are assumptions, and no better than faith.
Ultimately, I think Christians and skeptics alike focus too much on the rituals and superstitions of the religion and far too little on the philosophy and teachings. The idea that universal, unconditional love and forgiveness will make the world a better place is irrefutable. It deserves to be repeated often and loudly, even if it comes with baggage.
Mentok I think your words may be wise, but nontheless flawed.
This is absolutely not some great special thing that religion has brought to the world. Religions preach both for and against this in equal measure, both in their day to day practises and in their holy books. This is a universal aspect of humanity and a necessary by-product of being a social animal.
Utter bollocks. Science is by its own self-definition imperfect. It actually incorporates its own flaws into its approach to the universe. There is nothing – nothing – in religious writing even remotely as unarguably proven as the bulk of science we take for granted every day – F=ma springs to mind – and still scientists call even Darwin’s theory of evolution, one of the most conclusively proven facts in the world today – a theory, not because they think it is wrong but because they recognise that absolutely anything we believe may always be utterly reversed by things as yet outside our ken.
The other mistake is to place Science in the same class as religion. It is utterly different. It is a way of describing, not a philosophy. It doesn’t preach or judge because these things are not within its compass, nor does it claim them to be.
That’s why I don’t want to hear about candidates and their religion. This isn’t an atheism thing – I don’t want to hear about a candidate’s atheism either – nor a yell for the scientific method, it is actually a plea to keep closed, unarguable emotive nonsense out of the kind of political discourse that depends on active debate for its legitimacy. Religion is the apotheosis of this sort of non-argument.
Oh, and if you think that science to be just as much of a faith-based approach to the world as religion, try stepping off the top of a very tall building and believing that you won’t hit the ground very, very fucking hard.
No, I’m not equating religion and science, since as you rightly point out they are different things. I was equating faith and assumptions.
Love and forgiveness are functions of being a social animal? Whoa, that’s a stretch. Maybe you can say that about concepts like “tolerance” or “accommodation”, but among us chimpanzee-type species even those notions have to compete with those other strong, strong social impulses, like revenge/justice/fairness and desire for dominance in all situations. Forgiveness in particular is a singularly counter-intuitive idea that requires us to stretch beyond just being social animals.
As for stepping off a building on faith, of course I’m not going to do that because I feel afraid just thinking about it. But, you know, I’ve noticed I feel equally afraid when faced with such situations in dreams.
Can you prove that all of this isn’t just some sort of shared illusion a la The Matrix? Of course you can’t; no one can, any more than someone could prove the opposite.
As for keeping religion out of politics, I have no quarrel with you there. I don’t know how it is in the UK, but in Canada I can’t think of a single occasion when a candidate’s religion (or lack thereof) was a public issue. The Americans seem to have a peculiar fixation with such things.
I can’t help but notice that you didn’t address my comments about Buddhism at all. I have a theory that atheists find Buddhism unsettling, because it agrees with them in many ways but challenges them in others. Can you prove me wrong?
What issue should I have with Buddhism?
If it doesn’t invoke magic and simply sticks to the ‘what you say has an impact on future generations’ or ‘you should behave in a certain way’ then there’s nothing to have problem with unless they start annexing these ideas into some special status simply because they have decided to define them as religious.
But basically saying ‘be nice to people’ or ‘think about the impact of what your doing’… well, that may be included in some religions but its hardly exclusive to them, is it? If that was all they were saying I’d have no argument.
As soon as they start talking about infinite reincarnation then it changes somewhat.
Calling a basic set of life principles a religion is a bit meaningless because every single person has those. Are my principles for living qualitatively different from a religious person whose religion invokes no magic and no dogma? Probably not, but then I don’t claim special privilege for the principles by which I live my life over and above any other sort of idea I or anyone else might hold.
No, what you’re ignoring is that all religions have an element of transcendence i.e. asserting a level of existence beyond what is perceived. This is where Buddhism separates from atheism and from a simple, mundane set of life rules.
Even the most realistic, non-superstitious schools of Buddhism have a level of transcendency, albeit a rather proto-Nietschean one, which runs like this:
Everything we perceive is based on conditioned notions. Objectively, there is no such thing as a table, only collections of atoms we choose to call tables.
Therefore, everything we think and do is fraught with illusion because it is all based on our own accrued preconditioned notions.
First and foremost of these illusions is the notion of independent existence. The briefest moment of thought will easily demonstrate that no existence is independent; all existence is inter-dependent. Our human perception of independent, personal existence is therefore a delusion.
This delusion causes us to suffer and to cause suffering, because it blocks us from properly perceiving our interconnection with all other people and things.
It is possible, under the right conditions and, typically, with great effort, to achieve a more highly evolved form of human consciousness that is beyond conditioned perception and the delusion of independent existence. This higher-evolved mind does not suffer and is in harmony with all existence. (At least, this is what we’re told by numerous people who have allegedly achieved such super-consciousness.)
So, you see, that is all one hell of a lot more than just some little “set of life principles”. It is a viewpoint that, while entirely realistic, is nonetheless at odds with the narrow definitions of materialism and atheism.
And, yes, I do expect these views to have special status because they are the ultimate truth. Of course the truth should have special status, right?
It is not just ‘a collection of atoms’. It is a very specific collection of atoms whose basic arrangement occurs frequently enough that we label it with a name to recognise this pattern. As such it can most certainly be said to exist. Saying that the name is arbitrary is fair enough, but there is no difference between saying ‘that is a table’ and ‘that is a collection of atoms we choose to call a table’ – one is just a shorter version of the other.
Being independent and being individual are two different things. Of course everything is inter-dependent, but if you don’t think there is such a thing as individuality imagine the impact your own death would have on the world as a whole – none whatsoever. In which case there must being something ’separate’ about you as an individual or surely you couldn’t just vanish like that without leaving so much as a ripple.
It should also be noted that individuality is not unique to humans and exists throughout the animal kingdom. It may be a mysterious and ill-understood concept, but we aren’t the only ones who feel it.
This higher-evolved mind you are talking about sounds pretty much like any old run of the mill trance-like state which is not exclusive to Buddhism and does not need to be dressed up in fancy language.
Ultimately, whilst the people who feel strongly about all the stuff you mentioned are welcome to feel it and take it seriously, the whole thing is sufficiently vague as to be pretty much meaningless – along the lines of the table vs. bunch of atoms non-argument.
It’s a bit like the ‘existence could all be in the imagination of a five-year-old boy’. Sure it could, but so what? Does that really change anything? We all have imperfect information about the universe and we don’t really know what it means to be, say, me, instead of you, or Gary Busey. So we act on what we can have in front of us.
Can I disprove the scenario at the end of Men in Black, where the aliens are playing marbles with little galss balls enclosing entire universes? No, of course not, but I have no desire to do so. In all practical senses it is a meaningless speculation.
No, it’s not just the names that are arbitrary; the functions are arbitrary as well and therefore transient.
Would a dolphin recognize a table as a table? Probably not, because what we call tables do not serve any function the dolphin recognizes. Would a cave man understand the “correct” function of a golf club? Probably not.
So, tables and golf clubs have no absolute existence but only exist to the degree that we imagine functions for them. Aside from that, they are only random atoms.
Since, in this way, objects exist in our minds, they are not permanent things but are subject to change according to changes in the minds or perspectives of the observer.
Now, I’m not sure where the whole Men in Black kids-playing-with-marbles bit comes in, but I wouldn’t call such discussions “vague”. Unsettling, yes, but not vague and certainly not meaningless. Last time I checked, epistemology was a field of study valued by scientists as much as anyone.
I have to say you are certainly not making a very good case for the positive social benefits of atheism with statements like “imagine the impact your own death would have on the world as a whole – none whatsoever”. That’s not only depressing and cynical but also totally wrong.
Cripes, man, haven’t you read Bradbury’s Sound of Thunder? You know, the whole “killing a butterfly changes history” business. My death – any person’s death – would have an enormous, unknowable impact on future events. The presence or absence of any object or actor in the universe create nearly infinite ripples in the rest of existence. That’s just physics.
What I think you may have meant is that the presence or absence of one object doesn’t create an effect on the universe that can be easily measured by humans. But that doesn’t mean such effects don’t exist, and it’s the flip side of the whole “there is no table” argument: just because a human doesn’t perceive something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. (And, no, that’s not a contradiction, it’s an enhancement of the Buddhist “life is illusion” principle: we perceive things like tables that don’t have an absolute existence but fail to perceive things that do have existence like radiation, so our perception of the world is critically flawed and unreliable.)
Which ultimately loops us back to spirituality vs. materialism in general. There’s this great line in The Matrix: “You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”
All these people, all through history, have had this feeling. This feeling has been so powerful to them that they’ve been desperately willing to swallow all sorts of patently ridiculous explanations (e.g. Scientology, Mormonism).
You, like all atheists, don’t have this feeling, so you sit and sneer at it and believe yourselves to be superior. But, of course, scientifically, you can’t know that’s true. It could be that people with spiritual feelings are in the early, stumbling phases of a new evolution of the human mind, and atheists are a throwback.
Or, it could be the reverse.
Who knows?
All I know is that Buddhist meditation and ethics help people live better lives whether or not they buy into the epistemology and cosmology, and that it’s one of the few religions where that’s the case. So I highly recommend it.
Anyway, I just wanted to close off saying how much I’ve enjoyed this debate. This is one of those topics that so easily descends into emotional name calling but I think we succeeded, on the whole, in keeping this on the level of respectful dialogue, as befits a topic of such importance, and I thank you for that.