On Religion

[ Emilie says:  The discussion here is about an article "Believing, Disbelieving, And Suspecting - Disordered Thoughts On Religion" ( 2003-08-25 ) by Fred Reed ("Fred" below) at http://www.fredoneverything.net/Faith.shtml. The "Hermit" here is Meshed Gears. I have added direct links to the Positive Atheism pages cited. Also, the source of "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.", this is from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", Albert Einstein, 1954"]

 

Source: Mailing List/Virus 2003/virus: Fred Reed on Religion...

Reply: 1

Dated: 2003-09-01

Started by Jonathan Davis, Post by Hermit

[Hermit] Summary, a quasi apologist screed. Dissection follows.

[Fred] We live in a wantonly irreligious age-at least at the level of public discourse.

[Hermit] To be irreligious is not to be "wanton", it is to be rational. To introduce religion into public discourse would be wanton, as any such introduction offends anyone who disagrees with the speaker. Given that this is an irreligious age, and growing more so (hooray), each time somebody attemps to do so, they offend more people (boo). Unfortunately, the religious tend to have rather thick skins about preaching, until somebody preaches something they find offensive back to them.

[Fred] In America the courts, the schools, and the government seek to cleanse the country of religion.

[Hermit] The American Founders said, for excellent reason, having more to do with stopping religious wars than supporting atheism, that government could have nothing to do with religion - and vice versa. As government has intruded into more and more areas, so these areas have had to divest themselves of religion, to remain constitutionally supportable.

[Fred] More accurately, they seek to cleanse it of Christianity.

[Hermit] I'm not sure where Fred obtained his data, but if it is accurate, perhaps it has something to do with the particularly virulent proselytizing engaged in by the tens-of thousands of religions in America which identify themselves with Christianity, but not with each other.

[Fred] We are told, never directly but by relentless implication, that religious faith is something one in decency ought to do behind closed doors-an embarrassment, worse than public bowling though not quite as bad as having a venereal disease.

[Hermit] Far worse than an STD, as it tends to infect all aspects of the lives of those infected with it.

[Fred] Which is odd.

[Hermit] Why?

[Fred] I do not offer myself as one intimate with the gods, and on grounds of reason would be hard pressed to choose between the views of Hindus and those of Buddhists. I note however that over millennia people of extraordinary intellect and thoughtfulness have taken religion seriously. A quite remarkable arrogance is needed feel oneself mentally superior to Augustine, Aquinas, Isaac Newton, and C.S. Lewis. I'm not up to it.

[Hermit] And there is nothing to say that over the millennia, hundreds of millions of fools have not been wrong. Given that we do not believe as the ancients did, and class their religions as myth, the question Fred should be asking himself as why we see our myths as being different? Is it not "remarkably arrogant" to assume that "Augustine, Aquinas, Isaac Newton, and C.S. Lewis" were wiser in matters of religion than Salon, Plato, Socrates, Hippocrates, Democrites, Diogenes, Epicurus, Zenon, Archimedes and many hundreds of others recognised for founding schools of science and philosophy? Or as Mark Twain, a far better author - and perhaps wiser man, than CS Lewis put it, "The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years [Hermit: I would say 800 as the Christian religion was only established in the Fouth Century) before Christian religion was born."

[Hermit] And again, how about current scientists and philosophers? Some 90% of the senior scientists in the world today are undoubtedly "up to it", as almost all people with a scientific education reject the idea of Deism. If Fred actually had to defend the words of those he cites as wise, I suspect that he might recognise the weakness of his arguments. Surely it doesn't take genius to reject religion, only common sense. Could he defend Augustine:

• Slavery is not penal in character and planned by that law which commands the preservation of the natural order and forbids disturbance.
• The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of hell.
• Women should not be enlightened or educated in any way. They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men.
• It is indeed better (as no one ever could deny) that men should be led to worship God by teaching, than that they should be driven to it by fear of punishment or pain; but it does not follow that because the former course produces the better men, therefore those who do not yield to it should be neglected. For many have found advantage (as we have proved, and are daily proving by actual experiment), in being first compelled by fear or pain, so that they might afterwards be influenced by teaching, or might follow out in act what they had already learned in word.

Or Aquinas:

• Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.
• If forgers and malefactors are put to death by the secular power, there is much more reason for excommunicating and even putting to death one convicted of heresy.
• As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power.
• That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.

Does he imagine that Newton, a mostly sane, though nasty, person, argued as an orthodox Christian or imagined that he knew all there was to know about the world through Genesis?:

• If the ancient churches, in debating and deciding the greatest mysteries of religion, knew nothing of these two texts[Hermit: "Old" & "New testaments"], I understand not why we should be so fond of them now the debate is over.
• I know not how I seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with while the vast ocean of undiscovered truth lay before me.

CS Lewis too, wrote a few good books - and a whole lot of nonsense. In which category does Fred place the following?

• Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -- C. S. Lewis, in "God in the Dock"

But seeing as Fred appears to respect authority, for an opposite view, consider Einstein:

• I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
• I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
• A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
• Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.
• It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Or perhaps Sigmund Freud:

• Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever.
• Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.
• Religion is an illusion ... it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our intellectual desires. [Religion is] "the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity," arising, "like the obsessional neuroses of children ... out of the Oedipus complex," Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.

(All quotations bar Augustine on Mathematicians [which is from "De genesi ad litteram, Book II"] are  courtesy of Positive Atheism)

[Fred] Of course arrogance comes in forms both personal and temporal. People tend to regard their own time as wiser and more knowing than all preceding times, and the people of earlier ages as quaint and vaguely primitive. Thus many who do not know how a television works will feel superior to Newton, because he didn't know how a television works. (Here is a fascinating concept: Arrogance by proximity to a television.)

[Hermit] Science tells us that it is through disproving of old fallacious ideas that we progress. And we have disproved an awful lot of fallacious ideas in the last few hundred years. So yes. We are wiser and more knowing. Is Fred really arguing that ages when sick people went to see priests and then died, who believed women inferior, and considered slavery natural were somehow wiser and more knowing than secular societies today? 

[Fred] It will be said that we have learned much since the time of Newton, and that this knowledge renders us wiser on matters spiritual. We do have better plastics. Yet still we die, and have no idea what it means.

[Hermit] Fred is, as usual it seems, wrong. Death simply means that the illusion that we are intelligent self-conscious creatures, produced by our neurons, is over.

[Fred] We do not know where we came from, and no amount of pious mummery about Big Bangs and black holes changes that at all.

[Hermit] More proximally, my mother and father fucked. This lead to a long sequence of events, which culminated in my presence. Using genetic analysis, we are able to trace back the fact that our parents, and their parents, and their grandparents and so on, did the same for hundreds of thousands of generations. And before that, with other simpler creatures - from the chimpanzee, with whom we share 99% of our DNA, to the cabbage, with whom we share 28% of our DNA the path is clear. And yes, we can go back to the Big Bang, one small step at a time. The fact that Fred seems to have missed out on some essential education, perhaps because he didn't pay attention in class, or possibly because his schooling was deficient, is no reason for him to assert that others don't know things.

[Fred] We do not know why we are here.

[Hermit] As above. Unless Fred imagines that he was left under a gooseberry bush by the fairies, I'd suggest that he is here because his parents fucked one another.

[Fred] We have intimations of what we should do, but no assurance.

[Hermit] I wonder if Fred knew what he meant here? Unless he is talking about "morality" - in which case we know exactly where it originates:

[1] In the first stage, starting at about age ten, people avoid breaking moral rules to avoid punishment.
[2] In the second stage, people follow moral rules only when it is to their advantage.
[3] In the third stage, starting about age 17, people try to live up to what is expected of them in small social groups, such as families.
[4] In the fourth stage, people fulfill the expectations of larger social groups, such as obeying laws that keep society together.
[5] In the fifth and sixth stages, starting at about age 24, people are guided by both absolute and relative moral principles; they follow these for altruistic reasons, though, and not because of what they might gain individually (the final two stages are differentiated in that the fifth is based on adherence to democractic processes and rule of law, the sixth allows for the possibility of civil disobedience in the interests of changing laws).

 

 

(From http://virus.lucifer.com/wiki/KohlbergLawrence). If Fred meant, but omitted to say, that we know what we "ought" to do because of the gods, then he misses the point that we had to know what we "ought to do" in order to judge whether the gods were worth following. (Refer Virian Ethics: The End of God Referenced Ethics).

[Fred] These are the questions that religion addresses and that science pretends do not exist.

[Hermit] We know that conventional, irrational religion has made assertions about origins. All of which have been proven wrong by science. We know that conventional, irrational Religion has made assertions about morality. All of which have been proven wrong by reason and research. We know which areas of the brain are active when people have "religious experiences",  and we know how to invoke these artifacts of brain mechanics and how to prevent them and so, in some instances can already cure religious neurosis and hallucination.  What is it that Fred imagines that religion addresses - and science says does not exist? We need more details.

[Fred] For all our transistors we know no more about these matters than did Heraclitus, and think about them less.

[Hermit] While Fred seems to be lamentably ignorant, why does he imagine that the rest of the world suffers from his disablities? Surely he can speak authoritatively only for himself? And is Fred unaware of the fact that Heraclitus would call him an infidel and an atheist? Would Fred agree with this assessment? If not, where does Fred get the arrogance to make assertions about his beliefs being superior to those of Heraclitus?

[Fred] Many today assuredly do know of the questions, and do think about them. One merely doesn't bring them up at a cocktail party, as they are held to be disreputable.

[Hermit] Perhaps the people who frequent cocktail parties are not the right teachers? After all, "Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogether, then inarticulate, and then drunk.  When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling." Lord Byron

[Fred] Yet I often meet a, to me, curious sort of fellow who simply cannot comprehend what religion might be about. He is puzzled as distinct from contemptuous or haughty.

[Hermit] A rare creature, I'm sure. As Twain put it, "Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand." I think it can safely be said that this goes for most atheists. 

[Fred] He genuinely sees no different between religious faith and believing that the earth is flat. He is like a congenitally deaf man watching a symphony orchestra: With all the good will in the world he doesn't see the profit in all that sawing with bows and blowing into things.

[Hermit] Perhaps Fred borrowed his diatribe from somebody else? Or perhaps, having missed out on a modern education, Fred is not very different from the average person of Twain's day. Certainly, I cannot think of a better response than another Twain quotation. "One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed in it. They have also believed the world was flat."

[Fred] This fellow is very different from the common atheist, who is bitter,proud of his advanced thinking, and inclined toward a (somewhat adolescent) hostility to a world that isn't up to his standard. This is tiresome and predictable, but doesn't offend me.

[Hermit] I wonder where Fred gets his idea of atheists as "bitter" people? No source is cited. Perhaps he met one at a cocktail party and started preaching to her. And she, very sensibly, turned him down. No, surely most atheists are sufficiently sensible not to bother with cocktail parties. Certainly all the humorists I have met, with whom I have discussed religion, have been atheists. Perhaps Fred suspects that humorists are "bitter" people too.

[Fred] Less forgivably, he often wants to run on about logical positivism. (I'm reminded of Orwell's comment about "the sort of atheist who doesn't so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike him." Quote approximate.)

[Hermit] And given the character of the Judeo-Christian's gods and their followers, with whom many atheists in America have had more than sufficient experience, perhaps the dislike is readily understood by one less bigoted than Fred. After all, who having a modern ethical understanding, could appreciate the call for sacrifice of the newborn or the idea that slaughtering one's own child is required to forgive the percived flaws in orthers? Personal dislike of the ethics of insanity is sensible, not grounds for criticism.

[Fred] Critics of religion say, correctly, that horrible crimes are committed in the name of religion. So are they in the name of communism, anti-communism, Manifest Destiny, Zionism, nationalism, and national security. Horrible crimes are what people do. They are not the heart of the thing.

[Hermit] Agreed. Then again, science (nor even "logical positivism") does not claim to make people "better than they ought to be". Religion does, and manifestly fails.

[Fred] The following seems to me to be true regarding religion and the sciences: Either one believes that there is an afterlife, or one believes that there is not an afterlife, or one isn't sure-which means that one believes that there may be an afterlife.

[Hermit] Fred seems to have fallen into a logical mire, without canoe, never mind oars, and with the wrong end of the rope wrapped around his neck. The underlying question is not ao much about belief, but whether there is any truth in the idea that there is an afterlife. And to determine whether there is any truth in any idea, one requires a means of judging its validity. Having seen a fair number of deaths, I can assure Fred that after brain activity ceases, there is no life. So on the one hand we have some evidence that dead-is-dead. I can accept that. On the other hand, we have Fred. Fred appears to think that he should disregard this evidence and "believe" that there is an "afterlife" or perhaps that we should disregard the evidence on the one hand, and the lack of any evidence on the other, and say we can't determine the matter. That may be fine and well for Fred. But he really should not try to argue that he is being rational - or that the person who prefers evidence over belief - is somehow a "believer", simply because Fred has the arrogance to assert that this is the case.

[Fred] If there is an afterlife, then there is an aspect of existence about which we know nothing and which may, or may not, influence this world. In this case the sciences, while interesting and useful, are merely a partial explanation of things. Thus to believe in the absolute explanatory power of the sciences one must be an atheist-to exclude competition. Note that atheists as much as the faithful believe what they cannot establish.

[Hermit] This is a poor restatement of Pascal's Wager, and begs the question by ignoring the evidence that there is no afterlife (and as we have seen, this takes belief in the face of the evidence against it in order to make this assumption) and can be simply disproved by showing that if there is a "rational afterlife" which influences this world in such a way as to make this world purely rational, then the atheists are right, and the faithful wrong and Fred's if-then fails. And if there is no afterlife, then of course religion, uninteresting and totally unuseful, providing no explanation for anything, is wrong. And all the evidence points to the latter. I would suggest that it is only Fred's lack of logical competence, bigotted perspective and assertive arrogance which can lead him to make such statements about atheists as he does here.

[Fred] Here is the chief defect of scientists (I mean those who take the sciences as an ideology rather than as a discipline): an unwillingness to admit that there is anything outside their realm. But there is. You cannot squeeze consciousness, beauty, affection, or Good and Evil from physics any more than you can derive momentum from the postulates of geometry: No mass, no momentum. A moral scientist is thus a contradiction in terms. (Logically speaking: in practice they compartmentalize and are perfectly good people.)

[Hermit] Having asserted that scientists are "perfectly good people", I wonder what it is about Fred's strawman that is the "chief defect of scientists." Certainly, speaking as a scientist, I've never suggested that a "moral scientist" would be a sensible animal. A scientist, any scientist, merely applies the only process, the scientific method, known to result in progress. To speak of a kind of scientist as if they were different from any other is a contradiction in terms. Rather like saying that "Christian Science" or "Creation Science" actually are some kind of science simply because they name themselves as such. Speaking from a rational perspective, the problem with the faithful is that are not generally competent to compartamentalize - and thus are not perfectly good people. Certainly, when your neighbor tells you that you are going to burn in hell forever because you actually use your senses to gather evidence and your brain to reject the irrational, there is a tendency to think that as the hell is your neighbor's invention, that you want no part of it.

[Fred] Thus we have the spectacle of the scientist who is horrified by the latest hatchet murder but can give no scientific reason why. A murder after all is merely the dislocation of certain physical masses (the victim's head, for example) followed by elaborate chemical reactions. Horror cannot be derived from physics. It comes from somewhere else.

[Hermit] Really? Who appointed Fred to speak for "scientists"? Or did he take a survey? I think he should provide the evidence for this assertion. I'd suggest that science is not limited to "physics"; that I don't think that just because Fred seems to imagine that this is the case, is any reason to do so; and that I'd suggest that evolutionary psychology readily provides all of the explanation needed to explain "horror" at a rather gruesome murder. Far more to the point, the question in my mind is whether Fred is suggesting that there is any explanation for this phenomena outside of evolutionary psychology. After all, he makes an assertion, presumably intending for it to support whatever it is he is attempting to say, but his failure to address "compared to what" simply leaves this paragraph dangling without visible means of support.

[Fred] Similarly, those who believe in religions often do not really quite believe. Interesting to me is the extent to which those who think themselves Christians have subordinated God to physics. For example, I have often read some timid theologian saying that manna was actually a sticky secretion deriving from certain insects, and that the crossing of the Red Sea was really done in a shallow place when the wind blew the water out.

[Hermit] And there are archeologists who take the consensus position that Moses was purely a mythical invention and that the bronze age Jews and their rather unpleasant hill gods were not particularly significant on a regional basis until far later - and thus there is no more need to attempt to "explain away" these writings than there is to explain the legends about Perseus.

[Hermit] Against this, there are bible sometime-literalists* who assert that rabbits chew the cud, bats are birds and grasshoppers walk around on four legs. I recommend The Skeptic's Annotated Bible and "Faith and truth in science " to Fred's attention.

[Fred] That being said, at worst the religions of the earth are gropings toward something people feel but cannot put a finger on, toward something more at the heart of life than the hoped-for raise, trendy restaurants, and the next and grander automobile. And few things are as stultifying and superficial as the man not so much agnostic (this I can understand) as simply inattentive, whose life is focused on getting into a better country club. Good questions are better than bad answers. And the sciences, though not intended to be, have become the opiate of the masses.

[Hermit] Was Fred under the impression that this was a conclusion? While I can understand that he is suffering some confusion of "hoped-for raise, trendy restaurants, and the next and grander automobile" with "the sciences", I can't understand how he gets from there to "bad answers." Indeed, rather like religion, Fred doesn't appear to provide any answers at all - and thinking on it, while he made a lot of stumbling assertions, I'm not sure he asked any questions either. Perhaps Fred is on another kind of opiate altogether?

[Hermit] But why, oh why, did Jonathan Davis see fit to post this lacunic frothing here?

Hermit

*Sometime, because despite Job being "the only just man" and thus, his actions presumably considered ethical by the judeo-Christian gods, most bible literalists don't offer their virgin daughters to those who bang on their doors, and we assume, don't engage in incest with them either - although the latter assumption may be unwise. Like divorce, the demographic prevalence of incest appears to correlate remarkably well with biblical fundmentalism.

 

---

And a follow-up post after some omitted discussion

Reply: 14

The tone is easily explained. When people assert that others believe, are arrogant and bigoted - which is how I read Fred's work describing atheists - then they should expect to receive the same in abundance. Fred received it. Indeed, I returned and added to the scorn when I reread portions of the essay which didn't previously sufficiently identify the flaws he accused atheists of laboring under. All of your nitpicking does not overcome this basic and fundamental flaw in his essay. Given the fact that neither of us considers it worthwhile, I won't go into much detail or cite references for the latter half of this discussion.

As for your specific attempted responses, they fail. In very brief:

• If "we" are not "irreligious" then the society is not irreligious. Yet Fred's plaintive assertion is that society is irreligious, thus we are irreligious, thus he asserts we are wanton. Wanton is not as you coyly stated, "we don't seem to care", it is a term of moral condemnation and thus an epithet. 1. Untrained; undisciplined; unrestrained; hence, loose; free; luxuriant; roving; sportive.2. Wandering from moral rectitude; perverse; dissolute. 3. Specifically: Deviating from the rules of chastity; lewd;      lustful; lascivious; libidinous; lecherous. Reckless; heedless; as, wanton mischief. "Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)".
• The fight is for the freedom from religion by an oppressed minority demanding their constitutional protections from an increasingly non-representative, overbearing religious government.
• Not advocating "belief" in any form, but rather continuous panrational criticism, neither the CoV nor its members are in any danger of developing a faith based disease.
• Fred selected a group of religious maniacs in an attempt to make a point. If we select a random assortment of "great" men, I doubt that we will find Christianity mattered to nearly 100% of them. And I have no hesitation in saying that by definition Fred's supposed "Great men" were not "great men" by my definition when they advocated insane and immoral gods and their policies despite the fact that this is proven by history and their own words to have caused misery for other men. So it takes no arrogance on my part to disagree. Fred would have a great deal of difficulty reversing that argument.
• All of the thinkers I mentioned appear from the little we know about them, but principally from the beliefs of their era, most likely vague Platonic theists rather than deists. For some reason, as Christianities history demonstrates, deism and great thinking seldom seem to go hand in hand.
• I disagree on the "translation" of the tone of this document. Perhaps it feels beter to somebody more accomodating of belief, and familiar with Fred's style. I answered it as it reads to me. For example, I feel myself arguably superior to any of Fred's putative great thinkers. Yet Fred says, "A quite remarkable arrogance is needed feel oneself mentally superior to Augustine, Aquinas, Isaac Newton, and C.S. Lewis." So Fred asserts I have remarkable arrogance. I think it takes remarkable arrogance on Fred's part to make such an assertion. This is of course the answer to your question, "Bye the way, are you are co-opting Fred's rhetoric to use against him ("arrogance")?". The answer is, I had thought quite patently, yes.
• While I may be "wrong" (about an afterlife), as you assert, and Fred claims I "believe", I am quite correct in holding the opinion I do, as to hold any other opinion clearly means the rejection of strong evidence and the presumption that "theoretically possible" means "probable". It is also "theoretically possible" that there are fairies in the bottom of Fred's garden - and indeed, it is more likely that there are fairies there than there is an afterlife - as there is no evidence against the fairies. Yet I don't see Fred (or you for that matter) arguing that we should kowtow to these potential fairies, or even that we should accept the possibility of their existence.
• When you said, "Where Earth and the rest of the universe came from, we do not know." and argued that this meant, "Ultimately Fred is completely right." you are grieviously wrong. Rather than not knowing where the Earth and the Universe come from, there is better evidence for the Big Bang theory (in the form of it having made astoundingly accurate predictions) than there is for Darwinian Evolution. Yet you assert that you accept Darwinian Evolution. See the FAQ:  TimeLine and in particular the supporting references at the bottom of the page.
• In contrast to Jonathan's assertion, "we have no sound idea what underlies existence itself. "But where did that come from" echoes off into infinity.", we are fairly certain that we now understand exactly where our Baryonic Universe originated, and the forces that rule it. Certainly we know enough to be able to state that the question, "But where did that come from" is an illusion caused by our nature, not an attribute of the Universe. Questions about "what came bfore the big bang" are invalid as there was no "before". See my earlier discussions with Flag on this topic under Why God cannot exist by Joe Dees & Hermit
• When you say, "Fred is manifestly not ignorant, neither is he disabled." right under Fred's, " For all our transistors we know no more about these matters than did
  Heraclitus, and think about them less." then you are missing the point. Fred is speaking for "us" - all mankind. And he is quite patently wrong, stupid or both. 
• Any assertion about "science" and "scientists" (i.e. holding true for all science and scientists) can be refuted by any scientist. I did this. The same of course goes for atheists. I did this too. Both are valid.
• Science is a method, not an ideology. Anyone not applying the method is, by definition, not a scientist.
• Anybody who cites appeals to authority cannot refute the citation of justified authorities in return.
• Those who rely on appeals to popularity cannot avoid being lampooned for it.
• There is a qualitative difference between believing that something is so in the face of the evidence and refusing to accept something without necessity.
• Grep for question marks in Fred's original essay.
• When one makes an entire series of negative sounding statements (however vague), as Fred did, about atheists and scientists, and leaves them hanging in mid air without using them in the closing, then there is no conclusion. Your asserting that there was one does not repair this error.

Regards

Hermit

PS, As you should be able to figure from the reply above (and, I would argue, from my original response, the answer to your demand that I answer "Yes or no? " to the question, "Either one believes that there is an afterlife, or one believes that there is not an afterlife, or one isn't sure-which means that one believes that there may be an afterlife" is I cannot answer in those terms. The overwhelming evidence against, and lack of evidence for, any form of "afterlife" leaves us no rational conclusion other than the probability (which must exist) is that the likelyhood is infestismally small. This is not a belief. It is a well supported lack of belief in an unsupported idea. And attempting to force a discussion into terms indistinguishable from "Have you stopped beating your wife" is reprehensible. No matter who attempts it.