[FoRK] Re: the lines drawn by the hand that moves on

[Tom Higgins]

Ok so its early, for me at least, and I flubbed the youtube link...mea culpa


this is the one

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zDHJ4ztnldQ

also from the same source

"There are literally thousands of religions being practiced today.
Here are 20 of the most popular, along with an estimate of the number
of followers:

   1. Christianity: 2.1 billion
   2. Islam: 1.3 billion
   3. Hinduism: 900 million
   4. Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
   5. Buddhism: 376 million
   6. African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
   7. Sikhism: 23 million
   8. Juche: 19 million
   9. Spiritism: 15 million
  10. Judaism: 14 million
  11. Baha'i: 7 million
  12. Jainism: 4.2 million
  13. Shinto: 4 million
  14. Cao Dai: 4 million
  15. Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
  16. Tenrikyo: 2 million
  17. Neo-Paganism: 1 million
  18. Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
  19. Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
  20. Scientology: 500 thousand

[Source: Encyclopedia Britannica]

If you believe in God, you have chosen to reject Allah, Vishnu, Budda,
Waheguru and all of the thousands of other gods that other people
worship today. It is quite likely that you rejected these other gods
without ever looking into their religions or reading their books. You
simply absorbed the dominant faith in your home or in the society you
grew up in.

In the same way, the followers of all these other religions have
chosen to reject God. You think their gods are imaginary, and they
think your God is imaginary.

In other words, each religious person on earth today arbitrarily
rejects thousands of gods as imaginary, many of which he/she has never
even heard of, and arbitrarily chooses to "believe" in one of them.

The following quote from Stephen F. Roberts sums up the situation very nicely:

      "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one
fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the
other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

A rational person rejects all human gods equally, because all of them
are equally imaginary. How do we know that they are imaginary? Simply
imagine that one of them is real. If one of these thousands of gods
were actually real, then his followers would be experiencing real,
undeniable benefits. These benefits would be obvious to everyone. The
followers of a true god would pray, and their prayers would be
answered. The followers of a true god would therefore live longer,
have fewer diseases, have lots more money, etc. There would be
thousands of statistical markers surrounding the followers of a true
god.

Everyone would notice all of these benefits, and they would gravitate
toward this true god. And thus, over the course of several centuries,
everyone would be aligned on the one true god. All the other false
gods would have fallen by the wayside long ago, and there would be
only one religion under the one true god.

When we look at our world today, we see nothing like that. There are
two billion Christians AND there are more than one billion Muslims,
and their religions are mutually exclusive. There are thousands of
other religions. When you analyse any of them, they all show a
remarkable similarity -- there is zero evidence that any of these gods
exist. That is how we know that they are all imaginary. "