Is the same therefore true of "followers" of other religions?>

i don't think <fsr> has any such agenda.

see, people like <fsr> and <al wazir> are devotees of science and reason. anything they find absurd using reason they would point that out.

so, it is not that <fsr> starts with this agenda that he has to discredit or vilify religion and looks for ways to do that. he simply examines everything , including religion, through reason and if finds absurdities points them out.

so, that is why he was 'excited' about that quote of pope saying something like faith and science don't have to be inconsistent.

perhaps , he also thinks that fundamentalists have an agenda - to desperately justify the practices of their religion and writing of their scriptures and they always looking ways to serve this agenda and sometimes/often these ways become quite absurd when examined through reason.

it will be found nowhere ? evidence?

if you saying that <fsr> picks up some random news about some 'christian' doing something 'stupid/evil' and uses that to say religion is 'bad/evil' and therefore such posts of <fsr> are absurd, perhaps you have a point.

evidence ?

you know i am a man of science . these days i teach all the three subjects - maths , physics , chemistry - to students preparing for IIT entrance exam. in india people know about this exam. for you, roughly you could say that the questions asked are of grade 11th and 12th of the complexity level of olympiad. or if you aware of the book 'problems in physics' by i. e. irodov , then that is the complexity level of the questions asked.

so, this kind of training makes one look for logical intelligence in every statement/action automatically.

that is why when i see the statement like :

<al wazir : I am sure that human existence has no purpose>

On another level, what is purpose? Purpose is something that exists in the mind of a conscious, purposive being. But for *existence* itself to have a purpose, what could such a being be? God?

let us put it other way: what is your life about ? hedonism?

<al wazir: But for *existence* itself to have a purpose, what could such a being be? God?>

just to elaborate in case you missed - your argument is something like - ' premise is 'there is no god' and conclusion is 'there is no purpose for *existence*'

i am asking you to not use that premise
, not to insist on first providing you with an evidence for the existence of god before even bothering to examine purpose of 'existence'

That's not the only thing. Any positive human interaction might do the trick. A clever, well phrased post on the <Kenneth Rogoff> page (mine or someone else's). An enjoyable entertainment, or some little achievement. Solving a math puzzle or inventing a new one. Even something that doesn't involve human interaction: whipping my yard into shape, fixing the sprinkler system, mending a birdbath that the wind blew off the deck a couple of weeks ago. (I haven't done that yet.) Or figuring out why birds bathe. (I haven't done that yet either, but I have a couple of ideas for some experiments.) Lots of things.

now you talking :)

when i was in my teen , i was very competitive. doing well in chess or maths used to give me a lot of 'satisfaction' . in time i realized , i was driven to be no 1 because of my competitive nature. i began to understand that i have 'ego' (or everyone has 'ego' but i am not insisting on that lest you should ask for evidence - mechanistic evidence at that. and when i insist on making that point , i would provide mechanistic evidence. for now , i would just say that i realised i had something called 'ego' and assume you understand what i am talking about so that no further elaboration is required).

however, i also realised that i can leave my 'ego' aside for some time and can still derive 'joy' from maths and other activities.

am i right in assuming that you know the distinction and you experience the joy that you derive from the activities you mentioned is joy for its own sake and not 'pseudo joy' derived in the service of your ego (unless you say that you are absolutely free of ego at all the times)?

<al wazir> , the conversation of purpose of 'existence' emanated from conversation of utopia

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...

let's first focus on utopia.

if you can derive the joy from things that you mentioned and also has experienced the distinction of doing the things in order to serve ego or to do things to derive the joy which has got nothing to do with ego than you don't need any evidence for that. however, in your case i am not sure. you may say that you would need some mechanistic evidence to validate your experience. so , these days some bits and pieces of evidence are available in the form of brain mapping and discovery of messenger molecules.

so, if we are not living in a utopian society (a society with perfect harmony) but instead are living in a society filled with strife , crime... it could be argued that is because not enough people have experienced the joy that you have experienced.

but the hunger for that kind of joy is within everyone. so , if one is addicted to heroine or other drugs , that is because they are seeking joy/fulfillment in the wrong places - they will not find it there.

they can find it only in the kind of activities you listed. (in a way, you are leading a highly spiritually life if your life is about deriving joy from the activities you mentioned provided it is free from ego)

so by now perhaps you have figured where the conversation is leading.

i am saying that you are living at a very high level of consciousness and everyone would like to live at that level. people who are into crime , heroine/drugs etc. just don't know any better - i call it 'sheer ignorance and lack of experience' (a phrase i have used here before).

so your argument would essentially be like - "some people are made up to be criminal , drug addicts ... not everyone is capable of living at a level of consciousness as high as <al wazir> is living at. hence we can not have a utopian society"

meanwhile : <warning - carl jungian>

i had read a physician narrating the case : there was a teen girl who was trapped in drug use and in prostitution to finance her addiction and sick of her life. that physician asked her to remember some activities which used to give her joy. 'horse riding', she replied. well story's ending was that girl got back into horse riding and the joy derived from horse riding was enough to sustain her. she did not need to seek joy in drugs.