The part I’m dubious about is the idea that “reason triumphs over fear.”

The takeaway is, more accurately, that “reason triumphs over superstitious fear.  Scooby & the gang don’t often address actual, physical peril or materialistic dangers.  Scoob and Shaggy are the chickenshits of the outfit, jumping at every shadow and often being initially quite credulous of whatever the monster-of-the-week is.  But half the time their monster traps incorporate some pretty physically dangerous stunts that don’t worry even Shaggy and Scooby nearly as much as the haunted-amusement-park owner with the rubber mask and the sound FX tape will.  And Velma and Freddy’s efforts shine the light of reason on the superstition (poor “danger-prone Daphne” just tends to literally stumble over evidence all the time, unless my memory fails me), enlightening Scoob and Shaggy and us, the audience, showing that the ghouls and ghosts and things going bump in the night can usually be explained away as harmless misunderstandings (or, at worst, someone capitalizing on our own fears and superstitions to try and pull a fast one on us… and of course they would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids).

That’s what makes the point.  Not that there is no evil to be feared, but that we need not have fear based upon our superstitions.

Show us your biceps, Deidzoeb!

And I don’t know what you mean by ‘we lost a lot of data during the failure of Rome’. What failure was that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaLTwJFfVBA

That’s right, a talking owl.

Love is a description for a motivator of observable behavour, which almost certainly has a neurochemical basis. Many times it’s painfully obvious even from a strictly behavioural perspective, and we have every reason to believe that even well-hidden crushes could be tested with the right apparatus (though whether there’d be a point in doing so is another question). Love is in this sense objective.

Property ownership is a description of a social convention for resource usage. Resources are (lamentably) finite and sometimes difficult to attain; many societies have converged on the idea that people should be given priviledged access to some resources, which they are said to “own”. This is not a property of the object, but a convention developed to minimize conflict. It is both stable and productive in general (though you can have badly dysfunctional ways of implementing the concept). Property ownership is not objective, but it is a very robust convention.

Justice is a description of behaviour having the correct consequences, according to the conventions of society. Different societies — even in the same country, having the same legal system! — have different notions of justice. Take the death penalty, for instance: is it just to kill someone who has killed many other people? The answer will depend on the context of the killing the person did (Was it in a war? In self-defence? Was it pre-meditated?) but also on the moral tastes of the person you ask (Is there any justification for killing, even if the person being killed has themself killed many times?). Thus, most people agree that killing is bad in general, and agree that there should be *some* consequences, but disagree on what they should be. The notion of justice is one meant to promote the stability of society, but is contantly under negotiation, because people are complicated and do very interesting things with/to each other, and have complicated ideas about what things should be acceptable. Justice is not objective, and also not completely universally agreed upon in its details, though accepted as a general concept because it promotes stability.

God is a description of the idea that there is a person, or force, or something, that did a lot of things to bring us here, and who may or may not be interested in every minor thing that we do, and may or may not punish or reward us for our deeds. As you note, we have no good evidence for God’s existence: very few people claim to have ever seen or heard from him/her/it in any unambiguous way, and a noticeable fraction of those who have are seen to either require psychological help or to be people in power giving speeches. Those who promote the notion of God most fervently tend to do so because they believe the notion is good for the stability of society, like that of property ownership and justice. However, we find that the notion of God can be used to direct people to do things that would otherwise widely regarded as unjust, possibly even to themselves.

This rather strongly suggests that, like property ownership and justice (and unlike Love), God is not objective; and we find that there is very little agreement on a social convention about God, though it is not clear that it would be any better for God to be a mere social convention which the wise may safely regard as false and the rulers (or unscrupulous) may rightly regard as useful.

(TL;DR: I disagree — Love is objective, and property ownership / justice can be seen as useful social conventions with varying degrees of agreement throughout society. Comparing God to love is incorrect for the reasons you noted, and to ownership / justice is not only unfair to ownership and justice, but also not what you might want in a God.)

“Truth is transcendent and immutable?”  Yet the truth you cite as an example (“All men are equal under the law”) isn’t an immutable truth, but a useful convention of recent origin, which we neither follow perfectly nor can we logically demonstrate it.

People are not equal in fact, in capacities or resources or temperaments.  Deciding to treat them equally under the law anyways seems to promote a well-ordered egalitarian society.  We also have extreme examples, such as the mentally ill, the brain-dead, small children, etc., who are not treated “equally” under the law, even in theory.  In practice, your success with the legal system depends on how much “equality” the money in your bank account can buy, and society as a whole doesn’t seem too troubled by that particular inequity.

Which brings up the question:  what definition of “truth” are you using?   And what specific examples of universal truths can you give us to demonstrate that “Truth” apart from scientific inquiry actually exists?

The first point is that we seem to have been on an accelerating technological curve for tens of thousands of years.  Domestication of animals, the creation of fire and language and mathematics and reason, the use of the wheel, metalworking, even agriculture, all were huge technological breakthroughs that freed up people to specialize in things beyond subsistence.  Thus, each breakthrough opened the way for more frequent breakthroughs in the future.

It’s a classic self-accelerating trend.  It’s misguided to point to any point on an exponential curve and claim that here — HERE — is where things really took off.  You’re placing the starting date of the revolution at 33AD.  I could just as easily place the starting date of the technopocalypse at 1830, when Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Ascension of Mohammed in 620.  What fun.

Second, if we start from the premise that this technological explosion had to happen *sometime*, wouldn’t we expect the religion that was predominant at the time to have had relatively recent origin?  I mean, the requirements for a long-standing and widespread religion would have had to be in place (the written word, for example).  There isn’t much chance that we’d be worshiping Tuk-Luk, the god who helped Og miraculously survive a sabre-toothed tiger attack.

To approach the same subject from another angle, darwinian evolution seems to govern religions as well as critters:  those which are best suited to the needs of believers tend to thrive, while less well adapted ones fall by the wayside.  So new religions tend to be more common at any given moment than old ones.

While I’m sure Mark Twain would be proud, archaic and homey terminology does not an argument make.

Ooh, a tone troll right off the bat. Verily my monocle did shoot straight off my eye and I almost fell off my leather chaise perched atop my steam boat when you hit me with that witty rejoinder.

Codswallop is a pretty common expression in Australia and I thought you might appreciate me expressing my derision in less vulgar ways. Instead of say calling you “a fucking moron”, which was the first thing that went through my mind when I read your inane post.

Well it’s good to know the bastion of intellect and rigorous scholarship called Wikipedia has spoken.  One might think man bereft of learning otherwise.

Ooh a telling shot sir, you’ve cut me to the quick. Wait…, wait, no you haven’t. Wikipedia has it’s flaws I’ll grant you, but I’ll put more trust in it than the delirium dreams of a bronze age, genocidal  goat-fucker.

Why? Because every assertion can examined and challenged. But by trotting out this truth is above facts what you’re really saying is the Bible/Quoran/whatever is above examination and challenge.

“Pay no attention to that imaginary friend behind the curtain.” You thunder.

But at the end of the day it’s a sly argument from the Bible, carefully repackaged to have all of the serial numbers ground off. And if you can’t prove it then it isn’t real in my book.

For fucks sake this is an article about a kid’s cartoon series from 1969. Where a bunch of inept, stoner teenagers harass shonky businessmen with a rubber fetish.

Real evil doesn’t wear masks. Real evil has an excellent tailor.

Do you see atheist making broad statements like “Dawkins has great hair, that’s why the bible is wrong.” on Veggie Tales forums?

At the end of this I must apologize to all of you other readers for my angry rant. As Professor Internets says just walk away. Anything you do now now is a better use of your time.

And so I do safe in the knowledge that I’ll never change your mind, coffee100. Your belief is too strong. But you’ll never change mine because my reason is far stronger.

But yeah, that’s the dilemma for skeptics trying to embrace this show. If it’s a cartoon fantasy where a dog can talk, why not set it in a world where other fantastic or supernatural things can happen.

What a colossal load of codswallop.

While I’m sure Mark Twain would be proud, archaic and homey terminology does not an argument make.

Yes there is a thing called title and it can be proved.

 Laws, titles and contracts are pieces of paper with words on them.  They are evidence, not conclusions and not proof.  It is not possible to “prove” ownership of a house any more than it is possible to prove someone was taught to speak French.

Claiming evidence is proof is simply utilizing an imprecise definition of the word “proof.”

which were developed by everyone in society agreeing upon certain definitions and conventions

QED

Wikipedia defines facts as “something that has really occurred or is actually the case.”

Well it’s good to know the bastion of intellect and rigorous scholarship called Wikipedia has spoken.  One might think man bereft of learning otherwise.

Facts are truth and truth is full of facts.

Please describe the facts from which the truth “all men are equal under the law” is derived.

Facts are simply accurate.  Truth is transcendent and immutable.

Your god is a tiny god of gaps, scurrying in the dark corners of the library of our minds, constantly fleeing the light of inquiry and reason.

 
God dwells in the heart, where He bids men rejoice in truth.