"one needs but to disprove the idea that consciousness can exist without a human body to deliver it. Not that it'll be easy, but there is the task before the atheistic scientist"

Um,I don't THINK so.

The task before the atheistic scientist is to focus on things that can be done and to ignore the people who would insist on something as foolhardy as this. With time, this issue will take care of itself. In the same way that evolution is no longer an abomination, in the same way that race is no longer considered a biological indicator of inferiority (well except by racists), this too shall pass. Fifty years ago, sex before marriage was a scandal. Now it's the norm. People change, ways of thinking change, and even this religious zealotry will pass.

Scientists generally understand where the new religious zealotry is coming from. When threatened from the outside, people turn to religion and other diversions to create a sense of bonding and strength: turning against witches in Salem when the threat was starvation, turning against communists in the 50's when the fear was nuclear annihilation, and now turning TO religion when the right has us convinced there are terrorists who want to kill us for our freedom. It's why conservatives work so hard to promote fear and religion: the right uses these things as tools to keep the masses in line, to maintain control. Somehow, I doubt that a scientist able even to scientifically prove that consciousness cannot exist without a body would get much attention in the face of so much irrational thinking.

The thing for scientists to do in the meantime is to forget about burning bushes and disproving the existence of the soul---and to avoid spending too much energy thinking about this.

Like reading better things than THIS Armstrong interview in Salon! Despite congratulations from readers who enjoy contemplating the unknowable, I want to encourage Salon to come up with some topics that will be better than this! Preferably not about religion.

I personally would prefer hearing about Club Feds, ie what do white collar criminals face in prison terms these days? And what about the people who walked away from Enron with millions and millions and who seem to face no criminal charges? Have they gotten away scott free?

I would like to hear about Darfur and the conflicts between Arab and African muslims in that part of the world. How about a piece on the homeless in the US now? No one writes about the very poor anymore, and yet there are more of them than ever.

Speaking of the poor, Lalee's Kin was an excellent HBO documentary about poor people in the mississippi delta, made about 8 years ago. The people who made the film made a fortune and won alot of awards. So did HBO. But the poor black people in Mississippi (Lalee wallace and her family) are worse off than ever before. Why? what happens when HBO does a documentary about you? Why don't the film-makers feel any sense of obligation to help? Why doesn't HBO?

There are SOOOO many great things you could be giving us, and instead, we get religion.

Salon! What is up with your editors?!?!?!?

Thank you, thank you, thank you for articulating so well what I have privately thought and felt about religion for a long time. I've felt very lonely in this. :)

Who would Jesus bomb?

Impatient: "There are SOOOO many great things you could be giving us, and instead, we get religion."

You've probably come across the term 'off-topic' before, no? Thanks for the clear example.

(Last time I checked, 'religion' wasn't the only topic available on the front page of Salon. Maybe the editors missed some of your pet topics, but what site/magazine/news aggregation caters 100% to every one of their readers? You can always start your own blog to discuss stuff that interests you. Jesus... [so to speak])

I still hope that jg will weigh in also, and whoever else has thoughtful comments. Meanwhile, thank you all for yours.

Impatient, impatience is the problem. I like Ben's definition of atheism better than Richard Dawkins', but I do believe that Richard Dawkins stated with a certainty that God does not exist. It's all very well to be impatient with the two billion people who believe in the Abrahamic religions alone, but you might as well be impatient with an avalanche for falling. Better to deal with the practical realities you face, which is:

Your own scientists are having their work interfered with, and funding cut for projects that could be vital to human life, because of religion. Do you dispute that? And I see nothing impossible about proving to a reasonable certainty that telepathy, or consciousness not being contained in a human body, could not occur. If it cannot, then all the mystical underpinnings of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam must be false.

"Let them disprove telepathy, and the possibility of consciousness beyond the body, and they'll have disproved Islam, Christianity, and Judaism."

Again, your logic is jumping a gap here. Telepathy might very well exist (let's keep an open mind, right?), and yet its existence neither proves nor disproves the tenets of the major religions. Nowhere is it stated that telepathy was the sole agent used to convey divine messages to the messengers. Nor does extra-body consciousness prove or disprove anything.

Thank you deluxe. I didn't mean to imply that the proof of telepathy, for example, would confirm the Abrahamic religions, only that the _disproof_ of it would conclusively _disprove_ Mohammed's channeling of Gabriel, and therefore the entire basis for the Islamic faith. Ditto telepathy, or consciousness without a body, for similar episodes in Christian and Jewish scripture. To prove it, on the other hand, would simply confirm one of the underpinnings of that faith, not the entire faith itself. I would have made this clearer in a letter to the scientists of the world, but I figured I'd talked a long while here as it was.

It is really unfortunate that Armstrong left the Catholic Church. I hardly recognized her description of it. But Catholic doctrine, ironically, permeates her comments in the interview.

The rosary offers meditations on different sets of events that comprise the heart and soul of Catholic doctrine. Those events are called "mysteries." No one can explain them. No living person can verify them. One can only meditate on them in order to try to connect with their relevance to one's life and the essence of God.

Catholicism adopts a critical approach to reading the Scriptures. That is, to accept the essential truths but to read and reflect on the text in the context of the times and the interpretations as passed down through the scriptural and early apostolic traditions. Not even the canonical Gospels are considered to be "all-inclusive" or a comprehensive biography of Jesus Christ.

The one thing that is certain to me, in reflecting on this mysterious, perplexing, frustrating, and ultimately fulfilling faith is that none of us can capture the Essence of a limitless God. Jesus often spoke in parables and allusions. Perhaps it was because he sensed that the essence of God was too big for us to grasp, so He used terms and themes that we could understand.

Ultimately, the essence of faith is belief without knowledge. I cannot offer any quantitative or ontological proof of a God. You want proof of a carpenter who fed thousands, cured the sick and the blind, and rose from the dead after 3 days? I can't give it to you, player. But I believe in it, and in the Idea of a God that requires constant meditation and personal evaluation.

In the end, faith requires acceptance of an implausible premise and the stomach to try to understand the premise. That's all Jesus was trying to get us to do.

Isn't that what Ms. Armstrong is talking about now?