I can't be a scientist because I don't believe in God.

If we really want to face the death of God, said Nietzsche, we must not put anything else in his throne.

There is a piece of a matrix of ideas in my head, the tail ends of ideas that are bigger than me, stronger than me, against which I compare my own strength to determine whether I am strong. Against which I determine my own truth or falsehood, guilt or innocence. And if I do not know one or the other, the tails and framgents tell me that the either/or is out there, somewhere. It is in God -- the God we dress up as reason. We may not call it God, but it lives and dies as God lives and dies.

Without this matrix there is no shame. And in my own blind thrashing to escape my shame, I have mortally wounded it. And now I am an Earth unchained from it's Sun.

The verification and enumeration, the exploration of God's beautiful, trustworthy consistencies -- is impossible for me. There is no possibility anymore, for me to live happily as a scientist.

I am happy, now, for me, but I am afraid for us. If everyone made the decision that I have made, there would be no way to hold us together. Does anyone know a way to hold a society together with a truly empty throne?

time_three: aye, how quickly indeed. I know that morality without God is possible, eventually, but I agree with Nietzsche that the interim will be nasty business.

makes some geezer noise then says...well, son... sounds to me like you have a healthier take on this god thing than most of them there so-called Christians. In Skinny Legs and All, Tom Robbins muses about the Judeo Christian God being created as a way of rejecting the nonrational (yin) aspects of God. The astoundingly stupid irony is that your self-denoted scientists and self-proclaimed skeptics are even more yang than the religion that drove them to it in the first place.

Regarding the empty throne or anarchy, as it might be. You ever notice how kids get along fine until their parents come home? Morality without authority and/or morality without god might just be the sort of thing that allows one to be truly moral. Taking it a step further to consider morality without judgment, I wonder if the whole morality without bundle might be shooting for morality without a rational center.

Both morality and rationality exist, as does society. If you consider society to be important, you then (rationally) have a guideline for your actions. How quickly the structures reassert themselves. (and, by the way, if you keep at it, you'll find that god is one twisted character)

... nihilistic mystics ... kmdfm, megalomaniac

I built a god out of blood, not superiority
... I killed the king of deceit, now I sleep in anarchy
ibid, anarchy