I love Pink Floyd and some hippy era stuff too obviously. I think I was probably getting at the idea of mental stagnation, where people listen to the same music they liked when they were 19 over and over and over again and are never open to anything new. Can't really remember though, it was a long time ago and I think I was probably just being controversial... Fashion is all about wanting to conform with a group whether you're wearing the hippy uniform of tie-dye and bright colours or boho chic. I've never cared about the way people look or understood why it's so important, so yes when I see someone wearing a uniform of any kind I can't help but think they are conformist drones. Wanting to fit in is a universal human instinct but claiming that you're expressing your individuality while wearing the same uniform as everyone else is laughably hypocritical... Well if that was a revelation to you then I have to say you've misunderstood what most atheists believe. It is not a logically supportable position to say that something definitely does not exist, that's a logical fallacy, it is not possible to prove a universal negative. Atheism is simply an absence of belief until evidence is forthcoming. Science is all about "what if", there is no possibility of discovering new things without thinking to yourself "what if". There is also no 100% closure in a rational approach, far from it, we need to be prepared to re-evauate everything we believe in the light of evidence. There have been lots of examples in the history of science where this has happened, in fact it's totally central to whole process, which is precisely why I think it is the most robust method of gaining knowledge. Its conditional, tentative conclusions are tempered with intellectual humility. As such you're not actually criticising or arguing against anything I've said or anything I actually believe but simply railing against a faulty understanding of it or a straw man. To caricature scepticism and rational enquiry as closed mindedness as you seem to be doing here is simply to misunderstand it. Woah there! Where's your evidence for this? On the contrary evidence from the cutting edge of cognitive neuroscience is suggesting that the physical brain is indeed the seat of consciousness and experience and we're starting to figure out the mechanisms by which phenomena like consciousness and perception might occur. There is no known mechanism by which thought or personality could survive the physical death of the brain. I will withhold belief in that until there's a solitary scrap of evidence suggesting that might be the case... Thanks for your comments
