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New Documentary Chronicles Road Tripping Scientists Promoting Reason
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Dennis Overbye reports in the NY Times that two years ago Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss set off on a barnstorming tour to save the world from religion and promote science. Their adventure is now the subject of The Unbelievers, a new documentary. 'If you think a road trip with a pair of intellectuals wielding laptops is likely to lack drama, you haven't been keeping up with the culture wars,' writes Overbye. The scientists are mobbed at glamorous sites like the Sydney Opera House. Inside, they sometimes encounter clueless moderators; outside, demonstrators condemning them to hellfire. At one event, a group of male Muslim protesters are confronted by counterprotesters chanting, 'Where are your women?' 'Travelogue shots, perky editing and some popular rock music, as well as interview bits with such supportive celebrities as Woody Allen, Cameron Diaz, Sarah Silverman and Ricky Gervais, shrewdly enliven the brainy — but accessible — discourse,' writes Gary Goldstein in the LA Times, 'but mostly the movie is an enjoyably high-minded love fest between two deeply committed intellectuals and the scads of atheists, secularists, free-thinkers, skeptics and activists who make up their rock star-like fan base.' The movie ends at the Reason Rally in Washington, billed as the largest convention of atheists in history. Dawkins looks out at the crowd standing in a light rain and pronounces it 'the most incredible sight I can remember ever seeing' and declares that too many people have been cowed out of coming out as atheists, secularists or agnostics. 'We are far more numerous than anybody realizes.'"
You can be religious and be a secularist, that was a position of the Baptist Church in the New World since the beginning.
They believe, but you want them to understand. It's not going to work.
Where is it available? Or it has not been finalized yet?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What's to fear? I cheerily inform folks that I do not believe in their particular sky faery. Should I expect violence? Condemnation? Whatever.
If you're afraid to publicly affirm what you believe, you probably don't deserve your beliefs.
Why don't they take their tour into the Middle East, maybe to countries such as Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Egypt ?
I'll like to see how successful they are in convincing the Muslims.
Stop telling the non-Muslims how defective religion is - most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Science doesn't need to disprove anything since there is no reason to believe in a god in the first place. Even if there is a god, it doesn't mean that any of the junk in the bible, koran, bhagavad gita, or harry potter is true.
http://thepiratebay.ac/torrent/8495137/Rise_of_the_New_Atheists_(_Unbelievers_Movie_2013)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100920/03361311077/richard-dawkins-points-fan-to-the-pirate-bay-to-see-his-latest-documentary.shtml
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
And how many Muslims do you know? Most Muslims also know when NOT to use religion. There are more than a billion of them - if half a billion of them did not know when to use it, I think we might have a tad bigger problem that we currently do.
Remember, the kooks you see on TV are like the kooks you see for other religions as well - they are the minority. Hell, the way faith is involved in politics in the US and informs policy decision (veiled as some other excuse) has done far more harm to the LGBT community than most other religions.
Sounds like an anti-religion religion. I assume the goal was to get a lot of converts to atheism. Do they encourage their followers to read about science every day and share with others?
It all sounds so eerily familiar. Apparently the techniques of mass persuasion are pretty much universal.
"Science hasn't "disproven" the existence of *any* supernatural being, just as it hasn't "proven" the existence either."
It isn't up to science to disprove the existence of god or whatever you want to call it. As Sagan so eloquently put it "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and religion doesn't like to produce evidence.
On other hand though, when you look at how many gods mankind has believed in over the millennia (approximately 3000) the odds that the one particular god currently favoured is the right one is pretty darn small so as far as disproving it, no you're right, the particular favourite god of the moment (and this will change as it always does) may not be disproven, but it in no way stands out any more than all these other gods ever did and as such the probability that this god is any more real than any of the others is very tiny indeed. I certainly wouldn't go betting my life on being right about which one to pick.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Hard to explain it much better than that...
Science hasn't "disproven" the existence of *any* supernatural being, just as it hasn't "proven" the existence either.
Science doesn't have to disprove their existence. The basic idea behind science is pretty simple: prove it or it isn't real. As soon as your system of though allows any claim to be made with out verification, sanity goes out the window. In science, were I to claim that PI = 3, I would be laughed at as a quack and an idiot, and yet people can claim that there is an ancient jewish zombie and an invisible sky bully that rule the universe and nobody will call them out for being bald faced liars.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Science cannot prove or disprove something that by its definition is *beyond* science
by definition? you are just making that up. that's bullshit.
our current understanding does not explain many things. that does not mean they are all part of the set of unknowable or non-understandable things.
other than that, I'm not sure what else 'beyond' could mean, in this context. what exactly _do_ you mean by 'beyond'?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Science doesn't disprove anything.
Isn't the only thing you actually can do in science? Disprove or fail to disprove, but there is no prove.
Stop telling the non-Muslims how defective religion is - most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
I think Dawkins would say the role of religion is not to exist. That he would say that theism works against our interests more than it helps, so he would say no Christians understand the proper role of religion.
As for the spirit of your statements, there are so many extreme Christians in the United States, quiverful, southern baptists, LDS, etc. and so many middle-class average Christians who toy with theocratic ideas, that there seems to be a very real reason to proselytize atheism, if that would be your political desire, as it is for Dawkins. I can see an argument being made that its more important to advance the quality, culturally and intellectually, of the first world countries than to focus on improving other countries.
There may also be more people who are susceptible to ideological conversion and more people who could be affected by their message generally in the "Western" world.
There are language and cultural barriers that would make it less useful to tour the middle east.
And how many Muslims do you know? Most Muslims also know when NOT to use religion.
The statistics from Britain, where something like 30% Muslims want the UK to become a SA-like theocracy, speak a little different. Or are you suggesting that the majority of Muslims in other countries is less extreme than those living in the relatively liberal UK?
Ezekiel 23:20
"two years ago Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss set off on a barnstorming tour to save the world from religion and promote science."
That is exactly the wrong way to do things. I'm not going to argue whether it is reasonable or not to believe in both science or religion, because regardless of that if you frame an argument as A is wrong and B is right then everyone who already believes in A is going to get defensive and angry and be even _less_ likely to accept B.
If that's not actually a misrepresentation and he's actually approaching the perceived problem by trying to bludgeon the opposing side into adopting his beliefs then he's doomed to failure, and the whole things is really just a "feel good" tour for atheists to feel superior about their "enlightened" beliefs.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Science doesn't need anything, its science. The last thing I'd hope anyone would try using it to do, would be to prove an un-provable statement. That would seem to be the atheist version of heresy.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Dawkins can be obnoxious.
Rush Limbaugh is simultaneously obnoxious, obviously devoid of integrity in his stated purpose, and doesn't listen to the people he is meant to interview or debate. Oh, and he's a demagogue, intentionally playing against the passions and prejudices of his audience for personal gain.
Rush is worse
Scenario one) You've only had five twenty-minute cigarette breaks this morning and feel that there's imminent danger of actually having to work for your wages. Religion to the rescue!!! It's prayer time again. Off for a long hour.
Scenario two) You need to enroll an army of willing halfwits to kill themselves to further your own personal political agenda; Religion the the rescue!!! Fire up the hell-and-brimstone speech to arouse hatred of The Unbelievers and pack your new army off to the airport with exploding jackets beneath robes.
Scenario three) Anyone?...
What you have is two different world views, that lack a single frame of reference to have an honest dialog. Doing anything other than trying to establish such a frame of reference ( which is what Dawkins et all do), is fruitless.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
First thing one should focus on to learn reason is logical fallacies, and the False Dichotomy, for example, "Reason versus religion", is right up toward the top.
What Dawkins et al are selling isn't reason, it's Logical Positivism, which has rather thoroughly run aground as of about 30 years ago. Not all questions are resolvable by empiricism and scientific method. Epistemology is far wider than that. Is rock music good? Prove it.
I'll get into the Reification Fallacy, that "not-X" is not something, it is nothing, regardless of what "X" is--including theism--another day.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Don't these sociopaths realize that people cling to their guns and religion? What happens when you take away their religion? Hmm?
But I jest. From an atheist viewpoint, religion serves a valuable purpose: to keep the real sociopaths in line. The only reason they don't run rampant is because they believe in Heaven/Hell, and God's omniscience. Atheists like Marx believe that religion is the opiate of the masses, but they're fools to tell anyone that!
And how many Muslims do you know?
In the thousands ?
And I am not kidding.
Of the people that I know many of them are Muslims.
Many of them are very bright, except for one thing - you just can NOT discuss religion (or faith) thing with them.
Unlike the Buddhists or Christians or Jews where you can have civil discussion, or even debates on matter pertaining to whether if there is a "God" or matter such as "If the different religion worship the same God" or the very act of suicide bombing killing the innocent can be call "a service to God" ... you just can't have such discussion with the Muslims.
My background being from a Communist country (during the time I left China it was VERY ANTI-RELIGION) I can see the point from *both* the anti-religion standpoint and from the "God is my savior" standpoint.
I can have civil discussion with the Jews, with the Buddhists, with the Hindus, and with the Christians, in matters that I outlined above, but so far, the Muslims just can't discuss it civilly.
For them, anything that "threaten" and/or "weaken" their "belief in Allah" is "blasphemous" --- and in the discussion, I certainly never even have the thought of "weaken their faith" at all, but the Muslims just don't take it kindly if anyone DARE to question their religion.
That is why I say, if those two scientists are REALLY SO CONCERN of the negative effect religion might do to human civilization, they should stop proselytizing in the street of Los Angeles or Sydney.
They should go to Saudi Arabia, or Yemen or Egypt or Tunisia or Iran, and try to make their point across to the Muslims.
Anything short of that they are preaching to the choir.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
START THE FLAME WARS!!!
People seem to think that not believing in a christianity, judaism or islam means that they have no beliefs. The belief in nothing is a belief. Religion is a collection of beliefs. Therefore atheism and agnosticism is a religion.
It could be argued that religion of atheism and agnostism has done more damage than any other.
I would say, however, if ones beliefs are based on proof or disproof, then one is a pretty scary person. The one thing that I have come to learn is that my beliefs are exactly that, mine, and are not respective of anything that might be proved or disproved. This does not mean that science is beyond me. I am perfectly aware that when I flip a light switch I complete a circuit that heat up a filament(or excites a gas) that causes photons to be emitted. I do not believe that when I flip a switch that I am performing some ritual that causes the almighty to create light.
And even though I have worked through kepler's law, have worked out the deviations in the orbits classical and modern theories, I still believe that if no one dance the sun would not come back after winter. And I believe this not because no one can keep everyone from dancing at the solstice, but because it is pretty to think so. It matters not that reality does not fit the believe, or if no one else believes it. I am not going to go around supporting my ego by trying to convince everyone else it is true. I am not going to go out, like so many Christians, and kill those who do not believe, or kill children who might be effected by beliefs of others. I was raised to be content with my beliefs, and let other be content with thiers
So I will be grateful that there is such a wonderful place for us to live, and dance to express my thanks. I will pray in private and endeavor to treat people better than I expect to be treated, and sometimes just give people money because I can afford to, without any thought of how they will spend it. I will try not be attached to my stuff, as that absolutely leads to misery. I will remember that the world is somewhat effected by our actions, so if we want a world that is more to our liking, then we better in a way that could bring about such a world. Not expect others to live in a way that I would wish, because I can only be responsible for my actions, not others.
And if the people at reason magazine or the catholic church or the whereever are so insecure that need to demonize me, then so be it. I cannot be responsible for them.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Can Slashdot implement an alternate to the 'Anonymous Coward' sig?
I suggest 'Anonymous Nitwit'.
If they are SO REALLY CONCERN about religion ... Why don't they take their tour into the Middle East, maybe to countries such as Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Egypt ?
Maybe because atheism doesn't require martyrs? How is this +1Insightful?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
An honest dialog with a theologian? Most of the time, I have difficulty explaining the concept of an axiom (an assumption) to them, let alone getting them to realize that all statements fundamentally rely on them. Math grappled with this and formalized it over a century ago, and we're left with two main assumptions upon which the entirety of mathematics (and all of science by extension) are built. The difference here is that scientists can explicitly list the assumptions in their models, don't claim them to be the One Truth, and accept only falsifiable propositions beyond those axioms, whereas religious people seem incapable of accepting that their claims fundamentally rely on making one or more assumptions.
yes "by definition"
Yes, if you're talking about some teaching that is in dispute (existence of a 'god') then you have to look first to **those who believe in the thing** to define what it is they believe.
This is one of Dawkin's *biggest* shills...he pigeonholes anyone who isnt a hard atheist as believing in what Roman Catholics say. He makes *one* religious sect's views representative.
Classic straw man/red herring combo
But to definitions...it's a fools game to try to disprove a definition that is personal to every unique system yet uses the same term...'god'...some Jews teach that Yahweh or Hashim is a conscious entity that interacts with the world. Ex: The Burning Bush.
Some believe that it was an actual shrub that was on fire but did not get consumed, as the literal reading states...that is against science...
which would lead one to think that the literal account of a 'burning bush' was not true!
however, the believer can just put the whole quesiton into a bag, so to speak, and put a "supernatural miracle" label on it
it was a supernatural miracle by a supernatural being that functions beyond the laws of the universe as they see it
they can always that level of abstraction one step up the chain and say, "It was a miracle"
So just don't bother with the whole mess and ignore religious people who believe in God.
Now politics, say teaching Young-Earth creationism...that's **definitely** something we should all speak out against...but not b/c of 'atheism' but instead rally around science & the scientific method. Science and religion are separate things & one should not determine text teaching of the other in any combination!
It's a better argument b/c it avoids the false dictomies used by the opposition.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Most people are lazy and when it comes to actually thinking about something as opposed to having psuedoscience wrapped in religiousd claptrap as being ordained from on high or some other equally bullshit reason, the average meatsack out there will take the second option.
you need a hobby. Other than /.
Except that the blowhard is successfully trying to frame it as "people who don't agree with my pomposity are violent lunatics".
Rush may be worse...but IMHO it's closer than at first glance
Peel Rush's language away and he's a pure opportunist out to hustle for money/fame/power/recognition. Rush doesn't believe what he spouts.
Now, to Dawkins. He isn't a pure shill, he's an academic with a consistent approach. He's reasonable in conversation.
However, I'd argue that *both* are equally offensive in how they misrepresent **the other viewpoint** not just to make a rhetorical point, but it is foundational to their philosophical orientation.
If science can't prove *or* disprove a supernatural god then what point does Dawkins have? Why would anyone read his books?
He's not saying anything that hasn't been said for centuries...he's just doing it *now* and with University titles, degrees, positions, etc that make his opinion sell to the layman.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Or I could shoot myself in the head.
Of the two, the shooting choice is the far less annoying and insufferable.
I have difficulty explaining the concept of an axiom (an assumption)
Like the assumption that empirically derived knowledge is superior to other sources? That it's even useful beyond the short term? Who's to say the laws of reality are as stable as we think? The belief that "science doesn't have empirical evidence of miracle X, therefore it can't have happened" is a silly belief.
I think you missed the part where I stated that science makes its assumptions explicit rather than implicit. I didn't say anything about the validity of derived arguments from various sources of assumptions. I simply said that scientists make their assumptions explicit and religions deign not to, in general.
Science mostly disproves things. Adults who believe in imaginary friends probably have imaginary friends. The problem is if they believe their imaginary friends not to be imaginary; in other words: If they think that their imaginary friends share the physical realm with the rest of us, then they are mistaken. Science can easily disprove my assertion that my imaginary friend is physically standing in the room with me. It is far more difficult for Science to disprove my assertion that I have an imaginary friend, though I do not.
My bad.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Arguments about proof or disproof, or the burden of proof, miss the point. To Christians, "proof" of God's existence is irrelevant. It's like asking a parent to prove that they love their child, or like asking J K Rowling to prove that Harry Potter is a good read. The proper response is a blank stare, with options on laughing out loud at the extent to which the questioner just doesn't get it.
I have no interest in proving whether God does or doesn't exist. But why does it matter?
If that sentiment still baffles you, try substituting "free will" for "God". It's still true, and for precisely the same reasons: the concept itself is so poorly defined that proof one way or another would require so many assumptions and caveats that anyone who didn't want to believe it, would immediately laugh it out of court.
Science cannot prove or disprove something that by its definition is *beyond* science
by definition? you are just making that up. that's bullshit.
Uhhh, if I'm not mistaken, modern science is perdicated on naturalism. The idea is that ALL natural phenomena can ultimately be explained as due to the four known forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force). The existence of a God that can operate outside those four forces of nature is (ahem) "by definition" beyond science. Or so it would seem to me. Of course, this does not mean that the modern scientist has nothing to say to the modern theist. For example, it would be good for the modern theist to consider the reasons why the modern scientist is pretty certain that the Universe is ~15 billion years old and not 6000 years old. Or (again) so it would seem to me.
other than that, I'm not sure what else 'beyond' could mean, in this context. what exactly _do_ you mean by 'beyond'?
In this case, it could mean an effect which has no cause grounded in this Universe. I am not sure if that is what globaljustin meant, but that is one possibility. What other possibilities do you see for what he could have meant by "beyond"?
The statistics from Britain, where something like 30% Muslims want the UK to become a SA-like theocracy, speak a little different. Or are you suggesting that the majority of Muslims in other countries is less extreme than those living in the relatively liberal UK?
That sounds like crap to me. Is there a credible, robust, citation to that?
soylentnews.org
Um... I imagine if Martin Luther translated the bible to any language it was German, not English. King James was one of those who translated it to English.
As far as your rant against AWG, I thought American wire gauge was not controversial.
Oh, I get it, you're talking about anthropogenic global warming. You know the beauty of science is that it's self correcting because it's based on an underlying reality that is not something that can be manipulated by humans. If the climate scientists are promulgating politically motivated science then sooner or later they will be found out and disgraced. The fact that there has been active opposition to their position for over 20 years and extremely active opposition for over a decade and they still haven't seriously dented the existing theory is an indication to me that the basics of climate science are probably good science. Maybe someone will come up with something like what plate tectonics was to geology but I wouldn't bet on it at this point.
I do not believe that when I flip a switch that I am performing some ritual that causes the almighty to create light.
I still believe that if no one dance the sun would not come back after winter.
I'm failing to see how the two scenarios aren't similar. For both, you were given, and did not personally discover, the model which describes them. Yet, despite claiming to believe the generally accepted model, you immediately give an example of how you disbelieve the generally accepted model, because it's "pretty".
You are a case study in why it's difficult to have rational discussions with irrational people. They'll only accept something once the odds are so overwhelmingly stacked against them that they'd look like idiots to their fellows irrationals. Arguments from emotion do not a rational discussion make.
Atheist trolls are just as bad as religious trolls. Non-productive, proving nothing except pats on one's own back are awesome.
Why do you think that the favorite god of the moment will change? When has any other god but God of capital G fame ever had over 50% of the faith-share worldwide (Abrahamic religion). I don't disagree that mankind has believed in countless gods and does so to this day, I just find it more likely that mankind will either favor atheism/agnosticism or the one God. I doubt there will ever be another favorite. The scientific method has allowed us to discover that the world works its magics according to physical principals. The planet doesn't need constant intervention by the god of rain, the god of sun, the god of goats' milk, the god of purple lillies with yellow spots. No good reason for more than one god, and some think, "Why have God at all?"
Well, that and the fact that LGBT is gross.
If atheism is such a positive, why hide it? Why wasn't this article titled "Road-tripping atheists promoting atheism"?
You can measure, then whack around with the data using statistical methods. It's called "Social Science. "
Depends on who's asking and who's reading it. Polls are notoriously unreliable. Social science has a long way to go.
So why don't they take their road show to Iran or Saudi Arabia?
Conservative, mod down for violating
Actually, it's the other way around. Take the Loch Ness Monster, for example. It can be clearly and obviously proven to exist: catch one, point to it and say "See, there it is!" It's very obvious proof. However, I cannot similarly disprove its existence: I cannot point to the absence of the monster and say "See, there it is not!" Perhaps the monster is just somewhere else you haven't yet looked?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Science has also disproven many claims about god. True, as a totally abstract concept with no specific definition, god cannot be disproven. But as soon as scripture is written, it cannot help but make specific claims about the nature of god and the universe. In general those claims have not weathered well under the ever further-reaching methods of science.
Hope this helps. Here is some more. Think we can find similar numbers for any other religion?
Yep. I call the ones that need to convert others to their "non-belief" proselytizing Atheists. Capitalization intentional.
If someone says "all trees are hollow inside," you can disprove that by opening up a few trees and showing that they are solid through and through.
Or if someone says "sound travels faster than light," this can easily be disproven by experiment.
do your own research. lazy OR stupid. not both.
"Supernatural" means "magical". He doesn't believe in magic and he thinks its childish for others to believe in magic. He defends that position fairly.
"Depends on who's asking and who's reading it. Polls are notoriously unreliable. Social science has a long way to go."
I agree with the guy who replied just above you. These polls (no matter their results) are pretty much always garbage.
They HAVE been found out and disgraced. Look up Phil Jones. Look up comments from climate scientists who left the IPCC because it has become a joke.
Citation of MIT scientists that used to work on IPCC panel now thinks they have become a joke.
Citation 2 Phil Jones deleted data about 5 years after being legally required to share it for peer review. Deleting data to prevent an "arch-nemisis" from seeing it is NOT scientific, it is a desperate act to stop your corruption from being found out.
Its only idiots like you that REFUSE to acknowledge the truth that keeps it going.
Here are claims - And then reality:
More hurricanes every year - Reality is quiter hurricane season each year.
No record lows recorded anymore - Reality is over 1000 record lows have been recorded recently (Including a world record low recorded in 2010)
Average temps will increase - Reality is warming stopped 17 years ago
What you say HAS happened. You are aparently too stupid to actuallty READ anything on the subject because you "know it all already". I would rather debate a "bible thumper" because they can actually POINT to where their ideas come from, you just repeat crap that has been debunked for over 5 years and pretend it is still relevent. You are not scientific, you are worse than the most ignorant bible thumper out there.
That's incorrect. Dawkins has acknowledged many times that deities could exist, but we have no reason to believe in them (empirical or a priori). Any such insults are directed at the arguments of people who profess to have such a legitimate reason to believe in a particular deity. And he's right to. Such arguments are invariably foolish at best.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
oops, mismodded.
No. Modern science is predicated on the explicit stating of assumptions, and the formulation of a model from falsifiable hypotheses. It does not speculate that the Universe is only exactly as we know it. Instead, it explicitly says that we could be wrong, often are wrong, and presents a mechanism to process these new inputs. As for "supernatural"--the word is useless. If it exists, if it has any sort of existence, effect, instantiation, etc. (pick a word.. modern dictionaries reduce everything to "essence", effectively, just try looking up the core word in any given definition repeatedly, over and over. You'll always wind up at the same small subset of words.), then it is part of the Universe, even if we're not aware of it, and is natural.
I guess I'm thinking of scientific theories. You can't prove that the theory of relativity is true, but only fail to disprove it given the existing data.
I'm guessing now...
I think the theory, "there is a Loch Ness Monster" is not a valid scientific theory because as you demonstrated, it's not falsifiable.
To make it a scientific theory, you'd need to invert it and make the theory, "there is no Loch Ness Monster". This is falsifiable, for the same reason you demonstrated.
I think this is a lot more simple. What complicates it are people's egos that demand they aggressively defend a position, and that's incredibly frustrating when it's a position derived from faith. No wonder they get so upset. The ego can't lose, yet it has nothing to defend itself with at all, and that's an animal backed into a corner. Reason solves that problem, but requires maturity at several levels to implement.
Even positions derived from science and reason can be fanatically defended by scientists that don't want to listen to any arguments that may just force them to reevaluate their position. Scientists can have huge egos in that regard, and I think we see quite a bit of problems evidenced by all the articles about publishing and reproducibility problems. They are not perfect either, and subject to the same periods when they lack reason as well.
Faith is actually a very simple thing to deal with once you remove ego from the equation. Easier said than done, I know.
I personally believe such and such to be true, despite the complete lack of evidence supporting it. I know there is nothing to support the position, therefore I don't attempt to hold anyone else to the code of conduct that the position demands. It's my faith. Go get your own.
I'm not atheist. I believe in many, many, concepts and abstract ideas derived from decades of ontological excursions into my inner self, and attempting to use that knowledge to explain the world.
Quite often I don't feel included in Dawkins movement against reason having been replaced with religion. That's a shame, because they're is not all that much we disagree on at all. I do feel that reason must be used in our governance and construction of our "base" reality, and faith can be a personal thing not regulated or subject to governance.
It's not required that I reject everything not solely based upon reason to participate in such a movement, yet I experience quite the opposite. Even around here.
Those that make the fanatical demand to only adhere to reason are just as much a problem as the religious fanatics IMHO.
The concept of free will is well established within mathematics. In fact, mathematics has one of the better treatments of the subject, due to the crisis caused by Russell/Whitehead/Frege/Hilbert/etc.. Most of mathematics uses the axiom of choice (the ability to select an element of a set without any priori knowledge or rule) and this is equivalent to free will. The other alternative is the axiom of determinacy (the ability to select an element of a set is only possible with an a priori rule or knowledge). So, is 2 too many to work with for you?
Richard Dawkins is just another evangelist, evangelising his own beliefs and making a good buck out of it. There's no difference between Richard Dawkins and any other religious leader, they're all just peddling their own ideas about the nature of things, when in actual fact they have nothing but faith and belief that they are right, without any empirical evidence support their claims.
How would Richard Dawkins know if there is a god or not? How would he know if spirituality is a real tangible force in this universe or not? He should know better (and probably does).
All these "proven" facts are actually called discoveries. As a result of disproving older beliefs/theories, men were forced to hypothesize new ones. And then these were disproven, or partially disproven and new facts were discovered, leading to a more complete picture of the truth, leading to more disproving and discovering and on it still goes to this day.
GP is right, science primarily disproves.
Those that make the fanatical demand to only adhere to reason are just as much a problem as the religious fanatics IMHO.
In a way, you're as fanatical, as is everyone. Everyone thinks that morality is something. I'm a relativist, so the only point I'm fanatical about is that morality is different for everyone, and we should keep that in mind when constructing social contracts and trying to be good to each other. Yet, I'm absolutely fanatical about this point, because I live by it, and think other's should, too. Whatever it is, you have an actionable belief that you think is the proper one, which you have clearly indicated by suggesting that Dawkins is just as fanatical as "religious fanatics".
What does fanatic mean? Here's my definition, your reason for acting the way you are acting is absurd. It is a personal judgement. So I avoid the word. The problem is you don't agree, 100%, with Dawkins method, and you don't think he should be trying to convert people to his method. Also, I bet Dawkins is more flexible in his appreciation of slightly differing philosophies than many religions.
I did a quick search and found this saying 40%:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1510866/Poll-reveals-40pc-of-Muslims-want-sharia-law-in-UK.html
Many of [the Muslims I know] are very bright, except for one thing - you just can NOT discuss religion (or faith) thing with them.
To be fair, that's not exclusive to religious people. I've found strong narrow-mindedness in ivory towers as well.
As a personal anecdote, I chatted up a researcher from the VLA last August about his dark matter research. Big mistake. He could entertain no notions that weren't scientific dogma, but at the same time he couldn't cite experiments to refute anything in conflict with it. I was astonished at his certainty of belief - enough to remember the incident among a week's memories of Burning Man.
If you want your own anecdote, log on to the #statistics chatroom and ask any question that tugs at the foundation of why some things are the way they are. For example, ask why regression minimizes the squared error and not some other measure. The historical reason might surprise you, but check out the tone of the responses you get!
If you have been keeping track, many religious zealots post to slashdot. Ask economists to explain why "a little" inflation is good and what the optimum value should be without glaring flaws in the assumptions or "proof by opinion" or "proof by telling a story". Read any [scientific] article about obesity and survey the responses - many schools of thought are argued with rabid certainty, and no consensus.
Taking a completely evidence-based stand is really hard. Is free access to guns good for a society? The evidence-based answer is particularly well hidden because of framing, misused statistics, and emotional appeal.
I don't think anyone makes completely rational choices, myself included. It's mostly "strength of belief", that you get from listening to others, who themselves don't make rational choices.
I have no qualms against atheists nor people who believe in the supernatural. It doesn't bother me that either group of people exists. I do have an issue with those in these groups that ascribe to a system of hate and exclusion in order to identify the who's with them and who's against them. Ironically, the most extreme members of these particular types of folks so often fail to see they are what they hate. They operate in the same ways - they identify themselves as part of an enlightened, exclusive group that is superior to the other and engages in spreading that belief to others.
I was recently at our local high school football game and an older couple was passing out Richard Dawkins DVDs to the crowd. How is that any different than a holy roller passing out Bible tracts at a football game? How is Richard Dawkins going off on a barnstorming tour to save the world from religion different than Billy Graham going on a world tour to save the souls of the lost?
Science tells me that its understand of the laws of physics stops at a black hole's singularity? Does that mean I disbelieve the singularity exists because science has no way of describing the singularity? Superstring theory tells me that 10 dimensions of spacetime exist and bosonic string theory 26. Is it then possible that, if true, we can't (yet? ever?) comprehend events or life that takes place beyond our 3 dimensions of existence or that events from these dimensions can affect the reality of ours? Why is it when we speak of entangled quantum particles separated by billions of miles affecting each other instantaneously as a valid theory yet the very real experiences a significant amount of humanity have had and can only explain that it was God (does it matter that they call that experience Buddha, Jesus, Marduk, or Zeus?) as ignorant ramblings? That is, why exactly hasn't religion gone away after all this time?
I guess all I'm saying is, ignoring the veracity of the content of Dawkin's beliefs, simply recognize Dawkin's actions for what it is: I'm better than those folks over there and if you're smart you'd join my side and liberate yourself from your current misguided life. Personally, I choose to keep a more open mind to possible explanations of reality than Dawkins and (insert religious fundamentalist figurehead here) choose to.
I firmly and passionately believe in the flying spaghetti monster. Anyone who doesn't will be damned to eternally eating badly cooked pasta.
OK. Don't buy that one, eh?
I'll go along with W.C. Fields, "Everyone should believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink."
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
And how many Muslims do you know?
In the thousands ?
And I am not kidding.
Of the people that I know many of them are Muslims.
Many of them are very bright, except for one thing - you just can NOT discuss religion (or faith) thing with them.
Unlike the Buddhists or Christians or Jews where you can have civil discussion, or even debates on matter pertaining to whether if there is a "God" or matter such as "If the different religion worship the same God" or the very act of suicide bombing killing the innocent can be call "a service to God" ... you just can't have such discussion with the Muslims.
Fair enough. I do not have this experience (as I rarely discuss religion with anyone - people tend to treat agnostics as easier to convert than atheists). However, I wonder how much that has to do with the questions. Suicide bombings (while vile) tend to put people on the defensive - I certainly know people get touchy when you take the worst examples of their history and hold it up for criticism, especially if you do not show in depth knowledge of their religion (especially Muslims in US might be more sensitive, because of a perceived bias against them)
When you said they don't know when to "use" religion, I didn't know how to interpret it (and I still don't) - most religious people I meet never "use" their religion in any way, apart from going to a temple/church/mosque, and observing a few traditions - and that isn't really a "use", more like a habit. As a result, I took (from the tone of your post) the term "use" to mean justification of an action, especially unpleasant ones.
OTOH, I totally feel Dawkins has gone overboard (as has Bill Maher, etc). Look, we get it - they don't like religious people (and maybe with good reason). But have they really converted anyone who was a practicing religious person? Not in the sense of "Meh, I go to church once in a while" type of person, but a devout believer? What are they trying to prove by bashing religions and getting people defensive? Any time they want to work on practical stuff (overturning bad legislation, for example), I'll support them. But forgive me if I don't just want to get into a religious person's face and try to make them feel live morons.
Now given a few links, do you still think it sounds like crap?
> he would say that theism works against our interests more than it helps ...
Dawkins especially believes that Christians have no business working in science. The oft-quoted example is how years ago, geological strata were described as "pre flood" (or ante-diluvian, to use the right term) and "post flood." This is used as an example of how science was deliberately hampered by religious people who insisted that there was a flood, complete with a boat filled with animals and a guy named Noah.
He's right about that example, but the fact is, there have been cases where anti-theism has done just as much harm to the cause of science. I cover two (of many) examples at my homepage (look for the Introduction to The Case For A Creator, if you're interested).
John Maddox, long-time editor of Nature magazine, is one example. Same as Dawkins, he was convinced that there was no God and that belief in same was actually harmful. During his tenure at Nature, you would NOT see an article favorable to the Big Bang theory (especially after the Catholic Church endorsed it), because Maddox didn't want to give any aid to the "religious nuts." (His term, not mine.) The Big Bang implied a beginning and he hated the very idea.
Hated it with a passion. He allowed his hatred for that theory to affect the objectivity of an otherwise very well-respected journal.
I remember it well. When the COBE results were announced in the 1990's, people whose primary source of scientific information was Nature mag suddenly found themselves a bit behind the curve. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
No, the GP is right. Your story is good but it's missing a subtlety:
Today, we have never caught a Loch Ness Monster therefore the parsimonious conclusion is that it does not exist.
You can't prove that it is true that it does not exist; you would have to prove that it is not true that it does not exist -- perhaps by finding a carcass.
But if there were a Loch Ness Monster carcass in front of us, then the evidence would be in and the parsimonious conclusion would become that it does exist. It would become difficult to disprove but not impossible: consider the brontosaurus, which was proven to have existed by pointing to a skeleton, but then proven not to have existed on further examination.
The idea is that a scientific theory (hypothesis) makes predictions and the theory is disproved when the predictions fail. If the theory makes predictions that come true, that's great, but technically validated predictions never totally add up to "the absolute truth".
Yep.
Isn't the only thing you actually can do in science? Disprove or fail to disprove, but there is no prove.
That's a big part of science, but there's also coming up with "best descriptions".
Science is a way to come up with descriptions which encapsulate observational information. For instance, our notions of the laws of motion allow us to predict where a cannonball will land without consulting an almanac of weights, powder charges, and cannon angle. Half a page of equations encapsulates all the observational data.
Whenever a study makes observations and notices that the data appear linear, they are essentially saying "these observations are described by the simple, linear model". Occam's Razor, the scientific method, and Minimum Description Length are all the same thing.
This is why religion is at odds with science: science is predicting things from simpler models, while religion assumes the more complex model with less predictability ("God's plan is unknowable").
It's impossible to prove any simple model is correct (as in, this "unprovability" can be mathematically proven), but you can measure the likelihood of any two explanations. At this point in our knowledge, the religious explanation is far less likely than the scientific models.
The likelihood that the religious explanation is correct will never be zero. Zealots are just clinging to this last shred, pointing out (correctly) that there is still hope.
Because they don't want to. Being westerns they are probable more interested in the west, also its probable illegal in some of those countries. What a stupid question.
You're both wrong in some sense.
Science cannot prove an absence - you cannot prove that there is no monster in Loch Ness, because maybe it's invisible or can fly or something else that lets it circumvent the rather exhaustive searches of the lake. But it can disprove specific claims - for instance, the "Doctor's Photograph" has been disproven (or rather, proven to be fabricated).
A scientific theory (explaining *why* something happens instead of just *what* happens) cannot be "proven" in the mathematical sense, but it can be disproven. Newtonian gravity has been proven wrong, for instance. However, for casual usage, you can say that a certain theory has been "proven", either in that a specific experiment was consistent with the theory while being inconsistent with others (eg. "the 1919 eclipse proved General Relativity" is a valid statement with this subtly different definition), or that the theory has been found consistent with a large number of experiments ("General Relativity has been proven correct" is not a valid usage of the technical term, but for casual usage is perfectly fine).
Much of this stems over confusion between a hypothesis and a theory. A hypothesis can be proven or disproven. Take the example hypothesis "with my computer as currently configured, clicking on "preview" followed by "submit" will cause data to be entered into a remote database". This hypothesis will be proven or disproven when I submit this post. This seems to be the usage you are using. However, a scientific theory cannot be proven, only disproven, as there may always be some circumstance that invalidates the theory. Using the example hypothesis "submitting a post to Slashdot will result in data being added to Slashdot's database", this may be disproven if my post somehow fails (if my incompetent ISP goes down again), but even if it succeeds, the theory is only "not disproven", not "proven". In this usage Hazem would be correct.
In the context of religion, there are many claims that can be disproven. For example, the Shroud of Turin has been disproven (it was forged sometime in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries). However, science cannot disprove the existence of a god (an omnipotent being by definition can violate the laws of physics). You may be able to disprove certain gods, if the religion commits to enough claims (I think we can safely call Zeus disproven, since we've explored Mt. Olympus quite thoroughly and have found no gods there), but long-lasting religions don't tend to have gods that can be easily disproven by experiment.
In a way, you're as fanatical, as is everyone. Everyone thinks that morality is something. I'm a relativist, so the only point I'm fanatical about is that morality is different for everyone, and we should keep that in mind when constructing social contracts and trying to be good to each other. Yet, I'm absolutely fanatical about this point, because I live by it, and think other's should, too. Whatever it is, you have an actionable belief that you think is the proper one, which you have clearly indicated by suggesting that Dawkins is just as fanatical as "religious fanatics".
I don't think you need to be fanatical at all. The truth does not require cheerleaders. I believe that there is a level of maturity such that a reasoned person is making the decisions, and will choose based up on reason.
That happens when you remove ego, and emotions, from the decision. I think the truly great leaders of our time acted exactly like that at least some of the time.
So I agree with you about what you want to be fanatical about. That's kind of the ideal world anyways. One in which people employ such reasoned decisions the majority of the time. That would be awesome.
Once again, you don't need to be fanatical at all. Embrace the fact that faith exists. Champion the good effects that come from it. Accept it for what it is. After that, just be passionate about explaining to people how they balance their faith in their decision making process.
Even atheism is faith. Oh yes it is. You can't prove or disprove the existence of deities and the various frameworks created around them. It isn't falsifiable. An atheist is not inherently correct even when you only apply well reasoned logic to it. It's the choice to only make decisions upon that which is falsifiable . That is a matter of faith that nothing else is operating that can affect your conclusion.
You might think that is a stretch. I'm only championing neutrality here. True neutral defaults to only that which we can work with in a tangible sense. When you employ that in your reasoning process, I think many things become self evident in nature.
The problem is you don't agree, 100%, with Dawkins method, and you don't think he should be trying to convert people to his method.
Not at all.
I think converting people over to the "method" is fine. It's not really belonging in a group of people anyways. What you are teaching is logic itself. Just teach the concepts of logic in its various disciplines. Can you imagine having that as 2 hours a day required for all children while in school? Yeah, holy shit. You would have some very smart people out there.
Applying logic can create a person that is beyond atheism. They just recognize what they know, and what they don't know. Everything else is logic. Even faith in a sense.
What I disagree with, is that Dawkins thinks he has to convert me in the first place. He doesn't. We are on the same team so to speak already.
I feel this way because quite often I get that reaction any time I discuss my faith (being asked) with so-called intellectuals that become a little bit condescending once you step outside of falsifiable territory. It's hypocritical to me.
Sorry, that is not the "Same as Dawkins", because Dawkins has repeatedly stated that deities could exist, but it's not worth making arguments about them. Dawkins is properly agnostic, not an Atheist. If he were to assert the negative existence of all deities, he would be an Atheist, but again, he has repeatedly refuted this claim.
It is told that King Louis XIV of France once asked Blaise Pascal, the renowned 17th century mathematician and philosopher, to give him proof of the supernatural. Pascal answered: “Why, the Jews, your Majesty – the Jews.” -- The Miracle of Jewish Survival
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"The Egyptian, the Babylonian and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.
The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?" -- Mark Twain
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We have already quoted the judgment of a sociologist that “by every sociological law the Jews should have perished long ago”; to which we may now add that of a noted philosopher, Nicholas Berdyaev: “The continued existence of Jewry down the centuries is rationally inexplicable.” -- Huston Smith, The Religions of Man
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I think Dawkins would say the role of religion is not to exist. That he would say that theism works against our interests more than it helps, so he would say no Christians understand the proper role of religion.
I'm not sure he would go that far. Remember that Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, and to him, there is always an explanation for why some feature or trait persists in a species. I think Dawkins would more likely qualify your statement with "now that we have science, we no longer need religion." I've read some of his books and there's a sense that you can justify the existence of religion as a socio-evolutionary trait of humans. Our early society demanded something, an idea both simple and powerful, to germinate around. Something that promoted beneficial traits, like a strong sense of community, and not to ask too many questions, all while "explaining" the natural world. This was religion's role. Something which would promote the survival of one tribe over another, so that the most devout tribe was likely one of the strongest. But, now that we have science, logic, and rational thought, we no longer need religion as the very core of our societies. The social nature of humans is both well established and self-sustaining (barring global catastrophe, of course), and I believe his opinion would be that we're long overdue to jettison the booster-rocket of religion, and rely solely on science and logic to be our main engines from here on out. Pardon the rocket metaphor.
That's my take on him, anyways.
By all the gods above, below and non-existent, that is the dumbest thing that I have read on SlashDot all week.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Some parts of them sound nice; other bits, not so much; others still are out and out intolerance for different perspectives. I guess what I am trying to say is, based on Dawkins's own words, if Someone wanted to "promote reason (or, more accurately, atheism)", far Promoters with what One might call "greater p.r. effectiveness" exist. Dawkins does atheism and Atheists no favors.
You haven't succeeded in establishing a common language. You have to do that first.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
what matters is if you're a voting block. Secularists aren't. It's hard to form a voting block around not believing something....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I find it funny people can have so much faith and certainty there's no God and use simple trite logic to prove it when the same simple trite logic proves that our universe is stranger than most think.
For example, scientists can't even explain one of the first observations each and every one of them makes - consciousness - self awareness in the way we experience it. By the same logic of Russell's teapot and Occam's razor wouldn't the "consciousness" phenomenon not exist, other than we personally observing it? Couldn't you in theory have a machine or a human being that behaved exactly as if it was self aware, but didn't experience what we experience? If not, why not? Prove it. Or conclusively prove that other people do or do not experience this consciousness you do. In short, explain your invisible little friend that is yourself and why others do or do not have their own little friends that is themselves.
I have no proof that others experience this consciousness, I have faith that they do because I experience it myself and don't believe that I am so special. But I find no way to prove it conclusively.
In line with the weirdness of our universe perhaps there both is and is not a God. Just like we've shown that stuff can be in a superposition. And each of us is also in a superposition, and what happens in the end for each of us depends on whether we interfere constructively or destructively.
If so, you clearly don't get to read some of the gems that I do. But I am in no way surprised by your comment given the baggage you drag around.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"Depends on who's asking and who's reading it. Polls are notoriously unreliable. Social science has a long way to go."
I agree with the guy who replied just above you. These polls (no matter their results) are pretty much always garbage.
Yet, surprisingly, polls in the US can be used to predict the presidential election results quite well. Polls are garbage if you expect a 95%+ confidence interval. For a general trend of the way people feel? They're usually pretty good. Polls aren't scientific, but they don't need to be.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Isn't the only thing you actually can do in science? Disprove or fail to disprove, but there is no prove.
Is that really true? What about using a theory to make a prediction, and then proving or disproving the existence of the predicted phenomenon?
One example: General relativity predicted gravitational lensing, which was found to exist as the theory predicted.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I've tried English, but that's pretty malleable. Too much goalpost moving. I try math, less malleable, but incomprehensible to most. I'd try C or Python next, but that's almost as doomed. Human language sucks.
Great point. It pains the self appointed intellectual megaminds of slashdot to acknowledge the cringe worthy cowardice of this 'pair of intellectuals' who stay safely in the land of Christendom where no harm is likely to befall them on their childish adventure.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
Then I stand corrected on that technical point. (Seriously.) I try to respect the difference between atheist, agnostic and free-thinker.
He probably ought to watch what t-shirts he wears at some of these events. Just sayin' ... :)
I know, I know. He mostly attacks *religion* and not specifically the existence of God. For that matter, I attack organized religion myself. Have very little use for it.
What I especially object to are Dawkin's famous statements such as, "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world." That completely ignores that all through history there have been those who were intensely curious about nature BECAUSE they believed in a Supreme Being. They wanted to see how He did it. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
(1) Simply because science has no definitive means to describe a particular phenomenon does not disprove the whole of science, or any particular theory or hypothesis, nor represent evidence for a deity or set of deities. Nor does it mean science will forever not have a way to.
(2) The older couple passing out DVDs are not trying to tell you what legally consenting adult you can or can't fuck, or that you should remain indoors on a particular day, or that you should devote any amount of time to praying in a particular direction every day, or whether or not you can eat meat on a particular day, or that the members of the other gender are less than you, etc. What they might push is a stay in school mentality. The horror.
(3) Of course there are bad apples among atheists as with any group, but no soldier has ever killed a man, woman or child in the name of atheism. Aside from greed, God is the only other cause of war.
(4) For all the intellectualism you would no doubt like ascribed to your post, from the undeserved rating to the overt "I'm above even he" mentality, you are owed none of it. For one thing, the nonsensical "atheists are just as bad" view you've adopted / espouse is the common neckbeard position on forums and imageboards the world over. For another, whoever originally came up with the view was clearly not aware of Dawkins' actual views or work. He freely admits his errors. He freely points to where science has gotten things wrong.
Have a lovely day.
You might think that is a stretch. I'm only championing neutrality here. True neutral defaults to only that which we can work with in a tangible sense. When you employ that in your reasoning process, I think many things become self evident in nature.
I don't think it is a stretch, I think its irrelevant. I think calling it a faith when the word is used to describe methods clearly exclusive to empiricism is a malapropism, but nonetheless, I do believe empiricism is the only correct way to seek "truth".
I feel this way because quite often I get that reaction any time I discuss my faith (being asked) with so-called intellectuals that become a little bit condescending once you step outside of falsifiable territory. It's hypocritical to me.
Over the course of what you've written, I suspect you've met people being militant about "atheism". Do you think people are condescending if they think you're wrong? I think you used non-empirical methods to believe something, and I think that line of thinking can be more dangerous than straight empiricism. As I understand it, that is Dawkin's grand point. If you feel emotionally invested in your method, I can empathize with that.
I don't need to be condescending or think about it as us vs them. I don't care what words are used, atheist, agnostic, whatever. It's not about believing in God or not believing in god. It's about the empirical method I used to start and maintain a belief and my continual willingness to examine and synthesize new beliefs with the method. I also believe that I, and everyone else, would be better off if most people agreed with me. I'm not sure I believe that Dawkins should be doing what he's doing, but I suppose he could be a net positive force.
interesting
Can /. implement a moderation that prevents downmodding based on "I'm too stupid to dispute what was said but I don't like it" so I just name call and vote down instead?
Plenty of times, or did the people living BCE not exist to you? Afterwards, you should also consider the East, as opposed to your Western-centric jingoism.
It isn't up to science to disprove the existence of god or whatever you want to call it. As Sagan so eloquently put it "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and religion doesn't like to produce evidence.
I would actually ask the same question. I would start by saying, yes, I am a Christian, and I have many reasons for that; but one in particular is the very existance of "stuff". The christian belief on "why there is stuff" has perhaps been well explained-- there is an eternal unchanging God who always was and always will be who willed everything into existance (I have no particular belief concerning the "how"-- a big bang works well enough, though).
The naturalist belief however seems more interesting. There is demonstrably no way to gather evidence from before the big bang: the big bang is, so the theory goes, what created our universe, and thus all measurements are confined to times following the big bang; anything we can interact with is both after and caused by said event. There are a number of theories for "why" the big bang happened, as I understand it; perhaps our universe was spawned from a multiverse, or another universe and so on all the way down. But the core problem seems to be the very thing Sagan (and Russel as quoted earlier) get at: just as christians such as myself are mocked for not having any evidence for our belief in a creator, I might wonder what exactly could justify a belief in an uncaused ball of inexplicable matter to inexplicably explode into the universe-- and what sort of nerve could then admit "and we can never actually prove it".
In the christian's defense, I would say that one cannot rationally explain that ball of matter without a "root cause" or an infinite regress; while neither is perhaps provable, the infinite regress seems to make no logical sense to me ("turtles all the way down").
the odds that the one particular god currently favoured is the right one is pretty darn small so as far as disproving i
This is begging the question: It only holds water so long as you assume from the outset that there is no God. If there is, it would stand to reason that there might be immitator religions which are false, and a true main religion.
Or to flip it around, there are countless beliefs concerning the supernatural; that being the case, why should ANY of them (including the belief that there is none) be correct? Except of course that leaves you with "nothing whatsoever is true". You cant disprove a particular idea simply by pointing out that there are a great many alternatives, and that therefore each is statistically unlikely, any more than you can prove that noone receives money from the lottery simply because it is statistically unlikely for any particular one of them to do so.
Hoping for actual insightful responses.
You would certainly know a thing or two about baggage, wouldn't you?
I agree with you. I find more idiotic comments of yours than any other single person on this website.
How many countries where Muslims are in the majority have such a theocracy?
What people say they may want and what people so when they have the power to do so can be very different things. Consider Turkey, Indonesia and a pile of other places - they don't want their equivalents of Priests having full control of the legal system or the state in general.
Having Church and State in one neat package is a way to have a nightmare for anyone the leaders do not currently see as perfect or even see as more perfect than themselves and thus a threat. Each are supposed to keep the other from excess.
The belief that "science doesn't have empirical evidence of miracle X, therefore it can't have happened" is a silly belief.
It's way more rational than saying, "some old books says that miracle X happened, so I'm going to adopt an entire belief system and base all of my decisions on it."
Science doesn't care whether miracle X happened, other than curiosity. It's only an important delusion to you.
Gravitation lensing may be the current proposed mechanism, but that could change in the future. It has been proposed as a theory, something that holds up under repeated experiments. It does *not* mean that it has been proven, which would imply that it was immutable. Science does not prove things. It is a method to construct a model, based on the core idea of explicitly stating your assumptions, constructing hypotheses, and then testing them repeatedly. Those with a high level of reproducibility become called theories. Eventually, after extreme attempts to disprove them, theories become established as laws. Laws can be disproven. Science operates with falsifiable statements, things you can potentially disprove. There exist no means of absolute proof.
Have you read some of the things creationists wrote about him just for being a biologist, let alone after he wrote his books? That's the sort of thing he is addressing.
look, thanks, genuinely for your comment. I appreciate your thoughts.
however, I see sentence after sentence of false distinctions and old legacy dichotomies from philosophy books from centuries ago...
Look, this isn't about how *you* choose what you believe or what Dawkins thinks is the best way...it's about the boundaries of the entire conversation.
Here is a boundary: Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of a supernatural god
another boundary: Personal perception is a factor in all human interaction
no one can prove that their way of deciding the things that are **beyond science** is better than another's....
re-read that last statement b/c that directly contradicts your post...if it is a question beyond science, then you can still use **logic** but at some point it becomes **simple opinion** about which unprovable premise is more logical
Thank you Dave Raggett
Your faith despite contrary evidence is admirable :/
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
I recently went on a tour of Costa Rica with a group of 12 strangers. One was a Muslim couple from Denver. He is a doctor, she is a nurse. We had many civil, wonderfully productive discussions about world religions including Islam. Having not grown up in a Muslim family, it was great to get new insights into their world views, personal beliefs, and general humanity.
We have since become friends, and my girlfriend and I plan on visiting them next time we're in Denver.
Inflammatory, I'll give you that. It doesn't hurt his case that they are, in fact, violent lunatics.
Scientists can explain consciousness (maybe not yet perfectly, but they can explain it), it's just that many people prefer to believe that consciousness is a special, irreducible, spiritual phenomenon for which scientists can find no explanations.
Kind of like God, in other words.
Gravitational lensing, as a phenomenon, has been shown (proven?) to exist. There is more than one theory that explains it. Both General Relativity and the TeVeS flavor of MOND gravity can explain it IIRC.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The moment one proves the existence of the teapot, it becomes science and fact, not religion and faith.
That is where the scientific types get tangled up when discussing faith - logic and reason will never convince a believer not to believe. It is pointless to do anything other than realize these are two different knowledge domains.
If one believes in religion, one also believes in the importance of believing, especially in the face of contradictory information. Science, logic, and reason are either obstacles to surmount, or things worse down the same path. The more sense they make, the stronger they must be resisted.
To answer for GP post - there are many weaknesses in the human mind which *require* the belief in something more powerful and more compassionate, more perfect, more loving, and especially more understanding, than we are. To somehow hold that deaths in floods and earthquakes is something other than random noise in the human population - that whole cities and even civilizations destroyed has some part in a master plan.
The allure of nihilism is weak at best, and the explanation that in a few million years everything you ever stood for and believed in will not matter is abhorrent to most.
Yes, there is a need to believe in a deity, built in. And that will trump knowledge any day of the week, for most.
For simplicity, explain either the patriarchal or matriarchal society, which holds that what you do in life affects your descendants, and what your ancestors did affects you. Your name, possibly occupation, certainly race and religion, and unless you have resources your geography. The urge to pass down the family name, the euphemism of "the family jewels". Oh yes, we are hard-wired to need something that science has not yet given us, and faith and superstition fill that void.
I don't think it is a stretch, I think its irrelevant. I think calling it a faith when the word is used to describe methods clearly exclusive to empiricism is a malapropism, but nonetheless, I do believe empiricism is the only correct way to seek "truth".
Ouch.
I still think its relevant. If you exclusively limit yourself to empiricism, you negate an entire domain based upon non falsifiable statements. Logic precludes you from operating entirely upon empiricism without possessing some qualities and properties of faith.
To think otherwise is just as dismissive as those adhering to dogmatic belief systems dismissing our shared belief in empiricism being the foundation to cooperating with another.
Do you think people are condescending if they think you're wrong?
No, I think they are condescending when they instantly refute my statements without actually refuting them at all. The moment any aspect of non empiricism comes into discussion they can effectively Godwin the discussion.
That's frustrating. It makes any kind of lively discussions of an ontological nature difficult to have, and any kind of socio-political statements to be instantly without worth.
Yes, perhaps those are the militant people. I've got to be honest though, they are about as prevalent as the Tits-or-GTFO crowd. The level of arrogance present with strict empiricism is above average at least.
I'm not directing that at you specifically either.
It's about the empirical method I used to start and maintain a belief and my continual willingness to examine and synthesize new beliefs with the method. I also believe that I, and everyone else, would be better off if most people agreed with me.
I do agree with you. I just also believe that it doesn't preclude faith. You really can have your cake and eat it too.
Dawkins is of course going to be a net positive. That's a given. I just think that the movement would be far more efficient if it put more effort into the formal sciences around logic. They would reach more people, and find that they have allies they've been dismissing unfairly.
They've had experiences that they are unable to explain. Fine. The adjective "religious" is where the fantasy begins.
I can show you Newtonian gravity. Apples fall off trees. But that's been disproven too. You're missing the point. Science doesn't deal with absolute proof. It only gives us ways to disprove things, until we're left with things we can't easily disprove. Gravitational lensing is a name for a phenomenon which may be multiple other phenomena interacting, or it may be some singular phenomenon explained by one theory. It's a convenient label to refer to something by, not proof. Again, science doesn't deal with absolute proof.
If I can try to sum up your position, you chose your religion because some things are currently unexplainable and you need to have an explanation, any explanation, for those things. Instead of admitting that we don't, and may never, know how the universe began, you've adopted a belief system that makes assertions about things that can't be proven (similarly, speculation about what preceded the birth of our universe isn't [absent any evidence or falsifiable claims] real empirical science). You don't seem to have any problems with any of the things that science does explain well, so is it safe to assume that your god is one of the gaps?
You've given no particular reason to have chosen Christianity, so it makes sense to assume that if you were born to Muslim parents, you would presumably be Muslim, and likewise for any other religion. Most people inherit the religion of their parents or communities, which doesn't paint a picture of religions representing universal truth. It's a learned behavior (addressing each unknown with "God did it."), just like eating, driving, and hygiene habits. If you hadn't been taught Christianity by your [parents, community, etc], would you have come up with it on your own? Then how can it be the truth?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
So you are advocating they go to a place where they would surely be imprisoned or killed.....
so thanks again for your response...I acknowledge that you chose your words carefully and did not make hasty generalizations...
but you did say this:
You did, at the end say this
So you're not trying to say too much, but you are saying ***something*** about science that is important to the discussion.
I think you're right in that we are talking past each other with our definitions 'prove' and 'science' and 'scientific' and 'logical'
Beyond that, IDK...I'd like to hear your thoughts...I do understand what you are saying but I still think we may have more to discuss.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I'd say that "fanaticism" would be a better word there instead of "religion" althought it doesn't quite cover all of it. Jesuits don't have a problem with Dawkins and he doesn't appear to have a problem with them. Most Catholics do not see evolutionary biologists as the spawn of Satan. The long established Protestant Churches don't seem to either. IMHO the bunch that do have a problem with Dawkins would probably be called "the Merchants in the Temple" by Jesus.
Just to note, it is your position that is "extraordinary" by reason of the fact theism is the significant majority and so, that's the "ordinary".
"Extraordinary" does not mean "things I personally find really improbable".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The climate change "debate" has shown it does. The WMD hoax in Iraq has shown it does. The results of the North Korean propaganda machine have shown very graphicly what happens when you kill off any "cheerleaders for truth" that speak out against lies.
Currently there are a lot of people that oppose the very fabric of modern society for political ends and seem to want to go back to a "might makes right" system instead of something where reason and justice have influence. Sitting quietly while they corrupt easily swayed children is a worse choice than being a "cheerleader".
*posts link to philosopher's wind-bag attempt to logically "prove" god cant exist via teapot anaology*
BAM!
*wins /.*
Look, you didn't just PWN me by pasting a link and claiming victory without any context, discussion of my points, or any discussion.
That link goes to the wikipedia article on Russell's Teapot, which is some analogy that also involves some notion that b/c god is outside of science then those claiming god exists have the burden of proof.
1st. linking to an analogy that attempts to prove god doesn't exist doesn't prove or disprove my point that science/logic *cannot* prove or disprove it either way. You have to actually engage the topic and show why this teapot analogy is absolutely 100% perfectly proving that science is capable and indeed has proven all gods of all notions all over the world have not and will not ever exist
2nd I AGREE that if I was trying to convince you that Flying Spagetti Monster existed, then YES **I WOULD HAVE THE BURDEN OF PROOF**
But not every person who thinks a supernatural being exists is even religious or is trying to convince you to agree with them.
No one really gives a shit what *you personally* think in this case.
This is about boundaries, limits and **claims that have been made**
Dawkins made some very outlandish claims that have made him rich and famous...they do not withstand scrutiny and make us all worse off and dumber for having heard them.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Nothing is wrong with the language. You just need to listen with an ear toward understanding. Ironically, what you are trying to do is exactly what Christian Evangelists do. You have to understand their world view in order to effectively communicate your own. Of course, if you happen to meet a well trained Christian Evangelist, he'd be more than willing to help set up the common understanding. But don't go in expecting to convert a person based on your unassailable logic, and convincing prose over the course of a five minute conversation. People have free will, you can expose them to the truth any number of times but they have to decide for themselves what they believe.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
To be fair, they are probably sick of public drunkenness, drug use, casual violence, hooliganism, slutty dress, and general chaviness. Sharia would almost certainly be an improvement over the current situation of the barely-working/benefits class. /cheek
Well, I see the problem this way:
If the big bang was the beginning of time, then it is fairly consistent with the Genesis account of a God who spoke and created the universe. If time didn't exist prior to that moment, then God is the first cause from which the chain of all causes originates.
If the big bang was not the beginning of time, then perhaps time stretches backward indefinitely. In such a case, any being that comes into existence with the properties commonly attributed to God (omniscient, infinite in power, etc...) would continue to exist from that point forward. Therefore, if it is possible - no matter how unlikely - that God exists, he must exist. Any probability other than zero becomes a certainty given enough time.
This brings us to the current state of Atheism. To be credible, it must assert that the existence of God is a logical impossibility. Contrary to Dawkins' assertion, God is not a scientific hypothesis (and even if it was, science could not be used to determine his existence). To date, we know that Man values religion, and that a very large number of people have religious experiences, and assert the existence of God. And this has been this way for all of recorded history. The problem faced by the Atheist is finding a credible explanation for why - if God does not exist - so many people believe that He does.
The usual argument is to dismiss the intelligence or reasoning faculties of believers, rather than offering an explanation of how large numbers of people could believe in something that simply doesn't exist. One can always find individuals who believe in non-existent entities (unicorns, for example), but, generally speaking, large populations do not believe lies for extended periods of time, nor do they pass them down to their children and grandchildren.
I think the story is that three out of the four that debunked the great flood idea in geology were ordained Preists in the Anglican Church. The very devout Mendel was the founder of the field Dawkins is in.
There's a big difference between them and the creationist nuts willing to hide evidence that Dawkins means. He means extremists and not a big chunk of the global population.
I think what you mean and Dawkins means are very different things. I suspect you've picked up somebody else's strawman of Dawkins and been conned instead of building your own. It gets confusing because Dawkins has been "trolled" by creationists for decades and we get to see his responses to such things outside of the context.
Hey seriously that was a nice read. Thanks for commenting.
I take solace in the fact that Dawkins' notions are in fact not representative of the scientific community.
In my graduate program, I knew a few 'outspoken' atheists who loved to talk Dawkins stuff and we never, not once, got into any unsavory business when having philosophical discussions. They were cool as long as they saw I was cool. Very respectful if obstinate.
It is precisely because there are so many well thought out notions that don't fit into spirituality OR Dawkins' dogma that I compared him to Rush Limbaugh in the first place. He should know better.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Oh no! Heaven forbid we see some titties. /cheek
A few points here.
Occam was theist. As the best possible implementor of correct application of Occam's Razor, theism was his conclusion.
Occam's Razor says absolutely nothing about likelihood.
Occam's Razor states that the simplest model should be used, -all else being equal-, for the purposes of conceptual economy. That is the only correct inference to what "winning" per Occam's Razor means.
Any difference in evidence whatsoever invalidates the use of Occam's Razor in selecting between two or more models. I assume you consider your model to have greater evidence.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Really? Citation please. Why is there this observer phenomenon that I experience?
Or maybe you're someone who doesn't experience it and hence don't know what I'm talking about.
I hate Illinois Nazis.
My point here is that human language is often insufficient to bridge this gap by itself. In linguistics, where we differentiate between the symbol used to represent a concept and the concept itself. When you speak to me, I necessarily (and unavoidably) perceive your concept through the filter of your training in language, filtered through my training in language, and ultimately this translates into some concept in my mind, potentially and often not the same one as you intended. There is no human language capable of skipping the two filters in the middle. There is no perfect method of communication.
Modern science is (arguably) predicated on methodological naturalism, which is quite distinct from philosophical naturalism.
The former says "since this is what science can investigate, we will proceed with that stipulation". The latter is the stance that only things science can act upon (e.g. physical matter) exist.
It's an important distinction, and well-worth reading up on in terms of the nuances--googling either term will yield plenty of material.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
If God is telling me what to do and what not to do, the question of whether or not God exists seems pretty important.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Funny thing is a Kingdom is a bit different to a Theocracy and the same can be said with Tribal councils. Try harder.
That's what I mean about taking reality into consideration and who is actually running things instead of what people say they would like.
...They wanted to see how He did it. :)
A bit of a tangent, but that reminded me of a physics teacher I had who told us something like (more jokingly than seriously) "You know why I hope there's a god? Because the afterlife could be like a physics seminar, we'd all be sitting at tables, God would be up at the chalkboard, and we could ask him questions; "Hey, that thing about information lost in a black hole - how'd you do that?" (And God picks up the chalk...)
"Polls are garbage if you expect a 95%+ confidence interval."
What? Every political poll ever created is reported at exactly the 95% confidence interval.
For example, from the report linked by GGP post: "After taking into account the complex sample design, the average margin of sampling error on the 1,050 completed interviews with Muslims is +/-5 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence." (p. 57)
More generally, when reporting inferences from sample data you can always pick ANY confidence level you wish, and if it increases then the margin of error just gets bigger. Perhaps you meant to use some other phrase or idea in place of "95%+ confidence interval".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Hah! Throw out everything Phil Jones has ever done or reproduce it independently like the BEST group did and the answers still come out the same. There are thousands of scientists around the world who are studying the problem intensely. The thought that all of them are in on a conspiracy to bugger the science for political reasons strains credulity to the breaking point. It would have to be the biggest conspiracy ever and it would be impossible to hold a conspiracy that big together for any length of time.
Regarding hurricanes there was some speculation a decade ago about more of them but the IPCC has been ambivalent about that. Mostly what they say is that there is likely to be an increase in the average strength in the future. The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season was pretty quiet but the 2013 Pacific cyclone season wasn't. However, 2010, 2011 and 2012 are all tied for the 3rd most named storms in the Atlantic season so your "Reality is quieter hurricane seasons each year" statement is just wrong.
As for "No record lows anymore", I challenge you to find any scientist in the field that has actually said that. It hasn't happened. At most what they would say is that there will very likely be more record highs than record lows in the future.
I have read plenty on the subject but obviously not the stuff you read. Actually I have read some stuff from your side and most of it I find pretty laughable. Roy Spencer has some interesting stuff occasionally. I do read papers on the subject from time to time and I have read the IPCC AR4 WG I completely but they're a part of the conspiracy, aren't they?
I have no idea what you mean by "... you just repeat crap that has been debunked for over 5 years ...".
"I still believe that if no one dance the sun would not come back after winter. And I believe this not because no one can keep everyone from dancing at the solstice, but because it is pretty to think so. It matters not that reality does not fit the believe"
If you admit that reality does not fit this belief, then you don't really believe it, do you? What you have is a story that you like to tell, which is not the same thing. All you're doing in the post above is playing word games by not honoring the definition of "belief".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I may be getting old, but isn't it hard to promote science while you're tripping [out] on the road?
Here is why thr tea pot doesn't fit. Not only are you saying you hsvn't convinced me, but it isn't true and you are stupid too.
You see, the second two parts are affirmative asertions outside what you were asked to believe and require just as much weight as you place on the burden of proof yourself. Its like you saying you spilled wine on the carpet a couple of weeks ago and it didn't stain it. You have no way to prove it to me so i can either trust you or not. But when i say you had no wine and you didn't spill anything, i do need to validate that.
I do believe empiricism is the only correct way to seek "truth"
And thus from your perspective, truth does not exist, because you can not gather empirical data about the nature of empiricism and its role in providing truth.
"Saving the world from religion" is not really what they intend or want. They want to promote science, and thus save the world from the worst aspects of religion as practiced by a majority, but certainly not all, religions. Certainly they would actually want to promote the best aspects of religion - community, healing, ministry, social activism that is science based, of course, and so on. All of these things can, and do, occur outside of religious practice, but this does not mean that religion is irrelevant. As scientists they are aware that they cannot prove a negative. As self-aware human beings, I would hope that they can appreciate that, although they might not share the sentiment, belief in something beyond the self is not inheherntly a bad thing. Thus I say stick to promoting science, my friends, and let religion sort itself out thanks to your efforts.
Things you completely misunderstand can indeed be a tremendous source of amusement. It is really simple: The pure state is the absence of religion. Once you accept that completely obvious point, everything else follows. Incidentally, most religions do not even deny this, they just call it bad or undesirable without ever giving a justification that makes sense to anybody in that pure state. So the simple truth is that most religious people had religion forced on them. That is why they do it preferably to children. They are used to be forced into things and do not understand what is going on. And later it is too late for many. However you find far, far more adults that drop religion than ones that take it up. That should also tell you something.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Science doesn't care whether miracle X happened, other than curiosity. It's only an important delusion to you.
And Dawkins, apparently. Gets dander up his skirt, it does.
i was a practicing christian until i read God is Dead. i was scepticle and found the tone of the book unnecessarily vitriolic. as i continued to read, i began to put serious thought into /why/ i was doing those things, and it just wasnt making sense to me any longer (like it ever really did).
i ended up re-read the first three chapters that i had initially read with such scepticism.
agreed though that at some point these guys go too far. a book to me is far less annoying and 'in your face' than maher's video presentations, let alone a road show. it just seems too mean-spirited to me "in person" than in a book to be of much use in enlightening believers. mocking sarcasm isnt going to change anyone's mind.
I am an atheist and a scientist. No, science cannot explain consciousness, it can only describe it. That is fundamentally different. That doe snot invalidate science and it does not create a need for religion. For example, fire could not be explained by science for a long, long time. That caused it to be the subject of more primitive religions. Today it can be explained down to the details (although some things are still unclear in the properties of flames...) I do not mean to say by this that science will eventually be able to explain consciousness, but that there is no need for it to be able to do so.
Dualism is a perfectly fine, religion-free idea to describe a possible source of both consciousness and intelligence (which also cannot be explained at this time), and a nice model that explains why science has trouble at this point. It even allows things like an eternal soul without requiring religion. This just shows that religions with that concept blatantly stole it.
Many atheists initially mis-identify dualism as religion, but it is not. It is a model, not an absolute truth you have to accept. A model can be wrong. It serves only to provide a possible explanation, serving to rule out that there _must_ be a different one (i.e. those provided by religions). As such, dualism merely points out that there is no need for religion in order to explain certain things that science cannot explain at this time. And when you add that religion itself can be very well explained by science, you start to get a complete picture.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Actually, discussion of faith in scientific terms is very easy. The problem is that you have to use psychology, and then religious people become objects of study that are inflicted with a mental condition (malicious meme infection). That understandable does not go over well with them, however true it is.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Dawkins isn't primarily trying to convert believers into atheists; he's trying to level the playing field so that it is as acceptable to criticise or even mock a religious or otherwise superstitious belief as it is to criticise or mock a political belief or any other kind. He is also trying to raise opposition to the institutional legislative advantages religion, particularly the Church of England, has in government, such as the seats in the House of Lords which are automatically assigned to CoE bishops, and to end the practice of governmental support of faith schools.
He's also made it quite plain that he doesn't dislike "religious people" in general - he is in fact close personal friends with many, including prominent bishops and other clerics.
The pure state is the absence of religion
Does that mean religion over the years has proven itself evolutionarily fitter than atheism? Tribes, societies and countries with religion thrived and endured more than societies without.
Not saying all religions were fitter than atheism - many religions had higher cost-benefit ratios and so they and their hosts died out as they were outcompeted by the others.
Perhaps atheism is gaining the upper hand now, but it doesn't look a sure thing. And from what I see many people will still behave harmfully fanatically even in the absence of Religion. Look at some of those "green" terrorists or those who fight over football, hockey or D vs R. For most the vacuum is too strong to be unfilled by something. Unless someone provides a really better alternative, trying to get rid of Religion isn't really going to improve things.
You misunderstand what I meant about cheerleading for truth.
Being passionate about the truth, and vocal about it, is perfectly fine. You've taken me so far out of context that you are conflating my position with censorship almost.
I'm saying you don't need to push it to the point of fanaticism and degrade people doing it. It's virtues stand on its own quite nicely.
safely in the land of Christendom where no harm is likely to befall them on their childish adventure.
Says the guy who still believes in fairy tales and magic.
Hehe, it is unclear whether there are un-provable statements. Goedel's incompleteness is a hypothesis and very likely un-provable itself, but there likely cannot be a proof for that either. Sorry, but there is no certainty in that mental space. (Which is why so many people find religion acceptable or are unable to shake it: Without religion, a lot of things become pretty murky.)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Hope this helps. Here is some more. Think we can find similar numbers for any other religion?
You've got two US sources for a British social issue.
Sorry, but the only sources that cite Muslims want a Sharia state are factless media beat ups in Newscorp/Daily Mail or propaganda from the EDL and BNP.
The reality is quite different. Most Muslims want the opposite and would like Newscorp/Daily Mail to stop printing such nonsense.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
thanks for chiming in w/ an explanation of the teapot thing...I still think its a complete waste of time to consider but thnx just the same
"teapot" is in the eye of the beholder...
what i mean is, "a teapot orbiting the earth" is pure poppycock (said with English accent and foppish hair)
the analogy is that believing in some 'god' is just as patently ludicrous (more English fopping) as believing in a teapot or whatever
it's just like the Flying Spagetti Monster analogy
It's all just opinion too...it's your **opinion** that the proper analogy to believing in 'god' is [insert something ludicrous and nonsensical]
take **any belief system** hell even theistic Satanism...they all will tell you that their belief is logical or 'makes sense' given some precepts or inherent 'truths'
analogies don't prove anything...they are **opinions** of correlation meant to make a falsifiable point & aid understanding
Thank you Dave Raggett
Science disproves a lot of things. It proves a lot of other things. For example, science can perfectly explain religion. You just need to dig a bit deeper. Science does not say religion (any of the countless, inconsistent with each other ones) is wrong, it just says that is the wrong question to ask. Hell, science can even create quasi-religions and the followers will believe in them just as they would believe in naturally evolved ones. (As this is highly unethical, it is only done by the shunned scientific sects called "marketeers" and "politicians" today.) Fact is that people are willing to believe a lot of ridiculous things if they are presented right or indoctrination starts at an early age. This has been demonstrated experimentally a lot of times. It also has been demonstrated that beliefs negatively impact rational reasoning capability, for strong beliefs ("fundamentalism"), up to the complete obliteration of the afflicted individuals ratio.
So take modern memetic theory, the fact that believes suppress reason and the evolutionary mechanism, and you have a perfect explanation where religion comes from: Random thoughts that people had and that in some instances solidified into obsessions that proved infective. The less infective ones died out, being superseded by the more infective ones. Today, we see the end-result of that process, with modern science and education fortunately allowing many people to develop an immunity to these pests.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Strictly speaking, it's a theorem, which is a statement derived by formal rules of production from an initial set of axioms. A hypothesis may posit anything, without regard for rules of production or initial axioms--it merely helps to follow some set of them.
Education must really be going down the drain. Science can prove and disprove. Science works with probabilities and likelihoods, it is not balk or withe in most aspects. There are some limits, mainly that you cannot prove something is impossible in a general, unrestricted setting. (Which fact the religious use, but do not understand...) The thing about science is that it actually works and has demonstrated so time and again, unlike all other approaches tried.
Sometimes you also have to resort to use theories and models, and there the thing that well in practice is to use Occam's Razor: The least complicated theory or model that explains all the available facts is likely the correct one. When more facts become available, that assumption may get disproven or strengthened.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Scientists formulate things the other way around. You would start by asserting that the LNM does not exist, and then seek to disprove that hypothesis.
If I can try to sum up your position, you chose your religion because some things are currently unexplainable and you need to have an explanation, any explanation, for those things
Not correct. As I mentioned, I have a number of reasons for being christian, I just gave the one that was relevant to this conversation. I also have no problem with things that I dont currently have an explanation-- with saying "yea, I just dont know that". The issue I was highlighting is that the atheist position seems utterly untenable, because aside from the impossibility of evidence, it seems impossible for there to even BE an alternative explanation that does not involve infinite regress.
You don't seem to have any problems with any of the things that science does explain well, so is it safe to assume that your god is one of the gaps?
That would be the "other reasons" i mentioned. The thread, as I understood it, was not on why I in particular am Christian, and Im not willing to have that full conversation on slashdot (unless I were quite sure that there were a sincere desire to hear it from the other person, and not just to ridicule / waste time).
If you hadn't been taught Christianity by your [parents, community, etc], would you have come up with it on your own?
I wasnt, really. Id say I became a christian in my early 20s.
The pure state is the absence of religion
Does that mean religion over the years has proven itself evolutionarily fitter than atheism?
For some of them, unfortunately yes. Not in all circumstances and not in truly modern societies. But then, so have the plague and cholera. In modern times less so.
I agree, that "the masses" may not be capable to live without some fantasy to tell them what to do. This is not an argument on how to control humanity (or the morality of doing so), it just demonstrates that success of a religion and its consistency with the truth are not related.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Actually, it is not. The problem is that it is self-referent, so it cannot be part of any theory as a theory has to be self-contained. Just as the halting-problem breaks out of computability theory, Goedel's incompleteness is designed to break out of any theory that attempts to prove it.
It really only is a hypothesis and an informal one at that. It is often called a "theorem" in the literature though, but that is a mis-use of the word and incorrect. (Yes, I _have_ studied formal proof theory.)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
As Sagan so eloquently put it "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
If I'm trying to support a claim that is 80% extraordinary, does my evidence have to be 80% extraordinary too, or can I get by with two pieces of 40% extraordinary evidence? I mean, Sagan's statement is a nice sentiment and makes a great sound bite, and all, but the moment you start judging the ordinariness or extraordinariness of claims and evidence you start to stumble off the path of science. Science is simple: Either the evidence supports the claim or it doesn't. That's all that should matter.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that establish inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems capable of doing arithmetic.
In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been proven on the basis of previously established statements, such as other theorems—and generally accepted statements, such as axioms. The proof of a mathematical theorem is a logical argument for the theorem statement given in accord with the rules of a deductive system. The proof of a theorem is often interpreted as justification of the truth of the theorem statement. In light of the requirement that theorems be proved, the concept of a theorem is fundamentally deductive, in contrast to the notion of a scientific theory, which is empirical.[2]
what is difference bw science and religion? this is close topics!
-- nd welsh dec 13
there's no MIDDLE EAST, it's AMERICANISM. There's Far Easy, dude..... Far far far far East. House of Rising Sun.
I thought I'd also leave you with this since you must be out of practice. There exist complete, formal proofs for both theorems. I'm not really sure where you picked up this misguided notion that they aren't theorems, but an appeal to authority ("I have studied") is useless when you don't back it up with a citation, unlike what I've done, from multiple sources now. Frankly, I won't believe a claimed authority on logic when they mix up theorems and theories.
Rush Limbaugh is simultaneously obnoxious, obviously devoid of integrity in his stated purpose, and doesn't listen to the people he is meant to interview or debate. Oh, and he's a demagogue, intentionally playing against the passions and prejudices of his audience for personal gain.
Dawkins hasn't been in Family Guy.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
American Wikipedia indeed does not concur..... indeed does not concur..... indeed does not concur.....
IMHO not even remotely capable of being compared. Faith asks a question that atheism ignores. That's a similar trap as those who pretend science is a religion, not understanding that they are separate things and it's as silly a statement as insisting that tea is a kind of coffee. Mendel could embrace both science and religion. Darwin could embrace science and religion, he just had trouble with some extrapolated dogma that was really sitting on top of the religion. Dawkins embraces science and probably didn't care about religion either way until some Jim Jones types decided he was the antichrist just for doing the type of science he did.
Somebody has to point out the Jim Jones types while they are mixing up the Kool-aid. You seem to forget that Dawkins has not just been insulted but even subjected to death threats.
LLC: "Everyone will think like this!"
weilaway: "This is how I think. Other people generally won't"
LLC: "Oh, so you're the one genius who knows what everyone thinks, huh? That's why you're wrong!"
And your cognition of the events are reversed in many cases: you change the causality from what your PERCEPTIONS are, to what the known causality chain is.
So your "out of body experience" isn't proof of religion since these visions can be produced artificially in people who never died at all.
Religion doesn't give any reason for things to be the way they are. It doesn't answer "why morality" or even define it. Morality has changed where the religious texts have not. So it doesn't define it in the least.
And if mythology is merely "give us something to think about the world around us" science does that too. Religion doesn't do any different than that, but does it badly.
Religion doesn't do anything other than make people into easily identifiable tribes and easily identifiable "others".
You might think so, but see the counters against it that are documented in that article.
Paraphrasing one of them - "it's not the same, a god's so much bigger than a teapot, so it's easier to believe he exists".
Paraphrasing another one (or perhaps the same one?) - "blurble blurble, I'm an idiot".
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Or, more accurately, you understand it no better than if you'd claimed the EXACT SAME THING about Christianity.
Apostasy in the Quran is a death sentence. But not being a Muslim and not believing in Mohammed is fine: they will still help you despite that if you need it. That is the meaning of the word "Juhad": the struggle to do good works for the glory of Mohammed.
But, just like Christianities' "Love thy Neighbour as thyself", it's usually forgotten about except when defending the religion from valid criticism.
Theism concerns faith (in gods) and gnosticism concerns knowledge.
A- means "lack" or "non".
A-Theist has no faith in gods.
A-Gnostic has know knowledge of gods.
So someone who says "I don't know if god exists, but I have faith" they are an agnostic.
Your interlocutor is 100% correct and you are 100% wrong.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." is false.
It should read :
"Think about how stupid the median person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that."
I find science to be like a sudoku. Science will take time to analyse the evidence using various means of proving the right number or disproving the wrong numbers until only the answer remains. Sometimes it gets things wrong but makes educated guesses based on known facts.
Religion on the other hand fills in any old random number and claims it is correct. After persecuting anyone who disagrees for some time the religion will have to rub out a past mistake and make another guess to keep the faith alive. As a result it is possible for the religion to get to the right answer maybe, but it is unlikely and not by means of intelligence
That, sir, is the best comment in this whole thread. It's so rare to find a real True Neutral alignment this days...
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I will give this a shot. There are 2 current explanations of how the universe started- we dont know and fairytale. While there are scientific attempts to find a solution and look for an answer such as the big bang, multiverse, etc there is no answer. Each attempt by science is to provide an explanation which could be tested and possibly prove the theory wrong even if the ability to test is somewhere in the future (thing higgs).
You say you cant explain something without the root cause, but you are wrong. e.g. A car accident happens. We know it happened because we can see it. We know of cars and the result of impact but we still dont know what happened, and lets say there are no survivors/witnesses. By reducing the possible theories by using the available evidence we can reconstruct what happened. By working backwards and with a lot of effort we can work out the circumstances leading up to the incident and before.
Now to begin with the answer is we dont know, would you want to take the available evidence and find out what happened, why, etc or would you like to say a unicorn jumped into the road but disappeared without a trace and is so magical that you cant tell it ever existed?
Or to flip it around, there are countless beliefs concerning the supernatural; that being the case, why should ANY of them (including the belief that there is none) be correct? Except of course that leaves you with "nothing whatsoever is true". You cant disprove a particular idea simply by pointing out that there are a great many alternatives, and that therefore each is statistically unlikely, any more than you can prove that noone receives money from the lottery simply because it is statistically unlikely for any particular one of them to do so.
Hoping for actual insightful responses.
Again here you are wrong. We exist. If you cant get past that then I am wasting my time talking to nothing and I am not replying to your non-existent post. So we know the current state. Again like the car crash we can try to work out the truth of what happened but until we can we honestly dont know. Or are you going to accept a unicorn did it but leaves no evidence what so ever? If you seek the truth then you want to learn and know. If you choose the fairytale then you are too lazy to care about the truth.
Part of me wonders why any free thinking person would try to explain this to a believer of a religion. However the human brain is easy to indoctrinate out of free thinking which is a similar issue as slavery. If someone wishes to stay in their jail cell then it is their free choice (which has been removed). But they should have the freedom to choose to be free if they wish.
That's funny, that's just what I was thinking: if he didn't post so many "gems" then he certainly wouldn't have to read them.
You can if you find some equation that disproves it.
I think you are using the word "faith" wrong. Faith does not have anything do to with logic or philosophic arguments. Faith is the believe without any evidence, and in philosophy you are trying to prove your believes with arguments. Also logic is not faith. Logic is an invented system that is just played by their rules to their natural conclusion. You don't have to have faith in logic or believe in logic, you just have to accept the rules.
I personally find it very difficult to find anything worthwhile in ontological philosophy. Nature does not follow our primate instincts and even if you can show that something "must" exist (i.e. it is logical that is must exist) it does not follow that it really does exist. Maybe there is some law of nature that prevents that object to physically exist. So without empirical evidence an ontological argument is useless.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
You can't argue with people who don't think things through or listen to reason. Christian fundies are one such class of people, aggressive atheists like Dawkins are another. When slanging matches start, it's a little like watching Jeremy Kyle or Jerry Springer...
John_Chalisque
In a level playing field, you'd be able to have faith and non-faith schools both with support and see which is the better. Groups like the BHA seem to be campaigning for schools to be exclusively non-faith, based only on idealism without paying any attention to whether or not faith plays a functional role in learning and living (regardless of objective truth, which may seem like heresy to some, but it is an angle that needs serious consideration, since many things in everyday life and modern science are known to work, and work well, but for reasons that nobody understands).
There is a dire need to understand how faith functions in a persons life.
John_Chalisque
You're just describing human nature there, not an essential difference between science and religion. Most people doing science don't follow their assumptions to their ultimate philosophical consequences, and remain at a comfortable pragmatical ground.
Conversely, there are rational theologians (starting with scholasticism, which existed prior to the modern scientific method) that make all assumptions explicit - they just happen to use a different set of assumptions than positivism. This doesn't make them less rational, although it makes them less scientific.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Science doesn't need to disprove anything since there is no reason to believe in a god in the first place. Even if there is a god, it doesn't mean that any of the junk in the bible, koran, bhagavad gita, or harry potter is true.
Sorry, but "what you believe is wrong and you should stop believing in it because I say so" is no better than the religious fanatics claiming that their religion is right and you should believe in it because they say so - there's no reason to believe that there was a creator but there's also no reason _not_ to believe that there wasn't a creator. Science can't provide evidence either way, so all anyone is ever going to do by proclaiming that their viewpoiint is right and that they don't need any evidence to back it up is cause a few more wars.
(For the record, I'm agnostic - I believe that the existance or nonexistance of a god is unknowable (unless one chooses to show itself) and therefore, ultimately I shouldn't waste my time worrying about it).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
They are theorems. They have been proven mathematically.
That's why we recently appointed Abu Quatada as our Jihad Tsar, whose job (amongst other things) is to implement sharia law in the UK.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/war/abu-qatada-appointed-uks-jihad-tsar-201202074865
On a more realistic note, the poll you mention was carried out by a notoriously right-wing paper (the Sunday Torygraph) and tubthumped by the notoriously xenophobic ones (the Daily Heil). Back in 2006. Nothing has so far apparently happened about this supposed groundswell of angry muslims eager to start stoning unbelievers and I still haven't been stoned to death my a single one of my friends or cow-orkers.
Please compare this article from the spectator (also right-wing) on a similar thrust that was made in 2008:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/825601/our-survey-shows-british-muslims-dont-want-sharia/
There seems to be an awful lot of (presumably american?) people on slashdot that seem convinced that the UK is somehow populated by trillions of militant muslims hell-bent on dragging the country, and later the world, back to the dark ages. Perhaps it's just the rarefied circles I've moved in but I don't think even 1% of the muslims I know or have met are even remotely interested in anything approaching muslim or any other theocracy, in fact most would find the very idea of such abhorrent as they were quite happy to escape from one. And much like most christians or people of any other religion, they're eternally irritated by people thinking that the fundamentalist blowhards represent them.
A quick guide to how much NaCl you should include with anything you get from the UK newspapers:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BritishNewspapers
Islamophobia is also a fun read:
http://www.islamophobiatoday.com/
Fortunately, I never hear God telling me what to do and what not to do. I only hear people telling me what God says to do or not to do.
This guy is a personal hero of mine. He's one of those people "out there" you hope somehow never dies but just is always there, like a star.
For people interested in giving your kids an experience which will ground them as rational, free thinking individuals he runs a summer camp which teaches self reliance, and a respect for science and facts.
http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/next_article?article=5214&category=&videos=
The holy books of Judaism, Christianity, and Muslim read like exhaustive historical texts. If you can't find something significant in there that is disprovable, you're not trying.
Complaining that religion is not "easily disproven by experiment" is like complaining that the history of Russia has no experimental basis, and therefore must be false.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Yet another example of how empiricism misses the forest for the trees. Faith has everything to do with logic and philosophic arguments; those are the reasons why one believes what one believes. Faith is simply a conclusion one reaches about things which are beyond empirical proof. Because you can't see them and put them into a test tube and observe them, it doesn't mean they don't exist.
"You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. "
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Science has proven that no deity is necessary for our universe to be the way it is.
so why add something that is unnecessary as a explanation and just raises far more questions then it answers (which is zero)
I don't want to get tawdry but he's made comments that indicate he has a *strongly* Social Darwinistic view of "consent" and human choice.
I see the 'barnstorming roadtrip' in TFA as simply an advert for Dawkin's speaking
not sure what you are getting at here but he is not a social Darwinist. he is a moral relativist, but morals are relative, history shows us that beyond a doubt so i dont see a problem there.
I still don't agree that you are using the correct word. Faith is the believe in something or someone without evidence or sometimes contrary to evidence. As such poetry, love, romance and other non empirical (although those examples are all empirical) constructs, and philosophy and logic are not faith based.
From your quote: poetry, love, romance does not require faith because it is empirical. But the conclusion of the "picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond" does require faith because there is no evidence of a picture of the supernal beauty or glory beyond.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
True enough, but then think about delivering that line to an audience of 5000 people, half of whom have been drinking or toking. Which is mor understandable?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
> Faith is simply a conclusion one reaches about things which are beyond empirical proof. Because you can't see them and put them into a test tube and observe them, it doesn't mean they don't exist.
I wish it would be as simple as that. But what you call people who have faith in the biblical flood, or in Adam&Eve and genesis? That are things that are certainly not beyond empirical proof. In fact, cosmology and evolution have shown that those myths are not factual. There was never a global flood that killed all animals and humans and we are not descendants of just two animals and Noah's family. Also the earth and sun was not poofed out of nothing by god but was formed through natural laws (gravity and atomic fusion). Also humankind was not poofed out of nothing by god and we are not descendants of just two individuals.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Reality and knowledge and science is not limited to what one learns in school or what one was taught to believe. Most of us were taught, for instance, that Neanderthals went completely extinct, but we know have significant evident that many of us carry their genetic heritage. There is even evidence of a 'third race' of humans. Many may have learned Schrodinger equations in school, but do not know that they are subtly wrong. Reality is complex, and assuming we know, or that god plays dice with odds, it an emotional and irrational response.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Your point is irrelevant to this conversation. Obviously, it is possible for people to change their belief set. Obviously, it is possible to learn from cultures other than your own despite all existing cultural filters and language barriers.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
More than 50% of UK Muslims are inbred - by first-cousin marriage, often over many generations. Its 75% in Bradford.
Given that, if 30% want some sort of religious law, I'm not surprised.
I think I must have misunderstood what you were going for there. The creation of the universe is a problem that we humans are unlikely to ever explain satisfactorily. The religious explanation isn't any more solid or testable than the multiverse, etc explanations, so the most rational approach is to suspend judgement on the matter until a sound, testable explanation is proposed.
In my mind, the existence of God falls in the same category. I have no way to know whether a deity exists or not, so it doesn't make sense to come to any sort of conclusion on the matter.
[From a more humanistic standpoint, I reject the idea that living my life as a good person is not enough to win the approval of a just god. The idea that I could be punished eternally for doing all the good I can in the world, but not following arbitrary customs or worshiping some deity, is nonsensical and repulsive. That a good god would give us a sense of Justice, and then turn around and judge us like a capricious dictator or a petulant child doesn't follow. By that reasoning, it shouldn't matter whether or not I believe in God, even if there turns out to be one.]
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
The Loch Ness Monster is a unique case. It's quite possible to prove there is no such monster in the Loch, unless it has abilities far beyond being a mere monster (invisibility, dimensional shifting, etc). However, you cannot prove there isn't a similar monster somewhere in the unexplored depths of the oceans.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The dumbest thing you've read on slashdot all week is a Mark Twain quote? REALLY??
As far as I can tell Sharia explicitly demands casual violence. I'd rather wear the slutty dress and keep some semblance of equality and rationality about our law thanks.
Polls are shit statistics because the sample population is self selecting. /.
Sir, do you have time to answer a short survey?
No, I'm busy posting on
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
Dude, your pants are on fire to such an extent that it's visible from space. I see four Islamophobes gave you uprates, though.
I have to say, that hasn't been my experience with the Muslims I've known. Admittedly my sample size is only about (quick inventory here) 8 or so. But still, I know one guy in particular who used to have long conversations about the Koran and the Bible with another Christian friend of mine. Even convinced him to try fasting for Ramadan (incidentally convinced me to try a traditional Lenten fast too).
The only topics I've found that can be really touchy with my Muslim friends are Jews and Muslims of the opposite sect (Shiia for Sunnis and Sunnis for Shiia). They can have some really nasty ideas about them, very reminiscent of the kind of stuff you hear a lot of Christians say about Muslims, and can be impervious to reason on the subject. Even that isn't universal though. One of my friends was raised Shiia in Iraq, but is proudly atheist and loves having long conversations with a Jewish (Israeli) friend about it. Those are fun.
Just because someone cannot prove the non-existence of something, does not mean it does exist.
And a book claiming it does exist is not any more evidence than some crazy old fisherman saying he saw the Loch Ness Monster make it real.
Or make the theory "The Loch Ness Monster exists if it would show up and let people see it."
Guess what, god doesn't exist either.
Although I can't remember specifically which Middle Eastern country it was, one of in Richard Dawkins documentaries he did go and speak to some people. I think it was either Palestine or Israel.
The question of whether or not God exists seems pretty importan -- to you. I could not care less about this question. You look like a dog chaising your own tail asking it -- to me.
tl;dr
Yep, people can change, on the average, but you are remarkably dense, a perfect example of what I've been trying to get at, in various forms. Good day sir.
You don't seem to be following the argument.
There so very many things for which there is no evidence, that it becomes incredibly questionable for you to select just a few of them to believe in. If you believe in a god for which there is no proof, why not the Grey Men? the Invisible Pink Space Unicorn? Why not the flying spaghetti monster? Why not Russell's Teapot? Why not the dragon in my garage? Why not Harry Potter? Why not the Sasquatch? Why not Atlantis? I could go on for a very long time before I run out things that I could name that don't exist.
So how and why do you choose, with no supporting evidence, to believe in some things and not to believe in others?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Prof Dawkins may not serve God, but Mamon on the other hand...
I think I must have misunderstood what you were going for there. The creation of the universe is a problem that we humans are unlikely to ever explain satisfactorily.
I am convinced from a logical standpoint that there can be no explanation that does not involve something having existed eternally (which I do not believe the universe could), that is apart from the universe and capable of acting on the universe. As I said there are other reasons for why I believe in the God of the bible, but there is a reason that I don't find the atheist position workable.
From a more humanistic standpoint, I reject the idea that living my life as a good person is not enough to win the approval of a just god. The idea that I could be punished eternally for doing all the good I can in the world, but not following arbitrary customs or worshiping some deity, is nonsensical and repulsive.
That's not quite the Christian position; the position is that you stand condemned because of the very substantial bad that you (and all others) do and have done. If the standard on a test is to get a 100% or fail, its no good to point at all of the questions you got right while ignoring the many you got wrong. And if in fact there is a Christian God who is responsible for your very existence, it stands to reason that your ignoring and refusal to acknowledge or honor that God would be a very serious thing indeed.
> the odds that the one particular god currently favoured is the right one is pretty darn small
What, now you're telling us Miley Cirus isn't god?
The statistics from Britain, where something like 30% Muslims want the UK to become a SA-like theocracy, speak a little different.
Apparently, you have a different definition of "most" if the 70% that don't agree don't qualify.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Hope this helps. Here is some more. Think we can find similar numbers for any other religion?
You've got two US sources for a British social issue. Sorry, but the only sources that cite Muslims want a Sharia state are factless media beat ups in Newscorp/Daily Mail or propaganda from the EDL and BNP. The reality is quite different. Most Muslims want the opposite and would like Newscorp/Daily Mail to stop printing such nonsense.
Well, he provided sources. Where are yours?
I hope, for Dawkins' sake, if God speaks to him, he'll be prepared to listen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_converts_to_Christianity_from_nontheism
Quantum fluctuations remove the necessity of infinite regress, and pave the way to explain the entire universe as a zero-sum of existence.
While I find your comment interesting, I would like to propose a different view. Religion, in itself, is one of the things that is trying to win the "survival of the fittest" contest. It is essentially a parasite living within the human race. It has survived through evolution (of ideas) and is fighting against atheism for survival. That's why it proseltyzes (for reproduction).
Really? So I assume that you either don't believe in a god or that the god you choose to believe in is a complete no-op. He doesn't do things like dump these things on you and expect you to obey, right? Or tell you to slaughter folks? In that case, I can certainly see being totally willing to ignore questions of actual existence and just assume. I mean, I couldn't care less about gods who don't have any effect on the real world.
But a lot of gods seem to want their followers to do stuff that they might not otherwise do. In a case like that, a good sanity check like, "Am I doing this in the name of Grand Cosmic Righteousness or because of voices in my head?" seems totally appropriate.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Arguments about proof or disproof, or the burden of proof, miss the point. To Christians, "proof" of God's existence is irrelevant. It's like asking a parent to prove that they love their child, or like asking J K Rowling to prove that Harry Potter is a good read. The proper response is a blank stare, with options on laughing out loud at the extent to which the questioner just doesn't get it.
I have no interest in proving whether God does or doesn't exist. But why does it matter?
If that sentiment still baffles you, try substituting "free will" for "God". It's still true, and for precisely the same reasons: the concept itself is so poorly defined that proof one way or another would require so many assumptions and caveats that anyone who didn't want to believe it, would immediately laugh it out of court.
Most parents can point to their actions towards their children as evidence that they love them, and JK Rowling can point to sales numbers and reviews for Harry Potter being a "good read".
So, much like I would expect to see those reviews before accepting that I should read Harry Potter in responce to JK Rowling saying so, I also expect that if somone tells me that I should do or think something because their god wants me to they should be prepared to demonstrate the existance of their god.
The recognition of events, even of an image of yourself separately from "a human face" can be discovered by NMR scans.
It can be seen to exist at varying levels of complexity all the way through the animal systems.
yeah, b/c young-earth creationists *never* thought of that objection...
"created with apparent age" is how they explain that...done...**dusts off hands**
*no matter what logic you use* they can just draw a circle around it and label it a "miracle"
just stop the whole line of thinking...stop trying to disprove something with logic that is personal opinion....
it does no good to argue with a pig: you both get dirty and the pig likes it!
Thank you Dave Raggett
The fact that everything cannot be empirical and we have to "settle for" taking a few things on faith is not "religion" or doctrine -- it's society. Surviving within my social norms requires I trust people -- I cannot verify everything myself, so I listen to experts say that "light switches use electricity." IN fact, I've taken a science course and proven that bit -- but not everyone has. And there are a whole slew of things I take for granted until such a time that I have enough knowledge and inspiration to test it out myself.
We cannot breathe 100% oxygen -- for practical and health reasons. But the fact that we have pollution in the air doesn't give a value to the pollution.
We cannot prove every detail yet, but you sound like you are promoting the devil between the details rather than any admirable deity or way of life.
But I'll agree -- there is a lot of arrogance of empirical people -- and in my opinion, that's mostly because they don't recognize where they've taken things on faith and that they don't have all the answers. But being on shaky ground is empirically better than prancing around on nothing but thin air. ;-)
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
For most people, the purpose of religion is to answer otherwise unanswerable questions. This makes religion take on a very intellectual character, and philosophical rigor tends to undermine the foundations of any such approach.
For other people, religion is a means of expressing and furthering a mystical impulse. For such people, prayer practice, intent-based (rather than rule-based) moral reflection, and other ceremonies are far more important than the specifics of belief. Mainline Christianity, for example, tends to emphasize this whereas fundamentalist Christianity tends to emphasize the intellectualism.
Dawkins arguments are pretty poignant when used against religion-as-intellectual-exercise religious approaches. They completely fail to address basically anything that motivates the mystics to practice.
TL;DNR
the Above post makes sense to people who don't subject their beliefs to rational scrutiny. Hence, people of faith will say; "Wow, you beat them soundly in that debate." And of course they think some atheists are arrogant -- just as anyone today might grin a bit at someone carrying on about Zeus. The personality clashes are independent of the value of any system of logic.
Is there any ultimate arbiter of a "winning argument?" Yes, but you've got to adhere to scientific principles and theories that can be disproved, otherwise it's just a bunch of theologians arguing doctrines based on evidence of God's opinion.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
the existence of god, to people who believe, is not a "hypothesis" that they are testing and have some statistical margin for error
the whole point of the concept of 'faith' is that you make a 'leap of faith'....
people who believe say they believe something unprovable via hypothesis b/c of personal experience and faith
i just proved you wrong...so what...your 'logic' is just your opinion of what would be the most 'logical' approach
all I have really proven is that you cannot PROVE or DISPROVE the existence of a supernatural god, buddah, Xenu or whatever with logic or scientific inquiry
you can't prove or disprove it
Thank you Dave Raggett
I haven't read Dawkins but I read a book by Susan Blackmore years ago that sticks in my brain still - "The Meme-Machine" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meme_Machine Ahh the forward is by Dawkins :-)
Anyway, the idea is that the evolution of humanity is now primarily driven by survival of the fittest memes.
I think the collection of Science memes would be gaining on the Religion memes if it weren't for the fact that humans who have been infected with the Religion meme seem more likely to reproduce.
So ideas are only worth spreading if you spread them to people who will execute you on the spot for them? I'd be happy to teach calculus to people, but I don't think I'd be willing to get shot for it. Pretty sure that has no bearing on whether calculus is good or whether teaching it is a useful pursuit.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Science doesn't need to disprove anything since there is no reason to believe in a god in the first place. Even if there is a god, it doesn't mean that any of the junk in the bible, koran, bhagavad gita, or harry potter is true.
Sorry, but "what you believe is wrong and you should stop believing in it because I say so" is no better than the religious fanatics claiming that their religion is right and you should believe in it because they say so - there's no reason to believe that there was a creator but there's also no reason _not_ to believe that there wasn't a creator. Science can't provide evidence either way, so all anyone is ever going to do by proclaiming that their viewpoiint is right and that they don't need any evidence to back it up is cause a few more wars.
(For the record, I'm agnostic - I believe that the existance or nonexistance of a god is unknowable (unless one chooses to show itself) and therefore, ultimately I shouldn't waste my time worrying about it).
The problem is that you claim that science is "just an appeal to authority" while you write your statement with a machine created by following the scientific method.
That's an "Atlas Shrugged" level of precarious.
Science has provided evidence of the validity and usefulness of the scientific method. If you disagree you are welcome to live your life without the benefits of engineering (applied physics), medicine (applied biology), materials beyond "what I found on the ground" (applied chemistry), etc.
When someone argues from religion that science should not be taught in schools (which is happening), it is irresponsible to take the position that religion doesn't have to prove it's value.
There does tend to be an effect where immigrants, concerned about losing their ethnic identity, become even more attached to the beliefs of their home country than the people living there are.
It's not as implausible as it sounds...
Dawkins is concerned only with enriching himself, hence his assholery.
You don't convince people that you're right by being an asshole.
You can prompt people to question their beliefs by asking the right questions.
Be friendly, be personable, don't be an asshole.
Be Penn Gillette, don't be Dawkins.
Evangelical Atheists are just as annoying as Jehovah's witnesses.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There seem to be a lot of people out here who think that all things that are unprovable or uncertain are equally likely. I can't prove it, but I don't think that's the case.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
oh
ok
i guess this whole fucking conversation is over then!
c'mon man...you just threw more abstractions into the mix which makes for more possible vertices of misunderstanding in the giant graph that is this conversation...
ok...it is your opinion that 'supernatural' means 'magical' in this context...if you asked people who are believers, many might say 'supernatural' means something that is wholly bigger than in the 'meta' sense of all nature...or they might say something that inherently defines the laws of physics continuiously...
I just wanted you to know that you haven't proven shit, or contributed one thing to this conversation with your point about "magic"
Thank you Dave Raggett
Science doesn't disprove anything.
Isn't the only thing you actually can do in science? Disprove or fail to disprove, but there is no prove.
That's not very representative.
Science is about building a theory to explain observed facts, generating a hypothesis from that theory and testing the hypothesis.
A theory which has been heavily tested by many independent sources and it's hypothesis were confirmed consistently is considered "proven".
A theory which generates hypothesis that do not reflect observed fact is considered "disproven".
A theory which makes no testable claims is considered "useless".
no...he's not insulting them!
why, he's just saying they're deluuusional and full of poppycock!
calling someone "delusional" is insulting
also, adding a layer of abstraction..."he's not insulting all believers, just any believer that claims to be sane and not delusional" is bullshit....everyone sees throught it
either/or....stop equivicating and at least own what you believe
Thank you Dave Raggett
According to wikipedia, [In quantum physics, a quantum vacuum fluctuation (or quantum fluctuation or vacuum fluctuation) is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space.....[this] means that conservation of energy can appear to be violated, but only for small times.
Which is a far sight from "everything came into being by quantum fluctuations".
Also, theres about a million problems with what you seem to be suggesting:
1) You're fundamentally suggesting that "there was nothing, and then it created something" which is even more problematic than infinite regress.
2) Quantum fluctuation is a theory about something that happens WITHIN our universe. We're talking about how spacetime itself could come into existence, not random particles.
3) Theres no evidence (and as I said theres no chance of ever gathering evidence) for something like that, so you could throw it out as a "maybe this is how it happened" (if you ignore the other issues), but never actually hold it as a belief without ignoring the whole "extraordinary evidence" thing.
...yeah, I guess the subject says it all. :)
You don't seem to be following the argument.
There so very many things for which there is no evidence, that it becomes incredibly questionable for you to select just a few of them to believe in. If you believe in a god for which there is no proof, why not the Grey Men? the Invisible Pink Space Unicorn? Why not the flying spaghetti monster? Why not Russell's Teapot? Why not the dragon in my garage? Why not Harry Potter? Why not the Sasquatch? Why not Atlantis? I could go on for a very long time before I run out things that I could name that don't exist.
So how and why do you choose, with no supporting evidence, to believe in some things and not to believe in others?
My point was that the claim that "its obvious you shouldn't believe in a god because there is no evidence to support the existence of a god" has absolutely no more merit than "its obvious that you should believe in a god because there is no evidence to support the universe just popping into existence without the helping hand of a creator". Both viewpoints are equally valid from the evidence available, so either side arguing that the other is wrong is always going to be supported only by that side's faith in their own beliefs. I certainly think that the evolution-deniers can be refuted on scientific grounds, but at the end of the day we fundamentally don't know what started the creation of the universe - we have no idea if it was a random event or if some intelligence tweaked all the universal constants to be just right to create life a few billion years down the line and then kicked off the big bang. Nor is it likely that we will ever know this - its pretty fundamentally unknowable.
Some of your examples make absolutely no sense though - for example, given that J K Rowling has never tried to pass Harry Potter off as non-fiction, there seems little merit in people believing that it is non-fiction. The same cannot be said of various religious texts.
Also, things like a dragon in your garage are fundamentally knowable things - if you want to convince me that you've got a dragon in your garage then its a pretty simple job for you to just show it to me. If you refuse to show it then that can be taken as a reasonably good implication that you don't have a dragon. Conversely, the existence/nonexistence of a god is not knowable - if you want to convince me that a god exists there is *no way* for you to show me that god even if you wanted to, so the fact that you can't do this doesn't imply anything.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I guess I'm thinking of scientific theories. You can't prove that the theory of relativity is true, but only fail to disprove it given the existing data.
I'm guessing now...
I think the theory, "there is a Loch Ness Monster" is not a valid scientific theory because as you demonstrated, it's not falsifiable.
To make it a scientific theory, you'd need to invert it and make the theory, "there is no Loch Ness Monster". This is falsifiable, for the same reason you demonstrated.
No you're thinking like a philosopher, not a scientist.
A scientist starts with observed facts:
1. People say they saw a monster in the lake
2. Some photographic evidence of a monster in the lake exists
Then proposes a theory:
There may be a specimen of some species of megafauna living in the lake.
Then the theory is tested by generating a falifyable hypothesis:
If there is a species of megafauna in the lake it should show up on a SONAR survey of the lake
And testing the Hypothesis:
We did a SONAR survey and came up negative.
Conclusion:
There is not a specimen of some species of megafauna in the lake.
So start Again with more facts:
1. Some people claim to have seen a monster
2. Some photographic evidence exists
3. SONAR failed to detect the monster
Theory:
There is no monster, The eyewitness accounts are mistaken and the photograph is a hoax.
Hypothesis 1:
It should be possible to reproduce the photograph using fraudulent methods (confirmed)
Hypothesis 2:
Eyewitness reports would have to be unreliable in other contexts as well (confirmed)
Hypothesis 3:
An additional SONAR survey will also turn up negative (confirmed)
Hypothesis 4:
Observations of populations of prey species and plant-life will be consistent with other similar environments where no megafauna exist. (confirmed)
Conclusion:
At this time the existence of the Lock Ness monster must be considered disproven as the strongest theory appears to be that the witness were mistaken and the photo a hoax.
Because public discourse is strictly verboten (by death in some cases) in these countries.
By no coincidence, so is belief in religion.
So, mod up parent. Someday the author's of the documentary are going to miss the days of free thought. They'll be sure to learn the difference between theism and totalitarian government.
The pure state is the absence of religion. Once you accept that completely obvious point, everything else follows.
Is that an axiom? Or a conjecture?
I'd argue that (if we're going down the path I think you think you're trying to go) a "purer" state is the absence of opinion or naïveté. But that never lasts very long, now does it? So, what fills that innocence? The worldly wisdom of *insert philosopher here*? Or the still, small voice of a real-actual God?
What you have is two different world views, that lack a single frame of reference to have an honest dialog. Doing anything other than trying to establish such a frame of reference ( which is what Dawkins et all do), is fruitless.
On the contrary. Very few people believe that science doesn't work.
The problem is that a lot of people believe that you can accept both Science and Religion as valid philosophies. You can't.
Science demands evidence of claims, and that that evidence be subject to scrutiny before a claim can be regarded as true. Religion holds that things are to be accepted on faith. These are mutually exclusive ideas.
If religion were to present evidence of the existence of god and that evidence were to survive scrutiny, God would be a matter of scientific fact. Instead religious authorities dodge the question, and obscure the contradiction inherent in believing on God based on faith and living in a world supported by technology derived from the scientific method (which demands proof not faith) behind a web of logical fallacies.
"I'd rather wear the slutty dress and keep some semblance of equality and rationality about our law thanks."
From your id I hope you mean a kilt rather than a "slutty dress". Don't you have some pride? Or better yet sensitivity to the eyesight/sanity of others?
I think that the key word here is 'believe'
Just because somebody 'believes' that a supernatural force has created laws that the believer must follow in no way substantiates those as being valid laws for everybody
Sure, sure, there are a lot of practical laws that have existed in religious traditions, primarily because they represented the power of the state and were how law was handled IN THE PAST
Most rational adults that have been born since the Enlightenment have taken on the task of separating mythology from fact and figuring out what laws make sense (murder bad) and which ones are silly (only heterosexuals may marry)
fwiw, Dawkin's arguments have always gone far beyond 'because I say so'
Well I have met RD and seen him speak and read his books. He comes across as a very likeable and thoughtful fellow. I suspect for media purposes he gets cast as "Darwin's Bulldog".
But as a scientist the only rational position to take is what is defined as agnostic, since as a scientist I must be open to new information.
From a practical standpoint, many people confuse atheist (which is unscientific as we cannot prove the negative) with the agnostic (I'll believe it when you provide proof).
Basically until proven otherwise all religious writing is by definition fiction until proof can be provided to the contrary. In this regard "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" is the most succinct way of saying science can only provide the answers that to things that can be proven.Religion fills in the gaps, and they are shrinking...
Quite often I hear/read that it makes no sense that atheist voice their opinions on religion. To stay void on the subject. How in the hell is that even possible? With so much religious nonsense infiltrating into our schools, government, courts, neighborhoods, homes... As well as shunning known knowledge in favor of faith based agendas. Damn right we are going to speak out. From known religious history (2400 BCE) there is absolutely (null) evidence for any god or supernatural process that is overseeing our species. There is absolutely no good reason to believe in any god ever imagined. All religious myths which have holy books that attempt to explain how the stars, planets etc. came into existence have it terribly wrong. To that end, why would I sit idly by and allow ignorance and those whom prefer faith over caring what is true or not to prevail? Religion Sucks!!!
"They should go to Saudi Arabia, or Yemen or Egypt or Tunisia or Iran, and try to make their point across to the Muslims."
They also wish to stay alive. You said it yourself that this religious group responds with violence to any kind of religiously viewed challenge. In Egypt and Syria, they're wiping out christian minorities in towns. Tolerance seems to have little meaning especially under any kind of perceived challenge or need for revenge.
Because you can't see them and put them into a test tube and observe them, it doesn't mean they don't exist.
So if something has no empirical content, how on earth can you claim to know it exists? What reason can you provide to suppose it exists?
Find some smarter 'theologians' then..
Hint: They're probably not on TV asking for money, wearing brightly colored suits, and sporting freshly bleached teeth.
And really: Math defined axioms 100 years ago? Pythagoras and Plato much, for starters?
herego:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_theology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lossky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kallistos_Ware
and much, much longer than 100 years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Dionysius_the_Areopagite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen
true theological discourse is much closer to *philosophy* than *mathematics* ..
and try to dogmatically define philosophy from a mathematical perspective and you'll be left with little more than materialistic degeneracy...
oh wait.. sorry... 'rationalism'
You must have missed their parade, and the recent shitshow in London. Cameras have agendas too you think?
I would find it funny if he turned out to be one of them.
You are simply unfamiliar with what Islam really is.
They are quite trained to lie to non-believers. The doctorine of taqiyya.
I don't want to argue with you over what Dawkins said or didn't say...
His book is called "The God Delusion"...you can say "I am not insulting X" while you are *in fact* insulting X, just because you say you aren't doesn't mean that you aren't...
But I have made that point twice, and I think you get it...
Where do we go from here? Do we disagree or have we hammered it out?
Thank you Dave Raggett
Empiricism is the best way we have of finding out about reality. Truth in this instance is measured on how close the model comes to reality itself. This can indeed be investigated, and in fact the history of scientific investigation is evidence for the success of this methodology.
Off is a channel, bald is a hair-style. Gochya.
"a book to me is far less annoying and 'in your face' than maher's video presentations, let alone a road show."
As opposed to christian evangelists, missionaries, and traveling prayer meetings. Give me a break, nothing they are doing hasn't been done by religion before and maybe it's time for some balance.
"it just seems too mean-spirited to me "in person" than in a book to be of much use in enlightening believers. mocking sarcasm isnt going to change anyone's mind."
Your response is proof that even in this country we have problems with religious dogma programmed into us from birth.
"He is also trying to raise opposition to the institutional legislative advantages religion, particularly the Church of England, has in government"
We have that same problem here in the US.
Of those 3000 gods you mention I believe in the one true one (with a margin of error of +/- one)
i think what he was getting at was that claims that fall outside the natural order, necessarily require evidence that cannot be explained by natural mechanisms.
most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
And how many Muslims do you know? Most Muslims also know when NOT to use religion. There are more than a billion of them - if half a billion of them did not know when to use it, I think we might have a tad bigger problem that we currently do.
Remember, the kooks you see on TV are like the kooks you see for other religions as well - they are the minority. Hell, the way faith is involved in politics in the US and informs policy decision (veiled as some other excuse) has done far more harm to the LGBT community than most other religions.
Unlike most Islamic states, the Christian USA doesn't persecute gays. At worst, there is debate over recognition of same-sex marriages. Gays are publicly stoned or jailed in large portions of the Islamic world.
The Gospel according to lolcat
Keep reading, please. Keep on reading. Eventually you'll hit the concept which I'm actually describing. So far you're close, but off the mark, my friend.
1. Uncaused cause is in the *exact same boat* as infinite regress. Both are assumptions. However, infinite regress, itself is an uncaused cause (how does infinite regress begin?)! Therefore its reasonable to suggest that not all things need a cause.
2. Quantum fluctuations are a physical property that can be observed from within the universe, yes. This says nothing about it being limited to the universe we're in.
3. The evidence is a laboratory. That's how they came with this explanation in the first place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_singularity
There are language and cultural barriers that would make it less useful to tour the middle east.
You could hire a translator. The main problem is there's still that whole "you would be hanged for blasphemy" thing.
The Gospel according to lolcat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Hard to explain it much better than that...
Both atheism and theism are making assertions so both have a burden of proof. An atheist asserts that the universe and self replicating life came into existence purely via natural means. That is a claim and thus has just as much of a duty to show proof as assertions to the contrary.
The Gospel according to lolcat
The only thing you can assume about me is that I find the question not relevant and not worth pondering. Any answer to it brings us no further to anything than where we start from. Hence I used the dog chaising tail analogy. I could use the phrase "mental masturbation" if you prefer. I never said I'm ignoring questions of existence, I'm flat out stating this isn't one of them. Another way to look at it is that I hold no belief at all. So the universal answer to any question you may have that starts with: "Do you believe in..." is "No.". Always. So yes, to answer your question, really, but not in how you understood it.
"So, what fills that innocence?"
Trial and error
and this is equivalent to free will.
Not really, since free will of the libertarian variety is supposed to be independent from causation (which seems similar to the axiom of choice), while also being dependant upon causation (ie. your free choices are supposed to be influenced by your nature).
It's essentially random while also being claimed to be essentially non-random - in short, it's incoherent.
Losing a wee bit of personal pride is better than accepting theocratic rule, which would demean everybody.
"You might think that is a stretch. I'm only championing neutrality here. True neutral defaults to only that which we can work with in a tangible sense. When you employ that in your reasoning process, I think many things become self evident in nature.
Filthy Neutrals... you never know where they stand!
Dualism of the "substance" or "cartesian" variety (which you seem to be referring to) is not "perfectly fine". It's fraught with problems (the problem of interaction, for instance), and generally tries to explain away rather than explain - the "substance" that makes up consciousness on dualism just is conscious - it's taken to be fundamental and therefore isn't much of an explanation at all. In fact, it makes consciousness mysterious and explicitly beyond any explanation.
In fact, cosmology and evolution have shown that those myths are not factual. There was never a global flood that killed all animals and humans and we are not descendants of just two animals and Noah's family. Also the earth and sun was not poofed out of nothing by god but was formed through natural laws (gravity and atomic fusion). Also humankind was not poofed out of nothing by god and we are not descendants of just two individuals.
" In fact, cosmology and evolution have shown that those myths are not factual."
dna geneology can trace human origins to a central "cradle of life"?
"There was never a global flood that killed all animals and humans and we are not descendants of just two animals and Noah's family. "
where does it say global? if anything it was regional but large enough to cover a huge area...
" Also the earth and sun was not poofed out of nothing by god"
the earth and sun we're not created in a big bang that arose out of nothing?
" Also humankind was not poofed out of nothing by god and we are not descendants of just two individuals."
actually it says god made two people from the minerals found on earth (dirt) which molecularly is 100% true, and the bible doesn't say all mankind evolved from those two, maybe you should read it again without the atheistic blinders on....
where i wrote:
the earth and sun we're not created in a big bang that arose out of nothing?
i meant were* not we're, sorry
You seem to misunderstand Dawkins goal. Dawkins admits himself that he is not a true atheist, because he admits he cannot definitively prove there is no God. However, he says he is as certain about God not existing as most people are that the tooth fairy doesn't exist - which is to say there is no evidence that either one does. He isn't trying to convert people to atheism - he's trying to convert people away from superstition and belief without evidence (faith).
so when someone wrongs you, you wrong them right back?
got it, dawkins is quite the leader there...
...but there is a reason that I don't find the atheist position workable.
I think that this may be once place that our communication is breaking down. A scientific position is not the same thing as an atheist position. Since God is metaphysical and unmeasurable, science has no applicability with regard to its existence. Science is a method for testing measurable aspects of the world around us. It shares no ground with spirituality at all.
Dawson et al's statements are not coming from a place of science, but from a place of logic and reason. They are saying that believing something of which you have no proof is irrational. Logic and reason are the foundation of science, but they are not the same thing. Their position is best described as agnostic, anyway, which is how I would describe myself. I don't maintain that there is no God, I'm simply not in a place to know if there is.
That's not quite the Christian position; the position is that you stand condemned because of the very substantial bad that you (and all others) do and have done. If the standard on a test is to get a 100% or fail, its no good to point at all of the questions you got right while ignoring the many you got wrong. And if in fact there is a Christian God who is responsible for your very existence, it stands to reason that your ignoring and refusal to acknowledge or honor that God would be a very serious thing indeed.
This is just more of the capriciousness that I was talking about before. I'm judged for the actions of another and good deeds and intentions aren't enough to redeem me? But if I honor (appease) the angry God, I will not be punished? That's not justice. If our courts worked that way, we would decry them as irredeemably corrupt.
Why does God (an omnipotent, omniscient being) need to be acknowledged and honored by its creation in order to not torture it? This is the very description of a petulant child, not a wise God. In this view, The Gnostics's description of Yahweh as the demiurge was very apt. No perfect being acts like that.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
"Science doesn't need to disprove anything since there is no reason to believe in a god in the first place"
i think it all stems from 100s (1000s?) of people (prophets) telling everyone they spoke for god and then just as they said would happen, miraculous events took place... over and over and over again. eventually people came to believe it was true.
now this lends to an obvious conclusion most people make, why doesnt god just prove himself OR why did he stop doing these things to prove he exists.
i guess it has to do with what he wants from us, belief, and more importantly the abilty to NOT believe but a path to understand if we so desire.
would dawkins be an atheist if he was standing before god? would anybody?
being able to not believe but still have the ability to is quite the balancing act and looking at today's comments it seems to have worked...
one last thing i'd like to add, if god appeared on earth today, and sufficiently PROVED to all he is as he says and everyone on earth believed, then he left... how long until we had this same discussion again?
1000 years? 2? 5?
keep in mind we have had problems keeping any type of media around and working even in the last 100 years.
i think what he was getting at was that claims that fall outside the natural order, necessarily require evidence that cannot be explained by natural mechanisms.
Ahh! So it's meant to mean we can't prove or disprove spiritual claims by looking at merely physical evidence?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I'm in the UK and will happily help towards costs for plane tickets.
An atheist asserts that the universe and self replicating life came into existence purely via natural means.
Please quote a real person, rather than attribute a quote you invented to an entire category of people. Otherwise this is just a straw man.
It certainly wasn't claimed by either the person you are replying to, nor the article linked, nor AFAIK Bertrand Russell.
(For the record, I'm agnostic - I believe that the existance or nonexistance of a god is unknowable (unless one chooses to show itself) and therefore, ultimately I shouldn't waste my time worrying about it).
That just means you're indecisive.
So how and why do you choose, with no supporting evidence, to believe in some things and not to believe in others?
Pretty obviously because that's what his parents, or someone else he looked up to, trained him to believe, at an impressionable time of his life.
His community at that time made his particular ridiculous belief set one which could be held without him feeling ridiculous. Whereas there are no such mutually supportive communities for most of the ridiculous belief sets you mention.
Mammon on the other hand he doesn't serve either. He could make a lot more money than he does, but he often waives speaking fees and he donates to charities. Simply making a good living, even a very good living, is not the same as worshipping money.
Our problems are traditional and societal, not legislative and institutional. The CofE gets to appoint Lords; imagine if the Baptist Church got to directly appoint a number of Senators! Faith schools are also directly supported by tax monies in the UK.
Occam was theist. As the best possible implementor of correct application of Occam's Razor, theism was his conclusion.
And it might have been mine, given the knowledge of the 14th century. I very well might have believed that heaven was up there in the clouds and hell down below the earth. But thankfully science and philosophy has come a long way since the middle ages.
Occam's Razor has survived because of it's value as a principle in it's own right. Not because William of Occam was infallible. His personal belief in God and thus unwillingness to apply his own principle to religion is neither here nor there.
more along the lines of, "if you want me to believe you can defy gravity, there damn well better not be a giant magnet strapped to your back."
for example, if you say that intelligent design is real, then you better be able to tell me how evolution couldn't account for everything we see... or show me Yahweh's damn signature spelled out in our DNA or something. Occam's razor, show me something that would make me think God is the more probable explanation than whatever i'm seeing.
I have faith, I have faith that peer review is a bitch, and scientific consensus represents conclusions that I would come to myself given the time and ability to reach them.
Personal experience, as well as what's reported in the news everyday, disagrees with what you are saying. Not the part about Muslims being more touchy about religion overall - they very well may be; I must admit I don't know many if any Muslims personally - but that trying to spread reason and science among other religions, especially (IMO) Christians, is "preaching to the choir". There are a lot of Christians in this country (the US, that is) that genuinely believe in creation mythology, who think the world is six thousand years old, who reject evolution, who think the myths of the New Testament (raising the dead, feeding the multitude, etc.) are real, etc. and who certainly would not engage in any serious discussion about the existence vs. non-existence of God. I still recall that girl in 8th grade who told me she'd pray for me 'cause I was going to Hell - and that was in New York, less than 100 miles from NYC - I can't imagine what it must be like growing up in certain other parts of the US, even today. Dawkins et al still have plenty of work to do, right here in the US.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Not quite what I wrote. Try again.
This is begging the question: It only holds water so long as you assume from the outset that there is no God. If there is, it would stand to reason that there might be immitator religions which are false, and a true main religion.
That only applies if you don't consider time. You are a Christian, and so most of those other religions are not imitations, they originated before yours did. If there is an original and imitations, then yours is clearly an imitation.
The Christian religion came after the Jewish religion, from which it absorbed some beliefs and rejected others. What's that saying? That from the Christian point of view, Judaism was right, or it was wrong?
But it wasn't just the Jewish religion that Christianity absorbed. It also absorbed elements of paganish, such as yuletide, which was rebranded as Christmas.
If there's one true religion, and the others are imitators, Christianity is certainly an imitator.
Science may not be able to prove nor disprove a god. But science and history between them can certainly explain why people believe the various religions - and it has nothing to do with whether there's a god or not.
I'm merely pointing out HOW he became an aggressive atheist.
Oh, I understand what you're saying. Its just not at all relevant. We were discussing how to persuade someone who has a different frame of reference than yourself.
I suggested establishing a common frame of reference as a necessary starting point.
You suggested that language was so malleable that it was impossible to do so.
Which, sounds like you are trying to prove that gravity doesn't work. There is obviously something holding us to this spinning globe. Its obvious that people of different cultural references can break through their own filters, if they are willing.
I think you took offense at that point. My fault I guess. Pointing out arguments as not germane to the topic can be insulting to the one making the argument.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Religion grew out of the need to control the population in ancient times. When humans were hunter/gatherers grouped by family the matriarch or patriarch controlled the actions of the group and kept the piece. As the group grew in size to several extended family groups, then we got chiefs. And when society got too large for the chief to personally keep people in line, we invented priests and kings to take over the role. Religion served a purpose by controlling people through its rules. Thou shall not kill (murdering your neighbors doesn't make a peaceful prosperous society), don't eat these foods, dress like this, and so on. It helped to explain nature and give people guidance even when the leader couldn't be there in person to make sure everyone followed the rules.
No rules? No society. No society? No one pays taxes and it's hard for the king to raise an army to protect the borders from the next nation/state across the mountains who has a different religion with different rules. If the next nation/state over the hill can keep their act together and collect those taxes while you can't, then they'll conquer you and prosper.
Does this mean that deities are real? Well, for some people they don't care where and why their came into being. From where I sit though it just looks like a construct of Man.
> dna genealogy can trace human origins to a central "cradle of life"?
DNA shows that all living things are related. We can even exchange DNA and still retain the same function. This is very strong evidence that life arose on earth once and evolved to all currently and past living species. The fossil record shows a continuously progression from simple to complex species, we can trace our ancestors back to 500 million years ego in Pikaia gracilens*. So the answer is yes.
> where does it say global? if anything it was regional but large enough to cover a huge area. ..
All the creationist and literal bible believers.
> the earth and sun were not created in a big bang that arose out of nothing?
No. The big bang theory is that space and time was compressed in plank space and plank time. So space (matter and energy) and time was already there, just compressed. Then came the "bang" with was the inflation of space and time. Theory of relativity shows that space and time are not separated and quantum theory shows that at very small space gravity and all the other forces should be one. Supersymmetry and quantum gravitation. Still work in progress.
> actually it says god made two people from the minerals found on earth (dirt) which molecularly is 100% true, and the bible doesnt say all mankind evolved from those two, maybe you should read it again without the atheistic blinders on. .
Dirt, mud, ashes, earth, dust, whatever. We all star dust. I do remember that Adam and Eve were the first humans.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikaia
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
This is not general incompleteness. These are two specializations that can indeed be proven and hence are theorems. If you had actually read the text, you would know that, as it is very clearly described.
Incidentally, I nowhere said that incompleteness is a "theory". You seems to be unaware what a "theory" is as you are using it wrongly.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
When I used the term atheistic, I was using it in the sense of naturalistic, or "a position excluding the existence of a god". I would also object to the idea that "spirituality" has nothing to do with the world around us: the christian belief isnt that there is the real world, and then theres the spiritual wworld, and the two dont ever meet; its that there is a God who is behind the measurable physical processes.
I get what youre saying, I just want to be clear that to my mind the two do interact even if you cant testably prove the existence of God. Id also want to be clear that something doesnt have to be testable to be credible: history is not testable, but it does provide evidence which we use to make credible claims about it. Likewise, I think there is evidence which makes the existence of God credible, even if it is not testable.
I would almost agree with your statement about "believing something without proof", but I would amend it to be "something without evidence": I dont think anyone could go through their daily life if they required hard proof before accepting anything, rather than going on credible evidence.
. I'm judged for the actions of another and good deeds and intentions aren't enough to redeem me?
The Christian creed is that you are judged for YOUR actions, and for YOUR intentions (and I would challenge that your intentions are always above reproach). The other issue is, if you commit a wrong (not meeting the standard of the law, for example), you cannot pay the penalty simply by meeting that standard going forward: that is simply doing the "bare minimum", and does nothing to account for the prior deficit.
Why does God (an omnipotent, omniscient being) need to be acknowledged and honored by its creation
If God exists, and is responsible daily for your ability to take breath, it seems self-evident to me that it would be a terrible wrong to refuse to honor him for that. Im not sure I could make it more plain, as I have difficulty seeing how it is not already clear. Its not that God has some need to feel justified, noticed, or whatever; its that his station deserves it and his justice demands a response when you fail to do so.
To put it another way and use an imperfect analogy, if you were to refuse to acknowledge or pay deference to a visiting head of state, our society would consider that to be a gross faux pas. Regardless of whether said head of state was gracious about it, noticed, or cared, everyone else would see it as such, and you would still be guilty of said faux pas.
The objection to the punishment for all of that is really not to the point, either; once it is established that it is wrong to dishonor God, for God to be just he would have to enact a penalty for that wrong. So really the objection is with the idea that its wrong to dishonor God, and/or the idea that God is just. You object because you say a perfect being would not act that way, and I would argue that a being that doesnt enact justice isnt perfect.
Dawkins is an embarrassment to science. Reason? Odd, disingenuous name for an anti-religion, antitheist tour considering that most religions give reasons why we're here, even though they often conflict, while atheists believe that there is no reason whatever that we're here, that the universe is an accident that "just happened" for no reason whatever.
You can neither reason your way out of nor into religion. You see, or you don't. Or you don't and believe those who do, Or you don't and pretend to, as many people do. You're not going to reason me out of believing in something I've experienced.
Scientists traveling on a pro-science, pro-logic, pro-math tour? I'm all for that. But folks of any profession, whether scientist or garbage collector, going on an anti-religion tour is a silly waste of time. There's no reason whatever for this tour. They're acting like evangelicals.
Dawkins is delusional. There's no way you can convince someone who has experienced God that God doesn't exist. We would all be better off if Dawkins would end his foolish quest to rid the world of God and do what he actually has training and experience in -- science.
Dawkins, talk science and I'll listen. Trash talk Jesus and Bhudda and Muhammed and I'll simply laugh at you sadly. It's a pitiful, meaningless quest. Scientists everywhere should be ashamed of this ignorant clown.
Free Martian Whores!
Who's Dawson?
Uncaused causes dont require an infinite regress. Believing that the universe itself is eternal would not run a foul of the infinite regress, it just creates other objections.
Therefore its reasonable to suggest that not all things need a cause.
That goes against the foundation of all scientific inquiry; the very reason people do tests is because there is an assumption that causality exists. And I would agree that not all things require a cause (thats pretty much the argument with God), but if the universe has a beginning, then it does.
This says nothing about it being limited to the universe we're in.
You havent changed the core question: now we're asking "where did whatever created the universe come from".
From the article you linked, there isnt evidence, and its not in a laboratory:
t is impossible to see the singularity or the actual Big Bang itself, as time and space did not exist inside the singularity and, therefore, there would be no way to transmit any radiation from before the Big Bang to the present day
We can get evidence from after the creation of the universe, but not from before.
Even atheism is faith. Oh yes it is. You can't prove or disprove the existence of deities and the various frameworks created around them. It isn't falsifiable. An atheist is not inherently correct even when you only apply well reasoned logic to it. It's the choice to only make decisions upon that which is falsifiable . That is a matter of faith that nothing else is operating that can affect your conclusion.
Atheism is falsifiable, a God merely needs to present him/herself (Or a significantly witnessed old school miracle or magic).
Theism is not practicably falsifiable, an omnipotent all powerful but shy super being that you meet (and are judged by) only after death is not a measurable thing
Well, if that is your definition of god, then that's true for that definition, of course.
But that is by far not the only definition out there - people do make claims that god listens to prayers and intervenes and performs miracles and some even say that he made humans, and in particular that he caused some Jesus guy to exist (supposedly a somewhat human-like creature made of bones and muscles and all that kind of stuff, quite definitely measurable with very simple lab equipment), or that he inscribed stuff onto stone tablets, which also sounds to me like very measurable objects indeed.
And in any case, people make pronouncements about what god wants you to do - you can measure those pronouncements quite easily, either using your ears, or you might use a microphone with some elaborate equipment connected to it, but in any case those pronouncements quite certainly are measurable. Now, either those pronouncements actually reflect knowledge obtained from god, in which case they are caused by god (not necessarily the sole cause, but at least one of them), and thus are a measurable artifact of god, or they do not, but rather have been made up and thus are worthless. The latter would not invalidate your definition of god, of course, but the point is that with your definition of god, you can not make any such pronouncements.
What is "spirituality"?
No, they are not. You have to distinguish between proof (a mathematical construct showing that some conclusion follows unavoidably from some axioms) and evidence (empirical observations consistent with a hypothesis/theory). If you only believed things that have a proof, you could not believe anything, as proofs require axioms, and axioms by definition are assumptions without proof. If you listen carefully, you will always hear them talk about evidence, never about proof (in that context, obviously).
Yes, an agnostic atheist, to be precise: A person not believing in a god (atheist) not claiming knowledge about its existence (agnostic).
dont get me wrong, im on your side, and thats a good point about the balance.
youre right, the nature of religion (i think everywhere, not necessarily in this country particularly) is to be programmed. its difficult to purge one's system of that. probably why i was unconciously holding holding the anti-theists to a higher standard.
I said the exact opposite of that. I even asked, in brackets, "how does infinite regress begin?". Infinite regress is an uncaused cause.
Quantum fluctuations are spontanious. So I wouldn't go as far as "all".
Look, you're missing the concept and what is being explored in the articles -- I hope you didn't just stop at the wiki. The experiment in the laboratory is the observation of quantum fluctuations, and measuring their effects. Specifically, experiments consistently show that the "emptier" a space is (the more energy we take remove from it), the more voletile it becomes. "Nature abhores a vacum." seems to be the reality. Assuming we start with absolutely nothing before the big-bang, this type of fluctuation is the most likely event to kickstart everything.
Also, it does no one any good to keep pointing out the obvious, that we can't directly observe this event. I don't believe I'm arguing this point. What I'm explaining to you is one of the current running theories behind the event. You can argue its premise, but you wouldn't be arguing with me. We cannot observe it because the CMB is opaque, and the plank scale is a real limit, at least for the time being. But we can study the laws of physics and try to work out how these things behave under different conditions.
That's original, say something ridiculous and then accuse someone else of saying it. Anyhow, why 'ideas' are these cowards spreading anyway?
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
The guy I was talking to when I wrote that post. It's close enough that I didn't even realize I wrote it until after it was submitted. Behold the ravages of age. I'm not even that old, yet. :(
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
No, the point was not that they don't like religious people. The point was that they don't like religion, and the undue influence of religious leaders.
I have noticed that there are a thousand Richard Dawkins on the internet, and all but one of them are made of straw. You have just made that a thousand and one. Slate has an article by someone who claims that Christopher Hitchens was wrong when he thought that banning religion would fix the world. Except that Hitchens never called for a ban on religion, and he certainly never thought that eliminating religion would solve all the world's problems. The number of people misrepresenting Hitchens has skyrocketed, because no one would dare do it while he was alive. And that makes me suspect that they know they are lying.
If you are going to criticize someone, could you please exert the slightest rudimentary effort to understand what they did in fact say. I'm quite certain that 99.9% of the disputes on the internet would vanish if people could just learn to listen.
And before you say that we don't understand religious people, please be informed that most of the atheists I know were devoutly religious for most of their lives before becoming atheists, and we not only understand it, we were there, which is more than I can say for most of the people slinging this nonsense. The deepest theological conversations I have ever had took place in atheist meetups, between former believers who understood theology very well--in fact, it was theology that made them atheists. And yes, this includes Muslims.
Please take the time to become likewise informed.
The term "atheist" is embedded in a language framework that considers theism normative and thus "a"theism as aberrant. (Theism: noun: belief in the existence of a god or gods, esp. belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.)
I reject this entire language framework, and its framing of theism (belief in god) as normative.
I would prefer to think of myself as someone aspiring to be a rational, appropriately skeptical realist.
While I agree with a right to freedom of thought, I take a dim view of the prevailing "irrational supernaturalist" (theist) mindset.
Followers in organized "irrational supernaturalist" religions should wake up and realize that the top leaders in their hierarchies don't actually believe in god. They believe that maintaining the pretense is a great way to maintain inordinate amounts of social and economic power. These leaders, if intelligent, are clearly manipulative cynics of the highest order.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Argument from tradition.
I would disagree, I think your definition of "testable" is not useful, as by that definition much of physics probably would not be testable either.
History is very much testable, and not only that, it actually is being tested.
Testing is nothing more than checking independent observations for consistency with some deduced principle, in particular trying to obtain and use observations of events that would seem most likely to contradict your deduced principle. Another way to frame this is that you try to make predictions of things you have not used to deduce the principle, trying to predict things that seem as much unlike your observations so far as possible, and then comparing the observation with your prediction. This latter way of phrasing it is somewhat confusing, though, and I suppose that's roughly where your definition of testability comes from: Prediction does not necessitate causation of the event which is to be observed, as in making the prediction, then going to the lab and making the event happen, observing the result - that is only one possibility, which is useful for some kinds of claims, but not so much for others.
For example, Einstein made this prediction that gravitational lenses could exist, based on his theory of general relativity, and only about 40 years later the first was observed - but of course, the observation was of light that had been bent by that gravitational lens some 4 billion years before Einstein made the prediction, and gravitational lenses in any case are not exactly the kinds of objects humans could construct (at least as far as we can tell). That still very much counts as a test of general relativity.
But it's not even necessary that you haven't made the observation yet - what counts is that the principle you are testing was not derived from it. It's merely a matter of process to avoid biases that you try to use yet-unknown observations - if the observation has not been made yet, it's easy to be sure that the result did not have any effect when inferring the principle, but not all areas of research have that luxury. This really is about preventing over-fitting - you are checking that your rule is applicable outside those cases that it was derived from.
And testing history works very much the same way: You cross-check many historical sources (testing the prediction what some other author would be likely to say if what this one writes is true), you dig in the ground (testing whether the predicted grave site or buildings really are there), you check for consistency with our modern-day understanding of physics and biology - and you generally are highly suspicious of events decscribed by only a single source or of claims that people lived for thousands of years or that space aliens visited ancient egypt ... the only exception to that for many people seem to be claims about religions.
That then probably means that your deduced principle ("god") is over-fitted, as it is incapable of making predictions. That does not mean that it could not be true, it just means that the concept is useless, as you only can use it to confirm that those observations that you deduced it from are true, but you knew that those were true before you deduced the principle, so you haven't gained anything.
Yep, that is a common misunderstanding among theists - em
(For the record, I'm agnostic - I believe that the existance or nonexistance of a god is unknowable (unless one chooses to show itself) and therefore, ultimately I shouldn't waste my time worrying about it).
That just means you're indecisive.
No, it just means I don't think there is any merit in making a decision at all, since that decision can never be based on anything beyond blind faith (which I do not posess).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
You're absolutely correct about the use of "evidence" in place of "proof". Mixing up the two is a huge pet peeve of mine and I'm absolutely horrified that I did it myself.
On the other hand, I don't agree that it's rational to claim evidence of God without actually testing the hypothesis. If God actually has a measurable influence in our world, then you should be able to construct a framework that describes and predicts that influence, just like any other force. If that influence isn't predictable and testable, either because it seems random or because God is actively thwarting efforts to test it, then your framework is inadequate or the concept of God having a measurable influence is meaningless. Either way, claiming single otherwise unexplained incidents as evidence of God isn't rational.
Your claim that we are judged for our own actions, punished if we err, but forgiven if we worship sounds just like the corrupt court I described before. The idea that paying homage to the judge relieves you of guilt and punishment is horribly corrupt. If we commit crimes in our lives then we should all pay for them equally. That bribing the judge lets some of us off the hook isn't justice.
On your discussion of honor, I don't think we have any common ground at all. It sounds like a lot of authority worship that I don't understand at all. Expecting deference based on station or social standing is a very animal trait, and an extremely negative one at that. That failing to honor someone is some sort of grievous crime is something I can't get behind in the least. To take offense at not being honored is one of the most pathetic and small behaviors a man can exhibit. That a deity would not only take offense, but punish, a weaker being for that makes the deity sound like some sort of wild dog biting the neck of its smaller pack mate. I have no respect for that at all.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I really wish you would log in or create an account before posting in a philosophical discussion. Discussing stuff like this with ACs is like having a conversation with a series of different, but superficially interchangeable, shadows. There's a continuous moving of goalposts and redefining of terms that make it a distinctly unpleasant experience. I'm having this discussion here because I enjoy it and it's less enjoyable if I can't be sure that there's a common set of terminology.
On that note, your entire argument is about semantics and that is the most boring kind of argument there is. Back in junior high, I used to debate with my friends for days about stuff that only came down to a difference in the definitions of terms before we decided that agreeing to a common set of terminology was important to having a productive debate. When we came across words that didn't have an agreed upon definition, we would work out the definition before assuming that the argument of the other was bunk. In this light, your argument (which may be valid and insightful, but appears to hinge entirely upon differing semantics) looks very sophomoric. If you work on that, you might find yourself engaged in more rewarding debates.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
1. The balance of probabilities suggest that atheist are right. But there is no certainty so - in essence - Dawkins et. al. are simply promoting another belief system.
2. Science operates outside of belief systems (or it is intended to). There are lots of scientists who a religious; there are lots of scientifically illiterate people (think Michael Moore) who are atheists. There is no formal linkage.
3. Dawkins completely misses the role religion plays in humans affairs when there is a crisis. This is my most serious objection to his stridency. Try telling a simple family the reason their child is dying of cancer is due to possibly random DNA copying errors in a meaningless universe.
4. As the old cliche goes: there are no atheists in foxholes.
5. As Karl Popper points out the idea is to set up a hypothesis or theory and then research - empirical and theoretical attempt to refute the theory.
6. Politics and science are unhappy partners. GW is a case in point where the hypothesis that CO2 is, through the greenhouse effect, is warming the planet. Problem is many scientists are more keen to promote rather than refute the hypothesis. ( Their zeal borders on stridency that borders on a religion.)
7. Dawkins and other argue that religion foments wars. True sometimes, but equally true is that many wars and deaths have been caused by atheists. Hitler, Stalin and Mao spring to mind.
8. As a modern citizens one should be highly suspicious of anyone, from Dawkins, to Obama to the Pope who tells one what to think since, in the final analysis, nobody really - I mean really, really - knows what is true in the deepest sense. Science provides us with models and paradigms to understand and manipulate the world. It does not answer questions as to why there is a world in the first place.
most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
And how many Muslims do you know? Most Muslims also know when NOT to use religion. There are more than a billion of them - if half a billion of them did not know when to use it, I think we might have a tad bigger problem that we currently do.
Remember, the kooks you see on TV are like the kooks you see for other religions as well - they are the minority. Hell, the way faith is involved in politics in the US and informs policy decision (veiled as some other excuse) has done far more harm to the LGBT community than most other religions.
For me, religion is a social need, that brings peoples who think alike together. For example, change cities because of job and want to make friends, go to your friendly church (or bar). Need to really meet people that share your values, join their club.
As for religion, in times of stress, there is nothing better. I happen to be a doubter, but when I am stressed, I join my community for a while. Do I believe in all the ritual and fairy tails, and the "he said" that was documented 400 years after the fact? You have one guess.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I've never needed any blind faith to be an atheist.
Russell's tea-pot says it all. If someone wants to claim they are agnostic about the existence of a tea-pot in orbit around Mars, then that's not being open minded. That's being irrational.
With God, it's more indecisive than irrational, as it's just a case of not being able to decide between a story indoctrinated by parents, and taking a position based on rationality.
Richard Dawkins is intentionally being offensive, or provocative, in order to make money. It's a disgrace to call him a scientist.
The christian belief on "why there is stuff" has perhaps been well explained-- there is an eternal unchanging God who always was and always will be who willed everything into existence (I have no particular belief concerning the "how"-- a big bang works well enough, though).
I really hate that God always was and just tells us that is his explanation...just like I hate almost everything to do with Christianity. Atheism may have its concessions, but its still backed more by science than any religion. And anyone that doesn't gloss over the Christian God and make tons of excuses for Him would admit what a inconsistent wreck of a being it is. I was a Christian too, and I know how this is done. But then one day I get fed up with trying to bend reality for an alleged being that doesn't interact or communicate or appear to exist in any way.
What gives Russell the idea that there is a teapot floating through space between Earth and Mars? There is no evidence to suggest such. He knows he's making that shit up as he goes along. He never believed it, nor did anyone else.
That's the worst part about these idiots that claim to be promoting "reason" is that they're completely UNreasonable when it comes to discussing refuting evidence. Dawkins's books are basically strawman factories (i.e. FSM) -- not just for religion, but for any scientific hypotheses he doesn't necessarily agree with. 90% of his arguments are made up on the fly and postfixed with "If you only understood it as well as I do" anyway.
There is supporting evidence that the bible is true. The small band of hated, ultra-violent villagers that called themselves "Hebrews" managed to drag that book through every bloody conqueror that came across them. They were always the worst-equipped, ill-trained bunch of fighters, but they survived, just how the book told them they would. It's no proof, but it's hard evidence unless you're going to unreasonably turn a blind eye to it. There is a lot of historic, hard evidence supporting the bible as a record. You just ignore that in the face of the "soft evidence", even ignoring people that are taking the scientific approach to it e.g. "It says you will be a better person (temporally and eternally) if you abide by its principles. So abide by its principles and check the outcome." -- an approach that its detractors refuse to entertain -- because it's so easy to get hung up on the few bible-thumping idiots that employ circular logic and refute them than actually show due respect to a different belief system than your own.
If God is telling me what to do and what not to do, the question of whether or not God exists seems pretty important.
If God is not real, explain the bible? Or those pesky traps that Satan puts in the earth and stupid sientists think are fossils.
God 1
Atheists 0
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That doe snot invalidate science
I for one, am looking forward to worshipping our new God Doe Snot.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Why not the flying spaghetti monster?
Thou dost blaspheme the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Hast thou not been touched by his noodly appendage, and still thou dost not believe?
Stale beer and VD afflicted strippers for you in the afterlife dood.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I guess you are ;-)
I generally don't like accounts, especially long-lived ones, and creating a new one for each and every discussion isn't all that practical, so AC it is. I am the same as the one you are replying to there, though, but none of the others.
Yeah, I agree.
Well, in a way it is about semantics, but not in the boring kind of argument way. Or at least not in the objectively useless kind of argument way, who knows what you find boring ;-)
There is a difference between arguments that arise simply because two parties are using different but equally valid definitions (those are essentially just a maximally roundabout way of finding out about those differences, so mostly a waste of time) and arguments about why a particular definition is better than another, those can lead to useful insights.
I guess the most important general class of the latter are cases where one definition is self-contradictory. Strictly speaking, it would be sufficient to just show that self-contradiction, of course, but it's usually more constructive to suggest an alternative that is consistent.
So, while my first argument is based around a question of semantics, it is about showing that your definition of god most likely is either not internally consistent, or it is so narrow in scope that it is useless for concluding anything from it. I try to show that based on your definition of god in such a way that science has no applicability with regard to its existence, you can not then also claim almost any of the other characteristics of god that people commonly do claim, because if you did that, that whole construct would be self-contradictory, while if that is your whole definition, the thing you are defining is of no consequence, so it becomes useless.
Well, then I ask you what spirituality is, as I am not aware of any common definition that would be sensible to assume by default.
And, well, the last two indeed might be purely semantic, but not obviously so.
There is a lot of confusion out there that is a result of not understanding the distinction between axiom-derived and empirical truths and between claiming knowledge of a negative and not claiming knowledge of a positive.
Now, those people who do understand those distinctions tend to use the associated terms in very specific ways, and tend to also know that skeptic atheists, who tend to use the terms in that way, do not usually talk about proofs, because they mean empirical observations, and those are called evidence in their terminology.
So, my best guess was that you are not aware of that distinction, and are using the word "proof" in the more colloquial sense, which is not quite the the mathematical proof, but way stronger than what skeptic atheists mean when they talk about evidence, so that presumably you are both misunderstanding the position you are arguing against and also probably expressing your argument in a way that is prone to misunderstanding to those you are arguing against.
That's why I essentially explained the terminology as it is used by those who you are arguing against - or at least that was my goal.
That's fair enough.
My definition of God is certainly very narrow, because a God that has a physical manifestation would in essence just be another measurable force to be investigated. At least the physical manifestation would be observable and in that case it would be indistinguishable from any of the other aspects of the universe that science is already used to study. Since those manifestations would not be distinguishable from "natural" forces, it seems that a definition of God that includes them is overly broad. Ultimately, you could say that God is everything, but from that perspective this whole debate is a little meaningless.
I brought "spirituality" in as a placeholder for only the metaphysical portions of religion, because those are the only aspects of religion that aren't subject to scientific investigation. The other parts of religion are either history or actual testable physical phenomena (prayers having real physical results, miracles, etc). Spirituality isn't the best term, but nothing better came to mind at the moment.
You're absolutely right about using proof in place of evidence. It was just a slip, as I explained to Limecat, and I'm pretty horrified that I actually did it. If you replace proof with evidence in my post, it reads how I intended it.
With that out of the way, the discussion comes to finding an acceptable definition of God. I suspect that is at the root of much of the disagreement in this whole topic, but there's no reason we can't settle that once and for all here! ;)
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
you're being dishonest...you made a logical leap w/ no foundation very casually...
I put where you're being manipulative in bold.
See, it's ***YOUR OPINION**** than anything not 'supernatural' is by definition then definitely 'magical'
but that's your opinion, based on a definition of magic
You could define 'magic' by Arthur C. Clarke's Three Laws.
One of which states:
Your definition is bullshit, because your argument is bullshit, based on a false dichotomy. Arthur C. Clark would disagree with your concept of magic, that you can't credibly deny.
Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of an 'god' and any logic that claims to have a better way to decide the question is just an opinion.
Arthur C. Clark would disagree with your concept of magic, that you can't credibly deny.
Thank you Dave Raggett
(same AC as before ;-)
I agree. Though I am not sure whether you fully realize the consequences of what you are saying and how narrow your definition really is ... though, given your next sentence, maybe you do, I'm not sure ;-)
The thing is that any claim about any property of such a god (his abilities, his intentions, his interests, his future plans, his historical deeds, his existence, ...) by definition is made up (and thus does not actually provide any information about that god), as communicating any such claim (talking, writing) is a physical, natural, measurable, empirically observable phenomenon, and thus would be a physical manifestation, even if rather indirectly, of god, which it by definition can not be. Any information you communicate about something is either causally connected to that something, or it's made up and thus not actually information about that something, but just random data - that's the definition of information in a nutshell.
Hence, such a god concept is internally consistent, but completely vacuous - its width is zero, so to speak, there is nothing there, you can not use it for anything other than positing that it might exist. No bible, no morals, no history, nothing. It's just a highly confusing way to say "There might be something I know nothing about".
Well, I guess that just makes that concept of god a useless concept, yes - but the debate for a large part is about whether that is actually an appropriate/the definition, and opinions about that obviously do vary wildly, so a lot of debate is still to be had ;-)
May I suggest that it's really just yet another vacuous term for much the same thing? As is "metaphysical"?
(Though there also is the use of "spiritual" to describe a certain kind of emotions, which probably isn't vacuous, but also not particularly metaphysical.)
Then I guess I don't understand what you were trying to say. How is he not coming from a place of science when he asks for evidence? I would think that that is pretty much all that science is about!?
Heh :-)
Well, I think your definition is perfectly acceptable, but I doubt many theists will share that view ;-)
But yeah, I also think tha
I've never needed any blind faith to be an atheist.
Russell's tea-pot says it all. If someone wants to claim they are agnostic about the existence of a tea-pot in orbit around Mars, then that's not being open minded. That's being irrational.
A teapot is a human-made artifact - unless we sent it to mars there's no reason to believe it got there. Conversely *we simply do not know* how the universe came into being, so pretty much all answers that don't conflict with the known science are up for grabs as possibilities. I'm reasonably happy to dismiss the idea of knowing specificalities about any creator, but the idea that there may have been some intelligence behind the creation of the universe seems no more irrational to me than the idea that it all just popped into existence of its own accord - blind faith is required to make a choice between these possibilities, since there is no evidence either way.
(It should also be mentioned that if you assume that we will eventually have the technology to simulate our corner of the universe then statistically the chances that we're not just part of a simulation may be quite low, and that would certainly constitute our universe "being created by some intelligence").
With God, it's more indecisive than irrational, as it's just a case of not being able to decide between a story indoctrinated by parents, and taking a position based on rationality.
You're talking about _religion_, which isn't what I'm talking about at all. Religion is indoctrinated by parents and society - I'm talking about the fact that we fundamentally can't know whether there is a god or not, irrespective of what BS is spouted by religions. Atheism too is a religion - the absolute belief that there is no god despite absolutely zero supporting evidence, and is indoctinated by parents and society.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I hadn't heard...
A teapot is a human-made artifact - unless we sent it to mars there's no reason to believe it got there.
Who says it's a man-made artefact? Just because the ones you've seen up to now have been. What you're saying here is you can't imagine a teapot there with any other origin than humans. So why can you imagine a god with other than human origins? Are you suggesting that a god is a more likely phenomenon than a tea-pot?
Atheism too is a religion - the absolute belief that there is no god despite absolutely zero supporting evidence, and is indoctinated by parents and society.
Not as far as I've seen. Most atheists I've come across have parents that were religious. And most societies are more encouraging of religious views than atheist ones. Atheism comes more often from people laying aside their upbringing and thinking rationally.
What IS becoming more common is parents and society presenting a position of agnosticism. The "let people decide for themselves", "don't offend", "indecisive" position.
I wish that study had defined "Sharia law" clearly. There is a huge range of interpretations of Sharia Law. Without a specific definition, you might as well say "40% of Muslims would like laws that more closely match their particular morality, which is often governed by their religion".
Even atheism is faith. Oh yes it is. ...... It's the choice to only make decisions upon that which is falsifiable . That is a matter of faith that nothing else is operating that can affect your conclusion.
The choice to make decisions based on that which is falsifiable (or derived by the scientific method in general) also implies a fundamental thing: it means you choose to believe that that which can be observed and reproduced is real.
To do otherwise is what leads people like 'Young Earth Creationists' to disregard all the dinosaur bones and their geological dating. A wave of the hand and a bunch of evidence is no longer real.
A very careful person of faith, who deeply considers the boundaries and limits of religion, can, with practice, keep faith out of areas where it does not belong. However, that is rare. Faith based thinking inevitable leads to contradictions in reasoning.
tl;dr = your (and Dawkins) notions of the science and 'god' are base opinions carrying the relevance of your opinion on, say, the best Pizza Toppings
You interpreted Dawkin's comments thusly:
so that means anyone who believes in anything 'supernatural' is childish
by definition...it's a blanket statement that covers **anyone** who doesn't believe in hard atheism
you defend and support this statement...and in doing so make a logical error that undercuts your whole premise (and Dawkins as well)
**that's what we're talking about**
you are trying to Red Herring this discussion by doing definition gymnastics but the *core* is that you and Dawkins think that anyone who isn't a hard atheist is "childish"
its condescending bullshit...
there are all kinds of New Age concepts of a 'universal consciousness' that try to be based in science...several leading scientists have written about these topics informally, including Robert Oppenheimer & others who worked at the Eselen Institute in California.
you and Dawkins claim people are "childish" based on **your opinion** of the best way to answer questions beyond scientific inquiry
ITS YOUR OPINION...that's all it is...it's notion you can prove or ever hold a person accountable to in any way...
it has the level of relevance as you opinion as to the best Pizza Toppings
Thank you Dave Raggett
ha!
thnx for posting that, and you could've slammed me b/c I honestly didn't know Naturalism had become a "thing" in the whole disgusting "evoution/creation" god debate...I mean if you saw the same wiki I did the Naturalism (philosophy) really only became a thing in the last 30 years. That's fine but just sayin...
I had already read it, after I posted my comment of course...
As you might guess I think it's kind of bullshit, but so are alot of the arguments against it...I don't like any of it b/c to me it's just rhetoric.
Rhetoric is fine for a picnic on a Sunday afternoon or around the watercooler but its the how Dawkins tries to claim that **science** has proven **scientifically** that anyone who isn't a 'naturalist' aka atheist is Deluuusional
for fucks sake!
I want to keep real actual science separate from all of this...I used to do research and it's hard enough to navigate either office politics or university politics and keep your project focused on science and not marketing horseshit...
then this all gets into the conversation...I hate it
Thank you Dave Raggett
Here's the link directly to the 'naturalism' that is attributed to Dawkins, etc. The counter-arguments by people like Popper and especially Alvin Plantinga's critique are honestly equally as odious as Dawkins to me. Seriously Plantiga's notions of an 'evolutionary argument against naturalism' take just as many scandalous liberties with the concept of 'science' as Dawkins and I hate it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)
On the disambiguation page it's listed as Methodological Naturalism.
Seriously, do you see why Dawkins sticks out among Rush Limbaugh types to me? Not saying you have to agree or not be condescending but maybe your everyday life would go smoother (and all of us too) if we don't go down that road.
I'm totally fine with you being condescending to anyone for any reason...knock yourself out...let's just keep from using science where it doesn't belong
Thank you Dave Raggett
well this has been fun! thnx man
see this is where we differ...I guess just to put a bookend on things I'll elaborate
I think your notion, that:
'natural & skeptical thinking' will always arrive at atheism & any other conclusion is 'unreasonable'
is an opinion not provable formally (such as by syllogism or other language based logic)
Maybe you're right, but it's not formally provable...to get philosophical it is not formally provable because of the 'social construction' of reality via language limits human certainty to things that are communicatable and somhow formally repeatable. This is discussed alot in 2nd Order Cybernetics
I know I'm just repeating my last argument only substituting 'formally provable' with 'science' but I wanted you to see that my perspective is constant.
Any statement about the supernatural is opinion, not science or logic.
It's when you cross that border, into asserting ***CERTAINTY*** where you have none that causes me to raise objections.
As I said before I support you being an atheist, condescending to whomever you see fit, but to our greater discussion it's all about crossing that line of certainty.
Thank you Dave Raggett