It depends on what you mean by "good reason". There can be no scientific reason, for some definitions of "scientific", because the modern version of the scientific method was actually developed with the express purpose of excluding any foundation for religious belief. For instance, Russell Berg has proposed 15 criteria for whether a theory is scietific (behind paywall, sorry), and his first criteria is that it excludes God and gods. On those rules there can't be a "good" reason by definition, but I think it tells us more about the people making the rules than about the existence of God.
I do think that if somebody believes that they have had a subjective experience of God then it is rational to act on that experience unless they have good reason to reject it, and "lack of evidence" is not of itself good reason to reject it because they do have evidence (I don't say "proof"), they just can't pass it on other than by unverifiable statements. Alternative explanations are not necessarily sufficient reasons for rejecting the experience either, unless there is good reason for preferring those explanations. When push comes to shove, all evidence available to the individual is apprehended subjectively, and there's no a priori reason to prefer one set of subjective experiences to another.
Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you are charged with murder. You have no recollection of committing the murder, but rather have a clear recollection of being at home on your own on the evening the murder occurred. However, you have a motive and are picked out in a line-up, and ultimately convicted. The scientific (especially the classical foundationalist) view is that the objective evidence points clearly to your guilt, so you should reject the hypothesis that you are innocent. Because of information only available to you, subjectively, though, you would be completely rational to continue to believe yourself innocent, even though your recollection could in theory be defective. Sure, if the evidence continues to pile up -- a taxi driver remembers picking you up from home and taking you to the murder scene, he has the stub that shows he was paid with your credit card, DNA evidence places you at the scene, and so on, there comes a point when you would have to take seriously the possibility that your recollection is wrong. But the point remains: your subjective recollection, whilst being fallible, does carry some weight, so the degree of proof needed to convince you that you are wrong is quite properly higher than the level of proof needed to convince anybody else that you are wrong.
Now, what about your wife? She was away at a conference at the time of the murder, but based on her knowledge of you she tends to trust your claims of innocence. Not as strongly as you do, because she doesn't have the subjective experience, but enough to campaign about what she is sure is a miscarriage of justice.
Between those two positions I do see how it can be reasonable to have religious belief, either because of subjective experience or trust in the testimony of those who claim to have had religious experience. Neither position is "scientific", but I believe that both can be rational as long as they don't hold out against too much contrary evidence (and what constitutes "too much" is subjective anyway).
Sorry, but logic doesn't work this way. A logical proof only guarantees that if the premises of the argument are true, then the conclusions must also be true. Because of this, it is fundamentally impossible for a logical proof to demonstrate anything about the nature of reality.
Not quite right. That's true of classical logic, but modal logics contain some assumptions about reality (specifically concerning possibility and necessity), so within a modal logic it is possible to demonstrate something about the "reality" that the logic describes. The issue is whether that "reality" is the one in which we live -- my point of disagreement with Plantinga -- but that's undecidable by observation.
One problem with Plantinga's argument is that he assumes it is possible for an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent entity to exist, but this is exactly the kind of god we know cannot exist because of the problem of evil (never mind the logical self-inconsistency of omnipotence).
Actually we know of no such thing. As Adams pointed out in 1993, the arguments against God from the problem of evil only work if we add "utilitarian" to the characteristics of God. If God is a deontic or virtue ethicist then the existing arguments fail. And "omnipotence" is not necessarily self-inconsistent. Philosophers observed quite early on that putting "God can" in front of a meaningless statement does not yield a meaningful statement, so most of the supposed paradoxes are actually meaningless statements.
As for Stephen Hawking's argument, I'd have to read the book, but in principle it is completely accurate that there is simply no reason to believe in one.
There is no objective reason to believe in one, true.
No, the purpose of science is to discover certain types of truth, those that are amenable to scientific investigation. There are many things that are true but that do not fall within the remit of science. Unfortunately, we have no reliable way of determining what those many things are. For example, either "There is no objective reality" or "There is an objective reality" is true, but science gives us no way to decide between them (instead, it typically assumes the latter).
I don't know why this isn't mentioned more often, but there is something simpler than both of these cases.
How about that WE created the universe. We already exist, and the idea that we have an eternal soul is no more far-fetched than believing an eternal god exists. In fact it's less absurd, as we have proof of our own existence, at least in corporeal form.
The idea that the universe exists by virtue of being observed is an old one, going back at least to Berkeley, and once you get rid of the idea of God then we are the most likely candidates for observers. A more modern presentation would be that the states of existing and not existing were superimposed until our observation collapsed those states. It's a bit esoteric, though.
At the least, I'm still amazed there aren't more people who are 'not sure' about a big entity (god or whatever), but think that we each have some kind of eternal 'soul'. I certainly fall into that camp.
That seems to be the position of many "new age" spiritualities, although they come with their own baggage.
A very basic rule of philosphy is that anything that had a beginning had a cause
No. It's a very old theory of philosophy (Aristotle, if I recall correctly), but it is not a rule of philosophy because there's been an argument amongst philosophers since then whether it's true or not. If it were actually a rule there would be no way for them to have that argument.
Occam only meant that we can't invoke a more complicated explanation than necessary within science.
And even then the application is usually subjective, as what one person considers more complex another considers simpler. I have (tongue-in-cheek) upset people arguing for a form of scientism by invoking Occam's razor to "prove" solipsism ("Zero objective realities is simpler than one objective reality"). Occam's razor is a methodological tool; it is not any sort of guide to what is or is not "true" (although some seem to have what looks to me like a religious belief that it is).
It's about as good for the intellectual as The God Delusion is. Strong on rhetoric, weak on actual argument. Mere Christianity does have the advantage of being somewhat shorter.
And even if you do believe in God, what are the chances you've chosen the right one to believe in?
That isn't actually a very strong argument against taking a position. Suppose I put twenty boxes in front of you and told you that one of them contained a good cheque for $1,000,000 and the others contained nothing. You can open any one, and keep the contents. What are the changes of picking the right one? Not great. What reason is there for choosing one box over another? Not much: maybe hunch, maybe try to interpret my facial expressions. One thing is sure, though: any strategy that involves opening a box is better than the strategy of not opening any of them because you can't decide.
Anyway, people at stages 5 and 6 of Fowler's model of faith development don't really make a choice between different faith traditions (so your argument about inheriting the religion of their parents doesn't apply to them, although they may inherit some ways of expressing that faith). In terms of the box game, these people recognise the nature of the game, don't put any faith in their ability to choose well, but simply enjoy the act of opening the box that they do.
Yes it does, it just doesn't take any religious faith. There are metaphysical assumptions underlying all worldviews. Even scientific worldviews, although some popularisers of science try to pretend there aren't.
I'm not sure what you mean by the law of gravity not being "physical", but I'm pretty sure it's not addressed in "The God Delusion". The God Delusion is very lightweight anyway. Those who agree with it get carried away by the polemic, but there's hardly any substance. If you want good arguments for atheism you need to read people like William Rowe. Most people don't, though, because they'd have to think -- something most atheists turn out to be as averse to as most religionists. Almost everybody on both sides prefers slogans and polemic.
And how do you know he hasn't? There are some pretty subtle arguments for the existence of God, such as Plantinga's version of the ontological argument using modal logic. I don't accept it, but the problem isn't a lack of understanding of science or critical thinking. (For what it's worth, I don't accept the argument because I don't believe the version of modal logic he uses correctly describes the universe, but that's a metaphysical position -- there's no possible observation that could decide between the modal logics I accept, in which the existence of God appears not to be provable, and the one Plantinga uses in which the existence of God appears to be provable).
If you think that because some religious people have stupid reasons for being religious they must all have stupid reasons for being religious then perhaps you should spend a few minutes with a critical thinking primer too.
It's a good job you USAnians dumped the tea. In tea-drinking countries (UK, Ireland, India, China, etc), tea is as served as close to boiling point as possible, and we even have rituals to make sure of that ("pot to kettle, never kettle to pot..."). In India, tea is often served with a second, empty, cup, so the customer can pour the tea from one to the other until it's cool enough to drink. Somehow we tea-drinkers manage without incinerating ourselves.
Critical thought is frowned upon in religion it is not encouraged. This is practically the definition of faith.
I know it would be breaking with/. tradition, but it would be nice if people found out something about the subject before posting. Yes, there are religious groups that frown on critical thinking, and they can be very vocal, but they're far from representative of religion. Pascal, Aquinas, Priestley, Gödel, Berkeley, Descartes, Leibniz and Kant were all religious and great critical thinkers (mainly encouraged by religious institutions), and critical thinking has always been very strongly encouraged in non-fundamentalist religion. To the non-fundamentalist religious, faith is a supplement to reason, not a replacement for it. And for strongly secular examples of why such a supplement is needed, see almost any episode of the original Star Trek. Spock will try to solve everything with "logic", and will be forced by circumstances to step outside logic.
Well, you need a few receivers on the same plate, but by looking at phase differences you can even detect movement within the plate. See this for example. Sure, the calculations are complex, but there are plenty of folks who don't let that put them off.
The rights holders really have been very strict about keeping the secret for many years, so it's hardly surprising they're upset at finding out it's on Wikipedia.
Really? I've seen a stand-up comic on British TV give away the ending with no warning. It's not that well-kept a secret. It's not as if it's the formula for cola.
Taking it to the other extreme if you stood outside the entrance to a theatre as viewers were walking in, holding a big sign with the details of the killer written on it, that would worsen the effects of the production against the will of the people about to view it.
"The killer"? What, somebody gets killed in the play? Aww, you've spoiled the surprise for me now.
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It depends on what you mean by "good reason". There can be no scientific reason, for some definitions of "scientific", because the modern version of the scientific method was actually developed with the express purpose of excluding any foundation for religious belief. For instance, Russell Berg has proposed 15 criteria for whether a theory is scietific (behind paywall, sorry), and his first criteria is that it excludes God and gods. On those rules there can't be a "good" reason by definition, but I think it tells us more about the people making the rules than about the existence of God.
I do think that if somebody believes that they have had a subjective experience of God then it is rational to act on that experience unless they have good reason to reject it, and "lack of evidence" is not of itself good reason to reject it because they do have evidence (I don't say "proof"), they just can't pass it on other than by unverifiable statements. Alternative explanations are not necessarily sufficient reasons for rejecting the experience either, unless there is good reason for preferring those explanations. When push comes to shove, all evidence available to the individual is apprehended subjectively, and there's no a priori reason to prefer one set of subjective experiences to another.
Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you are charged with murder. You have no recollection of committing the murder, but rather have a clear recollection of being at home on your own on the evening the murder occurred. However, you have a motive and are picked out in a line-up, and ultimately convicted. The scientific (especially the classical foundationalist) view is that the objective evidence points clearly to your guilt, so you should reject the hypothesis that you are innocent. Because of information only available to you, subjectively, though, you would be completely rational to continue to believe yourself innocent, even though your recollection could in theory be defective. Sure, if the evidence continues to pile up -- a taxi driver remembers picking you up from home and taking you to the murder scene, he has the stub that shows he was paid with your credit card, DNA evidence places you at the scene, and so on, there comes a point when you would have to take seriously the possibility that your recollection is wrong. But the point remains: your subjective recollection, whilst being fallible, does carry some weight, so the degree of proof needed to convince you that you are wrong is quite properly higher than the level of proof needed to convince anybody else that you are wrong.
Now, what about your wife? She was away at a conference at the time of the murder, but based on her knowledge of you she tends to trust your claims of innocence. Not as strongly as you do, because she doesn't have the subjective experience, but enough to campaign about what she is sure is a miscarriage of justice.
Between those two positions I do see how it can be reasonable to have religious belief, either because of subjective experience or trust in the testimony of those who claim to have had religious experience. Neither position is "scientific", but I believe that both can be rational as long as they don't hold out against too much contrary evidence (and what constitutes "too much" is subjective anyway).
Does that make any sense?
For those religions you get the mustard gas even if you don't open a box, so not opening a box is still the worst strategy.
Sorry, but logic doesn't work this way. A logical proof only guarantees that if the premises of the argument are true, then the conclusions must also be true. Because of this, it is fundamentally impossible for a logical proof to demonstrate anything about the nature of reality.
Not quite right. That's true of classical logic, but modal logics contain some assumptions about reality (specifically concerning possibility and necessity), so within a modal logic it is possible to demonstrate something about the "reality" that the logic describes. The issue is whether that "reality" is the one in which we live -- my point of disagreement with Plantinga -- but that's undecidable by observation.
One problem with Plantinga's argument is that he assumes it is possible for an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent entity to exist, but this is exactly the kind of god we know cannot exist because of the problem of evil (never mind the logical self-inconsistency of omnipotence).
Actually we know of no such thing. As Adams pointed out in 1993, the arguments against God from the problem of evil only work if we add "utilitarian" to the characteristics of God. If God is a deontic or virtue ethicist then the existing arguments fail. And "omnipotence" is not necessarily self-inconsistent. Philosophers observed quite early on that putting "God can" in front of a meaningless statement does not yield a meaningful statement, so most of the supposed paradoxes are actually meaningless statements.
As for Stephen Hawking's argument, I'd have to read the book, but in principle it is completely accurate that there is simply no reason to believe in one.
There is no objective reason to believe in one, true.
No, the purpose of science is to discover certain types of truth, those that are amenable to scientific investigation. There are many things that are true but that do not fall within the remit of science. Unfortunately, we have no reliable way of determining what those many things are. For example, either "There is no objective reality" or "There is an objective reality" is true, but science gives us no way to decide between them (instead, it typically assumes the latter).
I don't know why this isn't mentioned more often, but there is something simpler than both of these cases.
How about that WE created the universe. We already exist, and the idea that we have an eternal soul is no more far-fetched than believing an eternal god exists. In fact it's less absurd, as we have proof of our own existence, at least in corporeal form.
The idea that the universe exists by virtue of being observed is an old one, going back at least to Berkeley, and once you get rid of the idea of God then we are the most likely candidates for observers. A more modern presentation would be that the states of existing and not existing were superimposed until our observation collapsed those states. It's a bit esoteric, though.
At the least, I'm still amazed there aren't more people who are 'not sure' about a big entity (god or whatever), but think that we each have some kind of eternal 'soul'. I certainly fall into that camp.
That seems to be the position of many "new age" spiritualities, although they come with their own baggage.
A very basic rule of philosphy is that anything that had a beginning had a cause
No. It's a very old theory of philosophy (Aristotle, if I recall correctly), but it is not a rule of philosophy because there's been an argument amongst philosophers since then whether it's true or not. If it were actually a rule there would be no way for them to have that argument.
Occam only meant that we can't invoke a more complicated explanation than necessary within science.
And even then the application is usually subjective, as what one person considers more complex another considers simpler. I have (tongue-in-cheek) upset people arguing for a form of scientism by invoking Occam's razor to "prove" solipsism ("Zero objective realities is simpler than one objective reality"). Occam's razor is a methodological tool; it is not any sort of guide to what is or is not "true" (although some seem to have what looks to me like a religious belief that it is).
It's about as good for the intellectual as The God Delusion is. Strong on rhetoric, weak on actual argument. Mere Christianity does have the advantage of being somewhat shorter.
And even if you do believe in God, what are the chances you've chosen the right one to believe in?
That isn't actually a very strong argument against taking a position. Suppose I put twenty boxes in front of you and told you that one of them contained a good cheque for $1,000,000 and the others contained nothing. You can open any one, and keep the contents. What are the changes of picking the right one? Not great. What reason is there for choosing one box over another? Not much: maybe hunch, maybe try to interpret my facial expressions. One thing is sure, though: any strategy that involves opening a box is better than the strategy of not opening any of them because you can't decide.
Anyway, people at stages 5 and 6 of Fowler's model of faith development don't really make a choice between different faith traditions (so your argument about inheriting the religion of their parents doesn't apply to them, although they may inherit some ways of expressing that faith). In terms of the box game, these people recognise the nature of the game, don't put any faith in their ability to choose well, but simply enjoy the act of opening the box that they do.
It's worth looking at the Euthyphro dilemma. The religious are not immune to the problem of the source of morality.
I think I'd prefer "What would Loki do". Still pretty much anything he wants to, but the stuff he wants to do looks like more fun.
"Religious nutters" like Karl Popper, who argued that it was impossible to draw an objective distinction between the scientific and the metaphysical?
Yes it does, it just doesn't take any religious faith. There are metaphysical assumptions underlying all worldviews. Even scientific worldviews, although some popularisers of science try to pretend there aren't.
I'm not sure what you mean by the law of gravity not being "physical", but I'm pretty sure it's not addressed in "The God Delusion". The God Delusion is very lightweight anyway. Those who agree with it get carried away by the polemic, but there's hardly any substance. If you want good arguments for atheism you need to read people like William Rowe. Most people don't, though, because they'd have to think -- something most atheists turn out to be as averse to as most religionists. Almost everybody on both sides prefers slogans and polemic.
And how do you know he hasn't? There are some pretty subtle arguments for the existence of God, such as Plantinga's version of the ontological argument using modal logic. I don't accept it, but the problem isn't a lack of understanding of science or critical thinking. (For what it's worth, I don't accept the argument because I don't believe the version of modal logic he uses correctly describes the universe, but that's a metaphysical position -- there's no possible observation that could decide between the modal logics I accept, in which the existence of God appears not to be provable, and the one Plantinga uses in which the existence of God appears to be provable).
If you think that because some religious people have stupid reasons for being religious they must all have stupid reasons for being religious then perhaps you should spend a few minutes with a critical thinking primer too.
B: the reason why she won the case was that was shown that Ms Donalds put profit before safety. http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
It's a good job you USAnians dumped the tea. In tea-drinking countries (UK, Ireland, India, China, etc), tea is as served as close to boiling point as possible, and we even have rituals to make sure of that ("pot to kettle, never kettle to pot..."). In India, tea is often served with a second, empty, cup, so the customer can pour the tea from one to the other until it's cool enough to drink. Somehow we tea-drinkers manage without incinerating ourselves.
Critical thought is frowned upon in religion it is not encouraged. This is practically the definition of faith.
I know it would be breaking with /. tradition, but it would be nice if people found out something about the subject before posting. Yes, there are religious groups that frown on critical thinking, and they can be very vocal, but they're far from representative of religion. Pascal, Aquinas, Priestley, Gödel, Berkeley, Descartes, Leibniz and Kant were all religious and great critical thinkers (mainly encouraged by religious institutions), and critical thinking has always been very strongly encouraged in non-fundamentalist religion. To the non-fundamentalist religious, faith is a supplement to reason, not a replacement for it. And for strongly secular examples of why such a supplement is needed, see almost any episode of the original Star Trek. Spock will try to solve everything with "logic", and will be forced by circumstances to step outside logic.
Sorry, I must have mistyped the html on the link.
Well, you need a few receivers on the same plate, but by looking at phase differences you can even detect movement within the plate. See this for example. Sure, the calculations are complex, but there are plenty of folks who don't let that put them off.
You don't even have to be that patient. With a GPS fiducial network you could be getting results in months rather than years.
However, she's probably one of the earlier instances.
Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone" was written well before Christie was even born.
All the cast, for a start.
The rights holders really have been very strict about keeping the secret for many years, so it's hardly surprising they're upset at finding out it's on Wikipedia.
Really? I've seen a stand-up comic on British TV give away the ending with no warning. It's not that well-kept a secret. It's not as if it's the formula for cola.
Before the character even appeared? That was clever. Or bull.
Taking it to the other extreme if you stood outside the entrance to a theatre as viewers were walking in, holding a big sign with the details of the killer written on it, that would worsen the effects of the production against the will of the people about to view it.
"The killer"? What, somebody gets killed in the play? Aww, you've spoiled the surprise for me now.