You are forgetting something really important here:
In a free market with a lot of competion companies will only make small to no profits. For that reason the most efficient way of making profit is stop competion. The goverment also needs to take care that there is a working free market with a lot of competion.
Not exactly. Marriage is one male and N females though, and N == 1 is a fairly common number.
Not really. A marriage is always a union between one male and one female. A polygamist doesn't marry multiple females at once, he has multiple marriages active at the same time. That is why there is no ceremony for 1 male and N females but instead N ceremonies with 1 male and 1 female. That is also the reason why it is often possible to get a divorced from just one female and divorce doesn't end the union with all the other females the polygamist has also married.
'marriage' as the union of a male and one or more females in a family unit for purposes of reproduction and inheritence
Yes. Marriage as a symbol of love is a rather new idea. Stuff like "arranged marriages" make a lot of sense with your definition of marriage but little sense if you require that marriage had something to do with love.
But there are over 2 billion Christians, 100 Million people in the US is just 5% worldwide. Worldwide there are likely more christians believing Evolution is true than Atheists.
And if you look at the questions often used for "god inspired evolution" vs. "evolution" you will often see that they are phrased in a way where almost no theist could really reject them and choose the "evolution". Even if someone is a deist who believes God created the universe and did not interact with it at all after that, then evolution must be considered as something that has only happend because God had choosen rules and starting conditions that allow evolution to work. So even a deist or pantheist can not really choose an answer like "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process"
Exactly a single gene is beneficial, two of them are not. But you can not have people with one of the them, without also having people with two sickle-cell genes.
Anyway, gay people have kids all the time. Just because you don't care to copulate with the opposite sex, doesn't mean the drive to procreate isn't there.
Sure, but they sure get a smaller number of kids than heterosexuals without modern contraception. And remember that not too long ago people were often having 8 children or so but the population still stayed almost stable. So for survival people need to have a lot of kids because only a small subset of them was actually living long enough to get own children.
No, but for resistant to malaria one copy of the gene is enough, which will not cause full SCD. However single gene carriers mating with other single gene carries results in a 25% chance of double SCD gene offspring, 50% with a single gene and malaria resistance and 25% chance of offspring without a single SCD gene. So SCD gene will be beneficial to a group if malaria is large enough threat for survival, so that limited resistance for 75% offsets the dead's caused by full SCD for 25% of the children.
Maybe I was not clear enough about this. Yes, having one copy of the gene is very helpful, but will not cause full SCD. Two copies of the gene will cause SCD. You can not have people with one copy of the gene without having a smaller number of people that have two copies of the gene.
Don't forget that during most of human history human survival was not as easy as it is now. In the past people often had a huge number of children, but still the population often did not increase because so many children died before they reached adulthood and own children. So it is not unlikely that even a birthrate that is just 20% lower would have been a real survival risk.
No. That is a too simple view of evolution and genetics. Something being common does not necessary show that something is beneficial for survival. Look at e.g.: Sickle-cell disease(SCD). Very common in Sub-Saharan Africa, but not helpful for survival. SCD happens in individuals with two copies of the gene, while one copy of the gene makes individuals more resistant to malaria. Genes can often have multiple effects, some beneficial, some not. So it is possible that homosexuality is beneficial for survival but it could also be just a side effect of something that is actually beneficial.
There are lots of species of which a significant number are homosexual.
This is also problematic reasoning. There are also significant numbers of species(ants,...) where most individuals are infertile. But that sure does not mean that mass infertility would be beneficial for humans, too. Whether something is beneficial or not most often also depends on other traits and the environment of species.
Yes, but the reason they believed religion needed to be eradicated was not so much because they were atheists as that it was competition for the loyalties of the people they ruled over.
This can be said for "religious" wars. Do you know any war where the rulers reason for participation was really religion and not power gain? However claiming religious reasons has often helped getting support by the people. But this also worked for Stalin and Mao, see e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists
Also I think the power gain theory is not strictly true. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 Stalin shut down the League of millitant godless, anti-religious periodicals and reopened churches to gain more support by the people. So for power gain the extremely antireligious activities were actually counterproductive and Stalin apparently knew this and continued until he felt he needed the support of religious people to not lose the war against Nazi-Germany.
For Hitler power gain as motivation behind his antichurch activities sounds more like likely. He used antireligious persecution against religious entities which he could not control, changed the protestant church to the "German Christians" and tried to appear as regular Christian in public while his private opinions were different.
I agree, the details of Hitlers views are hard to pin down. But I think that lumping him into a list of "atheist mass murderers" is extremely misleading.
"atheist mass murders" is misleading yes, on other hand "anticlerical mass murders" would be fine.
Aside from a few anecdotal accounts of skepticism, we have little reason to believe Hitler was not religious and many reasons (including his own statements) to believe that he was.
The question if he was religious is hard to answer because there are many very different definitions of "religious". Some people consider communism a political religion while others count only traditional religions. I think however most definitions will agree that Hitler was religious in a certain sense, calling him a roman catholic however is only formally true but very misleading imho.
These arguments are also beside the point, as there is a key difference between the three men listed above, and the religious zealots they are being compared to. The men above, whether atheist or not, did not do what they did because of atheism. They did not justify their actions by appealing to atheist teachings. Their religious beliefs can not be directly linked to their unspeakable actions. On the other hand, the abhorrent actions of the religious justified by, or taken "in defense of" their faith can.
Actually I think for Stalin and Mao this is not strictly true. They both killed a great number of priests and monks because they believed religion needs to be eradicated.
Dawkin's has on many occasions stated in plain english that neither he nor anyone else can be absolutely sure that unicorns don't fart rainbows, but that there is absolutely zero evidence to suggest that unverifyable reports of such beasts are anything more than an elaborate fiction.
An often used argument but not a valid one. There are many reason why this or Russel's Teapot is not a valid analogy to the belief in god.
1. Unverifiable reports? You rarely hear people reporting unicorns but I never heard anyone reporting a unicorn farting rainbows or a teapots in space. There are however a huge amount of people claiming some religious experience. Sure, this can possibly be all be bogus but this sure is a reason to investigate religious claims much more seriously then claims of farting unicorns.
2. There is no good reason why a farting unicorn would not have been noticed and caught by now. Religions usually provide built-in reasons why their god wasn't noticed by anyone yet.
3. Also try to replace farting unicorns by intelligent alien life in a different sun system. There is no evidence for this either, but still doesn't seem unlikely. Why? Because we can interpolate using our scientific knowledge about the development of life on earth and about the universe. We can get the result that the existence intelligent life outside of earth is possible and can even be considered likely. So for claims without evidence, Humans don't usually rule them out by default, but instead try to estimate an answer to the question by using knowledge about similar entities. For farting unicorns or teapots in space we got a lot of knowledge about horses and other animals, about regular teapots and space which we can use to estimate that these claims are very unlikely.
But what kind of knowledge about similar entities do we have to estimate anything about the existence of god? We got no good knowledge about any existing entity that shares just some basic properties with god.
Also check out the famous debate of Russell vs. Copleston. And while I don't think Copleston's cosmological argument proves the existence of god, it shows at least one thing: For anything to exist, there must be something that bends the usual rule of contingency. So such a deistic god is not a arbitrary assumption, but instead an possible answer for the fundamental question ("Why is there anything and not nothing?") with only a small number of possible answers.
A perfect reason to reject that particular *religion* then.
Yes. But which religion is that particular religion? There are some naive versions of Christianity which you can reject using that argument, however most versions provide a solution of the "problem of evil". E.g.: By limiting the omnipotence. If your definition of God is "omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolence", then you could even call them atheists, because they don't believe in such a being, but instead something very close to it. Or if you look at more recent theologians, e.g. Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
The God who makes us live in this world without using him as a working hypothesis is the God before whom we are ever standing. Before God and with him we live without God. God allows himself to be edged out of the world and on to the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us. Matthew 8: 17 makes it crystal clear that it is not by his omnipotence that Christ helps us, but by his weakness and suffering.
From the evidential POV, atheism and agnosticism are equal to a theistic stance which believes that God does not intervene in the universe, but most religions have the answer to prayer as a major plank of their platform, and thus hold a position at odds with the lack of evidence that prayer has a measurable effect.
"Pray and get healed" and similar claims can be rejected yes. But many religions claims aren't that simple. Most of the time the claims are actually untestable, e.g.: "pray and reduce your time in hell". Or they can be tested and will even be found to be true, but there is also naturalistic explanation for the claim, e.g: "pray and God provides hope".
If God does not intervene in the universe, then religion is of dubious value unless it conveys benefits that are not achievable otherwise, which is observably not the case.
The important question is not just if something is also achievable without religion, but also the probability of archiving something. People can be good and bad with and without religion. But what kind of differences will religion actually cause? This is really hard to evaluate. It can not be evaluated by a series of anecdotes. This is the real problem with Dawkins. The question of god existence can never be answered by science. But the physical results of religion are a valid field of scientific study. But here Dawkins doesn't really seem to want to really dig into the data. He doesn't want to really test his hypothesis about the effects of religions or his meme theory. He seems to be only focused on collecting anecdotes that agree with his point of view.
People are capable of being moral, charitable, cooperative, law-abiding, good parents, and upstanding citizens without the aid of religion, and are probably less likely to stray from the "path" given that atheism has a strong correlation with better education and income.
But will this continue if people are living in a society completely without religion and without religious upbringing? We just don't know yet. There is no example for a democratic state like this in history. The only examples for almost completely atheistic societies are set by communist states, which are not really fair examples to evaluate the question.
Religious people who don't reject science, whose understanding of evolutionary theory doesn't contradict their beliefs about higher powers, they don't call themselves "intelligent design."
Exactly. On other hand Pew Research unfortunately repeatly used questions in their surverys where even these people are not unlikely going to choose the "intelligent design" option. E.g.: Someone who believes that God setup the laws and starting configuration of the universe and then stopped interacting with it, will have trouble choosing between:
1. Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to natural processes such as natural selection.
2. A supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today.
He isn't unlikely to choose 2. and was counted as an ID beliver, even through his deist viewpoint has really nothing to do with ID.
That says nothing about it's place in the 21st century, of course.
I think the basic mechanism is still at work. There is still a huge number of common diseases where no treatment exists that is much more effective than a placebo. And for even more diseasses the "best" treatment can still reduce the quality of life of the patient instead of increasing it, because the side effects of the treatment decrease the quality of life more than it is improved by wanted effects of the treatment. When people first visit a homeopathic doctor most of the time they already went to a scientific doctors before. The chance is then very high that their problem is something where scientific medicine doesn't yet have a good remedy. Often doctors won't tell their patients about that, but instead prescribe something that is a effective treatment for a different disease but not for the disease the patient actually got: a bad placebo with side effects.
For homeopathy to die, doctors need to tell their patients when they can't help them instead of treating them with placebos with side effects.
Actually, I'd almost place this in the realm of "the only thing you can be sure of is that your own mind exists" that too is also not falsifiable but is dealt with by "I think therefore I am". How would you know your own mind exists if you were unable to think?
People are having inconsistent thoughts all the time, so it is clearly possible to think while not being consistent.
Rejecting your ability to compare is akin to rejecting that your own mind exists.....
How do you get the idea, that I'm rejecting the ability to compare?
I'm not rejecting the ability to compare, but the ability to know if you are inconsistent. If you are inconsistent, it isn't guaranteed that you will be able to find out. And if you were consistent and add "I'm consistent" you will get inconsistent as a result. "If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent from within itself, then it is inconsistent." So it is impossible to know if you are consistent.
If god were manipulating your experiments.. how would you know? How do you know that isn't the case now? you don't.
Exactly.
Thing is, the conjectures of science adapt to observed phenomena. Whatever we see is what goes down in a concisely notated form. We observe new things, old conjectures are broken, thrown out and new more falsifiable ones are made that fit the new observations.
The important thing is: If you can't be sure that your experiments are not manipulated, then you can't throw out any conjecture. Any failed test of a conjecture could possibly be the result of an manipulated experiment, while the conjecture could still be true. Even if you are able to repeat that experiment with the same results it would be possible that all of your experiments have been manipulated. Falsification of any conjecture is impossible, if you can't rule out systematic manipulation. You would be back to induction with all its problems.
When the conjectures always follow the observations, how would you ever know if a being whose existence itself is not falsifiable is playing with the results or not? We cannot completely define a phenomena, so how can you compare if something is manipulated or not if you cannot even define it?
I wouldn't. But I would need to assume that is not happening if I want to do science, cause otherways I just can't do science. I and everyone else must assume that there is nosystematic and undetectable manipulation my or their experiments. You can't falsify the conjecture that there is no systematic manipulation, but you still need to accept it to be able to do science and if you are wrong and there really is systematic manipulation of your experiments, you won't be able to know.
If you rely on that you can't guarantee it, all it takes for someone to be unable to be convinced is ask 'Why?' and have the person trying to do the convincing stumped because they don't have a reason other than they feel it's the case.
You can't guarantee ether that they people will accept your value of not accepting anything that is not falsifiable. I'm not claiming to provide a magic bullet, I'm just saying that there is no magic bullet.
I'd agree even that you could not really know even if the comparison function of the human mind works, after all if it didn't how would you able to tell it wasn't?
Then you basically agree that the set of values "I need to be consistent" and "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong" is inherently inconsistent. Now that you noticed that, shouldn't you try to find a different and possibly consistent set of values?
Few people would question this though, it's one of those not falsifiable things where if your mind is that horribly broken well there isn't really any recourse and you may as well just run with it either way.
Sure, but that would be inconsistent with your value "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong". With that rule your set of values will always be inconsistent if includes basic logic and math, without that rule it is at least possible that your set of values is consistent. Inconsistency doesn't need to be easy to notice, often inconsistent systems will work pretty well, e.g. naive set theory worked really well until Russel found his paradox. Naive set theory contained a small number of extremely easy rules, still it took many years to spot its inconsistencies. Because of that even "I need to be consistent" seems to be highly problematic. Most likely there is no existing set of values that is truly consistent.
Without the use of comparative logic consistency means nothing, the function of basic comparison is so primitive it is inbuilt into us but yet itself cannot be falsified as to whether it works.
Sure, your set of values would clearly include these
Do I need to definitively assume there is or is not a god when doing things of science? No
You need to make some basic assumptions about the reality otherwise science would be pointless. If god, the universe, aliens, whatever would be constantly manipulating your experiments, then science couldn't work. You could never really falsify anything, because you couldn't trust any of your experimental results.
However, people would tend to like to have a reason to prefer the conjecture that they do, and the only reason to prefer one conjecture over another if you care about not preferring false things without recourse is that if it is wrong it is capable of being shown wrong.
The only reason? Fortunately most scientists don't share that idea. There are always a lot of different conjecture, which can't be all right at the same time, but all of them are falsifiable. So scientists need other reasons why they prefer one conjecture over another. Values like preferring conjectures which are aesthetically pleasing have proven to be pretty helpful.
Comes to values with that, people can say 'I have an innate feeling x is true', if they go with that as a value they simply won't be able to convince others of it because they in all likelihood do not have that value.
In all likelihood? I would say there is a huge set of shared values where many people will agree with you, because they share the same feelings or agree that something is true a priori.
This would also conflict with any value of their own wanting to actually know the limitations of your own knowledge and to be able to tell when you are wrong (which are both very common).
I think these are actually not as common values as you believe they are.
When was the last time you heard someone say "x is true, I simply know it, it feels good man" taken seriously in an intellectual debate?
What is taken seriously during debate depends on the values of the audience. In this case the someone will not be taken seriously for multiple reasons: Language: There are some keywords ("simply" and not just "feels good" but "feels good man") in that sentence that will cause people in an "intellectual debate" to believe that the speaker is not a intellectual himself and many people will tend to reject stuff they hear from outside of their group
Values: To be taken seriously during an debate you need to appeal to values shared by the audience. If the audience doesn't share this feeling you are unlikely to hear this argument.
Could you please explain how a set of values such as "I need to be consistent", "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong" could be combined with "I want to prefer the conjecture there is god" without being a contradiction?
Actually even the smaller set of values "I need to be consistent" and "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong" is inconsistent as soon as you included the basic rules of logic and math to it: Gödel's second incompleteness theorem: "For any formal effectively generated theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, if T includes a statement of its own consistency then T is inconsistent." If your set of values/theorems is consistent and contains basic arithmetical truths then you can't prove that it is consistent. But if a set of theorems is inconsistent it is not guaranteed that you will be able to show its inconsistency. If there would be an guarantee that you are always able to find a counterexample within the theory itself for every inconsistent theory, that would be a contradiction to Gödel's theorem cause then you could just prove consistency by showing that couldn't find a counterexample. So you can't be consistent and able to know if you are wrong at the same time. You can either know that you are consistent, but then you won't be able to know if you are
Being undecided is not a false belief. Saying something is true when it potentially is not is a false belief.
People usually don't completely rule out the possibility of being wrong. They just assume that something is true or false. Being undecided doesn't really help here, because when people make decision they usually need to make assumptions for stuff where they don't know the answer, even when they might never know the answer.
Someone saying 'I do not believe in god' is not saying there is no god, only that there is no reason to believe there is a god (precisely because, it is unfalsifiable). There is no reason to prefer that conjecture. So why use it? for people who value there being a reason to believe something over another, it is not reasonable.
Okay, what you claiming here is: If X is unfalsifiable, then there is no reason to assume X is true, right? This seems false to me, e.g.: If people believe X, because assuming X makes them feel better, they clearly have a reason why they prefer believe X over not X. So I guess: "X makes me feel better" is not a valid reason? What is a valid reason then?
And having conflicting rules isn't 'inconsistent' by your standards?
People have inconsistent value systems all the time through lack of analyzing it all the way.
Having conflicting rules is inconsistent, sure. But most of the time an value system with conflicting rules can be transformed quite easily into an system without conflicting rules or at least into a system with fewer conflicts by adding small restrictions to its rules, that will fix conflicts people noticed. People do this all the time, works pretty well.
But if someone were to say "Human rights are inherently good" I'd call bullshit, it may fit with your values, and even many others, but nothing is inherently 'good' or 'bad' as properties of the universe.
When it comes to values when dealing with people at best you can use reason to appeal to another persons own values that they hold higher than the issue being discussed in order to convince them. You find inconsistencies and make them choose which value they hold more dear, since generally consistency is a very highly held value they will do this.
This will only work if their value system is inconsistent. This doesn't need to be the case. There are many different consistent value systems and even if a value system isn't consistent it is often easy to fix the inconsistency by just adding a few additional restrictions.
The thing is, those that claim that jesus is saviour tend to claim it to be the truth. Most of these people supposedly 'value' knowing what is and is not 'true'. Holding unfalsifiable beliefs is inconsistent in this manner.
Not really. People will never know the truth about unfalsifiable beliefs, no matter what strategy they choose to deal with something that is unfalsifiable. It doesn't matter if they hold unfalsifiable beliefs, actively reject them or try to stay undecided. Because of this, all of these strategies are consistent with a value of knowing what is true and what's not.
I wouldn't, I'm a moral nihilist in that morals are a human construct.
Okay, so in your point of view there can't be any position based on reason that includes moral realism? So if you believe in a universal human rights, you are not acting reasonable? This doesn't just reject the viewpoint of most theists, but also the viewpoint of most atheists.
Morals are a function of peoples values and goals, which can be arbitrary.
Okay, but following arbitrary goals can't be based on reason, otherwise they won't be arbitrary. So if we are following your definition of reason, there is no single action that is purely based on reason, every intentional action people do is always partly determined by unreasonable and arbitrary goals and values. So reason is at best a tool to reach arbitrary goals more easily.
What people value is entirely up to the person, which is why morals can be arbitrary. I value the ability to tell if something I believe is false, because otherwise you can be left the entirety of your life believing false things without recourse.
Sure, but if I follow your argument, this seems to be a just as unreasonable value as some other persons value of telling everyone about Jesus.
Lol... No, you can't say the same about theism. Theism is the base of various conceptual trees; it is an active assertion with consequences that stem *directly* from the assertion. Atheism is not an active assertion.
So which consequences follow directly from the assertion "There is a god."? You can be theist without following any particular religion.
Atheists get their morals, values etc. from sources other than atheism -- of course, since atheism doesn't specify or imply any. Theists get their morals, values etc. from their religion in the form of directives in their various holy religious books,
Again: You can be a theist without following any religion or holy book. And a religion or a holy book is also a "source other than theism", because theism is just the believe in god or gods, nothing else is implied just by being a theist.
Simply ask *which* god or gods a theist believes in, and now you know which religion defines their theism, and further, you'll know which book lays out the next lowest branches of their behavior. You now have the basic map of their moral and ethical tree. You'll know if they have been told to go for one wife or many; if they can eat cows or not; if they should turn the other cheek or behead the opposition, and many more things as well.
Often this will work, but not always. You might get an answer like "Oh, I believe there is only one god and all the holy texts out there contain wisdom collected during eons about the complex relationship of god and humans." If you get an answer like this it is pretty clear that you talking to a theist, but you will need to ask a lot of additional questions until you will be able to build a basic map of the moral and ethical tree of this person. But even if you get an answer like "I believe in the Christian god and follow the bible" you still won't know if this person is going to eat meat, if the person is going to be pro-life or pro-choice, if the person believes homosexuals or non-christians should be burned, etc.
Turn that around, note that someone is atheist, and you still know absolutely nothing else about them other than they don't hold a belief in a god or gods. You don't have any way to ask them something atheism-related that will help you learn, either.
How is "do you follow any named kind of life stance that includes atheism" not an atheism-related question? And if you get an answer like "I'm a secular humanist" or "I'm a marxist" you will know quite of a lot of stuff about this persons morals and ethics. Sure, many atheists won't attach any name to their life stance and most theists will attach some kind of name to their life stance, but you can be theist without attaching any name to your life stance. But even if people do attach a name like "Christian" or "Humanist" to their life stance, the life stances of two people that used the same name can still be wildly different.
Or we can talk about probabilities: Just ask a random person a single question: "Do you believe in god? Yes or No" Then depending on that answer guess whether the person is pro-life or pro-choice. Your guessing will be much more accurate for atheist than for theists. Even if the theist also tells you that he believes in the Bible your guessing accuracy will still be lower for random Christians than for a random atheists.
When you dig down to it, the fundamental thing comes down to the ability to compare items, binary comparison whether 'x is z, or it is not' which is a very basic part of logic.
We both can easily agree that logic needs to be part of reason, but we still won't be able to prove this to someone who claims otherwise. But let us consider this problem solved: So you got a binary relationship to compare things. Now prove that the golden rule "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself." or any other moral value is valid. Or if you say: I can't prove things, but I can falsify things then try falsify "killing non-believers is good". You can also use the other rules of logic and you can also use observations to falsify things. But even with all of these tools you still won't be able to prove or falsify any moral value valid. Falsifiability is a very useful concept to decide if something is science or not, but it is not a criterion to decide whether something is meaningful or not. Values are important to people, but can't be falsified.
Reason only allows anything if you allow inductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning isn't the problem. The problem is that people always need some unfalsifiable claims to begin with. You can't falsify the rules of logic, but you still need them to do any kind of reasoning. But logic is not such a problem because people usually be able to agree on one set of rules there. But other stuff is much complicated, e.g.: Is there good and evil? You can't falsify this stuff, but still people will care a lot about this. Not just religious people but also nearly every atheists got some kind of moral code and many will claim that their moral code is somehow based on reason. Still any claim of "X is good" is always an unfalsifiable claim.
Reason is always based on some set of a priori premises, but different people will consider wildly different sets of a priori premises to be true and thus arrive at wildly different conclusions.
Slashdot Mirror
You are forgetting something really important here:
In a free market with a lot of competion companies will only make small to no profits. For that reason the most efficient way of making profit is stop competion. The goverment also needs to take care that there is a working free market with a lot of competion.
Not exactly. Marriage is one male and N females though, and N == 1 is a fairly common number.
Not really. A marriage is always a union between one male and one female. A polygamist doesn't marry multiple females at once, he has multiple marriages active at the same time. That is why there is no ceremony for 1 male and N females but instead N ceremonies with 1 male and 1 female. That is also the reason why it is often possible to get a divorced from just one female and divorce doesn't end the union with all the other females the polygamist has also married.
'marriage' as the union of a male and one or more females in a family unit for purposes of reproduction and inheritence
Yes. Marriage as a symbol of love is a rather new idea. Stuff like "arranged marriages" make a lot of sense with your definition of marriage but little sense if you require that marriage had something to do with love.
TSMC, UMC and Samsung are some of the biggest players in the field. And almost all the DRAM is manufactured in South Korea.
But there are over 2 billion Christians, 100 Million people in the US is just 5% worldwide. Worldwide there are likely more christians believing Evolution is true than Atheists.
And if you look at the questions often used for "god inspired evolution" vs. "evolution" you will often see that they are phrased in a way where almost no theist could really reject them and choose the "evolution".
Even if someone is a deist who believes God created the universe and did not interact with it at all after that, then evolution must be considered as something that has only happend because God had choosen rules and starting conditions that allow evolution to work. So even a deist or pantheist can not really choose an answer like "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process"
Exactly a single gene is beneficial, two of them are not. But you can not have people with one of the them, without also having people with two sickle-cell genes.
Anyway, gay people have kids all the time. Just because you don't care to copulate with the opposite sex, doesn't mean the drive to procreate isn't there.
Sure, but they sure get a smaller number of kids than heterosexuals without modern contraception. And remember that not too long ago people were often having 8 children or so but the population still stayed almost stable. So for survival people need to have a lot of kids because only a small subset of them was actually living long enough to get own children.
No, but for resistant to malaria one copy of the gene is enough, which will not cause full SCD. However single gene carriers mating with other single gene carries results in a 25% chance of double SCD gene offspring, 50% with a single gene and malaria resistance and 25% chance of offspring without a single SCD gene. So SCD gene will be beneficial to a group if malaria is large enough threat for survival, so that limited resistance for 75% offsets the dead's caused by full SCD for 25% of the children.
Maybe I was not clear enough about this. Yes, having one copy of the gene is very helpful, but will not cause full SCD. Two copies of the gene will cause SCD. You can not have people with one copy of the gene without having a smaller number of people that have two copies of the gene.
Don't forget that during most of human history human survival was not as easy as it is now. In the past people often had a huge number of children, but still the population often did not increase because so many children died before they reached adulthood and own children. So it is not unlikely that even a birthrate that is just 20% lower would have been a real survival risk.
No. That is a too simple view of evolution and genetics. Something being common does not necessary show that something is beneficial for survival. Look at e.g.: Sickle-cell disease(SCD). Very common in Sub-Saharan Africa, but not helpful for survival. SCD happens in individuals with two copies of the gene, while one copy of the gene makes individuals more resistant to malaria. Genes can often have multiple effects, some beneficial, some not.
So it is possible that homosexuality is beneficial for survival but it could also be just a side effect of something that is actually beneficial.
There are lots of species of which a significant number are homosexual.
This is also problematic reasoning. There are also significant numbers of species(ants,...) where most individuals are infertile. But that sure does not mean that mass infertility would be beneficial for humans, too. Whether something is beneficial or not most often also depends on other traits and the environment of species.
Yes, but the reason they believed religion needed to be eradicated was not so much because they were atheists as that it was competition for the loyalties of the people they ruled over.
This can be said for "religious" wars. Do you know any war where the rulers reason for participation was really religion and not power gain? However claiming religious reasons has often helped getting support by the people. But this also worked for Stalin and Mao, see e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists
Also I think the power gain theory is not strictly true. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 Stalin shut down the League of millitant godless, anti-religious periodicals and reopened churches to gain more support by the people. So for power gain the extremely antireligious activities were actually counterproductive and Stalin apparently knew this and continued until he felt he needed the support of religious people to not lose the war against Nazi-Germany.
For Hitler power gain as motivation behind his antichurch activities sounds more like likely. He used antireligious persecution against religious entities which he could not control, changed the protestant church to the "German Christians" and tried to appear as regular Christian in public while his private opinions were different.
I agree, the details of Hitlers views are hard to pin down. But I think that lumping him into a list of "atheist mass murderers" is extremely misleading.
"atheist mass murders" is misleading yes, on other hand "anticlerical mass murders" would be fine.
Aside from a few anecdotal accounts of skepticism, we have little reason to believe Hitler was not religious and many reasons (including his own statements) to believe that he was.
The question if he was religious is hard to answer because there are many very different definitions of "religious". Some people consider communism a political religion while others count only traditional religions. I think however most definitions will agree that Hitler was religious in a certain sense, calling him a roman catholic however is only formally true but very misleading imho.
These arguments are also beside the point, as there is a key difference between the three men listed above, and the religious zealots they are being compared to. The men above, whether atheist or not, did not do what they did because of atheism. They did not justify their actions by appealing to atheist teachings. Their religious beliefs can not be directly linked to their unspeakable actions. On the other hand, the abhorrent actions of the religious justified by, or taken "in defense of" their faith can.
Actually I think for Stalin and Mao this is not strictly true. They both killed a great number of priests and monks because they believed religion needs to be eradicated.
It's much more complicated than this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler
Dawkin's has on many occasions stated in plain english that neither he nor anyone else can be absolutely sure that unicorns don't fart rainbows, but that there is absolutely zero evidence to suggest that unverifyable reports of such beasts are anything more than an elaborate fiction.
An often used argument but not a valid one. There are many reason why this or Russel's Teapot is not a valid analogy to the belief in god.
1. Unverifiable reports? You rarely hear people reporting unicorns but I never heard anyone reporting a unicorn farting rainbows or a teapots in space. There are however a huge amount of people claiming some religious experience. Sure, this can possibly be all be bogus but this sure is a reason to investigate religious claims much more seriously then claims of farting unicorns.
2. There is no good reason why a farting unicorn would not have been noticed and caught by now. Religions usually provide built-in reasons why their god wasn't noticed by anyone yet.
3. Also try to replace farting unicorns by intelligent alien life in a different sun system. There is no evidence for this either, but still doesn't seem unlikely. Why? Because we can interpolate using our scientific knowledge about the development of life on earth and about the universe. We can get the result that the existence intelligent life outside of earth is possible and can even be considered likely. So for claims without evidence, Humans don't usually rule them out by default, but instead try to estimate an answer to the question by using knowledge about similar entities. For farting unicorns or teapots in space we got a lot of knowledge about horses and other animals, about regular teapots and space which we can use to estimate that these claims are very unlikely.
But what kind of knowledge about similar entities do we have to estimate anything about the existence of god? We got no good knowledge about any existing entity that shares just some basic properties with god.
Also check out the famous debate of Russell vs. Copleston. And while I don't think Copleston's cosmological argument proves the existence of god, it shows at least one thing: For anything to exist, there must be something that bends the usual rule of contingency. So such a deistic god is not a arbitrary assumption, but instead an possible answer for the fundamental question ("Why is there anything and not nothing?") with only a small number of possible answers.
A perfect reason to reject that particular *religion* then.
Yes. But which religion is that particular religion? There are some naive versions of Christianity which you can reject using that argument, however most versions provide a solution of the "problem of evil". E.g.: By limiting the omnipotence. If your definition of God is "omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolence", then you could even call them atheists, because they don't believe in such a being, but instead something very close to it. Or if you look at more recent theologians, e.g. Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
The God who makes us live in this world without using him as a working hypothesis is the God before whom we are ever standing. Before God and with him we live without God. God allows himself to be edged out of the world and on to the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us. Matthew 8: 17 makes it crystal clear that it is not by his omnipotence that Christ helps us, but by his weakness and suffering.
From the evidential POV, atheism and agnosticism are equal to a theistic stance which believes that God does not intervene in the universe, but most religions have the answer to prayer as a major plank of their platform, and thus hold a position at odds with the lack of evidence that prayer has a measurable effect.
"Pray and get healed" and similar claims can be rejected yes. But many religions claims aren't that simple. Most of the time the claims are actually untestable, e.g.: "pray and reduce your time in hell". Or they can be tested and will even be found to be true, but there is also naturalistic explanation for the claim, e.g: "pray and God provides hope".
If God does not intervene in the universe, then religion is of dubious value unless it conveys benefits that are not achievable otherwise, which is observably not the case.
The important question is not just if something is also achievable without religion, but also the probability of archiving something. People can be good and bad with and without religion. But what kind of differences will religion actually cause? This is really hard to evaluate. It can not be evaluated by a series of anecdotes. This is the real problem with Dawkins. The question of god existence can never be answered by science. But the physical results of religion are a valid field of scientific study. But here Dawkins doesn't really seem to want to really dig into the data. He doesn't want to really test his hypothesis about the effects of religions or his meme theory. He seems to be only focused on collecting anecdotes that agree with his point of view.
People are capable of being moral, charitable, cooperative, law-abiding, good parents, and upstanding citizens without the aid of religion, and are probably less likely to stray from the "path" given that atheism has a strong correlation with better education and income.
But will this continue if people are living in a society completely without religion and without religious upbringing? We just don't know yet. There is no example for a democratic state like this in history. The only examples for almost completely atheistic societies are set by communist states, which are not really fair examples to evaluate the question.
Religious people who don't reject science, whose understanding of evolutionary theory doesn't contradict their beliefs about higher powers, they don't call themselves "intelligent design."
Exactly. On other hand Pew Research unfortunately repeatly used questions in their surverys where even these people are not unlikely going to choose the "intelligent design" option. E.g.: Someone who believes that God setup the laws and starting configuration of the universe and then stopped interacting with it, will have trouble choosing between:
He isn't unlikely to choose 2. and was counted as an ID beliver, even through his deist viewpoint has really nothing to do with ID.
That says nothing about it's place in the 21st century, of course.
I think the basic mechanism is still at work. There is still a huge number of common diseases where no treatment exists that is much more effective than a placebo. And for even more diseasses the "best" treatment can still reduce the quality of life of the patient instead of increasing it, because the side effects of the treatment decrease the quality of life more than it is improved by wanted effects of the treatment.
When people first visit a homeopathic doctor most of the time they already went to a scientific doctors before. The chance is then very high that their problem is something where scientific medicine doesn't yet have a good remedy. Often doctors won't tell their patients about that, but instead prescribe something that is a effective treatment for a different disease but not for the disease the patient actually got: a bad placebo with side effects.
For homeopathy to die, doctors need to tell their patients when they can't help them instead of treating them with placebos with side effects.
Actually, I'd almost place this in the realm of "the only thing you can be sure of is that your own mind exists" that too is also not falsifiable but is dealt with by "I think therefore I am". How would you know your own mind exists if you were unable to think?
People are having inconsistent thoughts all the time, so it is clearly possible to think while not being consistent.
Rejecting your ability to compare is akin to rejecting that your own mind exists.... .
How do you get the idea, that I'm rejecting the ability to compare?
I'm not rejecting the ability to compare, but the ability to know if you are inconsistent. If you are inconsistent, it isn't guaranteed that you will be able to find out. And if you were consistent and add "I'm consistent" you will get inconsistent as a result. "If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent from within itself, then it is inconsistent." So it is impossible to know if you are consistent.
If god were manipulating your experiments.. how would you know? How do you know that isn't the case now? you don't.
Exactly.
Thing is, the conjectures of science adapt to observed phenomena. Whatever we see is what goes down in a concisely notated form. We observe new things, old conjectures are broken, thrown out and new more falsifiable ones are made that fit the new observations.
The important thing is: If you can't be sure that your experiments are not manipulated, then you can't throw out any conjecture. Any failed test of a conjecture could possibly be the result of an manipulated experiment, while the conjecture could still be true. Even if you are able to repeat that experiment with the same results it would be possible that all of your experiments have been manipulated. Falsification of any conjecture is impossible, if you can't rule out systematic manipulation. You would be back to induction with all its problems.
When the conjectures always follow the observations, how would you ever know if a being whose existence itself is not falsifiable is playing with the results or not? We cannot completely define a phenomena, so how can you compare if something is manipulated or not if you cannot even define it?
I wouldn't. But I would need to assume that is not happening if I want to do science, cause otherways I just can't do science. I and everyone else must assume that there is nosystematic and undetectable manipulation my or their experiments. You can't falsify the conjecture that there is no systematic manipulation, but you still need to accept it to be able to do science and if you are wrong and there really is systematic manipulation of your experiments, you won't be able to know.
If you rely on that you can't guarantee it, all it takes for someone to be unable to be convinced is ask 'Why?' and have the person trying to do the convincing stumped because they don't have a reason other than they feel it's the case.
You can't guarantee ether that they people will accept your value of not accepting anything that is not falsifiable. I'm not claiming to provide a magic bullet, I'm just saying that there is no magic bullet.
I'd agree even that you could not really know even if the comparison function of the human mind works, after all if it didn't how would you able to tell it wasn't?
Then you basically agree that the set of values "I need to be consistent" and "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong" is inherently inconsistent. Now that you noticed that, shouldn't you try to find a different and possibly consistent set of values?
Few people would question this though, it's one of those not falsifiable things where if your mind is that horribly broken well there isn't really any recourse and you may as well just run with it either way.
Sure, but that would be inconsistent with your value "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong". With that rule your set of values will always be inconsistent if includes basic logic and math, without that rule it is at least possible that your set of values is consistent.
Inconsistency doesn't need to be easy to notice, often inconsistent systems will work pretty well, e.g. naive set theory worked really well until Russel found his paradox.
Naive set theory contained a small number of extremely easy rules, still it took many years to spot its inconsistencies. Because of that even "I need to be consistent" seems to be highly problematic. Most likely there is no existing set of values that is truly consistent.
Without the use of comparative logic consistency means nothing, the function of basic comparison is so primitive it is inbuilt into us but yet itself cannot be falsified as to whether it works.
Sure, your set of values would clearly include these
Do I need to definitively assume there is or is not a god when doing things of science? No
You need to make some basic assumptions about the reality otherwise science would be pointless. If god, the universe, aliens, whatever would be constantly manipulating your experiments, then science couldn't work. You could never really falsify anything, because you couldn't trust any of your experimental results.
However, people would tend to like to have a reason to prefer the conjecture that they do, and the only reason to prefer one conjecture over another if you care about not preferring false things without recourse is that if it is wrong it is capable of being shown wrong.
The only reason? Fortunately most scientists don't share that idea. There are always a lot of different conjecture, which can't be all right at the same time, but all of them are falsifiable. So scientists need other reasons why they prefer one conjecture over another. Values like preferring conjectures which are aesthetically pleasing have proven to be pretty helpful.
Comes to values with that, people can say 'I have an innate feeling x is true', if they go with that as a value they simply won't be able to convince others of it because they in all likelihood do not have that value.
In all likelihood? I would say there is a huge set of shared values where many people will agree with you, because they share the same feelings or agree that something is true a priori.
This would also conflict with any value of their own wanting to actually know the limitations of your own knowledge and to be able to tell when you are wrong (which are both very common).
I think these are actually not as common values as you believe they are.
When was the last time you heard someone say "x is true, I simply know it, it feels good man" taken seriously in an intellectual debate?
What is taken seriously during debate depends on the values of the audience. In this case the someone will not be taken seriously for multiple reasons:
Language: There are some keywords ("simply" and not just "feels good" but "feels good man") in that sentence that will cause people in an "intellectual debate" to believe that the speaker is not a intellectual himself and many people will tend to reject stuff they hear from outside of their group
Values: To be taken seriously during an debate you need to appeal to values shared by the audience. If the audience doesn't share this feeling you are unlikely to hear this argument.
Could you please explain how a set of values such as "I need to be consistent", "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong" could be combined with "I want to prefer the conjecture there is god" without being a contradiction?
Actually even the smaller set of values "I need to be consistent" and "I need to be able to know if I'm wrong" is inconsistent as soon as you included the basic rules of logic and math to it:
Gödel's second incompleteness theorem: "For any formal effectively generated theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, if T includes a statement of its own consistency then T is inconsistent."
If your set of values/theorems is consistent and contains basic arithmetical truths then you can't prove that it is consistent. But if a set of theorems is inconsistent it is not guaranteed that you will be able to show its inconsistency. If there would be an guarantee that you are always able to find a counterexample within the theory itself for every inconsistent theory, that would be a contradiction to Gödel's theorem cause then you could just prove consistency by showing that couldn't find a counterexample. So you can't be consistent and able to know if you are wrong at the same time. You can either know that you are consistent, but then you won't be able to know if you are
Being undecided is not a false belief. Saying something is true when it potentially is not is a false belief.
People usually don't completely rule out the possibility of being wrong. They just assume that something is true or false. Being undecided doesn't really help here, because when people make decision they usually need to make assumptions for stuff where they don't know the answer, even when they might never know the answer.
Someone saying 'I do not believe in god' is not saying there is no god, only that there is no reason to believe there is a god (precisely because, it is unfalsifiable). There is no reason to prefer that conjecture. So why use it? for people who value there being a reason to believe something over another, it is not reasonable.
Okay, what you claiming here is: If X is unfalsifiable, then there is no reason to assume X is true, right?
This seems false to me, e.g.: If people believe X, because assuming X makes them feel better, they clearly have a reason why they prefer believe X over not X.
So I guess: "X makes me feel better" is not a valid reason? What is a valid reason then?
And having conflicting rules isn't 'inconsistent' by your standards?
People have inconsistent value systems all the time through lack of analyzing it all the way.
Having conflicting rules is inconsistent, sure. But most of the time an value system with conflicting rules can be transformed quite easily into an system without conflicting rules or at least into a system with fewer conflicts by adding small restrictions to its rules, that will fix conflicts people noticed. People do this all the time, works pretty well.
But if someone were to say "Human rights are inherently good" I'd call bullshit, it may fit with your values, and even many others, but nothing is inherently 'good' or 'bad' as properties of the universe.
When it comes to values when dealing with people at best you can use reason to appeal to another persons own values that they hold higher than the issue being discussed in order to convince them. You find inconsistencies and make them choose which value they hold more dear, since generally consistency is a very highly held value they will do this.
This will only work if their value system is inconsistent. This doesn't need to be the case. There are many different consistent value systems and even if a value system isn't consistent it is often easy to fix the inconsistency by just adding a few additional restrictions.
The thing is, those that claim that jesus is saviour tend to claim it to be the truth. Most of these people supposedly 'value' knowing what is and is not 'true'. Holding unfalsifiable beliefs is inconsistent in this manner.
Not really. People will never know the truth about unfalsifiable beliefs, no matter what strategy they choose to deal with something that is unfalsifiable. It doesn't matter if they hold unfalsifiable beliefs, actively reject them or try to stay undecided. Because of this, all of these strategies are consistent with a value of knowing what is true and what's not.
I wouldn't, I'm a moral nihilist in that morals are a human construct.
Okay, so in your point of view there can't be any position based on reason that includes moral realism? So if you believe in a universal human rights, you are not acting reasonable? This doesn't just reject the viewpoint of most theists, but also the viewpoint of most atheists.
Morals are a function of peoples values and goals, which can be arbitrary.
Okay, but following arbitrary goals can't be based on reason, otherwise they won't be arbitrary. So if we are following your definition of reason, there is no single action that is purely based on reason, every intentional action people do is always partly determined by unreasonable and arbitrary goals and values. So reason is at best a tool to reach arbitrary goals more easily.
What people value is entirely up to the person, which is why morals can be arbitrary. I value the ability to tell if something I believe is false, because otherwise you can be left the entirety of your life believing false things without recourse.
Sure, but if I follow your argument, this seems to be a just as unreasonable value as some other persons value of telling everyone about Jesus.
Lol... No, you can't say the same about theism. Theism is the base of various conceptual trees; it is an active assertion with consequences that stem *directly* from the assertion. Atheism is not an active assertion.
So which consequences follow directly from the assertion "There is a god."? You can be theist without following any particular religion.
Atheists get their morals, values etc. from sources other than atheism -- of course, since atheism doesn't specify or imply any. Theists get their morals, values etc. from their religion in the form of directives in their various holy religious books,
Again: You can be a theist without following any religion or holy book. And a religion or a holy book is also a "source other than theism", because theism is just the believe in god or gods, nothing else is implied just by being a theist.
Simply ask *which* god or gods a theist believes in, and now you know which religion defines their theism, and further, you'll know which book lays out the next lowest branches of their behavior. You now have the basic map of their moral and ethical tree. You'll know if they have been told to go for one wife or many; if they can eat cows or not; if they should turn the other cheek or behead the opposition, and many more things as well.
Often this will work, but not always. You might get an answer like "Oh, I believe there is only one god and all the holy texts out there contain wisdom collected during eons about the complex relationship of god and humans." If you get an answer like this it is pretty clear that you talking to a theist, but you will need to ask a lot of additional questions until you will be able to build a basic map of the moral and ethical tree of this person. But even if you get an answer like "I believe in the Christian god and follow the bible" you still won't know if this person is going to eat meat, if the person is going to be pro-life or pro-choice, if the person believes homosexuals or non-christians should be burned, etc.
Turn that around, note that someone is atheist, and you still know absolutely nothing else about them other than they don't hold a belief in a god or gods. You don't have any way to ask them something atheism-related that will help you learn, either.
How is "do you follow any named kind of life stance that includes atheism" not an atheism-related question? And if you get an answer like "I'm a secular humanist" or "I'm a marxist" you will know quite of a lot of stuff about this persons morals and ethics. Sure, many atheists won't attach any name to their life stance and most theists will attach some kind of name to their life stance, but you can be theist without attaching any name to your life stance. But even if people do attach a name like "Christian" or "Humanist" to their life stance, the life stances of two people that used the same name can still be wildly different.
Or we can talk about probabilities: Just ask a random person a single question: "Do you believe in god? Yes or No" Then depending on that answer guess whether the person is pro-life or pro-choice. Your guessing will be much more accurate for atheist than for theists. Even if the theist also tells you that he believes in the Bible your guessing accuracy will still be lower for random Christians than for a random atheists.
When you dig down to it, the fundamental thing comes down to the ability to compare items, binary comparison whether 'x is z, or it is not' which is a very basic part of logic.
We both can easily agree that logic needs to be part of reason, but we still won't be able to prove this to someone who claims otherwise. But let us consider this problem solved:
So you got a binary relationship to compare things. Now prove that the golden rule "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself." or any other moral value is valid. Or if you say: I can't prove things, but I can falsify things then try falsify "killing non-believers is good".
You can also use the other rules of logic and you can also use observations to falsify things. But even with all of these tools you still won't be able to prove or falsify any moral value valid.
Falsifiability is a very useful concept to decide if something is science or not, but it is not a criterion to decide whether something is meaningful or not. Values are important to people, but can't be falsified.
Reason only allows anything if you allow inductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning isn't the problem. The problem is that people always need some unfalsifiable claims to begin with. You can't falsify the rules of logic, but you still need them to do any kind of reasoning. But logic is not such a problem because people usually be able to agree on one set of rules there. But other stuff is much complicated, e.g.: Is there good and evil? You can't falsify this stuff, but still people will care a lot about this. Not just religious people but also nearly every atheists got some kind of moral code and many will claim that their moral code is somehow based on reason. Still any claim of "X is good" is always an unfalsifiable claim.
Reason is always based on some set of a priori premises, but different people will consider wildly different sets of a priori premises to be true and thus arrive at wildly different conclusions.