It's like you people don't even hear what I'm saying. I don't care how many stupid examples you come up with. You've got aliens. Personally, I preferred the pink unicorn or whatever. The point is the same. If you come up to me on the street and say "I was abducted by aliens" the logical possibilites are:
1. you were abducted by aliens 2. you were not abducted by aliens
but my choices for ACTION are:
1. Believe you are right 2. Not believe that you are right or wrong (and therefore, since aliens are outside my experiential reality, treat it with skepticism) 3. Believe that you are wrong.
I'm saying position #3 is not justified. That doesn't force you back to 1. You can still be happy at #2. That's where I'd be.
Logically, something is either true, or false. Period. But we're not talking about ONLY logic, we're also talking about human action: belief is action. So while there are always 2 possibilities for truth (true/false) there are always THREE for action: belief, non-belief, disbelief.
The only thing I really disagree with here is this: "I believe it is not true" is exactly the same as saying "I believe it is false"
You're simplifying too much. The proposition "X is not false" is logically identical to the proposition "X is true". But belief is not about merely logical propositions - it is also about willful action because belief is willful. We can choose to believe according to evidence, or we can choose to believe without regard to evidence. It's a question of action not just logic.
Therefore it is entirely possible to say "I am neither convinced the something is true, nor that it is false". This is not the same as saying "i have no opinion" or "I don't care". You might have a very strong opinion, you just don't have enough certainty one way or the other to motivate the action in question - belief. In this case the statements "I believe X is false" means "there is enough evidence to justify belief in the proposition that X is false" whereas "I do not believe X is true" simply means "there is not enough evidence to justify the proposition that X is true". It says nothing about whether or not there is enough evidence to justify the proposition that it is false.
This is not an error in my logic, this is a demonstration of the limitation of syllogistic reasoning.
Finally, regarding your example, I maintain that the only thing you can say at the end of the day is "I have no reason to believe extra premises could be added to make the conclusion valid. Therefore there is not enough evidence for me to believe this argument." That's the "I don't think X is true" stance. Which I could modify to "I don't think X is true given the current information".
In order to make the MUCH stronger claim "this argument will never work, because no premises exist that will make it work" you have to have complete knowledge of all the premises that are possible. I simply dispute that you have such knowledge. Therefore you are not justified in saying (with certainty) "X is not true".
I think the meaning of the word is becoming corrupted in pop culture. There are lots of reasons to not believe in God - ignorance (not realistic), apathy, skepticism, etc. Atheism is only one of many "don't believe in God" types - and it certainly does mean one who espouses the belief that God does not exist (as opposed to simply not believing that God exists).
Sadly a word that had clear and distinct philosophical purpose is being hijacked by those who aren't satisfied with less-sensationalist labels. Still, I think that if you're going to engage in a discussion about theology and philosophy you should stick to the technical definition and not the corrupted pop definition.
In the final analysis, however, the point remains no matter whether we call it "atheism" or "anti-theism" or "fruit loops". Belief that there is no God is no more scientific than belief that there is a God.
1. I'm sorry if you think quoting a definition out of the dictionary is "pathetic". But in this case it was necessary because you don't know what the word you are using means. Is there a faster way you know of to demonstrate to some one that they are using a word incorrectly?
2. the onus of proof is on the person advancing the theory.
I agree. And if you are saying "I do not believe in God" then you have no theory to defend. But that's not being an atheist. Being an atheist means you have a theory "God does not exist" and therefore atheists need to defend their position on God just as much as religious people.
3. all attempts to prove the existence or efficacy of God have failed
I'm perfectly willing to concede this. I can't prove to you that God exist. I've never read a proof for God that I felt really worked. What you seem to fail to grasp, however, is that all attempts to prove the non-existence or non-efficacy of God have also failed. The one who needs the lesson in the scientific method and in logic is you.
It's just a fact of logic that if I can not prove X that does NOT mean that not X is true. If science can NEVER prove that God exists that is NOT the same thing as saying science has proved that god does not exist!
It's the most basic failure to properly negate an if-then statement you could imagine. In gneral the hypothesis is: If science can prove God exists, God exists. Symbollically this is S -> G You are negating this and getting If science can not prove God exists, God does not exist. Symbollically that is ~S -> ~G But that is NOT the way to negate an implication! The negation of S -> G is ~G -> ~S or (back to English) if God does not exist, science can not prove He exists.
Conclusion: The fact of the matter is that your casual dismissal of my quotation from the dictionary as "pathetic" is the key to unravelling your entire argument. You embraced the concept that disbelieving God is atheism (which it is not) and pointed out that it is unscientific to believe what is not falsifiable. Very well - it's unscientific to believe in God. But then, because you were confused about the definition of atheism, you concluded that atheism is scientifically justified - meaning that it is scientific to believe God doesn't exist. But that logical connection hinges on using the incorrect definition of atheism. Without that incorrect definition the logic falls apart.
This isn't about semantics. It's this simple: Proving the non-existence of God is ALSO non-falsifiable and therefore atheism is no more substantiated by science that theism is.
Is there no one honest to debate with? In the initial post one of the three options I gave you was "not taking the Bible very seriously". Clearly that was the option you wish to chose "Well, point me to where I claimed to be a Christian or a Jew."
You just wasted several posts arguing about nothing.
The quick summation of why you're argument is worthless is that you're just assuming your conclusion.
1. the materialist world view is correct 2. the materialist world view says supernatural is impossible 3. religion involves the supernatural 4. therefore the religion is impossible 5. therefore the materialist world view is correct
Jump on the train at any step you want - it doesn't matter. The logic just goes round and round in an unbroken, utterly perfect, and utterly irrelevant circle. Spare us all the trouble of pretending to have an argument and just say it: you're a materialist because you're a materialist.
Here's just one major problem (other than the circular logic):
The definitino of supernatural - and of physics - is not constant. 1,000 years ago radiation would not have been physics. It would have been superstition. Because what we can observe is a function of the tools we have. So the observable universe is expanding, meaning physics is expanding. So while religion is supernatural today, it may be natural given enough knowledge. I certainly believe that.
You believe that not only is religion the bastion of the supernatural now - but it always will be. You have no proof for that. Therefore it's just faith.
The fundamental flaw in your logic is you inability to differentiate between these two statements:
"I do not believe X is true." (requires not proof - it's just the absence of belief)
and
"I believe X is not true" (requires proof for - it's a positive believe about reality)
The whole "flying mole" metaphor falls apart under clear scrutiny using these definitions. Let's say I tell you there's a story about a flyign mole. If you react by saying "I do not beleve that's true" then the onus is on me to provide you with the evidence. But if you respond with "I believe that your story is false" then you've made a claim and not it's up to YOU to back it up.
Same thing with Jesus walking on water. If you want to be skeptical, balls in my court. But when you make the statement (as you have) that it could not happen - the balls in your court. So far you ability to back up your expression of belief has failed utterly. You've either flat out relied on faith, or you've fallen back to circular logic:
No, my argument regarding walking on whater is based on what we know of the capability of the people of that time of history.
If you assume Christ was merely a person of that time in history you've already assumed he wasn't God - so you're conclusion is assumed in the premise. Woohoo.
So the first thing you need to do is start differentiating between skepticism (I do not believe X) and and positive claims about reality (I believe X to be untrue).
Religious things revolve entirely around non-reason,
*sigh*
I've received enough emails and supporting posts so far to at least be content in knowing that there aren't as many people out there who maintain this weird position as it first appeared. I still fail to see why you can be so confident in this.
Practically the only people who claim that religion is inherently or essentially non-rational are those who know next-to-nothing about religion. There are a ton of people who have studied theology but are agnostic/skeptic/atheist. They do not believe in God, but they also realize that belief in God is not irrational. I challenge you to tell me why believe in God is fundamentally irrational.
Is beleif in something unprovable irrational? No - certainty does not exist and therefore either every thing we believe about reality is irrational or it is rational in some cases to believe what we can not prove. Faith is not irrational - it's just the application of insufficient evidence to get working solutions to problems. It's irrational to mistake faith for certainty - but it is not inherently irrational to believe.
And if it is irrational - why have so many philosophers believed it? You're just in over your head. 1/2 to 1/4 of modern philosophers (go back to 19th century for 'modern') believed or believe in God. From Descartes to Kierkegaard to Kant there's this immense traditional of extremely rational people believeing in God. I want you to answer these questions seriously: Is Descrates irrational? Was Kant? Kierkegaard too? And C. S. Lewis? This is just off the top of my head - there are plenty more.
Sure - there are also tons of atheist/agnostic/skeptic philosophers. Certainly more than believers. You've got some of my very favorites in that group too - from Hume to deBouvior (poor Simone, I can never spell her name right). But I'm not arguing they are irrational. Just that there are rational cases to be made both for and against belief in God.
Have you even read anything written by a believing philosopher? Well, I'm sure you've read at least something - surely you didn't graduate with no exposure to Aristotle. But haven't you read anything about faith or belief in God by a competent philosopher? "Sickness unto Death" by Kierkegaard? "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis? Anything?
If you're going to continue to insist on propounding your birds-eye-view pop-philosophy stereotypes of religion I'm just never going to get through to you. Eventually you're going to either have to concede that maybe, just maybe, you don't actually know what religious belief really means or just continue on in continued ignorance. I'm not trying to flame you. But if you were trying to argue evolution to me and I simply and utterly refused to read any biological source material and steadfastly maintained that "evolution means gradual change from species to species and this is not substantiated by the fossil record" you'd get no where. In vain would you pound your head against the wall and say things like "that's a 19th century view of evolution! There's a lot more to it than that!"
As long as I refused to actually learn what evolution entails or read anything by evolutionists no amount of slashdot posting coudl convince me of the error of my ways. You're in the same metaphorical boat. As long as you refuse to actually go read articles by competent philosophers insisting the case for God's existence and refuse to actually learn what "religion" is really about there's nothing I can do to "make" you see you're wrong. If I were Kant, or C. S. Lewis, or a PhD philosopher maybe I could - on my own and on the spur of the moment - make my own case from scratch for the raional belief in God. But I'm a mathematician/engineer, not a philosopher, and I have a full time job I should be doing right now. And even if I did that you would have an impoverished view of the case because I'm just one person. There are a host of intell
You are laboring under a faulty conception of what science can tell us. There is nothing in science, nothing whatsoever, that can tell us "water was never turned into wine 2,000 years ago" or "nobody walked on water ever". There's simply no evidence about these miracles one way or the other.
Science can tell us that, given what we know about human weight and surface tension, no person could walk on water without some funky shit going on. Who knows what the funky shit was in this case?
You are in the exact same position as a scientist could have been in 1750 saying - "based on what we know about science - it is impossible for several tons of steel to remain aloft in the air of it's own volition". But the problem wasn't with jumbo jets being able to fly, it was with science not having progressed far enough to realize that some seemingly impossible things were possible.
So I give you the quote again: any sufficiently advanced science seems like magic.
Your argument against Christianity is based squarely on an assumption that there's nothing about physics of which we are currently ignorant that could ever explain a man walking on water. You should, as a scientist, realize the inherent folly of basing your argument on the currently unknown. You are, in effect, merely propounding your faith in the proposition that science - as we have it now - is more or less complete when it comes to walking on water. This is merely an article of faith - there's no support in science for the claim you are making becaus science concerns itself with what is observed and known - not with what is not known.
All you're doing is pitting your faith that people can't walk on water ever against my faith that one person did and calling your faith science.
Hint: try to do it without getting in a snit. You could learn a lot from any Jesuit or Yeshiva student.)
So let me get this straight - you're admitting that you've been disingenuous this whole time? You're admitting that any Jesuit or Yeshiva student could demonstrate that theology is more than guesswork? You're admitting that this whole time you've been arguing a position that A - you know is false and B - you think is fairly obvious anyway? You've been criticizing me because instead of going to the trouble of creating an argument any Jesuit or Yeshiva student could construct I simply pointed out the fact that it's obvious?
Wow - you, sir, are a bona fide internet troll. Luckily your insatiable need to score points overwhelmed your desire to maintain any shred of credibility as an actual debater. What an idiot - you not only conceded the point to me you also demonstrated that I've been right about you all along. You could care less about the argument one way or the other, you just have some serious ego issues you need to vent on teh interweb.
Perhaps I should clarify. Science (and the output of scientific work) can and is trotted out by some people in a dogmatic way, not unlike the usual props that accompany religion. But the key issue is that those people are erring when they build a science-based dogmatic crutch for their world view.
I agree completely. My point is simply that the same is true for religion. You can believe religious things either rationally or dogmatically. Just because something can't be quantified - or even directly physically observed - doesn't mean that it can't be rationally depended upon. The only difference here is that I'd say that the # of people who believe religious stuff dogmatically as a proportion of those who believe religious stuff at all is higher than the corresponding ratio for scientific stuff. But the dogmatic scientific believers are growing in number rapidly.
But I don't need to, because there's no faith required when I know I can check for myself if I have the time.
On the contrary - until such as a time as you do check for yourself you are most definitely relying on faith.
religious people... they have no mechanism to check the validity of the myths they're nursing along, but they stick to their guns any way.
This is simply a baseless claim. There are many methods to verify religious beliefs. They are not the same as science. You can't have someone else come and conduct the same experiment and get identical results. Since you can't quantify the results, you also can't record them explicitly. But there are nonetheless methods. The first is internal consistency. Another is personal experience. Neither of these is scientific, but both are mechanisms to check the validity of the "myths they're nursing along".
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I think that while your logic about standing the test of time makes sense, you're unaware of the dangers. The religious texts also "stood the test of time" and thus became sacred. I think that particular type of sacredness - applied either to religion or to science - is abhorrent to the free human spirit.
I take to heart you point that questioning that is merely unbridled is not necessarily all that great. I should have better qualified. Questioning that is both courageous and competent. But I still maintain that it is even more important to question courageously than to question competently. I maintain that the true legacy was not how good their scientific conclusions could stand the test of time - but the act of sincere questioning itself. That is why we trace our intellectual heritage not back just to those we still (largely) agree with, but further back to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks. We more or less reject wholesale the content of their conclusions, but we continue to model our scientific thinking - at its most fundamental level - on their quest.
If we accept anything as dogma, we run the risk of letting that dogma become hijacked. That's what happened to religion. It became dogma and was too tempting a target for others to subvert for their own ends. The same COULD happen with science if we continue this effort to dogmaticize our history. I'm not saying that we each need to go and verify Newton's or Galileo's results ourselves, but I *AM* saying that we should reserve the right - at any time - to question those results as we do all others. There's a very fine line between respecting works because they have stood the test of time WHEN that time was spent questioning and verifying those works and forgetting everythign that comes after the "WHEN" in that sentence. One is fine - the other is an intellectual abomination. It's one thing to say "I'm going to provisionally accept Galileo's findings" and another to say "I'm gong to accept Galileo's findings without ever looking at them simply because they are old". The former is fine - the latter is not. Is this making sense?
Finally, to the Dennett quote. I'm in a pickle at times like this because I wholeheartedly agree with his aversion to mysterious religion. But he's referring explicitly to the Nicene Creed and more generally to those religions which magnify the mysterious aspects of theology. Not all religions do this. My own religion rejects the Nicene Creed wholesale. Furthermore I find his implicit faith in experts disturbing. Just go read some Michael Crichton essays on the current state of science. It's one thing to trust the competence of "experts", it's another altogether to trust their intentions. Given how political some aspects of science have become I think it's incredibly naive of Dennett to continue to put his implicit trust in everyone with a PhD. It's even more naive to put his trust in only those PhD holders who are respected by other PhD holders.
The real problem here is that peopel don't like unresolved intellectual tension. It's easy to acccept science wholesale or reject science wholesale - it's more taxing to accept science provisionally. But it's also the only realistic approach.
Dogma simply means either: something held as an established opinion; especially : a definite authoritative tenet or a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds. The defining characteristics of dogma are 1) it's considered authoritative and 2) it may have inadequate grounds.
Technically, dogma can be asserted on adequate grounds, but I'm emphasizing a particular ussage: the "inadequate grounds" aspect. That aspect gets me the "reason" vs. "content" distinction, since I believe inadequate grounds refers directly towards the reasons a belief is held.
In any case your own definition isn't really all that incompatible with my own. The idea that a thing must be true not for any external reason but because the thing itself is crucial for some other reason is just one example of "inadequate grounds" and of a thing being held to be true for some "reason" other than the content of the beleif itself.
So, all in all, I think my definition is both closer to the dictionary meaning and encompasses your own anyway.
I'm sorry if I wrote you off as that dogmatic - but look at the debate I'm having here. It's not like I'm trying to convince people that religion is true, or that God lives, etc. I'm just trying to tell people "hey - guess what, sometimes people follow science dogmatically" and "you know what else - sometimes brilliant scientists are also fervent believers in one religious tradition or another". So if, in the evolving debate, a few moderates drop by to pick on one point or another I sincerely apologize for assuming you're nutjobs with anti-religious axes to grind, but that's the debate you dropped into the middle of.
I do use the handle a lot, but I've never been to alt.mormon.org, and I don't believe I'm that "look at me score debate points" type. If I ever sound like that, it's because I'm responding to dozens of posts at a time and I have to pick some to go more in depth into than others.
I'll go dredge up my old paper on "Elbow Room" if you want to see what I have to say about Dennett. His philosophy is in line with modern materialism, so I'm not surprised to see it so widely accepted, but I maintain that philosophically it just doesn't make sense. In quick summation his argument for free-will within causality and materialism relies completely on the same methods (intuition pumps) that he starts out criticizing. The fact that his model for free will is a chess-playing computer program should pretty well show you how effective his philosophy is.
As for why we find sunsets beautiful... it's an interesting question. But is it important? I'm not sure. The feeling feels very important to us monkey-apes, but does what does the feeling prove about us, or about the world at large? I think it's rather self-centered to believe that an explanation for the universe is inadequate until it explains our emotions in a way that we find satisfying. I could personally write my perception of beauty off as a mere evolutionary artifact, without diminishing the feeling itself.
I think this paragraph demonstrates some of the inherent weakness of the pop-materialist menatlity. Do you really want to be in the position of saying "the human appreciation of beauty is just not that important"? You say that it would be self-centered to take this question overly seriously, but I find that attitude disingenuous. What other center but human experience do you think is appropriate for a human? I take a much more existential approach to the whole affair - but what it comes down to is simply that so much of what makes us human is our aspiration towards things that are beautiful. That may not drive the majority of human behavior, but it drives the best of it. If you think that just isn't really that important - than what is that important? Face it - if you're going to abandon a "self-centered" view of the universe you may as well go all the way and ask why we value human existence at all, why we value life at all. We take up an infintesimal amount of space in this big universe - why should we care about anything?
The march of science has simply been one mind-expanding blow to our self-centeredness after another.
I'll side with Thomas Kuhn on this one. The "march of science" is not a reality - it's just another myth in a long history. Religion, at it's core, is about a personal relatioship with God, about finding meaning in our life, about answering the big questions. But for most of religious history it's been subverted to other ends. Politically it's been subverted as a method of controlling the populace and solidifying power in the hands of a priestly class. Sociologically it's been subverted to serve as an intermediary between people and uncomfortable questions. Rather than stay awake at night in genuine uncertainty about why we are here, or other moral quandries (which some people do even if you don't) it's possible to just refer these questions to holy books and no longer worry about them.
This same trend is being followed with modern, western science. Origin
Where's the mystery? The only time killing was OK in the Bible was when God said so (and I don't want to get into that discussion right now, I've got enough on my hands with the present topic). So - either what I said about you and the Bible originally was true, or God told you to kill Republicans.
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I'm still waiting for you to show me why religion necessitates anything that is self-contradictory. You keep saying that phrase - but you've got to actually explain it.
Holy cow - I just want to post this again higher up the hierarchy because more people should read it. I never realized that there were people out there who called themselves "atheists" and didn't even know what the word means! I just figured that most people would, you know, know what something is before they start calling themselves that thing. Clearly, I was mistaken. If I was wrong about you - then who knows how many people are out there wandering the earth thinking they are atheists when they don't even know what the word means! That's just depressing.
Anyway, here's the proper defintion (from Miriam-Webster in this case):
one who believes that there is no deity
Here's your confused version:
one who does not belief that there is a deity
Maybe you missed that. I'll repeat it with added emphasis:
one who believes that there is no deity
one who does not believ that there is a deity
If you don't believe in God you might be an atheist. Or a skeptic (NOT the same thing). Or you might just be undecided. Or an agnostic (thinking that knowledge on the issue is impossible). Or you might just not care. But to be an atheist you have to make the positive claim: "God does not exist". Thinks about it this way - the world is not divided into atheists and theists. There's a whole vast middle realm for people that are neither.
Once you wrap your head around that and decide if you still want to be atheist or not, we can talk. I have nothing against atheists per se. I just think you should know what one is before you claim to be one.
I don't think there's a delicate way to phrase this. You think you are an atheist, but you clearly have no idea what an atheist is.
Here is the definition: one who believes that there is no deity (Miriam-Webster)
Here is what you seem to think the definition is: one who does not believe that there is a deity.
Do you notice something going on here? The actual definition of "atheist" implies a positive belief: "God does not exist". This is a belief. The simple non-belief position is NOT atheism. It could be anything from skepticism to plain ambivalence.
Please, before you go around telling anyone else you're atheist, look the word up yourself. You're a wannabe atheist. That's just sad.
Please don't bait the anti-religious zealots. They're pretty sure that prayer is basically a combination of 411 and ebay. That's why they think it's silly. But it makes them so happy to look down on it, and you're really going to spoil their fun if you expect them to actually look seriously at what prayer and religion are all about.
When you rest a good part of your smug sense of superiority on contrasting your own enlightenment with the heathen mobs (or, in modern times, the religious mobs) you just can't afford to actually question you assumptions.
Imagine how stupid you'd feel for making fun of the macarena you're whole life if you then realized dancing is fun. Such a situation just can't be risked.
Then again - I just compared all world religion to the macarena - so who am I kidding?;-)
Slashdot Mirror
It's like you people don't even hear what I'm saying. I don't care how many stupid examples you come up with. You've got aliens. Personally, I preferred the pink unicorn or whatever. The point is the same. If you come up to me on the street and say "I was abducted by aliens" the logical possibilites are:
1. you were abducted by aliens
2. you were not abducted by aliens
but my choices for ACTION are:
1. Believe you are right
2. Not believe that you are right or wrong (and therefore, since aliens are outside my experiential reality, treat it with skepticism)
3. Believe that you are wrong.
I'm saying position #3 is not justified. That doesn't force you back to 1. You can still be happy at #2. That's where I'd be.
Logically, something is either true, or false. Period. But we're not talking about ONLY logic, we're also talking about human action: belief is action. So while there are always 2 possibilities for truth (true/false) there are always THREE for action: belief, non-belief, disbelief.
It really is that simple.
-stormin
The only thing I really disagree with here is this: "I believe it is not true" is exactly the same as saying "I believe it is false"
You're simplifying too much. The proposition "X is not false" is logically identical to the proposition "X is true". But belief is not about merely logical propositions - it is also about willful action because belief is willful. We can choose to believe according to evidence, or we can choose to believe without regard to evidence. It's a question of action not just logic.
Therefore it is entirely possible to say "I am neither convinced the something is true, nor that it is false". This is not the same as saying "i have no opinion" or "I don't care". You might have a very strong opinion, you just don't have enough certainty one way or the other to motivate the action in question - belief. In this case the statements "I believe X is false" means "there is enough evidence to justify belief in the proposition that X is false" whereas "I do not believe X is true" simply means "there is not enough evidence to justify the proposition that X is true". It says nothing about whether or not there is enough evidence to justify the proposition that it is false.
This is not an error in my logic, this is a demonstration of the limitation of syllogistic reasoning.
Finally, regarding your example, I maintain that the only thing you can say at the end of the day is "I have no reason to believe extra premises could be added to make the conclusion valid. Therefore there is not enough evidence for me to believe this argument." That's the "I don't think X is true" stance. Which I could modify to "I don't think X is true given the current information".
In order to make the MUCH stronger claim "this argument will never work, because no premises exist that will make it work" you have to have complete knowledge of all the premises that are possible. I simply dispute that you have such knowledge. Therefore you are not justified in saying (with certainty) "X is not true".
-stormin
I think the meaning of the word is becoming corrupted in pop culture. There are lots of reasons to not believe in God - ignorance (not realistic), apathy, skepticism, etc. Atheism is only one of many "don't believe in God" types - and it certainly does mean one who espouses the belief that God does not exist (as opposed to simply not believing that God exists).
Sadly a word that had clear and distinct philosophical purpose is being hijacked by those who aren't satisfied with less-sensationalist labels. Still, I think that if you're going to engage in a discussion about theology and philosophy you should stick to the technical definition and not the corrupted pop definition.
In the final analysis, however, the point remains no matter whether we call it "atheism" or "anti-theism" or "fruit loops". Belief that there is no God is no more scientific than belief that there is a God.
-stormin
I screwed up some of the symbolic logic, it was careless of me.
S->G does not get negated to ~G->~S. The two are equivalent.
The logic of my argument not only holds, it makes more sense this way.
My mistake.
-stormin
1. I'm sorry if you think quoting a definition out of the dictionary is "pathetic". But in this case it was necessary because you don't know what the word you are using means. Is there a faster way you know of to demonstrate to some one that they are using a word incorrectly?
2. the onus of proof is on the person advancing the theory.
I agree. And if you are saying "I do not believe in God" then you have no theory to defend. But that's not being an atheist. Being an atheist means you have a theory "God does not exist" and therefore atheists need to defend their position on God just as much as religious people.
3. all attempts to prove the existence or efficacy of God have failed
I'm perfectly willing to concede this. I can't prove to you that God exist. I've never read a proof for God that I felt really worked. What you seem to fail to grasp, however, is that all attempts to prove the non-existence or non-efficacy of God have also failed. The one who needs the lesson in the scientific method and in logic is you.
It's just a fact of logic that if I can not prove X that does NOT mean that not X is true. If science can NEVER prove that God exists that is NOT the same thing as saying science has proved that god does not exist!
It's the most basic failure to properly negate an if-then statement you could imagine. In gneral the hypothesis is:
If science can prove God exists, God exists. Symbollically this is S -> G
You are negating this and getting
If science can not prove God exists, God does not exist. Symbollically that is ~S -> ~G
But that is NOT the way to negate an implication! The negation of S -> G is ~G -> ~S or (back to English) if God does not exist, science can not prove He exists.
Conclusion: The fact of the matter is that your casual dismissal of my quotation from the dictionary as "pathetic" is the key to unravelling your entire argument. You embraced the concept that disbelieving God is atheism (which it is not) and pointed out that it is unscientific to believe what is not falsifiable. Very well - it's unscientific to believe in God. But then, because you were confused about the definition of atheism, you concluded that atheism is scientifically justified - meaning that it is scientific to believe God doesn't exist. But that logical connection hinges on using the incorrect definition of atheism. Without that incorrect definition the logic falls apart.
This isn't about semantics. It's this simple: Proving the non-existence of God is ALSO non-falsifiable and therefore atheism is no more substantiated by science that theism is.
-stormin
*sigh*
Is there no one honest to debate with? In the initial post one of the three options I gave you was "not taking the Bible very seriously". Clearly that was the option you wish to chose "Well, point me to where I claimed to be a Christian or a Jew."
You just wasted several posts arguing about nothing.
That's so frustrating.
-stormin
The quick summation of why you're argument is worthless is that you're just assuming your conclusion.
1. the materialist world view is correct
2. the materialist world view says supernatural is impossible
3. religion involves the supernatural
4. therefore the religion is impossible
5. therefore the materialist world view is correct
Jump on the train at any step you want - it doesn't matter. The logic just goes round and round in an unbroken, utterly perfect, and utterly irrelevant circle. Spare us all the trouble of pretending to have an argument and just say it: you're a materialist because you're a materialist.
Here's just one major problem (other than the circular logic):
The definitino of supernatural - and of physics - is not constant. 1,000 years ago radiation would not have been physics. It would have been superstition. Because what we can observe is a function of the tools we have. So the observable universe is expanding, meaning physics is expanding. So while religion is supernatural today, it may be natural given enough knowledge. I certainly believe that.
You believe that not only is religion the bastion of the supernatural now - but it always will be. You have no proof for that. Therefore it's just faith.
-stormin
The fundamental flaw in your logic is you inability to differentiate between these two statements:
"I do not believe X is true." (requires not proof - it's just the absence of belief)
and
"I believe X is not true" (requires proof for - it's a positive believe about reality)
The whole "flying mole" metaphor falls apart under clear scrutiny using these definitions. Let's say I tell you there's a story about a flyign mole. If you react by saying "I do not beleve that's true" then the onus is on me to provide you with the evidence. But if you respond with "I believe that your story is false" then you've made a claim and not it's up to YOU to back it up.
Same thing with Jesus walking on water. If you want to be skeptical, balls in my court. But when you make the statement (as you have) that it could not happen - the balls in your court. So far you ability to back up your expression of belief has failed utterly. You've either flat out relied on faith, or you've fallen back to circular logic:
No, my argument regarding walking on whater is based on what we know of the capability of the people of that time of history.
If you assume Christ was merely a person of that time in history you've already assumed he wasn't God - so you're conclusion is assumed in the premise. Woohoo.
So the first thing you need to do is start differentiating between skepticism (I do not believe X) and and positive claims about reality (I believe X to be untrue).
-stormin
Religious things revolve entirely around non-reason,
*sigh*
I've received enough emails and supporting posts so far to at least be content in knowing that there aren't as many people out there who maintain this weird position as it first appeared. I still fail to see why you can be so confident in this.
Practically the only people who claim that religion is inherently or essentially non-rational are those who know next-to-nothing about religion. There are a ton of people who have studied theology but are agnostic/skeptic/atheist. They do not believe in God, but they also realize that belief in God is not irrational. I challenge you to tell me why believe in God is fundamentally irrational.
Is beleif in something unprovable irrational? No - certainty does not exist and therefore either every thing we believe about reality is irrational or it is rational in some cases to believe what we can not prove. Faith is not irrational - it's just the application of insufficient evidence to get working solutions to problems. It's irrational to mistake faith for certainty - but it is not inherently irrational to believe.
And if it is irrational - why have so many philosophers believed it? You're just in over your head. 1/2 to 1/4 of modern philosophers (go back to 19th century for 'modern') believed or believe in God. From Descartes to Kierkegaard to Kant there's this immense traditional of extremely rational people believeing in God. I want you to answer these questions seriously: Is Descrates irrational? Was Kant? Kierkegaard too? And C. S. Lewis? This is just off the top of my head - there are plenty more.
Sure - there are also tons of atheist/agnostic/skeptic philosophers. Certainly more than believers. You've got some of my very favorites in that group too - from Hume to deBouvior (poor Simone, I can never spell her name right). But I'm not arguing they are irrational. Just that there are rational cases to be made both for and against belief in God.
Have you even read anything written by a believing philosopher? Well, I'm sure you've read at least something - surely you didn't graduate with no exposure to Aristotle. But haven't you read anything about faith or belief in God by a competent philosopher? "Sickness unto Death" by Kierkegaard? "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis? Anything?
If you're going to continue to insist on propounding your birds-eye-view pop-philosophy stereotypes of religion I'm just never going to get through to you. Eventually you're going to either have to concede that maybe, just maybe, you don't actually know what religious belief really means or just continue on in continued ignorance. I'm not trying to flame you. But if you were trying to argue evolution to me and I simply and utterly refused to read any biological source material and steadfastly maintained that "evolution means gradual change from species to species and this is not substantiated by the fossil record" you'd get no where. In vain would you pound your head against the wall and say things like "that's a 19th century view of evolution! There's a lot more to it than that!"
As long as I refused to actually learn what evolution entails or read anything by evolutionists no amount of slashdot posting coudl convince me of the error of my ways. You're in the same metaphorical boat. As long as you refuse to actually go read articles by competent philosophers insisting the case for God's existence and refuse to actually learn what "religion" is really about there's nothing I can do to "make" you see you're wrong. If I were Kant, or C. S. Lewis, or a PhD philosopher maybe I could - on my own and on the spur of the moment - make my own case from scratch for the raional belief in God. But I'm a mathematician/engineer, not a philosopher, and I have a full time job I should be doing right now. And even if I did that you would have an impoverished view of the case because I'm just one person. There are a host of intell
You are laboring under a faulty conception of what science can tell us. There is nothing in science, nothing whatsoever, that can tell us "water was never turned into wine 2,000 years ago" or "nobody walked on water ever". There's simply no evidence about these miracles one way or the other.
Science can tell us that, given what we know about human weight and surface tension, no person could walk on water without some funky shit going on. Who knows what the funky shit was in this case?
You are in the exact same position as a scientist could have been in 1750 saying - "based on what we know about science - it is impossible for several tons of steel to remain aloft in the air of it's own volition". But the problem wasn't with jumbo jets being able to fly, it was with science not having progressed far enough to realize that some seemingly impossible things were possible.
So I give you the quote again: any sufficiently advanced science seems like magic.
Your argument against Christianity is based squarely on an assumption that there's nothing about physics of which we are currently ignorant that could ever explain a man walking on water. You should, as a scientist, realize the inherent folly of basing your argument on the currently unknown. You are, in effect, merely propounding your faith in the proposition that science - as we have it now - is more or less complete when it comes to walking on water. This is merely an article of faith - there's no support in science for the claim you are making becaus science concerns itself with what is observed and known - not with what is not known.
All you're doing is pitting your faith that people can't walk on water ever against my faith that one person did and calling your faith science.
-stormin
HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!!
Hint: try to do it without getting in a snit. You could learn a lot from any Jesuit or Yeshiva student.)
So let me get this straight - you're admitting that you've been disingenuous this whole time? You're admitting that any Jesuit or Yeshiva student could demonstrate that theology is more than guesswork? You're admitting that this whole time you've been arguing a position that A - you know is false and B - you think is fairly obvious anyway? You've been criticizing me because instead of going to the trouble of creating an argument any Jesuit or Yeshiva student could construct I simply pointed out the fact that it's obvious?
Wow - you, sir, are a bona fide internet troll. Luckily your insatiable need to score points overwhelmed your desire to maintain any shred of credibility as an actual debater. What an idiot - you not only conceded the point to me you also demonstrated that I've been right about you all along. You could care less about the argument one way or the other, you just have some serious ego issues you need to vent on teh interweb.
-stormin
Perhaps I should clarify. Science (and the output of scientific work) can and is trotted out by some people in a dogmatic way, not unlike the usual props that accompany religion. But the key issue is that those people are erring when they build a science-based dogmatic crutch for their world view.
I agree completely. My point is simply that the same is true for religion. You can believe religious things either rationally or dogmatically. Just because something can't be quantified - or even directly physically observed - doesn't mean that it can't be rationally depended upon. The only difference here is that I'd say that the # of people who believe religious stuff dogmatically as a proportion of those who believe religious stuff at all is higher than the corresponding ratio for scientific stuff. But the dogmatic scientific believers are growing in number rapidly.
But I don't need to, because there's no faith required when I know I can check for myself if I have the time.
On the contrary - until such as a time as you do check for yourself you are most definitely relying on faith.
religious people... they have no mechanism to check the validity of the myths they're nursing along, but they stick to their guns any way.
This is simply a baseless claim. There are many methods to verify religious beliefs. They are not the same as science. You can't have someone else come and conduct the same experiment and get identical results. Since you can't quantify the results, you also can't record them explicitly. But there are nonetheless methods. The first is internal consistency. Another is personal experience. Neither of these is scientific, but both are mechanisms to check the validity of the "myths they're nursing along".
-stormin
Case.
In.
Point.
I think we're done here.
-stormin
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-stormin
I think that while your logic about standing the test of time makes sense, you're unaware of the dangers. The religious texts also "stood the test of time" and thus became sacred. I think that particular type of sacredness - applied either to religion or to science - is abhorrent to the free human spirit.
I take to heart you point that questioning that is merely unbridled is not necessarily all that great. I should have better qualified. Questioning that is both courageous and competent. But I still maintain that it is even more important to question courageously than to question competently. I maintain that the true legacy was not how good their scientific conclusions could stand the test of time - but the act of sincere questioning itself. That is why we trace our intellectual heritage not back just to those we still (largely) agree with, but further back to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks. We more or less reject wholesale the content of their conclusions, but we continue to model our scientific thinking - at its most fundamental level - on their quest.
If we accept anything as dogma, we run the risk of letting that dogma become hijacked. That's what happened to religion. It became dogma and was too tempting a target for others to subvert for their own ends. The same COULD happen with science if we continue this effort to dogmaticize our history. I'm not saying that we each need to go and verify Newton's or Galileo's results ourselves, but I *AM* saying that we should reserve the right - at any time - to question those results as we do all others. There's a very fine line between respecting works because they have stood the test of time WHEN that time was spent questioning and verifying those works and forgetting everythign that comes after the "WHEN" in that sentence. One is fine - the other is an intellectual abomination. It's one thing to say "I'm going to provisionally accept Galileo's findings" and another to say "I'm gong to accept Galileo's findings without ever looking at them simply because they are old". The former is fine - the latter is not. Is this making sense?
Finally, to the Dennett quote. I'm in a pickle at times like this because I wholeheartedly agree with his aversion to mysterious religion. But he's referring explicitly to the Nicene Creed and more generally to those religions which magnify the mysterious aspects of theology. Not all religions do this. My own religion rejects the Nicene Creed wholesale. Furthermore I find his implicit faith in experts disturbing. Just go read some Michael Crichton essays on the current state of science. It's one thing to trust the competence of "experts", it's another altogether to trust their intentions. Given how political some aspects of science have become I think it's incredibly naive of Dennett to continue to put his implicit trust in everyone with a PhD. It's even more naive to put his trust in only those PhD holders who are respected by other PhD holders.
The real problem here is that peopel don't like unresolved intellectual tension. It's easy to acccept science wholesale or reject science wholesale - it's more taxing to accept science provisionally. But it's also the only realistic approach.
-stormin
I disagree. Luckily, so does Miriam-Webster.
Dogma simply means either: something held as an established opinion; especially : a definite authoritative tenet or a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds. The defining characteristics of dogma are 1) it's considered authoritative and 2) it may have inadequate grounds.
Technically, dogma can be asserted on adequate grounds, but I'm emphasizing a particular ussage: the "inadequate grounds" aspect. That aspect gets me the "reason" vs. "content" distinction, since I believe inadequate grounds refers directly towards the reasons a belief is held.
In any case your own definition isn't really all that incompatible with my own. The idea that a thing must be true not for any external reason but because the thing itself is crucial for some other reason is just one example of "inadequate grounds" and of a thing being held to be true for some "reason" other than the content of the beleif itself.
So, all in all, I think my definition is both closer to the dictionary meaning and encompasses your own anyway.
-stormin
I'm sorry if I wrote you off as that dogmatic - but look at the debate I'm having here. It's not like I'm trying to convince people that religion is true, or that God lives, etc. I'm just trying to tell people "hey - guess what, sometimes people follow science dogmatically" and "you know what else - sometimes brilliant scientists are also fervent believers in one religious tradition or another". So if, in the evolving debate, a few moderates drop by to pick on one point or another I sincerely apologize for assuming you're nutjobs with anti-religious axes to grind, but that's the debate you dropped into the middle of.
I do use the handle a lot, but I've never been to alt.mormon.org, and I don't believe I'm that "look at me score debate points" type. If I ever sound like that, it's because I'm responding to dozens of posts at a time and I have to pick some to go more in depth into than others.
I'll go dredge up my old paper on "Elbow Room" if you want to see what I have to say about Dennett. His philosophy is in line with modern materialism, so I'm not surprised to see it so widely accepted, but I maintain that philosophically it just doesn't make sense. In quick summation his argument for free-will within causality and materialism relies completely on the same methods (intuition pumps) that he starts out criticizing. The fact that his model for free will is a chess-playing computer program should pretty well show you how effective his philosophy is.
As for why we find sunsets beautiful... it's an interesting question. But is it important? I'm not sure. The feeling feels very important to us monkey-apes, but does what does the feeling prove about us, or about the world at large? I think it's rather self-centered to believe that an explanation for the universe is inadequate until it explains our emotions in a way that we find satisfying. I could personally write my perception of beauty off as a mere evolutionary artifact, without diminishing the feeling itself.
I think this paragraph demonstrates some of the inherent weakness of the pop-materialist menatlity. Do you really want to be in the position of saying "the human appreciation of beauty is just not that important"? You say that it would be self-centered to take this question overly seriously, but I find that attitude disingenuous. What other center but human experience do you think is appropriate for a human? I take a much more existential approach to the whole affair - but what it comes down to is simply that so much of what makes us human is our aspiration towards things that are beautiful. That may not drive the majority of human behavior, but it drives the best of it. If you think that just isn't really that important - than what is that important? Face it - if you're going to abandon a "self-centered" view of the universe you may as well go all the way and ask why we value human existence at all, why we value life at all. We take up an infintesimal amount of space in this big universe - why should we care about anything?
The march of science has simply been one mind-expanding blow to our self-centeredness after another.
I'll side with Thomas Kuhn on this one. The "march of science" is not a reality - it's just another myth in a long history. Religion, at it's core, is about a personal relatioship with God, about finding meaning in our life, about answering the big questions. But for most of religious history it's been subverted to other ends. Politically it's been subverted as a method of controlling the populace and solidifying power in the hands of a priestly class. Sociologically it's been subverted to serve as an intermediary between people and uncomfortable questions. Rather than stay awake at night in genuine uncertainty about why we are here, or other moral quandries (which some people do even if you don't) it's possible to just refer these questions to holy books and no longer worry about them.
This same trend is being followed with modern, western science. Origin
Bible:
Thou shalt not kill
Sig
Murder a republican.
Where's the mystery? The only time killing was OK in the Bible was when God said so (and I don't want to get into that discussion right now, I've got enough on my hands with the present topic). So - either what I said about you and the Bible originally was true, or God told you to kill Republicans.
-stormin
*sigh*
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-stormin
I'm still waiting for you to show me why religion necessitates anything that is self-contradictory. You keep saying that phrase - but you've got to actually explain it.
-stormin
Your argument is needlessly verbose. Let me help you out.
When I was 4 I became a materialist. And since I'm still one now, I'm right.
There you go. Don't worry little fella, as long as you keep going around and around in a cirlce no bad new thoughts will ever disturb you.
-stormin
Holy cow - I just want to post this again higher up the hierarchy because more people should read it. I never realized that there were people out there who called themselves "atheists" and didn't even know what the word means! I just figured that most people would, you know, know what something is before they start calling themselves that thing. Clearly, I was mistaken. If I was wrong about you - then who knows how many people are out there wandering the earth thinking they are atheists when they don't even know what the word means! That's just depressing.
Anyway, here's the proper defintion (from Miriam-Webster in this case):
one who believes that there is no deity
Here's your confused version:
one who does not belief that there is a deity
Maybe you missed that. I'll repeat it with added emphasis:
one who believes that there is no deity
one who does not believ that there is a deity
If you don't believe in God you might be an atheist. Or a skeptic (NOT the same thing). Or you might just be undecided. Or an agnostic (thinking that knowledge on the issue is impossible). Or you might just not care. But to be an atheist you have to make the positive claim: "God does not exist". Thinks about it this way - the world is not divided into atheists and theists. There's a whole vast middle realm for people that are neither.
Once you wrap your head around that and decide if you still want to be atheist or not, we can talk. I have nothing against atheists per se. I just think you should know what one is before you claim to be one.
-stormin
I don't think there's a delicate way to phrase this. You think you are an atheist, but you clearly have no idea what an atheist is.
Here is the definition: one who believes that there is no deity (Miriam-Webster)
Here is what you seem to think the definition is: one who does not believe that there is a deity.
Do you notice something going on here? The actual definition of "atheist" implies a positive belief: "God does not exist". This is a belief. The simple non-belief position is NOT atheism. It could be anything from skepticism to plain ambivalence.
Please, before you go around telling anyone else you're atheist, look the word up yourself. You're a wannabe atheist. That's just sad.
-stormin
Please don't bait the anti-religious zealots. They're pretty sure that prayer is basically a combination of 411 and ebay. That's why they think it's silly. But it makes them so happy to look down on it, and you're really going to spoil their fun if you expect them to actually look seriously at what prayer and religion are all about.
;-)
When you rest a good part of your smug sense of superiority on contrasting your own enlightenment with the heathen mobs (or, in modern times, the religious mobs) you just can't afford to actually question you assumptions.
Imagine how stupid you'd feel for making fun of the macarena you're whole life if you then realized dancing is fun. Such a situation just can't be risked.
Then again - I just compared all world religion to the macarena - so who am I kidding?
-stormin
It's no good. I read over the thread and I'm pretty sure "belies" is a bit much for him.
In any case, it's a waste of effort to try and explain it. By the time you use small enough words he'll just be pissed off and defensive anyway.
But if you're really luck he may throw some more latin at you. Because we all know - who ever calls the first fallacy in latin wins the debate.
-stormin