There is this strange site that has collected testimonials for the existence of god. If I were a believer, I’d be embarrassed at the painful lack of logic in these rationalizations. To the question “I believe in god because…”, answers are non sequiturs like “because he is the creator” or “because god is real” or “because I don’t do bad things”.
There is also, of course, a poll, because nothing says shallow like adding a pointless poll to a web page. The question is “ Does God exist?. The answers so far suggest that some doubters have already started pharyngulating it.
No! 51.6%
Yes 47.5%
Not Sure 0.9%
Another possibility is that random readers who stumble across the site read a few of the testimonials and are so appalled at their inanity that they immediately lose their faith in a sudden fit of enlightenment. Go ahead and read a few. They will simultaneously confirm your disbelief and disappoint you with the inadequacy of the average human mind.
That’s right. And the social nature of the process is where difficulties can creep in. I don’t know if anyone’s in social science, but it certainly seems like trying to obtain objective truth about humans is vulnerable to fads and interests.
I would like it if Pharnygula criticised postmodernists as much as religionists – they may be equally damaging to science and progress, and they are harder targets.
Holbach – Haven’t followed one damn bit of this thread, I’m off to watch the PBS – Bibles Hidden Secrets – but I am SO glad to see you back here! :o)
Koestler was an anti-Darwin neo-Lamarckian, possibly worse than a mystic and parapsychologist.
@500
Sorry, I meant I didn’t want to be dogmatic. For all intents and purposes, yes, I am an atheist. This is also the position taken by Dawkins, who cannot be “certain” there is no god but puts the probability at infinitesimally small. You are probably right about Koestler.
I don’t think it’s mystical to be interested in imagination and intuition – just introverted, really, which is nothing to be ashamed of. I’m a grad student in mechanical engineering BTW, and intellectual rigour is pretty important to me, even if I’m not a scientist.
Post-modernism is a fad, that outside of art has no significance except to those who are part of it. It’s no threat to society.
Well, it’s bad because it undermines the Enlightenment hope that a rational critique of society is the basis for social progress. Post-modernism denies the possibility of objective truth- which we have been defending for the past 500 posts. It means all the liberals run away to their ivory towers and admit defeat.
If there are no rational standards in public debate, nothing will be acheived. Let’s not abandon politics.
Ben Edmons #488 wrote:
As Kel says, by pointing out that they’re being inconsistent. When people who espouse conclusions they don’t agree with (ie “gay people are more violent than straight people”) use that technique, it’s not okay. They want to see the support, the reasoning, the evidence — and “gut feelings” are not considered valid. Using a ‘cheat’ when it’s supporting the things they want to be true is them going against their own values.
I agree — though the particularly silly forms seem to be becoming less popular than they used to be. When folks like Steve Fuller try to argue that ‘creationism is just another world view” they get slapped pretty hard here.
Postmodernism is a two-edged sword for the religious. They get to have their “own way of knowing” and argue that “everything is faith” at the cost of not being allowed to say those with “other ways of knowing” or who believe anything on faith are wrong. Relativism is supposed to be where godlessness leads. Not Theism.
I really like the website Butterflies & Wheels for my dose of enlightenment response to philosophical and cultural relativism. Ophelia Benson is marvelous.
All of these are heuristics which wouldn’t be in the mind if they hadn’t passed millions of rounds of trial and error. And even then they aren’t very reliable, as Emmet and David pointed out. The vaunted “other ways of knowing” turn out to utilise the same processes as rational thought, but unconsciously.
Look back at Walton @239 etc. Seems to be some inspiration from postmodernist language, at least.
Patricia @ 502
Thanks for your comments. There is a reference to me from clinteas at 103 and 110, and a comment from Missus Gumby at 116. My first comment is at 312, with more at 323, 369, 406, 411, 419, 449, and beyond. Some good bashing all around on the religionists. Gets better in the high 400’s.
The only person on here who seems to be post-modernist in philosophy is someone called “I am so wise”.
Alright, I’ll shut up for good now ;-)
Thanks for the chat, people, its been fun.
#460 Posted by: A.N.Other on November 18, 2008 at 7:49 PM:
[ponder]
I don’t speak for atheists, actually, but I’ll play along. For the record, simply claiming to be an atheist doesn’t make a person a clear, rational thinker. However, I’ve noticed a strong trend that people who are clear, rational thinkers very often are atheists.
That’s not how I would say it, but I think it is a general gist of the idea. But more specifically, the evidence that does exist quite clearly does not require a creator, and is rather damning if there is one.
Yeah, matter – something you can grab hold of. However, there are those that will argue, probably for arguments sake, that we can’t even be sure the Universe exists. Of course they might be wrong.
That was rather an abrupt jump. I doubt many reach that conclusion so simply. They take into account all the written records ascribed to a creator that we know to be wrong and extrapolate the likelihood that most of those written records are wrong. Thus, we can eliminate those gods written about throughout most of recorded history… certainly they can’t all be correct. In fact, the vast majority must, by process of elimination, be wrong. So we are left with a handful of ideas and concepts that might be god, left floating deisticly in the void (I made up that word…).
Probably, most atheists don’t bother with that. Those that do specialize in esoteric theoretical physics. Things like string theory and stuff. [/pondering] I don’t worry about what came before the universe and where the universe came from. That’s knowledge that may forever be unavailable to us. Or we might figure it out tomorrow. But I’m not asking that question. It’s like asking how many pink unicorns can fit in the trunk of my car – it’s a pointless question.
Actually, it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the current laws of physics. It could be that the universe is one of an infinite supply of universes, all with their own unique set of physics – and we have this one. We may never find out. We’re OK with that – not having that answer. Of course that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Trying, even if we never get that particular answer, may provide answers to many other exciting questions we can answer, and we may be able to eliminate many, many possible alternatives (like, say, some sort of omnipresent creator).
I may have mentioned in pondering point 5 that the laws of physics may not be the same inside as not inside our universe. It maybe there is nothing but our solitary universe. It maybe there are two universes: ours and a mirror universe. It may be there are an infinite number of universes, all pinched off from the rest by some sort of singularity – we call ours the Big Bang. In all that, there is little reason to assume our laws of physics are anything special or extend somehow to some sort of multi-verse. Perhaps our laws of physics only make sense here and now. The rest of there and then are different.
Why do you assume an atheist would assume this? It isn’t a logical conclusion. What if it is the specific shape and structure of this universe that sets our specific laws of physics in motion? I mean, it’s possible that what we consider the laws of physics are somehow extended across all of existences, our universe and any others, but is it necessarily so? I can’t support your conclusion here.
Why, look at that, you don’t support your own supposed conjecture either. That’s because it is a straw man. That being so, we can abandon your logic chain – the links are broke, starting at about pondering point 4, actually.
No – it isn’t.
OK, I have to admit, there is a strong appearance that the denizens of this forum do, in fact, enjoy slagging off nice people who believe in God. That might be a bit of confirmation bias, however, as readers conveniently skip the less exciting messages that do not slag “nice people who believe in God” to read the juicy bits.
So, you lost me at pondering point 4. I tried to play along – and even stuck around to the end. You lost me anyway.
John B. Sandlin
#107 Posted by: Walton on November 18, 2008 at 10:02 AM
I tried for many years to put my trust in Christ. I asked Him into my heart, I prayed for Salvation. It never happened. Eventually I realized it couldn’t happen, ever. It’s an adult fairy tale; magic and reality are incompatible. However, I found that reality and beauty are compatible. I found that reality and happiness are compatible. I found that reality and fulfillment are compatible.
So then: No Utopia. No Eden. No Paradise. We have this one Earth, this one life. We should not be living our lives in a lie that pretends there is some rewarding place better than here that we go to after we die. After we die, our bodies decay, our consciousness is lost, and we cease to be. Only those ideas and contributions we make to society, here and now, can continue beyond. The richest life is the one that makes Earth a better place for all people.
The richest man will eventually die and unless he made this place better, he will have accomplished nothing of note. The most remarkable woman will eventually die and unless she made this a better place, she will have done little worth remembering. Doing something to improve human society is the highest calling, the greatest good, the ultimate reason for living – and does not require a god or an afterlife.
I am John B. Sandlin, and I approve this message.
#182 Posted by Walton on November 18, 2008 at 11:25 AM
OK, here you’re short changing the people of 4000 years ago. They were every bit as intelligent as we are today. Possibly more so. What they lacked was knowledge. A God could easily have provided useful knowledge even then, in the bronze age, or earlier. What they lacked were the mathematics to explain the universe – but how many today actually understand the math.
My version:
1. In the beginning, the universe was void and without form. 2. Upon my word a big booming bang and energy like fire filled the void. 3. It began to grow, and as it grew it cooled. 4. I saw it was good and let the ages unfold. 5. When I saw it was time, I spoke again and disturbed the universe, causing the lights you call stars to form. 6. I saw it was good, and let the ages unfold. 7. After many such ages, I spoke the words that seeded your Sun and your Earth, and the wandering lights you see at night, and they grew. 8. I saw it was good, and let the ages unfold. 9. …
Would that have been so hard for people four thousand years ago to understand? A real god would have gotten the details right, and done so in a concise yet dramatic fashion. Obviously, I’m not a god.
John B. Sandlin
We have the benefit of actually being able to eat from the real tree of knowledge, but it’s a tree man grew. It seems a fruitless exercise to even try and rationalise the story of genesis away as anything other than mythic storytelling, it’s obvious to anyone who has eaten from the real tree of knowledge that those middle-eastern herders got it badly wrong. There’s no need for apologetics, no need to justify the relationship between the story and God; it simply fails on it’s own merit.
#385 Posted by Walton on November 18, 2008 at 6:06 PM
OK, I hope this question doesn’t come off as sarcastic or patronizing – because I certainly don’t intend to be:
What, exactly, is it that causes you to believe in this deistic universal force of life? Perhaps I’m genetically deprived, somehow, and don’t automatically grok what every believer does, but I don’t know what there is to our existence that cries out so persistently there must be a god. The only reason I tried so hard to believe when I was younger is my family believed, and friends, and so many others, that I thought I was the lone lost soul unable to believe. For a while I held on to a more deistic belief, but eventually I gave up all such beliefs – and even stopped defining myself by what I believed, or didn’t believe.
So, in all honesty, I want to know: What it is you experience, what you see or hear, or whatever, that brings to you this faith? I don’t get it.
The Holy Bible of the Christians is an interesting collection of books, with many contradictory stories, and references to other, older religions that were ever so carefully edited around so as to leave the lessons and laws, but removed the other deities. But one thing it is not is an authoritative source of how the world was created, and who, really, is God? So, if all those things I followed to try to believe like the other Christians leaves me no support for a God, what support is there?
John B. Sandlin
Sastra #475:
Extraordinarily well said. I call that the Huck Finn phenomenon – when people ignore what is “supposed” to be their basis for morality and substitute a better one. (Huck toward the end of the book wrestles with the idea of turning the escaped slave Jim in, believing it’s the “right” thing to do, but decides not to, memorably saying “All right then, I’ll go to hell!”)
#390 Posted by “Someone from West Brom” on November 18, 2008 at 6:16 PM
You’re on an atheist blog. A liberal atheist blog. A godless, …; You should think about your expectations a moment. Really, that should have been exactly what you expected.
Bilking fortunes from the old and weak; yeah, I see where folks might get that impression. Not just about Christianity, but confirmation bias allows you to believe Christians are singled out.
Understand that you are not the only one to study Philosophy. Anyone that’s been to University has probably done so. Any one that went to a Liberal Arts school has probably done so thoroughly. I seldom mention my several semesters of Philosophy, or of Theology, or of the other course work I’ve completed. I don’t wish to argue from authority, or try to imply authority in my arguments. I hope my arguments stand on their own merits.
Many here don’t find such respect admirable. It might be considered naive, in fact, to expect such from a blog by a godless liberal. I don’t get to decide for myself that the sky is green, the sun yellow, or that the Earth is made of marshmallow fluff. Whether there is or is not a God might be a personal choice where one’s faith is concerned, but that doesn’t make God any less a fairy tale for adults.
What, exactly, does his good works have to do with the topic at hand. Do you know exactly how much “Good Work” I do? How would that affect your perception of my arguments if you did know? Being humane to another human should be the norm regardless whether there is a god or not.
John B. Sandlin
— I’m not an atheist – I just look like one when I argue.
And so, in conclusion…
A Jewish man asks, “Rabbi, what should I do? My son has converted to Christianity”.
“I don’t know”, answered the Rabbi. “Come back tomorrow, and I’ll ask advice from God”.
The man comes back the next day.
“I can’t help you,” says the Rabbi. “God told me he has the same problem”.
Getting links from here diverted to google – why? It’s not like we can’t enter ‘thereprobablyis’ to find the place.
And when you do, you also find a ‘christianmums’ forum where the good reverend also takes part (as ‘Gurney’).
You won’t be surprised to find that the prayers from other posters that the reverend can find a way to stop the ‘attacks by a huge bunch of atheists’ doesn’t seem to have worked…
At #440, Someone from West Bron wrote:
Muslims, Jews and Christians all believe in the same God but have very different ways on how to relate to that God.
At yet that one very same god gave the Muslims, Jews, and Christians different rules to live by, and told each group that he had given them–and only them–the god-approved, authentic, verified, genuine, and 100% correct rules leading to eternal happiness.
So is this one god a charlatan, or merely a prankster?
Walton at 385:
If an Intelligence were to suffuse all of the universe (something which some think plausable, but remains completely speculative), it would be neutral, not dualistic.
In fact, Evil is by its very nature highly volatile and self-destructive, because selfishness and the spread of ignorance is the name of the game; therefore if Evil were to be the dominant force, we would be unable to recognize it as such becasue we would be fed lies and delusions pertaining to the character of our local deities. Maybe Satan doesn’t exist and Yehweh is just an incredible douchbag? That seems very plausable, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s just some aliens screwing with bronze age goat-hearders/mystics?
How could we possibly tell, one way os the other if things are what they appear by invoking Scripture? There are an awful lot of empty garuntees there, ins;t there? But all of it, down to even the aliens, is not provable, and thus void.
Penny @521, that redirect is cowardly and complacently foolish. Par for the course, really, since integrity and acumen aren’t godbots’ strong points.
Some people on here have not acted with integrity, sabotaging a poll for example! Sending in false submissions. And these are just the things some people on here have admitted to doing, i wonder what else has been done? That is not something done to encourage debate and free thinking but the act of an extremist!
lol
Got to love how extremist behaviour for any religion involves violence and extreme persecution. For atheists, it’s crashing polls and mocking beliefs. Funny how that works, and this is coming from someone who tried to mock atheist logic and failed miserably.
This is extreme as it is not normal behaviour, and wow once again another stereotype ‘religion involves violence and extreme persecution’, i think it is fair to say that both people who believe in a God and those who don’t have both done this!!!
Yes, there’s plenty of people who kill in the name of atheism… *roll*
You are full of crap, if you categorise ruining polls as extreme behaviour then your values are really out of whack. It could just as easily be put that you are being an extremist by being here and complaining about extremists, but unlike you I actually have a higher qualification for what extremism constitutes and I don’t use it as an off-handed comment to condemn at worst disruptive behaviour.
And for the record, that website is there for the public. We can’t be crashing it by definition, it’s open for anyone. Also you should visit 4chan and see what internet trolling is all about.
*cough*
COMMUNISM
*cough*
Come on, A.N.Other! If you’re going to persuade us to adopt communism, you’re going to have to spell out your arguments in a bit more detail than that! Meanwhile, I’d get that cough seen to if I were you.
You do understand the difference between communism and atheism right?
His argument at #460 was one of the worst arguments from first cause I have ever seen. If this is the best God’s got to offer…
*cough*
Christian Crimeline
*cough*
I don’t suppose A.N.Other refers to Christian communism? ;)
I’m mildly amused by the argument by expostulation, though.
Rev. Cocksure has a new YouTube video for ThereProbablyIs.com on his blog at ChristianMums.
Very easily parodied if anyone is that way inclined.
A N Other> Hey Rev Cockshaw, nice to see you attempt the sock-puppet… still upset about the poll? Let me enlighten you as to WHY we crash polls: See, most of the people here have at least a passing interest in this thing called ‘science’. Online polls are by their nature unscientific, because they don’t reflect an accurate sample of society, especially ones posted on specialised sites. Polls here wouldn’t be scientific either. So we crash them to demonstrate just how unscientific your polls are, and if we add our own stories to the absurdity that is already on the site, where’s the harm? Can you honestly tell the false stories from the true ones? Do you think the illogical, credulous nitwits who draw hope from your site can? So, it may be unforunate that we’ve collapsed your happy little daydream, but calling it immoral is a pretty large stretch. It’d be alot like calling the Jehovah’s Witnesses who knocked on my door on Saturday immoral for reminding me that there were irrational godbots in my neighbourhood. An irritance to be sure, but in no way immoral.
The whole communism argument is 1) old and tired and 2) fallacious (communists have an ideology uniting them that has nothing to do with atheism, from whence stemmed all the deaths. You attribute far too much beleif to atheism, when it is simply the lack of beleif in a deity).
Cocksure (see, I am doing it again so obviously my argument has no merit) says
You really are a little godshite aren’t you, and yes, that is a deliberate insult and about all you deserve. After all, why would your wife think it likely that atheists would send you letter bombs. Unless of course she is another of the deluded who believe that only the god botherers can be good and who has been filled with fear about the godless. Wonder who did that to her, you and your fellow god botherers, perchance. Plus, whenever someone starts a sentence or statement with ‘to be truthful’, the one thing that can almost be guaranteed, is that they are being anything but.
Ever heard of any atheists sending letter bombs to anyone? Didn’t think so, unless of course you know different. If so, pray tell, we are all eyes and hears for the links.
Ironically, PZ has and continues to receive death threats and hate mail from god botherers for his audacity in criticising religidiocy and its excesses. If I was your wife, I would be far more worried about letter bombs from fellow god botherers, who are from a different cult to yours, than any coming from atheists. The only ‘bombs’ you are ever likely to receive from us are verbal ones, but then you god botherers are very good at conflating criticism with extremism. Project much?.
And enough with the good works already, for it has no relevance to the existence or otherwise of god or gods. Additionally, even the religious based organisation running day centres, drug rehab centres and the like, that I have been a volunteer at in the UK over the last few decades, have been kept going, not by god botherers, but by the largely godless and agnostic volunteers. By the way, we do it not to curry favour with some mythical sky fairy so as to gain ‘salvation’ but because we feel for our less fortunate fellows and because it was, by our own selfish godless amoral world view, the right thing to do. The golden rule and all that, a principle that religions falsely try to claim as their own.
DOH! all eyes and
hearsears.So when no letterbombs or other physical threats show up in their mailbox, will his wife perhaps change her views about the threat of atheists?
Pablo, probably not. She is probably more likely to rationalise that her sky fairy protected them from us evil godless atheists.
Sorry, John, that was meant to be a rhetorical question.
Of course she won’t.
They don’t like your linking to them, PZ. If you click the link here, they send you to google via a redirect.
http://www.atheist-community.org/atheisteve/?id=19
Yet another idiot who fails at history because they only looks at the surface.
Hey guys, methinks you atheists protest too much – what you so worried about? Why the need to needle? You want respect, earn it … immature, spiteful reaction is really rational, eh?
Hey Christians! We think you protest too much. You’re always wanting everyone to live exactly how you want them to live intruding on every single aspect of society.
Pable, I reckoned you probably meant it rhetorically but thought it worth highlighting her likely response anyway.
After all, in their book, it’s all win/win. If good happens that is god showing his love for the religidiot while if bad happens that is also god showing his love by allowing the religidiot to develop and learn from it. Or some type of twisted logic along those lines anyway.
What’s that saying, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. God botherers sure like being foooled.
Someone from West Brom said at #140:
“This whole thread started because you unfairly high jacked a website for people to share what they believe.”
But we’re just sharing what we believe. Isn’t that what you just said the website is for? How can that be considered an attack?
Common christian act of disguising “I want to censor those who disagree with me” as “I just want to be free to believe”
sheesh
KoT
Very constructive post, enchilada. Good to see that you are able to distill down the many and varied perspectives and opinions of the numerous atheists here a down to one lazy caricature.
Why the need to needle? You want respect, earn it… Is that a universal rule, or just one to apply to opposite side of the debate than your own?
Moral high grounds too often lack substantial foundations.
Rev. Evan Cockshaw said at #419:
“my wife has gone to bed this evening dreadfully worried that we’re going to end up with a letterbomb or something from some hatefilled atheist.”
Yeah, I’m so sick of hearing about all those atheism-driven train station bombings, and med clinic arsons, and mail bombings.
Oh wait, that doesn’t happen, does it?
So where has your wife got the idea that it happens? It wouldn’t be from you and your religions dishonest portrayal of atheists as immoral and hateful, would it?
You have only yourself to blame for your wifes fear.
“I tried for many years to put my trust in Christ. I asked Him into my heart, I prayed for Salvation. It never happened. Eventually I realized it couldn’t happen, ever. It’s an adult fairy tale; magic and reality are incompatible. However, I found that reality and beauty are compatible.”
This was my experience, sort of, though mine was quite telescoped: I’d have to cut out the “many years.” But …
Fewer years ago than I like to contemplate, I was straitjacketed by circumstances into a cycle of anxiety like I’d never known — and I am a naturally anxious person. I was also in the middle of being horribly mis-medicated by an awful psychiatrist and my brain was being hammered into jelly by insomnia.
So: for a few days at least, I sort of went wacky. I started looking into the Bible, picking random passages to see if they would magically apply / help. I tried praying. Wailing. Begging for release, relief, help, a sign. I’d roll around on the bed — which had become the most frightening place in my world — hugging that Bible, hoping past hope that if something was up there, it’d see and take pity on me, reveal its workings, HUG ME, for gosh sake, HUG ME TO ITS AWESOME LOVING (I’d heard) BOSOM and make it stop hurting.
Of course, NOTHING happened. Nothing. Not even in my drug-addled, sleep-deprived nougat of a brain. NOTH-ING.
I wound up on a psych ward for a few days. The meds were adjusted. I got better.
I’ve never been back to that place.
bernard quartermass @
What were you like before you took to religion? I’ll not pass judgment here, but I hope that previous life was a normal life.
Rev Cocksucker*:
Well then your wife is obviosuly insane. She’s imagining threats that don’t exist. She’s terrified of bogeymen that exist only in her head. You Brits have national healthcare, take her to a shrink, she needs help.
I mentioned this before. You got such a case of the vapors at what horrible things we evil atheists were doing, but you conveniently forgot that NOT A SINGLE PERSON HERE HAS THREATENED YOUR LIFE!!! You’re scanadlized that people dared ask you for evidence, or call you on your lies, or make fun of your name, but your fellow cultists treat atheists far worse as a matter of course. The owner of this very site has received DEATH THREATS from religious nuts because he dared to criticize them for valuing their delusions over the lives of their fellow human beings. You are posting on the blog of a man whose wife has actual REASON to fear her family being murdered by hateful fanatics. Yet these people manage to live their lives.
On the other hand, you, you little whiner, you worthless fraud, have received NO DEATH THREATS AT ALL. Yet your cult has so brainwashed your wife that she is afraid of her own shadow, while ignoring actual threats and actual murders commmitted by your fellow cultists.
This is wrong. This is evil. It is not right for religious fanatics to murder nonbelievers, but it happens. It is not right to falsely accuse atheists of murder, especially when those same atheists are far more likely to be the VICTIMS, but you do it. It is not right to encourage delusion and baseless terror in innocent people, but that is the entire purpose of religion.
Your wife is sick, Evan. The disease is called “religion”. I hope it’s not a terminal case.
*I know I shouldn’t be calling you Reverend Cocksucker. It’s an insult to cocksuckers. But you’re the hypocritical sack of shit that can’t stand to have your own name made fun of, while doing the same to others. I guess it’s too much to expect a fucking VICAR to notice that that imaginary god of yours is supposed to take a pretty dim view of hypocrites and liars.
Jason A #551 wrote:
Maybe, but, to be fair to the wife, her husband wasn’t just being reamed out by people who are atheists: he was being reamed out by people on the internet. That’s got its own share of urban legends and scare stories — and they’re not all false.
When you’re online, you can’t really be sure of who and what you’re dealing with. People lie. And I think there’s good evidence that at least some of the folks who hang out regularly online don’t have all their marbles, so to speak. Possibly true even on Pharyngula. Lurid tales of people who cyberstalk or send computer-killing viruses or go off the deep end and do something violent or criminal to “someone they met on the internet” probably get bandied around the general public more than stories about mean atheists — who are usually depicted in popular imagination as grumpy or snotty (as if those were bad things!)
bernard quatermass #552 wrote:
To someone who has committed themselves to putting a positive spin for God on everything, your experience would probably be interpreted as “but when you were in need, you REALIZED that you wanted and needed God! Praise the Lord! You found your God-shaped hole! By not filling it, God just wanted to make the fact that there IS a hole there even more obvious. A miracle!”
That’s why that silly test to “ask God to reveal himself to you” is worthless. If you don’t bend over backwards and contort yourself in knots to find some way of confirming that God answered — well, then, the problem is clearly you.
@enchilada
Respect really is what it does come down to, I guess. The trouble is the definition of respect. It comes from the Latin – respectus – the act of looking back. Re – again, specere – to look. I certainly don’t mind looking again at theists. Really seeing them. The problem is the application of the term respect by theists. They want it to mean more than showing consideration for their beliefs. Being left alone to believe or not believe as they see fit. Autonomy to live life as they prefer. If this was all they wanted, I would have no issue tossing respect their way.
But, from experience, they don’t want this measure of consideration. They want RESPECT . Respect being defined as unquestioning deference for their beliefs regardless of how often you try to ignore or negate their interference with your life. Theists think that respect encompasses an ability to proclaim their beliefs ad nauseam while ignoring the autonomy of every other person who doesn’t subscribe to their set of beliefs. And when these non-believes have the audacity to ignore the imperative to give unquestioning deference to the theists beliefs, this group shrieks and whines and cries, “Persecution, persecution!” to anyone who will listen.
I think protesting, questioning, mocking theists is an appropriate response by atheists. A needed response. I don’t think we can do it “too much” to those demanding the second definition of respect. Regarding theists who only want the autonomy to live in their preferred way – that measure of respect and consideration – done and done.
Look at how terriby intolerant those evil atheists are
(thanks to Emmet Caulfield for the site)
Holbach,
“What were you like before you took to religion? I’ll not pass judgment here, but I hope that previous life was a normal life.”
I didn’t “take to religion” except in what feels at this distance like a bout of temporary insanity. That was the point of my post, I guess.
But I might be misunderstanding your question. Normal? Whatever is that? I have suffered from depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I’ve been on meds; sometimes not. Sometimes I haven’t needed them; sometimes it might have been better had I been on them. I have suffered and searched as much as the next person, but have found no heavenly voices offering succour for my out-of-balance brain chemistry.
My life has wound a too-slow course back to the science I sadly abandoned at 17 or 18 and I have found abundant joy, illumination and solace therein … but it hasn’t erased my profound self-loathing. I’m working on that.
All of this is, I suppose, “normal” to someone. To others who share this kind of head.
enchilada at #545 posted:
Welcome to Missedthewholeunderlyingpointofthediscussonville. Population: You.
No kings,
Robert
The outlawing of same-sex marriage, state control of a woman’s body, the elimination of good public health practices around sexually transmitted diseases, the teaching of false information in school biology classes, the termination of important biomedical research…and that’s just for starters.
If you religious want respect, stay the hell out of public policy.
enchilada #545 wrote:
There are a lot of people — especially religious people — who really, really hate cussing. I suspect they live lives where it’s seldom encountered, either personally or online. It jumps at them like a blow.
So if you use a swear word while making your rational argument, they shut down. If you use an insult while addressing their weak points, they shut off. Game over. You lost. They can’t deal with you anymore. Because if you had a legitimate case, then you’d be nice about it. You weren’t. So you don’t.
This attitude is, of course, over-sensitive, wheeny-whiney, childish bullshit. But it’s common. Sometimes it’s simply being used as a rhetorical play or fallacy, a kind of “gotcha.” Other times, there really does seem to be some sort of genuine belief that harsh words automatically make someone wrong. You find it with both conservatives and liberals (particularly with the “everybody get along spiritual but not religious” types I think.)
It’s what I call the “Style over Substance” Argument. A politely worded and gently flattering defense of totalitarian fascism is more persuasive than an expletive-laden and faintly insulting counterargument for human rights and freedom. Sometimes even to someone who otherwise considers themselves a human rights activist. They skid on the surface of things, and mistake that for a sign of what’s underneath. They accuse the other person of being too ‘ego-driven,’ when the real problem is that they can’t separate the needs of their own ego from careful consideration of the facts and reasoning. Someone insulted them. That’s now got to be the focus.
Of course, many people will also call perfectly calm and civil atheist discourse “shrill” and mean, but I think more people have this knee-jerk reaction to swearing. It’s one reason I seldom use cuss words in my own posts: I’ve been burned too often by people who used it as an excuse to shift the argument from its substance, to style. I try not to give them the easy handle to grip. It’s usually one of the first things they do when they realize they’re losing. “It’s not what you’re saying, it’s you and your hostile attitude. You swore, and now we’re going to talk only about that.”
bernard quartermass,
Thanks for sharing that story, and your struggles.
Also, to John B. Sandlin at #514, et al., thanks for sharing that perspective, as well. I nodded in recognition as I read it; it sounds much like my own experience.
I, for one, feel like this has been a great thread of discussion. Thanks to the participants . . . including the apologists who got their feathers ruffled. To the Rev. Evan Cockshaw, I hope you will receive the following in the joyful and encouraging spirit in which I mean it, and not as a mockery: in reference to the experience of the internet, I invoke the words of Al Swearengen from HBO’s television series Deadwood, season 2, episode 1:
“Welcome to fuckin’ Deadwood [the internet]! Can be combative!”
No kings,
Robert
Wow. This thread still going? More (un)convincing pleas (not)proving deities exist I see.
So basically the proofs are:
I believe it’s real; I believe it should be real; I can’t point to anything empirical for the purpose of showing others what I believe; Therefore, my god exists; And all the other deities throughout the expanse of time, well, they were never real in the fist place.
Hmmmm.
Visited the site and saw this:
“A group of atheists have overwhelmed the form on this website.
Because of that I am now asking for all submissions to be sent direct to stories@thereprobablyis.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
If you are an atheist looking to cause trouble or have a laugh, please know that the joke has worn very thin already. But also know that we do still love you, as does God, whether you like it or not. ”
Laughing my a** off.
Thanks, PZ!
“But also know that we do still love you, as does God, whether you like it or not.”
= “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on”, in godly language. Got it.
What we’ve been defending is observable reality. That’s not necessarily the same thing.
“But also know that we do still love you, as does God, whether you like it or not.”
1. But also know that we do still love you
This does not matter to us. It seems it matters more to you. Why would civil discourse cause you to be concerned about loving us? This is a part of what the religious, especially xtians don’t seem to understand – it sounds very trite and condescending. It adds no value to the discussion or the weak arguments that were presented by you either.
2. as does God
This is drivel. You have nothing empirical to show that a deity exists, or that such a creature can love, or that it loves anyone of us personally. This comment sounds like, again, you’re saying it to make yourself feel more confident in your irrational, unsupportable belief that your deity exists – and that you are nodding to it in recognition. Kind of like you want an “attaboy” from other xtians and your deity for saying such a useless comment to those who don’t think deities are real.
3. whether you like it or not.
Again, foisting unto someone something that you are sure they probably won’t respect or appreciate is just another annoying manifestation of xtian hubris. By saying such things, you are clearly inviting the ire of those who disagree with you on the matter, but you do it anyway for the sake of getting in the last jibe. It makes you all seem very small in character, and very weak in the mind.
In parting, may Odin cast his eternal grace and love on your life so that you may know he is the one true God.
See what I mean?
The way I’d put it, is that ‘pop’ versions of postmodernism deny the possibility of intersubjective knowledge. We are all locked into our presuppositions, background assumptions, and cultural habits, and there is no means or method of finding any common ground which will resolve disputes.
The people who try to promote this think that the up side to this approach is that it “respects” the viewpoints of all people and cultures, as being equal. The scientist who believes that disease is caused by germs is no more right or wrong than the native shaman who believes that disease is caused by evil spirits. So there should be no arguments and no conflict. It’s all happy harmony and everyone has their own “truths” and their own “reality” just the same way that everyone has their own “opinions.” No more wars.
The trouble, of course, is that this doesn’t mean that there are no arguments or conflicts. Reality doesn’t really bend to wishes and expectations. Instead, it means that there are no empirical, rational means to resolve differences of opinion, so the only thing left is force. The exact opposite of what they were hoping.
Sastra: The trouble, of course, is that this doesn’t mean that there are no arguments or conflicts. Reality doesn’t really bend to wishes and expectations. Instead, it means that there are no empirical, rational means to resolve differences of opinion, so the only thing left is force. The exact opposite of what they were hoping.
“Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.” – Lily Tomlin.
;-)
“Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.” – Lily Tomlin.
;-)
…a hunch that can be tested and falsified.
Post-modernism is a big crock of shit*
*outside art where it has a legitimacy
Whenever I encounter the term Post-modernism I think of the Sokal hoax* – which is a shame, I think there’re good ideas in there. I also think the term is misapplied to refer to Post-structuralism.
* Boy that was a good’un! – and a mighty blow to pretentiousness.
Just so we all understand each other, “…the inadequacy of the average human mind” is so because of the inadequacy of the average educational and information dispersal systems.
That and a stupifyingly gigantic dose of fashionable superstition, on which many are hopelessly addicted.
Lessee…
“Does God Exist”
Yup, I can see that middle word right there, “G”, “o”, “d”, all scrunched together as the subject of the interrogative.
In terms of directly observable, unequivocal, unassailable, extraordinarily powerful, and just plain visible evidence in FAVOR of the existence of “God”…that would be about it.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll doubtlessly say it infinite more times before I die, that the theist (particularly Am. Xtian) idea of respect for their beliefs is to prostrate yourself before their feet and cry, “O, thank you for exposing a worthless idiot like me to your utter correctness and superior wisdom! Please punish me for disagreeing with you!”
It’s the only thing they want to hear. Otherwise, the non-believer is “militant,” “angry” or “extremist.”
IOW, they are exactly like the megalomaniacal sadists (s) they worship.
I know it’s been said before, but I have to say it again.. the fact that some people appear to think that “because he cares for all of us” is evidence for the existence of an invisible man in the sky is frightening. That brains are being warped this way… that having an opinion about the nature of a subject is honestly believed to be evidence of the existence of it. It reminds me of the quote that I will never get out of my head, it was on a radio show about opposition to evolution, a reporter asked a girl in a Jesus Camp type situation what her evidence for an intelligent designer was. Her words, “because the creator is in my heart”. Generations of people have been and are continuing to be brought up to think that THAT is a rational statement and a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
In a way that may explain the way that theists constantly assume that atheists hate their god. It’s kind of a reverse of that process, they assume that a lack of belief is just a different kind of opinion about the nature.
This is a subject I’ve seen suggested multiple places, that some theists honestly cannot conceive of a lack of belief, to them all nonbelievers are really insincere, they don’t REALLY not believe, they just say it while denying it deep down.
The problem, I think, is that using that I can prove that Santa Clause exists, because he’s making his list and checking it twice. And furthermore, because he’s bringing toys for every good boy and girl and lumps of coal for the bad ones.
How about the following common argument for the existence of God? (Not being a physicist or cosmologist, I can’t judge the accuracy of the premises, so please correct me if any of them are wrong. But the line of reasoning itself is, as far as I can tell, formally valid.)
(1) Our universe is governed by certain physical laws and constants.
(2) Our universe had a finite beginning (approx. 13.7bn years ago).
(3) If the laws and constants which govern our universe were slightly different, the universe would not be able to sustain life, and might well consist entirely of (a) hydrogen atoms or (b) energy.
(4) Therefore, the fact that the universe is set up so as to be able to sustain life is very fortuitous for us.
This requires an explanation – and the two logical explanations are:
(a) that there are a large number of different universes, and we happen to live in the one which happens to be capable of sustaining life as we know it; or
(b) our universe was established by a designer who created it so that it would be capable of sustaining life.
The obvious problem is that this is a “God of the gaps” argument; we don’t know how our universe came about or whether there are other universes, so we simply posit God as an explanation in the absence of a non-supernatural explanation. This, obviously, is in general a silly line of reasoning; if we were ignorant of space and astronomy, for instance, we could equally well argue “Our Earth may be the only planet that exists; it is set up so as to support life; ergo, there must have been a benevolent designer.” And this would, of course, be wrong.
But the difference is that, as I understand it, because our perception and frame of reference is necessarily limited to our universe and its material laws, we cannot ever know what lies outside our own universe – making it purely speculative. It seems to me, then, that since empiricism cannot ever provide an answer, it’s not inherently irrational to posit God as an explanation.
(Apologies if I’m talking nonsense – I really don’t know much about physics, and so I might well have completely misunderstood the relevant facts.)
Of course, since this is empirically untestable and completely speculative, it provides no solid reason to believe in God, as opposed to believing in the “other universes” hypothesis. Which is where recorded accounts of supernatural events come into play. As I’ve said before, Christianity stands or falls completely on the question of the historical reliability of the Gospels – which is something that in principle is testable and falsifiable, albeit that we don’t have enough evidence to judge it at present.
Walton, if the universe couldn’t sustain life we wouldn’t be here to pose the question. The argument basically amounts to “we exist, therefore God exists”, explaining absolutely nothing.
It’s a collection of not unreasonable statements in ordinary language; it’s at most an informal argument; it’s certainly not a formal argument. A formal argument is formally valid if it correctly applies the formally defined rules of inference of the logical calculus used, resulting in a situation where the conclusion is true if the premises are true. Calling this a “formally valid” is like calling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire a “legally binding contract”. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Yes, and it’s as banal and vapid as every other such argument.
You have to define what you mean by “universe”. With one definition, the notion of “outside the Universe” is meaningless, tied to our intuitive notions of “inside” and “outside”, and simply nonsensical. The other alternative is “our universe” as being one of many in a multiverse. The problem is that there are many different multiverse theories based on different mathematical frameworks. In their respective contexts, universe would have a defined meaning. Without knowing the details, one cannot say whether one universe is detectable from another: it would depend on the particular theory.
Really, this is a problem with armchair science cum philosophy cum speculation. It’s fun and I love to do it myself, but informal and loosely defined concepts and reasoning are poor tools for discovering truth and generating new knowledge. That’s why we have the scientific method and use mathematics.
An unwarranted assumption.
A non sequitur.
In the absence of Christianity, such a collection of mutually inconsistent stories about a god-man with magical powers, not corroborated by historical evidence, would be a mere archaeological curiosity about the mythology of the peasants of primitive Palestine.
Walton, see the anthropic principle.
If the universe had a designer and only one configuration would lead to us, then the designer didn’t have a choice when creating the universe. Without choice, there is no omnipotence. Therefore the designer can not be God.
The way Hawking ripped apart the anthropic principle in A Brief History Of Time was quite eloquent. I’d copy it out if I weren’t so lazy.
It’s a collection of not unreasonable statements in ordinary language; it’s at most an informal argument; it’s certainly not a formal argument. A formal argument is formally valid if it correctly applies the formally defined rules of inference of the logical calculus used, resulting in a situation where the conclusion is true if the premises are true.
My apologies – of course I know that, and originally intended to phrase it in terms of a formal argument, but got carried away. How about if it were put this way:
(1) (premise) I live in the Universe.
(2) (premise) I am alive.
(3) By 1 and 2, the Universe can sustain life.
(4) (premise) If the physical laws of the Universe were different, it would not be able to sustain life.
(5) (premise) This Universe is the only universe.
(6) By 4 and 5, it is highly improbable that our Universe can sustain life.
(7) By 3 and 6, we live in a highly improbable Universe.
Of course, this is the limit of reasoning: the conclusion that our universe is highly improbable does not necessitate a belief that God exists. And premise (5) is open to challenge by those who believe in multiple universes.
That’s a big assumption
(6) By 4 and 5, it is highly improbable that our Universe can sustain life.That’s an even bigger assumption given we do not know how these laws come about.
Just transpose that argument to the origin of life
(1) (premise) I live in the Earth.
(2) (premise) I am alive.
(3) By 1 and 2, the Earth can sustain life.
(4) (premise) If the chemical makeup of the Earth were different, it would not be able to sustain life.
(5) (premise) This Earth is the only planet where life exists.
(6) By 4 and 5, it is highly improbable that our Earth can sustain life.
(7) By 3 and 6, we live on a highly improbable Earth.
Now if anyone concluded that God exists because we life is such an improbable event they would get laughed at. Why is it any different for the universe itself?
I’ve always thought that one of the sillier arguments. The belief that the universe was designed to be hospitable to us simply ignores our puniness in a vast cosmos, much of which is not hospitable to life. It also ignores the fact that we arose very recently
and that our appearance and form result from chance planetary events. Given this (in addition to all of the other problems with the creator argument), how is it reasonable to posit a creator who had life/us in mind?
I’ll also note once again my problem with the use of terms like “governed” by laws:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/09/oh_no_now_dinesh_dsouza_is_aft.php#comment-1129027
Kel at #584: I think you made one mistake in your analogy. Your premise (5) should have been simply “The Earth is the only planet.” (a premise which we know, empirically, to be untrue)
As it is, your conclusion (6) does not follow, since there is nothing inherently improbable in one planet out of billions happening to have the necessary properties to support life.
All cosmology aside (and Walton seems to propose a new one on a frequent basis), even if the bible were proved to be historically true, Jesus was the “son” of a creator god, and I were facing a million-degree gulag for not worshiping it, I would not worship it. My knee would not bow, my tongue would not confess, that Jesus is ‘massa.’ Because I am not a slave.
If I am going to worship anything, it will be knowledge and not power, and it will not be done under threat. I would attempt to study the phenomenon called god, to understand the sources and mechanisms underlying its power, and if possible, to limit that power. I am not a monarchist.
So Walton, what is it that you want this god to do for you? Tell you what to do? Make you happy? Give your life purpose? Reinforce your own sense of morality? What is it you seek in the life of Christ that the life of the mind cannot provide? Get off the plantation.
1) If anything about the 13.7 billion years up to 1954 had been different, I wouldn’t exist.
2) This is very fortuitous for me.
3) Therefore the universe was designed in order to ensure I should exist.
No. Sorry. I have a pretty large ego, but I’m afraid I can’t quite manage to believe this.
The point was expressed more elegantly by Don Maquis, writing as “archy”, a vers libre poet reincarnated as a cockroach:
warty bliggins the toad
i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially
planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain
thought out and prepared
for him
do not tell me
said warty bliggens
that there is not a purpose
in the universe
the thought is blasphemy
a little more
conversation revealed
that warty bliggens
considers himself to be
the center of the same
universe
the earth exists
to grow toadstools for him
to sit under
the sun to give him light
by day and the moon
and wheeling constellations
to make beautiful
the night for the sake of
warty bliggens
to what act of yours
do you impute
this interest on the part
of the creator
of the universe
i asked him
why is it that you
are so greatly favored
ask rather
said warty bliggens
what the universe
has done to deserve me
if i were a
human being i would
not laugh
too complacently
at poor warty bliggens
for similar
absurdities
have only too often
lodged in the crinkles
of the human cerebrum
archy
Walton,
No. A formal argument is a formal argument.
That is pseudo-formalism that mixes semantics and syntax. For an argument to be formally valid is a purely syntactic notion. The following is a valid formal argument in (several logics including a typical formulation of) classical propositional logic: A, A∨B → C ⊢ C
The following is (loosely) one of many possible interpretations: A=”I am in Siberia”, B=”I am in the freezer”, C=”I am cold”. The point is that the validity of a formal argument has a precisely defined technical meaning; no amount of clarification of an informal argument is going to make it formal or formally valid.
Leaving aside the proof theoretical part of the validity of an argument, one must still demonstrate that the particular model of that argument that one proposes corresponds to observable reality: that is the purpose of empirical evidence in science. Such thought experiments may be enjoyable and enlightening and a lot of other things, but in order for them to be acceptable in a scientific sense, they must be grounded in evidence. For example, it is not obvious that the bald premises “if the physical laws of the Universe were different, it would not be able to sustain life” and “this universe is the only universe” are true or even experimentally verifiable.
Semantically, the premise “this universe is the only universe” plainly contradicts the conclusion “we live in a highly improbable universe”. You can’t stipulate that a die is one-sided, then assign a non-zero, non-unity probability of it coming up with the value 6. Either its single face has the value 6 on it, in which case the probability of it coming up six is identically one, or it does not, in which case the probability of it coming up 6 is identically zero.
In other words, speaking of the probability of the existence of “this universe” requires that there are other universes with their own probabilities of existence. You can either have “the universe is unique” or “the universe is (im)probable”, but not both.
Even if the entirety of the argument were not fractally flawed, i.e. if we simply stipulated the conclusion that “we live in a highly improbable universe”, it would tell us precisely nothing. It’s like trying to infer something from the probability of winning the lottery after you’ve lodged the cheque from the lottery company for 20 million. This argument is no less foolish than “I won the lottery, therefore god exists”.
Walton @ #583:
You’re also ignoring the lack of support for premise 4. We don’t know how much different the physical laws of the universe would have to be to preclude sustaining life as we know it. Nor do we have any idea what kind of life might be possible that ISN’T as we know it, that might arise in a wildly different universe.
The phrase “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it” (which inspired the above) was memorably uttered by Mr. Spock in regards to the Horla, an underground-dwelling silicon-based creature that leaves a single member behind to nurture an entire generation of eggs. This is downright normal compared to the stars of Robert L. Forward’s novel Dragon’s Egg, creatures made of collapsed neutronium that need a million-g environment to survive. And these are merely beings speculated to exist in extreme environments within our own universe (speculation that, of course, may or may not bear any resemblance to reality).
There’s no telling, at this point, what kind of life might arise in an entirely different universe. We’ve found some pretty weird life in extreme environments here on Earth, even in places where we thought nothing could possibly survive. We don’t even fully know what what might exist on neutron stars or in dense nebulae, much less in a place where the very laws of physics are different. And without knowing that, we have no way of estimating how probable life is in any given universe, and thus no way of concluding that our universe is “highly improbable”.
“The Universe can sustain life” is only true in an infinitesimally small part of it. The vast majority of the Universe is, well, nothing, trillions of cubic light years of nothing, and nothing that is close to as cold as it is possible to get. There is no place we know of outside of our own infinitesimally tiny smudge of matter called Earth where life of any sort could survive. Far from being “sustaining”, the Universe is deadly to life as we know it except for our tiny corner of it. To think otherwise is astounding hubris — it would be like a bacterium that had fortuitously survived on the inside lid of a full bleach bottle thinking that the bottle was created solely for it.
In the final sentence of the penultimate paragraph of my #589, replace “the universe is unique” with “there is exactly one universe”.
Argh.
I admit it, I’m really not bright or educated enough to evaluate this question properly. Presumably very few people are.
The difficulty is that everyone, every single human being on Earth – regardless of their level of education – has to decide for themselves which religion, if any, to follow. (To simply copy one’s family or community, without thinking and questioning for oneself, is intellectual dishonesty.) So this is not just academic discourse; we’re talking about an issue fundamental to all human existence.
Yet very, very few people – and I am certainly not among them – are educated to a sufficiently high level in physics, mathematics, cosmology, philosophy, logic, comparative theology, world history, and all the other knowledge that one needs in order to properly understand all the arguments from every perspective. And even those who are sufficiently educated still don’t have any answers, because there just isn’t any concrete empirical evidence.
Politics is much easier than religion, because in the world of politics one can use empirical observation and evidence to test how well one’s beliefs relate to the real world. So the choice of political ideologies is relatively easy; but the choice of religious beliefs is not. How the hell am I supposed to choose which faith, if any, to follow when there just aren’t any clear facts, and I can’t follow a substantial proportion of the arguments?
How depressing. Why can’t life just be simple?
Re: fine-tuning argument.
I ask what measures we would expect, from the fact that this universe does, at least sometimes, produce life?
The answer is, of course, the constants that we have measured.
The real miracle, the real sign of a deity, would be if we took our measurements and found out we were living in, say, a dangerously radiation-filled part of space, but were magically alive, or if any one of a dozen constants was way off, but magically correct just on Earth.
Pretending that the constants of the universe being exactly as we would expect from a universe which gave rise to us is somehow evidence of any God or Gods is nothing more than an argument from ignorance (and no more convincing than those who argued several hundred years ago that there was no other reasonable explanation for the existence of bays other than that God had hand-crafted them to be useful for humans once we invented sailing).
Nick Gotts @ 588
Wow, nice to see someone quoting Don Marquis! I like him, and also his good friend in literature and life, Christopher Morley. A good bio of Don if you have not read it:
“O Rare Don Marquis” by Edward Anthony. I’ve read it three times from my local library and am still hunting for it in used book stores. Good stuff, “archy” and all!
Walton @#593:
Which just burns to the ground the idea of any deity who would punish us for not figuring out the answer in the back of the book, don’t you think?
When you learn enough about the persistent bottom-up nature of the universe at all scales, even a deist God is unlikely, but all particular religions are clearly man-made, and it shows.
Certainly there exists no God that we have to worry about pleasing, or who is going to ask us to know things we cannot possibly know to get through the door to a pleasant afterlife.
It is. As the atheist bus campaign puts it:
“There probably is no God.
Now stop worrying, and enjoy your life”
Walton @593,
I think you’re being a little hard on yourself. You’re plainly articulate, intelligent and interested in learning. I don’t often agree with you or even engage with you because I find it very frustrating to argue with someone who often appears to be obtuse, to think in black and white terms, and to lack clarity in reasoning. But, none of these things mean that you’re stupid or ignorant.
Clarity in reasoning doesn’t come at all naturally to people. I first realised this when I had to teach programming and later when I had to teach logic. We forget that we once didn’t know something, or once thought in a different way, and teaching has these lightbulb moments of “hey, I remember when I thought like that”. Truth is, we naturally draw conclusions in a very messy associative kind of way, rather than “thinking things through”. Even when we think things through, our reasoning is beset on all sides by unstated assumptions, muddling of syntax and semantics, and a dozen other non-obvious problems.
For my part, I think most people (including you) have grossly overcomplicated faith, religion, god, and theism precisely because of these monsters in the brain that muddle our thinking. My axiom is that assertions about reality require empirical evidence. This axiom is extremely simple and absolutely consistent with all useful human knowledge. “Faith” is simply the denial of this axiom and is consistent with an awful lot of stuff that’s transparent bullshit: if one can make assertions about reality without evidence, then any particular evidence-free assertion is as good as any other. If Yahweh, why not Xenu? Why not Ba’al? Why not leprechauns? Why not alien abductions? All bullshit.
I’ve ended up finding it very difficult to understand why anyone with a modicum of intelligence doesn’t simply reject “the god hypothesis” out-of-hand. Childhood indoctrination and the learned habit of compartmentalising the particular religious tradition we’ve grown up with make one belief system, uniquely, seem more plausible, but by any objective standard, it can’t be and it’s not: it’s bullshit too.
I have faith, er, I mean confidence ;o), that you’ll realise that pretty soon: you appear to be heading in the right direction.
Walton,
I admit I find it hard to appreciate your religious dilemma, having been a contented atheist from the age of 12. Can you articulate why you feel the impulse to “follow a faith” at all? To me the situation seems simple: there are lots of religions, and no good reason to believe in any of them. So I don’t. Any more than I believe in ghosts or leprachauns.
Meanwhile, I’d suggest actually trying to pay more attention to empirical evidence in your political views. This will still leave you plenty of choice – both because the evidence is in many areas insufficient to point unambiguously in a particular political direction, and because even if we agreed on all the facts, we could still have different values and so make different choices. I understand the attraction of “libertarianism” at one level, particularly for the young: it’s so simple! Given the Austrian economists’ contemptuous attitude to empirical evidence, and belief that everything can be deduced from “self-evident” axioms about human behaviour, you don’t need to know much about either current affairs, history or real human psychology and sociology to reach a conclusion on any given topic. The answer is always the same – let the market decide! (I realise I’m to some extent caricaturing your position, but certainly not those of the other libertarians who comment here). But, basically, it’s an intellectual scam: there’s no substitute for the hard work of studying the way the human mind and human world work, and have worked, in detail.
Walton @ #593:
And yet the intellectually dishonest way is the way the vast majority of the human race makes this decision. Mindless conformity is the NORM for religion, not the exception. And it seems the few who are searching for religious answers themselves in an intellectually honest manner tend to end up abandoning religion. Religion actively discourages intellectual honesty, by positing a tyrranical imaginary friend who tortures people without end for asking honest questions.
Walton again:
It is clear, from empirical observation and evidence, that Barack Obama is neither a Muslim, nor the Antichrist, nor an immigrant of any kind, nor involved in a vast Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids. These facts, however, do not have any effect at all on the right-wing nutjobs who continue to assert all these things.
It is clear, from empirical observation and evidence, that every time Reaganite “trickle-down” voodoo economics has been tried, it has failed. Again, the facts have not had any effect on the True Believers.
It is clear, from empirical observation and evidence, that the word “socialism” has a definition, and that that defintion bears no resemblance to the way the word is used as a bludgeon and a bogeyman by right-wing nutjobs. Again, the facts have not had any effect on the True Believers.
It is clear, from empirical observation and evidence, that deregulation tends to lead not to a Libertarian utopia, but to quite a variety of abuses. Again, the facts have not had any effect on the True Believers.
Of course, this all supports my thesis that the Republican party has turned into a cult. :)
Walton:
Why do you need to choose one? Are you actually capable of CHOOSING to believe something, in the abscence of evidence, even if it is obviously false or logically incoherent? (well given your political ideology…) Even if you CAN twist your brain in knots and force yourself to believe absurdities, why should you?
If you want to follow the arguments, you could take the time to actually LEARN something. The trouble is, religion tends to be actively opposed to learning. And there’s a good reason for that. The facts don’t support the dogma, so people who bother to learn the facts tend to abandon the dogma, leave the religion, and stop giving their money to preachers in return for nothing.
Walton @ 593
Why don’t you get that crap out of your head and come to your senses and realize that there are no imaginary gods, but just those created in unsound minds like yours and countless others? You only have to bring your imaginary god down and appear before us. I won’t belabor the task of all manner of philosophical and teleogical bullshit to prove there is no god, but isn’t obvious by now that there is no imaginary god? I’ll repeat here as I have several times before, that if I was a supreme being and one of my creations questioned my existence, I would be down in a flash and kick the crap out of it. Why isn’t this being done? Because there is no god. Can’t you comprehend this through your thick religious dead brain? Come on, let’s see your imaginary god. If you can prove it I’ll make you my god, how’s that?
Almost to the letter:
http://www.atheist-community.org/atheisteve/?id=32
(Damn I’ve spent three days reading all these posts. Time to see what’s new on Pharyngula)
I found Walton’s #593 incredibly annoying. He asked a question @ #577, and several people – including some of us who generally find him too exasperating to deal with – took the time to reply. Then, rather than addressing those specific replies, conceding the weakness of the argument he proposed, or asking questions if he wasn’t able to follow what people were saying, he starts babbling about no one really having any answers and launches into some ridiculous and irrelevant ramblings about religion and politics (in what may be an attempt to turn yet another thread into a blithertarian soapbox). It was an insult to those of us who answered his question.
And it seems the few who are searching for religious answers themselves in an intellectually honest manner tend to end up abandoning religion. – What about C.S. Lewis? While he was guilty, at times, of sloppy thinking – and his famous “trilemma” is simply wrong – he can’t really be accused of blind adherence to family or community tradition; he was an atheist from his teens until becoming a Christian in young adulthood (which is what made him a much more effective apologist than most, because, unlike most religious people, he understood the mindset of the sceptic and the search for evidence). Or how about the physicist, Anglican priest and apologist John Polkinghorne? Don’t get me wrong – you’re undoubtedly right that most people in the world do, indeed, follow their family’s or community’s beliefs (whether theistic or atheistic) like sheep; but I would question your claim that all, or even most, of those who think seriously about religion reach an atheist or agnostic conclusion. (Of course, this has no bearing on whether religion is actually true or false; that would be a fallacious appeal to authority.)
Religion actively discourages intellectual honesty, by positing a tyrranical imaginary friend who tortures people without end for asking honest questions. – That depends on which religion and which branch thereof, but I see your point.
It is clear, from empirical observation and evidence, that Barack Obama is neither a Muslim, nor the Antichrist, nor an immigrant of any kind, nor involved in a vast Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids. These facts, however, do not have any effect at all on the right-wing nutjobs who continue to assert all these things. – True. And they are idiots. To clarify, I wasn’t asserting that most people constantly think rationally about their political views and measure them against empirical evidence. Rather, I’m just pointing out that it is at least possible to do so, and to make political arguments based on facts, empiricism and logic, rather than wild speculation and personal preference.
The trouble is, religion tends to be actively opposed to learning. – This is a sweeping, and generally untrue, generalisation. The Anglican Church in which I was brought up certainly isn’t opposed to learning; nor are the best elements of most world religions. It’s true that among the most hardcore fundamentalists, religion seems to be linked to anti-intellectualism and a distaste for rational thought and the acquisition of knowledge (other than scriptural knowledge); but it’s certainly not true that these sentiments characterise religion as a whole.
Tulse @ 591
trillions of cubic light years of nothing
This is not correct. This should read:
trillions of cubic light years of
nothingspaceSpace, is not nothing. This may seem like a trivial point, but it is quite significant.
Holbach: I’ll repeat here as I have several times before, that if I was a supreme being and one of my creations questioned my existence, I would be down in a flash and kick the crap out of it. Why isn’t this being done? Because there is no god.
Or because God has given people free will, rather than governing as a cosmic tyrant and smiting those who disobey?
Walton @ 603:
And that is a sweeping, generally untrue reply to that perceived generalization. The Anglican branch of Christianity, like all other forms of religion, will, in fact, actively pursue a course of untruth to protect its dogma and further its agenda. Education may well be a part of religious upbringing… but only up to the point where it does not directly conflict with or contradict religious doctrine or dogma. This his been shown time and time again throughout history and is the same now, the Anglican church being no exception.
SC at #602: I apologise, I didn’t mean to insult anyone. Social interaction is not my strong point and I’m currently feeling tired and depressed. I was being genuinely honest about how I feel (which, seemingly, was a mistake). And for the record, I do concede the relative weakness of the argument which I put forward.
And I have no intention of making this another thread about politics; I mentioned politics only as a comparator.
No problem, Walton. Feel better soon.
Walton:
Standard christian response… except, Walton, this would only hold true as a valid point if the bible didn’t hold an account of the countless times god did decide to intercede throughout biblical verse. So what happened? Did he just decide to stop trying after the bible was written?
You can’t use that old canard, I’m afraid, and get away with it here, sir…
Thus spake SC:
I found his #603 incredibly annoying.
After #577 and #583, I interpreted #593 as a climbdown. It would’ve been very easy to rub it in, but nobody did. Instead they offered yet more explanation, counseled against woolly thinking, and related their experiences. Then came #603, mowing down dozens of thoughtful and meticulously explained arguments with a thundering freight train of bleating woolly-headed stupidity.
I’m forced to conclude that there is simply no getting through to him.
I give up.
Oddly enough, a catholic bishop (I think) in the UK has recently been grumbling in the press about exactly what Walton doesn’t think is happening. He has been complaining that education is emptying the pews in his churches – his beef is that a healthy intellect goes against everything the church stands for.
And let’s face it, the catholic church is actively campaining against stem cell research. It’s rather good to know they are now afraid of an educated population.
(I just found the article about the bishop with the anti-intellectual gripe:
http://www.lep.co.uk/news/Bishop-blames-intellectuals-for-church.4688452.jp
“Why can’t life just be simple?”
Alas, NO, life is NOT as simple as we might like it to be.
Never has been, never will be.
That question highlights a common frustration which many people sweep under the rug of religious superstition…much the simpler “answer”. Belief supported by ritual is definitely a low maintentance conceptual pet. Actually, it’s more akin to a kind of stuffed pet, say, like a stuffed puppy: since you don’t have to feed it (new information or evidence) or clean up after it poops (out the wrong or unnecessary stuff), you don’t need to fret over monitoring it for unexpected behavior or watching it grow and evolve into something else, like a dog of authentic knowledge that likes to make even more dogs.
When I try going to the site now I get a Google UK page?
Walton @ 605
Bring your imaginary god down and I’ll have the free will to kick the crap out of it.
Emmet Caulfield #610: Once again I apologise. I had no intention of “mowing down” anything. I was simply raising a couple of issues which arose from someone’s post. I don’t understand what part of it was “bleating woolly-headed stupidity”; it wasn’t even an argument in favour of religion, just a quibble with a couple of minor points.
I know some people here don’t believe this, but I’m an honest – if sometimes incoherent, woolly-minded and wrong – seeker after truth. And I’m very sorry if I come over otherwise. As I’ve said, social interaction isn’t my strong point.
Christianity stands or falls completely on the question of the historical reliability of the Gospels – which is something that in principle is testable and falsifiable, albeit that we don’t have enough evidence to judge it at present.
With the clear implication that we never will (evidence hasn’t exactly been pouring in since the find at Nag Hammadi, and that sort of exidence just muddies the picture for those who won’t look squarely at it), putting you back on the “normal academic methods are inadequate” line, which is nothing more than erecting a fence around your preferred myth that you wouldn’t put around any other myth, but begging off the hypocrisy with that “in principle.”
Get this, Walton: the gospels are theological fictions. The audience for whom they were written –members of a 1st-Century Jewish sect in tension with other such sects, like Pharisaism (proto-rabbinical Judaism) and others– would not have understood them even as attempts to portray historical events in the way we moderns understand “historical reliability.” They are dense with Scriptural reference and symbolism to the point that the story is utterly subservient to the aim of explicating Scripture in terms of the tumultuous events in 1st Century Palestine. I’m sure you won’t respond, again, but I say to you in the strongest of terms: this attitude toward the gospels as potentially historical evidenced in the above and elsewhere in your posts is dishonest and misleads you as to what the actual questions are as regards the historicity of the Jesus figure.
For illustration, tell me if you agree with this: The question of the divinity of the Emperor Augustus stands or falls completely on the question of the historical reliability of the account by Suetonius of the impregnation by his mother by Apollo in the form of a snake – which is something that in principle is testable and falsifiable, albeit that we don’t have enough evidence to judge it at present.
Walton @615,
It’s immensely frustrating to have someone say “I believe V, W, and X, therefore Z seems reasonable” and, after meticulous and total demolition of V, W, and X, have him/her continue to rationalise Z! It’s some V’, almost indistinguishable from V, or some new fallacy pulled out of his/her ass like “but Y believed Z”. You do this all the time.
Nick Gotts, for example, has on occasion meticulously deconstructed the reasons you’ve given for something, then on the next thread, you start off restating exactly the same damn thing again, like you’ve learned nothing from what he’s said or just ignored him. It’s like there’s simply no getting through to you. That’s the “freight-train” I’m talking about. It’s like you’re not reading anything people write or it’s not registering in your brain.
I suspect that your reasoning is exactly backwards, you’re scrambling around for premises (and anything will do) to justify cockamamie conclusions instead of seeking sound conclusions from real evidence.
In all honesty, it would be funny, or at least easily dismissed and therefore tolerable, if you gave the impression of being a complete fucking moron like Teno Groppi, but you give every impression of being articulate and intelligent. When stupid people don’t understand something, that’s OK, they’re just stupid and we can’t all be rocket scientists, but when smart people seem to be impervious to reason, it’s exasperating!
I’m sorry if I was hard on you, but I see no sign of making the tiniest impression on your thinking, which makes me think I’ve just wasted my time. I’m not getting an afterlife, so time is valuable to me ;o)
Walton @ 615
Your last paragraph describes your problem very aptly. I think part of being honest is to be intellectually honest as well, and this involves being able to think and determine if what you believe is true or false and then make the only intellectually honest decision, and this should always fall on the side of reason. You claim to be wooly-minded and wrong; this is a condition that can be corrected with clear thinking, something that you are not willing to do. If, as you claim, you seek after truth, then you would not encompass such illogical ideas that are far removed from the truth and only serve to entrench your afflicted mind even deeper into illogic and untruth. You may be honest as you claim, but it is also encumbent upon you to be intellectually honest which you most assuredly are not. Any mind that harbors ideas that are illogical and can be proved to be so, and yet continues to resist the blatant force of reason, is not only dishonest but willl always deny the truth. From what I read of your comments, you will always remain in the stultifying grip of insane religion, and I say this with complete honesty, both in character and intellect. Perhaps you better stay with your unstable ideas and express them as so, and in this way you will remain honest.
Nick Gotts, for example, has on occasion meticulously deconstructed the reasons you’ve given for something, then on the next thread, you start off restating exactly the same damn thing again, like you’ve learned nothing from what he’s said or just ignored him. It’s like there’s simply no getting through to you. That’s the “freight-train” I’m talking about. It’s like you’re not reading anything people write or it’s not registering in your brain.
Just to clarify, are we talking about God or about libertarianism? The two have nothing to do with one another, and, indeed, the majority of libertarians (in my experience) are atheists.
I suspect that your reasoning is exactly backwards, you’re scrambling around for premises (and anything will do) to justify cockamamie conclusions instead of seeking sound conclusions from real evidence.
To make things clearer: on the issue of the existence of God, I am to a considerable extent playing devil’s advocate. In real life I tend to argue from a Christian perspective with my atheist friends, and from an atheist perspective with my Christian friends; because I believe that this kind of adversarial dialogue is the best way to eliminate weak or incoherent ideas and arrive at the truth. So when I put up an argument which is a poor one, and which is subsequently ripped to shreds, I’m not expounding said line of reasoning because I truly and wholeheartedly believe it with every fibre of my being; rather, I’m arguing it as an experiment, to see how convincing the counter-arguments are. The reality is – as I’ve occasionally made clear – that I have serious doubts, and don’t really have a clear or coherent religious viewpoint. Rather, I’m trying to find such a viewpoint by discussing things with people. So yes, I’m starting from a conclusion and working backwards; but I’m doing so for the transient purposes of debate, not because my thinking is really that sloppy or because I’m completely intellectually dishonest.
The reality is that, as I said, I’d like there to be a simple answer; and it’s depressing that there isn’t one. I know many Christians and many atheists, and some people of other religious backgrounds – and many in both camps are good people, educated and rational, and worthy of my respect. It’s not a case of all the intelligence and sanity being on one side (though I appreciate it might seem so to those who are regularly exposed to the lunacy of fundamentalism). I would much prefer to live in a world where one ideological camp was full of good, decent, enlightened and rational people and had all the good ideas, and the other was full of idiots and lunatics; it would make it a lot simpler to find out the truth and to guide one’s lifestyle. As it is, I’m basically grasping at straws.
In contrast, my political views are genuine and heartfelt – and, as you can tell, I can justify with much greater coherence and certainty why I believe in libertarian conservatism than why I (might?) believe in God.
Granted, Alex — I was going for the whole Biblical “void” thing, but you’re absolutely right that space is not “nothing”. That said, it sure ain’t a happy place for humans to be.
(Sorry about the long and meandering posts. I apologise if I’m irritating some people; but I’m only trying to explain my motivation.)
There is.
Christianity*: False.
Atheism: Likely.
Deism: Unlikely.
The whole Atheism-Christianity dichotomy is completely unjustified.
Christianity* makes false truth claims about so many things, it simply cannot be taken seriously. It is false. Period.
The complete lack of any general or specific evidence regarding a god or gods means that atheism is likely true.
The complete lack of any general or specific evidence regarding a god or gods means that deism is likely untrue, but technically possible.
*feel free to sub in any other particular religion here: Islam, Judaism, Hindu, Mormonism, Scientology, etc.
Missus Gumby @ 611
How apt your comment on the bishop’s lament that education is the cause of empty pews. Most people benefit from a good education as long as they have the intellect to reason out the trash and recognize it farther along. Walton is one who seems to not have benefitted, or at least taken heed of a good education. It was Wendy Kaminer who wrote: “An empty mind is a receptacle for faith”. And a sure-fire pew clearer.
The fine-tuning argument has another glaring flaw, I’ll quote Blake Stacey on it since he explains it better than I do:
Any thoughts on this? (it’s a relative of the old “who made God” argument, of course, but more sophisticated ;)
Missus Gumby @ mine @ 623
Correction: The last line should read “and a sure-fire pew filler”.
Holbach #625:
Heh heh, I figured it out @ #623. :)
Go figure.
No, I didn’t make a mistake, we’ve observed other planets where life doesn’t exist as far as we know. The analogy is to show that one-off events like the creation of life are not proof of a divine being. Planets that can and do harbour life are beyond our observable reality, just as other universes are beyond our observable reality.
What I find really silly about the fine tuning argument is the sheer improbability of it. We are but one of millions of species that exist now, one of billions of species that have existed throughout time on this planet. Yet our planet orbits one star out of about 200,000,000 stars in this galaxy alone. And there At least 125,000,000 galaxies in our observable universe. And that’s just in our universe, what of parallel universes? To believe it was all made for us is absurd.
As Douglas Adams said:
” . . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
No, we’re talking about critical reasoning skills that you evince, which appear to be the same on both topics.
Proving that atheism is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for rationality.
On the rest of it, you sound like you’re trying to find a club to join, rather than decide on the truth or falsehood of a colossal compound proposition like “A unique tri-omni god exists, it is Yahweh, Jesus is his son (sorta), he monitors what 6.5 billion people do with their genitals, etc.”, which, to any rational person, is every bit as patently absurd as leprechauns. Truth is determined by evidence, not wishful thinking. No evidence for god(s)? No god(s). It is that simple.
And winning the lottery would make life simpler too. If you want simple, just become a Catholic, let the Pope tell you what’s right or wrong, and go down to the Church every week and join in the contemptible sniveling, fearful groveling, and self-deceit. Truths are not decided by who, or how many, people hold them. The truth of a proposition is the correspondence between it and evidence. Nothing else.
Heartfelt? I prefer rational and evidence-based any day.
So are those of everyone I meet, and not a single one has had a libertarian bent the way you have. Could it be that being genuine and heartfelt are no basis for rationality? That in the end, evidence is all that matters?
Emmet Caulfield @ #629
Spectacular. Say hello to the newest quote for my quote-board collection in my office. With due credit given, of course.
windy quoting Blake #624 wrote:
Yes, that’s a good point, and I’ve seen it made against the Fine-Tuning Argument before. God is a disembodied intelligence which is not dependent on any physical conditions at all. The angels in heaven are, presumably, also disembodied intelligences, “spiritual beings,” who can exist without oxygen or other physical necessities. They don’t need any special environment. So why would minds need to be in bodies? They don’t.
And, on the flip side — if our ‘souls’ and ‘minds’ are not dependent on anything physical — why do we even have brains? The Fine Tuning Argument works backwards from what is, and just says (per Bob Park) “If things had been different, then things would be different.” And it pretends that getting where we ARE is the only logical option.
Another good point that’s been made against Fine Tuning is to question why God has to ‘find and focus’ on the ONLY parameters which will allow life. When you consider the scenario, God is being forced to deal with a difficult system. He needs to adjust everything just right. One false move, and there’s no life. The fact that he’s able to avoid error, and get it all down perfect, is supposed to show that he’s God.
But this only makes sense if you don’t think of God as the person who SETS UP the system, and can do it any way He wants. Instead, He sets up the universe to only allow life one way, and sets up life to only exist under one kind of condition, in order to show what a great Marksman He is. The situation is an example of two gods colliding: the Ultimate Being God running different intuitions than the Powerful Person Who Knows How to Deal with His Environment.
Of course, my real problem with the Fine Tuning Argument is its unstated premise: “human life is objectively important.” If you leave that premise out, the argument goes nowhere. It’s dead before you start, because you need that premise in order to “derive” the conclusion: human life is objectively important.
Load it in, then act all amazed when you take it out.
Thus spake Celtic_Evolution:
Thank you. I’m glad you like the sentiment, but I have to admit that I made a mistake: the “people” should be deleted or moved before the comma, otherwise removing the parenthetic clause between the commas leaves “… who people…”.
Doh!
@ Emmet Caulfield
As I always say, the best type of pedant is the self-correcting pedant.
What a lot of thread! Not quite crackergate central but still …
@ Walton #603 (since it looks unaddressed in the posts after it):
1. Probably never genuinely an atheist – being damned by his own words rather than anyone else’s “no true atheist”! He seems to have been what Christians often falsely accuse real atheists of being – a believer merely angry with god. He was still a religious nutter in his anger. A sane person, a non-believer, doesn’t bother being angry at an imaginary critter, no matter how super-powered it’s supposed to be.
2. He’s a rubbish apologist, regardless of your apparent hero-worship of him. I find you lacking in the ability to discern good from bad – just as you are with logic.
“He was still a racist, misogynistic, religious nutter in his anger.”
There… fixed it for you.
He’s a rubbish apologist, regardless of your apparent hero-worship of him.
Erm, what hero-worship? Please read my post again; I specifically conceded that the “trilemma” – touted as his strongest argument – is in fact wrong.
You called him “a much more effective apologist than most” and falsely claimed “he understood the mindset of the sceptic and the search for evidence” – something which no intellectually honest person (with decent reading comprehension and critical thinking abilities) could possibly do. So you must be blinded into hero-worship by your faith even if you do accept some minimal flaws in your heroes (and a bunch more flaws in your imaginary god, for which you also need to apologise – hence apologetics at all).
Guilty as charged :o)
Rev. Cockshaw, I do hope you will come back to Pharyngula for the Beltane celebration.
@ Walton –
I wouldn’t go so far as to claim your post was indicative of hero worship concerning Lewis. I know you were just giving an example… but let the record show that it is a very bad example, as it is fairly clear from the various biographies and stories surrounding Lewis, as SEF pointed out, that he was not ever really an atheist. It’s not clear that there was ever a time when he fully rejected the idea of god or gods as completely false, and his own writings on the subject bear that out. He was merely an angry doubter… at most an agnostic.
And, he really was a bit of a nutter… some believe he got lost in his own imaginary worlds and in fact goes so far as to get personally angry with one of his own fictional characters in the Narnia series (Susan), and ultimately writes her completely out of the series, owing her “lost faith” to materialism.
I always found it interesting that Lewis himself painted Susan as the intellectual, most intelligent of the four siblings, and it is her he chooses to ostracize, ostensibly for those very traits.
Or perhaps come over to my place, and take a quick peep inside the Wicker Man I have in my back garden. I love a good bar-b-q. :)
Got to love the field of apologetics. A whole line of pseudo-intellectual discussion that exists for the sole purpose of justifying irrationality.
Rev. Cockshaw, I do hope you will come back to Pharyngula for the Beltane celebration.
We’ll mail you an invitation. That ticking sound? that’s normal. Perfectly fine.
Doesn’t it dawn on the rev (lower case, as in revile) Cockshaw and Walton, that they are being crucified on this site and as yet have received no invisible aid from their imaginary gods? No invisible aid from invisibles to help their creations on earth from the wrath of their betters? You are alone, and no amount of prayer and babbling will ever avail you. You will die just as disillusioned as you lived, lying in your graves being eatened by indifferent worms, and your god will die with your brains from which it came. To have hope in religion, only to be abandoned by it and the heartless hand of reality.
Deaf and dumb and blind and born to follow. They are locked down in the matrix. They are unaware and they don’t know it and they will never break out of it. They parrot whatever is negative. It is exactlty what is opposite of an an awakened mind. You can’t really blame them because to be awakened is to realize how wrong you are about everything that you thought was real.
That sounded like a strange declaration but seens right.
And presumably our souls won’t either once they are “with God”. By the premises of the fine-tuning argument, God created an environment that was LESS friendly to intelligence than his/her/its own.
Some people pull out the “God would have been just as happy with intelligent dinosaurs” argument at this point. Of course they forget that dinosaurs would likely end up with a completely different social and moral system. And it would have been tough to crucify a T-Rex.
I believe in God because many people in positions of trust during my
childhood told me that God was the explanation for all the world, over
many years and in tones of authority and seriousness.
I believe in God because facts about the world told to me repeatedly
and authoritatively by my childhood superiors, and reinforced through
frequent repetition by peers and authority figures in adult life, are
a fundamental part of my adult world view and are very uncomfortable
to examine even in light of evidence against them.
I believe in God because many human experiences of wonder and awe that
have a profound impact on our senses and emotions are overwhelmingly
asserted in our culture in terms of a connection with God.
I believe in God because my adult brain is very adept at holding
contradictory beliefs in order to satisfy my conscious mind that
established patterns of thought and behaviour are somehow consistent.
I believe in God because many people in positions of trust during my
childhood told me that God was the explanation for all the world, over
many years and in tones of authority and seriousness.
I believe in God because facts about the world told to me repeatedly
and authoritatively by my childhood superiors, and reinforced through
frequent repetition by peers and authority figures in adult life, are
a fundamental part of my adult world view and are very uncomfortable
to examine even in light of evidence against them.
I believe in God because many human experiences of wonder and awe that
have a profound impact on our senses and emotions are overwhelmingly
asserted in our culture in terms of a connection with God.
I believe in God because my adult brain is very adept at holding
contradictory beliefs in order to satisfy my conscious mind that
established patterns of thought and behaviour are somehow consistent.
Arthur Frundwick @ 648
You believe in an imaginary god because you have been brain dead when first indoctrinated.
I believe in God because many people in positions of trust during my
childhood told me that God was the explanation for all the world, over
many years and in tones of authority and seriousness.
I believe in God because facts about the world told to me repeatedly
and authoritatively by my childhood superiors, and reinforced through
frequent repetition by peers and authority figures in adult life, are
a fundamental part of my adult world view and are very uncomfortable
to examine even in light of evidence against them.
I believe in God because many human experiences of wonder and awe that
have a profound impact on our senses and emotions are overwhelmingly
asserted in our culture in terms of a connection with God.
I believe in God because my adult brain is very adept at holding
contradictory beliefs in order to satisfy my conscious mind that
established patterns of thought and behaviour are somehow consistent.
Arthur Frundwick @ 651
You are brain dead because this is the third time you posted the same comment. Religion is the cause of many mental illness as is attested to by your multiple posting. Do it once more to confirm that you are a lunatic.
@ Holbach #650:
Read Arthur Frundwick’s last paragraph (in any of the triplicated posts!) and engage your own brain.
Ugh. Excuse the multiple posts; admins, please feel free to delete the dupes.
I’ve now submitted those to the thereprobablyis.com request for stories. They seem to me to be the closest I can come to honestly answering the question, starting from the presumption of a belief in God. I hope they can educate people at that site who read them.
SEF @ 653
I have carefully read that last paragraph three times, and I concluded that he is affirming “that established patterns of thought and behavior are somehow consistent” with my belief in a god- the last part my interpretation and conclusion. Am I misinterpreting his statement? Either you point this out to me or let Arthur confirm mine or his meaning. I may be wrong and will freely admit to it upon the correct meaning.
That last paragraph is obviously a parody of religious thought
WOW, what a fun thread, every time I come back there are another couple of hundred posts. Though admittedly, a lot of them are the usual patient, mostly :), teachers trying to educate Walton. But sadly, apparently failing to make any progress.
My final contribution before I go to bed as it is after 4AM here in Bristol:
For believers to rely on the Anthropic Principle displays a level of ignorance of the logical conclusion of what being truly omnipotent means.
Maybe there are other universes that have different cosmological values with their own ‘intelligent’ life positing the anthropic principle to rationalise their belief in a fairy at the bottom of their cosmic garden :)
Kel @ 656
It is what follows “contradictory beliefs” that is determining his true meaning. You can’t just take that context out of the sentence without confirming the gist of what he is saying. Arthur, intrude in here and be honest about what you are proffering.
I could quote the whole sentence and bold it, but that was just my impression. It seems like nothing more than a parody in order to get passed the reverend censorall.
Holbach:
Arthur Frundwick is pretty obviously an atheist, writing a rather good parody of religious rationalizations. And it’s blatant enough that it probably won’t get past the Rev., especially now that he’s watching for them.
@ Holbach #655:
> I concluded that he is affirming “that established patterns of thought and behavior are somehow consistent” with my belief in a god
The paragraph makes a different claim: “my adult brain is very adept at holding contradictory beliefs in order to satisfy my conscious mind that established patterns of thought and behaviour are somehow consistent.”
In other words, the belief in god is one of the “established patterns of thought and behaviour” among many others; and it is the adeptness at holding contradictory beliefs that allows my conscious mind to be satisfied that all those myriad established patterns of thoughts and behaviour are consistent.
Arthur, I think you’ve hit it on the head – it seems to be a natural human tendency to make up elaborate rationalizations for things we have come to believe (for whatever reason) to be true. You twist yourself up in apologetics as far as you can go, then you say, “What’s the fucking point?” And that’s when you become an atheist.
@ Kel #656, @ Sastra #660, and others:
I present it less as parody and more as what I think is an *honest* answer that could be given, while still actually addressing the question “why do you believe in god”. It is not intended to belittle, but only to explain.
an Other (idiot) at 529″ *cough*…Communism…*Cough*
All state instituted religions persecute! Even the Bhuddists (i know, philosophy, not religion; though with all the trappings, ceremonies ect, i think it would nonetheless be possible to classify it as a non-theistic religion, if i may be so bold) in Japan went on Christian hunts way back when! Anything that merges politics and religion becomes a means to an end of extreme evil. I cannot possibly believe that Hitler believed God was on his side (and it was a favorite accusation for folks at my dumb school to assume he sold his soul to Satan), he used God as a tool to get people to do what he wanted.
It’s called ethnic cleansing, and it is the most disgusting of religious atrocities. However, that is not to be separated from the observation that religious peoples have always been far too prone to this blood lust, possibly because all religions believe blood to be magical!
The very name of his website ‘thereprobablyis.com’ displays uncertainty. There probably is? Oh he of little faith. I thought they were SURE he existed.
Emmet Caulfield: I’m sorry if I was hard on you, but I see no sign of making the tiniest impression on your thinking, which makes me think I’ve just wasted my time.
You, and many others here, have made a very significant impression on my thinking; if you hadn’t, why would I bother spending hours every day on this site?
But I play devil’s advocate for all sides; because as I said, I think adversarial dialogue is the best way to get at the truth.
FWIW, as regards politics, people here have raised valid issues which I have to think about. Nick Gotts and negentropyeater in particular have cited a lot of economic statistics which seriously challenge my viewpoints; and not being an economist, I’m not really qualified to argue in those terms. My basic philosophy is a libertarian capitalist one, and will always be so; but I’m not an ideological absolutist, and in reality I can acknowledge, as any intellectually honest person must, that there are areas in which the free market can fail and has failed, and where some level of government intervention is necessary and even desirable. So I apologise if I’ve come over as closed-minded and impervious to new information.
As to God, I simply don’t know the answer, and everything that you say is something that I take into account. Contrary to what Holbach says, I believe I am essentially an intellectually honest person: and I can’t, therefore, do what many Christians would do, which is to go away thinking “Those atheists must be wrong, I don’t need to engage with their reasoning, my faith will guide me to the truth!” So I would acknowledge wholeheartedly that there are some strong arguments for dismissing the existence of deities entirely, and some even stronger arguments for dismissing orthodox Christianity.
But, in turn, I would urge you (Holbach in particular) not to be too dismissive of believers or to view them as simply insane or deluded.
It is true that if one accepts your basic epistemological assumption – that there is no reason to believe in anything unless it is supported by either (a) empirical evidence, or (b) logical inference from such empirical evidence – then Christianity is fundamentally irrational. Even on the most positive historical view, we have no cast-iron evidence for any of Christianity’s major historical truth-claims. Since the Gospels are anonymous, their precise dates are unknown, they conflict with one another in the details, and they were written for evangelistic rather than purely historical purposes, the best we can say is that they may be broadly reliable accounts; at worst, they may be, as CJO has pointed out above, simply theological fictions written to encourage a community of believers in their faith. (We can know with certainty that such theological fictions did exist, since we have apocryphal gospels, such as the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas”, which are very clearly complete myth; so it isn’t implausible to suggest that the same is true of the canonical Gospels). So I have been listening to what people have said here; and I would acknowledge that if your demand is that Christianity prove its claims beyond reasonable doubt, then the answer is that it cannot. Don’t think, therefore, that I haven’t listened to, and learned from, the criticisms which people have made, or that I don’t understand the reasons for rejecting Christianity. To be honest, if I hadn’t been brought up in the Church, I would probably be a convinced atheist or, at least, an agnostic.
But I’m still searching, and hopefully one day I will find the truth. I’ll probably stop posting here on Pharyngula for the time being, since I think I’ve probably discussed all I can, and we are increasingly going round in circles. I’ll come back eventually when I have something new to add. Farewell, and thank you.
Walton @ 666
Your search for the truth is delusional as you are seeking something that does not exist, and your path will lead you nowhere. How many examples of your useless quest are needed to impress upon you that your continual embracement of an imaginary god is devoid of all proof? You have been commenting with mostly atheists on this site for some time who have earnestly tried to show you that gods are created in the human brain and can easily be removed with sound reasoning with all the obvious facts available. Most of us have been in the same situation as you are currently, have sloughed off vestiges of religion and have been the better for it. I am totally dismissive of people who insist on believing nonsense which reason clearly shows to be both unnecessary and harmful. We have made the transition from a religion dominated life to one free from all such superstitious nonsense. We were able to do so, and yet you are not capable of even considering the alternative. I have no doubt that you are a decent person, but I would never associate with you because of your restrictive ideas that are counter to reason. I doubt if you will ever wake up to reason, and you will no doubt live your remainging life in the shackles of religion. I have no pity or empathy for you but only ridicule which is duly rendered to all minds that are free to choose reason but decline to do so.
…so wonderfully naïve !
Evangelising libertarianism?
Re the Rev Cockshaws response : “I don’t go around atheist websites harranguing them for what they wrongly believe to be true … ”
First, as an atheist, my atheism is not a BELIEF system like Christianity, secondly, its not been PROVEN wrong any more than Christianity has been proven RIGHT. His response highlights a basic difference between theists and all the rest. All the rest dont need a belief system, our brains arent cluttered with superstitious nonsense, we are open to discussion inasmusch as there is something to discuss ( rules out religion then ) and I am happy knowing that those that believe in a hell probably deserve to go there.
I take Walton’s answer at its face value, as an honest one, he’s in the process of getting rid of many preconceived ideas and delusions that he had (what he calls finding the truth…).
Unlike what Holbach believes, getting rid of these delusions is not as simple as “chosing reason”. Ah, if only it were that simple ! It’s a bit like getting rid of an addiction, it will vary greatly depending on the individual, his own capacity most probably due to some genetic predisposition, and the level of the severity of the problem ie the amount of brainwashing received. So it’s a long process of opening up one’s mind, becoming gradually more and more skeptical to the preconceived ideas one had dogmatically believed in, critically confronting them to real evidence…
With some people, it just goes very fast, it crumbles like a castle of cards, with others it takes much longer.
For instance, I can say that with all the reasoning in the world, I still haven’t managed to conquer my fear of death and my wishful thinking, my hope that there might be something after I die, which means I never managed to completely kill the whole thing and will probably remain an agnostic until I die.
negentropyeater @ 668 & 671
Your reply was what I expected from one who is unable to decide the only decision when one harbors unassailable doubts concerning a belief in an imaginary god. You defend your stance and those of others of like bent, powerless in fortitude and character to once and for all rid themselves of superstitious crap. Just the very unsure doubt should be enough to steer you to the only decision abject reason provides. No, you sit on the fence without tottering in either direction, making you appear all the more undecisive, and this no doubt will cause you to fall into the arena of total belief as the safest course to pursue. I think that comparing religious belief to a form of addiction is bullshit and a copout of the lowest order. If you have an addiction to drugs, you are well aware that they are doing harm and by quitting with a concerted effort you will be free of its harmful effects. With religion there is no physical addiction, just one of the mind that can be clearly reasoned out and acted upon with no harmful effects. If you stopped drugs there will definitely be a painful withdrawful period that can be overcomed. By sloughing off religion there is no physical reaction; you can still brush your teeth, start your car and do all those things that you did without a thought or need to religion and the phenomena is without notice. As long as you embody the early indoctrination of a child and can still not discard it as an adult, then the fault lies with you and not your earlier experience. As a child I was afraid of horses which is to be expected of a child when confronted with such a large animal. I am now an adult and love horses which only proves the power of maturing out of childish fears. You are now an adult and should confront those unfounded fears without offering lame-duck execuses. As an atheist, I have no empathy for people who are unable to conclude their doubts with decision and so label themselves agnostic. My non-belief is definitive; your unsure belief is problematic. unf
Holbach,
1.I didn’t suggest that drug addiction and religious endoctrination were comparable.
2.the hope that there might be something after I die is not a result from childhood, but has been growing as I get older.
3.I feel quite comfortable with being unable to conclude. Would there be any benefit in my life if I forced myself to conclude one way or another (assuming I could)?
negentropyeater @ 673
Your third reason is the most flagrant, as you have painted yourself into the proverbial corner, and any decision you make will not be resolved with the wrong decision. Your second reason is based on hope which is tenuous at best. I’m hoping that the sun will rise tomorrow morning is more hopeful than your hope that there is a god. Your first reason is the weakest, and though you did not compare the two, the inference is made to describe the difficulty in ridding youself of a self-induced dependence.
I am an Atheist. “Religion is implausible”, said my 16 year old daughter 7 years ago.. to Mormon missionaries appearing at my door and trying to get me to go ‘back’ to the Mormon church. Yeh, RIGHT. My other daughters said to me, “Well it took you long enough to figure it out then.” When I stopped going…. I said, “Oh I had figured it out BUT didn’t seem to be able to make the break.. So I started drinking coffee, having some nice red wine, smoking ciggies etc… Then I had a reasonable excuse.. BUT now I don’t need one…
I find this page hilarious… as well as informative…don’t know why I hadn’t found it before..
Thing is… when you leave a religion, a social group or whatever.. you are left just with yourself and if you are lucky, some members of your family…but it can be a lonely process.
Valerie
Looks like someone added a redirect to Google.co.uk….
How ironic then that I’m using Google cache to look up his site…