Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: StarSlayer on October 29, 2014, 12:01:29 pm
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So sayeth his eminence Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome and absolute Sovereign of the Vatican City State. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis-declares-evolution-and-big-bang-theory-are-right-and-god-isnt-a-magician-with-a-magic-wand-9822514.html) He certainly seems a pretty progressive and vigorous pontiff.
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I'm still scratching my head around the notion that this is newsworthy. John Paul the second already acknowledged evolution and so did Ratzinger, and the "big bang" has been accepted by the church from the get go, so what the hell?
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I just want to emphasize that this is my favorite pope serving in my lifetime. I feel that the only reason he is ignoring the issues of homosexuality is the same reason Obama did his first term: to avoid the contentious issues that will divide the Church.
Luis isn't wrong. As traditional and backwards as the Catholic Church may seem, they are very pro-science in the early days.
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There wasn't really all the furor over Evolution until later when the Church went through a more fundamentalist phase. The Catholic Church is weird like that, took them till 1984 to remove Galileo's excommunication for saying the Earth went round the Sun.
Oddly enough, a large number of Scientific foundations around that period were discovered by people with, or training for, positions in the Church, though this was also largely to do with the fact that younger sons of nobles tended to get pushed into the Church to stop them lounging around at home doing nothing, and strangely enough, that's precisely how Darwin ended up where he did.
It's a funny old world...
That said, I will agree that this new Pope has been a breath of fresh air, who actually seems to have a grasp on the fact that an inclusive Church grows.
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Oddly enough, a large number of Scientific foundations around that period were discovered by people with, or training for, positions in the Church
This isn't 'odd' at all, despite what the reddit strain of atheist would have you believe. The Church was the main venue for scholarship in Europe for a very long time.
I'm looking forward to see how the fundamentalist Catholic creationists try to weasel their way out of this one, though. Not much scope for arguing about translation errors this time.
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Well I think that Francis means well, but I also happen to think that Ratzinger's more dubious position is somewhat more intellectual honest with the christian tradition. Catholic creationists will merely think that Francis is just being Francis again, and will probably be more aligned with Ratzinger's position anyway.
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Oddly enough, a large number of Scientific foundations around that period were discovered by people with, or training for, positions in the Church
This isn't 'odd' at all, despite what the reddit strain of atheist would have you believe. The Church was the main venue for scholarship in Europe for a very long time.
I'm looking forward to see how the fundamentalist Catholic creationists try to weasel their way out of this one, though. Not much scope for arguing about translation errors this time.
Well, by odd, I mean from a modern-day perspective, if you consider, at the very least, the amount of publicity that these confrontations between Science and Faith create.
The strange part is that a lot of the foundations of large established theories were created, encouraged and promoted by the Churches of most major religions at the time.
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He added: “He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfilment. “The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.
“Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
Essentially he's just saying Evolution came from Creation
Clever Pope is clever
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Yes, Pope Francis really is a great man. Ratzinger just didn't cut it, he was a theologian more than anything else, and soon acknowledged that. Francis is truly the right Pope for our time. A true successor of John Paul II in every sense of this word, he will likely end up just as (likely even more) revered as him. He clearly knows what he's talking about here - his point about Big Bang can well be indisputable by physics alone, and the origin of the first self-replicating organisms is still shrouded in mystery, and will likely remain so for long, though can make some educated guesses about that (amusingly, one theory states lightning was involved... go figure :)).
I like how he incorporated the two stances into a single entity. He placed creation in it's "original" place - at the limit of human knowledge. This is where mythology belongs, and he returned it there. While his proposition isn't exactly new, it's good to see it become an official stance.
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He added: “He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfilment. “The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.
“Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
Essentially he's just saying Evolution came from Creation
Clever Pope is clever
Well, to be fair, the Big Bang Theory, Abiogenesis, and Evolution are all distinct scientific theories and concepts, though related. He embraced two while leaving the third (abiogenesis) out. That said, if you look at the Bible and Christian teachings as metaphorical and not literal, there isn't anything about our modern understanding of the creation of the universe, life, and its evolution that outright contradicts a place for a deity. Science can never disprove the concept of a religious God... and that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
As to the Pope's announcement.... as I said on twitter, does it strike anyone else as highly amusing that the Catholic Pope just demonstrated a better grasp of science than a hell of a lot of people who were educated and reside in North America, one of the most affluent and well-educated parts of the planet?
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Not really. When you are free to do, learn, love and live as you wish, you take everything for granted; this includes demeaning and mocking those who do not have these things.
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It's a cop-out, but better than the alternative.
He's still essentially saying that:
-universe couldn't have started without a creator - big bang being the means of creation, rather than the original cause itself. It's much better than literal interpretation of Genesis, but still fundamentally unscientific (understandably).
-life couldn't have started without a creator - a statement strictly relating to abiogenesis, which has nothing to do with biological evolution, but spits in the face of chemical evolution and chemistry in general. As far as I'm concerned, abiogenesis is a simple statistical result of the fact that it's possible for a self-replicating molecule to exist - when that happened in suitable conditions, life occurs.
-evolution is real but can only happen after life has been created - again much better than "intelligent design" or any variant of creationism, but unclear in its meaning.
To what extent his statements have to do with evolution is difficult to decipher. Does he mean that in his view God created the first micro-organism that was qualifiable as "life" and all other species evolved from that point on, sharing common ancestry?
Or does he say that God supposedly created several species of organisms (if so, how many and at what point of the phylogenetic tree of life did this occur) but the theory of evolution is still valid because that's how things work post-creation?
Basically, it sounds to me like a very, very carefully formulated statement engineered to annoy as little people as possible. He doesn't want to alienate the conservative members of the church, but he wants to make his church less backward for the more progressive religious people.
Obviously, it's sort of understandable that the leader of Roman Catholic Church doesn't want to completely remove God as the original cause for as many things as possible, but to me it's rather annoying how much influence the position of a religious leader still has - progressive as he may be by comparison to his predecessors.
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Not really. When you are free to do, learn, love and live as you wish, you take everything for granted; this includes demeaning and mocking those who do not have these things.
I'm pretty sure I'm demeaning and mocking those who DO have these things and yet still choose to be ignorant buffoons. US Congress/Senate, I'm looking at you.
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I agree with Herra that his statements are 100% designed (ah) for social purposes, not theological clarity purposes.
Regarding how science cannot disprove "god", well that is superficially somewhat true, but not completely. Our current understanding on the big bang, abiogenesis processes, evolution and the overal materialistic underpinnings of our beings all but rule out almost everything said about these theistic gods. They don't "disprove" them, but merely state how these gods are absolutely unnecessary to explain everything around us, which is a kind of a slow death to these gods. All that might remain is some kind of a deistic demiurge god, something that sparked the big bang. But even Hawking believes that we now know sufficient stuff to even disregard that necessity altogether.
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I love when people go for 'god of the gaps' reasoning. It means that we can kill God one day.
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I'm not exactly sure why this is new (I never really understood the claim that Christianity and the Big Bang/Evolution were incompatible), but I'm grateful to Francis for the reminder.
@Dragon: Christianity =/= Mythology, but I agree with your assessment of Francis. He's exactly the kind of Pope the world needs right now.
@ Herra Tohtori: I disagree. The argument that the Universe, or Life, needed some intelligent being to start and design it is a philosophical question that, far from being unscientific, is (I hold) both reasonable and defensible. Science is useful- in fact, necessary- for determining how this was done (The Big Bang, for instance, or the Theory of Evolution). But stating that something as complex, powerful, and downright Transcendant (if you'll excuse the pun :P )as the human mind implies an intelligent creator is neither unscientific nor "God of the Gaps" reasoning.
If you're annoyed that a religious leader still has some influence- well, all I can say is I'm sorry about that. But religion isn't going to just disappear as long as there are humans seeking something deeper than mere mortal existence.
I'm pretty sure I'm demeaning and mocking those who DO have these things and yet still choose to be ignorant buffoons. US Congress/Senate, I'm looking at you.
I'm an American... and I couldn't agree more.
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But stating that something as complex, powerful, and downright Transcendant (if you'll excuse the pun :P )as the human mind implies an intelligent creator is neither unscientific nor "God of the Gaps" reasoning.
Double negatives are always tricky. It might well be "not unscientific", but it's also not scientific. More to the point, is it reasonable? Well, if it makes you feel better, if it informs your aesthetic or poetic mind, why not? I am definitely not going to censor or police these kinds of excentricities, they are part of being human after all! However, I'll add to this a simple point, namely, that it will be the more rational and "untranscendently-like" reasoning, the more down to earth, materialistic investigations that will unearth the mysteries of the brain and the mind in the next decades, not these poetic lines that are undistinguishable from handwaving banal deepities.
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But stating that something as complex, powerful, and downright Transcendant (if you'll excuse the pun :P )as the human mind implies an intelligent creator is neither unscientific nor "God of the Gaps" reasoning.
Double negatives are always tricky. It might well be "not unscientific", but it's also not scientific. More to the point, is it reasonable? Well, if it makes you feel better, if it informs your aesthetic or poetic mind, why not? I am definitely not going to censor or police these kinds of excentricities, they are part of being human after all! However, I'll add to this a simple point, namely, that it will be the more rational and "untranscendently-like" reasoning, the more down to earth, materialistic investigations that will unearth the mysteries of the brain and the mind in the next decades, not these poetic lines that are undistinguishable from handwaving banal deepities.
Well, it's not scientific in the sense that it's a philosophical question, certainly. But That doesn't mean it's invalid unless you dismiss Philosophy. And Philosophy (the use of reason to discover truths about ourselves, morality, and truth itself) is something I definitely don't dismiss.
I'm not being poetic or handwaving; by Trascendant I'm referring to the fact that the mind can "Transcend" physical reality in its understanding. The ability to grasp non-material concepts like justice or courage. The ability to separate the concept of a table from any one table. But It's hard to condense everything I've ever read on philosophy into a post. Arg!
Try reading Aristotle if you have time (and I know a lot of us don't :P ). He explains this stuff far, far better than I could.
EDIT: And for the record, I agree we should study the brain scientifically.
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It's handwaving in the sense that you use words like "Transcendence" liberally and without any rigorous restraint - what proof is there that the human mind really transcends "physical reality"? None, just an unjustified intuition that mostly stems from our sense of self-worth "I'm not just atoms!" - People still cling to Aristotle because he is still providing some philosophical basis for theistic lines of reasoning, but really come on most of his thoughts have been...ahhh... transcended by a whole philosophical tradition.
Try reading Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Nietszche, they also explain all of this much better than I could too (and no, I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just taking your words back at you because I'm tired and lazy, not to be sarcastic!).
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I understand you're not sarcastic. I'd take Nietszche off the list though- I have read him, and he's downright demonic. Kant has some pretty good points though.
Okay, I want to avoid coming across as harsh, so I'm going to use some relaxing art.
(http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0CAcQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Di%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dimages%26cd%3D%26cad%3Drja%26uact%3D8%26ved%3D0CAcQjRw%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.freewebs.com%252Fonghy3%252Ftravels26_australia2_mornington.html%26ei%3DhH5SVOeLI8msyAS_toDwBg%26bvm%3Dbv.78597519%2Cd.aWw%26psig%3DAFQjCNEHnlZG2UAypbsaGnyPEOauWYAy7Q%26ust%3D1414778879860291&ei=hH5SVOeLI8msyAS_toDwBg&bvm=bv.78597519,d.aWw&psig=AFQjCNEHnlZG2UAypbsaGnyPEOauWYAy7Q&ust=1414778879860291)
I have to ask that you not assume I'm relying on wishful thinking. I believe in a God, not because I have this desperate desire for there to be a God or because I was raised that way, but because at a certain stage in my life I realized that God's existence was the single most important question I had to answer- basically my whole lifestyle depended on it. So, using my own reason (freshly sharpened from my debate training) I studied the topic voraciously, taking in the arguments from both sides. And I came out of that (year? year and a half? hard to say) convinced that there was a God. If you want to try and prove otherwise to me, I'm open to that. But please don't assume I'm using wishful thinking.
That said, you'd have to prove to me that Aristotle, and those who built on him (Aquinas, Dostoyevski, Hildebrand, and so on) have been "superceded". It seems to me that the majority of Philosophers who tried to go against him fell into absurdism or else abandoned Morality (Nietszche being an extreme example). Not all such philosophers lost it, certainly. But the fact that he wrote a long time ago doesn't reduce the value of his insight.
EDIT: Blarg. How do you get those image tags to work?
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Nietszche is not demonic at all. I know *exactly* what you mean, but I tell you, you should read him again. He "sounds" demonic because he's so anti-christian, which might be too much of a turn off to you. But he is so brilliant. To ignore him is to ignore a source of geniality.
I have to ask that you not assume I'm relying on wishful thinking. I believe in a God, not because I have this desperate desire for there to be a God or because I was raised that way, but because at a certain stage in my life I realized that God's existence was the single most important question I had to answer- basically my whole lifestyle depended on it. So, using my own reason (freshly sharpened from my debate training) I studied the topic voraciously, taking in the arguments from both sides. And I came out of that (year? year and a half? hard to say) convinced that there was a God. If you want to try and prove otherwise to me, I'm open to that. But please don't assume I'm using wishful thinking.
No, that wasn't my intention, nor did I want to start a god debate here. I fully support your beliefs and conclusions, be them the more rational or irrational. I undestand the method you are describing here, and I have found people elsewhere making similar paths. I understand.
That said, you'd have to prove to me that Aristotle, and those who built on him (Aquinas, Dostoyevski, Hildebrand, and so on) have been "superceded". It seems to me that the majority of Philosophers who tried to go against him fell into absurdism or else abandoned Morality (Nietszche being an extreme example). Not all such philosophers lost it, certainly. But the fact that he wrote a long time ago doesn't reduce the value of his insight.
Whenever you get Aristotle more deeply and he starts talking about "essences" and "potentials" and whatnots he really really loses me in an instant. I've read modern readings on Aquina's aristotelic reasonings and it's so filled with these same pseudo jargons that are so pre-modern that, again, loses me in an instant. I completely understand you take their words to be wise and true, I'm just sharing with you the location where my reasoning diverges, insofar as their arguments are probably sound, the pieces they use for the arguments are not, they collide with all my own modern scientific intuitions in almost every place I can think of, and I also happen to think that Aristotle's really wrong intuitions about the physical world run parallel to his philosophical divergences. Were he to ponder in our post Quantum Physics world, I happen to believe he would not be Aristotelian at all.
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I agree with Herra that his statements are 100% designed (ah) for social purposes, not theological clarity purposes.
Regarding how science cannot disprove "god", well that is superficially somewhat true, but not completely. Our current understanding on the big bang, abiogenesis processes, evolution and the overal materialistic underpinnings of our beings all but rule out almost everything said about these theistic gods. They don't "disprove" them, but merely state how these gods are absolutely unnecessary to explain everything around us, which is a kind of a slow death to these gods. All that might remain is some kind of a deistic demiurge god, something that sparked the big bang. But even Hawking believes that we now know sufficient stuff to even disregard that necessity altogether.
Science can never disprove the existence of deities. It doesn't work that way.
What it CAN do is demonstrate that all phenomena attributed to deities are caused by something else that is perfectly explainable without invoking supernatural explanations. While that may make deities irrelevant in all practical senses as an explanatory concept for the physical world, it does not mean we can ever prove they don't exist or have no influence outside physical reality.
Existence and nature of deities, afterlives, etc are the purview of philosophy and religion, not science, a concept I grow tired of explaining to people (not speaking about HLP, but people in general who insist that science and religious thought are mutually exclusive).
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Are you trying really hard not to read what I say and then go on and furiously agree with me and repeat everything I said there?
Or are you perhaps under the silly impression that philosophy is to never have any influence from empirical scientific findings?
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(http://www.freewebs.com/onghy3/travels26_australia2_mornington_files/t26a2-mornington-pier_acrylic.jpg)
EDIT: Blarg. How do you get those image tags to work?
Like that.
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The ability to grasp non-material concepts like justice or courage.
These can both be boiled down into formal terms of game theory and competitive selection pretty easily.
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Nietszche is not demonic at all. I know *exactly* what you mean, but I tell you, you should read him again. He "sounds" demonic because he's so anti-christian, which might be too much of a turn off to you. But he is so brilliant. To ignore him is to ignore a source of geniality.
What I find demonic about Nietszche is the might-makes-right, strong-trample-the-weak morality system he advocates. It's downright sickening put into practice.
I have to ask that you not assume I'm relying on wishful thinking. I believe in a God, not because I have this desperate desire for there to be a God or because I was raised that way, but because at a certain stage in my life I realized that God's existence was the single most important question I had to answer- basically my whole lifestyle depended on it. So, using my own reason (freshly sharpened from my debate training) I studied the topic voraciously, taking in the arguments from both sides. And I came out of that (year? year and a half? hard to say) convinced that there was a God. If you want to try and prove otherwise to me, I'm open to that. But please don't assume I'm using wishful thinking.
No, that wasn't my intention, nor did I want to start a god debate here. I fully support your beliefs and conclusions, be them the more rational or irrational. I undestand the method you are describing here, and I have found people elsewhere making similar paths. I understand.
Okay, thanks. That clears things up.
That said, you'd have to prove to me that Aristotle, and those who built on him (Aquinas, Dostoyevski, Hildebrand, and so on) have been "superceded". It seems to me that the majority of Philosophers who tried to go against him fell into absurdism or else abandoned Morality (Nietszche being an extreme example). Not all such philosophers lost it, certainly. But the fact that he wrote a long time ago doesn't reduce the value of his insight.
Whenever you get Aristotle more deeply and he starts talking about "essences" and "potentials" and whatnots he really really loses me in an instant. I've read modern readings on Aquina's aristotelic reasonings and it's so filled with these same pseudo jargons that are so pre-modern that, again, loses me in an instant. I completely understand you take their words to be wise and true, I'm just sharing with you the location where my reasoning diverges, insofar as their arguments are probably sound, the pieces they use for the arguments are not, they collide with all my own modern scientific intuitions in almost every place I can think of, and I also happen to think that Aristotle's really wrong intuitions about the physical world run parallel to his philosophical divergences. Were he to ponder in our post Quantum Physics world, I happen to believe he would not be Aristotelian at all.
I agree he's REAL hard to understand. I don't claim to be an Aristotle Scholar myself, I understand a fraction of his work at best, but I found that fraction extremely helpful to my own truth-hunting. Aquinas is a lot easier to follow IMO, but if he turns you off as well... maybe try C. S. Lewis? Mere Christianity and Miracles are both logically solid and far easier to understand than Aristotle, but they build on the same tradition.
I think we're to the point where all we can do is give eachother "further reading" suggestions, which might be for the best.
@ Joshua: Ah, thanks.
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I agree with Herra that his statements are 100% designed (ah) for social purposes, not theological clarity purposes.
Regarding how science cannot disprove "god", well that is superficially somewhat true, but not completely. Our current understanding on the big bang, abiogenesis processes, evolution and the overal materialistic underpinnings of our beings all but rule out almost everything said about these theistic gods. They don't "disprove" them, but merely state how these gods are absolutely unnecessary to explain everything around us, which is a kind of a slow death to these gods. All that might remain is some kind of a deistic demiurge god, something that sparked the big bang. But even Hawking believes that we now know sufficient stuff to even disregard that necessity altogether.
Science can never disprove the existence of deities. It doesn't work that way.
What it CAN do is demonstrate that all phenomena attributed to deities are caused by something else that is perfectly explainable without invoking supernatural explanations. While that may make deities irrelevant in all practical senses as an explanatory concept for the physical world, it does not mean we can ever prove they don't exist or have no influence outside physical reality.
Existence and nature of deities, afterlives, etc are the purview of philosophy and religion, not science, a concept I grow tired of explaining to people (not speaking about HLP, but people in general who insist that science and religious thought are mutually exclusive).
Are you trying really hard not to read what I say and then go on and furiously agree with me and repeat everything I said there?
Or are you perhaps under the silly impression that philosophy is to never have any influence from empirical scientific findings?
Both of you, do NOT go down this route. Luis, accusing others of not reading your posts doesn't add to the discussion. MP, not reading what you are responding to is not a good thing.
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Since when does quoting someone mean I was disagreeing with them? Last I checked, quoting someone to expand on what they've written, including ideas you agree with, is a perfectly legitimate use of the quote function. If I disagreed with Luis I would have expressly written a post about how he was wrong. I quoted him explicitly because I was continuing along a similar tack. Good grief people.
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It's a cop-out, but better than the alternative.
He's still essentially saying that:
-universe couldn't have started without a creator - big bang being the means of creation, rather than the original cause itself. It's much better than literal interpretation of Genesis, but still fundamentally unscientific (understandably).
-life couldn't have started without a creator - a statement strictly relating to abiogenesis, which has nothing to do with biological evolution, but spits in the face of chemical evolution and chemistry in general. As far as I'm concerned, abiogenesis is a simple statistical result of the fact that it's possible for a self-replicating molecule to exist - when that happened in suitable conditions, life occurs.
-evolution is real but can only happen after life has been created - again much better than "intelligent design" or any variant of creationism, but unclear in its meaning.
To what extent his statements have to do with evolution is difficult to decipher. Does he mean that in his view God created the first micro-organism that was qualifiable as "life" and all other species evolved from that point on, sharing common ancestry?
Or does he say that God supposedly created several species of organisms (if so, how many and at what point of the phylogenetic tree of life did this occur) but the theory of evolution is still valid because that's how things work post-creation?
Basically, it sounds to me like a very, very carefully formulated statement engineered to annoy as little people as possible. He doesn't want to alienate the conservative members of the church, but he wants to make his church less backward for the more progressive religious people.
Obviously, it's sort of understandable that the leader of Roman Catholic Church doesn't want to completely remove God as the original cause for as many things as possible, but to me it's rather annoying how much influence the position of a religious leader still has - progressive as he may be by comparison to his predecessors.
I don't actually see him contradicting abiogenesis. Rather, supposing that abiogenesis is happened, it happened the way it did because God willed it.
In fact, it seems pretty clear to me that the Pope isn't being scientific at all, merely saying that whatever actually happened has happened the way it did because God made it happen that way. In fact, I think he's future-proofing the Catholic Church from future scientific discoveries rather than making claims about how God went about doing it.
edit: Wow! What the **** happened? Okay just to clarify, I agree with Herra on most things with a small bit of interpretation.
edit edit: I think we need a lesson in reading court decisions and learning the definition of concurring opinions. Maybe that'll teach us how quote buttons work.
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Nietszche is not demonic at all. I know *exactly* what you mean, but I tell you, you should read him again. He "sounds" demonic because he's so anti-christian, which might be too much of a turn off to you. But he is so brilliant. To ignore him is to ignore a source of geniality.
What I find demonic about Nietszche is the might-makes-right, strong-trample-the-weak morality system he advocates. It's downright sickening put into practice.
Have you ever actually read Nietzsche? (I haven't myself but I've heard enough to discount the many third-hand accounts that he was some sort of evil personified.)
e: oops, should've read the full thread. Can you actually point to him specifically saying you should go around trampling the weak?
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Well if you quote my words and begin your treatise with a negative sentence like that, yes I will assume you are responding to what I said in a negative manner. If then the thought is actually a repeat of what I said, then I will assume he didn't read me correctly, because that's the most generous assumption.
hint, if you agree with someone, don't quote them and go on with a sentence like "X doesn't do Y, it doesn't work like that, what it CAN do is Z...."
And The_e, that sentence of yours was hilarious. Try reading it out loud without laughing.
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I have to ask that you not assume I'm relying on wishful thinking. I believe in a God, not because I have this desperate desire for there to be a God or because I was raised that way, but because at a certain stage in my life I realized that God's existence was the single most important question I had to answer- basically my whole lifestyle depended on it.
I'm curious to know what made you think that is the single most important question you have to answer, because that seems genuinely mystifying to me. As is the statement that your whole lifestyle depended on what the answer to that question is.
Whatever your reasoning is, I suppose that qualifies you as a gnostic primarily, and a theist secondarily.
So, using my own reason (freshly sharpened from my debate training) I studied the topic voraciously, taking in the arguments from both sides. And I came out of that (year? year and a half? hard to say) convinced that there was a God. If you want to try and prove otherwise to me, I'm open to that. But please don't assume I'm using wishful thinking.
There is no way to prove such a thing otherwise. That said, I may be willing to go through your apologetics and see if I can't convince you to revert your conclusion, but not in this thread. PM's or another thread would be more appropriate, I think.
I don't actually see him contradicting abiogenesis. Rather, supposing that abiogenesis is happened, it happened the way it did because God willed it.
Well, that's just a null statement. It's essentially the exactly same platitude as saying "God works in mysterious ways".
The Pope could just as validly say that the Flying Spaghetti Monster manipulates everything with his Noodly Appendages to make the universe work the way it does, and to give us an illusion that there's some underlying physics working.
Maybe when two electrons repel each other, it's not Coulomb force that is responsible, but rather two noodly appendages pushing the electrons apart. Or when a photon impacts your retina, maybe there was no photon and instead noodly appendage is exciting the molecules directly, creating a perfect illusion of an energy quanta traveling through space and causing the chemical reaction to trigger nervous action potential.
Or perhaps noodly appendages are manipulating your visual cortex directly to create illusion of images.
Perhaps there is no visual cortex, just noodly appendages all the way.
The point is, once you have a statement that explains everything by explaining exactly nothing, you might as well go full solipsism, which is a fundamentally unsatisfying and counter-productive way of looking at life.
In fact, it seems pretty clear to me that the Pope isn't being scientific at all, merely saying that whatever actually happened has happened the way it did because God made it happen that way. In fact, I think he's future-proofing the Catholic Church from future scientific discoveries rather than making claims about how God went about doing it.
That sounds about right. In a way, you could see it as an application of differential calculus to theology; taking advantage of the fact that we can never be satisfied that the gaps in our knowledge have been reduced to zero.
It's converting the God of the Gaps from finite gaps in our knowledge into infinitesimal gap. Since that gap will always exist, the future of religion is assured. Hooray.
The problem is that although in reality this just means that God's relevance to real world is infinitesimally small, religions like Christianity craft an imaginary world where God's relevance is supposedly everything. Cleverly, this construct is fashioned in a way that is beyond scientific method and objective reasoning, typically proposing things like continued existence of self after physical death, and more importantly how said afterlife will turn up based on what you believed when you were alive.
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derp
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I think there's some merit to examining a particular point in this thread.
The point is, once you have a statement that explains everything by explaining exactly nothing, you might as well go full solipsism, which is a fundamentally unsatisfying and counter-productive way of looking at life.
Why?
To clarify, why must this point of view be fundamentally unsatisfying? I have no doubt that you, Herra, would be wholly unsatisfied to be forced for whatever arbitrary reason to accept it, but why must InsaneBaron, or Luis, or any number of the other multiple billions of people on the planet? I have a sneaking suspicion that if you produce a reason that makes logical sense, many would still disagree that such a worldview is unfulfilling.
To me, that's really the crux of the issue here. We think differently ('we' in the collective human sense). What may seem wholly unsatisfying to you could very well be a transcendent experience for someone else. And that's not a bad thing. This is why I'm always left a little confused and mostly irritated by folks arguing so strongly against anything faith-based, whether by way of objective rationality or otherwise. It's not really anyone's business to tell anyone else what to believe. Even if you strongly disagree, and have several well thought out reasons for why you disagree, belief is still not something that can be forced, nor should it.
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I do not understand why so very many people in this World regard those who believe differently to be idiots (not saying that about Herra or anyone else, just saying.) What great accomplishments do they have to their names that make them know the mysteries of the universe with such certainty, while most of the rest of the World are morons?
My beliefs are my own. I have taken in what I have seen of this World to form my own conclusions, but I am not arrogant enough to believe everyone who thinks differently is an idiot for not seeing it the way I do. I do not know what life experiences they have had while walking this Earth to form the conclusions they have done, and I do not think there's anything so special about me that I can have such confidence I have chosen correctly while most of the World has not. It doesn't matter what you believe in, most of the World has chosen to believe in something else. So are they all idiots? Are they all inferior to you?
I've just done what I can to make sense of this World from what has been put in front of me, which is all any of us mere mortals can do. None of us will see anything more than the tiniest sliver of what there is to see in this universe. What makes any one of us qualified to say with certainty we know these things?
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Why?
To clarify, why must this point of view be fundamentally unsatisfying?
Poor predictive power. The entire point of physics is to derive and develop fundamental laws that describe how reality works, so that you can predict the future given some information about the initial conditions of a system. There ought also to be, for any theory, feasibly-performable experiments that could conceivably produce results that contradict it -- falsifiability. It is not so easy to do these with a "God Works in Mysterious WaysTM" mentality. It's basically a cop-out from actually testing one's ideas of how reality works against evidence. No matter what happens, you ascribe it to unknowable divine interventions.
Some may find such a perspective to be satisfying, but, as with Herra, it mystifies me. I do not understand the appeal.
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Why?
To clarify, why must this point of view be fundamentally unsatisfying?
Let me elaborate.
Not only is it unsatisfying from the perspective of knowledge and understanding, because once God is invoked, there is no more intellectual incentive to further investigation. It's just something that is, happens, for reasons we don't understand and don't care to learn about. "God did it" is the end of cognitive process.
But in addition to that, it is exceedingly dangerous as well, in many ways.
Using the popular statement "God works in mysterious ways" as an example, to me it exemplifies the problems associated with predeterminism. It seems to me like it encourages fatalistic, apathetic attitude about events occurring in the world and in our lives. It is not useful in any way to predict anything. However, it can be used to justify anything and to support any agenda you might want to.
Second reason I find this outlook of life especially troubling is that even if there is a God, and even if he does have a mysterious plan, there is no guarantee that the plan is beneficial to us. Everyone just likes to think that God's plan will favour them personally. God bless the USA, eh? Why should God bless the USA, it only has a fraction of people living on Earth. It's the Promised Land of Israelites all over again - why should they be God's chosen people out of all the people in the world?
Considering the amount of differing agendas and factions on the world, God's Plan cannot favour everyone. In fact, there is no indication that "God's Plan" favours humanity at all.
To paraphrase a certain well-known fictional character: Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan".
Well, when everything is part of "God's Plan" (because it's categorically defined as such) then clearly there's no reason to panic because we can't really do anything about it... even if in reality there might well be good reason to panic, and start doing something about things that aren't going so well.
This can very easily lead to completely irrational decisions and actions, causing potentially irreparable damage and loss of life.
Examples of such logic in action:
-vilification of birth control as it goes against God's Plan (ignoring the fact that maybe birth control was also God's Plan)
-refusing medical treatment because life and death are for God to decide, or worse yet forbid their children to be treated
-ignoring the effects of releasing hundreds of millions of years worth of accumulated carbon into atmosphere within a few hundred years and expecting Earth to be just fine about it
The last example is not necessarily always religious in nature. However, "All Part of God's Plan" logic seems functionally identical to the reasoning that assumes humans to be too insignificant to meaningfully change the Earth and therefore Earth is fine regardless of what we do.
TL;DR: "God Works in Mysterious Ways" reduces human independent agency to such an extent that it doesn't even matter any more.
Addendum: I know that people's brain work differently and we perceive things differently. There are strong indications that religiousness is something that some people have a neurological, likely genetic predisposition toward. I'm not trying to devalue the way religious people perceive the universe, but it also has the potential to cause tremendous problems, as with every case where people make decisions based on things that are not necessarily true.
If I choose to make my decisions in life based on something I believe, I would like to know if my beliefs are true or not, because if they're false I might end up making poor decisions.
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I have to ask that you not assume I'm relying on wishful thinking. I believe in a God, not because I have this desperate desire for there to be a God or because I was raised that way, but because at a certain stage in my life I realized that God's existence was the single most important question I had to answer- basically my whole lifestyle depended on it.
I'm curious to know what made you think that is the single most important question you have to answer, because that seems genuinely mystifying to me. As is the statement that your whole lifestyle depended on what the answer to that question is.
Whatever your reasoning is, I suppose that qualifies you as a gnostic primarily, and a theist secondarily.
Three things. First, the basic questions "Does God exist?" "Is there life after death?" "Where does morality come from?" are, I would argue, extremely important questions to answer. If there is a good God I ought to be worshipping Him and following His commands- and making an effort to figure out where those commands are to be found. If there's life after death I better be getting ready for it.
Second, how does taking a reason-based approach make me a Gnostic? I'm a Christian.
Third, I must respectfully disagree with your frequently repeated claim that belief in a God hinders science. I love science. The statements "God made the world" and "We should learn everything we can about the world He made", far from being contradictory, are mutually supportive. And the claim that Theists are somehow opposed to medical treatment of all things is outrageous to the point of not requiring refutation. (For the sake of moderation I'll avoid the birth control question you raise.)
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Gnostic in the sense of not being agnostic, that is, being certain there is a God. I think that's what Herra meant. However, this is confusing because "Gnosticism" has another quite different historical meaning, soooooooo......
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Gnostic in the sense of not being agnostic, that is, being certain there is a God. I think that's what Herra meant. However, this is confusing because "Gnosticism" has another quite different historical meaning, soooooooo......
Okay, but how is Gnostic in that sense different from Theist?
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Third, I must respectfully disagree with your frequently repeated claim that belief in a God hinders science. I love science. The statements "God made the world" and "We should learn everything we can about the world He made", far from being contradictory, are mutually supportive. And the claim that Theists are somehow opposed to medical treatment of all things is outrageous to the point of not requiring refutation. (For the sake of moderation I'll avoid the birth control question you raise.)
Please read what Herra wrote carefully. The examples he cites of people foregoing medical treatment due to faith in God's plan are all documented. People HAVE made these decisions, that you personally wouldn't doesn't make those statements untrue.
Whether or not you agree with Herra's general point, that blind faith creates problems, is up to you. But please do not open a new front in the War on Straw in this thread.
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Gnostic in the sense of not being agnostic, that is, being certain there is a God. I think that's what Herra meant. However, this is confusing because "Gnosticism" has another quite different historical meaning, soooooooo......
Okay, but how is Gnostic in that sense different from Theist?
There is a difference between having faith and knowing. The former implies lack of knowledge, but nevertheless you "trust". The latter implies simple direct knowledge. I have faith that God exists vs I just know God exists.
Both can be theistic. Conversely, both can also be atheistic: I believe God does not exist vs I know for absolute certainty that God does not exist. Gnosticism implies a certain direct link between yourself and the universe, a kind of Gnostic epiphany that doesn't just makes you certain of things, but directly connected with the Truth of the universe. In a way. It gets complicated once the actual Gnostic heretical movement is brought into the conversation...
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Gnostic in the sense of not being agnostic, that is, being certain there is a God. I think that's what Herra meant. However, this is confusing because "Gnosticism" has another quite different historical meaning, soooooooo......
Okay, but how is Gnostic in that sense different from Theist?
There is a difference between having faith and knowing. The former implies lack of knowledge, but nevertheless you "trust". The latter implies simple direct knowledge. I have faith that God exists vs I just know God exists.
Both can be theistic. Conversely, both can also be atheistic: I believe God does not exist vs I know for absolute certainty that God does not exist. Gnosticism implies a certain direct link between yourself and the universe, a kind of Gnostic epiphany that doesn't just makes you certain of things, but directly connected with the Truth of the universe. In a way. It gets complicated once the actual Gnostic heretical movement is brought into the conversation...
I don't completely understand the underlined part, but otherwise, if Gnostic is defined that way, okay, I'm Gnostic.
@The_E: I'd be interested to see the documentation in question. To avoid Straw War, I'll make a more specific point: that no major theistic religion opposes seeking medical care.
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@The_E: I'd be interested to see the documentation in question. To avoid Straw War, I'll make a more specific point: that no major theistic religion opposes seeking medical care.
You're still strawmanning. Herra never claimed that there was a major religion that actively opposed medical care, all he said was that throughout history, people have decided not to seek it because they had complete faith that their God would help them if they were pious enough. Faith healing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_healing) is a thing. So are prohibitions against specific medical practices (like, for example, blood transfusions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah's_Witnesses_and_blood_transfusions)).
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Well, if you are a christian, especially if you are a Catholic, you are most probably not a Gnostic per se... or at least you shouldn't be :D. As I said, it's "complicated". Read about Gnosticism, perhaps start in Wikipedia, it has a good primer on it. Catholics reach God through the church, not through any particular sophisticated philosophical "gnosis"... but well, everyone has their own walk of life.
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The problem is that although in reality this just means that God's relevance to real world is infinitesimally small, religions like Christianity craft an imaginary world where God's relevance is supposedly everything. Cleverly, this construct is fashioned in a way that is beyond scientific method and objective reasoning, typically proposing things like continued existence of self after physical death, and more importantly how said afterlife will turn up based on what you believed when you were alive.
But is that a problem?
Ultimately, I don't care what people believe beyond what we can establish using evidence (and so long as their non-evidence-based views, like those on morality, aren't used as a justification to invade my life; witness rationalism and my classical liberal streak collide). If religious or spiritual views don't actually contradict methodologically-sound established scientific data, then they are factually harmless. Now, obviously some religions contain some problematic behavioural and moral tenets, but that's not within the purview of science to deal with.
This is why, as I was saying earlier, I don't think science and religion are mutually exclusive by any stretch. I have a problem with religion when its used as a shield to avoid evidence-based facts - people like Young Earth Creationists, the idea that human "life" (consciousness) begins at conception, the idea that you can treat cancer with prayer, etc. I see no harm in someone who accepts evidence-based information, yet simultaneously holds spiritual views that don't contradict them (qualified as stated in the paragraph above, of course).
Science can never prove whether or not deities, afterlives, reincarnation, etc exist. Those constructs are well outside of the realm testable by the scientific method. So if we truly embrace scientific rationalism, why in blazes do we care what people think about those things?
Things like the FSM are not just means to rationally-critique religion, they are a cautionary example for rationalists as well not to step beyond the bounds of science into philosophy without acknowledging that you're leaving evidence-based understanding behind and resorting to logic and extrapolation.
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Well, if you are a christian, especially if you are a Catholic, you are most probably not a Gnostic per se... or at least you shouldn't be :D. As I said, it's "complicated". Read about Gnosticism, perhaps start in Wikipedia, it has a good primer on it. Catholics reach God through the church, not through any particular sophisticated philosophical "gnosis"... but well, everyone has their own walk of life.
Arg. For the sake of the discussion I'm just gonna throw out the term "Gnostic". My familiarity with the term is in relation to the Gnostic religious movement, and when I try and use your definition I miss the point :P
@E: If that's the case, then Herra is pretty much argueing against a sort of blind and unreasonable Faith that has nothing to do with me.
EDIT: @MP: I agree with the vast majority of what you just said, but I have to dispute one point: the statement about consciousness and human life. I think you misunderstand the view; the pro-life movement doesn't argue "unborn babies are conscious" but "just because they're not conscious doesn't mean they don't have a right to live." It's not an exclusively religious view either; I'm active in the pro-life movement, and religion is not my reason for it. I simply don't think being unconscious effects a person's moral standing.
I'm leery of going too deep into the issue cause it tends to set off people's tempers.
Oh, and for the record, I think you should pray for a cure if you have cancer. I don't think that that means you shouldn't seek scientific medical care.
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The problem is that although in reality this just means that God's relevance to real world is infinitesimally small, religions like Christianity craft an imaginary world where God's relevance is supposedly everything. Cleverly, this construct is fashioned in a way that is beyond scientific method and objective reasoning, typically proposing things like continued existence of self after physical death, and more importantly how said afterlife will turn up based on what you believed when you were alive.
But is that a problem?
Ultimately, I don't care what people believe beyond what we can establish using evidence (and so long as their non-evidence-based views, like those on morality, aren't used as a justification to invade my life; witness rationalism and my classical liberal streak collide). If religious or spiritual views don't actually contradict methodologically-sound established scientific data, then they are factually harmless. Now, obviously some religions contain some problematic behavioural and moral tenets, but that's not within the purview of science to deal with.
This is why, as I was saying earlier, I don't think science and religion are mutually exclusive by any stretch. I have a problem with religion when its used as a shield to avoid evidence-based facts - people like Young Earth Creationists, the idea that human "life" (consciousness) begins at conception, the idea that you can treat cancer with prayer, etc. I see no harm in someone who accepts evidence-based information, yet simultaneously holds spiritual views that don't contradict them (qualified as stated in the paragraph above, of course).
Science can never prove whether or not deities, afterlives, reincarnation, etc exist. Those constructs are well outside of the realm testable by the scientific method. So if we truly embrace scientific rationalism, why in blazes do we care what people think about those things?
Things like the FSM are not just means to rationally-critique religion, they are a cautionary example for rationalists as well not to step beyond the bounds of science into philosophy without acknowledging that you're leaving evidence-based understanding behind and resorting to logic and extrapolation.
This rather closely aligns with my viewpoint on the subject, with one singular (significant) exception. As personally objectionable as I find it, and as much as all of us know that something like the Young Earth creation myth is wrong, it is no one's responsibility nor right to attempt to force a change to that viewpoint. You can argue all day long, and if at the end of the day the person you're trying to convince remains steadfast in that belief then there's simply nothing doing.
That's not to say you have to suffer it as fact in your own mind, or should have to allow those questionable/objectionable beliefs spread as fact. It's as much your right to not have to hear about it as it is someone else's right to believe it. The point of the matter, however, is that belief cannot be forced.
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I included YECs as harmful manifestations because they often try to influence public policy to align with their belief sets. Issues like climate change, science policy, history, biology, and the education on these topics are targets for many YECs, so I don't have as much of a live-and-let-live mindset toward them.
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I disagree, in the interest of not immediately painting with a negative brush any YEC that isn't politically active (and doesn't want to particularly push their beliefs on anyone else). That a particular way of thinking has a vocal minority of close-minded individuals is hardly unique among belief systems, and I think it's a bit unfair to paint the entire group thanks to those supremely unhelpful individuals or smaller groups.
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I disagree, in the interest of not immediately painting with a negative brush any YEC that isn't politically active (and doesn't want to particularly push their beliefs on anyone else).
Maybe depends on what you mean by "particularly", but how can there be any? How can someone believe in YEC, see the opposite belief pushed on innocent children in schools (for example), and then be indifferent towards that and not particularly care whether it's the truth or lies which prevail? If you don't care, then it's not much of a belief.
Applies to most other beliefs too, of course.
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Three things. First, the basic questions "Does God exist?" "Is there life after death?" "Where does morality come from?" are, I would argue, extremely important questions to answer. If there is a good God I ought to be worshipping Him and following His commands- and making an effort to figure out where those commands are to be found. If there's life after death I better be getting ready for it.
Before asking the question "does God exist" you should first define what God means in the first place.
Before asking the second question you should define what "life" means. After you've defined what "life" is, you can then define "death" as cessation of life.
I'm assuming in this context you mean specifically whether human consciousness or parts of it continue existing after the nervous system shuts down and dies.
And, respectfully, I think asking "where does morality come from" is sort of begging the question that it must "come" from somewhere, as opposed to simply being a beneficial trait and a result of natural selection working on a population of social animals.
Second, how does taking a reason-based approach make me a Gnostic?
Gnosticism is - in a nutshell - a world view that divides the universe into two parts: The lower world of Demiurge, and the higher world of God. You might call them "material" and "immaterial"; "Mundane" and "Divine"; or "Natural" and "Supernatural", if you will.
In gnosticism, not only is it certain that the supernatural exists, it also states that the material world is of less importance than the spiritual world. Therefore, material world is to be shunned in favour of gaining knowledge and understanding (gnosis)of the spiritual world. Several ancient religions that are classified as Gnostic religions outlined various way of achieving this end, aiming towards "oneness with God".
What exactly does that knowledge contain is less clear and varies between different Gnostic religions.
Your statement that the aforementioned questions of God's existence are the most important questions to answer in your life would seem to qualify you as a gnostic of some level, at least in my assessment.
The fact that you are also a theist has little to do with you being gnostic. Theism is simply a view that at least one God (undefined) exists. But being a theist does not necessarily mean one is also a gnostic. I can conceivably imagine a world view where one believes a god exists, but doesn't necessarily value the spiritual world over material.
I'm a Christian.
That's about as specific as if you said you're a Muslim.
Christianity, in general terms, is a Gnostic religion since most denominations have emphasis on the importance of salvation and all that business with afterlife (although there are differences). But there are so much variations between individual denominations as to how important the material world is in comparison to immaterial (heaven), and particularly relating to the salvation doctrine. The main difference being whether you can get to heaven by faith alone, or by your deeds alone, or if both are required, and whether certain deeds exclude you from positive afterlife even if you have faith... and so forth.
So saying you're a Christian doesn't really tell a whole lot.
Of course there are other theistic religions that are not gnostic in the same sense as Christianity is. It basically means that the physical world and your life in it is considered more important than whatever might come afterwards. Judaism comes pretty close; although it does have a concept of "afterlife", it's pretty different from that of Christianity or Islam.
Third, I must respectfully disagree with your frequently repeated claim that belief in a God hinders science. I love science. The statements "God made the world" and "We should learn everything we can about the world He made", far from being contradictory, are mutually supportive.
Believing in God doesn't necessarily hinder science, there are some theistic scientists who do brilliant work in their fields. However, it can be a hindrance and that's pretty much a statement supported by statistics. If you look at the percentage of theists in academia, the higher you go, the less theists you find. Particularly in certain branches of science that are often in contradiction with traditionally held religious views.
But there's also a difference between religiousness and religion. Being a member of some established religion and following its tenets and dogma is inevitably going to hinder one's ability to make science, because when one encounters something that contradicts the teachings of that religion, it results in a cognitive dissonance of some level. And the way it is resolved is either by ignoring the reality and evidence and sticking with the beliefs, or the opposite - which, I would argue, sort of stops you from being a member in that particular religion afterwards. You might still partake in the social stuff and go through the motions, but is there going to be any conviction in the truth of the established position if your research has shown otherwise?
I would hazard a guess that most of the scientists with theistic or otherwise religious or spiritual world view do not necessarily submit to any particular religion as such, on a personal level.
I guess it could be condensed as follows: Any mention of God (or supernatural in general) in scientific context is fundamentally unscientific, because "God Did It" is a non-falsifiable claim. And certain religions include beliefs that contradict science, which makes them a hindrance to practice of science on a personal level. That's all I'm saying.
And the claim that Theists are somehow opposed to medical treatment of all things is outrageous to the point of not requiring refutation. (For the sake of moderation I'll avoid the birth control question you raise.)
The E already responded to this in a way I don't think I can put any better.
My statement was: "There are theists who are opposed to medical treatment and birth control because of theological reasons."
It was an example of the type of problems that can occur when decisions are made based on religious beliefs, and why I think it can be dangerous.
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Three things. First, the basic questions "Does God exist?" "Is there life after death?" "Where does morality come from?" are, I would argue, extremely important questions to answer. If there is a good God I ought to be worshipping Him and following His commands- and making an effort to figure out where those commands are to be found. If there's life after death I better be getting ready for it.
Before asking the question "does God exist" you should first define what God means in the first place.
Before asking the second question you should define what "life" means. After you've defined what "life" is, you can then define "death" as cessation of life.
I'm assuming in this context you mean specifically whether human consciousness or parts of it continue existing after the nervous system shuts down and dies.
And, respectfully, I think asking "where does morality come from" is sort of begging the question that it must "come" from somewhere, as opposed to simply being a beneficial trait and a result of natural selection working on a population of social animals.
In my case, it was crucial to know whether any kind of "god" (polytheistic, monotheistic, pantheistic) existed. A bare-bones definition of God would be "A powerful supernatural intelligence", although that could be confused with an Angel.
"Life after death", naturally, refers to an afterlife; the possibility that the soul might survive physical death. A vastly important question IMO.
And of course, natural selection was on my list as one possible place where morality may have "come from". I came to the conclusion that it isn't a sufficient explanation. In a rather unsatisfactory attempt to condense a year's worth of intense study into a few sentences, the concept of a morality that came from natural selection and is nothing but a bunch of instincts might explain why I act in certain ways, but it doesn't explain why, regardless of instincts, I shouldn't act a certain way, nor why I have the authority and obligation to tell someone else that, regardless of their instincts, they shouldn't act that way either. Many scientists claim morality is the by-product of evolution, but to their credit few of them treat it that way in everyday life; they treat it as a set of objective laws, applicable to all, that everyone is expected to follow, regardless of what their instincts tell them. Educated or not, virtually everyone seems to perceive morality in that way, including me, and what that makes me suspect is that what we're dealing with is not a set of instincts but a real set of laws like the laws of mathematics, which humans can discern fairly easily. (Of course the matter is far more complicated than just that, but there's my attempt to explain.)
Second, how does taking a reason-based approach make me a Gnostic?
Gnosticism is - in a nutshell - a world view that divides the universe into two parts: The lower world of Demiurge, and the higher world of God. You might call them "material" and "immaterial"; "Mundane" and "Divine"; or "Natural" and "Supernatural", if you will.
In gnosticism, not only is it certain that the supernatural exists, it also states that the material world is of less importance than the spiritual world. Therefore, material world is to be shunned in favour of gaining knowledge and understanding (gnosis)of the spiritual world. Several ancient religions that are classified as Gnostic religions outlined various way of achieving this end, aiming towards "oneness with God".
What exactly does that knowledge contain is less clear and varies between different Gnostic religions.
Your statement that the aforementioned questions of God's existence are the most important questions to answer in your life would seem to qualify you as a gnostic of some level, at least in my assessment.
The fact that you are also a theist has little to do with you being gnostic. Theism is simply a view that at least one God (undefined) exists. But being a theist does not necessarily mean one is also a gnostic. I can conceivably imagine a world view where one believes a god exists, but doesn't necessarily value the spiritual world over material.
As I said before, Gnostic is a broad and confusing term (and I admit that Christian is as well, but it's hard to put my whole belief system into one word). I don't shun the material world at all- in fact I believe I have a God-given duty to help make it a better place- but I'm convinced that the supernatural world does exist, to the point of calling it a certainty. Whether that makes my a Gnostic depends on what definition of Gnostic you use.
I guess it could be condensed as follows: Any mention of God (or supernatural in general) in scientific context is fundamentally unscientific, because "God Did It" is a non-falsifiable claim. And certain religions include beliefs that contradict science, which makes them a hindrance to practice of science on a personal level. That's all I'm saying.
On the first point, we're more or less in agreement. "Does God Exist" is not a scientific question, because science is by definition the study of the natural (not supernatural) world. However, I don't believe that this reduces the validity or value of the question; philosophy is just a valid a field as science, and science can even impact philosophy in a positive manner (Psychology, in particular, is useful for understanding human beings, which in turn is valuable for philosophical analysis).
And the claim that Theists are somehow opposed to medical treatment of all things is outrageous to the point of not requiring refutation. (For the sake of moderation I'll avoid the birth control question you raise.)
The E already responded to this in a way I don't think I can put any better.
My statement was: "There are theists who are opposed to medical treatment and birth control because of theological reasons."
It was an example of the type of problems that can occur when decisions are made based on religious beliefs, and why I think it can be dangerous.
Yes, the confusion there has been cleared. I agree that if a religion's tenets oppose proper medical care, promote lying, et cetera, that's a pretty clear disproof of that specific religion. The ironic part of being religious is that you disagree with 90% of other people who are also religious. A side point: there are common birth control methods that reason alone tells me are wrong because they end a life; if a religion opposes them, that's something of an argument for that religion.
Interestingly, we both agree on a lot of things. Neither of us are in favor of blind faith.
In summary, I'll use a really awesome Martin Mandho line: "Faithful Reason and Reasonable Faith."
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A bare-bones definition of God would be "A powerful supernatural intelligence"
But the whole concept of "supernatural" is a paradox.
If something exists (ie. is a real thing), that makes it part of reality. Reality is natural.
The point of dissonance to me is describing something that exists, yet is not natural. The two seem mutually exclusive to me.
Now, if you mean to refer to something unknown or something we don't understand, that's one thing. That doesn't mean it is "supernatural" at all.
Or, in another perspective: If something exists, it exists. Whether we believe in it or not does not change the fact. Whether we understand something or not, doesn't change the fact. "Natural" and "Supernatural" are just arbitrary labels, so why use them in the first place?
Argument from supernatural is just an argument from ignorance in disguise. It's better to acknowledge being ignorant about something than to invent something supernatural to fill the gap, or more commonly to believe in someone else's invention that just happens to be popular around where you were born.
But let's go with your definition. Let's say a vastly powerful intelligent being exists, and you don't quite understand it so you're calling it supernatural (which, as outlined above, is not necessarily the best classification). What then?
Why does that qualify as a God? What is it that separates "divine" from "mundane"?
If a vastly powerful intelligent being suddenly appeared in front of you and claimed "I AM GOD", what would it take to convince you that:
a. you could trust your senses and are not having an elaborate hallucination,
b. that you could trust the powerful being to tell you the truth, and
c. that the powerful being isn't just deluded or deceived into thinking it is a god?
(http://i.imgur.com/JvDYBGy.gif)
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First off, as C. S. Lewis explains in "Miracles", we're arguing at cross-purposes because we're using two different definitions of natural. You define Natural as "everything that exists" (or something like that). By that definition, God (if he exists) is natural (which is a weird thought). When I talk about the Natural, I'm referring to our physical, sense-detectable, material world of matter and energy. The "Supernatural" is that which is "above the natural"- the term "spiritual world" is helpful, although that doesn't quite cover it. Whether or not we understand the supernatural is a secondary question- although in my view we can gain a certain degree of understanding.
So if you prefer, we can use the terms "physical" and "spiritual", although they aren't exactly the same thing.
Like I pointed out to Luis, "explaining what I don't understand" and "ideas that were popular where I was born" are irrelevant (religion was pretty unpopular where I was born).
As for what it would take to convince me... well, first off, if a being were to appear to me in the way you describe I'd smell a rat.
a. How do I know the table in front of me isn't an illusion? On a more useful note, at the time I'd consider it a significant possibility. Having had hallucinations in the past myself (stupid fevers :P ), I've found you can't often identify them until a while after you've had them.
b. & c. I'd challenge him to prove it. Now, once again, definitions are important; the polytheistic concept of a lowercase-g "god" (which from a Christian perspective is more like an angel, I'm reluctant to even call such a thing a god) is vastly different from the monotheistic, omnipotent creator "God" (capital G) of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. So I'd ask the thing what kind of god/God it was.
If the thing claimed to be a lowercase-g "god" (more of an "angel"... or "demon"... in my view), I'd engage the whatever-it-was in a debate: "What's your name? Who made you? How many other gods are there?" and look for contradictions. I don't think polytheism holds up to intellectual scrutiny. Given my existing philosophical convictions, my default assumption would be that the thing was lying to me. If the thing refused to engage, well, that's called admitting defeat :P
If the thing claimed to be THE UPPER-CASE G GOD... things would get complicated. Again, I could simply debate and look for contradictions. Alternately, I could simply ask the thing to prove it- THE UPPER-CASE G GOD ought to be able to think of something. Ultimately, it'd be difficult to disprove a claim by such a being, but for that reason I'd be cautious about accepting it's claim. Suffice to say I'd be in a difficult situation.
Now, what about you? How would you respond to such an appearance?
(Love that GIF btw. Puny God! I wouldn't even call Loki and Thor "gods"; just aliens)
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We may be arguing at cross-purposes, but I really am not convinced in any way that the definition of "above the natural" or "spiritual world" are helpful or meaningful in any ways. To me it seems they don't actually describe anything. Which part of the spectrum of existence should be defined as "natural" and which part "above" it? Who gets to make the call?
Coming from a physicist's point of view, almost all cases where the word "energy" is used in context with supernatural, it tends to cause a Montoya reaction for me. It is a common woo word, and should be cautioned against.
Quite simply, "energy" means potential to do something (which can be almost anything) that involves work.
If you say that a supernatural thing exists that has the potential to actually do something (anything) that affects the material world, you are actually saying that the supernatural entity has energy.
That means, from physical point of view, if supernatural things are described as not having energy, they have no potential to affect anything in the world and therefore by all standards do not exist.
In layman's terms: If "natural" world consists of "energy and matter", you sort of need energy and/or matter to affect the natural world.
That means, if supernatural things were to somehow interact with the "natural" world, they need to have some sort of connection to energy and matter, a way to manipulate things. That means "supernatural" part of reality cannot be separate from the "natural" - else they would have no interaction. Or, in simpler terms - supernatural things just consist of unknown type of energy/matter.
If you used a Venn diagram, you would end up with two intersecting circles, one labeled "Natural" and other "Supernatural", and the intersecting part would be the part of "supernatural" things that we would observe, right?
But if you look at it from a holistic perspective, both of them have a common denominator - both supposedly exist. So you might as well get over the fact that you don't understand what the "supernatural" half is, and just call it "unknown".
And, this is important: We can not make any statements regarding the nature of unknown things. That is what baffles me the most with religious conviction. It is a serious logical fault to suggest that something is both supernatural and that there is reliable information of it. Can't have it both ways, in my view.
Also a conceptual difference: "Unknown" is different from "unknowable". As the corollary of Clarke's third law says: Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science. Labeling something to be fundamentally unknowable is not a falsifiable claim; even if it is currently unknown, it may become known at some point in the future.
I can understand concepts like Plato's World of Ideas - a conceptual level of existence, not filled with real things but things of abstract nature, like logic, mathematics, ideals, or abstract representations of real things or properties of reality - but instead of considering it to be a "real" thing I think of it as a construct manufactured by sentient minds. Morality also exists there, but instead of originating from the world of ideas, it is rather a representation of human (and animal) real world behavioural rules that apply in the society one lives in.
To me, it seems plain that religious or "spiritual" concepts also exist in a corner of this World of Ideas. They are an idealized representation of something, and sit right next to (and intermingling with) our cosmological concepts of the world. For some people, religious ideas are part of their cosmology.
How well formulated these religious concepts are tends to vary from person to person. While these abstractions can exist in the same sense that mathematics exists, It does not necessarily mean there is any physically existing counterpart to them.
As for the problem of how to identify a God (or even just god) - it is a curious thing, isn't it? If I'm reading you correctly, you would be highly suspicious of any physical proof of the divinity of any given entity - as would I. Yet, there seems to be no doubt in your mind that a God exists while you have no evidence for it - while I categorically deny God's existence on conceptual level, on the basis that the basic property - divinity - is a faulty definition.
If I were confronted with an entity making a claim of its own divinity, I would approach things with great skepticism and even greater care. I would first attempt to establish what it means by the term "god".
If it insisted that it was a God, as in supernatural creator of the world, most likely I would conclude that either:
a. I was hallucinating,
b. the entity was lying for unknown purposes
c. the entity has deluded itself into thinking it is a god (whatever that concept meant to it).
Note that option C does not exclude the possibility that the entity really created the world we live in.
It just means it doesn't make it a god.
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There's two problems there.
First off, defining energy as "the ability to do things" is like defining nature as "everything"; it's far too broad to be useful in a philosophical context, and the definition assumes your conclusion, leading to some reverse reasoning. In this context, a better definition of Energy would be "the capacity of a physical system to perform work." I'm talking a spiritual God, not a physical being like the Marvel Asgardians. However, I would argue that God (angels as well) have the ability to manipulate the matter and energy of our world, in much the same way that a programmer can manipulate a game world without entering it- God "coded" the world after all. A being that does not have a physical body does not require physical energy to function.
Second, you keep treating the distinction between the natural and supernatural as knowability. I've never claimed that knowability was part of the equation; you're debating something I don't believe anyway.
On the one angle, we can infer a number of things about the Supernatural by looking at the Natural- reasoning from the effect to the cause. Take the human being for example: an incredibly complex design, with a clear purpose to the design, which functions and functions well. Even we humans, for all our remarkable intelligence, can't come up with anything nearly as advanced as ourselves. What that suggests to me is that something extremely intelligent had a hand in our design- if I found a car-like vehicle on a distant planet, I'd conclude something intelligent made it, and you and I are orders of magnitude more complex than a car. Our ability to think in such an advanced manner (like this conversation) also seems to indicate a higher intelligence- after all, computers don't program themselves. If my intelligence, and that of those around me, is the result of swirling atoms put together by random chance, I really don't have any reason to trust that intelligence to give me access to real, objective truth, except maybe with regards to finding food and sex... and therefore, I've got little reason to trust the deep scientific claim that my brain is a bunch of atoms put together by a blind, random-chance process. Art doesn't get formed by waves making shapes on the sand.
On the other angle, if a Supernatural God exists, it's entirely reasonable that God would want to tell us about himself. Looking at history, we can find some very interesting evidence suggesting that he did so. The historical record of Jesus Christ and the early Christian Church simply doesn't make sense if we assume it was all a lie. Why would Christ and his followers be willing to die for a lie they made up? Why couldn't the Jewish religious leaders of the time have shut down the whole movement just be presenting Jesus's dead body? Even if you were to throw out the Bible, the historical records from neutral sources like Josephus simply don't make sense if Chistianity were a lie or a fantasy.
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Well there's always the nonconstructive argument against that: what makes Christianity special in that regard? It's hardly the only religion whose followers have been willing to die for it, or that's survived persecution. Why can't I apply your line of reasoning to other religions and conclude that several contradictory gods exist?
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First off, defining energy as "the ability to do things" is like defining nature as "everything"; it's far too broad to be useful in a philosophical context, and the definition assumes your conclusion, leading to some reverse reasoning. In this context, a better definition of Energy would be "the capacity of a physical system to perform work." I'm talking a spiritual God, not a physical being like the Marvel Asgardians. However, I would argue that God (angels as well) have the ability to manipulate the matter and energy of our world, in much the same way that a programmer can manipulate a game world without entering it- God "coded" the world after all. A being that does not have a physical body does not require physical energy to function.
Which makes it impossible to make statements about God using the tools of scientific inquiry. The presence or non-presence of god becomes a neutral term; Equations constructed with God's influence in mind and those constructed without him come out the same way.
Second, you keep treating the distinction between the natural and supernatural as knowability. I've never claimed that knowability was part of the equation; you're debating something I don't believe anyway.
On the one angle, we can infer a number of things about the Supernatural by looking at the Natural- reasoning from the effect to the cause. Take the human being for example: an incredibly complex design, with a clear purpose to the design, which functions and functions well. Even we humans, for all our remarkable intelligence, can't come up with anything nearly as advanced as ourselves. What that suggests to me is that something extremely intelligent had a hand in our design- if I found a car-like vehicle on a distant planet, I'd conclude something intelligent made it, and you and I are orders of magnitude more complex than a car. Our ability to think in such an advanced manner (like this conversation) also seems to indicate a higher intelligence- after all, computers don't program themselves. If my intelligence, and that of those around me, is the result of swirling atoms put together by random chance, I really don't have any reason to trust that intelligence to give me access to real, objective truth, except maybe with regards to finding food and sex... and therefore, I've got little reason to trust the deep scientific claim that my brain is a bunch of atoms put together by a blind, random-chance process. Art doesn't get formed by waves making shapes on the sand.
I feel like this is a bit of a fallacy here. You look at the world around you, at the various gadgets and constructs humanity has made, and you see the results of a will shaping the world. Then you look inward, see complexity, and assume that some unseen will has shaped you. There's a logical leap here (because, as has been proven in lots of experiments, complexity is not a signifier of will; simple organisms, executing the same basic sets of behavioural instructions, can create complexity), one not implicitly warranted by the available evidence.
On the other angle, if a Supernatural God exists, it's entirely reasonable that God would want to tell us about himself. Looking at history, we can find some very interesting evidence suggesting that he did so. The historical record of Jesus Christ and the early Christian Church simply doesn't make sense if we assume it was all a lie. Why would Christ and his followers be willing to die for a lie they made up? Why couldn't the Jewish religious leaders of the time have shut down the whole movement just be presenting Jesus's dead body? Even if you were to throw out the Bible, the historical records from neutral sources like Josephus simply don't make sense if Chistianity were a lie or a fantasy.
Christianity is as real as it gets. Belief is a real thing. But the existance of belief says nothing about the existance of whatever the belief is about.
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Oh boy this is going to be a long post...
There's two problems there.
First off, defining energy as "the ability to do things" is like defining nature as "everything"; it's far too broad to be useful in a philosophical context, and the definition assumes your conclusion, leading to some reverse reasoning.
But it works both ways. Energy is pretty strictly defined physical term, but badly understood by the physically illiterate masses (clearly, you are aware of what the term means). This is exactly the reason why "energy" is such a popular woo word, used in contexts such as "spiritual energy" and "energy healing", etc.
Regardless, if you choose to attempt to define supernatural with physical terminology, then I'm going to use physics to expose any possible faults I see with the definition.
In this context, a better definition of Energy would be "the capacity of a physical system to perform work."
I disagree for two reasons.
First, it implies that there are non-physical systems. While you could argue that I'm using circular logic to exclude non-physical (ie. supernatural) things in the first place, I posit that it is merely a matter of perspective. I am not saying that unknown things cannot exist. Just that they cannot be supernatural, if they occur in nature. Which, for us to observe them, or indeed for them to affect the universe in any way, they have to do in the first place.
Secondly, and more importantly, is exactly the reason why I'm objecting to the viability of "supernatural" as a concept in the first place.
Labeling something as "non-physical" does not change the fact that if it causes something to happen in a physical system, it must have some potential to do that physical work. In a case where an unknown process is seemingly dumping energy into a physical system, causing work to be done, that means the unknown process is in fact part of the physical system that you're observing.
This is almost analogous to the cosmological constant, or "dark energy", as it's often called.
It is not supernatural, because we can observe its effects.
The only things you could possibly ever call "supernatural" with a degree of accuracy are things that are fundamentally un-observable, and that essentially means they do not cause any observable changes in our universe. Which, in effect, means they do not exist.
I'm talking a spiritual God, not a physical being like the Marvel Asgardians.
What's the difference?
However, I would argue that God (angels as well) have the ability to manipulate the matter and energy of our world, in much the same way that a programmer can manipulate a game world without entering it- God "coded" the world after all.
Which in no way makes the programmer divine.
If we imagine a scenario where our universe is in fact a nested, simulated world, that just means that whatever computer is running the simulator is obeying the laws of physics in the universe where it is physically present, and whatever entity is programming and managing the simulation is a naturally occurring sentient being living in its home universe.
Probably very different from us - probably the universe itself would be different from ours - but would it make any sense to call that being "divine" or even "supernatural"?
A being that does not have a physical body does not require physical energy to function.
Disagree. See above. All energy is physical because it is a physical term.
Second, you keep treating the distinction between the natural and supernatural as knowability. I've never claimed that knowability was part of the equation; you're debating something I don't believe anyway.
Historically, there has been several phenomena thought to be supernatural in origin. Once we acquired better knowledge of them, we began to understand the reasons behind them, and realized they were not supernatural at all.
But the thing didn't change, just our label for it. Hence, it's not a property of things to be supernatural, but just a degree of our knowledge of them.
Because of this, if there's something we can acquire knowledge of - even if it's currently unknown - it would make little sense to call it supernatural now. The trend seems to be that at some point we'll know enough about it that no one thinks it's supernatural any more.
That is also why the things that have retained their "supernatural" label tend to be of the unknowable variety. Claims that you can neither prove or disprove.
On the one angle, we can infer a number of things about the Supernatural by looking at the Natural- reasoning from the effect to the cause.
Natural reasoning (if you refer to "common sense") is fundamentally unreliable and suspect. Formal logic is not.
We know from physical experiments that our universe is seemingly highly illogical - by which we mean counter-intuitive to us - on a fundamental level. What does that say about our ability to infer anything about what is natural and what is supernatural?
Take the human being for example: an incredibly complex design
About the same complexity as any other vertebrate mammal. Minor differences aside.
with a clear purpose to the design
I wasn't aware...
which functions and functions well.
Not so much functions well as "functions well enough that there haven't been sufficient selective pressure to eliminate the less functional features".
I personally wouldn't call it clever design to build a bridge, then add barely sufficient reinforcements to get it to stand vertically on one end, and use that as a base structure of a skyscraper. That's basically what human spine is like from engineering standpoint.
Even we humans, for all our remarkable intelligence, can't come up with anything nearly as advanced as ourselves.
Fundamentally can't, or simply haven't? There's a difference (which is similar to unknown and unknowable).
It also raises the question of how one would define "advanced". I mean, an i7 processor is fairly well advanced compared to my ability to perform calculations, yet I definitely agree that in creativity, problem-solving, and being aware of itself, it ranks about the same as a bacterium, which is none at all. But one could make a hypothesis that this is just down to software...
What that suggests to me is that something extremely intelligent had a hand in our design- if I found a car-like vehicle on a distant planet, I'd conclude something intelligent made it, and you and I are orders of magnitude more complex than a car. Our ability to think in such an advanced manner (like this conversation) also seems to indicate a higher intelligence- after all, computers don't program themselves. If my intelligence, and that of those around me, is the result of swirling atoms put together by random chance, I really don't have any reason to trust that intelligence to give me access to real, objective truth, except maybe with regards to finding food and sex... and therefore, I've got little reason to trust the deep scientific claim that my brain is a bunch of atoms put together by a blind, random-chance process. Art doesn't get formed by waves making shapes on the sand.
These are incredibly worn out (straw man) arguments for intelligent design and I truly expected something different. I won't go into detail here on refuting them, since the topic of intelligent design really doesn't belong to this discussion I believe.
However, to understand why an inanimate object is different from a living organism that produces offspring, whose traits are affected by mutations, and the environment weeds out the least suitable specimens, I suggest watching this excellent video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0), and paying attention to the details.
Computers don't program themselves, but you don't need anyone to program DNA. That's what evolution is all about.
On the other angle, if a Supernatural God exists, it's entirely reasonable that God would want to tell us about himself. Looking at history, we can find some very interesting evidence suggesting that he did so.
Which is made less interesting by the fact that these records are largely in contradiction with each other and seem to be highly dependant on the culture they were associated with.
The historical record of Jesus Christ and the early Christian Church simply doesn't make sense if we assume it was all a lie. Why would Christ and his followers be willing to die for a lie they made up?
Belief in something does not make it true. Even if you're willing to die for it.
People throughout history have been willing to die for their beliefs, wide and varied. Some of the beliefs have been true, some false. Some beliefs have been beneficial, some malicious. That proves absolutely nothing at all about the validity of the beliefs themselves.
This just seems like a complete Non Sequitur to me.
Why couldn't the Jewish religious leaders of the time have shut down the whole movement just be presenting Jesus's dead body? Even if you were to throw out the Bible, the historical records from neutral sources like Josephus simply don't make sense if Chistianity were a lie or a fantasy.
Even if the Jewish religious leaders were in charge (which they weren't, the Romans were) of matters like that, the whole thing was initially a very small Jewish fringe group or cult and remained so for significant time. Members of it were mostly being Jewish and doing Jewish things just as everyone else. They did some non-standard things like ritually consume their dead leader's body and blood, and spread some strange tales of a new way to salvation (which, by being far easier than other alternatives was undoubtedly quite tempting).
But you have to remember that the time period from Jesus' alleged death and the actual writing of the Gospels (and the rest of New Testament books) is somewhat unknown (even longer until they were canonized, while other records were discarded, but that's sort of another story). By the time the early Christian Church had gained enough momentum to be a serious threat to regional stability, I'm fairly sure any physical evidence to counter the claims made by the new church would have deteriorated beyond anything that could have convinced the people of the time. Forensic science was not the same back then, and people didn't really know just how much you could enhance a digital photograph of Jesus' tomb to prove that Jesus' body really was still in there.
Even if they had been presented with evidence to the contrary of their beliefs, it is highly likely they would have simply ignored the evidence and continued believing regardless. That's how religions tend to work, especially if you're a convert.
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Which makes it impossible to make statements about God using the tools of scientific inquiry. The presence or non-presence of god becomes a neutral term; Equations constructed with God's influence in mind and those constructed without him come out the same way.
I think this deserves a highlight, as it betrays a certain mindset that works at cross-purposes to the discussion. Attempting to make statements about God using the tools of scientific inquiry is exactly the mindset that leads to the straw conflict between religion and science. Similarly (this is aimed at Herra), taking the pedant's route and insisting that words used be defined scientifically (in order to then expose flaws in reasoning) is also contributing to this conflict-not-conflict. It directly links God's existence or non-existence, influence or non-influence, to a matter of fact, rather than a matter of faith.
If you don't have that faith, more power to you. If someone else does, it is not your responsibility to convince them otherwise in such a fashion. I recall during our discussions on IRC, Herra, that you stated a desire to know the perspective of a religious mindset; I'm no longer so sure this is the case. From the neutral perspective, you're trying to convince InsaneBaron that there is something wrong with his faith, factually, based on his own presentation and interpretation. Please stop.
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that statement is only true about a specific subset of gods.
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Which makes it impossible to make statements about God using the tools of scientific inquiry. The presence or non-presence of god becomes a neutral term; Equations constructed with God's influence in mind and those constructed without him come out the same way.
I think this deserves a highlight, as it betrays a certain mindset that works at cross-purposes to the discussion. Attempting to make statements about God using the tools of scientific inquiry is exactly the mindset that leads to the straw conflict between religion and science. Similarly (this is aimed at Herra), taking the pedant's route and insisting that words used be defined scientifically (in order to then expose flaws in reasoning) is also contributing to this conflict-not-conflict. It directly links God's existence or non-existence, influence or non-influence, to a matter of fact, rather than a matter of faith.
If you don't have that faith, more power to you. If someone else does, it is not your responsibility to convince them otherwise in such a fashion. I recall during our discussions on IRC, Herra, that you stated a desire to know the perspective of a religious mindset; I'm no longer so sure this is the case. From the neutral perspective, you're trying to convince InsaneBaron that there is something wrong with his faith, factually, based on his own presentation and interpretation. Please stop.
I need clarification here. Are you asking that we stop debating the issue?
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I just have trouble distinguishing between "Faith" and "Taking fiction way too seriously."
Can anyone help me out with that?
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Which makes it impossible to make statements about God using the tools of scientific inquiry. The presence or non-presence of god becomes a neutral term; Equations constructed with God's influence in mind and those constructed without him come out the same way.
I think this deserves a highlight, as it betrays a certain mindset that works at cross-purposes to the discussion. Attempting to make statements about God using the tools of scientific inquiry is exactly the mindset that leads to the straw conflict between religion and science. Similarly (this is aimed at Herra), taking the pedant's route and insisting that words used be defined scientifically (in order to then expose flaws in reasoning) is also contributing to this conflict-not-conflict. It directly links God's existence or non-existence, influence or non-influence, to a matter of fact, rather than a matter of faith.
If you don't have that faith, more power to you. If someone else does, it is not your responsibility to convince them otherwise in such a fashion. I recall during our discussions on IRC, Herra, that you stated a desire to know the perspective of a religious mindset; I'm no longer so sure this is the case. From the neutral perspective, you're trying to convince InsaneBaron that there is something wrong with his faith, factually, based on his own presentation and interpretation. Please stop.
I need clarification here. Are you asking that we stop debating the issue?
No. I'm cautioning against either side trying to prove the other wrong; that path lies madness.
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taking the pedant's route and insisting that words used be defined scientifically (in order to then expose flaws in reasoning) is also contributing to this conflict-not-conflict.
It's not just about being pedantic and being opposed to ill-defined words. It's a matter of perspective as well.
In a way, I don't really have anything against the concepts of "divine" and "mundane", although I think their definition is lacking. What I do object to is assigning labels like supernatural and natural to things simply based on whether we humans, at this point of time, know enough of it to understand it.
Our labeling things doesn't change the universe. That is a fact. If you believe there to be a divine origin, then it would make sense to consider the universe as a whole to be divine. If not, then consider it mundane. Without the arbitrary dichotomy between supernatural and natural, the meaning of the words collapses, and the universe just... is.
My point is that since "divine" and "mundane" (and "supernatural" and "natural" respectively) are mutually exclusive terms, they rely entirely on an arbitrary definition of what is "not-natural" and what is "natural", which just so tends to coincide with our knowledge of things.
Because of this, the only way to future-proof supernatural claims is to make them non-falsifiable; claims about things that are fundamentally unknowable. Unknowable claims are also fundamentally uninteresting and don't really
If you don't have that faith, more power to you. If someone else does, it is not your responsibility to convince them otherwise in such a fashion. I recall during our discussions on IRC, Herra, that you stated a desire to know the perspective of a religious mindset; I'm no longer so sure this is the case. From the neutral perspective, you're trying to convince InsaneBaron that there is something wrong with his faith, factually, based on his own presentation and interpretation. Please stop.
I do want to know the perspective of a religious mindset, especially in a case where the other party claims they have arrived to their position of faith based on. To me, people who adopt faith (any variant) rather than being grown into it are the most interesting case to observe, because they are the most alien to me (in the "why would someone do that" sense).
However:
1. I also want to make my mindset known to the other party of the discussion - making it a mutual exchange of ideas.
2. I will inquire and challenge the logical flaws or non-scientific arguments about scientific matters in the mindset I am presented to. Particularly if the other party uses logic or scientific terminology to support their position.
InsaneBaron claimed his faith was a result of coming to a conclusion after a long period of research. Now it is becaming obvious that his arguments for faith are pretty standard fare apologetics with all the logical pitfalls, and intelligent design strawmen of all things.
I don't exactly know what I expected, but based on his initial claim I'm sort of disappointed that it wasn't something more interesting. Regardless of that, though, since he said his conclusion was the result of research and his faith is based on logic, I'm going to assume that he would be interested in knowing if his conclusion is based on logical fallacies and therefore unreliable. Which, I believe it is, and have said as much in this thread.
So in this case I could argue that I'm not trying to disprove InsaneBaron's faith; I'm trying to unravel the logical spaghetti monster that InsaneBaron has constructed to support his faith.
But, for the sake of intellectual honesty, I'm going to end this post in a confession of sorts.
I consider faith-based world views in general to be inferior to those that don't rely on faith.
This is because of their propensity to cause harm due to decisions based on beliefs we can't know are true or not (faith being defined as belief without evidence).
That being the case, I also consider it a moral responsibility of a sort to at least attempt to convince a person otherwise if the matter comes up in a conversation.
I don't think proselytizing is a bad thing, regardless of whether it's done by a religious person or an atheist. In this matter, I share Penn Jillette's opinion (http://vimeo.com/52957285). If you believe that another person is going to go to hell because of their beliefs, it is a natural and humane thing to attempt to convince them to change their beliefs so that they won't have to suffer the negative consequences. I understand and respect that response, as long as freedom of choice is maintained and no one is forced into conversion one way or another.
Overt proselytizing is of course a different matter, in the same way spamming is. Which is why in real life I don't really push my views on others unless the matter comes up in a conversation, but in real life I also have all sorts of non-verbal cues as to how receptive the other person might be to what I'm saying, if they're getting offended by having their beliefs challenged, or otherwise just want to change the subject or go about their lives.
To make an analogy: If someone I knew were absolutely convinced that all carbohydrates are BadTM, and made a decision to stop eating carbohydrates entirely, and replace the energy deficiency in the diet by increased fat and protein intake, I would attempt to convince them otherwise, because they are making a bad decision based on a belief that isn't quite true.
Or if someone is convinced that it's a good idea to go climb a tall structure with no security harness or other preparation is a good idea because they have faith in their own abilities as a climber, I would make a serious effort to dissuade them of the idea, and definitely I would refuse to hold their beer. To what physical extent I would go to prevent their climbing attempts would probably depend on the context...
Matters of world view are rarely this critical and life-threatening, so I generally don't consider it a high enough priority to upset the apple cart in most cases.
So, why shouldn't I try to convince someone that there's something wrong with their faith, if that is my assessment of the situation? Either generally, or in this case particularly.
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is there some way I can sign my name to Herra's post like it was a public declaration or something?
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When you start a discussion on the basis that the other's opinion (since it is all opinion in the end) is inherently wrong and/or inferior, you are not having a discussion at all. Despite your claims that this is a "mutual exchange of ideas", when you state that there's something inherently wrong with faith based beliefs you have shown that you have no interest at all in a mutual exchange of ideas - you have closed yourself to the other's ideas by denouncing them as inferior.
And as such this discussion will go nowhere.
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When you start a discussion on the basis that the other's opinion (since it is all opinion in the end) is inherently wrong and/or inferior, you are not having a discussion at all. Despite your claims that this is a "mutual exchange of ideas", when you state that there's something inherently wrong with faith based beliefs you have shown that you have no interest at all in a mutual exchange of ideas - you have already discounted someone else's position as inferior.
And as such this discussion will go nowhere.
This is less about opinion and more about validity of claims.
Opinion implies a preference, choosing from several options the one that simply appeals to you the most. In the case of opinions, there is no necessary inferior or superior choice. The more trivial the opinion is, the less controversial it's going to be. But as the complexity of "opinion" increases, it transforms into a claim, a proposition of an idea.
While simple preference can be a reason for making a claim, it is generally held that for a claim to be considered true, valid, or worthy of consideration in any way it needs to be supported by something. In some cases, argumentative logic is sufficient. In some cases, material evidence is required.
Unlike simple preference opinions, opposing claims are not necessarily equally likely or equally valid.
In some cases, two claims can be supported equally by flawless logical arguments that simply start from different but equally valid premises; in such cases it can come back to simple preference of opinion. One such case would be whether Deontology is better than Consequentialism, for example.
In most cases, however, out of two opposing claims, one typically ends up being shown to be the less wrong one. In formal claims, a logical fallacy or error is discovered in the supporting argumentation for one of the claims. In physical sciences of course one claim typically ends up disproven and the opposing claim vindicated by physical evidence through experimentation.
To outline examples:
No one's going to seriously suggest that your favourite colour is wrong, because that's a simple opinion of preference. No one's going to ask you to prove it, either, except perhaps the Bridgekeeper.
However, if I say that socialism is fundamentally better system than capitalism, that may be based on opinion but it's still a claim that's going to require something else than simple preference to be taken seriously; in this case, sufficiently vigorous argumentation may be sufficient to convince
And if I say that there's an invisible pink unicorn having a tea party on orbit over Mars, that's not an opinion at all - it's an extraordinary claim and no one's going to take it seriously without extraordinary evidence. I would have to go to Mars on a spaceship, find evidence of this tea party and the IPU, document it in some reliable way, and make sure the experiment is repeatable by future Mars visitors.
The God claim is about the most extraordinary claim you could possibly make, yet it seems like majority of people have no issues basing their entire world view on the assumption that the God claim they specifically subscribe to is true. It also happens to be a non-falsifiable claim about an unknowable thing so it's impossible to provide any evidence regarding it. And while it is true that I am opposed to this claim, I am also fascinated by why people find it convincing enough to build their entire world view around.
I should perhaps elaborate a bit on the ending of my previous post.
My claim (not an opinion) is that faith-based world views are inferior to fact-based world views on a very specific way.
My argument for this claim is that faith-based decision making is more erratic than fact-based decision making, because you have no way to evaluate the validity of the beliefs. The consequences can be either positive, neutral, or negative depending on whether the beliefs happen to be true or false. It's a gamble of completely unknown odds, and expecting to win at such a gamble is wishful thinking.
I should perhaps emphasize that this does not necessarily mean that a person with faith-based world view is bound to always make poorer decisions than a person with no faith, nor that a person with fact-based world view (which by the way is probably an unreachable ideal) is going to make "best case" decision every time. Irrational decisions are something all humans are very good at doing, and it requires constant struggle and conscious effort to apply rational thought to your decisions. Self-deception, wishful thinking, all kinds of logical fallacies are things no sentient being is immune to.
However:
In a fact-based world view, you're going to make irrational decisions because you're a human.
In a faith-based world view, you're going to make irrational decisions because you're a human and you're basing some decisions on faith.
It's also a sliding scale, so it's not like I'm making a binary division that states "religious people are irrational and atheists are rational". Most people with faith-based world view don't really put faith all that high on their decision making hierarchy, despite identifying as a supporter of a given faith. In most cases, believers would end up making identical or close to identical decisions to a non-believer in same situation. In many cases, the doctrines of a given faith would coincide with the response of a non-believer in the same situation, so the decisions often end up more or less the same even if faith influences the decision making process. Additionally, the degree to which faith affects people's decisions is incredibly varied. For some, it affects trivial everyday things yet it isn't a factor in big, life-changing decisions; for some it is the opposite.
Regardless, the potential to make seemingly irrational decisions tends to increase as the importance of faith in the world view increases. It's not just religious faith, either; the same applies to any other belief systems; zealots of any variety can commit unspeakable acts in the name of whatever their ideology is. Whether it's for God's Glory or the Great Leader, in worst case scenarios the results tend to be similar.
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You could work out a little in the TLDR department. I mean, for gods sake man.
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Which makes it impossible to make statements about God using the tools of scientific inquiry. The presence or non-presence of god becomes a neutral term; Equations constructed with God's influence in mind and those constructed without him come out the same way.
I think this deserves a highlight, as it betrays a certain mindset that works at cross-purposes to the discussion. Attempting to make statements about God using the tools of scientific inquiry is exactly the mindset that leads to the straw conflict between religion and science. Similarly (this is aimed at Herra), taking the pedant's route and insisting that words used be defined scientifically (in order to then expose flaws in reasoning) is also contributing to this conflict-not-conflict. It directly links God's existence or non-existence, influence or non-influence, to a matter of fact, rather than a matter of faith.
If you don't have that faith, more power to you. If someone else does, it is not your responsibility to convince them otherwise in such a fashion. I recall during our discussions on IRC, Herra, that you stated a desire to know the perspective of a religious mindset; I'm no longer so sure this is the case. From the neutral perspective, you're trying to convince InsaneBaron that there is something wrong with his faith, factually, based on his own presentation and interpretation. Please stop.
I need clarification here. Are you asking that we stop debating the issue?
No. I'm cautioning against either side trying to prove the other wrong; that path lies madness.
I'm breaking off the discussion then, for three reasons.
1. If we're not supposed to try and prove eachother wrong, than this debate stops being a debate; we're essentially back where we were before we started making these titanic posts.
2. Joshua's got a fair point, we're reaching the impasse wall anyway.
3. Now that fall break break is over, the sheer volume of Herra's last three posts would take more time to respond to than I can reasonably take away from getting my degree.
EDIT: There's at least one point here on which Herra and I are in agreement: God either exists or He doesn't, and either way His existence or non-existence is a fact. And, I would add, an important one.
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I agree that a proper debate should have that tentative hypothesis of being able to prove the other guy wrong absolutely in the open. I do understand Scotty's point however, because the odds of that happening due to this conversation are nil, and if people actually porsue this objective, the conversation can go sour really really fast.
The best debates are those who have this hypothesis in the air, but none of the sides actually take it too seriously and rather use the debate for two distinct purposes: to learn better about all the arguments and counter-arguments, the reason why the other thinks the way they do (always useful or interesting per se); and to convince lurking fence sitters that might be persuaded by one of the debaters' better arguments. If the respect is held between the two debaters, then a good discussion can indeed take place. My 2 cents of course.
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Man, Herra, people aren't supposed to actually win discussion threads. What the hell.
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Man, Herra, people aren't supposed to actually win discussion threads. What the hell.
You think Herra won?
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Man, Herra, people aren't supposed to actually win discussion threads. What the hell.
Burying one side under TL;DR is not winning.
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Burying one side under TL;DR is not winning.
I agree and I don't actually consider "winning" particularly important in the first place.
But I'm not going to attempt to condense a complex argument into a "streamlined" TL;DR format where I only have to spend the next three posts clarifying my position anyway.
I'm breaking off the discussion then, for three reasons.
1. If we're not supposed to try and prove eachother wrong, than this debate stops being a debate; we're essentially back where we were before we started making these titanic posts.
As I wrote in one of the earlier post, "prove" is too strong a word for this type of discussions. The best one can hope is being able to convince the other party to re-evaluate their beliefs and what they're based on, and possibly change them. Proof either way is by definition impossible when you're discussing non-falsifiable claims.
2. Joshua's got a fair point, we're reaching the impasse wall anyway.
I dunno, it was actually just sort of getting interesting because we just started addressing the list of arguments you mentioned in support of your faith. The reason I got into this discussion so keenly was the fact you mentioned your faith was the result of some effort spent into researching and formulating a logical basis for it, and I was curious to see if there was anything there that actually departed from the apologetic arguments that I'm familiar with.
3. Now that fall break break is over, the sheer volume of Herra's last three posts would take more time to respond to than I can reasonably take away from getting my degree.
That is fair enough. :) I should probably do the same, but remember what I wrote in my last post about irrational decisions...
There's at least one point here on which Herra and I are in agreement: God either exists or He doesn't, and either way His existence or non-existence is a fact. And, I would add, an important one.
I only disagree on the last bit - even if God does exist, we can't actually know how important it is to guess this God-being's nature correctly.
It might be important, or it might be completely inconsequential. If a "God" exists (in whatever way you want to define God, imaginable or not), we have no way of knowing whether it would even appreciate us trying to guess its nature. And it's difficult for me to consider a being like that being overtly interested in how accurate our imagination happened to be.
In fact I would go a step further and say that it doesn't matter at all whether "God" exists or not. It doesn't even matter whether we humans call it a God or something else - it is equally valid to call the universe as a whole "divine" as it is to call it "mundane". It's just a matter of words after all.
Reality remains unchanged by our beliefs or definitions of it either way, whether it includes a God or doesn't.
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That was an irrational take, Herra. It does indeed matter if the following set of propositions are true or not: God exists, Hell exists and if you don't declare yourself a christian you will go to Hell. These facts do indeed matter, at least as far as your own existence is concerned. Now, you can do as I do and declare those beliefs absolute baseless, bogus, and easily explainable by moral demands of proto-civilizations to curb psychopaths into civility. Or you can do as many others do and take it as a truthful account of the world around us and decide on that basis whether one believes in that religion or not. Be as it may, I agree with Baron when he claims that the question is indeed important.
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It does indeed matter if the following set of propositions are true or not: God exists, Hell exists and if you don't declare yourself a christian you will go to Hell.
Why does it matter? You could just as accurately say this:
"It does indeed matter if the following set of propositions are true or not: God exists, Hell exists and if you don't declare yourself a muslim you will go to Hell."
You can replace the key word with any given sect or religion that condemns non-believers to a negative afterlife. If you consider the propositions of one religion important, then you should give equal treatment to all the other religions that make claims of similar nature, with similar types of consequences for a failure to guess the correct one.
So what you're actually saying is that the God question is important if the following propositions are true:
-one of the mutually exclusive salvation doctrines is the correct one
-you must pick one of the existing religions to have ANY chance of winning
-if you pick the correct one, you get infinite reward; if you fail, you get infinite punishment.
If these statements are true, then it follows that your highest priority in this life is to guess the correct one, of course.
But the odds are unbelievably stacked. Considering the amount of religions available to choose from, and bearing in mind that these are claims about fundamentally unknowable things, there is no way to compare the validity of these claims - each of them is just as likely to be the correct one as any other. So, the only way to choose is by simple preference or by picking one at random. Incidentally, your circumstances of birth pretty much qualify as "random choice" - most religious people adopt the faith of their parents.
Of course it all falls apart if you refuse to assume the basic propositions to be true, for which there is no basis.
There is no reason to believe that, even if God exists, anyone on Earth has the correct information on its nature. It is infinitely more likely for all existing religions to be wrong, than it is for one of them to be correct.
Secondly there is no reason to believe that if God exists, it will grant positive afterlife to those who guess God's nature correctly, and punishes those who fail to do so.
I could just as well claim that our universe is a simulation being run by unknown entities, with the goal of producing sentient minds that will be harvested after their death in the simulation, to be used as AIs for various tasks. But only the most suitable minds will get picked for the best jobs [insert suitable traits here]. If you aren't suited for any job, you will simply be deleted.
If this set of propositions is true, it's incredibly important, right?
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So basically you wrote a tldr argument on how you came to agree with my statement. I take it, thanks.
There is no reason to believe that, even if God exists, anyone on Earth has the correct information on its nature. It is infinitely more likely for all existing religions to be wrong, than it is for one of them to be correct.
Secondly there is no reason to believe that if God exists, it will grant positive afterlife to those who guess God's nature correctly, and punishes those who fail to do so.
This is innacurate writing. Of course I know what you mean, but again, to say that there is "no reason to believe" in any of those propositions is not true, period. There are many discussed reasons. You, as I, do find them insuficient. But they exist, and people who believe in them are worth every bit of intellectual respect.
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It does indeed matter if the following set of propositions are true or not: God exists, Hell exists and if you don't declare yourself a christian you will go to Hell.
Interestingly, even I am convinced those statements are incorrect- I don't hold that every non-Christian is automatically damned (or that every Christian is saved for that matter). God's fairer than that.
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How can you possibly know? And Ratzinger would tell you otherwise, btw. He should know it better than you, he's a theological expert.
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How can you possibly know? And Ratzinger would tell you otherwise, btw. He should know it better than you, he's a theological expert.
Wait, where did Ratzinger disagree?
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There are many discussed reasons. You, as I, do find them insuficient. But they exist, and people who believe in them are worth every bit of intellectual respect.
I'm sorry I've only been half paying attention to this thread could you give me a tl;dr summary of these?
[edit]never-mind, I misread your post, sorry]/edit]
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Luis, Herra is agreeing with you that the question is important, if one views that set of propositions as true. He is asking why this should matter when considering that there is a large set of contradictory propositions that have equal footing. I.e. why is it important to choose one of them as being true in the first place?
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Yes, but he had said something different before, namely, that it didn't even matter whatever was the case regarding god and our stance with him/her/it. That was what I was pointing out it is not true. It *does* matter if a particular set of propositions is true. Herra states something analogous to *Well that's all very arbitrary to me, why not the reverse?*, and that's fine, but there is a really large proportion of human beings on this planet who really believe in a set of propositions similar to what I have stated, and if this belief is so widespread, then I do think that it at least deserves attention and questioning.
I also find Herra's apparent calls to Apatheism a tad silly given his constant and never ending apologetics to atheism. Clearly, these questions are important to Herra, otherwise he wouldn't have wasted so much time with them.
How can you possibly know? And Ratzinger would tell you otherwise, btw. He should know it better than you, he's a theological expert.
Wait, where did Ratzinger disagree?
I was mistaken. He actually stated otherwise, now I have researched and found my statements wanting. I am sorry for that.
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Yes, but he had said something different before, namely, that it didn't even matter whatever was the case regarding god and our stance with him/her/it. That was what I was pointing out it is not true. It *does* matter if a particular set of propositions is true. Herra states something analogous to *Well that's all very arbitrary to me, why not the reverse?*, and that's fine, but there is a really large proportion of human beings on this planet who really believe in a set of propositions similar to what I have stated, and if this belief is so widespread, then I do think that it at least deserves attention and questioning.
Clearly, if a person thinks something is true, it is going to affect their life regardless of whether that belief is true or not. In that respect, I do agree that beliefs and faith play an important part in human lives - that should be obvious.
But circular logic is circular.
The only reason people consider these things important is because their religions state they are important. That doesn't give any factual basis to think that the things proposed in a religion are actually true.
That's what I refer to when I say it isn't fundamentally important whether any given set of propositions given by a religion is true. Since there is no way to gauge any unknowable claim's truth value, they are all equally meaningless, regardless of how important each defines themself to be.
I also find Herra's apparent calls to Apatheism a tad silly given his constant and never ending apologetics to atheism. Clearly, these questions are important to Herra, otherwise he wouldn't have wasted so much time with them.
Apatheism is not necessarily the right word, though I definitely would endorse avoidance of any religion regardless of whether you personally have faith in any divine or supernatural things or not.
These questions are important in the sense that my personal reaction to religions is pretty much confusion and dismay. I can't think of a reason why people would subject themselves to such horrible, immoral ideologies, especially regarding claims that are fundamentally unknowable. It baffles me as to why people consider any other person an "expert" in these matters. No one can actually know anything about these things, so it follows that no one knows the nature of god (if applicable) any better than you.
That is why I consider following another person's ideas to be an ill-advised decision and I think it's important to prompt people to question such a decision. Just because a lot of people believe in a particular set of propositions does not make those propositions particularly important, nor does it make them actually true.
The particular question of "Does God Exist" is not really important in my view because I consider the concept of God itself invalid or at least badly defined to begin with. The question "How do you define God" is much more interesting to begin with, because it establishes what kind of being or entity we're looking for. But typically, to do that, most people use concepts like "divine" or "supernatural", and that's where I see a logical fallacy, as outlined before.
It just so happens that in my understanding of cosmology there is no room for the traditional definition of "God". Any entity that might be called "God" I see as a natural occupant of Cosmos, regardless of its specific nature. The closest you could get to the traditional definition of "God" in Abrahamic religions is the Admin of a simulated universe, but then I don't really see what would be divine in such an entity. Sure, you could call it a God if you wanted, but what difference would it make if you actually could know the facts about it?
I'm actually fine (to some extent) with people having faith in something and even considering it important. I can understand that, it's not like I'm free of irrational beliefs. And I sort of have higher respect for someone who says "This is what I believe, and I can't explain why" than someone who says "This is what I believe, and my faith is supported by logic", because it seems to me that in most cases it is simply not true.
If it were true, a believer whose faith was supported by logic would change their view if a fallacy was pointed out in their logic. This usually does not happen, so I conclude that even if some people think their faith is supported by reason and logic, in most cases it actually isn't. The faith reinforces the idea that the "logic" to support it is correct. When a person is introduced to a fallacy in their presented logical support for their faith, they have a cognitive dissonance where they have to choose between continuing to believe their faith is supported by logic, or acknowledging that the logic is faulty.
It is a cheap way to attempt to convert people to faith by showing them "logical" arguments to support faith, hoping they don't spot the glaring logical fallacies. What makes it worse is when they have adopted the faith of a particular religion, it actually becomes harder to get a person to acknowledge the fallacies in the apologetics, because their faith supported by evidence becomes faith in the evidence - even if the evidence is proven faulty.
It's even worse because many religions define a person's worth through faith and the questioning of their faith is seen as an insult to the person.
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Clearly, if a person thinks something is true, it is going to affect their life regardless of whether that belief is true or not. In that respect, I do agree that beliefs and faith play an important part in human lives - that should be obvious.
But circular logic is circular.
The only reason people consider these things important is because their religions state they are important. That doesn't give any factual basis to think that the things proposed in a religion are actually true.
That's what I refer to when I say it isn't fundamentally important whether any given set of propositions given by a religion is true. Since there is no way to gauge any unknowable claim's truth value, they are all equally meaningless, regardless of how important each defines themself to be.
You write a lot, Herra, but you keep making the same mistakes. No, what is "True" is important here. If hell were real, then I'd say that it was a very important fact to know, whether if you believe in it or not. You still claim this would be unimportant, but the problem here is one of logic. You are conflating two issues. One is the importance of Hell if it were true. The other is its probability of existence, or accepting the seriousness of its hypothesis to begin with. These are separate and you conflate them.
It baffles me as to why people consider any other person an "expert" in these matters. No one can actually know anything about these things, so it follows that no one knows the nature of god (if applicable) any better than you.
It baffles you for no good reason either. A good empiricist will recognize the existence of these highly intelligent people making these metaphysical arguments and "bafflement" about it is unhelpful. You should instead engage with it and try to understand where this strain of thought is coming from. Clearly, it's not "stooopid", but actually smart and thoughtful, or otherwise it would be as respected as astrology is. By the looks of the amount of intelligent brains one can easily see that it isn't the brainless ****fest you claim it is.
I'm actually fine (to some extent) with people having faith in something and even considering it important. I can understand that, it's not like I'm free of irrational beliefs. And I sort of have higher respect for someone who says "This is what I believe, and I can't explain why" than someone who says "This is what I believe, and my faith is supported by logic", because it seems to me that in most cases it is simply not true.
This is why you keep having problems with these conversations: your logic is amazingly condescending. To decree religious belief as irrational assumes there is no rationality behind it, when it clearly is. Now, we can claim, as I do, that this rationality is wrong, but ****ing irrational?!?? That won't do. No.
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You write a lot, Herra, but you keep making the same mistakes. No, what is "True" is important here. If hell were real, then I'd say that it was a very important fact to know, whether if you believe in it or not.
However there is a nearly infinite number of these important questions then. Is Hell real? Is God real? Is Krishna real? Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster real?
All of these questions are important if they are actually real. So look at this as a matter of priorities. If I have a high priority task I absolutely need to do today which will take most of the day, I can say it's important. If I have 5 of those all of which have the same priority it becomes harder to say which one is important. If I have an infinite number of tasks, then none of them are important simply because there is no reason I can say any of those tasks should be done before the others and saying "I have one billion important things to do today" is ridiculous. I'll leave it as a open question whether actually doing one of those things as opposed to simply ignoring the entire lot is the rational choice or not.
So I kinda see where Herra is coming from. Given an infinitely large number of "important" questions each of which have an infinitesimally small chance of actually having the correct conditions to be the "Truly Important Question", it's not unreasonable to say that none of them are actually very important.
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You write a lot, Herra, but you keep making the same mistakes. No, what is "True" is important here. If hell were real, then I'd say that it was a very important fact to know, whether if you believe in it or not. You still claim this would be unimportant, but the problem here is one of logic. You are conflating two issues. One is the importance of Hell if it were true. The other is its probability of existence, or accepting the seriousness of its hypothesis to begin with. These are separate and you conflate them.
No. When you make a claim that is fundamentally unknowable and non-falsifiable, it doesn't become important even if it proposes itself to be important. That's my whole point.
No one can know if [supernatural claim] is true or not. The hypothesis is entirely man-made; there is no way for anyone to have factual information on it.
You can make infinite amount of claims that "if they were true" would be extremely important. It does not make the claims important, and it definitely shouldn't make it the most important thing in our lives to figure out an answer to an unknowable question.
If it did, there would be nothing anyone would ever get done, being obsessed with figuring out whether all kinds of imagined things are true or not. There is absolutely nothing in God-claim or Hell-claim that sets them apart from any other outlandish, unreasonable claims that anyone could make up.
It baffles me as to why people consider any other person an "expert" in these matters. No one can actually know anything about these things, so it follows that no one knows the nature of god (if applicable) any better than you.
It baffles you for no good reason either. A good empiricist will recognize the existence of these highly intelligent people making these metaphysical arguments and "bafflement" about it is unhelpful. You should instead engage with it and try to understand where this strain of thought is coming from.
Rational observation reveals that highly intelligent people are making claims of some certainty about unknowable things. This is irrational. The baffling part is where one identifies these people as highly intelligent, yet engaging in irrational behaviour.
And anyone following a religious authority of any kind is ignoring the blatant fact that clearly, they cannot know the things they are speaking of.
Clearly, it's not "stooopid", but actually smart and thoughtful, or otherwise it would be as respected as astrology is. By the looks of the amount of intelligent brains one can easily see that it isn't the brainless ****fest you claim it is.
No. Argument from popularity. If there's two different belief systems and one has larger number of people supporting it, that doesn't make it more valid than the other. Neither one still presents any worthwhile reason to believe in it without a circular argument from within that says it's important to believe in this particular branch of nonsense.
In this respect there is no fundamental difference between salvation doctrines and astrology.
I mean, if the stars dictated your life, the challenges and opportunities you have any given day, wouldn't it be important to know it? Call your local Astrologist now, don't forsake yourself to endless misfortune!
I'm actually fine (to some extent) with people having faith in something and even considering it important. I can understand that, it's not like I'm free of irrational beliefs. And I sort of have higher respect for someone who says "This is what I believe, and I can't explain why" than someone who says "This is what I believe, and my faith is supported by logic", because it seems to me that in most cases it is simply not true.
This is why you keep having problems with these conversations: your logic is amazingly condescending. To decree religious belief as irrational assumes there is no rationality behind it, when it clearly is. Now, we can claim, as I do, that this rationality is wrong, but ****ing irrational?!?? That won't do. No.
Condescending? What?
Look up the definition of irrational. I'm not the one who came up with it, but it is a word that describes what faith is.
Faith is irrational by definition. How is it condescending to point out that fact? It doesn't synonymously mean that people who have faith "are" irrational in the sense that they cannot behave in a rational manner. Clearly, they regularly do behave in a rational manner - you can't usually point out to people on the street and separate religious and non-religious people based on their outward appearance or behaviour (though sometimes you can). But the part of their world view governed by faith remains irrational, and that's a fact.
For someone to claim their faith is supported by reason/logic/evidence, it isn't faith at all. It is an attempt to rationalize a belief system, a crutch in the absence of faith. And in every case so far I've observed, the reason/logic/evidence has been faulty and lacking.
A religious person who acknowledges their faith is irrational, is more rational than a religious person who insists their faith is rational, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
Actually, you know what's really condescending? Blank tolerance of any belief systems.
Which one is more condescending?
A. "Ok. You go ahead and keep believing what you believe."
B. "I think you're wrong, I disagree with your views, and this is why."
To me, it seems like the unsaid part of option A is "I still think you're wrong, but I don't think you have the ability to change your views, even if I tried to convince you of how absurd they are". It's the way you would talk to a child or mentally disabled person when you think you would just confuse or upset them by trying to correct their way of thinking.
Of course that doesn't mean one should go full autistic every time you encounter someone who's religious or has different political views or has whatever difference in opinion compared to yours. It's a smart thing to gauge how receptive the other person would be to an attempt to convince them otherwise, and if they express that they aren't interested to be convinced otherwise - drop the matter.
But it doesn't mean you should "accept" and "tolerate" every kind of nonsense anyone happens to believe in.
Sure, everyone has a right to self-determination and if they want to spend their money on astrological advice, I'm not going to stop them. If someone really wants to torment themselves by the idea that their un-believer child will go to hell, I can't really affect that either. But then you have cases where religious or cultural norms demand parents to mistreat their children for example, and that's where we get back to one of the original points of the discussion: Faith, being irrational by definition, can lead people to making irrational decisions that harm other people.
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However there is a nearly infinite number of these important questions then. Is Hell real? Is God real? Is Krishna real? Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster real?
All of these questions are important if they are actually real. So look at this as a matter of priorities. If I have a high priority task I absolutely need to do today which will take most of the day, I can say it's important. If I have 5 of those all of which have the same priority it becomes harder to say which one is important. If I have an infinite number of tasks, then none of them are important simply because there is no reason I can say any of those tasks should be done before the others and saying "I have one billion important things to do today" is ridiculous. I'll leave it as a open question whether actually doing one of those things as opposed to simply ignoring the entire lot is the rational choice or not.
So I kinda see where Herra is coming from. Given an infinitely large number of "important" questions each of which have an infinitesimally small chance of actually having the correct conditions to be the "Truly Important Question", it's not unreasonable to say that none of them are actually very important.
You are conflating two issues. One is the importance of Hell if it were true. The other is its probability of existence, or accepting the seriousness of its hypothesis to begin with. These are separate and you conflate them.
****ing hell.
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Perhaps we have a different understanding of what "important" actually means.
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No. When you make a claim that is fundamentally unknowable and non-falsifiable, it doesn't become important even if it proposes itself to be important. That's my whole point.
Then write it that way. This was not what you had said. You said that even if God were real it didn't matter, that we shouldn't try to guess what and how it behaves, etc. I merely told you the obvious: that if you allow yourself to entertain this hypothesis, then you must also entertain the fact that it's an important fact of the world. If you, OTOH, say as you are saying that this hypothesis is irrelevant, man-made, non factually based, arbitrary, so on and so on, then you are saying that you won't entertain the hypothesis. But this is a different thing to say. If you keep changing what you say, I'll have trouble keeping up with you, that is not surprising.
No. Argument from popularity. If there's two different belief systems and one has larger number of people supporting it, that doesn't make it more valid than the other. Neither one still presents any worthwhile reason to believe in it without a circular argument from within that says it's important to believe in this particular branch of nonsense.
It's not an argument from popularity. The popularity itself, furthermore from highly intelligent beings, is a sign that there's probably more than just "irrational" nonsense about it. This inference is extremely solid, and there's no realm filled with lists of fallacies you can pull off here that disproves this simple heuristic. Now, you can decide to learn these rationalities or not, that's up to you. But if you ignore them or won't learn them, then two things happen: first, it's your choice, I don't think you'll lose too much without them. Second, you can't them declare them "irrational". You did not engage with them, it's you who are at fault.
If you are declaring them irrational, then the burden of proof resides on you. YOU show how all of the most respected arguments are "irrational". You won't be able to do so, because even if I disagree with them, to call them irrational is beyond reason. It's stretching your case far far too much. It won't do, because they are not irrational. They are wrong, which is a quite different thing.
In this respect there is no fundamental difference between salvation doctrines and astrology.
I mean, if the stars dictated your life, the challenges and opportunities you have any given day, wouldn't it be important to know it? Call your local Astrologist now, don't forsake yourself to endless misfortune!
Anyone who hasn't considered the hypothesis that Astrology could be real isn't a good skeptic in the first place. Even if that personal investigation only lasted a few seconds of thought.
Faith is irrational by definition. How is it condescending to point out that fact? It doesn't synonymously mean that people who have faith "are" irrational in the sense that they cannot behave in a rational manner. Clearly, they regularly do. But the part of their world view governed by faith remains irrational, and that's a fact.
Faith is irrational by definition? Now we are entering peculiar domains here. Ok Herra, show me where "faith", definitionally, is irrational. Then go on proving that "Hope", "Trust" and "Belief" are irrational things that humans do, definitionally.
Now, now, don't change your goalposts here, Herra. You make these silly wild claims, you back them up.
For someone to claim their faith is supported by reason/logic/evidence, it isn't faith at all. It is an attempt to rationalize a belief system, a crutch in the absence of faith. And in every case so far I've observed, the reason/logic/evidence has been faulty and lacking.
So all those people who reached faith through a rational reading of theological arguments, they are simply illusions of my deluded mind? They actually do not exist? Are you capable of mind-reading, Herra? Are you telling me that InsaneBaron, for instance, is simply deluded or just outright lying when he said that he reached his religiosity through reason? This is a grave accusation, I'm sure you have evidence to back this up, and no don't give me the usual "psychologists find that people sometimes do this..." ****.
Actually, you know what's really condescending? Blank tolerance of any belief systems.
Why would I pick between two condescending visions? You are having trouble parsing the difference between irrationality and being wrong.
Perhaps we have a different understanding of what "important" actually means.
I'd say that living in an eternal hellfire, if true, would be in the "important" category. If it wouldn't, then I haven't the faintest clue what you mean by "important". This reply of yours shows me you didn't understand what I told you. I'm bored already.
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You said that even if God were real it didn't matter, that we shouldn't try to guess what and how it behaves, etc. I merely told you the obvious: that if you allow yourself to entertain this hypothesis, then you must also entertain the fact that it's an important fact of the world. If you, OTOH, say as you are saying that this hypothesis is irrelevant, man-made, non factually based, arbitrary, so on and so on, then you are saying that you won't entertain the hypothesis. But this is a different thing to say. If you keep changing what you say, I'll have trouble keeping up with you, that is not surprising.
Just that. Even if God exists, in the sense of religious definition of the word, it remains something we can't actually have any reliable information about.
And because the nature of this God is unknowable, there would be an infinite amount of possibilities of what he likes to wear and what kind of flattery would best work to give you a good afterlife. Infinite questions to answer that would each claim to be just as important as the other. Making all of them kind of irrelevant and not, in any regular definition of the word, "important".
No. Argument from popularity. If there's two different belief systems and one has larger number of people supporting it, that doesn't make it more valid than the other. Neither one still presents any worthwhile reason to believe in it without a circular argument from within that says it's important to believe in this particular branch of nonsense.
It's not an argument from popularity. The popularity itself, furthermore from highly intelligent beings, is a sign that there's probably more than just "irrational" nonsense about it. This inference is extremely solid, and there's no realm filled with lists of fallacies you can pull off here that disproves this simple heuristic. Now, you can decide to learn these rationalities or not, that's up to you. But if you ignore them or won't learn them, then two things happen: first, it's your choice, I don't think you'll lose too much without them. Second, you can't them declare them "irrational". You did not engage with them, it's you who are at fault.
If you are declaring them irrational, then the burden of proof resides on you. YOU show how all of the most respected arguments are "irrational". You won't be able to do so, because even if I disagree with them, to call them irrational is beyond reason. It's stretching your case far far too much. It won't do, because they are not irrational. They are wrong, which is a quite different thing.
The argument of popularity you made is that there are more people that consider religious claims valid, than there are people who consider astrological claims valid, and that somehow this makes religious claims possibly more valid. It doesn't.
EDIT: In case I misread you, if you meant that the people who believe in religious claims are smarter than people who believe in astrological claims, that is instead an argument from authority and just as invalid as argument from popularity...
When someone makes claims about unknowable things, it doesn't matter how highly intelligent they are; their claims are irrational.
Anyone who hasn't considered the hypothesis that Astrology could be real isn't a good skeptic in the first place. Even if that personal investigation only lasted a few seconds of thought.
True. So what? The same could be said about any claim anyone could make.
Faith is irrational by definition. How is it condescending to point out that fact? It doesn't synonymously mean that people who have faith "are" irrational in the sense that they cannot behave in a rational manner. Clearly, they regularly do. But the part of their world view governed by faith remains irrational, and that's a fact.
Faith is irrational by definition? Now we are entering peculiar domains here. Ok Herra, show me where "faith", definitionally, is irrational.
Faith in the context of this argument meaning belief in supernatural things of some degree, typically a deity, without any possible way to present evidence to support the belief. Also the associated doctrines.
I'm fairly sure we weren't discussing what it means if you sign a contract "in good faith" (legal definition) or if you're faithful to your spouse, but rather specifically in the sense of religious faith.
Then go on proving that "Hope", "Trust" and "Belief" are irrational things that humans do, definitionally.
Now, now, don't change your goalposts here, Herra. You make these silly wild claims, you back them up.
Who's being a pedant now...? Faith as a word is synonymous to those things, but it doesn't necessarily work the other way. For example, I see a definite difference in nuance between saying "I trust you", and "I have faith in you". But I'll work with what you gave me.
Hope is a manifestation of wishful thinking. It is irrational, so that one was easy.
Trust is reliance on something; whether it be trust in a person, physical thing, or something else. For example, a wall climber trusts their safety harness because they know it's strong enough to support their weight. Trust in person can mean that you rely on them to keep information confidential, or rely on them to complete a task given to them. If you know a person is competent and reliable, it is a rational thing to do to trust in them. If on the other hand you don't know them yet and give them a task or confidential information, trusting them with it could be seen as irrational. On the other hand, in certain situations trusting a stranger is the rational thing to do according to game theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma)... so it depends highly on context.
Trust can be based on facts, in which case it is rational, or not, in which case it is irrational. In the context of the discussion, trust is not very relevant but I suppose you could say a religious person might trust a religious authority - which is an irrational thing to do.
Beliefs, likewise, can be based on evidence or not. In the case of former, a belief is rational - to the extent that fact is usually defined as a well-supported true belief - while in the case of latter, a belief without evidence is irrational.
So yes: In the context of this discussion, faith is definitionally irrational, as are hope (wishful thinking), trust (in religious authorities), and belief (without evidence).
So all those people who reached faith through a rational reading of theological arguments, they are simply illusions of my deluded mind? They actually do not exist?
They are making claims of knowing unknowable things.
This is a position that cannot have a rational basis. The people claiming this clearly exist and you are not the one who's deluded. It is the people claiming their religious beliefs are supported by rational thought, logic, or physical evidence that are delusional.
Non-denominational theology itself can be perfectly rational study of concepts relating to God or religions in general. Denominational theology, like theological doctrines of Christianity, not so much...
Are you telling me that InsaneBaron, for instance, is simply deluded or just outright lying when he said that he reached his religiosity through reason?
If you want to use the word "deluded", fair enough. He is making claims of knowing unknowable things; although to his credit he has not claimed to know things with absolute certainty - just that he himself has become convinced that whatever he believes is true.
Regardless, the expectation that you can support unknowable things through rational inquiry is, in itself, irrational.
This is a grave accusation, I'm sure you have evidence to back this up, and no don't give me the usual "psychologists find that people sometimes do this..." ****.
Why is it a grave accusation? It's not any more serious than saying that people who believe in astrology are delusional.
Why would I pick between two condescending visions? You are having trouble parsing the difference between irrationality and being wrong.
What vision would you prefer, then?
Perhaps we have a different understanding of what "important" actually means.
I'd say that living in an eternal hellfire, if true, would be in the "important" category. If it wouldn't, then I haven't the faintest clue what you mean by "important". This reply of yours shows me you didn't understand what I told you. I'm bored already.
As explained already, the contents of a claim about unknowable things do not affect the importance of the claim.
All claims made about unknowable things are fundamentally unimportant, uninteresting, irrelevant, and irrational. You could make any statement as "important" as you want, if one were to assume it were true, but that doesn't make the claim itself important. Not even if half the people in the world (smart or not) believe it.
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Okay, so you held this entire debate not only on the assumption that I was wrong in my conclusions, but that I was downright deluded. Unless you want to fix that statement, this all seems much less civil all of a sudden.
Listen. I've given you reasons for my standpoint. I can give you more if you want, although I suspect you won't listen. You disagree with my standpoint, and I can accept that. You've given reasonable arguments for your own views. But if nothing else, you have to acknowledge that there are rational arguments for people like me to believe in the existence of a God. We both consider eachother to be wrong, and that's acceptable, but claiming that my standpoint is not only wrong but downright "irrational" is indeed quite condescending, while at the same time unlikely to convince the other person. You're never going to convince anyone of anything if you assume that when they say "I have rational reasons to believe X", they're lying or deluded.
Regarding the astrology analogy, the difference here is that, as Luis pointed out, the fact that highly intelligent people, and large numbers of them, have been convinced, at all points in history, that there was a God, and spent their time writing down the rational arguments that had convinced them of it, does not prove that Theism is true. But it does at least prove that it is worthy of serious intellectual treatment. Astrology does not have that status, not only that, astrology makes scientific claims that are, in fact, testable. Christianity, in its basic, intellectual form, does not make scientific claims because it's not a matter of science.
Finally, you repeatedly claim that we're dealing with something unknowable. This was never my claim, nor anyone else's, and it's simply incorrect. I repeatedly attempted to explain to you ways in which we can, in fact, deduce some knowlege of the supernatural. I also pointed out that theists throughout history have argued that we could know something about God because He decided to tell us about himself. You can argue that the claims are false if you like, and I would take you seriously there, but instead you repeatedly act as if the claims were never made.
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And because the nature of this God is unknowable, there would be an infinite amount of possibilities of what he likes to wear and what kind of flattery would best work to give you a good afterlife. Infinite questions to answer that would each claim to be just as important as the other. Making all of them kind of irrelevant and not, in any regular definition of the word, "important".
You're the one stating that god is "unknowable". Christians heavily disagree with you here, but that's not even what I stated. What I stated was, if God exists, if Hell is real, then it is an important fact of the world. To this you come up with the most irrelevant non sequiturs. It is important, even if it is unknowable. In that scenario, we would be facing a kind of Lovecraftian nightmare situation, wherein something really really really important was true, but you couldn't even understand it before you were faced with it. Now to this you say "but many infinite possibilities abound, so I won't make it important", and then I'll point you to the conflation I told you were making and still persist on making. Those are two very different things to say, they are not the same.
The argument of popularity you made is that there are more people that consider religious claims valid, than there are people who consider astrological claims valid, and that somehow this makes religious claims possibly more valid. It doesn't.
EDIT: In case I misread you, if you meant that the people who believe in religious claims are smarter than people who believe in astrological claims, that is instead an argument from authority and just as invalid as argument from popularity...
It's not an "argument" for the case of the matter, it's an empirical observation that gives you an heuristic to wonder whether if there's more to religious thought than "irrational nonsense", and a good one at that. It is possible they are all deluded idiots when it comes to religion, but unlikely. I won't repeat this any more. If you persist on this misreading I will excuse myself from this conversation.
When someone makes claims about unknowable things, it doesn't matter how highly intelligent they are; their claims are irrational.
Anyone who hasn't considered the hypothesis that Astrology could be real isn't a good skeptic in the first place. Even if that personal investigation only lasted a few seconds of thought.
True. So what? The same could be said about any claim anyone could make.
We're talking past each other. I'm really getting bored here.
Faith is irrational by definition? Now we are entering peculiar domains here. Ok Herra, show me where "faith", definitionally, is irrational.
Faith in the context of this argument meaning belief in supernatural things of some degree, typically a deity, without any possible way to present evidence to support the belief. Also the associated doctrines.
I'm fairly sure we weren't discussing what it means if you sign a contract "in good faith" (legal definition) or if you're faithful to your spouse, but rather specifically in the sense of religious faith.
You are doing what I asked you not to do, namely goalpost shift your way out of your claims. You claimed not that faith "contextually" was irrational, but that it was DEFINITIONALLY irrational. You are now weaseling out of that claim. Own it or drop it.
Who's being a pedant now...? Faith as a word is synonymous to those things, but it doesn't necessarily work the other way. For example, I see a definite difference in nuance between saying "I trust you", and "I have faith in you". But I'll work with what you gave me.
Oh ****ing hell. You said faith was irrational DEFINITIONALLY. Now you tell me I am the pedant one, just before going on a segway on prisoner's dillemma and so on, and how it's all about CONTEXT? Come on Herra, you're flailing here. Of course it's about context. The problem is that you declared faith irrational from the get go, definitionally. And then you wonder why you are being read as condescending.
Trust can be based on facts, in which case it is rational, or not, in which case it is irrational. In the context of the discussion, trust is not very relevant but I suppose you could say a religious person might trust a religious authority - which is an irrational thing to do.
Beliefs, likewise, can be based on evidence or not. In the case of former, a belief is rational - to the extent that fact is usually defined as a well-supported true belief - while in the case of latter, a belief without evidence is irrational.
So yes: In the context of this discussion, faith is definitionally irrational, as are hope (wishful thinking), trust (in religious authorities), and belief (without evidence).
So after all that TLDR talk about how faith is irrational in certain contexts, you conclude that faith is definitionally irrational. Can I facepalm any harder at this? No, Herra. Either faith is contextually irrational or definitionally. Not both at the same time, because that is weasily trying to win an argument using logical fallacies. And because you have found the obvious, namely that it can only be contextually, then it cannot be definitionally.
Is this pedantic? No. Because you use these absolutist terminologies in order to advance your case, it's not my fault that you use them so badly and without any kind of semantic rigor.
This is a position that cannot have a rational basis. The people claiming this clearly exist and you are not the one who's deluded. It is the people claiming their religious beliefs are supported by rational thought, logic, or physical evidence that are delusional.
Non-denominational theology itself can be perfectly rational study of concepts relating to God or religions in general. Denominational theology, like theological doctrines of Christianity, not so much...
Cannot? Oh my. I'm sure you'll now give a mathematical proof of this absolute statement. It's not only that "cannot" is an absolute statement, completely overreaching your case here, it's that it is demonstrably wrong, since many rationalities have been advanced not only for the case of God, but also for the case of God being the God of the Christians. These rationalities, you might call them weak. You might call them insufficient. You might say they are not sufficient to bridge the epistemological, ontological gap, but they are there and are not irrational. If you persist on doing so, you should at least feel compelled to show how and why they are so. Nevertheless, you could read more good philosophical apologetics and actually engage with it. Perhaps then you'll find that it's not so easy to discard it as "irrational".
Are you telling me that InsaneBaron, for instance, is simply deluded or just outright lying when he said that he reached his religiosity through reason?
If you want to use the word "deluded", fair enough. He is making claims of knowing unknowable things; although to his credit he has not claimed to know things with absolute certainty - just that he himself has become convinced that whatever he believes is true.
Regardless, the expectation that you can support unknowable things through rational inquiry is, in itself, irrational.
Strawmans are fallacious, you know? No one ever said that you can support unknowable things through rational inquiry. You believe they are unknowable, InsaneBaron clearly does not. It is only irrational if you assume they are unknowable. But that's not their assumption.
What vision would you prefer, then?
The vision of a world where people aren't gratuitously called irrational just because they happen to believe in some religion's tenets. A world where people are actually respectful of each other and realise there are many rationales for religion, thus it's not irrationality that is at its core.
As explained already, the contents of a claim about unknowable things do not affect the importance of the claim.
All claims made about unknowable things are fundamentally unimportant, uninteresting, irrelevant, and irrational. You could make any statement as "important" as you want, if one were to assume it were true, but that doesn't make the claim itself important. Not even if half the people in the world (smart or not) believe it.
Yes, you keep misreading what I said in order to make your own case. I'm done here. Have fun talking with strawmans.
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I believe I now have faith in Herra. :D
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Okay, so you held this entire debate not only on the assumption that I was wrong in my conclusions, but that I was downright deluded. Unless you want to fix that statement, this all seems much less civil all of a sudden.
It all hinges on whether the definition of God given in the premises of faith is of the knowable variety, or unknowable variety. That is why the first question I asked was how you define God, and if I recall you responded with "supernatural intelligent being that created the world", or something to that effect.
Since then, we have had a discussion about what defines supernatural, with various definitions given. One of the most sensible definitions for "supernatural" is that it is incomprehensible, unknowable, forever impossible for humans to understand. Your definition of supernatural may vary, but then I would question what makes it different from "natural" in the first place. If it's possible to gain accurate, reliable information about God, shouldn't he stop being supernatural the moment we acquire that knowledge and understanding about the subject?
In essence, my interpretation is that you declared God to be unknowable, yet claim to have reached knowledge through rational means.
Listen. I've given you reasons for my standpoint. I can give you more if you want, although I suspect you won't listen. You disagree with my standpoint, and I can accept that. You've given reasonable arguments for your own views. But if nothing else, you have to acknowledge that there are rational arguments for people like me to believe in the existence of a God.
Unless you redefine what you mean by "God" to a significant degree, I really can't acknowledge rational arguments for believing in such a thing.
The way I see it, God can either be supernatural or you can have rational arguments to believe in a natural God's existence. You can't have it both ways.
We both consider eachother to be wrong, and that's acceptable, but claiming that my standpoint is not only wrong but downright "irrational" is indeed quite condescending, while at the same time unlikely to convince the other person. You're never going to convince anyone of anything if you assume that when they say "I have rational reasons to believe X", they're lying or deluded.
Nah, your standpoint itself might be right or wrong (for what it's worth, anyway). I wouldn't know, because I consider supernatural to be unknowable. That 's a separate thing from "rational" (based on reason) and "irrational" (not based on reason). It is the definition of supernatural that is the start of all the problems...
Regarding the astrology analogy, the difference here is that, as Luis pointed out, the fact that highly intelligent people, and large numbers of them, have been convinced, at all points in history, that there was a God, and spent their time writing down the rational arguments that had convinced them of it, does not prove that Theism is true. But it does at least prove that it is worthy of serious intellectual treatment. Astrology does not have that status, not only that, astrology makes scientific claims that are, in fact, testable. Christianity, in its basic, intellectual form, does not make scientific claims because it's not a matter of science.
You're right in the sense that astrology has made some falsifiable claims (which have of course been readily falsified by scientific inquiry); not that the people who believe in astrology care about that) whereas religions in general don't. However, I could just as well say that highly intelligent people (http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/astrology/newton.htm), and large numbers of then, have been convinced that astrology was reliable and accurate science.
That doesn't mean astrology is worthy of serious intellectual treatment.
Also, I would sort of disagree with the assessment that Christianity doesn't make scientific claims. It makes a lot of claims, period. The concept of "scientific claim" is a relatively modern one; certainly the claims weren't categorized as such in the days when the scripture was canonized. The existence of soul for example is treated as a serious claim even if nowadays it would be classified as unscientific claim on the simple basis that it isn't testable or falsifiable. Certainly the cosmological claims made by Christianity have been taken seriously at some point - and some still do, even against insurmountable evidence to the contrary.
It seems a bit like cherry-picking to choose only the non-testable claims and then say that "basic intellectual form" of Christianity doesn't make scientific, testable claims. Sure, if you define things that way.
Finally, you repeatedly claim that we're dealing with something unknowable. This was never my claim, nor anyone else's, and it's simply incorrect.
In that case, we are in a serious disagreement as to what "Supernatural" means. Which, I concede, is highly possible, considering our earlier argument about the matter didn't really go anywhere; as I recall you claimed it was possible for something to exist without physical matter or energy, which I refuted.
I repeatedly attempted to explain to you ways in which we can, in fact, deduce some knowlege of the supernatural.
And I remember trying to point out that if we can in some ways observe "supernatural" it follows logically that the thing we're observing is, in fact, natural rather than supernatural.
Similarly if there is a way for us to observe (ie. gain knowledge of) God, that means God is a natural rather than supernatural being.
In that case, I wouldn't object to such a being's existence, nor would I question the rational methods of acquiring the evidence. Instead I would question the meaning of calling a natural being "God".
I also pointed out that theists throughout history have argued that we could know something about God because He decided to tell us about himself. You can argue that the claims are false if you like, and I would take you seriously there, but instead you repeatedly act as if the claims were never made.
No, I remember distinctly addressing a claim relating to scriptures and pointing out that none of them are reliable because they tend to be in contradiction with each other and the information they contain is highly dependent on the culture they originated in. I definitely argue that scriptures as evidence of divine being(s) are insufficient at best case scenario, since there is no evidence of them being of divine origin.
I never acted as though the claims were never made.
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You're the one stating that god is "unknowable". Christians heavily disagree with you here.
Unknowable is practically synonymous to "supernatural", because any other definition of supernatural simply falls apart when enough information is acquired on a supernatural subject.
It's not an "argument" for the case of the matter, it's an empirical observation that gives you an heuristic to wonder whether if there's more to religious thought than "irrational nonsense", and a good one at that. It is possible they are all deluded idiots when it comes to religion, but unlikely. I won't repeat this any more. If you persist on this misreading I will excuse myself from this conversation.
You don't have to be an idiot to be delusional. It's not like I'm saying theological doctrines (given that they are internally consistent) or apologetic arguments can't be well-structured, even seemingly rational. But they are built on irrational premise, and the number of people or their intelligence does not in any way change the fact.
Is this pedantic? No. Because you use these absolutist terminologies in order to advance your case, it's not my fault that you use them so badly and without any kind of semantic rigor.
Thankfully, forum posts are not legal documents where you have to include an entire category for DEFINITIONS before you actually get to the point. "Religious beliefs without evidence to support them will be hereafter referred to as FAITH in this document."
Seriously.
Strawmans are fallacious, you know? No one ever said that you can support unknowable things through rational inquiry. You believe they are unknowable, InsaneBaron clearly does not. It is only irrational if you assume they are unknowable. But that's not their assumption.
True. It's only irrational to think you know God if God is unknowable.
Now please give a definition of "supernatural" that isn't synonymous to "unknowable", and doesn't fall apart the moment you acquire information on a supernatural subject.
Because, you know, supernatural things become natural when you learn about them. I thought that was kinda obvious, really.
What vision would you prefer, then?
The vision of a world where people aren't gratuitously called irrational just because they happen to believe in some religion's tenets. A world where people are actually respectful of each other and realise there are many rationales for religion, thus it's not irrationality that is at its core.
I'm not sure if there's some linguistic barrier affecting things but you seem to be fixated on equating "irrational" with "idiot".
I'm not using the term as an insult or to describe a person. I'm using it to describe a position that is not rational. Belief in supernatural things is irrational, whether the belief itself is right or wrong (which we can't know). Trying to defend such a belief with rational methods is irrational.
Also, I can respect a person perfectly well even if they're being irrational about a particular thing in their lives. It's not like religion defines a person, it's just one aspect of them. And I don't need to respect a person's beliefs to respect the person.
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Herra, I'm beating the dead horse just by making this post.
First off, you are fighting a strawman every time you complain that religion claims to know something about the unknowable. The definition of "supernatural" is not "unknowable". No religion defines it this way. Check wikipedia for goodness sake: "The supernatural is that which is not subject to the laws of physics, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature." "Unknowability" is not part of the definition of "supernatural", or the definition of "God". If you want to convince someone of something, you have to argue against what they actually believe.
Second, I entered this debate on the assumption that you had rational arguments for your beliefs, and were firmly and honestly convinced that said arguments were true. I now find out, after the discussion bogged down, that you did not share that assumption with regards to me. I consider your beliefs "wrong", that is I'm convinced that you made an error in your reasoning somewhere along the line. Luis, evidently shares that approach to my beliefs, and for that reason I'd be willing and eager to discuss the issue further with Luis, if he's interested in doing so in the future. You, however, make the claim that my standpoint is not only wrong but "irrational", namely, you claim that I'm committing some form of intellectual dishonesty by holding the beliefs I hold. (And up until I called you out on it, you treated the word "irrational" as having this meaning.) This is contrary to the principle of arguing in good faith. For this reason, unless you change your approach, I'm not interested in debating with you further.
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First off, you are fighting a strawman every time you complain that religion claims to know something about the unknowable. The definition of "supernatural" is not "unknowable". No religion defines it this way. Check wikipedia for goodness sake: "The supernatural is that which is not subject to the laws of physics, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature." "Unknowability" is not part of the definition of "supernatural", or the definition of "God". If you want to convince someone of something, you have to argue against what they actually believe.
But if something exists beyond nature, but it does exist, where would you place the line between "this is natural" and "this is supernatural?" If you know something exists, would you not simply extend the definition of natural to include that thing?
If god exists, even if it exists outside our universe and just pokes reality, that is still part of reality, it is natural.
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I assume the "unknowable" Herra refers to is an antonym of provable or falsifiable.
Most (all?) current religions have non falsifiable claims.
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First off, you are fighting a strawman every time you complain that religion claims to know something about the unknowable. The definition of "supernatural" is not "unknowable". No religion defines it this way. Check wikipedia for goodness sake: "The supernatural is that which is not subject to the laws of physics, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature." "Unknowability" is not part of the definition of "supernatural", or the definition of "God". If you want to convince someone of something, you have to argue against what they actually believe.
Of course religions don't define supernatural as unknowable, that would make it obvious that the religions can't actually contain any knowledge of it.
However, that's what the essential definition of supernatural is.
Something existing "above and beyond nature" would have to be fundamentally of the unknowable variety. If it isn't, the moment we gain knowledge of it, our perspective of it changes and we consider it "natural".
Laws of physics are not what defines nature. Laws of physics are an approximation of nature - they are not a complete set of what exists in nature and how, and might never be. Describing "supernatural" as "beyond laws of physics" is to invoke the God of the Gaps, which is doomed to recede further and further every time our knowledge of nature expands.
We should concentrate on finding an agreeable definition of supernatural before proceeding with any other aspect of this discussion, or at the very least make sure we know what the other actually means when using the word.
Second, I entered this debate on the assumption that you had rational arguments for your beliefs, and were firmly and honestly convinced that said arguments were true. I now find out, after the discussion bogged down, that you did not share that assumption with regards to me. I consider your beliefs "wrong", that is I'm convinced that you made an error in your reasoning somewhere along the line. Luis, evidently shares that approach to my beliefs, and for that reason I'd be willing and eager to discuss the issue further with Luis, if he's interested in doing so in the future. You, however, make the claim that my standpoint is not only wrong but "irrational", namely, you claim that I'm committing some form of intellectual dishonesty by holding the beliefs I hold. (And up until I called you out on it, you treated the word "irrational" as having this meaning.) This is contrary to the principle of arguing in good faith. For this reason, unless you change your approach, I'm not interested in debating with you further.
I think there has to be some sort of error with whatever path of reasoning led you to believe in the existence of a supernatural God. I think it is an irrational position to take. I wouldn't necessarily say you're committing intellectual dishonesty; for that to be the case you would need to be aware of the problem, or that the problem is one of communication.
At the moment I suspect the problem is that the definition of "supernatural" you are using is more liberal than the definition I'm using, and that means the God you're describing as "supernatural" may actually be natural being in my definition (and, therefore, not a God at all in my view but that's a different issue). In that case my assessment of your position being irrational may be revised, but it would probably still require some fairly extraordinary evidence to convince me that your belief in a natural god is not irrational.
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people
people
stop with the endless point-by-point replies
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people
people
stop with the endless point-by-point replies
Thank you, PH. I was just about to chime in with this myself.
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This is called seeker friendly. Making the masses happy. Compromise.
Everyone can believe everything and still join the church! Everyone's right!
And what the pope said is all wrong.
13 “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because[a] narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207:13-14&version=NKJV
Wasent that refreshing? A Pro God post on this forum.
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When faced with a large quantity of material that you disagree with throughout, and are expected to respond to, it is easy to become convinced that the most efficient method of response is by attacking it sequentially, fragment by fragment. “I have a problem with the terminology you are using in this sentence.” “This claim right here is wrong and here is a lengthy description of why.” “Your tone here is deplorable and you should do better.” Now for your next section…
This inflates the size of the post, which also inflates the amount of material the other side must respond to, and so they are also more likely to do so in a similar line-by-line fashion. Thus discussions like these tend to turn into tl;dr prepare-your-scroll-button-finger quote wars. This is also the moment that rational discussion and healthy exchange of ideas goes out the window, because neither side is actively reading. Effort is wasted on responding to as much as possible as convincingly as possible, instead of being applied toward actual comprehension of the material and where its strengths and flaws lie.
How does one break this cycle? Stop contemplating posts line-by line. Read them in their entirety before you even begin to think of what you’re going to write in response. Actually try to understand in full what the other person is saying to you. Mentally break it down into its fundamental concepts, claims, and supporting arguments. Once you’ve done that, it should become clear how to respond in a concise manner, in a form that looks like a series of well thought out paragraphs instead of a nightmarishly hideous “quote-reply-quote-reply-quote-reply-quote-reply” chain that goes on for pages. You should only ever need a few quotes to properly capture the content you want to address.
Now I will freely admit that I’m guilty of this same behavior in the past. It is very difficult to avoid it. Perhaps it also takes a huge amount of effort, but I think only initially, and the trade-off is worth it in the end. You end up writing less, hopefully more clearly, and you are definitely more likely to be read, understood, and taken seriously by other forumites.
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This is good advise and I will attempt to improve my posts using it.
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You're really getting on my nerves Herra, so I am going to make an extra effort to make this the last response, because clearly this is really being unproductive.
You're the one stating that god is "unknowable". Christians heavily disagree with you here.
Unknowable is practically synonymous to "supernatural", because any other definition of supernatural simply falls apart when enough information is acquired on a supernatural subject.
You have been doing this for far too long and far too annoyingly. You redefine words to suit your agenda. That's not conversation with good faith. That's weaseling your way to win an argument. If you don't know what "Supernatural" means, then ask. If you are confused on how "Supernatural" can intersect with "Naturality" without becoming the latter, ask. Search, google. You have no excuses for your continuous ignorance, especially if you keep espousing it as "Truth". If you are going to say that "Supernaturality" "simply falls apart when X happens, you must show this and compare it with what the best apologists tell you about Supernaturality. Handwaving these half-assed wisdoms from above as if you're some kind of Oracle is terrible communication on your part.
Thankfully, forum posts are not legal documents where you have to include an entire category for DEFINITIONS before you actually get to the point. "Religious beliefs without evidence to support them will be hereafter referred to as FAITH in this document."
Seriously.
SERIOUSLY? ****ing hell! A "You're right, I'm sorry about that" would ****ing suffice!! What immature way is this of discussing **** where when you are shown to be wrong you come back and tell me this isn't a courtroom so you should be excused for saying silly things? Concede and move the **** on, Herra. You were wrong, I showed you why, correct and forget it. Jesus, is this so hard? Do you understand again why you sound so condescendingly arrogant? You keep adding to it!
Strawmans are fallacious, you know? No one ever said that you can support unknowable things through rational inquiry. You believe they are unknowable, InsaneBaron clearly does not. It is only irrational if you assume they are unknowable. But that's not their assumption.
True. It's only irrational to think you know God if God is unknowable.
Now please give a definition of "supernatural" that isn't synonymous to "unknowable", and doesn't fall apart the moment you acquire information on a supernatural subject.
Because, you know, supernatural things become natural when you learn about them. I thought that was kinda obvious, really.
LMGTFY is probably too harsh, but hey, why the **** not? I'll give you a headstart, with the wikipedia definition of Supernaturality, you seem to have a big time problem with semantics! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural
I'm not sure if there's some linguistic barrier affecting things but you seem to be fixated on equating "irrational" with "idiot".
I'm not using the term as an insult or to describe a person. I'm using it to describe a position that is not rational. Belief in supernatural things is irrational, whether the belief itself is right or wrong (which we can't know). Trying to defend such a belief with rational methods is irrational.
Unlike you, Herra, I have no semantical problems with the words I use or read. When you say "Irrational" I understand "Irrational". I understand BOTH the definition of the word and the CONTEXT of the usage you put in there. This is why I have REPEATEDLY referred to the existence of rationalities for the existence of a theistic God, and didn't refer to the word IDIOT. ****, read what I am saying please? ****ing hell.
Also, I can respect a person perfectly well even if they're being irrational about a particular thing in their lives. It's not like religion defines a person, it's just one aspect of them. And I don't need to respect a person's beliefs to respect the person.
You are not respecting a person if that person tells you they reached a conclusion through rational means and you simply say that is not true, they are delusional, what really happened is that such person got emotional and then rationalized his emotions into the belief. This is not respect, it's the opposite of respect. You are generally confused about semantics and respect. Work that **** out.
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It doesn't seem like you're actually reading the posts involved. The advice to "Search Google" for the definition seems an insufficient response to
"Something existing "above and beyond nature" would have to be fundamentally of the unknowable variety. If it isn't, the moment we gain knowledge of it, our perspective of it changes and we consider it "natural".
Given that the definition Google gives is "attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.
'a supernatural being'," Herra's post displays a good understanding of the word "supernatural" Something existing outside of nature "the phenomena of the physical world collectively" would obviously fall outside of our understanding, as we only have an understanding of the physical world.
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Herra, your last large-scale post seems to indicate some willingness to look into the matter further. And that's good. Unfortunately, at least for now, things have pretty much gone out the window. Rather than try and keep up with this mess I'm simply going to pass you some further reading suggestions. Instead of arguing with me, why not go striaght to the horse's mouth?
C. S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity"
C. S. Lewis's "Miracles"
Father Amadeus's "The Truth is Out There"
Anything by Deitrich von Hildebrand
These are just a few of my favorites, feel free to search for more if you want.
None of these are very long. Also, look at Patheos. It rarely convinces anyone, but it is THE antidote to the war on straw where religion is concerned.
Reading these apologetics with an open mind could have two results. A. It could change your mind. B. If it doesn't change your mind, it'll make you a far better atheistic apologist. Either way, you'll at least gain some respect and understanding of Theism.
InsaneBaron out.
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You know what they say, Herra. You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into.
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I think this topic has run its course.