[Scotty]

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.

[Bobboau]

that statement is only true about a specific subset of gods.

[InsaneBaron]

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?

[Turambar]

I just have trouble distinguishing between "Faith" and "Taking fiction way too seriously."

Can anyone help me out with that? 

[Scotty]

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.

[Herra Tohtori]

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. 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 Bad^TM, 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.

[Bobboau]

is there some way I can sign my name to Herra's post like it was a public declaration or something?

[Grizzly]

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.

[Herra Tohtori]

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.

[Luis Dias]

You could work out a little in the TLDR department. I mean, for gods sake man.

[InsaneBaron]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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.

[Turambar]

Man, Herra, people aren't supposed to actually win discussion threads.  What the hell.

[InsaneBaron]

Man, Herra, people aren't supposed to actually win discussion threads.  What the hell.

You think Herra won?

[The E]

Man, Herra, people aren't supposed to actually win discussion threads.  What the hell.

Burying one side under TL;DR is not winning.

[Herra Tohtori]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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.

[Herra Tohtori]

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?

[Luis Dias]

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.

[InsaneBaron]

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.