[kenberg]

What I get out of the discussion of Luther and his nutty views is an old lesson that more than a few of my religious friends would agree with, namely that you don't want religious zealots in charge of policy. I voted for John Kennedy, the fact that he was Catholic was of no interest to me. Joe Lieberman is Jewish, I suppose I would have realized that if I thought about the name but I hadn't thought about it at all until it was mentioned and then it was of no interest. Back when Goldwater was a political force I understood that he was Jewish or partly Jewish. I never checked, I'm not good at figuring these things out, and I don't care. One of the things that I like about Obama is that I actually have no real idea at all about his religious views. Dumping the Reverend What's his name was a good move, long overdue really.

Religion is not irrelevant, it can play a major role in developing values. But the issue, for me, is what values the person has come to rather than how he arrived there. My mistakes in life, and I have made many, were not the result of insufficient religious training. Stupidity played a major role.

[PassedOut]

phil_20686, on 2011-February-11, 08:40, said:

In any case, positing Gods existence as the "best of possible explanations" is not positing a wild card in the sense of ignoring a perfectly good natural explanation.

Certainly the ability to fall back on supernatural explanations comes in handy for things like the Miracle of the Sun, the Maitreya Buddha miracle, the Hindu Milk miracle, the Islamic Zamzam Water miracle, and so on, which buttress the religious faith of millions of believers. So I do understand your temptation to assert that God's existence is the "best of possible explanations" for each of these.

Is it your position that, so long as a religion can offer miraculous evidence, its explanations can be relied upon? If so, how do you then reconcile the conflicts between those religions? If not, what is the point of offering miraculous examples?

[blackshoe]

Friend of mine grew up in Delhi, a small farming community in central NY. He and his classmates used to bring their hunting rifles to school, and stack them up in the coat closet. No one thought it odd, or complained, or suggested these kids be arrested or whatever. Frankly I think that in a lot of ways, those were saner times.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Whether you think God exists or not, we all agree that the natural world exists! The point is more that there should be some explanation as to why our world is the way that it is.

I have read a description of a reason we find a god concept easy to believe, and that is because humans are conditioned to connect a cause with an agent, and then we extrapolate our own emotions in an anthropomorphic manner to create motive, and do this with unexplained phenomena. For example, when the creaking stairs in the middle of the night wakes us up, we think "burglar!" and not "temperature change affecting the wood". We are programmed to associate actions with agent-causations. There is no real penalty for this mistaken belief other than a sudden, quick fright, and the response is surely a lifesaver when the coiled rope on the dark garage floor really is a poisonous snake.

Tiny penalties for faulty beliefs, huge rewards if right. Sounds like the makings of a bet. Maybe I should talk to Pascal about that.

[Winstonm]

Quote

I am pretty sure that we have had an argument about the crucifixion narratives before. I have contended that they are precisely consistent with having 3 different eyewitnesses who were either there for different parts or stood different distances away and did not necessarily hear all the details of the conversations

Phil,

One thing is a certainty - believers believe. Because of that belief, believers are also quite adept at creating rationalizations for controversies and contradictions within their beliefs. Intelligence is no barrier to rationalization. In fact, the higher the intelligence the more likely the chances for quite complex rationalizations - smart people can believe quite irrational things basically because they are smart enough to convince themselves their beliefs - though improbable - are at least possible.

From inside the belief, the belief itself appears quite rational; however, even from within this bubble of irrationality, it is easy to see irrationality in other belief system.

For example, as a Catholic does it seem rational to believe that a lost tribe of Israel lived in the United States and was visited by Jesus, although there have been no records or archeological evidence ever found of an great Israeli civilization in the Americas, and that golden tablets were revealed to Joe Smith for translation via magical seer stones, but after completion of the task both stones and tablets were taken to heaven by the angel Moroni? Is that a rational explanation for the Book of Mormon or is it legend?

Does it seem rational to believe that a winged horse flew Mohammed to heaven and back, and that god himself dictated what Mohammed was to write? Is that a rational explanation for the Q'uran or is it legend?

Yet, from within the bubble, aided by rationalizations, it is perfectly rational to accept that a god can be one yet divided into three separate and distinct creatures at the same time, sent one part of himself as his own son so humans could kill him in order to save those same humans from a punishment that he, god, had established and had the power to change? And that is rational and not legend?

My contention is that beliefs should be put to as stearn of test as at least civil court, that a preponderance of the evience should be needed to accept claims of mysticism.

[phil_20686]

PassedOut, on 2011-February-11, 12:09, said:

Certainly the ability to fall back on supernatural explanations comes in handy for things like the Miracle of the Sun, the Maitreya Buddha miracle, the Hindu Milk miracle, the Islamic Zamzam Water miracle, and so on, which buttress the religious faith of millions of believers. So I do understand your temptation to assert that God's existence is the "best of possible explanations" for each of these.

Is it your position that, so long as a religion can offer miraculous evidence, its explanations can be relied upon? If so, how do you then reconcile the conflicts between those religions? If not, what is the point of offering miraculous examples?

This has always seemed a strange argument. It is clear that at most one religion can be "correct" in the sense of being right about everything, since as pointed out, they do disagree. However, even if, say Christianity is correct, it does not follow that Hinduism is intrinsically worthless. You can be wrong about many things and still be right about some things. From an omniscient perspective it might well be an acceptable outcome to support a "wrong" religion in the short term, as its better than the alternatives, or just to keep alive religions sentiment in general, even if He later planned to do away with it in favour of Christianity.

Christians have always believed that God will help believers: it does not follow that God cannot help unbelievers. He certainly does not require you to be right all the time about everything.
Besides that, God is not the only supernatural creature in a Christian world view, and the devil would certainly have a vested interest in obscuring the issue.

Besides that, it is more than passing strange to argue that because *more* people have claimed there are miracles, they must be less likely.

[phil_20686]

Winstonm, on 2011-February-11, 16:24, said:

I have read a description of a reason we find a god concept easy to believe, and that is because humans are conditioned to connect a cause with an agent, and then we extrapolate our own emotions in an anthropomorphic manner to create motive, and do this with unexplained phenomena. For example, when the creaking stairs in the middle of the night wakes us up, we think "burglar!" and not "temperature change affecting the wood". We are programmed to associate actions with agent-causations. There is no real penalty for this mistaken belief other than a sudden, quick fright, and the response is surely a lifesaver when the coiled rope on the dark garage floor really is a poisonous snake.

Tiny penalties for faulty beliefs, huge rewards if right. Sounds like the makings of a bet. Maybe I should talk to Pascal about that.

This kind of post-hoc reasoning makes me more than a little ill. Honestly, evolutionary biologists try to concoct (bizarre) explanations for almost every aspect of human behaviour, for which an appropriate counter argument is nearly always: Are you sure its not a bit more complicated than that? (A recent favourite was explanation about there being slightly more girls born than boys was evidence that males had always had difficultly remaining monogamous, and therefore having more females than males was a winning strategy. Or, maybe, in a world where more than 20% of children didn't live past 5 years, a difference of 1% in birth rates means absolutely nothing, except maybe that widely different rates would be bad, but anywhere close to parity is equally ok.)

For humours sake, let me analyse this line of reasoning, and its inherent flaws. Firstly, you are assuming a fundamental inability of humans to educate themselves, or to behave rationally. Its true that when we hear a creak on the stairs we might associate it with a human. This is natural, as no doubt we have walked on stairs and they creaked, and the first thing you think of tends to be the closest to reality. However, then you have a second thought: wood creaks due to temperature changes. In fact you might even have a third thought like "it might be my son sneaking downstairs for a biscuit". All of these explanations are "plausible". Your contention seems to be we are powerless to evaluate their relative merits, just because we thought of a burglar first. People aren't like that. Were you faced with his hypothetical actions you might take any number of rational actions such as: (1) The last 99 times I got up to check it was nothing, so ill go back to sleep. (2) I remember those stairs are very creaky so if I listen a human will definitely make more creaks. (3) We have agreed its my wife's job to check on the children if they get up in the night so I can go back to sleep. (4) Since I have many enemies I wont take any chances and I will get my gun from under the pillow.

All of these seem rational responses. To contend that a human must assume that the first or "most obvious" (in some sense) explanation is correct, when in general most humans have been burned by making rash assumptions, and often consider their actions/beliefs carefully, seems bizarre. In order to make good your argument you need to require that humans behave differently in religious sentiment than they do in real life, which is a stretch.

[phil_20686]

Winstonm, on 2011-February-11, 20:28, said:

One thing is a certainty - believers believe. Because of that belief, believers are also quite adept at creating rationalizations for controversies and contradictions within their beliefs. Intelligence is no barrier to rationalization. In fact, the higher the intelligence the more likely the chances for quite complex rationalizations - smart people can believe quite irrational things basically because they are smart enough to convince themselves their beliefs - though improbable - are at least possible.

From inside the belief, the belief itself appears quite rational; however, even from within this bubble of irrationality, it is easy to see irrationality in other belief system.

For example, as a Catholic does it seem rational to believe that a lost tribe of Israel lived in the United States and was visited by Jesus, although there have been no records or archeological evidence ever found of an great Israeli civilization in the Americas, and that golden tablets were revealed to Joe Smith for translation via magical seer stones, but after completion of the task both stones and tablets were taken to heaven by the angel Moroni? Is that a rational explanation for the Book of Mormon or is it legend?

Does it seem rational to believe that a winged horse flew Mohammed to heaven and back, and that god himself dictated what Mohammed was to write? Is that a rational explanation for the Q'uran or is it legend?

Yet, from within the bubble, aided by rationalizations, it is perfectly rational to accept that a god can be one yet divided into three separate and distinct creatures at the same time, sent one part of himself as his own son so humans could kill him in order to save those same humans from a punishment that he, god, had established and had the power to change? And that is rational and not legend?

This is by far the most cogent thing you have produced on this thread. No matter where you stand on the idealogical perspective, it will appear that people believe crazy and impossible things. This is true not only in religion, but in any walk of life. Nevertheless, some things appear more plausible than others. It is a necessary, but not sufficient condition, that ones beliefs should be self-consistent. But there are plenty of irrational beliefs that are entirely self consistent.

Some, like conspiracy theorists, can only be argued against using the "homogeneity" argument, in the sense that all conspiracy theories hinge crucially on the fact that there are large numbers of people capable of knowing certain information without revealing it, despite its incredibly incendiary nature, when that is not what the patient would do.

It seems self-evident (to me) that any kind of belief system has to be based on a sound epistemological basis, and I use the criteria that (1) We exist (independently of any feeling/sense), (2) our senses give us real (but imperfect) information about our surroundings. (3) Other people exist and have similar (but not identical) experiences to ourselves. The conspiracy theorist ignores (3). You, and post modernists in general, seem to attack both (2) and (3). Your arguments above amount to thinking that everyone, no matter how intelligent, who claims to have witnessed a miracle, must be misled, is in violation of (3) as you believe that you yourself are less likely to be misled. More subtly, your claim that one should exclude from discussion certain abstracts to which you do not think language applies, is in violation of (2), as it is definitely the experience of humanity that ideas have a concrete existence separate from our conception of them. This argument has at least some merit, and I would be prepared to discuss it, I just think its wrong.

My argument against your position, and in favour of mine, then can be summarised into three principle strands:

(1) Atheism tends to go naturally with materialism. Materialism fails to adequately address the existence of concepts with no clear material nature, and also the fact that conceptual insights based on these abstract entity appear to govern the workings of materialism.

(2) Your position that no miracles happen means that you believe all people who claim to have witnessed miracles must be misled. My experience is that sometimes I am right, and sometimes I am wrong, and a fair assessment must require that I make the same assumption about those claiming miracles. Assuredly sometimes they are wrong, and doubtless some things have been claimed miracles that are not, but I also believe that at least some of these people were not misled. This is merely assuming that other people are roughly like me. Your argument requires that you believe that you are better educated/more intelligent/less liable to be misled, than those who claim to have seen miracles. Some might say that believing yourself to be better informed than everyone else is the first sign of fanaticism.

(3) You seem to be prepared to exclude from consideration facts that are part of the everyday experience of people. You do this in the classic post-modernist style of claiming that words that are not rooted in a concretely existing thing, have no value, and should not be used in other contexts. However, this makes tenuous assumptions about the purpose and nature of language. In particular, you are assuming by stealth that ideas to not have any existence separate from our conception of them, and hence, that ideas are inseparable from the language in which they are described. I hold the opposite view-point. I think ideas are real, and the purpose of communicating is to help the other person also grasp this abstract entity, and that the words you use are not so important, beyond the difficulties of making oneself understood. There are a host of difficult philosophical issues around your position, in particular the argument that "if no one remembers Pythagoras' theorem, is it still true?" To which the PM replies "what exactly does "true" mean anyway?".

[kenberg]

There are many philosophical issues around theism and atheism. Then there is the issue of what to teach in science class. I favor teaching science there.

[Gerben42]

kenberg, on 2011-March-03, 15:28, said:

There are many philosophical issues around theism and atheism. Then there is the issue of what to teach in science class. I favor teaching science there.

Well, if you teach something other than science in science class, you are not allowed to call it science class. If you call it religion class, then you can teach belief stuff.

Personally, I've never gotten religion. It seems that the more I learn about it, the less I understand it.

[luke warm]

kenberg, on 2011-March-03, 15:28, said:

There are many philosophical issues around theism and atheism. Then there is the issue of what to teach in science class. I favor teaching science there.

this is true... now that we've (actually you) solved the issue of what to teach in science class, the philosophical issues still exist

[PassedOut]

phil_20686, on 2011-March-03, 12:35, said:

It seems self-evident (to me) that any kind of belief system has to be based on a sound epistemological basis, and I use the criteria that (1) We exist (independently of any feeling/sense), (2) our senses give us real (but imperfect) information about our surroundings. (3) Other people exist and have similar (but not identical) experiences to ourselves.

...

I think ideas are real, and the purpose of communicating is to help the other person also grasp this abstract entity, and that the words you use are not so important, beyond the difficulties of making oneself understood.

I agree with these statements. None of them, though, depends upon the existence of a god.

Thanks for your explanation of why you believe that god performs miracles to buttress all religions, even though conflicts exist between them. I'm not opposed to religious beliefs for those who find value in them, so long as they result in positive actions by the adherents. That's true even though I don't accept the supernatural and theological underpinnings.

As you say, we all have somewhat different sets of experiences, and those differences necessarily create variations in what seems plausible to one and not to another. What is not plausible to me, based on my own experiences, is plausible to you. I guess that's the long and short of it.

But I do appreciate your willingness to discuss this topic in a straightforward manner.

[kenberg]

luke warm, on 2011-March-03, 16:48, said:

this is true... now that we've (actually you) solved the issue of what to teach in science class, the philosophical issues still exist

Absolutely, and I even acknowledge there is some point in addressing them. But I am betting we know each other well enough to safely state that neither of us will be changing our religious orientation as a result.

A friend is about to undergo a very serious operation. He is religious, I am not. He would not ask me to pray for him, and indeed I think he would be a bit put off if I said that I would. We have each cast out lot with life the way we see it, and we leave it at that. But if I ever missed religion it would be for reasons like this, to have someone beyond the medical profession to express gratitude to if this should all work out. Arguments about the alleged lack atheistic philosophy to deal with conceptual whatevers leave me cold. No one there when I might wish to say thank you, that's a little tough. But it's the way I think it is.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Its true that when we hear a creak on the stairs we might associate it with a human. This is natural

Phil,

With the above words you concur with the argument but then continue on to build a strawman to fight.

The issue is simplicity itself: humans assume agents - like you said, it is natural to associate a noise with a human (an agent).

The extrapolation is that man also proposes agents for the unexplainable - what happens after death, etc.

This agent-cause creation by man seems to me a more plausible explanation of how a god came to be than being announced by a talking burning bush.

[phil_20686]

kenberg, on 2011-March-03, 15:28, said:

There are many philosophical issues around theism and atheism. Then there is the issue of what to teach in science class. I favor teaching science there.

Returning to the original topic, is that even allowed?

Well, you could teach science all day every day and still not touch on evolution. There are plenty of things you could teach that would be totally uncontroversial. Normally whoever is deciding what one should learn has both an idealogical stance and an agenda. I'm relatively confident that if you polled my (physics) department for the 5 most important scientific theories, evolution would not be on the list.

My personal list would go something like this:

1) Electro-Weak-Symmetry-Breaking (due to Glashow et al and completed the std model of particle physics).
2) Maxwell's Unification of electro-Magnetism - the first example of a gauge theory in nature.
3) Field Theory/Re-normalisation
4) General Relativity
5) The Schroedinger wave equation.

And if we were to loosen the criteria to `important' scientific discoveries, then you could add any of these:
1) Discovery of the electron.
2) Discovery of the Transistor.
3) Discovery of the Haber Process.
4) Discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background.
5) Discovery of the Hydrogen Absorption Spectrum.

If you have a very good education, you might cover milsdens oil drop experiment, the Haber process, and a few trivial consequences of Maxwell's theory, but you probably never covered the rest. All of these discoveries/theories are essential to our modern age, and you could include super conductivity and lasers somewhere on that list. The discovery of DNA. The Laws of thermodynamics.

My only point really is that there is a wealth of real science that you could teach without ever straying into controversial territory. Evolution can take its place somewhere in the second tier of scientific achievements, which seems to be roughly where it belongs. It does not have the same clarity of insight and clear predictive power of QED or GR, nor is it part of the fundamental tapestry of modern life like the Haber Process or the transistor. Evolution is on the syllabus for exactly the same idealogical reasons that other people want it off the syllabus. It is a calculated attempt to undermine fundamentalist Christians beliefs, while trying to maintain that that has nothing to do with it.

I tend to think that schools are not the appropriate place to have arguments between adults, and that is basically what is happening here. I think its naive if you imagine that a court case brought by the American Humanist Association isn't every bit as much about "converting" children as the court cases brought by evangelical organisations.

[Winstonm]

One of the problems I have with the arguments of theists is that they are not consistent with a single definition of a god figure. The real basis for belief for christians seems to me to resolve to one issue - do you accept that a superntural being can create ex nihilo? Is it possible for something to arise from nothing?

I say it cannot. But I admit that at its heart, there is noting but intuition on which I base my decision. But I do think that allowing for only those things which are natural is the more rational approach than hypothesizing an immaterial world where creation ex nihilo can occur.

After all, my logical system is like all others, built upon axioms which are noting more than intuitional acceptances of reliability. One of my axioms is that something cannot come from nothing. Nature tends to support that claim. That's as good as we can do as humans - take our best educated guess.

Communication depends on whether your goals: trying to persuade or trying to be precise. Precise language requires precise definitions. Persuassion gets away with murder.

Once we move out of the arena of the objective, we are using persuassion. The word exist is a terrific example. I can precisely define this word as meaning only those things that have shape plus a location, and when I say exist you know I'm not talking about an idea. But we cannot use such precise language in the metaphysical, or else we have no conversation at all, because we are not dealing with objectivity but subjectivity - or to put it snidely, selling snake oil.

[Winstonm]

phil_20686, on 2011-March-03, 18:44, said:

Returning to the original topic, is that even allowed?

Well, you could teach science all day every day and still not touch on evolution. There are plenty of things you could teach that would be totally uncontroversial. Normally whoever is deciding what one should learn has both an idealogical stance and an agenda. I'm relatively confident that if you polled my (physics) department for the 5 most important scientific theories, evolution would not be on the list.

My personal list would go something like this:

1) Electro-Weak-Symmetry-Breaking (due to Glashow et al and completed the std model of particle physics).
2) Maxwell's Unification of electro-Magnetism - the first example of a gauge theory in nature.
3) Field Theory/Re-normalisation
4) General Relativity
5) The Schroedinger wave equation.

And if we were to loosen the criteria to `important' scientific discoveries, then you could add any of these:
1) Discovery of the electron.
2) Discovery of the Transistor.
3) Discovery of the Haber Process.
4) Discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background.
5) Discovery of the Hydrogen Absorption Spectrum.

If you have a very good education, you might cover milsdens oil drop experiment, the Haber process, and a few trivial consequences of Maxwell's theory, but you probably never covered the rest. All of these discoveries/theories are essential to our modern age, and you could include super conductivity and lasers somewhere on that list. The discovery of DNA. The Laws of thermodynamics.

My only point really is that there is a wealth of real science that you could teach without ever straying into controversial territory. Evolution can take its place somewhere in the second tier of scientific achievements, which seems to be roughly where it belongs. It does not have the same clarity of insight and clear predictive power of QED or GR, nor is it part of the fundamental tapestry of modern life like the Haber Process or the transistor. Evolution is on the syllabus for exactly the same idealogical reasons that other people want it off the syllabus. It is a calculated attempt to undermine fundamentalist Christians beliefs, while trying to maintain that that has nothing to do with it.

I tend to think that schools are not the appropriate place to have arguments between adults, and that is basically what is happening here. I think its naive if you imagine that a court case brought by the American Humanist Association isn't every bit as much about "converting" children as the court cases brought by evangelical organisations.

I guess you then are ruling out biology and chemistry as unworth to be taught as science?

[phil_20686]

Winstonm, on 2011-March-03, 18:19, said:

The issue is simplicity itself: humans assume agents - like you said, it is natural to associate a noise with a human (an agent).

The extrapolation is that man also proposes agents for the unexplainable - what happens after death, etc.

You seemed to have missed the point I was making. Humans do [i]initially[\i] assume human agents for this type of thing. But they are allowed to have a second thought after that. Or a third thought. And we are not required to assume that our first thought is true just because it came first.

After that you are back to assuming that God doesnt exist, in which case human-agent causation would be a very plausible way for man to create God. But if God does exist, and fancied a chat, announcing himself in a dramatic fashion hardly seems unlikely.

[phil_20686]

Winstonm, on 2011-March-03, 18:46, said:

I guess you then are ruling out biology and chemistry as unworth to be taught as science?

What are you talking about(!) the Schroedinger equation is *all* of chemistry. Solve that and you know everything about any chemical reaction. Of course, those solutions may not be trivial....

Also, the haber process is definitely chemistry. Its the reaction by which you create both fertiliser and explosives, and I did also mention the discovery of DNA. But, mostly I don't think that there are many really good "theories" in biology, just quite a lot of interesting special cases with a few broad rules to which there is always an exception.

[phil_20686]

Winstonm, on 2011-March-03, 18:44, said:

One of the problems I have with the arguments of theists is that they are not consistent with a single definition of a god figure. The real basis for belief for christians seems to me to resolve to one issue - do you accept that a superntural being can create ex nihilo? Is it possible for something to arise from nothing?

I say it cannot. But I admit that at its heart, there is noting but intuition on which I base my decision. But I do think that allowing for only those things which are natural is the more rational approach than hypothesizing an immaterial world where creation ex nihilo can occur.

As a practising cosmologist, I can tell you with reasonable certainty that most cosmologists believe precisely that the universe was created from nothing, or occasionally, that it had no beginning (minority viewpoint). It seems moderately likely that at some point in the past, our universe was a genuine singularity of zero dimensions, and then the big bang happened (well, not exactly, but I don't want to get all technical), and hence that there exists a time before which there was no time at all.