Ten Atheist Dogmas
Faith and Philosophy
| June 11, 2008
| Tim
Like any other group, those who call themselves "atheist" vary greatly. Some (those I call "friendly" atheists) don't believe God exists, but aren't troubled by the fact that many do. Others aggressively promote their worldview with as much zeal as any other fanatic. Just as beliefs vary among the religious, it's also true that each dogma below isn't held or believed by every atheist. But I've encountered them frequently enough to document them here.
Miriam-Webster defines "dogma" as "a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds" -- and, if so, then modern atheism is positively bristling with dogmas. Look around the Internet: you'll see atheists gather on certain sites, exchange ideas, rant together about their common foe, and repeat and share certain beliefs -- beliefs which, it seems to me, fit the definition of "dogma" as much (if not more than) those from any other faith.
To name but a few:
1. "Atheism" - The novice atheist is assured that the word atheism means, and has always meant, a mere failure to believe in God. (The meaning most people attach to the word "agnosticism".) Of course, this is not so: Anthony Flew created that definition in the 1980s because, as he admitted, atheists were tired of defending their positive assertion that God doesn't exist.
(So today, the "new atheists" can now storm in, blasting away at everything that moves, making accusations about the horrors and falsity of God-belief -- but then beat a hasty retreat, claiming they've never made any positive assertions! They attack as atheists, but flee as agnostics. How brave.)
Of course, this isn't yet the prevailing usage, and atheists get very frustrated when non-atheists won't play along. But even guys like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris run around making positive assertions that God doesn't exist, and characterizing atheists who fail to be similarly confrontational and assertive as betrayers of the movement. Clearly, if this is the new definition of "atheism", some of the top leaders of the movement haven't read the memo!
Of course, the problem with the whole "weak/strong" atheist taxonomy is that it doesn't truly pan out: To the extent said "atheist" simply fails to assert anything, no debate can occur. If your position is merely "well, I have no view on whether God exists for not" then you're not going to be attacking me as wrong, are you? Conversely, to the extent you claim things, then you are indeed making positive assertions you must defend. So, in my experience, this doesn't work out as well as many atheists would like.
2. "Reason" - Sadly, many entry-level atheists seem to have no idea of how to reason (or even what it is), and seem unable to distinguish (on certain cherished topics) a fallacy from a sound argument. Some seem to have been taught that "reason" simply means disbelieving in God, when, in fact, "reason" is a technique for avoiding certain kinds of logical errors and pitfalls.
So the irony here is that it seems because many think they're already committed to "reason" (disbelief in God), they don't have to actually check their arguments to make sure they are actually rational. This may explain why so many (most, in my experience) atheistic arguments are fallacious: the atheist is unaware of the need to avoid fallacy, convinced that he (or at least the prevailing atheistic outlook) is incapable of illogic while fighting god-belief.
3. "Evidence" - Similarly, it seems that atheists are being taught that they are concerned about evidence, and that their atheism is supported by evidence. Whether atheism is right or wrong, the one thing which should be indisputable, if we're being honest, is that atheists have, in fact, far less evidence for their position than a believer.
Our universe seems to be grossly impossible, a "put-up job" seemingly designed to bring about life. People experience a wide variety of apparently supernatural phenomenon. We seem to have internal needs and hungers which, on the whole, are better satisfied by religious belief than by materialism. Key parts of the bible seem to be confirmed by archaeological and historical evidence. There are quite a number of documented cases of miracles, apparently-supernatural healings -- and so on.
Now, it's certainly fair for the atheist to protest that every one of these arguments (and more) are somehow mistaken, assert that every single apparent miracle or supernatural happening was just an illusion, etc. And that's fine. But the point remains that the atheist is then like the lawyer in the courtroom who faces a seeming mountain of evidence for one proposition, and none or almost none for the other -- and is convinced all the apparent evidence is wrong. You can certainly insist you believe you're right anyway, but you can't honestly say that the bulk of the evidence supports your view!
4. "Science" - Probably to shore up the above-mentioned problem, the atheist is told that his beliefs are confirmed by science, or that atheists somehow are the only people who really care about science. But by "science", what is frequently meant is a series of metaphysical assertions about human life and the universe, or certain political programs. If you believe God created the heavens and the earth, you're against "science" -- never mind if you are also the head of the Human Genome Project.
This is sad, because science is an important process for discovery, not a set of unquestionable (yet unproven) metaphysical dogmas. As Ryan recently pointed out, science can predict what will happen, but it doesn't tell us what to do with that knowledge, and it doesn't tell us what the meaning of anything is. Again, it is a process, not a set of dogmas.
Often, the fact that most scientists are atheists is offered as evidence of accuracy of atheism. Yet studies of those scientists have shown that they were typically atheistic before becoming scientists, not as a result of what they learned. So the evidence indicates the converse: atheists are drawn to science (as a kind of substitute religion, I suspect), not that science leads to atheism.
Conversely, atheists are taught that religious people are opposed to science. But, as mentioned above, it's more the case that religious people are opposed to certain atheistic dogmas and political policies which falsely purport to be "science" -- the claim we must start experimenting with human life, claims that we should sign on to the Kyoto protocol, claims that God didn't create life, etc. These are matters of ethics, economics, and belief. To claim scientists have some special authority on such topics is a rank example of false authority fallacy.
If atheists really were concerned about mixing science with politics or religion, they would be much more careful about conflating their own philosophical and political preferences with "science". But as it is Richard Dawkins thinks its fine to argue we can derive religious truth from biology -- but only as long as they're his specific truths. ;-) Suggest otherwise, and you should be prohibited from teaching and doing research.
5. "We should only believe what can be proven" - This is a hilarious assertion: It's self refuting. (What's the proof?)
I believe I should love my neighbor as myself. I believe that it's better if I embrace reason rather than (as some Eastern religions teach) view it as an optional "mode" of thinking. I believe in human rights. In short, I hold all sorts of beliefs that I can't prove, as does every atheist. The difference between us is that I'm aware I'm doing this, where many an atheist has been taught (and thus believes) that he doesn't.
Further, if the assertion above is right, then said atheist also shouldn't believe in any of these things.
Last, and even more amusing, by so saying, the atheist isn't merely believing something which can't be proven -- he's believing (and apparently basing his entire life-philosophy upon) an assertion which is therefore demonstrably false.
6. "Atheism is not an ideology" - As mentioned above, "weak atheism" (i.e. "agnosticism", in the popular sense) truly does imply nothing -- so you should never see such a person attacking any one else's religion. If they're not at least reasonably sure it's wrong, then they have no basis for dispute!
But "atheism", as historically defined, and as often practiced, does indeed lead to "a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture" [m-w.com]. If God doesn't exist, then religion must be wrong and misbegotten. If God doesn't exist, then alleged "moral truths" may be modified as needed by humans. If God doesn't exist, then it's up to us to decide who's valuable, and when/if human life begins. If God doesn't exist, then your existence has no ultimate meaning. These, and many more, are necessary implications of "God does not exist."
The absurdity here is obvious: God-belief leads to a whole laundry list of implications, rightly called "ideology". Yet the atheist can stand there, negating each of them, and then claim: "There's no ideology here!"? Dude, the negation of an ideology is an alternative ideology! Yet the atheist runs around, making the same arguments he sees all the other atheists making, and then claims: "Oh, atheism implies nothing." He can't see it, of course: What he has been told to believe trumps obvious evidence to the contrary.
Frankly, I know almost no religious people who are that blind.
7. "Atheism is the default position" - By this, the atheist usually means failure to believe in God is the default position ("weak atheism" / "agnosticism") -- unless you can claim to have proven God's existence, you should be an "atheist" (meaning agnostic). And indeed, it is sensible to argue that we should try to set aside our preconceptions and approach questions with an open mind, starting by assuming nothing.
But this is only how we should start our inquiry. After that, we should proceed to evaluate the evidence. By examining the world around them, and the universe visible in the sky above, most people seem to have concluded, on admittedly subjective grounds, that there's meaning to this place, and that the wonderful universe around us was put here by an intelligence.
Now, of course, some don't come to that conclusion. They feel the evidence isn't strong enough to warrant belief in God. But if that's the case, then we're not talking about a "default", are we? We're talking about judgment call: You feel the evidence implies nothing, others feel it implies divine purpose. So let's stop talking about "defaults", shall we? You and your opponents have both evaluated the evidence, and you've both drawn conclusions, you simply used different criteria, or saw different evidence.
Instead, the claim "atheism is the default" attempts to do an end-run around this process: the demand is that the atheist's opponents should have adopted the atheists' criteria (by which, he thinks, the evidence would not have passed muster) and short of that, the atheist's opponent is committing some kind of metaphysical sin against reason.
But why should this be so? Why it wrong to make (say) a subjective judgment based on what you see in the universe? (And don't atheists frequently argue against God, based on equally subjective judgments?) Why is it not enough that I should be present when a woman's large lump of breast cancer seemingly disappeared, and was confirmed by her surgeons before the radical mastectomy (which was then canceled) the next morning? Or why is it not enough that Frederica Matthew-Greene believes in God after seeing Jesus appear to her -- at a time when she was rather hostile to the idea?
I'm not saying these things prove God's existence: but neither does the atheist's stance prove the opposite. My question is why these should be invalid criteria for drawing a judgment call, which is what the atheist is implying here. From what I've seen, no explanation is offered. We just assert "atheism is the default" and conclude that anyone who didn't arrive at that conclusion must have made used the wrong criteria. Why? Dunno. It's my dogma -- don't ask.
8. Values - When I visit web sites devoted to atheism, I see a lot of claims that the atheist is particularly devoted to "reason", "truth", "rationality", etc. But I almost never see any which emphasize morality, nor encouraging atheists to treat other people better. Yes, there is a lot of criticizing religion for intolerance, etc. -- but almost nothing devoted to encouraging atheists to become better, more loving and caring people.
(Perhaps atheists are already so moral they don't need any encouraging?)
From this I deduce that among the more aggressive contingent of atheists, morality itself doesn't count for much, and seeming smart and knowledgeable does. (Many "friendly" atheists, though, do focus on morality, such as Charles Krauthammer and Theodore Dalrymple. And Dave Barry (another "friendly" atheist) has probably done more to make the world better than the best deeds of Dawkins and Sam Harris multiplied by a hundred. Or mine, for that matter.)
So it's not clear why "reason" or "science" are more important than morality. Ideally, we'd want both, but if I had to choose, I would personally rather have people treat each other well, even if it meant being confused about the age of the earth.
Of course, atheists don't only imbibe dogmas about their own beliefs. Many also hold a number of popular dogmas which mislead them about others':
9. "Faith" - The young atheist is frequently taught that faith is the opposite of reason, or that having faith means going against the evidence. Of course, that's not what it means at all: A man might say: "I have faith in free markets", meaning he has evidence that free markets have worked many times in the past, and that he believes (but cannot "prove") that they will again in the future.
Similarly, a religious person isn't typically going against the evidence. They are simply convinced, like everyone else, that what they believe at the moment is the belief which best matches the available evidence.
Of course, we all disagree with each others' arguments (otherwise, we'd all believe the same thing) but that doesn't imply that your opponent is unable to think or reason, or -- for some strange reason -- knows full well God most likely doesn't exist but chooses to believe the opposite of what the evidence they've seen implies!
(And of course, the atheist also has faith in a great number of things too (see above), but most atheists are told otherwise, so they're completely unaware of this aspect of their mental processes.)
It's important to expose this straw man fallacy because it functions as a mental shortcut (or, more aptly, short-circuit) for many atheists. (For example, one of the most recommended contemporary books defending atheism uses it as key argument!) Instead of engaging actual arguments put forth for belief in God, the atheist appears to demolish them all in one fell swoop -- by embracing a straw man argument! Simply define your opponents as "opposed to reason", and you're done -- no actual reasoning needs to occur.
Very easy, and quite fallacious!
10. Religion is Harmful - Two hundred years ago, when people didn't know much about the rest of the world, before Communism, it made sense to consider religion -- or at least organized religion -- harmful. But today there's simply no excuse for such ignorance: Either you say we can't generalize, or we have to admit that atheists, though much fewer in number, have handsomely outdone the faithful (many times over) when it comes to murder and torture. Further: study upon study shows that religious people in the US have better outcomes in a host of areas: greater happiness, better physical and mental health, giving more to charity, etc, etc.
American religion may be mistaken, but it's certainly not obviously harmful. Sadly, there seem to be a shockingly large number of atheists out there who apparently aren't particularly interested in evidence.
(Also, it is argued that Islam is harmful. Well, that might possibly be, but unless you can show that Christianity and Judaism are also harmful, you're engaged in a false generalization. Christopher Hitchens employs this fallacy incessantly.)
There are many other dogmas I could point out: mistaken ideas about what happened in the dark ages, the Crusades, who originated science, and many popular circular, ad homen, and straw man arguments -- but these are of smaller impact, and are more understandable as many can be written off as a lack of exposure to contrary evidence.
In contrast, the dogmas above are fundamental, and many of them are, if not completely obvious to any disinterested observer, are incredibly easily refuted. It's true that many religious believers haven't examined their faith, but that doesn't mean the same problem can't be found among atheists.
Any more?
Thanks for this helpful post.
There are many other dogmas I could point out: mistaken ideas about what happened in the dark ages, the Crusades, who originated science, and many popular circular, ad homen, and straw man arguments -- but these are of smaller impact, and are more understandable as many can be written off as a lack of exposure to contrary evidence. It would be wonderful if you would expound on this in another post. Or have you done so already? If so, please tell us where.
...that doesn't imply that your opponent is unable to think or reason, or -- for some strange reason -- knows full well God most likely doesn't exist but chooses to believe the opposite of what the evidence they've seen implies!
In this we must also be careful; I've heard too many Christians make the same assertion about those who don't believe in God: that deep down, they really know the truth, but are refusing to believe it. There is some Biblical justification for this stance (see Romans 1) but in practice it doesn't seem like a helpful -- let alone charitable -- argument.
But the point remains that the atheist is then like the lawyer in the courtroom who faces a seeming mountain of evidence for one proposition, and none or almost none for the other -- and is convinced all the apparent evidence is wrong. You can certainly insist you believe you're right anyway, but you can't honestly say that the bulk of the evidence supports your view!
That may be overstating things a little bit. You could find counter-examples for at least some of these things, for instance; atheists who have had spontaneous remission from cancer without praying. The placebo effect. Physical explanations for supernatural phenomenon. Confirmation of various hoaxes. Elucidation of a physiological or potentially physiological basis for what was previously attributed to spirits. Various problems with courtroom testimony. etc.
It is very very difficult, of course, to demonstrate that a thing does not exist, even when it does not exist. Especially when it is a subtle pattern of some sort, that can potentially have other causes and go hot as well as cold. I'm not arguing against you here. I am saying it's understandable how an honest person might believe, based on their limited knowledge and experience, that the bulk of evidence was on their side. They could believe this regardless of which side of the debate they were on.
btw, the end of your comment confuses me;
It really says something that
Any more?
Thanks!
"SursumCorda"! Good to hear from you again!
It would be wonderful if you would expound on this in another post. Or have you done so already?
(a) While I wrote this, I felt I had enough material to write a follow-up about popular atheist arguments. (I hope I can remember it all, and have time soon!)
(b) I'm slowly creating another web site, with quite a lot of old (and new) material (some of which hasn't appeared here) like this on it, but it's not quite ready for public consumption.
... in practice [accusing the atheist of willfully ignoring evidence] doesn't seem like a helpful -- let alone charitable -- argument.
I agree completely. I have an interesting theory about this (interesting to me, anyway), and it cuts both ways.
I tend to suspect many of the "angry" atheists are actually theists, who despite their protests, actually believe God exists, or at least fear, deep down, that he might. (Thus they react in a sort of "methinks the fellow doth protest too much" kind of way.)
I mean, after all, I'm not offended or bothered in the slightest that some people believe in aliens, the Hindu pantheon, of perpetual motion devices. I am sometimes concerned about harmful side effects of certain false beliefs -- such as many of the conspiracy theories about Jews or oil companies -- but aside from that, such beliefs bother me no more than a kid who believes in the tooth fairy.
So I suspect many an "angry atheist" is angry for some unexamined or unadmitted reason. I mean, so what if someone thinks there's a purpose to life? How does that ruin your day, really?
On the other hand, I have, at times, met people who don't believe in God, who have said things like: "I have friends who have faith. I think it would be kind of neat to have that, but I just can't bring myself to believe it." That, my friends, is an honest person -- unlike the "angry" crowd, they are freely able to admit that faith does indeed confer benefits, but simply are being intellectually honest. I find that admirable.
Conversely, I sometimes suspect that some of the more "liberal" church members are actually atheists. Indeed, some of them (Spong) actually admit as much in some of their beliefs. Others seem to be sure some kind of God exists, but are certainly offended by many of the characteristics of the one described in the bible.
Oddly, I've noticed that the atheists I know who tend to be politically conservative are generally the "happy" or "friendly" sort, like John Ray, who's constantly saying he is an atheist, but admires consistent Christians. (He even goes to church on occasion, and likes the bible's morals.) And of course, traditional Christians also tend to end up on the right.
Conversely, the more "liberal" Christians tend to end up on the left, along with the "angrier" variety of atheist.
So I wonder, sometimes, if the left isn't mostly composed of atheists who are actually theists, and theists who disbelieve in the God of the bible. Conversely, is the right mostly composed of atheists who are really atheists, and Christians and Jews who really believe in the God of scripture?
As I said, I can't prove it, but I certainly get the impression, at times, that the idea rings at least partially true.
Tim: But the point remains that the atheist is then like the lawyer in the courtroom who faces a seeming mountain of evidence...
Ryan: That may be overstating things a little bit. You could find counter-examples for at least some of these things, for instance; atheists who have had spontaneous remission from cancer without praying...
Absolutely true. But I'm not sure how this refutes my point. My point isn't that all the "seeming evidence" is sound or irrefutable, just that by far most the evidence runs in one direction.
It is very very difficult, of course, to demonstrate that a thing does not exist, even when it does not exist...
Agreed: Look at the ongoing debates about various alleged cryptozoological creatures. We'd like to say: "Well, if XYZ existed, we'd know it", but that's not always clear -- and sometimes, even in this modern era, we're surprised.
I could write more about proving negatives, what types of arguments are valid (or merely persuasive) under what conditions, beyond the bits touched on here and above, there's enough for an entire post.
btw, the end of your comment confuses me...
Reasonably so: I was in the process of finishing it, got distracted, and came back and posted, wrongly thinking I'd completed the ending.
Also, there was a longer preamble I threw away before posting, but, given Linda's comment, above, I thought it would be worth trying to put a more boiled-down version of it back in. So it's there again now.
There are a number of atheists I like quite a lot, and some who seem to be much better people than I am. I also have met a number who are, in fact, fairly logically consistent (some of the stuff I read by Richard Carrier seemed sensible) -- though they seem outnumbered, these days. In this business of trying to talk about certain common arguments, I don't want to hit any innocent bystanders with errant shards rhetorical shrapnel.
Absolutely true. But I'm not sure how this refutes my point.
I'm not sure that it refutes it. Things like the aprobability of the universe, undirected abiogenesis etc. aside for a moment and depending on a person's definition of evidence I could see how a person might not see a preponderance of evidence for the supernatural in their own life. And they might see a few debunkings a la James Randi.
It's easier to do a controlled debunking of a fake miracle than it is to do a truly controlled exhibition of a real miracle. Unless, perhaps, you count things like personalities transformed because of religious faith. Personally, I would. But that particular observation may not be a part of some atheists experience set.
Agreed: Look at the ongoing debates about various alleged cryptozoological creatures. We'd like to say: "Well, if XYZ existed, we'd know it", but that's not always clear -- and sometimes, even in this modern era, we're surprised.
Absolutely! And that holds doubly true for microbes such as strict anerobes and cell wall deficient bacteria (which grow very slowly and require special culture media.)
“Here we show that culturing failed to identify major contributing populations, especially strict anaerobes, within the given wound types,” state the team, “Standard culturing techniques are inherently biased as they only examine only(sic) the 1% of all microorganisms which are able to grow fairly rapidly in pure culture.”
link
But that particular observation may not be a part of some atheists experience set.
Or they may feel that they, or someone they know, was (or at least could hypothetically be) helped similarly by a secular ideology. Undoubtedly, they feel there's a naturalistic explanation.
And really, who's to say, definitively, that they're wrong? (I don't agree, but I can't prove it.) What do we really know anyway about anything? We talk about apparent improbability of the universe -- but what do we really know about the conditions under which it formed? (The same critique could be leveled at multiverse theory, which essentially arose for polemic purposes.) People talk about the "improbability" of God. Again, what do we know anyway?
I don't know anything much Ryan. In my own private life, to be an atheist would be a huge act of intellectual dishonesty -- akin to suddenly saying I've never seen evidence for, say, supply and demand. I might become mad at God, but there's no way *I* could honestly say, as an observer, that there's no such thing. I've seen and directly experienced too many things, many of which haven't appeared on this blog.
But it's okay that people don't see that: We're only responsible for what we know, or claim to know. So while I don't really claim to know even what "improbability" really means, I notice that we all, including people like Dawkins, place great weight on the importance of improbability as a indicator of significance. If two factors in the universe, two observations, line up to confirm a theory, such that the odds would be low of those two things just happening independently, we say that supplies evidence for said theory. And Dawkins prattles on about the "probability" of God when we didn't know this or that about the universe. (A god of the gaps, that is.) So he cares about "improbability" when it suits.
(Sorry I'm being a bit ranty here.)
But suddenly he's buying into multiverse theory, to dispel one very large set of serious improbabilities. Great, but then let's be serious: Undermining probability is a bit like undermining reason: you have no consistent ground left when you're done. That's why a conference of philosophers recently meant to talk about what probability still means, if anything, if we buy into the multiverse.
If you undermine improbability, how could you even hypothetically stage a repeated test of, say, some miraculous phenomenon? Heal five people in a row, and an intellectually consistent answer is: "Well, given that there are multiple universes, there are a huge number of alternative universes where each of those healings didn't happen." Great: then your materialism is completely bulletproof. And completely irrational.
If your beliefs are not disprovable, they're no longer scientific. And that's not always bad but: good heavens, by these grounds, my religious beliefs are more scientific than many current "scientific theories", given that, at numerous points in my life, I have tried to set aside my upbringing and be open to adopting atheism or whatever other belief seemed most true. I simply found them wrong or confused, I didn't need to erect some complex philosophical edifice.
Instead, certain theorists say: "Well, if the universe looks odd, and that seems to imply something, then in order to preserve our belief in the principle of mediocrity, we'll postulate an infinite number of parallel universes." Uh, okay, but so much for rational thought. The Marxists did the same thing when the Revolution didn't engulf Europe.
Again, I'm not generalizing here: There are atheists who have looked into various belief systems and found them wrong on subjective reasons. There are those who, frankly, haven't seen anything which wasn't easily explained by two everyday coincidences which just lined up, though in my view, that should leave one as an agnostic, not an atheist.
(Speaking of which, Richard Feynman tells a nice story about a clock stopping the moment his wife died -- how he might have thought that meant something, but it's just one of those things, like two people at the same party having the same birthday, which happen now and then. Agreed. And then there are something which aren't quite like that.)
It's easier to do a controlled debunking of a fake miracle than it is to do a truly controlled exhibition of a real miracle.
The "hiddeness" of God is one of his more puzzling (and frustrating) aspects. I've seen, and I know other people have seen things which we would suppose would push someone over the edge. I keep wondering: "Well, if you can do this stuff, why aren't you doing it for others?" Jesus's disciples wondered the same thing about his proclivity to speak in parables. "Lest they [the crowds] would turn and be healed." (Huh? Isn't that the whole point?) When Jesus was walking around doing miracles, it records that he kept telling people not to run around telling everyone, much to his disciples' puzzlement and annoyance. Instead of God talking in a great booming voice to the entire Jewish people (well, beyond Sinai, where nobody listened anyway -- which I think says a lot)...
You know, the story of Sinai is truly a fantastic story. You've got atheists who say: "Well, if God would just tell us all directly, we'd all believe in God." Well, perhaps, but the story of Sinai says that it wouldn't really make a difference. What a remarkable thing: Most peoples' religious books serve to flatter themselves -- you know, they the unique and direct decedents of Zeus, or whatever -- but the Jews' religious book does anything but. God appears, face to face, to the Jews, and what does their Holy text say they do in response to that?
Oh, basically they tell him he's an awful guy, that he has no idea what he's doing, that they want nothing to do with him. The decide to worship a metal moose (or golden calf or whatever, all equally stupid), get falling down drunk, and proceed to screw each others wives in broad daylight.
It's really quite a remarkable story, and it says something about the tremendous intellectual honesty of religious Jews that it was preserved exactly that way: "Here's the story of our founding fathers getting drunk and telling our God to shove off." Geez, what a founding myth! (And we get upset at allegations that Jefferson slept with one of his slaves! (I dont think he did, actually, having looked into it, but that's beside the point.)
But the point here is not about the Jews in specific -- it's universal -- and it's the same as the point about the Jesus's story about Lazarus and the rich man: That knowing God exists doesn't produce the kind of belief God seeks. There were times when Israel truly believed in God, but it didn't make them a particularly holy people -- many still hated him, or preferred to listen to 'prophets' who told them whatever was in vogue. I remember a materialist friend of mine -- who was constantly talking about the importance of "rationality" and "evidence" -- admitting that even if he saw a UFO or angel himself, it wouldn't change his belief system!
(Things are not as they seem, sometimes.)
And, of course, atheists like Hitchens are rather up front about this: I remember a Hitchens column where he said something about "Well, it's good thing such a disgusting entity doesn't exist." In other words, he'd be hostile to the idea wherever the evidence led. Nice he's honest, anyway.
Which leads me to my next post, I think...
This would be shared behavior amoung antitheists- atheists that don't care that other people believe could still be strong atheists.
1) Uh... Tim, you do realize that in reality the two overlap? You know, atheism is about belief and agnosticism is about knowledge? So you can be an agnostic atheist- in fact most atheists are(lazy bums-take philosophy dammit!).
Dawkins hasn't asserted he doesn't believed God doesn't exist- if you read his book, he simply says it is extremely improbable.
You do realize there is... I don't know, showing there is actually a reason to believe something? The theist has made a positive claim, as has the strong atheist- the burden of proof lies on them, NOT weak atheists.
2) Please give an example. I know, not all are rational, but there are alot of good arguments you don't have to use bad ones. The worst I heard was misquoting "The fools hath said there is no God" to saying the bible says there is no god, but that is it. And, no, showing natural causes of religion don't count- they are a rebuttal to "how do you explain why belief is widespread"
3) Argument from ignorance. Argument from nonsense (no supernatural phenomena have ever been confirmed). Arguing from wishes. Argument from misleading (only the non supernatural stuff has been confirmed- which isn't surprising considering Jews exist. Only really applies to the Old Testament though).
You didn't read point number three, did you? As for miracles... you are aware EVERY religion claims them? With about as much proof?
4) You are assuming meaning. Your points are also contradictory- theists are equally capable of doing science... and the field is dominated by atheists because they are the only ones interested in it. The more interested, the more likely to be better scientists... the two statements are mutually contradictory.
The first two are moral, but the third belongs to science.
Scientists don't have any special authority except that granted by expertise- for example, chemists and biologists in the field of abiogenisis- which you reject by the way.
You can derive truth from science. The only reason I'm against religion mixing with science is that it is false- if it was true, it would be a great match.
5) The first is a moral statement that can be proved from axioms. The second is a statement about the best way to get knowledge, which can also be proved.
You have yet to demonstrate atheism is false.
6) See antitheism. It is worth noting declaring that people NOT basing beliefs on God isn't an ideology either- not to mention this is arguing from consequences fallacy.
Than non-communism is an ideology because it leads to people not basing beliefs on the revolution of the proletariat and... you can't claim that since people DON'T have your ideology that lack is itself an ideology!
7) Actually most people have the religion of their parents...
If two peoplw view the same evidence and come to differant conclusions, one is wrong. To deal with that we look at the evidence.
Miracles? I guess you know thee didn't happen
http://www.geocities.com/islamicmiracles/
Hmm... have you converted yet?
Basically it is the default because we are born with it AND it is the position adopted without any evidence- no more, no less. You are arguing against a straw man by accident.
8) You aren't looking hard. See Daylight Atheism or a million other sites. Sites devoted entirely to antitheism won't discuss morality much, nust like sites devoted to baseball don't- they are unrelated.
9) You believe that your arguments are sound and your evidence valid even though the most cursory glance reveals they aren't. You declare that only believing in things that have proof are self refuting... without realizing how stupid that claim is (there are INFINITE things that aren't proven!). You use faith- I don't. Ask, and some atheist could probably explain why they do something yo consider faith based. You have fallen, again, to the fallacy of ignorance.
10) Funny- most people consider communism responsible. After all, the dirty reds rejected "Darwinism". just like theists did.
Crack also makes people happy. It is still illegal. On better ground is the fact Tasps could do the same thing and they WOULD be banned.
Because Islam is based on the same foundations as the other two religions- check out their apologetics if you doubt me.
On the posts
Yes, they are some "angry atheists" that are actuallytheists- if they say they hate God, that is a clear sign.
I call those "idiots". Here is a hint- if you can'thold similar beliefs than one of you is wrong. Obviously differances based on goals can exist, but on basic ideology... well, one is wrong.
http://www.daylightatheism.org/2008/06/respectable-infidels.html
Your claim it all points in one direction is like people who claim all UFO evidence points in one direction. It does, but it is all flawed.
See "Atheism: Proving the Negative".
Uhh... I'll stop now- I may deal with your next post.
You use faith- I don't.
Samuel - I address this statement in the previous posting. Could you please read it? Your definition of faith and your belief that you don't rely on it contradict the dictionary definition of faith and the term as theists use it. Faith is belief without proof, not belief without evidence. Everyone believes things which they cannot prove.
Did you notice the 9 other points?
1. Tim may be right, but personally I don't care about this point enough to argue it.
3. Re: The issue of abiogenesis as well as the nature of the universe. My degree is in Biotech, incidentally. Check out why Dawkins feels compelled to invoke the "Many-worlds" interpretation of Quantum physics. It's because he realizes that without such an interpretation the existence of a universe that doesn't implode on itself, much less one capable of producing such complex life in such a relatively short period of time seems improbable.
Consider that Hoyle, an atheist, used the notion that the universe was laid out to support life in order to calculate the values of certain constants, which later proved correct.
Also;
Living systems are based on carbon, (Hoyle) observed, and carbon is formed within stars by a process of nucleosynthesis. (The theory of nucleosynthesis is, indeed, partly his creation.) Two helium atoms fuse to form a beryllium intermediate, which then fuses again with another helium atom to form carbon. The process is unstable because beryllium intermediates are short-lived.
In 1953 Edwin Salpeter discovered that the resonance between helium and intermediate beryllium atoms, like the relation between an opera singer and the glass she shatters, is precisely tuned to facilitate beryllium production. Hoyle then discovered a second nuclear resonance, this one acting between beryllium and helium, and finely tuned as well.
Without carbon, no life. And without specific nuclear resonance levels, no carbon. And yet there he was, Hoyle affirmed, carbon based to the core. Nature, he said in a remark widely quoted, seems to be "a put-up job."
link
4. Scientists don't have any special authority except that granted by expertise- for example, chemists and biologists in the field of abiogenisis- which you reject by the way.
Who rejects abiogenesis? Not me. Not Tim, I'm reasonably sure. But it seems improbable, based only on what I know, that we just happen to have a universe that allowed it to happen. Chirality is a big problem in abiogenesis. You can't go straight to an RNA world (which is still a long way from life as we know it.) You have to have some other setup capable of SELECTING for RNA with the proper 'handedness.' This is very very hard to do. And it would severely limit the number of locations where life might be formed. You cannot start evolving till you get that first replicative setup. And that's just not that easy to do.
So yes, you can have some initial setup that creates the RNA world that eventually creates prokaryotic and then eukaryotic life and then complex animals. But given the difficulty of selecting for chiral molecules, the requisite length of RNA that seems to be needed simply to create a self-replicating loop and the limited numbers of environments which would support all these things (not to close to a black hole or the radiation destroys your little cells - that rules out 90% of the universe's mass right there, not too early in the universe or the carbon you need hasn't even been created yet, etc. etc. ) the whole deal seems improbable if left to random chance. There may be some simpler route I don't know about for creating life, but based on what we do know the matter seems very very difficult.
And this isn't even getting into how carefully the universal constants need to be tuned just to get a world that doesn't collapse in on itself, or which is incapable of having planets rotate around suns.
This does not prove or disprove either theism or atheism, of course. I'm simply demonstrating that there is physical evidence for the probability of intelligent creation.
The first is a moral statement that can be proved from axioms.
What does 'the first' refer to? Could you summarize your point including the point you're responding to?
5. You have yet to demonstrate atheism is false.
As I said before, I can give evidence that theism is true, but not proof. I can demonstrate that the lack of any type of God is improbable and provide some small hints as to his probable nature. But as I said earlier, belief in God and knowledge of the nature of God is based on evidence but not proof in the academic sense. If atheism could be definitively disproved, belief in God would be fact, not faith. But I disagree with your characterization that belief in God is "against the evidence."
7. If two peoplw view the same evidence and come to differant conclusions, one is wrong. To deal with that we look at the evidence.
But the evidence is not always sufficient to PROVE one person wrong. In which case, both people have faith in their views and the arguments continue.
Miracles? I guess you know thee didn't happen
http://www.geocities.com/islamicmiracles/
I address this in my response to the other post. Short version, they may have happened or they may not have happened. I'm skeptical, certainly, that any laws of physics have ever been broken. Some miracles seem made up for political reasons. I don't believe Constantine really saw any writing in the sky. Such an event probably should have been more widely recorded. But I don't know. And even if true, I don't know to what degree miracles can be used to determine the nature of God. Even the Old Testament acknowledges pagan miracles.
I'll stop here as I'm out of time and need to work.
This portion should be quoted. It's from the link I posted.
Living systems are based on carbon, (Hoyle) observed, and carbon is formed within stars by a process of nucleosynthesis. (The theory of nucleosynthesis is, indeed, partly his creation.) Two helium atoms fuse to form a beryllium intermediate, which then fuses again with another helium atom to form carbon. The process is unstable because beryllium intermediates are short-lived.
In 1953 Edwin Salpeter discovered that the resonance between helium and intermediate beryllium atoms, like the relation between an opera singer and the glass she shatters, is precisely tuned to facilitate beryllium production. Hoyle then discovered a second nuclear resonance, this one acting between beryllium and helium, and finely tuned as well.
Without carbon, no life. And without specific nuclear resonance levels, no carbon. And yet there he was, Hoyle affirmed, carbon based to the core. Nature, he said in a remark widely quoted, seems to be "a put-up job."
Samuel - Regarding #2 anyways, I'm willing to use you as a single data point. In the course of this conversation you've been confronted with some evidence which is contrary to your views. The definition of 'faith' is one of them. The rarity of ancient monogamy is another. The differences between Christian Europe and Rome, India and China is another.
It's possible, in my mind, that you just haven't studied enough history to compare and contrast the body counts of different societies or thought a word meant one thing when it meant something else. There's a lot of information in the world, and we base our views on such a small fraction of it. It's easy for us to think we know more than we do, and most people fall into that trap.
(It does seem a little strange that you seem to defend the Roman practice of decimation while sticking to the assertion that some calvary from ... well, you don't give a citation, ran down their own men. Were you referring to this;
according to later western chronicles of the Third Crusade, they were cowards and trampled their own men in the rush, but more likely they were simply trying to break the Muslim encirclement of the crusader army.
link
An action taken in the panic of battle hardly seems comparable to a deliberate act made in cold blood. )
I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, too, and believed things that evidence later informed against. I'm not trying to claim that I'm smarter than yourself. That kind of intellectual hubris can absolutely derail the learning progress (If we're smarter than anyone who disagrees with us and therefore don't have to listen to them, how do we know if we're wrong?) People less intelligent than myself have taught me quite a lot, and I've sometimes won arguments against people more intelligent than myself. Calling oneself intelligent is never an excuse to avoid dealing with unfavorable evidence.
At the heart of questions about logic and rationality is how people deal with evidence when it contradicts their established world view. Do they simply ignore it and repeat their assertions louder? Do they actually try and provide some kind of controlled experiment to support their belief? Do they have some clear threshhold after which they're willing to change their beliefs. If a belief cannot be disconfirmed through contrary evidence then "logic" and "rationality" are useless.
I've met, myself, a few creationists who didn't seem particularly rational about their beliefs (i.e. "God put dinosaur bones in the ground to confuse non-believers", etc.) as well. But most religious folk are not creationists.
For fine tuning arguments see this:
link
Stop being condesending. I used the dictionary you did and looked at their definition of proof. It turns out that it means evidence. Not to mention two of the definition explicitly fit what I gave.
Ancient monogamy? Given the fact that polygamy is rare even in polygamous societies, monogamy has been the system for the majority of humanity. And of course, the Romans and Greeks were monogamous.
Christian Europe sucked... so did ancient Chine, Rome and India. Rome was the best though. Do you have a point lurking in here?
No, I was defending decimation because there was an actual reason for it- maybe a disproportionate responce, but something the men (who were volunteers) could understand. I wan't refering to your link- it was the occasional practice to run over your skirmishers because they moved out of the way to slowly and general practice to butcher your enemies peasents.
You do realzie non-Creationism makes even less sense? It is the equivalent of the Holocaust- 6 billion years of pain and suffering while God stood by and waited. Seriously- I can't imagine how theists can believe in evolution.
I used the dictionary you did and looked at their definition of proof. It turns out that it means evidence. Not to mention two of the definition explicitly fit what I gave.
Samuel, again, you're not even addressing my arguments. you're just repeating your own.
One of the definitions is: "something that induces certainty or establishes validity"
You know what an academic proof is, right? And you understand how your misuse of the word "faith" implied that definition. You asserted that I was wrong. (which is not, of course, condescending at all.)I explicitly gave instances of where your misuse
No, I was defending decimation because there was an actual reason for it- maybe a disproportionate responce, but something the men (who were volunteers) could understand. I wan't refering to your link- it was the occasional practice to run over your skirmishers because they moved out of the way to slowly and general practice to butcher your enemies peasents.
Could you provide some evidence for this assertion?
No, I was defending decimation because there was an actual reason for it- maybe a disproportionate responce, but something the men (who were volunteers) could understand. I wan't refering to your link- it was the occasional practice to run over your skirmishers because they moved out of the way to slowly and general practice to butcher your enemies peasents.
I'm not sure I'd understand decimation much better than being trampled because I moved too slowly if I were the victim of either. You could try and excuse both as 'having a purpose' though you still need to support trampling one's own skirmishers was common institutionalized practice.
The article that you link to states;
We not certain, however, that this universe is improbable at all. We do know that the Standard Model of physics is incomplete: physicists have not yet reconciled quantum mechanics with general relativity. If they can reconcile the two, we might change our estimate of the probabilities; if we cannot reconcile the two, the universe would be a weirder place than even quantum mechanics suggests, and it's difficult to see how one would talk about probability at all. And, who knows, we might discover for deep reasons that have nothing to do with life that this is the only universe that could possibly exist.
I would like to note several things;
First that the argument from ignorance can be summarized, (from wikipedia) as
" a logical fallacy in which it is claimed that a premise is true only because it has not been proven false or is only false because it has not been proven true.
In formal logic, the strong version of the term 'proof' is implied. Proof, here, means more than just evidence, but rather evidence inducing certainty. So use of formal logic here implies the strong version of the term "proof" rather than the weak version which means "evidence."
At no time have I made the claim that the universe has been proven improbable, therefore I have not made an argument from ignorance. My argument was based on extrapolations from the best available evidence. What the poster says above is true. It may be that, after all the riddles of the universe have been solved, which they will probably never all be, we find that the universe is very different from how we see it now. Perhaps universal constants change over time, for instance. It has been suggested by some folks who are smarter than I am that this is a possibility.
It is possible to extrapolate from current trends without the resulting predictions being certain. However current trends do suggest (but don't prove) an improbable universe as I gave evidence for and which the linked article tacitly acknowledges in the course of arguing against their validity.
My arguments MIGHT be proven completely wrong. They are not conclusive. But they are based on the best available evidence as far as I can see.
Now, several problems with the linked article;
1. There are several problems with the anthropic principle(s) as used by this article. The first is that it is a de-facto admission that the universe is improbable (or an attempt by people to cover themselves because they think it might be)
The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time. This principle was used very effectively by Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke to resolve an issue that had puzzled physicists for a good many years. The issue concerned various striking numerical relations that are observed to hold between the physical constants (the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, the age of the universe, etc.).link
If the universe were not improbable, there would be no need for an anthropic principle to explain seemingly improbable constants. Note that I'm not arguing that it's improbable for us to exist on earth at this particular time, but that, given more or less random values for the universe, it is improbable that life should exist anywhere at this particular time.
The second is that, as Tim mentions earlier, the anthropic principle(s) throw all notions of probability out the window. They looks at results and reason backwards that those results were inevitable because otherwise they would not have happened. (Granted, some creationists do the same thing trying to calculate the "probability" that a particular form of life would have evolved, when there are many possible forms and paths that life can take. This is why I've limited myself to things like physical constants and abiogenesis rather than debating the probability of evolving a particular enzyme, given a basic replicative setup.
But use of the anthropic principle assumes a given result (concious life) which cannot really be assumed in order to dispel the improbability of concious life. Assuming what you mean to prove is circular logic.
2. While some of the physics quoted in the linked article is a bit over my head, I noted this;
From the article;
If there were a prevailing view among this concerned minority as to the resolution of the above dichotomy, CFD vs. locality, it would probably be that CFD, although pragmatically useful in practical applications and discussions of quantum mechanics, must be philosophically abandoned to positivism because the alternative of nonlocality is unacceptable.link, 1986
Do a search for "quantum non locality" and check out the first ten results returned. The majority of results returned will support a non-local interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
#1 search result returned;
In Bell’s words: [14] “It now seems that
the non-locality is deeply rooted in quantum mechanics itself and will persist in any completion.” We can conclude from the EPR paradox and Bell’s theorem that the quantum theory is irreducibly nonlocal9.
link
from the article:
If all physically possible universes exist, then of course we find ourselves in one of the universes that is physically life-friendly.
Note what he does in this passage. He jumps from "if all possible universes might exist" to "all possible universesdo exist." Big difference.
Unless you subscribe to the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum physics, there's a big difference between saying "I could write anything on this paper" and "I have written every possible combination of words on this paper."
More importantly, if we can talk in any meaningful sense about how the universe might have been, it is possible to talk in the same sense about how any hypothetical creator might have been....So the domain of plausible creators must be at least as large as the domain of possible universes
The reason that atheists tend to invoke the many worlds interpretation is to explain improbabilities which exist in our universe, not outside it.
But if you really buy into his rhetorical assertion that an infinite number of creators are possible and we just have to figure out the nature of the creator of this universe... well, I'd be happy to work along those assumptions. Would you?
We cannot determine if this being wants to be worshipped or ignored...
He asserts that we can't tell anything about the creator of the universe based on the world. But he offers no support for this assertion.
Indeed the idea that a being capable of creating such a vast universe, of actually creating physics itself, would choose to communicate with its creation by the agency of schizophrenic prophets and parasitic priests in some a remote corner of the ancient world seems vastly less plausible than that all religions are entirely human social constructs.
We are back now to arguing whether religion is functional or not. If religion is functional then his assertions about prophets and priests are invalid. If it is non-functional or demonstratably harmful then his assertion might hold up. Thus, we can use material observations, in terms of the effects of religion and God-belief on human societies, as partial evidence (but not proof in the academic sense) for the validity of a religion. If proving that a prediction is false can disconfirm it, then failing to show a falsifiable prediction to be false is (non-conclusive) evidence in its favor.
To clarify a point, I'm going to quote a broader section of the article you cited.
Some philosophers would assert that meaningful counter-factual definiteness entails an ontological commitment to the actual existence of the counter-factual conditions: in other words, for us to talk about how the universe might have been, those alternatives must actually exist. In which case, the Fine Tuning argument loses all force. If all physically possible universes exist, then of course we find ourselves in one of the universes that is physically life-friendly.
This is where he's moving from "other values for a universe could possibly exist" to "all possible universes exist."
Ancient monogamy? Given the fact that polygamy is rare even in polygamous societies, monogamy has been the system for the majority of humanity. And of course, the Romans and Greeks were monogamous.
Plato was an early critic of sexual intercourse in pederastic relationships, proposing that men's love of boys avoid all sexual expression and instead progress from admiration of the lover's specific virtues to love of virtue itself in abstract form. While copulation with boys was often criticized and seen as shameful and brutish,[39] other aspects of the relationship were considered beneficial, as indicated in proverbs such as A lover is the best friend a boy will ever have.[40]
...
Pederastic relationships were dyadic mentorships. These mentorships were sanctioned by the state, and consecrated by the religious establishment.
From the early Rebublican times of Ancient Rome, it was perfectly normal for a man to desire and pursue boys.[42] However, penetration was illegal for free born youths; the only boys who were legally allowed to perform as a passive sexual partner were slaves or former slaves known as "freedmen", and then only with regard to their former masters. For slaves there was no protection under the law even against rape.[43]
Conservative thinkers condemned it — along with other forms of indulgence.
link
As far as male-female polygamy; Of course the people practicing it are of a privaledged minority. Unless some war has killed off many men, half the population having exactly two wives would be more than enough to exhaust the number of women in the population.
The Romans didn't have polygamist marriages. Why would they bother. They had concubines. They didn't need to marry a woman to have a relationship with her. They had in their society women called heteri(?) who just floated around to give sexual favors to men and then non‑citizen women were used by men for their sexual activity. And then they had concubines. And then divorce was so rampant that we read of one Roman who had 27 different wives and only one at a time. And one writer talks about women wearing out their bridal veils with so many weddings.
(if you'll accept the source)
link
Also;
In a Roman household sex was in plentiful supply. Except, so it seems, between the actual married couples. The existence of slaves in the house naturally mean that, particularly the men, but also the women (although with the risk of pregnancy and disgrace), had access to sex whenever they so required.
Roman sexuality in its pagan times is perhaps hard to understand by western society with its values heavily influenced by Christianity.
To a Roman sex did not create any kind of bond between two people. It created no obligation between one side and the other. And, for the man at least, there appeared no reason why he should not share many sexual partners, - as long as it didn't get him into any form of trouble.
What is peculiar though is that, whereas even the sharing of a meal created a form of social relationship with a person, having sex with them did not.
link
The Romans may not have married many people, but it's hard to argue that they placed a high value on male sexual fidelity, per se.
3) I think Hoyle's point was the values had to be that value or we wouldn't be there to observe it.
Or it could be the only way that it is possible- we don't know exactly how the universe works. Also note this argument relies on an incredible premise- in fact I should mark it.
Major Assumption 1)- Life is important and all the universe was arranged around life because if it was differant we wouldn't be here.
I'm pretty sure RNA can do that- RNA is self-replicating, unlike DNA. It is possible there was an earlier base structure- I've heard stories about clay providing scaffolding. It isn't overly complicated given that it happened at least once (Earth).
Major Assumption 2)- I don't know how it works and scientists haven't solved the who puzzle yet- so it must have a supernatural origin. Sorry if this is insulting... but it is what you are saying.
It gets worse since you confuse universal constants with the ones that exist afterward. Once you have the universe existing, life isn't too hard. Sure, it looks hard- but there are more niches than there are grains of sand- millions of galaxies, billions upon billions of stars and trillions of trillions of worlds. If you roll enough d20s...
So far your only evidence of physical creation is life... which is based on the assumption that the universe is created for it because life exists and is improbable.
Or it could be created for Saturn's rings- they are even more improbable. Saying it was "designed" for us is huge question begging- why? Because God wanted to do that. Why? Stop asking questions. A universe designed for life makes no more sense than a universe without any- in fact, less sense. Life, by definition is capable of making itself and so doesn't need a creator (see "the existance of atheism"). Robots, by contrast do need creators- especially well designed ones. Don't tell me- souls can't bond with silicon?
5) I mispoke. Sorry. However, to show atheism is false, you'd have to give positive evidence theism is true. So far you have given improbabilities and stated that to overcome them you have to invent something that has no other justification, makes no sense, etc... I mean, it is an affont to Occum's Razor!
7) I don't have faith in my views. More to the point there IS sufficient evidence- if there wasn't you would be an atheist- so you believe there is enough evidence to justify belief. By contrast I realize your "evidence" doesn't hold water.
3rd
The definition of faith has conformed to my views... did you read it? Or their definition of proof? While absence of evidence isn't always evidence of absense, in the case of all powerful beings it IS!
What differance are you talking about and how on Earth is it related to the truth value of Christianity?
Ancient Monogamy isn't that rare- or are you telling me the Christians were the first group EVER to realize that polygamy is a bad idea?
You keep on accusing me of not being well read or understanding these things... which is getting annoying. I'll be blunt- I have a neurological condition called aspergers syndrome and one of the major features is "special interests"- an almost obcessive fasination with certain topics. It is shared by 85-95% of all those with the syndrome. My interest? Just history... technically human society, but history was a major subtopic. So you know, this is a little insulting.
More to the point I have made accurate predictions about your beliefs and I don't believe you have done so for me- for example, I guess for "Christian values" you'd either having "everything goodness and light" or "science". Imagine my surprise when you had both! Okay, no surprise there- it was only a matter of time before someone combined the two, although you didn't seem to recognize the unfortunate implications.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnfortunateImplications
You know, God brought Chritainity to the world so white people could get all the cargo and conquer it? After all, if Christianity leads to this AND God is all seeing...
Decimation was a practice done as a disciplinary measure. Given the fact the US Army was hanging people into the 19th century for desertion, I don't think it is extreme.
Killing your own men because they fail to get out of the way IS. I was actually thinking of the battle of Crecy. This was also repeated in other major and minor battles, but Crecy is the only one where I read about it specifically happening.
Ah yes, the accusations of black and white thinking and cries for moderation. I've learnt that applies to POLITICS- people, although I've characterized them as machines, tend to get... messier when in groups.
Unfortunately we aren't talking about politics- It is a BS strawman tossed in teh road by someone who feels "moderate" and "reasonable". Religion is either true or it is false- fact is the only reason I'm engaging in these diversionary nothings is because otherwise you'd probably consider them a win.
Most religious people are creationists- you forgot a very important point- most of the world's population live in third world countires.
In the US it appears to be 39% of the population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism
After my responce and your responce to it...
Proof was used in the definition of faith- I was giving the definition of proof to show that they didn't mean academic proof for "faith"- they meant the usage in the vernacular- evidence.
Seriously, it is the definition that has been accepted for over two millenia- I don't know why you don't get it (William of Occum, made Occum's razor to show that belief required faith- this is an OLD definition).
Crecy was an example- they run down their own mercs so they can get to the English.
Decimination is a punishment- you do something and you pay the price.
Running a person over because they are in your way because you put them there is using as
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeHaveReserves
Usages of the argument from ignorance by you
- The universe. You make multiple assumptions (there are differant possible configurations, life is its purpose, etc) to come to the desired result... because science hasn't provided answers in this area yet. Probability from the best available evidence is bull- the center piece of your argument is that the probability for a designer is higher than that of natural occurance because... you don't say actually. It FEELS desinged- but so do living things. And guess what? They aren't, so it could be just an illusion. You deal with this by ignoring it.
The problem with the idea of universal constants changing over time is that... well it would make life impossible AND they wouldn't be universal constants (space AND time my dear Watson). Most scientists have the assumption that the constants are constant- they can't prove it, of course.
As for the rest of the argument, well a creator of a universe implies deism, nothing more. If it wanted more it would actually intervene. And don't give me that holy book and miracle crap- ALL religions claim that. I could do more impressive stuff with Clarke level tech.
Ah- guess the Romans weren't big on monogamy... except monogamy means being married to one person... and that is what they did! If you include the concubine part then I'm afraid we are going to simply leave out Latin America as Christians- they do practice having mistresses. In fact if I remember right, 20% of married
...
I just looked at the wiki page... apparently adultry wasn't ground for divorce from the husband UNLESS he kept the concubine at home...
So, saying that Christianity is responsible for monogamy is BS- they still have some of the same flaws as the Romans.
And lets not even bring up medieval prostitution.
Finally (and my favorite part) is other cultures- did the Japanese have polygamy? No- they did have prostitutes and I believe the petifile thing at one time, but the stopped the second before they Europeanized. The Iriquios practiced monogamy. In fact monogamy is a feature of egalitarian societies. Yes, yes, I know some of them embraced "group sex" because... well they are dead and we can slander them. Lets ignore the fact we have never seen anything like it in any actual hunter gather society.
You don't seem to be arguing for monogamy, but marital fidelity. Unfortunately, as I have shown, the Christians weren't big on that either. Brothels and adultry are a good example. Unless you are refering to how much they disapprove of it in public- in which case I think we can agree it is more of the virtue of hypocracy than marital virtues.
Did I miss anything?
The essentail problem with talking about monogamy are many... wit, contradictory sentence.
The flaws ar many... better.
1) It is irrelevant to the truth value of religion
2) Practice and deed differ
3) Subgroups (see Mormons- yes, they are Christians)
4) Behavior, even if unusual, has other instance somewhere
I'm pretty sure RNA can do that- RNA is self-replicating, unlike
DNA. It is possible there was an earlier base structure- I've heard
stories about clay providing scaffolding. It isn't overly
complicated given that it happened at least once (Earth).
I've already acknowledged that RNA can be self-replicating. I'm
discussing the problems inherant in getting that first self-
replicating RNA strand, however. The places where it was possible
You'd need an area protected from extremeties with a lot of
naturally occuring RNA nucleotides. There are naturally occcurring
catalysts which catalyze the production of RNA strings, which improve the odds considerably. But a single base of the wrong chirality would
throw things off. And you need over 200 in more or less the correct
configuration for everything to work. So there would have to be some
pre-rna setup to get things going.
The problem with using chiral clays + nucleotides for the pre-RNA
setup to select for chiral molecules is that chiral clays seem to
have been created from the deutritis of living things. So you can't
have chiral clay before you have (chiral) life to produce the chiral
clay. If they've found chiral clay being produced by an inorganic
process this would be huge news. Please let me know.
Also note this argument
Which argument?
Major Assumption 2)- I don't know how it works and scientists
haven't solved the who puzzle yet- so it must have a supernatural
origin. Sorry if this is insulting... but it is what you are
saying.
Depends on how you define 'supernatural' here. The word is easily
misunderstood. I'm not arguing for any violation of the laws of
physics. I am saying "If enough coincidences run in a particular
direction, its fair to ask if there is some kind of intent behind
those coincidences." Of course, it's always possible to argue with
coincidences. Some people do win the lottery. That doesn't automatically have meaning.
Sure, it looks hard- but there are more niches than there are
grains of sand- millions of galaxies, billions upon billions of
stars and trillions of trillions of worlds. If you roll enough
d20s...
Well, first, there are a finite number of each of these things.
Also, it's fair to ask how many of those worlds are capable of
creating, much less sustaining, life. As I brought up earlier if you
go too close to a black hole the sychnotron radiation will, from
what I understand, tear most life forms apart. That alone removes
quite a large portion of the galaxy's matter as a possible starting
point for life. Not to mention the mass taken up by black holes and suns
themselves has to be excluded. Obviously abiogenesis did occur. And
it's hard to ask "what is the possibility of x value being so and
so" without having other universes to work with. On the other hand,
I don't think abiogenesis is the slam dunk a lot of people have made it out to be. There are a lot of very high chemical hurdles that need to be jumped. And most debates of abiogenesis tend to ignore them.
Life, by definition is capable of making itself
Please be careful of using the phrase "by definition." We're talking
about experimental results, not language. If we reason only based on
"definitions" without checking those definitions against any kind of
experiment then we have no reason to believe that our definitions
correspond to the material world. Granted, life reproduces copies of
itself. I agree. But my focus here is on abiogenesis, not life.
I mean, it is an affont to Occam's Razor!
As an aside, I think Occam's Razor is horribly overused. Predictive
value trumps Occam's Razor every time. Relativity is more complex than Newtonian physics, but we still use it, because it's more accurate.
More to the point there IS sufficient evidence- if there wasn't
you would be an atheist- so you believe there is enough evidence to
justify belief. By contrast I realize your "evidence" doesn't hold
water.
Huh? This doesn't make sense to me.
While absence of evidence isn't always evidence of absense, in
the case of all powerful beings it IS!
Why? I get the feeling that you're not addressing the Judeo-
Christian conception of God, but rather some God who wants to compel
belief in as many people as possible. That conception of God is not
consonant with the Judeo-Christian belief.
If I haven't accurately interpreted your argument here, please let me know.
The definition of faith has conformed to my views... did you read
it?
I've read your definition of faith. You've asserted that faith meant
belief without evidence or belief against evidence. I showed that
there was no explicit support in the dictionary for that definition.
You said that faith was what separated atheism from theism. I said
ask some theists if they believe that they are holding their beliefs
against evidence. Otherwise theists mean something different when
they say 'faith' than what you mean. If you want to say that you
disagree with theists, that's fine. If you think theists are wrong,
that's fine too. I would appreciate if you acknowledge that you're
using an unusual definition of the word 'faith' if you want it to
mean "belief against the evidence" or "belief without evidence."
A universe designed for life makes no more sense than a universe
without any- in fact, less sense.
Why 'less sense?'
. However, to show atheism is false, you'd have to give positive
evidence theism is true.
I don't think the issue will ever be definitively resolved from a
scientific, materialistic standpoint. The link you gave didn't
really refute any fine tuning arguments, though, and I've tried to explain why bit by bit. And the question of whether religious beliefs are adaptive for a society or an individual is something we've only begun to discuss.
The utility of religious beliefs is important because it argues
against the notion that prophets were just crazy schizophrenics. If
insanity produces something useful, maybe it isn't really insanity.
You keep on accusing me of not being well read or understanding
these things... which is getting annoying. I'll be blunt- I have a
neurological condition called aspergers syndrome and one of the
major features is "special interests"- an almost obcessive
fasination with certain topics. It is shared by 85-95% of all those
with the syndrome. My interest? Just history... technically human
society, but history was a major subtopic. So you know, this is a
little insulting.
I'm familiar with aspergers. Are you making an argument from
authority here? People with PhDs disagree with one another. So if
you know a lot, great. It means you can provide very specific
evidence to support your views. I'm not intending to be insulting
and I'm sorry if I came off that way. Since you said your views were
based on evidence and you're a materialist, is it wrong to assume
that you would use considerable material evidence for convincing
other people of the truth of your beliefs?
More to the point I have made accurate predictions about your
beliefs and I don't believe you have done so for me- for example, I
guess for "Christian values" you'd either having "everything
goodness and light" or "science"...Okay, no surprise there- it was
only a matter of time before someone combined the two,
Which accurate predictions have you made about my beliefs? I'm not sure what you're referring to here.
As for combining religious values and science, I've already given a
few cites about religious people who were also accomplished
scientisits for as long as science has existed. Bacon (kindof the
original scientist in some ways), Newton. Tim mentioned the head of the Human genome project. So this isn't really a new thing.
You know, God brought Chritainity to the world so white people
could get all the cargo and conquer it?
Well, I never claimed that the world is perfect or that religion
made people perfect. Or that all people in a society were devout in matters of their faith. The benefits, while I believe them to be
tangible, are relatively slight. At the end of the day, people are
still people. And power seems to attract the same type of people
throughout history. Many power-hungry people are willing to pay lip
service to the dominant faith, even if they don't agree with it. You
used this earlier as a reason for discounting some religious
scientists (though there's a good argument to be made that much of
the religious behavior of such people was voluntary and exceeded
what would be required for simply putting on a show.) But wouldn't that same logic also apply to, say, warlords? Wouldn't some warlords or even kings also put on a show of religious faith, even if they didn't themselves believe in it?
Warfare and even domination happened long before the colonial powers
existed and were tragedies then and now. They weren't the result of
the rise of Christianity. Even the Spartans and Romans demanded tribute.
Incidentally, white people didn't "get all the cargo." They made
quite a bit of it. Sometimes they used materials from colonies, but
still, the fact that they did produce it and did a very good job of that is noteworthy.
Killing your own men because they fail to get out of the way IS. I was actually thinking of the battle of Crecy. This was also repeated in other major and minor battles, but Crecy is the only one where I read about it specifically happening.
I'm sure there have been many horrible tragedies perpetrated by predominantly Chrisitan nations. But the only thing I can find about the battle of Crecy was that archers were killed for (understandably) retreating. That doesn't seem in any way worse than what the Romans did on a regular basis. Likewise
Unfortunately we aren't talking about politics-
We were discussing evidence. I said that things that cannot be seen can be understood based on things that can be seen.
Proof was used in the definition of faith- I was giving the definition of proof to show that they didn't mean academic proof for "faith"- they meant the usage in the vernacular- evidence.
Seriously, it is the definition that has been accepted for over two millenia- I don't know why you don't get it (William of Occum, made Occum's razor to show that belief required faith- this is an OLD definition).
HuH? Used by who? not sure what you're arguing for here.
Probability from the best available evidence is bull- the center piece of your argument is that the probability for a designer is higher than that of natural occurance because... you don't say actually. It FEELS desinged-
I do say. I say compare random values for universal constants vs. actual values. But there's more than I've given;
The WAP(weak anthropic principle) also has predictive power. Fred Hoyle used the WAP to postulate the existence of energy resonances in the nucleo-synthesis of carbon from simpler elements---a fact confirmed by subsequent observations.
...Every scientific theory must:
* have predictive power
* be falsifiable in principle (the Popper criterion)
The WAP is a scientific theory in the sense that it has predictive power (as the above examples indicate) and in the sense that it can be falsified (for example, one could simply show that life of some sort will inevitably emerge in all possible Universes).
link
Predictions of values via theories that were more accurate than values derived from experiments is pretty impressive stuff, btw. Prior to 1900, such theory based prediction was never even done.
And guess what? They aren't, so it could be just an illusion.
Again, you are assuming what you intend to prove.
But as I've said earlier, I don't claim that I've given conclusive evidence. Just that there is evidence. You can even provide evidence for a view which is not true.
You deal with this by ignoring it.
Ignoring what? Bring up the point with a bit of context and I'll be happy to address it.
Most religious people are creationists
Sure, but there are almost as many people who believe in divinely guided evolution.
In 1997 44% of the population answered a poll with the choice "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."
39% said "Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation."
Granted, the theistic view of evolution is becomming less common (55% creationist 27% theistic creationist 13% evolutionist for 2006) But it's hardly a minority small enough to ignore. I'm not sure what you were trying to prove with that statement. Though I imagine the numbers probably would be a lot different for other countries or other times.
link
Running a person over because they are in your way because you put them there is using as
I can't find that interpretation of Crecy. From a quick web search, it seems like the knights were attacking the archers because the archers were retreating, not because the archers were in the way. But I know nothing about the battle of Crecy. I'm just trying to figure out what you're referring to.
As for the rest of the argument, well a creator of a universe implies deism, nothing more. If it wanted more it would actually intervene. And don't give me that holy book and miracle crap- ALL religions claim that. I could do more impressive stuff with Clarke level tech.
Not sure what you're arguing for here. But yeah, a creator of a universe implies deism, nothing more. We're in agreement there.
If that was the only evidence I had, I would agree with you entirely.
If it wanted more it would actually intervene
That depends on what it wanted and how it was willing to get it. And, for that matter, if it was actually "omnipotent." Who knows, maybe the bible was wrong about that and God does have limitations. I don't have evidence to show what God can and cannot do. I do know that spiritual practices have effected positive personality changes in people, and those changes are more productive than what seems to be effected by most non-theistic systems that I'm aware of.
Ah- guess the Romans weren't big on monogamy... except monogamy means being married to one person... and that is what they did!
Well, to split hairs, it can have a few meanings;
1archaic : the practice of marrying only once during a lifetime
2: the state or custom of being married to one person at a time
3: the condition or practice of having a single mate during a period of time
link
Romans weren't monogamous by def #3 (it's hard to tell exact rates of infidelity, of course.)
But I'm not really concerned with definitions here. I'm concerned with what people actually do. If two people just live together and have sex together or they marry later divorce there isn't a big difference in my mind. It's essentially the same situation.
If you include the concubine part then I'm afraid we are going to simply leave out Latin America as Christians-...apparently adultry wasn't ground for divorce from the husband UNLESS he kept the concubine at home...So, saying that Christianity is responsible for monogamy is BS- they still have some of the same flaws as the Romans.
So if the husband only frequents prostitutes outside of his home then by Roman standards obviously he's monogamous and everything is okay? Modern society, for all its flaws, seems to have better standards than that.
Well, if the question is whether religion has an effect on monogamy or sexual fidelity (To me, there's not a huge difference. Though I suppose two wives is better than one wife and a lot of prostitutes) lets do the experiement and stand by the results;
For Brazil;
RESULTS: Twelve percent of married or cohabiting men reported having had at least one extramarital partner in the previous 12 months;
Compared with members of evangelical religions, other men were significantly more likely to report having had an extramarital partner (odds ratios, 3.0-4.7) and unprotected extramarital sex in the last 12 months (3.4-7.9)link
So religion doesn't eliminate cheating, but it certainly seems to cut down on it on the individual level.
1) It is irrelevant to the truth value of religion
It is a positive effect of religion. Having a positive effect is an argument against antitheism and against the notion that prophets and such were simply crazy. Religions are judged by the effect that they have.
3) Subgroups (see Mormons- yes, they are Christians)
Mormons say they are. Most Christians claim that they aren't. It's debatable. Either way, I'm happy evaluating them as their own group and looking at the results. A good religion produces good results, and can be judged (if we're very careful with our evidence) in that manner.
4) Behavior, even if unusual, has other instance somewhere
Not sure what you're saying.
Sorry about how jazzed up the previous posting was. This should be cleaner.
I'm pretty sure RNA can do that- RNA is self-replicating, unlike DNA. It is possible there was an earlier base structure- I've heard stories about clay providing scaffolding. It isn't overly complicated given that it happened at least once (Earth).
I've already acknowledged that RNA can be self-replicating. I'm discussing the problems inherant in getting that first self-replicating RNA strand, however. The places where it was possible You'd need an area protected from extremeties with a lot of naturally occuring RNA nucleotides. There are naturally occcurring catalysts which catalyze the production of RNA strings, which improve the odds considerably. But a single base of the wrong chirality would throw things off. And you need over 200 in more or less the correct configuration for everything to work. So there would have to be some pre-rna setup to get things going.
The problem with using chiral clays + nucleotides for the pre-RNA setup to select for chiral molecules is that chiral clays seem to have been created from the deutritis of living things. So you can't have chiral clay before you have (chiral) life to produce the chiral clay. If they've found chiral clay being produced by an inorganic process this would be huge news. Please let me know.
Also note this argument
Which argument?
Major Assumption 2)- I don't know how it works and scientists haven't solved the who puzzle yet- so it must have a supernatural origin. Sorry if this is insulting... but it is what you are saying.
Depends on how you define 'supernatural' here. The word is easily misunderstood. I'm not arguing for any violation of the laws of physics. I am saying "If enough coincidences run in a particular direction, its fair to ask if there is some kind of intent behind those coincidences." Of course, it's always possible to argue with coincidences. Some people do win the lottery. That doesn't automatically have meaning.
Sure, it looks hard- but there are more niches than there are grains of sand- millions of galaxies, billions upon billions of stars and trillions of trillions of worlds. If you roll enough d20s...
Well, first, there are a finite number of each of these things.
Also, it's fair to ask how many of those worlds are capable of creating, much less sustaining, life. As I brought up earlier if you go too close to a black hole the sychnotron radiation will, from what I understand, tear most life forms apart. That alone removes quite a large portion of the galaxy's matter as a possible starting point for life. Not to mention the mass taken up by black holes and suns themselves has to be excluded. Obviously abiogenesis did occur. And it's hard to ask "what is the possibility of x value being so and so" without having other universes to work with. On the other hand, I don't think abiogenesis is the slam dunk a lot of people have made it out to be. There are a lot of very high chemical hurdles that need to be jumped. And most debates of abiogenesis tend to ignore them.
Life, by definition is capable of making itself
Please be careful of using the phrase "by definition." We're talking about experimental results, not language. If we reason only based on "definitions" without checking those definitions against any kind of experiment then we have no reason to believe that our definitions correspond to the material world. Granted, life reproduces copies of itself. I agree. But my focus here is on abiogenesis, not life.
I mean, it is an affont to Occam's Razor!
As an aside, I think Occam's Razor is horribly overused. Predictive value trumps Occam's Razor every time. Relativity is more complex than Newtonian physics, but we still use it, because it's more accurate.
More to the point there IS sufficient evidence- if there wasn't you would be an atheist- so you believe there is enough evidence to justify belief. By contrast I realize your "evidence" doesn't hold water.
Huh? This doesn't make sense to me.
While absence of evidence isn't always evidence of absense, in the case of all powerful beings it IS!
Why? I get the feeling that you're not addressing the Judeo-Christian conception of God, but rather some God who wants to compel belief in as many people as possible. That conception of God is not consonant with the Judeo-Christian belief.
If I haven't accurately interpreted your argument here, please let me know.
The definition of faith has conformed to my views... did you read it?
I've read your definition of faith. You've asserted that faith meant
belief without evidence or belief against evidence. I showed that
there was no explicit support in the dictionary for that definition.
You said that faith was what separated atheism from theism. I said ask some theists if they believe that they are holding their beliefs against evidence. Otherwise theists mean something different when they say 'faith' than what you mean. If you want to say that you disagree with theists, that's fine. If you think theists are wrong, that's fine too. I would appreciate if you acknowledge that you're using an unusual definition of the word 'faith' if you want it to mean "belief against the evidence" or "belief without evidence."
A universe designed for life makes no more sense than a universe without any- in fact, less sense.
Why 'less sense?'
. However, to show atheism is false, you'd have to give positive evidence theism is true.
I don't think the issue will ever be definitively resolved from a scientific, materialistic standpoint. The link you gave didn't really refute any fine tuning arguments, though, and I've tried to explain why bit by bit. And the question of whether religious beliefs are adaptive for a society or an individual is something we've only begun to discuss.
The utility of religious beliefs is important because it argues against the notion that prophets were just crazy schizophrenics. If insanity produces something useful, maybe it isn't really insanity.
You keep on accusing me of not being well read or understanding these things... which is getting annoying. I'll be blunt- I have a neurological condition called aspergers syndrome and one of the major features is "special interests"- an almost obcessive fasination with certain topics. It is shared by 85-95% of all those with the syndrome. My interest? Just history... technically human society, but history was a major subtopic. So you know, this is a little insulting.
I'm familiar with aspergers. Are you making an argument from authority here? People with PhDs disagree with one another. So if you know a lot, great. It means you can provide very specific evidence to support your views. I'm not intending to be insulting and I'm sorry if I came off that way. Since you said your views were based on evidence and you're a materialist, is it wrong to assume that you would use considerable material evidence for convincing other people of the truth of your beliefs?
More to the point I have made accurate predictions about your beliefs and I don't believe you have done so for me- for example, I guess for "Christian values" you'd either having "everything goodness and light" or "science"...Okay, no surprise there- it was only a matter of time before someone combined the two,
Which accurate predictions have you made about my beliefs? I'm not sure what you're referring to here.
As for combining religious values and science, I've already given a few cites about religious people who were also accomplished scientisits for as long as science has existed. Bacon (kindof the original scientist in some ways), Newton. Tim mentioned the head of the Human genome project. So this isn't really a new thing.
You know, God brought Chritainity to the world so white people could get all the cargo and conquer it?
Well, I never claimed that the world is perfect or that religion made people perfect. Or that all people in a society were devout in matters of their faith. The benefits, while I believe them to be tangible, are relatively slight. At the end of the day, people are still people. And power seems to attract the same type of people throughout history. Many power-hungry people are willing to pay lip service to the dominant faith, even if they don't agree with it. You used this earlier as a reason for discounting some religious scientists (though there's a good argument to be made that much of the religious behavior of such people was voluntary and exceeded what would be required for simply putting on a show.) But wouldn't that same logic also apply to, say, warlords? Wouldn't some warlords or even kings also put on a show of religious faith, even if they didn't themselves believe in it?
Warfare and even domination happened long before the colonial powers existed and were tragedies then and now. They weren't the result of the rise of Christianity. Even the Spartans and Romans demanded tribute.
Incidentally, white people didn't "get all the cargo." They made quite a bit of it. Sometimes they used materials from colonies, but still, the fact that they did produce it and did a very good job of that is noteworthy.
Killing your own men because they fail to get out of the way IS. I was actually thinking of the battle of Crecy. This was also repeated in other major and minor battles, but Crecy is the only one where I read about it specifically happening.
I'm sure there have been many horrible tragedies perpetrated by predominantly Chrisitan nations. But the only thing I can find about the battle of Crecy was that archers were killed for (understandably) retreating. That doesn't seem in any way worse than what the Romans did on a regular basis. Likewise
Unfortunately we aren't talking about politics-
We were discussing evidence. I said that things that cannot be seen can be understood based on things that can be seen.
Proof was used in the definition of faith- I was giving the definition of proof to show that they didn't mean academic proof for "faith"- they meant the usage in the vernacular- evidence.
Seriously, it is the definition that has been accepted for over two millenia- I don't know why you don't get it (William of Occum, made Occum's razor to show that belief required faith- this is an OLD definition).
HuH? Used by who? not sure what you're arguing for here.
Probability from the best available evidence is bull- the center piece of your argument is that the probability for a designer is higher than that of natural occurance because... you don't say actually. It FEELS desinged-
I do say. I say compare random values for universal constants vs. actual values. But there's more than I've given;
The WAP(weak anthropic principle) also has predictive power. Fred Hoyle used the WAP to postulate the existence of energy resonances in the nucleo-synthesis of carbon from simpler elements---a fact confirmed by subsequent observations.
...Every scientific theory must:
* have predictive power
* be falsifiable in principle (the Popper criterion)
The WAP is a scientific theory in the sense that it has predictive power (as the above examples indicate) and in the sense that it can be falsified (for example, one could simply show that life of some sort will inevitably emerge in all possible Universes).
link
Predictions of values via theories that were more accurate than values derived from experiments is pretty impressive stuff, btw. Prior to 1900, such theory based prediction was never even done.
And guess what? They aren't, so it could be just an illusion.
Again, you are assuming what you intend to prove.
But as I've said earlier, I don't claim that I've given conclusive evidence. Just that there is evidence. You can even provide evidence for a view which is not true.
You deal with this by ignoring it.
Ignoring what? Bring up the point with a bit of context and I'll be happy to address it.
Most religious people are creationists
Sure, but there are almost as many people who believe in divinely guided evolution.
In 1997 44% of the population answered a poll with the choice "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."
39% said "Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation."
Granted, the theistic view of evolution is becomming less common (55% creationist 27% theistic creationist 13% evolutionist for 2006) But it's hardly a minority small enough to ignore. I'm not sure what you were trying to prove with that statement. Though I imagine the numbers probably would be a lot different for other countries or other times.
link
Running a person over because they are in your way because you put them there is using as
I can't find that interpretation of Crecy. From a quick web search, it seems like the knights were attacking the archers because the archers were retreating, not because the archers were in the way. But I know nothing about the battle of Crecy. I'm just trying to figure out what you're referring to.
As for the rest of the argument, well a creator of a universe implies deism, nothing more. If it wanted more it would actually intervene. And don't give me that holy book and miracle crap- ALL religions claim that. I could do more impressive stuff with Clarke level tech.
Not sure what you're arguing for here. But yeah, a creator of a universe implies deism, nothing more. We're in agreement there.
If that was the only evidence I had, I would agree with you entirely.
If it wanted more it would actually intervene
That depends on what it wanted and how it was willing to get it. And, for that matter, if it was actually "omnipotent." Who knows, maybe the bible was wrong about that and God does have limitations. I don't have evidence to show what God can and cannot do. I do know that spiritual practices have effected positive personality changes in people, and those changes are more productive than what seems to be effected by most non-theistic systems that I'm aware of.
Ah- guess the Romans weren't big on monogamy... except monogamy means being married to one person... and that is what they did!
Well, to split hairs, it can have a few meanings;
1archaic : the practice of marrying only once during a lifetime
2: the state or custom of being married to one person at a time
3: the condition or practice of having a single mate during a period of time
link
Romans weren't monogamous by def #3 (it's hard to tell exact rates of infidelity, of course.)
But I'm not really concerned with definitions here. I'm concerned with what people actually do. If two people just live together and have sex together or they marry later divorce there isn't a big difference in my mind. It's essentially the same situation.
If you include the concubine part then I'm afraid we are going to simply leave out Latin America as Christians-...apparently adultry wasn't ground for divorce from the husband UNLESS he kept the concubine at home...So, saying that Christianity is responsible for monogamy is BS- they still have some of the same flaws as the Romans.
So if the husband only frequents prostitutes outside of his home then by Roman standards obviously he's monogamous and everything is okay? Modern society, for all its flaws, seems to have better standards than that.
Well, if the question is whether religion has an effect on monogamy or sexual fidelity (To me, there's not a huge difference. Though I suppose two wives is better than one wife and a lot of prostitutes) lets do the experiement and stand by the results;
For Brazil;
RESULTS: Twelve percent of married or cohabiting men reported having had at least one extramarital partner in the previous 12 months;
Compared with members of evangelical religions, other men were significantly more likely to report having had an extramarital partner (odds ratios, 3.0-4.7) and unprotected extramarital sex in the last 12 months (3.4-7.9)link
So religion doesn't eliminate cheating, but it certainly seems to cut down on it on the individual level.
1) It is irrelevant to the truth value of religion
It is a positive effect of religion. Having a positive effect is an argument against antitheism and against the notion that prophets and such were simply crazy. Religions are judged by the effect that they have.
3) Subgroups (see Mormons- yes, they are Christians)
Mormons say they are. Most Christians claim that they aren't. It's debatable. Either way, I'm happy evaluating them as their own group and looking at the results. A good religion produces good results, and can be judged (if we're very careful with our evidence) in that manner.
4) Behavior, even if unusual, has other instance somewhere
Not sure what you're saying.
I guess for "Christian values" you'd either having "everything goodness and light" or "science"...Okay, no surprise there- it was only a matter of time before someone combined the two,
If you're saying that you predicted what Tim or myself referred to by Judeo-Christian values, please cite where you made such a prediction. "Everything goodness and light" is too vauge a prediction to be meaningful. It would more easily describe the new age belief system than Christianity or Judaism.
I can't speak for Tim, but personally I'd say that "science" is more of an effect of Judeo-Christian values rather than a value in its own right. It is a secularization of Judeo-Christian values. For instance, the academic system of citations is the religious system of citation, but applied to secular topics.
link
Regarding faith, let me try another approach for what theists mean regarding faith.
Hebrews 11:1 defines faith for Christians; "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen."
I can see where an atheist might read this and say that it translates to "belief with no evidence." But lets look again.
Faith is supposed to change a person and a society. That change is claimed as evidence. If faith really is evidence then on a societal level it should have a collective effect.
Which is one more reason I keep bringing up political effects of belief, personal effects, and so on.
Well, the net shut down when I was writting, so a longer rebuttel will take a while- I want to get this out now.
I didn't say that you were going to use those values- I was thinking it. As proof that I'm not pulling this out of my ass, look at the previous people who I have read and made the same claim.
http://www.dineshdsouza.com/
Also, it is common, just after "atheists have no morals"- just look at blogs on atheism. I'm surprised you haven't seen it before.
It also is a logical fallacy
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-consequences.html
So, that entire line of thought is useless. Sorry!
Hi Samuel,
The website you linked to about the book doesn't give any information about what the author's argument is. If you're saying that the author uses particular points, could you please link to a site which summarizes those points, or else summarize them yourself? I mean, the link that you gave didn't support your argument regarding you predicting any specific point. Why give it?
I'm surprised you haven't seen it before. Seen what, exactly, before? All religions have values. That's not the point. All religions do not have the same values.
Regarding the claim that I am appealing to consequences, there are several problems with that argument. Most seriously, the fallacy applies to formal academic proofs. I am not claiming to "prove" religion true, and have emphasized this several times. I am using a weaker standard of evidence. It is important that we distinguish between "giving evidence for something" and "formally proving it."
Showing that religion is functional is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for demonstrating that it is true. If you could show that religion was not functional, that would prove it false, because religion claims to have certain functionality. Thus, religion makes certain testable, falsifiable claims. Thus, functionality is evidence but evidence short of proof.
But I've said several times, emphatically, that I am not trying to formally prove it true. You seem to be missing that, repeatedly. That's important if you're going to try and apply formal logic which assumes a formal proof.
Sorry, here:
"How Christianity created framework for modern science, so that Christianity and science are not irreconciable, but science and atheism might be"
"Why ultimately you can't have Western civilization- and all we value from it- without the Christianity that gave it birth"
-book flap for "What So Great About Christianity" by Dinesh Dishou
I was surprised you weren't familiar with the claim that atheists can't be moral, or if they are they are inconsistant. It seems to be the most popular claim after design.
We aren't using logical proofs- we are using the proofs common to most arguments- overwhelming evidence. Religion claims to be essential to society... but societies have had differant religions. Which means that the content of the religion isn't what holds the society together- it is what the religion does. This is covered in the functionalism theory of sociology. It is worth noting that the Soviet Union managed to function even though it attempted to be a secular as possible (a third of the population where believers). Albania followed the proverb "I can't kill and idea- but I can shot all those who believe in it and burn their books" and entirely eliminated religious belief. Both of these countries problems were not from their lack of belief (I don't believe people acted any less morally, although the prisons were packed- mostly with dissidents).
Religion is not necesary for society and in fact can be down right dangerous. A good example is the war on drugs. Religiously based and guess what? IT is shotting ourselves in the foot. Badly.
The worst and creppiest? The fact that dominionists (people dedicated to creating a Christian theocracy in the states) make up forty percent (have to look it up) of the military. Oh, the military also happens to be the most highly regarded part of the government, with 75% of the population respecting it, 68% respecting the police and less than 20% respecting the president and congress and much of the population thinking we are on the "wrong track".
Can you say coup? http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/InfiltratingTheUSMilitaryGenBoykinsWarriors.html
When you military men writing stories about the possibility of it happening... http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/OriginsOfAmericanMilitaryCoup2012.html
Currently it is just a far off possibility- but if things get worse it could become more and more likely. I, for one doubt it will happen- the US military is extremely apolitical and doesn't have the manpower to control the country- but it could.
Yes, I'm paranoid. BUt the past has been filled with religious war, insanity, dictatorships, scarce resources and torture and the presnt is filled with the same. Why should the future be any differant?
Tim? If you are reading this can you give a reason why my fear about a coup is misplaced? Cause that is one of the few things that really creeps me out.
Note than none of this is formal logic proofs- all of this is evidentary.
I was surprised you weren't familiar with the claim that atheists can't be moral,
I'm trying to stick to discussing claims that have been made on this specific board, and hopefully this post. Otherwise, we get far off track.
Both myself and Tim have acknowledged that atheists can have moral values, where moral values are defined by the Judeo-Christian tradition.
(There are other sources of moral values, of course, but what one belief system might consider moral, another might not. Which is why I specify; "moral according to x tradition.")
In the same way that a car might roll for quite some time, even after it's out of gas, a person can also live by the moral standards of a certain religion that they were raised in, or that is dominant in their culture, even if they don't, themselves believe in man tenants of the faith. But that kind of morality won't last for an infinite number of generations.
Religion is not necesary for society and in fact can be down right dangerous.A good example is the war on drugs.
In every experiment, we need a control group. Which society do you think we should compare America to, here?
Personally, I'm not a big believer in the some parts of the 'war on drugs.' If you're saying that it's a religious initiative, its biblical basis seems less solid than many actions (though I'm sure it has support among the more religious.) But I think our society would still suffer some major consequences if all, or perhaps even some drug laws were eliminated. It seems fair to honestly acknowledge the costs of any action, both in the short and long term, including repealing drug laws.
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Thanks for this helpful post.
There are many other dogmas I could point out: mistaken ideas about what happened in the dark ages, the Crusades, who originated science, and many popular circular, ad homen, and straw man arguments -- but these are of smaller impact, and are more understandable as many can be written off as a lack of exposure to contrary evidence. It would be wonderful if you would expound on this in another post. Or have you done so already? If so, please tell us where.
...that doesn't imply that your opponent is unable to think or reason, or -- for some strange reason -- knows full well God most likely doesn't exist but chooses to believe the opposite of what the evidence they've seen implies!
In this we must also be careful; I've heard too many Christians make the same assertion about those who don't believe in God: that deep down, they really know the truth, but are refusing to believe it. There is some Biblical justification for this stance (see Romans 1) but in practice it doesn't seem like a helpful -- let alone charitable -- argument.
Posted by: SursumCorda on June 11, 2008 06:06 AM