A response to Richard Dawkins' argument against the existence of God.

Great Debates
221

Of course. And that is no need for faith certain if the risk taker is a masochist determined for a bad outcome. They could most likely even go out of their way to make a bad outcome. But if the risk taker would like to succeed, even if the odds are against them, they must have faith in their skills, or their luck, or that a failure is something they can live with even if they break their neck. Zero faith is zero confidence and usually not a great motivator. Now, one can operate more from trusting uncertain odds are a good risk if they have good reason to believe, that they can beat the odds. But that is not the instance that I am arguing about, though I’m guessing that’s more in line with your thinking. Am I wrong?

The we I speak of is everyone. Just driving our cars, we often can make several decisions in a minutes time in heavy traffic. We all usually make several decisions an hour if we are engaged in much of anything active at all. Which fork do I choose? do I want the crackers or not? paper or plastic? and so and and so on. Yes indeed, we often do make hundreds of decisions a day. You are wrong about that. And though the choices are usually clear cut enough or of a negligible nature that it makes little difference it’s certain that some decisions, occasionally crucial ones, will be made on less than adequate information. And when you make those essentially blind decisions can you make them in dis-belief of inadequate evidence? I don’t think so. Your decision must be made on some kind of belief. On what do you make it?

My apologies, looking back in the thread I did say that and it is overly broad and not right. Looking at it in the context that I wrote it I did not say what I was trying to. I do retract that particular statement, though my reason is that in that instance there could be exceptions. Specifically, if a person could live without faith, without any confident beliefs at all which I say is impossible, that does not mean that they necessarily would think that they know all the answers. That would be a condition for some, but generally, no not for all.

I understand what you are saying. Sure it can be fun to play against unknown odds, even if I go in knowing it likely that I lose at something I’m not familiar with. I wonder from your statement if you think that I am talking about having absolute certainty when I use the word faith. I assure that that I am not; more often the faith is perhaps little more than a hunch.

I must admit that here you have pointed out that I may have something of a personal bias and is influencing my discussion on this point. If I engage in risk or chance, I want to succeed. Even if I may go in knowing that I am likely to lose at something I’m unfamiliar with I will play to win and generally I find it crucial to try think that I have an edge. It’s not much fun for me if I don’t believe that I have a chance to win, even when I probably don’t. I am more likely to win when I believe I can because it gets me more involved. If not I get frustrated. If I’m loosing I’ll still give it the old college try and believe I can overcome the odds. In that vain, you won’t find me at the roulette table where I have absolutely nothing but blind luck to work with. I want a chance.

On reflection though I know some people who play with more of a what-the-hell attitude, doing it more for the camaraderie, to share a few laughs, have a couple drinks, more for the social aspect than going for the win. So what’s true for me in that sense may not always be true for others and they may not operate at all on faith in themselves in that instance.

But in other instances where there is novel situation you face without any previous preparation or experience and little idea of the outcome, on what basis do you act Fantome? Sometimes the the risk may not be fun or thrilling but a course of action is required. If you act at all in the face of the unknown how you do so without a belief that you are making the best choice? On what would you base that decision? Or, would you do nothing and just let fate have its way, in that case with no faith at all?

222

:rolleyes: Those who have been lecturing you about how fallible personal experience is have been lecturing about how fallible personal experience is so that maybe you’ll realize how fallible personal experience is and also maybe that claiming personal experience as evidence is not the most convincing type of evidence in the world, owing to how fallible it is.

Actually, all we have is your claim of the evidence. You could be lying, insane, brainwashed, confused, misremembering, mislead, lied to, or any of a number of other things, all of which would be more likely than a big invisible sky faerie. Of course, since you’ve had ample opportunity to give some other more reliable or verifiable kind of evidence and have refused to, we pretty much have to assume one of them.

So you think god hates fags too?

Really? Well there’s some Renaissance artists who would like a word with you.

223

We’re still talking about faith the way you defined it, right? One can have confidence in their skills without faith. Confidence in their skills based on evidence. A tight rope walker does not need faith to walk across a rope without a net as long as he has evidence he has the skills to make it across alive.

Nonsense. I have confidence in many things. Confidence because I have evidence for many things. No faith required. Why do you think one needs faith to have confidence?

If you have another example, give it. You already claimed I need faith to drive and play blackjack. I hope by now I’ve convinced you that I don’t.

I’m not wrong. I never said or inferred that I don’t make several choices a day.

So what? If I need to make a choice without enough information, that’s called taking a risk. Faith is not needed for that. And when you make those essentially blind decisions can you make them in dis-belief of inadequate evidence? I don’t think so. Your decision must be made on some kind of belief. On what do you make it?
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On the best information available. That doesn’t mean I have faith the results will conclude a certain way.

Wrong. I can have confident beliefs without faith. I can be confident based on evidence. I am confident that if I drop a rock it will fall towards the Earth. This is confidence based on evidence. I don’t need faith to be confident in my beliefs.

One can have hunches without having faith. If I have a hunch someone I’ve never met before is rich, it will most likely be based on evidence, e.g. nice shoes, expensive car, seems well educated, etc. I don’t need faith to have a hunch.

It depends on the situation. But my decisions won’t be faith based. Being forced to make a decision with little or no evidence for what is right does not mean one is making a decision based on faith.

You’re making the mistake of thinking the only way to not have faith is to make no decision at all. If making a decision without adequate information is better than not acting at all, then I’ll make a decision.

Suppose I’m trapped in a burning building four stories high and smoke approaching rapidly and my choices are to jump out of one window onto the concrete, another window onto a pile of bricks, or stand still and die. I will choose one of the first two because I want to live. I don’t know which will leave me with the better chances of surviving, but based on what I know, either choice is better than staying in a burning building. Choosing one of the two when I’m not sure which is best does not mean I have faith.

224

No, we’ve lectured you against falsely equivocating between the quantity and quality of the evidence that exists for your mother and that that exists for God.

Second, not all experience is created equal. As I pointed out in this post(which you didn’t respond to), applying a particular concept in experience depends, in part, on the theoretical plausibility of that concept in the first place. The existence of mothers is easy to accomodate within any plausible world-view; they do not present insuperable theoretical difficulties. Omnimax Gods do, and so if you think you perceive a God, theoretical considerations would suggest that you think again.

And finally, would you please please please respond to the argument that started this bloated thread in the first place? As I noted in this post, regardless of whether you attribute the argument to Dawkins or not, there is a version of Dawkin’s argument that does not rely on the problematic premise that God has a beginning, and seems to be very powerful in turning the design inference back against the theist.

225

Wasn’t Michelangelo a Catholic? I seem to vaguely recall some sort of minor painting work he did portraying such a Creator. He may have had the support and pay of some minor Church official for doing it, or something like that.

Nah. I’m probably imagining it.

226

I’ve never thought Michelangelo took himself to be giving a literal depiction of God’s actual appearance in that painting, but do you know something I don’t?

227

Exactly. I’m not denying that. It’s like a card counter. They have a pretty good skill to even odds enough to profit if they are competent and don’t get caught.
Now put the tightrope walker in a situation where a loved one is threatened nearly face to face with an angry, injured bear. While hiking, away from others. He has skills and somehow they may come into use getting them out of the situation. Or let’s say it’s you and your skills. What skills might you have if this happened to you? What decision does one make? One has to believe to some extent to make a decision. Other than a reflexive action. What skills might be brought to play? Will they be right choices? Do they matter? Do you try luring the bear away? Would it ignore you? Can it be scared off or pacified? Somewhere someone does something or does nothing. Does one have to believe in the action they will take? Of if not, will they be indecisive?

It isn’t most of the time. Only when one’s evidence of outcome starts becoming uncertain to a person.

You’ve not convinced me. There may be instances in a usually benign game of cards where someone who is indifferent to the outcome doesn’t care about incomplete evidence of outcome, but the more determined an action in the face of ever more incomplete knowledge to the person taking the action the more they must have faith in a blind decision. I give an example above but it’s equivalent to the one you came up with about the burning building below.

Now you are forgetting what you said. I specifically stated that and you said you don’t, at least as you responded here.

I’m not saying that faith means an absolute certainty that things will happen a certain way. You would only need confidence that they are more likely to.

Absolutely. No faith required here. Why? Because you have plenty of adequate information to make that statement.

That’s right. Sometimes that’s true, particularly where you are not engaged in an action, if all you are doing is considering information. But other times it is based on faith. If your best hunch is that you will only save your loved one from a bear that seems just as interested in you when you distract it, you might make yourself a decoy and hope that you’ll come up with another good hunch that saves you from the bear. But until you act and see the result you only have faith in your hunch.

Make a decision based on what?? Belief. Belief in yourself, in your decisions. But not on adequate information. Also, I am not saying that the only way not having faith is expressed is by not taking an action, but sometimes not having faith in one’s self can cause indicision.

I could not disagree more. That’s a good example of acting on faith. You have faith, a belief, a confidence that your first two choices are better than staying in the building. You cannot act without believing, without having confidence in what you are doing. The indecisive don’t have faith that there is any good answer. But if you don’t have adequate information and yet you act, by your definition that is faith.

Truthfully, I don’t think either of us is going to convince the other. From my viewpoint you don’t have a case but you are not going to accept my viewpoint. We’re just going around on the issue here. I tend towards skepticism on most things and would prefer not to engage in doing things based on faith if I can help it. But while I think beliefs in things that have insufficient evidence are best avoided, sometimes they are inevitable.

228

Only that Michelangelo, a Catholic, painted God in that form on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, under the authority of the current-at-that-time Pope. I’m not claiming that when he did so, it was because that’s what he (or the Pope, or the Church as a whole) believed that to be God’s actual appearance. Only that, apparently, God as the bearded Creator as an analagous or reasonable concept existed in his mind, that he apparently felt it was recognisable, reverent, and acceptable enough to paint it as he did, and that the Pope in turn didn’t arrive at some point and say “What? Who’s the hairy chap? Start over, mate”. IOW, that, as ITR claims, the idea that that particular concept having never existed outside the mind of atheists is pretty incredibly false.

229

Wasn’t it pretty clear that ITR was saying that the idea that the God believed in by Christians really has a beard is not something any Christian has believed, but is rather something some atheists believe about Christians?

He might be wrong about that (esp. depending on what he thinks of Mormons, and what Mormons think about divine beardedness) but I’m pretty sure that’s what he’s saying, not what you say he’s saying.

230

http://www.workofthechariot.com/TextFiles/Translations-ShirQoma.html

An anthropomorphic image of God was quelled in Jewish thought starting the 12 century. Xenophanes, similarly, argued against anthropomorphic gods noting that if everyone around the world simply portrays their gods as looking like themselves, then it all looks an awful lot like gods were made up by people. The Audianists were declared heretical by the Christian church for believing in an human-shaped God. So yes, it’s probably pretty likely that official, theological doctrine has leaned towards an incomprehensible form since the first person who took two seconds to think through the implications of a anthropomorphic deity on the plausibility of religion.

But the thing is that regardless of what official doctrine may be, the popular image is most likely going to go with the millions of paintings of God as a white-bearded man in a toga. You can argue that those artists are simply using symbolism, but there are any number of paintings where God is portrayed as a ball of light, as an incorporeal hand, as light shining through clouds, or as the force imbuing human actors with their grace (i.e. halos), showing that artists can draw an incomprehensible god just fine. There are, similarly, plenty of paintings of gods as animals, as animal-headed humans, as people with extra limbs, etc. There’s no reason to draw pictures like these at all unless you have some reason to think that they have some merit.

What you can portray in a painting is essentially unlimited, and plenty of artists have demonstrated that God can be drawn as something symbolic (like a ball of light), so there’s no excuse for an artist to do anything other than that unless that image of God doesn’t jibe with how he sees it–being a non-theologian. It’s impossible to go back to medieval Europe and poll the average Christian to see what he would say, but I would be willing to bet a very decent sum of money that if the majority of artists were portraying God as a bearded man, nearly all of the general populace believed that to be the truth of the matter. Even today, I suspect that if you grabbed random Christians off the street and asked them, you’d get a decent percentage who agreed that God has a human form.

(It looks like approximately 9% do: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=409 A significant portion assign a gender. ~36%)

231

Not to my eyes, in all honesty. It’s “concept” that’s tripping me up; ITR to me appears to be saying not simply that God having a beard (and, in general, the stereotypical appearance) is an athiest misunderstanding of Christian beliefs, but rather that the entire concept of God as that bearded personage doesn’t exist “outside the imagination of atheists”.

Quite possibly i’ve just misinterpreted him - i’d certainly say that your argument is the more reasonable one, but I’m not entirely convinced that ITR would not make an unreasonable argument of that kind. I’ll happily apologise if i’m wrong.

232

The view that no one has ever had the concept of God as bearded is so obviously, ludicrously incorrect that I could never imagine attributing the view to anyone I thought sane and capable of communication.

If ITR said “You’ve insulted the memory of our first president Benjamin Franklin,” I’d assume he was joking. And when he says “The concept of a bearded god exists only in the heads of atheists” I’ll assume that he means the closest plausible sane thing he might mean–that atheists misunderstand when they think that the God of Christendom is actually bearded. Otherwise, I must think ITR is insane, and it’s not clear why I’d be talking to him about this at all.

233

ITR has mentioned this and several other odd items before as being absolute and eternal facts for all Christians throughout history, regardless of the time period of an individual, his level of education, and so on. I am fairly certain that when he says that atheists made up the idea that religious people believe in bearded men in togas that he firmly believes that there was never a time or place where anyone actually held this religious view. Since throughout history almost no one left a diary, especially not the uneducated masses, this is a very hard point to prove either way.

234

It’s a poorly worded question. “Do you think of God as being like a human being with a face, body, arms, legs etc.?” I’d answer that in the affirmative! My mental image of god is accurately described as “like a human being, with a face, body, arms, legs etc.” This, despite the fact that I do not think God is the kind of thing that would have any kind of body at all

I imagine answers would be different if the question had been “Do you think God has a face, body, arms, legs etc.?” or “Does God have a face, body, arms, legs etc.?”

235

I didn’t forget what I wrote. Read it again. I never said that I don’t make several choices a day.

You said: “Zero faith is zero confidence and usually not a great motivator.” If that doesn’t mean one can’t have confidence without faith, what does it mean? It’s what you said!

Yet you said, “Zero faith is zero confidence.” I can make statements with little or no confidence also. That takes no faith.

I can believe my decisions are right without having faith.

Disagree all you want, but you’re wrong. I have evidence that staying still in a burning building with smoke rapidly approaching me is not as good a choice as jumping out of a four story window. Standing there and being engulfed in smoke would be stupid. I don’t need faith to act. Or to drive. Or play blackjack.

Uh huh. I’m done here.

236

I think this is important. It seems at times that many believers who have had profound experiences that have convinced them their beliefs are correct tend to think non believers have not had or cannot have experiences just as deep and profound. If they had they couldn’t possibly remain atheists. Once you accept that that is not true and atheists cam have experiences just as powerful, deep and profound then a seed is planted. It’s a seed IMO that allows us to accept what we don’t and can’t know.

It’s fine to interpret those experiences in whatever way we will based on what is meaningful to us an individual and what culture and people influence us. It’s fine to choose our own path and walk it as long as it serves our purpose. It’s also emotionally and mentally healthy IMO to claim our beliefs for ourselves and admit that we can’t know with surety, no matter how strongly we may *feel * about our beliefs.

It enables us to allow others the freedom of their chosen path as we claim our own and makes it easier to find the thoughts and concepts we share in common. If we value truth, compassion, justice, peace, the labels on our belief systems matter less than those principles.

237

IMO, as I have already said, every single person who believes in a God has a different concept of their God. Every person’s God is unique. Some see it as resembling a human being, some as a male, some as a female, or not anything like a human at all. Some theists are pan-theists who believe that the Universe is God, some theists are Deists who believe some force or being created the Universe and then, (Exeunt). Etc., etc.

I don’t think that there is anything intellectually constructive to be gained in debating or, really, even discussing the existence of “God” when the very notion of such a thing means something completely different to every single individual.

I will again opine that this is why these sorts of Dope threads go on so long (not that there is anything wrong with that, per se). It’s as if we were all arguing over who’s way of experiencing “purple” was more real or universal than everyone else’s. (There seems to me to be much better analogies than that one but it conveys my basic idea).

The idea/notion/concept/knowledge of “God” varies from person to person; so much so that it is usually pointless to discuss “God” in terms of it being any distinct entity that could, did, or does exist (other than as an abstract thought in an individual’s mind).

I’m sorry (probably for my own sake because someone will eventually engage me on this and “beat me down” if only because of the superior articulation/presentation of their position, if nothing else), but I, in my necessarily limited worldview, can see no more useful or effective way to describe/define/conceive of “God” than as a variable. I call that variable X. Would anyone care to discuss whether X (as I have previously defined it) exists? I maintain that it does, but only definitively so when it is defined as a known entity/object or as an abstract, albeit often quite powerful, personal thought/idea.

238

No, not that question, this one: Would you call my experiences as an atheist ‘religious’? I must push you for a direct answer to this question.

So there are types of experience which couldn’t possibly come from your ‘own mind’, like my example of a comforting presence I talk to in my own head? If you could just tell me about these in as much detail as possible I’d be very grateful. If you were to do the same with your mother, you would say things like:
“From an early age, the same camera-photographable woman appeared before my very eyes and moved massive objects, including myself, physically around the room. Sounds appeared to emanate from her exactly like micophone-recordable sounds from other external souces rather than from my own mind, and other people in the room responded to these sounds exactly as they had heard the precise words I had. When I pressed my hand against her, the pressure sensors on my skin reacted exactly as when I touched part of my own body. Numerous instances occurred in which I asked another person “Where’s my mother?” and the person immediately turned and pointed precisely at the person I had just identified. I occasionally had dreams featuring my mother, but when I woke up I could tell that these particular experiences had somehow originated in my own head, since for them really to have happened I would have had to have literally relocated myself elsewhere, perhaps many miles away, since I went to bed.”

But you could do this very easily with your mother, couldn’t you? There are specific experiences for which you hold her responsible. For example, when I was a theist, I would attribute both the wow! epiphanies and the subtle experiences to an external eternity: the comforting presence to talk to in my head, the sense of peace which might alight upon me in times of anxiety, the decision I felt was right emerging from my deliberations over a particular dilemma. Is it similar with you, or completely different?

So the existence of any belief constitutes evidence of the thing believed in??

But I am not. It’s a non sequitur when you talk to me, agreed?

But it’s possible that the source of the experience was their own mind, yes?

But ENRON shows that businesses can be fraudulent. These negative experiences show that experiences can be misattributed to external divine entities. You are suggesting that positive experiences cannot possibly be misattributed so. Why not?

If you’ll permit me, ITR, I’d also like to restate point I notice you avoided, and I would very much appreciate a direct answer if you could provide one.

The inner dialogue is not just a ‘neurological phenomenon’ – it is fundamental to how we think. Serious impairment is strongly correlated with auditory hallucinations, but we all talk to ourselves in our head – that’s mentally healthy. Personally I even find it useful, nay comforting, to give the ‘responder’ a character different to mine. This isn’t a full-blown hallucination, nor even an imaginary friend as such. Just a comforting presence to talk to, in my head.

My question: In your opinion, ITR, could this presence be misattributed to an external source by a mentally healthy individual? It’s still unclear whether or not you are saying this is impossible.

I explicitly accept the possibility that God exists and that your experiences result from an external divine entity. Do you afford my worldview, in which no such external entities exist (only misattributions thereto), the same courtesy?

239

If you have a reasonable amount of experience with the art of the western world, then you must know that personification has been a very common technique, especially before the modern era and especially in painting. Any museum devoted to the topic would yield plenty of examples demonstrate the point. There are thousands of paintings which depict wisdom, charity, benevolence, science, patience, or even art itself as a physical, human figure. For some of these concepts there were specific, agreed-upon physical features that the personification was supposed to have. Yet none of the means that anyone felt that wisdom as a woman was “an analogous or reasonable concept”; rather, they used it in the common sense way, as a personification. People in all (or nearly all) civilizations were much more comfortable using personification and metaphor than we are today. One must understand this to have any hope of understanding the thought of previous ages. The topic of God has always required a particularly heavy dose of metaphorical language by nature, since the nature of God is so far above human understanding, and depictions of God as a wise old man were one among many such metaphors. One shudders to imagine how modern people will interpret medieval hymns like this one if they can’t grasp this concept.

In any case, the post that I was responding to implied that the guy with the white beard was the standard way for religious believers, or at least “for many people”, and that’s flatly untrue. As for whether it was true in the Middle Ages, I highly doubt it. After all, medieval treatises on theology are famous for being extremely long and detailed. If St. Thomas Aquinas believed that God was an elderly man with a long, white beard, he surely would have found some place to fit that into the Summa Theologica.

240

You know what, ITR? Atheists don’t think theists believe in a literal guy with a white beard either (at least not since the heyday of Zeus). The fact that they don’t think he’s a guy with a white beard doesn’t make their beliefs any more plausible, or sensible or even comprehensible, though. Part of the problem with the God hypothesis is that it doesn’t provide a coherent definition for “God.” Whenever I’ve pushed theists on it, they invariably say God is “energy,” which is just as patently silly as saying God is a guy with a beard.