You do realize that “there is almost certainly no God,” is not the same as “there is no God?”
If you’d read the book, you’d know that Dawkins never says God can’t exist, only that it’s got no more likelihood than fairies or dragons.
Most of us non-believers around here have read the book and know what it says. You aren’t going to win any debates by misrepresenting what it says. We KNOW what it says.
You’re also never going to cause any epiphanies with endless variations of GOTG.
Hi ITR, thanks for that. I look forward to your further responses when you get chance, but I may be busy myself this weekend.
I’ll just deal with a couple of your points:
Because there are eminently reasonable alternative explanations for the phenomena you attribute to God (“feeling a loving presence”, “a sense of great peace and inner calm” etc.), but none for those attributed to your mother (visible appearance before numerous observers, moving physical objects around the room etc.). Ockham’s Razor leaves your mother in the set of necessary entities, your God in the set of unnecessary entities.
Entropy is a function of the relationship between a gravitational field and a Higgs vacuum expectation value, as we discussed in this thread. The point is that there was never no Higgs field. It is eternal. Are you seriously positing a nothing to something transition for the singularity (if it is a true singularity, which isn’t clear yet) which lies at one end of “our” universe? If so, you are guilty of the very ludicrousness which you (unfairly IMO) accuse Dawkins of.
A multiverse is just one of many hypotheses for explaining the characteristics of an eternal Higgs field. Nevertheless, I am perfectly willing to consider an infinite universe as vastly more likely than a “creating being” of any kind. Like I said, a “Heavenly Father” just seems a heck of a thing to exist at all, whether or not it had a beginning.
So there is nothing about your religious experiences which is more miraculous than those of a Buddhist, say? Understand, I’m trying to establish precisely what it is you are saying cannot be explained without divine influence, and avoiding any invocation of a No True Scotsman fallacy later on.
And how about my experiences, first as a theist and later as an atheist. Would you draw any fundamental distinction between my earlier “religious” experiences my later deeply profound, long-lasting, clear, specific, and well-remembered experiences as an atheist, in terms of their explanation?
Actually, Dio, I agree with ITR that you are overstating this. I believe that the natural ‘candidate’ explanations for religious experiences will solidify into rigorous scientific explanations in my lifetime, but they are currently nowhere near the level you suggest: Some experiences can be artificially induced, but by no means every single one.
But “there almost certainly is no God” is very different from proving God does not exist. One says it is unlikely, even highly unlikely; the other says that it is not so at all. You jumped the gun in response to** Diogenes**, and probably should have read his post a wee bit better - unless, perhaps, you disagree, and feel that a claim of likelihood, even strong likelihood, is the same as a claim of definite proof.
I think the problem with this argument is that it seems, at least in ITR’s case, that it’s one or the other for him. That is to say, I agree from what i’ve seen that all religious experiences cannot so easily be said to be hallucinations or the like, but for** ITR** it seems that those are the only two options; they are hallucinations, or they are actual, true experiences. I would tend to say that there is the possibility that some religious experiences are significantly different from hallucinations - but that doesn’t mean that the only other option is that they are truth. Likewise, them being created in different ways, or unable to be always matched by the use of drugs, doesn’t mean that they are, therefore, truth - it’s another gaps argument. They might simply be a different type of experience attributed mistakenly.
What experience can’t be induced by drugs? Ever heard of Salvia Divinorum? It pretty much replicates all the classic religious experiences. What religious experience has not been artificially induced?
By the way, I’ve had some expreriences both ways, and there isn’t any difference (except the drug induced experiences are deeper and more intense).
Well, mine for a start. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve chugged, popped and huffed a hell of a lot of different drugs in my time (not Salvia Divinoum yet - ‘to do’ list duly updated) but always found that drugs inhibited some of the more meditative mindstates which I consider ‘deeply profound’ as an atheist and considered ‘religious’ when I was a theist. Nor have I had a go of Persinger’s helmet, but that’s apparently rather overblown as well, arthe like saying the original Pong ‘artificially recreates’ an actual game of tennis. That’s not to deny the whoooaaaa-ness of such drug-induced experiences, of course, just to point out where I consider they differ from what I think ITR is talking about.
They don’t. I’ve had both (you have to try the SD. It’s not comparable to the other psychedelics. It’s its own thing).
I do think there’s a difference in interpretation. I think if you are predisposed to want to believe in something religious, you will tend to interpret it that way during the experience (and to enhance the memory afterwards).
I found that while the sensations were the same, my emotional reaction was different when I was more analytically detached. When I was heavy into meditation, I pushed through into samadhi (at least I’m pretty sure it was samadhi) a couple of times. The first time I was really into Eastern mysticism and excited about it afterwards, and wrote some gibbering, abstract poetry about it. The second time, I felt like it was really just an interesting cognitive gymnastic, but that it didn’t really teach me anything, or give me any information.
My experiences (both naturally and pharmaceutically induced) have also involved some OOB sensation, and that’s been exactly the same either way.
Whether or not God has shown up is what we’re debating here. You can’t simply assume the conclusion that you’re trying to prove.
All I’m asking is, what would happen if we evaluated the evidence for my mother using the same evidence that atheists commonly use to challenge the evidence for God? We’d first rephrase the question in some clunky and distracting way, such as “Can we produce sufficient evidence to merit the acceptance of the mother hypothesis?” Secondly, we would observe that there are alternative theories available that explain the data quite well. (Some people refuse to accept the existence of any physical reality at all.) Thirdly, we would certainly agree that the fact that many people believe the mother hypothesis doesn’t tell us anything about its truthfulness, since obviously atheists don’t qualify widespread belief as proof. Fourthly, we would agree that my personal experience is not grounds for accepting my mother’s existence, since many in this thread have vigorously attacked personal experience. Fifthly, we would agree that appearances before numerous observers mean nothing. People have a genetic predisposition towards pattern-matching and agent-detection and so forth, which explains the data without any need to invoke a mother. Sixthly, if else fails, we can simply point out that we’re all raised in a society with a strong, pro-mother bias, which makes all observations unreliable. After all, in a previous discussion about miracles you implied that the reliability of observations depended on the religious views of the observer. If so, what’s to stop a strong amotherist from dismissing data collected by motherists in a similar way?
Wait, I’m confused. The debate has pretty much convinced me that there are no gods (though I wavered for a moment in the middle of page 2), but I’m struggling to believe that ITRC doesn’t have a mother, and never had one. That doesn’t seem likely to me, and I’m not understanding the evidence. Could someone explain?
We’re not debating whether he’s shown up; we’re debating whether his existence is plausible. Keep up.
And he hasn’t shown up. He’s been described as showing up in old books, he’s been self-reported as having messed with various people’s minds and emotions, but he hasn’t shown up. There’s been no sight of him anywhere.
Well <expletive deleted> me. I wondered what ‘ITR’ stands for, and looked at his profile. He claims to be … a science teacher.
No smiley is adequate…
The existence of his mother is in doubt because she’s had her hair color changed, and had a haircut, and this lack of constancy is considered by some to be comparable with never appearing objectively at all and being described with wild inconsistency by the people who claim to have magically-acquired knowledge about the subject in question.
No, we’re talking about God’s existence - and him not showing up doesn’t prove he doesn’t exist. Him really showing up in some significant way would provide solid evidence that he does. So, where is the direct evidence that he shows up, evidence that is more than old stories or internal thoughts?
Clunks? Distracting? This sounds like an excellent statement of the problem to me.
There are always alternate theories. It is rarely or never the case that when new evidence is discovered all opponents of a hypothesis put up their hands and surrender. That’s one of the reasons for peer review - to let neutral scientists evaluate the quality of a paper. That is also the reason for repeatability - to account for unconscious biases that might make an experiment come out right even when it was wrong. See cold fusion for an example of this working.
If a reviewer wanted to reject a paper based on reality not existing, and decent editor would throw out the review, not the paper.
Correct. I don’t recall offering this as a reason. The mass of evidence we have for the existence of our mothers, and thus by analogy for the existence of other mothers, does count.
Your personal experience happened in the presence of others who could independently verify your story. A claim that you experienced your mother without this would be more suspect. If you got her to tell you stories about her childhood that could be independently verified, that would be evidence. If all she ever said to you was “be a good boy and wash behind your ears” we’d have reason to be skeptical.
Not 100% proof, but multiple appearances on schedule with agreement from independent parties (unprimed by pictures and the like) would be good evidence.
Because even Philip Wylie admitted he had a mother?
Your argument is very similar to C. S. Lewis’ in The Last Battle, where he has the atheists (the a-Aslanians) reject the existence of Aslan while looking right at him.
There could be reasons to reject the existence of a mother. For instance, during the time a child was being born the supposed mother was photographed dancing or in a bar, which falsifies the hypothesis that a mother needs to be at a birth. Evidence that babies come out of vats. Some predictions in the Bible came true, but only in the sense that the predictions the witches made at the start of the Scottish Play came true. The later ones, like Jesus returning, not so much. Of course the specific predictions made depend strongly on the brand of god you support.
So did you ever figure out what “ITR” stands for?
Yeah, we need a “facepalm” smiley.
To your “what cannot be explained” question, I’m think the question is something too broad to answer. The best I resource that I can give you is to point you to chapter 6 in Schumacher’s A Guide for the Perplexed, which is an attempt to introduce and summarize what is known about the greatest mystical experiences with vocabulary and organization chosen for those who know little about the topic. Mysticism develops in the same way as music or any other field. The greater a person is at it, the greater the variety of what they’re willing to investigate and practice. However, the practice of mysticism always begins with a similar process, which I can at least try to describe.
The practitioner begins by acknowledging that all true knowledge begins with self-knowledge. Thus, attention is focused inward. The practitioner analyzes his or her own thoughts and the patterns which govern those thoughts. Through that analysis, he or she begins to gain control over his or her thoughts, and to develop what we might call ‘mindfulness’ or ‘self-awareness’. (Buddhists have traditionally used the term satipatthana.) A person with this quality is able to control all thoughts and beliefs in their own mind, eliminating distractions and base emotions.
Up to this point, of course, nothing in the process requires any religious belief at all, which is precisely the point I was trying to make earlier about the absence of contradiction among the mystical experiences of various different religions. As far as I’m aware, none of the “candidate explanations” that you alluded to earlier can explain the experiences of people who practice these things carefully. The experiences that I get from materialists are typically along the lines of “people believe what they’re told” or “people believe whatever makes them comfortable”. Those explanations are obviously wrong because real mystics do the exact opposite–paying careful attention so as to break through the level of consciousness centered on social conformity and basic emotion to reach a deeper level of reality. Likewise for explanations involving supposed genetic dispositions. The problem–besides the obvious fact that no one can find the genes–is that meditation and mysticism break through dispositions, rather than following them.
As to what I find in Christian mysticism that convinces me to believe and practice Christianity, the answer is again too long to put here, but a fine place to start is simply by reading the works of great Christian mystics like St. Francis, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, Alexandrina da Costa, and Thomas Merton. Any time I’m given a candidate explanation for religious experience I immediately compare it to what I’ve learned from those and others like them. If it doesn’t match up, then the explanation can be tossed.
Why exclude “old stories or internal thoughts” as evidence for God when you’ve already advanced them as evidence for my mother? It seems an arbitrary distinction to me. There are, of course, plenty of instances that meet your standard–the visions at Medjugorje are ongoing, for instance.
If so, then I’d guess you’re accustomed to speaking in academic jargon. Most people aren’t, so language like that tends to cloud rather than clear the picture.
And how many peer-reviewed papers have ever testified to the existence of my mother?
(As an additional point, the academic world is not particularly high on reliability. After all, Sigmund Freud had theories explaining why everyone’s experiences of their mother were mostly delusions or distorted, but it didn’t stop his ideas from dominating the academy for decades.)
But what is this “mass of evidence”, other than the personal testimony of myself, the (contradictory) testimony of other people, and silly things such as her moving objects across the room that can easily be explained away?
Firstly, I’d say that the vast majority of my personal experiences with my mother did not happen in the presence of others. In any case, who are these independent observers you keep referring to? When we investigate, we find that the vast majority of pro-mother testimony comes from people who are friends and family members of the subject of the investigation. Pretty suspicious, wouldn’t you say? Why doesn’t she ever appear in a way that amotherists couldn’t deny? I mean, if she really wanted to prove her existence, why doesn’t she run through a shopping mall screaming at the top of her lungs or something like that? If we can make arbitrary demands that God has to fulfill before accepting his existence, why not do the same for my mother?
You are mistaken about the burden here. That no gods exist is the logical default assumption. No one has a burden to prove they don’t exist. If you want to assert that gods exist, the burden rests entirely on you. It’s your hypothesis, you support it. Your continual attempts at GOTG and demands to prove the negative are not actual arguments for anything. They are specious assaults on non-assertions.
You seem to be operating under the mistaken impression that Science (Capital S Science - the Institution, not the discipline) has some kind of opinion about your mother specifically. It doesn’t. It has ample evidence that mothers in general exist, and had determined a fair bit about the process of becoming a mother, but regarding your specific mother it doesn’t know jack. This is because it doesn’t care about you. To Science you are like the insignificant bug - bugs in general are interesting, but not as specific individuals.
All this being the case, the argument are on a smaller scale; just people in your area drawing conclusions based on the evidence they have available.
If all people had to go on was old, garbled, contradictory stories and inconsistent and contradictory mental experiences about your mother, many of which defy conventional knowledge, they wouldn’t believe in her either. Of course, some people have actually met your mother - but for other people, it helps a lot that the stories about her are plausible. If you were going around telling people that she was a fifty foot tall giant moth that raised the dead, then they probably would believe it.
It seemed clear enough to me. Perhaps it’s just you.
The peer-reviews on your mother are all verbal. “Hey, have you met ITR’s mom?” “Yeah. She totally wasn’t a fifty foot giant moth that raised the dead.” “That’s my experience too. But if Benny saw something different, I’d have to rethink my assumptions.”
As opposed to the religious world, which is totally immune from being influenced by people.
Aside from the photos and videos and signatures and legal documents and drivers liscence records, you mean?
And the testimony isn’t that contradictory. Though the degree to which you lampoon your own position with this false equivalence is hilarious.
Two reasons. One, we don’t actually care if she exists or not. If we did, we’d check. Look for records of her presence in the world, which DO exist, unambiguously, and do not resemble the results of evolution. And if that’s not enough maybe even go so far as to send two or three people with a camera to talk to her, get a photo or two. If anyone doubts them, those people could go check for themselves.
Seriously, if I didn’t know better I’d think you were trying to argue that God doesn’t exist, because by comparing the example of your mother, you are graphically hilighting the extreme deficiencies in the evidence for God. Seriously, I couldn’t do better myself.
As for the things only you have experienced, they’re a separate matter. Suppose you *had *observed your mother raising the dead. Plenty of other people have observed your mother, and so there is a scientific concensus (heh) that she exists, but nobody else has seen her raise the dead. And even she refuses to state an opinion on the matter - it’s just you. There isn’t even an undead person around to corroborate the story.
At this point, every rational person will have to assess the probability of your story being true. And that plausibility makes a difference; if you had said she served you cornflakes nobody would blink, but raising the dead will give people pause. Quite reasonably. In fact it would be reasonable to wonder if you hadn’t gotten confused about the matter yourself.