Belief in God = Belief in Restless Leg Syndrome?

Great Debates
1

It’s thoughts like this that remind me of why I am an agnostic instead of an atheist.

After reading the Pit thread “‘There is no God’ is an opinion, not a fact”, I was considering posting a GD thread inviting atheists to prove, without a doubt, that there is no God. While some people say “You can’t prove a negative”, some fire back “Sure you can”, and it’s to those people I would issue such a challenge.

And of course, such I thing is completely unexplored territory on the SDMB. :wink:

Then I had a strange thought: Belief in God is like belief in RLS.

RLS is Restless Leg Syndrome. Most people who have never had it think it sounds like some idiotic, whiney, made-up “disease” that some people might use to get out of work or something. Doctors can’t prove that it exists (my information on it being several years old, things may have changed). There is no test for RLS. AFAIK, there is no known treatment. It is, in fact, more elusive and mysterious than ADHD (perhaps because “believers” in RLS don’t give psychotropic drugs to kids, so it’s not really a topic of discussion).

Given that, it’s clear that RLS doesn’t exist.

Unless you suffer from it. Then you are positive. It is every bit as real as hunger or yawning or a bloody nose. Even if you never knew it had a name, you do now, and I’d bet that the name immediately meant something to you the moment you read it. You probably realized, just on reading the the term “restless leg”, that you were automatically included in some sort of brotherhood of sufferers. A “church of RLS”, in a way.

So is it the same with religion? Do those of us who don’t believe lack some sort of “condition” that prevents us from seeing the obvious? Could it be a condition that our current scientific processes are not yet able to detect? If so, it might explain the attitudes of believers who think that we just hate God, and can’t understand the concept of non-belief. It would certainly explain the attitude of some atheists. “Restless God Syndrome”, indeed.

What do you think?

2

I don’t think there’s any one reason why some people profess to believe in God and some do not. However, given the lack of evidence to the contrary, I can’t discount the possibility that there’s physical differences between believers and non believers.

3

I’ve seen no evidence that there is such a “disorder” that causes religious belief. Perhaps the way to proceed might be to look at correlations between beliefs and parents’ beliefs for adopted and non-adopted children. I suspect that would provide some sort of indication that religious belief is not inherited genetically.

4

RLS has recently been shown to be effectively treated with drugs used for Parkinson’s. Maybe you need a different analogy :wink: …

5

What? You haven’t heard of the God gene?

6

Perhaps I should have made myself more clear – I don’t ascribe belief (or lack thereof) to any sort of physical anomoly, though I don’t necessarily discount it either. I’m wondering if there is some ability to receive God as a primary experience rather than through deductive reasoning or scientific method. So far, what that can be attributed to is beyond the scope of this debate. For the time being.

On reason to argue against this is the demographics of religion. Take the Bible Belt, for example. Of course, one could argue that those in the BB tend to breed in that area, and thus give birth to people who also have the capacity to believe. But people move from location to location, don’t they? Wouldn’t the BB demographic eventually dissapate?

7

Perhaps I also need those drugs. :slight_smile:

For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that such a treatment has not yet been discovered.

8

All together, one more time: The words God and proof ought not appear in the same sentence.

“Proof” is a word associated with certain epistemologies such as mathematics and logic. The epistemology called science sometimes appeals to “proof”, but this is rather a misuse of the word, since science really only examines evidence and formulates testable (ie. falsifiable) hypotheses (the best it can do is “prove” something “beyond reasonable doubt” - and who’s to say what is reasonable!). Religion is yet another epistemology, which some (like myself) simply consider unnecessary, but I would not make the mistake of thinking that I could “prove” or “disprove” statements about a non-physical (ie. metaphysical) entity.

I have never really understood the distinction between athiest and agnostic. Of course one can never know whether God exists or not, but one can never really know anything when you get down to it: every reasonable person is surely an agnostic as well as a theist or atheist?

I characterise the human belief process as rather like a fantastically complex computer (see username) attached to a needle which I call the Belief-O-Meter[sup]TM[/sup]. Prior inputs from our senses, memories, emotions (ie. our ‘likes’ or ‘personalities’) determine whether the needle points towards (God exists), NOT(God exists), or hovers precisely at the 50-50. My own needle points so strongly towards NOT that even were God to appear before my very eyes I would believe I was simply in a physical simulation. Is this literally 100% NOT, or a shade off? Can anyone really be precisely 50-50, like Buridan’s donkey?

Clearly, it’s just a spectrum with arbitrary lines drawn on. That we humans spend so much time obsessing about the position of other peoples’ needles is one of our great failings as a species.

9

Synchronised activity in the temporal lobe is strongly associated with certain ‘divine’ experiences (commonly had by epileptics). Again, this does not prove that God does or does not cause this activity - you are correct that this is beyond the scope of this debate.

Note that beliefs are ultimately also a function of our education, ie. those prior inputs and memories from which our decision is output, as well as any particular capacity to synchronise certain activity in our limbic system.

10

Which “God” do you want disproved?

If you want it disproved that there is design and purpose in the makeup of the Universe, that’s a tall order. I’m an agnostic on that one myself.

If you want it proved that there isn’t a big bearded grumpy father figure with superpowers in charge, I consider the concept too laughable to contemplate.

If you want it disproved that Zeus and his buddies aren’t up the top of Mount Olympus quaffing nectar and stuffing themselves with ambrosia, I put it to you that someone would have spotted them by now. Plus Apollo should have been spotted by astronomers, driving the Sun Chariot.

11

I agree that it’s impossible to prove that God doesn’t exist - the general definition of God is a being who could easily alter or conceal any evidence concerning his existence if he chose. So any evidence offered is inconclusive.

I think it’s theoretically possible to prove God does exist. But I’ve never seen a real proof offered. And by a real proof I mean one that specifically proves “God” exists - any “proof” which could equally be used to prove the existence of Allah or Zeus is essentially meaningless.

12

Restless leg syndrome can be detected, through a sleep study (they put wires on you to measure muscle movement etc during sleep.) And it can be treated by a variety of medications (the one I take is called Mirapex.)

QED.

13

They do? You’ve already lost me, here. I think, with increasing education, folks have largely come around and joined the pioneers who have accurately diagnosed, gone a long way toward describing, and even managed to find treatments for, various forms of neuropathic pain and related syndromes.

Perhaps the wealth of evidence had something to do with it.

14

The key difference for me is that the belief in God as an existant being requires a belief in some form of supernatural existance. Such a strange requirement is not necessary to believe in RLS.

Belief in God may be considered similarly to someone believing they are Napoleon, and seen as a sign of mental distance from reality shown by the belief and not a sign of the existance of God or the reincarnation of Napoleon. In contrast belief in RLS would seem far less a fantastical belief and so less a sign of mental imballance.

Belief in God may also result from careful consideration of ones existance and experiences through life. It would differ from a mental imballance, since the experiences on consideration would make reasonable (if not conclusive) reason for that person to believe in God. This belief may or may not be correct, but it relies on evidence available to the believer and should not be considered simple mental fallability.

Belief in RLS may result from actual experience of symptoms. Without medical tests there can be no way to prove that the individual has RLS or even that RLS is something someone can ‘have’. None the less when it is found that many people report similar symptoms, and similar reaction to curative drugs, then this particular set of symptoms can be given a name to allow for communication about it without knowing what the symptoms are about. So a name RLS becomes appropriate. There can be nolonger any question of believing in RLS, only questions about what RLS is believed to be.

So everyone would believe RLS as the concept of a group of particular symtoms.
Not everyone would believe RLS exists as a disease.

Everyone would believe in God as the concept of an all-powerful creative force.
Not everyone would believe God exists as a being.

15

You try sleeping next to someone with RLS and then ask me if it equates to sleeping next to someone with religion. Many a time have there been warnings to move back to their side of the bed or I am breaking out the duct tape.

16

An agnostic QUESTIONS the existence of God.
An atheist DENIES the existence of God.

True - you can’t absolutely KNOW. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I question it.

17

Expressing denial of something while entertaining the possiblity that one is in error is questioning something, surely? I question whether Liverpool will win the Premiership this season, and if asked one way or the other will deny so. Both theists and atheists can still QUESTION the existence of God.