All the ones that claim that God(s) are capable of intervening, as benevolent or more so than us, and either really powerful or really knowledgeable. If a god is remotely as powerful and benevolent as we are, it would have intervened long ago to solve any number of problems. We know this because that’s exactly what the more powerful and wealthy cultures do when feeling benevolent; they send foreign aid, donate vaccines, send teachers, send food, and on and on. We know that helping people and making the world better is possible because we do it. Imagine how much suffering could have been avoided if some hypothetical god had told people a few thousand years ago about sanitation, or pricking people with coxpox needles to stop smallpox. Or told the inhabitants of Pompeii to flee the region now. Or given certain extremely evil people heart failure.
The fact that we see no such intervention strongly implies that if there is some sort of “god”, it either doesn’t care much about us or is less powerful in our universe than we are. And I’d lump in the claim that “God is benevolent but has a mysterious plan that just happens to involve your slow death” with “not benevolent”; it’s a distinction without a difference.
Depending on the definition of “miraculous”, I’d be more careful here. A lot of sick people visit Lourdes and similar sites and we know for a fact that certain severe illnesses do vanish spontanously or temporarily retreat even after failed treatments; among these illnesses are some variants of cancer that show spontanous remissions and regressions from time to time (see Barasch MI (2008) Remarkable Recoveries: Research and Practice from a Patient’s Perspective. Hematology/Oncology Clinics of North America 22: 755-766. And: Sengupta N et al. (2010) Cancer immunoediting and “spontaneous” tumor regression. Pathology – Research and Practice 206: 1-8.).
Since self-recovery happens occasionally, you will find among that pool of people some who visited sites like Lourdes or its equivalent in other religions – and they might very well call their improved health miraculous.
I am not aware that anyone was ever able to show a correlation between a certain religious orientation and a higher percentage of self-recovery, but it’s quite understandable that the “miraculously” saved ones tend to see causation where more sceptical natures apply the rules of probability.
We can argue about the definition of mental health and how sound it actually is if someone believes in things that are not there (or if such belief is indeed necessary in one way or another) – but if I understand you correctly, your main point here is that religiosity and an optimistic attitude correlate positively? If this is your point, I tend to agree but does it tell us anything with certainty about the nature of religiosity?
I can as well reason, that, at some point, our early pre-homo-sapiens ancestors developed the power of imagination, and it proved to be a survival advantage. When religion sprung from their descendants’ imagination is hard to say, but it’s definitely an ancient idea that was already present when we were still hunters and gatherers. And if our known past is any indication, we were selected strongly in favour of acceptance of religiosity.
From that point of view, it’s not surprising that the descendants of people who showed an advantageous trait and started to select for it in certain ways over a long period of time, show a tendency to be religious and feel good about it. This, of course, is mere speculation and not verified knowledge, since we don’t know much about the origins of religion and if it can be defined in such a way that selective pressures occur, but it’s an approach towards an explanation of a phenomenon that doesn’t need the supernatural/spiritual to explain the culture-spanning belief in it and its individually perceived positive impact.
No need to be careful. I can state categorically, absolutely and without fear of contradiction that no verifiable “miracle” has ever occurred. A miracle, by definition, is a suspension of physical laws.
Spontaneous remissions happen all the time, with or without vists to magic grottos. Lourdes is a classic example of cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (not to mention a heavy dose of placebo effect).
Why are many people falling away from religion? Take Western Europe-the great churches and cathedrals (that were formerly filled with the faithful) now are almost empty. Seminaries and monasterys are closing, as the pool of applicants dries up. Many sociologists describe Europe as a “Post-Christian” society-and predict that the majority of the people will have no religion soon.
I don’t know about Islam-but it strikes me that Islam is not in such a declining mode.
Then the orientation of the satellite galaxies is a miracle, because it just doesn’t follow from the laws of gravity. [shake fist towards the geometry of the universe]
But seriously, I agree that no miracle has ever been documented that negates any physical laws we know. But that’s not the only definition that is in use among religious people: “everything positive that happens that we can’t (yet) explain in every detail” seems to be another widely held idea about the nature of miracles. A definition by ignorance allows a lot more leeway.
Yes, they do and that’s exactly what it is. But I doubt that logic or probability theory will convince anyone who wants to believe - and given the effect you mention, it looks heartless to even try.
This is what I hope to elicit out of ITR Champion. In fact, that question (why prefer one religion over another) is pretty much the whole purpose of this thread. I’ve seen him write about the eloquence of some of the major Christian writers, and how some of the claims about Christianity have been exaggerated. But what I haven’t seen is why Christianity is more true than any other religion, and why he found other religions to be lacking.
I’ve been asking the same basic question as in the OP for over 30 years, with no better answers than we’ve seen here. But, I have thought about this a lot, and can give a process.
First, we have to separate religious claims into falsifiable and unfalsifiable varieties. The unfalsifiable ones are the deistic ones and the “the Universe is God” varieties. By definition these gods don’t give us moral guidance, and, besides giving those who care a warm fuzzy feeling that all is not for naught, are indistinguishable from not existing.
The other category includes religions that make scientific or historical claims. These can be evaluated using standard scientific or historical methods. I think it is pretty clear that every claim that can be checked has been refuted. Some can’t be checked yet, but with this record one hardly expects any confirming evidence, especially since it could have been planted by an all-powerful deity.
There are four responses to this. The fundamentalist response is to just deny that the claims have been falsified. Not many of them around here. The more moderate believer’s response is to retreat from the falsified claims to a smaller set which haven’t been falsified yet. The third is to retreat into deism while keeping the claim of being a Christian or whatever, mostly from social pressures or childhood indoctrination. I think Universalist churches are full of these. The fourth is to try to resign from the game by saying that belief by itself excuses one from having to rationally defend a position. This is chicken but okay - unless you use this pure belief to try to influence the actions of others.
Where would you put those that insist all the different religions do not conflict with either each other or with their own personal beliefs-people that claim that all the different religions are merely paths to the same god, although even the most cursory glance at these different beliefs would show that they contradict each other in many ways?
Every individual is on a lifelong quest to determine what is the true nature of himself or herself, and what is the true nature of the Cosmos that we live in. I started out life as an atheist and stayed so through the end of college. In the years after leaving college I began to investigate some of the topics which had been pushed to the sidelines or ignored entirely during my education. I learned a great deal and as a result of what I learned, I became a Christian. If I were to explain everything that took part in that process to you in its entirety, we’d be here until next year and would overload the server in the process. Consequently I try to give summaries along with pointers to books that are closely aligned with the way I think. But the bottom line is that I read, I study, and I see what is consistent with the reality that I perceive. Once you pass childish ways of thinking such “things are valid if and only if they’re published in scientific journals” or solipsism or “Ayn Rand was right about everything” (and based on what you’ve written it seems as if you’re long past these things) then you are able to investigate and think on your own without having some authority figure to give your thoughts a stamp of approval.
When I read the Koran, for instance, I saw that it contained roughly the following: 80% explaining how great the Koran is and how everyone who doesn’t agree that it’s genuine will be punished for eternity, 10% abot how great God is, 5% Bible stories with added dialogue, 5% laws (mostly dealing with divorce and property division), and a very few sentences about how it’s nice to be nice to other people. Most westerners will never read the Koran. Most who try will quit after the first few pages. To get a good picture of it, look at the excerpt in this post and imagine that continuing for 700 pages or so. So that is why I am not a Muslim. Or, as Chesterton says, Islam is “a monomania is which everything is neglected so that one thing may be exaggerated beyond all proportion,” that one thing being “the greatness of God which levels all people.” I cannot believe that a God who created the world with all its wonders would then try to hammer humanity down so that we can’t get any enjoyment from them. Jesus Christ, on the other hand, had a message that was all about lifting people up to higher levels of being. In other words, His message matches the reality of the creation that I can see around me.
Did you read the Koran before or after you became a Christian? If it was after, then you have yet to answer the question: What were the different religions you examined before you determined that the sect you picked was the right one?
Post 95, top line. But the point is simply to show how Dio functions to shoot down any cite that he doesn’t like. If it’s not written in a peer-reviewed journal or not by a Ph.D. in the relevant field, he declares that it false because of those particular qualities. If it is written in a peer-reviewed journal or a book by a Ph.D. in the relevant field, he just declares it to be false anyway, based on one of his ‘because I say so’ cites. He’s done that several times in this thread and countless times in other threads.
Leaving aside that rather vague interpretation of “Mystical Experience”, that study did not involve the direct induction of a “mystical experience,” but rather a memory of one. I could have a memory of being abducted by a UFO, but that memory, by itself, would not be evidence of an abduction.
No, but you have to admit that he posted one that proves that some people believe they’ve had a “mystical experience”…much like my uncle Lucky believes that he can influence traffic lights if he stares at them long enough.
I know what the alternate hypotheses are and how much support they have, even if you doubt that I do.
Previously you said that the existence of Q was “indisputable”. Now you’ve acknowledged that there are other hypotheses, so while I full admission that you were wrong would be preferrable, with you I guess I’ll take what I can get. There are arguments for Q and argument against Q and as I said, I’m not personally arguing against its existence, just pointing out that hanging so much on the contents of a document when you don’t know either whether it existed or what it said if it did, is not such a good idea.
Bit if there actually was such a document as Q, we do not know everything it contained, as you’ve already admitted. Thus you can’t make claims such as “it contained only sayings” or “it contained no miracles”.
That’s your source? As I recall, you said that Paul called people idiots for believing in a bodily resurrection and carefully distinguished between bodily and spiritual resurrection. However, in 1 Cor 15, he clearly says that our first body will be changed into a new body at the last day; however, he makes clear that he’s talking about a bodily resurrection.
The fact that he constantly makes stuff up. For instance here he says “pagan Romans were far kinder than the Inquisition Christians.” The Spanish Inquisition killed about 2 thousand people in its entire centuries-long existence. For the Romans, killing as many in a single day was not unusual. Just as Glenn Beck says whatever right-wingers want to hear, Carrier says whatever atheists want to hear. Both men are utterly indifferent to the truth or falsehood of what they’re saying.
His words are in the book regardless of whether or not you believe them. As for your declaration that he’s wrong, (fact-free and cite-free as usual) perhaps you shouldn’t have made it two sentences after using “he is a credentialed, peer-reviewed historian in his field” in your defense of Carrier. Ehrman has a Ph.D. in his field, writes peer-reviewed articles, and is a whole heck of a lot more honest than Carrier.
I’ve had mystical experiences myself actually. I was once obsessed with them, until I figured out how internal and illusory they really were. It all amounts to just different ways of screwing with your brain, none of which are particularly condusive to healthy functionality. It can be pleasant enough, though and can lead to creative inspiration.
The stated objective of the study was to look for neurological correlates of religious experience.
It was done, as stated using fMRI. All this technique does is show you which areas of the brain have increased blood flow at about the same time as the subject reports experiencing a particular thought or mental state.
Fine and good. I’m sure it is a useful study in terms of finding such neural correlates. So what. It in now way tells us if the experience necessarily implies any sort of divine contact, communication, presence, perception or anything else even remotely transcendent. Unless you are going to argue that any altered stated is evidence of god, this study does precisely nothing to advance your argument. How can you not see that? Either you are willfully ignoring the multi-timezone canyon between your evidence and your conclusion, or you are deliberately trying to deceive people. In either case, it does not speak highly of your general credibility.
