Theoretical, not metaphorical. And more to the point that’s not even evolutionary psychology, it’s theoretical neurology. It would apply just as well to some critter created out of nothing a week ago as it would to something evolved.
I’m going to ask for a direct quote for that.
And for this.
And for this.
With regard to that last bit, are you proposing that the “blank slate” hypothesis is correct?
A chapter of The God Delusion is titled “why god almost certainly does not exist.” The argument is that god is necessarily more complicated than the natural world and so occam’s razor is in play.
Dawning dies not say that there are multiple universes. That is a lie. He says that its a hypothesis and that in the future maybe it will explain things.
Is there anyone with any scientific credibility claiming that multiple universes exist? I can well imagine physicists and cosmologists hypothesizing that multiple universes exists, saying that they might exist, as a means to explain some aspects of exotic phenomena like black holes and white holes (and these phenomena may themselves have a number of as-yet unproven hypotheses attached).
The difference with theists and communists, of course, is that they’re confident in things that have never been proven, and in fact by a significant amount of evidence have been actively disproven.
Totalitarian regimes have something far more relevant in common than atheism, a lack of tolerance for competing ideologies or organisations.
Think religions, unions, established military structures, intellectual establishments etc. etc.
These are exactly the institutions that Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin etc. attacked, dismantled or subjugated and rebuilt in their own image.
And they were not rebuilt in the name of atheism. It was more that one had to distance oneself from those institutions in order to carry out the carnage. They were rebuilt in the name of the only allowable ideology left, that of “insert dictator here”.
I’m pretty sure there is a lot of scientific support for multiple dimensions that humans cannot experience directly. Last I recall, the estimate was at least 10. Who’s to say there couldn’t be whole universes crammed it some of them, whole others couldn’t hold enough coke to fill Lindsay Lohan’s spoon.
I’ll go looking for some kind of cite.
Here’s one story quoting two scientists supporting multiple universes. I’ve heard of one of the two, Michio Kaku, and I can’t say I’m particularly impressed by him. The other is named Andrei Linde. The story notes that string theory is supportive of the concept in some ways.
Her’s another that I don’t really understand, but it has “Oxford” in the title. If I am interpreting this correctly (doubtful) there could be more universes than there are particles in this one. That would indeed be a very large number.
But AFAICT, there is no real world evidence. Postulating these universes solves some of the apparent mathematical contradictions and/or dead ends in some theories in physics.
Of course that’s how most physics theories get their start.
But that’s hardly a “positive argument”. That chapter is pretty much all about why God is not a useful explanation for the existence of life.
Then again, I’ve yet to see a post by ITR on Dawkins that doesn’t gravely distort Dawkins’ work. Which may be why he’s not quoting him anymore.
The argument that religious types are typically making when they bring up multiple universes is “there is no evidence for multiple universes, yet science takes the idea seriously; therefore you should take God just as seriously despite there being no evidence for him!”
What they ignore is that we have evidence that universes are possible, since we live in one; there’s no evidence of any gods. They ignore that multiple universes are consistent with the laws of physics, while God is not. They also ignore that multiple universes are a logically consistent idea, while most conceptions of God are logically contradictory and therefore flatly impossible.
Simple answer: There is absolutely no argument that you can make to make me believe in biblegod. No atheist will fall for it, new or otherwise. (I became atheist in my teen years before I even heard of Dawkins, Harris, etc. )
Here is why: A believer is incapable of making an argument FOR religion that doesn’t require a leap of logic and a god of the gaps argument. We want a linear train of thought. We don’t want things like “I crossed the street without looking, so god loves me.” WE WANT EVIDENCE! Which you have none of.
All the "good"arguments you had have been disproven. Pascal’s Wager, Intelligent Design and now “new” creationism going up against evolution.
An argument in support of religion or belief in a higher power REQUIRES nonsense. It requires forgetting facts (like founder John Adams saying this is not a christian country or that so many coincidences had to happen for you to be born and exist).
It requires you to have your OWN PERSONAL god/jesus and to stick with your own personal fantasy.
This is true of the Christian god, but not necessarily for all of them. It’s possible to posit a god that’s consistent with reality. For instance, a non-interested creator or a capricious god that only works though what we’d call chance or feelings. The problem with these kinds of “solutions” is obvious though; if they exist, there’s no reason to go around thinking about them since they can’t be differentiated from a reality where there is no god.
I am picturing a reality show. A group of scientists agrees to help a group of religious people design experiments to prove the existence of god – any god.
In the first episode, the scientists ask the religioids what they think offers evidence of god’s existence. One answers, “The smile of a baby”. The scientists begin to scribble notes, but an over the shoulder camera shot shows only doodling. Another religious person says, “A woman’s breasts”, and one of the scientists mutters “Now we’re getting somewhere”, and the notes/doodling continues, but the pictures change. 
Disagree. Just because it’s possible to posit a new god where the only prayers it answers are those which help the AFC teams doesn’t make it any different for me. Any gods have been written about, worshipped or believed in are all the same: non-existent.
( And I would HATE the AFC god too. I’m more of an NFC fan. :D)
You can’t posit that god, because that would be testable. That god would only work as long as nobody takes it seriously. It’s a self-defeating prophecy, if you like
I want to start this by saying I don’t think anyone knows what’s actually under debate here. ITR seems to think that if he can prove “new atheists aren’t new at all!” he’s won. But what has he won? None of the atheists in this thread care if they’re called new or old atheists. We’ve all pretty much admitted it’s just a term for the resurgence of interest in atheism and atheistic literature in recent times.
So ITR seems to be pushing hard to argue something that doesn’t actually matter and doesn’t prove any points, and the rest of the debaters are simply picking apart the stuff ITR says to make his arguments.
Okay. The other people in this thread fight this, but I’m willing to accept it. At least partially.
Religion often gets the full blame for certain holy wars and things along those lines, but the issue is often more complex - often there are more immediately practical reasons for war but it’s wrapped up in a religious premise in order to rile the population and squelch dissent.
Which is true in a lot of these cases. As has been pointed out, the Orthodox church in early Russia was a big opponent of the communist regime, so they would’ve attacked them regardless - atheism just made a good premise.
But even so, I’m willing to acknowledge there’s been atheism-motivated violence against the religious. It’s a tiny amount compared to religiously motivated violence, but it’s there. During these sorts of arguments, some religious people count Stalin’s entire death count as an atheist death count, which is just silly, since for the most part it was coincidental.
But so what? You seem to imply that we needed the term “new atheism” was created so us atheists could seperate ourselves from people like Stalin and such. Which is ridiculous. No atheist here is feeling guilty over what Stalin or Cubans or people in the spanish civil war did. Why would we? I’ve never killed any religious people or even seriously thought about advocating it. Do you feel guilty about being a Christian because of Hitler (or insert any other bad guy Christian from history)? Do you need to invent the “New Christianity” to avoid the association?
Anyway, I think the missing premise here is that when most people talk about how atheists have been that people are talking about their own culture, which in this case is the modern US. When we’re talking about atheists have treaded lightly on the area of religion due to social constraints, we’re not talking about the fucking Russian revolution, we’re talking about how there’s a huge social stigma in our culture attached to being atheist. Even otherwise skeptical people who are willing to debunk other silly beliefs will steer clear of religion because they give it a special status, that despite being as silly as any other supernatural belief, it has a long standing social and historical tradition that make it immune from criticism.
There’s been a trend in the recent past where skeptics and atheists are less willing to give religion that special protected status, they’re more willing to give it the same critical treatment, and there’s apparently an audience for it. If anything, this is the “new atheism”, but it isn’t a change in ideology, it’s just a willingness to be critical when you’d have held your tongue before.
So if your whole argument is “new atheism really isn’t new!” … ok. Who cares? Like I said, it isn’t a change in ideology, so I have no problem if it exists or it doesn’t.
No, I didn’t say that. I’m saying “new atheism” is a name given to a group of people who are more outspoken in their criticism, not that it’s a new movement. I also said I don’t even know if anyone refers to themselves or thinks of themselves as new atheists, or if this is just a convenient label for referring to a few authors at once.
As for the other part - come on, we know when we’re talking about the discourse in US society, we’re not talking about atheists/communists from the path. If someone says “people are hiding their atheism less than in the past”, it’s almost certain that person is talking about the public discourse in the US, and not the political history of humanity.
You’re trying to tar atheists with the murder of religious people in the name of atheism, and the fact that in this case they did it for other reasons is not relevant to the debate?
Er, what? You haven’t argued against the notion that god almost certainly does not exist - you’ve just said “atheists are dicks, see these historical examples” all throughout the thread. Addressing Dawkin’s arguments would require some logic or evidence in support of the notion of god.
Oh man, this one makes my head hurt. Usually there’s one flaw in an argument - someone is incorrect about the facts at hand, someone incorrectly states a premise, someone makes fallacious reasoning to reach an erroneous conclusion… but this is failing on all counts at once. And then some.
Okay, let me give it a go.
Really? Come on now, do I really need to pick this apart? A bunch of atheist skeptics are asking you to believe more stuff than anyone else you know? This is so absurd I’m just going to let people draw their own conclusions.
First, is the premise correct? Could you cite that Dawkins actually believes that there are multiple universes, and not just hypothesizing about it as an interesting idea? Furthmore, is this relevant to his claims regarding atheism? Is his criticism that there’s no evidence to support any particular kind of god somehow damaged even if he happens to hold this sort of belief?
I don’t think any serious scientist believes multiple universes exist in the concrete way that we believe the other things about the universe. It’s an interesting mathematical construct that allows us to explain some things we don’t understand about the universe - but it’s all clearly theoretical mathematical construct at this point. It would explain some things we can’t explain (and I’m not qualified to detail what or how exactly - this is some pretty complex stuff). This happens in science all the time - stuff is proposed that explains some mysterious phoenominon, and if it ends up being supported by the experimental evidence and its predictions correct, it becomes part of our understanding of the universe. If it doesn’t, it gets discarded. It’s just that we’ve reached such a good understanding of every day things that the stuff we can’t explain seems pretty esoteric and counter-intuitive to laymen.
Evolutionary psychology is a pretty soft and speculative science that relies too much on “just so” stories. And the “modules” you speak of aren’t literal, but are a logical concept, a way to understand them. As for the genes - there’s obviously evidence that genes exist, and that we got genes from our ancestors, and that certain behaviors are genetic. Birds make nests from instinct, lizards do weird mating dances instinctually, etc. Genes controlling the behavior and preferences is well established science fact and easy to see. The field of evolutionary psychology attempts to apply that same idea to complex human thought and interactions. But the issues are complex and I don’t think anyone thinks we’re deterministically controlled by our genes in that way.
You’re clearly a pretty smart guy ITR. You write well. But this is a crowning moment of dumb. This is actually a great example of the type of cognitive failure you’re guilty of. This type of generalization is absurd.
Believing in multiple universes is not an atheist tenant. Nor is belief in evolutionary psychology. You could be atheist and believe both or believe neither.
The idea that one person of group X holds whacky beliefs, therefore group X believes whacky things is the sort of logic a kindergartener could see as faulty.
I wouldn’t think I’d have to point out that there are theistic people who believe all sorts of whacky things - things that are much less credible even on a theoretical level like various conspiracy theories or alt med or what have you. The idea that you’d point out one whacky belief (and even then, it’s not so whacky if you understand it to be a hypothesized method for explaining the universe and something interesting to think about) and tar an entire group with it and then declare that they must believe in more whacky things than theists because you’ve yet to simply point out any kooky belief a theist has is… juevenile. I have a hard time believing you seriously believe what you’re saying.
As a group, you only know one thing about atheists. They don’t believe in god. Given that there’s no evidence to support any particular idea of god, this is the most logical and rational belief. Therefore, since that is their only universal defining characteristic as a group, they therefore believe fewer kooky things than the rest of the general population, who, by definition, have belief in some sort of theistic figure without evidence.
And the funny thing is - even if you were right and your logic wasn’t faulty in a million ways - the idea that believing in multiple universes is still less silly than a guy reading a golden book out of a hat or spaceborne DC10s flying evil souls into our volancos. I only point that out because it only adds one more delicious creamy layer to your wedding cake of wrongness.
What’s the question again? What to say to atheists who demand that you get washed in the blood of a vacuum, when you just want to finish your pie and coffee? How to convince atheists of the proven fact that they should pray to Hastur, when all they want is to peacefully finish their pie and coffee? IOW, do you want to prove the existence of God, or do you want to show that God is something over which good, reasonable people can differ?
IT seems to me that you guys are the ones changing the subject. The question was never prove or disprove the existence of God. It was all about how to respond to a New Atheist. We’ve been given the defintion: and atheist who pushes his views on other people. The answer is simple.
“You claim you want theists to stop pushing their religion on you. So don’t push your beliefs on me, whether you call them religion or not. Assuming you are aware of Christianity but reject it, I have no reason to try to convince you of anything. I’m just as aware of all the atheist arguments, but reject them, so you have no reason to say anything to me.”
This crap about trying to convince the other person is stupid. If you are sure enough of your beliefs to proselytize, then I’m not going to be able to convince you. It doesn’t matter if your beliefs are religious or not.
The subject has been changed by pretty much everyone in this thread, true, true, wrong and wrong, respectively.
If we take Dawkins as an example of the “new Atheists” (and I personally don’t think ‘new Atheism’ is new in any way, it’s just that this type of Atheism is currently more popular than it was in the 70s, probably because the dangers of religion are more obvious to the general public right now), he’s got two main ideas that he’s promoting:
- Religiously based objections to established scientific theory are bunk, especially when it comes to evolution.
- The common respect for religious beliefs is unfounded and potentially dangerous since it isn’t based on testable evidence (or even common agreement).
Both he can quite easily back up.
ETA: If you want to count Hitchens as a “new Atheist”, his arguments are very different.
This is the same question. The only way to respond to an atheist is to prove the existence of God.
The best response?
“I’m sorry, you are right”