Why is your willingness less biased that Cosmosdan’s unwillingness? Why is it bias when he talks, but not when you talk? Again I ask: why are you the objective standard for what does and does not constitute acceptable evidence?
Because in the case of God, there is evidence other than the testimony of a serial killer. The other day, I saw a flash of light come from behind me. I did not think “that must have been God”. I ran through my mind a number of possible reasons that there was a flash of light behind me. Eventually, I figured it out. The reason I didn’t think it was God is that it did not fit with the totality of my experience of God’s communion. He doesn’t speak to me by semaphore, or at least He never has. That’s just the nature of solid evidence. You can’t take Godel’s work, for example, as proof of undecidable propositions without first accepting bodies of work from generations of philosophers and logicians who provided evidence that the rules-set used by Godel in fact works and is legitimately reasonable. You don’t accept the theory of evolution based on a single piece of evidence, but on the totality of all the evidence. At least, that’s how it should be.
I wonder if William of Occam wore a beard.
Tris
It might be understandable to accept the belief, but that does not make it rational. Though I think it is true that the Romans and medieval Christians were far more rational believing in the gods who explained the problem of where we came from than those in the 21st century are, where this is no longer an issue. Remember Tom Paine believed in a deity because of the structure of the solar system.
I wonder how you and Liberal feel about the evidence for UFO abductions. This seems to be at least as consistent as evidence for meeting god, and certainly aliens are just as plausible as god.
Do you think the claims of Mack and company deserve as much credence as yours?
How do I feel about them? I feel like I don’t care. It’s no skin off my nose.
That’s what I don’t understand about the near desperation in the appeals of some atheists that I renounce my faith and start being what they consider to be reasonable. The questions come wrapped in thick layers of sarcasm, ignorance, and condescension. Why does this alleged god you claim to love torture innocent children and rape old ladies? Inquiries seldom come (but sometimes do) with respect and a genuine search for understanding. Could you list the items of evidence that have convinced you, thanks? That’s what I miss about the participation of Gaudere, Spiritus, and others of old in these discussions. Gaudere was even thoughtful enough to capitalize not just the name “God” (yes, the term serves a dual purpose, both as a proper noun and a descriptive noun) but even the pronouns. She did this, she said, out of respect for the faithful.
Some atheists seem to care deeply that I believe in God, and apparently are willing to fight over it. Check out the discussion with Catsix, for example. It isn’t that my evidence is not acceptable to him; it’s that I have no evidence. Not only that, but the original claimant (who said there is no evidence) is not required to back up his assertion, but the challenger of the claim is. How does one reason with such a person? I just don’t know.
The only way I would treat a UFO proponent the way people like Catsix, Badchad, and Pseudo treat us is if he came at me with a knife and threatened to harm me. I will challenge him, yes. I will ask him questions, yes. But I won’t presume that his every utterance is a lie just because his mouth is moving. I’m happy to hear his evidence.
(Sorry for venting. Thanks for listening. :))
Liberal, not capitalizing the pronouns that refer to God and the Christ is not always intended to be disrespectful. I mentioned this in another thread. In the late 1960’s, I was an editorial assistant for the United Methodist Publishing House. One of my responsibilities was proofreading. The in-house style manual specified that we were not to capitalize the pronouns. I haven’t done it since. It is generally no longer customary.
Because none of this ‘subjective evidence’ is in any way acceptable even to the religious folks except when talking about their own religion.
Really? What evidence?
I asked you to, and you refused.
I don’t see any need to elevate the importance of a myth.
You haven’t presented any.
You’ve only refused and dodged the question by attacking me.
[quoteThe only way I would treat a UFO proponent the way people like Catsix, Badchad, and Pseudo treat us is if he came at me with a knife and threatened to harm me.[/quote]
Are you seriously trying to say that debating your religion is the equivalent of trying to stab you?
Uh huh. That’s exactly what I said, isn’t it. And that sort of humble and genuine interpretation by you is exactly why I’ve been so happy to supply you with all the information you’ve so courteously requested. Knowing that you will interpret “night” as “day” and “black” as “white” if it suits you makes communication with you a joy and delight. I will continue to go out of my way to supply you with information while ignoring others. Hugs and kisses.
But here I disagree. Everyone uses their own subjective evidence to help them reach conclusions and make their decisions. Everyone exercises a faith in doing so. It may not be religious faith but it definately fits the definition offered here
Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
I don’t think someone else’s subjective experience should be “good enough for you” each person must choose their own path for themselves. The rub comes when the choices we make based on our own subjective experience affect the lives of others, as they must. Then comes interaction and conflict and we are forced to choose again how to handle that interaction and the cycle of learning and growth continues. At least we hope it does.
You’re beginning (?) to express some serious derangement about here. Why not just type in “sarcastic uncooperative retort” and save yourself some effort? What Catsix may be distinguishing (and what I certainly am) is the difference between your beliefs, which to me you have every right to hold, and your right to discuss them in public with deference and respect for their content.
If I say “I believe in free speech” and you say “Why?” I will defend my beliefs in terms that you can understand. If you finally choose to reject my belief in free speech, we will both be clear why you are rejecting it: you don’t accept my premise that free speech is desirable, you are an authoritarian, you have seen free speech being abused, etc. What you, and others like you, seem to want is to describe your beliefs in terms that make no sense to me, predicating them on principles not a whit more lucid than those of idol-worshippers or psychotics, and show them a certain large amount of respect. You seem downright offended that I (and others like me) cannot, other than by very disrespectful acts of hypocrisy, treat with respect something that makes no sense to me and makes no attempt to make that sense, but simply retreats into your subjective perceptions upon inquiry.
You’re perfectly free to believe what you please. Indeed, how would I even know what you believe, and how could I possibly affect what’s in your heart? But when you try to present your beliefs as attractive or reasonable explanations of the human condition to others, I must try to show how your belief system is ultimately based on your own highly subjective, extremely personal, and by definition untransferable experience.
If you would be content with such a description of your beliefs, we would be fine. “I believe devoutly in the Christian Bible (or in Xianity, or whatev) for reasons of my own which I cannot explain intelligibly to anyone outside my own skin .” It’s your putting on the cloak of reasonable discourse, which you shed so easily, that I question, and I need to point out, in American culture generally and the SD specifically, how you’re allowed to wear that cloak only by consent of the majority, and not by any definition of “reasonable discourse.”
Man, I love it when someone capsulates a key point in a sentence or two. Wolf just did it and now you.
So it wasn’t irrational for people centuries ago to believe in God or Gods because they didn’t have the scientific knowledge we have now. You and other atheists seem to feel that we’ve advanced so much scientifically that belief in God is unnecessary and even irrational. Isn’t that every bit as presumptuous as the believer saying “How can you look at the wonder that is creation and not believe?”
How can you make that judgement call for another? How can I? There’s a lot of scientific knowledge available but it still leaves certain questions unanswered. It’s safe to say that the average person only knows a small fraction of the basics of science. Shouldn’t that be factored in when declaring so much of the population irrational?
Here’s a point I raised to someone else that you might help me with. I consider belief in God to be accepted by many by sheer weight of numbers. Everybody around me believes and tells me to believe, and I trust them, so I believe. Everybody also tells me there’s a continent named Australia and even though I’ve never been and seen it myself I believe it’s there. Is it irrational for me to accept Australia’s existence without personally examining the evidence and making the trip? This principle is why I think irrational is an incorrect term for belief in God.
I have no reason to accept or reject the existence of aliens. IMHO it’s about how a certain belief affects your life, your day to day choices, and inevitably the lives of the people you interact with.
If I meet an atheist who is an honest, responsible, compassionate human being I don’t think “Aw it’s a shame he doesn’t believe as I do” I celebrate his or her positive influence on the world and honor the path they’ve chosen that led them there.
If you meet a Christian who has successfully incorporated the best teachings of Jesus into their lives, are honest and kind and spend time helping the needy, do you sigh at their unfortunate circumstance of being irrational?
Do you think to yourself, “the world would be a better place if they could keep all these good qualities and just stop believing in God”?
OTOH if someone uses a line pulled out of a 2000 year old book to try and justify their desire to deny human beings their rights then I feel obligated to oppose them, not excuse them.
If some atheist launched a campaign to outlaw praying in public I would feel the same.
Would you like to challenge the existence of Australia? Go ahead. You’re perfectly free to. If your position finally comes down to “I refuse to make the trip you’re suggesting,” then you’ll be refusing to examine the evidence that millions of Australians provide every day. That’s your lookout.
What is a Xian offering me that is analogous to a trip to Australia, or a photograph of the Earth from the moon?
I no more ‘chose’ to be an atheist than I ‘chose’ to be female. I didn’t elect to not believe in something that does exist, I found it impossible even at seven years old to believe in something that doesn’t. Hell I had more ‘evidence’ that there was a Santa Claus and I quit believing in that when I was five.
It may seem like splitting semantic hairs, but I don’t see myself as someone who doesn’t believe in a god that exists. I am someone who finds it impossible to believe in things that don’t exist.
And that my friend {I hope you don’t mind a believer calling you friend} is not the objection, but the point.
I don’t claim that my subjective evidence is valid for anyone else but me. Nor do I think that others subjective evidence , yours or other believers, are valid for me.
I take personal responsibility for deciding what my subjective experiences mean and how they affect my choices. I request that others do the same.
Me saying “God is love” may be meaningless to many but an act of love is not.
Me saying “God is truth” may be meaningless but being a truthful person is not.
The problem we run into is people being convinced that their own conclusions that are “right” for them must also be the ones that are right for everyone else. Thats not how it works. IMHO we need to address the actions and the results of those actions while respecting the individuals right to choose their own path and find their way in their own time.
I know there are far too many believers who don’t see it that way and would love to legislate their belief to others. That’s an action we can and should address. I understand the frustration of atheists who are by far in the minority and feel that their freedom of choice is not being respected.
I believe in speaking out and challenging beliefs. There’s plenty of superstition and tradition that is addressed by existing objective evidence. Let’s get the information out there into the consciousness of the public and the next generation.
If someone presents me with solid objective evidence then as someone who cares about being truthful with myself and others, I feel obliged to examine it and decide if it changes my belief system or not. You don’t have any objective evidence to show me. You are just talking about your opinions and your conclusions based on objective and subjective evidence. Fair enough. Then you go the extra step and say my conclusions are wrong without having sufficient evidence to back it up.
Neither believer or non believer should insist their conclusions are the correct ones for someone else without objective evidence. They do however, maintain the right to draw their own conclusions.
If you look at my post you’ll see I didn’t imply you or anyone chose to be an atheist. The path I refered to is not atheism, but the direction of your life which includes being an atheist and a female, choice or not.
Certainly your experience led you to know that belief in a supreme diety was widespread but there was no objective evidence and no subjective experience that satisfied you. At some point you became aware that you did not believe, yes?
I think I get your point and while it may be a semantic hair sometimes those are important.
Let me split one of my own. It seems to me that you decided, either consciously or simply because it’s your nature, to not accept things that you can’t see evidence for. A reasonable position. Thats not the same as “something that doesn’t exist”
Furthermore my position is that all people operate on a kind of faith as they decide what their subjective experiences mean.
It’s rather like unicorns and dragons and zeus: god exists in myths and only in myths.
First of all, kudos to you. I was able to read your entire post and digest its content without feeling as though you’d pegged me as your enemy. I have atheist friends, and we certainly joke and rib each other, often tossing out witty jabs, but underneath it all, we respect each other. I don’t feel like they’re “missing” anything, and they don’t feel like I’m deranged. If you and I get no further than this, we’ve come a long way.
Except that I don’t understand why making no sense to you tags an argument (in the formal sense of a debate) for disrespect. I mean, there are lots and lots of things that I don’t understand, even when people explain them to me. But my reaction is not to freak out and blast away at them with mocking tones and resentful hatred.
For example, I cannot for the life of me grasp any sort of affinity for seafood. It stinks. The animals are either cooked alive or tortured to death by suffocation and stabbings. They’re ugly. They’re filthy (shrimp are like cockroaches). They’re slimy. People even eat these creatures raw. Did I mention they stink? How on earth someone could sit down for a civilized meal and consume these things is beyond me. And yet, I have friends who like seafood. I don’t go with them to seafood restaurants, just as I wouldn’t expect an atheist to go with me to a Quaker meeting. But why should I presume that my standard for food is the objective standard and that all fish eaters are irrational numbskulls.
That makes no sense. Why must you? Especially given that I already have. I’ve never failed to stipulate that the evidence that convinces me most is my own experience. I’ve said time and again that you cannot replicate that evidence without living my life. The only time I ever buckle at a demand for evidence is when the demand is for scientific evidence. I buckle because it is a stupid demand. Science cannot examine God. Period. You can no more examine God by science than you can examine gravity by prayer. It’s oil and water, or more precisely, physical and metaphysical.
But my discourse IS reasonable with reasonable people. I am happy to discuss rational proofs, historical evidence, inductive indications, testimonial disclosures, cases studies, analogical examinations, traditional apologetics — anything you please. As I explained before, it is the totality of the evidence that convinces me, just as the totality of the evidence for evolution convinces me. I don’t believe in evolution just because Darwin wrote a book. Do you? Of course not. You call upon paleontology, geology, organic chemistry, biology, and a whole slew of disciplines in order to argue in favor of evolution. With me, same same. It takes a whole discussion to cover all this. It can’t be a token blurb in response to a person who already has made up his mind to the contrary. Does that make sense to you?
You see, Pseudo? If he percieves (wrongly) that I’ve made an initial assertion, he demands that I prove it. But he slings gratuitous assertions like the above all day long without even a shred of supporting argument. How do you reason with a person like that? I just don’t know.
I believe catsix is a she, as it happens. And you could start - as you yourself suggested - by calming asking what evidence she has for what she believes (of course, this may not make a huge difference in catsix’s case, but it’s worth a try).
Your theistic position is the only one I can begin to respect, in that it claims no support other than your own subjective perceptions. I wish you’d own up to it a bit more cheerfully, perhaps “Okay, I’m completely incapable of making my beliefs make the smallest shred of sense to anyone who is not me, and I can certainly endorse your viewing me as completely outside the sphere of rational discourse on this subject and, by extrapolation, other subjects if you choose.” I mean, why does being called a nutball bother you so much, when you’re pretty well claiming all the attributes a nutball has, in rejecting every rational scientific basis for supporting your beliefs?
Of course, I can’t see what you’d have to say (outside of “Works for me”) in a discussion of why Xians believe as they do. How many times can you say, “People can believe as they choose to believe”? Is it the equation with idol-worshippers that offends you? Aren’t idol-worshippers allowed to believe as you do in a God that comes to them exclusively through their own perceptions? Is the question of legitimacy different for you than for believers in other systems of belief? Does the question “Why do you treat other outlandish systems of belief with a kind of disrespect you object to when it’s turned on your system of belief?” make no sense to you?
As to why even your beliefs bother me, it’s because I sometimes want to engage my fellow humans in exchanges of ideas, but not so much when my fellow humans reserve some sort of unspoken right to retreat into irrationality when they have nowhere else to go. If you and I were arguing about why traffic lights should have the green light at the top or at the bottom, I would always be thinking “This may be a huge waste of my energy, since at any moment **Liberal ** could simply resort to ‘Because God says so’–he’s shown me that he’s capable of saying that in other contexts,” so I might prefer not to engage with you in discourse entirely, and save myself a few (dozen) steps before you retreat into your claims of subjective truth. How do you reason with such a person? I just don’t know.