All religious believers make unprovable claims, not just the zealots.
I will contemplate the irony as I await the proof of your claim.
Ouch. I agree with your point about Uzi, but I think that’s going a bit too far. I think you’re mischaracterising emotion about him upstairs with emotion about the believers, which is perfectly reasonable, and even emotion about the concept of a god I wouldn’t take as proof they believed it exists. I think that perhaps that’s wishful thinking on your part.
I guess it’s all in how we interpret what Uzi says. I didn’t hear a nuanced argument about any theological “concept”. I heard only that I have convinced myself that the tooth fairy exists. That was a bit of an ouch itself, don’t you think?
I assume that people understand that anything anyone posts is based entirely upon opinion unless they provide cites. Why would you assume different? I mean really, is everything a debate from a podium for you?
Dehumanize? If anything it seems entirely human for people to believe in the unknown. Would I be happier if I knew there was some form of rational afterlife and had the knowledge of what the rules to get in there were? Probably. As no religion has those answers, and no deity has chosen to grant me that knowledge (a thing easily done by the creator of the universe) then I have no option other than to play the hand dealt me, don’t I?
What bothers me is I see the terrible things that religion does first hand, not just the religion, but the belief itself. So, if I get emotional it is that I see the terrible waste that surrounds it. If the people I work with spent the amount of time working to better themselves and their society as they do worshiping the non-existent and worrying about what outsiders think about their religion, then they most likely wouldn’t be part of the third world anymore.
Even yourself, who seems like a smart, rational guy most of the time, is burdened wasting your time using the university education you acquired, I assume through hard work, to prove the existence of a being that deigns not to make his presence known in a more obvious manner that everyone can not doubt.
Logic is only valid when you use it, huh?
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It is not up to me to prove or disprove a believer’s claims. I’m only commenting here on the silliness of them.
They should be but Mother Teresa’s weren’t, not only because they were squalid and crowded and filthy (despite all the millions of dollars raised by her order, her hospices were the same when she died as they were when she started), but also – and more egregiously – because she refused to administer pain relief no matter what how much agony her “patients” were in. She claimed that suffering was “beautiful” and “spiritual” and really seemed to get her rocks off watching other people twist in pain. There’s a story that she told one gentleman who’d been screaming in agony that “when you are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you,” to which the man retorted, “then tell Jesus to stop kissing me.”
The ultimate hypocrisy is that Teresa availed herself of only the best and most modern medical care when she herself got sick.
Yes, it is. I agree with you on Uzi’s argument - as I said. But I don’t think I mentioned any nuanced argument about any theological concepts. All I said was I took Uzi’s argument to show emotion at believers, rather than emotion at God. And either way, I don’t think you can say “That guy shows too much emotion at believers/God; clearly he secretly believes!”.
Another reason I think you’re wrong in this particular instance because **Uzi ** didn’t mention any religion particularly. He feels all religious folk are silly. All we can tell is that he feels equal emotion for all religious believers - does that mean he’s also a Buddhist, and a Hindu, and a Wiccan? By your logic, it would appear to. I’m afraid you may be jumping to conclusions based on your own beliefs.
[QUOTE=Uzi]
I don’t think I am making any excuses for him, but if you are to put him to higher standards then those who make the extraordinary claims that most religions do should also be held to the same standards.
I mean. If, as the OP suggests, he loses credibility for uncritically accepting a silly story about making love through a sheet, how little credibility must his critics have who insist that there’s a big magic man who created the world and punishes the wicked?
Belief in the unknown. That’s far better than belief in fairy tales, and least gives us a serious context in which to have a discussion. But although it’s more respectful, it still misses the mark, and here’s why.
There are different kinds of belief. There is intellectual belief, which is compelled by reason. There is heartfelt belief, which is compelled by experience. But there also is belief that is not compelled at all, at least not by anything rational or anything encountered before. A person, for example, might believe that he will be rich some day. He has no reason to believe it since he is poor now and hasn’t the first idea how to become rich. He just hopes for the best and believes in the sense of thinking positively.
There is also a more vicarious kind of belief, such as belief in quantum theory. Most of us really have no idea what the underlying principles are, nor how to manipulate the underlying mathematics of quantum theory. We don’t really know how to test it either. Instead, we trust scientists to give consensus to things that they understand even if we don’t. And finally, of the sorts of belief pertinent to our discussion, there is a hypocritical belief, which really isn’t a belief at all. A belief in God, for example, based on nothing more than convenience.
You can see why it is vague to the point of amphiboly to dismiss all belief in something unknown. For one thing, there’s equivocation over the term “belief”. But for another, what is known to one person might not be known to another. I’m sure you will agree that the average person’s belief in undecidable propositions of Peano arithmetic are very different from Godel’s belief in them. John Smith may not even know what an undecidable proposition is, but that doesn’t make undecidable propositions unknown.
Speaking for myself, my belief in God is of two types: (1) a heartfelt belief born of experience, and (2) an intellectual belief compelled by reason. Before you scoff an number (2), keep in mind that I cannot disregard my experience and still be reasonable. Every axiom, premise, and postulate that we as thinking people propose is taken from what we’ve experienced. Every deductive system is built on a foundation of assumption. Unproven assumption.
I’ve never had any dealings with the tooth fairy, and I have no compelling logical reason to believe in him or her. That is why flippant references to that sort of nonsense is so ignorant and disrespectful. It suggests that since I believe in God, I may as well believe in the tooth fairy as well, as though they are the same sort of phenomenon. And while they may well be indistinguishable to you, owing to the fact that you’ve experienced neither of them, you have no cause to question the experiences of other people. Only one person in history has ever had your experiences. You are wrong to project your narrow view of the world, known only to you, onto others.
I wasn’t talking about a believer’s claim. I was talking about YOUR claim. “All religious believers make unprovable claims” is itself a claim. It is up to you to prove it because you asserted it. It is a sweeping claim about all believers which you did not bother to prove.
Liberal: would you respect as an equal someone who really did believe in the tooth fairy, assuming they came at the conclusion that the tooth fairy exists the same way you came to the conclusion about a god?
What does the belief even matter?
Seriously. Even if you were to assume every person who held religious beliefs was a damn dirty liar, it is still not okay to lie about them knowingly.
I once belonged to an organization where I utterly despised one of the members holding position. One of the other members called a vote of no-confidence… but he did it for bullshit reasons. I spoke against the no-confidence vote, and I said to the man’s face: “I don’t think you should be in this position. I think there should be a vote of no confidence. But I’m not going to attach my name to false claims to get that accomplished.”
I don’t know if you’re being intentionally obtuse or not. I will guess not.
Even if they are actively lying or deluded or wrong or WHATEVER, that is no excuse to lie about them.
You lose your moral high ground when you do this. You lose respect, too: if you make easily falsified claims about your opponents, the rest of your arguments – however valid – will be lessened by it. The only way to get out of that hole is to own up to your misstatements, apologize, and soldier on.
What you said was “emotion about the concept of a god”. (Emphasis mine.) Hence, my reply about a “theological concept”.
Except that I wasn’t attempting to make a logical argument, just an observation that many hard atheists that I’ve known seem to be rather angry at God and that I myself would not be so emotional about something I don’t think exists.
Hard to say, but only because I don’t base respect on what people believe or don’t believe spiritually. I respect SentientMeat and everything he believes, even though he’s a physicalist. What I respect him for is his intellectual honesty and honorable debate tactics. I’m not trying to get Uzi to believe in God; I’m just trying to get him to stop mocking me for MY belief in God. And if Sentient told me that he has met a tooth fairy, I would respect him none the less for it. He wouldn’t tell me so if it weren’t true.
Or to use an easily debunkable piece of “evidence” as an “example”, when there are plenty of better ones.
You fight lies/delusion/disinformation with truth. Not with counter-disinformation.
“It COULD happen” or “it makes just as much sense” are not adequate justifications when you are precisely attacking a worldview that asks for belief in absence of evidence or based on unverifiable evidence. To me, “Oh, sure, [silly thing X] is an Urban Legend, but you know it’s the kind of thing you would expect of religion” is in the same league with the believers saying “Oh, sure, nobody’s proposing [antirreligious policy Y], but you know THAT is the kind of thing the atheists would want, if they could get away with it!!”.
Belief in what you believe to be known is probably a better statement. You believe in it, so it is real to you. But that still doesn’t make it a reality.
I agree. Can we agree that using my experiences we would not reach the same conclusions? For the sake of argument, that is, as there is no way I can use your thought process to analyze my experiences. So, how can I come to the same conclusions you have done with out any verifiable proof? To me Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and your God sit upon the same shelf. A shelf labeled ‘Children’s toys’. They sit upon the shelf because grownups don’t play with them anymore. Yet many bring them down and expect others to act in accordance to the game of ‘make believe’ they are playing. And it is a serious game that is played. People’s lives are lost daily because of it. So, I don’t think it is beyond the realm of good taste to question the game, or to show some contempt for people who pretty much say,“You’ll have to take my word for it”. This isn’t quantum physics where only the gifted few can appreciate the answers. It is expected that everyone can know god.
The statement “I believe in God”, if we take a person at his word, is factual.
The statement “There is a God” has not been proven and it has been unprovable throughout human history. My assumption as to why it hasn’t been proven is because it doesn’t exist to prove.
Now which makes more sense, “I believe in God because he exists” or, “I believe in God because he doesn’t exist”?
Obviously, by making the statement, “I believe in God” you make the case for the existence of god. This is why I say that all believer’s make unprovable claims. Now maybe there are some people out there who say they believe in gods they don’t believe to exist, but it would be strange indeed to meet one.
Ah, you’re right, I did. My mistake. :smack:
I would have had no problem had you said “I personally would not be so emotional on this issue if I were an atheist”. That you pretty much came out and said that any hard athiest who feels emotional about a god or gods in your opinion is probably a secret believer seems pretty perplexing and on the verge of offensive (to me; it may well be actually offensive to hard atheists). And i’d point out that you’re using “God” again; Uzi hasn’t specified a particular god he dislikes (and i’d still maintain that his emotion is at believers rather than the god itself), and under your logic by expressing universal anger he believes in all gods, a contradictory situation.
Ok, so he didn’t rob the liquor store. But he’s guilty of something. I mean, just look at him!
Not that anyone cares, but I just realized that I forgot, in my earlier post, to make my opinion on the actual subject of this thread clear, which I might as well do now: earlier, I had said that I gained a lot of respect for Hitchens for his speaking out against Mother Teresa. (Indeed, I had long been saying to myself “Though his politics may be regrettable, at least his writings on religion are always quite good.”) What I forgot to add was that I recently lost a lot of respect when I heard him, on some debate (perhaps with Al Sharpton?), repeating the myth about Orthodox Jews and the hole in the sheet; in other circumstances, I might have ignored that small, perhaps understandable bit of ignorance, but this coming from a man who had just written a long diatribe on the subject of religion, ostensibly an educated and well-researched tome; well, it was a bit much. Then, coming into this thread and discovering him also repeating the myth about Ma Ferguson and “If English was good enough for Jesus…”, I was doubly crushed. Both of those being so readily debunked with the barest of effort at research, the impression left upon me is distinctly amateur.
Does that mean I’m not real to you? 
Yes, of course. We could also say that about a lot of things. For many reasons I conclude, for example, that peaceful honest people should be free to pursue their own happiness in their own way. Someone else might conclude (for the same or different reasons) that one or more authorities are necessary to guide the lives of peaceful honest people.
The problem here, of course, is that the disagreement is ontological in nature; that is, we disagree about what does and does not exist. It is understandable, to some extent, that you would demand some sort of empirical evidence for the existence of anything and everything. However, the demand suffers from two fatal flaws: (1) it begs the question, i.e., you presume that only physical things exist and therefore demand physical evidence; and (2) empiricism is not the proper tool for examining anything supernatural, so that even if you concede the possibility of supernatural existence, you cannot demand empirical evidence for it.
I’m not so sure it is. Many religions are extremely exclusive. Even Jesus teaches that “many are called, but few are chosen.” Neurological researchers have even touched on this point:
Indeed, if you are tempted to jump to this conclusion, just bear in mind that one could use exactly the same evidence – the involvement of the temporal lobes in religion – to argue for, rather than against, the existence of God. By way of analogy, consider the fact that most animals don’t have the receptors or neural machinery for color vision. Only a privileged few do, yet would you want to conclude from this that color wasn’t real? Obviously not, but if not, then why doesn’t the same argument apply to God? Perhaps only the “chosen” ones have the required neural connections. … My goal as a scientist, in other words, is to discover how and why religious sentiments originate in the brain, but this has no bearing one way or the other on whether God really exists or not."VS Ramachandran, MD, Ph.D., Phantoms in the Brain, “God and the Limbic System”, pp 184-185
I believe in God because it is a metaphysical necessity that I do so. In other words, I cannot not believe in God anymore than I cannot not believe in gravity. He is as real to me as my own mother. I completely understand why that might seem incredulous to you. But without predicating God’s existence, there really is nothing TO prove. You cannot, for example, prove that fatigue exists to a person who experiences only vigor. You cannot prove that joy exists to a person who experiences only depression.
Besides all that, “God exists” may be offered axiomatically, and if it is, a demand for proof is absurd, meaning that phrases like “it has been unprovable throughout human history” are meaningless because they are inapplicable.
I agree with you, Liberal, that faith is not a choice anyone can make. I hope from this you don’t think non-believers are hellbound or something equally disgusting as that, but that’s irrelevant, really.
This seems to contradict your argument that supernatural entities do not have physical explanations.
The problem with using personal belief and nothing else is that this strategy is the least reliable for information acquisition. We misunderstand things on personal levels all the time. Intuitively, I know a bowling ball falls faster than a tennis ball because it is heavier, which is false. I have lots of childhood memories that relatives assure me never happened. I see faces in clouds and vegetables.
It is because of these and other limitations of first-person experience that I can not accept only my personal experience for such extraordinary claims for the existence of supernatural beings. Simply put, personal experience is just flat-out wrong a significant portion of time, and the best check against this is external review by multiple parties. While this doesn’t provide any absolute 100% proof for anything, it does give a very high likelihood or truth.
After a day like I’ve had today, I’m willing to concede that you may be a ‘overdone bit of potato’, or at least I wish some of the people I work with were!
A rather confusing sentence. If the supernatural is the imaginations of humans then all you can prove about it is that it is just in people’s imagination.
I think you open a whole barrel full of worms with this type of argument. I’m automatically condemned because he didn’t give me the tools to be saved.
Also, if this was the case that god gave certain people the ability to perceive his message or himself, then religions should be consistent in their message, not all over the map like they are now. I guess you could argue that some people have better perception than others, but why would god do that and allow his message to be garbled? Or maybe the simple answer is that you insane and should be locked up before you infect others.