Faith is the lack of evidence; blind faith is believing in spite of evidence.
I can agree that humans share an organized “stupidity”, but that leaves room for intellect and knowledge (the part that ought to be taken seriously and debated).
You can start by giving reasons why god-believers are not self-deluded (or misled by others.)
Science is all about methods of showing us that our opinions are deluded and leading us to more correct ones. It takes some training to do this, since the common response is to blame anything but your delusions. When I taught beginning CS classes kids whose programs would bomb would blame the compiler. That is kind of like saying God works in mysterious ways as the answer to anything that attacks ones faith in what a merciful god should be doing.
I’ve always thought that the ‘monkey mind’ or ‘lizard brain’ or whatever refers to the part of your mind that is still primitive & instinct driven rather than rational. Reason vs emotion, etc.
From what I understand Jehovah IS perfect.
-perfect can’t lead to imperfection (if it does then the perfect was never perfect?).
If the world is how it was supposed to be then it is perfect.
-If this world is perfect (GOD is there but I got some bad opinions of him that belong somewhere in the BBQ pit).
Because (thank goodness) it isn’t 100%. We are all somewhat deluded; we can’t even have total faith in the evidence of our senses. But if we do our best, we can often get through the error and arrive at truth. It just takes a lot of hard work.
Human progress often seems like the frog in the well in the old riddle. We crawl upwards ten inches…and slide back downward five.
And evidence and proof do not have the same meaning. I heard an interview with a gentleman who said that he has proof that God exists. I think he was a scientist. But despite that, he misused “proof.” His presentation had nothing to do with math or proving anything.
Faith is not the lack of evidence. I’'ve seen no evidence of fairies, but I don’t have faith in them. It is just “faith” whether you think you have evidence or not. And blind faith is not “believing in spite of the evidence.” Blind faith can be based on no evidence at all.
I am a believer in Christianity as well as other paths to God. That is just a statement of my opinion and my faith. Have I ever tried to convert you? No. Have I tried to make you buy something? No. I doubt anyone here has tried to force you to buy or convert. I don’t care if you like me or not. I’ve never asked. And I think that you don’t know most Christians. It usually isn’t very scientific to make such generalizations. For the record, mainline Christians and liberal Christians out number the fundamentalists. But the fundamentalists can be very loud. Some of them are usually the ones who get pushy about changing laws to include forced religious activities in school, keeping “In God We Trust” on the money, and who try to deny the rights of many, many of our citizens. But perhaps they mean well. And certainly most fundamentalists don’t intrude.
If you yourself want to be more scientific, you might want to consider dropping your generalizations.
That has become my belief over a long period of time. I heard someone refer to God as “the great cosmic glue.” That seems to have stuck with me based on my own experiences.
Well said!
I think I always find your posts to be very astute – even when they are short. Godel, Escher, Bach is a favorite in this family. I am not as knowledgeable of it as most of them are, but I am fascinated by what I have read.
I dislike people who are often unpleasant and accusatory. Mostly atheists are very kind to me. We don’t talk about religion much. We just go to movies and out to eat when I get out of the house.
I have lots of questions about “miracles” and what they are and are not. But I found out a year ago tomorrow that I had lung cancer. The unusual thing about my cancer was that I had had it for eight years (according to old x-rays and scans). Neither the pulmonary specialist nor the surgeon (who removes lung tumors almost daily) had ever heard of such. The were amazed. To me, it’s a miracle to be alive and cancer free. I don’t care whether it was a coincidence or not. I felt blessed.
:dubious: I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
I see no evidence that liberal Christians outnumber the fundies; more importantly, they don’t matter. It has always been the fanatics and hardliners who have been the core and driving force of religion. A liberal, tolerant Christian is a Christian well on the way to become an agnostic, an atheist, or a believer in name only; once you strip away the negative and irrational parts of Christianity, there just isn’t much point to it. And for meaning well, the Inquisition meant well when they tortured people. And the vast majority of Christians fundie and otherwise intrude all the time.
In other words, no one should ever criticize Christianity, a very convenient position for you. This is just an old Christian rhetorical tactic that keeps popping up; Christians insist that their religion cannot be criticized without knowing every single individual Christian, an an impossible standard, and act like anyone who doesn’t meet their impossible standard is ignorant and bigoted and oppressing the poor helpless Christians.
Thank you. Now you are going to get mad at me.
You said that faith is not lack of evidence, which certainly seems correct. But faith begins with belief, does it not? You don’t believe in fairies, so the amount of evidence for them is immaterial.
Since we can’t really prove anything about the physical world, pretty much all conclusions we draw about things involve belief. (Not counting opinion.) But we should have a degree of confidence in that belief. A scientist may believe in a hypothesis, but will know that this belief is very provisional, and in fact the job of a scientist is to try to disprove that belief. Things with a lot of evidence for them allow your belief to be much stronger.
Now, isn’t faith belief without evidence, or even in the face of evidence? Faith does not seem to be provisional, and it is the rare religious leader or religious person who feels it is his duty to try to refute religious faith and belief. They will retreat when the mass of evidence is so great that only a fundamentalist can deny it, but they retreat to something as irrefutable as possible. Some retreat into deism which is totally irrefutable.
Faith in this sense isn’t guaranteed to be wrong - but it seems the way to bet.
That is evidence that will soon be proven to either be true or false. There is no former evidencf, that one can put on a God, only faith and the belief in another humans idea od what or who a god is. One can have faith in their partner, but that too can be true or false. A lot different that a spiritual being. Only material things can be proven. One cannot know if there is a God or not, some say because we exist, well, that proves in exixtence, not a supreme being, and when one compares the God of the Abrahamic religions by the Bible the qualities attributed to it are not as people tell. If a human did the thinsg the way that God did, then they would be put in jail.
By human standards(that is al lwe have) We would not call a human parent,just, kind ,Loving or any of the attributes they give to their idea of a God. Any human can say god said, or did something, and some people will belive it,but humans can be just using their faith to say it is God, and maybe if the psalmist is correct,( and Jesus seemed to feel that way if John was correct in his quote of Jesus) then all are gods and sons of god. A matter of how one translates the quotation.
I think that probably many people think that they have had evidence of a God. But I’m not talking about scientific evidence. And certainly many people have faith in spite of scientific evidence (but not proof) to the contrary.
There. That didn’t hurt.
I don’t see anything inappropriate in your criticizing Christianity (the teachings of the Christ). Especially if you have some knowledge of them. But most of your criticisms are about Christians themselves. If you are talking about individuals or even official groups of Christians, again, if you know them or know about them, then I have no problem with your being critical. You won’t find me being defensive about the Inquisition. But I didn’t do that. And none of the Christians that I know were involved. Nor have I ever met a Christian who supported the Inquisition. I don’t know of any denomination that has supported the Inquisition. And in my opinion, they were certainly not acting upon the teachings of the Christ. There have been many other examples, I’m sure, of terrible things that some Christians have done. Always, I think, they were done against the teachings – not because of the teachings.
You put all Christians in one group in your statements. You no longer bother with qualifiers such as “some” or even “many.” We are no more alike than the participants on Straight Dope are alike. We certainly have different beliefs, different ways of thinking, different ways of acting. About the only thing that we all have in common is that none of us is perfect. Your arguments don’t hold up when you attack us as a whole.
It seems that when you try to summarize what I am saying with “In other words…” you completely misstate what I have said. Please be careful about twisting my words. (I’m not saying that you do it intentionally, but it does happen.
I will see if I can find a link for you about how the divisions of Christianity break down – at least in the USA. (But I will have to do that another time.) Meanwhile, why not address some of the questions that I asked you: Have I ever tried to convert you? And I’ll add another: What teachings of the Christ do you dislike? (If you care to answer.) Just don’t confuse the beliefs of so many different kinds of Christians with the actual teachings of Jesus.
Have I insisted that my religion cannot be criticized by you? Do I treat you as if you are stupid? (All of us are “ignorant” of some things.) Have I described Christians as being helpless?
Nothing I write is going to change anybody’s mind here one way or the other. In the interest of fair play I wish to let everyone know that I am a practicing “Cafeteria Catholic” (or perhaps Unorthodox Catholic is a less derogatory term). Anyway, Howard Storm used to be an atheist and had the same contempt for religion (especially Christianity) that so many other atheists have, including some on this board. After dying in France and returning to life, Mr. Storm wrote a book called “My Descent Into Death” which tells of his experiences in Hell and eventually meeting Jesus Christ. Today Howard Storm is a minister in the United Church of Christ. Now I realize that many atheists here will talk about what Cecil wrote awhile back regarding the out of body experience with the bright light of Love. Nonetheless, I would suggest that the atheists read Howard Storm’s book and then either accept it or reject it. Perhaps nothing Howard Storm says will persuade an atheist to believe, but I have no reason to doubt Howard Storm’s claims.
I’ll dip my toe into this.
Is the God of Christian/Jewish/Islam real? Most likely not. Just reading the texts you can tell it is obviously mythology - giants, boats that carry two of every animal, long haired strong men, bets between competing gods, sons of god - the list goes on. The idea that a god or gods are actively intervening in human affairs is ridiculous.
Now, could the universe have been created by a god or creator or watchmaker? Sure. Anything on the other side of the big bang is possible. It could be a god or group of gods, it could be colliding branes, it could be like the old Twilight Zone and Dennis Weaver is dreaming everything into existence. Myself, when allow myself to consider a god, I think of Rod Serling - the dispassionate observer.
Lastly, submitted for your approval, one Frank Rocky Fiegel http://www.dvdizzy.com/images/m-p/popeye1-46.jpg, the inspiration for Popeye. There is more evidence for the existence of Popeye the Sailor than Jesus of Nazareth.
I know of people who were in a mental institution who had simular things, they attributed to a god. It is still just the belief, not fact, plus the Athiest you mention may really wanted to believe in something; there are many atheists who were once very religious until they read and studied the Bible. It still boils down to that there is nothing ever written, taught, said, or thought, that wasn’t from a human being, they may say it is of God but it still is just their belief.
If he is happier for it then fine, but there are also Atheists who found peace in no longer believeing, and being able to think for themselves.
Howard’s book is not going to sway any Athiest I know, any more than Christians are swayed by Muhammad’s teaching and claim an angel dictated a whole book to him.
Here is some of that evidence:
67% of Americans believe that the First Amendment requires a clear separation of church and state. Only 28% disagreed.
Only 30% of Americans believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. 49% believe that the Bible is divinely inspired but should not be taken literally.
Only 37% of Americans believe that homosexuality is a sin.
I propose that the fanatics and the hardliners are the core and driving force behind the aspects of the religion you find the most distasteful, not behind religion as a whole. In this way it is like all mass movements, it is the quiet majority rather than the noisy extremes that actually shape policy.
This suggests to me that the answer to “How did the universe come to exist?” should be “we don’t know”. Answering God or Dennis Weaver is to make an assumption without evidence. It’s ok not to know something, it doesn’t necessitate fabricating an answer.
You are correct, but Howard Storm wasn’t in a mental institution. He was a college art professor (although some people might call academia an “institution” )
That being said, prior to his experience, he pretty much believed and vocalized the same thing that all the other atheists here are saying. That changed after his death in France. Again, will other atheists and agnostics believe him? Some may, others may not. I will say that I do believe him but I do NOT believe the guy that wrote “23 Minutes In Hell” because logically speaking, if God wanted to show somebody the horrors of Hell so that others on earth could be warned about it, why in the world would God choose a born-again Christian to do it? I think the message would be much more convincing coming from someone who previously denied the existence of God, someone like Howard Storm (or if you prefer, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Jeanine Garafalo, or the late Christopher Hitchens).
valid point
Execpt for the fact that I can come up with strong evidence for the existence of Dennis Weaver.
Sure, Duel is pretty strong, as a film and as evidence.
But not evidence that God or Dennis Weaver created the universe.