God? (Got proof? Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more) [ed. title]

Great Debates
141

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
But is religion as dangerous as science?

Religion justifies war. Science enables it.
[/QUOTE]

Please. Religion was waging war when science was still at the ‘goddidit’ stage. You might as well ask if cars or dynamite is more dangerous, which has killed more people. Science enables people to do things with less effort. One of those things happens to be kill other people. Science is a tool, it’s up to the people holding it to decide what to do with it.

Science doesn’t tell people that all those who believe differently should die. Science doesn’t tell people that if they die killing others there will be a reward in the afterlife. Science doesn’t say that killing is ok as long as you say ‘its god’s will’ beforehand.

142

[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
Please. Religion was waging war when science was still at the ‘goddidit’ stage.
[/quote]

Primitive religion, primitive science, they went hand in hand.

Religion enables people to find meaning in life. One of those meanings happens to be kill other people. Religion is a philosophy, it’s up to the people holding it to decide what it means.

Religion doesn’t give people the tools to kill. Religion doesn’t enable a small group to massacre a large group. Religion doesn’t enable people to spread carcinogens throughout the biosphere.

See how easy this is? I can provide aview of science every bit as lopsided as your view of religion.

Daniel

143

[QUOTE=lekatt]
One has only to look in the mirror to find the Creator.
[/QUOTE]

I understand you’re using that as illustrative metaphor. Nevertheless, every Christian denomination would regard that statement as heresy, blasphemy, and probably solipsism.

144

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Religion justifies war.
[/QUOTE]

Justifies, perhaps, but does not motivate, not nearly as often as is commonly assumed. I think in most so-called “religious” wars in history, religion was a pretext for making war for more material ends such as territory, power and control of trade routes. This is true to some extent even of the Crusades (one theory of which is that the invention of the moldboard plow had increased food production, leading to a surplus population of dangerous, underemployed nobles and knights whom the popes and kings were desperate to get out of Europe); and the early expansion of Islam out of Arabia was, at least at first, a simple traditional Arab tribal raid on a much vaster scale. (In the early years, conquered subject peoples were not even encouraged to convert to Islam, and Arabs/Muslims outside Arabia lived in military settlements carefully quarantined from the native infidel population.)

Then, OTOH, you have some cases such as the Thirty Years’ War, where the material ambitions of German and foreign princes were all jumbled up with sincere popular religious passion on both sides, and both sets of motives kept the war going.

145

[QUOTE=kanicbird]

{snip} We have to come to God as a child would, willing to be open, willing to accept things - things that our adult mind has been taught not to accept. If you do this God will make Himself known to you in a way that you won’t need any objective evidence.
[/QUOTE]

Okay, guy, let’s try this on for size.

WINKY EYE ON!

You are quite wrong to follow your Christian version of God. Allah is the only God!

You must abandon your silly Christianity inanity, and come to Allah through the teachings of the Prophet! What?! You dare put forth your intellectual so-called “objections” to the TRUTH?! NO, NO, NO!

You “have to come to God (Allah) as a child would, willing to be open, willing to accept things - things that your adult [COLOR=Black]infidel mind has been taught not to accept.”

“If you do this God (Allah) will make himself known to you in a way that you won’t need any objective evidence.”[/COLOR]
{Which is fortunate, because there is really none!}

WINKY EYE OFF!

Get the picture?

Sincerely,

True Blue Jack

146

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Justifies, perhaps, but does not motivate, not nearly as often as is commonly assumed. I think in most so-called “religious” wars in history, religion was a pretext for making war for more material ends such as territory, power and control of trade routes.
[/QUOTE]

Mmmmmaybe. There’s certainly some truth to that, inasmuch as few wars are purely religious in their causes; on the other hand, I’m not sure I’d say religion was a pretext for things like the Crusades so much as it was one of many reasons for the war.

At any rate, that simplistic statement about religion was more a parody of the idea that religion is dangerous. I think the idea that religion is dangerous is no more accurate than the idea that science is dangerous: indeed, both ideas are dangerously simplistic, ignoring the many goods done by both science (as a tool) and religion (as a motive) in history. Pointing out the evils done by both does not cancel out the goods, nor is there any divine scale on which we may meaningfully weigh the goods against the evils.

Daniel

147

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Primitive religion, primitive science, they went hand in hand.
[/QUOTE]

No they didn’t. Science is a modern invention, a methodology. Religion was killing infidels long before science got here. Religion has also done it’s best to suppress those parts of science it disagrees with.

[QUOTE}Religion enables people to find meaning in life.[/QUOTE]

It does? Life has a meaning? See, the problem here is that life doesn’t necessarily have a meaning, and religion just makes people think that they have found a meaning. Or at least, so far no religion has provided adaquate evidence that thier meaning is real.

Shrug, this is true. But science doesn’t make subjective judgements. Science doesn’t convince people they are right to kill someone else because god said it was ok.

Condemning unbelievers/sinner/infidels to death, and providing a reason and an excuse to kill them? Yes it does.

How many cities did the wandering Israelites sack and destroy?

When did religion start burning sacrifices/candles/incense?

148

[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
No they didn’t. Science is a modern invention, a methodology.
[/quote]

Speaking of ignorance, there’s a difference between “science” and “the scientific method.” I use my words carefully.

Nonsense and more nonsense. There’s no proof that religion predates human efforts at taxonomy. And you’re conflating specific religious events with Religion, which is just as silly as a conflation of, say, the atom bomb with Science.

Adequate evidence to you, sure. But it doesn’t need to be adequate to you: it only needs to be adequate to those who believe it. Or do they need to run their beliefs by you before they can hold them?

Absolutely it doesn’t, just as religion doesn’t enable the construction of weapons. Each sphere’s capacity for destruction manifests differently.

Daniel

149

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Speaking of ignorance, there’s a difference between “science” and “the scientific method.” I use my words carefully.
[/QUOTE]

It doesn’t matter. ‘Science’ uses the scientific method. Science isn’t just a body of knowledge any more than it’s just a methodology. Science didn’t exist until recently.

We have evidence of religion before we have evidence of taxonomy. Unless we have a reason to believe that scientific taxonomy occurred before our evidence of religion occurred, we conclude that religion came first.

What specific religious events?

It has nothing to do with me, it has to do with science. Religion has not convinced science, or indeed, philosophy, that there is a meaning to life. And belief does not make it true, regardless of how many people actually believe. ‘Truth’ does not mean ‘enough to convince the average person off the streeet’.

Of course religion makes subjective judgements, that’s practically what it is. ‘X is bad’ ‘Y is good’.

Religion isn’t just dangerous in terms of violence, it’s also dangeous in other ways. Suppressing knowledge (creationism), interfering in it’s followers lives (spread of AIDS due to Catholic condemnation of condoms), causing mental problems (anxiety problems from threats of hell), all kinds of stuff. Religious dogma is causing these problems. Anytime you name something in science that’s dangerous, it’s not science that’s using it, or abusing it.

150

[QUOTE=GuyNblueJeans]
My guess, however, is that every soul that exists knows at some level that God exists. When one stands one’s self up against the rest of creation, it would, I should think, be natural to get a sense that one is very weak and puny. Therefore, it makes sense that one would want to take a humble attitude and call out in a sincere, heart-felt way for some guidance and understanding to help one along in this strange and often difficult journey called life. And who better to call out to for help than God Himself?
[/QUOTE]
First, it’s not HUMBLE to just declare that everyone really agrees with you, but simply won’t admit it. That’s one of the more obnoxious things the religious do. And second, I’d rather call out to someone who might actually exist. I’d phone, say, my brother first, since he’s more powerful than God, being real.

As for being puny; I may be small, but it’s dead. And mindless. Size matters not.

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Not being quite so sure of myself, I don’t guess that every mind that exists knows at some level that God doesn’t exist. I’m capable of believing that others hold their beliefs sincerely, even when those beliefs are different from my own. What is it about your beliefs, do you think, that require you to think that those who disagree with you aren’t sincere?
[/QUOTE]
Here’s my opinion of people who make such claims. They want to claim and believe that they KNOW that God exists, that their religion is the true religion, and not on faith - they want to claim knowledge. That their beliefs, and no others are valid, inarguably. So, they claim that the truth of their beliefs is obvious in some fashion, either by “evidence” or logic or some built in/revealed knowledge. So, they have to believe that everyone else is lying or deluded, or the house of cards comes tumbling down and they have to admit that their religious beliefs have no more evidence than any other.

[QUOTE=Liberal]
Because God’s existence is necessary; i.e, God cannot not exist.
[/QUOTE]
No, it’s not. And I’m aware of the silly arguments that God is logically necessary.

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Religion enables people to find meaning in life. One of those meanings happens to be kill other people. Religion is a philosophy, it’s up to the people holding it to decide what it means.
[/QUOTE]
No, it’s up to religion to decide what it’s followers do. They serve it, it does not serve them.

Religion motivates people to commit evil; science doesn’t. Science is a tool; religion makes people into tools; it’s tools.

151

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
In my case when I went from extremely religious to not religious at all ,I believe I have been very familiar with religous training and dogma. My experiences as a youth from deep belief to rejection arose from mild questioning to much reading. While originally I rejected religion for myself only, I was eventually lead to reject them all. There was a time when I thought religion was a personal experience. Its heavy entrance in politics and justification of war makes me more strident. I now believe it is dangerous .
[/QUOTE]
It would never occur to me to challenge how you came to unbelief. And I have no interest in debating the qualities of any beliefs held, here.

My specific comment was to note that every person’s journey to belief or unbelief is, indeed, personal. There is no great order of belief in which people, having been led astray by belief or unbelief, are led, inexorably by TRUTH, to the opposite pole. Claims by believers that “You will believe if you let god show you the way” and claims by unbelievers that “You will shed your unnecessary belief if you will simply use your mind” are equally false extrapolations from personal experience to (nonexistent) universal law. It is entirely possible that a believer may listen to exhortations to consider the world in a different way and eventually move away from belief. It is also possible that an unbeliever may look at the world in a new way and come to belief. “Can,” however, is a different word than “must” and many people will listen for god and never hear a voice and many people will examine the world rationally and continue to find god in it.

152

I can’t bring myself to be interested in whether religion is cooler or science is, or as tom says, whether or not we can pre-emptively declare this or that opponent in a discussion deluded or mistaken. How is debating any of those things going to help Cover Barack’s Face?

wth?

153

[QUOTE=hotflungwok]

Religion isn’t just dangerous in terms of violence, it’s also dangeous in other ways. Suppressing knowledge (creationism), interfering in it’s followers lives (spread of AIDS due to Catholic condemnation of condoms), causing mental problems (anxiety problems from threats of hell), all kinds of stuff. Religious dogma is causing these problems. Anytime you name something in science that’s dangerous, it’s not science that’s using it, or abusing it.
[/QUOTE]

154

[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
It doesn’t matter. ‘Science’ uses the scientific method. Science isn’t just a body of knowledge any more than it’s just a methodology. Science didn’t exist until recently.
[/quote]

You’re using an idiosyncratic definition of science, one that’s purposely limited. If you’re determined to use such a limited definition (one that doesn’t match the dictionary’s), then I’ll change my analogy from “science” to “technology,” under the hope that you’ll admit that breaking a branch off to beat someone’s skull in is an example of technology use.

Of course we have no such evidence. Hunter-gatherer societies tend to have highly ornate taxonomies of species in their environment, and these taxonomies correspond on the species-level very closely to those of mainstream Western science. It appears taxonomy has been with us just as long as religion.

The repression of scientific views it doesn’t like, of course.

This whole point is entirely irrelevant; you may as well condemn basketball for not following the rules of golf, or condemn Thai cooking for not having enough tasty cheese dishes.

Yes, well, science (or, if you insist on your idiosyncratic definition, technology) is also dangerous in other ways, too. From the production of tobacco to the production of PCBs, science has found innumerable ways to poison humans. The development of the loom impoverished millions of Indians. The Internet has enabled child predators to find victims more easily.

I can find as many dangerous harms caused by technology as you can find harms caused by religion. It’s a silly game that vastly oversimplifies a very complex subject.

Daniel

155

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Fear is an adaptive trait: it gets you to go away from things that are dangerous. But adaptive traits aren’t perfect (as they might be were we designed by an omnipotent omnibenevolent God): sometimes the fear module in our head–and here I’m speaking very simplistically, not within the rigors of cognitive science, of course–overreacts.
[/quote]

Overreacts? Yes, certainly, in many cases. But our brains don’t go around manufacturing dangers just so that we can have phobias of them. Some people are afraid of snakes. This does not prove that snakes don’t exist. Rather it’s a product of the fact that many snakes are dangerous and worth avoiding. Some small children may fear monsters under the bed or the like, but such imaginary menaces are not frequent problems among adults. Certainly from an evolutionary perspective, it would be immensely counterproductive to dream up imaginary entities just for the sake of being afraid of them.

Bearing that in mind, why would spiritual fears spring up if there was no spiritual realm? I can certainly understand and accept the possibility that some spiritual fears are exaggerated, but I can’t see them arising from nothing whatever.

156

[QUOTE=Malthus]

[/QUOTE]

No, that does not apply.

157

[QUOTE=ITR champion]
Bearing that in mind, why would spiritual fears spring up if there was no spiritual realm? I can certainly understand and accept the possibility that some spiritual fears are exaggerated, but I can’t see them arising from nothing whatever.
[/QUOTE]

What sort of spiritual fears? Fear of annihilation? Totally adaptive. Fear of being evil? Again, totally adaptive: a community in which people fear being evil is likelier to cohere and fluorish than one in which people don’t fear being evil. Fear of divine retribution? A combination of the adaptive desire to understand motives of others, a desire to understand the natural world, and a desire to avoid injury.

What kind of spiritual fears are you thinking of, specifically?

Daniel

158

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
No, that does not apply.
[/QUOTE]

Disagree. Defining “religion” as including ‘the acts of all those claiming to be inspired by religious dogma’, yet insisting on defining “science” as excluding all those claiming to be acting under the influence of scientific theory.

Simple counterexample: Communism. Communism claims to be a purely scientific theory of history. Communism has caused many of the same ills as claimed for religion.

One may claim that Communism is a perversion or misunderstanding of science. However, one may equally claim that such things as the Spanish Inquisition are a perversion or misunderstanding of religion.

So, no true Scotsman.

159

[QUOTE=Apos]
Good grief. From YOUR OWN CITE:

“By all known standards Pam Reynolds was clinically dead and remained that way for many minutes.”

Emphasis mine.

This account of course also simply glosses over the fact that the observations she has of what the operating room people were saying all come from times that were demonstrably merely under general (and as often happens, she might well have not been fully under). There is no evidence at all given that she actually had any experiences during those few minutes when she was brain dead. The actual procedure, from when she was put under to when she was put in recovery took HOURS.
[/QUOTE]

Reread the evidence. Know that near death experiences are real and provide real evidence of life after death.

160

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
I understand you’re using that as illustrative metaphor. Nevertheless, every Christian denomination would regard that statement as heresy, blasphemy, and probably solipsism.
[/QUOTE]

Machs mir nicht aus.