I think you meant “reason = truth”, though perhaps dalovindj does believe that “reason > truth”.
Spot on, Newton Meter. That’s why I’m disappointed this thread has become a metaphysical recursive-quotefest instead of the “tales of my journey to enlightenment” I’d hoped it’d be. I don’t normally participate in religious debates because the disjointed back-and-forth rarely adds to my understanding of greater truths. But I think this thread could.
So, anybody wanna share with the group? I’d start, but my own “path” was pretty boring, as anyone who’s taken the time to get through works like Hans Küng’s could attest. Believers and non-believers: was there a watershed event or source that led to epiphany for you?
I accept nothing on faith. Just because a theory supposedly comes from the proper use of scientific method does not make it true. Fortunately, when someone makes an extraordinary claim using the method, it allows others to verify it on their own. Everyone who holds an apple above the ground and lets it go will see it fall (unless they are blind or looking the other way). Everyone who prays will not be filled with “The Love of God”. I am not saying that spirituality is at all negative. I have some theories about the nature of reality and existence of “greater powers”. I accept, however, that I may be wrong. It is not the belief that is wrong with religion in my eyes, it is the lack of accepting the potential for their own incorrectness which is irrational.
In this case, your foundation premises (if they accept statements without testable proof – like “I didn’t do it!”), are irrational.
Belief in statements which offer no verifiable proof.
Employment of the scientific method may or may not be able to answer these questions. I believe only that I do not know. For any human to claim to know the exact nature of reality at this point in our history is irrational. We simply do not have enough evidence to prove it one way or the other. To claim to have the answer before one is there is irrational and intelectually foolish.
Things like everytime you drop an apple on the surface of this planet it will fall towards the ground. Of course whether the universe is open or closed is not a settled issue.
They may feel better since they accepted a certain conclusion without demanding testable proof, but they still accepted that conclusion in an irrational manner.
No it does not. What would make an experiment non-scientific would be the experiment being unrepeatable. Now, if it has different outcomes every time, that must be worked into any theory which hopes to explain the outcome of said experiment. It does not make it unscientific.
Reason is greater than truth? Who said that? And how exactly is it comparable to stating with complete certainty that a particular god exists?
Reason is a process, one which religion would have you irrationally abandon based on non-testable tenants.
How about you save me some time, and tell me what test of religion this text offers which is repeatable and verifiable, instead of bragging about what you have read?
Science and religion both offer theories as to where everything came from and where it is going. A main difference between the two is that science admits it is just theory and could be wrong (and offers ways to test and find out) which is rational. Religions (most of them anyway) claim to be correct no matter what may happen in the future, or what new knowledge may be gleaned, do not accept that they could be wrong, and offer no test that is in any way repeatable, which is irrational.
A neccesary part of religion may well be that it is irrational. Believing in the religion blindy (ie rejecting the possibility that you are wrong in your conclusions) does not make you a bad person per se, but it does make you guilty of being irrational.
DaLovin’ Dj
I’m partially responsible for this thread spinning off into the metaphysical recursive-quotefest, so I’m willing to try to bring it back to a better sort of thread.
The only caveat is that I’m not interested in convincing anyone that there is a God, but rather in showing how a rational person might conclude that there is. And you’ll have to take my word that I’m rational.
The short version: I was raised as an atheist. Last year, at Easter, I was baptized Catholic, confirmed and had first communion. Before you ask, I know about the priests. And I like being Catholic.
How’d I get here? I studied physics, math, and Computer Science in college. I got married. I went to graduate school. I was a cold-hearted bastard. I thought that I was just about the smartest person ever. Things fell apart. I got divorced. My grandmother died. I flunked out of graduate school. My cat died.
I went looking for meaning. Looking for reasons. Looking for help, frankly, because my problems were bigger than me. I stopped thinking that I had all the answers or ever could. And lo I found God.
This could just be self-fulfilling. In other words, if I wanted to find God in sunsets and rainbows and first causes and bibles, then that’s exactly where I’d find him. And it could be that I grew personally and it didn’t have anything to do with God–that that power to change myself existed solely within me.
But I’m rational, remember. When I think about it rationally, without trying to beg the question, I realize that as much as I was looking for God, he was also looking for me. I honestly don’t believe that I would have found him if he wasn’t there to be found. The person of God reached out to me and met me halfway, and thus he must exist.
That serves as sufficient proof for me.
This is probably an explanation you have already heard, but I don’t think it’s really a highjack. You say you “have trouble imagining” what happened before the big bang. But why make the assumption that ANYTHING “happened before the big bang”. I’d like to borrow a really nifty and concise explanation someone else posted on another forum - Asking what happened before the big bang is like asking what is North of the North Pole.
In other words, to ask that question, you are in effect assuming that ANOTHER time continuum exists OUTSIDE of our universe. I suppose this could be possible, but why assume it? All available evidence suggests that time is merely a dimension of the universe, which renders the concept of “before the universe” meaningless.
Now, the question remains - why do we have trouble intuitively grasping the concept? I believe it is because of our nature as human beings. We see our lives as a progression - we are born, we live our life, and we die - yet we know that others have lived before us and still others will live after we are gone. We live on Earth in this manner, so wouldn’t our brains naturally develop to understand the universe in this way? We have no intuitive understanding of the limits of time because it is irrelevant to our daily existence.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that I’m wrong, and that time transcends all, and that everything that exists must have a cause. How do you get from the unknown of “how did the universe start?” to the assumption that it was created by a sentient being? (And I won’t even go to the “who created God?” argument, since that’s been beaten to death). So, in short, not only do I believe that the premise is wrong, but also the conclusion doesn’t even follow from the premise. Having said that, I hope I have not offended you - I’m just trying to explain my own beliefs on the matter, and I hope I have shown proper respect for yours.
Also, regarding the post that quoted Lewis, I noticed that several people have beaten me to the punch and already pointed out the flaws in Lewis’ arguments, so I won’t bother with a blow-by-blow refutation. I’ll just say that I agree his arguments are extremely weak.
That’s just interesting to me. I mean, when people say “I was raised Catholic (for example)”, I take that to mean that their parents made them attend Mass, made them confess, etc. [insert joke here about the things Father Flannery “made” them do]
So when you say “raised athiest”, I picture you, age 3, in a little blue and yellow suit with a bow tie, standing on a little mild crate in the living room and reciting a poem for your parents, about how God is a sham. 
Seriously, though, did your parents TELL you and actively encourage you to believe that there was no God, did they just say it once to you and drop the subject, or what?
And what do they think (if they’re still alive) of your “conversion”?
You’ve already demonstrated that. If I ever questioned your judgement, it would only be in the amount of time you devoted to trying to debate with someone who was nonresponsive. Again, that’s why I seldom tread in this type of thread.
Good story. You told your tale, and didn’t soapbox. How refreshing (especially for a Catholic! :D).
Again, ignore this if it’s too personal, but can you remember the instant you “got it,” or to use your words, when “God reached out to me?” Or was it a gradual thing? Forgive my asking, but the experience of others is one of the inputs my rational mind uses to confirm and modify my own inductions.
*:enters calmly:
:looks around:
:returns with soapbox:
:gets onto it:
:clears throat:
:remembers too late why he doesn’t come into these threads:
:immediately buried beneath avalanche of reason:
:crawls out:
:wanders off:*
And I’d consider casting off my deist mantle if it meant I could use words like “lo” 
Oh, wait, I just did. Never mind.
What exactly does “I found god” mean here. I assume it aint literal “He was hiding in the closet”. You probably mean that you felt some sort of something that you interpreted as God. Not only did you feel a greater power, you are absolutely sure that what you felt was the specific God referred to in the bible, and he told you that Catholic was the right denomination? Fill in the gaps for me here. Just when it was getting good, you got all vague.
I have a problem with this list myself. If you were attributing that line of thought to me, you misunderstood me. If I put my thoughts in this type of format it would be more like this:
- Belief in anything without proof is irrational.
- Religion requires belief without proof.
- Religion is irrational.
Is rational better than non-rational? That’s a different debate. Behaving irrationaly has helped humans out in many a situation. It has it’s place. As far as does God exist, the only approach which seems rational to me is as follows:
- Religion cannot prove that god exists
- Science cannot prove that god exists nor that he/she/it doesn’t
- There is no proof either way.
- Belief without proof is irrational
- Claiming to know one way or the other is irrational- Scientist or Fundie
Hope this helps. I’m not arguing for the fact that god does not exist. Only that humans lack the ability to make a rational decision. Not deciding is the only rational course. To claim you know for sure is a form of conceit to me. Just like people used to claim we are at the center of the universe. Once we got more data as a species we refined our views. Anyone who claimed they knew prior to that was irrational. Those who accepted their ignorance and went in search of answers found them and the world changed.
Pretending to already know cuts you off from the journey that is trying to find the truth.
DaLovin’ Dj
First let me just say that I wasn’t trying to preach theism, I’m not even sure what I believe. I was merely saying that this particular question is one that, in my mind, leaves more room for some sort of “universal oneness” to again quote he with many consonants than other more every-day questions. Does it automatically follow that one exists? Not at all. It does, however, make me wonder “what if…” a lot more than, say, the matter of what happens to me after I die.
As for the North Pole thing, I think I could only follow that analogy if we began at the north pole and were continually being dragged in some arbitrary direction away from the pole, could not move back toward the north or accelerate our move south. Again I’m sure there’s plenty of features of space-times i’m not grasping, and I really don’t want to hijack this whole thing, I just don’t know if I buy that particular comparison.
Don’t run off that quickly, Ross. At a quick glance, there are more people in this thread supporting your beliefs (or at least your right to hold them) than attacking.
Religion isn’t trying to prove that God exists; Science is about proof, religion isn’t (or shouldn’t be, at least IMHO).
Rather than return to the rather torturous above discussion, I think we can deal with this linchpin.
I do not think we disagree all that much. I do not believe that humans can make a “scientific” decision whether God exists or not, nor use “pure reason” to arrive at such a conclusion. This does not mean, to my mind, that people who choose to embrace religion do so “irrationally,” with all of the negative connotations that word entails. Perhaps this describes a certain kind of bible-thimping dogmatist, but certainly not an individual who comes to a conclusion using his own imperfect reason that there is something else out there.
My objection is that it is equally conceitful to deny all evidence of the divine that does not conform to scientific principles. One does not use a sledgehammer to perform open heart surgery; likewise it seems rather inappropriate to apply scientific tools to questions of faith. They are not “irrational,” just outside the purview of pure critical reason.
Are we ever going to understand the universe with perfect accuracy? I seriously doubt it. But can we approach enough of an understanding of the divine to reach enlightenment? Yeah, I think so.
I was raised a Reform Jew in the suburbs. To this day I find reform culture to be rather venal and not exactly to my spiritual taste. Just like every other alienated suburban jewish pseudo-intellectual, I turned into a hard core empircist. Emotions were just chemicals, god was bullshit, and spiritual experience was something only fools believed who fasted too much.
I took more issue to dj’s remarks because they reminded me of the near-Randroid I was when I was a kid.
I rather softened in college, when my academic interests changed from political history to religious history. I started reading a fair amount of stuff, from the Lives of the Desert Fathers to the Little Flowers of St. Francis to Stoic treatises. And I got into Buddhism, too. Just as an interest. I never joined anything or called myself a buddhist; I just find buddhist self-sufficiency and psychology really interesting.
So I haven’t excactly had a religious breakthrough or anything. But developing my inner life has become really important lately. I am not big on organized, communal religion or anything. I don’t actually feel I know anything with any certainty, but I am still looking. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, perhaps I will figure it out one day. I am convinced that there is a tremendous wealth of knowledge and wisdom locked somewhere in our minds, and that all we have to do is open it up and use it correctly. Easier said than done.
I see people try to prove that god exists daily. I also do not doubt that if religions COULD prove anything that they most certainly WOULD. An attitude something like “It is not important whether we have proof or not.” would disappear quickly if God were to offer proof. The attitude would THEN become something like “Look, we have proof!”
I find it very suspicious that religions offer the explanation, “We’re not trying to prove it” when it is something they can not prove. An attitude like that - seemingly irrational (belief without proof) - leads me to question the organizations motives. So I look harder at the organizations. They take money from people all over the world every Sunday. Lots of it. Religion is worth lots and lots of cash. Big buisiness. Has been for thousands of years. Why it’s been worth giant money since way back before people knew anything about planets or suns or biology, or cosmology, or even written language!!! These creatures born in ignorance of things we hold to be common knowlegde were easy marks. They were scared of nature casue it could come out of the woods and eat them!!! What good was money if you got eaten?
“No! Come believe in MY god . . .errrr . . . gimme a little cash on Sundays and your crop will come in real nice!!! But if you don’t do what I say then . . .ummm . . .your crops . . .will die. . .and ummm. . .you will burn for . . .umm. . . 50 . . . no . . . for eternity . . .yeah . . .you’ll burn for eternity if you don’t go to church every Sunday.”
::looks back::
“Hey Jimmy, you writin’ this down - there buyin’ it!!!”
“Be sure to hit the basket while your there folks. . . Have a nice week. . . Bless you too.”
It worked!!! It worked incredibly well. It was just what the people were “yearning for”. They made a ton!!! Big money tends to protect itself. How could they keep the dough coming in? What better way to take it from people then sell them something that they don’t get until they die, and promise something in return they can’t prove whether or not exists. And you gotta pay a little every week.
Seems a litle more likely than the creation of a 6-day old universe that looks like it’s billions of years. No, I’ll hold out on my decision until I get something a little more concrete then my local “Father” telling me I’ll burn if I don’t conform to his views. I’ll also hold out before I accept the universe is a “quantum fluctuation” until I can get a better unerstanding of the theory, the evidence it would require, and see some experiments to gather that evidence. To accept the limits of your own knowledge is really the only sensible approach to me. It is the only way you can ever learn.
New things are learned all of the time. Who knows what we will discover tomorrow if only we are looking? The answer is not there yet. Why pretend it is when there is no proof either way? Why claim you know and stop looking? Behaivior that would tend to promote ignorance, it seems to me.
DaLovin’ Dj
What would you accept as proof? Miracles? God showing up and walking the earth?
I find the suggestion that religion is about money offensive, to say the least. The church as a whole has done more for society than just about any other group, leading to the establishment of the first schools, hospitals and welfare organisations (in Australia at least). Many people who work for churches are lower paid than they could be were they to work in industry (I have a friend who took a significant pay cut ealier this year to work for a church). Moreover, many churches give generously and contribute in other practical ways to their communities.
To suggest that thousands of people willingly give to some corrupt organisation which offers empty promises of spirituality every week is ridiculous. I’m not saying that there aren’t some corrupt people, churches or religions out there, but to suggest that because you haven’t got proof of what we believe means that we are automatically under the suspicion of corruption or personal gain is both offensive and a huge leap. I don’t question your integrity simply because you do not share my beliefs. You should not question mine.
I agree. But what if you’ve found God. I gave my reasons in an earlier post. My proof is both logical and rational, and satisfactory to me. Why should I waste my time searching for God when I already know him. There is so much more out there for me to discover - an entire universe, in fact. I’m not pretending anything. The fact is, there will never be enough evidence (until you’re dead, and then it’s a moot point) to prove that God exists for some people. But a belief can be rational without proof.
We believe things all the time without proof. When you sit down, you believe that the chair will hold your weight, but until you actually sit on it, it is unproven. A perfectly rational and reasonable belief, which leads to faith in the chair. The belief stems from your experience and observation - the chair looks solid, looks like a chair, previous chairs have held me up etc. I believe in God, but until I actually die, it’s unproven. This belief stems from experience and observation also. It is both rational and reasonable for me to believe in God on the basis of my life experience. But it’s unproven.
Newton Meter said (I know you weren’t talkin’ to me, but I can’t help getting involved in these kinds of debates):
That’s correct. However, it is also irrational to conclude that he did commit the murder solely because you think you saw him do it, unless certain other things are stipulated. For example, how directly did you see the murderer’s face? For how long?
Were you tired or on medication or distracted in some way? Does the man you think you saw have a plausible or very likely alibi? There are many defeaters of the evidence of percieving someone’s face. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
Applying a similar analogy to this matter (this is how I see it): Several people are standing around when a murder supposedly occurs. Many of the witnesses claim they saw it, but there is large disagreement on exactly what took place or who the murdered man and murderer were. Some of the witnesses claim they didn’t see anything at all, even though they were looking at the same area that the others were when the murder supposedly took place. After some investigation, no body is found and no murder weapon is found. No blood is found. After interviewing the folks who were there, the police discover that
there is much disagreement on what “murder” even means. Some say it has to do with one thing, others say it has to do with something else entirely. Looking through past cases, the police discover that other cases similar to this one have occured. Although at the time of those other events some eyewitnesses claimed they definitely saw a murder take place (some others said they saw nothing). When told this, the recent “eyewitnesses” are unanimous that the “eyewitnesses” in past cases were mistaken.
Is anyone in this situation (any of the “eyewitnesses” or the police) justified in believing a murder even took place?
In other words, I hardly think this is a case of simple observation. If I were one of the “eyewitnesses” in this account and thought I saw something, I would have to conclude
(after examining the evidence) that I was most likely mistaken.
First off, I don’t believe there is a religious way of knowing anything. That is, religion does not offer a valid way to justify an epistemic claim. There is a religious way of believing, perhaps, and a religious way of feeling, but hardly any religious way of
knowing. I feel I might be misunderstanding here you though, so if I have done so please let me know.
Secondly, religion and science most emphatically do often address the same questions. “Does the sun go around the earth or vice versa?” “Are humans the product of evolution, just like other animals?” “Where do emotions come from?” “What does it mean to be conscious?” “Are humans alone in the universe?” Etc. All of these could be addressed from a religious perspective or a scientific one.
Some questions are not able to be addressed from a scientific standpoint. For example, “What is the moral thing to do in situation X?” That does not imply that they can be
answered truthfully from a religious standpoint. Nor does it mean that there are not other generally truth-preserving systems that might give an answer that contradicts a religious answer.
To my knowledge, nobody has made that argument. Also, there are a lot more possible contenders than religion and science, so a lack of a scientific answer does not imply that a religious answer is preferable or unanswerable in a justified way.
Why is it that even sensible and reasonable theists such as Newton Meter appears to be suddenly go into poetic gibberish the second they actually present the evidence that made
them conclude that god exists? I don’t intend to be mean here, but is it at all possible to be more clear or precise? Meaning of/for what? Reasons for what? Help for what? And, most importantly, In what manner did you find God? What does it mean to “find God”? Perhaps this makes perfect sense to a theist, but as an atheist I’m very confused about what it means. Details man, details!
What leads you to realize this? What do you mean by “realize”? Again, I don’t mean you any offense, but this is exactly the place where vagueness is counterproductive.
And now a quickie response to an interesting point by Mangetout:
Are you saying that religion doesn’t (or shouldn’t) make epistemic claims?
Also, I must agree with robinc308 that, for most people involved, religion is not at all about money. Most of the theists I have met are very sincere in their beliefs - they don’t do missionary work (for example) because they’re out to convert the filthy heathen.
They do it because they honestly believe that they are doing something good for others. In the same vein, many theists help others not so they can have a dupe to convert. They help others because they are genuinely good people who want to help others.
I do take some exception about some of this though:
First off, you’re absolutely right. Secondly, the fact that it occurs regularly does not make it right or preferable (although depending on what you mean by “proof”, I may agree
that it is).
This is only not proof if you mean proof in a very strong way. I tend to avoid using the word “proof” because it’s often unclear whether one is talking about “absolute, irrevocable certainty” or just “evidence sufficient to reach a tentative verdict”. One has sufficient evidence to believe that the chair will probably support them. What they do not have is faith that the chair will support them, except for non-standard meanings of “faith”.
I can accept that it might be justifiable for someone to believe that God exists without proof, so long as they have evidence. I think the difference between “proof” and “evidence” is a very important one that tends to get lost in these kinds of debates.
I like this. I haven’t had a good debate/discussion about this issue in a long time.
Faith is when you take your belief - which you came to (usually) because of some form of evidence - and act on it (in spite of potential risk). In the example of the chair (which I know is a bit of a silly example, it was just what I came up with off the top of my head) you see the evidence that it is a sturdy looking chair, and so you believe that it will support you. The belief becomes faith when you attempt to sit on the chair, staking the wellbeing of your nether regions on this belief.
I agree. I have evidence sufficient that I believe in God, which leads me to faith (staking my eternal wellbeing on the basis of what I believe). With matters of religion, much of the evidence may be subjective (things I and others have experienceed), and some of it may be an interpretation of observable fact (eg the world is beautiful). But for me, the combination of the evidence is enough, even though a single piece may not be enough in isolation.
All I’m saying is that this is rational and reasonable. You may disagree with the belief, and you may disagree with the interpretation of the evidence. You may (and probably should) lend less weight to my personal experience that I do (as I would lend less to yours than you would yourself). But the conclusions I draw from my evidence, are rational and reasonable.
Small voice, and ready to scurry away
Um, as far as I know, most of the 10th through 18th century scientists were Christian… particularly Newton and Pascal… I know that it doesn’t address the OP…
scurries off
There are a whole host of reasons as to why this might be true, not all of which are matters of religious conviction.