“100% certainty that god exists is irrational” is the position which I am attempting to defend here. Those who accept that they may be wrong move back into the realm of the rational.
DaLovin’ Dj
**It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The First approached the Elephant
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”
The Second feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ‘tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”
The Fifth who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong**
Moral: So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
- American poet John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) based the above poem on a fable which was told in India many years ago.* Certainly seems fitting for this discussion
“I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I Am.”
I disagree. Here is what’s lazy: To assume the validity of a Bible verse simply because you have been told to, without questioning the source, or the motive for having written it, or whether it’s really true. Another thing that’s lazy is to counter your opponent’s argument not by reason, but by ad-hominem attacks.
You have created a false dichotomy, e.g. “you must either believe that God is the strongest will, or that YOU are the strongest will.” This of course assumes your conclusion, that there is a God. To assume your conclusion is also intellectually lazy. It is more logical to assume only that which is necessary, i.e. “there is currently no valid evidence for supernatural beings, and comparing human wills as to which is more powerful is a highly subjective pursuit”.
All you have done here is to say “I am right, and you are lazy and cowardly if you do not agree with me”. Yet the only reason you give for this supposed laziness and cowardice is the fact that we disagree with you.
Oh, good. This is much more fun when folks don’t take it personally.
Wait just a sec, Sister - you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say “I’m not a Christian, but if I WERE, I’d be right.” If you are claiming the validity of the Bible, or the Talmud, or the Koran, then that’s gonna start a whole side debate.
Are you questioning my evidence that “Rite of Spring” exists? If so, why? Because I DO question the assertion that the Bible is the word of God, and I think my reasons are valid. I’d be glad to go into it if you really want to go down that road. But I don’t think it’s fair to cite evidence that you yourself don’t even consider to be valid.
Now, here’s an example that I think would be more analagous. I remember reading a science-fiction story years ago. I’m sorry, I don’t remember the author, but maybe someone will recognize it. The story takes place in the future, in a regimented society where a young musical prodigy is isolated from all other music, so that he can produce “pure” music that is not influenced by anyone. What if I tell you that his music really exists? You would of course say that it’s only a story, and that the burden of proof is on me to convince you otherwise. There IS evidence that the music exists, e.g. the story. But this evidence is continent on showing that the story is truthful. Do you see the difference between this “evidence”, and the much more convincing evidence of actual soundwaves?
No, that doesn’t matter. I’m trying to get you to see that it’s a difference between YOUR subjective experience versus objective evidence.
BTW, I didn’t mean to imply that you were a Christian. I’m just using the word “God” to denote whatever higher power it is that you believe in. I apologize if that doesn’t accurately represent your beliefs.
So you say now. However, your earlier postings claimed much more than that. You claimed that religion itself is irrational, and that mere belief requires 100% certainty.
Clearly, a moving target is harder to pin down.
That’s the whole problem. I started this post as a catalog of your beliefs, as gleaned from this thread. But then it got too long, so I threw all that out.
Instead, let me say that just about every single thing you have written here is a belief of yours. In your fear of the word “belief”, you are forced to misrepresent, to us and to yourself, your beliefs as if they were proven facts. Your posts are merely litanies of unproven assertions, and yet you continually repeat your mantra “I do not believe anything without proof”.
I’m forced to conclude that you understand exactly what you’re doing and you’re making a bad faith effort to keep this from turning into a discussion of rational belief in God, or else that you are actually fundamentally unable to subject your own thought process to examination.
We’re stuck. As long as what you do is “rational proof”, and what I do is “irrational belief”, and you’re the arbiter of that distinction, then we have nothing to discuss.
kg m²/s²
But this evidence is continent on showing that the story is truthful
Oh, crud. That should say “contingent”, not “continent”. If the administrator feels like correcting that for me, I would be ever so grateful.
dj, you clearly believe that your way of looking at the world is the correct way. In fact, it looks like you have faith in it. You certainly have no evidence.
Incorrect, if part of the word “believe” means 100% certainty, as it does with many fervant religious believers. I accept the possibiliity I may be a brain in a vat. Therefore, I do not accept with 100% certainty anything I see. What I have done is point out things I accept as a given - based on evidence.
Using common sense and evidence, I can make predictions about what is likely to be true. Common sense does not require a god, and there is not enough evidence for a conclusive decision either way.
You want evidence that belief without evidence (proof) is irrational? Buy this bridge from me. You will end up a sucker. Get it? One thing that everyone should know is “Don’t believe everything you’re told”. If you think that this is an irrational position to take I think you have one idiotic outlook on reality.
There is alot of really good evidence for the fact "Believing anything your told is a poor idea. " There is not any good evidence (which I classify as something which is repeatable or verifiable - preferably both) for a god. Nevermind a particular one.
You somehow use your little axiom word game to rationalize that it is as reasonable to accept something with evidence as it is to accept something without evidence. That is one of the stupidest things I can think of. It throws common sense out the window and cheapens the value of evidence rather than raising the bar of your argument to the commonly accepted standards of evidence (proof).
Yes I do. Trying to prove something to someone who is trying to prove to me there is no such thing as proof. As long as your strategy is to attack the value of evidence in any form, you are the one playing worthless games.
There is a range of evidence which constitutes rational proof. Just believing something is evidence of nothing aside from perception. I really hate this axiom crutch so many of you use in religious debates. It really is worthless.
DaLovin’ Dj
As Lib points out, if this is an accurate representation of Mister V’s detection abilities, he would doubtless have little luck finding God!
I almost stopped reading when I saw a mean girl double post calling Poly polliwog. If you were intending to indicate affection, it was not apparent to this reader.
Auntie em asks what it takes to “raise a kid athiest” and if just addressing it once would cover it. Mrs. D and I are both atheist (tho we’d probably refer to ouselves as humanists.) We have 3 kids, and it has been our experience that there more than one opportunity has arisen for us to tell our kids that mommy and daddy are not bad people who are going to burn in hell just because they do not go to X church. Besides the “bad” religious folk (tho the exception, unpleasantly common and vocal) there are plenty of opportunities when they tykes either question some aspect of religious teaching, or ask how some aspect of religion correlates with some scientific knowledge/theory. We have no qualms about explaining that we believe an explanation we consider “rational” or “scientific” makes more sense to us than a supernatural one. We routinely stress that different people are free to believe in different things, and that just because someone believes in one thing or another, that professed belief does not make them better or worse than someone else. I wish a similar attitude were more common among both believers and non-believers.
Anubis – what the hell kind of school do you attend?
Sister Coyote refers to UU as a religion. Well, as long as you don’t call it an “organized” religion.
This is bordering on too rude for me to even respond to. I apologize if the tone of my previous post suggested that I would enjoy this tack.
I am emphatically telling you that I am not claiming that “nothing can be proven”. That is something that I most certainly do not believe. If you are intentionally mischaracterizing my argument for rhetorical purposes, you should probably suggest that I am trying to “prove everything”, instead of “prove nothing”. That’s not what I’m claiming either, but it’s a lot closer.
I do not know what this “common sense” of yours is, other than your opinions and belief wrapped in the bully’s mantle of “only stupid people could disagree with it”. When I claimed that you knew exactly what you were doing, you responded:
If I ever claimed that there was no such thing as proof, it was unintentional. I claimed that I had experienced God, and that the experience of God was not contradicted by or inconsistent with any of my other experiences. Therefore, I have concluded that God exists, since I do not believe that I would perceive something that did not exist. You may certainly agree with my conclusion (“God exists”), but it is difficult to see how you gain by denying that my thought processes were the result of reason.
Again, I most emphatically am claiming that there is such a thing as “proof”. I have stated, quite explicitly, that I do not think there is any weight of evidence I can bring to bear to prove to you that there is a God. Likewise, I don’t think that you can prove to me that I should deny my experiences and conclude I am insane, just because your experiences differ. My direct perception, coupled with that perception’s non-contradiction by any other perception, serves as adequate proof to me.
And guess what? You agree:
So, why is it, by definition, rational for you to trust your perception; but irrational for me to trust my perception? You talk a lot about furniture and proving chairs exist, but you’re the one who brought that up. If you must, I am claiming that I perceive a chair under my butt. There is nothing else that I perceive that contradicts my perception of the chair. Now, I’m going to lower my center of gravity about 0.5 meters and take a load off. That is, if you say it’s OK for me to believe in the chair.
In short: I see a chair, you insist that my perception of the chair cannot be trusted, and the only rational thing is for me to conclude that I don’t know if there’s a chair or not. But my feet are tired, so I’m gonna sit. And you’re the one busting out the rolled eyes? Please.
kg m²/s²
If. However, there is no reason why belief must necessarily imply 100% certainty. Your statement is tacitly affirming the consequent.
When it comes to certain matters, perhaps. However, this does not logically imply that belief in general necessitates 100% certainty. Moreover, while many “believers” of a particular tenet (whether theistic or atheistic, religious or non-religious) may claim to have absolute certainty, this often means that they simply consider all sources of error to be negligible. If pressed, I think most people would admit the possibility that their reasoning is somewhere flawed, but would remain confident that it isn’t.
JFTR, Mean Girl and I are regular and friendly disputants on another board; I’m certain she meant “polloiwog” in an affectionate way.
I spent a great deal of today speaking frankly with my son about his damaged marriage, and am in no good mood to play word games. But part of the underlying assumptions in that discussion have a great deal to do with some of the assumptions.
First, the question of God’s action vis-à-vis man, his destiny, and his putative sinfulness. Because I am at least as certain of His existence as I am of andros’s, and aware of His love for me as a result of that continued experience of Him, I’m confident of His motivations in what He does. He’s not playing a guessing game with people; He has purposes in what He does and does not do, although they may not be obvious or palatable to those He does them to or with, or fails to do them to or with. My son is attempting to deal with irrational behavior on the part of his wife, and to try to understand it, or at least to deal with it. And my motives in giving him a classic “Dutch uncle” talk (sorry for the ethnic slur, Coldfire :)) were for his future and consistent happiness, not for what would make him feel warm and fuzzy right at the moment – which would have been much easier to do but not what he needed from me. The apparent coercion of “turn to me” needs to be seen in that context – because if anything other than God at the focus of your life will ultimately fall short of satisfying you, then giving you anything other than the demand to come to Him would be the equivalent of a warm fuzzy when a hard face-the-facts lecture is needed. To be sure, without the love between us, my lecture would have fallen on deaf and angry ears and been worse than useless, since it would have alienated him from me when he needed me the most – but because that love is there, free for the asking or even when not asked for, I was free to give my son what he really needed from me. Now, examine the “coercion” question from the divine perspective – God has consistently said that He loves each of us and wants only what is ultimately best for us, and makes demands on us only to ensure that we follow the way that He knows to be best for us. Does it, in that context, make more sense?
I have trouble forgiving myself for the mistakes I make. Being my Lord, He can forgive, and I am therefore compelled to forgive myself, and to trust in Him to repair the mistakes that I cannot make (and, of course, to repair those that I can).
I was pleasantly surprised by Sister Coyote’s perspective on the question – like my namesake, I find common company with the Virtuous Pagans.
Absolutely true, DJ. As somebody has already suggested, the fallacy of the excluded middle applies. There is, however, a middle ground between “belief without evidence” and “incredulity without proof” and that is to weigh the evidence and tentatively accept that which seems most likely to be accurate. This is the last phase of the scientific method, after the review of data and testing phases. Applied to my own experience, that which purported to be an experience of the Christian God, which bore up under my own scrutiny – because I am fully aware that I can think myself into untenable hypotheses by sloppy reasoning, and accordingly tested my percept against (a) the teachings of my church and of Christianity historically, and (b) the empirical test of following His will and seeing if the results promised did in fact obtain – which they did, along with a greater degree of happiness, self-actualization, and a sense of fulfillment that I would not have thought possible for me prior to the event, led me to examine critically the dogmas and assumptions of Christianity. I find many of them to be true, others to be misinterpretations of the truth, and a few, largely with regard to traditional moral codes, to be total spin, rationalizations on the basis of Scripture to impose a fake legitimacy on innate cultural prejudices.
I do not expect you to “believe without proof” – but I submit to you that in the nature of things, that proof is either going to be something explainable under the assumption that things happen in the absence of God. or a subjective experience to which you will have to decide whether to give credence. If the latter, I encourage you to be as judicious and thorough as I was, for your own satisfaction and for discussions like this where you will need to stand by how you came to believe and explain it to others who stand in your shoes. Nor does God generally supply proof “on demand” – He speaks to each man and woman when He knows that person is ready to hear, and not before. And how He does that speaking may be through another person, through a satori gained from a pensive walk or from reading, or possibly through the sort of interior dialogue that He had with me – but that seems to be a rare occurrence. What you will find in such a case is that some of the questions that you raise now become effectively moot, that some of the “silly ideas” of Christianity (or your chosen faith) become alive with meaning to you – stuff like that.
My own conception is that God is greater than any pigeonholes we may want to stuff Him in, and that Freyr’s experience of the Vanir Freyr, or Sister Coyote’s of Coyote, along with those of our Islamic and Jewish contingent, are all quite valid – but so, emphatically, is that of us Christians – and that in the person of the man Jesus we have the answer to “What if God were one of us?” And, Hazel, for me at least the dichotomy you raised of “only begotten Son” vs. “one among a brotherhood of sons and daughters” is perfectly moot – through His work and teachings back then, whether or not He was the first (and I think He was, but am not prepared to argue the issue outside a Christian context), He did what was necessary to make the second a living reality.
The one other thing I got out of this thread was to know where that pain, as if someone had hit me in the chest, over the weekend, came from. Your aim was off, Gaudere!! 
In a perfect world, but not here in GD.
Ummm . . . no, I didn’t. Do a search for the word chair on page 2. I would love to stay away from efforts to prove things which common sense should dictate. Unfortunately, every time a religious debate gets good, someone has to attack proof in general as opposed to trying to prove anything. Weak.
:rolleyes: Pathetic.
I think I’m done in here. I can’t take complete abandonment of reasonable assumptions, ie “don’t believe everything you’re told”. The fun is gone.
DaLovin Dj
Evidence is not the same thing as proof. Evidence is often a critical component of proof, but the two are not the same creature.
And therein lies another word game. Reckless skeptics often act as though the two words were synonymous. As a result, one can accuse religious believers of having no “evidence,” when what they truly lack is proof.
(FTR, I happen to believe that there are many religious tenets which lack both evidence and proof. However, that is not an indictment of religion in general.)
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is denying that we shouldn’t believe everything we are told. What you fail to grasp is that there is a wide range of options between “having no beliefs”
and “believing everything you are told.”
As stated before, the fallacy of the excluded middle applies. I suggest that you read up on this fallacy, so that we can avoid some of these irrelevant rabbit trails.
all religions, allow me to repeat myself, all religions, are based on mans inability to deal with death. they are all based on myth, so in order to “believe” you have to toss out a lot of facts. in good conscience i can not do that.
That’s a rather broad claim. Can you substantiate it?
More responses to ImNotMad:
What on earth are you talking about?
Again, what are you talking about? You don’t seem to have been responding to my point at all.
Let’s say that everything in nature has a cause. That doesn’t mean that nature itself has a cause. It’s the fallacy of composition.
Of course.
You skipped part of the question. If God commanded you to kill your neighbor, would you consider such a killing a morally good thing?
Thank you! It’s good to get a clear and detailed response to that
question.
I suggest you go to www.infidels.org and read up on the incompatible properties arguments. Suffice it to say that the God you believe in cannot exist. Here’s a good starting place:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/incompatible.html
And another good one:
http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/august97/barker.html
What does that have to do with anything? Last I checked, Christianity wasn’t the world’s most popular worldview either. Does that mean we should all be Hindu?
On other note, you’ve made the mistake of thinking that atheism precludes any transcendence. This is not the case.
Atheism is perfectly compatible with transcendence, at least with this definition of transcendence.
Maybe I can’t, but who knows about God?
Ok, back to being serious. You’re missing the point. An infinite thing contains finite things. The fact that part of them is finite doesn’t conflict with their being infinite. It seems to me that a truly infinite God would contain the universe. He would be it.
An argument that your belief is irrational, based on your own words. Of course it uses semantics. Every argument does, if it is to have any meaning.
Nobody said anything about forced. The problem still stands: if an omnipotent being wanted everyone to love him, everyone would love him. Simple as that.
Now some words for Libertarian:
(First off - didn’t you leave the board for a bit? Or am I confused? If you did, then welcome back. If you didn’t, then I’m glad you’re still around.)
Does this mean that if nobody believed in God, he would cease to exist? Or merely be homeless?
A principle of justification hardly needs to be justified by itself.
This is false for any meaningful definition of false (that is, it implies a contradiction). If all systems of knowledge are equally valid, then all propositions, even contradictory mutually contradictory ones, are true. If anything is true, then not everything is true.
to sum all of that up…man created god.
yes