[QUOTE=Bob Bobford]
But that is how Dawkins effectively gets to his “no evidence” claim. He dismisses any account of the supernatural because it can’t be verified empirically. Of course if it was verified empirically then it wouldn’t be supernatural. It’s like asserting that squares can only exist if they have three sides. If they don’t have three sides they don’t exist, and if they have three sides then they are really a triangle.
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Pot, meet kettle. By asserting, “…if it was verified empiracally then it wouldn’t be supernatural,” you are defining the semantic argument on your own terms, i.e. you can’t falsify an extraordinary, unverified claim on the basis that its lack of substance makes it unfalsifiable. This statement is true as far as it goes, but it gives no weight to a thiestic view; it essentially reframes the “God of the gaps” argument in terms of paucity of evidence equating to room for a deity to exist. Just because all cats are black at midnight doesn’t mean that the investigator must conclude that the only color one can obtain a feline in is black; it just means that he hasn’t found the light switch yet.
Personally, if somebody comes by to tell me how important it is that I kiss Hank’s ass so that I get a million bucks when I leave town, I want to talk to Hank. Not through Hank’s buddy Karl, not from visions induced by acid, not by reading a book written by a bunch of guys who came way after Hank left town, not by a vague resemblence of Hank somebody found in a disfigured crepe–I want to sit down and chat with Hank Himself and see this bag full of money he’s going to give me. I’m not sure why that’s a big deal for Hank–after all, He notes every sparrow that falls, at least according to that biography written by Hank’s buddies–and I find nothing persuasive in the argument that I should look past normal events that can be readily described by a consistent framework of physical laws to “find” (i.e. manufacture) evidence of Hank’s influence.
Belief in a deity is no more justified than belief in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, albeit with better p.r. and a movement of adult human beings who are willing to abandon the critical thinking skills that they routinely apply in other areas of their lives and indoctrinate others to do the same.
I think Dawkins’ argument is terrible, and hardly the beacon of rational thinking that many assume him to be.
First off, it is worth considering what Dawkins means when he says “there is no evidence for God”. Human history, if nothing else, is full of stories of miraculous things happening which demonstate the existence of some higher power. Some are widely believed, some not. Some are personal to the people who tell the stories, some not. To merely hand-wave and say that none of these accounts existist is ludicrous.
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Not at all. First of all, if miracles happened, they should be happening now. However investigations of claims of miracles, done with our science and our new
methods, have found them all to be frauds. Do you believe that Washington through the dollar across the Potomac? How about the odd animals reported by the Greeks. No extraordinary claim should be accepted without verification, and there is no law saying that if there are a lot of bullshit reports, some must be true. If you believe that, you must believe in flying saucers - plenty of those reports.
Besides what Dio said, even inferences can be falsified. We infer a model of what should be found in the fossil record, and we check against new discoveries. I think it is very easy to define what we should have found if religion were true - we’ve found none of it.
You can’t quite experiment, but you can generate hypotheses and verify them against new discoveries. Every reference to Waterloo discovered from the time is a test, just as every fossil discovered is a test. That no one living at the time reported that Christ rose from the dead right then, and the population of Jerusalem went on as if nothing happened is a test also - a test Christianity fails.
All you have to do then is produce evidence that things are happening that can’t be explained by natural laws. 2500 year old reports of miracles that are unverified don’t count. Don’t got any? Didn’t think so. Given no events that require god, there is no reason to explain events that don’t require god as demonstrating god. Yes, god can make everything look just like there was no god if he wanted to, but then he surely doesn’t want us to believe in him, or he’s a trickster, or he’s evil, or he’s stupid.
Nonsense. Verified empirically means have an impact on the real world. If someone could be shown to get every ESP card right again and again, that would be an empirical verification of what now looks like a supernatural action. If there were current Egyptian writings about the Red Sea parting that would be another. There can be empirical verification of supernatural claims - there just haven’t been any.
FYI, if anyone cares, the cover story in Wired magazine for November 2006 is “The New Atheism” with a prominent position given to Dawkins and his new book. The cover is subtitled, “No Heaven. No Hell. Just Science. / Inside the crusade against religion”.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Once you start denying cause and effect and natural laws, you take leave of rationality.
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. . . and the continued existence of religion that relies on non-provable claims clearly demonstrates mankind is not completely rational. What are you, or Occam’s Razor, or any boatload number of rational arguments going to do about it? Nothing. The debate is pointless and unwinnable. That is all I’ve been trying to say all along.
[QUOTE=Lizard]
. . . and the continued existence of religion that relies on non-provable claims clearly demonstrates mankind is not completely rational. What are you, or Occam’s Razor, or any boatload number of rational arguments going to do about it? Nothing. The debate is pointless and unwinnable. That is all I’ve been trying to say all along.
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I have faith (heh) that not only are a few people here and there convinced, every once in a while, by arguments of rationality, but that someday this number will increase.
Throwing up your hands declaring the argument “pointless and unwinnable” certainly isn’t going to help.
Normally I wouldn’t want to interrupt one of your get togethers as you bemoan the sad circumstances that atheists find themselves in - a world loaded with believers and\or irrational fundamentalists who continuously make your lives miserable at every level. I’m sure you’d rather be left alone to pursue the higher purpose that Dawkins has assigned to you ie, to produce DNA (referencing the youtube.com video at the start of the thread). But I couldn’t help pointing out his Freudian slip at the very end of that video - it’s like the lecturer who spoke as an advocate for racial equality, but ended it with “We should therefore strive to be more tolerant of all the lower races.” Similarly, Dawkins answered the interviewers last question with, “I don’t believe we’re put here to be comfortable.” Thus he inadvertently and subconsciously, acknowledged some measure of faith as well as our placement here by a higher power; and he thereby contradicted everything he had just said (not to mention his own book). What he managed to publicly demonstrate is, that no matter how hard someone tries, it’s very difficult to completely silence not only the conscience, but also one’s inner consciousness of the existence of God - we are born with it.
Hey, science is about forming models that have utility for future actions. It does this by making models that increasingly better predict future results.
Religion is also about forming models with utility for future actions. Just regarding moral actions is all. Science cares less about the absolute “truth” of its models than it does on its utility in making predictions and therfore guiding behavior. Religion still provides models of utility for moral actions; there still exists these God-shaped holes. I wouldn’t toss this model out quite yet.
[QUOTE=Bible man]
Normally I wouldn’t want to interrupt one of your get togethers as you bemoan the sad circumstances that atheists find themselves in - a world loaded with believers and\or irrational fundamentalists who continuously make your lives miserable at every level. I’m sure you’d rather be left alone to pursue the higher purpose that Dawkins has assigned to you ie, to produce DNA (referencing the youtube.com video at the start of the thread). But I couldn’t help pointing out his Freudian slip at the very end of that video - it’s like the lecturer who spoke as an advocate for racial equality, but ended it with “We should therefore strive to be more tolerant of all the lower races.” Similarly, Dawkins answered the interviewers last question with, “I don’t believe we’re put here to be comfortable.” Thus he inadvertently and subconsciously, acknowledged some measure of faith as well as our placement here by a higher power; and he thereby contradicted everything he had just said (not to mention his own book). What he managed to publicly demonstrate is, that no matter how hard someone tries, it’s very difficult to completely silence not only the conscience, but also one’s inner consciousness of the existence of God - we are born with it.
[/QUOTE]
Are you really this desperate? Your’e reading this as “I don’t believe that the reason we were put here is to be comfortable”. Another, equally valid reading, is “I don’t believe we were put here, even if it is to be comfortable”
[QUOTE=Bible man]
Normally I wouldn’t want to interrupt one of your get togethers as you bemoan the sad circumstances that atheists find themselves in - a world loaded with believers and\or irrational fundamentalists who continuously make your lives miserable at every level. I’m sure you’d rather be left alone to pursue the higher purpose that Dawkins has assigned to you ie, to produce DNA (referencing the youtube.com video at the start of the thread). But I couldn’t help pointing out his Freudian slip at the very end of that video - it’s like the lecturer who spoke as an advocate for racial equality, but ended it with “We should therefore strive to be more tolerant of all the lower races.” Similarly, Dawkins answered the interviewers last question with, “I don’t believe we’re put here to be comfortable.” Thus he inadvertently and subconsciously, acknowledged some measure of faith as well as our placement here by a higher power; and he thereby contradicted everything he had just said (not to mention his own book). What he managed to publicly demonstrate is, that no matter how hard someone tries, it’s very difficult to completely silence not only the conscience, but also one’s inner consciousness of the existence of God - we are born with it.
[/QUOTE]
I think these thoughts are true actually. We humans have tendency to assign purpose and design to things, although they might not have. In fact, Dawkins writes about that himself in his book. All this proves is that humans are apt to believe in a deity, which of course we knew already.
[QUOTE=uglybeech]
OK, I thought your comparison with murder had more layers than it did, so fine, as long as you’re not moralizing against false beliefs, I have no problem.
But I think you’re mistating Lizard’s position. I hope he doesn’t mind my interpreting what he’s saying, but I think he isn’t merely making a positivist argument, that just because something exists, it’s necessarily good. He’s arguing that religion is performing a function separate from describing empirical reality, and Occam’s razor only applies to certain narrow tasks involved in hypothesizing mechanisms, etc. In other words, the tasks of science. I tend to agree with Lizard on this. Or at least I believe that Dawkins continuously begs that particular question, as if he can’t concede that there’s any other mode of thought that has value.
Yes certainly, religious thought often intrudes on the tasks of science, and that’s where I get irritated too. I am an atheist, and a disgruntled one at that. But I’m not so interested in how the religious (who I generally don’t agree with) justify themselves, as how Dawkins (who I generally agree with) condemns religion. I think his arguments get awfully facile at times. It is, after all, possible that *both * sides are wrong at times.
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I tried to post to this thread a while back, and gave up after getting timed out. It looks like it’s just as well, because you’ve said it all way better than I did.
It’s great that people like Dawkins will take on the religious fundamentalists when they attack the sciences, The problem I have with Dawkins is his need to aggressively encroach on the social and philosophical spheres.
Fundamentalist Scientism and Atheism can be just as destructive as religion, as evidenced by Eugenics, Mengele, Pol Pot et al. The Scientism team have better weapons too.
People who make a religion of Science are just as much of a problem as people who make a religion of God. So long as they all stay out of politics…
There’s no such thing as “fundamentalist scientism.” The Nazis were just misusing science in the name of religion. There’s no such thing as “scientism” at all.
[QUOTE=Themenin]
…
People who make a religion of Science are just as much of a problem as people who make a religion of God. So long as they all stay out of politics…
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People who fervently seek rational, repeatable, testable, falsifiable answers are exactly the kind of people I’d like to see in government.
[QUOTE=Themenin]
I tried to post to this thread a while back, and gave up after getting timed out. It looks like it’s just as well, because you’ve said it all way better than I did.
It’s great that people like Dawkins will take on the religious fundamentalists when they attack the sciences, The problem I have with Dawkins is his need to aggressively encroach on the social and philosophical spheres.
Fundamentalist Scientism and Atheism can be just as destructive as religion, as evidenced by Eugenics, Mengele, Pol Pot et al. The Scientism team have better weapons too.
People who make a religion of Science are just as much of a problem as people who make a religion of God. So long as they all stay out of politics…
[/QUOTE]
People go to war with other people because of their religion. When did anyone ever go to war or similar because they were atheists?
“Making a religion of science” doesn’t really make sense. But if we interpret it as you perhaps intended as a denomer for the nazi use of eugenics, I’d agree this is also bad. I fail to see what this has to do with Dawkins views though.
[QUOTE=Lizard]
. . . and the continued existence of religion that relies on non-provable claims clearly demonstrates mankind is not completely rational. What are you, or Occam’s Razor, or any boatload number of rational arguments going to do about it? Nothing.
[/QUOTE]
Watch, while everything is destroyed. That’s what I’m going to do.
[QUOTE=DSeid]
Religion is also about forming models with utility for future actions. Just regarding moral actions is all. Science cares less about the absolute “truth” of its models than it does on its utility in making predictions and therfore guiding behavior. Religion still provides models of utility for moral actions; there still exists these God-shaped holes. I wouldn’t toss this model out quite yet.
[/QUOTE]
I would. Just from looking at the news, it’s pretty obvious that religion is very, very bad at guiding morality.
This idea that religious people are any more or less prone to commiting atrocities as non-religious people is absurd. People are people, and if it isn’t religion that leads to war or violence, it’ll be something else. Also, the idea that communism is a religion doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. Communism is an economic system, and the USSR was a Stalinist one-party state-- not much different from any other police state or dictatorship.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Watch, while everything is destroyed. That’s what I’m going to do.
I would. Just from looking at the news, it’s pretty obvious that religion is very, very bad at guiding morality.
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I absolutely agree that religion is very bad at guiding morality - science is also very bad at guiding morality. Maybe some kind of moderation and openness to debate will avert the catastrophe ?
I may be guilty of some kind of neologism by combining ‘fundamentalism’ with ‘scientism’, but I think the concept is clear. If you’re unfamiliar with either of these terms, the dictionary is your friend. :)Although the hard sciences are great for explaining how things work, they have no application at all in explaining what we should do about it and why.
We all know that some religions and some religious zealots have been responsible for innumerable conflicts and atrocities, some science and some scientists have done the same. It seems disingenuous to argue that religion is bad because of fundamentalists, but eugenicists were ‘misusing science’.
Science does not concern itself with morality. Philosophy does. Science is simply an empirical method used to understand the physical world. Now, it’s possible that we might use science to probe into the depths of human nature-- ie, discover what kind of animal we are-- and that we might try and derrive some from of morality from the results. E.O. Wilson, for example, will tell you that ethics “is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate”. (That quote taken from the NYT review of Dawkin’s new book in this Sunday’s Book Review, btw).
Wilson’s point is similar to something I tried to post the night the hamsters got into the server. Right, ethics is adaptive. So, too, it would seem, is belief in religion. At least that’s the inference I draw from its near universality. Which, of course, doesn’t make the belief true. (As I’ve mentioned often, I’m an atheist (or strong agnostic, depending on how one defines terms.) But it does suggest the belief served (and probably still serves) some useful purpose.
BTW, as for the OP, I would strongly prefer the word illusion or placebo to delusion. The latter implies the belief is contrary to the evidence, whereas Dawkins admits (as he must) that God can’t be disproven.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
This idea that religious people are any more or less prone to commiting atrocities as non-religious people is absurd. People are people, and if it isn’t religion that leads to war or violence, it’ll be something else. Also, the idea that communism is a religion doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. Communism is an economic system, and the USSR was a Stalinist one-party state-- not much different from any other police state or dictatorship.
[/QUOTE]
There are a lot of atrocities committed by people because of their religion. I can’t think of any atrocities committed by people because of their atheism. Thus, everything else being equal, I think you can say that religion leads to war or violence.
Also, the major religions are old, and the morals in them can thus be harsh. In some muslim states you can thus risk cruel punishments for smaller offences, or things we don’t consider offences at all. While this is state sanctioned violence, it is still violence. And it is caused by religion.
Religion creates a very good seperation between people, creates a way to identify who is not in your group. For instance, in northern ireland the protestant-catholic thing has created and held the separation.
I have never seen any data regarding the faith of the prison population. If we had such data I suppose we could ascertain the question you raise. I do know, though, that the southern USA is both more religious, and more violent than the north. Also, if you compare the entire USA to a different country with the same BNP, it is also both more religious and more violent.
