You may love science, but given the total lack of anything resembling accuracy in this post it’s obviously an unrequited love.
So can I claim “Cecilism” as my religion and pass that off as good enough to enroll my son in Boy Scouts?
Sure it can. If the events in Exodus had really happened, the existence of God would have been known as well as just about anything being known. That we have never seen a unicorn is different from saying the existence of unicorns cannot be known.
Actually, there are some pretty startling predictions from prophets of God that conveniently extend just beyond their lifetimes so they can cash in on their gullible followers with no actual mechanism of falsifiability.
Here’s one. Unless one holds that reopening Wall Street was God’s ultimate victory over the Jews and the Devil.
Actually it does say something about this. I think the reference for this is Gladwell’s Blink, but there is a psychologist who can predict whether marriages are happy based on body language. If one spouse rolls his or her eyes as the other is talking, that is a bad sign. The Sunday Times Magazine yesterday had data about generosity being an indicator of a happy marriage. Science can’t make anyone be generous or respectful, but it sure can tell you what to do.
To say “Depends how you define God” is like saying “Depends how you define Zeus” We have a pretty good idea of how one is defining God when they ask the question. They are referring to the Judeo-Christian God, or some variation of it, or some dogma inspired by it; moreover, anything can be true sometimes, if it’s definition can vary from person to person, the word “God” loses it’s meaning all together!
:smack:
You know what? All this God nonsense is not even the issue, the real question should be: is there a good reason to believe in something/someone that has no proof that he/she/it is there in the first place? There may be no God, but the answer to this question might still be yes! Seems to work for football players and refugees…
It only works for half the football players, and a very small percentage of refugees.
I hear you, I wasn’t totally clear on my point, I meant it works as a motivator, even if the outcome is a sunken raft or a lost Superbowl. Although, when a man loses a pro football game, he still goes home with three cheerleaders, a millionaire!
Proof means different things to different people. Someone with a very low IQ can never accept proof of mathematical formulae because it is beyond their own, personal ability to comprehend, though many others do understand and accept the proof. Perhaps the same can be said of people who lack spirituality.
What? This is a bad sign? I think my wife has spent half of our marriage rolling her eyes whenever I open my mouth.
Why must all discussions of whether god exists or not in America ignore almost entirely polytheism?
This is a critical issue in the discussion for several reasons.
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Most people throughout history were polytheists.
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The world’s current 3rd largest religion, Hinduism, is polytheistic, and it is older than the monotheistic religions. India has also historically been the most populated area on the planet, or near the top, for all history and estimates of prehistory (after humans left Africa). Southern Indians possess genetic markers indicating that they were some of the earliest people to move out of Africa (Another source of many polytheists. The other early out-of-Africa humans, Australians, also have had tens of thousands of years of polytheistic belief). The polytheists of India will, or already do, have the world’s largest population of English speakers as well, and have contributed greatly to both science and spiritualism. To ignore Hinduism (and other polytheistic religions) when discussing the existence of god is foolish from both scientific and spiritualistic points of view. and has more than a scent of racism.
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Polytheism puts into focus the need to not decide whether god exists, but which one. Or which group. And whether the composition of the group changes over time and space and for what reasons.
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Polytheism reminds the religious that if they insist in believing in the god of their personal choice based on the absence, or impossibility, of conclusive evidence of the contrary, they must also accept that there are thousands of gods that are not of their personal choice for which there is also no conclusive evidence of the contrary, or the impossibility of obtaining such evidence.
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Some of these gods are very nasty, such as the Decapitator of the Moche.
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Polytheism also includes the possibility that there is no such thing as a first cause or prime mover. There may be a committee involved with different parties taking differing roles.
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Polytheism also includes the possibility that there was never a starting point in existence, that there was never a pico-second where there was nothing that became something. There may be no such thing as nothing, only somethings.
The question of whether there is a god not only depends on how you define god, but how you explain away the gods that you don’t believe in.
We do have a pretty good understanding of what Americans mean when they discuss whether there is a god. But polytheism forces consideration of more than just a “pretty good idea” about god. There must be discussion specific characteristics, what entities possess them, and why others do not. So yes, it depends on how you define god. But it also depends on how you define Zeus, Mithras, Shiva, and thousands of others.
Judeo-Christians attempt to make this discussion a dichotomy, which better allows them to cast the scientific minded as the closed-minded party. The predominance of polytheism reminds the Judeo-Christian that they are closing their minds to tens of thousands of gods. The atheist is just rejecting one more than they are.
Appeal to popularity/appeal to tradition. Though I agree on the point that most theists believe in a God radically different to the next man (whether God endorses killing or not will differ from Wahabbi Islam to Jainism for example), they just want to find proof of at least one God (some of one God maximum).
Popularity depends on where and when you are.
According to most people throughout time who were capable of thinking about such things, monotheism would have been highly unpopular, to say the least.
And according to hundreds of millions of people right now, and the people who will be ruling the most populous nation on the planet in a short few decades, as well as conducting the bulk of the spoken English in the world, it is a foolishly and unnecessarily limited perspective.
If you want to find proof of at least one god, it would seem to be logical to try to find evidence of any proposed reasonably popular god (we can ignore the Flying-Spaghetti Monster, but not Zeus), rather than a specific one. And Hindus think they have plenty of evidence for plenty of gods.
And if you are indeed concerned about god’s will toward mankind and the afterlife, you would really want to think carefully about angering certain gods who are believed to wantonly destroy civilizations and torture the inattentive souls for all eternity if regular human sacrifices are not performed. The assumption of benevolence toward humans by the gods is not at all common, especially when it comes to unbelievers. Or so I’ve heard. All the more reason to think hard about the options, and maybe spread your bets. As many polytheists have done and continue to do.
American theists hold an unpopular tradition that has not proven it has much lasting authority.
And while I agree with the popularity/appeal to tradition answer, my comment was not just a history lesson, but was also an argument that those having such a limited understanding of the world of religion and human history should be informed of their ignorance and pressed for explanation, as a means of defusing their false dichotomy that they try to impose upon non-religious people.
I agree that it’s a good answer to Pascal’s wager and that the argument that the only two options are “monotheism or atheism” is a false dichotomy, but if there’s a serious contention that the supernatural exists at all, then one takes babysteps: trying to reach consensus on a simple deistic/pantheistic/woo-woo principle, then hammering on to the wedge until we get flat, young Earth creationism taught in schools. Starting with polytheism is the wrong end of the wedge in a discussion like this (multiplying unexplained entities unnecessarily).
…differing religions have gone to great lengths over the ages of man to shoehorn opposing view points into their own. The Hindu religion does have a massive diversity of supernatural uber-beings, but they’re all manifestations of the supreme being, Brahman. Historically, this allowed many differing religions to be brought under the umbrella of Hinduism, promoting social cohesion. Similarly, in the seventh century, the elevation of Mary to divine status was just good PR to attract the many Diana worshipping folk of Rome to Christianity.
IMO- the route from polytheism to monotheism is not a case of whittling them down one by one till it’s a case of ‘last god standing’. Monotheism is a more advanced way of considering the situation, an evolutionary quantum leap from polytheism, and monotheism’s whole ‘light-bulb in the head’ moment is the realization that there is only one god. Period. No further whittling required. I use the term evolution, as i feel it’s a more natural progression to go from ‘one universal god’ to ‘one universe, no god required’ then it is from ‘many gods all doing a bunch of different stuff’. Too confusing. Even more confusing, in this context, is the original default human position, which was, i believe, animism, where every single thing is considered to ‘be a god’ or rather a divine spirit.
So I see polytheism and monotheism as steps on the path from animism to nothing-ism, and then to ‘really don’t give a toss-ism’ and so on…
Then you’re not a Real True Religionist, are you? Religion claims to hold all the answers-maybe not the details, but at least the answers.
The problem is you lack an understanding of what science is. Science is the search for answers, not the answer itself. Are there things scientists haven’t learned the answers to? Of course. If there weren’t, we would no longer need scientists. Can scienctists find out, using science? Most likely. Maybe not in my lifetime or yours, but I suspect they’ll figure it out sooner or later.
Hell, look at the advances just in my lifetime (38 years). When I was born, we were still using rotary phones, only had three channels, and if you wanted to talk to someone on the other side of the planet, you mailed them a letter that they read sometime later. That was that.
Today, I’m currently sitting thousands of miles from the U.S. discussing religion vs science with someone I’ve never met, who, in theory, can read mere seconds after I hit “Submit Reply”. Did scientists know how to do this four decades ago? No (obviously). That doesn’t mean they stop trying (using science).
With religion, all the answers are given. They’re set in stone as dogma in holy scriptures, and that’s that. You don’t questions the answers, because then you’re arguing against holy writ. Four decades ago, Catholics (which I was raised as) believed that Mary was always a virgin, even after the birth of Christ. Today, four decades later, they still believe it, and it’s not likely to change 38 years from now.
Marc
I made my first trans-oceanic telephone call before you were born.
I wrote an e-mail system from scratch before you were born.
What is that supposed to have to do with anything? Do you think the human race was unaware of the hymen 38 years ago? Or two thousand years ago, for that matter?
Back then they may have been more willing to follow Deuteronomy 22.
Edit: I’m assuming that someone may consult a woman and the various reasons why vaginal bleeding isn’t an adequate indicator of prior intercourse before writing a holy text purportedly inspired by God nowadays.
Bully for you. Not everyone could, and that was my point.
I’m hoping that I just wasn’t clear, and that you’re not being deliberately dense. The point is that Catholic dogma remains the same regarding Mary remaining a virgin after the birth of Christ as it was two thousand years ago. Despite the bible suggesting otherwise, or even the unlikelihood of a married couple going at least 12 years (the last time we hear of Joseph is when Jesus is 12) without having sex-especially in a time period where large families were prized. Why? Because it’s dogma.
Science, however, marches on. Regardless of what you could have done 40 years ago, just the fact that the technology is now readily available to everyone shows that. We didn’t stop 40 years ago with the technology that was available, or the medicine, or or or or.
My famiily certainly couldn’t have used the internet 40 years ago, or cell phones, or better cancer screenings, or any number of things that have come up just in my lifetime. Unless you’re suggesting that scientists just gave up back then and have stopped their inquiry?
This was my point in the first place: Religion stops seeking the answers because it believes it already has them. Science doesn’t. If my post and examples were unclear, I am sorry, I will do better next time.
Marc
There was a bit of snarkiness in my post here, that I’d like to apologize for. I was kind of in a foul mood when I started typing it, and I let it color how I responded. I tried to come back and edit, but the system wouldn’t let me.
John, I apologize for sniping at you. It was immature, and my being in a bad mood doesn’t excuse it. My points, without the sniping, are still the same.
Marc