This is a perfect example of how a genuinely smart and thoughtful person can confuse himself into rationales for a baseless belief.
The supernatural has utterly no evidence to speak for it, so it is no answer. It’s simply a personification of “I don’t know”.
How do trees grow from seeds? God!
What makes the sun rise? God!
Where do we go when we die? To God!
These aren’t questions we naturally know the answers to. But instead of looking in to them primitive men waved their hands and said, God!
God is the opposite of an answer, and assuming that the Abrahamic God is the one of the millions of options throughout history is doubly shoddy thinking.
“Arguments that explain everything… explain nothing.”
-Christopher Hitchens
The issue of complexity, especially in regards to Occam’s Razor, only really applies to issues that are both of the following:
-Unproven/questionable
-dealing with unknown assumptions
Let me explain… Using Occam’s Razor to assume that “elves did it” in the case of the automotor is fallacious; we know that in this case, one explanation fits with the assumptions we make. That is, it’s not unproven or questionable. We know how it works.
However, the second question is where “god did it is simpler” falls apart. Occam’s Razor deals with basic human assumptions. Things like “My senses offer my correct data about the world” or “it is possible to learn something about the universe”. Whenever you invoke the supernatural, you make an additional assumption: “the supernatural exists”. One that Occam’s Razor deems unnecessary if the previous assumptions you necessarily have made regarding the physical universe are to remain upheld.
More than a personification of “I don’t know,” an honest enough position to take, a belief in the deity also provides a personification of “What I find useful.” The explanation may not be completely correct, but it is sufficient to meet my needs.
It is a simple, practical and pragmatic philosophy. Science gets needlessly complex, unlikely and frankly rigged as it deals with questions that do not (yet) have answers.
If you believe in a God that is undetectable, you are unreasonable. If you believe most of the mass of the universe is undetectable, you are scientific. Or you are making stuff up so your notions meet the observations.
So… “I don’t care what is correct; this works for me whether it’s true or not”?
Um… No offense, but that’s a load of horseshit.
Science gets necessarily complex when dealing with extremely complex questions. Things like the existence of the universe, the cause of the big bang, et cetera. Things that are incredibly difficult to deal with.
In fact, kind of the entire point of the scientific method is to weed out needless complexity, and provide a fair playground for evidence to accumulate. Let’s take your next example:
I assume you’re referring to dark matter… Sounds a little like someone who doesn’t understand how light can be more than just the visible spectrum they see, and therefore doubts the existence of microwaves. It is detectable.
It took me about 30 seconds of googling to reach this page: Dark matter: The evidence | New Scientist
The scientists aren’t talking out of their asses when it comes to dark matter. I’d school you in the matter further, but I honestly don’t actually know much about it. And I’ll gladly admit that. You… won’t. Admitting that you (and everyone supporting you) have no credibility in the field you’re debating kinda hurts your case… I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I know enough to debunk your shit.
You have an incredibly flawed view of both science and the scientific process; “unneeded complexity” is to science as “proof” is to religion: it doesn’t happen because it’s antithetical to the main point (in my case finding the simplest, most realistic explanations that fit with all the data we have; in your case, taking crap on faith alone).
So you think you stump faith when you say the Big Bang happened nothing that was in no place and in no time exploded?
In truth, why even worry about matters that have little practical value? People of faith and of science agree on the vast majority of everything. Minor questions on the edge might be interesting, but they are not really critical.
Even if god had explanatory power (which he technically does, even if it’s pretty much the same power as “I don’t know”), he has no predictive power whatsoever. Okay, God did it in regards to evolution, flooding, lightning… Doesn’t help me one bit. Doesn’t let me figure out how to protect myself from lightning strikes (or how to avoid them). Doesn’t let me figure out when floods are likely to happen. Doesn’t help me predict the effect glasses, braces, and similar technological enhancements will have on our evolution as a species. It does not help us one bit. And I think this is a fair critique of magical thinking; even if it’s true, it tells us nothing. Science, on the other hand, has told us how to avoid floods, given us a warning system for tidal waves, shown us not only how to avoid lightning, but how to cause it, and given us evolutionary evidence for the entire field of biology. YEP, THAT’S A PRETTY BIG DIVIDE, DON’T’CHA THINK?
But it’s not useful at all. It explains nothing. It gives you no information.
What are you talking about? Have you ever taken a science class. You seem to have some very peculiar ideas about what it is.
Unreasoned, anyway.
Who believes the universe is undetectable?
We infer things about the unobserved universe (the mass of which is not “undetectable,” by the way), from what we know of the laws and mainfestations taht we do see. We are able to make testable predictions about things. There is no test for your cloud wizard, nor is he an inferrence from any kind of observed data. It’s just an arbitray figure of fantasy which lacks either demonstrated necessity, evidence or utility.
Science is not sone kind of atheistic ideology, by the way. It’s not “philosophy.” It’s a method for discovering information, that’s all. It’s not based on opinions or beliefs and it self corrects for human error.
Religion is simly made up out of whole cloth, depends on self-proclaimed “revelations” from human beings (human beings who basically fall into two categories - psychotics and frauds - mostly frauds). Science does not rely on something so puerile as “revelation” or human authority. The data is the data. The tests are the tests.
Nobody says that, and implicatons about god beliefs have nothing to do with it. The Big Bang is a fact. it happemned. we have the microwave radiation to prove. Whatever that says about your god beliefs is your problem. It’s not an issue for scientific method.
People of faith and science are not necessarily opposed. One does not have to exclude the other. It’s a fact that scientific method has never revealed wither necessity or evidence for gods, though. Technically speaking, gods cannot be disproven, but it also can’t be disproven that gravity is caused by psychic elves.
You do know that typing in all caps is usually interpreted as shouting, don’t you? I am sorry if you are becoming emotional. It was not my intent.
A belief in deity shows us that we are special, the purpose of all of creation, the main character in the sitcom. This means we are masters of this sphere and can understand it, mold and shape it. We are not a simple mote of dust in a meaningless and directionless eternity. A belief in deity lets us see the vastness of the cosmos and know that there is a plan, that evil will fail, good will endure.
Or not, your milage may vary of course. But it is a comfort and a help to me. Pragmatism I would point out is the most American philosophy.
Again, I am sorry if I upset you. (It is bedtime here, please understand that I am not ignoring you.)
Stupidity makes me feel one of two emotions: pity and rage. And when you’ve been at SDMB long enough to understand that we fight ignorance here (took me about one look at the tagline :rolleyes:), and are still spouting crap like that…
Except that not only are good and evil entirely man-made and subjective concepts, but just because a feeling is nice doesn’t make it factually correct.
A belief in a deity shows that we have superiority complexes, that we are delusional, and that our rationality centers are not working particularly well. It doesn’t matter how useful it is if it’s dead wrong.
The last part of the vastness of the universe was something that was until very recently denied by all the followers of the deities. It makes me hopeful for the future that there are people that can drop ancient texts when they clearly no longer apply, but one should realize that this attitude is not the norm among believers.
What I normally see is constant reminders from believers that their deity is a small one. (Only we are the chosen ones in this speck of dust in the universe, you see.)
[Moderating] Budge Player Cadet, do not use the quote box function to attribute words to other posters that they did not say. If you feel the need to characterize someone else’s words, please do it out side of the quote boxes.
Belief in a deity shows nothing. Belief in a deity makes you think creation revolves around you. When you believe in a deity it makes sense that the sun and stars revolve around the Earth. The real universe makes us look very insignificant. It was here before we were, and will be here after we are gone.
Belief in a deity makes you think you can trash the Earth and reproduce to fill it. God will not bail us out, and God’s commandments made up by people wishing to grow no longer make any sense. Yes, we can understand the world, but none of this understanding requires belief in the supernatural.
It is sad that the only things that comfort you are lies. I get my comfort from real people and things, not fairy tales.