Not to ask you to do my homework for me Dio, but can you give me the name of Dawkins’ book where this is discussed? I’ve thought the same for years. It would be nice to see it expressed in detail.
It was in an article he wrote for Free Inquiry magazine (he might have discussed the same in a book also).
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/124-what-use-is-religion-part-2
Are these events intended to be consecutive? It would be more interesting to me if in Step #1, “God” announced to me His intentions to address the entire world at once, and in Step #2, told everyone of His plans to disappear a portion of the population. At least there’s a sense of “upping the game” that way. Otherwise, my reaction would be:
-
Remove flask from coat pocket and toss theatrically over shoulder while raising one hand and mumbling an oath of abstinence.
-
Furiously search for missing flask.
-
Guzzle contents of flask while celebrating or grieving (depending on who’s gone).
Ah, gotcha. “Supernatural” becomes a weird word in a discussion like this, since for a lot of folks, it literally means, “does not exist.” If you consider nature to be everything that exists, then if something exists, it’s not supernatural, and if something’s supernatural, it doesn’t exist. Maybe another word, or else a more nuanced definition, would be helpful?
I’ve never heard specifically about someone thinking that everyone is hearing God’s voice, but I’ve heard of people who think that everyone around them is participating in a conspiracy, lying, out to get them, deluded about the nature of reality, etc.
And the important thing is that it strikes me as more plausible that I’m completely nuts than that God exists.
Marty, that’s the problem. Based on your responses to others in this thread, I imagine you to be a believer in the supernatural being Christians call god, or are at least open to the possibility. If not, I apologize; I don’t want to attribute something to you falsely.
Think, for a second, about those of us do not believe in anything supernatural. To make a leap from such a mindset to instant belief is not plausible to us; I should say ‘to me’. There is nothing, short of total control of my mind, that could make me believe in the supernatural. My mind doesn’t work that way on its own. If the supernatural were omnipotent, as the religious purport, why wouldn’t it simply snap its omnipotent finger and cause everyone to suddenly believe? I certainly cannot imagine a scenario in which I would consider the supernatural to be the only explanation. For me, it’s a nonsensical proposition equally as implausible as talking cantaloupes in my fridge.
The reason technologically advanced aliens would be more believable is because they’d be governed by the same physics and be part of the same universe we are, nothing supernatural required. It’s simply a matter of plausibility for me. My mind would go to the simplest, most logical explanation for an event. Although it would take quite a lot to convince me a phenomenon or event is caused by aliens, I would come to that conclusion infinitely quicker than the supernatural.
The existence of the supernatural is simply not within the realm of possibility, as far as I’m concerned, and it is not possible for me to consider it organically, just as I wouldn’t conclude the wind, a natural phenomenon, to be a malevolent intelligence because it blew down my house.
You mentioned something a page or two earlier about atheists hating religion, or something like that, and that’s the reason we can’t consider a god, even in a hypothetical. I think I have that right. Anyway, for me, it has nothing to do with hating religion. I’m not religious; I have no faith or belief in any supernatural proposition, and I consider religion to be one of the most harmful and powerful deterrents to humanity’s advancement. However, I understand the value religion has for many. There are billions of people for whom life holds meaning solely because of it. Some of these people have openly stated that the only thing that prevents them from committing murder, rape, or unleashing all manner of unfathomable havoc is their religious belief. I wouldn’t want them to suddenly stop believing. I don’t know what percentage of the religious hold to this philosophy but it is a number higher than zero and, I don’t know about you, but that scares me. So yeah, let the believers continue to believe. Believers commit too many atrocities in the name of their religion as it is. I certainly wouldn’t want them unleashed on the world without it.
God being evil has seldom stopped people from worshiping him. That is part of what makes religion such a force for evil in the world.
You are looking for the terms antitheist, misotheism, and antireligion. Opposition to belief in gods, the belief that the god(s) is/are evil, opposition to religion.
Not true at all; “God” would still have all the logical problems it presently has, all the physics violations, all the lack of physical explanation, all the lack of plausibility, all the competing god-claims it has now. “A specific, logically incoherent bronze age myth did it” is simply going to be way, way down on the list for rational explanations regardless of what happens. The only reason people think that God is a plausible explanation is cultural conditioning; I doubt you’d be making the same arguments if Zeus was the proposed answer instead, even though Zeus is a more plausible entity than God (due to his supposed abilities being less grandiose).
Alien wizards are more logical, because that explains why we presently see no evidence of wizardry; they aren’t here right now, and know things we don’t.
Wow dude, I almost wish I was a Christian because of how patiently you are attempt to explain things. Alas, I am thoroughly nonreligious. I don’t believe anything remotely supernatural can ever exist outside of fantasy. Luckily, the OP’s hypothetical is fantastically impossible, therefore I would have no problem attributing it to the supernatural.
That is exactly why I’d be just as likely to attribute telepathic communication and hordes of disappearing people to god as I would to aliens. The natural laws that govern my world do not allow that stuff to happen. So, it would be exactly as universe-shattering a revelation to find out natural law allows for these things, as it would be to find out natural law allows for god.
Nah, I think most atheists don’t give a crap about religion. I think most atheist dopers dislike religion. Plus, I thought the atheist dopers in this thread were being so stubborn in their misotheism that they would not give the author of the ridiculous hypothetical, crafted in such a preposterous way as to make god the only explanation allowed, the petty satisfaction of acknowledging said hypothetical god.
The people who already dislike religion would dislike it stronger if the Christian god’s existence was sufficiently proven, I think. Not only would he be a total jerk in print, but in real life as well.
Indeed, I was. I think I’ll go with misotheism, cause that sounds more impressive.
I’d trust god to explain telepathic phenomenon just as much as I’d trust Pat Robertson to explain how a light saber works: exactly as well as Niels Bohr could.
That seems like a variation on a strange loop, though. If you’re that completely nuts, then it seems like you can’t take any of your perceptions of the world at face value. And if that’s true, then whatever perceptions of the world you have that led you to your conclusion that God doesn’t exist are also suspect.
Well, if I start hearing voices, yeah. I’ll be crazy. I’m not too worried about it.
It depends. Is he still demanding that I go back in time and kill Hitler or has he moved on since the last hypothetical?
All knowledge is contextual. We don’t believe in individual facts that have no relation to each other, but a hierarchy of facts that don’t contradict each other. An interference or invasion by aliens doesn’t contradict any of the facts I already believe; a deity does.
Oh, I don’t know about that. Many atheists I’ve come across know a great deal about religion and especially about the Bible. Some of them know that book better than the ones who claim to follow it. The folks at ex-Christian are a good example.
Just so no one chufts at that claim, it’s supported by polling:
From: http://pewforum.org/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey-Who-Knows-What-About-Religion.aspx
That would only be an issue for theists. Atheism is not a “conclusion” based on anything. It’s just an absence of a particular belief. Atheism would be more “suspect” than a non-belief in vampires and werewolves. There are an infinite number of things a person doesn’t believe in. It’s nonsesne to say that anyone who thinks they might be undergoing some sort of psychotic episode must then entertain the thought that smurfs, sprites, leprechauns, Zeus, the Matrix and intelligent blobs of gass on Jupiter might be real. How is a lack of belief in sky gods any different than a lack of belief in those other things?
-
Go on about my daily business.
-
Same as above.
-
Same as above.
That’s why comparisons with various other beliefs (fairies, unicorns, etc..) are useful.
Most Christians have a hard time getting that most atheists don’t believe at all in the existence of God. Believers tend to assume God is at least a reasonable hypothesis, and expect atheists to react accordingly. That is, that given some level of evidence, they would have to agree that God does, in fact, exist. While in reality we view it as an unreasonable hypothesis and it would take an enormous amount of evidence to convince many of us.
For instance, let’s say you look outside on Christmas eve and see an old bearbed man dressed in red, drawn through the sky by flying reindeers. “Obviously” this vision fits perfectly the description of Santa Claus. But I bet you’ll be searching for a lot of alternative explanations (hallucination, practical joke, projection made by some unknown technology, whatever…) before considering that Santa Claus could, in fact exist, because to you, that’s amongst the less believable explanations. You would reject the “obvious proof” in favor of something “more reasonable”.
Read what has been written in this light, and hopefully, our answers will make more sense to you.
Well, some of the answers essentially stem from “god doesn’t exist, therefore any proof of god is something else” - if you are closed to the possibility of changing your opinion, it’s not very useful. Now it may be extremely unlikely that any evidence can be provided that will change your opinion - but in the case of a hypothetical which is exactly what we’re supposing, you can hypothesize how you would react in such a situation.
Comparisons to other supernatural beliefs are indeed useful - but if someone gave me a hypothetical… if a horse with a horn and wings flew down and landed next to me, would I believe in unicorns? Hallucinations, hoaxes, and other possibilities would certainly come to mind, but it would certainly be a piece of evidence towards changing my stance on unicorns that would deserve further investigations. I wouldn’t merely say “hmm, I know unicorns don’t exist” and pretend it never happened.
Part of being a skeptic is quite the opposite of being closed minded. You should be open to any possibilities that there can be evidence for. Even if you correctly assess that the possibility that the evidence will never materialize is miniscule, you still should be open to any rational possibility if the evidence somehow becomes available.
Consider I may have ingested some hallucinogenic. Seek help.
Water, air or food has been contaminated with such hallucinogenic. Seek help.
Possibly caused by disease (epidemic), mass contamination of water, food or air. Aliens.
Evidence of what? Because it would be fairly difficult to tell deserving Christians from undeserving ones. It’s not like they are wearing a sign on their foreheads. Most everybody around me claims to be a Christian. They certainly believe so, even the ones that by their own standards should burn in hell. Most atheists like myself are either deeply in the closet or fairly discreet. How will we know who/why got taken?
But even if we were open to the possibility of god’s existence, there is a much longer list of plausible explanations from more to less probable (poisoning, disease, mental issues, aliens). We’ll more likely chalk it up to "totally logical explanation that I can’t come up with/prove right now. The world is full of such mysteries and we don’t use god as an explanation for them. We know that eventually we will probably find the answer, and it won’t be god.
I think we are seeing part of the reason why God doesn’t intervene more directly in human history. Because even when He does, some people are so stuck in their current thinking that they would reject even that, and that is a greater sin than the current ones of non-belief and rejection of the divine.
Atheism is faith-based - we see in many of the reactions here. “Even if it happened, it didn’t happen”.
Maybe God knows that a more generally indirect approach works better.
Regards,
Shodan