Any morals or ethics.
I agree with your statements. However I don’t think the claim is that theism is false only within certain social constructs.
Most brands of theism make claims about the nature of material reality, not merely social reality.
If theism were merely “the human abstraction of morals and ethics” as you claim, then most atheists would have no problem with it.
(And indeed, I quite happily attend services at my reform temple because the emphasis is on ethics and deeds rather than belief. The focus of the temple is on living a positive life, not on advancing a particular ontology.)
But most religions aren’t like that. They don’t just say “here’s how you should live”, but “here’s how the universe works”. And those claims are certainly target for falsification, particularly when they impinge on any moral or ethical messages (“God wants me to kill you!”)
Damn right. That’s probably why every book on relativity and quantum theory I’ve ever seen emphasizes how many decimal places the theories have been verified to. It just shows how scientists have more imagination than any prophet.
I don’t see how any of my examples involve verifying or falsifying morals or ethics. There is an implicit assumption that trustworthiness has been defined, and the question is whether the girlfriend or colleague have met that definition. They hypothesis about whether a girlfriend is true can be tested even if you think it is okay to mess around outside the relationship.
I agree that since moral and ethics are opinions in a sense, not statements about the truth of anything, they can’t be falsified.
There are many branches of philosophy studying ethics. Religion is different in that it claims to be able to define absolute morals and ethics derived from a supposed deity who handed them down to us. No deity, no special claim. We can argue about the ethics of this and that, but religion tells us that our arms too short to box with God, so we had better do what he says. If religion didn’t act this way, they would be the Ten Suggestions, not the Ten Commandments after all.
True. Theism is false in all social constructs.
Which doesn’t mean that theistic morals are always wrong (which is a word that isn’t well defined in this discussion.) Stopped clocks, etc.
Just because it’s an abstraction doesn’t mean it’s not real though. See math.
Some are some are not. Mine is not, but I don’t really want to get into my personal faith here. Just the scientific method in relation to atheism.
This is a forum for discussion.
It is expected that any participant will make the effort to have sufficient knowledge to participate.
If one does not possess sufficient knowledge or understanding, then it is expected that one will stay on the sidelines and learn or ask informed questions to learn.
If the topic is superstring theory, one is expected to have a basic understanding of the appropriate terms applied in physics.
If the topic is economic theory, then it is expected that one will be familiar with the writings of Smith, Galbraith, Keynes, Friedman, and even Marx.
Certainly not every thread in Great Debates is carried out at the graduate level of discourse, (and many are not carried out above the level of third graders),
HOWEVER, it is presumptuous and rude to enter a thread only to whine that one does not understand the basic terms employed in the discussion.
No; religion is a denial of ethics. It tells you to do things because God/the Prophet/whatever says so. And if tomorrow they say to do the opposite, you do that instead. Mindless obedience isn’t ethics.
It also tell you to ignore real people and real consequences, in favor of worrying about imaginary things like souls and the afterlife. You can’t behave morally very well if you aren’t treating people and the real world as what matters. Praying for people in Haiti is no more helpful to them than watching the news and laughing at them. And then there’s all the “moral” behavior like oppressing gays because God hates them, or spreading lies about condoms in hopes of tricking people into not using them; and therefore risking their real lives to protect their imaginary souls.
Religion is nothing more than a collection of lies and delusions that happen to appeal to people. There’s nothing profound about it. And certainly nothing moral.
It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
Well, somebody had to say it.
It may not require lab coats or publication, but what you described is NOT the scientific method. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
- People have many different beliefs, even when they share a religion. These beliefs encompass history of the natural world, human history, supernatural (non-measurable) reality, material reality, and ways of making decisions.
- People acquire their beliefs in different ways. Most of these ways are indirect – ie, they are told by someone else, who in turn acquired the belief somehow. There will always be some uncertainty in indirect learning. Other people may misreport the source of their own beliefs.
- Sources of belief may include:
a. Personal observation of the material world
b. Revelation or inspiration
c. Logical extrapolation and combination of existing belief
d. Systematic observation (typically the scientific method)
e. Indirect learning from others or from texts - Of these methods of acquiring belief, only systematic observation has been effective in generating new beliefs that can reliably be used to predict the state of the material world. It is not perfect in this, nor is it monotonically improving, but it is sufficient (for example) for most engineering required by our current civilisation.
- Indirect learning is quite reliable for acquiring beliefs that are reliable when learnt from others who make credible claims that the knowledge is originally sourced from the scientific method. Again, it is not perfect.
- Revelation and inspiration (and learning from those who source their beliefs in this way) have historically been extremely unreliable in generating material beliefs. (ITR claims to have counter examples, and I’d like to hear them).
- For non-material beliefs, the variety of different beliefs is proof that revelation is unreliable, unless a particular method of revelation can be distinguished from the others. Note that this must be the method of revelation, not the revealed beliefs. If the beliefs cannot be confirmed by another way of knowing, then the method itself must have something to distinguish it.
- Beliefs about a deity, unless they are materially testable or an inevitable conclusion from material tests, cannot be confirmed by another way of knowing.
- No method of revelation has a method of knowing which can be both distinguished and shown to have increased reliability through this distinction.
Not formally, no. We’re not expecting people to do statistical tests on the intervals between kisses. But it is a layman’s application of what the scientific method is all about - making hypotheses, making observations, doing experiments, and supporting or not supporting the hypothesis.
What do you think the scientific method involves?
Smashing the boyfriend and girlfriend together at extreme speeds to see if love particles can be detected in the collision debris?
Yes, it does. An abstraction is an idea about a thing, not the thing in itself.
I think you are confusing “useful” with “real”.
So…your argument is based on what you like and what you find easier to believe? Are you in fact saying truth and the universe define themselves according to your desires? Or that what you desire *must *be true because if it weren’t true you wouldn’t desire it?
But that’s psychology, not epistemology or ontology. People believe in idea X and X is a powerful motivator of positive behavior. That doesn’t mean that X is objectively true. God could well be the biggest placebo in history.
Nonsense. Ethics encompasses both right and wrong. I would expect an atheistic perspective to conclude divine absolute morality to be fundamentally flawed. For it to be flawed however, concepts of right and wrong need to exist in the first place. Worrying about “imaginary things” is indeed worrying.
Worst euphemism for the sex act I’ve ever read. 
But it would justify all those misspellings of “hadron”.