There is an entire spectrum of worldviews within what you’re referring to (incorrectly) as sanity and insanity. An autistic child is not insane. He merely perceives differently. A man who believes that he is the wealthiest man alive simply because he is unaware of anyone wealthier than he is not insane. He is merely ignorant. And a man who presumes that his experience is an objective standard for all other men is not insane. He is merely mistaken.
Fine.
Then, I submit that there are billions of testimonies that God is indeed real and indeed manifests within a person’s experience. Statistically, atheism is insignificant.
Funny, I was preached to for years, and even read the Bible, but none of it meant anything to me. I thought that people of faith were fools. I did not experience God until I “discovered” Him independently.
And let’s be careful not to equivocate when we speak of Christianity. There is Christendom, which is a politico-hierarchical organization. And then there are those who love, whether they in India, Africa, or on the SDMB.
The only thing I take on faith is my own existence, since I cannot prove that I exist. All else, I take on evidence. So, I’m not at all sure that you take less on faith than I do.
An ignoratio elenchi. His claim is unfounded on manifold levels.
Libertarian, do you truly think that you would have come to believe what you currently believe concerning God, Jesus and Christianity if no information whatsoever concerning these entities had ever crossed your path? To say that all the preaching and witnessing didn’t influence you at all is disingenuous, to say the least.
Personally, the fact that there are billions of testimonies that God is real doesn’t effect me for three reasons:
There are billions that believe in other gods
The billions that believe in the Christian god don’t exactly agree with each other as to aspects
I don’t think reality can really be voted into existence. The earth wasn’t flat until enough people thought it was round, y’know.
I think the proof of whether belief is a choice is quite simple. I choose a belief. If anyone can switch to that belief and show proof, they win.
Belief: If you cut off your hand, it will grow back.
Proof: What are you waiting for? Cut it off.
Choosing to trust God versus not-trusting God still depend on the belief in God.
Someone breaks into my house. I have a gun. I can protect myself, or I can choose to trust the police to protect me.
If I don’t believe the police exist, I cannot trust them to protect me. This is independent of belief about the quality or ability or tendencies of the police. I might believe in the police and still not trust them, for example, because they are too far away, or understaffed, or just don’t care. But the choice to trust them to protect me can only come if I believe they exist.
Of course I’m aware of the difference between autism and insanity so let’s just say that all “cognitive normals” will agree that arithmetic agrees pretty well with their common experience. I do not assume that my personal experience is some kind of objective standard but that it is more or less consistent with what the bulk of cognitive normals experience and that this experience more or less conforms to something, OR (objective reality), which is, in some sense “out there”. My whole purpose in this thread has been to show that you are using a false analogy when you make this claim:
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You claim that “faith” is required to believe in arithmetic, medical science and finally the specific doctrines of the Christian faith. If OR exists and can be percieved with some accuracy this analogy is demonstrably false. Peano’s axioms, medical, and all other science is definitely well rooted in that objective reality as experienced by the bulk of people everywhere (excluding I suppose your autistics, etc…). The specifics of the Christian, Muslim, Scientologist or any other faith are simply not. Ask any random group of people around the world what number follows 4 and they will say 5. Ask them about god and you will get a thousand different answers.
If OR either does not exist or cannot be accurately percieved then we are not in a world where “truth” can meaningfully exist. Christianity at this point becomes meaningless as well since it is based on certain claims about a certain person Jesus, who supposedly existed in OR.
Or perhaps OR does exist but mathematics and science are NOT based on it and are arbitrary constructions requiring only “faith” to believe in. If so I can now construct my own rules of arithmetic. For instance I now declare that the number 1000 is followed by the number 1,000,000,000. I now only have to deposit $1000 dollars and put one more in to retire comfortably. I’m sure the bank will agree.
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Hmm… Now who’s “drawing distinctions without differences”. Which god? The god of the JW’s, the Mormons? the Baptists? the Muslims? the many gods of the Hindus? This is my whole point. Nobody agrees on this stuff but they do largely agree on scientific matters. And it’s interesting that you seem to conclude that my argument is atheistic. Actually I’m an agnostic but my arguments could have easily been made by any theist, even a Christian. I simply object to your attempt to put the specific details of Christianity on the same level as physical science. Faith is what is needed for belief in Christ or any other religious figure. Faith is NOT relevant to the sciences and to claim it is - is to undermine the foundations of science and reason. Note that I am not claiming that faith or religion is invalid, but it is, if you like, “another way of knowing” apart from science.
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That’s funny, I though you were saying that we accept things like arithmetic and medical science on faith. I guess we don’t and there’s evidence for these things after all. :rolleyes:
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Really. How is it unfounded? The poster claims that he cannot believe given what he knows and asks why god should condemn him for this. You yourself bring up autistics, schizophrenics and others. Mightn’t this person be “Christianity impaired” in some sense? And if so why should god condemn him? I’m not ready to torture people for not accepting the Peano axioms, why would god be ready to do so for people who can’t accept Jesus? This is directly on the point.
No problem. I figured I would throw some good old time Calvinism into the mix. And it does answer the OP’s question, even if it requires you to consider yourself a disgusting, pathetic worm.
Actually, those are two analogies. And false is redundant when paired with analogy, since analogies are metaphorical by definition.
It never fails that the materialist must sooner or later resort to the sort of mysticism for which materialism is so famous: in this instance, the Objective Reality that is in-some-sense-out-there. Naturally, you believe that you, as a “cognitive normal”, take your own awareness from the mystical OR. You might be surprised to learn that I am neither autistic nor schizophrenic nor in any other way cognitively abnormal. I, too, am a cognitive normal, and yet my own experience with God is vastly different from yours. In fact, it is different from all other cognitive normals who believe in God or in a god or gods. But then, so is my experience with music. And with art. And with everything that I treasure. Does music not exist because it moves me differently than it moves my wife?
You uphold Peano’s arithmetic as an objective standard. And yet it is well known that the Peano axioms define a system that is necessarily either incomplete if it is consistent or else inconsistent if it is complete. Is this the nature of the mysterious Objective Reality? That it is either incomplete or inconsistent? Does the supposed correlation between Peano’s arithmetic and Objective Reality constitute what you would call a “false analogy”? Or is this yet another of materialism’s have-its-cake-and-eat-it-too miracles?
I think what you are struggling to describe is not the difference between something that is “well rooted” in objective reality and something that is not, but rather the difference between something that is scientific and something that is not. A scientific theory must be falsifiable. And what a scientific test proves is whether something is false (but not whether something is true).
Incidentally, there are in fact an infinite number of answers about what number follows 4. I think you meant to say “integer”, but in that case, you have merely defined into existence that which you seek as an answer. Remember — the Induction Axiom (Peano’s 5th) is unproven, just as all axioms are. There is no proof that 4 has any successor at all. And in fact, there are various implications with respect to whether the Induction Axiom is stated in first order logic — {F(1) & (Am)[F(m)—>F(m+1)]}—>(An)F(n), where F is a free varialbe — or in second order logic — (AF){F(1) & (Am)[F(m)—>F(m+1)]—>(An)F(n)}, where F is bound by a universal qualifier: (AF). Which version is real?
An ad hoc fallacy.
You are attempting to formulate an argument to show that your predicate about Christianity is true based on the evidence of your assertion about objective reality. It is in fact entirely possible that God Himself is the Objective Reality, and that truth is His very essence. If this is the case, then it makes sense that the material world and its axiomatic systems are either incomplete or inconsistent since the spiritual world is the real one.
If you were to set your own rules for arithmetic, you would be that latest in a very long line of people who have. Number theory has more esoteric, transclassic arithmetics than I have time to cite for you. But I don’t believe that you meant to declare that bankers are they who have decided what arithmetics are objectively valid; bankers merely have chosen an arithmetic that is subjectively valid for their own purposes. If you want to play their game, then you must play by their rules. But that does not make their rules any sort of objective standard. If their rules held objectively, then photon emissions might be utterly predictable. But of course, they can’t be because to be predictable, the particles would have to be at rest. And if the particles are at rest, then entropy is at one hundred percent. So, you see, there is more to heaven and earth than compound interest.
Well, it takes very little to undermine the foundations of science and reason.
Take the foundation of science, for instance: the aforementioned falsifiability, the core attribute of every theory that may be considered truly scientific; i.e., if an hypothesis cannot be tested for whether it is false, then that hypothesis is unscientific. And yet, lo and behold, the Theory of Falsifiability itself is — well — not falsifiable! It must be taken on faith just like any other axiom. There is no test to show whether Popper’s famous hypothesis is false.
And take the foundation of reason as well: the Law of Noncontradiction (A v ~A). If A is true, then Not A must be false, and vice-versa. From this basic principle springs a plenum of axioms, such as the Identity Axiom (A = A), the Primary Axiom of Implication (modus ponens: A -> B, A, :: B), the Secondary Axiom of Implication (modus tolens: A -> B, ~B::~A), and so forth. Within any system of logic that is developed axiomatically in this manner, there must of necessity exist statements that are themselves not provable within the system — propositions that Godel called “undecidable”. Thus, a complete logical system is always contradictory and a consistent logical system is always circular. We find that either a proposition might be either A or Not A, or else it might be a proposition that is itself begged from a premise: a petitio principii. Reason ultimately fails under the weight of its own rules.
With respect to distinctions without differences, I did not draw them — you did. I make none of the arbitrary distinctions that you and Czar make. A man who loves ([symbol]agape[/symbol]) is a Christian by definition.
[…shrug…]
There is, as I said, evidence for everything from my frame of reference except that I exist. And likewise, every subjective frame of reference perceives reality differently; that is, no two experiences have ever been the same owing to the nature of the chronosynclasticinfundibulum. No two people can ever have seen the same thing from the same place at the same time. Thus, a few years ago, you and I would be on about the same page, and you would be declaring me to be cognitively normal. But as the years have passed and our experiences have diverged, I am now what you might call insane.
Because he has committed the cardinal sin of materialist philosophy: he has denied his antecedant. No one but God Himself may say whether the poster is condemned. And yet God has already decided otherwise.
First let me say that I’m well aware of Godel’s Incompleteness theorem and its implications for scientific philosophy. I never claimed in this thread that I could “prove” Peano’s axioms or the foundations of medical science. Indeed, these systems will always remain ultimately unproven in any rigorous sense. I am simply pointing out that most “cognitive normals” (of whom I would certainly consider you to be and not autistic or schizophrenic) do not believe in these things for quite the same reason they might believe in Christianity. Peano’s axioms concern the natural numbers, also called the counting numbers. They are the numbers we deal with in real life and we have some intuitive sense about how they should behave and how they should not. Hence, we do NOT take Peano’s axioms on pure faith. We see that they seem to resonate with experience, likewise medical knowledge and other sciences. This concept of “resonating” is admittedly fuzzy and perhaps even “mystical” if you want to call it that. But my point stands. Belief in a specific religion and mathematical reason do not rest on the same ground. If they did we should see much more unity on religious issues than we do in the world.
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Somehow I knew you’d bring that up. I’m well aware of esoteric systems of arithmetic where an integer may have a successor other than n+1. But you brought up the Peano axioms which concern the natural numbers, the numbers we use to count things like money. Hence my remark about the bank. You said that if you deal with the bank you must play by their rules. Actually, they must play by the rules of counting that everyone already knows. The bank is constrained, not you.
Your claim in this thread was that faith is needed to believe in the Peano axioms. You can call me an autistic materialist if you want but I do not take such things on faith as they concern entities (natural numbers) that have a direct bearing on the natural world that I observe. I likewise base my assessment of a medical treatment on how well it seems to correlate with my own knowledge of the body and human physiology, not on pure faith in the magic man in the white robe.
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The whole historic view of the Christian faith is based on claims of a historic Christ, miracles, resurrection, etc… that really happened in a real world at a certain specific time in a specific place. God might be the “real” OR but, well, now who’s being mystical?
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That is certainly not the definition of Christianity as understood by any fundamentalist or even mainstream Christian. Since I love my mom even I (an agnostic) am a Christian in that view. This is also clearly not the kind of “Christianity” that the OP had problems with. You can make up your own definition if you want but even most of your own co-religionists don’t agree.
And now:
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Say what you want but we have a contradiction (assuming you believe in medicine and arithmetic). In 1) we have the idea that certain things about mathematics and science are taken on faith just as religious ideas are. In 2) we are told that faith is only needed to believe in one’s own existence and there is “evidence” for all else.
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That’s a mighty broadminded view but again, not the one taken by most of your co-religionists and not the one that the OP has trouble with. I have met Bible thumpers and believe me Stoid (and me and even probably you - given your somewhat esoteric theology) are definitely going to hell if they are right.
I think JThunder is failing to grasp the distinction between a belief and a delusion.
Beliefs are derived from our experiences and principles of thought – we have no control over what we come to believe (what controls that which controls the belief?).
Delusions – conclusions about the world not based on evidence and bearing to relationship to reality – can indeed be chosen.
I believe you mean it when you say you made a choice; I think we mean different things by the word “choice,” however.
You say you had reasons to trust that things would work out. Could you, given those reasons, have chosen to believe that God wasn’t in control?
When you reach a belief based on reasons, the word I would use is “conclude.” You (possibly) concluded that the weight of evidence suggested that God was in control, and you chose to act on that belief.
If that’s what you mean, then I can understand. A person can evaluate the evidence before them, can consider their experiences of the world, and perceive that the weight of evidence supports one belief over another. When they’ve done that, they conclude that the supported belief is accurate and adopt it.
A person cannot (at least, I cannot) look at the evidence before me, perceive that the weight of evidence supports belief A over belief B, and then choose to adopt belief B despite the evidence. As soon as I perceive that the weight of evidence supports belief A, I believe A; if I “choose” to believe B instead, I am pretending.
Similarly, if I look at the evidence and see nothing to support either belief A or belief B, if I “choose” to believe either A or B, I am pretending.
Nor can I step back and choose to perceive evidence in support of one belief or another. It is, of course, possible that I unconsciously weight the evidence in favor of one belief more highly than I weight the other evidence; it is possible that my bias taints the evidence and therefore taints my belief. But before I can consciously choose to weight one set of evidence more highly than I’d otherwise weight it, I must be aware of how I’d otherwise weight it – and as soon as I’m aware of that, I’ve already adopted the belief, and any artificial weighting that comes afterwards will be sheerest pretense.
I can pretend, of course. I can drive along and thank a stoplight that turns yellow as I pass through it, “believing” that by doing so I honor the God of Stoplights and encourage Him to give me more green lights in the future. But if it ever became important to me, I’d drop the pretense and gamble that there’s no such god of stoplights to be honored by my thanks.
Thing is, when it became important to you, you gambled that Jehovah (?) actually exists. You weighed the evidence before you, saw that there were reasons to believe that God was actually in control. Am I right in thinking that, on looking at it, you concluded the evidence for God’s control was stronger, more convincing than the evidence for God’s lack of control? Or at least concluded that the potential benefits of acting as if God is in control outweighed the potential risk of having made an incorrect conclusion?
If that’s what you concluded, then I understand your decision to trust in God: it was based on a conclusion (reached without choice) that God was probably in control.
If, however, you looked at the evidence, perceived that the evidence for God’s (presumably benevolent) control was no greater than the evidence against God’s benevolent control, and nevertheless decided to “believe” that God is in control, then I wouldn’t describe what you did as “believe.” When I make such a decision, I call it “pretend.”
As I stated above, however, I don’t think you’re pretending. I don’t think we use the word “believe” differently; I think we use the word “choose” differently, and where you say “choose” I say “conclude.”
And I do hope it doesn’t sound like I’m belittling what you’ve gone through or belittling your faith. I do recognize that your mind might just work in a way fundamentally different from my own, and that you’re neither pretending nor concluding, but really are choosing your beliefs in a way that is totally foreign to me, as foreign as the idea of choosing what color one sees the sky as being. But I’m hoping that our brains work in ways comprehensible to one another, and that we’re just using different words to describe similar processes.
One day, Scylla is just sitting around, and this guy comes up to him, and says, “Listen to me for a moment.”
And the guy lays out a simple argument, in plain language, that demonstrates the absolute necessity that God must, and does exist. It’s extraordinarily erudite, but not complicated. Elegant at a level beyond anything Scylla has ever heard, and completely obvious after it is understood.
Scylla is dumbfounded.
“Where did you find this?” Scylla asks.
The guy smiles. “I’m Him. I knew you couldn’t get through it any other way. Don’t worry.”
Peter needed a fish to swallow a shekel piece, and then jump into his net. Scylla and Stoid need a logical proof. I once had the same problem. My miracle wasn’t profound logical proof. But that doesn’t mean yours won’t be.
Just keep on loving each other, OK? We’ll let God handle the miracles.
I was simply pointing out one possible alternative to the proposition that the Lord would abandon those who find faith to hard a path.
I don’t know the perfect logical argument for the existence of God, and I can’t even claim to prove that such an argument exists. But, I have faith in God, so, for me it seems likely that He could arrange words in an appropriate order to satisfy Scylla’s intellect, and change his mind. I have seen it happen on this board, on other subjects.
Or, it might happen another way, as it did for me. I didn’t get answers. But I did get faith.
The dogma of specific theology is a human thing. God does not have those limits. If you can’t walk, He will carry you.
[quote]
Actually, those are two analogies. And false is redundant when paired with analogy, since analogies are metaphorical by definition.
[quote]
Huh? I didn’t see the word “metaphorical” anywhere in that link. What I did see was “Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.” If the alledged similarity does not in fact exist, then the analogy is false.
Triskadecamus
But do you agree that your alternative does not affect what I should do? Whether there is no way that I will ever believe in God, or if God will make Himself known to me, there is no point to my squeezing my eyes tight a chanting “I do believe, I do believe” (unless I’m at a Metallica show ), and the evangelists are wasting their time?
Huh? I didn’t see the word “metaphorical” anywhere in that link. What I did see was “Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.” If the alledged similarity does not in fact exist, then the analogy is false.
Triskadecamus
But do you agree that your alternative does not affect what I should do? Whether there is no way that I will ever believe in God, or if God will make Himself known to me, there is no point to my squeezing my eyes tight a chanting “I do believe, I do believe” (unless I’m at a Metallica show ), and the evangelists are wasting their time?
AND to believe that God is a disgusting pathetic worm-torturer.G
and Dr Z- I am so glad someone else knows Xantor! At least we two will escape the Wugglemort!
now seriously, I’ll add this-
Some have had experiences which seem to compel…
belief in the existence of a Creator;
that there is a specific identity & path to that Creator;
that said Creator & path can be trusted (the real meaning
of “faith”);
and vice versa, some have had experiences which leave them
totally unconvinced and maybe even against believing a Creator exists or that said Creator is trustworthy or that there is a specific path to that Creator;
and then there is the vast middle that could go either way
depending on what they want to believe & do. I don’t see how anyone can claim that a Creator cannot exist. I can see how one can be unconvinced.
I have a close friend who had experiences which convinced her of God, Jesus & the charismatic Christian faith (poltergeist phenomena after playing with Ouija boards & seances which were ended when she met, far out of her hometown, a deliverance minister who told her all that was happening & then came when her family called him to successfully “clean house”.)
She since has become antagonistic to it all because she could not reconcile it with other things she wanted to do. She’s made her choice & will have to work it out with God/Jesus in the Judgement.
I look at nature & life & all & cannot believe there is no Creator;
I can understand why some would doubt the Creator’s trustworthiness but I choose to trust as that would make life absurd & meaningless to me. If I trust in a Creator, it seems natural that He/She would want relationship with us- and such a path to the Creator would be universally true & also individually relevant & culturally effective. I find the revelation of the Creator tranmitted through the Jews & culminating in Jesus Christ to fit those three criteria. In all this, some beliefs seemed totally natural to me & some I had to choose.
Now- for those who claim they cannot believe, I’ll acknowledge that may be true or it may be an excuse for personal irresponsibility. That also will be worked out with God/Jesus in the Judgement. I don’t believe anyone will be thrown into an eternal torture chamber- I do believe everyone will be confronted with their lives in the light of God/Jesus’s love & fairness & we (Christians included) will find large parts of our lives which are out of harmony with God/Jesus to be trashed & burned. That will hurt. It will hurt like Hell. It will be Hell. And whatever is left of us when that is done will be glad it’s over & able to love, trust & follow God/Jesus unreservedly.
if you want but I do not take such things on faith as they concern entities (natural numbers) that have a direct bearing on the natural world that I observe. I likewise base my assessment of a medical treatment on how well it seems to correlate with my own knowledge of the body and human physiology, not on pure faith in the magic man in the white robe.