I didn’t like ITR’s use of the word “lies” either, but I think you’re wrong here. You may not know whether God exists or not, but that doesn’t remove it to the field of opinion. There is still an objective truth to the matter, and a statement can either confirm to that truth or not. I think I know what is true about God’s existence, and so does ITR. (We have different beliefs about what is true, but we both believe we are correct.) The fact that we can’t prove which of our belief’s is true and which is false is irrelevant. Either the statement “There is a God” is a lie by ITR’s usage or “There is no God” is. It’s needlessly inflammatory usage, IMO, but it is perfectly consistent.
No, a “lie” isn’t just a false statement, it’s an intentionally false statement. You have to know a statemt is false in order to be lying. George Costanza’s famous quotation is true - it’s not a lie if you believe it.
Necessarily the major bones of contention between Christians and the secular set are not questions where you fact check by looking it up on Wikipedia. Diogenes asked me which of my childhood learnings I was displeased with. I answered him with that list because those are the important issues that I consider key in my life, and my new perspectives on those questions are directly related to my eventual conversion. If you don’t approve of using describing a stance on those major issues as “lies”, then just forget that I used that word.
(Incidentally I could list plenty of actual lies that I learned in school that were aimed at Christians. For instance, the claim that everyone prior to Christopher Columbus all believed that the Earth is flat. That’s a whopper that no one has any excuse for repeating.)
I guess not.
And what did I say that contradicted that? Take it up with ITR champion if you think it’s worth arguing about.
Perhaps the notorious spaghetti monster is sometimes brought up for that reason, but you certainly didn’t bring it up for that reason in post 142. What you (and Dawkins) said is that the real Christian theologians don’t deserve an answer because of the imaginary theologians who deal with the flying spaghetti monster. This would like me saying that the real economists who study inflationary expectations don’t deserve an answer because of the imaginary economists who study flying spaghetti stocks. As I and others have said before, the flying spaghetti monster is a silly argument even by atheist standards, and atheists would look slightly less ridiculous even if tehy stopped using it.
You clearly do not understand the argument.
We frequently hear that humans are apes on the straight dope message board and elsewhere. While those who make the statement may sometimes be joking, in some cases it’s clear that they mean it to downgrade the status of humans and to reduce the rights, responsibilities, and respect due to humans. That would be what I mean when I object to being taught that humans are merely animals.
Utter balls, and I challenge you to find one example of someone saying humans are apes to “downgrade the status of humans and to reduce the rights, responsibilities, and respect due to humans” on these boards.
Humans are quite possibly apes (I don’t know the exact taxonomic standards). Primates. Animals. Does this mean we’re not smarter, more socially aware, more advanced, more technologically and intellectually superior to other animals? No; we are all those things. But we’re still animals. Should any other animals evolve to a point where they’re as smart and so on as us, they would likewise still be animals, but they would be peers. I do not feel that saying we’re animals at all downgrades us; it’s just a category.
Flip it around; saying that we are not animals belittles our achievements as beings of the same family as chimps. Look at who our closest relations are, and what we’ve done compared to them; highly impressive. But say we’re intrinsically better than they are, not animals, but that humans are a category unto themselves and all that success is just expected. Normal. Put another way; I find the idea of being the rising ape much more impressive than the fallen angel.
It’s not that I disprove of using the term, it’s that using the term is false usage, and if committed knowingly, a dishonest falsification.
What has that got to do with Christians, if everyone was said to have believed it??
I find it puzzling that you can come so close to understanding the point of the argument and yet miss it so totally. The analogy you provide is almost valid, except that you have to remove “real” and “imaginary” from it – because, quite frankly, there is no such difference between the spaghetti monster and the Lord. You cannot prove one to more valid as a theology than the other – they are both equally unlikely – only your bias towards one of them makes you deem it more likely. This is precisely Dawkins’s point: there is no foundation in logic, science, or reason for one of those imaginary beings to exist while the other doesn’t. Christian theologians do not deserve preferential treatment compared to believers in Thor or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, especially not when they venture out of the realm of belief (which is fine) into the realm of logic or reason.
Try the thread from last year titled “the human plight”. The original poster asks for philosophical explanations for the tragedy of human suffering. Several responses mentioned the status of people as apes (or monkeys) to argue that we’ve no reason to view human suffering as a tragedy. Larry Borgia’s entire response to the question was, “We’re agressive, violent apes.”
Or try another thread about teaching our children to be liars. It actually started with someone claiming that we should teach our children to lie to give them a competitive advantage. When others objected on moral grounds, we got arguments about dishonest chimpanzees as proof that humans have no moral grounds to be honest. (Then again, some said that since chimpanzees are dishonest we clearly have no need to teach our children dishonesty, since it obviously comes naturally.)
However, I view that sort of thing as just a small part of the issue. The big part is this. Animals can only take pleasure in animal pleasures: food, sex, mutual grooming and so on. In as much as they do “good” deeds, they do them only in pursuit of pleasure, even if the pleasure comes in terms of ‘status within the herd’ or something like that. Christianity teaches to do good because it is good. That doctrine is fundamentally different from what we can get as an extension of animal behavior, even a big extension. The Christian approach broadens and deepens our understanding of goodness past merely being “smart” and “socially aware”. It includes those things, but also pushes individuals to cleanse themselves of all bad feelings, motivations, and habits and to replace them with good feelings, motivations, and habits.
I will make one last post on the flying spaghetti monster and then leave it focus on the bigger and better issues in this thread. You say that there’s no difference between belief in God and belief in the Flying Spaghetti, because neither set of believers offers evidence to back up their belief. (The fact that the second set of believers doesn’t exist, we’ll lay aside for now.) Believers in God offer tons of evidence to back up their beliefs. You, obviously, do not accept that evidence, and neither does Richard Dawkins or a number of other people. (Or to be precise, you do not believe that portion of the evidence which you are aware of.) Nonetheless, the evidence exists. That makes the situation wholly different from the situation with the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for which the claim of “no evidence” is actually true. That’s what makes it a silly argument.
Suppose in a certain trial the prosecution spends six months arguing for the defendant’s guilt. Then the defendant’s lawyer stands up and says, “The Prosecution has offered no reason to believ my client is guilty. Therefore there is no more foundation for his guilt than for the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The defense rests.” If you understand the weakness of this defense, then you understand how the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster argument looks to most people.
(my bolding). Seems to me that “Frankly i’m surprised we’ve made it this far” tends indeed to suggest Larry considers humans to be better than these animals. I question your motivation in leaving out half of his answer, a half I feel invalidates your point, while claiming your half as Larry’s “entire response”.
I’m afraid i’ll need an actual link, please.
No, I tend to disagree with that. I seem to recall that there have been examples of what’s been deemed as altruism among apes, though if possible a person with better knowledge on this than me should address it.
Your Christian approach. 
My own philosophical position likewise goes into the pros of altruism, why we should help people, an understanding that we should feel empathy for others and we should force ourselves to act upon those empathic feelings. It pushes me to try and cleanse myself of bad feelings and the like. My own views are pretty similar to yours on this. No-one is denying that humans are better than other animals (by our standards), and that’s the point you seem to be missing. That I think humans are animals doesn’t make my ideas of human status any higher or lower than yours. If anything, that I consider humans to be in a category with all the fun “low” animals, yet have considerable status, makes us much more impressive than your putting them alone on a pedestal is. Your way would have us merely and meekly submitting to our predetermined standards of acceptability. My way has us pushing our way to the top, carving our own status from a beginning of essential nothingness.
Which is more impressive; the football team made of top players from around the world, bought a by a rich owner, sponsored by the most famous companies, winning the title; or a formerly nothing, hard-working team from the bottom of the ranks beating their way to the top to win? I would say earning it is more impressive than being gifted it.
I’d like to say that I agree with ITR Champion; the Flying Spaghetti monster and so on are good for showing arguments, but all they do is be confusing and piss believers off.
Much better to compare a real religion than a made up one. The problem with this, of course, is that many believers will say “Ah, they’re wrong, but that they believe shows they can feel it but they just happen to be mistaken about the truth”; in other words, they might not feel the same incomphrensibility of understanding that many atheists feel because either they empathise or they think the other’s beliefs are understandable within their own system of beliefs. I don’t really know if there’s a really good analogy to show this; all we can really do is say that really, we’re not lying, we don’t believe in any gods, and really, we honestly don’t see the evidence that they exist, and really, we’re not in denial.
And the reason the Christian obeys these altruistic Christian teachings is that, when the rubber hits the road, doing the actions is more pleasurable than not doing them. The feel “better” for doing it, and they’d feel guilty if they didn’t. Yes, this is in their case because of the added motivations and concerns trained into them by their church, but when you come down to it, it’s still just about chasing pleasure and avoiding pain.
Let me focus on the art example for a minute. While some of what neuroscientists believe is not backed up by fact, we have undoubtedly made progress in physical understanding of perception. We know where the optic nerve runs, what sorts of rods and cones we have for percieving light, and so forth. Some of this information may have been useful for some artists in minor ways. On the whole, I see no reason to believe that it has led to better art. To make a great painting one must focus on artistic aspects. Knowing exactly which shades of color the eye can distinguish maybe be helpful technically, but it cannot replace a good artistic sense.
The late 20th century was a time of enormous scientific progress, yet I’d say that didn’t lead to a corresponding progress in art (or in any of the other areas I mentioned.) Obviously I can’t prove that statement with finality, nor know for sure how future generations will judge our art, but we can see that the art community gets less respect than in earlier eras, and that a proper appreciation of art and music and literature is not held in such high esteem as it once was.
As for predicting that neuroscience will lead to better art in the future, we’ll have to wait and see. But while our discussion about the nature of the brain has included a lot of predictions about future discoveries, I can’t be to impressed why knowledge that is yet to be gained. I’d say this at least: if that particular prediction comes true, it would be a reversal of current trends.
I am sorry if pointing out their lack of proof and inherent logical fallacy pisses them off, it is however, still there.
No it isn’t, precisely because of the instant respect shown to a religious believer vs. an adult who says they have an imaginary friend. Dawkins says again and again in his book that he could lay everything out in a nonconfrontational manner and not upset anyone, but that will only be used by theologians as leverage. His book isn’t about sweet talking anyone. The one regret I have with *The God Delusion *is a lot of it seems to be self fellating when he talks about his other books or television debates or powerful Royal Society friends because if this book was written by a 16 year old drop out the argument would remain untarnished.
Is that answer really worse than “We’re aggressive, violent humans”? If anything, I would say that the former has more explanatory power, because we can see that the problems run deeper than our intelligence.
Aside from begbert2’s point, there are animals who will behave altruistically even when they have no pleasure what-so-ever. Why? Because altruism, and morality in general, are the solution of the problem of social behavior, that is, the answer to the question “How can creatures with divergent and sometimes contradictory interests work together?”
When most people hear explanations like this they feel that this isn’t “real” morality. I have this intuition myself, but why should it be true? For one, we don’t accuse other evolutionary adaptations of being mere imitations: the wings and light bone structure of birds both have evolutionary origins, yet no one claims that what birds do isn’t “real” flight. Secondly, when people talk about the degradation of morality they often claim that it will result in the destruction of some social institution, or society itself, for example, the objections to gay marriage. Clearly, even God’s morality serves a practical purpose.
If morality is the solution to a design problem, does it really matter whether it was found by a conscious or unconscious process? I don’t see why it should.
Re the “violent aggressive apes” comment. It was really just a flip comment. For the record, I’m aware that humans can love, create art, do science and many other wonderful things. And I do hold that humans take moral precedence over other animals. I love my cats, but if one of them had to be sacrificed for a stranger’s baby, I’d reluctantly go along. I’m generally fond of humans, being one myself. However we certainly are a violent, aggressive lot, as a brief look at the news makes plain. And we are primates.
I’m glad to see people are reading my posts, though! 
I would suggest that maybe we are in fact aware of the evidence. But none of the evidence is conclusive. You interpret it one way, I interpret it another way. And apparently, when we reject your theistic interpretation, you assume we are not privy to all the evidence you have.
So do share. What evidence do you have up your sleeve that puts God head and shoulders above FSM? Admittedly, God has an advantage. Billions of believers have spent hundreds of years gathering all the proof they can, so I would guess some of it is pretty snazzy.