I wouldn’t have noticed this post, but I was walking past my Horseshit Detector™ and it exploded and knocked me through an interior wall.
Utter nonsense. I know a number of religious people who aren’t try to legislate that everyone lives by their rules and aren’t trying to make the US a worse place to live, or believe that they are persecuted, and are more tolerant than you two seem to be.
And simply avoiding being offensive to others does not constitute moral or intellectual cowardice (though it doesn’t sound like much fun to me).
The OP’s friend is made of straw. What does being a logical person mean? Only Vulcan’s are logical about everything, and not even they are in the reboot. Do logical intelligent people believe in alchemy and astrology? Isaac Newton did. So, if the question is just an existence proof for people logical and intelligent about something believing in God, we can close the thread now. If we expand it to something interesting about whether believing in God is logical, the theists seem to have conceded already.
Not all religious people try to legislate morality - some are even in favor of social justice. But pretty much all who do wish to legislate morality are religious. This is not a matter of left and right - atheist Ayn Rand was against legislating morality also.
If you allow that the Catholics might be right in saying that globs of cells have souls, it is hard to justify abortion rights. Much easier if you force them to try to prove it or else get out of the way.
We already can do things undreamed of by the old version of God. We don’t have to stop the sun to play baseball at night - we’ve got lights.
They eyewitnesses wrote it down at the time. Plus we have lots of evidence from people who reported it at the time. Plus, the state of the world changed as one would expect it would from the events of the time.
Now, let’s consider the most recent really big miracle, the resurrection. No on wrote it down for decades afterward. And, most telling, the people living in Jerusalem at the time acted as if nothing happened at all.
Not to mention writing it down doesn’t make it true. Joseph Smith wrote about finding and translating the hieroglyphics at the time. However, it turns out his translation (or the one given to him) was totally bogus.
A thousand pieces of crap don’t add up to even one fact.
I think you need to buy a new detector since the old one malfunctioned badly.
Ah, so you’re claiming that you know what takes place in my mind better than I do?
I am able to communicate why I believe, but not able to condense it to short, simple message board posts, as you constantly demand that I do. There are many things in this world that can’t be compressed in that way. That’s why books and magazine articles and college courses and colloquiums and so forth exist. A person who insisted that everything be condensed to short internet posts and refused to read any further than that would doom himself to missing virtually the entirety of human intellectual experience.
My earlier post notwithstanding, I usually don’t get involved in threads on God’s existence–if only because nearly all the arguments are pretty shopworn by now. But the thread title asked about the “logic” of belief, and this reminded me of a recent article on a similar topic. IMO “logical” belief in God is possible, but not in the way usually assumed by non-Theists. In fact, the problem with most of these existence of god threads is that one side has different assumptions about the role of god in religion than the other side.
Non-Theist arguments start with the non-existence of God and use that premise/conclusion to undermine the authority of acts/beliefs based on that God’s religion. I think most non-Theists are quite up-front about that approach, but IMO it leads them to believe that if they can just convince the believer that his/her god is phony, trust in the associated religion (and all the consequent evil that religion does) will automatically start to crumble.
Theists, of course, naturally want to defend the existence of their particular god–or at least the general concept of “God”. But what most don’t consciously realize is that their faith in God is largely a result of their adherence to the customs and values of their religion. IMO very few religious believers got that way after first being convinced of a god’s existence–St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus may be the only example. Most believers first find an affinity with religious doctrine as it is practiced in the community, and only later start to associate these practices in a way that suggests a particular form of god and the attendant supernatural beings. Certainly formal religious doctrine comes in to mold individual belief in a particular way, but IMO that only comes after the practice of the religion is already accepted by the individual.
Thus, when most non-Theists argue against Theists, they’re really just attacking the result of a personal lifestyle choice. Of course if you ask a Theist if his/her god is based on personal choice, most will unequivocally deny it and assert that their religion is based on faith in a mostly-unambiguous God. But as they start to lose the argument from this end (and quite frankly, the non-Theist’s argument is quite sound), the real reason for their belief in God re-asserts itself (often subconsciously) and they shift the argument in ways that make belief in God a derivative of their faith rather than its cause. This (rightly) frustrates non-Theists to no end, but IMO it is a logical consequence of the way most believers have developed a personal concept of “god”.
It is in this sense that I think belief in god is “logical”; as the natural conclusion of holding and analyzing certain shared practices and values. It may even be logical to accept the supernatural claims of a religion as a kind of cultural token–say, the various myths surrounding the Christmas celebration. Here again, disproving things like the Virgin Birth, the Star of Bethlehem, or the Three Wise Men will not get believers to stop attaching significance to the holiday. No believer celebrates Christmas because they believe these myths, they believe these myths because they celebrate Christmas, and they’re willing to re-interpret them or give them an outright pass in order to keep celebrating.
Who knows what goes on in your mind. I can only speak to what you say. Read this book, is not an intelligent argument.
Bullshit. You are just hiding behind a reading list to pretend that your decision to embrace Jesus was rational.
It is a fact that you won’t even try to explain it. It is a fact that you offer reading lists when asked. This, to me, suggests that you’re unable to put into words the steps of logical reasoning that you think lead to your decision.
I think the reason you’re unable to do that is that you haven’t examined those thoughts yourself. I’m not asking you to define in detail all the nuances of evolution. I’m asking for the logical chain that takes a person from non-belief to rock solid belief. And you can only see that chain as a bunch of books and magazines, not the coherent thoughts contained therein.
Has ITR or anyone else claimed that there is such a logical chain? that the process by which he came to believe in God—or anything else important—is strictly through following a chain of logic?
There may be a lot in what you say (and I also hesitate to get involved in these discussions), but I am a believer because of a personal experience that convinced me that God exists.
I won’t recount it because a) there is no reason for anyone (let alone strangers on a message board) to accept it as true and b) those who staunchly believe there is no God and no evidence of God would just dismiss it as a delusion.
But it is rational to act on one’s own experience and so I did. Frankly, it would have been much easier at the time to rationalize it away and go on as I had been. But in fact thinking about my faith and trying to follow Christ’s teachings has made me a little better person and helped me to do things for others, as well as made me happier. So continuing to practice my faith is entirely rational, because it has had positive effects.
ITR wrote this: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14166848&postcount=176
When asked what his intellectual reasons for being a Christian were.
This was some time ago, perhaps his opinion has changed. I only brought it up in passing as example of the kind of muddy thinking that produces conversions to religion.
Would it not be logical to simply conclude that the universe could not have come from nothing.
Or to simply not accept that this is all an accident do to the enormous mathematical odds against it happening.
The act of worship or prayer and meditation can induce some very powerful chemicals into our brains. Assuming a spirit entered our bodies would not be illogical.
Proclaiming that their is no creator with the little knowledge we actually have of the universe sounds more illogical to me than assuming a creator is responsible.Why? You’d have to presume that God came from nothing.
No matter the odds, someone wins the lottery.
Prayer may also make invisible ducks blow hot loads in our ears. It would not be illogical according to the insane standard you’ve set.
Proclaiming that there is no evidence at all for it is reasonable. Because it’s true. Other things that there are no evidence for: Vampires, Superman, Handjob Pixies.
Where I live there are many, many non-Christians. Judging from the malls in December, many of them celebrate Christmas - but I think few of them accept the myths of Christmas, as you say. My family celebrates Christmas also, but only one of us has ever accepted the myths of Christmas, and even she no longer does. People celebrate Halloween without really believing in ghosts. I think the fervor of the “War on Christmas” is about those who do not buy into the myths, and the stores who sell to these people. I think many Christians celebrate Christmas because they believe in the myths, at least in part.
Sure. Until physics has illustrated that this is not illogical at all. We learn.
And it didn’t happen far more than it happened. And all those living in a universe which never existed can feel comfortable that the odds are on their side.
Since we have evidence that chemicals (and meditation) affect our bodies, and no evidence that spirit even exists, I fail to see how you get from one to the other. I’m as unspiritual as you can get, but I was able to reduce my heart rate when left in a room attached to a heart monitor. The body is a wonderful and well-connected thing, and our brains can certainly affect the rest of it,
What we actually proclaim is that no god is the default assumption, one that works until someone comes up with a theory of god and some evidence supporting that theory. Don’t tell me that it is impossible to come up with such a theory - religions have done so countless times. Their predictions keep failing.
There can be a deistic god, who never interferes, and a universe which is the same if he exists or doesn’t. Seems silly to believe. There can be a god of some other planet who created the universe and who has nothing to do with us. What we are pretty sure doesn’t exist are the gods of earthly religions. I provisionally lack belief in any god since such a god is unnecessary. Show me some evidence, and I might change my mind, but as this thread nicely demonstrates, the evidence if very scarce.
And none of them are the people we are talking about, because we wouldn’t even know they existed unless you told us.
Nevertheless, they do exists. That you either deny or ignore their existance in society only serves to make your (anti-theist?) position look desperate. And I say this as a lifelong atheist with a long standing interest in why some people choose faith while others not.
Also, very much this… which seems the most reasoned post so far and may have been lost in all the noise:
The particular thread that you linked to was not a thread devoted to debating the existence of God. The OP asked us not to do so. Hence in that thread I avoided doing so, beyond listing one of the books that greatly influenced me. In other threads, which were devoted to that topic, I’ve written a great deal, including providing as best I can summaries of some points from the aforementioned books. But nonetheless reading the books themselves will give you a much better picture of what I was thinking then reading anything I post.