And that’s why I stick around. 
Are you talking about the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where the possible outcome of every random event takes place in different parallel universes? If so, “likely” is perhaps a bit too strong a word. “Stupid, pointless, and unprovable wankery” is probably closer.
Does this represent a belief on my part? I’d say no. Despite the fact that I can’t prove there aren’t a few zillion extra parallel universes corresponding to every possible game of craps that could have taken place in Las Vegas yesterday, the reason I dismiss it is because it’s irrelevant to what quantum mechanics is actually used for: scientifically understanding and predicting the behavior of matter at Planck length scales. I don’t have to maintain an agnostic “could be/couldn’t be” point of view, because I don’t care either way. Invisible unprovable parallel universes are indistinguishable from no parallel universes at all and thus, for all intents and purposes, the same thing.
That happens to also be the same way I feel about God, but I feel much more strongly about the Many Worlds interpretation. 
How would one go about disproving the existence of an alternate universe’s god? 
Tough one. I would probably try to invent some ludicrous deity, such as the Unseeable Yet Very Angry Brown Bear, and argue that belief in Him was just as valid as belief in whatever they call God in the alternate universe. Then probably get pelted with butterscotch hats. (I’m pretty sure they wear candy in most parallel universes.)
Would alternate universes have their own gods, or is the god we’ve got too big for just one universe?
The problem is that God(creator type God), by definition, is outside the universe. He existed before the universe (he had to, in order to create it), and as such, he is not bound by the laws that govern the universe. We are inside the universe and our frame of reference is limited to this universe and it’s laws. The universe exists as a subset of ???, whatever reality or whatever it is that God inhabits, and while we are bound by the laws of our universe, God is not.
Which is what makes discussions like this completely pointless, albeit amusing as hell to observe. The only intellectually honest position to adopt is that of the agnostic, both the atheist and the deist who presume to speak definitively about something that is not only completely out of their frame of reference but beyond any frame of reference of which they are capable are foolish. That means that arguments of this type usually become discussions of religion, which is a TOTALLY different thing.
Both sides are equally valid only if both sides are equally likely, and if both sides are equally likely, then all mythologies must be considered on the table.
If you prefer, substitute the words “ideology” or “dogma” for “religion” in OP.
Most of my friends are religious, and I have no problem with them because their religion basically consists of only two parts: A. Let’s all be nice to each other, and B. Whew! we get to live again with our loved ones after death.
I do have a problem when people starting tacking on dogma to religion, such as “oh, and you have to believe this book that says ‘I will not suffer a woman to teach or hold authority over men,’ and you have to join group Y instead of group Z or you go to hell,” etc.
Have you ever heard or read a dedicated Communist talking about the inevitability of the “historical dialectic” or proselytizing to get people to join the Party? They sound exactly like Christian Bible-thumpers dreaming of the Rapture and trying to save your soul. For exactly the same reason. They’re both motivated and emotionally wrapped up in a particular set of dogma. They’re both dreaming of an idealized future prophesized by their doctrines. And they both think it would be a jolly good idea if the rest of the world shared that same dogma, even if that dogma has to be forced on everyone else. That kind of zealous certainity is what causes atrocities.
I suspect that eliminating dogmatic book-based ideologies, with competing groups of people each convinced they alone have the one perfect, unchangable version of the truth, would do a great deal to reduce brutishness. Whether that dogma originates in the Bible or Quran or Communist Manifesto seems irrelevant.
A religion is how it is practised. There’s no need to play ‘no true scotsman’ games with theology. And just about everywhere Islam is practised and it is dominant it is pretty much antithetical to human rights as we in the West understand it. The freedom to change religion for example, is not a recognised right in the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights. In liberal Malaysia (liberal being a relative term here) you are born a muslim and cannot change without being charged with apostacy. That such a concept exists in the 21st century is ludicrous. That you can be punished for it is utterly indefensible.
It does not matter if teddy bears are not mentioned in the Koran or the Hadiths. The concept of insulting the Prophet and Islam and draconian penalties are.
And regarding getting ‘religion out of the courts’ as someone has said. This represents a shocking and fundamental lack of understanding of Islam. Islam is all about the unity of life, society and religion. It’s spent 1000 plus years embodying this approach to life in Sharia Law. Islam simply is not a religion you can put in a box and wear on Sundays.
That seems perfectly reasonable to me. I don’t find that to be close-minded.
This is a sampling of the posts from the discussion on sharia law in this thread. I’m not certain, but I think that most of the Dopers posting are male. Some of you are from outside of the US.
tagos, I know that you are from Northern England. I don’t expect you to know that even in a Democracy such as the United States, their is no Constitutional “basic human right” to equality before the law regardless of gender. We have failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
And, of course, we have had no women presidents or vice presidents. Maybe someday we will learn from India, Burma and Pakistan. Maybe they will spread their freedom to our country. Freedom is on the march.
And I do think that it is at least partially a result of the New Testament teaching. Frankly, I think St. Paul got it wrong when he talked about women’s roles. (And he admitted that he sometimes got things wrong.) That’s one of the reasons I don’t put my faith in a book or a minister.
In my opinion, some of the things that I see blamed on a religion should actually be blamed on the religious. It’s those who misinterpret – not the teachings themselves – that are most often at fault.
Your question presumes that God is a part of the universe(s). Do you not define God, at least partly, as supernatural?
I don’t find the general definition of valid (“well-founded”) to be compatible with your usage of the word. A thing can be extremely unlikely, and yet perfectly valid. Like the notion that a gamma ray burst could hit the earth at any moment, for example.
And this is indeed the case for many (most?) atheists, although I think having no belief is a far stronger position than you imply. It is not synonymous with saying “it’s 50/50”, for example. Even proper agnosticism is not synonymous with the “all views are equally valid” tripe it is so commonly assumed to be. I not only have no belief in a God or gods, I hold that there is in fact no way I could rationally hold a belief either way, absent the direct personal intervention of some God. In other words, I expect that every argument put to me for the existence of a God is either logically unsound, based on false premises, or (NB!) based on premises whose observation is subjective, and thus unverifiable by me.
Not at all. Dismantling someone’s argument puts the onus back on them; it is not necessary to prove the converse of their argument. If someone is trying to get you to agree to a conclusion, it is necessary only to show that either his premises or reasoning are flawed in order to reject it (NB: “reject”, not “believe the opposite”). I fail to see why it’s unacceptable to say, “yes, you might still be right; but your reasons for believing what you do are completely unconvincing.”
If someone tells me that 2+2 = 5 because John Howard lost the Australian election, do I really need to show that 2+2 = 4 and 4 != 5 in order to suspect that he might be talking rubbish? No; I need merely observe that his conclusion does not follow from his premises by any sound reasoning. Proving the converse is certainly one way of dismantling his argument (rather comprehensively), but pointing out flaws in reasoning is perfectly, well, reasonable. Especially in the face of a highly adaptable competing hypothesis whose very nature precludes disproof.
And, returning to my point above, probably the most common flaw in people’s reasoning (from a discursive point of view) is that their premises are entirely personal and utterly unverifiable. Thus to reject their argument is not necessarily to state that they’re “full of shit”; merely that they can not expect their reasons for belief to be accepted by a third party.
In the case of Islam you don’t have to strain very hard at the Koran or the hadiths to come up with an ‘iffy’ interpretation. IMHO the fundamentalists are not the ones straining. And the Koran, as the explicit word of God, to be interpreted through the life of the perfect prophet, as in turn interpreted in the hadiths, is not a comfortable read for western liberal types.
And I do not recognise as useful any distinction between the religion and the religious. Religions are what the religious do under its banner. Nothing more. Everything else is playing ‘no true scotsman’.
Well now, you are not saying there is no God, you are saying you see no proof of God and don’t really care. That is pretty close to my attitude. That is not appear to be the same as what **Der Trihs ** and several other self-proclaiming Atheists have said.
Many Worlds is one dismissive way to look at it, but the multiple universe part of the string theory and quantum physics appears to be well accepted today. This might change in another 20 years, but you seem to be casually dismissing a theory that has gained wide acceptance.
Why is it stupid & wankery? This is not my theory; this is not based on some new age concept but solid articles out of Scientific America and the New Scientist. I am not smart enough to come up with this on my own. What was once an obscure physics concept only readily accepted by Science Fiction is now pretty well accepted in general. If the string theory ‘unravels’ then the multiple universe theory will probably go with it, but it is wrong to dismiss a concept of physics you don’t find palatable as stupid and wankery. This is not based upon some creative myths from 1500 to 3000 years ago, but rather scientific theory that has been growing slowly since around 1955 and has only come to be accepted as probable in the last 5 to 10 years.
Isn’t that how science is supposed to work?
If your disbelief about “Invisible unprovable parallel universes” is the same as your disbelief in God, than you are one of the atheists that I would have to consider foolish indeed. Surely, you know that lack of proof is not proof it is just probable. More importantly, if the leading scientist appear to be accepting multiple universes as part of the explanation for string theory, quantum physics and even to a lesser degree a possible connected to singularities; who the hell are you or I to think we know better. As far as it not being important for you or I to know, that is valid for you. I find physics, even physics well above my education and needs, to be fascinating.
Jim {Great I am arguing God & Advanced Physics with a pair of mods, this can’t end well}
Yeah, if only those dumbass pointy-head intellectulz had been as smart as you, they wouldn’t have used the moronic title “The God That Failed” for their indictments of Communism… :rolleyes:
I agree that atheism isn’t a belief system. But that doesn’t mean that athiests do not have beliefs concerning the proper way to run society, personal morality, and the realtionship between the two - simply that these beliefs are not predicated on belief in a diety.
The issue, as far as I’m concerned, is whether these other beliefs have turned out better or worse in general for humanity - that is, whether explicitly discarding belief in a diety has made a positive difference in terms of personal or societal morality among the majority of people.
Sadly, I would be forced to conclude from a historical perspective that it has not. The history of the last century is littered with various groups - communist, nationalist, fascist - who have expressly discarded belief in a diety and who have not thereby increased public or personal morality.
One could certainly argue (and many here do) that all of these groups have simply replaced blind faith in one diety - a mythological creator-god - with another (a great leader, a philosophy of dilectical materialsim, the nation, or even democracy as a political system). One could argue that “pure” athiesm has never been applied as a political system. But I woulds say that there is in effect no such creature - as we agree, “athiesm” isn’t any sort of ideology in and of itself, an athiest has to have some sort of ideology, or at least a theoruy of government. Evidence suggests that an athiest is just as likely, if not more likely, to be attracted to one of these competing philosophies, which may not be an improvement.
My theory is as follows: in matters of personal or political morality, religious belief, while it is IMO generally (but I think not entirely) based on little more than inherited fokelore and superstition, acts as a very useful conservative force - it acts as a break on enthusiasm, against the adoption of other perhaps well meaning utopian visions of society which turn out, in the end, to be distopian.
That is, where the religion is not iself an actively utopian force.
Having read the book, I don’t recall that any one of the contributors was such an incredible dumbass as to insist that Communism is literally a religion. The title was metaphorical, not literal, a subtlety you are apparently too dense to grasp. I have to ask the same question of you that I asked of Diogenes the Cynic: Are you really as shallow as you sound?
I don’t believe in a diety. All the weight I’ve lost has been through calorie control and exercise; faith had nothing to do with it.
Communism performing the function of a religion for its adherents is a reasonable hypothesis and your hysterical ranting says more about you and your ability to think than anything else. Maybe your own narrow definition of religion needs questioning. Maybe you should open your eyes to other ways of looking at the world, other conceptual frameworks within which to analyse and interpret things. You simply cannot understand a huge tract of 20th century history if you refuse to see the messianic appeal of communism and the way it filled a God-sized hole in its adherents.
Ideas are tools. Concepts enable us to examine the world in a different light and looking at the ways communism resembles a religion and meets the same needs of its adherents that religion meets for its followers is a sensible and useful way of looking at things.