Granted. But I’m gonna remain skeptical that anyone is going to be able to prove conclusively (or even to within reasonable doubt) that a specific emotion is directed at a specific person any time soon – even with those things hooked up to people and showing them images of putative loved ones. (Which I believe has been done. Unless I’m getting it mixed up with attempts to study the neurochemical effects of sexual attraction.)
Even if they can, eventually, well, most people will continue to muddle through without the expensive and complicated equipment and have to figure out whether (and how much) to trust other folks’ reportings of their personal experiences on their own.
I haven’t heard of anything that would let those actual experiences – rather than just signs of what processing them in the brain look like – into the realm of observable data, though.
This has also been done; further, some of the brain regions that correlate with spiritual experiences have been artificially stimulated. It hasn’t made much of a difference to the sorts of debate I see, except that some theistic folks argue, “See! We have a sensory complex for the divine! We wouldn’t have that without a reason!” and some atheistic folks argue, “See! Poke it with a stick and you get ‘experiences of the divine’! It’s all hokum!”
Boy oh boy are you fucking dense. How many fucking times do I have to say I do not assume there is no God? Get it, numbnuts? I’m not saying there is not God, m’kay? That would make me…wait for it…yeah, that’s right, who’s a clever Othersider? Hmmmm? Who is? What would I be? What?
An ATHEIST!!!
YEEEEEEEAAAAAH. That’s right! Now, let’s see, what do we call somebody who doesnt’ know if there’s a God or not? Hmmm? Do you know? I think you do! I think you do!
An AGNOSTIC!!!
WHEEEEEEEEEE! Right again!
So here is Loopy’s position on the subject, told like a widdle story so we can understand bedder:
“God exists, and the Bible is His Word to us.”
"Eh, seems like any other mythology to me, living or dead. No proof of anything, lots of wild claims about stuff that nobody can demonstrate ever really happened, miracles and other fantastic phenomena I never observe nor hear of in daily life, aside from this account; I kinda doubt this is anything but a historical fiction, though I suppose I can’t say with 100% certainty it’s all a crock. Tell you what, prove me wrong.’
“I may not have proof, but I have faith. After all you have no proof that I am wrong, yet you believe yourself to be right.”
“Err, not so much. Besides, why should I believe you? I’m not claiming people walk on water, multiply loaves, turn water into wine just by saying “it’s wine”, coming back to life three days after being stone-cold dead. I’m rather claiming these sorts of things seem to defy everything we know about how the world works, and that’s troubling. These are highly unusual events you’re describing, so I think the burden is on you to show me some evidence these things really happened.”
“I feel deeply they did, and God speaks to me through the Book as to its Truth.”
“And I’m just supposed to take your word on it.”
“No, you should let your own experiences guide you.”
“Well, actually, I’ll do better and not just rely on my own experiences. I’ll also take other eye-witness accounts, with physical documentation, etc. You know, the sort of stuff I’d want from, say, a crime scene. Hard evidence, in other words.”
“This I cannot provide.”
“Why not?”
“That is not the way God revealed Himself to me, so I don’t see how I could promise He be revealed to you in such a manner.”
“I guess I’m sorta in a pickle, then.”
“Indeed. I’m afraid we must disagree about the nature of Truth.”
“Kinda looks that way. Frankly, this whole thing is starting to sound kinda delusory. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Not at all. My faith tells me God is real, and that is all I need.”
“Yeah, well, it would, wouldn’t it. Take it easy.”
“And you as well, my brother. I assume you voted for the Pro-choice candidate. My condolences. I’m sure it’s hard to feel the way you do, not believing in a soul, or the true nature of life. I hope you can come to be happier being neighbors with the faithful someday, and not feel threatened or invalidated. You are entitled to your oppinion, after all.”
“Mmmm. I’m used to it. Still pisses me off, though. Seems unright somehow.”
“Peace.”
“I hope.”
I am perfectly well aware that those experiences are subjective and not replicable. Therefore I do not believe that anyone else should be convinced by them.
My impression is that my experiences were of the Christian Triune God. That undoubtedly has more than a little to do with my upbringing as a rationalist firmly exposed to Christianity, both the rationalist and the Christianity being by family pressure. In any case, God as understood and interpreted by the liberal wing of the Episcopal Church is what I think I encountered.
Many people who have not been privileged to such experiences believe on the basis of their weighing of the evidence, e.g., Scripture, accounts of experiences of saints like Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc, etc. Many among this group are quite well aware of the Biblical scholarship that suggests that much of the book is the result of accretion of legends. That does not preclude the fact that there is a consistent testimony to what was experienced by those Biblical figures and saints. It does not require abdication of reason, but its proper use, to arrive at these conclusions.
For anyone who does not so weigh the evidence and who has not had such an experience, it is reasonable to hold that there is no adequate evidence to prove the existence of God to him.
However, any person who has reached the conclusion of #7 should be acutely aware that that is his or her reasoned decision, and that sane, undeluded people can arrive at the opposite conclusion, for reasons that seem equally good to them.
There are idiots on both sides of the fence. I don’t believe in a Magic Sky Pixie any more than gobear does – my understanding of who God is and how He works in humans is substantially more nuanced – as gobear knows. I am not Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson, or the Rev. Billy Bob Braindead who is convinced on the basis of his reading of the Bible and his eighth grade education that all them scientists and scholars are rejecting the truth of God and are headed straight for Hell. Nor are nonbelievers who are willing to live and let live the sort of clown who thinks that there is no difference between Paul Tillich and Sister Mary Virgoperpetua who taught first grade at Our Lady of Perpetual Bingo Parochial School, and that both believe in the Magic Sky Pixie.
Jesus said, “By their fruits you shall know them.” I defy any person on the no-God side of the argument to show me how Siege’s or Triskadecamus’s beliefs in any way harm or injure them, and to deny that in fact those beliefs have led them to be supportive of the rights and dignified treatment of the people what the aforementioned Phelps, Robertson, and Co., are wont to denigrate and condemn.
A better Christian than I would find a way to make peace among the warring factions here, and to forgive, without request, those who insult him and his beliefs. I’m human; I find that very hard to do – and that too depresses me.
In a recent IMHO thread on “What do you believe?” I commented that people probably expected me to do a religious witness. Instead, I offered [url=http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/athens/heinlein-i-believe.html"this.
That about summarizes it. Feel free to trash where I stand.
Do you realize that your entire argument can boils down to you citing your own ignorance as evidence for “God.”
“I don’t understand it therefore God did it.”
What, specifically, do you imagine could not have occurred through explainable natural processes? I’ll explain it to you.
I think that’s all perfectly reasonable, and in that instance politely expressed (provided that “they” aren’t representative of all Christians). Hell, the rector of my church, in his sermon today, said, to very loosely paraphrase “We do a lot of praying for the poor and opressed, but we aren’t told to do so–we’re told to pray for ourselves and to do something about the poor and the opressed.” There are plenty of Christians who’d agree that there’s hypocrisy among us.
What spawned this little sub-thread, though, was your characterization of God has an invisible being who lives in the clouds and likes people to sing to him on Sundays. That’s an insulting argument to make, because it characterizes God in a way intended to make him look silly, and in a way that isn’t close to how a lot of theists conceptualize him. It’s insulting, and it’s dishonest. Using stereotypes to insult people is wrong.
There are two axioms in this that aren’t historically universal, by the way.
Historically speaking, gods were gods of a people or place – you can see this even in the Bible, where the Hebrews in exile were desperately wondering (in the Psalms, I believe) how their god might possibly be able to hear their prayers when they were in a foreign land. Of course different peoples had different gods; they were different peoples. (Some even considered this a matter of descent or blood-kinship.) Sometimes cultural intermixings led to partial integrations of gods into new cultures – the history of the ancient Mediterranean is full of this, as well as the way Christianity had to work to displace the gods of northern Europe rather than have Jesus included as one of their number.
Also, many of the gods of the ancient world were reknowned for their shapeshifting abilities, including the (potential) capacity to deceive even each other with those abilities. (Some were better at this than others; trickster and magician gods were generally best at it, at least within my knowledge.) If they have the capacity to deceive other gods with their shapeshifting, it is entirely plausible that they would be able to change their apparent identities before humans.
If someone doesn’t have a tenet of universalism or a set form (or in the case of the Abrahamic religions as I understand them, a denial of the possibility of representative form) for the divine in their beliefs, this point is not likely to be relevant to them.
I’m not insulting people, I’m insulting their silly beliefs. Sure, some folks have complex, nuanced ideas about God, but they are far, far outnumbered by the mouthbreathers who really do believe God lives in the clouds where the streets are paved with gold.
You’re not paying attention–I’m not picking on Christians, I’m denying the exitence of any supernatural entities, so I’m contradicting every religion and non-rational belief system. Hindus, Jews, Christians, Native American religions–you’re all wrong.
But complexity of ideas still doesn’t constitute valid evidence for the existence of God. Every religion has its theologians and philosophers, but the intricacy of the belief system in no way substantiates its subject. The ancient Greeks created complex stories about the lives and deeds of their gods, but the sun is still just a ball of incandescent gas, not the chariot of Apollo.
Hey, you don’t have to be a complete asshole. You have never told me your theological position. Calm the fuck down. :rolleyes:
That’s not it at all. It’s not that I said I don’t understand it. It’s that I think it’s more likely that a creator, who knew what he was doing, did this, than that it happened by accident.
Go back to the building analogy. Could this building have sprang up all of the sudden of it’s own accord? Possibly, but it seems more likely to me that it was built by someone who did it purposely.
There is nothing you can try and “explain away”. You aren’t going to change my mind, and you aren’t going to “convert” me.
I’m not convinced God exists, just as I’m not convinced God doesn’t exist. It just seems more likely to me that God does. Does that make sense?
How very funny. I’m on chapter 3 of Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer, and I just read about this particular logical fallacy. Of course, I am familiar enough with gobear to know that he loves to generalize, and quite hastily at that.
The frigging point was that if anyone could be expected to understand how vicious stereotyping hurts, it would be you. The issue of being gay has little to do with it; you could have been a black man raised in the Old South, or a woman coming up against the glass ceiling in business, or you name it.
And I don’t give a sweet flying fuck whether or not you believe in any or all gods whatsoever, including the one I believe in, except insofar as I think He (as opposed to the stalking-horse for their own prejudices some people make him into) might provide solace and uplift in your life. What I object to is the intolerance directed at those who, for whatever good or faulty reasons they may have, do happen to believe in one or another theistic belief system.
Very true. I know I used to be quite the asshole about my theism. I recently went back and read some of my earliest posts on this board, and was quite embarassed. I like to think I’ve grown quite a bit in the last 3+ years, particularly on this front.
And how is denying the existence of gods equivalent to being a racist or a sexist. Are you claiming to be the victim of discrimination?
And I have to ask, what intolerance? Am I passing laws to ban religious observance? Am I purging religious books from the local library? Am I having people arrested for praying in public? Am I using religious tests to bar believers from housing or employment?
All I’m doing is saying that there is absolutely no good evidence for supernatural belief and plenty of evidence against it. Calling that “intolerance” is abuse of the language.