# What is the value of faith? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 23, 2007, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355 "2007-04-23T20:03:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Alwrong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/94ad74/32.png) [@Alwrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alwrong)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/241 "2007-05-03T03:25:59Z")
Uh, Hoyle’s theory. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/242 "2007-05-03T03:31:56Z")
[QUOTE=Czarcasm] Many people do things that make sense only to themselves. Are they rational? If a voice only I hear tells me to kill someone to achieve grace, and I do so, have I committed a rational act? It would make sense to _me_, right? [/QUOTE] My little girl is asleep now, so I really can’t ask her. She did however say that “rational” means “it makes sense.” You appear to have altered her definition by adding a personal sense of perspective to it that she did not include. She said rational means “it makes sense” not “It makes sense to **Czarcasm**.” So no. Your personal perspective does not make an irrational act rational. So don’t kill anybody. ok? Like my Daddy told me: “Don’t listen to the voices in your head. They’re not on your side.” It’s good advice. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/243 "2007-05-03T04:35:50Z")
[QUOTE=Alwrong] The problem, as I see it, is that you are placing creationism on par with scientific cosmological theories. Creationism is a religious belief and not a scientific theory. What’s the scientific test for the existence of god? If, instead, creationism is a scientific theory that has been falsified, then it should be taught in school as a part of the history of science, just as Boyle’s theory is still taught. I’m sure that’s not what you’re suggesting. (Also, when you say “creationism”, are you referring to both YEC and OEC, or just YEC?) [/QUOTE] Creationism was taught in school as part of the history of science when I went to school - but that was before the recent resurgence, and in New York. I absolutely agree that it should, along with phlogiston and spontaneous generation. It was a scientific theory 250 years ago. Back then, there was no known mechanism for allowing the Sun to burn as long as would be necessary for evolution and geology. When YEC got falsified, through geology in large part, many scientists abandoned it. In fact the only reason it is now a controversy again is that the fundamentalists started to try to call it science in order to allow it to be taught in schools. They’re the ones who put it in the realm of science again, so they have to accept the methods of science. Anyone who considers the creation symbolic, or a myth, is indeed considering it a religious belief, and thus don’t have to worry about scientific consideration. Any supposedly true statement about the natural world is up for falsification, any statement purely about the supernatural world isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/244 "2007-05-03T05:19:22Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] My little girl is asleep now, so I really can’t ask her. She did however say that “rational” means “it makes sense.” You appear to have altered her definition by adding a personal sense of perspective to it that she did not include. She said rational means “it makes sense” not “It makes sense to **Czarcasm**.” So no. Your personal perspective does not make an irrational act rational. So don’t kill anybody. ok? Like my Daddy told me: “Don’t listen to the voices in your head. They’re not on your side.” It’s good advice. 🙂 [/QUOTE] 1. Who _does_ it have to make sense to to be rational? You? Your little girl? The neighborhood? The general community? 2. “Don’t listen to the voices in your head. They’re not on your side.” Would this include God? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/245 "2007-05-03T06:32:33Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] It’s hard to accepty your criticism, founded as it seems to be on selective perception. You ignored Apos’ rather insulting response to my innocuous post. When your criticism is applied with an even hand I’ll consider it’s value. [/QUOTE] No, I actually have criticized everyone so far who went so far as to imply that their opponent lacked an elementary school understanding of the material by running off into a rambling and incoherent (and inaccurate) rant about the (mis) use of adjectives. That’s right, every single such person. You can go and check! [QUOTE=Scylla] “I don’t want to die!” Isn’t a rational conclusion. It’s an exclamation of emotion. [/QUOTE] That would be incorrect. A person can rationally conclude that they don’t want to die based on making a rational measured assessment of their life to date, and deciding that by and large it was nicer to be alive than not. Based on this, they can rationally determine that avoiding death is something to put on their ‘to do’ list, if they have a rational expectation that their live will continue to be nice for whatever duration of time they feel is necessary to justify not slashing their wrists. See? It can be a rational conclusion. [QUOTE=Scylla] I did not mention what was “average,” I mentioned what was “rational.” [/quote] Excepting that fatalism is not generally rational. Sure, maybe if you’re being physically tortured all the time and being prevented from enjoying life in any way, maybe then it’s rational. But _my_ life isn’t like that. How about yours? [QUOTE=Scylla] I made no statements regarding atheists, so I don’t know where you get this from. As I stated, I beleive that faith is something that is hardwired into us from an evolutionary standpoint, and in my post I was careful to avoid the whole God conundrum on which people get very sensitive. [/QUOTE] It seemed a reasonable leap to assume that you were speaking as a theist with the opinion that “without god, how can life be worth living!” **Only** with the (mis)conception that life is in general arduous for all rational persons could you conclude that the only rational assessment of life is fatalism. That sort of ignorance about the way a rational person can enjoy life speaks of the perspective of a person outside that sphere, speaking pejoratively of the people in it. The only reliable source of nonrational people I know are people who embrace faith as an alternative method of guiding their lives: that is, a theist with misconceptions about atheists and their ability to enjoy live without eschewing rationality. It is possible that I was mistaken, and you are not a theist. If so I don’t know where you got your misconceptions about rational living, though. [QUOTE=Scylla] If you were to ask me, I would imagine that being an atheist does not automatically make one a rational being, and I would be surprised to find an atheist who’s worldview did not contain elements of faith, nonreligious though they may be. [/QUOTE] I assume that by “rational being” you mean a “_purely_ rational being”, since _all_ humans are at least a little bit rational, atheist or not. Being an atheist does not make you a (purely) rational being, but being a (purely) rational being probably does make you an atheist. And depending on how you define faith, you can easily find atheists who don’t entertain it. I myself don’t have absolute certainty in anything that lacks at least _some_ reasonable evidence for it. (Heck, I don’t have absolute certainty in a lot of things that _do_ have reasonable evidence for them.) [Quote=Scylla] This is why I looked up even the obvious things. [/Quote] No, you did that to be insulting, by attempting to imply that it was your debate opponents who needed obvious things pointed out to them. (Go ahead, deny it. I don’t mind.) [QUOTE=Scylla] You missed my point, and that’s my fault for not explaining it clearly. These things that you know you can’t do fall into two categories. The first is simply the extremely difficult or unlikely (like the example I gave with the bear.) You seem to accept this one easily enough. The second category is simply those things that you know you cannot do. Here is where you seem to have the problem, pointing out, that if you can do them after all, then you were simply wrong and no big deal, right? This is not necessarily the case. Of course, you might simply be wrong about what you can do. Other things are simply impossible without the tool of faith goading you into making irrational decisions. [/QUOTE] Oh, I understood you. (So did **Apos**.) The problem is, you’re wrong. Specifically, you seem to misunderstand the meaning of the word “can’t”. If you can’t do something, then you _can’t_ do it. If something is merely difficult, but you still can do it, then you _can_ do it. See? A = A, and Not A = Not A. Simple. If something is merely extremely difficult or unlikely, then it is _not_ impossible and if you think it is, then you’re **wrong**. Not A != A. If something is really impossible and you think it isn’t impossible, then you’re **wrong**. A != Not A. So you’re right that there’s two categories of things that you “know” you can’t do: The things you _actually_ can’t do, and the things you can do and have incorrectly decided you can’t. Faith can’t help you with the first case; impossible is impossible. And faith _doesn’t_ help you in the second case, except for the trivial impetus of getting you to start moving. It certainly doesn’t make the task _possible_, since it already _was_ possible; you were merely mistaken about the task’s impossibility. I suppose you make a case for faith being somewhat useful if you have a chronic inability to determine the doability of things, and you need a goad like faith to get you to try _everything_ (even truly impossible things, like flying unassisted) in order to assist you in succeeding at _something_. Fortunately for me, I’m don’t have that sort of extreme problem in assessing whether things are possible. [QUOTE=Scylla] There are lots of things that you can’t do if you are a rational person. The smarter you are, the fewer choices you actually have, because rationality will limit you from what are bad choices. For example, if you are a rational person you will never win the lottery (barring trying to put a syndicate together and buying out.) Your chances are simply too small to justify the purchase of a ticket, if you are intelligent and thinking it through. [/QUOTE] A rational person will not view the lottery as a viable investment scheme, no. But a rational person is capable of playing the lottery for entertainment value, and a rational person who had two bucks left and (for whatever reason) no possible chance of survival if they did not turn that two dollars into ten thousand within a few days, and they had no other way of doing that than winning the lottery…that person would play the lottery. It would be the rational choice, by virtue of there being no other viable choices. Success does not have to be guaranteed for a choice to be rational. It merely hast to be the best choice among the options available (by the reasoner’s best assessment of what’s “best”.) Let me repeat that. Success does **not** have to be guaranteed for a choice to be rational. It merely hast to be the best choice among the options available (by the reasoner’s best assessment of what’s “best”.) [QUOTE=Scylla] Lots of risks are unjustifiable from an individual rational standpoint. From a species standpoint however, it is necessary that some people behave nonrationally and take extreme risks on long shots because some of them will pay off and benefit others. Stupidity works for this, and in many cases it still works. But not in all. Intelligence would stop us from doing some things. So we need “faith” to override intelligence and make us take innapropriate risks for the greater good. Observe teenagers. Many teenagers are smart enough to know that they are mortal. Not all of them beleive it. Many demonstrate by their actions that they really don’t beleive in their mortality, and they take stupid risks, because they have faith that they will be ok [/QUOTE] What you of course fail to do here is demonstrate in any way _why_ reckless teenagers are a boon to society, thus collapsing your whole point into “it’s good to be stupid becuase…uh…we need teenagers to take stupid risks and maybe die.” However I’ll be nice and pretend that you actually made your point, and actually _had_ presented an example where somebody needed to do something “stupid” to save the tribe. The problem is, such an act then _isn’t stupid_, assuming you value the success of the tribe. A rational person who cares about the tribe _would_ step forward and take up the dangerous duty (assuming nobody else did first), out of the rational interest in protecting the thing that he values: the tribe. See, this is what you completely fail to grasp about rationality. Rationality is when you _use your brain to figure out what you want to do_. Preferably without making mistakes or basing your decisions on things that aren’t real or true. You’re pretty close to the mark when you contrast it with stupidity. Like, it’s _stupid_ to not take a short-term risk if failing to do so guarantees bigger problems down the road. It’s _rational_ to try and do things that protect the things you value. If you happen to value something other than yourself, then it’s even rational to die to protect it (if you happen to value it that much). This is what rationality is. It’s not some dumbass thing where you’re like “No, there’s a 51% chance of failure; I cannot attempt it and instead must die horribly.” Great mother of cheese, that’s so wrong. [QUOTE=Scylla] I am quite certain I understand the term, and I looked it and posted a link to support my usage. [/QUOTE] You’re quite certain of a lot of things. Congratulations. (And I seriously hope you don’t mean that link that stated that that “rationality” is “the state of being rational”? Oh yeah, that was quite a link. It certainly captured every subtlety of your use of the term.) [QUOTE=Scylla] I’m not talking about a situation where survival is simply not certain. I’m talking about lottery ticket type long odds where the price of the ticket is tremendous pain, hardship and suffering with only a million to one chance of success. If you’re being rational in such a situation you would chose to use what time you had left on a much more constructive and pleasant pasttime then torturing yourself to almost surely no avail. Let’s go back to my plane example. Let’s say you figure your chances of being rescued before you die if you stay with the plane are 1 in 20 million. In the plane you have some comforts. It will almost surely be found eventually and if your body is still in it your loved ones will know what happened. You can stay there in relative comfort and safety, maybe even write some notes to people you care about and put your affairs in order. On the other hand, if you try to kill the bear and walk out you maybe have a one in five million chance of surving, but the price of trying to take that chance is very high. The bear will most likely kill you immediately in a really painful way, or maul you and give you lingering injuries worse than what you have now, and between now and the time you ultimately fail you will undergo incredible suffering and pain. You won’t have the time to write notes or enjoy your last few days or hours, or make yourself comfortable, and your loved ones will never likely find your body since it will just be so much bear shit. Staying in the plane is the rational choice. [/QUOTE] No, it’s not, unless you happen to like dying. Assuming you are correct in your assessment of the odds (which of course you would be assuming), you are four times as likely to survive if you go out and face the bear. Gee, that’s a hard one. Other obvious problems with your assessment: 1. A rational person would likely realize that starvation is a suckola way to go. Much worse than being mauled by a bear. At least that’s moderately short. 2. A rational person would realize that you can write the notes and put your affairs in order _before_ you go out and face the bear. Have cake, eat too. 3. If you value life so little that you think your family would benefit from finding a dessicated corpse in the plane with a note “I decided not to bother trying to survive”, as opposed to merely finding a note “I’m going to try and live! See you next week, or hold a memorial service. Serve cookies” then it would be rational to stay. But as previously noted, a rational person can easily like living, or actually want to _see_ that family again. [QUOTE=Scylla] You underestimate the power of adjectives. Any adjective and any noun can go together. At any rate I accept your challenge. “obese” and “air,” huh? ok here goes: “After three years in the rarefied cold thin air of a mountaintop in Nepal meditating on the meaning of life, I decided to come down from the mountain and share my wisdom with the people. I chose New Orleans, the city of sin as my destination, but I was shocked by the environmental change. The **air** of the city felt **obese** with heat, moisture, the funk of the swam and the sin of the populace.” How’s that? [/Quote] Very, very poor, if the best you could to was make a simile out of it. Goalpost move much? Sorry, no, it seems that even you can’t coerce “obese air” into being a coherent concept; the language does not bend to your whim in this manner. (Keep in mind, before you attempt to turn this into a prolonged debate or something, that if your sentence references actual obese air, then “she was round, like a jelly donut” means she _was_ a jelly donut.) [QUOTE=Scylla] No. For example, let’s say 20 years ago I fell in love with a prostitute in New Orleans, and think about her everyday. I am filled with the burning desire to see her again. I deeply value the time we had together. I hope for nothing more than to find her and start all over though I have no idea where she may be or what may have become of her and I have no reason to think she would wish to see me. According to you, as a rational being I leave my fine family, good job, and children and relatively happy life and go seek my desire. [/QUOTE] As is usual when you attempt to falsely attribute nonsensical ideas to others, this is where you go off the rails. A rational person may possess irrational desires, since such desires are, you know, _irrational_; however _being_ a rational person, the person is able to recognize all the problems with chasing his dreams, and refrains. This happens a lot. I mean, how many people do you know who would like to have a million dollars? A lot? How many of them have attempted to rob banks? Not many? Was it because they had faith that they would get the million dollars another way? No, probably not. It’s because they rationally decided that it was best not to pursue that particular fantasy that way, for various rational reasons. This is not so hard to understand. [QUOTE=Scylla] This is not a rational choice. I suppose though that there is 1 in a million shot it could work out for me. The price is simply to high. Being rational I realize that she is probably old and haggard and used hard, probably never cared about me, wouldn’t want to see me, we’ve changed so much that I wouldn’t like her if I did see her, and that I’d be throwing away a very good life and running from responsibilities and commitments. Being rational I decide that it is probably best not to act on this desire. As burning as it may be it is, for all intents and purposes, futile and foolhardy. You see? [/QUOTE] Look, even _you_ know that chasing the aging prostitute is irrational. Why then do you claim that the rational person is the guy who does so? Are you that desperate to try and make rationality seem stupid, to make faith sound less stupid by comparison or something? No, wait, you stated yourself above that stupidity is the contrast of rationality, and that faith is there to make otherwise rational people act like stupid people. Man, I just don’t know _what_ you’re trying to prove! [QUOTE=Scylla] I’m pretty sure I understand the meaning of the term. Do you? [/QUOTE] You’re pretty sure of a lot of things. The proof in is the pudding, I suppose. [QUOTE=Scylla] If they precede the logic than the desire isn’t rational. You just want them, right? What if you are 400 pounds, have a heart condition, and diabetes? As you figure out how to sneak some cookies, are you being rational? [/QUOTE] There’s two ways to answer this question: as if you’re not trying to distort my point, and as if you are. If you’re not trying to distort my point, then if my thought processess are “I’m going to get cookies by going to the store and buying them”, then I’m using a rational method to satisfy my irrational desire. If my thought processes are “I’m going to get cookies by jumping up and down and clapping my hands, because I’m _sure_ that that will make cookies appear” then you are not being rational in your methods for getting the cookies. To answer your distortion of my point, I will answer with a paraphrase from the movie _Stranger than Fiction_: **Scylla** , if you pause to think, you’d realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led… and, of course, the quality of the cookies. [Quote=Scylla] Don’t get ahead of yourself. You need to master your definitions and the parts of speech before we can move onto advanced concepts like hyperbole and anthropomorphizing. Until then you are not ready to take a bite out of a rational cookie. [/QUOTE] Ah, trying to undermine my position by pretending I’m stupid! How very ad hominem of you! It’s good to see that I’m getting the benefit of the full gamut of your debate skills. And to take a page from my little sister, when she was in her teens, “I’ll rational cookie you!” (She, of course, _did_ recognize the absurdist amusement value in using words in a nonsensical manner. She’s is quite smart, though.) [Quote=Scylla] No. I’m sorry. You didn’t do very good. [/QUOTE] Aw, I’m crushed. ---
**Author:** ![Alwrong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/94ad74/32.png) [@Alwrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alwrong)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/246 "2007-05-03T12:51:37Z")
[QUOTE=Voyager] Creationism was taught in school as part of the history of science when I went to school - but that was before the recent resurgence, and in New York. I absolutely agree that it should, along with phlogiston and spontaneous generation. It was a scientific theory 250 years ago. Back then, there was no known mechanism for allowing the Sun to burn as long as would be necessary for evolution and geology. [/quote] Perhaps it will help me understand your viewpoint if you answer the following questions: What specifically do you think should be taught about creationism? Do you think that there is a difference between “science” and “non-science”, and, if yes, what specifically is the difference? (Also, are you saying that, 250 years ago, creationism offered an explanation for why the Sun has burned as long as would be necessary for evolution and geology?) > [@](#): > > When YEC got falsified, through geology in large part, many scientists abandoned it. In fact the only reason it is now a controversy again is that the fundamentalists started to try to call it science in order to allow it to be taught in schools. They’re the ones who put it in the realm of science again, so they have to accept the methods of science. Are you putting creationism “in the realm of science”? > [@](#): > > Any supposedly true statement about the natural world is up for falsification, any statement purely about the supernatural world isn’t. Are those the only two choices: statements about the natural world, and statements purely about the supernatural world? Isn’t creationism about the natural world \*and \* the supernatural world? Is creationism a “statement”? If yes, what is that statement? And, how about your statement about statements? Is it falsfiable? BTW, perhaps you missed my earlier question: “Where [in this thread] did you mention that you’re Jewish?” I would appreciate an answer from you. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/247 "2007-05-03T13:00:48Z")
[QUOTE=begbert2] I think that a lot of people who believe in themselves do so for non-faith reasons. (ie: possible there’s some evidence that they have value or ability, or possibly they don’t leap to the conclusion and instead inch toward it by small steps of increasing belief, none of which has the certainty of faith and each of which is self-justified before moving on. Among other options.) Even so, it’s still a larger subset than people who wrestle bears or invent airplanes. But I’m beginning to think that focusing on subsets is something of a digression anyway, unless that subset represents an outcome of significant value, (like the sacrificing-their-lives types you reference below). I’m going to stop worrying about it, unless you want to revisit the airplane scenario for some specific reason. [/QUOTE] Did you notice that when you described this subset and their non faith reasons you immediately went to speaking of evidence? As if that factor indicated it was not faith. Faith is not always a leap. It can indeed be small steps forward in continued faith while processing new evidence. > [@](#): > > I will note that I consider faith-in-denial and faith-not-in-denial both to be proper subsets of faith, and I include _both_ of them when I discuss the value of faith. I don’t labor under the misconception that faith _must_ be contrary to evidence; otherwise I would have denied that “against the odds” events were faith events. (Any ones that succeeded, anyway.) On the other hand, I don’t entertain the notion that when someone asks to talk about the value of “faith”, they’re excluding faith-in-denial from the discussion. (shrug.) Fair enough. > [@](#): > > Out of curiosity, how do you think limiting yourself to the subset of faith beliefs that do not conflict with available evidence will improve your position? Belief that your god wants you to kill infidels and/or foreigners is unfalsifiable. Belief that your god wants you to bomb abortion clinics is unfalsifiable. Belief that your god wants you to hate homosexuals is unfalsifiable. And (the foundation of all of the above) belief that the desires of God are more important and outweigh “earthly” laws and standards…is unfalsifiable. Belief that God wants you to feed the hungry, help the poor, care for the sick, love thy fellow man, even your enemy, is also unfalsifiable. It’s not a perfect world and people use all kinds of reasons to justify their actions. If a religious fanatic bombs a clinic it’s because religion is bad. If a non religious person commits some horrible deed it’s because he’s a nut. How do we weigh what is done wholly, or partly for religious belief, against whats done for other motivations? If we stick to faith that puts new evidence to use then Christians would not be calling the Bible the inerrant word of God and pulling out select verses to justify their bigotry. We would be considering the historical evidence we have about the Bible, and the data we have about homosexuality. If we stick to faith using available evidence the dialogs would be quite different and less people would be manipulated by leaders who misused and misinterpreted Holy Books. > [@](#): > > I think if you make even a cursory count of the numbers, more lives have been taken in the name of God than saved in his name. The thing here is that, all desire to act aside, you can only sacrifice your life for somebody if there’s somebody in peril around to save. You can _always_ find somebody to kill or oppress if you’re so inclined. > > Also a lot of self-sacrifice in the name of faith is for nobody’s benefit but God’s, and if they were wrong about God, then nothing much of value was accomplished. I don’t think this null-effect scenario happens so much with people looking to do harm due to faith. > > I don’t think it’s impossible to notice that, as nice as religious people are when dealing with themselves and their close associates (who presumably they would be nice to anyway) they have a decidedly mixed score when dealing with persons outside their social circle. I think the wars and prejudices outweigh the occasional charitable donation, if by frequency alone. (Especially since many of the people who donate to charity _also_ vote to marginalize gays, while I doubt many suicide bombers go around saving lives on the weekends. The weekends prior, that is.) > > Suffice to say, I disagree that value assessments are impossible here. Even if _precise_ value assessments are, that only matters if it’s otherwise too close to call. Even just a cursory count you say? You haven’t even done that. A cursory count would include a reasonable attempt to tally numbers on _both_ sides. Like most people who use this argument to show how bad religion is, you ignore or dismiss and minimize many on the positive side and stress the negative side as if it’s a slam dunk that you are correct. It’s not. Furthermore I think it’s a glaring example of extreme bias when someone makes this kind of argument. And yet you can call my argument useless. Think of hundreds of small soup kitchens and homeless shelters all over the US. Thats just the US. Think of hundreds of religious programs offering medical services to the needy in our country and in others. How do you measure the cumulative effect of those programs on human lives? How many lives have they saved? How many have they turned around and greatly improved. How about AA? Over the years of it’s operation how many lives has it saved and improved. Not just the alcoholics themselves but everyone close to them.Would you like more examples of how the faithful day in and day out year after year have a positive effect on society? It’s so easy to dismiss and ignore that and say, “yeah but look at the crusades. religion bad” I don’t make excuses or dismiss the evils committed in the name of religion but what I do dismiss is the kind of glaringly bias and one sided argument that you and others make about the effect of religion on society. It’s childish and unworthy of your intelligence. > [@](#): > > (I’m not going to bother with the bit about population percentages. It’s useless to start with, unless you have data on which section of the populace did more good per capita; and it’s even _more_ useless when you realize that not all actions done by “religious people” have faith-based causes. And no, bringing up something useless and uninformative does not demonstrate that there is no useful information, that you cannot “weigh between the two”.) My point here is generalized to the extreme but I don’t find it illogical or unreasonable. If the division of believers and non believers was 60/40 then it might be tricky. The division is more like 90/10 isn’t it? Regardless, since you see fit to dismiss my argument rather casually I’ve decided to be more direct in telling you what I think of yours. Personally I don’t see any realistic way to measure the two sides accurately or meaningfully. What I have seen are offhand examples like yours that haven’t made any serious attempt to reasonably consider both sides of the argument. I don’t find your obviously biased assessment in any way accurate {even cursory} or meaningful. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/248 "2007-05-03T13:33:28Z")
Scylla, amazingly, you’ve managed to drag out a phenomenally silly argument with yourself to some pretty amazing lengths. Congrats. I guess your argument is one of those things that could never happen unless you discard rationality and just take it on faith that babbling incoherent nonsense constitutes some sort of response. In the hopes that maybe you’ll reconsider this premise… “What makes sense” is a pretty good start for discussing rationality, but you seem to have missed the follow up question, which is “given what?” In the case of wanting to live, “given what” is “I want to live.” Given that, there are all sorts of things that are rational to do (like, not drinking bleach), and irrational to do (like drinking bleach). But it isn’t irrational to value living against all odds and to keep on striving even though there is vanishingly tiny hope. It might be irrational IF your premise was “conserve energy so that I can die thermodynamically superior!” All of your rebutalls simply contain a host of covert assumptions and premises. That’s how you can pretend that such judgments are “reasonable” without really thinking about what that means or whether those assumptions are not, in fact, values, as I argued. It might have helped, I guess, if I had said that _bare_ desires are not themselves rational or irrational: perhaps that would have avoided the bizarre, masturbatory tangent you took, but probably not, since apparently only the very silliest and bizarre interpretation of anyone’s words will do. I should have thought that was obvious, and frankly, I sort of expect that it was obvious to you as well, but your desire for rhetorical flourish overtook any sense of honesty. The point is that merely desiring something is not itself reasonable or unreasonable by itself. It’s just a fact. Things become reasonable or unreasonable only in light of something else: some other context or fact by which those desires are then held to be unreasonable. Yes, you can call a desire irrational, but only sensibly because there is some other underlying judgment that defines what standard or goal or value it’s being held up against. That’s so because reason, rationality, reasonable things: they aren’t just a bunch of disjointed conclusions from out of nowhere. ---
**Author:** ![Alwrong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/94ad74/32.png) [@Alwrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alwrong)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/249 "2007-05-03T14:03:16Z")
[QUOTE=Apos] Scylla, amazingly, you’ve managed to drag out a phenomenally silly argument with yourself to some pretty amazing lengths. [/quote] Well, Scylla pretty much blew his credibility with this exchange: > [@Scylla](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Desires and values and hope are not rational or irrational. > > That makes it perfect! Every single thing that you have said in your post is completely wrong! I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone do that before. Congratulations. Seriously. > > Ok, basic english. “desire” “value” and “hope” are nouns (They can also be verb but we’ll ignore this to keep things as simple as possible for you.) > > You can tell that they’re nouns because you speak of them as if they were either persons, places of things. > > Ok, basic english. “desire” “value” and “hope” are nouns (They can also be verb but we’ll ignore this to keep things as simple as possible for you.) > > You can tell that they’re nouns because you speak of them as if they were either persons, places of things. > > I have a desire. > I have a value. > I have a hope. > > You see? Things. That makes them nouns. > > I have a rational. > > doesn’t work. How can you have a reasonable debate with someone who doesn’t understand the statement “Desires and values and hope are not rational or irrational”? (And spends so much time and energy belittling someone who presented the statement …) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/250 "2007-05-03T17:16:37Z")
[QUOTE=Alwrong] Perhaps it will help me understand your viewpoint if you answer the following questions: What specifically do you think should be taught about creationism? [/quote] Very similar to what is taught about other incorrect theories. The hypothesis, the reason they believed in it (to show scientists 250 years ago weren’t stupid) and the evidence against it that caused mainstream scientific opinion to reject the hypothesis. I don’t for the moment doubt this would cause all sorts of problems. I’m talking what should be taught, not what is politically feasible to teach. > [@](#): > > Do you think that there is a difference between “science” and “non-science”, and, if yes, what specifically is the difference? I don’t think that can be answered in a sentence. You might want to start a thread. > [@](#): > > (Also, are you saying that, 250 years ago, creationism offered an explanation for why the Sun has burned as long as would be necessary for evolution and geology?) In some cases, yes. I assume you are aware of the major problem the Sun posed in the 19th century? Since most people believed in God, including scientists, offering a god of the gaps explanation in the absence of any other was not unreasonable. You didn’t have to be a staunch Christian to do so. Tom Paine did exactly that in _The Age of Reason_, not about the sun but using God to explain the structure of the solar system. > [@](#): > > Are you putting creationism “in the realm of science”? Which creationism do you mean? If it is the nypothesis that the world was created 6,000 years ago, sure. If it is the ICR flavor, which mandates that the Bible overrules all evidence, then no. > [@](#): > > Are those the only two choices: statements about the natural world, and statements purely about the supernatural world? You might have to break down the clauses of a statement. If I say “God caused a rose to appear on my desk” and you see there is no rose, you can reject the rose part, but that doesn’t say anything about the god part. The statement god is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent can be attacked logically, but not scientifically. God causes the wind to blow is slightly different - we know the wind blows, we have an alternate explanation, but we can’t rule out the god explanation - we can just make it unnecessary. Science doesn’t rule out god, it just makes god not required. That’s enough for me. > [@](#): > > Isn’t creationism about the natural world \*and \* the supernatural world? It depends. “Scientific” creationism claims, say, the Flood happened, and gives some “scientific” mechanisms for it. Even the most casual examination shows these to be impossible. If they had just claimed the flood happened, and that God had magicked it, they would eliminate half their problems - but then they wouldn’t be able to teach it in schools. As it turns out even the natural statement about the flood and its affects is incorrect, so they can’t teach that either. Think of intelligent design. That tries to make statements about development to show structures are impossible without a designer. Even if true, though, no supernatural entity would be required - the Raelians like space aliens. So it actually is a purely natural thing - just a wrong one. > [@](#): > > Is creationism a “statement”? If yes, what is that statement? > And, how about your statement about statements? Is it falsfiable? Creationism consists of a series of statements, obviously. My statement about statements is not a scientific hypothesis. It is something that would require a philosophical proof, and if statements in philosophy are falsifiable, I’ve never noticed anyone doing so. > [@](#): > > BTW, perhaps you missed my earlier question: “Where [in this thread] did you mention that you’re Jewish?” > I would appreciate an answer from you. Thanks. I did miss it. For some reason all your sentences run together, even around quotes. Do you have line feed turned off for some reason? In any case I mentioned that my great-grandfather spent all his time studying the Torah, and seemed to be one of those people the community supported. That’s where I mentioned it. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/251 "2007-05-03T17:59:38Z")
[QUOTE=hotflungwok] And if it was able to be measured, then it wouldn’t be described as supernatural anymore. And until it can be measured, it gets stuck up on the shelf next to faeries and unicorns. [/quote] For those fond of not giving subjects very much thought, certainly. > [@](#): > > No, the experience is interpreted that way. There is no evidence god was in involved. Again, I am skeptical that you know what ‘God’ is. > [@](#): > > What? You can just name what you think god is, and suddenly that thing is god? The word ‘god’ has a notoriously non-specific but generally agreed on meaning (inside of each denomination of course), and all you’re doing here is declaring that god can be anything, and then saying that since god can be anything, god exists. You’re not moving the goal, you’re making the goal everything. When someone says ‘god talked to me’, there’s a certain expectation because of the common definition of god. If you’re going to call anything ‘god’, and not bother with any further definition, then I suggest you pick a new word, because the way you’re talking about it is misleading. It is not self-evident that god exists, or every single person would know it existed, and there would probably be a whole lot more agreement on his attributes. No, I stated the opposite in fact. However, “Everything” or at least the cause of “Everything” is a pretty standard attribute in all major religions that believe in such a thing as a supreme ‘God’. i.e. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Bahai, Taoism. In Taoism ‘The Tao’ represents God. Have you read the Tao te Ching? Any of it? I recommend rereading Spinoza’s Ethics. Particularly the first definition ‘Substance’. Read the first chapter where he lays out his groundwork the rest of the book. > [@](#): > > There isn’t a ruler big enough? Please. This is just quibbling over the definition of ‘exists’. Tolkien’s Middle Earth exists, in people’s minds, but that’s no reason to build churches and kill people over it. God exists as an idea, and until it can be shown, as nothing more. This is one definition of ‘exists’. Another definition of ‘exists’, one which I’ve been using the whole time and one which is normally used when having a ‘does god exist’ argument, is physical existance. I don’t care if god exists as an idea. It’s obvious it does. But god real? Does god have any form of physical existance? Does god coincide with this reality in any way? That matters. No, this is actually quite simple. A ruler is a measurement of a finite size. It is relative to a base measurement that kicked it off. They are culturally specific, a normative size that is based on common sizes that are useful for that culture. A ‘foot’ for instance was derived from the size of someone’s foot. This varied as the size of feet varied. Empire itself is an excercise in standardization. Look at ancient empires and how they standardizes weights and measures. Why would they do this? So that they could actually have a reasonable hope of commerce being relatively uniform. The same principle is applied to a Big Mac. Now of course, as God cannot be related to the size of the big Mac or the size of the King/Emperor/Duke/Presiding Officer’s foot. We do not have enough water to measure how much he displaces. (I am using ‘he’ generically not meaning it as a unit of measure of gender.) As God is the size of the aggregate of all possible synergies in all of existance, aka the ‘Supreme’ Being, it is not possible to measure him by its limited subsets. When you can tell me how you measure infinitely large or infinitely small, with a ruler that will denote it using finite chunks, get back to me. Again, we must be clear on the definition of God before we debunk the notion. People apply properties to God based upon what they are capable of perceiving as the supreme being. People spend their whole lives devoted to the discipline of knowing God. To hear you talk, you’d think that you knew precisely what that word means, and that it is meaningless. I already agreed with you that "goddidit’ is an unsatisfactory answer. I feel the same way about “BigBangdidit”. So within our finite frames of reference, we have some common terms to describe common experiences. Our language of course does not have the facility to adequately describe uncommon experiences. That doesn’t mean at all that the experience is invalid or has nothing to do with what the person describing it says. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/252 "2007-05-03T18:01:35Z")
[QUOTE=Voyager] Anyone who considers the creation symbolic, or a myth, is indeed considering it a religious belief, and thus don’t have to worry about scientific consideration. Any supposedly true statement about the natural world is up for falsification, any statement purely about the supernatural world isn’t. [/QUOTE] Creationism has yet to be falsified. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/253 "2007-05-03T18:28:04Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] Again, I am skeptical that you know what ‘God’ is. [/QUOTE] Er, so? Until you actually define god it doesn’t matter. You won’t, you just talking about events or the universe or whatever, even saying people can pick what they want god to be. Until you nail down what god is, and can prove it of course, then the subject doesn’t matter. > [@](#): > > No, I stated the opposite in fact. However, “Everything” or at least the cause of “Everything” is a pretty standard attribute in all major religions that believe in such a thing as a supreme ‘God’. i.e. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Bahai, Taoism. In Taoism ‘The Tao’ represents God. Have you read the Tao te Ching? Any of it? I recommend rereading Spinoza’s Ethics. Particularly the first definition ‘Substance’. Read the first chapter where he lays out his groundwork the rest of the book. And I recommend that you go back reread both of those. The Tao is not worshipped as a god. Taoism has lots of gods in its pantheon, but the Tao is not one of them. And Spinoza’s Ethics, as I stated before, starts out with a bunch of handwaving as its basis. He uses a bunch of bad logic so he can say god exists, and then bases everything off of that. It’s even worse than Aquinas’ 5 ‘proofs’. > [@](#): > > Now of course, as God cannot be related to the size of the big Mac or the size of the King/Emperor/Duke/Presiding Officer’s foot. We do not have enough water to measure how much he displaces. (I am using ‘he’ generically not meaning it as a unit of measure of gender.) As God is the size of the aggregate of all possible synergies in all of existance, aka the ‘Supreme’ Being, it is not possible to measure him by its limited subsets. Really? You sound awful confident of this. Maybe you could give some kind of evidence for it. > [@](#): > > When you can tell me how you measure infinitely large or infinitely small, with a ruler that will denote it using finite chunks, get back to me. When you can explain how an infinite being fits into a finite universe, get back to me. > [@](#): > > Again, we must be clear on the definition of God before we debunk the notion. People apply properties to God based upon what they are capable of perceiving as the supreme being. Yes, why don’t we be clear on it. Go ahead, you haven’t been clear yet. > [@](#): > > People spend their whole lives devoted to the discipline of knowing God. To hear you talk, you’d think that you knew precisely what that word means, and that it is meaningless. I already agreed with you that "goddidit’ is an unsatisfactory answer. I do know what the word means. See, we have these things called dictionaries now that tell us the definitions of words. It’s you who is using a different definition than what most people use. And you still haven’t said what that definition is. > [@](#): > > I feel the same way about “BigBangdidit”. You think ‘goddidit’ = ‘bigbangdidit’? Wow. I really don’t know how to respond to this, other than to say you need to learn more about the big bang theory. > [@](#): > > So within our finite frames of reference, we have some common terms to describe common experiences. Our language of course does not have the facility to adequately describe uncommon experiences. That doesn’t mean at all that the experience is invalid or has nothing to do with what the person describing it says. It also doesn’t mean that the experience was valid or has anything to do with what the person describing it says it does. That’s why we look for evidence to support it. If someone says something happened and they attribute it to god, it doesn’t mean that god it, or that god didn’t do it, until it can be shown one way or another. But, since nothing has ever been shown to have been done by god, the default position should be that god didn’t do it. Just because an experience can’t be shown to be not something, doesn’t mean it automatically is that something. > [@](#): > > Creationism has yet to be falsified. Creationism has yet to come up with a single shred of objective evidence. To date, all creationism has is pseudo-science and bad logic, mostly trying to attack evolution. It doesn’t need to be falsified, it needs to be verified before anyone should even bother falsifying it. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/254 "2007-05-03T22:55:01Z")
**Hotflungwok** One of the reasons I find these debates so intriguing is because supposedly learned people will argue so vehemently as to why they should be allowed to maintain their ignorance, and why it should trump the attempts of others to allay theirs. I don’t think you’ve understood a word I’ve said. That’s probably why you found Spinoza’s Ethics to be a bunch of ‘Handwringing’. Your inability to comprehend what someone is talking about does not amount to objective anything. It’s merely a willful assertion of ego. As for the infinite being inside a finite universe thing. That’s easy. An infinite being does not fit inside a finite universe, a finite universe exists inside an infinite being. Infinity does not necessarily require a ‘size’. As a friend of mine once said, “Infinity exists between the decimals”. A centimeter is infinitely wide, it is also 10 millimeters wide. It is infinitely wide because theoretically, you can divide it infinitely. Come back to me when you know the difference between a pagan deity, and YHVH. Then we’ll talk about the Tao again. There are some basics of theology at play here that are learnable if the person has any desire to, which you clearly do not, you just want to assert that you are correct, and yet I keep telling you we’re playing baseball and yet you continue to insist on kicking your soccerball around the field while telling me we don’t have any goal posts. When you are capable of understanding even the rudimentary semantics, then we can talk. So far your entire argument can be boiled down to, “Prove to me that the word means what you think it means using a completely inadequate symbolic toolset.” I’ve given you a pretty widely accepted definition of God, and you’ve ignored me time and again. God is ‘Supreme Being’. How is that moving it around saying it can mean anything I want it to mean? See when we are dealing with really big concepts there are ways of seeing it from many perspectives. Let’s say I go skiing on Sandia Mountain in Albuquerque. I describe the mountain only in terms of the ski slope. I talk about the runs, I talk about the lifts, the clubhouse, the restaurant, the view, all that sort of thing. I refer to it the entire time as a description of the mountain. Now of course it is not a description of the entire mountain, it’s not even a description of the entire ski resort, it’s little snippets of my experience of that mountain. Because you have a frame of reference for a ski slope and a mountain you accept the explanation. You read Spinoza’s Ethics, and you dismissed it. I believe you dismissed it because you didn’t understand it. It was a bunch of handwaving, and yet, Einstein is on record as saying he believed in Spinoza’s God. Now why would a man as intelligent as Einstein allow himself to be hoodwinked by a bunch of nonsensical handwaving? As far as ‘Bigbangdidit’ you explain to me how elements came to have the properties that they do and how as a result of that they ended up clustering together in the configuration that they did here in this solar system and galaxy. If you can do that, I am fairly certain that you will have dramatically altered my perception, I might even consider you one of the most influential people in my life. But please, don’t waste my time talking about valences, positive and negative charges, and isotopes. I want to know why a gold atom is a gold atom and why a hydrogen atom is a hydrogen atom, why they exist in the proportions that they do in the universe, and most importantly how choice is derived once they configure into a sufficiently complex pattern. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2007, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/255 "2007-05-04T00:27:43Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] **Hotflungwok** One of the reasons I find these debates so intriguing is because supposedly learned people will argue so vehemently as to why they should be allowed to maintain their ignorance, and why it should trump the attempts of others to allay theirs. [/QUOTE] I was just thinking this for some odd reason. > [@](#): > > I don’t think you’ve understood a word I’ve said. That’s probably why you found Spinoza’s Ethics to be a bunch of ‘Handwringing’. Your inability to comprehend what someone is talking about does not amount to objective anything. It’s merely a willful assertion of ego. And I thought you were trying to debate. I gave you the reasons I thought that, and you’re trying to say I didn’t understand. Why don’t you try to refute my argument, rather than just slapping on more handwaving? > [@](#): > > As for the infinite being inside a finite universe thing. That’s easy. An infinite being does not fit inside a finite universe, a finite universe exists inside an infinite being. Infinity does not necessarily require a ‘size’. As a friend of mine once said, “Infinity exists between the decimals”. A centimeter is infinitely wide, it is also 10 millimeters wide. It is infinitely wide because theoretically, you can divide it infinitely. So god is bigger than the universe? Can you prove this, or are you making things up to fit your preconceptions? > [@](#): > > Come back to me when you know the difference between a pagan deity, and YHVH. Then we’ll talk about the Tao again. There are some basics of theology at play here that are learnable if the person has any desire to, which you clearly do not, you just want to assert that you are correct, and yet I keep telling you we’re playing baseball and yet you continue to insist on kicking your soccerball around the field while telling me we don’t have any goal posts. When you are capable of understanding even the rudimentary semantics, then we can talk. What? You’ve got to be kidding. You claimed that the Tao is a god, [and that is plain wrong.](http://www.religioustolerance.org/taoism.htm) Period. There are gods in the Taoist pantheon, but the Tao is not one of the them. And you’re telling me that I need to learn? > [@](#): > > So far your entire argument can be boiled down to, “Prove to me that the word means what you think it means using a completely inadequate symbolic toolset.” I’ve given you a pretty widely accepted definition of God, and you’ve ignored me time and again. God is ‘Supreme Being’. How is that moving it around saying it can mean anything I want it to mean? See when we are dealing with really big concepts there are ways of seeing it from many perspectives. Let’s say I go skiing on Sandia Mountain in Albuquerque. I describe the mountain only in terms of the ski slope. I talk about the runs, I talk about the lifts, the clubhouse, the restaurant, the view, all that sort of thing. I refer to it the entire time as a description of the mountain. Now of course it is not a description of the entire mountain, it’s not even a description of the entire ski resort, it’s little snippets of my experience of that mountain. Because you have a frame of reference for a ski slope and a mountain you accept the explanation. ‘Supreme Being’? That’s it? And you’re trying to say I don’t know anything about god? Some might just say that ‘Supreme Being’, even with the capital letters, is just a tad general. You said: > [@](#): > > Some people like to call it ‘the universe’ or ‘existance’ and say that it works on purely mechanical principles. Other people like to see it in other ways. and now you’re saying ‘Supreme Being’? Well, if you can see it in purely mechanical principles, then how can an inadaquate symbolic toolset work? And if god is ‘the universe’ then what’s the problem measuring it? We’ve already done lots of that. You can pin anything to ‘Supreme Being’ that you want, any attribute, any powers, anything. ‘Supreme Being’ doesn’t define squat. > [@](#): > > You read Spinoza’s Ethics, and you dismissed it. I believe you dismissed it because you didn’t understand it. It was a bunch of handwaving, and yet, Einstein is on record as saying he believed in Spinoza’s God. Now why would a man as intelligent as Einstein allow himself to be hoodwinked by a bunch of nonsensical handwaving? Cite please. This smacks quite hard of the fallacy of false authority. > [@](#): > > As far as ‘Bigbangdidit’ you explain to me how elements came to have the properties that they do and how as a result of that they ended up clustering together in the configuration that they did here in this solar system and galaxy. If you can do that, I am fairly certain that you will have dramatically altered my perception, I might even consider you one of the most influential people in my life. But please, don’t waste my time talking about valences, positive and negative charges, and isotopes. I want to know why a gold atom is a gold atom and why a hydrogen atom is a hydrogen atom, why they exist in the proportions that they do in the universe, and most importantly how choice is derived once they configure into a sufficiently complex pattern. See, there you go again presupposing. There doesn’t have to be a why. The how is because of the nature of the universe. Elements exists because of the forces of the universe, etc. There simply doesn’t have to be a why, you’re the one creating one where so far there isn’t one. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2007, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/256 "2007-05-04T01:46:47Z")
**Hotflungwok** God means ‘Supreme Being’. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2007, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/257 "2007-05-04T02:41:39Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] **Hotflungwok** God means ‘Supreme Being’. [/QUOTE] So Loki, Thor, Athena and Ares are _all_ supreme beings? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2007, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/258 "2007-05-04T03:04:01Z")
[QUOTE=Czarcasm] So Loki, Thor, Athena and Ares are _all_ supreme beings? [/QUOTE] Again, I think the basic understanding of theology is a little too light on the con side for there to be a decent argument here. Greek and Norse Gods are anthropomorphizations of primal concepts. Very few people actually worship pagan deities like these anymore. Categorizing monotheistic deities in the same way as Pagan tribal deities is a mistake. Yes, God has different meanings in different contexts just like most other words in the dictionary. The way I have been using it has been as ‘supreme being’. However, I think you and everyone else in this argument knows that the article preceding the word God makes all the difference. ‘a’ God vs ‘the’ God. For instance in terms of Hinduism, the Gods are faces of the supreme being. I am beginning to wonder if the interlocution here is in good faith. Are you at all interested in understanding the point of view I am trying to explain or should we continue to make the rounds about inanities such as ancient pagan deities from dead cultures? I am not interested in going the rounds with the prepackaged arguments, I’ve heard them all before. I notice that any questions I’ve asked that don’t fit on the rails of the standard argument have been roundly ignored. Dogma, it’s not just for the religious anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2007, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/259 "2007-05-04T03:28:31Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] Again, I think the basic understanding of theology is a little too light on the con side for there to be a decent argument here. [/quote] But if we just accepted your definitions for all things religious and philosophical, there wouldn’t be any argument at all, would there? The reason we argue is that we disagree in the first place. [QUOTE=mswas] Greek and Norse Gods are anthropomorphizations of primal concepts. Very few people actually worship pagan deities like these anymore. Categorizing monotheistic deities in the same way as Pagan tribal deities is a mistake. Yes, God has different meanings in different contexts just like most other words in the dictionary. The way I have been using it has been as ‘supreme being’. However, I think you and everyone else in this argument knows that the article preceding the word God makes all the difference. ‘a’ God vs ‘the’ God. For instance in terms of Hinduism, the Gods are faces of the supreme being. [/quote] You do know the history of your god, don’t you? Originally, he _was_ a tribal god that served the Jewish people. Later, as older religions died out, he became the most powerful tribal god. Later still, the most powerful among the gods, and now religious history has been “corrected” to show that he is the _only_ god. > [@mswas](#): > > I am beginning to wonder if the interlocution here is in good faith. Are you at all interested in understanding the point of view I am trying to explain or should we continue to make the rounds about inanities such as ancient pagan deities from dead cultures? I am not interested in going the rounds with the prepackaged arguments, I’ve heard them all before. I’ve seen this type of misunderstanding before-you seem to think that the only reason we have to disagree with you is because we don’t understand you. Wrong. I fully understand what you are saying and _still_ disagree with it. > [@mswas](#): > > I notice that any questions I’ve asked that don’t fit on the rails of the standard argument have been roundly ignored. > > Dogma, it’s not just for the religious anymore. But they still excel at it. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2007, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355/260 "2007-05-04T03:35:23Z")
[QUOTE=Czarcasm] But if we just accepted your definitions for all things religious and philosophical, there wouldn’t be any argument at all, would there? The reason we argue is that we disagree in the first place. [/quote] So you disagree that the word God means ‘Supreme Being’? > [@](#): > > You do know the history of your god, don’t you? Originally, he _was_ a tribal god that served the Jewish people. Later, as older religions died out, he became the most powerful tribal god. Later still, the most powerful among the gods, and now religious history has been “corrected” to show that he is the _only_ god. Yes that is the history of the Jews. The Jews were not the original monotheists. > [@](#): > > I’ve seen this type of misunderstanding before-you seem to think that the only reason we have to disagree with you is because we don’t understand you. Wrong. I fully understand what you are saying and _still_ disagree with it. Show me evidence that you disagree. State that you disagree. Tell me that my definition is unacceptable, then I have something to work with. So far all I see is a lot of side-stepping and reiteration of the same old arguments. I want evidence that I am not arguing with rote automatons. Another explanation of Natural Selection as though I didn’t learn it in the eighth grade, or some variation on “You don’t believe in other people’s Gods, I just believe in one less.”, just aren’t going to cut it. You have to accept the definition in order to argue against it. If people accepted it on those terms then we could actually argue rather than go into a recursive loop trying to come to a mutual understanding of the rules of engagement. > [@](#): > > But they still excel at it. They aren’t the only ones. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-value-of-faith/401355.md?page=14)