And what’s wrong with just not believing until more evidence comes in?
Before I respond more fully, have you read the thread or at least perrused my posts?
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Straw man , I never said we can’t judge religion. I said we can’t realisitically measure all religion, throughout all history, including every person who lives, and ever has lived, their every act, and assign some measureable value of good or bad.
Let’s make this easy. I’m not interested in hearing your opinion on the subject again. If and when you can find some reputible source who claims to have actually done such a study I’ll be happy to look at it. Until then there’s zero need to hear from you about it.
When someone is making a claim about logic about such a being then they are because that supposed being is included. I’ve seen the argument about unnessecary evil quite a bit. Never made sense, still doesn’t.
Nothing at all. Also rational.
People believe a study that says X is bad for you, and that becomes common knowledge until another study a few years later says , no X isn’t really bad for you and actually has some benefits.
Is that rational?
Yes, I suppose one can take a very logical and rational approach to an absurd, hypothetical or incorrect premise. People once reasoned that the sun moved around the Earth based on the empirical evidence they had at the time. The Unibomber reasoned that he needed to start blowing people up to save the Earth.
What would such a being care about any particular individual’s suffering any more than we might care about the suffering of an amoebae? What could an amoebae possibly comprehend about it’s “purpose” under a microscope? Why is it important for people to feel it is possible for them to have a “relationship” with God any more than it is possible for the amoebae to have a relationship with the lab techniciam?
I think you are confusing rational with rationale.
Buying Frosted Flakes over Corn Flakes because I like the taste is a rationale.
Buying Corn Flakes cereal because it is healthier than Frosted Flakes is rational.
You are correct. Different people will reason differently. They have different motives, drivers, experiences and information available to them.
“Nobody” and “ever” are probably incorrect. People will make decisions based on emotion. Hwever that is very different from saying no one ever takes a logical and reasoned approach to decision making.
Yes. But I was a little drunk when I posted that and got carried away - if you want the same point made eloquently and without the contentious crap, head to** Little Nemo**'s
What does “that” refer to ?
That, is believeing a study that X is bad for you because it got repeated and spread around as true, only to discover a few years later it was incorrect, or perhaps the 2nd study is incorrect.
As a general rule, I wouldn’t say accepting something as true because “everybody knows it is” is rational, no. Common knowledge is more often than not up it’s arse, even more so when it comes to science and fact-based assertions. Hence this very forum. Did you know there’s actually not all that much iron in spinach, and the source of the myth is a 140 year old misplaced decimal point ?
The rational measure of the truthiness of a given study is the contents of that study (methodology, interpretation of the results, etc…), not how far it got carried on the wings of rumour, misunderstanding, false advertising, miscommunication and so forth.
Who said there’s anything wrong with that?
Seems to me that it can be a better choice than the two you presented, and thus conspicuous in its absence.
It is probably the most rational choice so long as we are careful to operate as if X does not exist in our other pursuits.
What feelings were the neuroscientists having that led them to believe that?
Agreed.
It’s not essentially correct. It’s a meaningless capitulation to fantasy. You are essentially saying, “what if, in some way we can’t understand 2+2=107?” That’s not rational, it’s deciding to pretend that in this one instance, nonsense makes sense.
And as the being would be omnipotent, nothing it doesn’t explicitly want to happen would happen.
The universe could certainly exist with negative motivation without the possibility of gangrape, coke-fueled child solders and brain cancer.
What if someone throwing acid in your child’s face is actually necessary to God’s plan?
Surely you can see that everything you wrote in that previous paragraph is simply nonsense what-ifs? That’s not being rational. A rational person looks at reality for cues to action. Not picks an idea (that God exists) and spend time daydreaming about excuses to make the concept sound reasonable.
Rationality, I think, is the ability to reason within the confines defined by your logical framework. If my framework is, for example, personal utility, then it is rational for me to choose the $4 platter over the $5 one, all else equal. I am making a rational choice because I am optimizing my utility based on the framework defined by the situation at hand.
When it comes to epistemology, inductive reasoning is what we largely use as our underpinning. Inductive reasoning is largely probabilistic. Some things we’re extremely confident about because it’s worked 100% of the time, and it’s predictive, supported by tons of evidence, etc. However, it could be wrong. Many years ago, inductive reasoning would have suggested that it was rational/reasonable to think that God created complex things or that we were alone in the universe.
Of course, as evidence rolled in and expanded our logical frameworks, we changed our opinions to arrive at more rational conclusions. We don’t need God to explain anything.
You can be rational within a theistic framework, but I do not think it is rational to adopt the theistic framework in the first place. I draw the line at the 50/50 mark. In this case, the evidence is overwhelmingly against theistic frameworks, as they’ve now been revealed to be God of the Gaps arguments, argument from ignorance, appeal to authority, appeal to utility, confirmation bias, etc, which are all problems we’re well aware of and how they work.
Could it be wrong? Maybe there is a God? Sure. But God is very improbable based on what we now know. He’s not necessary to explain our universe just like pixies are not necessary to explain how water boils.
Is it rational to believe in something that hasn’t been proven or contradicted? An unfalsifiable God? If your aim is to feel better and enjoy life more, it could be. If your goal is truth, then absolutely not.
There has been a lot of recent research into the role that emotion plays in decision-making.
What scientists have found is that it has a surprisingly large place. In the example of buying cereal that you give, what they have found is that in many cases, people who are simply asked to choose a cereal give a different answer than the one they give if they are asked specifically to weigh cost, weight, nutritional content, etc., and then choose. Even though they think they are making a rational decision in both cases, in the first case they are making an emotional decision which is immediately rationalized.
Not only that, but scientists can actually follow the progress of thoughts through the neurons in the brain, from the emotion center first and then to the frontal lobes where rational thought occurs.
I don’t entirely agree with this, given that I think I understand where DT is coming from.
all religion is derived from one single source of evidence. Someone told you so.
that is the entirety of religion other than the part where the person told believes the teller.
the invisible pink unicorn and the FSM are both perfect examples of this. no one really thinks either of these things exist because they were created to poke fun at believers (among other reasons) yet they have exactly the same level of proof of existence as every other god who has been believed in at every point in human history.
there is no god is a perfectly rational stand point if you hold this view. just like there is no invisible pink unicorn standing over your shoulder, the one who is also incorporeal, does not breathe or radiate heat or any other type of energy. if you believe god exists because we cannot prove he doesn’t or can’t then you also believe in the ipu, the fsm, and that tomorrow morning fairies will have built an invisible bridge that allows you (and only you, it will not stop airflow or birds or anything else from passing through that space) to walk off the top floor of a parking garage to the nearest tall building. Wait, that last one could be proven one way or the other, but only if you are willing to take that first step.
Believers require that their faith be rational to them, they require the “you can’t prove he doesn’t exist” argument to seem valid. it is not, and never has been.
Yes it is. When new evidence is found, it expands your knowledge and you adjust your beliefs accordingly. This is the essence of rationality - you go where the evidence takes you.
To put it in perspective, do you think millions of people converted from Christianity to Islam in the eight century because new evidence was discovered that proved Allah was more real than God?