Ustwo

Yea I was going to post it but no need to be that harsh. Religious groups have been trying to tie in Einstein into this sort of things for years, perhaps the worst example I read was in a work of fiction by Frederik Pohl where a computer Einstein personality went temporarily insane when he discovered that the universe was pretty much standard science fiction like with no apparent need/place for God. Apparently even Pohl bought into the concept that Einstein was some kind of strong believer, when while he was alive Einstein was often criticized by religious groups for his apparent lack of faith.

So its understandable that a lot of people assume Einstein was somehow religious, I think its been a conscious goal of some groups to try to tie into the one scientist/genius everyone knows of. Its also dishonest of course.

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Baraka_Guru

Being the genius that he was, it is difficult to pigeonhole Einstein's mind into one classification. He thought a lot about God, religion, and science and how they all interacted in the universe. Whether he believed in a figure that we could call God is irrelevant. He was keen on viewing the universe and how it worked. To say Einstein was non-religious would be false. To say he believed in a personal god would also be false. He criticized indoctrination of the church, but saw the value of pursing the "laws of God." He criticized both religious institutions and atheists:

About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church. As long as I can remember, I have resented mass indocrination. I do not believe in the fear of life, in the fear of death, in blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws.

—W. Hermanns, Einstein and the Poet—In Search of the Cosmic Man (Branden Press, Brookline Village, Mass., 1983), p.132, quoted in Jammer, p.123.

I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional "opium of the people"—cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims.

— Einstein to an unidentified adressee, Aug.7, 1941. Einstein Archive, reel 54-927, quoted in Jammer, p. 97

How does this apply to this thread? Well, this thread is about theism. I suppose it depends on how you apply it. Is it the theism of church dogma, or is it the theism of religious truth as applied to the pursuit of scientific truth?

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n0nsensical

I think it's disingenuous at best to equate theism with organized religion dogma.

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filtherton

It's a convenient way to frame an argument against theism. You can point at people like pat robertson, and though folks of his ilk in no way represent theism in its general sense, you can pretend that he epitomizes theist thought. Then, in your most intellectually elite voice you can chuckle and shake your head at the whole lot of them.

I think most arguments against theism could be avoided if every instance of the word "theist" was replaced with the word "douchebag". The problem with pat robertson wasn't that he was a theist, it was that he was a douchebag.

Ustwo

There has been very little of this kind of argument in any of the atheism threads here. So while there is a segment of the population much like you described, they are not the ones posting here.

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Willravel

There is one and only one way for theism to die: human kind becomes extinct.

Even if a whole new generation of children is born and only has one adult to lead them and that adult is an atheist, theism would find it's way back in. It's in some people's natures.

filtherton

'tis true.

Infinite_Loser

REALLY? Well, I guess we all learn something new every day.

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Lasereth

I think a lot of people deep down have their doubts but don't want to blow their chances of getting into heaven in the event that it's real. I mean it really does sound awesome, right? If there's even a miniscule chance that it's real, wouldn't you do everything you could to make sure you would get to go there?

Plan9

I'm a good person because I respect and fear this world... not the next one.

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Filtherton

It has quite a larger basis than what you think. Everything that science attempts to explain and indeed does explain is based on evidence. As for the realms of science, science deals with all of reality which is essentially everything.

True. IF you make the very large and completely unfounded assumption that the universe is too complex to come around by its own. Show me how this could possibly be so.

What do you truly know of string theory? Quantum theory is all maths however for string theory to work one often has to introduce extra spacial dimensions. Furthermore string theory’s claims are un-testable and therefore have no accompanying proof.

Let’s see... Consistency is when claims or indeed evidence agree with each other. If you have read scripture you will find that the amount of contradictions is extremely numerous. Theism is inconsistent. I take theism to include, for the sake of this argument, both theism and deism as both are opposed to atheism. Logic really only has one meaning and according to Oxford it is reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity. I do not use my own definitions. I do not know where you are getting yours from.
When has an atheist here made the claim that because one theist acts in one way all theists are bad? We can leave those kinds of claims to the theists (‘Stalin was atheist so there!’). Atheists do not judge groups by actions of individuals however you seem to think that we do, though you are right that it is indeed an ineffective way to argue.

allaboutmusic

I believe that either they are deluding themselves or they have been tricked by someone or by natural events and they really do believe. This puts them out of any realm of an argument because they know that God is real and nothing we could possibly say will tell them different. This is where the childhood thought comes into it. In any other field bar theism such attitudes would not be tolerated however theism teaches that unquestionable faith is a virtue and as a result these people become almost idolised.

My comment in relation to Newton and Einstein was not worded too well and as a result it reads as though I thought Newton was unreligious, my mistake.

Baraka_Guru, I think that church dogma as you call it follows almost explicitly from theist beliefs so that is how it fits into this thread.

Willravel makes a good point however this would be very hard to show in practice or even in theory.

Lasereth

You are talking of Pascal’s wager. He thought the same things that you do however there are some things inherently wrong with his argument.

God allegedly rewards belief however he rewards true belief and not ‘I’m just pretending to believe in you because I want to get into heaven’, wouldn’t go down too well. You cannot simply decide to believe one day, you can decide to act as a believer but you cannot decide to believe.

God is also allegedly omniscient so you have no hope tricking him into getting into heaven either. There are further arguments against this however I think what I have said here is enough to show its fallacy.

Sedecrem

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Plan9

God = entropy?

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filtherton

It has a much more refined, specific basis than you think. Science only deals with the things it is capable of dealing with. A simple thought experiment: is there anything that science can't deal with?

Case 1: Yes.

How can you tell?

Case 2: No

How can you tell?

Either way, there is no evidence that science is capable of providing a useful and/or relevant understanding of all, or even most, of reality.

It doesn't matter if it is so. I was just pointing out that it is logical. Whether it is so shall forever remain a mystery.

From my understanding, string theory is all math- very little physics is involved. Logic is the fundamental building block of math. It is easy (if you know calculus) to show, using mathematical logic (is there any other kind of logic?) that it is possible to have an infinite area, which when revolved around a certain axis gives a finite volume. This has no physical meaning, but it can be shown mathematically to be true. I make no claims on the validity of string theory, just that it has a logical base and is completely unprovable. That doesn't mean anything more than it means.


Well, if you have read science, you will find that it says nothing that necessarily contradicts scripture or the notion of an all powerful god. The consistency of belief in an essentially all powerful god is inherent- any perceived inconsistencies can be written off as evidence of god's power. It's really that simple. I'm not saying its compelling, just that its consistent.

In any case, theism and scripture aren't the same thing. There's more than one way to believe in god.

Don't settle for the dictionary definition- dictionary definitions don't really do a lot of things justice. If you're in school, or have access, take or read up on the first required math class after calculus, those usually focus on logic and proof.

Logic just defines the relationship between statements. If A, then B. If B, then C. If A is true, then C must also be true. What A, B, and C are isn't necessarily important. A is often an axiom, something which is often taken to be self evident, and which cannot be proven.

Furthermore, "strict principals of validity" doesn't necessarily refer to science or whether a statement meets some certain external criteria, it more likely refers to agreed upon meanings for different statements, i.e. what does A implies B mean formally, as opposed to A and B or A but not B. Like any sort of mathematics, you can't get very far if you don't agree on the ground rules.

I'm still waiting for some sort of working definition of critical thought.

Lasereth

I know that viewpoint is redundant and basically bullshit. I said many people, not myself. You do have to take into account that MANY "Christians" or otherwise religious people believe in it for that sole reason. They believe because they don't want to blow their chances. Yes that's not how religion works, but true religion requires an unwavering, blinded faith in something that can't be proven. Not many people have this even if they say they do...so they just say outloud and to others that they believe.

Plan9

True religion?

Hmm, seems kinda... like something we shouldn't be measuring. I was under the impression that religion works because you can't measure faith.

Although I tend to agree with you... not many people are really religious.

We have too many things in our lives pulling us in other directions.

Money, the TeeVee, and a really great blowjob before bed.

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roachboy

uh...no. that's not the problem with pascal's wager.
pascal was smarter than that....

the problem is more that everyone is in a position of having to play at all. the wager only works if you accept the argument that you have to play.

within that, there is a question about faith, obviously--but pascal deals with that....when at the end of the probabilities section, the voice of the bettor says basically "i have been convinced to wager, but am so constituted that i still cannot believe. what do i do?"

the response is to act as though you believe--perform the rituals, etc.--and you discipline your body with the result that eventually you will become stupid (literally you will become like an animal) and will forget that you don't believe.

so in general (now backing out of the wager section a bit) for pascal there are two ways to reach faith: either you simply jump into it, or you condition yourself physically into it.

the reason for this situation follows directly from pascal's nominalist assumptions. so there's strictly speaking no way--NO way--to know
anything about this god character, and it's a matter of definition: human understanding is finite, god infinite and that's all there is to it.



strangely these options dovetail with the thread as a whole: once you believe, once you perform your own belief, you see reinforcement for it everywhere. this because you enter into a circular relation between the frame/premises that shape your worldview and the information that is organized by that worldview (in shorthand). but this is not particular to believers--such a circular relation always obtains in the ordering of/performance of the ordering of infotainment about the world. what varies are degrees of open-endedness, which may or may not translate into falsifiability.

for many believers, the objects of belief function as a priori.
and there is no way for anyone from an outside perspective to disrupt the circuit.

most theists (the-ist? those who believer in the article "the"?) are not nominalists as pascal was--most operate with a much looser understanding. you could explain this by reading pascal---the pensees are scary, there is nothing reassuring about them---you dont pull the world down around you like a sweater, you dont feel more like there is control in the world and that you benefit somehow from that divine control---nope--you float about an infinite space on a tiny rock from one viewpoint, and you twitch about like a reed over the infinite spaces of the small/microscopic. you are nothing, lodged nowhere. on the other hand, if more theists were nominalist, epistemology questions (which are actually ontological questions because they are not about knowledge of the world, but about what conditions knowledge of the world) would be simpler to sort out because agency of a radically unknowable god couldnt be integrated into data sets as an a priori.

but most theists prefer the nice, teddybear god who is close, comprehensible, like dad but bigger and dressed in white robes, who tinkers with things in the world directly. but even this is not problematic in itself.

the problem really is a naive faith in "science" or scientific method, which sits on an even more naive theory of what situation obtains when you map an embodied subject onto a general social space and try to generate an account of that mapping. most of the defenses of "science" here seem to sit on such a naive theory: that the world is an accumulation of objects, that these objects are complete within themselves and so are stable and so are therefore knowable, that scientific investigation involves a kind of unconditioned subject, a pure observer who uses mechanical devices to extend the pure gaze over a world of things. this relation extends to descriptions of phenomena via formal languages (mathematics) to the extent that the statements are understood as topological (descriptions of surfaces or features). what makes it naive is that questions of the "constructedness" of the observed are displaced from the relation of observer to what is observed onto the object itself, its situation (say, its scale...) what this means is that the arguments/images that are the basis for these constructions (in other words, which function as templates that are projected onto fields of infotainment and which order those fields) are not themselves problems----if "science" knows the world, then philosophy is simply ancillary. if "science" knows something of the world but that something is mediated in the strongest possible sense by the nature and quality of the arguments that enframe that knowing, then philosophy can operate as a recursion mechanism.

seems to me that the naive faith in "science" generates an image of the "scientist" as littlegod. and the quaint professions of faith in "science" are basically no different from those quaint professions of faith in the big-god.

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Baraka_Guru

...and from here we can determine the reasonable positions of atheist scientists with strong moral cores, or theologists who believe in and support theistic evolution.

The misleading path of this thread is one that focuses on the question of whether God really exists. This isn't the main concern of faith because it is a given; the religious do not doubt God's existence, so instead they focus on how to live under His laws, or, at least, they should. But what of the atheist scientist? Well, he or she should not be concerned with whether He exists either, because it doesn't matter. What matters is scientific truth. Both theologists and scientists are concerned with truth. Whether they seek truth of the same kind is what we should be focusing on here.

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—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

roachboy

but if truth is simply a matter of correspondence, then the search for it necessarily involves you in a loop---you find what you are looking for--and this bypasses the atheist/theist divide and cuts more to the question of what "scientific knowledge" is--btw i think there are only regions of scientific knowledge and no Scientific Knowledge in general--this rests on the same claim about truth as correspondence.

you see the notion of truth as correspondence in the design of any experiment.

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Baraka_Guru

By truth as correspondence, do you mean the connection of knowledge to power? If so, who, or what, determines what is true? Does this power shift? Is this how we see truths revealed has half-truths or falsehoods? May we have some examples, roachboy?

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

roachboy

i have some other stuff to do, so for the moment will just direct you to heidegger's being and time section 44 for the best explanation.
i know, i know: it's pretentious.
but hey, there it is.

the example of an experiment works too, though: experimental procedures are such that the anticipated outcomes are built into the design. if you map this design as a set of expectation as to outcomes, you can derive the notion of correspondence.

gotta go.

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roachboy

next day--truth as correspondence would be truth more in the sense that you'd use to refer to a statement generated via a proof that is valid or true (its production doesn't violate any rules)...

if i remember correctly, heidegger talks about correspondence between a signifier and its putative referent as an example--so correspondence is also about expectations and whether they are met or not.

the organization of information involves both patterns of realtime phenomena and secondary patterns (maybe--not sure if they'd be separate, and dont know how you'd know whether they were, but they seem secondary) of expectations concerning what is to follow.

expectations or projections are important in the reduction of complexity, which is a basic perceptual task. projections are the space where different registers of organization get intertwined, confused, conflated and so are the space in which, say, assumptions about how Things Are Organized in the Biggest Possible Sense get superimposed on more local phenomena---

this is probably going too far afield, but anyway since i've been working with this stuff it is jammed into my brain so here goes: edmund husserl talks about internal time consciousness as being comprised of a sequence of operations: retention, protension and modalization. time consciousness is a way of modelling thinking (which is not embodied for husserl) as temporal--as unfolding in time, as unfolding time---but a temporal process that generates a perceptual field (a visual field) that is relative stable, like what you see when you look around, or what you see as you read this...the sentences remain stable as perceptual data even as time ticks ticks ticks--the processes that enable you to read this are not processes that you experience directly, but they have to be in place and operative if you are reading this. so time consciousness is a way to model the transition from a temporal flux into organizable perceptual data. so it's about pattern generation--retention is a way of talking about how instantaneous visual data is coalated at a slight lag--husserl talks about types of edge recognition as the basis for patterning the contents of the field generated around this instantaneous visual data--so retention is a variant of memory that fixes elements abstracted from a temporal flux and renders them organizable---protension is the projection forward in time of expectations which are rooted in the fashioning of an object from temporal data---modalization is the adjustment of expectations to fit variation or change in perceptual data.

now there are problems with this model, most of which have to do with the way time is itself modelled...and that, if you think about it, if this operation was geared in fact around the production of objects in isolation, it'd be terribly slow. on the second point, i think that for husserl it follows from his desire to relegate language to a second-order operation, which gets introduced into the game of perception at the level of judgments about organized data, which is not implicit in the organization itself. anyway, i might be digressing (this shit has infested my brain)...

so to go back to the idea of experiment, you can see a structure of expectations built into an experiment's design.
these expectations are hedged round by any number of frames--the history of other such experiments, the accepted definitions of the phenomena being investigated, the collection of descriptions that enables results to be anticipated, etc.
so correspondence operates.
once established as valid or true, an experimental result can then be inserted into broader images of the world as coherent, as true or valid--these broader conceptions are not subjected to anything like the analysis that the experimental data is, but nonetheless, in a strange way, the inserting of experimental data into a "set" ordered around these other, unexamined signifiers (like god) functions to validate them.
this seems inevitable---if anything about husserl's time consciousness idea is correct, we mostly live in networks of expectations which are either met or not as we move through particular perceptual regions or fields.
it is not easy to separate different registers of expectation...and those who engage in scientific work are no more equipped to do it than anyone else necessarily--personally, i think this a consequence of the separation of scientific investigation and philosophical investigation, which to my mind should be talking to each other, but which in 3-d tend not to, particularly not in the states (as a function of the separation of disciplines)....

i wonder if this makes any sense at all.
meh--------posting it anyway.

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Hain

I'll rudely interrupt here and put my 2¢, without reading much else, and am probably reading it all wrong.

The debate, to me, is just, "I see religious people doing a lot of bad things." Religion itself isn't the problem, lack of tolerance and understanding is.

What evidence, where? Don't answer this, I really don't care to argue it, as I am sure I will encounter it again somewhere. While can I imagine many mysteries of the Bible have somewhere been disproved or shown to have been coincidence... how do you disprove something that cannot yet be observed?

Personally: engineering student, and all around fact finder. Love the debate. Yeah, religion does it's fare share of damage to people and culture, but that isn't the problem. The problem is people take belief so far and forget that there are basic rules we ought to follow outside of what the book says (I am recalling the thoughts of Kant at this point).

I prefer a mystery, and that is why I don't call it God. I've expressed this many times before, I thought here, and I am doing so again. We can't know anything. We observe.

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Baraka_Guru

The stuff that you wrote preceding this in #61 needed a referent for us, and here it is. A bit too conceptual at first, Husserl's ideas take form in your application of them to the idea of experiments. What I find interesting is that this seems to me to tie into my original reference to power/knowledge as conceived by Michel Foucault in that what we deem as knowledge (or truth) is that which has been accepted and "verified" by those with the authority to do so. The problem with this (even so within the context of internal time consciousness) is that knowledge is invariably effected (perhaps corrupted) of the ideological desires of those very authorities who empower it.

Take research, for example. The problem with research reports is that the data can be manipulated and presented in such a way to reflect the bias of those responsible for it. One can essentially have their answer before the question is even asked. "Knowledge" can be engineered by scientists out of the materials of what philosophers would call "truth." What, then, can we do to fill this void between "knowledge" and "truth"? What, then, can we do to undermine or circumvent the authoritative powers that not only create this knowledge but also apply it in great factors throughout society?

The problem with this thread is that it encourages people to fall into the easy trap of blindly criticizing "religious truth" as dangerous while doing so out of the more so affecting "scientific truth" that surrounds us in practice. We have removed much of the Church from our governments and schools, but we have done so at the cost of further empowering the power/knowledge problem.

Does this in anyway tie into what you're haunted by, roachboy? Or is it a misleading tangent? The only shift I can see is that I've pointed out the impact of accepted results, whereas you've focused on expectations.

I haven't read Heidegger. I haven't read Husserl.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

roachboy

well, in a way its a tweak of what filtherton's been saying in these threads too.


i focussed on expectations in time consciousness because if you think about it you can see how basic a role they play in the reduction of complexity, which enables us to generate a stable perceptual field...so the problem operates at a very intimate level, one that skims beneath the surface of interpellation involving subject positions generated by Institutions (in the big, straight sense) and points to how it is that we are ourselves institutions (the I is an institution) in a smaller sense--there are rules and we perform ourselves in contexts shaped by those rules (this is way too simple, but for the sake of being able to actually end this post...)

i went here because i think this is an interesting way of thinking about perception in general, how it is fashioned, what might be the parameters (at the biosystem level, say) that shape its production. and what i've posted really is only the barest of outlines, not even cliffnotes stuff.

anyway, if anything about the above is accurate, then we live mostly in ways shaped by protension, by expectation, which is a way of referring to modalities whereby we stabilize phenomena that we encounter in time (you know, from a particular side, from a particular angle, etc.)

and i dont think husserl was right in separating language from time consciousness and its operations...[[steps should be here but aren't]]
so i think that ideological propositions (implicit propostions) are repeated or performed in the most basic perceptual activities. we internalize and perform ideological positions. and many of these committments or positions are not rational at all--think for example about capitalism and the greatest mystery about it, that it has not exploded


anyway, it makes no sense at all to imagine that one type of knowledge production will eliminate this space held together by projection and another will not. science doesnt get rid of that. religion doesn't. so neither alters the central space of projection/expectation...so it's not like one is True and the other False in itself.

this isn't to say their equivalent, though.
scientific procedures do not falsify religious committments held by those who undertake them--they're simply integrated at a different level of symbolic interaction. nor does science-like activity explain the atheism of those who are. nothing is proven or disproven necessarily.

this also does not mean that there are not arguments for or against beliefs and that some are more persuasive than others.

it's all only to say that it is naive to imagine that "science" provides anything like a procedure that would lead anyone to either a religious commitment or to a lack of a religious commitment.
it's also naive to imagine that anyone is consistent in their ideological commitments--when you get down to it, people seem to value a sense of locatedness from which they are able to derive a sense of self as stable and/or coherent--so there's a bit of the conservative in everyone.

btw, i think god is just a word.

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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Hain

This reminds me of a discussion in the Atheism's sudden rise thread, where "faith" in the models was required to accept them. You are talking about dirty science. We all know the clique, "ends justifying the means," however here I say dirty science, "the ends must justify the spending." Yes science can be biased, because (aside from unscrupulous reasons) we are not ready to know the next step. The model may require new means of measurement, or new basic models to begin with. The real essence of the universe is there, we haven't the minds to understand it fully, yet. In science when you, viz your model, are proven "wrong," it usually means that the model breaks down as things get larger, smaller, faster, colder, etc. It wasn't precisely wrong, just not correct in all cases. This doesn't mean that the model can no longer be used.

The reason "religious truths" often are criticized, from my observations, is because many "truths" are not open to interpretation, there is no room for observation. When religion makes the headlines it is because some shit has hit the fan. This occurs when people strictly adhere to beliefs, instead of taking from their books the good that is to be taught.


Nor have I.

I agree with roach, that science is no means of justifying or renouncing religious beliefs.

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Tophat665

I think you're argument fails on this point. While I am most assuredly agnostic, the whole point of God is that it can neither be proved nor disproved. It's defined that way. If science could demonstrate the absence of a deity, then it wouldn't BE a deity.

For a really entertaining read and eye opening take on this that would probably jibe nicely with your Atheistic beliefs, and yet help you to understand the inevitable persistence of Theism, go to the library, take out George RR Martin's Dreamsongs, and read "The Dragon and George."

But look, it's not Theism that bothers you, it's people telling you what you ought to believe...

...Like Atheists are wont to do.

Agnosticism is the only 100% logical response, but no human is 100% logical, and 100% logical is no fun - even Spock figured that one out by the 6th movie.

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jorgelito

Dude, relax a bit, this is not a pissing contest. I have done plenty of research thank you. I really don't see the disagreement. Your own source (one that I've read) if you continue the whole quote (See Baraka's post) clearly states that Einstein was a very religious man. No problem there. I share his belief as well (as well as Spinoza's).

Again, the point is that religion and science are two very different things but not mutually exclusive. Plenty of scientists are religious and plenty of religious people believe in science. I really don't understand the antagonism and hatred directed at religious folk.

It's ok Ustwo, I didn't think it was harsh but thank you.

I disagree that it is dishonest to claim Einstein as a religious man. He says so himself. Just because he is religious does not diminish his scientific achievements. The reason I chose Einstein as a an example was to illustrate that religion and science are not incompatible or mutually exclusive. I think it is dishonest to claim otherwise.

Very well written Baraka, thank you.

Sedecrem

Augi

You talk about how the problem with religion is that people take things too literally and bypass the Good of the Good Book, if i understand you correctly. Would you wish the moral stories of scripture, ones that we can take meaning from to be taught and the ones that cause hatred intolerance etc. to not be taught?

(Apologies if i have misunderstood you)

Tophat
I tend to agree and disagree with you at the same time so this will be interesting.
I agree, as a scientist, whole heartedly that one cannot prove that God does not exist. We have no definitive proof that God does not exist and as some others have said we can never do. We can speculate on the existence of God as a probability though. To be an Agnostic i would think you either a) do not bother yourself with such though at all or b) think the chance of a deity existing to be more or less equal with the chance of it not existing.

Considering that if you were 'a' you probably would not be posting in this thread you would most likely think that God has equal chances at either way of existence. One must base probability on the evidence we have. Yes the evidence against God is not condemning but it does not need to be to shift from Agnosticism. (If you are aware with Hypothesis Testing in Mathematics then you will know what i am talking about)

The existence of God is just as likely as the existence of fairies and neither can be 100% scientifically disproved. However simply because something cannot be completely proved nor completely disproved does not mean the likelihood is 0.5 (50%).

I hope i have understood your position, if not please clarify me.

Sedecrem

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Hain

I would prefer people learn as much about each religion as they can to make up their own minds. You can let the hatred be taught, but as far as I am concerned, the hatred is just inflated by the modern times. Big example: Muslims and Jews, originally just a difference between which son was to get the promises of God. Now it is a modern conflict because the UN gave [promised] land away to Jews from the Palestinians. How much of that hate was originally instilled in the original texts of the Koran and mow much is just inflated by modern passions?

I myself think, "God promized... give me a break," only because of my own beliefs. So, yes, you would be correct. Personally, I would rather see the hatred not taught.

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filtherton

You can't really frame the existence of god as a matter of probability in any sort of technical sense. Doing so implies that you have some sort of data, i.e. you've studied a number of universes and a certain portion had a god, or that you have enough knowledge of the innate workings of the universe so as to come up with some numbers for the probability of the existence of god. Neither of these is true. You haven't studied other universes to determine whether there exists a god in any of them, and assuming that ours is the only universe the idea of "probability of god" is completely meaningless. And, you can't possibly have enough information to make any sort of meaningful claim on the probability of a god's existence- if you do i'd like to hear about it. The existence of god is just as likely as the existence of fairies, which is just as likely as new zealand acquiring nuclear weapons; which is to say that they all have a probability of x, where x is some number less than one.

Probability comes up in discussions of god's existence only as a means of trying to lend scientific sounding validity to matters of pure speculation. It's a scientific sounding way of saying, "Well, i've thought about it and my gut says probably not." It's not science in any sort of meaningful sense.

Jinn

QED. Science is testable, repeatable, and falsifiable. Saying something like "the chance of God existing is 50%" is a fancy mathematical disguise for an unprovable (and non-scientific) premise.

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Baraka_Guru

"Truths" not open to interpretation? No room for observation? Well, that isn't what they're meant for. "Truths" are meant to be the tools used to interpret the world through observation. It's supposed to be the other way around. However, you might be referring to dogma as opposed to the "truth," the latter which is often confirmed by observation and experience. Dogma is meant to teach, but it is also easily corruptible, which makes it open to criticism when it is used as a source of power to exploit others. This is the danger of religion; this is religion's delusion.

Would this be akin to using the scientific method to gauge good and evil?

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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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roachboy

but the fact that, if you like, we operate within different genres of thinking---that we can engage in scientific activities in one quadrant of our lives, and in another be quite religious---means that the only result of the above is that certain types of premises are ruled out of certain games. but that this is the case doesn't falsify them in general--it only excludes them from that particular game. this is one of the things i was trying to get at above...why the appeal to some abstract notion of "science" doesn't speak to the multiplicity of genre-frames that all of us operate with as we move through our experience, nor does it say anything about the hierarchies or arrangements that folk can fashion for themselves between or among these frames.

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it make you sick.

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Hain

Yes, dogma, that is what I meant.

Good and evil are human concepts we use to describe behavior conductive or antagonistic to society. Without certain morals and social laws, society could not function efficiently. In a sense, the scientific method could be used to gage good and evil demonstrating that without such X then Y of P you could not acheive Z, but as far as I see it, they are human concepts.

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Baraka_Guru

Good and evil aren't just human concepts, they are human problems. I'm not sure we could pin the concepts of good and evil to any other animals within the kingdom, but that doesn't make them any less real to us.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

Part of my acceptance of atheism is the understanding that there's no such thing as good and evil. There's destructive and creative. There's negative and positive. There's no good and evil, though. They're absolutist constructs intended to misrepresent what is really going on by painting an easier to understand black and white picture.

filtherton

I think that it could be argued that there's no such thing as destructive or creative or negative or positive- at least not in any objective sense. The differences between destructive and creative or positive and negative depend on perspective.

Ustwo

That I have to agree with filtheron on that.

But I do think the concepts of good and evil are in fact valid even though I don't believe in any higher power.

Good and evil are human terms for moral/immoral actions. Our morals are part of our genetics as a social animal and it is our morals which we mirror in our religions (not the other way around). Even when a society appears to be 'evil' it tends to be evil to out groups and moral to its own. This too is part of our genetically influenced behavior.

So while evil wouldn't be the work of the devil it would be recognized as extremely selfish behavior non-compatible with harmonious social living.

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filtherton

Sounds like hippie-talk to me.

Baraka_Guru

Actually, I think Karl Marx wrote that.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot