papermachesatan

EDIT:
You're right. Im not being very fair. I apologize.

papermachesatan

My position has been that God has no supporting evidence and consequently, faith in him irrational. Yes, most of the debate revolved around God's existance. My summariziation does include what my last response to GakFace's post covered, however.

There's a far greater amount of evidence in my physician's competence - Medical degrees, laws, etc. than there is in God. I don't know that the car stopped at the red light won't just peel out other than the probability is low and they most likely know of consequences of doing such; even then, I procede across cautiously. Faith is the grease of life and faith in things with evidence supporting their dependability is not irrational. And you are correct than I cannot be 100% certain that the sun's going to come up or that my parent's love me. The sun has consistently come up and gone down for all of recorded history; it's safe to assume it will come up. I also have evidence of my loved one's love towards me. God has no evidence what-so-ever. Faith in something with evidence is far different in something faith without evidence. That's where the boundry of the rational and irrational lie.

I'd be highly interested in hearing what makes a spirtual assessment of what happens when you die so accurate.

If you're refering to faith, see the above.

See the above quote taken from one of my earlier posts.

filtherton

So what if someone claims to have personal evidence of the existence of a god? Since that evidence may be purely experiential how is it any difference from the "evidence" that you have as to your loved ones' feelings towards you?

I agree though, faith based on rational thought is generally better placed than blind faith. What if i claim that it is possible to believe in the existence of god based purely on the very rational belief that the universe was created? Surely the idea that the universe was created by some sort of force is nothing new to you, why is it so irrational for that force to be sentient? I think it is irrational to label as irrational something which you have no direct or even secondhand knowledge of.

I'm not saying it is accurate, just that when it comes to things that by their very nature can't be proven or disproven it is a waste of time to try and write said thing off as irrational. I'd like to hear your rational, scientific fact-based perspective on the afterlife or lack thereof. Where do you think we go after we die? Let me pre-emptively state that whatever you think is wholly irrational. At least as irrational as believing in some sort of deity.

So i'm wrong. You're argument is essentially "you can't prove it and it is irrational." My bad. Its still not a very compelling argument. It is very rational to wonder about that which cannot be explained. It is also very rational to make sense of the unknown as best as you can based on your experiences. How is it irrational to believe in god, even lacking the empirical, quantitative evidence that you seem to need?

chavos

Paper: thank you for revising your tone...

Understood... The problem is that we've been talking about the evidence we see. You simply disagree with how to interpret said evidence. That's fine...but acknowledge that there is an interpretive debate. Ultimately, most of us understand that faith is arational. It is not understood soley with reason, nor does it stand in direct defiance of our intellectual capabilities...but it is reliant on knowledge that is non-testable in a scientific means.

Aside from some perjorative language, and the conclusions as to the value of arational thinking and evidence...that's the same thing i see you saying.

filtherton:
Very interesting...i like the way you put it.

Tophat665

1) They were taught to. GakFace's demurral aside, many people never get beyond their childhood conditioning. (one of them is running the country these days.)

2) Searching for truth is hard work, many or all facets of which have at this point a specialized vocabulary that takes time, effort, and desire to learn. However, people are fundamentally curious, so, if they haven't the resources or desire to try to find out what's really going on, or if they lack patience or ability or gumption, then God is as good an answer as any. (Yes, you read that right: because they're stupid, lazy, or both.)

3) Expanding on the last, there are things that literally cannot be known. You run across them in science and math all the time. The Heisenberg Uncertainly Principal is a good example from science and Gödel's Theorum is a proof of the existance of things unkowable in math. Now, those are two rigorous examples, but there are many people who, when confronted by these lacunae in knowlege feel a lack (as if emtpy space needed filling. It doesn't). So they fill that lack with God.

4) Because the human mind sometimes talks to itself in such a way that it seems like the speech is coming from without. Sure, there's schizophrenia, but I am actually talking about enlightenment - the fourth and fifth Arisotoelian souls.

5) Because God is where you define it.

I am 34 with 7 years of college and not degree.

As for what I believe, I think God is a semantic convenience. There's a whole lot of things out there that I don't understand, and somewhat fewer things that I do. They are all God. I think the afterlife lasts between cause of death and cessation of brain function, but feels eternal subjectively. However, I also belive that if I am wrong about this, that there is sufficient commonality among religions that, if I live a good life, then I'll have a good afterlife, and if I don't it's because God is a bastard.

Oh, and I think Blind Faith is a fools game. (Winwood was better with Traffic.) If it makes you happy, though, enjoy.

If there is an omniscient, omnipotent (and possibly omnibenevolent, but I only need the first two for this argument) God that created humanity, then the human capacity for science was created by God, the human endeavor of science was forseen by god, and, frankly science has as much God in it as church, which is also a human endeavor to answer a human proclivity: curiosity.

Therefore, God and science are not incompatible, and, if either rules anything, it is merely parts of the same thing, and those parts either overlap significantly or are identical.

This is Hell, nor am I out of it.

__________________
Light a man a fire, and he will be warm while it burns.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

Tophat665

Edit: Removed (by author) for excessive flippancy and lack of any possible positive effect.

__________________
Light a man a fire, and he will be warm while it burns.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

filtherton

I'm not saying that god and science can't coexist. Just that god can generally be used to explain the things that are beyond science. Religions generally evolve along with scientific thought(when they aren't trying to silence the scientists). Example: many christians see the story of adam and eve as mere myth/parable/metaphor since evolution became the vogue method of creationism.

So if believing in a deity is stupid and lazy, how lazy do you have to be if you can't even take the time to believe in anything? Now this kind of argument is ad hominem at worst and misleading at best.
Do you know that many religions require that their pastors/priest actually go to college? My dad had to get a masters degree. How stupid and lazy is that?
I think i know what you mean though, that many people lack the desire to attempt to make sense of their own spirituality. I agree with you there.

chavos wrote:
Thanks fellow minnesotan. You're pretty well spoken yourself.

papermachesatan

It would depend on the 'personal evidence' involved. I would question the premises, the situation, and the circumstances of the claim,etc. .

God's an unnecessary part of explaining any phenomena. Chance and Coincidence serve as superior explanations to phenomena unexplainable by other means. Consequently, God is an irrational belief.

Why do we have to go anywhere at all when we die?

See second response in this post.

papermachesatan

EDIT:
delete me.

papermachesatan

Agreed.

filtherton

Okay, well prove to me that your parents love you. Right now, over the internet, with completely rational and non-anecdotal evidence. Good luck.

Emotion isn't all that necesary either. Love? Who needs it? All anybody needs is cold hard reason. I'm sure you argue with your parents and call them irrational because they bear the unnecesary cross of loving you. I'm also sure that you, as the guardian of rational necessity, wouldn't be caught dead having sexual relations for non-procreative reasons.

Let me make a list of other things that are unecessary: art, science, reading, love, computers, coffee, friends, trust, beauty and well, pretty much everything else beside oxygen, water, food, and shelter(depending on your climate).
Pretty much everything that has changed about humanity starting with agriculture has been wholly unecessary.

Geez, that means there are a great many things that humanity takes for granted that aren't necessary.
Yet we continue to do all these things. Why? I'm guessing we do the things we do because they give meaning to an existence which, if you follow logic's directions, appears to be completely meaningless. Now, if your a nihilist(not hard for me to believe at this point) i just have to ask you something. If everything is so meaningless and unecessary why are you even arguing about it?
Finding meaning IS a necessity. Without it you are a robot waiting to die. Spirituality, and even the belief in god, give people meaning. Just like art and love give people meaning.

So you believe that we just stay in our bodies after we die? Dead people are still there, they're just being unresponsive to the physical world? Sounds pretty rational to me. Do you honestly think that we don't go anywhere after we die or do you have actual thoughts on the matter?

See first response in this post.