Five Reasons to Reject Belief in Gods

[cottage]

A proposition is a sentence expressing something true or false

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition

how is the athiest not making a proposition?

if you are entitled to make beleive what you believe believe you see no reason for it then we should be believe it simply because we see a reason, so your back in the same boat either prove why your view is better or your just as bad as we are.

If there must be labels then a-theism at its basic level is being without god belief. There are what I call campaigning atheists, who actively argue that there is no God; and then there are atheists who are such by definition, ie those for whom God or gods do not figure in their lives. Now, to see no reason for belief in gods isn't to argue that there are no gods. Religious beliefs are propositional and contain a subject and a predicate, but to be without a belief doesn't imply one is saying something about God or gods.

 

[Oberon]

I'm not against speculation, but what does it buy us to posit the existence of this "ghost in the machine"?

Perhaps nothing, and this may indeed be a "ghost in the gaps." If it can be eventually shown exactly how human consciousness is produced from neural interactions, to the point where any "ghost" is completely unnecessary, than to posit a soul is pretty pointless. We aren't there yet, and it is still possible that the "ghost" is responsible for driving the machine, but there is no evidence for this.

I do not believe that one needs to understand exactly how brains generate consciousness in order to establish that that is what they do

It isn't so much a question that the neural machinery is responsible for "generating" consciousness. We have known since Phineas Gage and others that brain damage can fundamentally alter who a person is, and we now know a great deal about where memory and learning take place, how long-term potentiation makes simple learning possible, how messages are passed back and forth via action potentials, etc. The question still is one of how all this electrical and chemical activity in summation amounts to a human being. And until we know that, while there is no evidence for it, the answer could still be the "ghost" organizing neural activities in particular ways.

I used to be a bigger fan of Kuhn's, but I now believe that paradigm shifts are less revolutionary and more incremental than he portrayed.

I don't buy Kuhn's argument completely by any means. I do believe that science actually progresses, and does not simply go from one paradigm to another. What is interesting to me is the tendency for a paradigm to dominate scientific research in an area and try to explain outliers either within that paradigm or as exceptions, until finally enough research is conducted as to make the old paradigm meritless. A good example of this for me is the biomedical model of mental illness dominating psychiatry.

Francis Collins, a devout Catholic,

I should point out that Francis Collins was an atheist and converted after his work in science. His examination of the genome led him to a belief in a creator. The design appeared too "designed."

We haven't proven abiogenesis, so the "explanation" has shifted to the gaps that science has yet to fill.

Collins and others are loathe to look for "god in the gaps" which are (as you know) failures to explain particular events. Collins, for example, points out that while there are certain things we can't explain in the evolutionary record, this doesn't mean we won't be able to. Guided evolution is often a "god in the gaps" argument, and when it isn't it is superflous. However, the strong versions of the anthropic principle are more concerned with the fine-tuning of the universe itself.

As Dawkins has pointed out, the "fine tuning" argument actually works against creationism, as it can be explained in terms of natural evolution.

The fine-tuning arguments go WELL beyond evolution. They concern far more things the laws of physics in the universe itself, and the fine-tuning necessary just to have an earth CAPABLE of supporting life. Compared to those kinds of arguments of fine-tuning, the "tuning" necessary for evolutionary changes is nothing.

Besides, there are perfectly good non-religious explanations of why human beings would come to believe in gods.

Yes.

I know of no such cases, but I am willing to be convinced.

There is a shrine of Lourdes in France where numerous miracles are claimed to have occured. So many, in fact, that a there is a medical bureau made up at times to examine these claims. The bureau is composed of doctors of with and without religious affiliations. When they determine that a so-called miracle can't be explained, they pass it on to the International Medical Committee in Paris, for further examination. If they can't explain it, they call it "medically inexplicable." It could be as simple as we just don't know what happened, but the point is these are documented cases examined by multiple experts under great scrutiny and the answer isn't there.

 

[tarasan]

OK, take out the positive if you like: the burden of evidence lies with those making a claim. Atheists decline to accept the claim that god exists.
I think you're just plain wrong here. It's meaningless to reject the existence of something whose existence has never been proposed. Suppose I try to convince you an invisible pixie called Skip lives behind my monitor; I suspect you might not believe me, and are now an aSkipist. But were you an aSkipist before you read this post?

Atheism is a response to theism; no theism, no atheism.

also like I sayed athiesm is making a claim so long as you are active, if your proposing something to someone you are making a claim about it, for example say if an athiests where to come up to me on the street and say hey there is no God he would be claiming it to me, therefore need evidence, now if I went to him hey there is a God that is when the burden of proof is on me.

but say i believed in a religion where no such entity called God was mentioned would i not be an athiests?

 

[tarasan]

If there must be labels then a-theism at its basic level is being without god belief. There are what I call campaigning atheists, who actively argue that there is no God; and then there are atheists who are such by definition, ie those for whom God or gods do not figure in their lives. Now, to see no reason for belief in gods isn't to argue that there are no gods. Religious beliefs are propositional and contain a subject and a predicate, but to be without a belief doesn't imply one is saying something about God or gods.

fair enough I agree with the non active athiests, but the active athiests are proposing something and therefore should put evidence up for thier belief

 

[Copernicus]

fair enough I agree with the non active athiests, but the active athiests are proposing something and therefore should put evidence up for thier belief

Tarasan, I started this thread on the grounds that there are positive reasons to reject belief in gods. Those are stated in the OP. I agree that the burden of proof is on theists to prove the existence of God, but I do not define atheism as mere lack of belief in gods. I define it as rejection of the belief that gods exist. Although there is no absolute proof of the claim that gods do not exist, there are very good reasons to adopt the position that they do not. I believe that positive atheism can meet its burden of proof on that score.

 

[Copernicus]

Thanks again for your thoughtful replies, Oberon.

I'm not against speculation, but what does it buy us to posit the existence of this "ghost in the machine"?

Perhaps nothing, and this may indeed be a "ghost in the gaps." If it can be eventually shown exactly how human consciousness is produced from neural interactions, to the point where any "ghost" is completely unnecessary, than to posit a soul is pretty pointless. We aren't there yet, and it is still possible that the "ghost" is responsible for driving the machine, but there is no evidence for this.

I could just as well argue that there might be 2 ghosts, or 25. I just need some speculation to overcome Occam's Razor, but speculation is cheap. I asked what it buys us to posit a ghost in the machine. Unless you can answer that question, your speculation ceases to tell us anything of interest. Occam's razor cannot be so easily neutralized by speculation.

...The question still is one of how all this electrical and chemical activity in summation amounts to a human being. And until we know that, while there is no evidence for it, the answer could still be the "ghost" organizing neural activities in particular ways.

Agreed, but the speculation is still sunk by Occam's Razor. What does the ghost actually do? What would it explain if it did exist? And let's not forget all of the animals with brains in various stages of evolution. Do they all have souls? Or is it only human brains, as some narcissistic human beings have claimed? Or are souls also to be associated with animate beings as some animists have claimed? Or with inanimate objects as some pantheists have claimed? Such speculation is notoriously a fire in a wooden stove.

I don't buy Kuhn's argument completely by any means. I do believe that science actually progresses, and does not simply go from one paradigm to another. What is interesting to me is the tendency for a paradigm to dominate scientific research in an area and try to explain outliers either within that paradigm or as exceptions, until finally enough research is conducted as to make the old paradigm meritless. A good example of this for me is the biomedical model of mental illness dominating psychiatry.

I am not where you are on this. I think that the biomedical paradigm has not been shown to be useless merely because some implementations of it have failed. That is the normal course by which science progresses. Failed models lead to improved theories. What would be interesting is if it really did fail in ways that suggested a need for an alternative paradigm. (I think that Kuhn's ideas have merit, but science is progressive and cumulative. His approach doesn't really account very well for that aspect of science, but I sense that you agree with me on that.)

I should point out that Francis Collins was an atheist and converted after his work in science. His examination of the genome led him to a belief in a creator. The design appeared too "designed."

A lot of Christians claim to have been atheists at some period in their lives, when, in fact, they merely suffered through a serious crisis of faith. If you want a genuine atheist who ended up converting to belief in a deity because of DNA "complexity", I think that the recently-converted deist Antony Flew is far more convincing than a Roman Catholic.

And there is nothing about DNA that makes it appear any more "designed" than the complex being that people like Collins imagine to have done the "design" in the first place. That is a general problem with theistic explanations. They almost always end up getting hoisted by their own petard.

Collins and others are loathe to look for "god in the gaps" which are (as you know) failures to explain particular events...

My impression of him is the exact opposite.

...Collins, for example, points out that while there are certain things we can't explain in the evolutionary record, this doesn't mean we won't be able to. Guided evolution is often a "god in the gaps" argument, and when it isn't it is superflous. However, the strong versions of the anthropic principle are more concerned with the fine-tuning of the universe itself.

Again, I find Dawkins, Dennett, and other atheists far more convincing on the fine-tuning argument. We are an effect of the way the universe turned out, not the reverse. If the universe were designed with us in mind, one would expect more of it to appear friendlier to our form of life.

The fine-tuning arguments go WELL beyond evolution. They concern far more things the laws of physics in the universe itself, and the fine-tuning necessary just to have an earth CAPABLE of supporting life. Compared to those kinds of arguments of fine-tuning, the "tuning" necessary for evolutionary changes is nothing.

I find the "fine-tuning" argument to be totally unconvincing as an argument that the vast universe containing our speck of a planet was designed to bring us about. If there ever existed unplanned planners, I think that we make the best exemplars. We clearly evolved from less complex self-replicating processes. It takes a fantastic set of assumptions to conceive a need for a "planner" that did not itself come into being by the same means. The anthropic principle ultimately gets plowed under by its own set of assumptions, just like all the other anselmian mind tricks.

There is a shrine of Lourdes in France where numerous miracles are claimed to have occured. So many, in fact, that a there is a medical bureau made up at times to examine these claims. The bureau is composed of doctors of with and without religious affiliations. When they determine that a so-called miracle can't be explained, they pass it on to the International Medical Committee in Paris, for further examination. If they can't explain it, they call it "medically inexplicable." It could be as simple as we just don't know what happened, but the point is these are documented cases examined by multiple experts under great scrutiny and the answer isn't there.

I find it telling that you cite no references or even a single web link. I'm sure that there must be loads of support for you generalizations, and I would have expected lots of scientists to be citing these "medically inexplicable" miracles. But you give no details. Is there some kind of scientific conspiracy of atheists who have managed to suppress these revelations? Or is this just like all the stories of bona fide miracles that every religious movement manages to produce?

 

[Oberon]

Thanks again for your thoughtful replies, Oberon.

My pleaure.

I could just as well argue that there might be 2 ghosts, or 25. I just need some speculation to overcome Occam's Razor, but speculation is cheap. I asked what it buys us to posit a ghost in the machine. Unless you can answer that question, your speculation ceases to tell us anything of interest. Occam's razor cannot be so easily neutralized by speculation.

So far as I can tell, the only "evidence" for such speculation is a type of "ghost in the gaps" one. However, it is easier (or more in line with occam's razor) to posit a single "controller" for neural activity, if one is needed.

Agreed, but the speculation is still sunk by Occam's Razor. What does the ghost actually do?

I'm not exactly the right person to ask, as I am on the fence here. However, I would imagine the "ghost" organizes the dynamic system (and by this I am referring to chaos theory) in such a way as to produce consciousness.

What would it explain if it did exist?

How the ego or self is produced form electrical and chemical reactions.

And let's not forget all of the animals with brains in various stages of evolution. Do they all have souls?

Good question (and ironically, St. Francis thought dogs do). However, looking at collective intelligence research (e.g. neural networks) we can reproduce rudimentary learning systems. Again, if we can understand these well enough to replicate the brain, positing a soul is needless. At the moment we can't, and it is possible (however, likely or unlikely) that only something like a soul can form consiousness out of the chaos of neural activity in the human brain. No other animal is capable of our level of self-understanding (although some appear to be self-aware).

I am not where you are on this. I think that the biomedical paradigm has not been shown to be useless merely because some implementations of it have failed.

This would involve an entirely seperate thread (which I would be more than happy to engage in). It is one of the many areas I have spent a long time researching and am quite familiar with. The biomedical model is inherently flawed, yet the domination of this paradigm in psychiatry (not so much psychology) conforms very well to Kuhn's thesis. See, e.g. Creating Mental Illness by Horowitz. Even ignoring the anti-biomedical fundamentalist like Szaz or Breggin, a large body of research has shown radical problems with the biomedical model.

His approach doesn't really account very well for that aspect of science, but I sense that you agree with me on that.

I do.

A lot of Christians claim to have been atheists at some period in their lives, when, in fact, they merely suffered through a serious crisis of faith. If you want a genuine atheist who ended up converting to belief in a deity because of DNA "complexity", I think that the recently-converted deist Antony Flew is far more convincing than a Roman Catholic.

Flew certainly has a documented history of atheism. But until I see counter-evidence, I don't find Collins' claim to have been atheist or at least agnostic unbelievable.

And there is nothing about DNA that makes it appear any more "designed" than the complex being that people like Collins imagine to have done the "design" in the first place. That is a general problem with theistic explanations. They almost always end up getting hoisted by their own petard.

That was Collins' turning point. For me (and I am forever on the fence) I do see a number of aspects of our universe which appear to be to "fine-tuned" to be products of change. DNA is potentially one of them, but it was more convincing for Collins (who is, after all, far more aquainted with DNA research than I) than it is for me.

My impression of him is the exact opposite.

In one of his books he actually states that looking for god in the gaps is a bad approach.

Again, I find Dawkins, Dennett, and other atheists far more convincing on the fine-tuning argument.

They tend to focus solely on evolution, and not so much on the fine-tuning of the universe itself. It is an established fact that those scientists who are trained in micro-specialities (e.g. genetics, biology, etc) are far more prone to agnosticism or atheism than scientists in macro-specialities (e.g. astro-physicists).

We are an effect of the way the universe turned out, not the reverse. If the universe were designed with us in mind, one would expect more of it to appear friendlier to our form of life.

It is amazingly friendly to our form of life. Have you read Barrow and Tipler's The Cosmological Anthropic Principle?

I find the "fine-tuning" argument to be totally unconvincing as an argument that the vast universe containing our speck of a planet was designed to bring us about.

One interesting thing I find is that those astro-physicists who deny the strong anthropic principle posit instead an infinite number of universes in order to explain how ours is so adapted to us.

If there ever existed unplanned planners, I think that we make the best exemplars. We clearly evolved from less complex self-replicating processes. It takes a fantastic set of assumptions to conceive a need for a "planner" that did not itself come into being by the same means. The anthropic principle ultimately gets plowed under by its own set of assumptions, just like all the other anselmian mind tricks.

I find it telling that you cite no references or even a single web link.

I first heard about Lourdes from volume II of A Marginal Jew by Professor J. P. Meier. I did some subsequent checking up, but his book was published by an academic press, and all of my checking up confirmed his account.

 

[footprints]

An argument from ignorance claims that x is the case because there is no proof to the contrary. To say we do not have the knowledge or technology to fully answer the question assumes the very thing that is being questioned. A premise is not true simply because it hasn’t been proven false. If I say to you that Costovaen exists and it is up to you prove it doesn’t, you would rightly berate me for talking nonsense, and yet that is precisely the position you are defending.

Precisely why your point is an arguement from ignorance.

A premise is not simply true because it hasn't been proven false, and a premise isn't false because it hasn't been proven true.

The proposition ‘God exists’ requires belief as faith, but no faith is required to identify that no contradiction is implied in its denial. But while a theist cannot believe there is no God, a sceptic can always be wrong.

LOL to deny that God doesnt exist takes as just as much faith as claiming a deity does exist.

Any person can change their base belief, theists convert to atheism and atheists convert to theism. Sceptics are no different to theists or the majority of other people on the planet. A sceptic can hold loose sceptic values or deep rooted sceptic values.

Well, you’ve shown that you don’t understand the argument. An argument from ignorance makes a claim. The opposite is to say the claim isn’t demonstrated.

That you do not accept knowledge, doesn't say that the knowledge cannot be demonstrated, just that due to your own belief and your faith in that belief, you do not accept knowledge which doesn't align with your own perception.

 

[footprints]

If there must be labels then a-theism at its basic level is being without god belief. There are what I call campaigning atheists, who actively argue that there is no God; and then there are atheists who are such by definition, ie those for whom God or gods do not figure in their lives. Now, to see no reason for belief in gods isn't to argue that there are no gods. Religious beliefs are propositional and contain a subject and a predicate, but to be without a belief doesn't imply one is saying something about God or gods. [/quote]

Being without a God belief, means the person holds another belief.

A person must have reason to see no reason in something, else they are operating totally on blind faith.

For a group of people who don't have a belief in a deity, many sure do argue the point all in favour of their own perception. Which is of course the reason behind the belief that they hold, when they think they do not hold a belief. The harder they fight and argue, the more faith they hold onto that belief with.

 

[cottage]

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Precisely why your point is an arguement from ignorance.

A premise is not simply true because it hasn't been proven false, and a premise isn't false because it hasn't been proven true.

Of course a proposition isn’t false simply because it hasn’t been proven true, and that is not the sceptics’ argument. The claim made by theists is that God exists, despite the lack of evidence, and they defend that point by saying his non-existence doesn’t necessarily follow from his absence. To say exactly the same can be said of the contrary argument takes us into the realms of the absurd. So an appeal to ignorance establishes nothing. In sum, the theist claims that x is the case, ie ‘God exists’ is true; the sceptic is saying x isn’t the case, ie it is unproven, which isn’t to say it is false (see my comments below marked with an asterisk, which exemplify this point).

LOL to deny that God doesnt exist takes as just as much faith as claiming a deity does exist.

*The claim isn’t that a deity doesn’t exist! ‘God exists’ can be denied without involving any contradiction, which doesn’t mean ‘There is no God’. ‘God exists’ isn’t demonstrable. Sceptic or theist, no belief or faith is involved in understanding this.

Any person can change their base belief, theists convert to atheism and atheists convert to theism. Sceptics are no different to theists or the majority of other people on the planet. A sceptic can hold loose sceptic values or deep rooted sceptic values.

You are missing the point concerning religious faith. A believer can lose faith and become an unbeliever, but a believer cannot by defintion argue that there is no God. But as a sceptic I can both doubt and see merit in the arguments. (In fact I can, and have, argued to the existence of a Supreme Being).

That you do not accept knowledge, doesn't say that the knowledge cannot be demonstrated, just that due to your own belief and your faith in that belief, you do not accept knowledge which doesn't align with your own perception.

‘Demonstrate’ doesn’t mean ‘produce empirical evidence’; it means a statement is true self-evidently, or that a true conclusion that follows from valid premises. ‘God cannot fail to be God’. ‘All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Socrates is mortal.

 

[cottage]

If there must be labels then a-theism at its basic level is being without god belief. There are what I call campaigning atheists, who actively argue that there is no God; and then there are atheists who are such by definition, ie those for whom God or gods do not figure in their lives. Now, to see no reason for belief in gods isn't to argue that there are no gods. Religious beliefs are propositional and contain a subject and a predicate, but to be without a belief doesn't imply one is saying something about God or gods.

Being without a God belief, means the person holds another belief.

A person must have reason to see no reason in something, else they are operating totally on blind faith. [/quote

You are begging the question again. You are saying there is a God (p) and anyone who says there isn't must have a belief why there isn't a God (p). A person of faith believes in God because they have reasons or a disposition to think there is such a being, but for those that don't it is because they don't have those reasons or that disposition.

For a group of people who don't have a belief in a deity, many sure do argue the point all in favour of their own perception. Which is of course the reason behind the belief that they hold, when they think they do not hold a belief. The harder they fight and argue, the more faith they hold onto that belief with.

I think that in common with many theists you believe that anyone who questions a belief in a Supreme Being is somehow arguing that there can be no Supreme Being? But like certain others on here, what I question is the reasoning behind what amounts to a speculative metaphysical belief, and the implications that follow from contradictions and inconsistencies in the arguments.

 

[cottage]

fair enough I agree with the non active athiests, but the active athiests are proposing something and therefore should put evidence up for thier belief

One can reasonably say, as a conclusion, that 'There is no God'. In other words no reason to believe there is an other-worldly entity who interacts with our lives. That's not really a proposition but just referring to the facts of experience. But, one can also assert 'There is no God' as a logical proposition, without fear of contradiction.

 

[Willamena]

One can reasonably say, as a conclusion, that 'There is no God'. In other words no reason to believe there is an other-worldly entity who interacts with our lives. That's not really a proposition but just referring to the facts of experience. But, one can also assert 'There is no God' as a logical proposition, without fear of contradiction.

Well, I'm glad that's settled.

 

[Copernicus]

One can reasonably say, as a conclusion, that 'There is no God'. In other words no reason to believe there is an other-worldly entity who interacts with our lives. That's not really a proposition but just referring to the facts of experience. But, one can also assert 'There is no God' as a logical proposition, without fear of contradiction.

But I do want to take a slightly different position in this thread, as I pointed out to Tarasan. It is correct that theists bear the burden of proof in asserting existence of any god. However, the "5 reasons" in the OP are intended to assert the implausibility of god-belief. The burden of proof for that positive assertion is on me. There are theists who claim not to know whether God exists or be able to prove it. Nevertheless, they maintain that belief in a god is a plausible position to take. That is not an existence claim. I not only deny that, but I give reasons why I think it is implausible.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

ohh so we have switched to positive not just a claim? fair enough tell me why it HAS to be a positive claim?

You're making a claim about reality, therefore it's a positive claim.

However, I disagree with johnhanks about the burden of proof. In general, I think there are two valid burdens of proof. They're related, but slightly different in nuance:

1. The burden of proof falls on the person trying to convince another to believe the claim in question. In this case, someone arguing for or against the existence of God would have the burden of proof, not the person responding to this argument.

2. The burden of proof falls on the person advocating a change from the status quo or the current situation. As an example, this would mean that when proposing to implement a new law, the burden of proof would fall on the proponent of the bill to demonstrate that the bill was good, but when proposing to repeal an old law, the burden of proof would fall on the opponent of the bill to demonstrate that it was bad.

Either way, the point is that if you want something to happen (whether it's some change in how things are done or just a change of someone's mind), then it's up to you to make the change happen.

I also disagree athiesm means No God if anyone doesnt believe they were created by a maker then they are athiest in their views you dont need the example of a God to reject in that case.

Consider the following statements. Decide whether you accept each of them:

- my car is blue
- my car is green
- my car is yellow
- my car is orange
- my car is red
- my car is white
- my car is black
- my car is grey
- my car is brown

Now, assuming that you have no information about what colour my car is, you probably wouldn't have accepted any of these statements as true. However, there's one option left: purple. Does your failure to accept all those other statements as true imply by default that you believe my car to be purple?

If you have no opinion about the colour of my car, then you do not believe in any of the statements I listed. However, this is different from believing that any of the statements are false. Not believing my car is grey is different from believing that my car is not grey. By the same token, there's a difference between "not believing they were created by a maker" and "believing they were not created by a maker".

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

fair enough I agree with the non active athiests, but the active athiests are proposing something and therefore should put evidence up for thier belief

Only to the extent that they care about convincing you to be an atheist as well. If they don't mind you being a theist, then there's no need at all for them to give you any evidence whatsoever.

 

[Copernicus]

So far as I can tell, the only "evidence" for such speculation is a type of "ghost in the gaps" one. However, it is easier (or more in line with occam's razor) to posit a single "controller" for neural activity, if one is needed.

Only if one can establish that one is needed.

I'm not exactly the right person to ask, as I am on the fence here. However, I would imagine the "ghost" organizes the dynamic system (and by this I am referring to chaos theory) in such a way as to produce consciousness.

But chaotic deterministic systems are self-organizing. They do not really have a "ghost controller" to bring about organization. Rather, feedback loops in self-replicating processes bring about the organization that does emerge.

How the ego or self is produced form electrical and chemical reactions.

That reasoning strikes me as circular. The "soul" is usually thought of as the ego itself--a purely mental entity--but here you refer to it as a cause of the ego.

My own opinion is that a moving body's awareness of its surroundings promotes survivability of that body. That is why animals have brains and plants do not. Plants usually do not move around in their environment. Brains evolved increasingly greater awareness of self and surroundings as animal bodies developed ever more complex needs to sustain survivability.

Good question (and ironically, St. Francis thought dogs do). However, looking at collective intelligence research (e.g. neural networks) we can reproduce rudimentary learning systems. Again, if we can understand these well enough to replicate the brain, positing a soul is needless. At the moment we can't, and it is possible (however, likely or unlikely) that only something like a soul can form consiousness out of the chaos of neural activity in the human brain. No other animal is capable of our level of self-understanding (although some appear to be self-aware).

There is one very interesting difference between a brain and a neural network. Neural networks are essentially "neuron soup". They have no inherent structure other than arbitrary parameters--feature "nodes"--that undergo strengthening or weakening. Brains have much more complex organization. They are specialized networks of associations that support a wide variety of bodily needs. And it is questionable whether neural networks really behave the same way neurons do.

This would involve an entirely seperate thread (which I would be more than happy to engage in). It is one of the many areas I have spent a long time researching and am quite familiar with. The biomedical model is inherently flawed, yet the domination of this paradigm in psychiatry (not so much psychology) conforms very well to Kuhn's thesis. See, e.g. Creating Mental Illness by Horowitz. Even ignoring the anti-biomedical fundamentalist like Szaz or Breggin, a large body of research has shown radical problems with the biomedical model.

I really have limited time so I don't want to commit to such a discussion now. For one thing, I leave for Spain in a few days, so I will likely be responding more slowly to these types of discussions. My general position in such matters is that one needs to have a very good reason to advance any hypothesis that might undercut scientific methodological naturalism. Once you go down that route, you essentially negate science, which has an excellent record of improving our knowledge of our environment. Once you allow that magic works, you can never eliminate magic as the explanation of any physical phenomenon that you observe. That way lies madness.

That was Collins' turning point. For me (and I am forever on the fence) I do see a number of aspects of our universe which appear to be to "fine-tuned" to be products of change. DNA is potentially one of them, but it was more convincing for Collins (who is, after all, far more aquainted with DNA research than I) than it is for me.

I respect his scientific expertise, but "fine tuning" argument is philosophical rather than scientific.

In one of his books he actually states that looking for god in the gaps is a bad approach.

Be that as it may, the argument that DNA arose by divine intervention is a leap of faith based on our ignorance of how it did arise. I suspect that we'll learn more, if we collect more sophisticated evidence from places like Titan. We expect to find some very complex proteins on Titan, which appears to be more like Earth was before primitive forms of life began pumping oxygen into the atmosphere.

They tend to focus solely on evolution, and not so much on the fine-tuning of the universe itself. It is an established fact that those scientists who are trained in micro-specialities (e.g. genetics, biology, etc) are far more prone to agnosticism or atheism than scientists in macro-specialities (e.g. astro-physicists).

I have never heard that this was an "established fact". Do you know of any surveys that attempt to validate the claim? Scientists in general tend to be less religious than the public. My impression is that astrophysicists are not big on promoting belief in God. It used to drive Einstein crazy that theists used his metaphorical references to "God" as endorsing their religious views.

It is amazingly friendly to our form of life. Have you read Barrow and Tipler's The Cosmological Anthropic Principle?

I don't recall it, so I don't really know what you mean by "amazingly friendly". There may be a huge number of earthlike planets in the universe, but they form only a tiny fraction of existing planets. And only a tiny fraction of those would be close to ours in terms of livability.

One interesting thing I find is that those astro-physicists who deny the strong anthropic principle posit instead an infinite number of universes in order to explain how ours is so adapted to us.

This is a sweeping generalization. I doubt that it is true.

I first heard about Lourdes from volume II of A Marginal Jew by Professor J. P. Meier. I did some subsequent checking up, but his book was published by an academic press, and all of my checking up confirmed his account.

I certainly do not consider JP Meier a reliable source of information about the validity of miracle cures. I doubt that any of the alleged miracle cures produced by Lourdes has any scientific credibility.

 

[Oberon]

But chaotic deterministic systems are self-organizing. They do not really have a "ghost controller" to bring about organization. Rather, feedback loops in self-replicating processes bring about the organization that does emerge.

This part of the discussion likely won't go anywhere. I know a fair amount about neuroscience. There is no evidence that any "ghost in the machine" exists, but there is nothing to make it impossible, and it is possible that neural organization is somehow controlled by a soul.

I respect his scientific expertise, but "fine tuning" argument is philosophical rather than scientific.

It is. The science still forms a basis for the philosophy, however.

I have never heard that this was an "established fact".

That's a big overstatement on my part. I know I have come across people making this point before, but cannot recall whether the evidence was merely anecdotal or something more solid. I will look into it.

I don't recall it, so I don't really know what you mean by "amazingly friendly". There may be a huge number of earthlike planets in the universe, but they form only a tiny fraction of existing planets. And only a tiny fraction of those would be close to ours in terms of livability.

You'd have to read the book.

This is a sweeping generalization. I doubt that it is true.

Look into it. Multiple universes is a common counter-argument to the anthropic principle. Steven Hawking, Smolin, Dawkins, Dennet, Weinberg and many others all buy it. One of my favorite comments on this theory comes from Harvard astronomer Owen Gingerich, who says anyone who can believe in multiple or infinite universes should have no problem believing in heaven and hell.

We clearly evolved from less complex self-replicating processes.

Your still stuck on evolution. The anthropic principle has far more to do with the nature of the universe.

I certainly do not consider JP Meier a reliable source of information about the validity of miracle cures.

You don't get it. He was simply reporting a process that takes place there.

I doubt that any of the alleged miracle cures produced by Lourdes has any scientific credibility.

Fine. That isn't the point. The point is that there are documented incidences where scientists and doctors have looked at the facts and concluded they can't account for this or that healing. It is quite easy to say "well, the healing was natural, we just can't explain it." The point is that there are documented examples of "miracles" which were examined and no scientific explanation could be found.

Lourdes Medical Bureau - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[tarasan]

Only to the extent that they care about convincing you to be an atheist as well. If they don't mind you being a theist, then there's no need at all for them to give you any evidence whatsoever.

I guess im thinking about the more active athiest in our society whenever I say this, after all if someone merely stated to me I am a buddist I would tell them that they had to prove why, but if say an athiest came up to me and said "there is no God you should be an athiest" (which happens) then I would ask them to give me proof, however they generally pull the line "cant prove a negative" and "i dont need to provide evidence" which is silly in my opinion.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I guess im thinking about the more active athiest in our society whenever I say this, after all if someone merely stated to me I am a buddist I would tell them that they had to prove why,

Why would you do that? Same thing applies: if they're not trying to convince anyone else of anything and they're not using the truth of their religion as the basis for some argument about changing things around, then they don't have the burden of proof.

but if say an athiest came up to me and said "there is no God you should be an athiest" (which happens) then I would ask them to give me proof, however they generally pull the line "cant prove a negative" and "i dont need to provide evidence" which is silly in my opinion.

It seems odd that people would do that. Is there more to this story?

If I'm trying you to convince you of something, then the burden of proof is on me, and the standard I need to meet is to make my case to your satisfaction. Anything less than that and I won't have acheived my goal.

However, I do see merit in the idea that if there are no compelling reasons either way, it doesn't make much sense to be a Christian.