To the Anti-Religious

[OmarKhayyam]

"I don't know if a person would have to use the god-ideal to follow such a transformative path, but it certainly seems as though most human beings do it that way."

Are we to understand from that you have NO example of a positive effect acheived from belief in a "god" that could NOT have been achieved in some other way?

 

[PureX]

"I don't know if a person would have to use the god-ideal to follow such a transformative path, but it certainly seems as though most human beings do it that way."

Are we to understand from that you have NO example of a positive effect acheived from belief in a "god" that could NOT have been achieved in some other way?

What does that have to do with anything? Someone asked for evidence and I gave them evidence. Now you're trying to insist that the evidence be absolute? Of course other ideas can be transformative. But BY FAR the most common transformative idea among human beings is the idea of "God". It works for people. That's why so many people adopt it and use it.

Does the phone book have to be free of all errors before it can be deemed an accurate and useful tool? Of course not. And neither does the idea of "God", or the religious paths these ideas inspire. Is the phone book irrelevant because you can find a phone number in other ways? Of course not. And neither is "God" or religion.

 

[OmarKhayyam]

"And what about my a priori beliefs, such as my belief that necessarily, if All men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal? There's no evidence for this proposition. Indeed, there can't be any. What evidence can point to a necessary truth? At most, evidence leads us to contingent truth claims, not necessary ones. Yet I think I'm rational in holding my belief that this proposition is necessarily true. "

I am not sure what this argument was intended to prove but a simple matter of fact it is incorrect. There is CONCLUSIVE evidence Socrates is mortal. He's dead. And since the fact men die has always been true for all men at all times one can safely adopt it is proven that men are mortal. And it so remains unless and until there is conclusive evidence to the contrary.

I don't think the learned and esteemed Christian apologist can site ANY a priori belief that is NOT supported by objective evidence.

But do feel free to correct me.

 

[OmarKhayyam]

"Does the phone book have to be free of all errors before it can be deemed an accurate and useful tool? Of course not. And neither does the idea of "God", or the religious paths these ideas inspire. Is the phone book irrelevant because you can find a phone number in other ways? Of course not. And neither is "God" or religion."

Am I then to understand that we have moved from "god" being the absolute and eternal source of all things good and noble to a error proned tool for betterment of some individuals who are predisposed to use it for that purpose?

 

[PureX]

"Does the phone book have to be free of all errors before it can be deemed an accurate and useful tool? Of course not. And neither does the idea of "God", or the religious paths these ideas inspire. Is the phone book irrelevant because you can find a phone number in other ways? Of course not. And neither is "God" or religion."

Am I then to understand that we have moved from "god" being the absolute and eternal source of all things good and noble to a error proned tool for betterment of some individuals who are predisposed to use it for that purpose?

How did the idea "God" become "error proned" in your mind? Why do you presume that the idea of "God" as perfection would itself need to be perfect? Aren't you really just trying to place an absolute criteria on the idea so that you can then claim it falls short? I.E. Any flaw = total failure.

 

[Dunemeister]

Concerning your breakfast example, you list the very ways in which we can determine your breakfast, despite your memory loss, yet discount them all for some reason, merely say they vanish without a trace without any reason for it. Why wouldn't there be any trace of it in your body or stool?

Okay, let's put it back a week rather than a day. I've had several bowel movements, so there's no trace of the breakfast anywhere in my body.

Even still, you can look at your grocery bill, confirm the purchase of bread and jam, and thereby the quantity and ask if any of your family had bread and jam and approximately how much. If there is a difference between what you purchased and what your family ate, it is reasonable to conclude you had the remainder.

Are you seriously telling me that a family, with enough effort, can CALCULATE whether one of its members ate toast and jam in this way? Please tell me you're having me on.

Besides, it's a moot point. We normally take things at face value without conclusive evidence. With evidence, yes, but not conclusively. But there are unimportant things that are not worth the effort of verifying.

The question is whether my belief about what I had for breakfast last week (to accommodate your objections) is RATIONAL. If you agree that it is rational to hold my belief about what I ate last week, you agree that it is rational to hold some beliefs without evidence.

But the issue of God is an important one because it is an extraordinary claim. Thus it requires extraordinary evidence in order to conclusively prove it. It's not a trivial matter like what my name is because my name is an ordinary claim.

So you're saying that IMPORTANT claims require evidence. Again, I'm not so sure. Let's go back to my memory belief about what I had for breakfast last week. Imagine further that the company that manufactured the jam has issued a recall because a distribution of jam (that includes the one I purchased and remember eating) has a serious bacterial contamination. The bacteria lays dormant for ten days, and then emerges as a serious infection that kills 75% of the victims. So this is a very extraordinary kind of bacteria (I've never heard of a bacteria that behaved this way), and an important belief (whether I ate the jam last week). And now there are two beliefs at issue, BOTH of which I have no evidence to support. There are

(1) The jam has bacteria in it, and
(2) I ate the jam last week (7 days ago)

Are either of these beliefs rational? They are individually important and together extraordinary (I have never eaten contaminated food). I have no evidence that my jam has bacteria in it. I have only the word of the manufacturer. (It's one thing to note that they have no reason to lie; it's another to claim I have evidence.) I have no evidence that I ate the jam last week, I just happen to believe that based on memory (and as I've already pointed out, memory doesn't serve as evidence for a belief, but as its occasion). Yet it seems to be that it's perfectly rational to hold both beliefs.

Now let's say that a treatment is available, but it's in limited supply. Only those who have in fact eaten the jam is permitted to take the medication. What would we say of a doctor who withheld treatment because I didn't have evidence that I even ate any of the bacteria? After all, since this particular set of beliefs is both important and highly extraordinary, we actually need quite a lot of evidence that I ate the jam. Unfortunately, there's no evidence to be had.

Clearly, the doctor is being irrational. It's perfectly acceptable to take my word about what I ate. It's perfectly rational. My belief about what I ate last week has no supporting evidence (for me or for anyone else). And my testimony about what I ate last week has no supporting evidence (for me or for the doctor). Yet it seems perfectly rational for me to believe (1) and (2), and it also seems rational for the doctor to believe them, too. Indeed, it seems irrational not to. And this despite the total lack of evidence.

Of course it isn't evidence for me. I wouldn't expect to go to court to defend myself and use "faith". Would you? If not, why?

Is believing in God illegal now? The problem with the forensic analogy is that evidence is required to legally deprive someone of liberty or life. In court, the issue is proof (beyond a reasonable doubt or on a preponderance of the evidence, depending on the type of case). The question whether a belief is rational is entirely different. And it's the latter question we're considering.

So basically you're saying you have evidence, but not conclusive evidence?

Yes.

Well, beyond "faith"...what other evidence do you have? What evidence could you possibly have of a supernatural world which is by definition unknown?

By definition? Why think that? If Christianity is true, God is knowable (and known). I'm afraid we can't define the supernatural out of existence. As to evidence, you know the sorts of arguments available. There's the historical argument for Jesus' resurrection, the Kalam cosmological argument, there are several varieties of teleological argument (the strongest these days appeals to the fine-tunedness of the universal constants), moral arguments (God is the most adequate basis for the truth of moral statements, their universal applicability, and our use of moral terms), ontological arguments (out of fashion for the last few hundred years), and perhaps others that I've not heard about.

You've got to shoulder some burden of proof as soon as you start claiming your God exists or that another belief system is wrong if you presuppose your own is correct.

Only in the context of a debate about the truth of the beliefs.

What you are describing is a small fraction of hardcore atheists. Even Richard Dawkins himself doesn't say "God does not exist", but "God probably does not exist". And you don't get to be much more of an influential atheist than Richard Dawkins.

Atheists maintain the probability is so small and the evidence in favour of God is so weak that we believe God probably does not exist.

Okay.

That's the difference. There is no positive claim (except on those who claim there definitely is no God). Those people are subject to a burden of proof as well as you -rightly- state, they are making a positive claim.

The agnostic claims (quite positively) that (1) evidence is required for belief in God, and (2) there isn't enough of it. The agnostic owes us arguments for both of these claims.

Any supposed miracle - if it really did happen - is an extraordinary event.

Well, that's the double-edged nature of "extraordinary." You are focussing only on the statistical interpretation. However, as I've argued, every action, regardless how mundane, is extraordinary (indeed, unique). So in what sense is the RESURRECTION extraordinary? Well, it's because it apparently violates the inviolable laws of nature. But that "violation" is extraordinary only because the skeptic makes certain assumptions about the world. Namely she assumes the world runs according to inviolable natural laws? But why should we think these laws inviolable? Because natural laws have nothing to do with a god. But again, that begs the question at issue. For Christians (and other theists) regard natural laws as God's typical way of acting in the created order.

Judging from your other posts you seem to favour an outlook that stipulates "What's true for me may not be true for you". Correct me if I'm wrong.

You're wrong. I'm saying what's rational for me to believe (e.g., that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself) may not be rational for you to believe. It's rational for me to believe it because it is based on a cognitive mechanism (IIHS) I have that you don't (yet).

Fair enough. But how exactly do you "perceive" God? How do you know that influence comes from your God and not someone else's God? How do you know what you are "perceiving" isn't the powerful human mind at work creating a very real experience?

These are questions not unique to Christians. How do you know you perceive the same physical world I do? How do you know you're not a brain in a vat, subject to the whims of some strange Alpha Centaurian cognitive scientists?

I've had very real dreams that feel like I'm in them. For example if in my dream I jump off a building, it will very realistically feel like I'm plunging off a building and I'm in freefall and I will wake up frantically when I hit the ground. That experience seems very real. It's a powerful delusion. How do you discount this possibility?

I admit it's possible that I'm tragically, horribly, profoundly, pathetically wrong.

 

[Beaudreaux]

Sure ...

1. The idea of God works for most people most of the time. Ideas that work for us on a regular basis tend to be taken as accurate.

I do not believe this is evidence for God and I'll tell you why. Astrology "works" for most people most of the time as well. The reason it "works" is that it provides sufficiently vague predictions and believers actively seek confirmation of those predictions. People consider it accurate because they want to, not because it's true. Chris Angel did a great bit that illustrates this where he cut parts of astrology columns together to form a "reading". He had a line of 100 people who, one-by-one came in to be read. He used the exact same script on them all and TO A PERSON they were amazed at how accurate the reading was. Many started crying. To summarize:

works for most people most of the time != evidence of truth
​

2. The ordered nature of existence forces us to consider the reality of a "God". Existence is not random. How do we explain this? What is responsible for the order? And why? The answers to these questions are a mystery, and we have named this mystery "God".

The "order" does not come from nature, but in how our minds understand the world around us. Consider the taxonomy of life:

• Kingdom
• Phyllum
• Class
• Order
• Family
• Genus
• Species
• Variety

WE created that ordering mechanism. Order comes from our minds, not creation.
(And a special "thank you" to my High School Biology teach Mr. Edwards for the mnemonic that helped me keep that info in my head. )

But lets say that you do not agree with this (as I anticipate). Let's say that the order actually exists in the physical world itself. Why does that order necessitate a creator? That's just the way things are. Why would you think that an uncreated world would not have order? Do you have any examples of this to show?

3. Energy can express itself as consciousness (take ourselves as an example), again, forcing us to consider that a consciousness could in turn express itself as energy (in much the same way as matter and energy are interchangeable). If so, all of existence could well be the "mind of God, expressed", just as the ancients claimed.

"Could well be" is supposition, not evidence.

 

[lunamoth]

works for most people most of the time != evidence of truth.
​

Hi Beaudreaux,

Do you have a definition of truth that is not based on the pragmatic (i.e., "what works"?

luna
​

 

[PureX]

I do not believe this is evidence for God and I'll tell you why. Astrology "works" for most people most of the time as well. The reason it "works" is that it provides sufficiently vague predictions and believers actively seek confirmation of those predictions.

Actually, astrology doesn't work for most people most of the time. The number of people who use astrology because they find that it "works" for them is really very small.

Also, you are comparing a simple idea that has been pretty thoroughly explained away to a very complex idea that has not been explained away at all.

People consider it accurate because they want to, not because it's true. Chris Angel did a great bit that illustrates this where he cut parts of astrology columns together to form a "reading". He had a line of 100 people who, one-by-one came in to be read. He used the exact same script on them all and TO A PERSON they were amazed at how accurate the reading was.

People can be fooled. People can fool themselves. People could be fooling themselves about the existence of "God". But you have offered nothing here to suggest that they are; only that they could be. My evidence still stands.

The "order" does not come from nature, but in how our minds understand the world around us. Consider the taxonomy of life:

• Kingdom
• Phyllum
• Class
• Order
• Family
• Genus
• Species
• Variety

WE created that ordering mechanism. Order comes from our minds, not creation.
(And a special "thank you" to my High School Biology teach Mr. Edwards for the mnemonic that helped me keep that info in my head. )

I agree with you, but that wasn't the kind of "order" I was referring to.

But lets say that you do not agree with this (as I anticipate). Let's say that the order actually exists in the physical world itself. Why does that order necessitate a creator? That's just the way things are. Why would you think that an uncreated world would not have order? Do you have any examples of this to show?

The order I was referring to is inherent to existence. As I understand it, all that exists is energy. We don't know where all this energy comes from, and we don't know why it's limited in it's behavior, but it came from somewhere and it's behavior is limited. And because energy can express itself in some ways, but not in others, our universe is what it is. So those limitations are the "orders" from which all that exists, exists as it does.

That this order exists, inextricably leads us to contemplate it's origin, and it's possible purpose. It is not logical that a pointless existence would express order. But then it's not logical that a pointless existence would be logical, either. So we can't rule that out, but most humans find this highly unlikely. And I do too.

"Could well be" is supposition, not evidence.

It is another open door to the supposition that God exists. That's still evidence because it's a revealed possibility. (Example: Bob could have slipped away from his job unnoticed and killed his wife. The possibility is not proof that Bob did this, but it stands as evidence that he could have, nevertheless.) Also, most folks would agree that it's extremely difficult to imagine that a meaningless expression of energy could achieve a complex form, let alone consciousness.

 

[Smoke]

The argument is that if Christianity is true, it can receive warrant by IIHS (faith). With IIHS, the Holy Spirit convinces the Christian of the truth of various propositions such as that Jesus was born of a (literal) virgin.

Actually, I don't think so. Even if Christianity were true, your feelings about it would not serve as evidence of its truth. Even following your own argument, you'd first need to show that Christianity is true before your feelings about it -- what you believe to be the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit -- could serve as evidence.

Now, you say that this belief about the IIHS is irrational because there's no evidence for it. This raises several questions. (1) WHO needs evidence for it? The believer or the skeptic? If the believer, well, the believer HAS evidence (for her). Namely, the bible, the Christian community (which testifes about the truth of this), and, of course, the IIHS itself. Part of the Christian story is that the witness of the Spirit is self-authenticating.

Adherents of other religions have the same feelings you have, but about contradictory teachings. Why do you believe your feelings are good evidence, but theirs aren't?

Unfortunately, you seem wedded to the notion that rationality necessarily involves evidence and/or argument.

It does. "I just feel it in my heart" is not a rational reason for believing something, not even if what you believe turns out to be true. If you believe, as many Christians do, that it's important to believe without evidence -- blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed -- then that's your belief. It may, for all anybody knows, turn out that there is a god and that he rewards people for believing things without warrant. But as long as there's no evidence for those beliefs and no logical basis for them, they're still irrational.

(That's not to say Christian beliefs can be proven true to a skeptic.)

It's not just that they can't be proven. You can't give the skeptic a single good reason even to think that your beliefs might be true. If you had rational reasons for your beliefs, you could.

Thus, it's weird to expect that IIHS would supply me with truths about your husband. But it's more natural to expect that IIHS would supply me with information about the gospel. (Indeed, IIHS is part of the gospel message!)

You don't think it's weird that the Holy Spirit should find it necessary to fill you in on the state of the Mother of God's hymen, though, right?

 

[Smoke]

The question is whether my belief about what I had for breakfast last week (to accommodate your objections) is RATIONAL. If you agree that it is rational to hold my belief about what I ate last week, you agree that it is rational to hold some beliefs without evidence.

But you had the evidence at one time. You experienced the eating of the toast. You know it was toast. You know you ate it. Even if it somehow turned out that an alien from another galaxy had, while your back was turned, secretly substituted an alien fungus strongly resembling toast, it would still be reasonable for you to think that you had eaten the toast, because the experience corresponded so very closely to the many times before when you had eaten toast.

Your supposed experience of the Holy Spirit is not of the same kind. You have no way of knowing that your feelings are in fact the instigation of the Holy Spirit. You have no way of knowing that the Holy Spirit even exists. It's equally likely that Muhammad is the prophet of Allah, that evil spirits are deceiving you into believing that they are the Holy Spirit and filling your head with lies, and that if you would just respond to the true leading of Allah, you'd quickly realize that. It's even more possible that you've just deluded yourself into believing that your own feelings and wishes come from the Holy Spirit when in fact they're just your feelings and wishes. There's simply no way of knowing that your feelings come from the Holy Spirit, and no way of judging from experience whether it's likely to be true. You can't go back and compare it to the many other times you experienced the leading of the Holy Spirit, because you don't know if any of those were really experiences of the Holy Spirit, either.

Your belief in the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit is an irrational belief, and it would still have been irrational even if it turned out to be true.

 

[Smoke]

These are questions not unique to Christians. How do you know you perceive the same physical world I do? How do you know you're not a brain in a vat, subject to the whims of some strange Alpha Centaurian cognitive scientists?

Nobody can prove we're not all brains in a vat, just as nobody can prove there's no god. We just have to proceed on the best evidence we have, and nobody has come up with any evidence that we're all brains in a vat or that there is any god.

In fact, I think your claims about reality amount to about the same thing as saying we're all brains in a vat. The world is our vat, and we're unable to perceive the really important facts. You think you have insight into the important facts because the Holy Spirit has revealed them to you. But you're in this vat with us, and neither you nor anybody else has any rational reason for thinking that what you believe to be the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit actually is what you believe it to be.

 

[Dunemeister]

But you had the evidence at one time. You experienced the eating of the toast. You know it was toast. You know you ate it. Even if it somehow turned out that an alien from another galaxy had, while your back was turned, secretly substituted an alien fungus strongly resembling toast, it would still be reasonable for you to think that you had eaten the toast, because the experience corresponded so very closely to the many times before when you had eaten toast.

Well, all this does is push the problem back, and we're back where we started. When I perceive things, again I form beliefs, but those beliefs aren't based on evidence. I eat the toast and jam and form the belief "Wow, that's some really good jam." I don't form that belief on the basis of any evidence. Rather, I taste the jam, and the belief arises in me as a result. I don't argue as follows:

(1) I have a gustatory sensation X associated with the jam I'm eating.
(2) Usually, when I have such a gustatory sensation, the food associated with it is really good.
(3) Therefore, this is probably good jam.
(4) Generally, if something is probable, I should believe it.
(5) Therefore, I believe that this is some really good jam.

THAT's how an evidentiary (and probabalistic) argument would run. But clearly, nothing anywhere like this is happening when I form my beliefs about what I'm doing at the moment. Yes, experience is involved, but the experience doesn't provide me with EVIDENCE. Rather, the experience merely invokes, calls forth, creates, causes, occasions, gives rise to, the belief. Is this rational? Yes, if my cognitive (and sensory) faculties are functioning properly.

Your supposed experience of the Holy Spirit is not of the same kind.

Yes it is, in a very closely analogous way. I sense the Holy Spirit just as I sense the taste of jam. Just as I can be sure I'm having a taste experience, so I can be sure I'm having a God experience (if that's quite the right way to speak of it). Just as I might need some training and experience to distinguish jam from marmalade, so I need training and experience (perhaps more so) to distinguish God experiences from pseudogod experiences. Indeed, the analogy is so tight I wonder whether people even question it. Must have something to do with presuppositions....

Another similarity. Just as my memory might play me tricks, and just as mirages fool my sight, and just as my hands when affected by cold can fool me about textures, my spiritual sense can be interfered with, fooled, hampered. But if that possibility of hampering isn't a problem for beliefs about physical experience, there's no problem for God experiences. If there's a special problem, at any rate, no one has made a cogent case for it. The possibility of error isn't terribly relevant (at least as a comparison with more "standard" beliefs about the world.

You have no way of knowing that your feelings are in fact the instigation of the Holy Spirit.

How would you know a thing like that? I think I do know. I have scripture, I have others who are experienced in the interal life, and as a matter of fact, the Holy Spirit's witness is self-authenticating. So I have plenty of means at my disposal. Does this mean I'm always right about it? No. But then, I'm not always right about what I see with my physical eyes, either. So what?

Your belief in the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit is an irrational belief, and it would still have been irrational even if it turned out to be true.

You've yet to give me any reason to think so.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Dunemeister,

First of all, no one (I think) questions that you have real experiences, which you call God experiences. Just as no one questions the placebo effect. The question is, are those experiences caused by the things you attribute them to?

Your argument would have more merit, I think, if we lived in a vacuum and there were not so many countless other people, now and throughout history, with experiences they attribute to the Holy Spirit, demons, revelations, encounters with the Oracle of Delphi, witchcraft, etc. etc. Not to mention children, who no doubt truly experience and believe in monsters in their closet, etc. And then we have many credible adults who testify to alien abductions, ghost sightings, etc. Or (using the placebo example) so many people who have experienced the curing power of a sugar pill.

The experiences are real, no doubt, but are they caused by sugar/Spirit/aliens or are they caused by the mind?

There is a wealth of knowledge and information on such experiences, in history, literature, psychology, neuroscience. And the evidence in my opinion strongly supports the hypothesis that these entities are creations of the human mind, not external agents coming down to visit the mind.

Here are some questions to ask about these experiences:

• Does the experience change due to social context? (Americans attribute it to toast, but Indians attribute it to bananas?)
• Can/has the putative object of the experience be verified by non-human devices? (Toast: yes. Holy Spirit: no.)
• What sort of conditions induce the experience? (For toast, it is just the eating of toast. For Holy Spirit, it depends on the person but psychological suggestion, religious objects, psychoactive drugs, and brain stimulation help.)
• What sort of person is more/less likely to have the experience? (For toast, it's simply anyone who eats toast.)
• Would the explanation of the experience violate known laws of physics? (Toast: no. Holy Spirit: yes. Neurons fire for no reason -- this violates basic energy conservation.)

So there do seem to be key differences between what causes the experience of eating toast and what causes the experience of Holy Spirit, any way you "slice" it (so to speak).

 

[PureX]

Dunemeister,

First of all, no one (I think) questions that you have real experiences, which you call God experiences. Just as no one questions the placebo effect. The question is, are those experiences caused by the things you attribute them to?

Your argument would have more merit, I think, if we lived in a vacuum and there were not so many countless other people, now and throughout history, with experiences they attribute to the Holy Spirit, demons, revelations, encounters with the Oracle of Delphi, witchcraft, etc. etc. Not to mention children, who no doubt truly experience and believe in monsters in their closet, etc. And then we have many credible adults who testify to alien abductions, ghost sightings, etc. Or (using the placebo example) so many people who have experienced the curing power of a sugar pill.

The experiences are real, no doubt, but are they caused by sugar/Spirit/aliens or are they caused by the mind?

There is a wealth of knowledge and information on such experiences, in history, literature, psychology, neuroscience. And the evidence in my opinion strongly supports the hypothesis that these entities are creations of the human mind, not external agents coming down to visit the mind.

Here are some questions to ask about these experiences:

• Does the experience change due to social context? (Americans attribute it to toast, but Indians attribute it to bananas?)
• Can/has the putative object of the experience be verified by non-human devices? (Toast: yes. Holy Spirit: no.)
• What sort of conditions induce the experience? (For toast, it is just the eating of toast. For Holy Spirit, it depends on the person but psychological suggestion, religious objects, psychoactive drugs, and brain stimulation help.)
• What sort of person is more/less likely to have the experience? (For toast, it's simply anyone who eats toast.)
• Would the explanation of the experience violate known laws of physics? (Toast: no. Holy Spirit: yes. Neurons fire for no reason -- this violates basic energy conservation.)

So there do seem to be key differences between what causes the experience of eating toast and what causes the experience of Holy Spirit, any way you "slice" it (so to speak).

Such experiences do have a physical component in the mind. And different people interpret them in different ways. No doubt. But I don't see how this negates their possible authenticity as a "God" experience.

Just for the sake of the argument, let's say "God" decides to "contact" me, for reasons I cannot know. Why should we assume that "God" wouldn't use natural means? It seems somewhat reasonable to me that "God" might create circumstances through which such electro-chemistry is produced in my brain that would cause me to have this "God experience". However, I might not be in a state of mind that would allow me to experience this phenomena as "God". I might experience it as some sort of demon possession, or as some sort of schizophrenic event, or as who knows what. My point is that the fact that such events have a physical cause doesn't preclude them from being what some people think they are.

 

[OmarKhayyam]

How did the idea "God" become "error proned" in your mind? Why do you presume that the idea of "God" as perfection would itself need to be perfect? Aren't you really just trying to place an absolute criteria on the idea so that you can then claim it falls short? I.E. Any flaw = total failure.

I got the idea from you (at least for this exchange) to wit:

Does the phone book have to be free of all errors before it can be deemed an accurate and useful tool? Of course not. And neither does the idea of "God", or the religious paths these ideas inspire. Is the phone book irrelevant because you can find a phone number in other ways? Of course not. And neither is "God" or religion.

Now as it happens this is a correct observation. The belief in a "god" has indeed been used to create what even you would consider less than "positive results" and hence it is error proned.

So we have established that this god belief is NOT prefect, does not necessarily produce positive results and what ever good it does produce can and IS achieved in other ways.

So why bother with it?

 

[PureX]

I got the idea from you (at least for this exchange) to wit:

Does the phone book have to be free of all errors before it can be deemed an accurate and useful tool? Of course not. And neither does the idea of "God", or the religious paths these ideas inspire. Is the phone book irrelevant because you can find a phone number in other ways? Of course not. And neither is "God" or religion.

Now as it happens this is a correct observation. The belief in a "god" has indeed been used to create what even you would consider less than "positive results" and hence it is error proned.

So we have established that this god belief is NOT prefect, does not necessarily produce positive results and what ever good it does produce can and IS achieved in other ways.

So why bother with it?

Just because people occasionally kill other people using a hammer doesn't mean the design of the hammer is flawed. It's the people who misuse it that are flawed. Nor does it imply that we should stop using hammers.

For all those people who do not abuse the idea of "God", the idea works well for them.

 

[Vile Atheist]

Are you seriously telling me that a family, with enough effort, can CALCULATE whether one of its members ate toast and jam in this way? Please tell me you're having me on.

This ties into your first point. Why wouldn't they be able to calculate it? Most families have routines. A lot of families routinely eat the same breakfast everyday.

Regardless, as I said before, you believing you had toast and jam for breakfast is an ordinary claim. Thus it does not require exhaustive evidence. You are comparing this to claims of miracles - which are extraordinary - and do require exhaustive evidence. The resurrection and your breakfast are two very different claims with one being much more significant and important than the other, no?

The question is whether my belief about what I had for breakfast last week (to accommodate your objections) is RATIONAL. If you agree that it is rational to hold my belief about what I ate last week, you agree that it is rational to hold some beliefs without evidence.

If you have evidence for it, it's rational. If you don't have evidence for it, it's irrational. Rationality is not the lone decider of truth. However, it's still indicative of the truth. If you have evidence for what you ate, that's a rational belief. If you don't have evidence for what you ate, you may still have eaten the toast and jam...but it's still irrational to believe so without evidence for it.

So you're saying that IMPORTANT claims require evidence. Again, I'm not so sure. Let's go back to my memory belief about what I had for breakfast last week. Imagine further that the company that manufactured the jam has issued a recall because a distribution of jam (that includes the one I purchased and remember eating) has a serious bacterial contamination. The bacteria lays dormant for ten days, and then emerges as a serious infection that kills 75% of the victims. So this is a very extraordinary kind of bacteria (I've never heard of a bacteria that behaved this way), and an important belief (whether I ate the jam last week). And now there are two beliefs at issue, BOTH of which I have no evidence to support. There are

(1) The jam has bacteria in it, and
(2) I ate the jam last week (7 days ago)

Are either of these beliefs rational? They are individually important and together extraordinary (I have never eaten contaminated food). I have no evidence that my jam has bacteria in it. I have only the word of the manufacturer. (It's one thing to note that they have no reason to lie; it's another to claim I have evidence.) I have no evidence that I ate the jam last week, I just happen to believe that based on memory (and as I've already pointed out, memory doesn't serve as evidence for a belief, but as its occasion). Yet it seems to be that it's perfectly rational to hold both beliefs.

Now let's say that a treatment is available, but it's in limited supply. Only those who have in fact eaten the jam is permitted to take the medication. What would we say of a doctor who withheld treatment because I didn't have evidence that I even ate any of the bacteria? After all, since this particular set of beliefs is both important and highly extraordinary, we actually need quite a lot of evidence that I ate the jam. Unfortunately, there's no evidence to be had.

Clearly, the doctor is being irrational. It's perfectly acceptable to take my word about what I ate. It's perfectly rational. My belief about what I ate last week has no supporting evidence (for me or for anyone else). And my testimony about what I ate last week has no supporting evidence (for me or for the doctor). Yet it seems perfectly rational for me to believe (1) and (2), and it also seems rational for the doctor to believe them, too. Indeed, it seems irrational not to. And this despite the total lack of evidence.

Not necessarily important, but we're talking in terms of ordinary vs extraordinary here.

Concerning your bacterial example, it would be rational to believe the jam has potentially fatal bacteria in it because of the recall. Food companies have food scientists employed to test the quality of the food and to test for bacteria. Whether or not the jam does have bacteria is irrelevant because considering that there is a 75% chance you'll die, it would be perfectly reasonable to apply a precautionary principle and go see a doctor immediately.

You personally do not have evidence to rely on, but the food scientists do. And furthermore recalls cost companies a lot of money. They don't issue them lightly. Now we're getting into the precautionary principle because the risk is so high.

Now because the risk is so high, it wouldn't do any harm to see a doctor to see if this bacteria is present in you. The precautionary principle diminishes the need for exhaustive evidence when the risk is significantly high (75%, I'm sure you'll agree, is very high).

If you saw a news report that there was a large fire in your neighbourhood and I told you your house is on fire, would you believe me? I could be lying. Nonetheless, you would rush to your house to see if your family is alright. There is a very high chance your house IS on fire and you demand little evidence.

This is because you are dealing with ordinary claims. Food recalls and housefires happen all the time. Even if the bacteria is extraordinary, the food scientists have enough reason to issue a recall without completely understanding the bacteria. And the mere fact this bacteria would be previously unknown would be enough to warrant a recall because you don't know what this bacteria can do. The precautionary principle rules.

Now you can retort that "Why don't you believe in God, then, instead of risking eternal damnation for your life of blasphemy? Doesn't the precautionary principle apply here?" Well no. The precautionary principle only works if the risk is significantly high.

If there was no jam recall and I told you there was fatal bacteria in it, you might not believe me, depending on your gullibility. I don't know you personally enough to remark on that. But the point is, you would be more hesitant to apply the precautionary principle because the risk is significantly less. After all, how would I know about the bacteria and not the food scientists?

Just is the same with God. You are telling me there is fatal bacteria in my jam when I have no reason to believe you. Because not only are there many, many other people claiming a different bacteria is in my jam, I see plenty of people enjoying it without dying. (Hopefully you get the reference to religion there lol).

Is believing in God illegal now? The problem with the forensic analogy is that evidence is required to legally deprive someone of liberty or life. In court, the issue is proof (beyond a reasonable doubt or on a preponderance of the evidence, depending on the type of case). The question whether a belief is rational is entirely different. And it's the latter question we're considering.

I did not claim belief in God is illegal - nor should it be. My point was that you wouldn't expect to go to a courtroom and defend yourself using only evidence of "faith" and possibly win. It has nothing to do with the rationality of belief, but the standard of evidence that denotes faith.

 

[Vile Atheist]

Had to put this into two posts because it was almost 15000 characters long lmao.

By definition? Why think that? If Christianity is true, God is knowable (and known). I'm afraid we can't define the supernatural out of existence. As to evidence, you know the sorts of arguments available. There's the historical argument for Jesus' resurrection, the Kalam cosmological argument, there are several varieties of teleological argument (the strongest these days appeals to the fine-tunedness of the universal constants), moral arguments (God is the most adequate basis for the truth of moral statements, their universal applicability, and our use of moral terms), ontological arguments (out of fashion for the last few hundred years), and perhaps others that I've not heard about.

Firstly, kalam is false because it presupposes everything has a cause. If you use the kalam argument you must explain where God came from. And you cannot say that "God was always there" or "God is infinite" because that would violate the very kalam argument you are using.

As for moral arguments, again, how do you reckon conflicting moral philosophies? If morality only comes from God, then other moral codes must therefore come from other Gods. Either you must acknowledge the existence of many other Gods who created these other moral codes (and justify not accepting them and accepting the moral code of your God), or you must show why God would create so many conflicting moral codes.

The historical argument for Jesus' resurrection is also a no-go because of many conflicts in the Bible and not to mention that a lot of the events do not match up with known historical records. For example in the story of the birth of Jesus, everybody had to go to their place of origin in the Roman Empire to be "taxed". Yet, such a massive undertaking was never recorded in Roman history. And a significant event like that would.

Not to mention Philo and Josephus wrote of King Herod's brutality and how he killed family members in order to retain power. But they never wrote of Herod killing all the cute little babies - a danger which Jesus was subjected to. So if the Bible is so fundamentally flawed historically, why on Earth would you possibly accept it as an accurate historical record?

As for the "fine-tunedness of the universe's constants", this is irrelevant because it has been demonstrated that universes can still function much in the same way as ours does when some fundamental forces are removed completely. And the fine-tunedness arguments rely on all the other constants remaining the same. But why would the other constants remain the same?

Furthermore the important fact of the matter aren't the constants, but the ratios that exist in the universe. I wonder why Creationists never address them as they might have a much stronger argument to make.

All these "arguments" have been repeatedly shot down. Either on logical or evidential grounds.

The agnostic claims (quite positively) that (1) evidence is required for belief in God, and (2) there isn't enough of it. The agnostic owes us arguments for both of these claims.

Agnostics claim that evidence is unattainable. That is a positive claim they make.

But evidence being required for belief in God? That's true for everything. Evidence - to whatever standard suits the purpose - is required for all things. That's hardly a positive claim. And claiming there isn't enough of it is kind of redundant if they say it is unattainable, which as I said, is a positive claim and agnostics have that burden of proof.

Well, that's the double-edged nature of "extraordinary." You are focussing only on the statistical interpretation. However, as I've argued, every action, regardless how mundane, is extraordinary (indeed, unique). So in what sense is the RESURRECTION extraordinary? Well, it's because it apparently violates the inviolable laws of nature. But that "violation" is extraordinary only because the skeptic makes certain assumptions about the world. Namely she assumes the world runs according to inviolable natural laws? But why should we think these laws inviolable? Because natural laws have nothing to do with a god. But again, that begs the question at issue. For Christians (and other theists) regard natural laws as God's typical way of acting in the created order.

Laws of nature are merely what humans describe as what normally happens in the universe with almost no exceptions. They are basic truths about the universe around us from hard observation that fits with mountains of data.

Thus the probability of an event violating the laws of nature is statistically almost nothing. That's why when somebody claims a miracle, we look for other explanations the laws of nature offer us before we conclude that it was something we cannot explain.

Imagine if we're sitting in my living room. All of a sudden, a lampshade starts to move. You say "It's a miracle! It's a ghost!!". It's an extraordinary event because lampshades don't normally move on their own. It violates the laws of nature.

However, I unplug the fan heater underneath and the lampshade stops moving. An extraordinary event was explained by an ordinary one. For an event to be extraordinary (lampshade moving by itself), it cannot have any alternative explanations that are ordinary (the fan heater). It has to be of itself extraordinary. Statistically highly improbable, yet confirmed to have happened with no alternative explanation for it. The resurrection fits the bill for "extraordinary" quite nicely (other than the "confirmed to have happened" part)

You're wrong. I'm saying what's rational for me to believe (e.g., that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself) may not be rational for you to believe. It's rational for me to believe it because it is based on a cognitive mechanism (IIHS) I have that you don't (yet).

For most of my life, I had it. And then I saw it was very irrational. Any belief that you cannot objectively prove is irrational, no matter what way you slice it.

These are questions not unique to Christians. How do you know you perceive the same physical world I do? How do you know you're not a brain in a vat, subject to the whims of some strange Alpha Centaurian cognitive scientists?

Which is why Christians aren't the only group subject to my regular barrage of questions. I know I perceive the same (or at least similar) world you do for the mere matter we're communicating on a device.

From our communication, I know that you know how to speak English, you have some knowledge of computers, and the experiences you describe in communication are things I can attest to (Ex. bread/jam, breakfast, etc). So at the bare minimum the world we perceive is mostly the same. And probably completely the same. The exception are people who have a disability - are blind, deaf, mute, etc, or even mental disabilities. There are obviously differences there. But our common functioning senses are all the same. Someone who is blind experiences touch, smell, and hearing just as a sighted person does.

Besides, why would your God give you the ability to perceive him and not me and other non-believers?

I admit it's possible that I'm tragically, horribly, profoundly, pathetically wrong.

That's possible for any belief. Not just your own. I'm just wondering how you rule that out because it's a more ordinary conclusion (the powerful human mind creating "experiences") than your extraordinary one (It's God).

 

[Dunemeister]

Nobody can prove we're not all brains in a vat, just as nobody can prove there's no god. We just have to proceed on the best evidence we have, and nobody has come up with any evidence that we're all brains in a vat or that there is any god.

In fact, I think your claims about reality amount to about the same thing as saying we're all brains in a vat. The world is our vat, and we're unable to perceive the really important facts. You think you have insight into the important facts because the Holy Spirit has revealed them to you. But you're in this vat with us, and neither you nor anybody else has any rational reason for thinking that what you believe to be the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit actually is what you believe it to be.

Well, this begs the question, doesn't it? As a Christian I say I can know that the IIHS is what I think it is. The only way I COULDN'T know is if Christian belief is FALSE. But that's precisely what's at issue.

Recall, too, that I'm not arguing for the truth of Christian belief from the reliability of the IIHS. That would be viciously circular. Rather, I'm saying that Christian belief (even belief about IIHS) is properly basic. The mechanism whereby it is properly basic is IIHS. All I say about this model is that it is possible. For someone to say it isn't possible, they'd have to argue that Christianity -- the whole kit and kaboodle -- is false. I wish you luck.

Moreover, it's entirely possible I'm wrong, but what of that? Just as I may be wrong about whether my IIHS corresponds to anything external to me, so you may be wrong about whether our visual perceptions correspond to anything external to us. Nevertheless, we believe in objects external to us (that is, physical objects). We can't prove it, yet we believe it. Same for me with respect to IIHS. I can't prove it, but if it's nothing against physical objects, it's nothing against IIHS.

A crucial difference is that (apparently) I've had experiences that differ from yours. Is it rational for me to believe that they arise as a result of IIHS? Why not, especially if it is rational for you to believe that my perceptual beliefs are a result of physical objects? I just don't get why I as a Christian have a special problem with IIHS. It just all appears to be the same problem. And if the proper answer to the global skeptic (one who thinks it irrational to believe in external physical objects) is to turn your back on them in disgust, the same answer is a propos with respect to skeptics about IIHS.