God exists

[Phi for All]

Evil things happen to good people because of the evil deeds they committed in their previous birth.

You didn't noticed the 'Nature Part' of what I said. Electrons are non-living or material, then how they join together to make up a living organism? Who induces in them what we call Life?

This is God. That is why he is omnipresent. He has taken many avtaars, we have seen him many times, but as he is beyond our material eyes and senses, we never devoted to him.

So... evil things happen to me, even if I'm good, because of... evil deeds I did in past lives... that I'm not even aware of, and can never know about?! Whose definition of "evil deeds" are we using? The Hindu version, the Christian version, the Budhist version? Does the religion matter or does it have to be one that believes in reincarnation?

 

I have to tell you, I think the idea that we are paying for transgressions from a life we're not even aware we had sounds horrible. I mean, that's really a shockingly hideous thing to burden someone with. "Evil is going to fall on you no matter how good you are because you used to be bad in a previous life that you don't remember." Which religion is this from?

[farmboy]

So... evil things happen to me, even if I'm good, because of... evil deeds I did in past lives... that I'm not even aware of, and can never know about?! Whose definition of "evil deeds" are we using? The Hindu version, the Christian version, the Budhist version? Does the religion matter or does it have to be one that believes in reincarnation?

 

I have to tell you, I think the idea that we are paying for transgressions from a life we're not even aware we had sounds horrible. I mean, that's really a shockingly hideous thing to burden someone with. "Evil is going to fall on you no matter how good you are because you used to be bad in a previous life that you don't remember." Which religion is this from?

 

I guess this explains the Catholic Church's apparent disinterest in protecting the children left in theircare lol.

 

I feel the need to point out this is just a joke btw (since I am not know here for the most part) as I wouldn't want anyone to interpret this as a slur against catholics in general.

[Mr Skeptic]

Given the premises of the OP, it is special pleading to remove God from consideration with the same line of reasoning unless a specific mechanism for doing so is given. No such mechanism has been provided.

 

I'm not aware that anyone demands causes for eternal things. An eternal God doesn't need a cause for the same reason the cyclic model of the universe does not need a cause -- they don't have a start, no event for which to invoke the law of cause and effect.

[Edtharan]

Evil things happen to good people because of the evil deeds they committed in their previous birth.

If you are punished and not told what you are being punished for, then that punishment is completely ineffective and just brutality for the sake of brutality.

 

Imagine this scenario. You are at school. As you leave the class for lunch, you are put into detention. You are not told what you did to deserve this just that you did something at some time before this (you are not even told what day you did the thing that was wrong).

 

Now, what have you learned from this experience? Nothing. What the punishment effective, will you stop doing the wrong thing? No, you don't even know what that thing was, so how can you avoid it in future?

 

In other words the whole thing has no value. It is completely and utterly pointless. The punishment doesn't stop the bad things from being done and could likely stop good things from being done. It would, in effect, be the ultimate evil (and so who or whatever came up with this should be punished themselves for creating it).

 

You didn't noticed the 'Nature Part' of what I said. Electrons are non-living or material, then how they join together to make up a living organism? Who induces in them what we call Life?

This is God. That is why he is omnipresent. He has taken many avtaars, we have seen him many times, but as he is beyond our material eyes and senses, we never devoted to him.

The Élan Vital belief has long been discredited. There is no evidence that it exists and there is no reason that it needs to exist (so if it does exist it has no influence on whether something is alive or not and thus if it exists, it actually disproves its existence).

 

What you are looking at here is "Processes". A living organism is a set of processes. these processes are just the well known physical and chemical (ie: naturalistic) processes that have been known about for a long time.

 

Think of it this way. On your keyboard you have all the letters and symbols that Shakespeare used to write his plays. However, it is the order that these letters and symbols are used that makes Shakespeare's plays what they are. There is no magical ingredient, not Élan Vital that turns normal letters and makes them something else entirely.

 

Thus it is with living systems. All the parts that make up a living organism are just the natural chemicals that exists in non living systems. It is the arrangement of them that makes a system living or non living.

[mooeypoo]

I understand your difficulty understanding how rationalists thing, so I want to show you something as an experiment. This is not meant to offend you, it is just meant to demonstrate the point that I believe you're missing in your retorts.

See, you see God as so obviously existing, you're missing the fact that a lot of us do not come out of that point of view, and hence when we ask our questions about the world, we find alternative solutions that do not require a supreme being, solutions that are naturalistic and can be demonstrated by natural means (like observations and experiments and ockham's razor) and hence do not need to stipulate the existence of God.

 

Your replies are of the style of "BUT OF COURSE!" when we, in fact, do not think "of course" at all.

 

So, to demonstrate, I took your first post and replaced the word "God" with the word "Unicorn".

Again, this isn't to offend anyone, it's to make a point. I also made sure these worse are bolded so it's clear what I've replaced.

 

Read this:

People say that the unicorn doesn't exist both scientifically and visually.

Let me conclude this:

Not everything can be visualized. Can you get the knowledge of the letter 'A' only by visualizing? Simply not. You need to have the knowledge how the word sounds.

Can you prove your father by visualizing? No, because you weren't even born at that time.

Can you prove a far country by visualizing? No, because the country can be beyond reach of eyes, but it actually exists.

Same is for the unicorn. He is beyond our material eyes and ears and all senses.

A lot of saints have seen him and they have attained bliss.

 

Something more-

What is nature?

Whatever we can't explain scientifically is what we call nature.

For ex- We know subatomic particles have no smell when taken individually. But when they combine in ratios of different number(as different elements) they form compounds with different smell. How can you get smell? This is termed as NATURE of electrons! Because this is unexplained.

There are countless examples of so called Nature.

The unicorn is what we call nature in science.

 

Is the problem more clear now?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beyond that, I think you have a bit of a misconception on what atheists/rationalists/secularists actually think as opposed to what you think they think. This is ecoli's initial problem.

 

Your first post (and quite a number of your replies) use logical fallacies we call "Strawman" and "False Dichotomy".

 

Strawman is stating someone else's views but not the way they actually see them. For instance, if I were to say "Religious people claim that God is a beautiful creature with a beard. That makes no sense, since beards are ugly." --> I'm making a fallacy here. That's not the religious claim (at least not the common one), and I am using my own version of it (the wrong version) to claim that the view is wrong. But this isn't the actual belief, so my criticism of it is just as invalid.

 

Do you see the problem?

 

False Dichotomy is a similar problem. You seem to come out of a position where only two options are available: Either you believe in a specific God or you do not. The fact is, many other options exist. The mere fact there are more than one religion (and more than one type of religion) is proof of that. Beyond that, however, you say that either you can visualize or you can't -- which isn't quite true. There's more than one way to visualize something; the fact I can't see quantum interactions does not mean I can't visualize them. The fact I personally can't visualize them in my mind doesn't mean I can't visualize them another way, say, in physical models that can be tested.

And even beyond that, even things that I can't visualize do not necessarily mean they don't exist. You can experience the effects of things you can't see, touch or smell and still conclude they exist because of the interactions they exert on other things. Dark matter is one example of that. Black holes is another example. We know these things exist even though we've never actually observed them because we can see the effects they have on other things.

 

There are a few other errors you make in your logic, like plea from ignorance: the fact *you* don't understand how something works, for instance chemical bonds or quantum mechanics, does not mean there is no natural explanation. That's what mississippichem was trying to tell you.

 

Your "It's God!" claims are nonsensical to us because we explain everything you say with naturalistic terms and do not require a being that is beyond the realm of reality.

If you wish to convince us that God exists, you have to try and first understand where we come from, what we *actually* claim, and what rational logic dictates proper forms of debate.

 

Otherwise, you're just preaching. And it's not really working very well.

 

~mooey

[Zarnaxus]

How do you know Australia even exists?! Because you have seen it on a map? Because you have talked to someone who has been there? Because you have been there? Because you have talked to someone you has seen it in space? Because you have seen actual pictures or footage of Australia from space to see that it's acutally there? Even if you have done all of these things, you still CANNOT know one-hundred percent that Australia exists. Until you go into outerspace and see Australia relative to the other continents yourself, you will never know... And even then, the glass you were looking through could be an illusion. The entire world is a conspiracy against you, making you believe that Australia exists!!

 

So how can you make such a cosmic assumption that an omnipotent God exists, when you don't even know if Australia exists or not...

[zapatos]

How do you know Australia even exists?! Because you have seen it on a map? Because you have talked to someone who has been there? Because you have been there? Because you have talked to someone you has seen it in space? Because you have seen actual pictures or footage of Australia from space to see that it's acutally there? Even if you have done all of these things, you still CANNOT know one-hundred percent that Australia exists. Until you go into outerspace and see Australia relative to the other continents yourself, you will never know... And even then, the glass you were looking through could be an illusion. The entire world is a conspiracy against you, making you believe that Australia exists!!

 

So how can you make such a cosmic assumption that an omnipotent God exists, when you don't even know if Australia exists or not...

Do you believe Australia exists? I mean, maybe not 100%, but enough so that you believe it is probably so? Confident enough that you would buy a plane ticket, board the plane, and put your life at risk, since if it is not there you are going to have to land in the middle of the ocean? Will you act out your life as if it exists, talking about Sydney without a smirk on your face, believing people when they tell you they've seen koalas and kangaroos on their vacation to Australia? Would you be willing to bet all your worldly possessions that it exists? I'll take a chance that the answer to these questions is yes.

 

So how can you have so much faith in the existence in a hunk of rock you've never seen, yet find it so incomprehensible that someone else can have the same faith that God exists?

[JillSwift]

Do you believe Australia exists? I mean, maybe not 100%, but enough so that you believe it is probably so? Confident enough that you would buy a plane ticket, board the plane, and put your life at risk, since if it is not there you are going to have to land in the middle of the ocean? Will you act out your life as if it exists, talking about Sydney without a smirk on your face, believing people when they tell you they've seen koalas and kangaroos on their vacation to Australia? Would you be willing to bet all your worldly possessions that it exists? I'll take a chance that the answer to these questions is yes.

 

So how can you have so much faith in the existence in a hunk of rock you've never seen, yet find it so incomprehensible that someone else can have the same faith that God exists?

 

If trying to test the claim that there is a continent and country called "Australia", no one will ever claim that the reason one can not find it is because:

• You must first have faith - and if you can't see it, you've not enough faith.
• Australia is inherently beyond human understanding, and thus can not be detected by human means.
• Australia exists outside our universe - it has no energy, mater, or dimension. It is supernatural/metaphysical. Thus, you can not detect it.

Where folks commonly say similar things about "god".

 

Secondly, "Australia" is very clearly defined. On seeing any continent, we could test it against the definition and know clearly if we're looking at Australia or not. Whereas "god" is very vaguely defined, and many definitions are in direct contradiction with other definitions. Many of the definitions for god are internally inconsistent, meaning they can't describe anything real.

 

So, it seems rather easy to say "Australia exists" with faith that one is correct (as in the sort of faith that lets you say the sun will rise tomorrow, i.e. very likely right, with a nonzero chance of being wrong), while it seems rather unreasonable to have the same certainty about god.

Edited April 15, 2011 by JillSwift

[zapatos]

If trying to test the claim that there is a continent and country called "Australia", no one will ever claim that the reason one can not find it is because:

• You must first have faith - and if you can't see it, you've not enough faith.
• Australia is inherently beyond human understanding, and thus can not be detected by human means.
• Australia exists outside our universe - it has no energy, mater, or dimension. It is supernatural/metaphysical. Thus, you can not detect it.

Where folks commonly say similar things about "god".

 

Secondly, "Australia" is very clearly defined. On seeing any continent, we could test it against the definition and know clearly if we're looking at Australia or not. Whereas "god" is very vaguely defined, and many definitions are in direct contradiction with other definitions. Many of the definitions for god are internally inconsistent, meaning they can't describe anything real.

 

So, it seems rather easy to say "Australia exists" with faith that one is correct (as in the sort of faith that lets you say the sun will rise tomorrow, i.e. very likely right, with a nonzero chance of being wrong), while it seems rather unreasonable to have the same certainty about god.

It seems to me that you should have directed these comments toward Zarnaxus. He is the one who doesn't seem to have complete faith that Australia truly exists. I do have complete faith it exists.

 

I am questioning his logic in doubting the existence of something so clearly defined, and at the same time not understanding how someone else's logic can lead them to believe in God. Seems to me to be opposite sides of the same coin. One is unsure of some existence despite the evidence, the other is sure of some existence despite the lack of evidence.

[JillSwift]

It seems to me that you should have directed these comments toward Zarnaxus. He is the one who doesn't seem to have complete faith that Australia truly exists. I do have complete faith it exists.

 

I am questioning his logic in doubting the existence of something so clearly defined, and at the same time not understanding how someone else's logic can lead them to believe in God. Seems to me to be opposite sides of the same coin. One is unsure of some existence despite the evidence, the other is sure of some existence despite the lack of evidence.

I don't see it like that.

 

Zarnaxus isn't claiming not to know Australia is there, rather that even though we can have a high certainty about Australia (as my previous post) we can't be supremely certain without a final test of the "Australia hypothesis" - a test we can manage to do.

 

As contrast, there is a dearth of evidence for "god", and no way to test the god hypothesis.

 

I've been debating the whole god idea for over two decades, and I've yet to come across any argument in favor that has consistent logic. So, I can't see them being two sides to one coin, but wildly different approaches to trying to understand reality. One is reasonable (faith as in a high degree of certainty), the other is just bizarre (faith as in belief without evidence or despite contrary evidence).

Edited April 15, 2011 by JillSwift

[zapatos]

I don't see it like that.

 

Zarnaxus isn't claiming not to know Australia is there, rather that even though we can have a high certainty about Australia (as my previous post) we can't be supremely certain without a final test of the "Australia hypothesis" - a test we can manage to do.

 

As contrast, there is a dearth of evidence for "god", and no way to test the god hypothesis.

 

I've been debating the whole god idea for over two decades, and I've yet to come across any argument in favor that has consistent logic. So, I can't see them being two sides to one coin, but wildly different approaches to trying to understand reality. One is reasonable (faith as in a high degree of certainty), the other is just bizarre (faith as in belief without evidence or despite contrary evidence).

I must have missed it. What is Zarnaxus' final test of the "Australia hypothesis"? Seeing it from space and actually being threre were not enough for him to be 100% certain. It sounds to me like he believes he can never be 100% certain.

 

Someone who believes in God can make up for the lack of evidence with faith.

 

Zarnaxus has enough evidence for Australia's existence, yet uses faith in the slim possibility of "The entire world is a conspiracy against you, making you believe that Australia exists!!" to maintain his bit of doubt.

 

While their respective faiths may cover different amounts of evidence territory, I don't see much difference between the two. One doubts with evidence; one believes without evidence.

[JillSwift]

I must have missed it. What is Zarnaxus' final test of the "Australia hypothesis"? Seeing it from space and actually being threre were not enough for him to be 100% certain. It sounds to me like he believes he can never be 100% certain.

He can't be. 100% certainty can't be attained - strictly speaking. Though a functional certainty can be. Intellectual honesty requires the recognition of the fact that we are nothing near omniscient, and there is always the chance - even if so remote as to be not worth consideration in daily life - that what we are certain about is in fact untrue.

 

Someone who believes in God can make up for the lack of evidence with faith.

 

Zarnaxus has enough evidence for Australia's existence, yet uses faith in the slim possibility of "The entire world is a conspiracy against you, making you believe that Australia exists!!" to maintain his bit of doubt.

 

While their respective faiths may cover different amounts of evidence territory, I don't see much difference between the two. One doubts with evidence; one believes without evidence.

Zarnaxus isn't only admitting that trickery or misinterpretation may well mean there is no Australia in objective reality. I doubt very much though that this doubt is more than the admission of a tremendously remote possibility in regard to what I said before.

 

It's not even close to being the opposite of "belief without evidence".

 

Making up for a lack of evidence with faith sounds like pure fiction, though. Isn't there a huge difference between admitting that perfect certainty isn't achievable (without discarding functional certainty) and fabricating a belief?

[Marat]

Wittgenstein's philosophy of language is once again useful here. 'Certainty,' defined by the way we ordinarily use it in everyday contexts, rather than by the highly artificial, metaphysical way some philosophers try to misuse it, refers to the security of knowledge we have after it has been tested by ordinary means socially deemed appropriate to its confirmation. In this sense the true meaning of 'certainty' is very close to what a real-world institution like a court means when it instructs a jury that it must be certain of the accused's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It does not mean beyond a metaphysical doubt, requiring certainty that the whole world is not a dream, that the jury members are absolutely certain they are not the drugged victims of some laboratory experiment in induced hallucinations, or that they are not insane and suffering from the delusion of being in a court room while in fact they are languishing in an asylum. It means rather that by tests ordinarily used to assure ourselves of the reality of things -- such as confirming that Australia exists because it can be located on maps of the world made by recognized and reputable publishers -- it is what we generally mean by 'certain.'

 

Doubt is itself only defined in a context where real certainty is possible, so it makes no sense to destroy all certainty by some universal, radical doubt of a sort that would never be accepted in ordinary practice and outside of a philosophy seminar as constituting a real reason to be sceptical about something, such as for example whether you have just read this internet posting.

[zapatos]

Making up for a lack of evidence with faith sounds like pure fiction, though. Isn't there a huge difference between admitting that perfect certainty isn't achievable (without discarding functional certainty) and fabricating a belief?

(For illustrative purposes only -- Don't really know you so I'm just picking a topic. Could be any subject you believe but do not have first hand experience with.)

 

Do you believe in DNA, that it exists, that it is responsible for traits and how people develop? (Hoping the answer is yes.)

Have you ever worked with DNA, helped map a genome, done cloning, worked in a microbiology lab? (Hoping the answer is no.)

 

What is your evidence of its existence? Because someone else said so? Do you have faith in those strangers who write papers or talk online regarding the subject? So even though you lack the evidence, you have faith that it is true. Does that feel like pure fiction to you? Do you feel like you are fabricating a belief?

 

Is it that much of a stretch for you to be allowed your faith in what strangers are telling you is true, but not to understand how someone can have faith in God?

[JillSwift]

(For illustrative purposes only -- Don't really know you so I'm just picking a topic. Could be any subject you believe but do not have first hand experience with.)

 

Do you believe in DNA, that it exists, that it is responsible for traits and how people develop? (Hoping the answer is yes.)

Have you ever worked with DNA, helped map a genome, done cloning, worked in a microbiology lab? (Hoping the answer is no.)

 

What is your evidence of its existence? Because someone else said so? Do you have faith in those strangers who write papers or talk online regarding the subject? So even though you lack the evidence, you have faith that it is true. Does that feel like pure fiction to you? Do you feel like you are fabricating a belief?

 

Is it that much of a stretch for you to be allowed your faith in what strangers are telling you is true, but not to understand how someone can have faith in God?

 

You do realize there is more than one definition for "faith", right?

 

Per your analogy, I'd have "faith" DNA exists where faith means "confidence or trust in a person or thing". This is in contrast to "belief that is without evidence, or in spite of contrary evidence", which would be religious faith.

[zapatos]

You do realize there is more than one definition for "faith", right?

 

Per your analogy, I'd have "faith" DNA exists where faith means "confidence or trust in a person or thing". This is in contrast to "belief that is without evidence, or in spite of contrary evidence", which would be religious faith.

I do realize you can spin a statement to make it sound as if it favors your position.

 

I could have said you have 'confidence or trust in a person trying to make money by selling another overpriced text book', where a theist has belief in a person 'who took a vow of poverty and is dedicating his life to study and the betterment of mankind'. But that wouldn't have been fair.

 

When you get right down to it you decide who and what you want to believe and why. As does the theist. But you have also decided that you are just and he is a fool.

 

Despite your implication, there is no 'contrary evidence' to the existence of God. Given the lack of evidence either way it seems unreasonable to deny the theist his beliefs.

[JillSwift]

I do realize you can spin a statement to make it sound as if it favors your position.

AS you demonstrate here.

 

I could have said you have 'confidence or trust in a person trying to make money by selling another overpriced text book', where a theist has belief in a person 'who took a vow of poverty and is dedicating his life to study and the betterment of mankind'. But that wouldn't have been fair.

It would have been silly rhetoric, neither fair nor unfair. At best a plea to vanity, at worst a appeal to authority.

 

When you get right down to it you decide who and what you want to believe and why. As does the theist. But you have also decided that you are just and he is a fool.

Was your intent is to say different methods of deciding what is real and what is not are all perfectly equal? If that were true, we'd have garnered as much useful technology from the study of theology as from empirical science.

 

Despite your implication, there is no 'contrary evidence' to the existence of God. Given the lack of evidence either way it seems unreasonable to deny the theist his beliefs.

Whether there is contrary evidence depends entirely on which god you're talking about. It is as perfectly reasonable to deny a theist's belief in god as it is reasonable to deny belief in fairies, gnomes and flumphartigans. No evidence of their existence means no reason in believing in them.

[zapatos]

Was your intent is to say different methods of deciding what is real and what is not are all perfectly equal? If that were true, we'd have garnered as much useful technology from the study of theology as from empirical science.

No, my intent was to say that I have yet to meet someone who claims to know the best way of doing something, and then tells me that they don't use that method. Reminds me of a line from "Meet Me in St. Louis"; "Wasn't I lucky to be born in my favorite city?" --Tootie.

 

If you had been born to very religious people in the mountains of Pakistan you would in all likelihood be making very different arguments than if you had been born to scientists in Paris. And you would be just as confident in both cases.

 

It would have been silly rhetoric, neither fair nor unfair. At best a plea to vanity, at worst a appeal to authority.

As you demonstrated previously.

[JillSwift]

No, my intent was to say that I have yet to meet someone who claims to know the best way of doing something, and then tells me that they don't use that method. Reminds me of a line from "Meet Me in St. Louis"; "Wasn't I lucky to be born in my favorite city?" --Tootie.

This does not then jibe with:

 

If you had been born to very religious people in the mountains of Pakistan you would in all likelihood be making very different arguments than if you had been born to scientists in Paris. And you would be just as confident in both cases.

What does personal confidence have to do with it? Aren't the results of a given epistemology a better metric?

[zapatos]

It seems clear to me that you have concluded that your frame of reference is the correct one and that the way theists think and reason is in some ways flawed. Apologies if I misstated your position.

 

I tend to feel that scientific thought and theistic thought are really two very different things, and one is really in no way qualified to suggest to the other how to reason. Kind of like baseball players not really being qualified to pass judgement on how soccer players approach their sport.

 

Since the dialogue seems to me to be breaking down and neither of us is budging, I'll go ahead and call it quits.

 

Thanks for the debate!

[JillSwift]

It seems clear to me that you have concluded that your frame of reference is the correct one and that the way theists think and reason is in some ways flawed. Apologies if I misstated your position.

 

I tend to feel that scientific thought and theistic thought are really two very different things, and one is really in no way qualified to suggest to the other how to reason. Kind of like baseball players not really being qualified to pass judgement on how soccer players approach their sport.

 

Since the dialogue seems to me to be breaking down and neither of us is budging, I'll go ahead and call it quits.

 

Thanks for the debate!

 

Okies.

 

Just a final thought or so: I don't think theists have flawed thinking, but the thinking leading to theism is flawed. Probably just a quibble, but I don't want to seem like I'd call the theist people themselves unreasonable, 'cuz they ain't.

[Marat]

This discussion about some people having 'another way of proving things' or 'a different concept of truth' reminds me of an anthropological account I read once about Europeans encountering a Native tribe who had all sorts of magical beliefs. The Europeans decided to test the Native reasoning by doing something that the Native shaman would curse them for, since when the shaman cursed disobedient Natives, they always became severely ill, and the Natives refused to believe the European explanation that this was simply psychosomatic. But when the shaman cursed some Europeans for being bad and the Europeans didn't become ill, the Natives simply explained away the ineffectiveness of the curse by one of the many dodges which ware familiar whenever people give excuses. "The spirits were not listening to the shamans power that day because it was cloudy," "the Europeans were not really all that bad," "the shaman was not serious because he wanted to be generous with people of a different tribe," etc. But it was never possible to pin them down to a test case.

 

However, the superiority of a cultural system which cultivates objective testability of its hypotheses over one which does not has to be clear to all, since if you really want to develop a vaccine against polio, you can't just say that your vaccine works even though everyone taking it still gets sick, and the failed results can all be explained away by various ad hoc factors, such as it probably doesn't work when taken on a cloudy day, or for people with blue eyes, or for those with surnames in the second half of the alphabet, etc. Unless you are willing to submit your beliefs to tests which are independent of the theory being tested and all the theory structures which might be called upon to explain away negative results, you are really not, as Wittgenstein would say, "playing the language game of genuinely testing anything to find out if it is real."

 

Before you can legitimately use words like 'real,' 'proof,' 'tested,' 'objective,' etc., you have to use them as commonly defined rather than as metaphysically imagined, and these common definitions of the terms being used require the real to meet the standards of an independent test.

[Edtharan]

How can you tell if someone is lying to you?

 

The simple answer is to see if what they are telling you can be confirmed or disproved by some other source.

 

This is what science does. It treats everything as something that could be a lie, even the results and claims of other scientists. This means that everything in science has to be constantly subject to tests to see if it is true or not. Every time you drop a ball, you are testing gravity (if you make accurate observations to confirm the more precise claims about it all the better).

 

What lead to this is that it was recognised that patterns occur in the behaviour of things in the universe (eg: things fall down). As people tested these regularities to see if they were truly regular it lead to the processes that we call science (measurements, description of the phenomena and testing of these descriptions).

 

The bible does not state that blind faith is needed, just faith. Is it possible to have non-blind faith? Yes. We have non blind faith all the time, we use our brains and our rationality to develop non-blind faith.

 

For example, every morning we see the sun rise and have done so every day of our lives. Further more as far back as records go, the sun has risen each and every morning. The data suggests that sun rises regularly and without exception.

 

However, we have no proof that the sun will rise tomorrow and it can be said that we take it as "faith" that it will rise tomorrow, but this faith is not a blind faith because we have a lot of evidence on which we have based this faith on.

 

Now, think back to what I was saying about science, that the processes of science is about looking for regularities and constant testing that these regularities actually exist and that our descriptions of them are accurate.

 

So, although one might claim that there are things in science that are taken on faith, this faith is not a blind faith.

 

Religion, on the other hand requires blind faith, if religious beliefs were to be treated as non-blind faith and tested regularly and with as much accuracy as we could, then they would crumble.

 

Another way to look at it is that God gave humans the ability to reason and to think logically. Now to reject a gift from God is to reject God, so to not use our gifts of reason and logic would be a rejection of these gifts form God and thus a rejection of God. Also, as Satan is supposed to use lies and deceit to tempt us from God, then these gifts make sense as they allow us to determine what is a lie or truth.

 

As I said above, the best way to determine if something is a lie is to test it, and that is what science does. Looking at it this way, in a worst case, science might not bring you closer to God, but it will stop you from getting further away from Him. And, the best case is that it is the intention of God all along.

[zapatos]

Someone on this site has the tagline "When you are a hammer, all your problems begin to look like nails".

 

Most of the religion discussions on this site are coming from scientists, who use their science hammer to view the world from a scientist's eyes. And since there is no empirical evidence supporting the existence of God, there is no reason to believe. Which makes perfect sense, especially if you are a scientist. That is how they've learned to think, it works, and they've bought into the concept. And in areas that are covered by science I don't understand how theists can ignore the cold hard facts of science over an ancient text that has many glaring errors.

 

But not all areas are covered by science. For example, 'Does God exist?'. Science has no business addressing that question since there is no way to test it. It is supernatural and outside the purview of science. However, based on a scientist's background and science's track record, many scientists come to the logical conclusion that God does not exist and are very comfortable in that position.

 

But of course they don't know God doesn't exist. How could they? But they take (what they believe to be) the indirect evidence around them, along with their experiences, background, and all the rest, and come to that conclusion. Very logical.

 

And of course there are theists who don't know God exists. How could they? But they take (what they believe to be) the indirect evidence around them, along with their experiences, background, and all the rest, and come to the conclusion that God exists. Very logical.

 

What I see happen so often on this site is that the scientists tell the theists that their conclusion is flawed. The science hammer comes out and they try to apply it where it cannot be conclusively used. I'm not surprised the hammer comes out. You use what you have. But that does not mean it will necessarily work.

 

To me it looks as if the scientist is unable or unwilling to look at things from the perspective of the theist. Not to buy into it, but to listen and try to understand before coming up with their next argument. If they were making that effort I think I'd see a lot more of "I don't agree with you but I do understand your perspective". Instead I just see a lot of "You are wrong". I don't understand why scientists have such a tough time accepting the fact that someone can come to the conclusion that God exists, when the scientist has no more evidence of non-existence than the theist has of existence. I don't understand why it is so hard to accept that someone can honestly and logically come to a different conclusion.

 

(Note: I don't mean all scientists, or all theists, or in all cases, etc. And I'm sure on a religious site the slant would be the exact opposite. I'm talking about what I see here.)

[Marat]

When you say that 'you don't know that God doesn't exist,' the problem is that you can apply that phrase, from the perspective of the highly metaphysical way you are using words like 'know,' 'faith,' and 'doubt,' to anything. Thus we also don't know with 1000% certainty that Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck are not at this very moment conspiring in a dingy hotel room in Paramus, New Jersey, to take over the world. But if we were to permit such metaphysical 'I don't know for certain that it is not the case that ...' statements significantly to detain our thinking or to create important puzzles and hesitations for our thinking, all knowledge, rationality, science, and human activity would collapse into paralsis. For when scientists are testing drugs for purity and potency before releasing them for use on desperately ill patients, they would have to admit that they don't know for certain that the world is not a dream, that they have not gone suddenly insance, that everything has not suddenly become an illusion, so they cannot be certain that the drug is safe to release for administration to patients. This is just to show that we don't use the words 'doubt,' 'knowledge,' and 'certainty' in the sense you are proposing -- and have to propose -- in order to save the God-hypothesis from disproof.

 

With respect to the real use of the word 'faith,' we would not ever really say that we have 'faith' in any significant sense of the word that the floor of the ordinary building we are about to walk on will not collapse, because that possibility is so rare in a developed society with professional engineering standards that we don't even seriously entertain a doubt. We do have faith, however, if we see a deteriorating wooden bridge in front of us with a sign, 'Cross at Your Own Risk,' that it is safe to cross, since it hasn't yet been closed. Here we have good empirical reasons to enter on the doubt/faith intellectual excursion. But to consider the third and more extreme, metaphysical case of the use of the word 'faith,' no one sensibly has 'faith' that the Moon is made of green cheese or that everyone else in the world is really just a robot with no genuine self-awareness, for just as extraordinary hypotheses require extraordinary evidence to be proved, so too extraordinary doubts require extraordinary evidence to be motivated, so unless we have some empirical prompting, we cannot meaningfully use the term 'faith' as a bridge to embrace the hypothesis.

 

You complain that scientists are unwiling to look at things from the perspective of theists. But the ordinary test for distinguishing truth from illusion is to subject things to an independent empirical test, and this is really the only clear, operationalized definition we have of testing something. If you want to use 'proof' or 'test' in some special, metaphysical way, so that it can distinguish an illusion from a fact by other than empirical means, then that is really just overextending words beyond the only context in which they are substantively defined, although it falsely appears to be legitimate because the words still sound and look the same, even though they are now so far removed from their operationally real contexts of definition that they are just empty shells, purporting to carry their original meaning into spheres where in fact they lack it. Before we can adopt the special perspective of the theist, given our grounding in everyday reality, we need an ordinary, empirical reason for admitting that that perspective itself is a valid one to adopt, and none has been provided.

 

If we are both in the desert dying of thirst and come across a bottle of what appears to be water, we might test it to determine whether it is poisonous by watching what happens when an animal comes by and drinks from it. But if I were to propose to you that you abandon your scientific perspective and adopt my mystical way of seeing things in terms of analogies, metaphors, and intuitions, and suggested that instead of that empirical test we decide whether the fluid was poisonous based on the color of the container, with red suggesting danger while blue suggested safety, I'm sure you wouldn't be willing to adopt my special perspective unless there was some evidence that was not only good but also ordinary and empirical, such as the fact that there was a convention for labelling fluids by these colors to indicate danger or safety. You wouldn't accept my metaphysical perspective itself as the reason for adopting a correspondingly metaphysical perspective for evaluating my hypothesis, since that would just be an attempt to lift the hypothesis up by its own bootstraps.

 

You might be interested to read a short, pithy. epigramatic book by Ludwig Wittgenstein entitled 'On Certainty' covering all these issues.