People who believe in god are broken

[immortal]

That's not the question I would ask. I'm curious to hear how him hearing instructions from dogs is supposed to be any different than people hearing instructions from god(s). I'm curious to know why you feel belief that dogs are telling you something constitutes mental illness but belief that gods are telling you something does not.

 

At least dogs can be shown to exist.

 

 

The idea that animals can communicate with humans using languages which humans can comprehend is a normal belief in most religious traditions. I can even rationalize it and show that it is very much possible and that doesn't sound like an extraordinary claim to me, it is not so unlikely as you're portraying it.

 

 

As far as David Berkowitz is concerned I don't know what his cult taught him and how much he pyschologically believed in it or did he used religious ideas to justify his killings. There is lot of difference between asking was David Berkowitz broken and asking are these religious ideas have any truth in them or not.

[tar]

Inow,

 

Thank you for the reading list. Looks like some good themes. Especially the one about "stories" being the way we interpret reality.

And I would like to, (without having even fully read the abstract or peeked at the trailers), tie that general idea into this discussion.

 

The David B. devil dog would be a good indication that David B. believed the stories about the devil that the Bible and society has been telling us for several thousand years. Either that, or that there is "the Devil" and he spoke through the dog. I will go with the first take.

 

But belief in the story seems to be the real thing that occurred. David Berkowitz seems to have not only been broken in taking the story literally, but in getting the story wrong. You're not supposed to LISTEN to the devil, you are supposed to cast him out of your being, so you can be with/of God.

 

I am not so sure that religious people are broken, to "listen" to the stories of the Bible, "as if" they are written by God, through his Prophets. If you take God as an Ideal that is, and not an actual sky Pixie. Most of the 10 commandments, if not all, are sort of reasonable. And many of the stories and themes in the Bible can be traced back to various tribal ledgends and actual societal morays of the day. Somewhat outdated by now, I am sure, but the stories cemented our societal roles into our psyches. Somewhat liberating to NOT believe in the God of the bible, allowing us to "write our own story", or at least change the plot and characters enough to reject the "king with divine power" and the male chauvanism and slavery and cruel injustice and domination that that the old testament story line would not only allow, but ensure. (Wait, I think maybe I just ran myself out of my own argument.) I was heading in the direction of suggesting that we still NEED stories to go by, thereby validating the belief in a master story teller...but it appears that believers in the Abrahamic God, would have to be broken on this count, as well. Bad story line.

 

Regards, TAR2

Edited June 15, 2012 by tar

[Iggy]

I am asserting that belief in a theistic god in and of itself, does not make someone as broken as someone else who believes their neighbor's dog is telling them to kill.

Good. The belief itself does not make someone as broken as some other belief. At the same time you say:

 

If you are broken for believing in God then you are broken for believing in anything else that could turn out to be untrue.

Here the belief itself seems to be on the same footing as all other unverified beliefs.

 

All I'm trying to do is to point out the double standard. To say "if X makes you broken then Y makes you broken" is non sequitur unless you can tie the two together, and here you clearly can't because things like the big bang are not only supported by evidence, they can be proven false by it. That is to say, there are things that make some unverified beliefs more broken than others.

 

No kidding? My theists are mostly Catholic, what are yours? And do they claim to literally hear instructions, or is it more of a figurative instruction, as in 'being a teacher is God's calling for me'?

Thinking one hears the imaginary voice of god is no less worrisome than thinking one knows the imaginary thoughts of god.

Edited June 15, 2012 by Iggy

[tar]

Though I don't think "no story" is preferable. Nor do I think the story about hydrogen atoms accidentally creating TAR2 is very good.

 

Iggy,

 

Was listening to a Catholic talk about Catholic school the other day, and the fact that they saw through the God/Nun thing the first time they told a lie and got away with it. (no lightning strike).

 

Regards, TAR2

[zapatos]

Good. The belief itself does not make someone as broken as some other belief. At the same time you say:

 

 

Here the belief itself seems to be one the same footing as all other unverified beliefs.

 

All I'm trying to do is to point out the double standard. To say "if X makes you broken then Y makes you broken" is non sequitur unless you can tie the two together, and here you clearly can't because things like the big bang are not only supported by evidence, they can be proven false by it. That is to say, there are things that make some unverified beliefs more broken than others.

I think I understand what you are saying, which is summed up in your last line, "there are things that make some unverified beliefs more broken than others". In addition, you believe that due to the line you quoted, that I think that belief in God is the same as belief in the Big Bang (and others). Please correct me if I got that wrong.

 

My position is that belief in God does not in and of itself mean you are broken.

I believe that the more evidence you have for something, the less likely you are to be broken for believing in it.

I believe that if belief without complete evidence is to be considered broken, then the more complete your evidence, the less broken you are. This of course means that belief in the Big Bang would be considered less broken than belief in God.

 

There are some things that you can believe in that have a complete lack of evidence.

There are other things that you can believe in that have nearly total evidence.

And of course other things that fall somewhere in between.

 

The OP is suggesting that belief in something with no evidence (god) is to be considered broken, but remains quiet on what level of evidence is required to not be considered broken. I listed various beliefs that had different levels of evidence supporting them (string theory, big bang, etc.). My contention is that you cannot draw a line at what level of evidence defines broken vs. not broken. That is why I said "If you are broken for believing in God then you are broken for believing in anything else that could turn out to be untrue." My point being that in all cases (belief in God to belief in the Big Bang), you are relying on incomplete evidence, and you are therefore all in the same boat, either all broken or all not broken.

 

If they are all broken then I concede that there are different degrees of being broken.

 

I also think there are other factors to consider when determining broken (education, maturity, etc.) but that was not what you were talking about so I won't address here.

 

At the moment I don't see a flaw in my logic but would be happy to change my position if you could convince me otherwise. As an atheist I don't really have a vested interest in being right.

 

Thinking one hears the imaginary voice of god is no less worrisome than thinking one knows the imaginary thoughts of god.

Sorry to disagree again but I find them very much different.

 

I can know how someone would think (more or less) in a given situation if I had read about them, studied them, etc. Many times I've heard on this site that Einstein believed this or that. That does not worry me, but I would be very worried if they said Albert told them such and such last night.

Edited June 15, 2012 by zapatos

[Iggy]

I think I understand what you are saying, which is summed up in your last line, "there are things that make some unverified beliefs more broken than others". In addition, you believe that due to the line you quoted, that I think that belief in God is the same as belief in the Big Bang (and others). Please correct me if I got that wrong.

No, I took you at what you said... that if belief in one makes you broken then the same with the other.

 

I believe that the more evidence you have for something, the less likely you are to be broken for believing in it.

I'm sure you could get a lot of people to agree with you, but it isn't true. Before Einstein had any supporting evidence for general relativity he believed in it completely. That didn't make him broken. You are judging things by the wrong standard. I'll point out exactly where you go wrong:

 

The OP is suggesting that belief in something with no evidence (god) is to be considered broken, but remains quiet on what level of evidence is required to not be considered broken.

The OP is three words long and doesn't suggest that.

 

Like I said, not only does belief in god have no supporting evidence, there is nothing even in theory that could prove it wrong. Ideas that are unsupported and unfalsifiable have a defect above and beyond your "level of evidence" scale.

 

My point being that in all cases (belief in God to belief in the Big Bang), you are relying on incomplete evidence, and you are therefore all in the same boat, either all broken or all not broken.

Did you understand someone to say that people who believe in God are broken because they are relying on incomplete evidence? It is hard not to consider it a purposeful strawman when I keep pointing out that there are other differences between the beliefs.

[MonDie]

No kidding? My theists are mostly Catholic, what are yours? And do they claim to literally hear instructions, or is it more of a figurative instruction, as in 'being a teacher is God's calling for me'?

 

According to this video, hallucinations are "common," "normal" and "natural."

 

a theist who also hears god talking to him is probably just as broken.

 

I'm guessing he meant theists but it could have been the others. And yes, I believe that neither group could be considered menatlly ill in the way [David Berkowitz] is.

 

I will add more information. Hallucination can be induced in hypnosis, and most people can be hypnotized. Hypnotic susceptibility depends on a person's willingness, and I think a religious follower would be very willing to go into a trance at a religious ceremony, at which point, they might hallucinate voices.

Edited June 15, 2012 by Mondays Assignment: Die

[music]

Being from a fundamentalist and very pious family, I've known lots of people who believe they've heard God's voice. That's fairly common, as is belief in miraculous healing. I've also witnessed spiritual possession and ecstatic religious trance.

 

But it's not mentally ill. Working with homeless people in the 1990s, I've seen mentally ill: a guy who had to be physically restrained for his own safety because he believed he was demonically possessed. A guy who believed the Pope (and by extension the entire Catholic Church) was trying to kill him. A guy who insisted he needed to attach paper cups to his ears with duct tape in order to prevent some malevolent extraterrestrial or spiritual thing from getting inside his head. There's probably a spectrum of behaviors, but it's usually really easy to tell the difference between ordinary religious experience and mental illness. People who get messages from God in church telling them to be patient with their kids, go home afterwards, watch some pro wrestling, go to work the next day... that's normal. People who cut and burn themselves to get the demons out - nope.

[Iggy]

There's probably a spectrum of behaviors, but it's usually really easy to tell the difference between ordinary religious experience and mental illness. People who get messages from God in church telling them to be patient with their kids, go home afterwards, watch some pro wrestling, go to work the next day... that's normal. People who cut and burn themselves to get the demons out - nope.

It is easy to dismiss the 'pentecostal church experience' (for lack of a better phrase) as not mentally ill. These people may think they are possessed and God is speaking through them in tongues on Sunday, but Monday rolls around and they're back to selling mortgages and teaching kindergarten. They turn it off.

 

But, what about the devout Muslim who hears Allah's voice telling him to blow up a bus full of children and subsequently does exactly that? What about the devout Christian who kills an abortion doctor on God's say so? You can't doubt the reality or the severity of their delusion. How is their delusion less mentally ill than the guy duct taping his ears with paper cups?

Edited June 15, 2012 by Iggy

[Moontanman]

No kidding? My theists are mostly Catholic, what are yours? And do they claim to literally hear instructions, or is it more of a figurative instruction, as in 'being a teacher is God's calling for me'?

 

 

Most of mine are fundamentalist protestant Christians but I have talked to a couple of Catholics who made the same claim. Yes they literally hear what they think is gods voice, many times god tells them trivial things like where their car keys are or a hair brush. sometimes it's hugely important things like "lets disenfranchise gays" or kill abortion doctors but it's gods voice, nothing can change their minds about that.

[zapatos]

It is hard not to consider it a purposeful strawman when I keep pointing out that there are other differences between the beliefs.

Maybe it is a weakness in my personality but I find it difficult to maintain any desire to continue a conversation with someone who questions my integrity.

 

Most of mine are fundamentalist protestant Christians but I have talked to a couple of Catholics who made the same claim. Yes they literally hear what they think is gods voice, many times god tells them trivial things like where their car keys are or a hair brush. sometimes it's hugely important things like "lets disenfranchise gays" or kill abortion doctors but it's gods voice, nothing can change their minds about that.

Live and learn. When I started on this site I had no idea where the hostility toward religion came from. Living in my isolated Catholic community I only saw a helpful, harmless group. You and others have certainly opened my eyes to many aspects of religion that I was ignorant of.

[Iggy]

Maybe it is a weakness in my personality but I find it difficult to maintain any desire to continue a conversation with someone who questions my integrity.

If I thought you lacked integrity I would tell you that you lack integrity.

 

This is either a strawman or it is not:

 

The OP is suggesting that belief in something with no evidence (god) is to be considered broken, but remains quiet on what level of evidence is required to not be considered broken... My point being that in all cases (belief in God to belief in the Big Bang), you are relying on incomplete evidence, and you are therefore all in the same boat, either all broken or all not broken.

 

I don't think the OP suggests that and I know I've personally refuted the premise to you a number of times, yet you continue arguing against it. I'm sorry to call that a strawman, but I honestly don't know what else to call it.

[iNow]

I can know how someone would think (more or less) in a given situation if I had read about them, studied them, etc.

No, you cannot, and I addressed this same issue earlier in the thread when TAR claimed he "knew" what the deer he saw one day was thinking. Nope, not true. You can speculate. You can hypothesize. You can conjecture, and guess, and assume... but you cannot "know."

 

In much the same way, people can speculate that there is a god. They can hypothesize that there might be a god. They can conjecture there is a god, guess there is a god, or assume there is a god... but they cannot "know" there is a god, and yet that's precisely the claim theists make. They claim to KNOW there is a god despite the lack of adequate evidence (as I said, thunder is not evidence of Thor any more than complexity or nature is evidence of Yahweh), they make this claim based on faith alone, and they are quite broken for doing so.

 

To suggest this is somehow equivalent to the conditional acceptance people offer to the big bang model based on the evidence at hand is quite disingenuous and misguided... and I really don't care if it bothers you that I'm being blunt or if it saddens you that your integrity is somehow being questioned based on my doing so.

 

---

Being from a fundamentalist and very pious family, I've known lots of people who believe they've heard God's voice. That's fairly common, as is belief in miraculous healing. I've also witnessed spiritual possession and ecstatic religious trance.

 

But it's not mentally ill.

In what ways do you propose it's functionally different? I suspect you cannot name any.

 

From my perspective, the only thing different here is that one is considered acceptable by society and the other is not. One of these unfounded beliefs is granted special deference and given undue deference wherein the other is not. However, we're not talking about societal acceptance here... We're talking about the nature of the belief itself, and in that case belief in god(s) is precisely the same as your paper clipped ear friend on the streets who believes aliens are trying to get into his brain.

Edited June 15, 2012 by iNow

[zapatos]

If I thought you lacked integrity I would tell you that you lack integrity.

That is a bullshit dodge of what you said. Starting your accusation with "It's hard not to consider it" only makes it more socially acceptable.

Do you think if someone said to another "I have a hard time believing you are not a total asshole" that they wouldn't have considered themselves insulted?

 

This is either a strawman or it is not:

 

The OP is suggesting that belief in something with no evidence (god) is to be considered broken, but remains quiet on what level of evidence is required to not be considered broken... My point being that in all cases (belief in God to belief in the Big Bang), you are relying on incomplete evidence, and you are therefore all in the same boat, either all broken or all not broken.

 

 

I don't think the OP suggests that and I know I've personally refuted the premise to you a number of times, yet you continue arguing against it. I'm sorry to call that a strawman, but I honestly don't know what else to call it.

Can you be specific about which part the OP did not suggest? What exactly am I arguing against?

 

iNow, either in the OP or later in the thread has suggested that there is no evidence for belief in God.

iNow has suggested that people who believe in God are broken.

iNow did not list in the OP what level of evidence is required to be considered not broken.

iNow did not respond to the level of evidence required to be considered not broken when I questioned him in post 23: "You are drawing a line that says your level of required proof is sufficient for belief but their level is not. That seems exceedingly unfair to me. Why do you get to draw the line? Why not criticize everyone who believes in anything without absolute proof?"

 

It is true that there is incomplete evidence for the existence of God.

It is true that there is incomplete evidence for the Big Bang.

It is true that there is incomplete evidence for String theory.

 

Starting at around post 230 we talked a lot about evidence. In post 253 I gave examples of evidence of God based on another posters requirement for type of things that constitute evidence:

 

From your link, types of evidence include:

 

Anecdotal evidence

Intuition

Personal experience

Scientific evidence

Testimonial

 

Examples of evidence of God for all but scientific:

 

Anecdotal - A person who prays for a cure and their disease goes into remission

Intuition - There must be something that created the universe based on my understanding of cause and effect, conservation of energy, etc.

Personal Experience - I had a near death experience.

Testimonial - Declarations from the Pope when speaking ex cathedra.

 

In a similar way, example of evidence of extraterrestrials include:

 

Anecdotal - Crop circles

Intuition - The Drake equation. As big as the universe is and with the number of planets in the goldilocks zone, there must be other life out there.

Personal Experience - I saw a blue and green light hover over me, then fly off into the distance.

Testimonial - The Disclosure Project

 

These are all evidence of God and aliens. You may find that they are not sufficient to justify the claim of the existence, or you may feel they in no way support the proposition, but they are evidence nonetheless. Evidence is often wrong, misleading, insufficient, questionable, etc. That does not stop it from being evidence.

 

 

What exactly have I misrepresented and where did I then say that misrepresented statement was false?

 

No, you cannot, and I addressed this same issue earlier in the thread when TAR claimed he "knew" what the deer he saw one day was thinking. Nope, not true. You can speculate. You can hypothesize. You can conjecture, and guess, and assume... but you cannot "know."

Logical fallacy. Strawman. Convenient of you to leave off 'more or less' in the rebuttal as it makes your argument much stronger that way.

 

In much the same way, people can speculate that there is a god. They can hypothesize that there might be a god. They can conjecture there is a god, guess there is a god, or assume there is a god... but they cannot "know" there is god, and yet that's precisely the claim theists make.

Logical fallacy. Generalization. An agnostic theist does not "know" there is a god. Same as you've been doing all along.

 

And I really don't care if it bothers you that I'm being blunt or if it saddens you that your integrity is somehow being questioned based on my doing so.

[Iggy]

If I thought you lacked integrity I would tell you that you lack integrity.

That is a bullshit dodge of what you said. Starting your accusation with "It's hard not to consider it" only makes it more socially acceptable.

Do you think if someone said to another "I have a hard time believing you are not a total asshole" that they wouldn't have considered themselves insulted?

I didn't say that you lack integrity. I didn't say that it's hard not to consider that you lack integrity. I didn't call you an asshole. I didn't say that it is hard not to consider you an asshole.

 

Trust me, if I thought you lacked integrity or if I thought you were an asshole I would tell you those things in no uncertain terms. I haven't because I don't.

 

Can you be specific about which part the OP did not suggest? What exactly am I arguing against?

I'll quote it again:

 

My point being that in all cases (belief in God to belief in the Big Bang), you are relying on incomplete evidence, and you are therefore all in the same boat, either all broken or all not broken.

That quote only makes sense if "lack of evidence" is the sole quality of belief in god which makes a person broken for believing it.

 

Imagine I made the argument that belief in god makes a person broken because it is an unsupported and unfalsifiable belief. Your response -- that belief in the big bang must also make a person broken because it is not fully verified -- would be a strawman of my argument.

 

I shouldn't have to explain this in such detail. Your quote above says "you are relying on incomplete evidence, and you are therefore all in the same boat, either all broken or all not broken". Either someone in this thread said that belief in god is broken because it relies on incomplete evidence or they did not. If not it is a strawman.

 

iNow, either in the OP or later in the thread has suggested that there is no evidence for belief in God.

Fine. I'm sure that's true.

 

iNow has suggested that people who believe in God are broken.

I'm less sure than iNow on that point, but fine.

 

iNow did not list in the OP what level of evidence is required to be considered not broken.

Again, you are judging things by the wrong standard. Einstein believed completely in general relativity before it had supporting evidence. Despite the lack of evidence it was a rational belief, and Einstein was in no way broken for holding it.

 

Lack of evidence is not the only requisite for considering a belief broken or considering a person holding the belief broken.

 

If someone said or implied differently then I would disagree with them, but I haven't seen that.

 

iNow did not respond to the level of evidence required to be considered not broken when I questioned him in post 23: "You are drawing a line that says your level of required proof is sufficient for belief but their level is not. That seems exceedingly unfair to me. Why do you get to draw the line? Why not criticize everyone who believes in anything without absolute proof?"

You would have to show me where iNow said that people are broken for believing in god because god doesn't meet a "level of required proof".

 

It is true that there is incomplete evidence for the existence of God.

It is true that there is incomplete evidence for the Big Bang.

It is true that there is incomplete evidence for String theory.

You would have to show me where someone said that people who believe in something with incomplete evidence are broken.

 

Starting at around post 230 we talked a lot about evidence. In post 253 I gave examples of evidence of God based on another posters requirement for type of things that constitute evidence:

If a person has a vision of God then they have subjective and personal evidence of god. They have, in their own mind, support for god's existence. I wouldn't disagree with you on this point.

[zapatos]

I didn't say that you lack integrity. I didn't say that it's hard not to consider that you lack integrity. I didn't call you an asshole. I didn't say that it is hard not to consider you an asshole.

 

Trust me, if I thought you lacked integrity or if I thought you were an asshole I would tell you those things in no uncertain terms. I haven't because I don't.

When you said "It is hard not to consider it a purposeful strawman when I keep pointing out that there are other differences between the beliefs", you were implying that I purposely created a strawman. And the only reasons I can think someone would do so would be to purposely mislead or to argue unfairly. If someone was doing that to me I would question their integrity. I therefore thought you were questioning my integrity. Since you say you weren't it was my fault for interpreting it that way. My apologies.

 

I'll quote it again:

My point being that in all cases (belief in God to belief in the Big Bang), you are relying on incomplete evidence, and you are therefore all in the same boat, either all broken or all not broken.

 

That quote only makes sense if "lack of evidence" is the sole quality of belief in god which makes a person broken for believing it.

 

Imagine I made the argument that belief in god makes a person broken because it is an unsupported and unfalsifiable belief. Your response -- that belief in the big bang must also make a person broken because it is not fully verified -- would be a strawman of my argument.

 

I shouldn't have to explain this in such detail.

I know what a strawman is, I didn't know what part of what I said you believed I was making up myself.

 

Your quote above says "you are relying on incomplete evidence, and you are therefore all in the same boat, either all broken or all not broken". Either someone in this thread said that belief in god is broken because it relies on incomplete evidence or they did not. If not it is a strawman.

As recently as post #1063 this was said:

 

They claim to KNOW there is a god despite the lack of adequate evidence (as I said, thunder is not evidence of Thor any more than complexity or nature is evidence of Yahweh), they make this claim based on faith alone, and they are quite broken for doing so.

 

Again, you are judging things by the wrong standard. Einstein believed completely in general relativity before it had supporting evidence. Despite the lack of evidence it was a rational belief, and Einstein was in no way broken for holding it.

I am not judging anything. I stated a fact. I only said that here to show I was not creating a strawman. I was showing that everything I said in my disputed statement was true.

 

Lack of evidence is not the only requisite for considering a belief broken or considering a person holding the belief broken.

 

If someone said or implied differently then I would disagree with them, but I haven't seen that.

And here I have to thank you. That has been my position all along. I have been arguing that the OP without constraint is trivially falsified, and have given many examples of people who should not be considered broken simply because their belief lacks evidence or 'quality' evidence. I have been nearly universally shot down for saying that education, experience, maturity, and other factors should be considered when determining if someone broken.

 

You would have to show me where iNow said that people are broken for believing in god because god doesn't meet a "level of required proof".

That was my quote, but to see an example of iNow saying something similar see above.

 

You would have to show me where someone said that people who believe in something with incomplete evidence are broken.

I'd be happy to look up some for you. However, the whole gist of the thread is based on the idea that belief in God without evidence is broken.

Edited June 15, 2012 by zapatos

[iNow]

Faith [math]\ne[/math] Incomplete Evidence. It's claiming to know something you do not know. I was not conflating them in the manner you suggest, and people don't accept the big bang based on faith. It's a false comparison.

[Iggy]

Your quote above says "you are relying on incomplete evidence, and you are therefore all in the same boat, either all broken or all not broken". Either someone in this thread said that belief in god is broken because it relies on incomplete evidence or they did not. If not it is a strawman.

As recently as post #1063 this was said:

They claim to KNOW there is a god despite the lack of adequate evidence (as I said, thunder is not evidence of Thor any more than complexity or nature is evidence of Yahweh), they make this claim based on faith alone, and they are quite broken for doing so.

Knowledge is not the same as belief. I have a feeling the caps were meant to emphasize that. I believe there is alien life on other planets. I am not broken for holding this belief. If I were to say that I *know* there is life on other planets when I can't possibly know that I'd be displaying the most broken of reasoning.

 

Belief in God and belief in the big bang may have lack of proof in common, but if you want to continue saying "if a person is broken for believing one then they must be broken for believing the other" you'll have to show where someone said that lack of proof is the reason people who believe in god are broken. I don't think you can do it. I think it is a strawman.

 

I... have given many examples of people who should not be considered broken simply because their belief lacks evidence or 'quality' evidence.

An unsupported belief does not a broken person make. We agree. Post 19 is still entirely in error.

Edited June 15, 2012 by Iggy

[MonDie]

Can you be specific about which part the OP did not suggest? What exactly am I arguing against?

 

iNow, either in the OP or later in the thread has suggested that there is no evidence for belief in God.

iNow has suggested that people who believe in God are broken.

iNow did not list in the OP what level of evidence is required to be considered not broken.

iNow did not respond to the level of evidence required to be considered not broken when I questioned him in post 23: "You are drawing a line that says your level of required proof is sufficient for belief but their level is not. That seems exceedingly unfair to me. Why do you get to draw the line? Why not criticize everyone who believes in anything without absolute proof?"

 

It is true that there is incomplete evidence for the existence of God.

It is true that there is incomplete evidence for the Big Bang.

It is true that there is incomplete evidence for String theory.

 

Starting at around post 230 we talked a lot about evidence. In post 253 I gave examples of evidence of God based on another posters requirement for type of things that constitute evidence:

 

 

From your link, types of evidence include:

 

Anecdotal evidence

Intuition

Personal experience

Scientific evidence

Testimonial

 

Examples of evidence of God for all but scientific:

 

Anecdotal - A person who prays for a cure and their disease goes into remission

Intuition - There must be something that created the universe based on my understanding of cause and effect, conservation of energy, etc.

Personal Experience - I had a near death experience.

Testimonial - Declarations from the Pope when speaking ex cathedra.

 

In a similar way, example of evidence of extraterrestrials include:

 

Anecdotal - Crop circles

Intuition - The Drake equation. As big as the universe is and with the number of planets in the goldilocks zone, there must be other life out there.

Personal Experience - I saw a blue and green light hover over me, then fly off into the distance.

Testimonial - The Disclosure Project

 

These are all evidence of God and aliens. You may find that they are not sufficient to justify the claim of the existence, or you may feel they in no way support the proposition, but they are evidence nonetheless. Evidence is often wrong, misleading, insufficient, questionable, etc. That does not stop it from being evidence.

 

Even if we couldn't think of counterarguments or better explanations, those examples of evidence wouldn't say much. Religious gods are usually complex. Even the idea of a god itself is complex because it has multiple characteristics, and it becomes more complicated when you add in more characteristics. Such complex ideas would hardly be supported even if someone could prove something like prayer healing or the logical necessity of an ultimate creation event, EDIT: and it's even debatable whether that could be considered supporting evidence at all. I would continue promoting the search for natural explanations/knowledge because that is the progressive route. To make matters worse, religious hypotheses aren't supported by the evidence when they're examined scientifically.

Edited June 15, 2012 by Mondays Assignment: Die

[iNow]

iNow did not respond to the level of evidence required to be considered not broken when I questioned him in post 23: "You are drawing a line that says your level of required proof is sufficient for belief but their level is not. That seems exceedingly unfair to me. Why do you get to draw the line? Why not criticize everyone who believes in anything without absolute proof?"

Sorry, but I thought I did, in fact, respond and I thought that you and I had covered this already. You even conceded the point immediately after I shared the comments below. What has changed since then?

 

 

I also believe it is not possible to draw an absolute line that says 'this level of evidence is sufficient for belief, while this level is not'.

I tend to agree. The nature of the evidence must scale with the claim.

 

If you make a mundane claim, then relatively mundane evidence will generally suffice, and sometimes even no evidence at all will be required in some instances (if I say my dog just walked into the other room, you probably wouldn't ask me to prove it and would generally accept my word that it happened as sufficient). However, if I said my dog just turned into a 90 foot purple dragon with dvds as scales and native american arrowheads as teeth... and started spraying the Schrodinger equation all over my walls using a combination of macaroni and cheese and liquified coal sludge, that claim is a bit more extraordinary and you'd likely ask for more extraordinary evidence.

 

So, if you make an extraordinary claim, you need extraordinary evidence to support it. The evidence must scale with the claim.

 

I'm of the camp that the claim of gods existence is a rather extraordinary one, and that a fictional book filled with internal contradictions from two thousand years ago or personal faith and wish thinking alone hardly satisfies the extraordinary burden of proof that accompanies such a claim.

[MonDie]

Whoops, double post.

Edited June 15, 2012 by Mondays Assignment: Die

[iNow]

Just to recap, this exchange with Villain further clarifies my position:

 

No evidence can ever be produced to those that believe that a god doesn't exist, so surely you jest.

This is not true at all, and frankly is a bit insulting. I would very much review and accept valid evidence, however, the theist camp can barely even offer a cogent definition of god, let alone evidence which adequately scales with the extraordinary nature of the claim.

 

The concept of evidence is quite clear in this context, and you (and other theists like you) have merely failed to even approach that threshold, let alone surpass it.

 

I am quite open minded on this. However, I'm not SO open minded that I will accept the fact that there is an ocean as evidence of Poseidon, or the fact that there is thunder as evidence of Thor. Nor would you, I suspect.

 

I would, however, accept actual evidence that matched an actual clear and agreed upon definition of god (as opposed to the nebulous, woo ridden, ethereal mumbo jumbo... shifts with the breeze to meet whatever a believer wants it to mean at that particular moment... definitions we generally hear).

 

---

This time, with feeling!

 

I have laid out why I think faith is perhaps one of the single worst reasons to accept a proposition as true.

 

I have elaborated that an affirmative belief that god(s) exists is an extraordinary one, and that faith alone does not adequately scale with the claim.

 

I have shared how believers present a double standard and appear as hypocrites since they ask their faith to be good enough to accept their god(s), but like me they reject the faith of others who believe in different gods.

 

I have shared how this double standard becomes even more readily visible outside the concept of deities, as believers themselves reject faith as a good enough reason to accept something as true in other aspects of reality, and they require evidence of claims and tend to value both logic and reason for just about everything else... it seems... so long as the subject of those thoughts are unrelated to religion or god(s).

 

I have explained that a person who uses faith to make a decision on something as important as the concept of god(s) is more likely to make decisions using faith in other areas of life, and so the use of faith on the concept of god is more likely to diminish their logic and rationality and reason on other subjects more tangible.

 

I have shared how many of those decisions effect all of us in this society, and that is part of the reason we should seek to minimize that type of thinking and more highly value evidence, reason, and consistency.

 

I have made this point more accessible by stating that if faith can be used to accept as true the proposition that god(s) exist, then it can equally be used to accept as true the proposition for just about anything... including the easter bunny, unicorns, leprechauns, or even more real life issues like humans can't impact climate, evolution can't be true, children should have their genitals mutilated, medicine is not to be used, or people who don't believe (or who believe something different) are to be murdered.

 

I have summarized this position by saying people who believe in god(s) are broken.

[zapatos]

Sorry, but I thought I did, in fact, respond and I thought that you and I had covered this already. You even conceded the point immediately after I shared the comments below. What has changed since then?

My mistake. When I was reading through old posts to get my quote I found it on page two. We didn't have the exchange you just listed until a bit later and for whatever reason it slipped my mind.

 

You are correct, you did respond, and while we did not come up with a precise location to draw the line, I agree with you that the bar should be set very high for such an extraordinary claim.

 

Even if we couldn't think of counterarguments or better explanations, those examples of evidence wouldn't say much. Religious gods are usually complex. Even the idea of a god itself is complex because it has multiple characteristics, and it becomes more complicated when you add in more characteristics. Such complex ideas would hardly be supported even if someone could prove something like prayer healing or the logical necessity of an ultimate creation event, EDIT: and it's even debatable whether that could be considered supporting evidence at all. I would continue promoting the search for natural explanations/knowledge because that is the progressive route. To make matters worse, religious hypotheses aren't supported by the evidence when they're examined scientifically.

Yes, I wasn't trying to suggest they were strong evidence, simply some kind of evidence. I know anecdotal evidence is very weak and doesn't mean much.

 

As far as the idea of God being complex, that is not one of the assumptions in the OP. Belief in God means any belief that any person has about God, whether personal or not, complex or not.

 

Belief in God and belief in the big bang may have lack of proof in common, but if you want to continue saying "if a person is broken for believing one then they must be broken for believing the other" you'll have to show where someone said that lack of proof is the reason people who believe in god are broken. I don't think you can do it. I think it is a strawman.

I think I know why I was struggling with understanding how I created a strawman. It was because I didn't create a strawman. According to Wikipedia:

A straw man is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position

A strawman requires that I misrepresent an opponent's position. I didn't misrepresent anyone's position. (Please tell me whose argument I misrepresented if you disagree.) What I did instead was make an assertion of my own.

 

I think you were right when you said that my assertion is wrong unless I can link belief in a scientific theory (falsibiable) with belief in the supernatural (not falsifiable). That is the weakness of my assertion.

 

I realize it doesn't make much difference either way, you still think I'm wrong, but I'm still trying to figure all this out for myself.

 

Post 19 is still entirely in error.

After re-reading posts from you, iNow, and doG, I was about to give in. I am convinced that belief in the BB (and other scientific theories), with its falsifiability and robust requirements for data is really in a different catagory than belief in God, with no ability to falsify and paltry 'evidence'. Between the three of you I now see that.

 

The only thing I still cannot get past is the lack of constraints in the OP.

 

The example I used before was: "if a theist has no knowledge of the tons of research and the confluence of research supporting a scientific theory, for that person it can be considered not to exist. It therefore would put belief of God and belief of that scientific theory on the same footing. You cannot fault someone for equating the likelihood of the Big Bang and the likelihood of God if he knows of the exact same amount of support for both (i.e. Nothing)." In this case I think I have linked belief in the BB and belief in God within the constraints of the OP (i.e. no constraints).

 

What this means to me is that my assertion ("If you are broken for believing in God then you are broken for believing in anything else that could turn out to be untrue") is correct for a subset of the population of theists.

 

If anyone is not yet tired of arguing with me, I think this would be a good place to start continue.

Edited June 15, 2012 by zapatos

[Moontanman]

I have to admit that, to me, calling someone broken who really might not know any better is difficult, much like a child, if you grew up in a culture that simply taught that religion was all there was how could you be broken?

 

Once the evidence starts coming out if you double down and believe in the face of contrary evidence then yes you are broken.

[iNow]

Post 261 (I replied to John C):

 

Also, to be honest I think the use of the word "broken" might be unhelpful here.

<...>

I'm not going to make any friends by saying this but, I think the problem isn't that they are "broken": it's that they are "childish".

 

Before you all jump on my head for saying that first think about how all the things that atheists liken God to ( Santa Claus, leprechauns, the tooth fairy...) are all things that we probably believed in as children.

Next have a look at this thread

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/66029-analytic-thinking-decreases-religious-beliefs/

 

If you are still unhappy, then I suggest you pretend I used the word "imaginative" instead of "childish".

 

I'm fine with that.

Edited June 16, 2012 by iNow