The God Delusion

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Whaleboy


As reluctant as I am to turn this thread into a debate about the existence / non-existence of God, I think your post deserves a response simply on the grounds that it's so misleading.

Consider the intelligent design hypothesis. It relies on the choice between pure chance (life in all its varity somehow magically assembled itself with some cosmic role of the dice, which is ridiculously unlikely), and design (life must have been designed to account for this improbability). However, once ID has been ripped to shreds by Natural Selection, it begs an important question (in rather the same was as the cosmological argument). Who designed God? A process of evolution would be contrary to Gods nature, similarly would a process of design. Pure chance then? Can you imagine the improbability of that?

So now already you have a measure of improbability against the existence of God that is significantly different to 50/50.

Sticking with empirical arguments, you have the argument from poor design. This goes to say that many organs and creatures contain strange and self-defeating features that would have any designer or engineer awake at night, but is exactly what you'd expect if life had evolved by a process of natural selection. Consider poor teeth and sinus drainage; a result of humans having a flat faith. Not to mention the mammalian retina being almost inside out, with nerves and capillaries actual on the surface.

We then face issues of theodicy and various ontological and empirical arguments; but I'd be here for a geological age if I was to describe them all.

I think for the time being I've done enough to show how a default 50/50 God/non-God agnosticism is not realistic. Indeed, why base it on 50/50, is that an assumption?

As for fuzzy logic, examples please.

What you just posted. What does ID have to do with the existence of God/gods? Or a supernatural?

I get tired of all this holding up evolution as some sort of light against theism. They aren't at all related. The requirement of one or the other is a fallacy of the highest order.

Laymen (and sadly some scientists never grow out of it) are use to the uninformed position that evolution is the deathknell of religious beleif, when really it is just an argument against a particular god of the gaps. Anyone who is really informed (and from reading reviews, it appears that Dawkins is not) would know that the current attack on god of the gaps is found in cosmology and physics. All this of course has nothing to do with the beleif in God(or any other supernatural beleif) merely in the god of the gaps.. which hasn't been the in thing in religion for ~2000 years. And of course, many of the physicists involved in this study are theists.

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Whaleboy

Such as? On what grounds? Link to studies of scientific opinion on this?

Talk to physicists.

And become less and less true in more grounded disciplines, such as biology no?

You are joking, right? This whole thing is just one elaborate troll?

Biology is based on Chemistry, which is in turn based on Physics.

There are areas of Biology which are almost as bad as economics!



Jon Miller

[Last Conformist]

Jon is right; demolishing ID/creationism wrecks one type of religion, but is no more an indictment of all religion than is the fact that the Sun continues to rise despite sacrifices to the Aztec gods having ceased.

[Jon Miller]

There are some who don't consider Biology as a science (I am no longer such a one).

There are even some who don't consider anything outside of the fields of particle physics and GR to be truly studying the laws of the natural world.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
Jon is right; demolishing ID/creationism wrecks one type of religion, but is no more an indictment of all religion than is the fact that the Sun continues to rise despite sacrifices to the Aztec gods having ceased.

The odd thing is is that Christianity was the first highly successful non god of the gaps religion to exist in european/mediterranean society.

Yet today so many people have it narrowed to a god in the gaps position (both atheist and Christian).

JM

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
There are some who don't consider Biology as a science (I am no longer such a one).

There are even some who don't consider anything outside of the fields of particle physics and GR to be truly studying the laws of the natural world.

JM

Well there are some weird people around - truth is that biology is very important. You simply can't study ecology on the quantum level, for example...there are different levels different fields work at, which now overlap, so things are rarely so distinct nowadays anyway. I am a biochemist by education, which means that I have a good grasp of the cellular biology (I am not too good on stuff bigger than that, ie, anatomy or ecology) and I am good at stuff like organic chemistry (although very rusty) and especially molecular biology. Quantum stuff is really below my scale though (mostly). Although I am actually an analytical chemist by occupation

And back to evolution and religion...it is not that evolution does have any impact directly on the existence/nonexistence of a God, but because Christianity was so inclusive, including the origins of man, it revealed the strength of atheism as a philosophy - that religion could be successfully challenged and beaten back. And that has revealed a trend - all evidence since has supported Darwinian evolution, whereas Christianity has just caved in on this front - even the RC church acknowledge evolution. It's just a pattern that constantly reveals itself - Christianity constantly retreating into the gaps of knowledge all the time (I can't really speak for any other religions as I don't really have the knowledge as to how they have reacted to modern 'enlightenment').

What is somewhat disturbing is the lack of rational and calm input from the religious. We have even had the old 'you'll go to hell' business from one such person (Joseph) - you must realise that is exactly what we stereotypically expect? It back up the thought that, at least intellectually, you are on the defensive...

[Jon Miller]

Maybe I am defensive because atheists are attacking religion all the time? And yet, atheists say they are the ones who are constantly attacked, and put that forward as a big evil of religion.

god in the gaps is not the important part of Christianity, and (at minimum) just provides a framework for the central truths of Christianity

and these truths aren't where lightning came from

of course, I am not saying that there isn't any truth to God being active in creating the universe, I am just saying that isn't the explanation for Christianity

Christianity isn't a religion about where lightning came form, or where dog's/cat's/human's came from. Rather it is a religion about redemption.

The fact that God is a creator, as well as redeemer, is important, but not the central point of Christianity. The important bit of Christianity is that Jesus Saves.

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

god of the gaps is inherently weak, I agree with you

god in the gaps is where you go, I see something in the physical world (lightning, fire, differentiation of species) I can't explain, god must be responsible for it

this is an old type of religion

Judaism (and maybe others) started something different, and Christinaity had wide success (and made it explicit on a new level).

Jon Miller

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Maybe I am defensive because atheists are attacking religion all the time? And yet, atheists say they are the ones who are constantly attacked, and put that forward as a big evil of religion.

Get a slightly more narrow brush, will you?

I come from a society where unbelief is the mainstream, and I've never claimed to be under attack from theists, except to the extent many theists posting stupid drivel on the 'Net count as attacking.

[Provost Harrison]

Well unfortunately it is perceived as our 'raison d'etre' by the theist that our only purpose is to attack religion, that is why. This thread started out as a conversation between a few of us, until Drake Tungsten et al arrived, who provoked a reaction from all involved. If you read my second post I said it was pointless to end up in such an exchange as this thread has become. But due to the position of some posters against me (As I pointed out, Drake even expressed the fact he 'hated' me, a very strong term), he got pounced on. When people could have left us alone.

But redemption from what? It is only because it tells you that you are sinful that you believe you have to be redeemed. If you don't believe in concepts such as sin or good or evil, the whole concept of Christianity becomes utterly meaningless. You know I have a very different interpretation to how injustice should be handled in the world - by humanity itself rather than divine intervention.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Get a slightly more narrow brush, will you?

I come from a society where unbelief is the mainstream, and I've never claimed to be under attack from theists, except to the extent many theists posting stupid drivel on the 'Net count as attacking.

I was mainly pointing out that some are hypocrites.

And Provost.. I and other Christians do think that we must change the world. It is just that our hearts must be changed first, and we can't do that.

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

If you don't see good and evil in the world, then we have entirely different eyes and perceptions. I see the child rapist and murders. I see people being spiteful and prejiduced.

I also see people being kind, feeding the hurt, clothing the poor, etc.

I see a lot of good and evil. More evil than good, I think, but still a lot of good and evil.

Jon Miller

[Provost Harrison]

You see to me, it is far more complex than that, beyond shades of grey - it is about the functioning of human minds, psychology. Don't get me wrong, I see good and evil in a nontheistic sense, and they are not necessarily clear cut concepts either. But everything usually has a root cause (not to justify the action committed, of course), and often from the basest parts of human nature that are not resisted...

[Elok]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
It might be better just to accept that others have their faith, rather than sneering at 'immaturity', or whatever. Intolerance on one side can lead to intolerance in the other.

Thank you.

And I'd avoid proselytizing if I were you, Whaleboy. Atheists and theists are just working with a whole different vocabulary. Atheists trying to "convert" me have inevitably come across as dumb arsewipes. 'Course, that might be in part because almost nobody knows the principles of my religion and just assumes I believe all the crazy crap westerners do, but who knows?

Anyway, if you're so certain that a knowledge of the real world will lead them to the true non-faith, let them discover the world. Though it sounds like you're talking about grown-ups who've had plenty of time to discover it already.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Belief in purple leprechauns living in underground colonies on Venus is not a notion that is universal to human cultures spanning continents, time, and in isolation from each other. The idea that you can propose funny things that could be believed in, but are not, says nothing about the value of faith and spiritualism in human culture, let alone the existence of gods or God.

I agree. I didn't mean to say that the one belief is the equivalent of the other, just used the example to show that it's not entirely stupid to believe in the non-existence of something just because you can't prove its existence, as Sava seemed to suggest.