Elton John: ban organised religion

[Arrian]

I'll stick with agnosticism for the following basic reason:

It seems to me that we have explored a tiny fraction of our universe. Accordingly, while I do not believe in God/gods, and doubt the existance of a supernatural being, it's possible that something along those lines exists. I certainly don't believe the gods of the various organized religions exist, though. There is still room for an "absentee creator" type though. Caused big bang, sat back and watched.

Again, I don't think so, but I don't see why one should assert that it's impossible (hard atheism).

-Arrian

p.s. Central to this is an idea that many "hard atheists" and religionistas seem to be repulsed by:

"I could be wrong."

[Whaleboy]

You are missing the point. I am not trying to prove god(s) existence. I am arguing against atheists who say it is disproved. I am the one saying, where is your evidence.

I do not consider God to be utterly disproved, only shown to be very, very, very unlikely.

Nope, read what I said about quarks. There was no experimental evidence until last century. That doesn't mean that they didn't exist before last century.

The fact that they weren't discovered until last century is a failure of science that was only rectified with Max Planck?

Evidence changes and grows, and so the conclusions change and grow. The scientific method for obtaining that solution remains, and that is what is relevant here.

[Whaleboy]

It seems to me that we have explored a tiny fraction of our universe. Accordingly, while I do not believe in God/gods, and doubt the existance of a supernatural being, it's possible that something along those lines exists. I certainly don't believe the gods of the various organized religions exist, though. There is still room for an "absentee creator" type though. Caused big bang, sat back and watched.

Atheism, even strong atheism, permits the possibility of God's existence. I consider atheism to be the result of an evaluation of the probability of god's existence, given the evidence today.

I totally agree that people who base their views on faith cannot stand the idea of admitting that they are wrong. I would quite happily stand up and change my views if someone showed me evidence of God. That's not a challenge, rather a statement of where I stand on this question because I consider myself to be intellectually honest.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Whaleboy

Let's see...
1-Life and the universe will demonstrate strong evidence of design, or there should at least be evidence of God in his supposed creation
2-Authorship of biblical texts can be demonstrated to be of divine origin (this assumes that we take God to be God of the bible... you could ignore that and thus ignore this prediction).
3-Assuming God is knowable, then God exists, and thus God can in principle be tested (even if we lack the means, see your apt point on string theory).
4-If God is good and omnipotent, then pretty much any theodicy-based question will test God

This is true, but how much of that is honest, and how much of that is a desire to show to naive skeptics *cough* that God was a logical view? I prefer to take Douglas Adams' view, that reason and faith are mutually exclusive, and one detracts from the other when applied to a given question.

Why take a leap [of faith] across a great chasm when there is a perfectly good suspension bridge?

I numbered for ease of reference.

1. This assumes a certain type of Creator God.

2. Depends on what you mean by divine origin. It was assuredly men who wrote the Bible, but where does it say otherwise? But we can get off this because it isn't relevant to the discussion (as you noted).

3. Assumes that God is knowable. Which theologians have been arguing about for centuries. I am not at all sure all of Physics is knowable by humans...

4. Theodicy is philosophy/theology and as such not part of scientific discussion.

Sorry, this doesn't give me anything to use to write a proposal with.

Jon Miller

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Right, but there are a whole lot of Bigfoot theories that are testable, have been tested, and have been found lacking.

Experiments have been formulated, bounds have been set, science has worked. On the otherhand, the only modern religions that I think science has placed bounds on are scientologists and maybe mormons. (I only know of major religions or US popular ones)

Now some religious traditions can be experimented on, like the Shroud of Turin or all the peices of the cross (as catholics traditionally claim). But that is a different matter. We are talking about the existence of God here. (or god(s) if you prefer to be general)

Jon Miller

Am I a stupid pseudo-intellectual for not believing in invisible teleporting Bigfoot? Or should I keep an open mind?

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
I do not consider God to be utterly disproved, only shown to be very, very, very unlikely.

What evidence have you supplied?

JM

[Whaleboy]

You have immediately assumed a lab-based view of the God hypothesis. Not even the most delusion Christian physicists could expect to peer into a particle accelerator to see his maker.

This comes back to my point of scientific method being applied to rational concepts, and not necessarily empirical observations. That is why the boundary between logical philosophy and science is blurred, and why I consider Wittgenstein to have been a better scientist by these lights than Einstein.

[Arrian]

The burden of proof should be on those asserting the existance of God.

Whaleboy,

Atheism, even strong atheism, permits the possibility of God's existence.

Really? I must be out of step with the definition of "strong atheism" then. I thought that was the group that though being wishy-washy meant you were a ***** [edit: wimp] and thus they ditched the whole uncertainty thing.

I totally agree that people who base their views on faith cannot stand the idea of admitting that they are wrong. I would quite happily stand up and change my views if someone showed me evidence of God. That's not a challenge, rather a statement of where I stand on this question because I consider myself to be intellectually honest.

-Arrian

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Whaleboy

Life and the universe will demonstrate strong evidence of design, or there should at least be evidence of God in his supposed creation

Why strong evidence? theres abundant tradition that God is hidden, and that to be found he must be searched for and with diligence. That the finding of God and Man is problematic, and not at all a matter of clarity, and that there is both good reason for this, and textual citations. Im thinking Buber now, but I think the concepts are also in Rosenzweig and Levinas.


Authorship of biblical texts can be demonstrated to be of divine origin (this assumes that we take God to be God of the bible... you could ignore that and thus ignore this prediction).

Why? does the bible say the bible was written by God? Where? Mostly the bible is silent about its own origin, other than attributing specific prophecies to God. And, Id argue, even wrt to that, one can come up with textual justifications for a non-literal interpretation of prophecy.


Assuming God is knowable, then God exists, and thus God can in principle be tested (even if we lack the means, see your apt point on string theory).

Again, why? If God is radically different from man, and indeed radically different from the world, could Man be capable of anything resembling empirical testing? And no, I dont buy the equivalence between philosophical and existential discussion, and physics thought experiments.


-If God is good and omnipotent, then pretty much any theodicy-based question will test God

Omnipotent is such an "old theology" concept. The use of the term, Id argue is profoundly misleading.




"This is true, but how much of that is honest, and how much of that is a desire to show to naive skeptics *cough* that God was a logical view? I prefer to take Douglas Adams' view, that reason and faith are mutually exclusive, and one detracts from the other when applied to a given question."

Why take a leap [of faith] across a great chasm when there is a perfectly good suspension bridge?

Thats a huge meta question about medieval "rational" theology, one that I think was addressed at huge length at the time (and was attacked by its opponents of the time) Since medieval aristotelian proofs arent my thing, Im not gonna address that, I just think youre view of the use of 'belief" is narrow by historical standards.

[Whaleboy]

What evidence have you supplied?

None in this thread because that would be a red herring from Elton John. If you want me to discuss evidence, start another thread tomorrow where we can discuss it. I would suggest tonight, but an attractive man is meeting me at the gym in 20 minutes.

[Pekka]

whaleboy, are you gay too? Man, is this board turning people into gaydomhood?

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Sandman


Am I a stupid pseudo-intellectual for not believing in invisible teleporting Bigfoot? Or should I keep an open mind?

You are a stupid pseudo-intellectual if you say that there is scientific evidence against an invisible teleporting Bigfoot. Second, there is scientific evidence against invisibility and teleporting (as would be applicable to Bigfoot), so you can say that. Once you remove the invisibility and teleporting properties from Bigfoot, you can say that there is scientific evidence against Bigfoot.

Please don't confuse issues by playing word games.

Note also, for one, that you said beleive.

JM

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Whaleboy


I totally agree that people who base their views on faith cannot stand the idea of admitting that they are wrong.

The number of A. ex-religionists B. religionists whove converted to another religion C. Religionists whove changed to a radically different philisophical basis for their religious tradition (eg an ex Buberian turned Kaplanite) would argue that this is an empirically false statement.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Pekka
whaleboy, are you gay too? Man, is this board turning people into gaydomhood?

Pretty soon you'll come out too, sauna boy, and it'll be fabulous.



-Arrian

[Whaleboy]

Really? I must be out of step with the definition of "strong atheism" then. I thought that was the group that though being wishy-washy meant you were a ***** [edit: wimp] and thus they ditched the whole uncertainty thing.

All I can really say is never judge the rationale behind a concept by the actions of those who claim to agree with it. I do not believe that atheism can claim to be a view based upon rationality and falsifiable evidence if it has "faith" in its evidence being true. I might say I'm 99.999% sure of God not existing, but it would be disingenuous to say I'm 100% sure.

I'm one person with limited mental capacity, I can't possibly know everything. Someone might come along and blow my mind tomorrow... it's happened before to my political and religious views (I used to be an observant Jew) and I think it's a good thing!