More Religious Nutters

[Elok]

Originally posted by Saras
umm... Hume can't be obscure if an investment banker from Lithuania knows of him...

Which is why it's acceptable for him to be cited; I didn't mean to imply that he was obscure. The ban is against someone *more* obscure than Hume. I don't want him quoting some German contemporary of Sartre's named Schleinengauber nobody ever heard of.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Omni Rex Draconis
I already have, arrogant one, and I didn't see anything about Beasts labeling themselves with the number 666/616. Prime Movers and Ideal Forms are a long way from the hidebound superstition presented in the opening post.

Either way, it is obvious that your definition of God is not that of the fundamentalist Christian who is afraid of a number.

Urge...to kill...rising...

Ahem. As I have explained many times in this thread already, they specified that they are not "afraid" of the number, they just dislike being associated with a number which is in turn associated with evil incarnate in the popular imagination as well as in their own belief system. For which I cannot blame them too much, as the number is associated not only with Satan but with heavily made-up, music-murdering Death Metal bands, which are arguably worse.

[Whaleboy]

Elok, I know that you can do better than the argument from incredulity. If you have trouble with some of Agathon's arguments / references, then hit Wikipedia (which is useful because it can give you pointers to criticism, which I'm sure Agathon won't mind me pointing out).

He's just said that he values logic more than his senses, with "logic" meaning "the prejudices inculcated in me by my present worldview."

I think you're struggling with the parsimonious nature of the scientific method. I won't stray into the philosophical debate about empiricism and rationalism because I'm not as hot on epistemology as I could be. Nevertheless, you seem to think that if A.T. Eist was presented by "obvious" empirical evidence for God (say, some hidden code in the Torah is able to predict the exact outcome of the 2008 US POTUS election), he would say "oh this doesn't conform to my theories, let's pretend it doesn't exist".

That's not the case because scientific method is dependent upon phenomena that can then be explained by proving a given hypothesis). It is parsimonious because any rational explanation must be non-superfluous and I've never seen a God-explanation to be scientific. I'm open if you can show me otherwise. In other words, the scientist will take something that cannot immediately be explained and try to explain it using rational principles. As far as I can tell therefore, scientific method represents a nice synthesis between empiricism and rationalism.

[Omni Rex Draconis]

Originally posted by Elok
Urge...to kill...rising...

Remember the Commandments, son.

You're saying that concerned business leaders, worried about revenue loss from the superstitious reacting to a telephone prefix code, put pressure on government to get it changed?

I could believe that.

You say that parents were worried that their precious little snowflakes would get drawn into a life of Satanism every time they googled their phone number?

OK, some parents are just that uptight.

But these things were not mentioned. What was repeated over and over (perhaps for your benefit), was that this was a "very, very religious community", "good Christian people".

And they fought for forty years to change that phone number. It is as Wezil called it - religious nuttery.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

You know, after 8 pages of this nonsense, I still can't believe people are hassling elok about a very simple point.

Maybe an analogy will help. I used to live not far from the town of Intercourse, Pennsylvania. When the town was named back in the 19th Century, when "intercourse" predominently meant interaction; naming a town "Intercourse" was like naming it "Commerce" (as in Commerce, CA or Commerce City, CO). But times change, and "intercourse," while still retaining itst original meaning, now is primarily a sexual term. So, not surprisingly, there are peopel who want to change the name of their town.

Are these people Victorians? Are they unaware of their own town's history? Are they actually opposed to sex itself? I suspect the answer is no, no, and no. I think they've just grown tired of telling people they live in F*ck, PA.

The situation here seems to me almost exactly analogous.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
Elok, I know that you can do better than the argument from incredulity. If you have trouble with some of Agathon's arguments / references, then hit Wikipedia (which is useful because it can give you pointers to criticism, which I'm sure Agathon won't mind me pointing out).

I didn't start out trying to "argue" anything. I think trying to prove or disprove God's existence is pointless and silly. I told Agathon not to talk about things he had no experience with, he countered that because of his immense smartness that didn't matter, and it went from there.

I think you're struggling with the parsimonious nature of the scientific method. I won't stray into the philosophical debate about empiricism and rationalism because I'm not as hot on epistemology as I could be. Nevertheless, you seem to think that if A.T. Eist was presented by "obvious" empirical evidence for God (say, some hidden code in the Torah is able to predict the exact outcome of the 2008 US POTUS election), he would say "oh this doesn't conform to my theories, let's pretend it doesn't exist".

That's not the case because scientific method is dependent upon phenomena that can then be explained by proving a given hypothesis). It is parsimonious because any rational explanation must be non-superfluous and I've never seen a God-explanation to be scientific. I'm open if you can show me otherwise. In other words, the scientist will take something that cannot immediately be explained and try to explain it using rational principles. As far as I can tell therefore, scientific method represents a nice synthesis between empiricism and rationalism.

I'm not struggling with anything. The scientific method only accepts evidence of a sort very unlikely to indicate God; anything that can be repeatedly provoked by methodical experiments and observed would not resemble a sentient deity in action. I'm fine with that; we wouldn't have accomplished anything if we were always trying to second-guess invisible entities. But we're essentially beginning with the assumption that the supernatural doesn't exist when we use the scientific method. It's not fair or sensible to cite "lack of scientific evidence" when there can be no scientific evidence. That's tautological. It's not a question the scientific method is equipped to solve.

Also, if your scientist encountered such a code, he would immediately use the least complex explanation. Is a deity really the least complex explanation there? It depends on what you think is complex, I suppose. I imagine the discoverer would default to assumptions of forgery or the apparent code being a simple coincidence (conspiracy nuts have been finding unlikely codes in everything for ages now). He would take that as more plausible than a deity telling ancient Hebrews about the outcome of a governmental process alien to them in a country that would not exist for several thousand years. Honestly, so would I. If there's one thing I could believe God has utterly forsaken, it's politics.

Seriously, though, I find Agathon's insistence that I disbelieve my own experience rather strange. If I disbelieve my own experience in that regard, why should I not also disbelieve his telling me to disbelieve it? Maybe this is all a vision sent to me by Satan, or the Illuminati, to make me forsake God. Maybe it's all a dream. Maybe the Matrix is real...or not. Uh-uh. I'm going to assume that I'm sane. If I'm going nuts, it doesn't really matter what I think, I'm just a crazy person. Actually, I suspect if Aggie had his way I and all my ilk would be in straight jackets, which is one of the reasons I'm not feeling too friendly towards him. I trust nobody who wants to burn books. But that's another matter.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
You know, after 8 pages of this nonsense, I still can't believe people are hassling elok about a very simple point.

Maybe an analogy will help. I used to live not far from the town of Intercourse, Pennsylvania. When the town was named back in the 19th Century, when "intercourse" predominently meant interaction; naming a town "Intercourse" was like naming it "Commerce" (as in Commerce, CA or Commerce City, CO). But times change, and "intercourse," while still retaining itst original meaning, now is primarily a sexual term. So, not surprisingly, there are peopel who want to change the name of their town.

Are these people Victorians? Are they unaware of their own town's history? Are they actually opposed to sex itself? I suspect the answer is no, no, and no. I think they've just grown tired of telling people they live in F*ck, PA.

The situation here seems to me almost exactly analogous.

Thank you, Rufus, that's exactly the sort of example I was looking for. To be fair, though, we didn't spend all of those eight pages arguing about that. Four of them, at least, were dedicated to...no, actually, I don't want to think about it. Eight pages it was!

[Perfection]

Originally posted by Elok
3.5/10

Well seriously dude, how can you believe that God can't convince Aga?

He's flippin' God!

It seems to me that you need to answer not why God can't, but why God won't!

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
You know, after 8 pages of this nonsense, I still can't believe people are hassling elok about a very simple point.

No, we're harrassing him for a compendium of silly statements.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Perfection
No, we're harrassing him for a compendium of silly statements.

Rufus didn't say that was the only thing that ELok was getting harrassed about. Rather he couldn't believe that after 8 pages in which the same point kept being made some people didn't seem to grasp it.

[Wezil]

We grasp it - we just don't buy it.

Did the people of Commerce want to change the name b/c they are "good Christian people" and don't like the connotation or b/c others laughed about it? The move for change in the OP is motivated by their own silliness, not that of others as would seem to be the case in Commerce.

[Kuciwalker]

You apparently didn't even read Rufus's post...

[GePap]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris

Any notion of the divine is bound to be ethnocentric, but that doesn't mean there isn't some underlying truth. It's all a question of language. People who have abnormal experiences describe them with the tools they have at their disposal. For instance, Nietzsche had some mystical experiences, and his originality is to have not assumed that they were a sign of God, and to have explained them differently.

What truth? If nothing concrete can be discerned from these mystical experiences, there is no "truth" apart from the very experience itself, no lessons to draw on for any time before or after that one singular bit of time.

The problem here is probably one of philosophical prejudice. People assume that words are the reflexion of natural objects, while it's actually the opposite : it's the objects that are reflexions of our own words and minds.

This world existed long before there was sentience to examine it - the Universe does well on its own.

Ultimately, it boils down to wisdom and experience. There are some great minds who attained wisdom through a certain experience deemed to be divine. I don't have any issue with them believing in God, as long as they create meaningful propositions backed with real insight in their behavior. That's why I find Christ, Buddha, Aquinas, Spinoza, etc, to be fascinating figures.

I don't care if individual believe in the divine. My problem is when they try to order this world based on supposed "messages", lessons, or orders from said realm.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Elok

I didn't start out trying to "argue" anything. I think trying to prove or disprove God's existence is pointless and silly. I told Agathon not to talk about things he had no experience with, he countered that because of his immense smartness that didn't matter, and it went from there.

If your argument is that it is pointless to try to prove God's existence, the reason is that it probably can't be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, and hence rational people have no business believing it.

You simply asserted that certain experiences warrant belief in God. I pointed out to you that there are good reasons to doubt that assertion. You defended this by appealing to a Humean empiricism. That was fair enough, except that I mentioned all sorts of counterexamples to Humean empiricism.

So apparently, it is OK to use reason to defend belief in God when it suits you, but not when it doesn't.

I'm not struggling with anything. The scientific method only accepts evidence of a sort very unlikely to indicate God; anything that can be repeatedly provoked by methodical experiments and observed would not resemble a sentient deity in action. I'm fine with that; we wouldn't have accomplished anything if we were always trying to second-guess invisible entities. But we're essentially beginning with the assumption that the supernatural doesn't exist when we use the scientific method. It's not fair or sensible to cite "lack of scientific evidence" when there can be no scientific evidence. That's tautological. It's not a question the scientific method is equipped to solve.

Then you need some other reason. There's a long tradition of metaphysical arguments for the existence of a divine being, so it's not as if you're completely out of ammunition.

But you will be when I prove to you that all our entity claiming methods are "scientific" in the broad sense.

You are right that the scientific conception of truth is much more humble than the theological conception. The problem is that the scientific conception of truth is the one that we actually work with in all our beliefs, whether we care to or not.

Also, if your scientist encountered such a code, he would immediately use the least complex explanation. Is a deity really the least complex explanation there? It depends on what you think is complex, I suppose. I imagine the discoverer would default to assumptions of forgery or the apparent code being a simple coincidence (conspiracy nuts have been finding unlikely codes in everything for ages now). He would take that as more plausible than a deity telling ancient Hebrews about the outcome of a governmental process alien to them in a country that would not exist for several thousand years. Honestly, so would I. If there's one thing I could believe God has utterly forsaken, it's politics.

If there were a genuine miracle, then it would be resistant to our ordinary scientific theories of the world. Let's say that a man appeared who could raise the dead (a hoary old chestnut, I know). If he could continue to raise the dead in laboratory conditions and no feasible explanation could be found in current scientific theory, you would have a case of a genuine miracle. But there is no good reason to believe that a genuine miracle has ever occurred.

Seriously, though, I find Agathon's insistence that I disbelieve my own experience rather strange. If I disbelieve my own experience in that regard, why should I not also disbelieve his telling me to disbelieve it? Maybe this is all a vision sent to me by Satan, or the Illuminati, to make me forsake God. Maybe it's all a dream. Maybe the Matrix is real...or not. Uh-uh. I'm going to assume that I'm sane. If I'm going nuts, it doesn't really matter what I think, I'm just a crazy person. Actually, I suspect if Aggie had his way I and all my ilk would be in straight jackets, which is one of the reasons I'm not feeling too friendly towards him. I trust nobody who wants to burn books. But that's another matter.

I'm not asking you to disbelieve your experience, but to understand that experience is not necessarily reliable. I'm a pragmatist, so I don't think that universal scepticism is reasonable, but it is still true that any particular belief or set of beliefs could be false, even if I think it is impossible for all our beliefs to be false at the same time.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
You apparently didn't even read Rufus's post...

I did. Read it again to see what the hell you are on about. My comment applies perfectly.

Perhaps you need to reread it (or are you just trolling?).

[Kuciwalker]

Hint: the people of Commerce weren't the ones who wanted to change their name.