Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion.

[mdk]

um, you kind of missed my point. Can you prove to me that what you call "love" for your children is not, in fact, a barely restrained urge to cover them in tomato sauce? If you can't prove that to my satisfaction, then I say your "love" for your children is a myth.

So what are you criteria for being satisfied that someone does indeed love their children?

[mauve]

I guess people have faith in a deity because to believe that we came from non intelligent source renders any life's ambition pointless.
Two halves of me could argue endlessly whether God exists or not. And it is always a tie. 50/50 on a level of reason. The question is which one I want to be true.

[pilcrow]

I don't see how you can contineu to be religious with the answers you have given above.

Well, luckily, I don't have to make you understand.

Yes. You do.

No, I really don’t.

Look. A couple of points. You’re stuck on such a one-dimensional concept of god, and you’re assuming so much about what you think I believe, that it would take me a week and a half to first disabuse you of all your misconceptions. Then we’d have to go on to the other points from there. But alas, I have a job, etc...

These issues are, obviously, complicated and contentious. And they have a long history. People have been chewing them over since day one. To think that the resolution lies just one post away in an electronic-music forum is folly. Sorry.

My thoughts about the limits of science and the possibilities of religion have been stated in my previous posts in this thread. If they’re not clear or compelling to you, then I’m just going to have to live with that. Happily, I’m willing to

[Machinesworking]

Pilcrow
The ever shifting reality of the religious eh? "I have my own version of god, I made up the rules, and picked what I wanted from the bible, so you using the bible as a source for my belief is only half the story!"
That's how you're reading here, and I'm actually not knocking you for that, I think that's the best way to get something good from religion, but it makes it ridiculous to debate you on religion, you don't have any concrete ideas, you have faith, and personal intuition. Great way to feel connected to the universe etc. but it gives you no real platform.

Seriously, using an emotion like love as a way to try to prove the rational for the existence of god? Just for fun though, everybody knows that there is ultimately a bond between parents and children that has been documented in almost every living creature for eternity. Parents of almost avery type of animal will think of their children first, even going as far as sacrificing themselves for the children. (the spider mom drops her eggs in hopes that you concentrate on her movement and eat her, forgetting about the eggs) The fact is that bond has and will always be referred to as love. With spiders and other 'lower' creature we don't ascribe that instinct to love, but to all of the mammals, and people are mammals, we cal it love.
That sort of proof cannot, and has not been documented with god, simply because there is no real world evidence of god. There is plenty of real world evidence of a parents love for their children.

So in a real world physical evidence way, we can surmise that a parent loves their children, simply because the evidence is there that this is the most rational and logical thing for that person to do, far more rational than throwing sauce on them.

[Novel]

I guess people have faith in a deity because to believe that we came from non intelligent source renders any life's ambition pointless.

If something has an end, does that make it worthless?

[Seyser Koze]

Pilcrow

The problem is I believe you do have to justify yourself to society due to the priviledges you and religious groups seek within it.

If you don't then all the more strength to my argument that you should have no priviledge beyond the public as a whole.

If we can agree on that then I will happily live with our difference of opinion on everything else.

What say you?

Will you join me in lobbying the government in removing the charitable rights of religious organisations, the indoctrination of our children in schools and the spending of public money on chaplaincy services in the armed forces and hospitals of the UK due to the fact that you are not willing to make the rest of us understand why you believe you are so right?

In exchange I believe the atheist public will let you enjoy your beliefs without further interruption.

[mauve]

I guess people have faith in a deity because to believe that we came from non intelligent source renders any life's ambition pointless.

If something has an end, does that make it worthless?

Good one.

Nothing ends it just changes into something else

[BoimB son of BoB]

I am in a technical field, and have a degree in electronics and physics, I still see more facts in the Bible than science has given on the topics of evolution and creation.

what has electronics and physics to do with evolution? and why would mentioning that give your statements any more credit.

sorry to say this, but for my part you won the noble prize, your biblic ranting makes me .

and what do you mean by the topic "creation" anyway??

seems you know shit about the subject

[BoimB son of BoB]

Here's a spin on it for you.

We, as individual human beings, experience 'consciousness' and 'self-awareness'. We are comprised of a collection of molecules that ordered themselves into a complex arrangement in accordance with physical principles through an evolutionary process over the course of billions of years.

The universe is a vastly larger system comprised of a collection of molecules that have ordered themselves into a complex arrangement in accordance with physical principles over the course of ??? years.

How can we possibly confirm or deny that this vast system may or may not have some experience of 'consciousness' or 'self-awareness'?

...And if it should, certainly there is no requirement that it cares or is capable of manipulating your personal human reality on an individual level, in much the same way that you have virtually no control over the destiny of a single cell inside your leg.

although the universe is very very big i like to point out that it is also very very very very empty. and if you do not believe that you look it up. if it is alive it sure is dumn but hey, dream on

[BoimB son of BoB]

OK, so the Genome guy doesn’t come up to snuff for you. I’ve not read his book. The point I was after was that there are scientists who are also religious. i.e., not every scientist has a problem with religion. I suppose that makes them all dolts in your eyes, but they’d probably disagree, and they’d probably be able to make their case for you better than I can in their stead.

I don’t have the kind of evidentiary proof for the existence of God that would satisfy you; it’s pointless to try. I believe that God is outside—over and beyond—the laws of nature. That’s kind of the crux of this whole argument, isn’t it? Where is your evidentiary proof for the “fact” that reality consists of only those things that science can prove?

I disagree with all the hand-wringing rhetoric about religion suddenly being the most dangerous affliction our planet’s ever seen. That’s reductionist and absurd.

look man, for my part the 'scientist' is religious and stupid in his private life, i don't care. as long as he does not mix it up when actually DOING science. you can NOT mix religion/blind faith and science. if you do that, it's no science anymore, the two contradict each other completely.

the guy is a fool,period. i've seen a lot of fools at university. and they even weren't religious.



caution IMHO.

[BoimB son of BoB]

I was an atheist from about 11 years old. I studied math and sciences heavily throughout school, believed religion was the source of most of the major problems in the world, and basically could not conceive that a belief in a higher power was rational or reasonable in any way. Basically i confronted my own intellectual hypocrisy, and in doing so I realized there was a whole lot of truth in the religions I had hated - truth that hit deeper and more completely than pure rationalism. My change of heart was not purely an intellectual exercise, though, as it involved every aspect of my experience as a human being.

that's funny i have the same story only the other way around. i can not believe this shit. i have deep faith in you making that up.

[BoimB son of BoB]

[Can you prove to me that what you call "love" for your children is not, in fact, a barely restrained urge to cover them in tomato sauce? If you can't prove that to my satisfaction, then I say your "love" for your children is a myth.

no, but you will agree that it is very unlikely. well god is even much more unlikely.

YOU are missing the point completely.

you just explained why believing in god is as stupid as believing in the spaghettimonster. and if you do not see that. than we are done until you reach that level of understanding.

[BoimB son of BoB]

Two halves of me could argue endlessly whether God exists or not. And it is always a tie. 50/50 on a level of reason.

err... no it isn't. see the spaghettimonster argument. actually i think that the existance of a allmighty god has been disproven quite satisfactory by a lot of philosophers.

maybe we CAN prove that god does not exist simply by reason,i should post a list:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... ments.html

"Can God create a rock so big that He Himself could not lift it?".



"how can an All-Knowing Being change His mind?"



and what's up with the devil, what god is he? ans if god is allpowerfull, then i presume the devil works for god?


nice god to worship!

[edge100]

Let's imagine a specific scenario (with apologies to Sam Harris, who developed a similar thought experiment in The End of Faith):

Tomorrow morning, the entire world wakes up and finds that they can remember nothing about how their world works. Every scrap of human knowledge, painstakingly gained since the dawn of history, gone in an instant.

All of our books, computers, cars, phones, etc are all still there, but we have no idea how to use them. We can still read and write, but we have no idea how our 'old' world functioned.

What would be the first thing we would want to do? I would say, ensure we have adequate food, shelter, and clothing. We would learn very quickly (though our hunger and interaction with a harsh environment) that we need (at least) these three things to survive.

After that, we might want to establish rudimentary communities, which would be far more likely to survive than those who operate alone. Those who operate in communities, would, in essence, be increasing the chances of their survival.

Somewhere along the line, reproduction would become important. If communal living increased the chances of survival, then that would also likely increase the chances of reproducing.

And so forth, until we began to understand out environment, and could start to manipulate it for our own benefit. We would have to base our actions on very 'real' factorsl; that is, we would have to gather data (in an admittedly rudimentary way) and then make logical, rational decisions based on that data.

Ok, let's say we did that, and we've got a basic understanding of how to live from day to day. We decide to take a walk around the neighbourhood, and we get to the library, where we find books, some of which contain tales of gods and dieties such as Zeus, Ra, Shiva, Jesus, etc.

Each book tells us a disparate story about how the universe was created, and how the different gods interact with the universe, and with those who live in it. Of course, many of the stories contain obvious similarities, but there are also distinct differences, many of which have important consequences for how we conduct our lives (and many of which are contradictory to the way we HAVE been conducting our lives to this point).

The question is, which one do we believe, having no a priori bias towards any particular story? Do we believe the most logically probable? Is there any independent evidence for the 'truth' of one of these stories that we might discover in our day to day lives?

Clearly, we have a dilemma on our hands. These books are telling us how we got here and how we should live, and yet we have no way of knowing which one, if any, we should take as being 'true'.

Some of us may believe the stories of the Olympian gods, some the Egyptian gods, some the Hindu gods, some may believe the story of Jesus, still others that the stories of Islam are greatest, and so forth (almost ad infinitum). Some of these stories explicitly state that other stories should not be believed, and those who DO believe them are destined for the worst type of punishment available. Of course, there's no real evidence to back this up, but that doesn't change the fact that the stories do say these things.

Moreover, if communities have begun to form, they are likely to all believe the same thing, in order to maintain their communal nature. What's more, they are also likely to teach the validity of their particular story to their offspring, and so forth. Sadly, they may also begin to clash with other communities who happen to have read the wrong book.

So what is the answer? Who is 'right'? Who's story has more validity, and why?

Of course, the point I'm driving at here is that if we eliminate the biases of history, none of these stories have any more real validity than any other. If all religions, past and present, were presented to a theoretical impartial 'outsider', which one would win, and why? Again, serious question. If you believe that YOUR story would win, why is that so? Clearly it won out for you, but were you an impartial 'outsider' when you decided to practice a given religion? And if not, why do you reject the other religions, which are based on the same amount of observable evidence as yours?

The vast majority of the god stories that have existed are now lost to history, purely through circumstance. If we consider the above hypothetical scenario, we clearly see (or at least I clearly see) that there is no particular good reason to think that one of these stories (or indeed ANY of these stories) is the 'truth' about god and the creation of our universe and everything in it.

To me the most compelling reason NOT to believe in a particular god (and by extension, ANY god) is that other people believe just as strongly in other gods as I might believe in mine. Moreover, since niether of our beliefs are based on anything we can see or touch or hear in our physical world, our beliefs stand on equal footing in terms of potential 'truth'. Christianity and Olympian-ism have the same amount of real evidence to support their literal truth (I'm not talking about the way Jesus makes you 'feel', which may be absolutely wonderful, but is entirely irrelevant to the current discussion).

If religion makes you happy, fulfills your need for community, and inspires you to do good things, so be it. That's fantastic. The issue arises, however, that other people of other 'faiths' have this exact feeling in response to the tenets of their own religion. And because the literal truth of both of your religions is based on the same amount of tangible evidence (zero), the only conclusion we can draw is that both have an equal chance of being literally correct (if not zero, then tending very heavily towards zero).

I really think that if you consider this from the point of view of the unbiased outsider, you will see that belief in the literal truth of your particular religion is just as rational as the belief in the literal truth of any other. Again, if your religion inspires you to greatness, that's fantastic. But there is no good reason to believe that the creator of the universe really truely hates homosexuality or hates people working on Sunday (or is it Saturday?), just as much as there is no good reason to believe that Helios literally carries the sun across the sky with his chariot.

[Novel]

I do believe this thread just got owned