Ok I got my deleted post back here it is again paying extra attention to not tread on anyone's toes:
@VRAEL
I don't think we should make stuff up (ie. put words in God's mouth) in
any serious discussion as it does not contribute in the slightest. If we are arguing against the Christian God Yahweh we need to confront the Christian Bible, because that is the original source of the information. We can confront it from both literal and metaphorical views but just completely making up things gets absolutely
nowhere.
The following may or may not be considered digression but they are still my direct responses to previous users argumentsThe point of the website seems to be provocation. If they're really concerned about converting people, they would be more concerned with the type of language they use, they would cut out the rhetoric.
I guess the title GodIsImaginary is a bit provocative, you have to wonder why they name it such though. Look at the names of these best sellers: Richard Dawkin's , THE GOD DELUSION, or Sam Harris' THE END OF FAITH, Christopher Hitchen's GOD IS NOT GREAT - HOW RELIGION POISONS EVERYTHING. You have to wonder why all these people named their books the way they did and still became big bestsellers. The answer? Because these books aren't trying to convert dyed-in-the-wood theists or hardcore fundamentalists/literalists; these type of people wouldn't touch a book that even so much slightly hinted at a disprovable of God. The authors (and the author of that website) chuck in catchy provocative titles because their trying to grab the DOUBTERS and AGNOSTICS, not the ones that are too far gone. If you read the above mentioned books you'll see they've got quite the rhetoric embedded as well. They're concerned about converting people that actually are willing to be converted. I really don't see how you can argue any further on this either, these books ARE bestsellers after all.
I share Plato's sentiments. That website isn't concerned with proving things, it's concerned with persuading people with emotion.
Plato's words still ring true. However I still think this is simply a difference in opinion, I still think that the rhetoric is relatively mild. Just because its on the subject of God however it immediately is inflamed (in your eyes) as something equivalently outrageous as: "I SUPPORT CHILD MOLESTATION". The website IS concerned with proving things (it has a list of 50 proofs), and sure it may use emotional persuasion as well, most people need to be emotionally persuaded.
I'll do you all 50, in one proof.
Claim from website: God is imaginary
Premises a priori:
1). God is either real or not real.
2). If God is real, then he is not imaginary.
3). If God is not real, then he may or may not be imaginary.
Implications:
Since the claim "God is imaginary" asserts that 2) is not possible, we arrive at a contradiction between the claim and 1) since 1) can not be true if 2) is not possible. Therefore, the claim is false.
If they hadn't been so intent on using rhetoric in their website, I would not have been able to do that, so don't even bother accusing me of "cheating" or anything.
Please do not muddy the waters. I asked you to refute one of their proofs, not their eye-catchy, rhetorical title.
Almost all atheists will agree with the fact that disproving God is impossible, just like disproving Invisible Pink Unicorns is impossible, or Celestial Teapots, etc. etc. We all just assume these things do not exist, there are no doubt countless objects in the world that exist right now without our knowledge, atheists don't make the same faith claims as theists do. So of course you could easily refute their title, which was nothing more then an eye-catcher.
My challenge still stands, refute one of their proofs. Otherwise all your arguments about how they are convincing people on emotion and not on logic are groundless.
I have to point out a couple things as well:
1). God is either real or not real.
2). If God is real, then he is not imaginary.
3). If God is not real, then he may or may not be imaginary.
If God is not real, then he IS imaginary. Remember the difference between concept and imaginary is solely etymological.
1). The Website uses information from the bible to form their proofs
2). An all powerful deity such as God can exist without regard to any book
3). If God exists he is not imaginary
4). The bible is a book
Your 1. point is your own little a priori. They use information such as prayer statistic analysis as well. Ever heard the phrase "why does God never heal amputees?"
Your 2. point is a neat little example of how the theistic believers once pushed back quickly try and sneak back into the realm of the deistic, where everything is concept and unprovable. You need to stop confusing theistic and deistic Gods in order to solidify your arguments. The theistic God can easily be refuted through his own book, see the website I gave you or if that isn't to your taste search for others. It's all there. Only in the realms of the deistic do the theists get their wiggle room, which is why they so readily slither into it.
No, it is not groundless. I offer you no logical refutation for this one, but take a trip to any part of any part of town where the mean income is poverty level. What else do such unfortunate people like that have? Hell, I'm sure there are rich folks out there who need to believe too.
I would like to point out that we are now having two separate arguments here. Whether God exists, and whether God is useful. Essentially, you are arguing the oft quoted "ignorance is bliss" argument. Telling the masses a lie, so they feel better as a result. I for one, consider this immoral - I think the truth should be of utmost importance, regardless of how bad it hurts. This treads into the realms of morality though, so I shan't discuss it further. I agree with you on this point: people DO use religion as a crutch. What I disagree with is the opinion that they will always need this crutch, I think humanity can continue to thrive without religion, and I truly believe it will actually advance much quicker. These are differences in opinion that aren't relevant to the topic at hand however, so I won't harp on about it any further.
It depends on what you mean. If you mean "how is free will compatible with an omniscient being," then I would say something along the lines of limiting omniscience.
You cannot limit omni anything, otherwise it is no longer omni. This refutes the theistic God.
If you mean "how is free will compatible with an all powerful being who says Person A will do B C and D actions at X Y and Z times" then I would say it straight up is not compatible
Agreed, and I would certainly hope God does not exist in this case. Fortunately, there's no evidence to say otherwise at the moment.
As for the case where we're not free, then there is nothing just about punishing us, nor is there anything unjust. If we have no free will we cease to be a conscious being, and are nothing more than robots which our creator sees fit to do whatever he likes with.
We can still be conscious beings in this scenario. We are just puppets that can't see our own strings. This touches on the freedom debate that philosophers are always quarreling about, libertarianism, determinism, compatibilism - take your pick.
Now that would be an interesting case study.
Case studies only examine an individual or small group, and make no claims about the population as a whole. It would be ineffective for testing this hypothesis. I would recommend an observational study.
That would be nearly impossible to implement though, considering the breadth of things prayed for, and the frequency for which they are prayed. The sample size required to get an idea of the aggregate effect would still have to be enormous, and considering that prayers are thoughts, and not something physical that we could watch for, we'd need a huge group of extremely honest people (someone might pray for another persons death and never tell anyone about it, for example) and they'd have to have extremely good memories too, for any sort of accurate statistical data. Then there would be the problems like "are people more likely to pray when the outcome they want is more likely anyway?" and "does it count when someone answers their own prayers?" and all kinds of stuff like that.
The following will demonstrate how prayer cannot be used as a proof for God's existence:Not to mention that any sort of controlled situation where we have people pray deliberately would be explained away by theists saying something along the lines of 'God doesn't answer insincere prayers".
However I don't have to create an experiment to make my point. I ask anyone here that prays to look back on their lives and remember all the prayers that never got answered. I imagine you'll have a hard time, whereas if I ask you to remember the prayers that did get answered: you'll immediately jump to this and that and this. The reason is you tend to forget the prayers that are ignored, because, well, their ignored. Prayers that are answered are a very good example of positive reinforcement. You ask for something, you get it, you immediately think YES he answered my prayer. Gamblers have the exact same problem, you see it in other ways as well. You ever see people doing their own little elaborate rituals between sports games or whatever? They are doing that because the last time they did it they won their game, so they thought that their little ritual makes them lucky; they inferred that correlation equals causality - not the case folks! I actually have a funny little video somewhere where a pigeon was being given a food pellet at random intervals whenever the pigeon hit the lever. At one point the pigeon wiggled his head while hitting the lever and a food pellet dropped as well. The pigeon that inferred that wiggling his head while pressing the lever would give it a higher chance of getting food (even though it didn't, the pellets were being released at random), and started doing that repetitively (even though multiple times no pellet was released). This is a very clear example, I can't find the video right now, but as usual Wikipedia has an in depth article on what I'm talking about, link here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReinforcementIf anyone here honestly thinks prayer works, then I'll give you a simply little challenge - instead of praying to your chosen God. Pray to a different one then, pray to anything for that matter. Then try another period of time praying to your God, compare the results - you will see they are exactly the same. This experiment requires a bit of self-honesty in order to work properly mind you.
@NEWB
Imagine this in your head.
Nothing at all but black. Before time. Before (a) God. Before atoms ( for the scientists )
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Imagine this in your head.
Nothing at all but black. Before time. Before (a) God. Before atoms ( for the scientists )
How did anything come to existence?
Even if (a) God is there, you have to imagine how anything came to be ( even God himself )
If God is the reason for everything, then he is all-powerful and knows everything, hears everything(including prayers), and can do anything.
I can bet from this argument, that there is (a) God who has made everything.
If (a) God didn't. Who, or what did?
How indeed? People who say GOD immediately ignore their own question, how did GOD come into existence? Oh, he's eternal. Well who's to say that the universe isn't eternal either? The Big Bang could just be one small event in an eternity of events within our cosmos, who knows. We only think in these terms, how did anything come into existence, because we are surrounded by things that were created, our children are created by us, we are created by our parents, our technology is created by us, the list goes on. We infer that everything needs a creator - this may not be the case. Also, how do you know that it was black?
We must be wary of our every presumption!
To say God created us is nothing more and nothing less then a GUESS. There is absolutely NO empirical evidence that says there is a God. This-is-a-GUESS.
However, this topic is practically pointless. The whole, Does God exist?, thing is all what you want to believe. That's why it's called having faith. The amount of evidence to some will seem pointless, but to others, will seem valuable. It is all about who you are, and what you choose to believe/think.
I agree, I think we should change the topic of discussion to WHY HAVE FAITH. I would love to have that discussion.
@CAPTWILL
Bin Laden has to identify himself as religious in order to maintain his support. I'm not saying he's not a "true Muslim" or anything. No doubt he is a Muslim, however I believe his religiosity is a vehicle or rallying cry for politically-motivated conflict. Islam and Christianity (or, "the West") have coexisted in relative peace, the Crusades notwithstanding, until the 19th and 20th centuries. By 1920 the only Muslim countries not under formal European political control were Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and trouble flared up generally not over religion but over questions of land; freedom to choose one's political destiny, and money, in the European-controlled territories. Conflicts may have been put, from time to time, in terms of religion, but fundamentally the causes of conflict are opposing national interests, and this is the prevailing view among political scientists. Where religion has played a part in conflict it is more often than not in order to serve the interests of the group which has the most influence in a country. Usually this is a small elite, but not always. Huntington and various Orientalists have chosen to interpret things rather differently, but they are by and large discredited.
Ok, let's just say I agree with you. That still doesn't change the fact that the hijackers were motivated solely by God. I really don't think they'd sacrifice their lives and kill thousands of people if they didn't think they were going to get an afterlife reward. I suggest we get back to the topic at hand, I'll do a bit more research and try and see if Bin Laden was solely politically motivated, but that's not the issue of this thread.
You say that removing religion would give people one less reason to fight. I would argue it gives them one less excuse to fight - the underlying reasons remain the same.
I agree, though religion and culture in those places is so deeply entwined its hard to tell what the underlying reasons are.
I'm afraid to say that I am quite cynical about the ability of people to get on with one another.
Well your not really being cynical, your being a realist! People don't get along with each other, its a fact! Where you and I differ is that I think we (being the whole of humanity) can eventually unite in peace, whether that be in my lifetime or not I don't know, but that's what I hope happens.
As for religion being dogma and nationalism not - it doesn't matter. What matters is to what end any belief system is used.
Well it doesn't matter now because you just changed the argument in that second sentence. You originally asked me: "how is religion any worse than, say, nationalism?" Dogma was my answer.
What matters is to what end any belief system is used. Religion has been used for good purposes (e.g. charity), as has nationalism (e.g. public works). Intent is important.Yes, intent is very important, and I don't deny that religion has good people. However I think overall religion does much more bad then good, its a breeding ground for the fundamentalists, it slows scientific advance, hell - it slows moral advance (slavery, condom-use, abortions, gay-rights, etc.), etc. etc. etc.
What I'm trying to get at is this: we don't NEED religion to be good people. This is not a groundless statement, just look at all the nonbelievers who DON'T go around murdering, raping, molesting children, etc. etc. It's already been proven by all the nonbelievers out there today - religion is not necessary to live a happy and fulfilling life.
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@VRAEL
My analogy is focusing on the "Then whence cometh evil" part. It essentially says that there is no contradiction: God is both benevolent, omnipotent, and evil does not exist. It utilizes the perspective from an infinite timeline to achieve this by making evil negligible, and therefore not evil. Certainly from our perspective I would agree that evil exists. But if we are to consider the existence of a being like God, we should be willing to consider other viewpoints, due to the extreme chasm in experience between ourselves and something like a God.Ok, I understand what you mean now. But I can refute this by bringing in another one of Yahwehs supposed traits, omniscience (they really give him too many omni's for his own good don't they
). If God created us and he knew exactly how we would interpret things as evil and etc. etc. then why did he do it anyway? That would seem to me an inherently evil and sadistic creator.
@CECIL
We can't go around acting on beliefs we can't prove or disprove.
Sure we can. Whenever a belief is reasonably accurate, or the margin of error is reasonably low, it becomes reasonable for one to subscribe to said belief. There are plenty of examples. Just because something isn't proven or disproven doesn't make believing in the belief itself illogical or irrational.
There is so much etymological mistranslation within this type of debate its such a shame the words are so synonymous. When I was talking about acting on beliefs by "belief" I actually meant "faith" and when I was talking about "proving" and "disproving" I was actually talking about "Evidential Support." Apologies for the confusion, you are of course right - we can never truly prove or disprove things, outside of the field of mathematics of course. We can only be reasonably sure about things. Just as we are reasonably sure there is no flying teapot or invisible unicorn we can also be reasonably sure there is no God - for all three cases there is no evidential support.
Finding evidence is not the only way of knowing something. If finding evidence, aka the scientific theory, were the only means of knowing, then the only means of knowing that the scientific theory were valid would be by validation via the scientific theory. How about once you find evidence that finding evidence can give you reasonable proof on a particular matter, in order to make a viable decision, you can continue to post the same response while ignoring others' retorts to your arrogant remarks.You are confusing the principles of the scientific theory with the principles of epistemology. Science exists to subject erected postulates to empirical test with respect to whether or not those postulates are in accord with observational reality. In other words, synonymous to what we usually do in day to day living, albeit more rigorously and with a painstaking eye for accuracy. Epistemology focuses on asking questions about what knowledge is and how we obtain it, which is in the area of metaphysics and is not what we use in our day to day lives. All information that is necessary and useful for the running of our lives is garnered through evidential support. Electricity, motor transport, radios, television, space travel, medicine, construction, music, art (insert everything else here) has benefited greatly from the scientific theory, and will continue to do so. If we were disregard the scientific theory because of an epistemological question we would be nowhere near as sophisticated as we are today. I hope this has answered your questions.
Thank you and goodnight.
Pinky.
Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 2 2010, 7:38 pm by Pinky.
None.