The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
I, like others, find myself in a unique position when it comes to the debate between atheism and theism. On the one hand, I acknowledge the lack of empirical evidence for a divine being, and on the other, I cannot deny the possibility of its existence. In this post, I aim to articulate my thoughts on the matter and present a dialectic that addresses my concerns of the debate.
1. If there is no empirical evidence for something, then belief in that something is based on faith and personal beliefs, not fact.
2. There is currently no empirical evidence for the existence of a deity.
3. Therefore, the existence of a deity is based on faith and personal beliefs, not fact. (1,2 MP)
Theism, as a belief system, is based on the idea that there is a divine being who created the universe and governs its workings. Theists often argue that the presence of order and design in the universe is evidence of a divine creator.
The argument for a divine creator relies on the assumption that the universe had a beginning. However, there are several alternative theories for the beginning of the universe for example, Astrophysicist Alex Filippenko of the University of California, Berkeley stated that quantum fluctuations can produce matter and energy out of nothingness and could have led to the creation of the universe. Of course, one could ask how those initial quantum laws were created and end up in a similar causal regression as a theist trying to explain who created their deity. The difference between them, though, seems to be that theist is making positive claims that they know whats at the end of that regression and that seems problematic. It seems like the atheist is in a better situation here.
Some theists will point to personal experiences as evidence, but these experiences can be subjective and interpreted in different ways. For example, a person who experiences a feeling of peace after praying may attribute that feeling to the presence of a deity, but it could also be due to the release of chemicals in the brain (which is observed to result from meditation)
In our day-to-day lives, we demand evidence and validation before accepting something as truth. For example, we expect to see a plethora of evidence as to why a cutting-edge drug or supplement works before putting it in our bodies. (At the very least, we expect the drug/supplement claims to be evidence-based not faith or belief based) Why is theism exempt from this kind of evidence-based thinking?
Perhaps Ive not fully understood some of the strongest theist arguments. All responses are welcome.
1. If there is no empirical evidence for something, then belief in that something is based on faith and personal beliefs, not fact.
2. There is currently no empirical evidence for the existence of a deity.
3. Therefore, the existence of a deity is based on faith and personal beliefs, not fact. (1,2 MP)
Theism, as a belief system, is based on the idea that there is a divine being who created the universe and governs its workings. Theists often argue that the presence of order and design in the universe is evidence of a divine creator.
The argument for a divine creator relies on the assumption that the universe had a beginning. However, there are several alternative theories for the beginning of the universe for example, Astrophysicist Alex Filippenko of the University of California, Berkeley stated that quantum fluctuations can produce matter and energy out of nothingness and could have led to the creation of the universe. Of course, one could ask how those initial quantum laws were created and end up in a similar causal regression as a theist trying to explain who created their deity. The difference between them, though, seems to be that theist is making positive claims that they know whats at the end of that regression and that seems problematic. It seems like the atheist is in a better situation here.
Some theists will point to personal experiences as evidence, but these experiences can be subjective and interpreted in different ways. For example, a person who experiences a feeling of peace after praying may attribute that feeling to the presence of a deity, but it could also be due to the release of chemicals in the brain (which is observed to result from meditation)
In our day-to-day lives, we demand evidence and validation before accepting something as truth. For example, we expect to see a plethora of evidence as to why a cutting-edge drug or supplement works before putting it in our bodies. (At the very least, we expect the drug/supplement claims to be evidence-based not faith or belief based) Why is theism exempt from this kind of evidence-based thinking?
Perhaps Ive not fully understood some of the strongest theist arguments. All responses are welcome.
Comments (196)
Personal experience is evidence, whether or not you find it convincing. I'm not here to make the case for theism, but saying there's no evidence is just not true. Have you had a similar personal spiritual experience, whether or not you identify it with God?
Quoting Thund3r
...says roughly that beliefs are either based on empirical evidence or faith, setting up a false dilemma.
It's also not at all clear what this has to do with "Dialectic"... I gather it's not a reference to Hegel.
Quoting Thund3r
There's other arguments besides this one. And "empirical evidence" suggests that the universe did indeed have a beginning. The example of quantum fluctuation is a case in point, not in contrast.
A better argument against there being a good god who intervenes in the world is to look around at how bad a job he is doing.
Secondly God is not based on an idea. If anything, God is reduced to an idea or a series of propositions, which then are said to have no possibility of empirical validation. But that is a kind of straw God in that it refers mainly to the kind of God whose only presence is as a term in Internet debates. In practice belief in God is grounded in community, in tradition, and in a way of living, which opens up horizons of being in a way that mere propositional knowledge cannot.
Im not here to argue for theism (which again is a word only really encountered in Internet debates) but to try and provide another perspective on the question.
Funny thing is that no sooner does one start to set out god's attributes then one runs into contradictions.
Better to remain silent.
Well, there certaintly isn't any corroborable, non-anecdotal, public evidence of or sound arguments for "theism" (e.g. the existence of any "theistic" g/G). No doubt I could be wrong about this ... :smirk:
And shared experience doesn't count? Not sure about that.
Quoting 180 Proof
I probably disagree. Still thinking.
I agree with this. Atheism forces God into little boxes and then complains when the boxes don't stack neatly.
That's hardly unique.
If you really want to judge on evidence, you first have to decide what is and what is not admissible in your particular court. In legal proceedings, there are several kinds of evidence: physical, eye witness, hearsay and circumstantial. There is also a standard of preponderance - how much of each kinds of evidence is required to add to up to a convincing case.
In this situation, we have all kinds of eye-witness reports, both first-hand written. You have to decide how reliable each witness is. Again, you need to establish a basis for deciding that.
Then of course, you have to hear both sides, with cross-examination, expert testimony, everything - not just a summary of closing arguments.
Quoting Thund3r
I am unaware of any scripture that refers to the universe. The creator deities I know of only made the "the world", and the world to which each myth refers is somewhat different from every other world. They usually consist of earth, water and sky or 'the heavens', in which are one sun, one moon; stars optional, but when they are mentioned, they often are the embodiment of dead people or fantastic animals. Little resemblance to the universe as described by cosmologists.
So is the process of creation different in each story, as is the deity performing it.
Quoting Thund3r
Really?? What percent of your fellow citizens is included in the "we" and how have they demonstrated their demand for proof - of what, exactly?
Quoting Thund3r
You may very well have understood the ones under consideration, but I suspect your sample size is inadequate. How many apologists for how many religions have you reviewed?
Regarding empirical evidence for God, what about order (re clockwork universe); "there's gotta be a ordering principle" say theists, which is God.
Well, that's good enough to demonstrate that disbelief in theistic g/G is more reasonable than theistic g/G-beliefs. From a recent post ...
Quoting 180 Proof
Also (same thread):
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/774753 :fire:
Second, people can believe in a deity because it represents a great ideal. The ideal of an ordered universe, morality, and the idea that you as an individual are special somehow and should live your life as if you are. These are powerful motivators to many people.
Third, people can believe in a deity through fear. I view this as the more negative aspect of theism. A cultural bonding can just as easily be a means to exclude a person from a group. Pushing to an ideal that cannot be lived up to can lead to frustration, self-loathing, and needless self-sacrifice.
Its not about evidence. If it was, theism would have died a long time ago. Its about servicing those needs that a lot of humanity has. Until something else can come along and replace that, theism will remain strong.
and more.
Many of these we follow not based on evidence.
Then there are microversions of this. We have things like 'there I have analyzed that argument/idea/person/situation long enough quale. I don't need to look at it any more. IOW we use intuition about our own effforts, abilities, effectiveness, specific achievement in the moment all the time, without evidence - certainly nothing that would be accepted in a peer reviewed science journal.
These macro assessments/heuristics and then also microversions lead to decisions that affect ourselves and other people. They are not small stuff: they lead to voting choices, moral choices, assessments of parenting techniques or specific actions and attitudes in parenting, how we relate to other people and more.
These heuristics and intuitive assessment processes are working for us, we assume, think, have decided, have faith in. And of course, perhaps they just seem to. Many we are not even conscious of.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/463672 (follow the links ... or not)
We really don't have a choice, do we? It's either up or down. :sad:
:up: Danke kind person.
False? Belief is defined as: the feeling of being certain that something exists or is true, and the page puts a good example related to this topic: His belief in God gave him hope during difficult times. Belief - Cambridge Dictionary
Rather than being a false dilemma it is a deep debate on the identity of the believers tend to have. They - sometimes - experience crisis of faith when questioning the existence of God because of beliefs are not a solid evidence of existence and thats why some thought as empirical evidence arises.
If beliefs are not based on faith or empirical evidence, what is the main root? :chin:
Quoting Banno
But we are questioning the evidence of Gods existence not the universe itself or its beginning
Quoting Banno
Kierkegaards existentialism :grin:
Sure. Right now we can probably find many thousands of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens and taken away for a probing... They are often well adjusted people who hold down responsible jobs. I don't think we learn anything much from anecdotes or tales of personal experience. What exactly is a personal experience?
Quoting Agent Smith
I can't know there is no god. I can only decide there are no reasons good enough to believe in one. I am, like many contemporary freethinkers, an agnostic atheist. Agnostic in relation to knowledge of god; atheist in terms of belief in god.
Quoting javi2541997
I think most people believe in god because they are brought up with the idea - evidence and faith are post hoc. Children are taught there is a god and the notion becomes absorbed as part of their socialisation and enculturation. You're much more likely to have an experience of a particular God as an adult if you are properly primed from birth.
I don't know whether God is/isn't, but I believe God isn't. :up:
:up:
Quoting Tom Storm
Paradoxically, we have here an act of empiricism because the children who were taught a basic notion of God, probably they wouldn't be aware about what is God or what is the cause of "believing" otherwise.
Quoting Tom Storm
Then, soon or later, they need a "proof" of God's existence and here is when the dilemma starts: do they believe in God because of blind faith? ... or do they need an empirical evidence?
... or delusion? ... or whichever is cognitively-socially easier? ... or???
:up: :up:
God-claims do. Those who claim to speak for gods also make demands.
We don't decide on the evidence; we decide on the effect.
I'm under the impression that we may have "reasons" other than a good argument to believe. No, I'm not having fun. Fun and I parted ways thousands of years ago. :lol:
Such as ...
Is that a rhetorical question?
I was referring to something along the lines of Pascal's wager.
I suspect no one has ever believed in g/G because of a Pascal's Wager who wasn't already riding the fence up his sacramentally Confirmed keester. Pascal, the mathematical rationalist, was a religious fideist and proposed the wager as a prophylactic against promiscuous doubt rather than as "a reason to believe".
So what other non-reason reason you got, Smith?
Argumentum ad baculum, argumentum ad misericordiam, and their like.
I've never seen how this wager is meant to work. I personally do not believe that we can cynically choose our beliefs in this way. You are either convinced, or you are not convinced. How could anyone genuinely accept and integrate 'the truth' of a metaphysical presupposition like theism because of a potential consequence of a piss-poor bet?
An additional problem is which god do we undertake this wager on? The wager has no way of informing us what god to bet upon. What if the Muslim god is the true god? Or one of the gods of Protestant Christianity (surely Christianity amounts a series of different religions, with different gods vicious or accommodating, depending on the sect). Or Hinduism; Zoroastrianism...?
A final problem of course is how do we imagine a god would regard us for choosing to believe in it just for the sake of a wager? Fake it until you make it? Seems an approach completely lacking moral integrity or fidelity to an ideal, a contemptuous exercise in shallow self-interest.
As far as Pascal was concerned, no other gods but Jehovah would come under consideration; everyone whose religion was not rooted in the bible was simply pagan.
The real problem with the wager is that the Christian god had, by that time, been elevated to omni-mind-reader, so you couldn't fool him with insincere belief.
Indeed. But for anyone thinking of using the wager today this is a problem since it begs the question.
Quoting Vera Mont
Yep.
What is Christian faith supposed to be about, in philosophical terms? I would put it like this: it is about realising one's identity as a being directly related to the intelligence that underlies the Cosmos, a direct familial relationship, not as abstract philosophical idea. (This is the gist of Alan Watt's book The Supreme Identity).
The name 'Jupiter' was derived from the Sansrit 'dyaus-pitar' meaning 'Sky Father'. There are versions of that name all through ancient culture. The name sounds like 'Jehovah' even though it is etymologically unrelated. But the point is, for a great many people, believers and unbelievers alike, Jehovah is conceived as a 'sky-father'. But underneath or concealed by the popular image, there's another level of meaning although it's very difficult to convey. The name 'Jehovah' was derived from the Hebrew yahweh, itself a derived from the tetragrammaton, a sequence of consonants that was literally un-sayable. In ceremonial religion, the name of God was invoked using other terms, but the 'sacred name' was unsayable because it was unthinkable, it was over the horizon of being, so to speak. By uttering the name casually, one profaned it, by bringing it into the profane world.
As a consequence of these complexities, many of the arguments about 'theism' are based on very confused accounts of what really is at issue. (David Bentley Hart's book The Experience of God addresses this confusion.)
:roll:
No doubt this is the case with the so-called "New Atheists" (except Victor Stenger or Rebecca Goldstein) which is why I consider their arguments (those of e.g. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett) to be irreligious humanist polemics instead of philosophical critiques of theism or theology.
I find it difficult to reconcile this ^ with this v
Quoting Wayfarer
If reincarnation is an actual thing, that's just the moment you must resolve to do better - no?
Of course, I also have a problem with the idea of "directing" one's life, as if the playing field were level and every newborn soul had the same degree of control over their path between that point and their death... which might be only a few days off.
Quoting Wayfarer
That sounds a lot like an abstract philosophical idea.
Man is directly related to the god or gods in every kind of mythology. Only the relationships are quite different. Christianity is based firmly on the sin-sacrifice-redemption dynamic, wherein the god is a discrete entity, aloof and judgmental. He is supposed to have made the world, which was then pure, but later profaned, as was God's creature, man, [Why else would his next-of-kin be not permitted to utter even a sayable version of his name?] by The Adversary*, who tempted man and led him into the sins of moral awareness and sexual awareness - the two never to be separated .
*And where did he come from? And what is his purpose?
Quoting Wayfarer
It's exactly as complicated as some scholar or theologian wishes to make it.
Christianity (and other religious and philosophical traditions) are not one exclusive model. Otherwise there wouldn't be the interminable conflicts between the various denominations. Within the Christian world there are more and less pantheist or panentheist visions.
Which Christian denominations do not consider Christ their saviour?
But there are very different interpretations of what that means. The Eastern Orthodox interpretation is different to the Calvinist, for instance - the orthodox don't believe in 'vicarious atonement'. In any case, it isn't my intention to get into all of those details. From the perspective of philosophy of religion, the question is what do these doctrines and ideas mean?
That we were at one time keenly aware of a very great loss. Whether it's interpreted as a fall from grace, original, or the inability to speak the language of other animals, something happened. Something we chose. The move to settled agriculture alienated us from, and put us in conflict with Nature (including a vital portion of our own nature.)
:up: :100: :clap:
What do you mean by misdirected? Missed opportunities to learn or missed opportunities to improve life for others? Or both?
Useful discussion of meaning of religion here, from which:
One can recognize the desire for transcendence without sharing it or attributing to it an ontological reality coextensive with that desire. There is a rhetorical ambiguity at work. What is it that cannot be real to them? The longing or a life other than our "natural life", a "a Higher Life"?
Empirical evidence for the supernatural is a contradictory notion because that which is sensed must be by definition natural. That is, if I see a ghost, the ghost must be just a new discovery, like a previously unknown insect in the rain forest.
This draws a distinction between the type of evidence necessary for proof of a non-corporeal God and that of previously undiscovered physical events (like alien abduction, Bigfoot, or a strange new sea creature). If someone claims a miracle, it should be assumed not to have occurred because few things are as empirically established as physical laws. That is, I will find you not guilty of a crime if it were physically impossible for the crime to have occurred as alleged.
What then is left in terms of proof are such things as pragmatics or subjective mystical experiences. The only way I could see empirical evidence as being evidence of God's existence would be in the indirect sense, as is the fact that existence exists points to something creating that existence.
Quoting Banno
Of course these conversations have been going on for over a thousand years:
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/maimonides-conception-of-god/
Quoting Tom Storm
Much time is spent psychoanalyzing the theist, perhaps because he seems so obviously wrong to the atheist that an explanation must be arrived at for why an otherwise intellgent person would take it seriously. But this is me psychoanalyzing the atheist. My guess is that we're both part right and part wrong here.
What is interesting to me is how seriously the atheists take these conversations. You can't seem to have a thread about theism without the atheists being sure to enter the conversation and passionately objecting, some more respectfully than others. Often the conversation turns toward a discussion of childhood trauma dealing with religion, prior episodes of social ostracism arising from religious institutions, and other bad acts of religion. To the extent the driver behind atheism is pain caused by religion, then that does seems like something that needs to be addressed, but I acknowledge a reasonableness to the atheistic position that keeps it from being explained as just reaction to trauma, but it seems part of it for some.
Why??
What's wrong with him and his life?
This is real to me as a psychological problem unique to human animals, but not common to all human animals. I come back to a sense of loss.
But of what, exactly?
Not of the "higher" life they long for, because they haven't experienced it yet, hence the longing. It must be for a state of innocence - that is, the genuine life of appreciation for sunlight, grass, water; the joy of having limbs to move about, a voice to sing with, taste, sound, smell, exertion and rest, affection and pleasure, striving and triumph. The moments between terror and grief.
When you have defeated the body, mortified and discarded, you don't have very much left.
But this yearning to set it free of earth.
The death-wish.
You can have all the theist conversations you like without any butting in from me.... so long as they don't open with: The trouble with atheists is...."
Pascal's wager assumes a relationship between belief in God and salvation, an ideosyncratically Christian notion, which just because pervasive does not mean the link is entailed by theism generally.
This is what is often missed in these discussions, that it is assumed theism is a belief system requiring certain fundamental beliefs. But theism is no more a belief system than is atheism. Theism asserts God's existence. Atheism denies it. How you wish to develop those single itemized beliefs into a system is up to the person, but assuming something logically must flow from there is incorrect.
Anyway, that is why I never understood Pascal's wager to be an important argument because my immediate response was to ask how did Pascal know that believing in God is exactly what God didn't want you to do and that is what would lead to punishment. I found that suggestion no more or less absurd than the idea that belief in God would lead to salvation, mostly because I'm not Christian and the concept of salvation based upon belief was entirely foreign to me.
Just interested on your attraction to the labels agnostic atheist, as an accurate combination, for you Tom.
Why are you not more attracted to Ignostic atheist?
Rather, atheists complain about the untidiness of the boxes that religious leaders put God into.
You've been talking to different atheists than I have.
Atheists don't make up religions. Religious leaders do. They box up God, Gods, or whatever. Atheists question these stories or 'boxes'.
Mainly because the term is new to me.
From wiki:
Ignosticism or igtheism is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because the word "God" has no coherent and unambiguous definition.
I would be interested in your opinion of the terms described in the wiki link above and how they may or may not relate to you when you consider the OP in terms of 'An agnostics perspective.'
Yep, I find that my atheism often reaches an ignostic/igtheism level, when I have to listen to the latest creationist attempt to defibrillate god posits. But I then have to regroup and resist my ignositc tendency, so that I can try to engage constructively, with the latest creationist conflation.
My point isn't to identify what is supernatural or not (or even what counts as evidence) just that you can find seemingly reliable people who claim to have had all sorts of bizarre experiences, so there's not much the rest of us can take from a personal experience argument.
Quoting Hanover
Is this right? Surely you are not ruling out the possibility that god could appear empirically to all of us as they have done in stories/scripture?
Quoting Hanover
I'm not psychoanalyzing anyone, I hope. Psychoanalysis is just another faith based belief system. :wink: I was simply making the common sense observation that most people believe in god because they are brought up that way - groomed by parents, family, culture. But as an atheist I don't hold to the view that belief in god is obviously wrong. My atheism is probably derived by aesthetic considerations and the simple lack of an ability to believe. Reasoning is post hoc.
Quoting Hanover
It's a serious subject, right? Especially when you consider that for atheists, many of the world's key problems are either created by or intensified by a fiction people call God. (Let's not list all those countries with appalling expressions of religion again.) If theists did not want to influence abortion laws, women's rights, gay rights, access to contraception, environmental protections, what book we can read, etc, I don't think the matter would interest many atheists.
It's probably also worth mentioning that most atheists, myself included, rarely have reason to talk about theism/atheism. I know in America it isn't very safe to be openly atheist. Especially outside of urban cosmopolitanism. This is the only place where I have spoken of atheism in many years, so it's not really a part of my daily life (except as my implicit or enacted worldview). Much of my critique of religion actually comes from Christian religious writers like Bentley Hart and Shelby Spong.
Quoting Hanover
Survivors of fundamentalist creeds tend to fall into this category. I consider myself fortunate to have been brought up within a liberal tradition of Christianity which saw the Bible as a series of myths designed to make a broader point.
In general I think what you have said about religion on this forum is reasonable and laudable.
You have misunderstood and misused my metaphor. You should come up with your own.
That's a serious accusation and being so deserving of an explanation.
I completely failed to answer this. Sorry.
This definition is important to me because of the endless confusion people have about agnosticism vis-à-vis atheism. I think if you can incorporate both and explain the context of knowledge versus belief, you have a better persuasive platform. In discussing atheism with theists, I try to avoid introducing new terms.
You might like this presentation by Matt Dillahunty on belief vs knowledge:
I don't consider people misunderstanding something I've said as particularly serious. It happens all the time. I'm sure it happens to you too.
I had some trouble with it myself.
Quoting T Clark
I've never, that I can recall, attempted to box or stack a god. I disbelieve in all the ones I've heard of, and the one that is most frequent subject of discussions - and my rejection - is that jumped-up tribal deity we know only from a big book Christians revere as infallible truth. Or claim to believe, even while they deny that what's written there means what is written there. Apparently it's hard to understand, but at least it's available for everyone to read now, and judge.
What did you mean by atheist-made boxes?
I don't deny the possible existence of a something that humans intuitively suspect orders the universe, or whatever - I just don't count that among the gods that called gods.
Quoting T Clark
I think this works - TC seems to be saying that atheists twist ideas of god into distortions and then use those distortions as evidence that God is a problematic idea. In other words, it's a variation on a straw man argument.
I was being less generous in that regard and I would insist, for example, that if someone's account violates physical laws, then I would discount their account as unreliable. It's why we use photographs, DNA, and all sorts of CSI methods to prove things. We need to do the same in all avenues of our life. So if you say the sea parted, I'd discount it.
This is to say, I'm not willing to give a pass to people who think faith is just a certain type of stubborness that refuses to listen to reason when those reasons aren't consistent with previously held conclusions. It would be nice for me to allow room for those to believe in a 6 day creation, but the truth is that belief is utter bullshit.
Quoting Tom Storm
I am ruling that out. A corporeal god creates all sorts of theological problems. I think when we start getting into literal interpretations of scripture and anthropomorphic descriptions of God, the atheist ridicule properly applies. If God is somewhere specific, I have the right to ask for his address, put him on a scale and weigh him, take a biopsy, and kick him in the shins. That's what physical means. If you say you saw God, I would say you might have seen a cloud and felt something spiritual, but God wasn't the cloud. Quoting Tom Storm
A theist who can't recognize that his beliefs are likely as they are due to his parent's beliefs is hard to take seriously. That has to be dealt with reasonably, which means either you accept there are multiple paths to the same destination and appreciate that your chosen path has something to do with it being paved by those around you, or else be forced to arrive at the incredible conclusion that you found the truth independently and it just coindentally was the exact same thing you were being told your whole life.
I don't see religion as a sanctuary from reason for those needing comfort from reality. If that is what it is, then the atheists are right to scoff at the theists.
How can I twist and distort the idea in someone else's head? I can respond only to what they describe and recount. If I give a false version of the theist's account, he's right there to correct me and point to the source of accurate information. Incidentally, does any version of the Christian god stack neatly?
Now that I think about it a bit more, I think Clark may be saying something different. Basically that God is ineffable so any dumb atheist that comes along with their boxy reason will be invariably off the mark. God cannot fit in a box. The believers know that. Atheists are too clueless to grasp this wonderous truth.
Is that about right, @T Clark ?
Ironically, in denying my point, you've demonstrated it. Probably the most obvious and one of the most egregious examples of atheists putting theistic beliefs into boxes is equating theism with fundamentalist Christianity. Which is what you have done here.
@Wayfarer brought this quote to my attention and I use is whenever I can. It's from St. Augustine, one of fathers of the Catholic Church. It was written in 415 AD:
Quoting St. Augustine
I find this very interesting. Do you think this comes from a Jewish perspective?
Quoting Hanover
Fair.
Quoting Hanover
Also interesting. I know Christians who hold this and think all the miracle stories in the Bible are nonsense.
Quoting Hanover
I would have though that if god wants to be encountered in a physical realm then god can do this. But perhaps not for a biopsy or a stool sample.
Indeed. I include that in what I said earlier. Perhaps an unintentional straw man argument.
Quoting Vera Mont
Depends who you talk to. I'm not in the worship business so I can't help with that.
Ahem...
The problem is that they're all strawmen. Every God ever preached about is a strawman and not the REAL God. God is a boxed-up strawman. Atheists question these boxes of strawmen. They don't question what is beyond the boxes when questioning theistic claims, and they don't make up their own boxes of strawmen.
Then Aquinas and Christopher Hitchens are not so different. :joke:
Quoting praxis
Beyond the boxes? Sounds like an old movie of the week title. If you are referring to god as 'god is in itself' then I would suggest most atheists do question this too. Perhaps you mean something else?
No. I have said that the god most frequently referred-to in discussions is the one depicted in the Bible. Do non-fundamentalist Christians draw their understanding of their god from some other source that I can consult? Then they should cite those sources during the discussion.
Quoting T Clark
I never called the writers of scripture unlearned. I have no record of their educational backgrounds. Is he not referring to that selfsame Bible? Perhaps the theologians that have come to prominence since the move to Rome had other reference material. I Only said I get my image of their god from that book. I'm not sure what other scriptures Augustine consulted, but I don't remember being more impressed with his god than Matthew's. (Granted, I read him and Aquinas quite a long time ago and forgotten everything except that 1. Aquinas was more literary and 2. neither of them convinced me, even though I was more open to persuasion in my youth.)
Okay, you're on!
What is beyond these boxes of theistic claims that should be considered?
If all gods described in all holy books and pulpits are of straw,
What god is made of something else?
What is that god made of?
How can you know and how can I find out?
I did ask, in one of the disappeared threads: If the bible and the priests are not telling the truth about god, what sources do?
Not all of them. Many internet atheists, and certainly the cadre of new atheist authors were, but there are very perceptive atheists who know what theyre rejecting. (Im thinking Jean Paul Sartre and other atheist existentialists.)
The only reason that religion works is because God is ineffable and requires some sort of **special access** unavailable to the common folk. Do religious authorities present God or the ineffable? How can they if it is beyond words and mundane experience. Followers must rely on faith. They must have faith in the words (strawmen) of their leaders.
You called God "that jumped-up tribal deity we know only from a big book Christians revere as infallible truth." You can't not know that most Christians don't see the bible as infallible. St. Augustine didn't 1,600 years ago. The Pope doesn't.
You're arguing with a man who's been dead for 1592 years.
You sure don't look it!
Gee, one's a saint and the other's infallibe...
And yet that scripture is the source of their belief in sin, Jesus, resurrection and eternal life. Cherry-picking is not a modern practice.
Are there alternate sources for a description of that Christian god, or not? Is there an alternate, more reliable account of the roots of Christianity?
Quoting praxis
And that's what atheists reject. The ineffable doesn't need great big piles of filigreed stonework, or Indian converts, or red letter days to glorify it.
I'm not a good source to answer questions about the origin of Christian beliefs. I was only responding to your contention that Christians consider the bible "infallible truth." Most don't. That's all I said.
Yes.
@T Clark seems to be claiming, unless I'm misinterpreting him, that believers only believe in the ineffable, not anything particular, and not the words that are preached to them. Atheists come up with the particulars, all the words, the so-called 'boxes'.
That doesn't seem true, of course.
If I'm wrong why you don't try to clarify what you mean?
All I ever said was 1) Atheists put theist ideas in boxes, by which I meant they mischaracterize their beliefs based on their own biases. 2) Claiming that Christians believe the bible is infallible is a very common example of that process. 3) It is not true that Christians in general believe the bible is infallible.
Everything else you say I said, I didn't say.
I agree that there are atheists who intentionally mischaracterize religious ideas out of prejudice. There are also theists who intentionally mischaracterize atheist ideas out of prejudice. Basic tribalism really. Not everyone relates to those they disagree with on that level though, you know.
Well, speaking only for myself, I take theism at face value and demonstrate that its sine qua non claims about g/G are not true (i.e. either incoherent or false). I suppose the relevant "bias" here is I reject untrue claims.
I wasn't talking about intentional mischaracterization. I think many atheists don't think twice when they say things like that.
Quoting praxis
But that's not what we're talking about here. I don't think atheists need to be defended here on the forum. Elsewhere they do.
[snarky]Yes, well 180P, you're such a good boy. [/snarky]
It's God's word when it suits them, on some subjects. Pick'n'choose. I added:
"Or claim to believe, even while they deny that what's written there means what is written there. Oh, yes, God really means it about resurrection for the ones He likes, but he was only kidding about drowning all the bunny-rabbits, and stoning all the homosexuals. He's dead serious about transubstantiation... well sorta serious... no, that was a metaphor, it's really just a cracker.... but He changed his mind about witches in 1728(AD), but didn't get the word to the New World until 1879... but all the other stuff is true... except Abraham and the badger game... well maybe the frogs in Egypt were an exaggeration, but He really, really meant it about saving everybody who sincerely repents of their sins. Original sin ...weeeeellll....um....
And again we come back to: Where else did they get their image of God?
Quoting praxis
...so they put on black cassocks and sail around the world to tell the heathen.... What, exactly? "My dear savages, I feel in my bones that Something ineffable exists, so I want you to renounce your own version of it and embrace mine. It's so much better, trust me!"
I'm afraid only a theist can correct a mischaracterization of their ideas, particularly if it's unintentional. They can be rather odd and unintuitive.
Again, all I said was:
Quoting T Clark
Note - I added "often" to soften the claim a bit.
Quoting praxis
I hate it when I'm the calm, understated poster in a thread. It means something is out of whack. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.
I made a couple of simple statements back at the beginning of this thread in response to the OP and a post from @Wayfarer. Since then, I've just been responding to criticism of those statements. My posts were not any kind of comprehensive attack on atheist arguments. They were simple and focused. These "strongest arguments" you speak of have not been on the table.
They do. It isn't.
So... No missionaries? No conversions to the God of the Bible? No cathedrals? Atheists imagined the whole thing?
Do Christians believe in the God of the Bible, or don't they?
He just wants it to be known that he's well above the din. I'm grateful for it personally, because it has allowed me the opportunity to use the expression 'above the din' which I didn't realize until now would be so satisfying.
Of course, but it is my understanding, based on 15 minutes on the web, that most do not consider the Bible infallible or inerrant. If you want to go any deeper into Christian doctrine or history, I'm not the one to be talking to.
Sometimes an opportunity to use a favorite word, phrase, or quote is the best thing about a discussion.
I don't.
I'm asking the most superficial, obvious question - not necessarily of you, but of any or all apologists:
If not from the Bible, where does the character of God come from?
I grew up in the Baptist tradition. We were taught that the Bible stories were allegories to tell a broader truth about the nature of god and man. Literalist interpretations are more of a recent phenomenon within Protestant traditions - according to people like Karen Armstrong and David Bentley Hart (two theist writers of note).
God it would be argued comes first. Stories which capture the deity come second. Hence the evolving nature of theology over time. Most theists I grew up in the 1970's-80's with would argue that all religions are human attempts to capture the same truth about the transcendent or 'oneness' using a language that belongs to a particular time and place. This is known as the perennial tradition.
Okay. So, none of the stories are true? What is this "broader truth"? For that matter, what is it broader than? Who are these allegorical stories really about?
In Whom, exactly do you* believe?
* Not necessarily you, personally, but anyone who reads the stories, knows they're not true, but thinks they're about something or somebody wider than the god depicted in them?
Pascal's wager is very clear on what one has to do vis-à-vis theism-atheism in a Christian context. I don't see where the confusion lies mon ami. It involves some basic probability math and the conclusion is inescapable - we should believe in the Christian God. Sophia (wisdom) is not limited to facts alone, mon ami.
Expand and elaborate ... please.
Are you pushing for honesty (agnosticism)?
Confused / uncertain about g/G-belief, agnostics are not particularly "honest". As you know I'm a disbeliever.
[quote=Romans 10 :: NIV]That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.[/quote]
Sorry for the double reply. You added the above later so I suppose it won't come as a surprise.
Agnostics are essentially skeptics. Are skeptics confused or rational?
Skeptics, however, are not "essentially" agnostics.
Plenty of books on this by people like Paul Tillich, David Bentley Hart and Shelby Spong and the like. I'm not a progressive Christian, so I'm not involved. I never had the interest to go look for subtext and interpretative value.
I focus more on the credence level, I assign to the arguments Matt makes, rather than his influences or his self-assuredness. I am not saying these issues are not important, they certainly are, especially when you consider someone like Trump's influences and his professions of self-assuredness.
Matt describes knowledge as a subset of belief and knowledge is a belief that you assign a high credence level to. A belief, which, for you, would be 'world changing,' if it turned out not to be true.
Belief is then a proposition that you simply accept as true, regardless of supporting evidence.
My belief that there is no god has a personal credence level of 99.99%
That credence level results in me feeling Ignostic sometimes when a theist is explaining why they 'believe' or 'know' a god exists.
Quoting Tom Storm
I agree with your first sentence, I can't 'know' either, but I perceive (possibly incorrectly,) a difference in credence level when someone employs 'agnostic' instead of 'ignostic.' Agnostics will (normally reluctantly) assign a credence level to a particular theistic claim, if pestered enough, but I find it is usually higher than the 0.01%, someone wearing an atheist hat would.
So, I think agnostic atheist offers a little more hope to a theist of being able to 'convert you,' than using ignostic atheist. :lol: Perhaps agnosticism vs ignosticism is not that important, in the overall debate between theists and atheists.
That was my point. You have to buy into the basic legitimacy of Christianity in order for Pascal to be relevant. If Pascal's point was to get me to be a Christian, his argument will only work if I were already a Christian, so there's no value in his argument to those who don't already believe.
So you wouldn't believe in someone who told you to believe him/her if you don't wanna end up in a bad place? :chin:
Critical biblical scholarship, which is taught in most universities, and is likely something any formally trained minister is well versed in (although not preached from the pulpit) denies the divine authorship of scripture and questions the basic historicity of the accounts. It does not follow that because the accounts are not factually true or that they were not written by God that there is no role for those documents in the religious context or that the only rational solution is atheism. While there are some religions that declare war on the biblical scholars, that is not the only solution, meaning some fully accept the conclusions of that scholarship and accept the fact that OT was written by a multitude of authors over centuries and that the NT is hopelessly inconsistent in its claims about Jesus.
But to the specific question, if you want to know the broader truths of a certain passage, then you would need to identify the one you're asking about and the tradition that you wanted interpreted under and from there you can engage in the Bible study class you're asking about.
The hypothetical requires that (1) I believe in an inferno like hell, that (2) there is a belief system that can protect me from that, and that (3) there is no negative consequence to accepting that belief system. I don't believe in #1 and #2. If we are going to assume I believe in #1 and #2 to make this work, the we are already assuming I'm a Christian. If that's the case, then we've already accomplished our goal of trying to convince me to believe.
It does. See: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/332555/jewish/Maimonides-13-Principles-of-Faith.htm , particularly #3.
In understanding this, it also requires that any reference in the Hebrew Bible to human like characteristics of God (like if he speaks, breaths, etc.) must be understood in a metaphorical sense, even within the Orthodox judaism. That is, even at its strictist level, no Orthodox Jew is going to commit to an absolute literalism.
Pascal's wager is an analysis of a carrot-stick deal. If you don't believe, hell and if you do, heaven. If you don't believe in hell/heaven and the rest of the Christian doctrine, you should is Pascal's point mon ami.
I understand that, but my point is that I have no reason to believe that belief and acceptance of Jesus as my lord and savior will not be the cause of my burning in hell. Why are my odds increased and not decreased by my accepting Jesus? If I see absolutely nothing holy or special about believing in Jesus, then why should I expect any special reward for that belief any more than I should expect eternal rewards for liking chocolate and expect eternal damnation for liking ice cream?
If we start with the notion that Jesus is special, then you have no reason to offer me any sort of wager. I already believe. Of what value is this whole wager to someone who stands unconvinced that acceptance of Jesus will anymore help me than hurt me?
Pascal's wager is a protrepsis cum paranaesis tool. It works for proselytizing as well as to prevent apostasy. If you don't believe (in Christianity), you go to hell.
I see. They If they don't ask, don't tell them. So, what most Christians believe is not what their pastors believe. But is it then still the same God they both worship?
Quoting Hanover
IOW: Pick your cherry and ask an expert what varietal it is in his bailiwick.
[metaphor]This is what happens when you put all your vested eggs into one basket. Technology comes up with wooden flats, paper trays, styrofoam cartons, and by each change some of your eggs have passed their sell-by date, so you need to manufacture chocolate ones to replace them. Five minutes later, styrofoam goes out style and you look bad again.[/metaphor]
Sooo... By saying that what the authors wrote was what they meant (give or take a few errors in translation), I'm the one who is twisting and distorting their images of God. Because what they really meant - all of them, centuries apart - was to be so abstruse that only a few highly specialized scholars could decode it. I wonder what might be the underlying broader, deeper truth beyond Numbers or how Leviticus can be untwisted into something that doesn't resemble instructions for prescribed atonement.
Rather than jump through all these intellectual hoops, wouldn't it be easier to let go of the book as their basis for belief? It would, if an alternative, more reliable authority were available.
I recently read "Jesus Interrupted" by Bart Ehrman and he made the point many times that biblical criticism is taught at most seminaries and pastors are well aware of it, but it's not taught to the congregation, and he didn't have a good explanation for it. Ehrman was previously a fundamentalist who eventually went to Princeton, so he has a unique perspective.
The fundamentalist position is an impossible one to maintain, but it has very strong contemporary (but not historical) influence, especially in the US South.
Quoting Vera Mont
No, because you have thousands of years of analysis that has in fact led many to a more meaningful life. I understand that history could have been different and that we might all be holding Beowulf as a sacred text, and had that been the case and had our best and brightest spent those years deriving truths from it, then it would be the text tucked into the book holders in all the pews across the nation.
But this only matters if one holds the view that the Bible has special inherent significance that was not just the result of people having made it that way. That's a hard argument to make, which means you have to accept that the significance of the Bible comes from the significance people have placed upon it and that is what gives it value. The fact that its meaning has been modified over the years and differently by different traditions is a fact, but that fact doesn't make the book useless or insignificant. To hold otherwise would require that you either accept the fundamentalist's tenant that the Bible's value derives from its divine creation or that you throw the Bible out as an imposter. I think neither holds, but the answer lies in accepting the obvious fact that the Bible has been used for a particular purpose by people and it has been given significance by people and that is what makes it relevant.
His is certainly a Jewish perspective but Maimonides is a relative latecomer. He denies things that were fundamental parts of the ancestral religion, especially the parts about God's parts. The god(s) of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was a corporal god, the kind of god apologists are so quick to deny. Maimonides' god is an attempt to create a philosophically acceptable god.
For an early history of this flesh and blood Levanite god:
God: An Anatomy
Stavrakopoulou, Francesca
I concede that Judaism has changed dramatically over the years, and there are arguments to be made that early Judaism wasn't even monotheistic. Today's orthodoxy might well have been yesterday's heresy. In truth, the Judaism I subscribe to is very modern, and it resembles the ancient views in very few ways.
:up:
As Kant pointed out, personal experiences are the only evidence of ding an sich Reality that we humans have, from which to construct our worldviews and belief systems. Everything else is hearsay. Our supposedly objective Science is merely a conventional model of Reality agreed-to by others with similar motivations. Theistic beliefs may be motivated, in part, by the visceral need for emotional social bonding (group identification), and in part, by the ideals of purity, perfection & salvation . On the other hand, Atheistic beliefs may be motivated, in part, by the visceral rejection of sheep-like social bonding, and in part, by the intellectual need for ideal perfection found only in logic & mathematics. But both seem to need the comfortable feeling of Certainty & Predictability. So, they make a leap of faith, as a knee-jerk response to the pain of uncertainty.
On the other hand, Agnostics seem to be able to function under uncertainty -- to tolerate the pain. They are able to suspend both belief and unbelief, pending a stastical assessment of Bayesian probability. Is that a superior adaptation to the incomplete information & knowledge of the human condition? In a quote often attributed to Immanuel Kant: Someone's intelligence can be measured by the quantity of uncertainties that he can bear. I don't know if that assertion is true. But I can live with the uncertainty. :joke:
The virtues of uncertainty :
[i]A second type might be called the atheistically-inclined agnostics. Bertrand Russell was one. . . . Russell adopted his position for strictly philosophical reasons. He recognized that any purported proof for God's non-existence could never be completely convincing. So his atheistic inclinations had to do with intuitive feeling as well as pure logic. Together, they led him to live life as if the cosmos were godless.
In contradistinction to Russell's agnosticism is a third kind religiously-inclined agnosticism and it is this type, I think, that is the most interesting. Individuals who find themselves in this camp agree that the question of God is likely never to be settled. However, they nonetheless suspect that there's something at the heart of the religious way of life that can be of extraordinary value.[/i]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/apr/13/religion-philosophy-atheitsm-agnosticism
Agnostic belief embraces uncertainty :
In truth, agnosticism is less about belief in a god and more about knowledge, or lack thereof. Some agnostics will say they think there is a God, and others will say they do not, with the caveat, of course, that there is no evidence to support either of these thoughts. Theists and atheists hold a strong belief (or disbelief) in the existence of a higher power. The key difference is in how secure the person is in those beliefs an agnostic will recognize a realistic possibility that their beliefs are incorrect, whereas a theist or atheist generally will not.
https://www.themiamihurricane.com/2017/12/01/agnostic-belief-embraces-uncertainty/
Kantian Agnosticism :
Kant also proposed that because of our lack of information and tangible evidence, it is impossible to know whether or not God, or an afterlife, really exists. He put forward the sentiment that people are justified in believing in God, despite not being able to know of its existence.
https://www.orionphilosophy.com/stoic-blog/immanuel-kant-greatest-quotes
I know the argument, but such hearsay actually runs the world and our belief systems. How would governments, a military, corporations, social groups function without their articles of faith - documentations, texts, constitutions, preambles, amendments, treaties, books... ? Personal experience is never just a value free experience - in most cases people are primed by culture and the weight of conventions to see and experience in very particular ways.
Can you identify this reality that we all share that hasn't already been mediated, parsed and shaped by society and family expectations and cultural values?
Most atheists I've encountered these days say they are agnostic atheists - for reasons I described earlier. I think this makes sense. One claim goes to knowledge, the other goes to belief. It is entirely possible not to know if god exists but also to not hold a belief in any god/s.
I can offer one - the same one you did, below. The faithful are too dependent on their faith, whether it's simple and ignorant or learned and sophisticated: the minister has to address minds of every caliber and belief at every level in his mixed audience. In fact, those with simple, unquestioning faith are the most vulnerable and in need of protection from complexity. (Unfortunately, they are also the most exploitable and exploited by religious charlatans. )
Quoting Hanover
I wonder how that number would fare in the balance against lives ruined. It doesn't matter: individuals and communities, parishes and entire nations, have too much invested. All they can risk is gradual adaptation to modernity, minor adjustment to religious claims and demands.
Quoting Hanover
That's because it's uncompromising. They're not appealing to reason, but to something far more atavistic - the very roots of religiosity. People love crusades and circuses.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, I do realize this. Many of us take a third option: Read the text, make up your mind what the contents mean (both in the context of how, when and why it was written, and the purpose it serves now) then determine its place in your life, in your understanding of belief and history.
But we can't very well have presidents sworn into office, holding a copy of the Constitution....
Yes. I sometimes identify myself as an agnostic Deist. I have no direct experience of the putative deity of my theory, merely circumstantial evidence, sufficient for conviction of creation. But from what I've learned from Philosophy & Science -- especially Quantum & Information theories -- leads me to infer that some metaphysical (Potential) First Cause is necessary to explain the physical (Actual) existence of the world of our experience. Logic, not Faith.
A Big Bang (something from nothing) is no explanation, just a dramatic gap-filler. Several prominent scientists have reached the same conclusion, but avoid using the taboo term "god" as a conventional label for that preternatural causal force. The essential role of causal & meaningful Information in the world led me to the thesis of Enformationism. And the thesis pointed to the logical necessity of a Programmer to write the Program that is unfolding as the process of Evolution, "creating this immense and wonderful universe" *1.
Since my youthful experience of an austere religion was "mostly harmless", I never developed antipathy toward the almost universal cultural belief in an unseen power organizing the world. I have merely adopted the philosophical notion of an abstract impersonal Principle (energy + law) instead of the traditional prescientific humanoid entity to rule the world. Personally, I don't take the god-concept literally, but figuratively. An open-ended worldview is very modern (supercilious), but it leaves Ontological questions unanswered. To seek such universal general knowledge is what philosophers, and Deists *2, do, yet what pragmatic specific scientists avoid -- deeming Philosophy feckless. :smile:
*1. Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.
Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary biology, as cited in his autobiography.
Note -- A philosophical "First Cause", perhaps even the faceless-timeless-spaceless Creator of the Genesis myth, but not the tyrannical Lord of Judaism & Christianity. Toward the latter, I am indeed an Atheist. Darwin has been pictured as an Atheist by atheists. But, in his 'confessions" sounds more like an Agnostic or perhaps a Deist.
*2. " No atheist, Darwin deliberately avoided bashing religion. ... properly speaking, he was more deist than theist during this period."
https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk/news/darwins-religious-beliefs/
Confirmation of my criticism that your "Enformer / Programmer" = "intelligent designer" = "creator" = woo-of-the-gaps. :sparkle: :eyes:
Cocksure ballsups? :grin:
This is a great objection!
It seems like youre objecting to premise 1:
1. If there is no empirical evidence for something, then belief in that something is based on faith and personal beliefs, not fact.
2. There is currently no empirical evidence for the existence of a deity.
3. Therefore, the existence of a deity is based on faith and personal beliefs, not fact. (1,2 MP)
I agree with you that empirical evidence for the supernatural is a contradictory notion because the very act of sensing something makes it a natural phenomenon. However, it is important to consider the role of faith and personal belief when it comes to claims about the existence of a deity.
While it is true that belief in a deity can be based on faith and personal belief, we must recognize that such beliefs cannot be objectively verified or falsified. In other words, they are not based on empirical evidence but instead are based on subjective experience and interpretations. This raises the question: can subjective experiences be relied upon to make objective claims about the existence of a deity?
Furthermore, I think its important to differentiate between what can be considered objective fact and what can be considered subjective belief. While beliefs about the existence of a deity can be based on subjective experience and interpretation, we must recognize that subjective experiences cannot be relied upon as a means of verifying objective claims. This is because subjective experiences are, by definition, unique to each individual and cannot be independently verified or falsified.
For example, two people may have a subjective experience that they interpret as evidence of the existence of a deity, but these experiences may differ in significant ways. One person may interpret their experience as evidence of an all-good deity, while the other may interpret their experience as evidence of an all-bad deity. The fact that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of a deity does not necessarily mean that a deity does not exist. However, it does mean that belief in a deity cannot be considered a factual claim in the same way that, for example, the law of gravity can be considered a factual claim. That is, of course, unless a deity were to appear before us and become natural rather than supernatural.
That being said, I dont believe there being no empirical evidence for the existence of a deity necessarily concludes that a deity does not exist.
I'm totally happy with accepting this :)
This seems to agree with my first premise. I don't think empirical evidence is needed or available in all cases. However, there seems to be an important distinction between personal experiences.
We have various personal experiences in our lives. We daydream, we work, we play. Whatever we do, there are some experiences that stand out. For example, let's say I had a dream that I took out the trash. In a vacuum, that seems totally normal, and I have little reason to doubt that I didn't take out the trash. That entirely checks out with all of my other personal experiences. I take out the trash all the time. However, it becomes a moot belief upon waking up and realizing that everything that just happened wasn't real. I, too, could walk into the kitchen and see that the kitchen trash is still full. This reality, although potentially also fake, seems more real to me. It would be preposterous for me to hold still the belief that I took out the trash.
My claim, then, is that even when operating without empirical evidence, it still seems like we can apply probability to our experiences. The difficult torch to pick up becomes the claim that someone has a spiritual experience that presented itself in an unquestionable manner. Beyond the illusion of water on a hot summer day, one would have more confidence in their spiritual experience's legitimacy than in its falsity.
There is no problem with evidence. The entire universe is evidence. The question is; evidence for what? That is, it is our interpretation of the evidence that matters, not the existence of evidence.
Quoting Thund3r
It is often based on personal experience too.
Quoting Thund3r
What matters is the fact that there is existence. Existence is not a property of things. Things are properties of existence. Existence is not a property of God. Existence is God. Existence is that which is. All contingent/created things are properties of existence and are made out of existence.
Yes. That's the purpose of Bayesian Probability. In some scientific and philosophical investigations, the empirical evidence is frustratingly incomplete & inconclusive. So Bayes developed a statistical technique, to update the original plausibility of a conjecture as more information becomes available. Unfortunately, the essential uncertainty remains, so in the final analysis, we tend to fall in the direction in which we are leaning. :smile:
Bayesian probability is an interpretation of the concept of probability, in which, instead of frequency or propensity of some phenomenon, probability is interpreted as reasonable expectation representing a state of knowledge or as quantification of a personal belief.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Deus, sive Natura :up:
God and nature are not identical. Temporal Nature is a property of God. God/existence becomes.
So theists and deists, acosmists and pandeists belueve.
Is existence something that has properties? It is clear that things that exist have properties, but existence is not something that exists.
Again, here, the distinction of 'what exists' and 'what is' has to be discerned. 'Existence' pertains strictly to particular existents. The meaning of the term means 'is apart from' or 'is outside of'. The fact of being is more general , and so 'what is', is not necessarily synonymous with 'what exists'. In philosophical theology, this is the rationale behind for erxample Paul Tililch's insistence that God does not exist - that while God is, God is not 'an existent' which reduces God to a being, one being among others. See for elaboration God Does Not Exist, Bishop Pierre Whalon.
Here's where I depart from philosophical convention (tradition): anachronistic "what is" (or "to be") is merely a sentence fragment placeholder that does not say anything. I find Epicurus' void (or even Spinoza's substance) a more intelligible concept than "being" and that atoms (or modes, respectively) correspond to "beings" (i.e. things, events, facts) which exist in particular.
Existence, as I am using the term, is not a verb nor is it a property. It is the eternal positive, as opposed to nothingness, that is. It is what is there before 'creation'. See below-
Quoting Wayfarer
Different philosophers use 'being' and 'existence' interchangably which is woefully confusing. I see existence as the eternal positive. I see being as developed existence: something that is closer to life and activity, consciousness.
Assume X has the property 'existence'. In this respect we see X and existence as distinct entities. Now ask 'Does X exist?
1. X exists. This makes existence as a property of X superfluous whence X is existence.
2. X does not exist. It is incoherent to say as non existent X has properties. Whence existence has properties but is not a property of anything.
This is an example of how being and existence can be confused. I see existence as a primordial, eternal, positive. An analogy is a lump of lead representing existence; it is simply there. The lead can be reformed into the shape of a horse or an eagle; it becomes. The lead is existence, the horse is being, it is what is created.
In my opinion, this is not a convincing argument for the existence of God.
That leaves aside a whole class such as numbers, conventions, principles, universals, and related. the question as to the sense in which number exists is an entire topic in philosophy. What about possibilities? There is a 'realm of possibility' - what might happen - and while none of its inhabitants exist, they are real possibilities (as distinct from things which could never happen). Similarly there are logical possibilities which might never exist, but which are real in some sense.
You're venturing into fundamental metaphysics, but I don't know if trying to re-create it from scratch will be a fruitful undertaking.
There are journal papers which differentiate being, reality and existence. Also an Oxford University external studies course of the same name.
These things exist because they are properties of existence. A horse made of silver IS the silver that makes it. Created things exist because they are made from existence. All this is possible.
'The existent' and 'the uncreated' are different domains in classical metaphysics.
Lawrence Krauss published a book 10 years ago, A Universe from Nothing, which proposed to account for how fluctuations in quantum fields give rise to the Universe (hence the title!) It was subject to some pretty savage review, see here and here, which give some insight into the difficult metaphysics of these questions.
To argue there is an entity without fom or attribute, but who has the power to create, is to define a non-physical, propertyless powerful creator.
How isn't this theism?
Well, it is theism. Does existence/God have attributes even before creation comes into being? I don't know.
Quoting 180 Proof
Yes, properties of existence (contingent/created things) inherit their existence from existence/God. They are made out of existence.
There is something because there is nothing to prevent it???
Existence/God contains all possibilities. The real is what has been made real from this potential of possibilities.
The power of reason in our minds is God. All mind is ultimately God's Mind.
That's the claim, what's the evidence? Which make of god are you referring to, if any?
... and because "nothing" causes it to be.
Actuality consists of every possible way the world could have been and can be described. Actuality is the immanent, unbounded[/I] space of possibilities within which each instantiation of a possibility (i.e. each possible version of the world) is [i]necessarily contingent. Actuality is necessary contingency.
Mind-ing is what human brains do. Some mind-ing also reasons, occasionally exhibiting sufficient power to create knowledge. However, some mind-ing unreasons instead, dreaming "God creates human brains." (Buridan's Ass?)
Quoting Tom Storm
:up:
And devils.
When my son was young he used to blame "the little Santa".
I agree that it would be weak evidence in court, but at some level I find it convincing. Whether or not I take it as evidence for God, I do recognize it as something important that rationalism, or materialism, or whatever you call it misses.
You ignored my comment and just repeated what you wrote in your previous one. You're also commenting on a post I made a month ago. Let's just leave it at that.
Consider the following flipped argument:
1. If there is no empirical evidence for something, then belief in that something is based on faith and personal beliefs, not fact.
2. There is currently no empirical evidence for the non-existence of a deity.
3. Therefore, the belief in the non-existence of a deity is based on faith and personal beliefs, not fact. (1,2 MP)
This alternative argument suggests that both theism and atheism involve a degree of faith and personal beliefs, as neither position can be definitively proven or disproven with empirical evidence alone. The debate between theism and atheism often extends beyond empirical evidence and encompasses philosophical, logical, and experiential grounds.
Pascal's Wager automatically comes to my mind. It can be summarized as follows:
1. If you believe in God and God exists, you gain infinite happiness.
2. If you believe in God and God does not exist, you lose little or nothing.
3. If you do not believe in God and God exists, you face infinite loss.
4. If you do not believe in God and God does not exist, you gain little or nothing.
However, I know this can potentially have problems. While neither theists nor atheists can provide conclusive empirical evidence for their positions, I find the theistic arguments, such as the Cosmological Argument and the Teleological Argument, to be more convincing and coherent than their atheistic counterparts. In addition to these philosophical arguments, I think it's important to consider the limitations of human knowledge. There are many aspects of reality, such as higher dimensions or the nature of consciousness, that we are still struggling to understand. If a deity exists, it is likely to be a transcendent, complex, and powerful being that could potentially exist beyond the limits of human comprehension. Expecting to fully understand or grasp the nature of such a being using our current level of knowledge might be an unrealistic expectation.
The burden of proof on is on anyone who makes an extraordinary positive claim. There's no empirical evidence for the non-existence of Bigfoot or fairies either.
Quoting gevgala
Atheists like myself don't make claims about the non-existence of god. Our claim is that we have no good reason to accept the proposition - the arguments and evidence being unconvincing.
:100:
EnPassant, regarding the definitions you set forth; I'm not sure they're ones I could accept. It seems to conflate existence and being as properties and assumes that they are distinct entities.
From a naturalistic perspective, it seems that one could argue that existence is not a property, but a precondition for properties. In other words, for an object or concept to possess properties, it must first exist. Therefore, when we talk about X having the property of existence, it's not a property that X possesses, but rather, it describes the state of X.
Moreover, the distinction between being and existence seems to be based on a metaphysical assumption that is not universally accepted. Instead of assuming that being is developed existence, we could view them as synonymous, describing the same state of existence.
Quoting EnPassant
In response to the two above scenarios:
1. If X exists, then it's not that existence is a property of X; rather, X is in a state of existence, which allows it to have properties. This doesn't seem to imply that X is equivalent to existence itself.
2. If X does not exist, it indeed cannot have properties. However, this doesn't imply that existence has properties, but rather, that the discussion of properties for non-existent entities is irrelevant, which I would agree.
To me, these counterexamples and explanations seem to provide a robust alternative here.
How many human lifetimes would it to take to examine the evidence for the non-existence of all the things we have conceived of that don't exist?
Quoting gevgala
Then how is such an entity relevant to us, and why should we call it God?
How do you relate to something you can't comprehend?
Does it want us to eat meat or not? Does it want us to masturbate or not? Does it breathe souls into babies at conception or birth? Which day of the week does it want us to pray? Which is its favourite football team? What exactly are we supposed to believe about this deity?
Just that it exists?
Okay, maybe it exists. So what?
Thank you! I appreciate the alternative perspective and the flipped argument you presented. However, I'd like to address a few aspects of your argument and offer some clarifications.
This is largely echoing what Tom said, but I think it's important to note that the burden of proof typically lies with the one making a positive claim, in this case, the theist. It does seem true that neither theism nor atheism (as we know them) has sufficient evidence to warrant an end to the discussion. However, atheism is often seen as a rejection of the positive claim (i.e., the existence of a deity) due to insufficient evidence rather than making a claim in itself. In this sense, atheism does not necessarily rely on faith and personal beliefs, but rather a healthy dose of skepticism and a demand for evidence.
Regarding Pascal's Wager, it is indeed an interesting thought experiment, but I don't think it's without its flaws. In this case, it assumes a binary choice between belief and disbelief in a specific deity. This seems to neglect the multitude of religions and dieties that've surfaced through history. It seems that choosing to believe in one deity could lead to "infinite loss" if the true deity turns out to be another, for example.
As for the Cosmological and Teleological arguments, they do offer interesting perspectives on the origin of the universe and the apparent order within it. However, these arguments are not without their criticisms, either. For instance, the Cosmological Argument relies on the assumption that everything must have a cause, which we don't necessarily know to be true at the quantum level. It sounds crazy, but much of what was previously unknown to science sounded crazy as well.
Take, for example, ancient cultures and religious texts that said things to the effect:
"How can water fall from above? Ah, it must be an ocean above us held back by a dome. That's how we get rain."
While it's true that there are many aspects of reality that we are yet to fully understand, invoking a deity to explain these unknowns seems wrong (the "God of the gaps" fallacy). Historically, gaps in human knowledge have often been filled with supernatural explanations, only to be replaced by natural explanations as our understanding advances. I will accept that the existence of a deity might be possible. But relying on it as an explanation for the unknown might hinder our pursuit of knowledge and understanding.
Even if we assume everything must have a cause through our current understanding of nature (and ignore emerging quantum theories), it still seems like quite the stretch to posit a particular deity or religion. The Cosmological argument seems to advocate that the diety is exempt from laws of causation because it's necessary, but I don't see how the same couldn't be said about the cosmos itself. Additionally, the Teleological Argument has been challenged by the theory of evolution, which provides a natural explanation for the complexity and order we observe in living organisms.
These replies are grossly short considering the expanse of the topics, but hopefully it helps to continue the conversation :)
It seems like your view explained here might fall under the "God of the gaps" fallacy. If you don't mind sharing, I'm curious how someone could hold that stance.
If nothingness has a power to cause anything, it is not nothingness. Nothingness is not even there. 'It' is not even an it; 'it' is entirely absent.
So, when we say, "Nothing happened," that positive existence was taking place. Could we have perceived it?
Long story - short version. Many philosophers, including Kant and Lao Tzu, have recognized that the reality we live in is a function, not only of some so-called "objective reality," but also of aspects that are uniquely human, e.g. Kant wrote that concepts of time and space are not inherent in reality, but are an overlay created by the human mind. I think religions recognize that fundamental humanity of reality in a way that rationality and science don't and can't.
To be clear, this is a metaphysical position, not a factual one, but I think it is more useful, less misleading, than rationalists standard metaphysical views.
It? What?