The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge & shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

quote:

---

could bunnies be created by evolutionary accident ... or is there a plan?

---

quote:

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What would you consider proof?

---

I don't really expect anyone to prove it. Just facetiously carrying over from the last thread.

quote:

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could bunnies be created by evolutionary accident ... or is there a plan?

---

Evolutionary theory says they can, if given enough time and enough opportunities. If you toss a deck of cards in the air, the probability that they'll land in such as way as to spell out the word "God" is pretty slim. However, if you had millions of years to keep throwing the deck in the air, eventually it would happen. Add a few driving forces, and it happens even sooner.

It certainly doesn't seem intuitive to us to think that a deck of cards could spell out "God" without some divine help, and if one happened to be there the time it happened they might believe they were witnessing a true miracle, but it's really just very large numbers in operation.

quote:

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I don't really expect anyone to prove it. Just facetiously carrying over from the last thread.

---

quote:

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could bunnies be created by evolutionary accident ... or is there a plan?

---

"Let the shitstorm continue!"

Roman Preacher (roughly):
"You may have made sacrifice to Jupiter, but it is not enough! You may have bowed before Minerva, but it is not enough! You may have appeased and sacrificed before all every one of the gods, but it is not enough! Because for the 10,000 gods we do know, there are 20,000 gods we do not know!"

quote:

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Yeah, the universe, with trillions and trillions of stars, spanning billions of light-years, was created 6 billion years ago so you could watch a bunny rabbit play with a little ball in a pub.

---

i think cynic is being bunny-ist. is that against babble policy?

quote:

---

Roman Preacher (roughly):
"You may have made sacrifice to Jupiter, but it is not enough! You may have bowed before Minerva, but it is not enough! You may have appeased and sacrificed before all every one of the gods, but it is not enough! Because for the 10,000 gods we do know, there are 20,000 gods we do not know!"

---

Hee hee heeeeeeee!

Reading this thread, after having worked through the first one (and I think Wingy was right: we did good there; no flame wars), reminds me of a different quotation (and Magoo, this is especially for you):

quote:

---

Yeah, the universe, with trillions and trillions of stars, spanning billions of light-years, was created 6 billion years ago so you could watch a bunny rabbit play with a little ball in a pub.

---

quote:

---

Flog him at once.

---

quote:

---

Whenever life get you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough.
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you've had quite enu-hu-hu-huuuuff!
Just - re-member that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
and revolving at 900 miles an hour,
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
the sun that is the source of all our power.
The Sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
of the Galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our Galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars,
it's 100,000 light-years side-to-side,
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light-years thick,
but out by us it's just 3000 light-years wide.
We're 30,000 light-years from galactic central point,
we go round every 200 million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
in this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
in all of the directions it can whizz,
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know,
twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
how amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
because there's bugger all down here on Earth.

---

Nasty/McQuickly

[ 18 September 2003: Message edited by: ronb ]

quote:

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Flog him at once.

---

I don't think that this qualifies me for status as an athiest, but I definitely don't believe in God as it/he's presented to us by most major religions.

I think any and all attempts to "prove" the existence or non-existence of God are futile and arrogant. The whole deal with God, as I understand it, is that he's beyond our reckoning as lowly, earth dwelling humans. And it's not even like we'll ever find proof, so it's just stupid to argue in circles about it.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lima Bean:
I don't think you can use the universe as proof of the existence of a sociopsychoanthropoligical construct of the inhabitants of one planet in said universe.

How hubristic...

---

quote:

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If you can present some accurate and reliable pre-big bang data, I would be glad to reconsider the theory of spontaneous deity-driven creation.

---

Now, I have heard numerous descriptions of Gawd, and it seems to me that what Gawd is depends upon the individual. It's a deeply personal thing. So, for the individual who has a concept of Gawd, whatever that concept may be, Gawd clearly exists.

Me, I have no concept of anything recognizably Gawd-like, the universe is so magnificently wonderous and amazing to me that it just blows any Gawd-concept I've ever heard of out of the water. In fact, any Gawd-concept than can be confined linguistically is too limited for my universe.

quote:

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Originally posted by HeywoodFloyd:
Whenever I think of Audra, I remember the brilliant computer game "Leather Goddess of Mars".

---

I do love the Hopkins poem, though.

edit to add: An interview with God.

quote:

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So. God. Whats the most important thing to you?
Certainly not my wife, anyway! Probably faith. Faith is where I draw my power from, so its kinda important. Its why I refuse to prove I exist- for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.

But isnt this interview a dead giveaway?
Oh. I hadn't thought of that. [At this point God disappears in a puff of logic.]

---

[ 19 September 2003: Message edited by: swallow ]

[ 23 September 2003: Message edited by: Youngfox. ]

quote:

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"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing.
Douglas

---

QED indeed!

[ 19 September 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

quote:

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I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in *trouble*."

"But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg.

"That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em."

---

Ummm... I think I am, therefore....mmm..

Well, I thought I was onto something there, but never mind.

quote:

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Originally posted by cynic:
(1st commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before me).

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
........all I know is that the religious community has had about ten thousand years in wich to accumulate and present thier evidence, and all they've managed to amass is bupkiss, some sweet f.a., and a truck load of dick all.

---

quote:

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There is no proof, that is the point. It is a matter of faith- beleiving in it even if it cannot be conclusively proven.

---

quote:

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From the incomparable Douglas Adams...

---

But my dear fellow. You leave out the next part of the passage, which is (approximately) "Most leading theologians believe this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Celluphid [sp?] using it as the central argument in his massive best-seller Well, That About Wraps It Up For God."

quote:

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If there is a Gawd I wish he would make some good quality weed more readily available in the apparently Gawd-foresaken GTA. Praise whatever!

---

quote:

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Ahh Oolon Colluphid. What about his trilogy of philosophical blockbusters - Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?

---

Well, but I still think he was the Deepak Chopra of his sector of the galaxy -- full of empty "profundities."

Incidentally, that passage above puzzled me mightily when I first read it, because Adams said not "pedestrian crossing," but "zebra crossing." Though I could maybe have guessed from context, I didn't know till some time later what that actually was.

Though I guess the sentence would work with a literal zebra crossing...

[ 19 September 2003: Message edited by: 'lance ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:

I would think that just about any post-big bang data should do just as well, provided it's over 6,000 years old (or whenever the Bible says the world was created). A 10,000 year old fossil should suffice, or any planet, or most space junk, or...

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Gir Draxon:
[QB]There is no proof, that is the point. It is a matter of faith- beleiving in it even if it cannot be conclusively proven.

---

There is something here. However, if I may muddy the waters, St. Paul would have seen your proposition as a false dichotomy:

In Hebrews 11:1 we get the classic Pauline definition of faith which is usually rendered as something like: "Faith
is the substance of things hoped for. It is the evidence of things not seen."

Here faith is a kind of evidence, though not the evidence of the usual senses on which the scientific paradigm is constructed - the paradigm of 'proof' being called for by most of us here. Do we have other senses capable of 'knowing'? That's another question, I suppose...

[ 20 September 2003: Message edited by: Courage ]

[ 21 September 2003: Message edited by: Mohamad Khan ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by DrConway:
Faith requires the a priori acceptance of the existence of the thing you are being asked to verify (i.e. being required to accept, in advance, the conclusion) rather than being able to gather data that supports the conclusion.

---

This is what we call "circular" reasoning.

A science analog of this would be to design an experiment, designed to prove that F = ma (force is mass times acceleration), not by comparing calculated forces with measured forces in some fashion (either by utilizing a special case of F = mg for the acceleration due to gravity, which can be used to show the more general case), but by directly using the equation first prior to getting the experimental data.

Immanence is evidence. It is not a two-step operation.

an excellent read...here

quote:

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The “seed of life” – what we now call DNA – was brought into our solar system by the invader (Nibiru in Sumerian, Marduk to the Babylonians) and was transmitted to Earth during the collision with Tiamat (of which Earth is the remnant).

---

Oh geez that's compelling! Of course there is no reason to believe it at all...but then again, there is no reason to believe that a giant penis can see everything everyone does, and makes notes which are engraved on teensy-weensy flowers which bloom semiannually.

So I just can't choose which is the superior of these two theories!

but for folks who do believe in an unlimited God, what i wonder is, how can you believe this without being atheists?

quote:

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So I'll stick with evolution.

---

I know nothing of these people except that their cites check out and it’s a good summary of some of the problems geneticists and evolutionary biologists are having with the fossil record. As I understand it, Stephen Gould’s ‘Punctuated Equilibrium’ was in response to the fact that the fossil record has come up short in offering evidence of evolution. I’ve also read that some geneticists and bio-guys have a problem with PE...”it “also isn’t clicking with the evidence, say some." But I’m a lay person.

It seems The Theory of Evolution is still the over-whelming fav for most experts, but there may be some head-scratching going on, if I’m reading things right, which I may not be. If species evolved, from one to the next, where are the bones? There’s lotsa bones, but much, almost all actually, of the fossil record seems to suggest that most species just appear from nowhere with an unlikely connection to any previous species.

I don’t know if these doubters are crackpots or not, they don’t appear to be...seems some seriously credentialed experts are writing similar stuff. Scientists being scientists.

I recall a PBS program some years ago on the subject of the Big Bang, origins of the universe and all that. What stood out for me was that these experts – the particle/astro physicists, etc, – all believed in some ‘higher power’. Many were even, loosely speaking, religious in that they affiliated with a church in some way. Several mentioned that whatever you make of the life of the universe or the Big Bang, none if it answers the obvious next question of: ‘What was there before the Big Bang’?...and who dunnit? That’s how they got to their ‘higher power’ position. It’s perfectly logical. Say we can explain totally and completely everything except how it started. Not very satisfying...short on answers.

quote:

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In the end when it comes to either God or evolution the truth is we just don't know.

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What does that mean? Here are your choices: A pre-historic myth, or hard evidence leading to a conclusion? I don't buy that. How does superstitious mumbo-jumbo gain this status?

We could also then say that either the earth's climate is changing because of increased atmospheric carbon, or because of Santa Claus, or because of Celine Dion's Vegas show, we just don't know.

quote:

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If species evolved, from one to the next, where are the bones? There’s lotsa bones, but much, almost all actually, of the fossil record seems to suggest that most species just appear from nowhere with an unlikely connection to any previous species.

---

Not at all. Read "the Panda's Thumb", and it gives good answers to that.

Remember too that the formation of fossils isn't easy. Geologically speaking, it is pretty astounding that anything is preserved at all. Think of the unimaginable time frames involved, erosion, metamorphisis, and the fact that we can only see what is at the surface (we can't dig for fossils in rock layers 2000 feet under us, for example) then the sample size is really quite underrepresented. The amazing thing is that even with what evidence available, a clear pattern of change in species over time is present in all life forms everywhere.

quote:

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if God is limitless, how can She be limited to existence? how can He be limited, indeed, to unlimitedness?

---

quote:

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Can God create a doughnut so big even He could not eat it?

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quote:

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What does that mean? Here are your choices: A pre-historic myth, or hard evidence leading to a conclusion? I don't buy that. How does superstitious mumbo-jumbo gain this status?

We could also then say that either the earth's climate is changing because of increased atmospheric carbon, or because of Santa Claus, or because of Celine Dion's Vegas show, we just don't know.

---

Sorry, jingles, but being disrespectful gets you nowhere. "Hard evidence"? What hard evidence? Show me the hard evidence? Maybe you have the missing link under yoru bed hiding it from scientists.

Blind adherance to an unproven scientific theory is as childish and stupid as a blind adherance to the concept of God.

So many so-called rational people who believe in "reason" so unreasonable as to a) discount any other possibilty and b) as doctrinaire as any evangelist over theories unproven.

quote:

---

Originally posted by DrConway:
[QB]Faith requires me to accept the validity of a conclusion in advance of having arrived at it.

---

I don't think so. I think that all it asks is that you have the tendency to believe that there is the possibility of a certain conclusion and finality. If there were conclusiveness to 'faith' there would be no need for it.

To me, 'science' is also of this catagory: a tendency to believe in the possibility of origins and finalities.

[ 22 September 2003: Message edited by: Courage ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by DrConway:
It's not my job to believe in God first so he/she/it will deign to prove to me that he/she/it exists, skdadl.

---

quote:

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Maybe you have the missing link under yoru bed hiding it from scientists.

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I did, but he left to run as a Canadian Alliance candidate.

What's disrespectful? I don't consider according a belief in God any more respect than a belief in anal-probing aliens. They have equal amounts of validity as far as I am concerned.

quote:

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Blind adherance to an unproven scientific theory is as childish and stupid as a blind adherance to the concept of God.

---

I totally agree. There is a big difference between the two, as you pointed out. One is designed to allow disproval. As a matter of fact, I think the whole field of Astronomy is a colossul load of crap. But when it comes to right here on the immediately observable earth, it's hard to discount what happens right in front of your face, which evolution does. As far as discounting possibilities, you gotta pick and choose. And I'm afraid that one has to limit one's choices to the observable otherwise your possibilities must include any incredible flight of imagination that strikes your fancy.

Oh, and the missing link is one of the fantasy creatures dreamed up by creationists so they can say "where is the missing link? Since we don't have a missing link, all theories of evolution are bunk".

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jingles:
And I'm afraid that one has to limit one's choices to the observable otherwise your possibilities must include any incredible flight of imagination that strikes your fancy.

---

The question is: observable how?

quote:

---

it's hard to discount what happens right in front of your face, which evolution does

---

E.T. and God - by Paul Davies

quote:

---

Many scientists believe that life is not a freakish phenomenon (the odds of life's starting by chance, the British cosmologist Fred Hoyle once suggested, are comparable to the odds of a whirlwind's blowing through a junkyard and assembling a functioning Boeing 747) but instead is written into the laws of nature. "The universe must in some sense have known we were coming," the physicist Freeman Dyson famously observed. No one can say precisely in what sense the universe might be pregnant with life, or how the general expectancy Dyson spoke of might translate into specific physical processes at the molecular level. Perhaps matter and energy always get fast-tracked along the road to life by what's often called "self-organization." Or perhaps the power of Darwinian evolution is somehow harnessed at a pre-biotic molecular stage. Or maybe some efficient and as yet unidentified physical process (quantum mechanics?) sets the gears in motion, with organic life as we know it taking over the essential machinery at a later stage. Under any of these scenarios life becomes a fundamental rather than an incidental product of nature. In 1994, reflecting on this same point, another Nobel laureate, the Belgian biochemist Christian de Duve, wrote, "I view this universe not as a 'cosmic joke,' but as a meaningful entity—made in such a way as to generate life and mind, bound to give birth to thinking beings able to discern truth, apprehend beauty, feel love, yearn after goodness, define evil, experience mystery."

Absent from these accounts is any mention of miracles. Ascribing the origin of life to a divine miracle not only is anathema to scientists but also is theologically suspect. The term "God of the gaps" was coined to deride the notion that God can be invoked as an explanation whenever scientists have gaps in their understanding. The trouble with invoking God in this way is that as science advances, the gaps close, and God gets progressively squeezed out of the story of nature. Theologians long ago accepted that they would forever be fighting a rearguard battle if they tried to challenge science on its own ground. Using the formation of life to prove the existence of God is a tactic that risks instant demolition should someone succeed in making life in a test tube. And the idea that God acts in fits and starts, moving atoms around on odd occasions in competition with natural forces, is a decidedly uninspiring image of the Grand Architect.

---

[ 22 September 2003: Message edited by: Michelle ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff house:
Oh geez that's compelling! Of course there is no reason to believe it at all...but then again, there is no reason to believe that a giant penis can see everything everyone does, and makes notes which are engraved on teensy-weensy flowers which bloom semiannually.

---

Someone on an earlier thread spoke simply of the numinous, a word I would prefer for my own faith. I certainly have no trouble at all accepting the broad outlines of evolution theory at the same time, primitive though that branch of science still seems to me.

quote:

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I find it puzzling that so many people think of belief in evolution as excluding any other kind of understanding.

---

quote:

---

Someone is walking along the beach with the Lord and notices that sometimes there are two sets of footprints; sometimes there is only one set of footprints. Now these visions of feet in the sand come when the lightening flashes and there is a sequence of remembered events from this persons life. Disturbed, finally this person says, “Lord, you promise that when I accept your love, when I turn my life over to you, that you will always walk with me. I can see that many times in my life that there were two sets of footsteps and I knew that you were there with me. But there were times that there was only one set of footsteps and Lord, I can’t understand why you would desert me in my most needful times, the most dark and troubling times of my life.” The response of faith says, “I didn’t desert you, it was then that I was carrying you.”

---

i've always viewed religion as something that people need, that gives some structure, something to hold onto, in life.

quote:

---

You have observed this? Wow!!!!
I read recently where scientists witnessed what they called an evolutionary change among some sort of insect. They were ecstatic as they said no one actually witnessed an evoltionary change before. But apparently they haven't met you and your face where it happens every day.
And the missing link is an invention of creationsists is it? Then you can draw for us a line of human evolution? Excellent. Let's see it.

---

Wingnut, you're just arguing from ignorance here, I'm afraid. There is more evidence converging on some sort of evolutionary modification of life-forms from an initial (probable) abiotic state than for almost any other theories in science, exlcuding, perhaps, quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Evolutionary change is one of the banes of my existence. True, I don't see it every day, but would a couple of times a year do?

Since I have to maintain clonal cells lines and insure their consistency of response, imagine my dismay when, at least twice a year, I find that without obvious selection pressure conciously applied by me, I get sub-populations that have to be discarded because of presistent mutations (i.e. "evolution").

It usually becomes a person to learn something about a field of study before dismissing it contemptuously. Why don't you read a little about observed speciation events before heaping derision on those who might know a little bit about it?

This is the attitude that makes people in science so hostile to religious fundementalists.

Of course no one with an ounce of intellectual legitimacy talks about a "missing link" because the termn cannot be defined in any useful way. How woould you answer the question: what is the "missing link" between 2 and 3? 2.5? and between 2.5 and 3? 2.70000005?

We can go on infinitely. Why don't you look at this list of known hominids (some controversial ones are missing) and explain why it does not comprise a reasonable possible list of "transitory" forms. (Listed in order of age from about 6 500 000 yrs. BC)

Sahelanthropus tchadensis
Ardipithecus ramidus
Australopithecus anamensis
Australopithecus afarensis
Kenyanthropus platyops
Australopithecus africanus
Australopithecus garhi
Australopithecus aethiopicus
Australopithecus robustus
Australopithecus boisei
Homo habilis
Homo georgicus
Homo erectus
Homo ergaster
Homo antecessor
Homo sapiens (archaic) (also Homo heidelbergensis)
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (also Homo neanderthalensis)
Homo sapiens sapiens (modern)

quote:

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My intellectual problem is not with evolution but with people who draw strictly materialist conclusions from it. To me, materialism is a reactionary dead-end,

---

No argument here. I would normally be gearing up for a spirited defence of materialism at this point , except that I have come across the first intelligent and rather difficult challenge to it that I have seen. Worse yet, it's coming from a person whom:

a) I admire intellectually

b) Is not scientifically naive

c) I though (wrongly) was a fellow materialist

I have turned in my membership to the Church of Chomsky until I can recover from this terrible blow
.

BTW, none of this bears on whethere there is a God or not.

[ 22 September 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

quote:

---

it saddens me to see so many intelligent people still in thrall to Whiggish conceptions of history. (Yes, I think that Karl Marx was still in thrall to Whiggish conceptions of history.)

---

Actually, despite the constant references to scientific socialism, Marx's basic concept of the dialectic comes from religion. There was a theoretician in the late middle ages who developed the idea of thesis/antithesis/synthesis which, in a somewhat less crude way, reappeared in Hegel and in the left Hegelians such as Marx was.
------
"Whig history", though, is a term of abuse pioneered by the British historian Herbert Butterfield in the 1930's. But it does not really refer to those who believe in the triumph of Communism upon the earth. It refers to the views and thinking of the English Whigs, who thought that all history was directed towards the triumph of English institutions of their own making:

quote:

---

They allowed their interpretation of the past to be coloured by their own political views and what they saw as the political needs of their own times.

This led to them making arrogant assumptions about the direction history was taking. They applauded the British system of liberal parliamentary democracy, and assumed that the goal of history was to perfect it.

So, Whig historians were likely to see the past progressing in a reasonably straight line towards parliamentary democracy. There are two main problems with this. In the first place, it tends to encourage historians to look for, and then to over-emphasise, similarities between past and present, and so to tumble into anachronism. In the second place, Whig historians were prone to categorising their historical characters as those who favoured progress (the winners) and those (the losers) who did not.

Identifying winners and losers is a sure step on the road to making moral judgements about people in the past.
......

In practice, then, issues raised by Whig history remain central to debates about the nature and purpose of history. Butterfield was right to point out the dangers of glorifying and distorting the past to uphold a particular view of the present, and many would agree that the objectivity he demanded is central to all ‘good history’. Others might question how far objectivity is, in practice, attainable, and point to the way in which Butterfield’s own prejudices shaped his demands.

---

http://www.history-ontheweb.co.uk/concepts/whighistory53.htm

quote:

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This led to them making arrogant assumptions about the direction history was taking.

---

This is also a big problem with the evolutionarily semi-literate who take it as "natural law" that humans are the pinnacle (never a run-down way-station, mind) of evolution. "Social Darwinism" is, of course, among the more repellent (and hostile to the spirit of evolutionary theory ) manifestations of this impulse.

Bertrand Russell wisely cautions us:

quote:

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Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoan to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoan, who gives us this assurance.

---

[ 22 September 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

quote:

---

The Russian cytologist Karpchenko (1927, 1928) crossed the radish, Raphanus sativus, with the cabbage, Brassica oleracea. Despite the fact that the plants were in different genera, he got a sterile hybrid. Some unreduced gametes were formed in the hybrids. This allowed for the production of seed. Plants grown from the seeds were interfertile with each other. They were not interfertile with either parental species. Unfortunately the new plant (genus Raphanobrassica) had the foliage of a radish and the root of a cabbage.

---

(Emphasis added)

Reminds me of a (probably apocryphal) story about GB Shaw and the English actress, Mrs. Patrick Campbell (Beatrice Stella Tanner):

quote:

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An attractive British actress once approached George Bernard Shaw, saying, “With your brains and my looks, our children would be divine." Shaw retorted: "Yes. But what if they end up with your brains and my looks?"

---

[ 22 September 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

quote:

---

No argument here. I would normally be gearing up for a spirited defence of materialism at this point , except that I have come across the first intelligent and rather difficult challenge to it that I have seen. Worse yet, it's coming from a person whom:

a) I admire intellectually

b) Is not scientifically naive

c) I though (wrongly) was a fellow materialist

---

quote:

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Wingnut, you're just arguing from ignorance here, I'm afraid.

---

My entire purpose in this thread is to establish that so many of those who say they do not believe in God employ the very same ignorance, arrogance, and self-assuredness that characterizes those who so strongly believe in God they dismiss out of hand creationist theory.

Whatever evidence you have, you cannot prove humans descended from anything. I can look at the path of a vehicle and say it came from down that road but I don't know for sue if it turned on to its current path or was placed down by a helicopter.

Likewise, those who are so dismissive, or arguing out if ignorance in your words, have no real knowledge if their is a God or not.

I have not argued anyone must believe in God. I don't. All as I have argued is respect for other views and an open mind. And weirdly, that seems so hard to acquire from those who make aq claim to the scientific method.

quote:

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Whatever evidence you have, you cannot prove humans descended from anything.

---

I don't support the strong atheist position.

But as I said before I personally have sympathy for the position that says if you're positing the existence of something for which no phenomena exists that can't be explained by not invoking the existence of the thing your positing, then the burden of proof is on you.
I don't support atheism because it actively posits the non-existence of God, which is foolish philosophy in my opinion (can't prove a negative) and because we have to define to each theist's satisfaction the God we're saying does not exist. If I define God as an immanent, omnipotent intelligence, imperceptible to humans except through the workings of the natural world, you as an atheist have no basis upon which to mount an argument against me.

So, let's leave God and turn to evolution.

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Whatever evidence you have, you cannot prove humans descended from anything. I can look at the path of a vehicle and say it came from down that road but I don't know for sue if it turned on to its current path or was placed down by a helicopter.

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No, you're right. I can't prove much of anything. I can't prove that the moon isn't made of green cheese. I can't prove that George W. Bush isn't just a digitally-created personnage for which there is no corresponding flesh-and-blood human. I can't prove that the whole universe wasn't created yesterday, us complete with implanted memories and a sense of temporality.

All I can do is use my senses, my brain, my memories and rules of inference and apply them to the evidence at hand. Take your car example. If I retrace its route, I might fing a spot on the road where dust and sand or grass has been disturbed in the way that is characteristic of helicopter rotor wind. I might find tire indents in soft earth or short skid marks on the highway the indicate that the car was dropped a short distance or had a rough landing. I might observe the license plate and ask a cop friend to run it for me... You get the idea.
I can't prove that God didn't breathe on some dirt to make the first man, but I can show that there is no evidence of campfire making, stone tools or any artifacts we associate with intelligent hominids in geologic strata before let's say 2 million years ago and although we see fossils of many sorts, there is nothing mammalian before about 150 million years ago. Changes in the early atmosphere, like increasing oxygen (inferred in part from ice core sample and geochemical analyses) correlates with the emergence of phtosynthetis palnts. In all cases, the admittedly inferred geology, chemistry, biology and paleontology all converge on a relatively uniform picture.

The organization of genetic material of virtually every studied organism currently on the planet shows interrelationships and differences that can only be systematically explained, and testably accurate predictions made when it is considered to have reached its present disposition by means of an evolutionary process driven largely by a process of natural selection. Antibiotic resistance, genetic counselling, genetic modification of organisms, regardless of the moral implications, are possible because of the explanatory power of evolutionary and molecular biology.

So, yes, you can play sophomoric games of the "you can't prove you exist" type. You'd win. I'm no match for obstinate radical scepticism: I admit it, I can't prove anything.

But from my limbo of unverified possible non-existence, I'd prefer to discuss things with people who value evidence over assertion.

As a rejoinder to Aristotle (with whom I agree on this point): Once you've entertained a thought and it's drunk all the beer, pissed on your carpet, and scratched your CDs, send the fucker packing and don't invite it back!

Edited to add:

Courage, you wrote:

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Do tell. What's the nature of the challenge, Sisyphus? As you know from some other discussions we have had, I count myself as a kind of materialist, though I leave open room for explaining the 'supernatural' and other spiritual-religious experiences and phenomena as forms of materiality - energy movement, if you will. I would be curious to know what has shaken your tree..

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Chomsky's a pretty good philosopher for a linguist and a psychologist and a political historian/theorist, so I'm just scratching the surface right now.(I've just renewed the books).

So far, his main quibble in a nutshell is the lack of a precise definition of "material": quantum mechanics, Newton's "force at a distance" etc. which upset Descartes intuitively appealing definition in the mind-body context, which is the context (think "language organ") that interests Chomsky epistemologically. I've got to re-read some of the articles with a pen and take notes. I want to start a thread, if only to see if I can faithfully follow the arguments. The book that got me into this is part of a series called Philosophers and Their Critics. Each chapter is an essay by a critic and Chomsky's responses to each chapter are collected at the end. It's tough going, but I'm starting to think about these things at a whole new level, which is the point, right?

[ 22 September 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

[ 23 September 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

Anyway,

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I restate my questions. What do you consider evidence? How do you justify your standard of evidence?

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Hmm, if you've asked me this before, then I probably answered that the onus of proof is on the one making the claim.

I make no claims on the existance/non-existance of gods or god.

As for the standard of evidence, let me say this about that: Devine claims require devine evidence.

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But as I said before I personally have sympathy for the position that says if you're positing the existence of something for which no phenomena exists that can't be explained by not invoking the existence of the thing your positing, then the burden of proof is on you.
I don't support atheism because it actively posits the non-existence of God, which is foolish philosophy in my opinion (can't prove a negative) and because we have to define to each theist's satisfaction the God we're saying does not exist. If I define God as an immanent, omnipotent intelligence, imperceptible to humans except through the workings of the natural world, you as an atheist have no basis upon which to mount an argument against me.

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You say I am an atheist. On what grounds? I have said previously I am not an atheist. I have also said I don't believe in God. I also don't believe in aliens. But I accept either is a possibility. For me to be an atheist I would have to be certain God doesn't exist. I am not and never said I was.

In fact, I have argued exactly your point that atheism "actively posits the non-existence of God."

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So, yes, you can play sophomoric games of the "you can't prove you exist" type. You'd win. I'm no match for obstinate radical scepticism: I admit it, I can't prove anything.

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But from my limbo of unverified possible non-existence, I'd prefer to discuss things with people who value evidence over assertion.

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You say I am an atheist.

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Actually, I didn't mean you, Wingnut, specifically, I was casting you "f'rinstance" in the role of atheist to make my point. My lack of clarity.

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On the contrary, Sisyphus, you have no argument to mount against me. Of course, if you read more of what I have been posting here rather than jumping in to the middle to confront me, you would know that.

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Actually, I've mounted my argument to which you have failed to respond. No worries.

Just to make the purposes of my posts to you clear: I've never been interested in the God/No God thing.

You blithely dismissed Jingles' support of evolutionary theory on the "nobody has a monopoly on the truth" basis. I admit the lack of monopoly, I'm just saying that some are part of the collective and some are in the next county, wondering what's for dinner.

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My point is and always has been that neither side of the question has a monopoly on truth. If that is too sophomoric for you, too bad.

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It's the refusal to address evidence that's sophomoric. And by the way, where have I ever claimed to have "The Truth"?

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And I woulod prefer to discuss with people who are not assholes. But we all have our crosses to bear, don't we?

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
Sorry for the less than timely response, Pax, but I was away getting my consciousness altered in the middle of no where on the weekend.

Anyway,

Hmm, if you've asked me this before, then I probably answered that the onus of proof is on the one making the claim.

I make no claims on the existance/non-existance of gods or god.

As for the standard of evidence, let me say this about that: Devine claims require devine evidence.

Good huntin'.

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Devine evidence? I guess we'll be hunting for overweight butch drag trannies, then...

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Actually, I didn't mean you, Wingnut, specifically, I was casting you "f'rinstance" in the role of atheist to make my point. My lack of clarity.

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Then on that we agree.

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Actually, I've mounted my argument to which you have failed to respond. No worries.

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I will deal with later.

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Just to make the purposes of my posts to you clear: I've never been interested in the God/No God thing.

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Neither have I, really.

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You blithely dismissed Jingles' support of evolutionary theory on the "nobody has a monopoly on the truth" basis. I admit the lack of monopoly,

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It's the refusal to address evidence that's sophomoric. And by the way, where have I ever claimed to have "The Truth"?

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I have not argued anyone must believe in God. I don't. All as I have argued is respect for other views and an open mind. And weirdly, that seems so hard to acquire from those who make aq claim to the scientific method.

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Who was it that said don't open your mind so far your brains fall out?

You haven't established just why we should respect these "other views", and in particular, why we(I) should respect a belief in a god over any other fantasy someone might dream up? Or what you mean, exactly, by "respect"? Should we just say that all ideas, no matter how crackpot, bigotted, or just plain stupid they may be, are all equally valid? Does that include those who believe, for example, that interracial marriage should be outlawed because it will dilute the purity of the white race? The least one could do would be to ridicule shit like that.

So both Fundamentalist Believers, whether in imaginary friends or in the scientific method are dogmatic in their claims to know the truth? It is strange though when someone in admitting that they don't know the Truth, or indeed that the truth may be unknowable, is accused of being a slavish, unthinking Fundamentalist. Whatever.

We have 5 senses and overly large brains*. We can use them to try and understand, or we can shut them all off and follow every pixie and leprechaun that dances under the toadstool.

*ahem

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My entire argument has been just on the issue that no one has a monopoly on truth and therefore, although it might contradict what we believe to be true, we must at least excercise a tolerance for what others believe.

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My entire purpose in this thread is to establish that so many of those who say they do not believe in God employ the very same ignorance, arrogance, and self-assuredness that characterizes those who so strongly believe in God they dismiss out of hand creationist theory

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When I was training to be a camp counceller at a Christian camp, we would be assigned groups and have late-night discussions during our canoe trips. One of the topics was Creationism vs. Evoloution. Obviously in a training camp for a Christian camp, most of the leaders in training were making arguments for creationism. I didn't mind. they had a lot of good points that they made very clear and understandable. There was one person however who was starting to get me angry because I felt that he made no valid argument for creationism. his argument was as follows:
"Evoloution is a crock! It would never happen in a million years! (I tried not to laugh at that.....) It's just like saying that the boogey-man exists or the tooth-fairy! It couldn't have happened! It's just too far-fetched and stupid!"
I was getting kind of angry at the ignorance and I ended up telling him in a calm tone that a scientist who studies Evoloution could say the exact same thing about creationism. He decided to be quiet for the rest of the night.

Some time later, I spoke with a friend of mine who firmly believes in the Evoloution theory. I doubt he's even read a passage from the bible but he completley dismisses Creationism without making any valid argument.

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Devine evidence? I guess we'll be hunting for overweight butch drag trannies, then...

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He doesn't even recognize his own deep seated ignorance and prejudice that left unchecked could lead to the murder of people for nothing more than their beliefs.

Someone should remind ghim that some of history's worst crimes werer committed in the name of science. The holocaust was an extension of eugenics. Nazis believed with their five sense they were superior and gathered all sorts of evidence to prove it.

I wrote Whiggish.

Your description of the original source is correct, and thanks for the annotation.

More generally, however, Whiggish history has come to mean any linear account of (usually) Western history predicated on the assumption that that history is a story of steady progress, each generation building directly upon the achievements of its predecessor.

Whiggish histories tend to be especially gassy not only about the progress of parliamentary institutions -- or, in the U.S., their notions of democracy, freedom, and the Murrican Way -- but also about the technological progress of Western cultures.

They are all, of course, observably wrong.

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I think that in philosophical strictness at the level where one doubts the existence of material objects and holds that the world may have existed for only five minutes, I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptic orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely. ~Bertrand Russell

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The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying...it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity. ~Carl Sagan

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God has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of those in power. ~Robert G. Ingersoll

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It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all. ~Denis Diderot

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I didn't think ANYBODY else was ever gonna quote Denis on this board. One is so grateful to you, Magoo.

Diderot was always a most interesting critic of banal materialism, even though the banal materialists of his day tended to be his best friends -- Holbach, Helvetius, the physiocrats, etc. He wrote the first and often the best critiques of many of those people.

He also spent much of the last year of his life in conversations with a priest, so that he could be re-received into the church and buried in sanctified ground.

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Originally posted by WingNut:
Someone should remind ghim that some of history's worst crimes werer committed in the name of science. The holocaust was an extension of eugenics. Nazis believed with their five sense they were superior and gathered all sorts of evidence to prove it.

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Science can be as much of a religion as any, well, religion

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[ 23 September 2003: Message edited by: Rebecca West ]

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Should we just say that all ideas, no matter how crackpot, bigotted, or just plain stupid they may be, are all equally valid?

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The illustrative example is not one I would have chosen because it doesn't illustrate the point I'm making, but the question is valid. Just because nobody has a monopoly on the truth doesn't mean that every random, half-baked idea that flits across my conciousness is on equal footing with conclusions drawn by people who've spent a disciplined lifetime studying a subject.

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We have 5 senses and overly large brains*. We can use them to try and understand, or we can shut them all off and follow every pixie and leprechaun that dances under the toadstool.

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I agree, though the last part shows a rather simplistic contempt for the nuances available in the theist camp: there are some prodigious intellects in the Catholic tradition who have to wrestle with Doubt (big topic, this) in a way that builds intellectual character you rarely see in atheists. Hans Kung is one I know and have read a bit of, but there is an old and impressive tradition, far bigger than I know. Teillhard de Chardin, a priest, is one of the evolutionary theorists/philosophers whom I admire the most.

I engaged your posts, not because I have a stake in either side of the Gawd debate. Truth be told, I think it's a shallow and immature faith that tries to submit the ultimate Mystery and source of the numinous to the comparatively trivial parlour games of proof and logic. Only an idiot would give their life for/to a logical argument that depends only upon the sophistry of a debater and can be destroyed when a cuter argument is conceived.

The results of science are trivial: cheap trinkets of superficial beauty and short-lived value.
But the idea of science and the integrity of the scientific method allows a meeting of the Infinite with the finite,a way of seeing our squishy little carbon-water existence in the Big Picture. The laws that make us what we are have formed galaxies and the atoms that make us up were forged in the furnace of distant stars.

This perspective is central to the religious experience, though the symbols differ.

Our great strength and tragedy as humans is that we are aware and that our reach exceeds our grasp.

If I were to take your position on this thread at face value, I would ask why you argue with Mishei on Middle East threads since death is occurring on both sides and nobody has a monopoly on the truth so all assertions are equal and that's the way the cookie crumbles. Too bad for those who want peace.

I think this is where Jingles was going with the kiowa argument and I support it.

Simply put, if we don't talk/discuss/debate, we use force. If all points of view are equivalent, there's nothing to be gained by talking, and there can be nothing to teach and nothing worth learning. So let's just go back to killing,eh?

This, Wingnut, is why I find your position so repellent. And it applies to the scoffers and mockers, too.

[ 23 September 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

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Not as interesting as cats, though.

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[ 23 September 2003: Message edited by: Andy Social ]

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Someone should remind ghim that some of history's worst crimes werer committed in the name of science.

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And religion has no blood on its hands? Come on.

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Someone should remind ghim that some of history's worst crimes werer committed in the name of science.

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C'mon, Wingy, you know the answer to that. See "faith based" initiatives. It's more correct to say that religion have been used as cover for conquest and wars since before humanity began. Science, being a relatively new project, just doesn't come close. Yet.

That science has been corrupted for the same purpose isn't surprising, but consider what most these "sciences" are: psuedo-scientific justifications like eugenics, phrenology, social darwinism, intelligent design, etc, that use science's terms and air of impartiality to disguise their base, decidedly unscientific, nature.

Or consider too that like religion, the language of science is corrupted and used as cover for conquest and oppression; "regime change", "precision munitions" or "bring the unsaved to god", take your pick.

But I think Rebecca and Sisyphus answered best.

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...and unlike god, cats aren't fictional.

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Originally posted by cynic:

And religion has no blood on its hands? Come on.

One can keep an open mind and still reject obviously wrong hypotheses, otherwise no discoveries could ever get made.

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Where did WingNut say that religion has no blood on its hands? Surely his point is that BOTH religion and militant atheism (blind FAITH in science) have both been used to commit atrocities. He said "neither side" has a monopoly on truth.

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The belief in God is not an "obviously wrong hypothesis." To claim that it is, is to make a statement based on your own absolute faith that there is no God.

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No, it's not faith, it's reality. The idea of a magical invisible sky pixie is so patently absurd it should be kept a thousand kilometers away from any other hypothesis. How can science make any headway if every theory has to encompass every single possibility, including ignorant stone-age mythologies? Does NASA have to include the possibility of a flat earth every time it launches a satellite?

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How can science make any headway if every theory has to encompass every single possibility,

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Headway to what, exactly?

I gotta say that I am actually no fan of science. Or specifically, the notion of scientific progress. The thing that pisses me off is the disassociation of moral considerations with science; the idea that science is neutral and therefore, above morality. That's bullshit, and that's why the world is the festering, toxic dump it is today.

It's true that religion has had centuries to inflict human misery, but the effects were pretty much localized and temporary. The effects of the reliance on science are permanent, such as the presence of radioactive isotopes today from 50's nuclear tests, or the permanent poisoning of Serbia, Iraq, and Afganistan from DU.

The last thing we need is the co-operation of science and religion. Then we get GW praying while his finger hovers over the go-button.

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including ignorant stone-age mythologies?

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I didn't think ANYBODY else was ever gonna quote Denis on this board. One is so grateful to you, Magoo.

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Funnily enough, Mrs. Magoo is currently reading A History of God, and read this quote to me over the weekend. Unlike the "militant atheists" mentioned above, I think I have to agree with Diderot on this. Specifically, who the hell cares? I'm not here to try and absolutely and positively deny the existence of an all-powerful, invisible, magical being (handy how the faithful constructed "Him" that way, eh?) since such a proof would be, from the standpoint of logic, impossible. So who cares? Obviously the pious do. And so, I suppose, do some atheists, although it's worth noting that if no believers existed, neither would any disbelievers need to. And furthermore, considering all the evil done in the name of the kind and loving Gawds of the world, I think it's understandable that atheists might push back... after all, atheism in and of itself is basically live-and-let-live, but historically very few religions can claim the same.

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If laws weren't passed in the name of someone's belief in a Gawd and forced on everyone, if writers weren't sentenced to death, if "adulterous" women weren't murdered with stones to appease the great cosmic superhero, if wars weren't waged on the unbelievers, if heretics weren't burned, if rights weren't subverted, if the poor weren't kept poor, all to please the Giant White Man With The Beard... who'd care??

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Who would care? Well, as I thought I pointed out above, Diderot did. He didn't specifically care about God all that much -- he was way beyond imagining a personified finitude, that being an obvious contradiction in terms.

But he was bothered by -- well, expressions of enthusiasm for the thinnest of all possible rationalisms.

He spent his life wondering whether he should take materialism seriously; or, once he'd decided he couldn't, how to put his dissent.

Don't go to church on Sunday
Don't get on my knees to pray
Don't memorize the books of the Bible
I got my own special way
I know Jesus loves me
Maybe just a little bit more

I fall on my knees every Sunday
At Zerelda Lee's candy store

Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied

Well I don't want no Abba Zabba
Don't want no Almond Joy
There ain't nothing better
Suitable for this boy
Well it's the only thing
That can pick me up
Better than a cup of gold
See only a chocolate Jesus
Can satisfy my soul

(Solo)
When the weather gets rough
And it's whiskey in the shade
It's best to wrap your savior
Up in cellophane
He flows like the big muddy
But that's ok
Pour him over ice cream
For a nice parfait

Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Good enough for me
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Good enough for me

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Dark matter? Come on, why not just call it Firmament like Billy Graham and call it a day.

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Atheism is not "faith in science" (whatever that means). The scientific method works, in that some theories get disproven through observation, prompting scientists to create a new theory, or tailor an old theory, to fit the new observations. Thus the movement from subscribing to the theory of gravity to the theory of relativity. Or from the theory of gradual evolution (Darwin-envisioned evolution) to punctuated equilibrium (Gould's theory...which really is Darwin's tailored to explain how drastic and sudden ecosystem changes has driven rapid species changes). Or from continental drift to a working model of plate tectonics. One need not be an atheist to attest that the scientific method is a valuable device for explaining the natural world.

Atheism is not a religion. Atheism is a rejection of the need for God. It is not a faith, it is a choice. Most atheists have been exposed to one (or more) religion, and have rejected it's tenets. This rejection is sometimes based on a rationalisation (e.g.: there is no concrete proof of God) and sometimes based on an emotional reaction (how could a just God allow such-and-such to occur?). That doesn't mean that it is religion of rationalism. Atheists don't pray to the Great Spirit of Rationalism, nor seek it's wisdom. We simply reject the concept of a greater power to whom we are somehow accountable, or which is the seed of our existance.

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Until someone comes up with a way to actually go out and poke around these places, they're just doing their best with what they got.

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This is what I don't like about Science: this notion that all the world--nay, all of everything--is ours to investigate and violate and destroy, all in the name of arrogant curiosity, or "science".

I really cringe when I hear people talking about new frontiers of scientific discovery. I'm generally of the opinion that whatever they've found out or are working on is going to spell new dimensions of doom for the planet, and the human race.

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this notion that all the world--nay, all of everything--is ours to investigate and violate and destroy

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It's this insatiable, destructive curiosity that'll be the end of us, one little discovery at a time.

I remember reading a while ago about a lake that was discovered down deep inside a glacier, or underground somewhere up in the north. They found it with some seismic gizmo, and until that time they had no idea it was there--it had never been touched, never been exposed to the light of day or the air from up here, and what did they do? Immediately began looking for ways to poke around in there--just to find out what it's like--even though, obviously, the very instant that any foreign body enters that ecosystem it'll be irrevocably altered, and will likely never recover.

But science must know...

[ 23 September 2003: Message edited by: Lima Bean ]

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The idea of a magical invisible sky pixie is so patently absurd it should be kept a thousand kilometers away from any other hypothesis.

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As others have said you are arguing against the excluded middle - the excluded middle where me and my agnostic buddies reside. I don't believe in sky pixies. I try not to 'believe' in anything. Provisional truths are as far as I go - a true agnostic.

Science has revealed a universe far more complex and magnificent than ancient philosophers could have dreamed of. Sky gods seem like a very low probability hypothesis to be sure.

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Originally posted by Lima Bean:
It's this insatiable, destructive curiosity that'll be the end of us, one little discovery at a time...But science must know...

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Atheism is not a religion. Atheism is a rejection of the need for God. It is not a faith, it is a choice...we simply reject the concept of a greater power to whom we are somehow accountable, or which is the seed of our existance.

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two polar opposites of faith in God/faith in no-God

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Our knowledge remains shockingly incomplete and it seems premature to me to take either of the two polar opposites of faith in God/faith in no-God.

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I'd be perfectly happy if everyone took this approach, because you wouldn't make a law based on a possibility - for example you can't sentence a woman to be stoned to death because she may have offended a potential Gawd that you're not even sure exists, nor could you tell two men that they can't marry, so as to impress a Gawd who might not even be listening.

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quote:
two polar opposites of faith in God/faith in no-God

more precisely: belief in god / no belief in God.

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However...

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Remember I'm not asking you to believe in pixies, just in the possibility that the universe might be very strange indeed.

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Sure, it is a very strange place. Fr'instance, there is an Australian Cockatiel sitting in the pine tree outside my window. Now, I'm no orinthologist, but I do know the the Australian Cockatiel isn't a native species to Edmonton. It shouldn't be there. But there it sits....

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in fact that I'm quite sure that nothing as banal, or intellectually confining, as the god (or gods) we have conjured up over the millennia has anything to do with it.

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I couldn't agree more. Again I'm not talking about sky gods or pixies. In Carl Sagan's Contact he posits a breathtaking possiblity of where God might be hiding - a God like Einstein conjured - a mathematician.

[ 23 September 2003: Message edited by: JimmyBrogan ]

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Originally posted by skdadl:
Aw. I love newborns.

Am I right in thinking that what many people know about Christianity these days is garnered from fundies on TV?

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I think this is most likely true for many. An example: In Asian history courses, students seem incapable of grasping the concept of a "left-wing evangelist" because they perceived evangelism as inherently linked with the religious right. Today, that's true. But historically, evangelism is linked with left-wing social reform movements. But tell that to a student in a class room at UBC, say, and they seem unable to assimilate the information. I think this may also be why the link is often made between Christianity and creationism, when the plain fact is that most Christian churches accept evolution and reject Biblical literalism.

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This, Wingnut, is why I find your position so repellent. And it applies to the scoffers and mockers, too.

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No one, least of all me, suggested every idea under the sun is equally valid and worthwhile. You are choosing to put words into my sentences that my fingers never typed. Simply poor form.

Your claim to the enlightened ground is equally shallow if your rebuttals are based on what hasn't been said.

Yes, there are those on the God side of the equation who are distasteful. Just off hand I can think of those so-called christians cheering the Israeli foreign minister as he advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

But scinece does not have clean hands by any standards. Again, off the top of my head there are those scientists who said, for years, there is no definitive link proving smoking causes cancer. There is the UWO professor who a nmumber of years ago provided "evidence" blacks were inferior and Asians were superior. Today the petrochemical industry has scientists to tell us atmospheric pollution is not contributing to global warming. We have corporations whose scientists are genitically modifying plants and releasing them into the environment. Those same corporations are testing bovine growth hormones on cattle whose milk is fed to children. I could go on and on.

(An aside, yes, Rebecca, many have invoked the name of God to carry out atrocities. However, I would argue the name of science is often invoked to carry out atrocities. Scientist tell us the depleted uranium that litters Iraq is not harmful and in doing so they claim scientific evidence that contradicts the physical evidence of cancer rates on teh ground.)

Maybe my problem is that I don't think I should have to say it. I suppose I am wrong. I guess I must state that in a debate such as this, God or scince, no reasonable person holds a monopoly on truth.

I guess I didn't feel a need to say so earlier because, after all, only unreasonable people would claim a monoploy on truth.

quote:

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If I were to take your position on this thread at face value, I would ask why you argue with Mishei on Middle East threads since death is occurring on both sides and nobody has a monopoly on the truth so all assertions are equal and that's the way the cookie crumbles. Too bad for those who want peace.

---

However, and here is where my qualification comes in (the qualification it appears is necessary in the abscence of reasonable people), I would consider the extremists on both sides of the issue to be unreasonable. In my mind, the murder of innocent people in the advancement of political agendas is never reasonable. And I have said as much time and again.

What is repellant is the method of debate where words and ideas never spoken are ascribeds to an opponent for cheap shots.

quote:

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But scinece does not have clean hands by any standards. Again, off the top of my head there are those scientists who said, for years, there is no definitive link proving smoking causes cancer. There is the UWO professor who a nmumber of years ago provided "evidence" blacks were inferior and Asians were superior. Today the petrochemical industry has scientists to tell us atmospheric pollution is not contributing to global warming. We have corporations whose scientists are genitically modifying plants and releasing them into the environment. Those same corporations are testing bovine growth hormones on cattle whose milk is fed to children. I could go on and on.

---

Were it not for the scientific method, those frauds would remain unexposed.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: WingNut ]

Sarcasmobri and Sisyphus have brought up excellent points that I agree with.

WingNut, I don't know why you're being snippy, dogmatic and abrasive, but it's really uncharacteristic of you. You remind me, incidentally, of a person on IRC who is impossible to now have a decent conversation with because he has become so incredibly vicious and dogmatic that it's just not worth trying to have a decent discussion.

He also has no basic political beliefs; he simply exists to oppose whatever prevailing trend seems to exist in the town he lives; currently the left gets a fair bit of press in his town, so he bashes the "hippies" all the time. As soon as they fade away and Dubya Bush begins shoving his face in all over, he'll turn around and just as viciously bash him.

My basic problem with your statements on this thread is that numerous argumentation and, really, common knowledge about the basic theory of atheism, present in this thread and elsewhere, has been met by unequivocal statements from you either denying the basis on which atheism rests or simply dismissing any statements as contrary to some image you have of them.

I will not bother repeating myself, thus, since you clearly seem to believe that people who choose not to believe in a deity are misguided.

skdadl:

I appreciate that you have a much more nuanced experience with Christianity than I, and that you likely feel unfairly put upon by those who tend to attack Christian fundamentalists.

However, may I point out, as I have before, that atheists are often characterized as "immoral", "lacking any knowledge of right and wrong", et cetera ad nauseam?

I doubt that anyone would rush to trash the Presbyterian church or its members in such unflattering terms.

More generally, and to all reading this thread:

Some people seem to believe that atheists have no internalized moral code of conduct. I challenge any one of you here on babble to directly tell me I am an immoral, unethical and lacking a conscience.

One thing I've learned to relax about is searching for answers when in fact there is insuficient data to formulate a reasonable one.

This is just such a case. Is there a God? How the fuck should I, or anyone else know?

quote:

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I will not bother repeating myself, thus, since you clearly seem to believe that people who choose not to believe in a deity are misguided.

---

And if you are offended by my non-acceptance of atheism, and I have not at any time insulted athiests, then maybe you should really have a better understanding of why those who believe in God are offended when you do ridicule their beliefs.

quote:

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This is just such a case. Is there a God? How the fuck should I, or anyone else know?

---

My argument is not and never has been against science. I am being left with the impression that people choose to see what they want to see and ignore everything else of substance.

My argumemnt began with the ridicule of people who do believe in God. I don't think that is fair nor do I think it is becoming of people who claim to be open minded and tolerant.

Not every believer is an evangelist waving the flag of intolerance. Many are in developing nations doing the work we so admire. Many are in war zones tending to injured civilians and helping to rebuld communities. And they are doing it not because of some lofty ideology but because thier belief tells them they are serving God by serving humanity. And in doing so, they are not trying to convert the masses, either.

Some of them are right here on babble. If you want to push them away and isolate them because of some prejudice against beliefs they hold, go ahead. I think it is stupid.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: WingNut ]

quote:

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If you want to push them away and isolate them because of some prejudice against beliefs they hold, go ahead. I think it is stupid.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:

Don't worry... we'll get back to pushing them away because of their belief in free market Capitalism, or personal responsibility, or law and order real soon!

---

But Magoo, Wingy was talking about me. For a for instance, anyway.

Doc, forgive me, but I think you should look to your own rhetoric. It amazes me how others have read Wingy in these threads. He has made it perfectly clear that he is arguing disinterestedly, on sort of civil libertarian grounds, for people who believe more than he does -- but he is arguing against those who think that all belief is risible.

If, Doc, in the outside world you have run into people who think it's fair to trash atheists as idiots, then I'm sorry to hear that.

I have been reacting to what I read on babble, and I've never seen atheists treated as trash here. I have seen theists of all sorts, and especially Christians, simply ridiculed -- not answered decently, just ridiculed, sometimes mainly by inference only, but that's bad enough.

quote:

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But Magoo, Wingy was talking about me. For a for instance, anyway.

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Fundies, ok: I make fun of them too, mainly when they attempt to interfere with other people's lives and freedom.

quote:

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It amazes me how others have read Wingy in these threads. He has made it perfectly clear that he is arguing disinterestedly, on sort of civil libertarian grounds, for people who believe more than he does -- but he is arguing against those who think that all belief is risible.

---

sdadl, it amazes me how you have read Wingnut in this thread, I mean Diderot? *snort*.

Let's look at some posts, shall we?

First, I'll note he doesn't cite any particularly offensive posts to bolster his case that there is any systematic abuse of theists. I'll add that when I notice unwarranted contempt, I draw attention to it. Since none of the scoffers has responded, I take it to mean they don't have an intelligent rejoinder and dismiss them.

The first substantive post on the theist side is Gir Draxon's (I also re-iterate the point in more pretentious form later on) :

quote:

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There is no proof, that is the point. It is a matter of faith- beleiving in it even if it cannot be conclusively proven.
As for evidence, I submit the universe as exhibit A. Where did humans come from? evolved in a series of speciation starting with bacteria from 4 billion years ago. What did they come from? abiotic factors in the early atmosphere. Those came from the Earth which came from the nebula that gave rise to our sun. Where did that nebula come from? The leading theory is the big bang. And how/why did this spontaneous explosion that created matter occur? "Let there be light... hey, that looks like it is good..."

---

I have some quibbles with the evolutionary exegesis, but the points are valid, particularly that about Faith, which is a little more subtle than just "believing things for which there is no evidence", but that's another thread, and worth discussing, I think. By the way, even the radical anti-materialist Stephen Hawking says words to the effect that if we knew what went on pre-Big Bang, we'd "know the Mind of God".

Magoo (the Prime Mover and First Cause of this thread) says irrelvantly:

quote:

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I would think that just about any post-big bang data should do just as well, provided it's over 6,000 years old (or whenever the Bible says the world was created). A 10,000 year old fossil should suffice, or any planet, or most space junk, or...

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There's no necessity for any particular conception of God or any particular divine cosmology to be true in order for there to be a God.

Theists still in the lead due to GD, IMO.

Rebecca West just makes sense, as usual, without trying to impose her views on anyone.

quote:

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Hmm. I'm almost certain that the major religious effort of the past 10,000 years was not to prove the existence of God. Proof is impossible; thus the stress on faith. The whole question is teleological.

---

swallow, bang-on here, shifts the discussion, rightly, to a needed exploration of faith.

As I see it, until Faith is explored in a non-trivial way, the debate at this point is over and the scoffers don't have a leg to stand on.
Further on, as promised, Courage muddies the waters:

quote:

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Here faith is a kind of evidence, though not the evidence of the usual senses on which the scientific paradigm is constructed - the paradigm of 'proof' being called for by most of us here. Do we have other senses capable of 'knowing'? That's another question, I suppose...

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Nobody takes him up on it. This is too bad, because as long as we search for "proof", especially without defining it, we support the scoffers.

DrConway cuts through the B.S. with:

quote:

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Faith requires the a priori acceptance of the existence of the thing you are being asked to verify (i.e. being required to accept, in
advance, the conclusion) rather than being able to gather data that supports the conclusion.

---

I think Faith is a lot more complex than this, but the oversimplification I see here actually applies to people on both sides of the question and deserves a separate thread.

There are a few halfhearted attempts to explore this by Courage and skdadl, but it is a daunting thread drift.

Problems for me begin here with Wingnut's post:

quote:

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In the end when it comes to either God or evolution the truth is we just don't know. Not yeat, anyway

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Completely false dichotomy.

Jingles points this out in a not-overly-diplomatic tone, but provides a reference and a little pertinent info on fossils.

Wingnut responds with what will become a stock response:

quote:

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That is nonsense.

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There is no justification for why the offending comparison is nonsense, just the assertion from on hogh that it is.

Ignoring evidence that has so far been provided, the unfounded derision and unsupported assertions continue and we're off!

quote:

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Sorry, jingles, but being disrespectful gets you nowhere. "Hard evidence"? What hard evidence? Show me the hard evidence? Maybe you have the missing link under yoru bed hiding it from scientists.

Blind adherance to an unproven scientific theory is as childish and stupid as a blind adherance to the concept of God.

So many so-called rational people who believe in "reason" so unreasonable as to a) discount any other possibilty and b) as doctrinaire as any evangelist over theories unproven.

---

Courage and DrC continue a potentially fruitful line of debate which we all ignore...

From Jingles:

quote:

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What's disrespectful? I don't consider according a belief in God any more respect than a belief in anal-probing aliens. They have equal amounts of validity as far as I am concerned.

---

Could be stated in a more diplomatic form, but this is the question that apologists for theism NEED to answer if they're going to assert that their belief has any logical/intellectual merits (as I and others have said, I believe that this tack is unwise philosophically and logically ludicrous if we see God as Infinite in any way).

I'm going to make this as clear as I can, because the rest of the argument follows from Wingnut's refusal to address this point and led to the accustaion that I "put words in his mouth":

If you don't accept that all propositions are equally valid, regardless of generally-accepted rules of evidence and logic, then you cannot help but rank the likelhood of assertions that are not logically contradictory or for which no evidence is available as "less likely" than those for which there is evidence. Further, if it can be shown by the rules of evidence and logic that any particular propostion is more likely than another, mutually exclusive one, then all mutually exclusive propostions are subject to the same verification. There is an enormous amount of evidence supporting the theory of evolution and none supporting Creationism, for example.

There is no evidence for the existence of God (by the "rules" we use to establish most other things in our lives (e.g. who drank all the milk, is Bush lying, which building should I go to to renew my drivers' license).

By ignoring this point, which was brought up time and time again, and just repeating "This is nonsense." and "No one has a monopoly on the truth". Wingnut was not discussing the issue at hand, just launching unsubtantiated attacks on strawmen.

I agree with DrC that this was uncharacteristic, which is why I pursued to the point of being a boring asshole. This is my last post on this topic. Yay!

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

We weren't here ONLY to plant seeds of doubt in some minds about nuances of metaphysics they might not have encountered before. You seem to think that the only serious way to enter this discussion is to debate metaphysics, possibility of, with you at your level. And some of us did that, or hinted at it.

But there was a much more basic reason for us to continue to counter the mockers. I repeat: Wingy was defending people you mock. He doesn't have to win any kind of philosophical debate to point out, again and again, that some people here are simply blind to their own cheap prejudices.

quote:

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But there was a much more basic reason for us to continue to counter the mockers. I repeat: Wingy was defending people you mock.

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See, this is my point:I haven't mocked anyone, except Wingnut, a bit, for the reasons I listed. Mostly because of the tone of his attack on Jingles.

He wasn't countering the mockers in any useful way that I could see and was, IMO, discrediting his own challenge to the mockers by refusing to explain why people shouldn't be dismissive of positions for which they see no evidence.

Fundamentalism is no more "mockworthy" than simple belief in God from that perspective, then.

My question is then "On what basis can you mock one set of beliefs and not another?"

Perhaps the higher path is not to mock any beliefs, no matter what they are or where they come from, but Anne Coulter's existence sets that bar too high for me.

Edited to add: Shit! This is my last post on this thread.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

Let's see... free market capitalism, now where was that quote, oh here it is...

quote:

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Q: LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?  Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

A: He that putteth not out his money to usury,
nor taketh reward against the innocent.

---

quote:

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My question is then "On what basis can you mock one set of beliefs and not another?"

---

That's a fair question. It was nagging away at me as I wrote my last post.

Clearly, there are people/categories we all get away with mocking on babble. Neo-Nazis, easy. For me, the fundies if they are proposing to compromise the freedom and/or decent education of others in a multitude of ways, as so many of them do.

But maybe that's the thread we should have now.

Is it fair to mock anyone on babble? Who, and why?

Ok. Mock away.

Oh, and the smug too. They are beneath contempt.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: ronb ]

quote:

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My question is then "On what basis can you mock one set of beliefs and not another?"

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Well, if it looks, feels and smells like bullshit, chances are it is. I've yet to see any coherent defence of theism mounted here beyond attacks on the fallibility of the scientific method, the limitations of our knowledge of what is true and teh belief in equivilancy between ideas. Which, to me, is bunk.

quote:

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As I see it, until Faith is explored in a non-trivial way, the debate at this point is over and the scoffers don't have a leg to stand on.

---

And yet, somehow, the scoffing continues unabated.

My question is why. Why do so many posts continue to talk about sky-pixies and the like, when the same point could be made equally well without the mockery? Sisyphus, you're doing it without scoffing, and i see you pursuing an intellectual point. Some others seem unable to make their points without mockery, and i sit here wondering why. It's not because they have no valid arguments. All i can see as a reason is that they are working from a position of complete moral certainty. And that's why i think that there can be a fundamentalist atheism which is taking its position on no more than faith: ie it's the flip side of religious belief. There is nothing at all wrong with that, but i think those with a faith in non-faith should own up to it.

quote:

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Why do so many posts continue to talk about sky-pixies and the like, when the same point could be made equally well without the mockery?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by JimmyBrogan:
I couldn't agree more. Again I'm not talking about sky gods or pixies. In Carl Sagan's Contact he posits a breathtaking possiblity of where God might be hiding - a God like Einstein conjured - a mathematician.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Andy Social:
That's not mockery; it's an unbiased, logical argument.

---

He still bores me.

The above few posts further illustrate my point. With such derision and ridicule why would any progressive believer in a faith (and remember religion includes many forms of belief from Bahais, a truly peaceful people, to Bhuddists, to first nations and their spiritual belief in a creator, and unitarians whose very purpose is to explore truth) find any sense of belonging with such a group of closed minded bigots who call themsleves progressives?

Progressive to me has always meant being open to all who share a common goal for a better world and not exclusive only to those who share common prejudice or hostililty to other ways of approaching those questions we can't answer.

I have tried very hard to address this honestly. But then people who I have come to admire and respect attack me and congratulate someone using the most dishonest of debating tactics from putting words into my mouth to the republican smear method of quotes out of context.

Thank you, skdadl, for your continued support.

This is my last post here. But I am left with a sickly sense that the left is no better, in fact, than much of what it preaches against.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: WingNut ]

quote:

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Originally posted by swallow:

Thanks Andy, for so perfectly illustrating my point.

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[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: Andy Social ]

quote:

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Originally posted by WingNut:

The above few posts further illustrate my point. With such derision and ridicule why would any progressive believer in a faith (and remember religion includes many forms of belief from Bahais, a truly peaceful people, to Bhuddists, to first nations and their spiritual belief in a creator, and unitarians whose very purpose is to explore truth) find any sense of belonging with such a group of closed minded bigots who call themsleves progressives?

---

And comparing a person's true faith to fairytale characters is not mockery?

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: WingNut ]

quote:

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Originally posted by WingNut:
And comparing a person's true faith to fairytale characters is not mockery?

---

I have never seen anything that shows that belief in god is any more logical than belief in pixies or the tooth fairy. What's the difference? Why is one belief supposedly exempt from scrutiny?

By the way, these aren't rhetorical questions.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: Andy Social ]

quote:

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My question is why. Why do so many posts continue to talk about sky-pixies and the like, when the same point could be made equally well without the mockery?

---

A few reasons, at least speaking for myself.

1) If I told you I had a personal friend who's invisible, a superhero who can read minds, and who lives in outer space, you'd likely, and rightly, question my grasp on reality. If, on the other hand, I say I have a personal relationship with Jesus, you'd think that perfectly common and normal. I hope that by reducing God to what he's often described as, we might see the jump in logic that must be occurring for discussion of God to occur on a rational and accepted level, and discussion of other invisible, unseen, unprovable entities to occur on such a vastly different one.

2) Why shouldn't I? If I suggested that people should be responsible for their choices I'd expect to be dismissed and mocked. You certainly can't suggest that that's because my suggestion is more untenable that the suggestion that we were all made from either dust, or a rib, depending on gender. So why should my idea be open to unchallenged disrespect, while religion isn't? I know this is the subject of a new thread, and I'm curious to see what develops there.

3) Faith in a God, while it may have some happy ending stories, has also been responsible for all manner of wars, oppressive laws, censorship, repression of all kinds, etc. I think it's crucial to note that these evils are being done in the name of someone or something that may not, and from where I sit, almost certainly does not, exist. Salman Rushdie is sentenced to death to appease a God that nobody has ever seen. Gay and lesbian partners have been forbidden to marry until 4 months ago, lest it offend a God who is conspicuously absent here on earth. Up until a few years ago, I couldn't shop on a Sunday, since that day was "special" to an entity for whose existence there is absolutely not a shred of evidence (never mind any proof that he'd care what I do on a Sunday). Personally, I get tired of talking about God as though it's a foregone conclusion that he exists, and I think that some hyper-realistic, even if also disrespectful, language might help bring home the fact that religion, or the choices made in its name, is so ingrained in all of our lives that we're in danger of forgetting that none of it has been shown to be fact, and yet decisions - important, sometimes life-and-death decisions - are made every day as though it were.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: Mr. Magoo ]

quote:

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Originally posted by WingNut:
Because, and this might be hard for you to grasp, it is meaningful to some people. If the basic sense of understanding what might be meaningful to others, and developing a respect for that and even (gasp!) sharing an empathy with those people, is beyond your ability than I have nothing further to add.

---

I have things that are meaningful to me -- probably even more meaningful than religion is to many people -- but those things aren't immune to logical criticism, nor should they be.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: Andy Social ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Andy Social:

So if someone says there is a god or some kind of spirit world, that's just a statement, but if someone says there is no god, that's closeminded bigotted mockery. Interesting concept.

---

There is the illogicality, or the misreading, plain as day.

No one has been saying, Andy, that there's anything wrong with saying, "There is no god."

No one said that that statement was closed-minded bigotry.

The closed-minded bigotry has come often -- and, obviously, not in the first place on this thread -- from people who insist on trivializing, mocking, parodying the wondering of those who either have faith or haven't made up their minds yet.

quote:

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Originally posted by skdadl:
The closed-minded bigotry has come often -- and, obviously, not in the first place on this thread -- from people who insist on trivializing, mocking, parodying the wondering of those who either have faith or haven't made up their minds yet.

---

Well said. I'd like to add that there is a lot of overgeneralizations made about "Christians" based on the behaviour of certain fundamentalists or evangelicals that some of the rest of us might oppose.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: paxamillion ]

quote:

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The decision to drive an SUV is no different from the decision between a peanut butter or an egg salad san for lunch. Yeah, sure.

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quote:

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But, we can disagree on some issues while remaining focussed on what is important. So if we agree social housing is important, do we really want to alienate the faith community on that issue because we can't display any respect for their fundamental organizational purpose?

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quote:

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The closed-minded bigotry has come often -- and, obviously, not in the first place on this thread -- from people who insist on trivializing, mocking, parodying the wondering of those who either have faith or haven't made up their minds yet.

---

quote:

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(An aside, yes, Rebecca, many have invoked the name of God to carry out atrocities. However, I would argue the name of science is often invoked to carry out atrocities. Scientist tell us the depleted uranium that litters Iraq is not harmful and in doing so they claim scientific evidence that contradicts the physical evidence of cancer rates on teh ground.)

---

Belief and spirituality are, I think, separate in many ways from formal religion. For instance, I practise many aspects of Buddhism, yet I am not a member of that religion, nor am I interested in practising it as a religion. Yet, it is central to how I conduct myself morally, intellectually, socially and politically. As a child, I was a member of the Anglican Church, yet I did not participate in any spiritual sense, as I did not share the belief in the supernatural aspects of the faith. And yet culturally and morally I am Christian - albeit a very secular Christian.

It's complex, we're all too hung up on labels and definitions, and the only thing that is clear is that what we don't know is vast, and what we do know is fluid, ever-changing.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: Rebecca West ]

quote:

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the decision to belong to a religion that denies reproductive rights to women and condemns homosexuality is no different from the decision to be a subscriber at the AGO.

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Well they both perpetuate paternalistic eurocentric cultural values. And they both have lots of paintings of Jesus and his posse. Was that your point? Do you have a point?

quote:

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Originally posted by Andy Social:

Again, where is this so-called trivializing, mocking and parodying?

Someone referred to my argument that belief in god is no more supportable than belief in the tooth fairy as "mocking." On the contrary, it's a detached, non-judgemental statement of fact.

---

Sorry, Andy, but you're just doing a Magoo there -- see the peanut butter/egg salad = driving an SUV example above.

You are equating the longest, deepest, most complex traditions of every culture on the face of this earth with a belief in the tooth fairy.

Even serious atheists trouble to inform themselves much better than that, Andy. And they write rather more intelligently than that.

Questioning existence, human consciousness, where it comes from, of what it consists, and, even given modern science, the philosophical limitations of materialist rationalism -- Andy, a whole lotta interesting people have spent time doing that. It ain't a cartoon, Andy.

quote:

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You are equating the longest, deepest, most complex traditions of every culture on the face of this earth with a belief in the tooth fairy.

---

Lots of great things have been accomplished in the name of religion -- art, music and charity for example -- but that still doesn't change the fact that there's no more proof of god than there is of the tooth fairy.

Remember, the title of this thread is "Is there a Gawd?" Nobody has provided evidence that a god exists.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: Andy Social ]

You can equate all kinds of things that can't be proved (of some, we would want to say "yet," because we are clearly well on the way to proving them).

The point is: the original questions are not the same.

The tooth fairy has nothing to do with the history of philosophy in every human culture on earth.

quote:

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So you admit it's all about not hurting people's feelings.

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But as much as a believer must respect your rights you must respect his. And this becomes more important when we are discussing vital issues of the day where we have common interest. The idea is to build bridges with those who share our values not walls.

Anyone can agree to disagree and work in common despite fundamental differences of agreement if there is at least a level of respect. That respect is not achieved when belief systems are belittled and years of study reduced to fairy tales.

On a personal note, I went to Quebec city to protest the FTAA. I got there on an interfaith bus. No one questioned my beliefs and no one tried to convert me. I received only respect and experienced only solidarity. And those with whom I rode the bus were gassed right along with the anarchists, the labour movement, the students, the scientists and the atheists. I wonder how many of those interfaith activists would be as comfortable riding on a bus for so long a period of time with people who have no respect for their beliefs to the point of ridicule.

quote:

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I'm not sure why you've brought me into this, as I've already stated as much. My point, again, is that you can't blame science itself for the evil of people.

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quote:

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It's complex, we're all too hung up on labels and definitions, and the only thing that is clear is that what we don't know is vast, and what we do know is fluid, ever-changing.

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quote:

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And those with whom I rode the bus were gassed right along with the anarchists, the labour movement, the students, the scientists and the atheists.

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[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: Andy Social ]

quote:

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But in fairness, Rebecca, attrocities have been committed in the name of, not by, God. Science gave us the nuclear bomb but neither science nor God dropped it.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Andy Social:

That's because god doesn't exist.

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quote:

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Well they both perpetuate paternalistic eurocentric cultural values. And they both have lots of paintings of Jesus and his posse. Was that your point? Do you have a point?

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Of course, but you'll also have to look at the post I was responding to to see it. Skdadl was suggesting that I'm some kind of relativist because I regard buying an SUV as a choice, like choosing which sandwich one wants to eat (her words, not mine), and then she added "Sure." to let me know she disagrees (presumably believing that driving an SUV is inherently bad, and choosing a sandwich is not).

I'm merely pointing out that if choosing to buy an SUV is inherently a "bad" or morally incorrect choice, so is choosing to belong to a repressive religion (regardless of whether or not you see yourself as actively involved in this repression), and so she's being just as relativist in acting like (and wanting us all to act like) belonging to a repressive religion is a morally neutral choice. It's not. So why is Skdadl defending it as though it is?

quote:

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That respect is not achieved when belief systems are belittled and years of study reduced to fairy tales.

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What if out there there's someone who believes in what we disrespectfully refer to as fairy tales? Do we have to stop using them as the low-water mark of credibility? A great deal of folklore began as someone's spiritual belief or cosmology, but in our modern, North American way we pick and choose which "fairy tales" we read to little children, and which we read to adults.

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That they certainly wouldn't mock the idea of Zeus taking the form of a swan, or make any "Sisyphus and the rock" jokes?

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I didn't, really, you addressed me and I responded. But in fairness, Rebecca, attrocities have been committed in the name of, not by, God. Science gave us the nuclear bomb but neither science nor God dropped it.

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I'm sorry, Sir, to inform you that you are officially a "myth". May I suggest, if you crave respect, changing your name to Lot, or Noah, or even Burning Bush?

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I'm not a "myth", I'm an allegory or an
archetpye .

Noah way! Lotta good those name changes'd do, I'll take that with a grain of salt.

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Belief, or faith may be one road to understanding the whys and wherefors, but religion is the dogma that proscribes behavior, and whether you believe it is divinely inpired or not, religious dogma is the creation of human beings. Science is another framework for understanding how things work, but it has no moral dogma. That is the responsibility of the individual people who use that framework for various purposes.

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Science does not exist in a vacuum and without humans there would be no science. Humans ascribe moral value to scientific work and the creations that result and humans, using science with moral certitude, could yet create God. Or even try to become God.

[ 24 September 2003: Message edited by: WingNut ]

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Personally, I get tired of talking about God as though it's a foregone conclusion that he exists,

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
1) If I told you I had a personal friend who's invisible, a superhero who can read minds, and who lives in outer space, you'd likely, and rightly, question my grasp on reality. If, on the other hand, I say I have a personal relationship with Jesus, you'd think that perfectly common and normal. I hope that by reducing God to what he's often described as, we might see the jump in logic that must be occurring for discussion of God to occur on a rational and accepted level, and discussion of other invisible, unseen, unprovable entities to occur on such a vastly different one.

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