RE: Attn: Theists - What would it take to prove you wrong?
August 10, 2013 at 2:42 pm
(This post was last modified: August 10, 2013 at 3:04 pm by Golbez.)
Re: fr0d0, Theo Zacharias, Maelstrom. Long post, skip to the relevant section if you wish. I didn't expect a 17 page explosion over night 
(and I'm only on pg. 9...)
1. This is cyclical, because of its cyclic reasoning. So why bother explaining something with your "because" clause? The redundancy boils down to: "it is, because it is" or "it is, because I said so."
2. This isn't objective though. It's explicitly subjective - the emotions and perceptions of an individual without the rigors of being subjected to independent verification.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/subjective
So you are exactly, fully, 100% wrong on this point.
3. I was torn on this post. Was about to give you a "like" for the "I don't know" response. Here's an atheist clearly articulating reasons when "I don't know" is a perfectly legitimate, honest response. And I agree. It certainly can be:
http://youtu.be/MoTt0-IAbY8
(Start at 11:35)
But I clearly couldn't "like" the second half of your post. Limited by reality? We are all limited by reality. This is the reality. Reality doesn't limit that some of us have supernatural desires, but we're all still bound to the laws of nature. We are not bound by the laws of false imaginings.
First, I appreciate your honest self-reflection. You're up front about not knowing, about stating you haven't seen the evidence for the proof of God's existence or not, and you state that there are social pressures to continue to believe, rather than a firm conviction of evidence.
Second, I agree that scientists would seek to reconsider their understanding about the laws of nature. This was a solid rebuttal to my OP. I think a suspended upside down volcano with disappearing lava is fairly supernatural, but we can extend it, or rewrite it altogether. Suppose God intervenes by bringing back a larger than actual life performance by all members of the Beatles - God's half time show, where each member stands 3000 feet tall in the sky, as they rock out to "Can't Buy Me Love" while 10,000 Micheal Jacksons do the thriller dance and maybe 25 of them start touching all the boys. (Sorry, over the top
There can be supernatural events that occur. He could repeatedly violate all the laws of thermodynamics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics
He could show up and hang out for years, subjecting himself to tests, interviews, impoverished populations, hospitalized victims, etc, etc. There are a limitless number of things that could be done to confirm his omnipotence. Make us 2 dimensional. Something.
Also, what is this faster than light form of communication you speak of?
Re:A-D.
A. If you don't adhere to the extremes and limits of religions, and impose their terrible value system upon others, I have nothing against you finding that you fit in better while believing a god is real. But if you should happen to agree that we shouldn't perform stem cell research, or that gays are an abomination who shouldn't be able to marry, or that the earth is 6000 years old and dinosaurs and man coexisted, or that global warming is a madmade hoax, you're crossing the threshold of "overall positive effect," particularly over something that has no basis for reality.
B. Again, I appreciate the candor with which you recognize the reason for your beliefs. But I do wish to emphasize that this is certainly no basis for the claim being true. You seem to acknowledge this, so I have no quarrel.
C. The reason is because of how you spend your life, time, and energy pursuing a belief system that has no evidence for being true. Flash forward to the future - you're 65 years old (I was going to say 95, but at that point, you probably wouldn't care one way or another). And if you make the realization then that there is no god, you may well regret all the time you spent at church, all the candidates you supported in elections, all the time frittered away on an unattainable pipedream. You'll have spent the majority of your life believing in, what may as well be Zeus and Poseidon. And just because your friends and relatives do?
Hopefully, they're good enough Christians (or other) to forgive you for your honest pursuit of knowledge. And if they're not, because of their beliefs, is that really something you wish to emulate?
D. I agree with your questioning here. But the distinction I want to make from religion is that these ideas are relatively new. Christianity is 2000 years old, and other religions much older. Suppose 2000 years from now, scientists have discovered everything that would have otherwise explained string theory, and it's all supported by verifiable evidence. If at that point, people are still clinging to the belief of string theory, then yes, I would think they are nuts.
But SETI? Definitely not. We just don't know, and the search itself brings new technology, knowledge and understanding that can vastly improve our lives. It's foolish to write that off.
What? You have boxed yourself into imagining it's not even possible? You can just not make a decision about something that's still up in the air. And what is your definition for intelligent life? Lifeforms that show intelligence? Use tools? Communicate? Or have advanced civilizations? Do apes not count as intelligent life?
Edit -
Theo - "Why should I change my position to atheist? What's the reason?"
I want to take another crack at this. Your position is, on an innumerable amount of things we can't disprove, that you accept that this one unfounded, unverified belief is more likely to be correct. But by extension, you are establishing that it's better to believe in leprechauns, unicorns, Russell's teapot, Santa Claus, etc. until proven otherwise. So you just accept, without any evidence, any number of imaginings. Otherwise you're inconsistent in your ration- ahem, your irrationale. So consider that. You're staring at a list of equally unsupported ideas which all have not been proven false. Thousands of them. Yet you cherry pick Christianity and say, "it's okay. Why shouldn't I believe it?"
If you were intellectually honest, you'd recognize that you'd have to accept that entire list. But I imagine you immediately see the absurdity in doing that. Problem is, Christianity is no different. So all those lies you might have to tell in part A), in adopting Christianity, you have to commit to the biggest lie of all, and devote to it your entire life. Seems like a good reason to me not to.
(and I'm only on pg. 9...)
(August 9, 2013 at 4:43 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: 1. I find it worthy of ridicule, because it is ridiculous.
(And later)
2. A person tells me what they've experienced and I can confirm that it it's also true for me. There's no guess work there. Nothing vague, but a definite, solid experience. We are sharing subjective experience with another person... and can agree when both experiences converge.
The only way it isn't objective, is if you take someone who doesn't accept the logic, will not understand the reference.
(Later, still.)
3. Don't be an idiot maelstrom. "I don't know" is the most intellectually honest and reasonable stance of all.
Once you've stated what kind of evidence would be possible, then we could start looking for it. Unfortunately, your dumb ass is limited by reality.
1. This is cyclical, because of its cyclic reasoning. So why bother explaining something with your "because" clause? The redundancy boils down to: "it is, because it is" or "it is, because I said so."
2. This isn't objective though. It's explicitly subjective - the emotions and perceptions of an individual without the rigors of being subjected to independent verification.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/subjective
So you are exactly, fully, 100% wrong on this point.
3. I was torn on this post. Was about to give you a "like" for the "I don't know" response. Here's an atheist clearly articulating reasons when "I don't know" is a perfectly legitimate, honest response. And I agree. It certainly can be:
http://youtu.be/MoTt0-IAbY8
(Start at 11:35)
But I clearly couldn't "like" the second half of your post. Limited by reality? We are all limited by reality. This is the reality. Reality doesn't limit that some of us have supernatural desires, but we're all still bound to the laws of nature. We are not bound by the laws of false imaginings.
(August 10, 2013 at 4:05 am)Theo Zacharias Wrote: I think it's not that easy. If there is a phenomenon that seems supernatural, i.e. defy known laws of physic, I think most scientist will first say that either the data is probably flaw or there probably are some hidden variables that we don't know. Even if those 2 possibilities are shown to be wrong, most scientist will say that the known laws of physic is probably wrong and they will develop a new theory that will bring the seemingly-supernatural phenomenon back to natural phenomenon.
2) Belief in God brings an overall positive effect to me
If you can show one of the above to be wrong, i.e. evidence that God does not exist or belief in God brings an overall negative effect to me, then I will leave theism.
____________
A. If I don't believe in God publicly, it will most likely bring an overall negative effect to me and to my family. If I secretly don't believe in God, I will have to lie in many circumstances. So, at least for me, believing in God brings an overall positive effect to me. I don't know whether God exists or not because there is no evidence either way as far as I know. So why not choose a side that brings an overall positive effect to me?
__________
B. Why I don't believe? Because believing in them does not bring an overall positive effect to me.
___________
C. If there is an evidence that God does not exist, i.e. if the truth is God does not exist, then yes, that might be a reason to hide the truth. But if there is no evidence that God does not exist then we don't know what the truth is. Why should I change my position to atheist? What's the reason?
___________
D. Please answer this. Do you believe that graviton exist? There is no proof of its existence so you should not believe that graviton exist, right? But string theory predicts that graviton exists. So you should not believe in string theory either? But several physicist believes in string theory. Do you think they are nuts?
First, I appreciate your honest self-reflection. You're up front about not knowing, about stating you haven't seen the evidence for the proof of God's existence or not, and you state that there are social pressures to continue to believe, rather than a firm conviction of evidence.
Second, I agree that scientists would seek to reconsider their understanding about the laws of nature. This was a solid rebuttal to my OP. I think a suspended upside down volcano with disappearing lava is fairly supernatural, but we can extend it, or rewrite it altogether. Suppose God intervenes by bringing back a larger than actual life performance by all members of the Beatles - God's half time show, where each member stands 3000 feet tall in the sky, as they rock out to "Can't Buy Me Love" while 10,000 Micheal Jacksons do the thriller dance and maybe 25 of them start touching all the boys. (Sorry, over the top
There can be supernatural events that occur. He could repeatedly violate all the laws of thermodynamics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics
He could show up and hang out for years, subjecting himself to tests, interviews, impoverished populations, hospitalized victims, etc, etc. There are a limitless number of things that could be done to confirm his omnipotence. Make us 2 dimensional. Something.
Also, what is this faster than light form of communication you speak of?
Re:A-D.
A. If you don't adhere to the extremes and limits of religions, and impose their terrible value system upon others, I have nothing against you finding that you fit in better while believing a god is real. But if you should happen to agree that we shouldn't perform stem cell research, or that gays are an abomination who shouldn't be able to marry, or that the earth is 6000 years old and dinosaurs and man coexisted, or that global warming is a madmade hoax, you're crossing the threshold of "overall positive effect," particularly over something that has no basis for reality.
B. Again, I appreciate the candor with which you recognize the reason for your beliefs. But I do wish to emphasize that this is certainly no basis for the claim being true. You seem to acknowledge this, so I have no quarrel.
C. The reason is because of how you spend your life, time, and energy pursuing a belief system that has no evidence for being true. Flash forward to the future - you're 65 years old (I was going to say 95, but at that point, you probably wouldn't care one way or another). And if you make the realization then that there is no god, you may well regret all the time you spent at church, all the candidates you supported in elections, all the time frittered away on an unattainable pipedream. You'll have spent the majority of your life believing in, what may as well be Zeus and Poseidon. And just because your friends and relatives do?
Hopefully, they're good enough Christians (or other) to forgive you for your honest pursuit of knowledge. And if they're not, because of their beliefs, is that really something you wish to emulate? D. I agree with your questioning here. But the distinction I want to make from religion is that these ideas are relatively new. Christianity is 2000 years old, and other religions much older. Suppose 2000 years from now, scientists have discovered everything that would have otherwise explained string theory, and it's all supported by verifiable evidence. If at that point, people are still clinging to the belief of string theory, then yes, I would think they are nuts.
But SETI? Definitely not. We just don't know, and the search itself brings new technology, knowledge and understanding that can vastly improve our lives. It's foolish to write that off.
(August 10, 2013 at 5:12 am)Maelstrom Wrote: Until intelligent life other than humanity can be positively and verifiably proven, then I will not believe that other intelligent life is possible.
What? You have boxed yourself into imagining it's not even possible? You can just not make a decision about something that's still up in the air. And what is your definition for intelligent life? Lifeforms that show intelligence? Use tools? Communicate? Or have advanced civilizations? Do apes not count as intelligent life?
Edit -
Theo - "Why should I change my position to atheist? What's the reason?"
I want to take another crack at this. Your position is, on an innumerable amount of things we can't disprove, that you accept that this one unfounded, unverified belief is more likely to be correct. But by extension, you are establishing that it's better to believe in leprechauns, unicorns, Russell's teapot, Santa Claus, etc. until proven otherwise. So you just accept, without any evidence, any number of imaginings. Otherwise you're inconsistent in your ration- ahem, your irrationale. So consider that. You're staring at a list of equally unsupported ideas which all have not been proven false. Thousands of them. Yet you cherry pick Christianity and say, "it's okay. Why shouldn't I believe it?"
If you were intellectually honest, you'd recognize that you'd have to accept that entire list. But I imagine you immediately see the absurdity in doing that. Problem is, Christianity is no different. So all those lies you might have to tell in part A), in adopting Christianity, you have to commit to the biggest lie of all, and devote to it your entire life. Seems like a good reason to me not to.
Religious but open minded about the arguments of atheists? You may have spent your whole life learning about the arguments for religion. May I present to you 10 segmented hours for the case against it?
