RE: The real religion?
August 16, 2016 at 11:29 am
(This post was last modified: August 16, 2016 at 11:33 am by Crossless2.0.)
(August 16, 2016 at 10:30 am)SteveII Wrote:(August 13, 2016 at 5:09 am)bennyboy Wrote: You didn't assert anything? Do you want to link the many, many, many unsupportable assertions you've made in this thread?
The difference between my speculation about superstitious behavior is that it's a connection of very basic principles: animals want to live, they have instincts, and the instincts cause behaviors. I'm not bothered by the possibility that it may be wrong, so long as in the meantime I'm making sensible inferences.
The same is easily observed in humans. Humans have ALL KINDS of superstitious beliefs, only some of which are Christian religious. But their beliefs are a response to how they feel, i.e. their instincts. You yourself have said that among the many benefits of the Christian religion are how it makes you feel: deep peace, etc. and that Christianity is therefore a special snowflake, since no other religion makes people feel the way the Christian religion does. This is an ASSERTION, by the way.
At any rate, fine, you have feelings. How do you go from "I have feelings" to "the feelings are about God," if you cannot establish that God exists except BY your feelings? Where's that point of convergence that lets you bridge from one to the other?
You might want to look up a picture of a circle, and then ask yourself if your circular path is likely to lead to forward progress in your thinking.
You responded to a comment where I mentioned that psychologist believe there is a god-shaped hole in our psyche. Not my assertion. I did assert other things. You didn't respond to those however.
The point of the conversation about 'is belief in God properly basic' (as opposed to just basic) centers around the fact that it is an intuition (not inferred--based on evidence) that God exists and therefore is warranted (as opposed to justified) to believe so. They only way to defeat this position is to show this belief to be false. Simply proposing another way this intuition may have developed is not a defeater.
The conclusion of this line of reasoning is that you (the atheist) are not justified in complaining that a Christian's belief in God is irrational. While there is other evidence, none is required if belief in God is 'properly basic'.
This post adequately demonstrates the sleight-of-hand Christians indulge in when they play the Plantinga 'properly basic' card. Whether belief in God (or, more accurately, a god) is properly basic is debatable but of no particular concern to me. If that's all you claim, Steve, then you are in exactly the same boat as any other theist, of any stripe, should they make the same claim. But that's not what you're up to, is it? Captial-G god (your god) is not believed in by way of intuition. It comes with a baggage train of claims concerning its qualities that are derived from your holy book. Belief in the Christian god cannot, by its nature, be properly basic and you have done nothing to bridge the chasm between a deist god (which might, arguably, be basic) and your god, except to repeat claims nobody else is buying. If we did, we'd be Christians.