Professor's Proposition: Only Two Logical Choices

[Tiberius]

Your father is half right, however I would argue that being agnostic is the only logical choice. Agnosticism deals with knowledge, not beliefs. When you take "knowledge" in an absolute literal "x is true" sense, then agnosticism is simply an acceptance of human fallibility.

So, you either have to argue that you are infallible, or you have to be an agnostic.

I should note that being an agnostic does not prevent one from being religious, or being an atheist. Religious and atheistic beliefs are beliefs, not knowledge, so one can happily believe them but never claim them as absolute truths (though one can state a belief that they are absolute truths without invalidating ones agnosticism).

[Angrboda]

"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy."

Richard Feynman



Apparently intelligence skips a generation every now and again, or so I'm told.

[Cyberman]

Fashionably late, as usual.

Anyway:

You can't assume based on lack of evidence that something is true, that it is untrue.

You can if it's reasonable to expect there to be evidence of that something.

Which makes me not want to join your side, even if you're right, because I don't want to associate with people like you.

Which comes as a relief to us all, I'm sure.

[Mister Agenda]

My father, who is a very devout Catholic, has two Ph.d.'s, in math and computer science. He is very interested in science and he has a broad-ranged knowledge of science in many fields. He is also very informed of the Catholic faith.

My father had a Catholic father who really wasn't into it, and a mother who converted to Catholicism to marry my grandfather. But neither of them were much interested in religion.

My father, however, was so devout that by the age of 12 he was going to Mass by himself.

Which is to say, my father is not Catholic because he was brow-beat into it by his family, he is a devout Catholic because he used his intelligence to look into it and determined that the Catholic Church's claim to be the One True Faith are true.

Now, you can't dismiss my father as some ignorant fundamentalist, he very much believes in the theory of evolution and does not try to wave away any science because of the Bible.

And also, my father's IQ is so high that my guess is he's smarter than all but one or two people on this forum. He is certainly smarter than the vast majority of people who think they are intelligent and crow about it in groups like Mensa.

My father once told me that there are only two logical choices for the educated man who investigates the religion issue and comes to a conclusion based on all the evidence, without rejecting any due to prejudice or bias.

One logical conclusion is to be an agnostic.

And the second logical conclusion is to be a Roman Catholic, believing everything the Roman Catholic Church teaches.

And all other conclusions would ultimately be rejected if subject to thorough analysis by the educated man who really wants to know the truth.

Anyway, that's the start of what I'm saying here. Is there anyone here who believes my father is wrong about this?

I guess I'd like to hear from agnostics especially. And if there are any Catholics, I'd like to hear your reaction too.

Appeal to authority is a fallacy. Appeal to high IQ should be its own special subcategory of that fallacy.

---

But the big clincher for me is the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. I looked into that and there is no way to explain how 70,000 people could be affected by a "mass hypnosis" which is the usual atheist explanation for this even.

I don't know about 'usual atheist' positions on this phenomenon, but the usual opthamologist position on the topic is that if you stare too long at the sun, it will seem to start to move around. This is an automatic neural defense for the eyes being attached to the brain of someone too stupid to look away from the sun: your eyes involuntarily move around slightly to avoid looking directly at the sun. When your eyes move involuntarily, it appears as though it's what you're looking at that's moving. You can easily observe this by moving your eye (through your eyelid) gently with your finger.

This 'miracle' can be easily reproduced by anyone willing and able to get a large crowd to stare at the sun long enough.

[Whatkins]

What a time consuming argument from authority. Try again, Catholic.

[frankiej]

I think reading all of this guy's threads has given me some brain damage... ouch...

[Minimalist]

This 'miracle' can be easily reproduced by anyone willing and able to get a large crowd to stare at the sun long enough.

Who, aside from some theistic shitstain, would be stupid enough to do that?

[Blackrook]

Your father is half right, however I would argue that being agnostic is the only logical choice. Agnosticism deals with knowledge, not beliefs. When you take "knowledge" in an absolute literal "x is true" sense, then agnosticism is simply an acceptance of human fallibility.

So, you either have to argue that you are infallible, or you have to be an agnostic.

I should note that being an agnostic does not prevent one from being religious, or being an atheist. Religious and atheistic beliefs are beliefs, not knowledge, so one can happily believe them but never claim them as absolute truths (though one can state a belief that they are absolute truths without invalidating ones agnosticism).

Thank you for actually responding to what I've said. People should learn from your example.

I have a lot of respect for agnostics. They at least are honest in saying there is no way to prove that God does not exist.

Atheists, on the other hand, assert that God does not exist, and then refuse to ever provide any proof for that assertion.

So its really impossible to argue with an atheist, because its a faith-based proposition that there is no God, not subject to critical analysis.

[Mister Agenda]

Yes, it would seem that every atheist has that arrow in his quiver: that every argument from authority is a logical fallacy.

Not every argument from authority is a logical fallacy. If the authority is an authority in the specific field for which it is being appealed to, the appeal can be sound. For instance: Einstein on relativity, sound. Einstein on religion, fallacy.

And yet, you don't do that.

Unlike you, we understand when an appeal to authority is sound and when it is unsound. There is perhaps no other single trait that more distinguishes a freethinker.

But at the same time, you blast away at Christians who rely on a book called the Bible for authority that there is a God.

Generally, we don't seek out Christians to bug. We tend to respond when anyone says something stupid, not just Christians.

In what way are you better than we are?

I wouldn't claim to be better than all Christians in any way, and I can't speak for all atheists. I'm better than you personally on many levels, not least of which is that I care more about what is true than on preserving my current position.

And what makes the Bible less reliable than all the books you rely on?

Lack of independent corroboration of its most crucial claims and reality claims consistent with Near Eastern ancients (who had no way of knowing that the earth is not flat and is not orbited by the sun, for instance) rather than writers in contact with an omniscient being. It gets some history right though, which we know because of corroboration with other sources. On its supernatural claims there is no outside confirmation at all.

Factual errors, you can pick on, but don't all authors introduce errors into their books?

Every time I read a newspaper article about an event I know about, I see that the article is rife with errors.

Imperfect beings perpetuate imperfection. What would one expect a perfect being to perpetuate? Would a perfect and omnipotent being be undone by the limitations of its medium? Would a perfect and omnipotent being need excuses made for the errors in its texts?

But that doesn't mean the event described didn't happen.

It does mean your source of information about the event is incomplete and/or distorted.

If you're going to toss out the Bible than you have to ask yourself what DID happen to the Israelites all those thousands of years. Was everything the Jews wrote about themselves a LIE?

And if it was all a LIE what was the motive to make up all those lies?

Everything the Jews wrote about themselves was at the end of many generations of 'Chinese whispers'. You couldn't get a long story passed down to your great-great-grandchildren unaltered by purely oral means if their lives depended on it. However, one actual lie was the captivity in Egypt and the Exodus, which archaeology (by Jews) says never happened. The motivation was to comfort the Hebrews under Babylonian captivity: 'if you think things are bad now, just look what we had to go through in Egypt!'

Let's face it, the atheist position requires a lot of faith.

Our position is that you haven't given us a good enough reason to believe you.

You have to believe that the entire Bible is one lie after another and none of it never happened and a bunch of Jews got together one day and cooked up a bunch of lies to fool the world.

All we have to believe is that it is just like the scriptures of other ancient cultures: some real history mixed up with legends and myths.

Parts of the Iliad are true. Troy really existed. Do you think parts of it being verifiably true means that the Trojan war was started because of a beauty contest between three goddesses? Do you believe Achilles was invulnerable except for his heel because his mother dipped him in the River Styx? If not, you should be able to understand how and why we can reject the parts of the Bible that sound like myth, accept the parts that have been corroborated, and reserve judgement on what's plausible but unconfirmed.

[frankiej]

Atheists, on the other hand, assert that God does not exist, and then refuse to ever provide any proof for that assertion.

So its really impossible to argue with an atheist, because its a faith-based proposition that there is no God, not subject to critical analysis.

No, no, no, no! How many times do people need to be told? Atheism is simply a lack of belief in any gods. Me being an atheist does not mean I am asserting that God does not exist, you can't know such a thing.

And please reply to some of the valid points of the other members. You seem to just pick what you want to reply to... there is a lot for you to answer, but you seem to pick the ones that are easiest for you to answer and slag off atheists at the same time.