Belief... or lack thereof

[MPat]

Extraordinary - non-ordinary… you say it looks circular because?.. why would people come up with two words for basically the same meaning?
Yes, it can mean many things - like you said… in that case, I think it’s applied to mean non-ordinary, as in an assembly which is gathering at an abnormal time. Perhaps, such Assemblies are supposed to be held every 2 or 3 years, but some urgent business required it to be held in advance of the usual, normal, ordinary, schedule.

Well, I’m afraid that “non-ordinary”, “extraordinary” and “not ordinary” are just grammatically interchangable.

A good explanation will give something more - is “extraordinarity” that is relevant related to rarity of something? To some sort of breaking of some pattern? To something else?

The extraordinary character applies to how believable the claim is… how out of the ordinary it is…

OK, that’s much clearer - “Extraordinary claim is an unbelievable claim.”. Yet in that case this “extraordinarity” is completely subjective: I find existence of God believable and non-existence unbelievable, while for you it works another way around.

Also, in this case the “rule of thumb” just tells you to keep your beliefs at all costs. Oh, well, if you really meant to tell us that we must stay Catholic no matter what anyone says, that’s probably OK…

Well, in the ancient times, Abraham is said to have heard the voice of God, right? Moses too, right? Heck, for Moses, He even wrote on stone!
Then he became unable to affect chariots of iron…
And now… immaterial.

That might be a good point against some Protestants. Yet Catholics accept many miracles and apparitions that happened in far more modern times. For example, St. Faustina Kowalska did report talking with Jesus in her Diary.

Good link…
I got stuck on II. Natural theology. If I don’t accept this bit, what use is it to go further down?
The cosmological argument… again…
The begin to exist thing is flawed. What does it mean to “begin to exist”? That’s the first premise on such arguments… “everything that begins to exist has a cause”… As far as we know, everything in existence began to exist with the Big Bang (we can’t tell beyond that - it’s an information barrier), so which philosophical argument is put forth to justify that first assertion?
Chairs and tables, usually… -.-’

OK, that’s what the “Philosophy” subforum is for.

But, just to get you started before you open a thread there, I do not see how “everything in existence began to exist with the Big Bang” is supposed to be a counterexample. In that case “everything” was caused by Big Bang.

And the consciousness which needs no material substrate… I find those ideas lacking in honesty… and overflowing in human presumption and ego-centrism.
I find it baffling how can a consciousness with no substrate act in one way with a full brain and act in a different way with a partial brain. Clearly, to me, the brain is acting as the substrate on which consciousness is built or generated.
Of course, I may be wrong. This is not scientifically set in stone, but it seems damn near.

A radio receiver that has been bashed with a hammer might start malfunctioning. Does it mean that radio waves do not exist? Or that they do not exist without a radio receiver?

And if it doesn’t, isn’t that how your argument works?

“Profitable” to the others… those who convince you of their claims.

I meant maximising profit in a sense that includes minimising the losses. When you disbelieve a story of another “Nigerian prince”, you are minimising your “losses” and maximising your “profit”.

In here, profit would go to those other persons. We are seen as believing (or acting as if we do believe) in their stories.

Who are “those other persons” in this case?

Or is it better to maximize our profit where we maximize our acceptance of true things while minimizing our acceptance of false things?

Then you should have said (and shown) that your rule of thumb helps to avoid falsehood in general, not just fraud.

Yep, the same applies to my windows anti-virus.
But, somehow, I don’t think it applies to religion… What’s the worst that can happen? I skip going to church? I don’t learn all the biblical stories? I don’t hear the advice spoken from the pulpit? An advice which sometimes carries some political undertones (I’ve heard it first-hand)…
Or am I to gain something after death?.. well, I’ll be dead, then, so what’s the use?

That already assumes that Catholicism is false, God does not exist etc. But you can’t afford to make that assumption, unless you actually do believe that God does not exist.

Yet you have claimed that you just lack the belief that God exists. Are you sure it is so? How have you tested that?

Anyway, let’s do an experiment. Try claiming (right here, in this thread) that you lack belief that God doesn’t exist (that would be more explicit that just refusing to claim that God does not exist) and report how that felt. If you are right, it should result in no discomfort, as that claim would be true.

Then we could return here and try to find out if your position wouldn’t change, were you to assume that, for all you know, Catholicism might be true.

What is the impossible, when we are considering an all-powerful immaterial being?

Omnipotence does not allow things that are logically self-contradicting (square circles and the like). One can also try to disprove omnipotence in some way. But anyway, no “atheistic” hypothesis can avoid impossibility using omnipotence. Thus there are still things one can do.

 

[PRmerger]

I can’t, in all honesty, make that claim, no.That’s why I’m on the agnostic camp.
However, it’s a working assumption… I lead my life under the assumption that no god whatsoever exists, and that includes God. That’s why I’m in the atheist camp.

Hence the “agnostic atheist” label I put in the OP.

Well, being in the agnostic camp obligates you to examine the arguments for God’s existence.

You still haven’t given any evidence that you’ve done this.

In fact, the evidence shows that you’ve summarily dismissed arguments that you don’t understand.

Would that you would be able to articulate correctly and eloquently the best argument you’ve seen for God’s existence. That would be some evidence that contradicts my assertion in red.

 

[Bradski]

Well, being in the agnostic camp obligates you to examine the arguments for God’s existence.

I wonder how many of us can say, hand on heart, that all options were considered before coming to a definite decision. Could we further fine tuning the definition of an atheist?

Someone who doesn’t believe in the existence of gods about which he has been given evidence.

That is being a little too specific though. It generally happens that someone realises that they don’t believe in God, extrapolates that to include the supernatural which then includes all other gods. It’s like being convinced that there is no life apart from that on this planet and then being able to discount, based on that, all claims of alien abduction.

It obviously (as I said earlier) makes no sense to believe in something, or not to believe in something, if you have no information about it. That said, I am strongly of the opinion (and it is only opinion) that if everyone on the planet was given information about all the various religions as opposed to just the one, then we would see a huge difference in what people believed.

It is totally beyond belief that we would have everyone in America choosing Christianity and everyone in India choosing Hinduisim and everyone in Iraq choosing to be Muslim. That would be crazy. And I admit that if I had been brought up in one of those countries I might not now be an atheist. We are all, myself included, products of circumstance.

I’ve said before that there would be less atheist if there were only one religion. There would also be less, I believe, if there was a greater variety in belief. That the proportion of beliefs were not represented geographically.

Wouldn’t the world be a better place if you were a Christian, your brother a Muslin, your uncle a Buddist, your daughter a Hindu. I’ll tell you what, if that were he case, then there wouldn’t be blood flowing on Parisian streets tonight.

 

[PRmerger]

I wonder how many of us can say, hand on heart, that all options were considered before coming to a definite decision.

Probably no one on the CAFs that’s an atheist could say that.

Could we further fine tuning the definition of an atheist?

Someone who doesn’t believe in the existence of gods about which he has been given evidence.

This already demonstrates an impoverished understanding of the arguments for God’s existence.

Use of the term “gods” rather than “God” indicates that you’re arguing against an idea that Believers reject also.

We’re not arguing about the existence of “gods”, who are “superheros only more awesome.”

We reject those gods just like you do.

We are arguing about the existence of God, who, by definition, is necessary, eternal, immaterial, infinite, all knowing, all powerful.

He who no greater can be thought.

Not superheroes.
,

 

[PRmerger]

Wouldn’t the world be a better place if you were a Christian, your brother a Muslin, your uncle a Buddist, your daughter a Hindu. I’ll tell you what, if that were he case, then there wouldn’t be blood flowing on Parisian streets tonight.

I sympathize with the sentiment, and it seems intuitively true…however, I would propose that we could also say “Wouldn’t the world be a better place if no one owned anything, esp property and land…then there wouldn’t have been blood flowing on US soil in the 1860s, European soil in the 10th, 15th, 17th, 18th centuries, Central American soil in the 1980’s…etc etc etc”.

But, of course, we all know that property ownership isn’t *really *the source of conflict, right?

 

[Bradski]

Use of the term “gods” rather than “God” indicates that you’re arguing against an idea that Believers reject also.

This is no more and no less than saying exactly what every other believer of every other god of every other religion at any time since we could actually talk has always said. ‘I am right and the others are wrong’.

Yes, I appreciate that you KNOW that you are right. But I must ask you to accept that everyone else feels exactly the same way.

And the odds that practically everyone in one geographic location or another feels exactly the same because their religion IS the right one is a coincidence of such mind boggling proportions that we must discount it and offer another reason for it.

And that reason, from my perspective, standing outside of any belief system, applies to you as well as all other believers of whatever religion.

 

[PRmerger]

This is no more and no less than saying exactly what every other believer of every other god of every other religion at any time since we could actually talk has always said. ‘I am right and the others are wrong’.

Yes, I appreciate that you KNOW that you are right. But I must ask you to accept that everyone else feels exactly the same way.

And the odds that practically everyone in one geographic location or another feels exactly the same because their religion IS the right one is a coincidence of such mind boggling proportions that we must discount it and offer another reason for it.

And that reason, from my perspective, standing outside of any belief system, applies to you as well as all other believers of whatever religion.

If we talk about the existence of God–not the truths of various religions–then I say to the Muslims, Jews, Christians, Bahais, Deists and others who don’t wish to be classified yet believe in the God of the Philosophers: you are right about professing the existence of God, and come join me and the rest of Christendom in proclaiming the truth of the existence of this God of the Philosophers.

So let’s just talk about the existence of the God of the Philosophers.

You need to examine the evidence for His existence…and then we can talk about the differences in all the other religions.

 

[Bradski]

But, of course, we all know that property ownership isn’t *really *the source of conflict, right?

No. Owning property is not a problem. Having different attitudes about what it means to own the property will cause conflict. Wanting someone else’s property is a problem. Especially when those who want a specific amount of it are geographically situated together and act as one.

It’s quite easy to convince a large group of people with similar backgrounds with a strong belief system that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is in the enemy camp. And that whatever they do about it can be justified. You’ve probably seen the pictures from France that confirm that.

Race, politics and religion will get you there. Combine all three and God help us all.

So let’s just talk about the existence of the God of the Philosophers.

You need to examine the evidence for His existence…and then we can talk about the differences in all the other religions.

How do you reference the God of the philosophers without Him turning out to be the same God as Christians, Jews and Muslims worship? It’s the same one. The one in which I don’t believe.

 

[pocaracas]

Hi MPat!

OK, that’s much clearer - “Extraordinary claim is an unbelievable claim.”. Yet in that case this “extraordinarity” is completely subjective: I find existence of God believable and non-existence unbelievable, while for you it works another way around.

Also, in this case the “rule of thumb” just tells you to keep your beliefs at all costs. Oh, well, if you really meant to tell us that we must stay Catholic no matter what anyone says, that’s probably OK…

Unbelievable when you first hear it, unless you are in a vulnerable position and influenced by people you implicitly trust…

Also, yes, I’ve been guilty (at least on this forum) of telling people to keep their faith at all costs.

Yet Catholics accept many miracles and apparitions that happened in far more modern times. For example, St. Faustina Kowalska did report talking with Jesus in her Diary.

So… she reports talking to someone… was that someone out of her and producing sound waves? or in her head?

OK, that’s what the “Philosophy” subforum is for.

But, just to get you started before you open a thread there, I do not see how “everything in existence began to exist with the Big Bang” is supposed to be a counterexample. In that case “everything” was caused by Big Bang.

It is because the premise “everything that begins to exist must have a cause” should be a valid premise to the argument… it is stated as valid for everything we experience daily, chairs, trees, houses, cars, the planet Earth, the Sun, everything… in everything we see a causal sequence of events that leads to those structures… but ultimately, they’re just the rearranging of pre-existent material…
Cosmological arguments tends to extrapolate from these rearrangings (which we typically call creations) to the original cause that started the Big Bang and, possibly, generated the materials we know of from… nothing?
It doesn’t follow. The premise and conclusion stand on two different concepts of “create”, or “begin to exist”.
This mixing of concepts is, I admit, not obvious. When I first saw this kind of argument, I was a bit puzzled… but then I noticed this detail.

A radio receiver that has been bashed with a hammer might start malfunctioning. Does it mean that radio waves do not exist? Or that they do not exist without a radio receiver?

And if it doesn’t, isn’t that how your argument works?

A receiver? I’d put an emitter in that comparison.
A radio emitter that has been bashed with a hammer might start malfunctioning. Does it mean that radio waves don’t exist? well, no… but the radio waves that would have been emitted by that particular emitter don’t get to exist, or are too distorted to be meaningful to any properly working receiver

I meant maximising profit in a sense that includes minimising the losses. When you disbelieve a story of another “Nigerian prince”, you are minimising your “losses” and maximising your “profit”.

Who are “those other persons” in this case?

The persons who wish to convince you of their belief.
Pascal’s wager works equally “well” to any other religion or belief system.
Believe in the god of Islam and cut your losses in the afterlife, or disbelieve that god and go to Islamic hell. Now you too are in the non-believing team. You lose the 92 virgins (or whatever number it is). That’s a mighty big loss

Then you should have said (and shown) that your rule of thumb helps to avoid falsehood in general, not just fraud.

Yeah… I should… I try to be as accurate as possible, but sometimes I fail…
Only human…

That already assumes that Catholicism is false, God does not exist etc. But you can’t afford to make that assumption, unless you actually do believe that God does not exist.

Yet you have claimed that you just lack the belief that God exists. Are you sure it is so? How have you tested that?

Anyway, let’s do an experiment. Try claiming (right here, in this thread) that you lack belief that God doesn’t exist (that would be more explicit that just refusing to claim that God does not exist) and report how that felt. If you are right, it should result in no discomfort, as that claim would be true.

Then we could return here and try to find out if your position wouldn’t change, were you to assume that, for all you know, Catholicism might be true.

I answered this to Randy, yesterday.
I cannot make the claim that God does not exist… it’s practically impossible to ascertain that with certainty.
Just like it’s practically impossible to ascertain that Darth Vader didn’t exist, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away… he may have… we can’t tell.
But we lead our lives under some assumptions of practical value: Darth Vader and the Force are products of a human mind, fiction, and are not depicting reality, so no, Darth Vader never existed anywhere is our working assumption.
For me, it seems that the Catholic God and all other gods are products of human minds and are not depicting reality. My actions arise from the assumption that no gods exist.

But intellectually I know I can’t make that claim with certainty.

Omnipotence does not allow things that are logically self-contradicting (square circles and the like). One can also try to disprove omnipotence in some way. But anyway, no “atheistic” hypothesis can avoid impossibility using omnipotence. Thus there are still things one can do.

Yes, logical contradictions are barred… but that still leaves way too much to work with.

It may be possible, in some higher dimensionality, to have a 2D circle also be a 2D square… I don’t know how, nor if it is… but sometimes we need to take care with some 3D assumptions that we make…

 

[pocaracas]

Well, being in the agnostic camp obligates you to examine the arguments for God’s existence.

You still haven’t given any evidence that you’ve done this.

In fact, the evidence shows that you’ve summarily dismissed arguments that you don’t understand.

Would that you would be able to articulate correctly and eloquently the best argument you’ve seen for God’s existence. That would be some evidence that contradicts my assertion in red.

Well… I’d say I just did that on my previous post, replying to MPat, when referring to the cosmological arguments.

I also remember, on another thread, when I granted you, for the sake of continued argument, the existence of a conscious entity, out of this Universe, who somehow created the Universe.
You then jumped the gun to this “God of the Philosophers” and assumed a whole bunch of stuff about that entity.
I’m curious about how you make the leap from conscious entity out of the Universe, capable of generating Universes, to some super-hero God of the Philosophers.

If I don’t understand the arguments, then maybe it’s because they aren’t being conveyed in a correct and eloquent way.
I keep finding that people mix two concepts attributed to the same word as if they’re the same thing… like “begin to exist”… please, do keep probing me… maybe I’m missing something… maybe not and further probing will lead to a clearer picture of this exact thing: all arguments are flawed at some level - most likely, the linguistic level… for language is strongly connected to how we think about things… and language breaks, for example, if we try to discuss events in a timeless domain… to our minds, any sort of action requires time. Our verbs have that temporal part included in them.

 

[You]

No… the human brain “appeared” out of a primate’s brain, that “appeared” out of a mammal’s brain, that “appeared” out of an amphibian’s brain, which “apeared” out of a fish’s brain, which… I don’t know… what came before fish that had brains? slugs or snails?.. they do have some rudimentary nervous system…
It took lots of evolving to get to the human brain…

Like your flash animations are possible because they are possible in the human brain perhaps the human brain was possible in the fishes brain. But then I have the odd quandary wherein the simpler and the more basic things appear to get the greater the potential for complexity exists within them. Essentially carbon and hydrogen atoms sitting on the ground had no choice but to become a human brain to ask what is a carbon and hydrogen atom and whence did they come, and who and what am I. Its like matter is questioning its own reason for existence. And following our original line of thought of complex arising from simple we find that then question of what and who am I is the complex thought which has arisen from the basic clay. It suggests potential for answering that question in radical ways like atoms and clay are radically different from the substance of nothing.

 

[pocaracas]

Hey you!

Like your flash animations are possible because they are possible in the human brain perhaps the human brain was possible in the fishes brain.

If a human mind is possible in a fish brain? I doubt it… too simple, I guess.

But then I have the odd quandary wherein the simpler and the more basic things appear to get the greater the potential for complexity exists within them. Essentially carbon and hydrogen atoms sitting on the ground had no choice but to become a human brain to ask what is a carbon and hydrogen atom and whence did they come, and who and what am I. Its like matter is questioning its own reason for existence.

Yes, it is…

And following our original line of thought of complex arising from simple we find that then question of what and who am I is the complex thought which has arisen from the basic clay. It suggests potential for answering that question in radical ways like atoms and clay are radically different from the substance of nothing.

You lost me at “nothing”…

 

[ericc]

Oh, with one exception. Apparently He couldn’t include Life in His flow chart of existence. He could allow the whole entire universe to form by natural processes, but He couldn’t do that with life.

I don’t know why. Above my pay grade I’m afraid. Maybe He hadn’t allowed for the right mix of chemicals. Or maybe he’d set up the wrong conditions. Or maybe He just ran out of time. Who can say…

But we have apparently found something that God couldn’t do.

You have found nothing. God could do it, but he didn’t let Nature/Cosmos do it. Because Nature does not come with built in intelligence. Nature comes with certain “laws” that determines its behaviour but no instruction manual is included, no codes provided. It can not think, it can not direct action to intended targets, it has no knowledge. It is just elements and energies and stuff. Nature is not a being, it is not life itself. That must come from somewhere else.

If God wants to cook his own recipe, why do you feel that he must delegate everything to Nature? Why do you think that he need to give to Nature the capability to create life for example? It is not like God is too busy to do it. Perhaps he just didn’t want atheists to have the excuse to say they don’t need him?

 

[Bradski]

If God wants to cook his own recipe, why do you feel that he must delegate everything to Nature? Why do you think that he need to give to Nature the capability to create life for example?

Because He can do anything. And He has done everything using what we can describe as natural processes. We describe them as such (even if God was the instigator) because we can understand them.

But now you want to claim that anything that we don’t understand is still the work of God but…this time He can’t use what we would describe as natural causes.

So…anything that we do understand is natural because God wanted it to be that way. And anything that we don’t understand is not natural because…well, God wanted it not to be natural.

As arguments go, I’m not marking that very highly. It’s classic God of the Gaps. That is: what do understand is natural and what we don’t is divine.

You are saying that life either could not be set up by God to be natural (as is almost everything in the cosmos) or that He decided that this aspect of the universe shouldn’t be.

Do you really think that He made a special effort to instigate life? That it wasn’t happening as part of the natural processes that He had put in place and there was a ‘KAZAM’ moment when it suddenly happened?

Was that a microbe? A cell? A virus? Why on earth would He have to bother specifically constructing life when it could (and appears to all intents, should) be part of His initial plans.

You are saying it couldn’t be done. Either that or admit that it could and be done with it.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

You have found nothing. God could do it, but he didn’t let Nature/Cosmos do it.

Are the two mutually exclusive? Say God decided to wipe out the lifeforms on a planet. Is nudging a bit of debris and letting gravity and inertia guide it to its pathway out of question? Or would direct anihilation necessary?

 

[You]

…

You lost me at “nothing”…

nothing in this case being whatever matter was before it was matter. whether a thought, idea, potential. etc.

 

[PRmerger]

I also remember, on another thread, when I granted you, for the sake of continued argument, the existence of a conscious entity, out of this Universe, who somehow created the Universe.
You then jumped the gun to this “God of the Philosophers” and assumed a whole bunch of stuff about that entity.

Can you please tell me what the difference is between this Conscious Entity who created the Universe and the God of the Philosophers?

 

[ericc]

The state of non-belief is not a belief… why do you ask about “my belief”?
My lack of belief is also not a belief.

Whatever state you think you are in and you tag it to be not a belief, you are actually saying you do not feel that the statement is real and true. So we should ignore your statement on the states you find yourself in then?

Then what exactly is it that you are asking people to “pick apart” then? If you are just stating a fact that “you are in a state of atheism” then there is nothing to discuss. It is like making a statement “that color is black”. But if you are inviting discussion on something about atheism or agnosticism, then set up a premise or something to facilitate the discussion.

My assumption that humans made up the concept of gods is a belief, for I have no empirical data to serve as evidence for it. People weren’t exactly recording their thoughts at the time…

Why do you believe that assumption in the first place since you have no basis for your assumption? Are you in a habit of believing stuff with no basis?

It does have some other kind of backing, based on the present-day absence of any god which primitive people would have had physical access to in order to come to the acknowledgement of that god’s existence and then passing it on to subsequent generations… for example.

And you have no evidence to back that up and it serves as another opinion again. And since when does one need to have physical access to God? If you have no experience with God, why do you think that is a requirement?

 

[PRmerger]

No. Owning property is not a problem. Having different attitudes about what it means to own the property will cause conflict. Wanting someone else’s property is a problem. Especially when those who want a specific amount of it are geographically situated together and act as one.

Egg-zactly.

So just like we don’t throw out owning property because people start wars over property, we don’t throw out religion because people start wars over religion.

 

[PRmerger]

How do you reference the God of the philosophers without Him turning out to be the same God as Christians, Jews and Muslims worship?

Quite easily.

You simply talk about the Being who is necessary, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent and immaterial.