Doubting Atheists

[Kaninchen]

Depends which god(s) and whether you mean the existence of the god(s) or their claimed actions.

You think repeatable, falsifiable (or potentially falsifiable) test conditions might turn up?

 

[FiveLinden]

You think repeatable, falsifiable (or potentially falsifiable) test conditions might turn up?

Sometimes they do. I have been impressed with the experiments using simple techniques to make things that look very much like the shroud of Turin. And religious predictions of the future, if sufficiently detailed, are very easy to test just by waiting.

 

[Kaninchen]

Sometimes they do. I have been impressed with the experiments using simple techniques to make things that look very much like the shroud of Turin.

That’s just dealing with the age of and condition of a particular artefact, the attributed origin of which isn’t assumed by all Catholics anyway. Showing it to be Medieval in origin wouldn’t be a test of the existence of a deity.

And religious predictions of the future, if sufficiently detailed, are very easy to test just by waiting.

It’s the sufficiently detailed bit that has foxed everybody so far.

 

[Hume]

And religious predictions of the future, if sufficiently detailed, are very easy to test just by waiting.

That’s the darndest thing.

Most of these prophets end up being defensibly right because, if given enough time, something occurs that looks like the fulfillment of the prophecy if you turn around a few times and squint.

I’d take a prophet much more seriously if he was able to foretell something unknowable, discreet, and gave an exact date. Like “Hey guys, there’s going to be a massive earthquake in Lisbon on All Saint’s Day in 1755” and said so awhile beforehand.

Otherwise you just have Nostradamus-types that make fuzzy statements about a bad guy named “Hister” and 400 years later everyone says “See!? He was right! He was clearly talking about that baddie Adolf!”.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

It would be interesting to find out what other people felt at times like that. Whether people with belief and those without had similar thoughts.

Two stories.

My mum went into a coma and was rushed to hospital, her breathing was a horrible gurgling sound, nicknamed the death rattle. The doctors said she had days to live and there was nothing they could do for her. We called a priest, although none of us had a faith at the time, we just thought it was what you should do as mum was bought up a Catholic.

As the priest prayed my mum’s breathing seemed to relax and change. About ten minutes after the priest walked out the door, mum came round and started to speak, she had no recollection of anything that happened in hospital. We thought it might have just been a temporary reprieve, but she lived another eleven years.

Having our mum back was a mixed blessing, because she had suffered with multiple sclerosis for about twenty years prior to the coma, and she had gradually lost the use of both her arms and legs. Before the coma, there were times she said she wanted to die. But after the coma my mum regarded her healing as a blessing, despite her paralysed body, and she said she was not ready to die after surviving the coma.

About ten years later I had tests done for cancer, about a month later the doctor phoned and said he urgently wanted to see me, it was non – Hodgkin Lymphoma. This was a name I recognised, our friend had this cancer, and died a few months later. She was also the friend who had helped me to find my faith in God.

I prayed for the wisdom, strength and peace to do God’s will, whether the cancer was a death sentence, or just an inconvenience. I can only say that from the moment of making this prayer, I have experienced a profound sense of peace, and the thought of cancer has never troubled me for a moment.

Cancer could be a truly worrying process, you wait a month or two for tests, you wait for the results, and you wait for more tests. I have never once prayed for healing, at the age of 62, the prayer for healing seemed too complicated, it might or might not be my time to go. Recognising this profound sense of peace comes from God, gives me reason to be thankful.

 

[Freddy]

Good luck to you, Eric. You’re a very lucky man to have the faith you do which I hope will give you the strength you need. Stay strong and trust in God.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Good luck to you,

And to you Fred.

Stay strong and trust in God.

The stronger you are, the less you need God. Taking the risk to trust in God has been a profound journey. I have been a Street Pastor for the last twelve years, we wonder the streets of our town until around 4 am, we go out to care, listen and help if we can.

I can remember the first drunken fight, about a dozen men were punching the living daylights out of each other. The dilemma we face is observing all the policies, procedures and risk assessments, or we pray as we go and trust in God.

We walked in the middle, with drunks in front and behind us, we could do nothing other than try and keep people apart with no physical contact. I don’t know how it works, but I experience a profound sense of peace that surpasses all my understanding. It is almost as if they absorb our peace and you soak up their anger.

After a while the fight ended and we stayed with them a while. When it was time to part company we had lots of handshakes and hugs. My two partners were remarkable ladies, both in their seventies.

We have been in fights with broken bottles, and asked people to hand over their knives. We don’t have any training in self defence, we don’t have any protective equipment, we go out in our weakness, and trust in God for our strength.

 

[Neithan]

No, nothing particular in mind. I wondered how you felt about it if you had read it. It’s not really a philosophical treatise which a lot of people take it as. More a rant against fundamentalism.

After listening to the audiobook in full, the impression the book leaves is overall superficial, even more than I recall. Listening to Dawkins narrate it does brings out the satire though, and there are quite a few laugh-out-loud moments; and of course the Professor is in his element when he is teaching biology. His cursory treatment of natural theology and theism is disappointing, to say the least. He dismisses Aquinas in a few paragraphs, revealing his lack of understanding and likewise the shallow grasp of the subject by anyone who considered that treatment in any way satisfactory or influential.

Most of the rhetorical attack on religion reminds me of Bill Maher’s mockumentary, Religulous that was released around the same time, and has about as much insight. There is value in his criticism of pseudoscience, in particular the Intelligent Design movement (which unfortunately obscured and continues to obscure teleonomy), and I sympathize with his pleas not to indoctrinate children. [His own counter-argument to teleology, though, maybe because of his lack of appreciation for the classical arguments, is attacking a strawman.]

In the end, his positivist presumptions are obvious throughout the book right up until the final sentence. I’m curious if he’s adjusted that at all since and shifted his attitude toward a more postpositivist lens, but I suspect he’s not even aware of the philosophical implications, as that would expose some of the hypocrisy in his vitriol for religion. Anti-religious naturalism could be a virulent “memeplex” as much as any other ideology.

 

[Frankenfurter]

It makes little difference how your brain processes it or chooses to label it. The event has happened. The miracle has already occurred.

God shares his ability to exist, to be, with us.

You are already aware of it.

 

[Freddy]

It makes little difference how your brain processes it or chooses to label it. The event has happened. The miracle has already occurred.

God shares his ability to exist, to be, with us.

You are already aware of it.

Miracles don’t have to be divinely ordained.

 

[Frankenfurter]

Cahtbots pick up on one word and make a statement about it.

I used the term ‘miracle’ so you respond with the stock statement about ‘miracles’.

You must be seeking God since you are on a Catholic web site.

I wish you well in your search.

But then again you may just be an algorithm. Forever going in circles.

 

[Freddy]

Cahtbots pick up on one word and make a statement about it.

I used the term ‘miracle’ so you respond with the stock statement about ‘miracles’.

You must be seeking God since you are on a Catholic web site.

I wish you well in your search.

But then again you may just be an algorithm. Forever going in circles.

I didn’t know it was a stock statement. I was just pointing out that the word miracle is commonly used in a secular sense as well as a religious one.