Is it Rational to Believe God Exists?

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Peter_Plato said:
You cannot damn all moral views merely because some practice morality poorly or use poor logical skills to draw errant moral conclusions.
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“Love the sinner and hate the sin” has become “I don’t like it so let’s all pretend it’s a mental illness”.
 
Hello 987MK.
987mk said:
First there is no evidence that God exists.

I do not assume God exists.

The Laws of Physics do not demand a God exists.

The Law of Entropy has nothing to say about a supernatural God.

No God, No Creation, NO Matter, No Order…according to who? You and other believers.

Remove God from the equation and you still have creation. How did this all come about? The people studying these things still don’t have the answer, but wouldn’t it be exciting if they were able to discover the answer?
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Those laws you revere are part of God’s signature across the Universe. I forget which great mind said but there are many exceedingly smart men and women who see in the order of the Universe God’s signature. I do too.

Glenda
 
Peter_Plato said:
Meaning just about anything is acceptable for “persons?”

When is this “transcending” of rationality warranted or justified and when is it not?

Are you claiming that as long as it is a “person” who transcends rationality there is no problem with doing so? How would you know it is a “person” doing so and not that this “person” has merely gone off the rails and become dysfunctional? Must be some reasonable way to assess that, no?

The statement just seems an odd one to make. Kind of like saying your own personal rationality trumps the “rationality” of common parlance, therefore you, inocente, are justified in “transcending” the vulgar “rationality” of the masses with your own personal version simply because you have the dignity of being a “person.”

Of course, you would likely admit anyone who happens to agree with you to have a share in that dignity and also transcend the vulgar rationality of the masses, I would think. Meaning, dissenters are merely “rational” while you and your like-minded ilk share a superior and transcendent “knowledge.”

On the improbable possibility that you happen to admit that a “person” who disagrees with you on some points might also “transcend” rationality, the problem (at least for your claim) becomes how to arbitrate between two such “persons” who both transcend “rationality” without recourse to some “rational” means of doing so?

Apparently, merely claiming to transcend “rationality” does not, I suspect, make a point of view invulnerable to critique, as much as you would like it to. It does mean, however, that you would need to construct a non-rational basis for distinguishing between acceptable and not acceptable “personal” views. Assuming, of course, that the inocente view is not the de facto correct one. Just saying.

Otherwise, “persons transcend rationality” is polite code for, "I am right and no matter what reasons you come up with, if you disagree with my “person,” you are wrong.
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Sheesh, all I said was in turn that implies that morality cannot be reduced to any mere set of rules, that it must in some way transcend rules. And it does, since mercy, compassion, love are not bound by rules.

Christians, of all people, might agree that people are not computers, but I can see you want to argue. Trouble is, you went off on one of your tangents again, so apart from admiring all your air quotes, sorry but I can’t see anything to comment on.
 
Peter_Plato said:
The problem here is the body of psychologists who have removed homosexuality from the DSM have forgotten or ignored one of the principal features of illnesses - that is their effect on the larger population. In other words, what is the effect of not treating homosexuality as an illness on humanity as a whole? What impact will this have for generations to come and on the ultimate well-being of the human species?
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Yikes, you want to do WHAT?

You’re not heard of the Nazis then?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Super Genetic Engineering Man.
 
inocente said:
Yikes, you want to do WHAT?

You’re not heard of the Nazis then?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Super Genetic Engineering Man.
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Since when does treating an illness mean exterminating everyone who has it?

I suppose you simply forgot how illnesses are treated in modern societies in your haste to associate me with Nazism.

You do realize homosexuality is not genetic, but, if any correlation to genes exists, it is epigenetic. You do understand the implications of that, no?

Environmental factors change (turn on or off) epigenetic inhibitors, so homosexuality, if epigenetic, can be “treated” environmentally.

If epigenetic, by the way, promoting it as a “good” thing will very likely increase prevalence. The only reason anyone would positively endorse allowing homosexuality to become more prevalent is that a moral determination has already been made that homosexuality is morally good, or, minimally, not morally bad. Which, of course, you are committed to such a view.
 
RGCheek said:
Of course not, but it ALLOWS us to make choices.
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If being in time does not explain the origin of our power to make choices, i.e., we must transcend the causal material order to introduce novel causes into it, then you have admitted that being in time does not restrict or constrain anyone to time. So, God need not be in time to “experience” or observe time, or effect changes in time.

It should be noted that power to transcend time could not be caused by any cause within time, which takes us to another reason for thinking a transcendent cause (God) for human free will does exist.
 
Peter_Plato said:
Personally, I find pure intelligence more telling.

According to the Mensa site the number of members by religious affiliation are as follows:

49% Christian, 3% Unitarian, 9% Jewish, 7% agnostic, 3.6% atheist, 9% no religion

Note, only 3.6% atheist.
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The American branch of Mensa does indeed report 49% of subscribers identify as Christian.

Only problem is, 73% of the general population of America identify as Christian.

So supposedly, the high IQ American is one third less likely to believe in God than average. But as most high IQ Americans choose not to subscribe (membership of Mensa is tiny), it doesn’t actually tell us anything at all.

mwm.us.mensa.org/faq/people.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States
 
inocente said:
The American branch of Mensa does indeed report 49% of subscribers identify as Christian.

Only problem is, 73% of the general population of America identify as Christian.

So supposedly, the high IQ American is one third less likely to believe in God than average. But as most high IQ Americans choose not to subscribe (membership of Mensa is tiny), it doesn’t actually tell us anything at all.

mwm.us.mensa.org/faq/people.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States
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Actually, it does tell us that religious beliefs are not the domain of the unintelligent. Even if many high IQ Americans choose not to subscribe, it is clear that only very few (3.6%) from a sampling of those with high intelligence subscribe to atheism.

The proportion of atheists among the general population and the Mensa numbers being roughly the same, it is not true to say “the high IQ American is one third less likely to believe in God than average” although it might be accurate to say the proportion of Christians is one third less in the Mensa group.

Now it may be that the 73% of the American population who identify as Christian have a strong tendency not to “toot their own horn” as far as intelligence goes - and do not go out of their way to advertise their intellectual capacity - that being the reason why the proportion of Christians is lower in the Mensa group.

Regardless, the point remains that there is not an inverse relationship between intelligence and belief in God (theism.) I wasn’t making a claim about Christianity, specifically, in any case.
 
inocente said:
I never said that though.
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This is what you said in post 976.

*Psychiatrists treat patients suffering from mental illnesses. So they must first determine whether there is an illness present, and the general criteria are whether there is suffering or endangerment or an impaired ability to live life, with detailed criteria in manuals such as the DSM.

Homosexuality does not of itself result in suffering (although bullying will) or in any impairment, and so isn’t a mental illness.
*

And here was my answer:

*Suffering is not a necessary criteria of mental disease. Sodomites will not tell you they are suffering. But so will many of the mental patients wandering about the halls of state hospitals. Some might even think they are deliriously happy.

Then again, some sodomites will tell you they are suffering when at last they realize they have damaged rectums or AIDS. Others will admit to suffering when they finally come to admit they have sinned against nature and want to stop, or don’t know how to stop.

The same applies to those who don’t believe it is rational to believe in God. Their self doubts haunt them, and they cannot refrain from visiting websites like Catholic Answers, where they work to reassure themselves that they have no reason to suffer, or where they hope to convert Catholics according to the principle that misery loves company.
*
 
PRmerger said:
This is not a correct articulation of the Argument from Causality.

Everything that has a beginning has a cause.

See the above.

Everything that has a beginning has a cause, Tom.
God has no beginning.

Evidence for the existence of the multiverse, please!

And this puts you in the same place, now, as Believers: you have to prove that your theory is correct. You maintain “if there were”…which is similar to the Believer’s paradigm.
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It is an assumption that the universe had a beginning, so you are not going to convince the atheist by this argument.
 
Peter_Plato said:
Actually, it does tell us that religious beliefs are not the domain of the unintelligent. Even if many high IQ Americans choose not to subscribe, it is clear that only very few (3.6%) from a sampling of those with high intelligence subscribe to atheism.

The proportion of atheists among the general population and the Mensa numbers being roughly the same, it is not true to say “the high IQ American is one third less likely to believe in God than average” although it might be accurate to say the proportion of Christians is one third less in the Mensa group.

Now it may be that the 73% of the American population who identify as Christian have a strong tendency not to “toot their own horn” as far as intelligence goes - and do not go out of their way to advertise their intellectual capacity - that being the reason why the proportion of Christians is lower in the Mensa group.

Regardless, the point remains that there is not an inverse relationship between intelligence and belief in God (theism.) I wasn’t making a claim about Christianity, specifically, in any case.
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Mensa may not be a representative sample.
 
Peter_Plato said:
Actually, it does tell us that religious beliefs are not the domain of the unintelligent. Even if many high IQ Americans choose not to subscribe, it is clear that only very few (3.6%) from a sampling of those with high intelligence subscribe to atheism.

The proportion of atheists among the general population and the Mensa numbers being roughly the same, it is not true to say “the high IQ American is one third less likely to believe in God than average” although it might be accurate to say the proportion of Christians is one third less in the Mensa group.

Now it may be that the 73% of the American population who identify as Christian have a strong tendency not to “toot their own horn” as far as intelligence goes - and do not go out of their way to advertise their intellectual capacity - that being the reason why the proportion of Christians is lower in the Mensa group.

Regardless, the point remains that there is not an inverse relationship between intelligence and belief in God (theism.) I wasn’t making a claim about Christianity, specifically, in any case.
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😃

American Mensa claims 50000 members. 3.6% of 50000 is 1750 people.

1750 out of an American population of 314 million. That’s 0.0006%. Read any book on statistics, you can extrapolate zilch from such tiny minorities.

While it remains that only 49% of members identify as Christian against 73% of the general population. But the numbers are still far too small to extrapolate anything whatsoever.
 
Peter_Plato said:
If being in time does not explain the origin of our power to make choices, i.e., we must transcend the causal material order to introduce novel causes into it, then you have admitted that being in time does not restrict or constrain anyone to time. So, God need not be in time to “experience” or observe time, or effect changes in time.
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Yes, I agree, but God’s beard is still not growing. 😃 By which I mean that God is not subject to the changes of time as we mere mortals are (and the polytheistic ‘godlings’ like Zeus, etc, were subject to the flow of time).
Peter_Plato said:
It should be noted that power to transcend time could not be caused by any cause within time, which takes us to another reason for thinking a transcendent cause (God) for human free will does exist.
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If I understand you correctly, I agree, but I don’t think this prevents the scientific manipulation of time via General Relativity effects, no?

And free will I agree exists and its point of origin I would think is extra-natural by implication. Consciousness itself, since we do not know its actual cause, could itself be extra-natural. I can without changing anything about my position or other physical attributes can shift my mental focus from one sensation to another without any cause, almost randomly. There is nothing chemical or structural about the brain that controls this as I or anyone can do it at will, ignoring what we wish and focusing all the more on what we wish.
 
RGCheek said:
I can without changing anything about my position or other physical attributes can shift my mental focus from one sensation to another without any cause, …
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Does this mean that it is not true that everything that has a beginning must have a cause?
 
Tomdstone said:
Does this mean that it is not true that everything that has a beginning must have a cause?
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You are confusing “cause” with “physical cause.”

Having a novel idea or coming into conscious existence still requires a cause or explanation, though that may not necessarily be a physical one.
 
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