“We” meaning theists. My point is, “Why God?” Without any evidence, why postulate something as necessarily complex as God to fill the gaps in our knowledge?
I wouldn’t say it’s reasonable to invent something far greater than is necessary.
My main problem with Dawkins is not that he is athiest, or even that he is anti-religion. I don’t even care that he speaks out against religion. My problem with Richard Dawkins is the insulting, demeaning, and mocking tones he takes when dealing with religion and religious people. He has no regard for people with differing beliefs and doesn’t hide his contempt for those of us who believe in God and in the importance of the Church in society throughout history. Nevermind that there have been hundreds of thousands of renowned scholars and well-educated physicists who also believed in God throughout the hears–to him, all of them were idiots compared to his “supreme” intellect.
Some of those terms might apply, if you take the OT literally as a portrait of God. Others are ill-chosen even in that context. Homophobia, for instance, is a modern smear word and completely anachronistic when applied to ancient texts. “Filicide” is just plain silly. “Capricious” is also debatable. But I’ll grant the general point that, read literally, the OT applies some rather nasty actions to God.
This raises an interesting point: who decides which parts of the OT are metaphor and which are literal? Has it always been the same or have Christians and Jews re-appraised their interpretation as non-religious human moral intelligence has evolved over the centuries?
I think William James has answered this objection effectively in “The Will to Believe.” Admittedly his version is a bit different from Pascal’s (and in my opinion superior).
It’s not as simple as “metaphor” or “literal.” But as for “who,” it’s the interpretive community.
What “non-religious human moral intelligence” has “evolved”? There was precious little non-religious human anything until recently. Moral development, as far as I can see, has taken place almost exclusively in societies influenced by Christianity. (This is not to say that non-Christian societies were immoral, only that I can’t see that Chinese morality of, say, 1800 was superior to the Chinese morality of Confucius’ day. That’s a pretty high standard–Confucius’s morality is admirable and we can still learn a lot from it.)
The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church - The Catholic Church
No it hasn’t changed that much. Augustine was none too happy about attempts to read Genesis literally, back in the fourth century.
I respectfully disagree. People buy advertising space to sell something. That is what atheists are doing now. And advertising works. While it is often based on seemingly ridiculous emotional appeals, it is designed to target people by its message. So whether or not you think that some hair tonic or a particular car will help you get the chicks, that type of appeal does work on some people. Diet pills are a big business based not just on heath but on perceptions, the same with fashions. In the 1980s, the so-called “beautiful people” took cocaine because it was ‘fashionable.’
Do you feel that the two are not analagous? If they’re not, why not?
As somebody pointed out to him, there are any number of teapots orbiting the sun. Most of them located on planet earth.
Then you have totally misread me. I have not uncritically accepted anything. What I am pointing out is the following:Hi Ed,
Sure I’ve heard of them and as a psychologist, I have both studied and taught them.
However, the fact that those theories exist does not mean that they are true! Nor do posts constitute evidence. The reality is, as has been pointed out by the mathematician () that all we are doing is measuring physiological changes and inferring (or taking on faith
) that mind is produced by matter. We don’t know that, nor has it been demonstrated.
I love your uncritical acceptance of natural selection acting on psychological processes without any evidence. Evolutionary psychology is based on making up stories to fit our observations of how people behave today. There is no empirical evidence for evolutionary psychology. There is plenty for evolution of physical characteristics, but not for psychological ones, including faith and/or religious behaviour.
In addition, evolutionary psychology is not premised on computer models of the mind either. We have successfully built some models of some processes, but this does not mean that that is how our minds actually work. Conceptualising psychological processes as software gives the illusion of more knowledge and understanding than we actually have.
Evolutionary psychology and computer science can both be used to demonstrate how people think they are using the scientific method but are actually relying on inference and faith.
I’d say they are. It seems a perfectly reasonable position, and at the core of his ideas. Everything else derives from it.
A teapot doesn’t explain anything, or answer any questions that people commonly ask. God does.
This is not true. Religion does have to justify its rituals and the behaviour expected of those following the religion to both its own members and to the rest of society. It does that on the basis of scripture and argument. It is then up to the individual to decide whether or not to take part in the religion and/or that aspect of the religion and it is up to society to decide whether to allow that religion to practise that aspect. For example, Hindus in the UK are not allowed open air cremation - even though their religion expects it.
There is no empirical evidence for the existence or non-existence of God! That statement is based on opinion and…faith.
The physical processes in the brain are blind in the sense that they do not know what they are doing. For the physicalist, beliefs are simply predetermined modes of activity. There is no insight or foresight involved. Like habits they are programmed to follow certain routines. Unlike a rational being they cannot adjust automatically to an unusual situation. The flexibility of a mind with free will is a far more powerful explanation of knowledge, insight and understanding than a biological machine which is not responsible for what it does.
The question of the ultimate origin of free will remains.
One Rational Being with free will is sufficient. (Occam’s Razor).
The Church has been, historically, the body that interprets the Christian scriptures. Of course different Christian groups define this somewhat differently. Likely the Orthodox are the most conservative in their understanding - the doctrine of the Church, in their view, does not change from the truth that was first revealed. So though it may, in some cases be further explained, it can’t contradict what was there before. The Catholic Church also claims a similar understanding, though what they see as “further understanding” goes outside of what Orthodoxy would allow. And then Protestants are divided into several camps - some see themselves as a “reformed” Catholic Church, so their view is similar (Anglicans, Lutherans). Others reject the idea of interpretation at all.
You know, I just don’t get it when people say this. We have a universe, which is clearly empirical evidence (if we assume it’s real.) If not, we each know that we are real, so that is our evidence.