Ah, but here’s the thing: you don’t know that you’re just seeing half the machine. You could be seeing 1/41 of it, or 99/100, or anything in between.
Which is exactly why those regimes are hardly non-religious. They have far more in common with the likes of you then the likes of me. I demand evidence, not authority. I demand facts, not feelings.
Whoah, hold on there. Talk about comparing apples to oranges. You’re adding up MULTIPLE christian charities and comparing it to ONE secular charity. The fact is that a secular charity is #1 and comprises most of the top ten. Besides, you may want to actually look of facts related to what your spouting. The largest charity doesn’t really say anything about WHO gives the most. Christian charities have been shown time and time again to be incredibly less efficient as well. No surprise, they’re more concerned with spreading childish fairytales than actually helping people. And after all, suffering is part of god’s plan. And how moral is it to be charitable just because some angry diety tells you to?
Yes. And yes. It is irrational fantasy, and even believers, as we’ve seen in this thread, are proud of that fact. The more irrational you can be the better. And irrationality is dangerous. Do some research on victory reform schools if you want more evidence of this. Read some stories about girls being made to force feed each other their own vomit from a turkey baster. Certainly the owner’s mental illness had much to do with his actions, but it was the religious environment that allowed someone who should have been institutionalized to gain power and praise, and to have dozens of young girls handed over into his care without question. Irrationality, belief without evidence, is praised as one of the highest virtues you can have.
I have a hard time imagining how you could do that. But still, you’re missing the point. I don’t know if you glossed over this or purposefully ignored it, but here it is again.
Occam’s razor is important because it is one of the most foundational ideas in reasoning. It’s like non-contradiction. Without it the world stops functioning, and you adhere to it whether you realize it or not. If we reject it, anything goes. Atomic theory? Well it could just be invisible fairies moving all those electrons around? Found a suspect in a murder trial covered in blood with a video of him commiting the murder, fingerprints on the weapon, and a signed confession? Could have been invisible space hamsters that framed him! All of the explanations can fit those scenarios but not all of them are equally simple. We can be sure god doesn’t exist for the same reason we know invisible space hamsters don’t frame people for murder.
I still don’t understand why Occam’s razor works for atheism and not theism. To be an atheist you have to believe that every particle, every unit of energy, every law in the universe simply exists for no reason whatsoever, and the fact that it all works together remarkably well to create human beings is simply an interesting curiosity. With theism, you only have to believe that one singular being, entirely simple, exists of its own accord, and the whole universe then results from that one entity. As God himself said, “I AM WHO AM.”
Do what? See how much of the puzzle you’re missing? You can’t. Of course, nature appears to work fine without a god, but you can’t prove there is no higher power.
Sorry, I didn’t realize this part was very important. I suppose we just disagree whether God “almost certainly” doesn’t exist.
Thank you, now how does this relate to philosophy?
Well, those people are wrong in my opinion. We would still have free will if God made himself entirely known to us. It’s just that we would only get one act of free will, like the angels. Humanity is all about second chances.
Well, first of all, the universe doesn’t work remarkably well to create humans. If you think the nature of the universe tells us something about the nature of god (which I would agree, if there was a god) then god must love empty space and black holes, because that’s what the universe is built to create. The laws of the universe are set up so that life is a near impossibility, which will be snuffed out by the universe like it never existed.
Well, it does though, because religion pretty well just interjects an extra step where it’s not needed, that’s the very point of Occam’s razor, no god’s of the gap, minimize the amount of assumptions you have to make for your hypothesis to work. If there is some other decent argument for religion I’ve never seen it. And the argument pretty well ended 100 years ago. There are many interesting questions serious thinkers engage in about language, consciousness, free will, subjectivity versus objectivity; but god is just not on the agenda any more. It’s not taken seriously. That’s why atheist philosophers like Dennet don’t even bother. You should have learned enough reasoning and logic by the end of Elementary school to gather that there was no god. The arguments have been laid out. Theistic arguments have all fallen flat without good retort, a long long time ago. People like Jefferson held on to some last lingering bits of theism just because they had a hard time explaining the diversity of life otherwise, but that was solved 150 years ago today.
You actually can hear God’s voice, in your head, if you do some things “God’s way.”
This sounds just like Job when he questioned God about gratuitous pain and suffering. The answer is don’t question God, He knows better.
Been giving this some thought.
Christianity is based upon the two great commandments.
Perhaps this has been noted already, but I’ll give it another shot. St. Thomas Aquinas divides our knowledge of God into “natural” and “supernatural” revelation. Supernatural revelation involves authoritative, inerrant communication, usually through Scripture. By this method of revelation, we can learn about doctrines like the Trinity that cannot be known through natural reason. Natural revelation, conversely, is that which enables us to deduce certain aspects of God from logical principles. (His omnipotence, simplicity, primacy, love, etc. are known through this method.) Natural revelation, however, still comes from God, for God is the source of all created beings, and that includes our knowledge. Through the very act of endowing us with reason capable of knowing Him, therefore, God communicates Himself to us.
Actually, Marx was incredibly proud of his “scientific” view of the world. While the likes of Stalin did demand a lot on faith, they also tore down and repressed countless Christians and their churches. Marxism has a strict bias against the supernatural as a starting point. The attempt to call Marxism a religion makes the terms “Marxism” and “religion” both meaningless.
The reason it is fair to compare a wide array of Catholic (not merely Christian) Charitable services is because all of them stem from and serve the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Yes, we are more concerned with evangelisation, but I fail to see your point. Since Christians are firmly dedicated to the belief that membership in the Church is the key to eternal joy, why wouldn’t we try and assist the matter? Yes, suffering belongs to “God’s plan,” but to assert that that makes charity a pointless endeavour is absurd. Would a hero in a novel be considered futile for his heroism because the villainy of the antagonist was part of the plot. Our duty is not to ensure the success of the whole of God’s foreordained will, merely to play our own part well.
You make a dreadful confusion here between “blind faith” and “authority.” The Catholic Church condemns blind faith as a form of simple-minded vice, yet demands that we obey authority. The difference is this, that blind faith has no reason to trust in the authority it obeys, where as proper submission to authority involves some motivation by reason to trust in the authority it does. Some rational background is required as the basis for faith. This has been acknowledged splendidly by the Angelic Doctor, whose reason far exceeds the vast majority of atheistic intellects.
You make a dreadful fallacy here in asserting that mere majority makes for purpose. The whole of a story can exist for its central climax, and the whole of DNA is rife with “junk DNA.” Simply because there are fewer humans than beetles does not signify a Divinely inordinate fondness for beetles, as the saying goes.
You err in understanding the nature of God. God is not a “contingent particular,” His very essence is to not not be. To be God is to be, His essence is existence, He is pure Act without potency. He does not exist “without reason,” He is the basis of His own reason. He is not directed to an end, He is His own end. In short, He is not simply the biggest and most powerful of creatures, He is the Creator. Not understanding this, no progress may be made on the subject.
No, the point of Occam’s razor was to place excessive trust in Divine revelation and avoid the use of reason wherever possible. Check out your scholastic history!
The argument did not end 100 years ago, my friend. Simply because an idea falls out of favour among academics does not make the matter truly closed. After Aristotle “refuted” the belief that our genetics are determined by small particles within the parents, the doctrine fell out of favour for nearly 2500 years, until a German monk found evidence to the contrary. And, I need hardly add, the idea of God has not really been out of favour as you would like among academics for the past century. Chesterton, John Paul II, Maritain, Kreeft, Anscombe, Belloc, Percy, and the whole Neo-Thomist school still thrived during the 20th century. Even famous anti-religionists like Sagan have generally tended towards agnosticism, not atheism. Really superb arguments, like the arguments from First Movement and Contingency, still stand. Particle physics merely beg the question. You have yet, my friend, to provide us with a syllogistic disproof of God. Or are syllogisms out of fashion, too?Because that’s what people of faith say. Faith is belief without evidence. The discussions that started this whole derailment off started with a believer making that statement, so pulling the “that’s not what faith means” isn’t going to fly this time.
Because Christians brag about it. They revel in their childishness.
That doesn’t change the aspects of your faith which I pointed out that DO support those kinds of people.
He could be proud of his pink elephant, but if he never had one he never had one.
Which is exactly what I said. The fact that he repressed christians is completely irrelevant. The fact that he demanded a lot of faith is totally relevant. It is the single criteria for what we are talking about. End of story. You proved my point.
Your reasoning makes no sense at all, for reasons I laid out and you mostly ignored. Why don’t you walk me through how you get from “All catholic charities combined give more than the Mayo Clinic” to “Christianity causes people to be more charitable”
You could try reading my post. I stated my point fairly clearly.
Of course you would. Christianity gives people higher priorities then charity, QED, Christianity causes people to be less charitable. Obviously, you have reasons in your own belief system why it is good to focus on other things, but don’t turn around and try to claim that Christianity causes people to be more charitable.
True, but I know many Christians take that as reason to not be charitable and not to worry about the future of the world. QED, christianity causes people to be less charitable.
Right, ultimately, you believe something is right or wrong because god said so, if god told you to molest your kids, according to christian beliefs, you should. And that makes Christianity dangerous and sick. I believe something just is right or wrong. If a voice in my head told me to do something like that I’d go see a doctor. According to the bible such actions would be deserving of severe punishment from god.
Many of the Catholic posters here do not seem to make the distinction you do. This is how this whole line of reasoning started, and this happens about every other week. I show good evidence that this whole god this is a sham, and inevitably someone retorts with basically “evidence shemidence, I have FAITH, god demands my child like innocence and faith that goes BEYOND EVIDENCE, I don’t need any reasons to believe in god, in fact, if I had reasons, they I couldn’t truly be saved!” Then, when I show how silly this is, that person slinks out and someone like you steps in shouting “THAT’S NOT HOW CATHOLICISM WORKS” Well, better inform the congregation, because few people seem to know. And you can’t have it both ways. If you say you have evidence, where is it. If you say you don’t need it, then you’re dangerous and stupid for the reasons you’ve already agreed with.
Well yes, and that’s kind of my point. Believers seem to think this reasoning makes a lot of sense when they cherry pick some part of physics that makes it seem like the universe is favorable towards life, but the minute you point out that, in the grand scheme, the universe is very hostile to life, suddenly they see the flaws in such reasoning. And it’s not just that life isn’t in the “majority” it’s that life is destined to fail. The universe will inevitably swallow it up and destroy it.
Semantics nonsense. If God can be his own reason then the universe can be it’s own reason. You haven’t escaped the problem you’ve created, you’ve just covered it up with a bunch of illogical feel good statements that you try to imply are hard to understand because they’re deep. But “not not be” is not deep, it’s just nonsense.
Which violates basic reasoning, particularly Occum’s razor. Do we need to go over the invisible crime framing hamsters again? Subatomic physics may not “make sense” but they’re actually the simplest explanation we have available. Trying to explain subatomic physics without our current theories is way more complex.
Majority certainly does not merit truth, but the arguments have been long sense torn to shreds, including first cause and contingency, which go away simply by uttering the phrase “special pleading”No, the point of Occam’s razor was to place excessive trust in Divine revelation and avoid the use of reason wherever possible. Check out your scholastic history!
All right then, point taken. Sorry for the difficulties.
I don’t think you have my cause-effect relationship sorted through. Because Christianity causes people to be more charitable, we have a larger base of charitable organisations than any secular agency can claim.
Ah, then we mean very different things by the word “charity.” When I use the word, I am referring to love, a will of the good directed towards the beloved. Since eternal happiness is the highest conceivable good of man, to love a man would seem to entail a will of his eternal happiness.
No, I believe ultimately something is “right” or “wrong” because it directs us to God. Since child molestation is contrary to this end as revealed by natural law (which is implanted in us by God), He would never demand child molestation of us. I’d see a doctor, too.
Two quick points, 'cause I’m in a hurry: