Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Atheist Penelope
pwhodges:
I'm sorry, but the fact that there are reports of events which may not have been properly observed or reported, and which have not been or cannot now be investigated properly to find the explanation, simply has nothing to do with the possibility of the existence of God.
Jeff7:
--- Quote from: Saints on 19 Dec 2008, 23:21 ---I didn't say it makes it true. I simply said that a belief in god/gods/whatever is not irrational or illogical.
And why must belief be based on fact? I believe my fiancee won't cheat on me. There are no facts to support this. Only interpretations and assumptions that I make. Does that make me an illogical and irrational person?
--- End quote ---
Do you not have evidence that your fiancee will not cheat on you? Evidence deduced from her behavior and signs of affection towards you?
People say that there's no way to prove that love exists. Well I don't know what kind of "proof" is sought by this, if you want an indicator light on a person's head that says "IN LOVE" when that condition is true. But there sure can be a lot of evidence, most notably the person's behavior, and how well it matches a predefined set of ideas about what constitutes the condition of "love." If you want to go further, measure various responses, such as skin resistance, perspiration rate, pupil dilation, and brain activity.
One other thing which science seeks to do is to have the ability to make predictions based on observations. I can reasonably predict where Earth will be in its orbit around the Sun 1000 years from now. If I throw something at a certain angle and velocity, I can reasonably predict where and when it will land.
No one can predict what "God" is going to do in 500 years. No one seems to really know what God wants at any point in time. Sure lots of people claim to know what God wants; none of them can seem to agree though. People can't even seem to agree on which deity to listen to. And if you've got someone saying he's hearing God talk to him, he gets stashed away in an asylum because he's deemed insane. People can't agree on whether or not to take the Bible literally or not; some say all, some say none, some pick and choose.
--- Quote from: Spluff on 20 Dec 2008, 00:50 ---There are thousands of things science cannot explain, constant reports of unexplained phenomena, events occurring that were so unlikely that people didn't even acknowledge the possibility of them even happening. The whole bible was written about proofs of God.
Are these proofs fictional, the events co-incidences, and the phenomena imagined? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Some choose not to believe that just because modern science can't explain it, it can't have ever happened, and instead take these things as proof of God.
You cannot possibly attempt to examine the possibility of God if you do not even attempt to accept the opposing sides arguments, and just dismiss anything that contradicts your beliefs as 'untrue'.
--- End quote ---
At one point in time, science could not explain what the Sun was. They thought a god named Ra carried it across the sky. Lightning was once hurled to Earth by Zeus. Not so. Spirits of the Earth made it rain. Nope, the air reaches saturation due to pressure or temperature changes, and the water precipitates out. Illness was caused by "bad blood," and not microscopic pathogens, genetic anomalies, or malnutrition.
The Egyptian gods, the Greek/Roman gods, and the Native American gods and spirits are now considered "mythology" - not real. Why? Why are they any less valid than the big religions of today?
What other unexplained things will eventually find themselves out of God's jurisdiction? Why must some deity always be around to mop up the scraps things we can't explain yet? Isn't "We don't know yet" a good enough answer? Why do electrons act like both particles and waves? Is the Particle Spirit at war with the Wave Spirit, and so the electron behaves as both? I rather doubt it.
"We accepted the products of science, but we rejected its methods." - Carl Sagan
God hasn't brought us our technology, our medical research, or our libraries. We did it. Humans did it. How is information obtained? Through the scientific method. Why accept it one place without question, yet reject it entirely elsewhere? What makes it suddenly invalid when it attempts to explain our origins?
Surgoshan:
--- Quote from: Jackie Blue on 19 Dec 2008, 17:01 ---
--- Quote from: Dotes on 19 Dec 2008, 16:09 ---The God of the bible is the big-dude in the sky. End-o-story.
--- End quote ---
Er, no. The God of the Old Testament is presented as such, but not all theologians take the Bible literally.
--- End quote ---
Again, we must point you not to the vanishingly small minority of people who are religious philosophers, but to the overwhelming majority of people who are not. They may not have a clear conception of god as "dude in sky with beard", but there's not much difference between that and what they do believe. Theirs is an interventionist god who manipulates events and people to his own ends and, for many of them, is an angry god who is quite full of hate for a large number of people.
--- Quote from: Saints on 19 Dec 2008, 23:19 ---Who says that god is necessarily interventionist?
--- End quote ---
Most believers. Virtually all of them. Basically, anyone who believes in God and calls him such. The interventions are called "miracles" and are believed to happen on a daily, nay, hourly basis.
--- Quote ---Also, typically the idea of god happens to be an idea of omnipotence. If that really is the case, then god could do whatever he pleases in any manner he pleases. Why attach human reasoning and logic to something that is inherently separated from human reasoning and logic? If anything, that's illogical.
--- End quote ---
So... "because". "Because" has become the ultimate in refutation. Why? Because.
As Superman has become overpowered and omnipotent over the years, most people have realized that it's led to absurdity and poor writing. But when you change "superman" to "god", all of a sudden it's no longer absurd, it's "faith".
--- Quote ---Science has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of god. It has offered no evidence of his existence or non-existence. To say that someone is illogical or irrational for believing in a higher power/being/god is just wrong.
--- End quote ---
Why? Why can science say nothing about the existence or non-existence of a thing? Religion posits that there exists an incredibly large, potent, weighty phenomenon that changes the world around us. Science is all about the observation of things and events. The larger and more powerful the thing or event, the easier it is to observe. Far from being impossible to see, an all-powerful, all-manipulative god should be the easiest thing ever to spot.
And yet, no one has. The best anyone comes up with is a feeling. That ain't evidence. And, yes, lack of evidence for something for which there should be overwhelming evidence, is evidence of the absence of the thing.
And believing in something in spite of evidence against it is irrational.
--- Quote from: Spluff on 20 Dec 2008, 00:50 ---There are thousands of things science cannot explain, constant reports of unexplained phenomena, events occurring that were so unlikely that people didn't even acknowledge the possibility of them even happening.
--- End quote ---
Stuff and nonsense. There are thousands of things which science either has not yet fully explained (gravity) or which science has explained, but which the faithful choose to ignore (alien kidnappings, spontaneous combustion, mythical ape-men).
--- Quote ---The whole bible was written about proofs of God.
Are these proofs fictional, the events co-incidences, and the phenomena imagined? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Some choose not to believe that just because modern science can't explain it, it can't have ever happened, and instead take these things as proof of God.
You cannot possibly attempt to examine the possibility of God if you do not even attempt to accept the opposing sides arguments, and just dismiss anything that contradicts your beliefs as 'untrue'.
--- End quote ---
The bible isn't about proofs of god. It's a collection of, in the case of the old testament, the myths and causi belli of bronze age shepherds. In the case of the new testament it's the myths and causi belli of medieval farmers. It's no more a proof of anything than when a child believes there are ghosts in the attic. It's a faulty explanation of something the expositor was ill-equipped to comprehend.
I'm not dismissing what contradicts my beliefs. I'm dismissing what contradicts evidence. I dismiss god as firmly as I dismiss ghosts, fairies, spontaneous combustion, and alien abductions. The evidence is overwhelmingly against them and belief in them is, at best, delusional.
Spluff:
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 20 Dec 2008, 01:16 ---I'm sorry, but the fact that there are reports of events which may not have been properly observed or reported, and which have not been or cannot now be investigated properly to find the explanation, simply has nothing to do with the possibility of the existence of God.
--- End quote ---
How exactly would you like a God to affect our world? Would you like him to appear in the sky in the form of a giant, glowing head a la Monty Python? I'm sure that would make these type of debates a lot easier for everybody, but it is highly unlikely.
I put to you all that because God, if he exists, has existed from the start of the universe, or at the very least, since before the human race evolved, we have grown up with his influence, and are accustomed to it. The touch of god, would, therefore not be something we take special notice of - it would probably be something that is just part of life. If you stand around waiting for something out of the ordinary to prove God, then you will never find something, because he has been intervening ,with regularity, in the affairs of the universe since before our race developed, by very definition it is ordinary - something we take for granted, such as two people happening to meet in the same place, or something that escapes our notice completely, such as how particles interact with each other.
The fact that science can show us how most of the things we have come into contact with work (or so we assume, science is constantly being revised and what we currently believe may be completely different to what we believe 1000 years into the future) is beside the point. There is no reason God, if he exists, cannot be factored into science. If his influence is constant then we will have, no doubt, made scientific laws that include his influence in them.
Saints:
--- Quote from: Surgoshan on 20 Dec 2008, 03:08 ---
--- Quote from: Jackie Blue on 19 Dec 2008, 17:01 ---
--- Quote from: Dotes on 19 Dec 2008, 16:09 ---The God of the bible is the big-dude in the sky. End-o-story.
--- End quote ---
Er, no. The God of the Old Testament is presented as such, but not all theologians take the Bible literally.
--- End quote ---
Again, we must point you not to the vanishingly small minority of people who are religious philosophers, but to the overwhelming majority of people who are not. They may not have a clear conception of god as "dude in sky with beard", but there's not much difference between that and what they do believe. Theirs is an interventionist god who manipulates events and people to his own ends and, for many of them, is an angry god who is quite full of hate for a large number of people.
--- Quote from: Saints on 19 Dec 2008, 23:19 ---Who says that god is necessarily interventionist?
--- End quote ---
Most believers. Virtually all of them. Basically, anyone who believes in God and calls him such. The interventions are called "miracles" and are believed to happen on a daily, nay, hourly basis.
--- Quote ---Also, typically the idea of god happens to be an idea of omnipotence. If that really is the case, then god could do whatever he pleases in any manner he pleases. Why attach human reasoning and logic to something that is inherently separated from human reasoning and logic? If anything, that's illogical.
--- End quote ---
So... "because". "Because" has become the ultimate in refutation. Why? Because.
As Superman has become overpowered and omnipotent over the years, most people have realized that it's led to absurdity and poor writing. But when you change "superman" to "god", all of a sudden it's no longer absurd, it's "faith".
--- Quote ---Science has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of god. It has offered no evidence of his existence or non-existence. To say that someone is illogical or irrational for believing in a higher power/being/god is just wrong.
--- End quote ---
Why? Why can science say nothing about the existence or non-existence of a thing? Religion posits that there exists an incredibly large, potent, weighty phenomenon that changes the world around us. Science is all about the observation of things and events. The larger and more powerful the thing or event, the easier it is to observe. Far from being impossible to see, an all-powerful, all-manipulative god should be the easiest thing ever to spot.
And yet, no one has. The best anyone comes up with is a feeling. That ain't evidence. And, yes, lack of evidence for something for which there should be overwhelming evidence, is evidence of the absence of the thing.
And believing in something in spite of evidence against it is irrational.
--- Quote from: Spluff on 20 Dec 2008, 00:50 ---There are thousands of things science cannot explain, constant reports of unexplained phenomena, events occurring that were so unlikely that people didn't even acknowledge the possibility of them even happening.
--- End quote ---
Stuff and nonsense. There are thousands of things which science either has not yet fully explained (gravity) or which science has explained, but which the faithful choose to ignore (alien kidnappings, spontaneous combustion, mythical ape-men).
--- Quote ---The whole bible was written about proofs of God.
Are these proofs fictional, the events co-incidences, and the phenomena imagined? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Some choose not to believe that just because modern science can't explain it, it can't have ever happened, and instead take these things as proof of God.
You cannot possibly attempt to examine the possibility of God if you do not even attempt to accept the opposing sides arguments, and just dismiss anything that contradicts your beliefs as 'untrue'.
--- End quote ---
The bible isn't about proofs of god. It's a collection of, in the case of the old testament, the myths and causi belli of bronze age shepherds. In the case of the new testament it's the myths and causi belli of medieval farmers. It's no more a proof of anything than when a child believes there are ghosts in the attic. It's a faulty explanation of something the expositor was ill-equipped to comprehend.
I'm not dismissing what contradicts my beliefs. I'm dismissing what contradicts evidence. I dismiss god as firmly as I dismiss ghosts, fairies, spontaneous combustion, and alien abductions. The evidence is overwhelmingly against them and belief in them is, at best, delusional.
--- End quote ---
It amuses me that you neglect the mass amount of people that completely disagree with the idea of a god that performs miracles on an hourly, daily, or even regular basis. Or should I assume that you suddenly know how every person thinks?
And belittling my argument by saying "Because..." is all it boils down to. Good way to attack me I suppose, but it does little to actually address the argument. So again,why we should attach human reasoning and logic to something that is inherently separated from our perceptions of the world and reality? You never did bother to answer this.
As for science not being able to explain the existence or non-existence of an omnipotent being...well, that should be pretty well addressed by the above. Or, you know, simple thought. As for the bit about all religion seeing god as a"n incredibly large, potent, weighty phenomenon that changes the world around us". I refer you to my first point. The one about you apparently tossing aside the vast amount of people(even Christians *gasp*) who don't see a god in that light at all.
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