Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Atheist Penelope
tragic_pizza:
Shirley Guthrie: "We live life inside the brackets."
Saints:
--- Quote from: Surgoshan on 20 Dec 2008, 22:23 ---
--- Quote from: Saints on 20 Dec 2008, 04:48 ---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.
--- End quote ---
Even those faiths that don't believe in an interventionist god believe in a supernatural order. Buddhism has its reincarnation, and also its demons, spirits, and deities. Shintoism has its animist spirits. The vast majority of the world believes that there is something or some things other that influence and alter the world daily.
And I belittled your reply as "because", because that's what it is. The common reply (espoused unfortunately by far too many scientists) is that science cannot comment on god because god is somehow beyond the ken of science. When asked why, any who espouse the belief reply, "Because god is not something science can study." That is to say...
Q: Why can science not study god?
A: Because science can't study god.
The answer may be more sophisticated (saying that god is somehow outside the universe or indelibly part of the fabric of the universe), but the answer always boils down to a stubborn "Because". Because if there's a supernatural being of any sort (omnipotent Christian deity, spirit of a Japanese home, or German kobold), then that being is still interacting with the world and those interactions must necessarily be detectable. Because science is the practice of making observations, cataloging them, and drawing inferences from the catalog, the effects of a supernatural being are within the bounds of science. Therefor, however indirectly, the being itself is subject to the scrutiny of the scientist.
Medieval barber-surgeons may not have been able to observe a bone mending, yet they nevertheless knew how to properly set it so that it might heal. And they also recognized when it was too badly broken and only amputation could prevent a deadly infection, even when they didn't know what the true cause of the infection was.
The only remaining argument is that, interact though it may with the world, the supernatural is still somehow, ineffably different. Why? Because.
And as for your vast number of supposed semi-deists... look to the analogy of the gardener. What's the difference between an undetectable completely inactive being and one that doesn't exist?
--- End quote ---
You don't seem to understand the concept of omnipotence. Even tossing aside an all-powerful being, the argument doesn't boil down to "because". Let me help. If a being is able to operate outside our concept of physics, time, and space...why are you so certain we could detect something that they did? See, it doesn't boil down to "because". It actually boils down to the spiritual being, well, spiritual. The very nature of the spiritual means that they operate on some plane that isn't necessarily tied down by our conceptions of reality. As science operates only in that reality, it would be reasonable to assume that science would have trouble observing the spiritual.
Now, sure, you could just say, "That's not fair! It's basically a get out of jail free card for anyone that believes in that stuff!" but that's no fun, is it?
As for the bit on praying, I think I misrepresented myself. I should clarify that I was responding to Surgoshan's assertion that basically everyone believes god interacts with the world on an hourly basis. Obviously, if a god does anything to affect our world then he would be deemed an interventionist, I was merely challenging the assertion that a god is necessarily as interventionist as Surgoshan suggested.
Saints:
--- Quote from: Dotes on 20 Dec 2008, 22:44 ---You know, the funny thing about the "that's not my God" argument, or the argument that many people believe in a God who isn't an "incredibly large, potent, weighty phenomenon," is that it seems like, as time goes on and science progresses, "God" keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Hopefully, some day he'll get so small that people realize we don't need him anymore.
I also never understood the argument that God is undefinable and beyond the scope of science, yet so many people tell you he's real. Whether religious believers like it or not, the statement that there is a supernatural being that created the universe and may or may not be omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and interventionist is a scientific hypothesis. It just happens to be one that fails on a number of levels. Falsifiability, logic, evidence, there are just so many reasons to be skeptical, it baffles me sometimes how certain people are of their beliefs.
Edit: Surgoshan makes excellent points as well.
--- End quote ---
What makes you think people didn't reject the idea of god meddling in our fairs on an "hourly basis" 1000 years ago? And no...the idea that there might be a god isn't a scientific hypothesis. Science is the study of the physical world. It has little to do with something based entirely outside of the physical. Perhaps that's the reason many don't feel a need to find physical evidence of a higher power?
Surgoshan:
--- Quote from: Saints ---It actually boils down to the spiritual being, well, spiritual.
--- End quote ---
*cough*
--- Quote from: Surgoshan ---The only remaining argument is that ... the supernatural is still, somehow, ineffably different. Why? Because.
--- End quote ---
Jackie Blue:
First: There is no such thing as "supernatural". It's a buzzword to ghetto-ise a bunch of different potential sciences involving things we don't yet have an explanation for.
Remember what a famous atheist said? "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
"God", as state-of-being, part-of-human-consciousness, "The Kingdom's all inside", etc., could not be observable by traditional science yet for the same reasons that electrons at one point were not known about or detectable.
It doesn't necessarily boil down to "the big Because".
Pratchett, in Hogfather, put it very well:
Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They're not the same at all.
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?
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