seebs

For all I know, what I'm thinking of as God is my subconscious. If so, my subconscious knows a lot of stuff I don't, including things that haven't happened yet. Very clever for a brain, but who am I to rule a theory out?

Sure. The only reason I found my friend's testimonial interesting is that it's the only time I've ever heard of God directing someone to give someone a guitar.

This is a very, very, hard question. How, after all, do I distinguish between what I believe to be the benefits God gives me 'cuz He's nice, the benefits of believing in and of itself (think psychosomatic and placebo), and perhaps interactions? In other words, if the people who say faith makes your prayers stronger are right, what then is the effect?

So, with in mind the awareness that this is guesswork and supposition:

Saved my marriage: Check. A couple of fairly dramatic instances, but mostly, on a dozen or more occasions, I have been stopped by what I felt was an external force right *before* saying something really cruel to my wife when I was mad. If I hadn't, things would have gone worse; if they'd gone much worse through some of the last eight years, I'd probably be saying "ex-wife".

Job? Indirectly, yes. I think I can attribute this to belief; my religion is where I learned humility; I am by nature an arrogant person. (If this doesn't surprise you, I'm backsliding; if it does, well, you'll just have to trust me, or look at old Usenet posts.) Without humility, I don't think I would have been able to adapt enough from my school habits to work habits; even in the last year or two, I've had to learn a lot about working as a team, putting up with policies I don't like, and so on - and I wouldn't have done it, except that I'm more open to the idea that I could be wrong than I used to be.

No kids, thus no kids drug problems. Never got into drugs myself, except for a brief drinking period in college. My brain is fuzzy enough already.

Let's see. Religion has *not* prevented me from committing suicide; I'm occasionally depressive, but I have never in my life been able to understand suicide, nor been "all that" depressed. I think it helps me appreciate and understand depression. I'm glad I'm a little depressive; if I weren't, I would almost certainly be one of those insufferable pricks who tells people to "just get over it".

God gives me joy. In particular, every so often, I feel that He's sharing His view of the world with me, in bits and pieces. This protects me from being a jerk to people I think are making mistakes; instead of seeing them the way fundies see them, as willful rebels, I see them as small and lost, reaching for anything worth holding on to. People are like that; they're not perfect, they're not really self-sufficient, and they want to be loved. Seeing this, it is practically impossible *not* to love them.

I also attribute to God occasional insights into the nature of things. It's hard to explain, but looking at cats, I no longer see harmless pets, and I don't see "bad" predators. I see animals which are beautifully designed killing machines, which take joy in the hunt. They're more beautiful to me now. And yeah, lots of people see this sometimes; I just think it's a wonderful gift.

I once asked mostly the same questions. I had no answers to them, but came to believe in God, even though I didn't see anything in it for me, just because it seemed to be true.

Since then, I've come to think of myself as I was before as fairly isolated and weak.

Still... I don't believe in God to get help in my daily life, because I don't seem to need much; I was lucky, and got born into a middle-class family and got a good education, and such. Mostly, it's because I came to think that there ought to be someone to thank.

seebs

I have provided reasons - they're just reasons that contradict presuppositions you have about the world. Fine by me; you may pick whatever axioms you wish, and live by them. If one of your axioms is "nothing that doesn't have reproducible physical effects exists", or something similar, well, that's fine; I see no reason to object to that presupposition any more than I object to the presupposition "some things exist which do not have reproducible physical effects".

I find it peculiar that anyone who rules something out of consideration out of hand would actually call himself a skeptic, but I'm aware that many people have started using the word that way; more's the pitty.

Amergin

It is not a trick or troll question. I am an agnostic leaning to atheism for specific gods (Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Hindu).

I personally find it impossible to believe in the Biblical God as interpreted literally in the Bible. I do not deny some kind of god as a creator but do not feel such a creator is necessary.

What is the God in which you believe? Do you believe in the Christian tri-personality god with a human mind, human emotions, human virtues, and human vices? Or do you believe in a non-Anthropomorphic God whose function is creation? Do you believe that such a god must of necessity have human like consciousness and intelligence? My view is that the action of creation may be the work of a creator that is more of a force than a being.

My view of consciousness has been posted by a friend of mine on this forum in the past. It is that consciousness is a neurological state of response reactiveness that evolved in animals only for survival purposes only. Intelligence is a further adaptation of neurological function to react to more complex situations again for survival. There are three basic need for consciousness: finding food, finding a reproductive mate, and avoiding predators.

God as a universe creator can hardly need to eat (he is spiritual not physical). God is eternal and need not reproduce his "species". And finally I know of no predators whose primary taste is for gods. So God need not avoid any predator. Therefore, all of the three major functions of consciousness and intelligence evolved in animals for survival.

Amergin

pz

Whoa, there. You're the one who claims evidence for your god is somehow better than that for elves. You seem blind to the fact that you are using your presuppositions to reject my quite reasonable (in comparision) proposal that the Wee Folk are doing all the magical conjuring that has so impressed you. How do you know they didn't whisper in the ear of that fella while he was sleeping in order to subliminally persuade him to fork over that guitar?
I see. In your world, skeptics are people who blithely accept any old random explanation for phenomena.

I've seen this very same attitude on various newsgroups frequented by astrologers, saucer nuts, and bigfoot believers. They are quite convinced that they are the True Skeptics, and people who reject their delusions are merely pseudo-skeptics.

seebs

If the elves are doing that, they are very different from any elves I have previously been told about. I'm thinking standard stuff like shoemaker elves and leprechauns; they don't fit the experiences well at all.

My thinking is, proper skeptics should distinguish between "no opinion" and "definitely false", and should distinguish strengths of beliefs. My belief in God is not as firmly rooted as my belief in mathematics, but in the end, it's all presuppositions anyway, and I have no support for any of 'em.

Astrology, at least, I feel I can offer reasonable disproofs of most of the claims of - although for all I know, there are people who have something similar that works, and I just haven't seen it. However, the ones I've seen are sufficiently obviously false that I haven't looked carefully. I admit to being lazy.

seebs

Understood. I personally don't think the Bible is a 100% accurate source of information either.

Hmm. Interesting point; I was more along those lines in the past.

I believe in a single entity which made (makes, actually - I think the universe continues to exist through active will on God's part; this is untestable, and purely a supposition) the universe. I think this entity is aware and conscious, and not particularly "within" this universe, nor like this universe in the sense of having temporal or spatial qualities. I believe this entity can interact with us in a personal way, although of necessity I don't think we get the full picture, or the full force of personality.

I am not sufficiently sure I understand the trinity doctrine to make any clear statement about it. I believe that Jesus was, in some meaningful way, this same God, manifesting. I don't know exactly how this works, or what it means; it's a bit hard to get my head around, but it seems consistent enough. I believe this mostly because it's part of a set of beliefs that strikes me as being accurate on the things I can form opinions of, and it's a core part of those beliefs.

Hmm. I think those are the reasons for complicated instincts and reasoning to be useful - but I think that reasoning is suitable for many other tasks. I believe the reason for consciousness is to allow us to percieve the world and each other. Intelligence as we experience it is interesting, I think, mostly for love and art; empirically, one does not have to be very smart to reproduce successfully. (No offense meant to HazyRigby's bunnies.)

pz

Yeah, and you're inventing gods that I've never heard about before, too. So? If you can claim your god isn't a hairy old testament thunderer, I can pretend there are clever elves conniving to get guitars into the hands of strange men.
Ah, that's the other thing the astrologers always say: all those scientific/materialist ideas are just other peoples' beliefs anyway, it's all relative, one man's superstition is another man's reality, blah blah blah.

I'm afraid I am a proper skeptic, and skeptics should and do dismiss out of hand wild stories that contradict observable realities and lack any supporting evidence. Your god is such a story.

Besides, amorphous deities lyin' around distributing guitars is no rational basis for a system of ethical and supernatural beliefs.

seebs

If it pleases you to invent such elves, go right ahead.

I see. No true Scotsman, no true Christian, and now no true skeptic. I posted a link to a discussion of skepticism, and I stick with my kind as perfectly valid. If you wish to assert purity of belief in your personal philosophy, go ahead, but you have about as much chance of persuading everyone as any other fundamentalist does.

I think you have perhaps gotten caught up in the subtle distinction between accepting something provisionally and being utterly committed to it come hell or high water. It's perfectly reasonable for a skeptic to accept a working hypothesis - as long as it remains clearly distinguished from proven conclusions. (If, indeed, there is such a thing.)

Indeed, it would be a poor basis for such a system, but it might be the beginnings of evidence for one.

pz

I claim no special privilege to define a term, and am quite aware that there is a wide range of thought within skepticism. However, you are trying to claim that a good skeptic is willing to accept outre ideas on the basis of skimpy to nonexistent evidence, which is pretty much flatly contradictory to any sensible definition of skepticism out there.

We might as well claim that I'm a good christian. I reject every scrap of their dogma, think the bible is collection of incoherent, bloody-minded superstitious nonsense mixed up with a few rare scraps of nice literature, don't believe in jesus except perhaps as a long-gone executed con-man, and am pretty damn sure dead is dead with no pretense of a happy hunting ground...but hey, don't you dare pull that "no true christian" crap on me and reject my appropriation of the title.
Err, no. In principle, all of my beliefs are held provisionally. I don't think it is a sign of intellectual rigidity to say that if someone claims they believe in a magic invisible man with super powers, that I'm not going to believe them without some pretty solid evidence. Telling me stories about people dispensing guitars does not constitute such evidence, and I find it laughably ludicrous that anyone might think it does.

seebs

Hmm. I would claim that a "good skeptic" shouldn't reject a theory out of hand - but neither should you accept it. The default should probably be "I don't know, and I see no reason to believe this".

As to what constitutes "skimpy" evidence, there we run into the real difference; the amount of evidence you require to accept something depends on how well it fits the rest of your expectations about the world.

"accept/not-accept" is more boolean than I am.

Sure - but that's not because of any externally defined absolute standard, it's because of your own personal beliefs and worldview. I accept it because it fits with things I already believe; you reject it because it would contradict things you already believe.

There is no external absolute standard of what is reasonable to believe or not believe; we each draw that line differently.

People like to say that a thousand pieces of flimsy evidence are still flimsy evidence, but, while most people would consider a single coinflip flimsy evidence of any ability to control the outcome of a coin toss, a thousand might well be considered evidence that *something* was going on.