luvluv

I found everything.

Family Man

Don't believe it? Just take a peek in his garage!

catman

Hey--secularfuture--you want to debate me on anything? Problem is I am in the cusp of not knowing if I will remain a christian or not. I will, however, debate you on the philosophical aspects of the bible.

Philosoft

Or perhaps you just believe you did?

Amos

Why don't you try being a Christian on odd numbered days and an atheist on the other days? Or just become a good old sunday christian would work as well.

catman

It looks like SecularFuture is no longer around. Hmmmm.

[ December 18, 2002: Message edited by: catman ]</p>

Tercel

Hi Fiach,
Well I agree with you up to here...

It seems you're contradicting yourself. You first say that Religion is based on never questioning anything and then assert that religious people do question things. I can understand what you're saying, but I think you're getting a little carried away. As you point out, there are plenty of people who question their faith and are religious. Perhaps it is not so much that all religion is based on unquestioning faith, but rather that unquestioning faith in all areas of life (including both science and religion) has been the norm for the general masses for most of history, and questioning among the common people is only now becoming usual due to ever increasing educated and public dissemination of knowledge.

At anyrate, I disagree with your point that religion is not based on reason, but on unquestioned faith. Look at the popularity of many apologetics books (eg Case for Christ, Evidence that Demands a Verdict etc) and you see the public demand for a rational defence and basis for faith. There are also plenty of liberals around who would claim their belief is based on rational evidence. (eg on these forums: Bede, Metacrock, Vinnie etc and I) As you yourself point out, it is relatively commonplace for even ministers to openly question things. In light of this, the assertions that faith is limited unquestioned belief and is destroyed by reason and questioning seem to me to be narrow minded, inaccurate, and indicative of someone who has had a very limited experience of Christian belief (either due to a limited experience with Christianity in general, or an experience confined to only a narrow subset of Christian groups - eg "Bible-Believing Fundamentalists").

That's nice.
I'm amused by your certainty in the matter given that the only scientific experiment I can conceive of that we could possibly ever engage in to gather any proof whatsoever for that statement is currently beyond our ability. I think if we could analyse the quantum wavefunction collapses throughout the brain and compared them to the standard observations given by the rest of reality, dualism would most likely predict some sort of observable statistical difference whereas reductionism would almost certainly necessitate no difference.

Typically, as with all atheist reductionists, you seem to think standard observations of brains functioning is somehow evidence for reductionism. I don't know what leaps of logic you guys go through to get to that conclusion, but... given that Dualism predicts the observed data just as much as reductionism how is it that this can possibly be considered evidence for a reductionist viewpoint?

Neuroscience has nothing to do with it since nothing in neuroscience gives the least evidence one way or another. Apart from religious superstitions (which are probably based at least in part on the following): Dualism is primarily a philosophical observation. eg I am a theist mainly because I am a dualist.

I have read that they have occurred before in people who were clinically dead and had no measurable brain activity.

Your nice explanation is nice, but doesn't exactly prove very much. All you can show is that the phenomena is explainable under a naturalistic worldview, or at least enough so to give some evidence that it might one day be explainable. Back to the basic point that you seem to have missed in all this: You can happily observe brain activity but you can't make statements about what is causing it. People having "religious experience" could either be having them because the relevant part of the brain has been incorrectly stimulated resulting in an illusionary experience or they are actually having the experience which results in the relevant part of the brain being correctly stimulated. Your effective logic that "there is a correlation between A and B: therefore A causes B" (where A is brain activity and B is consciousness/mind/experiences etc) is a classic example of the post hoc fallacy: Until you can rule out "B causes A" and "C causes A and B", your conclusion is fallacious.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion.

Actually, there is - which is kind of why I mentioned it! There was a question regarding what evidence there is for the existence of heaven. My answer was to the effect that religious texts support the existence of heaven and to the extent that one considers these religious texts as evidence for anything they provide evidence for existence of heaven.

That's an interesting hypothesis. Would you like to provide any scientific or philosophical evidence for it?

Actually, I don't think I've ever seen a movie involving Demons. And about the only one I can think of involving space aliens is Stargate.

Tercel

Family man,
~shrug~ "Proof", "evidence", call it what you will: You still don't have any.
You claim to have some, so I'm intrigued. My challenge of the day: Produce it. ie Provide rational evidence for the truth of hypothesis A over hypothesis B:
<strong>* Hypothesis A:</strong>
The world actually exists. Of course, it's rather vague for exactly what it means for something to exist. What I'm trying to say is that the observed natural world is the ultimate reality and there is nothing beyond that which might (if we knew of its existence) lead us to say "oh, so it's just an illusion" or "it's not actually real" or similar with regard to the natural world. eg when I bang my hand against the desk I see in front of me, I feel a desk, because the desk is really there, and not because my senses are being in some way deceived or malfunctioning.

<strong>* Hypothesis B:</strong>
The real world is pretty similar to our own universe. The most advanced life in the universe is only the planet Xasd, who are 3 thousand years ahead of "Earth" technologically. The scientists on the planet Xasd have an extremely advanced understand of neuroscience and consciousness. They are capable controlling a mind in such a manner that they can cause it to perceive exactly what they want. Using advanced computer modelling and AI, they have been able to model a reasonable replica of their home planet as it was 3000 years ago and have populated the computer model with AI "people" who are indistinguishable from conscious beings (since they understand the entirety of the human brain they can mimic its workings perfectly). They call this replica "Earth". They have decided that lawbreakers instead of being jailed normally, should be "sent to Earth" for the duration of a life on earth (on Xasd they live a bit longer due to advanced medicinal techniques) in the hope that the lawbreakers will learn to be better people. Thus they plug the lawbreakers perception into their computer model of Earth and temporarily erase the lawbreaker's memory. etc. You are one of those lawbreakers. (Any correspondence to any science-fiction movie is purely coincidental)

I'm intrigued to see this rational evidence you can produce. Any evidence whatsoever for hypothesis A over hypothesis B is welcome.

No. Look at what I was responding to:
how do they [believers] know that their continual belief in a God is not psychologically disturbing their rational judgment, and/or mentally creating what they feel to be God's presence?
My point is simply that the argument cuts both ways. Non-believers accuse believers of having psychologically disturbed rational judgment or indoctrination etc but exactly the same accusations can equally be applied to non-believers by believers, as I demonstrated above. Why is it "argument by insult" when I do it when an atheist does it? In either case the aim is to find irrational causes for belief.

See: You're doing it too. How do you know your disbelief isn't a result of indoctrination? Lack of a father figure perhaps? Or maybe an irrational disappointment when you were "counting on God"? Or maybe it was peer pressure? Or you wanted to feel smart and above the "ignorant theistic masses"? I'm sure we could find something if we dug hard enough...
As far as indoctrination goes... well yes I'm lucky enough to have grown up in a Christian home (since in my country I probably wouldn't know enough to make an informed decision about Christianity if I hadn't). But the entire public society is secular, and I never heard the word "creation" in biology (evolution being taken for granted), and about the only time religion ever appeared in the news was when abortionists demonstrated or someone decided that a statue of Mary with a condom on was a nice artwork and someone else took offence. I think we might have had an hour a week of "scripture study" (or something) at primary school for a couple of years (ie 6-8 years old or so), but I don't remember anything more than that it was taken by some old lady from the neighbourhood who didn't take us for much that was more involved than drawing pictures and learning what Easter and Christmas were about.
About the closest thing I've ever had to indoctrination was learning memory verses... all of which I've forgotten bar Psalm 23, John 3:16 and Eph 4:32. And perhaps seeing numerous preachers thump there Bibles and declare "The Word of God!"... which has never had any effect other than to annoy me...

But you never know... perhaps I was subconsciously indoctrinated as a baby... or wait... maybe it was the tapes I used to listen to as a boy when I was going to sleep ("Robin Hood" as I recall it ).

Really? I see. Are you simply saying that the universe may have actually came from something (in which case I'd agree)? Or that the question of the nature of causation and the possibility of an infinite causal regress verses the possibility of a first cause is somehow a strawman (in which case I'd disagree)?

Tercel

Well the fact that I'm a dualist leads me to rationally believe in an pretty much omnimax rational creator deity thingy. Of the religions going in that area, Christianity seems to have by far the most coherent and reasonable theology. I think the distinction I see between moral right and wrong combined with an analysis of the questions of evil and suffering etc suggests that the deity thingy is Good but opposed by its creation as opposed to simply arbitrary or indifferent. I also observe the human struggle within myself and the world for good and compassion vs evil and hatred etc which seems to line up reasonably well with the Christian view of sin, judgement, the need for salvation etc.
In addition, out of all the claimed supernatural experiences made by friends, people I've heard speak, and books I'm read, those which seemed actually reasonably believable unanimously occurred in Christian contexts. (not that as a Christian I have anything against God or demonic powers doing a miracle outside a Christian context - I've simply never encountered reasonable evidence that such has occurred)
I must also add to that my own "feelings", which I grant are not going to sway you much. (I note however, that those of which I can remember occurred after I was already a commited Christian for the above reasons) And yes, I could probably dismiss them as "it wasn't really God talking to me or making me feel that, it was my own thoughts and feelings caused by &lt;insert some ad hoc naturalistic explanation here&gt;" if I really wanted to or simply ignore them if I wanted to become an atheist or something. But at the time they felt real, and I don't really see any good reason to just start dismissing my own experiences off hand. Yes I'd like to hear God talk to me audibly, or appear, or see an absolutely undeniable miracle with my own eyes - light coalescing onto a paraplegic in response to prayer and them jumping out of their wheelchair would be nice. But it ain't happened yet that I've seen.

I don't believe it's the "word of God" in the usual sense of the words. And your last sentence above fails to consider the possibility that God might exist and have inspired the Bible irrespective of whether we can find a proof for his existence.

To answer your question:
I am a Christian and the Bible contains a record of the beliefs of the early Christian church. Given that I agree with Christianity on the major points of doctrine, I respect the Church's opinions and ability to be "in the know" with regard to points on which I might otherwise be unsure or ignorant of. In general the Church largely claims the record of the beliefs of the early Church (ie the Bible) as the main support for its teachings, and hence I greatly respect that record.


PS Replies to any responses may (or may not) be unduly delayed (even more than these ones!) due to Christmas etc.

Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year to all!

diana

Ba'alzamon,

I'd ask them what, then, would they accept as credible evidence that their god didn't exist after all?

I suspect most theists never realize that they have an undisprovable construct. This question tends to stump them.

Another good question is how they explain people who looked really hard at all the evidence and decided someone else's diety was the right one. Their faith is real. Does that make the god real? If not, why does the Xn's faith make the Xn god real?

Oh wait. Selsaral said it better. I particularly liked this point: Family Man,

What we call "rational evidence" is what we perceive. "Silly hypotheticals" aside, your statement is tautological.

Tercel,

Speaking only for myself, I'm only capable of assuming things true until I'm led to question my assumptions and find them unsupported by the only evidence I have to go on, which is the evidence of my senses. At that point, I can no longer assume that thing.

I was taught absolutely that God exists and assumed it true throughout my childhood and formative years. I'd never heard different and was surrounded by other people who assumed it true. When I questioned that basic assumption, I found it groundless, and have been unable to assume its truth since.

I don't know how you do it.

The fact that the public demands a rational belief system is not the same as them having one. How many of "the public" have even a basic grasp of logic, do you think? How many are able to recognize fallacious reasoning when they see it?

Most Xns I've encountered--including fundamentalists--argue vehemently that their religion is rational. This does not make it so.

Hm. So you're saying, essentially, that you selected Xnty based on the fact that it happens to agree with the values you already held before converting?

Merry Xmas/Happy New Year back at you!

d