Cosym

Andrew,

--On boards that merely bash theistic thinking this would be valid.---

No, simply bashing theistic thinking is not valid. Things don't become valid or invalid just because they are part of a mission statement.

---On a board with the aforementioned statement the only relevant question is this; is naturalism an observable fact or a belief?---

I am not a "naturalist." I gave you my answer because it is the answer and approach that I think is correct. I am just a poster on these forums: I am not responsible for the claims of management.

In fact, I think the claims of management are rather silly, and I welcome you to find them so too. Metaphysical naturalism is philosophic nonsense: it's not that's wrong: it's that it's unintelligible. There is no ontological quality one can point to in anything that identifies it as being a "natural/material" quality vs. a "non-natural/material" quality. To use "natural/material" in this way is to express a non-concept, and you're welcome to present that philosophical criticism to management: though you should keep in mind that it provides no aid to theist belief either.

Only _methodological_ naturalism is philosophically justifiable as an approach to knowledge, and that only because it happens to accord with our particular abilities as beings to prove and disprove truth claims (i.e., we are neither infaliable nor omniscient, and so need to first know what it is we're talking about before we can really discuss it, and then can only deal with those things we can present valid evidence of based upon the shared premises of objective reality)

---If belief what value has it over competing beliefs?---

Value? I thought you were interested in _truth_. The same truth may well be both less appealing to _some_ people, AND more appealing to _other_ people.

If something is taken purely on faith, then it almost begs the question to ask whether one belief is more valuable than another: there is no guarantee that everyone values the same things.

I've actually been to your boards (assuming you are the same Andrew), knowing of your already strong views and convictions. I suspect that you NEED materialists and naturalists to justify your theist positions: without the provisional "correctness" of them, your entire line of criticism would fall to pieces.

Heathen Dawn

Assumption 1: Personal God
Assumption 2: Sovereign over Nature
Assumption 3: Rewards and punishes people

The sum of those assumptions is a world in which people get rewarded and punished according to their deeds. Or beliefs. Or whatever pleases or angers God. You must demonstrate that the natural realm is controlled in such a way. However, when a large group of people (say, 200 passengers in a jumbo jet) share the same fate despite their difference, but only because of their chancing to be at the same place at the same time, then the theory of the Personal God is shaken.

Also, pushing reward and punishment into the afterlife is a cop-out. It just shows this present life does not have a system of controlled reward and punishment.

Jamie_L

I think promoting naturalism means something different to you than it does to us.

To promote naturalism, we do not need to disprove every other competing belief system.

I think most of us naturalists are of the opinion that naturalism is not some belief system you get told about and then weigh against other systems.

Naturalism is the default. Until someone tells us otherwise, we operate under the assumption that the natural world is all their is. I'm pretty sure my two-year-old daughter is operating under that assumption. In fact, she won't have any idea what a god is until someone tells her.

So, the notion that we should have to disprove your belief is a bit backwards. Do we also have to disprove Hinduism, Buddism, and the strange cock-eyed religion that the crazy guy down the street invented while he was high on LSD?

Jamie

daemon

(1)"Convincing" is not well-defined enough to respond properly to.
(2)There is no reason that the required chemical processes could not occur. Therefore, logically, abiogenesis can occur unaided.
Nonsensical proposition at best. Theories cause nothing; theories explain. The theory stands as sound until some evidence exists that the theory does not adequately explain; the theory of evolution has been changed to fit the evidence several times. The current form of the theory of evolution exists as it is because there is no evidence that contradicts it.
What would be evidence of such a thing?
(1) "Realistic" is not well-defined enough to respond properly to.
(2) We have no information on the probabilities involved in universe generation; our sample size of one is far too small.
"Convincing" is not well-defined enough to respond properly to.
Okay. I'll tell you when it's been discovered.
Actually, the word I was thinking of was "nonsensical."
Well, given that "what is attributed to God" is arbitrary and constantly changing, this appears to simply be an issue of moving goalposts. I have no desire to engage in such a fruitless endeavor.

joedad

Partly, but if there were not other purposes, we'd talk about the value of applying our knowledge of bacteria and other infectious pathogens to the relief of pain and saving of life, and then not use that knowledge to do the same. So, there is clearly more to it than that.

Aside from that, my question would be how you personally differentiate between an abstraction and a physical reality?

You have certainly decided that gods are real, or so it seems to me, but how do the "real" gods in your ontology gain their reality? Maybe you just have an unrecognized double standard when it comes to the existence of gods. Is that possible? Have you ever thought about that?

If you do indeed have a double standard, which imho is quite obvious, that double standard neatly explains how you can accept an uncreated god, yet not accept an uncreated nature. A god becomes nothing more than your favorite team.

Everything else, including your line of reasoning here becomes just a kind of filler where you attempt to justify this double standard / team loyalty.

joe

Mageth

Have you considered another alternative: that God was created by the universe, and not vice-versa? Perhaps God is a natural property of the universe, like the existence of matter.

Another alternative: the universe came into existence on its own. God came into existence on its own. God, wandering around looking for something to do, stumbles across and investigates our universe (possibly one of an infinite number of universes). To have a little fun, god decides to f**k with the minds of a few sentient inhabitants he discovers herding goats on a small planet.

EvilTeuf

To all: A while ago, I did visit Andrew's board for a while, but stopped because of personal stuff. To be blunt, it's not really worth it. Andrew is only interested in debating the common and inaccurate dictionary definition/s of Atheism.

Thomas Metcalf

First, depending on your version of God, it's likely that I can prove It nonexistent or provide considerable probabilistic evidence that It does not exist. The omnicompetent morally perfect God is self-contradictory or inconsistent with what we observe in the way of suffering and widespread reasonable nonbelief. The most popular versions of God are internally and externally inconsistent, in my experience.

Well, here's the thing. There is no good reason to believe in God. Therefore, any reason to disbelieve God should be sufficient to confirm disbelief. Certainly, evidence of abiogenesis is evidence of no God, but I would wonder why you believe in God in the first place.

Modern biology textbooks should take care of this. We've observed all the building blocks of life forming naturally in early-earth conditions, and we know that self-copying systems can form stochastically.

I assume you mean that mechanisms of evolution cause the speciation we observe today. We've observed this happening many, many times, and I don't see any reason to think what was apparently evolution is not actually evolution.

In my experience, most big bang models do not posit that the universe "came into existence" in any intuitive way. There was never a time at which the universe did not exist. You're correct, however, that big bang models often do preclude the existence of God. See Q. Smith's work in the II library.

Well, any chance is a realistic chance. Yes, we got lucky, but pure improbability is never evidence that something didn't happen by chance.

You're probably familiar with the argument. Every event has a cause or is uncaused. Uncaused decisions can't be will, and caused decisions can't be free, if the causal chain behind them extends outside of our brains completely.

The universe, I guess.

You've put yourself in rather an uncomfortable position here. By acknowledging all these as evidence that God does not exist, you've admitted that one ought to believe God does not exist if there is evidence for any of these, for there is no evidence that God does in fact exist. In fact, there is evidence for some of these phenomena, so you must now produce evidence that God exists, or the lack of positive atheism will be visibly irrational.

More importantly, you've left out several better evidences for God's nonexistence. The internal inconsistencies in definitions of God, and the existence of widespread intense suffering with no visible morally sufficient purpose, all provide very good reasons for disbelief.

Autonemesis

No, you asked to be convinced that there is no God at the start of this thread. Look at the title. You did not ask to be convinced of anything concerning naturalism. Nor do you need to be convinced of anything concerning naturalism, in order to be convinced that there is no God.

While it is true that you suggested that you'd be convinced there was no God if the claims you listed were proven true, it does not follow that we must prove those claims in order to show there is no God, simply because you said we do. All we have to do to show there is no God, is to show there is no God. The claims you listed are irrelevant to that question.

[ August 13, 2002: Message edited by: Kind Bud ]</p>

Kent Stevens

If god existed we would know he existed because he would clearly reveal his specific nature to us.

If god existed he would being all good, remove evil.

We can always find something that we do not know about. But instead of putting a question mark over this subject religious people put God.

This question mark could be any number of millions of different entities. It could be Zeus, Jupiter, an alien, a cruel King and so on. If we do not use evidence we are free to dream any deity into existence.

What religious people argue is that I do not know everything therefore Zeus exists. But this does not follow logically at all.