Vorador

Do you believe the physical world exists? I sincerly hope you do. However what rational evidence do you have for believing that over Solipsism? If you have no rational evidence, then according to you, you have no foundation for that belief. Yet believing in the existence of the world is a fairly major part of any worldview on par with belief in a deity's existence. If you can believe in the physical world's existence over Solipsism without "rational evidence" why not God?

Whether reality exists or does not exist is irrelevant, because even in a Solipsistic world, there is only one way that one can percieve evidence: through one's own senses. And through those senses, evidence is logical, rational in nature. Whether or not reality really does exist is meaningless. God has not shown himself to me, whether this world really does exist or does not. Thusly, I have no belief in him, because I have recieved nothing that I percieve as any sort of rational evidence, whether or not reality exists.

There are innumerable logical and reasonable arguments for belief, those who say "have faith" are in my experience those who simply don't know any arguments themselves.

We agree on something! Woohaw!

I accept evolution and a ~15 billion year old universe and I am a Christian. As far as I am concerned neither of these things has more than an incidental relevance to my faith.
I was not refering to Archaeology as proving such dubious claims as Young Earth Creationism, but rather things like the accuracy of the Gospels etc - a task which it has succeeded admirably in over the last century or so.

I'm not sure I follow you on this one, here. The accuracy of the Gospels? Can you provide me with a reference of some sort?

I don't have enough time right now to give a reasonable treatment to even one of the arguments. One of the other Christian posters might have time if you ask nicely.

Well if you can't back up those logical points then they're not very good tools for debate then, are they? =P

1) No empirical evidence can prove the existence of the external world, other minds, or the reality of history, or other such basic things.
2) We do not find this epistemological dilemma debilitating on a daily basis because we assume that if our experiences are consistent and regular than we can navigate in "reality" whether it is ultimately illusory of not.
3) Consistency and regularity of personal experience is the key.
4) religious experience can also be regular and consistent, perhaps not to the same degree, but in the same way.
5) therefore, we have as much justification for assuming religious belief based upon experince as for assuming the reality of the external world or the existence of other minds.


1)Like I said, whether or not those things really exist is irrelevant, because our actions within that world, real or not, give us the perception of the consequences of our actions. Things in the world can be deduced through logic, and so one must act as though the world really did exist in order to garner the appropriate results from your actions.

2) Again, irrelevant in accordance with the argument concerning 'logical evidence'.

3) The key to what?

4) Yes but they also lack any sort of rational, logical proof that they are indeed experiences concerning the 'truth'. There's none of this consistancy that you speak of.

5) Not so far as I can see, no, you don't. You are of course allowed to believe anything you want, but this is a forum for debate, so... ^_~ Anyway, religious experiences are derived from things within reality. Your God has not shown himself to me from my senses, through which I percieve 'evidence' of the world around me. Thusly, without 'evidence', I can come to no logical conclusion that he exists.

Whew... O_O

[ May 15, 2002: Message edited by: Vorador ]</p>

Theli

Tercel...
I don't see how the morals handed down through religion can be in any way unquestionable.
The "source" of god's will if you wish - the bible, can be used to justify just about anything. It can and it has.
I also find the agenda of people following these morals questionable. I mean, do they follow the moral foundations handed down by religion out of fear of punishment and obedience rather than understanding of it's meaning?
If you can't question a moral code you find faulty or unjust out of obedience or trust in it's source, can you call yourself moral?

Personally I think that the word "morality" has been distorted, maybe not by religion but by those utilize and preach it.

Well, not if you see it from an individuals standpoint.
Just because your "meaning of life" can't be categorized and filed as a religion means it's lacking. This is a pretty big generalization.

Again... Are you reffering to an individual's life, humanrace's life or all life?
Religion has only brought questionable "meanings" to life's existence. God's experiment?
Humans as servants to an omnipotent god?
I haven't found any satisfying "meaning of life" yet from a religion.

Toto

I couldn't let this go unchallenged. What are you talking about? Archeology has not validated any part of the Gospels. The archeological reconstruction of the Temple has shown that the story of Jesus driving out the moneychangers was undoubtedly fictional, but other than that I can't think of any issue where archeology could be used to prove or disprove anything of substance in the Gospels (unless they archeologists found the tomb with a skeleton in it.)

Tercel

Toto, you must have your head buried in the sand.
Surely no amount of wishful thinking could ignore the fact that archeology has been systematically proving the accuracy for Luke for the past hundred years with regard to all the minor details such as names and titles of rulers, information on towns and local customs etc. Archeological digs in Jerusalem, such as the uncovery of the Pool of Bethseida, demonstrate that the writer of the Gospel of John had accurate knowledge of features of Jerusalem prior to its destruction in 70AD. I also understand that archeology has supported the accuracy of Mark in several instances.

The driving out of the moneychanges in the temple was "undoubtedly fictional" eh? I think you need to check your sources on that one...

Tercel

A few more miscellaneous arguments for God for Vorador. (Sorry about their shortness, but in the interest of time, there's no way they can be presented here in full)

<strong>Miracles and relgious experiences by personal testimony.</strong>
The thing that has personally led me to Christianity, is the accounts of miracles I have heard and read of that have happened in the present day within a Christian context.

[Now some charge that since Muslims etc claim miracles to this cancels everything out. But I believe this is not so:
1. The evidence is better for the Christian ones. In my experience I have never actually encountered any claim outside a Christian context that was remotely as convincing a numerous Christian ones.
2. I can perfectly accept that God might do miracles outside the "true religion" (if such can even be said to exist). God presumably cares about everyone, not simply those who have exactly the right doctrine. Hence miracles within a different religious context should not be construed as cancelling out claims from other contexts. (Although they do make it harder to judge which religion is the truest one)]

You must understand that it is impossible to relate even a tiny portion of all I have heard and read here, and it does not do justice to the accounts to tell them second hand like this. Talking to the person who is making the claim, or reading their life-story gives evidence which cannot be reproduced here.
Suffice to say, I have heard a large number of accounts that I have found extremely convincing (of healings, miracles, imparted knowledge, tongues, the demonic etc) and this is the primary reason I am specifically a Christian as opposed to some kind of deist or agnostic theist.

As far as evidence for you goes, (although this is slightly different to personal testimony) sometimes miracle claims of healings can be scientifically assessed. Although world-wide there is generally no scientific assessment accompanying miracle claims, the International Medical Council of Lourdes will review cases of miracle claims that happen at Lourdes, France. (A particularly famous location for miracles) Over the past 50 years, the board has found a number of healings to be completely inexplicable to known medical science. (You can read more about this a the <a href="http://www.lourdes-france.org/gb/gbsa0010.htm" target="_blank">Lourdes Web Page</a> - the text on the left is a menu)

<strong>Fine Tuning</strong>
Science has uncovered that there are a number of parameters in the fundamental make up of our universe, and if any of them had differed by a very small amount them life as we know it could not exist (either they’d be no stars, no galaxies, or the universe would already have collapsed back into a singularity). By very small amount, they mean one in ten to the power of 30 or so. Or in one case, one in ten to the power of 120. Now given that the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the world is approx 7.5 times ten to the power of 18, the probability of an event with one in ten to the power of 30 chance of happening is approx the chance of three people independently picking the same grain of sand given all the beaches in the world to choose from. So we ask the question of why the fundamental constants of the universe are all within these tiny life-permitting ranges. Now, this argument doesn’t prove God. But the idea the world is the creation of a purposeful deity would seem at least as reasonable an explanation as “it was a fluke” or “there are really lots and lots of universes out there”.

<strong>Conciousness</strong>
A basic property of anything is whether it is self-aware. Physical matter, presumably, is not self aware (at least I hope this table desk I’m leaning on isn’t self-aware). Adding lots of non-self-aware things together must result in something that is non-self-aware, since self-awareness vs non-self-awareness is a difference in kind not degree. Thus self-awareness is a basic property, neither reducible, nor a result of physical matter. Since I am self-aware, something that is self-aware clearly exists. Thus the fundamental reality has be something that is self-aware (since non-self-awareness cannot give rise to self-awareness), and self-awareness is that which we call the deity.

<strong>A Moral Argument</strong>
As humans we often perceive that some behaviours are right, and others are wrong. Some would argue that we get taught morals from our parents and society and it is thus a subjective human construct. But of course, we get taught maths by our parents and society too! The question is of course, is morality simply a human construct or is it something objectively real? So is morality simply a matter of human taste? Is morality simply subjective? One person likes strawberry icecream, another likes vanilla. It is a matter of taste. One person thinks torturing babies is okay, another thinks it isn’t. One person thinks violent rape is okay, another thinks it isn’t. Is it just a matter of taste? Is morality really and truly a matter of one group liking their bread butter-side-up and another group liking their bread butter-side-down? Shall we go to war because of that? One side thinks murdering an entire race of people is okay, the other side thinks it isn’t. A matter of subjective opinion, or is one side really objectively wrong? The Holocaust: a matter of subjective opinion similar to one group of people liking carrots better than potatoes, or was it really and truly wrong?
As I see it, morality is objectively real - some things are objectively right and wrong, it is not simply a matter of subjective opinion. But if morality is objective then it must exist objectively. How tall I am is not a subjective matter, but objective, because my height exists independently of peoples’ thoughts about it. Some moral standard must exist objectively then. But is it some arbitrary standard floating in space? In our experience laws and rules about how humans ought to behave are created by intelligent beings. Hence it suggests that the objective moral standard exists as the dictate of the deity.

<strong>A Dualist Argument</strong>
In our experience we observe the workings of two separate worlds. The world of the concrete and the world of the abstract. The physical world contains entities which when it boils down to it do nothing more than simply exist and obey a few mathematical laws of movement. But in our minds we can deal with the abstract world – logic, rational argument, mathematics. This does not seem to be something we create ourselves, rather we all recognise the validity of logic, and we “discover” mathematics. We progress in mathematics not by making up things ourselves, but by proving new and different theorems which follow logically from the results we already have. It seems there is a world of logic out there that is independent of physical existence. We can also create concepts, and meaning and infer these things from the environment around us. Writing on paper is physically made up of nothing more than blobs of black ink atoms sitting on white paper atoms. Yet it would be ignorant to assert that the writing is nothing more than this. The writing contains information. This information has no meaning to the physical world – mere blobs on paper. But when a self-aware being comes along, the being can interpret the information represented on the paper as having meaning and referring to ideas and concepts. If two mathematicians are arguing about a geometry puzzle on the blackboard, only an idiot would ask them what they’re arguing about and assert that the figure on the blackboard is nothing but many atoms chalk arranged in a certain way. The physical representation clearly corresponds to a non-physical concept.
And so in addition to the physical reality we have this strange world of logic, concepts and meaning that is comprehensible by all intelligent beings.
The abstract world is ultimately more real to us that the physical world – the physical world we must know through our senses and interpret that sense data, whilst the abstract can be known directly in our minds.
Now the abstract world seems to completely surround and underlie the physical world. No matter where in the physical world we go, logic is still there, mathematics still exists – it is omnipresent. We also find basic mathematical constructs describe the very foundations of physical reality. Now it seems clear that physical reality cannot create the abstract world, but perhaps something from the abstract world could create physical reality? It is our experience that intelligent beings such as ourselves do indeed conceive of ideas and actualise them in physical reality – bridges, buildings, paintings etc. Hence it is reasonable to infer that an intelligent being in the abstract world is responsible for the creation of physical reality in its entirety, and that being we call the deity.

Tercel

No, no, you've misunderstood my point. When I say that lacking a God, the philosophical foundation for morals is non-existent or questionable at best, I am meaning it is impossible to construct a logical argument as to why people should be moral. I'm saying that if God does not exist there is no sound logical reason to be moral.

Tercel

Weren't you talking about "rational" evidence a moment ago? Can't we also deduce truth through deductive logic, as well as simply our sense data?


Why?
There's a "game" at <a href="http://www.philosophers.co.uk/games/games.htm" target="_blank">http://www.philosophers.co.uk/games/games.htm</a> labelled "Strange New World". I suggest you play it and see if you still think the same thing!

Metacrock

Meta =&gt;There aren't enough days in this century.

[ May 15, 2002: Message edited by: Metacrock ]</p>

Metacrock

Meta =&gt;This response can be categoriezed thusly: a cheap shot, a strawman argument, but my favorite would be "aiming at the easy targets."

cheap because it only takes seriously the most comic book view as Christian and ignores the real thinking in the tradition (which is why I say aiming at the easy targets). Straw man because it's setting up an easy argument that it can knock down which hasn't been argued and isn't going to be because none of us are YECS.

that makes it a very unfair response.

Metacrock

Meta =&gt;No HRG! You need to understand this, it's very fundamental to this whole enterprize. There can only be one God, that can only be Being itself. there can't be more than one ground of being or Being Itself. So whatever the case about religious traditions, those are just people's views of God. there are many of those, but there can only be one thing to which they refur. So any argument that proves God proves the only God there is.

Why should God be necessarily good? becasue we have the concept of goodness.