We welcome people of all backgrounds to the community of this theological sandbox. Here we allow the tools of reason, study, and speculation to operate upon the vulnerable grains of belief in our minds. Although willing to entertain ideas of slim potential and wild implication, we also recognize the importance of maintaining convictions. Take a look around, and then do something funny or cool to make us all like you.
Is there a God in all possible worlds?
Can we know with certainty that there is a God?
Is it possible for someone to prove that the notion of a God is incoherent?
Is it reasonable to believe in God?
8 comments:
I do believe God exists for a few reasons. My reasons surpise me a little though. They are not deeply philosophical, but they are honest. I believe in God, because I cannot escape Him and I need Him.
Reason #1
I am not able grasp the idea that the human mind was formed by anything but a superior mind. I am not able to gaze at sunsets and think that they were not painted by a genius of an artist. I am persuaded that the universe is much too mighty and beatiful to be a cause of a non-personal force of chance.
Reason #2
I absolutely shudder at the thought that suffering, hatred, and evil are here for no reason, and that there is no hope for it to ever be fixed in this universe, but mostly in my heart.
Reason #3
I could not wake up in the morning knowing I am a mistake, that I have no meaning except what I produce, and that hope in any real sense is a waste of an emotion.
I cannot accept that the most important thing in this universe is you or I.
although I think that the basic christian worldview is scientifically and philosophically reasonable (meaning that it does not contradict the evidence, nothing contrary can be proven, and moreover, it is the most likely of the valid interpretations posed to date), it is not because of this that I go to bed at night feeling confident that I am believing and living according to an accurate view of reality. i am not a mere evidentialist.
nor have I chosen, just for faith's sake (and despite reason), to pick a belief system and stick to it. if for nothing else than the honest observation that this would be silly. sincerity of belief does not dictate reality. firmly believing that a large red dragon exists outside my window does not make it so. i am not a fideist.
at the end of the day, when i don't have to defend my beliefs to anyone but myself, and i wonder whether it will actually matter that i give my life to the God of the bible, whether my effort to deny myself and place myself in physically and emotionally difficult situations - even my willingness to die will make any eternal difference, my assurance is actually based on my experience with Jesus. the engagement of God Himself in a relationship has no epistemic equal.
as my journey carries on, many of my beliefs are turned upside down (belive me). but my core convictions about God and His relationship to me have only been confirmed by my life and studies.
nevertheless I love dialogue on the intellectual front, and it is important for believers to think clearly for their own sakes', and be able to give a rational defense of the gospel for the purpose of removing barriers to faith for others. dialogue can also foster relationships, which are an end unto themselves.
i guess my point is: there are many approaches to demonstrating God's existence, or uncovering evidence and arguments to show that it is reasonable to believe in God, but none of those are what actually hold my faith together.
however, if someone wants to post specific arguements for why they are not compelled to believe in God, please feel free to do so, and I am willing, for the sake of dialogue, to participate in objective truth-seeking, productive debate, and a journey even towards just clarification of viewpoints for a better understanding.
I'm a little put out right now. After much time spent carefully crafting my comment for this blog, blogger.com won't let me post it because of the html content. Unfortunately, I'm too tired to try to revise my comment without the html content and have it be cohesive and impactful.
So I've posted my comment for this blog on my own myspace blog. Please check it out (http://blog.myspace.com/chrisblackmore)and then leave comment back here on the RT blog. Think of it as a worth while field trip.
Thanks for reading.
[OK. A little re-tooling of my post and I have it in a format that works for blogger.com. Not quite as complete as the version on my "myspace blog", but here goes.]
Hey All,
I'm Chris, Louis' cousin. I consider myself agnostic though in practice I'm an atheist. This means that I lead a life without reguard to a supposed god or gods, but I don't discount the possiblity out of hand. I've just not seen any thing nor heard any argument to suggest there's an overriding supernatural entity. I used to say I was an optomistic agnostic, but the more research into religion I do the more I find to suggest that there isn't a god.
Big thanks to Lou, who created this particular blog thread at my urging. I'm always interested to hear from people who are devoted to various religions as to why they are so. I'll go into my own reasons for not believing toward the end of this oversized post, but first I'm anxious to respond to the previous posts. Oh, and sorry for the length of the this post, I may have gotten carried away. There's just so much to cover, so much I want to hear dissenting opinion on. I went through innumerable re-rights. I wanted to make sure I clearly expressed myself and that I wasn't coming off as derisive. Well, at least not too derisive ;^). Anything that might read as though it were written in a mean spirited or arrogant way, wasn't. It's all meant to have a friendly tone. Please don't let my lack of compositional skill put you off.
Alright let's jump in.
Dane:
I think your answers are the same top three reasons (in the same order) that most believers would give if asked this question.
Response to Reason #1 (the cognitive reason)
Being unable to grasp an idea in no way disproves it or lends credence to another idea. The inability to phathom the complexity of something or the inability to comprehend how some thing came to be shouldn't prompt one to leap to an "it must've been god" conclusion, though it often seems to. The better reaction to it is to either accept your inability and become comfortable with not understanding it, or to try find out as much as you can about it to broaden your understanding.
On a rational level everyone knows that they won't ever know everything, but on an emotional level people uniformly want completeness of idea. People react to the intellectual tension this dichotomy creates differently, though principally in one of two ways. The desire for all questions to be answered drives some to strive to try figure everything out by reason, observation and experience. This is the basis of science. It causes others to seek answers (and in their absence create them) through a kind of non-scientific causal reasoning, that strikes me as related to "magical thinking." It doesn't take long for this sort of conjecture to grow into religion.
Response to Reason #2 (the empathetic reason)
Suffering, hatred and evil exist. Well suffering does at least, in so far as it is defined as "To feel pain or distress; sustain loss, injury, harm, or punishment." People certainly feel pain and distress whether phyical or psychological. Hatred, defined as "Intense animosity or hostility. A feeling of strong dislike towards something or someone.", does as well. The precise definition of evil can be a sticky one (as Louis and I have discussed in the past) and so I'll leave that for another time.
Do these things require a god to give them meaning? No.
Are these things purposeless? Again, no.
Situations and emotions we feel as unpleasant drive us to improve our personal state of being, as well as the state of being of humanity. If we never felt hungry we would never eat and would starve to death. If we where not outraged that a madman was torturing people to death we not try to stop him and he may end up killing us all. Our nature of identifying with the plights of others is our way as a species of protecting one another and ensuring our mutual survival.
Response to Reason #3 (the existential reason)
This reason speaks directly to the nature of the human condition. Humans are, as far as we know, unique in our awareness of our own mortality and our desire for some transendental cosmic significance. This again speaks to our survival. As we evolved increasingly higher levels of intelligence, we eventually became better able to remember the past and look to the future. This led us to the awareness of our own mortality. Finding the idea of our own death to be abhorent, we found the stength to survive by supposing an afterlife. Despite or perhaps because of a lack of evidence for this, the notion comforted us and quickly became part of our culture.
While you are probably correct that you or I are not the most important thing in the universe, "importance" may have no meaning outside the human mind.
Louis:
*...I think that the basic christian worldview is scientifically and philosophically reasonable (meaning that it does not contradict the evidence, nothing contrary can be proven, and moreover, it is the most likely of the valid interpretations posed to date)...*
OK, let's go over the problems with this statement. While I appreciate (and seem unable to suppress a heartfelt smile) at the Tori like confidence with which you assert that it's "the most likely of the valid interpretations posed to date", it isn't. While Christianity may be philosophically tenable, it is however patently not scientifically reasonable. Simply not contradicting evidence and not being able to be disproven do not make something scientifically valid.
Science works by proposing a hypothosis about observable phenomena such as "P is true". Then it devises a way or ways to test or challenge the veracity of the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is proven true, it and the methodology of testing it are presented to the scientific community for review and retesting by third parties. If ratified by the scientific community at large it become a theory.
"In science, a theory is a proposed description, explanation, or model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation." A theory is the established set of rules governing an observable phenomenon like gravitational theory or music theory or evolutionary theory.
The problem is that god and other supernatural propsitions is that they are said to exist outside of nature and are therefore unobservable. In four millenia of trying no one has yet devised a test for god.
As for being the most valid worldview, Christianity's basis on conjecture and hearsay make it as valid Buddhism, Mormonism or Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. It's complete lack of tangible evidence for the fantastic events it claims happened makes it implausable in the light of reason and ever advancing science. It's textual self contradiction and lack of clear language allows it to be used to justify almost any manner of behavior. It's brutish intolerance toward alternate belief systems and dissenting opinion (re: first commandment) make it a bad neighbor. It's bible's tales of sex, incest and violence make for unsuitable reading for children.
My doubts of Abraham's god echo those going back before the bible.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-Epicurus 300 BCE
"Gods power is infinite. Whatever he wills is executed but neither man nor other animals is happy. Therefor he does not will their happiness. Epicurus' questions are yet unanswered"
-David Hume 1711-76
"If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest."
-Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Necessity of Atheism 1811
"It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind."
-Robert Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses (1879)
I don't believe in god not because I can't conceive of one, but because I can't perceive one. The testimony of people who claim to "feel His presence" isn't enough for me. Not being able to sense god myself, I'm left with applying logic and reason to the premise of god.
Q: Is the existence of god necessary for people to be moral?
A: No. Many of the nicest, most caring, most giving, most honest people I know are either atheist or claim a non-Abrahamic religion. Many societies, some quite advanced have existed peacefully for eons before and after monotheism.
Q: Is the existence of god necessary for people to be happy?
A: No. I know many truly happy people, both believer and non.
Q: Has a miracle ever been proven to have occured?
A: No. In fact I heard somewhere that the Catholic church had said I wasn't going to vouch for any more miracles because scientists have a habit of provening how claimed miraculous events are but uncommon confluences of physical phenomena.
Q: Is the existence of god necessary for the explaination of any physical or psychological phenomena?
A: No. There's no mathematical equation or scientific formula that needs "and then god stepped in" to be complete. While there are still many mysteries in nature to be unravelled, history has shown that whenever we do decipher some heretofore unknown aspect of nature, god is never involved. Moreover, the more we learn about nature and our place in it the more long standing beliefs and religion are shown to be but superstition and myth.
"If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them"
-Baron d'Holbach 1868
I firmly believe that if something is true it can be tested and will withstand any rigour.
I'd never claim to have all the answers and I'm not only open to new ideas about the the supernatural, but a big part of me wants to find a supernatural dimension to the universe. That said, one must wade skeptically through these waters. If someone said to me that an ancient text foretold that computer keyboards repelled lions and cheetahs (well, have you ever seen a lion or cheetah near a computer keyboard?) I'm not going to strap one to my chest and hike carefree through the Savannah.
I look foreward to reading responses to this post and participating in further dialog.
-Chris
Hey Jeff, welcome to the party. Nice to hear from the peanut gallery ...umm ... potato gallery? Idaho joke.
In all seriousness, big thanks to you and your Misses for creating Lindsey. You do good work. It's also nice to hear more view points.
First, a quick word on societal shifts. America, if anything is currently seeing a move towards not just Christianity, but fundamental Christianity.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
-President George H.W. Bush, August 27, 1987
"The United States is a Christian nation founded upon Christian principles and beliefs."
- President George W. Bush
I personally would like to see a shift towards the beliefs and values of our founding fathers, most of whom where not Christian but rather Deist. Like Christians, Deists varied in their specific beliefs but generally agreed there was likely a god of some kind but that it was unlikely man would ever know his nature let alone his mind. I suggest that their Deism came from the appearance of design in the natural world. Had the discovery of evolution come a hundred years earlier, I feel that they would to a man count themselves as Atheist.
"Dr. Rush told me (he had it from Asa Green) that when the clergy addressed General Washington, on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to disclose publicly whether he was a Christian or not. However, he observed, the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly, except that [one], which he passed over without notice."
- Thomas Jefferson, quoted from Jefferson's Works, Vol. iv., p. 572
"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity."
- John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
- Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, primary author of the Declaration of Independence
"This nation of ours was not founded on Christian principles."
-John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
"The Government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion."
- John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
(If you buy 'W' a history book, I'll pay the postage.)
Evolution was not designed to do away with god. In fact it was not designed, but rather discovered. It's the explaination of how life evolved from it's simplest form into the variety and complexity we see today, period. If the god of Abraham exists as described, a scientific theory could not get rid of him. C.S. Lewis spoke to this quite eloquently when he said, "A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." (The Problem of Pain). That said, evolution's discovery has changed the way people skeptical or not view the world. As physicist Steven Weinberg said, "It wasn't that scientific discoveries made religion impossible. It's that they made irreligion possible."
Moving on to the four points you raised about evolution itself...
I've watched and listened to young earth creation lectures by Kent Hovind, John Clayton, Ted Haggard and a few others and there's and interesting phenomena I've noticed that seems to be a kind of intellectual inbreeding, a homogenizing of thought patterns among creationists. It's like they all went to the same seminar on the subject and were all given the same souvenir playbook. Clayton and Hovind even make some of the exact same jokes. "This isn't my wife. It's just a picture of my wife." Then they make the exact same points using the exact same carefully selected and misrepresented scientific findings. I only mention this because the points you've mentioned seem to be pulled from their playbook's pages.
Number 1
Darwin said that his theory could not be true if there were not found transitional forms in fossil evidence...and there are NONE! It could not have happened.
Number 2
Speaking of transitions, how could a rat transition to a bat. Wouldn't the half bat half rat not be able to run or fly and get eaten by the cat...(h yeah, that came 61 million years later)...that transitional forms would not tend to survive but would be less likely to survive and therefore die out.
hmm. To these points I say *Emus*
Think for a moment about an emu. Not a transitional animal per se, but bear with me for a moment. Here you have an animal with four limbs, two of which do almost nothing. Despite this limitation the emu gets around, evades and even defends itself against predators, finds food and cares for it's young. It'd be great to use it's wings to fly. It'd be nice to use them dig or fight with. Circumstance provided a habitat that didn't require these things for survival so they went away.
So a half rat half bat (actually, despite appearence bats aren't closely related to rats. in fact they're closer to primates) could hypothetically survive with just two legs. But that doesn't actually matter. To explain why I offer the flying squirrel.
At some point the fluke genetic variation of a slightly more pronounced stretch of skin between the fore and hind legs of a tree dwelling squirrel ancestor appeared. Enhanced leap via slight glide turned out to be an advantage and this squrriel was able to gathered more nuts and survive even when food was scarce. It's kids inheirited it's genes and the advantage was passed on. Then among this new improved group squirrels some had even slighty more pronounced skin flaps than the others and the process repeated. Now we have flying squrriels. They may eventually evolve true wings like bats did but only if each subtle step yields a survival benefit in their enviroment, which of course is itself evolving.
Bats at one point were flightless mammals, likely ground or tree dwelling, who like the fyling squirrel developed the advantage of leaping then gliding further and further after insects and other flying food. Perhaps as the easy to get to food on the trees was hunted to extinction, this leaping after flying prey became their primary way of feeding. The better leap/glider flourished. Individual bats born without such good crawling and climbing skills still survived because they where good gliders and their weak crawling genes stayed in the gene pool. This meant on going generations got genes decreasingly suited for the increasingly irrelevant to their existance modes of crawling and climbing. The flying genes where now the ones that mattered and evolutionary process reinforced them. They weren't surviving despite their forelegs transitioning into wings but because of them.
Imagining a half rat half bat in the environment of either a full rat or a full bat doesn't work. Of course the full rat would beat the half form to the food while evading the cat. It would only evolve if each slight step along the way made it able to fair better than the others competing with it for resources.
Transitional forms did occur. They did so because their variation was an issue of survival. Many if not most of them were in the soft tissue, like the skin flaps of a flying squirrel. Soft tissue is almost never fossilized. Could you pick a tree squirrel skeleton out of a group of flying squirrel skeletons?
"It is commonly stated by anti-evolutionists that there are no known transitional fossils. This position is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of what represents a transitional feature. A common creationist argument is that no fossils are found with partially functional features. It is entirely plausible, however, that a complex feature with one function can adapt a wholly different function through evolution. The precursor to, for example, a wing, might originally have only been meant for gliding, trapping flying prey, and/or mating display. Nowadays, wings can still have all of these functions, but they are also used in active flight."
Number 3
There is NO, ZERO, NONE, ZIP examples of macro evolution in the universe...PERIOD!!! It doesn't happen, never has and never will. Most mutations are fatal. It can't happen. Without macro evolution, the whole theory is gone. Horses breed horses and roses roses. I don't have enough faith to believe it any other way because science won't allow it.
"A misunderstanding about this biological controversy has allowed the concept of macroevolution to be coopted by creationists. They use this controversy as a supposed "hole" in the evidence for deep-time evolution.
However, microevolution and macroevolution both refer fundamentally to the same thing, changes in allele frequencies, and the scientific controversy is only about how those changes predominantly occur. Either way macroevolution uses the same mechanisms of change as those already observed in microevolution."
Number 4
How could an eye evolve? It can't. There are many distict parts to an eye, all are worthless without the others...did they all evolve together? What good would an animal be if it just evolved a lense or a cornea or just the eyelid...no good...no greater tendency to survive, therefore the theory is untrue.
Ahh, the Behe argument. A common misconception among creationists. The notion of anatomic features suddenly appearing as they are in their present form in one generation, and therefore being of no use on their own. Not the way it works. Here's a decent explaination of how it happened. Other complex organs and organic systems in nature developed in a similar fashion.
A theory in crisis!?!
"Evolutionary theory is now enjoying this uncommon vigor. Yet amidst all this turmoil no biologist has been led to doubt the fact that evolution occurred; we are debating how it happened. We are all trying to explain the same thing: the tree of evolutionary descent linking all organisms by ties of genealogy. Creationists pervert and caricature this debate by conveniently neglecting the common conviction that underlies it, and by falsely suggesting that evolutionists now doubt the very phenomenon we are struggling to understand."
-Stephen J. Gould, evolutionary biologist
One thing evolution is not is "...a joke that has been disproven many thousands of ways and is really only believed and taught in the public schools and textbook companies." All institutes of higher learning that don't accept students based on their willingness to sign a "statement of faith" teach it. And that's a lotta well respected schools.
I can't speak to whether or not the biologists you know who teach as fact what they themselves can't believe are Christians or not. I will say that such academic hypocrisy is not a good thing and that these teachers should recuse themselves from teaching subjects of which they at their core disagree with.
As interesting as all this has been, you haven't offered anything to suggest a god exists. I do agree that Darwin's findings poke big holes in the Bible's tales, but people have been doubting the book's veracity since it was compiled.
As for me, I do believe that humans and other modern primates desended from a common ancestor. But remember when calling me a monkey, you're my uncle-in-law. That makes you a monkey's uncle(-in-law).
-Chris
my reply to Chris continues the thread at the above post, Existence of God II
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