Then you don't understand probability. It absolutely is. Neither the notion of God or the notion of being absent God are any more or less reliant on an undemonstrable assumption. That's just the long and short of it.
Unfortunately, it ain't that simple. I know that the faithful would love to lower science to the level of "faith" or elevate faith to the level of reason, but it ain't gonna happen any time soon. In our daily lives, when deciding what is true or untrue, we routinely use Occam's Razor. Theists put that on hold arbitrarily for this one particular question. That done, yes, it is a coin toss.
If "universe" and "universe + God" explain the same data, then the first model is more likely.
Darwin's theory has absolutely no bearing on the question of ultimate origin.
Correct. But it does great damage to theism because it explains the most obvious problems after origin.
Putting God first doesn't solve the question of origins at all. In fact, it only opens more cans of worms. If nothing can come from nothing, than neither can God. If God has always been here, then I can make the same claim for "the universe". God is more complicated than the universe in either case. See Occam's Razor.
You skipped the part that allows for the conclusion. You know, the working part. Feel free to attempt it.
You skipped the part where you clearly articulate where I failed to explain. But we can drop this quibbling. The latter part of this conversation (below) is more interesting.
You'd have to make the case, since I studied two of the three academically and religious text as something of a hobby during my decades as an atheist, viewing them as a telling window into man's notions of being and value. Good luck doing that as well. I'm prepared for it.
You said originally that I had the flaw. I was just echoing your assertion. The ball is in your court to explain the problem.
Certainly, if you mean by that encompass, but you can experience what there is of God that can be and in that find sufficient reason to hold with the posit.
Right - but within those somewhat limited parameters, people experience very different, mutually exclusive gods. Is it pure chance that people experience the gods of their own cultural background or missionary context? Or might we be dealing with something not so supernatural at all?
That's not really a "no" then, since I haven't said it isn't a leap. I noted an error in your first assumption that impacts the sense of scale in the second.
At the start of this conversation that sounded a bit different to me, but this is a side point.
I don't know anyone who would say genocide and benevolent belong in the same sentence...any more than I can think of someone who would frame their favorite ice cream in the context of wisdom or attempt to suggest the sum of our republic is found in the workings of its army.
I have had this conversation before and heard Christians start to excuse all manner of horrific crime because of "context" - the most important context being that God is ordering or condoning the crime. In the next breath, they assert that God is benevolent. The slaughtering of whole societies - or the drowning of all creation! - are "righteous".
Only if we don't understand literary device or the actual point of a bit or two of scripture.
Sometimes it's true because that's what the Bible says. Sometimes it is a literary device. Sometimes it is immediately and obviously true. Sometimes we need training. Sometimes it stands alone. Sometimes we need context. The cultural context of the reader and the century we live in determine which, when we read the unchanging word of God. Hell has cooled down significantly over the past few centuries. The divine genocides of the Old Testament are now a literary device.
No. "Making up" a thing isn't the result of serious reflection and approach and doesn't signify a mind that recognizes the importance of context. Else, that's part of the struggle, as it is with any principle worth thinking about or living by.
Okay, but I would say that "serious reflection" requires a much higher degree of doubt and skepticism than is typical in these forums.
Rather, the point being that we should live as though the Holy moves among us, as it does. I think of it as a version of "love your neighbor as yourself".
"Should" is a normative claim I don't agree with here. I don't think it has been established that there is anything "holy" at all. If society agrees on particular customs and traditions, they should not be violated capriciously. That has something of the "holy" about it. Even though I don't believe in supernatural stuff, I still don't paint mustaches on icons. But that is out of respect for the art and the people, not because there is something "really" holy about it.
The mistake you make with the "elves" context is the old FSM error. That is, you're simply introducing a placeholder that is inferior to the consideration at hand. This is almost always part of an attack by association/inference and doesn't deserve much by way of response.
The "placeholder" is perfect because it takes the claim being made by the theist and shaves off all the cultural ballast, leaving only the raw claim. Everyone knows that elves or the FSM don't exist. But what does that say about other spooky claims when the latter exhibit the same attributes or ontological status? Dismissing this line of argument because the alleged God is somehow superior in an numinous, inexplicable way, comes across as attempting to bury the issue under the cultural ballast again.
There are any number of truths that can't be falsified. It doesn't remove anything but our ability to make objectively demonstrable statements about them.
Perhaps you could name a few. If you do, I might say, "Oh, yeah. You're right." Or I might point out an example of possible falsification. Or I might show how the example can reasonably be rejected as not demonstrated as "true."
For clarity - by falsification I do not necessarily mean something that would absolutely prove the opposite. I mean "evidence against." If evidence against something is unimaginable, then it is pointless to talk about evidence at all.
Then it would make for an interesting conversation, I'd imagine. You could suggest, reasonably, that either one or both of us were deluded, or mistaken, or that both of us were using differing language to relate a similar event. I'd have to speak with the adherent. And that's where I'd introduce Lewis and the true Christian myth discussion.
Wow. If I met someone with a similar data set, but with a completely different model to explain the data, I imagine I might go into the conversation with some doubt.
Truth is truth whenever grasped and age is no impediment to it. Else, it's no more reasonable than not, depending on your context, as set out prior. As to why someone long in the skin of skeptical disbelief, comfortable in his thinking, station and prospects would have my experience of God...absent some biological malfunction that left me intellectually unimpaired in relation to my academic pursuit (one reliant on the application of critical thinking)...
I'll admit that you're not the first theist I have met who claims to be a former atheist, but you're the first in that category to demonstrate any familiarity with the arguments used by atheists. I say that because I have serious doubts when someone claims they were an atheist and then had a complete conversion. Usually, what I think people mean is that they were a "backsliding Christian" or something, at "worst" someone who had lost interest in religion since childhood.
As for a biological malfunction, I don't want to claim to know what happened. But the human mind is capable of a high degree of modularity. There are many cases of people being completely logical about some things and not at all about others - and that is not pathological. Within pathology, there are brain imparements which show that all kinds of things can be "uncoupled" - although the examples I have read about would not appear to apply to complex, cultural convictions (more sensory stuff - like failure to see the right or left side of things, the de-coupling of emotion from the senses, the separation of awareness from actually seeing something consciously, etc. - rather simple brain disorders that I would not apply to this case). I doubt whatever happened in your case is really pathological, although I suppose some atheists could disagree.
Re: the conversion/salvation of man.
Those conversions and alterations are...(evidence of the truth of the biblical account)
...but then conversions to Islam would be evidence of the truth of Islam.
else, I've never held that the matter of God is resolvable objectively. In fact, I've argued that the atheist's demand for proof and the theist's answer are both wasted efforts. You touched on part of the problem in your experiential note relative to terms. And that's without the added difficulty of establishing a standard that if met would settle the question, objectively, for the person asking it.
That is indeed a problem. Part of it stems from some claims about God
- being considered objectively impossible (mutually exclusive - like the theodicy issue) by atheists
...which decides the issue for the atheist, but leaves the theist unconvinced...
- being considered un-measurable (omnipotence) by atheists
...meaning that a definitive answer is out of reach.
In my experience, atheists don't demand "proof," but evidence. The resulting conversations/arguments revolve around how robust/logical/applicable, etc. the proposed evidence is.
I don't think the first part (Lith's claim that all his beliefs are, in principle, falsifiable) is true so it's hard to step around it....
Well, I've toyed with it again and again and challenged people to propose counter-examples, and so far, nothing's turned up. An obvious exception is the claim that "I exist." I can't imagine a falsification for that. For anything else, though, I do my best.
...God being the actual subject on hand. If you can't fully fathom or define Him you can hardly contradict Him. It's not logical. You're then left to approach and accept or reject what it is you approach, but nothing more than that, reasonably.
I guess we atheists have a problem with this "unfathomableness". God would appear to be quite well defined and clear in some contexts. Sometimes, Christians claim to know exactly what "He" is saying or doing or intends. They know what is literal and what is allegory. Some even have all kinds of terminology for subtle points of doctrine. Then, suddenly, in the same conversation, He becomes "unknowable," "undefinable," "not subject to human reason," "unmeasurable," "mysterious in His ways" or some other such qualification. I don't want to say it is an intentional "bait and switch," but it does come off as a nifty way to have it both ways.
And Camping's error wasn't the testable, but that he attempted to verify a thing his own faith and scripture assured him was beyond his understanding or any man's ability. There's an error and a vanity. As to Hindu place holders, I don't argue their part and suggest you take it up with my notice on Lewis if it interests you.
Well, I see Camping's error differently. But either way, I find the dismissal of placeholders odd. I'll make a note of the Lewis reference and check it out some time if the "spirit" moves me!
- Lith
