Plantinga: The God Delusion

[karlhenning]

Hey, Drogulus, do you even pay attention to what other people say or do you just discuss for the heck of discussing?

I dare make answer for him: no, he pays attention to nothing which does not either (a) more or less directly agree with him, or, (b) give him ready occasion to keep flogging his rant.

[drogulus]

     Those who deny Planet Mongo at the outset by some sort of circular reasoning will never find Planet Mongo.

     
      The charge of Denial is an old familiar one. If someone doesn't buy your potion he's Denying it (or denying IT). But why should a denial be necessary? All that's needed is to observe that Sandage has not the slightest intention of following through on his "other proofs" statement. If such proofs existed then all the rhetoric that believers emit about how inaccessable to reason these beliefs are would be revealed as the meaningless blather it is.

      So which is it, accessable to reason "of a different kind" or inaccessable? Most of the time the answer is inaccessable but under pressure the fissures in the dual system open up and the truth comes out. What is said is designed for different audiences. For those who will swallow a dumbed down version it's "our feeble minds" can't understand. For a more sophisticated audience it's understanding of a different, but unspecified, kind. The implied promise to explain will never be kept. Sandage would rather insult his colleagues to feed his habit, and cast people he supposedly respects overboard. What a sorry business.

[Catison]

If such proofs existed then all the rhetoric that believers emit about how inaccessable to reason these beliefs are would be revealed as the meaningless blather it is.

I don't think there are many believers who would say that they are doing something unreasonable.  They are believing something unprovable and unanswerable to scientific understanding.  That is a different statement.  You can reasonably believe something metaphysical if you see evidence for the metaphysical, which many do in the ancient texts.

[Shrunk]

And the fact that in the course of history human beings have been able to transcend their physical, material limits....

What are you referring to here, Florestan?

[Florestan]

I don't see how accepting bronze-age myths as a result of parental transmission (or whatever indoctrination method it is) as freedom.

This illustrates  another striking difference between theists and atheists. While theists take science very seriously and see it as a legitimate human endeavour, atheists dismiss religion altogether as "bronze-age myths" and every religious person as "indoctrinated". It seems that the last resort of atheism is argumentum ad hominem.

[Florestan]

Yes, my belief is also an act  of free will to accept divine revelation and a personal relationship with God, but I could not have belief if it would not be supported by rational reasons to do so. Interestingly, the Catholic church appears to think the same way, since it condemns fideism, which is belief without reason, "believing just to believe".

I trust you don't think I am a fideist. My point is my belief is supported by, not based on, rational reasons. And speaking of the Catholic Church, I wholy agree with the sound principle of St. Anselm of Canterbury: Credo ut intellegam (I believe in order to understand).

[Florestan]

What are you referring to here, Florestan?

The well-documented cases of miracles performed by Christian saints, Hindu yogis or Buddhist monks, for instance.

[Al Moritz]

I trust you don't think I am a fideist. My point is my belief is supported by, not based on, rational reasons.

Yes, of course.

[drogulus]

I don't think there are many believers who would say that they are doing something unreasonable.  They are believing something unprovable and unanswerable to scientific understanding.  That is a different statement.  You can reasonably believe something metaphysical if you see evidence for the metaphysical, which many do in the ancient texts.

     Not in those words, but they would say that gods can't be found by reasoning about them, all the while reasoning their asses off to get out from under what they got themselves into. Modern people who believe are just like you and me, they know how things are, but they reserve the right to say it's a different way too, even though they admit they don't know what that way is. It takes a lot of rationalization horesepower to do that. They are reserving the right to object for a later time when they can figure out what their beliefs actually amount to. Trust me, they never will.

     What is "evidence for the metaphysical" if the term is defined by the lack of evidence for it? Al gives me grief for my supposed dogmatism about metaphysical naturalism, and he would be right to do so if I didn't make it clear that my scepticism is applied to all absolutisms, including the small band of scientific realists who think their models are just true, period. Naturalism is an efficient model for a theory of everything (science works because its models map the world closely), but it suffers the same fate as religious ones: It can't be confirmed. Sometimes chunks will fall off into science but mostly not.

(I believe in order to understand).

.

     I know. It doesn't work.

[Florestan]

      I know. It doesn't work.

It doesn't work for you.

[drogulus]

     

It doesn't work for you.

     I'm not a relativist. I don't know what that means.

[drogulus]

    Hey, you know what? When things hit a lull, I'll ask people to "define belief" or "please define proof" just to keep my hand in. I might even throw in an occasional Precisamente if I'm feeling up to it. _{(if Karl says it's OK, that is)}

   

[Al Moritz]

           Al gives me grief for my supposed dogmatism about metaphysical naturalism, and he would be right to do so if I didn't make it clear that my scepticism is applied to all absolutisms, including the small band of scientific realists who think their models are just true, period. Naturalism is an efficient model for a theory of everything (science works because its models map the world closely), but it suffers the same fate as religious ones: It can't be confirmed. Sometimes chunks will fall off into science but mostly not.

Then again, with this thinking you should be an agnostic and not an atheist.

And don't come with things like:

   
      The difference between atheist and agnostic shouldn't be oversold. Neither thinks a god is likely. One term expresses doubts about the supernatural, the other has no religion. Strictly speaking, they don't contradict each other, though in practice the terms are associated with different groups, sorted by degrees of "niceness", I suppose.

No, a truly openminded agnostic simply says "I don't know", not that a God is "unlikely".

But I forgot, you already have made up your mind about what a "real god" should or should not be like -- so perhaps you are just a dogmatic atheist after all.

[drogulus]

    That's a real mish-mash there, Al.

    Atheism means no religion. I have no religion. Atheism is the correct term.

    In fact, it's more likely that an agnostic is flying a false flag than an atheist is.
   
    Everyone should be able to undertand that gods are extremely unlikely. Believers want that not to be a bar to belief, but they only deny it to contradict a critic. Everyone knows a miracle is impossible, otherwise it wouldn't be a miracle for it to happen. Does that really need to be said after all this?

   

[drogulus]

      Al, how open-minded are you about Zeus and Aphrodite?

      How open-minded do you have to be after a couple of thousand years?

      What about Baal? Don't you want to tell Saul (and me, too!) how narrow-minded he is for dismissing Baal without even a fair trial?? And just how narrow-minded is it of Karl not to give a fair hearing to the Thetans, or Ahura Mazda, or Eric Clapton, for that matter? 

     

[Saul]

Saul, when you say things like this, you do make yourself appear absurd.

The entire purpose of science is to determine truths within the natural world, things like the boiling point of pepto-bismal, the rate of absorption into the water-table, the nature of the DNA chain.

Remarks like yours above, are a catastrophic mistake.

I meant to say Spiritual truths, ideology, Ideals, and Faith.

I understand why you misunderstood me, it was my fault.

[Al Moritz]

 
    Atheism means no religion. I have no religion. Atheism is the correct term.

   

Not quite. Atheism comes from the Greek a-theos = godless, without God.

[Norbeone]

After the 13 pages of this thread, the important difference between supernatural and the natural hasn't even been properly established. People like myself, drogulus and shrunk seem to find it impossible to gain the understanding of the believers here: Haffner, Florestan, al and....(ahem...Saul). We are clearly missing something that the 'believers' have; something that 'we' can't seem to obtain. And i'm not been sarcastic or facetious here: the believers I mention are ones whose intelligence I take to be wholly genuine (I know how pretentious that sounds, but trully I don't mean to it to be so). As a result of some of the arguments made by some 'believers' here I must admit that I question the whole notion of what gives me credit for what I, myself, believe. Not that i'm saying any such arguments have power so far as convincing me otherwise, but still, I do start to question the fundamentals.

(Beware, this is a rather intoxicated comment, so maybe it shouldn't be taken too seriously.)    


as a slightly more direct commet: the difference between atheism and agnosticism (as has been stated here before) shouldn't be oversold. Most claimed atheists are actually agnostics; it's just that the sheer lack of evidence for Gods is so lacking that it's not really saticfactory to state that such said Gods' existence is unknown, rather that they are highly unlikely. Furthermore, the defintions of each are so ambiguous that I don't even know what to label myself.

[Norbeone]

Not quite. Atheism comes from the Greek a-theos = godless, without God.

Still, what is the important distinction? Surely it's the reason for lack of religious belief that's crucial.

[Catison]

What is "evidence for the metaphysical" if the term is defined by the lack of evidence for it?

Then by what criteria would you consider evidence for the metaphysical?

It seems you've created a wall around a materialist world.  You can't say you would accept metaphysical events if only there was evidence and then create the circular argument of defining metaphysical events as though which have no evidence.

I have always thought of metaphysical events as those events which cannot be understood by physics.  It has nothing to do with evidence for them, except in lacking a scientific, material signature.