Einstein: The Bible Is Pretty Childish

[PSmith08]

     A good secularist does appreciate that. Religious belief exists in a relativist haze where faith in faith is right except where its wrong and so on. Though, I wonder why faith can't be applied with equal force to a naturalist antirelativist position. The argument would be even better for faith justified by evidence that can withstand scrutiny. That's the curious feature of all faith-based argumentation. Any argument for faith is weaker than an argument for faith in scepticism. Faith can't support a bad argument (what other purpose could it have?) since faith in a better one will prevail. Faith cancels out on both sides and you're left with the quality of evidence and the best arguments derived from what can be known. It seems that faith can't support a good argument either! Then, good arguments don't need such support, do they?

    I guess the best way to put it is that faith follows from rather than precedes knowledge of how things are in this world or any possible other. It relies on what justifies it without providing justification on its own, and the weakness of any truth claim is not enhanced by the addition of faith. So I will continue to have faith in gravity or human nature or any other well confirmed phenomenon while understanding that my faith is a measure of confidence in these things and not an active component in the truth about them.

About the only thing I could pull from this mess, which could have been simplified greatly, is your assertion that faith is meaningless since it cannot bolster good or bad claims. Indeed, you argued that faith follows knowledge, and the question is ultimately one of the value of the evidence backing up that faith. That's all well and good, I suppose, but what does one do about fundamentally undecidable propositions. Not even M could disprove the existence of a higher power. The most he can do, as we have seen, is assail the historical parts of the Bible. That might say something about the Bible, even going so far as to say that the divine-inspiration aspect is in trouble, but that doesn't really get to the heart of the matter. It is no proof to my mind to say that the oral histories of a nomadic desert tribe in the Levant are flawed somehow implies that there is no God. I am sure M's argument is more subtle than that, and his argument is ultimately irrelevant, as there is no universally convincing, comprehensive argument to be made on the subject. By the same token, the most JCampbell can do is defend against the attacks, but I think I've shown above that he is running a fool's errand attempting to defend the Faith against someone who has already decided that it is an error in judgment. He cannot prove that there is a God.

So, what say you about faith on matters that are undecidable, like the one in question?

[karlhenning]

So, what say you about faith on matters that are undecidable, like the one in question?

Aw, Patrick, what do you want to pluck Ernie awake out from his cozy relativist haze for?

[PSmith08]

Aw, Patrick, what do you want to pluck Ernie awake out from his cozy relativist haze for?

Because it beats the daylights out of sitting in a darkened room and listening to Boulez' second piano sonata two or three times in a row.

[karlhenning]

You do Boulez a disservice to compare chatting with Ernie, to listening to his second piano sonata . . . .

[PSmith08]

You do Boulez a disservice to compare chatting with Ernie, to listening to his second piano sonata . . . .

Perhaps, but you need to reread my comment. It isn't just the B2dPS.

[Brian]

Not even M could disprove the existence of a higher power.

I agree - nobody can disprove the hypothesis that there is a higher power. But at some point we have to ask: why believe such a thing? Why do people believe there is a higher power, and why do they tend to hold certain sets of beliefs about its characteristics? Why would somebody want to believe in a higher power?

And I think on that level there's really little relevance to proof or disproof. The vast majority of people who believe in a god do so not on the basis of what's most logical, or most intellectually satisfying, but what makes them feel better and what they have learned from their culture.

[PSmith08]

I agree - nobody can disprove the hypothesis that there is a higher power. But at some point we have to ask: why believe such a thing? Why do people believe there is a higher power, and why do they tend to hold certain sets of beliefs about its characteristics? Why would somebody want to believe in a higher power?

Well, belief in a higher power is the dominant strategy in a game-theoretical sense, regardless of the actual presence of a higher power (Viz. Pascal's Wager). So, speaking in the admittedly non-inspiring terms of 'what will be best for me in the long(est) run,' someone would want to believe because it is a strategy in the game of eternity that cannot fail (taking the original formulation, such as it is). It would be counterintuitive and highly non-trivial to think that someone would act against their self-interest, but the non-belief option has a greater potential for a negative outcome than does the belief option, the negative outcome of which is merely the best possible outcome for a non-believer. In other words, assuming that a higher power will behave in such a way that rewards belief and punishes non-belief, being a non-believer is irrational. Indeed, given the possibility of a higher power that will behave in such a way, despite the fact that its existence is fundamentally undecidable, belief is still the rational decision (i.e., the dominant strategy for self-interested players).

And I think on that level there's really little relevance to proof or disproof. The vast majority of people who believe in a god do so not on the basis of what's most logical, or most intellectually satisfying, but what makes them feel better and what they have learned from their culture.

Now, I have just shown that there is a rational way to believe in a higher power, but I think it would be safe to say that most folks don't base their belief/non-belief choice on a dominant strategy, assuming God works in a belief=reward/non-belief=punishment (i.e., binary) way. I think you're partially right about feelings and culture, but I think you're wrong on the value of proof or disproof. You see, for an atheist, if there can be no proof of their position (disproof of the existence of God), then there's at least the possibility that there is a God. If God could exist, then He could behave in a binary way. Assuming that a traditional binary arrangement is made, then there's at least the possibility that they're in eternal trouble of a pretty serious nature. So, absent proof/disproof, the potential for a nasty outcome exists. Strategies to avoid that outcome become relevant, and belief is the dominant strategy. In other words, without proof that there is no God, it is, in at least one way of looking at the matter, irrational not to believe in God. Now, I feel rather like Hans Castorp during one of his colloquies with Settembrini and Naphta, but I hope I've made myself clear (even if clearly wrong).

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

But I'd add, God is a nice hobby, good fun for human beings. If they just wouldn't take it too serious.

[Wanderer]

...faith follows from rather than precedes knowledge ... So I will continue to have faith in gravity or human nature or any other well confirmed phenomenon ...

A general problem with these kind of discussions is that people keep arguing and arguing in circles using the same words but having each invested them with different meanings and definitions - their own.
In the above quoted passage, for instance, it is clear that the word faith has been invested with a peculiar meaning that reflects an idiosyncratic understanding of it; a definition of faith that also includes its antithetical notion of knowledge.
However, faith by definition excludes knowledge; to "believe" is to acknowledge something on trust and without proof, whereas in the face of evidence, proof and justification one talks about knowledge. One can't believe well confirmed phenomena or facts, one knows them and to claim that one both believes and knows something is absurd.

Just wanted to note this. Unless a general consensus about basic definitions is reached people will never reach useful conclusions even if they generally agree with each other.

[M forever]

Not even M could disprove the existence of a higher power.

M doesn't want to disprove the existence of a higher power. M just wants points out that if there is a higher power, it is not the naive idea of a "god" that you can directly connect with, know and understand what he wants, influence him and gain his support by acting the way some people tell you he wants you to act. Because all the people which try to make you "believe" that you can, or at least, that they can, if you follow them and their bedtime stories blindly, just want to influence and use you. That kind of stuff is not "religious", it is the perversion of the religious sense in people.

What is so interesting in all these discussions here is that all the people who call themselves "religious" act as if they were defending "spirituality" and "faith" and the sense of a "higher power" from those evil, materialistic, atheist people who want to deny and disprove all that. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is those people who seek to reduce whatever there may be "beyond" the material world to something defineable, small, something they can be sure they understand and use for their very own, very small, very worldy needs and purposes.

[Al Moritz]

What is so interesting in all these discussions here is that all the people who call themselves "religious" act as if they were defending "spirituality" and "faith" and the sense of a "higher power" from those evil, materialistic, atheist people who want to deny and disprove all that. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is those people who seek to reduce whatever there may be "beyond" the material world to something defineable, small, something they can be sure they understand and use for their very own, very small, very worldy needs and purposes.

I agree, some believers may make their God "little" to fit into the pocket of their comfort zone or because they don't know better. However, you have a very, very small idea of what more intellectual and educated believers may see in God. I don't by any means "understand" God; I am in awe of Him and His vast creation, which points to His infinity -- bringing my scientific knowledge  into my faith is thrilling. He created this vast universe, and still there is, at least for me, every reason to believe, from what He has revealed to us, that He is intimately interested and invested in us human beings. It perplexes me, fascinates me, but I cannot say that I truly understand it. Nobody can claim to "understand" it, but why should an infinite being fit into our little minds?

[Al Moritz]

Now, I have just shown that there is a rational way to believe in a higher power, but I think it would be safe to say that most folks don't base their belief/non-belief choice on a dominant strategy, assuming God works in a belief=reward/non-belief=punishment (i.e., binary) way. I think you're partially right about feelings and culture, but I think you're wrong on the value of proof or disproof. You see, for an atheist, if there can be no proof of their position (disproof of the existence of God), then there's at least the possibility that there is a God. If God could exist, then He could behave in a binary way. Assuming that a traditional binary arrangement is made, then there's at least the possibility that they're in eternal trouble of a pretty serious nature. So, absent proof/disproof, the potential for a nasty outcome exists. Strategies to avoid that outcome become relevant, and belief is the dominant strategy. In other words, without proof that there is no God, it is, in at least one way of looking at the matter, irrational not to believe in God. Now, I feel rather like Hans Castorp during one of his colloquies with Settembrini and Naphta, but I hope I've made myself clear (even if clearly wrong).

I don't believe in God because of the self-interest strategy. In some ways the world would be "simpler" to understand without God, and in some ways life would be easier without the God idea (while in other ways it becomes easier with it). I believe in God because the combination of the search for ultimate origins of the universe and what can be reasonably assumed to be divine revelation makes Him for me an unavoidable conclusion, aided by what I perceive to be His grace that He has given me to understand (in a limited way, see above), a grace not based on my own personal merits.

I would reconsider the God idea if atheism had any plausible explanation for why the universe is, and why it is the very special entity that it is, with its particular laws of nature. However, atheism fails miserably in that area, the worse the more one studies the issues. In fact, it fails so miserably that it is an outright offense to my intellect. Theism is by far the more rational choice.

[Bunny]

I stopped looking for existential explanations a long time ago.  I really don't care why the universe exists or why I exist or why anything exists.  The miracle is existence -- that's enough for me.

I would reconsider the God idea if atheism had any plausible explanation for why the universe is, and why it is the very special entity that it is, with its particular laws of nature. However, atheism fails miserably in that area, the worse the more one studies the issues. In fact, it fails so miserably that it is an outright offense to my intellect. Theism is by far the more rational choice.

Please explain why God exists!  Religion fails to explain why God exists, so you are really back to the very same problem -- no explanations of anything.

[knight66]

M doesn't want to disprove the existence of a higher power. M just wants points out that if there is a higher power, it is not the naive idea of a "god" that you can directly connect with, know and understand what he wants, influence him and gain his support by acting the way some people tell you he wants you to act. Because all the people which try to make you "believe" that you can, or at least, that they can, if you follow them and their bedtime stories blindly, just want to influence and use you. That kind of stuff is not "religious", it is the perversion of the religious sense in people.

What is so interesting in all these discussions here is that all the people who call themselves "religious" act as if they were defending "spirituality" and "faith" and the sense of a "higher power" from those evil, materialistic, atheist people who want to deny and disprove all that. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is those people who seek to reduce whatever there may be "beyond" the material world to something defineable, small, something they can be sure they understand and use for their very own, very small, very worldy needs and purposes.

The item in bold is merely a sweeping statement and basically a calumny. I am not in the least interested in trying to teach you anything, but if you wish to retain any sense of intellectual honesty, then you need to explore the particular and cut out the gross generalisations.

In your second paragraph; again, more assumptions. One constant teaching in my church is that you cannot put God in a box, nor hope to understand in any substantial way. At best we discern darkly through an imperfect glass....as someone pretty much said some time ago.

Mike

[Bunny]

Mike, we all know that you aren't out to convert anyone (thank goodness for that!).  The problem arises when too many people post something as if they were pronouncing dogma ex cathedra.  I'm still wondering how anyone can claim to know God exists or know God does not exist.  I also wonder at how many people have claimed that they have the only correct connection to the infinite. 

It's a scary world without something to believe in, so afaic it doesn't matter what belief system anyone espouses or doesn't espouse, so long as no one is trying to proclaim my way is the only way.  I have as much respect for Buddhism, Hinduism, Lamaism, Shintoism, Christianity, Islam, etc., as agnosticism, theism, deism, atheism, monotheism, polytheism, etc.  Different strokes for different folks. 

I love it when anyone starts out on the my church is better than your church path; it makes for a firecracker thread.
I just get such a kick out of asking questions that bust the bubble, or threaten the bubble of complacency.   It's too much fun around here to give that up.

[head-case]

The most fun is to look at the actual behavior of religious nuts.  I remember working at a place where there were two guys, one who was a godless, liberal agnostic, the other a Evangelical Christian who accepted god as his personal savior and had graduated from a fundamentalist Christian college.  Of course the godless liberal was a smart-ass but utterly ethical in his dealings with others, while the fundamentalist had a child out of wedlock, patronized strip-clubs, went to Indian casinos to gamble away the money he was supposed to be paying in child support,  and regularly got falling-down drunk.  Lest you condemn this an anecdotal, the epicenter of liberalism, Massachusetts, has lower rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, domestic violence, etc, than any of the sanctimonious bible belt states.

Mike, we all know that you aren't out to convert anyone (thank goodness for that!).  The problem arises when too many people post something as if they were pronouncing dogma ex cathedra.  I'm still wondering how anyone can claim to know God exists or know God does not exist.  I also wonder at how many people have claimed that they have the only correct connection to the infinite. 

It's a scary world without something to believe in, so afaic it doesn't matter what belief system anyone espouses or doesn't espouse, so long as no one is trying to proclaim my way is the only way.  I have as much respect for Buddhism, Hinduism, Lamaism, Shintoism, Christianity, Islam, etc., as agnosticism, theism, deism, atheism, monotheism, polytheism, etc.  Different strokes for different folks. 

I love it when anyone starts out on the my church is better than your church path; it makes for a firecracker thread.
I just get such a kick out of asking questions that bust the bubble, or threaten the bubble of complacency.   It's too much fun around here to give that up.

[PSmith08]

M doesn't want to disprove the existence of a higher power. M just wants points out that if there is a higher power, it is not the naive idea of a "god" that you can directly connect with, know and understand what he wants, influence him and gain his support by acting the way some people tell you he wants you to act. Because all the people which try to make you "believe" that you can, or at least, that they can, if you follow them and their bedtime stories blindly, just want to influence and use you. That kind of stuff is not "religious", it is the perversion of the religious sense in people.

That's fine, but I don't think you could even do that much. Since the existence of a higher power is a fundamentally undecidable proposition, it follows that the characteristics of that entity are unknowable in any concrete way. Characteristics imply existence. Without a concrete answer on the existence of a higher power, any attempt to characterize it is mere speculation. Now, I realize that I've more or less made a case that holds that (1) we cannot know if there is a higher power, and (2) we cannot know how it will act. This is more or less what you have said, minus the business about manipulative clerics. You, however, seem content to stop there, pointing out the flaws - as you see them - in a more-concrete system of belief (e.g., the historical errors in the OT). That is certainly a position allowed by the axioms of the system. It is, however, no less valid than the other position, which holds that there is a God, and He behaves in a binary way. You say, to that position,

In fact, it is those people who seek to reduce whatever there may be "beyond" the material world to something defineable, small, something they can be sure they understand and use for their very own, very small, very worldy needs and purposes.

You see, however, that position is allowable under the axioms of the "God-system," which are fundamentally ones of undecidability. If we cannot know if there is a God, then He could exist; if we cannot know how He will act, in that case, then he could punish people who eat ice cream on even-numbered Thursdays of a leap year. It's entirely possible under the rules of the game, so to speak. Now, the question is whether anyone will really believe that business, as it is for any statement on a higher power and its tendencies. The question for any religious system or statement is whether people will believe it; the system itself is valid under the axioms I've talked about above largely because it isn't invalid (if you cannot know something, then any proposition could be true).

Matters of belief are not subject to debate, for reasons I've discussed above.

[M forever]

See, and that's what M has been saying all along. We simply don't know, but (organized) religion is all about people deciding they do know anyway, and so they can tell other people what no one really knows, and so they can manipulate and make rules for them. And there will always be a lot of people who will walk into that trap because the need to "believe" in something higher is obviously a very human desire, a very basic need, both a dangerous need and at the same time, the main reason for why we "wonder" about and investigate the universe we live in. Becuase we humans wouldn't have come as far as we did (however far that actually is) if we didn't have a sense of wonder for and about things which are beyond what we can see and grasp. We see a mountain range and *feel* there must be something behind it, so we wonder what is there and we go and investigate, no matter how dangerous it is. If we can't go, we still wonder and eagerly listen to the stories of people who were there (or at least claim they were). We *feel* there are powers at work in our world that we can't see and understand, but we simply must know what they are, so at a time when we didn't understand electricity or bacteria, people were happy enough with explanations which made sense to them (demons and other supernatural forces at work). The same applies to the sky and the stars and the universe. We simply *must* know what is there and why, and if we can't go and see for ourselves, we at least need stories which somehow convincingly seem to explain all that to us.

Such stories are what "conventional" religions are, and they are nice and very poetic stories (as I said before, M is very interested in mythology as an expression of the human soul in general, not just one given set of canonized mythologies) which played at a very important role in shaping the world we live in, but just like children need fairy tales to make the world around them emotionally understandable enough to process it and live in it, but then eventually, they grow up and move beyond that and are able to understand the world at least a little more rationally, which means that they aren't steered by their random emotions alone anymore, in the same way, mankind as a whole needs to grow up at some point. We are in the late childhood phase of mankind right now, at a point where t least part of the species has come to understand clearly that some growing up needs to be done because we can't go on as irrationally as we did for countless millenia, or else we are destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over (like killing each other by the tens of millions over silly ideological or other irrational interests).

[Norbeone]

Well, belief in a higher power is the dominant strategy in a game-theoretical sense, regardless of the actual presence of a higher power (Viz. Pascal's Wager). So, speaking in the admittedly non-inspiring terms of 'what will be best for me in the long(est) run,' someone would want to believe because it is a strategy in the game of eternity that cannot fail (taking the original formulation, such as it is). It would be counterintuitive and highly non-trivial to think that someone would act against their self-interest, but the non-belief option has a greater potential for a negative outcome than does the belief option, the negative outcome of which is merely the best possible outcome for a non-believer. In other words, assuming that a higher power will behave in such a way that rewards belief and punishes non-belief, being a non-believer is irrational. Indeed, given the possibility of a higher power that will behave in such a way, despite the fact that its existence is fundamentally undecidable, belief is still the rational decision (i.e., the dominant strategy for self-interested players).

Pascal's Wager is flawed in a very serious way, and in a way that seems to have eluded you. I don't belief in God, though I do, of course, admit that I do not KNOW that God doesn't exist. However, I am not in the least bit afraid of the possibility of hell. BUT, just say, hypothetically, that I was afraid that I may go to hell for not believing, it would not be at all rational for me to suddenly start believing, in order to avoid eternal damnation. In fact, it would be almost impossible to start truly believing in God anyway, if fear was the only thing motivating me to do so. The most I (and any non-believer) could do is pretend to believe in God, which surely isn't an option either because God, being apparently all-knowing, would catch me out.

It is irrational to believe in God solely because of Pascal's Wager. It is, in fact, rational to maintain non-belief, because Pascal's Wager offers no actual or honest motivation to do otherwise. This is the only intellectually honest way of going about it, IMO.   NOTE: People who genuinely believe in God for other reasons are excluded from this whole notion.

[Bunny]

That's fine, but I don't think you could even do that much. Since the existence of a higher power is a fundamentally undecidable proposition, it follows that the characteristics of that entity are unknowable in any concrete way. Characteristics imply existence. Without a concrete answer on the existence of a higher power, any attempt to characterize it is mere speculation. Now, I realize that I've more or less made a case that holds that (1) we cannot know if there is a higher power, and (2) we cannot know how it will act. This is more or less what you have said, minus the business about manipulative clerics. You, however, seem content to stop there, pointing out the flaws - as you see them - in a more-concrete system of belief (e.g., the historical errors in the OT). That is certainly a position allowed by the axioms of the system. It is, however, no less valid than the other position, which holds that there is a God, and He behaves in a binary way. You say, to that position,

You see, however, that position is allowable under the axioms of the "God-system," which are fundamentally ones of undecidability. If we cannot know if there is a God, then He could exist; if we cannot know how He will act, in that case, then he could punish people who eat ice cream on even-numbered Thursdays of a leap year. It's entirely possible under the rules of the game, so to speak. Now, the question is whether anyone will really believe that business, as it is for any statement on a higher power and its tendencies. The question for any religious system or statement is whether people will believe it; the system itself is valid under the axioms I've talked about above largely because it isn't invalid (if you cannot know something, then any proposition could be true).

Matters of belief are not subject to debate, for reasons I've discussed above.

Have you ever heard of Schrödinger's Cat?  I think you've opened the poison bottle.

Btw, I never got any of the letters I mailed to Santa Claus back, but Santa never answered any of them either.  Does that mean that he might exist?