Firstly, I just want to point out what I am NOT saying.
Religious people can be tremendous people and contribute hugely to society. Indeed many do.
But their irrational belief in God is dangerous because it leaves them more susceptable to other irrational beliefs and religion encourages irrational behaviour generally.
Indeed people like Blimpish use religion's very irrationality to justify it, by saying that because religion is not rational, it lies outside of science's remit. He trys to deliberately cloud the issues by burying this argument in unnecessary complexity, but don't be fooled. This is exactly what he is arguing.
The beauty of science is that it is about questioning and testing EVERY theory against the available evidence. Religious beliefs are theories. The reason that blimpish says religion lies outside this testing procedure is because he knows that scientific enquiry quickly discredits religion's claims.
Any concept of god that lies outside religion's benign definitions is effectively meaningless because it doesn't make claims on our behaviour. Therefore, I only have to disprove religion's benign concept of god to disprove a meaningful god.
Science has comprehensively disproved religion's concept of god. For example; the bible is claimed as the word of God, and the bible claims the Earth was created in 7 days. Blimpish claims that the bible shouldn't be taken literally but should be interpreted metaphorically. In science, when a theory is disproved, nobody says 'I still believe in this theory, because it should be interpreted metaphorically'.
How reasonable is it, to base your life on a belief that there are fairies at the bottom of your garden? This has the same amount of supporting evidence as the existence of God and just as much scientific evidence to ridicule it.
Blimpish then argues that believing in God is about more than scientific proof, it is about morals.
Who is the more moralistic? The person who is moral because he wants the reward of eternal life and is fearful of god. Or the person who is moral because it is the right thing to do.
I have some more questions for Blimpish and to help keep him away from sidestepping the issue, I am going to keep them simple and try a different tack.
Is it possible for an atheist to go to heaven? If not why not?
If it is not possible for an atheist to go to heaven. You are either saying; an atheist can't live a good enough life to please God OR that God only cares about people believing in him. How benign is that?
And if it is possible for an atheist to go to heaven by leading a good life, why the need for the irrational belief in religion? You admit yourself that religious teaching is just full of conflicting and confusing metaphors and symbols. How does that help?
Either way a belief in god just doesn't make any scientific, rational or moral sense. So what is the point of believing in a god?
As Bertrand Russell wrote
ReplyDeleteHow can anyone who professes to be profoundly humane believe in everlasting punishment ?
...religion is a disease born of fear and a source of untold misery to the human race.
Hello carry bag man, excellent quote from Betrand Russell!
ReplyDeleteBlimpish, why don't you answer carry bag man's question?
Blimpish, arguing with you is really tiresome, as you just repeat the same old tripe.
"all atheists are more reasonable and more intelligent than all religious people."
I am not saying that at all, as you well know. You don't have to be clever to see how ridiculous God is, but you do need to understand the question.
"Hardly a controversial position [to argue a belief in god as irrational]
Since you admit that God is not rational, I think that says it all. Why live your life by the irrational?
Until you can explain why God is any more believable than fairies at the bottom of the garden, I don't really see the need to continue this debate?
"And why is it the right thing to do, Neil?"
Because through rational thought we have worked out that it is better to treat everyone as fairly as possible.
Through co-operation, mankind has advanced. If you want to follow people who were writing 2000 years ago to tell you what your morals should be, you are in a bad state.
Think of all the progressive advances in thinking that have occured since then? We would still have slavery and all kinds of bigoted thinking if we followed you and your religious scriptures.
"Therefore, it isn't irrational, is it?"
I wish you'd make your mind up, Blimpish, you admitted earlier that it WAS irrational to believe in God, now you are saying the opposite. I suppose you are being consistently irrational by changing your position from minute to minute.
"in order for "an atheist to go to heaven" to be worth discussing, you have to accept (hypothetically) that "religion" is a correct belief. Therefore, it isn't irrational, is it?"
When you want to disprove something, you sometime assume it correct, then follow it through until is proves absurd. This is what I'm doing here.
"Surely, open-minded you should embrace things you don't understand, in the hope that they become clearer through time? "
You can live your life by something you don't understand if you like, but you are irrational. Irrational behaviour is dangerous.
"you haven't conclusively refuted the ontological, cosmological, or teleological arguments."
All these arguments use infinity in their reasoning. As I have said before the 'concept of a god' cannot be disproved, but religion's definitions of God can.
"Why do you believe in the morals you believe in?"
It's not that difficult is it? It's bad to do bad things. Bad things are murder, theft, etc.etc. They are wrong because we can imagine being on the receiving end of this treatment and we know our societies work better when we follow these rules. People don't need God to tell them this.
"What exists prior to the universe?"
Nothing.
"Is love anything more than a hormonal imbalance driven by the reproductive urge?"
Like I've said nobody has written the 'rules of love' that threaten hell to those that don't follow them. If they did I would call it dangerous nonsense, just like I do with religion.
"Is this whole blog a Jeremy Beadle-style joke set-up?"
It is sometimes radical to tell the truth.
Neil, I expect you'll enjoy my debate with a US Christian: click here
ReplyDeleteGav, Thanks for the link, I read your debate in October (I'm comment number 5), it was very interesting.
ReplyDeleteBlimpish: I suspect the reason you won't answer the quote from Bertrand Russell (posted by carry bag man) is because you can't even think of how to attempt to answer it.
ReplyDeleteHow is it humane to believe in everlasting punishment?
"The lesson of the twentieth century is that morality is hardly so obvious and simple; that people will commit unspeakable acts for various reasons."
Morality is simple, it's just that people sometimes don't follow it. Are you claiming a belief in God makes you more moral?
"Your claim has no response to the question "why not?" - the ends can justify the means in your world."
Why don't the vast majority of people go around killing and stealing? The reasons are manyfold - empathy, respect, fear of punishment etc. etc, but none of them involve believing in religion or a God. They are irrelevant. As Colin McGinn states 'something isn't moral just because God's rule book states it is'.
"So much for your being scientific. The appropriate empirical answer is "we don't know;" or maybe, "we can't know." But to posit that nothing does exist prior to the universe is hardly an open-minded answer, is it?"
The Universe is defined as everything in existence. Therefore before existence existed there was nothing. Of course, can there ever truly be nothing is the next question, but that is not what you asked.
"You didn't answer this question. If you were consistent in your beliefs, you'd accept that romance is mere illusion."
I have answered; religion is made up rules, while love is something tangible, it is different. There is a reason for love and nobody tries to attach hard and fast rules on penalty of eternal torment if they are not followed. You are just repeating yourself. We have reached the circular argument here, this is getting really boring now. The facts speak for themself. You have been fisked and you know it.
It should be more an argument of whether or not a creator would be just. Then you could argue whether or not humanity is significant or whether or not there even is some sort of afterlife. Judgement according to Christianity is unjust. 'Hell' is unjust. Why would anyone base their life on something so unjust? That is really all their is to it. Creation myths have been around for as long as people have. When the ancient Greeks taught their children about the Gods, they didn't see it as a myth. Just as when Christians teach their children about an unjust God. As far as Nazi Germany goes; Hitler started somewhat of a cult. Giving people silly beliefs. People believed in the promising parts and ignored the fact that it was wrong to kill the innocent. They were desperate. And dumb. It's similar to Christianity in the way that Christians promise a wonderful Heaven for only those who follow. And Hell for anyone who stands in the way. Nonsensical, if you ask me..
ReplyDeleteI apologize first for responding to this post so long after it was made, but there are several points I feel I must make after stumbling upon it.
ReplyDeleteIt is asserted by Neil and supported by Blimpish that religion is outside of the scope of science because religion is not rational and science is. This is not necessarily true. Religion is outside of the scope of science whether or not the specific religion is rational not because of any inherit trait of religion but because of several limitations to science.
The most important of these limitations is that no scientific theory is ever proved. They are often disproved, but are never shown to be true. A scientific theory is in essence, and I say this as a student of physics and mathematics, a random idea pulled out of someone’s rear end. This theory is then judged in usefulness by how well it matches data that has been collected. If it does not match the data, it is thrown out; if it does, then it is kept as a model. Not a truth, a model. No generalization can be proved by a finite number of data points, and no scientist or group thereof is capable of testing all the infinitely many (or nearly so) situations to which a theory must apply. This does not in any way make scientific theories less useful in technology, but renders them useless in philosophy. A philosophical truth uses logic to prove the way things are from a set of axioms or known’s; a scientific theory tries to find the fundamental rules from the way things are, and we all know that there are multiple ways to arrive at a given end point. This means the endpoint cannot always specify the starting point or method. If I know the answer is two, this does not tell me whether I subtracted one from three or added one to itself, but if I add one and one I know the answer will be two.
Let us look at the example of gravitation. Newton tells us that the gravitational force one body exerts on another is proportional to the product of their masses divided by the square of distance between them. This tells us only what the force will be however, not how it gets there. For that, we have to look at Einstein’s relativity, which says that mass distorts space-time, or possibly string theory which has yet to claim even the scientific approximation of truth. Or we can say that undetectable angels push the planets and other things in their paths. Many of you will laugh at this last. But why? True, many of you have never even seen proof that angels exist (and I say many instead of all on purpose here, for some have), but how many people have reached out and grabbed the fabric of space-time or the thirteen dimensional super-strings? These are models. The atom is a model. The Earth, in fact, is a model. They are pretty good models to be sure, especially in the case of the nature of the Earth, but they are models nonetheless. There is no proof that they are anything more than good ways to predict the outcome of certain events. We say the Earth is roughly spherical because it is possible to sail around it. All the experience of sailing around the Earth actually proves is that the specific person who sailed around the earth could do so at the time he tried. It strongly suggests that the earth is spherical, but does not in fact prove it. There could just as easily be a bunch of spirits sitting around acting in predictable, if strange in the case of quantum physics and the like, ways for the sheer purpose of waiting until we die then pointing and yelling “the jokes on you.” Scientific theories are mathematical ways of predicting things. They may be more, but that would be impossible to prove empirically, and science is all about empiricism. I would not suggest that anyone studying physics look at these theories as pure collections of formulas because this makes the process much harder, but that is in fact what they are.
Neil asserts that religion is a theory. You could call it that, I suppose, but in general the most basic empirical components, such as the activities of Christ in Christianity, have happened long ago and are disputed. If one cannot agree on the empirical data, one cannot argue about what theories to draw from it. Let us back off from specific religions and look at the argument for the existence of a deity of some sort. First let us look at the possibility of proving that the deity does not exist. Here we return to the “the jokes on you” hypothesis. An all powerful creator deity could have designed a universe (or collection of universes if you follow a certain interpretation of quantum mechanics) in such a way that it looked like he didn’t exist from inside. This is part of the meaning of “all powerful.” So we cannot in fact prove that there is no deity because the deity could simply be hiding.
To prove that the deity exists at any given time would require only that he show himself to us. This has happened for many of us, myself included, but I will admit that many people have either not had this experience or didn’t notice when it happened, and I do not expect you to take my word for it because, unfortunately, many people make false religious claims.
It is logically impossible to be atheist. I do not mean this as an insult to atheists, but it is true. The closest one can get is agnostic, and this even is disputable. But it is definitely impossible to claim that one knows for sure that there is nothing supernatural. This should, in fact, be obvious from the word supernatural, meaning above or outside that which we experience as physical or natural.
There is another interesting question posed: who is more moral, the one who follows morals because he wants a reward or wants to avoid consequences (Heaven and Hell), or the one who does so because it is the right thing to do (in the article a position granted only to atheists). I would lean towards the second, though it is really not my place to say. I would rather look at the assumptions and issues inherent in the question. This requires the breaking into two cases, one in which we assume that God does exist, and one in which we assume that he does not.
Let us assume for a bit that there is a God of the Christian form, since the people who believe this are the people the question was aimed at. It is not required that one live completely morally to get into heaven. This annoys many people, but it is specified several times in the bible. What is helpful is an acceptance at the end of one’s life of Jesus as Savior, a love for God above all other things, and remorse for one’s sins. And even then, the final verdict is left to God. How he would judge a moral atheist or an immoral Christian I cannot say. The reason why it is important to follow morals is because following them is good, and the reason why following them is good is because God said it was. There really is no other source for good, an idea that will be explored more in the next section. The ideal Christian is moral not because he wants the goods or wants to avoid burning for eternity, but because God asked him to be and he loves God to the extent that he would do anything God asked. Many of us fall short of this somewhat, and for some of us the threat of Hell and prospect of the reward of Heaven probably help us along, but the ideal is independent of consequences. Which is better or even if one is better is for God to say, not any of us, but it is premature to assume that because consequences exist that they are the sole reason an action is taken.
Now let us take the atheist view that there are absolutely no gods or super-natural entities of any form. Everything that exists is physical (yes, physical includes energy, funny particles that don’t act right, and all that) because this is what “not super-natural” means. We run into a several difficulties immediately. First, what is moral? One could answer that it is that which works for the good of society. Then what is good? (We will assume that the difficulties with how society works can be worked out even though they haven’t yet been.) Well, it makes society happier of course. Happiness is a concept. But I suppose if you worked hard enough, you could say that it was a certain type of activity involving hormones and the brain. Why should I care about the organization of hormones? Because society would work better? Society is just a more complicated arrangement of physical stuff, and I see no particular reason to care about what position it’s in. In order to even consider morals as important, in order to even use the word important, we must admit to the existence of some qualities that are more than physical, that are worth attaining. Otherwise there is no reason why any one organization of physical particles is superior to any other, whether it be the torture of an innocent man or the giving of food to the hungry. The word superior has no meaning. In fact, the only argument that can be left for morals is a fairly weak “because the organization of particles that comprises my brain and thoughts leads my consciousness, which is also just an organization of particles, to believe that this is important, where even this belief is dependent only on the position of certain particles.” And even this is mere assertion, it doesn’t come from anything. It takes a deity to make assertions reality. And, of course, this still doesn’t tell me why I should care about what the position of particles inside someone else’s skull mean when translated in the proper way.
There is also the question of free will. Either we have it or we don’t. If there is no deity, then all is physical, and all of existence is a result of the laws of reality mixed with the possible randomness inherent in quantum physics. This leaves no room for choice. If we have no choice, we cannot choose to act morally or immorally. So the question posed becomes meaningless, as do morals and importance and all that. Of course, the absence of free will is contrary to experience. And science likes to discard all that is contrary to experience. But if one logically arrives at a false conclusion from an assumption, then a mathematician will say that the assumption must be wrong. And the only assumption I see is that there is no God of any form. In order to be atheist, one must doubt the most ongoing experience ever had.
There is also an interesting argument on free will. I imagine someone else came up with it before I did so I should give credit, but I do not know who. It goes like this:
Assume the goal is to be correct. If there is free will and you think there is, you are right. If there is free will and you think there isn’t, you are wrong. If there is not free will and you think there isn’t, your thoughts are the product of physical laws mixed and a fair amount of randomness, so you have actually done anything that can be said to be right. Similarly if there is no free will and you believe there is, you are still not wrong (though not right either) because you have not in fact done anything.
Saying that one can choose which to believe is an admission to the existence of free will, but we could probably get around that by talking about interactions of neurons and such until the questioner gave up and went away. Either way, if you can choose which to believe, the only way to be correct is to believe that there is free will and hope that you are right. And, of course, if there is free will then there must be something supernatural. If nothing else, there must be a soul independent of physical restrictions, for everything else is governed by the laws and randomness of the natural.
The last thing I wish to discuss was a question as to whether or not an atheist could go to Heaven, if he couldn’t why not, and if he could why it is worth being religious. This supposes that God does exist again, of course. I think it would be possible for an atheist to go to Heaven, though I am not sure. Let us say that it is for the sake of argument only. Why then be religious?
Because God wants us to, because God determines what should be done, what is good and right, and because we owe it to our creator to thank him for our creation. Because the very fact that it is possible to be religious means we should.
--- A note to Blimpish: while I admire the fact that you argue for the existence of God, the way that you do so, specifically the assertions of your own intelligence and the stupidity of your adversaries, make it seem as though your goal is to prove that you are a better arguer. I am not saying in anyway that this is the case; it is not my place to do so especially since I often find myself guilty of the arguing to show my intelligence rather than change the mind of my opponent. I would suggest that your arguments may be more effective towards the one you are arguing with (if unfortunately not necessarily for readers) if you omitted the mudslinging.
Hi Everyone,
ReplyDeleteIf there is a God, He loves you all. If there isnt, then I do.
I am sorry but blimpish, in your rebutle there you didn't acutuly defend your religion or disprove anything neil said, you more "attacked" neil. nice one neil i enjoyed reading that.
ReplyDeleteYou're not an atheist, you're just anti-Christian and anti-organized religion. Once you start addressing deistic and fidesitic principles, as well as modern arguments for a First Cause like the Anthropic Principle and Godel's Uncertainty Principle, can you truly prove atheism. Until then, you're just a philosophical materialist.
ReplyDeleteYou can't spell words correctly, you should try and disprove your own stupidity next.
ReplyDelete