Richard Dawkins sums up religion

[Skunkworks]

Secondly, you also assume that the explainable cannot be attributed to God, but it can. Just because you know how an earthquake works, does not mean God did not create it. Just because you know tectonic plates shifting causes earthquakes to occur does not mean God has not caused it to occur based on a plan he created billions of years ago when he formed the earth. An inability to perceive the plan or the "hand" in action does not disprove God.

God was once thought necessary for those things, but now we know it isn’t. All throughout history we’ve had instances of humans not understanding something and attributing it to god. God and supernatural have just turned out over and over to be nature we didn’t understand at the time, and this is now being played out again with the creation of the universe.

Just because we understand how a car moves, it doesn’t disprove the notion of an invisible and undetectable entity moving, stopping and turning the car in response to driver inputs, but exactly what reason would we have to even entertain such an idea?

Oh, and my closet theist detector is twitching.

 

[Castiel]

?

Horses for courses I don't really understand how so called clever people can't get such a simple concept.

And Dawkins is a nutjob he should have become an evangelist he's got the nature for it.

Quite.

 

[RDM]

And Dawkins is a nutjob he should have become an evangelist he's got the nature for it.

I don't think he is, he is just outspoken in his beliefs. Which for some reason is fine for the likes of Welby but not so fine for the likes of Dawkins.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Perhaps you could count the number of "nutjobs" who preach religion, and compare them to the number who hope for secularism. Dawkins wouldn't seem half as mad, and would also be in an enormous minority!

Yes, he is outspoken, but I think it's wrong for you not to speak out against something that you believe in, and he's a very successful professor.

 

[elmarko]

And no-one is saying otherwise.

And if you were testing something on the scale of god then there is no viable way you or anyone else could test it. You are a scientist are you not - compare like with like.

You've got belief and faith the wrong way around. And once again your bias shows there as you are limiting one side of the debate whilst allowing the other side no such limitation.

Which goes back to your original point that they are different so why try to describe one by the rules of the other. You are guaranteed to fail both ways if you try that. Do you criticise qualitative work because it attempts to provide personal meaning?

Horses for courses I don't really understand how so called clever people can't get such a simple concept.

And Dawkins is a nutjob he should have become an evangelist he's got the nature for it.

Nobody said they are the same or the two have the same function.

Quite the opposite in-fact, I asserted that the scientific method of problem solving is the only viable method of interrogating the world with a fine understanding of human fallibility.

While other domains may be able to explore & learn much of the world, its findings are going to be rife with errors - some deliberate & others not.

The other aspect was that without the element of verification - reason is absent.

If religion made no factual claims over the state of the universe (creation) or the human condition (good, evil) i really wouldn't mind as much.

 

[D.P.]

No one said there wasn't..in fact people have been saying that there are.

That doesn't mean that the way in which people apply such subjective emotions as Trust and/or Faith to each is fundamentally different.



Well, given such an exhaustive amount of time and resources then I would say the logical position would be that every possible and probably arena could be covered...so a little bit of an exaggeration there D.P....and any Philosophical position can also be verified as Sound given reasonable time and resources, it is after all, Rational Analysis is a basic tenet of philosophical thought and by association through Theology, Religion has its own mechanism for applying this and therefore can also be verified in this way albeit subjectively. And that is the difference, that one is subjective and the other objective..they are also tackling different things, one (science) is the objective search for knowledge, the other (philosophy) is the subjective pursuit of understanding.....both seek to better understand the Universe..one from a pragmatic and external (from the Human Condition) perspective..the other from a subjective, internal (to the Human Condition) perspective. ..Religion is but one manifestation of this internal search for understanding..it is not comparative to Science...as you say they are fundamentally different.



You are missing the point...If the observer doesn't understand the mechanism, they take it on faith that they work....the underlying requirement in both cases for the individual is the same. It matter not whether the mechanisms are different, we are not discussing the mechanisms..but the observers reaction to the unknown and how they accept positions on trust.

I think you are completely missing the point, as always.

If science required faith it would be a religion, it doesn't and is not. Stop trying to contort what others are saying. Religious blind Faith in God is not the same as trust in science. Faith does not require evidence, trust does. There is strong evidence that the scientific literature have accurately described scientific theories, there is no evidence that God exists and so that entail blind faith.

I trust when I drop my glass it will fall to the floor because I have no evidence to the contrary. I don't require faith to beleive in that outcome.

 

[D.P.]

And no-one is saying otherwise.

No, some people are. Some people are claiming the blind faith belief in a God is the same as trusting science, which is absurdly false. I can read a scientific paper, understand the proposition, and rely on trusting the peer-review and scientific process to reduce the risk of error. Mostly the scientific method works and so I can offer that trust based on evidence.

The rest of what you say is philosophical claptrap frankly that is irrelevant to the discussion.

 

[Castiel]

I think you are completely missing the point, as always.

Sure...yet it is you that is repeating an argument no-one is making whilst ignoring the point being made. You cannot seem to differentiate the concept of the emotion from the application.

Whether I have faith in science or religion or that my wife loves me or that you will miss the point again..the mechanism of that emotion is the same. I have no evidence I personally can verify, either because that evidence doesn't exist, or because I have no way to verify it or I simply do not understand it..I put my trust in others and the mechanisms inherent in each or simply in my own perception...I put that faith into my action..

Now Religion has its own mechanisms to validate itself internatlly..Science has its own, we all subjectively have own own internal mechanism to validate our own emotions etc...none of that is important, as we are discussing the nature of trusting something (it matters not what it is) without the ability to verify it objectively. In this what was said by spoffle is correct.

 

[Castiel]

No, some people are. Some people are claiming the blind faith belief in a God is the same as trusting science, which is absurdly false. .

No they are not, you just think they are. In act I expressly explained the difference between Blind Faith and Faith.... No one is saying Science requires Faith, but that the ignorant person exerts faith in their belief in Science, much the same way as the ignorant person exerts faith in their belief in God....it isnt about the proposition of God, or the validity of Science..but the action and understanding of the individual observer.

Xordium is right. It is frustrating that such a simple thing seems to escape the grasp of people who are so educated.

The rest of what you say is philosophical claptrap frankly that is irrelevant to the discussion.

Which simply illustrates the bias from which you are operating.

I can read a scientific paper, understand the proposition, and rely on trusting the peer-review and scientific process to reduce the risk of error. Mostly the scientific method works and so I can offer that trust based on evidence.

Yeah, you can..but then we are talking about those who, for whatever reason cannot. Its the people who cannot understand the proposition, doesn't understand peer review, cannot fathom or have no knowledge of the Scientific Method we are talking about...when they accept the proposition, they do so from a position of faith..faith that what they are told is correct...much the same way as someone listening to the preacher on the street-corner may trust what they are told. It matters not that we undrstand the difference, that we understand the methods of each, that we understand the propositions...it matters what they think and how they come to their decision.

Anyway, if you still don't understand, I give up..I'm going to bed.

 

[spoffle]

And no-one is saying otherwise.

Horses for courses I don't really understand how so called clever people can't get such a simple concept.

And Dawkins is a nutjob he should have become an evangelist he's got the nature for it.

This, a million times.

It's frustrating when people consistently respond to things you haven't said because they clearly have it in their head what you meant and can't help but respond to the assumptions they've made. So called clever too, people are too busy associating their own definitions of logic and rational thought with being highly intelligent, thus anyone who thinks in a different way gets ostracised and labeled as the opposite of highly intelligent, logical and rational.

It's like these people are parodies of intellectuals.

No they are not, you just think they are. In act I expressly explained the difference between Blind Faith and Faith.... No one is saying Science requires Faith, but that the ignorant person exerts faith in their belief in Science, much the same way as the ignorant person exerts faith in their belief in God....it isnt about the proposition of God, or the validity of Science..but the action and understanding of the individual observer.

Xordium is right. It is frustrating that such a simple thing seems to escape the grasp of people who are so educated.

This a million times too.

 

[D.P.]

No they are not, you just think they are. In act I expressly explained the difference between Blind Faith and Faith.... No one is saying Science requires Faith, but that the ignorant person exerts faith in their belief in Science, much the same way as the ignorant person exerts faith in their belief in God....it isnt about the proposition of God, or the validity of Science..but the action and understanding of the individual observer.

Xordium is right. It is frustrating that such a simple thing seems to escape the grasp of people who are so educated.



Which simply illustrates the bias from which you are operating.



Yeah, you can..but then we are talking about those who, for whatever reason cannot. Its the people who cannot understand the proposition, doesn't understand peer review, cannot fathom or have no knowledge of the Scientific Method we are talking about...when they accept the proposition, they do so from a position of faith..faith that what they are told is correct...much the same way as someone listening to the preacher on the street-corner may trust what they are told. It matters not that we undrstand the difference, that we understand the methods of each, that we understand the propositions...it matters what they think and how they come to their decision.

Anyway, if you still don't understand, I give up..I'm going to bed.

But the ignorant with no understanding of science has the theoretical ability to become educated on the matter and derive their own conclusions from evidence and thus see the scientific explanation for a phenomena is reasonable and sound. Faith is not a requirement. However, Someone who does not know of the existence of God cannot under any theoretical sense substaniante evidence one way or the other, and thus faith is a necessity to believe.

The ignorant person supporting the scientific claim does not require faith in science but trust in the accurate distribution of scientific knowledge. Trust can be developed by an ignorant person throug evidence.

I don't know enough about mavity to claim an educated opinion on how a dropped glass will fall to the floor. The underlying mechanism is not even fully understood by science. But I do fully trust the fact that if I drop the glass it will fall. Moreover, I don't understand sufficient quantum mechanics to know how a force can be generated from matter, but a simple Newtonian model is a reasonable explanation of why the glass would drop the floor due to the exertion of a gravitational force. I trust the Newtonian approximation as valid despite its limitations. Faith has no part of it, it is simply a model that fits empirical observations accurately and has the predictive capability to tell me what will happen when I drop the glass.

 

[Castiel]

Then the ignorant person is no longer ignorant DP....which changes the parameters of the point being made. Again..we are not talking about the actual aspects of Science or Religion or their requirements...but simply the fact that people hold faith in each without knowledge.

Even your example about mavity misses the point...as that requires knowledge, knowledge that mavity will do what you expect. There are more people than you would imagine that would blink at you and wonder what the hell you were talking about if you mention Newtonian models to them...for all they know (or care) God does it.

You are also making the assumption that evidence must be scientific...the evidence most people use on a daily basis for reasoning their existence is personal experience, which is subjective evidence...not scientific. People substantiate their belief in God (or not) in such a subjective way by interpreting the world around them in a relative and subjective way according to their emotive and individual state....Your whole argument is flawed by its very assumptions and refusal or inability to separate the emotion of the individual and the subjective nature of the position and your own knowledge. Basically you are putting yourself in the shoes of the individual and making a judgement on how you think rather than how they think.

Again, The mechanisms of science (or religion) are not being discussed, only the mechanism of how people apply belief and rationale to their daily lives with limited knowledge.

 

[kedge]

The evolution hypothesis, has been through the process of test, peer review, re-test... for a period of many decades. An evidence based consensus has formed, and it's become an accepted theory.

The hypothesis is just an assumption and not necessarily accurate knowledge or the truth which is derived from accurate knowledge. You can choose any known animal, creature or a human being they all are limited by their very own boundaries meaning that they can not cross these boundaries, they are allways going to be what they are nothing more nothing less. One type of species can not change (evolve) into another type that is completely different from itself, you can have variation of a kind-type-species but one will never ever change into another that is completely different from itself, it-is-impossible, to think or claim otherwise then one would be suffering from delusions of grandeur.

In a previous post i mentioned different distinct kinds-types-species therefoer animal, creature/insect? and human being, all distinct kinds-types-species, all have anatomical and molecular/genomic boundaries within themselves that they all can not cross, so where did they come from in the first place?, someone mentioned "from the same place", but where is that "same place"

 

[zenf]

You are also making the assumption that evidence must be scientific...the evidence most people use on a daily basis for reasoning their existence is personal experience, which is subjective evidence...not scientific. People substantiate their belief in God (or not) in such a subjective way by interpreting the world around them in a relative and subjective way according to their emotive and individual state....

What about someone who believes they have lucky pants, so they wear them to the football match and their team wins. The next week, they don't wear them to the match and their team loses. The pants must have some magical lucky winning power, right? That seems to be a similar weight of evidence that many religious people have for their views, in my experience.

While ignorant atheists may put their faith in science on the basis of a trusted scientific method that they may not actually understand, that still seems more reasonable than the faith some religious people have in their subjective evidence. So while the ignorant religious person and the ignorant atheist may have faith in their beliefs, there is a difference in how reasonable it is to have that faith, imo.

 

[kedge]

WRONG just plain wrong also a lie, which is even worse.Choice is not there, for the simple reason of parents indoctrinating.

Teaching children that they evolved from apes can be seen as a lie.

 

[elmarko]

Then the ignorant person is no longer ignorant DP....which changes the parameters of the point being made. Again..we are not talking about the actual aspects of Science or Religion or their requirements...but simply the fact that people hold faith in each without knowledge.

Even your example about mavity misses the point...as that requires knowledge, knowledge that mavity will do what you expect. There are more people than you would imagine that would blink at you and wonder what the hell you were talking about if you mention Newtonian models to them...for all they know (or care) God does it.

You are also making the assumption that evidence must be scientific...the evidence most people use on a daily basis for reasoning their existence is personal experience, which is subjective evidence...not scientific. People substantiate their belief in God (or not) in such a subjective way by interpreting the world around them in a relative and subjective way according to their emotive and individual state....Your whole argument is flawed by its very assumptions and refusal or inability to separate the emotion of the individual and the subjective nature of the position and your own knowledge. Basically you are putting yourself in the shoes of the individual and making a judgement on how you think rather than how they think.

Again, The mechanisms of science (or religion) are not being discussed, only the mechanism of how people apply belief and rationale to their daily lives with limited knowledge.

But that's the point, personal evidence isn't reliable or a method to which we can formulate an understanding of our actual place is the universe.

From a third part view, the 'evidence from within' could be caused by a number of alternative explanations which the observer has no knowledge of - that 'talk with god' the individual claims to have intimate proof of subjectively may be the result of a mental illness, aural hallucinations or a number of other different factors.

It requires what is essentially faith in individuals (as they can't be verified) - which goes back to the problem of anecdotal evidence (lack of reliability).

Valid evidence, set-up in such a way to remove the potential for bias & human fallibility must be in part done using what resembles the standard scientific method.

Yes you can obtain evidence via other means, but on the other side - you can't verify it, neither can you say within even a reason degree of certainty what's being proposed is true.

Besides, the point is less about what constitutes faith on a personal level (in which an individual may or may not understand the science or religion in question) - but faith as a wider concept within the domain of religion compared to trust in verifiable evidence.

It's a bit of a straw-man to simply assert that anybody who disagrees with you & Xordium on this point simply doesn't understand.

 

[koolpc]

Could you consider this from an Atheist's perspective? Why we might think that religious people are slightly crazy?

You feel loved by sometihng that you've never seen, never touched, never spoken to, wouldn't have thought existed unless someone had in troduced you etc...it just sounds insane!

But, my point is that I don't need to see any evidence like an atheist requires. It's all down to a strong faith and love of God. As for the matter of being introduced to God well, some are never brought up in a faith but then elect to choose God later in life. Lots of variables.

It would only sound insane to someone who doesn't want to believe in God. For me, its perfectly normal and I couldn't live without my love of God!

 

[C.R.A.Z.Y]

Its all about empirical evidence and both evolution and general relativity have bucket loads of it. This is why they are theories and not hypothesis, unlike religious folk scientists aren't aragont or foolish enough to claim absolutes !!
That said the empirical evidence for a deity is pretty much non-existant.

 

[Castiel]

But that's the point, personal evidence isn't reliable or a method to which we can formulate an understanding of our actual place is the universe.

No one said it was...what has been said is that people rely upon it in their daily lives, including on issues related to or involving Science. We are not saying that the mechanisms are the same as regards the subject mattrer (Science, Religion, Philosophy et al) but that the way many approach things in their lives (such as listening to a Priests sermon, or to their doctors diagnoses) relies on faith in those respective things subjectively through personal evidence.

From a third part view, the 'evidence from within' could be caused by a number of alternative explanations which the observer has no knowledge of - that 'talk with god' the individual claims to have intimate proof of subjectively may be the result of a mental illness, aural hallucinations or a number of other different factors.

Assuming that the individual has had a "talk with God"..they might (and in the majority of cases I would think) simply have come to the personal understanding that a God is extant through the subjective, but rational analysis of the world around them. It is not necessary to hold scientific objective material proof for everything in order to have come to a rational position or perspective.

It requires what is essentially faith in individuals (as they can't be verified) - which goes back to the problem of anecdotal evidence (lack of reliability).

This is the point...people put their faith in individuals, concepts and ideas that they do not always as individuals understand..like you have said they put their faith in others, whether that faith can be ultimately verified objectively isn't really the point, the point was that the internal mechanism of the individual having faith is the same. We see it with Cosmogenesis in the Global Warming threads..he has no way to know the truth value of what he believes in, not because there is no truth to be had, but simply because he doesn't have the cognition or ability to comprehend it even if it is presented to him..therefore he accepts it on faith (and blindly also, as you cannot argue him out of a position he is entrenched in regardless of any objective evidence you produce)..this is precisely the same as Kedge and his faith in Literal Biblical Creationism..he barely understands the scriptures, yet has faith that what he is told about them supports his faith in them at the same time as having faith that evolution is not validated despite objective evidence being shown to him of the contrary. This is what Spoffle and Xordium and myself are trying to convey...the similarity between the application of a faith based position in respective individuals without objective knowledge (inherent within their individual position, not the subject of their position) to produce definitive positions based only on their individual subjective reference.

You and I would require far more to opine on a position than simply implied authority in texts or individuals..we would require understanding and rational analysis of the proposition whether it was Scientific, Spiritual, Philosophical or anything else ...what we are saying is that there are some people who do not require that...regardless of the subject matter.

Do you see the relative point we are trying to make..it isn't the same as the position you are stating..which, for the most part no one disagrees with.

It's a bit of a straw-man to simply assert that anybody who disagrees with you & Xordium on this point simply doesn't understand.

Its not a strawman, and I hope the further clarification above is enough to explain the differences in our approach to the question.

 

[Castiel]

Teaching children that they evolved from apes can be seen as a lie.

Which is why no one does teach children that they evolved from apes.