Well, this argument is as basic as it gets, but it is nonetheless true. If 75% of a population believes in something then that thing is probably, but not necessarily, true. Most of the time a majority like that will be correct. There are certainly other much more substantial arguments, but the question here was just the most basic one of whether a god or gods exist, period. If the answer to this question is that there is a strong possibility that a god or gods does exist, then the discussion gets a lot more interesting. How have you been finding that book? I’ve been typing up an answer to your post #790, btw. Are you still interested?
It's not a fight you have to have. It's a lot harder to deal with the unknown than with a religious explanation so there is no real benefit for anyone to try an explain your position. You really don't need to discuss it with anyone other than whatever love interest you might be developing. Just smile enigmatically and benignly fake it. You can be yourself at a liberal college but you have to go right back in the atheist closet for your career. And whatever you do, don't discuss your atheism with your Dad at Christmas. Yeah, in hindsight, that was a mistake.
Well that's horsh*&#t. Conventional wisdom is based on the limited information sources that are available to the general public, their intellectual capacity to understand them, the prevailing biases they enter in to the discussion with and the degree of skill and motivation of the advocates. Advancing truth is always a battle against conventional wisdom.
And your point is? Surely you’re not saying that everything that is now considered conventional wisdom is false. Most of what we consider to be conventional wisdom is true, or at least substantially true. W.r.t the parts that aren’t then, yes, you’re correct. It is important not be believe that conventional wisdom is necessarily true, and it’s important to believe that it should be questioned, but it’s just as important to know that conventional wisdom usually came about through experimentation of some sort, often generations of experience, and that it is usually well founded and “true”.
It's hard to believe 9 months after this thread was started, 40+ pages in, people are still arguing with someone who thinks something is true because a lot of people believe in it. It doesn't matter how many examples you guys can bring up to Grizzled to make him understand this line of thinking is as illogical and stupid as you can get...he's clearly not going to change his mind. To him, Santa Claus really does exist for children and the earth actually was flat thousands of years ago....well, probably actually... It's almost one of the dumbest lines or argument ever proposed anywhere on this bbs....
Yes, but "most of the time", we're talking about something which is tangible, something which can be observed, and something for which direct evidence can be brought up (e.g. chandeliers). You're making a generalization about beliefs and trying to apply it to a specific type of belief -- belief in the supernatural.
If you want an example of why breaking this question down to its simplest, almost trivial, question is a worthwhile exercise then have a look at Mr. JayZ750’s post. Let’s be frank. Stating that if 75% of a population believes something to be true then it probably is true is so obvious and trivial that a young child can easily understand it. It is truly that simple and obvious. But some people’s need to deny even the possible existence of a god or gods is so great and so manic that they lose their minds on issues like this. Reading Mr. JayZ750’s post you might well wonder if he’s a moron, literally, but I don’t believe he’s as stupid as that post sounds. The likelihood is that he has deep seated issues around religion that cause him to lose his mind, and his dignity, on these issues. I don’t think you can reach someone who is at a stage where he’s embarrassing himself like that, but for people who aren’t quite as disturbed breaking the issue down to its very basics can help to move it out of the world of fear, panic, repressed emotions, and denial into the world of rational thinking and scientific analysis. On this issue it’s often baby steps.
(I partially typed up a response to this post before, but since some of these issues have come up again I went back and finished it off.) We’d have to define the term luck. If you take a shot from 50’ and make it the chances are that you will call that luck, but what it really is is a low probability shot. If you take that shot 100 times you’re probably going to hit it a couple of times, just not very often. When you do, however, it's not really luck. The point of wanting to understand is to find answers that benefit us. Being in groups also benefits us because it allows us to work together to help each other. That is the benefit in itself. What would be the benefit of believing in a fictitious god and developing an elaborate religion that consumed an enormous amount of time and resources? The people and the groups who are wasting time and resources on something that isn’t real should fall behind and be naturally selected out, but for some thousands of years now this hasn’t been the case, and this raises some questions. Why hasn’t this happened? Is there something else going on? Are these beliefs continuing to be so strong because they’re actually based on something real? You’re making some debatable claims here. Early humans did have science, in fact. Some caveman somewhere stuck his hand in a fire and got burned, and he learned not to do that again. That’s an experiment, and that’s science. Exactly how and why the various belief systems came into being is part of the broader question being discussed here. You’re assuming that they were simply made them up, but in doing that you’re sidestepping the issue we’re debating. And again, groups are beneficial, but evolution would suggest that that should be the reward in itself. In theory a random group may have invented a god and a religion as a way to manage the group, but the theory suggests that the time and resources put into something like that would cause this group to fall behind the others and be naturally selected out. Instead we see something very different has happened. The term supernatural is very problematic in this context. What you’re saying is that we’ve done more formal research and we have more hard data and a better understanding of how a lot of things work, and therefore we consider fewer tings to be “supernatural”. This speaks more to how we classify our knowledge than anything else, and I’m not sure that the word supernatural is used very much in a scientific context anymore. And I’m not at all sure that the belief in a god or gods has declined significantly. The overarching question is still the same. Why would virtually all human societies do these things if all they were was a waste of time and resources? Also, I don’t think we are biologically conditioned to try to fill in gaps or draw connections between events that may not really be warranted. We are curious and want to find answers, and when we find answers and causal relationships they give us more ability to control our environment and to prosper. Often we form theories that are only partially true, like the theory of Caloric, for example, but later research refines the knowledge and increases our understanding. I don’t see any widespread tendency to simply make things up randomly to explain the unexplained. That kind of thing doesn’t do us any good, so why would we do it? A scientist is trained to come up with possible explanations that are grounded in science and logic. If he or she simply says, “I don’t know”, and then gives up, then they’re not doing their job, and if they simply make up a fairly tale explanation of some sort then they’re also not doing their job.
There are lots of things we can’t see and yet have good reason to believe exist. We can’t see gravity, or electrons, or magnetic fields, etc. We have good reason to believe they exist, however, because we see what they do. We see indirect evidence that they exist, iow, and the same principle is true in this case. There is nothing fundamentally different about this case.
The theory of gravity is believed by scientists because (1) it explains observable phenomena in a simple, elegant way, and (2) it allows us to make very precise, testable predictions about what we should observe in various scenarios. The second part is crucial. I can float out a theory on anything, but if there's no way to test its accuracy what good is it? The "God Theory", if we want to call it that, does not satisfy this basic requirement, and that is why it is fundamentally different. I'll get back to your other posts at a later date.
Although I lean towards your side in this discussion, I find this a poor argument. Essentially you are saying there are a set of rules (1 and 2) which make gravity a fact, but they appear to be arbitrary ones which just so happen to fit what you believe. In reality, gravity is as much a fact as any fact we have because it passes the "scientific theory " test, plain and simple. I think the question that should be asked here is how you can expect the scientific theory, a creation of God's creation (in my view), to prove or disprove something outside its scope? "If we can't prove it exists then it does not exist" is used as a foundation for scientific testing, experimentation, etc but is not a true statement. It is just the best method we have of going about trying to prove things and keeping reality in some kind of order. Actually, we can show that based on the historical accuracy of the sentence that it is basically always wrong - this is why/how we have new discoveries and inventions. Protons, for example, have always existed. Yet at some point in time/history, it did not exist according to your principles. That was false. The reality is that it did not exist as a scientifically observable phenomena, just as God currently (again, in my opinion) does not exist as a scientifically observable phenomena. However, if over half the world believes that it exists, then it definitely becomes an area where further research is warranted (according to your principles). This is the equivalent of testifying in a court of law - if a lot of people saw it, even though there's no proof of it happening, then it holds some weight. If a lot of people who disagree with each other believe it, that provides greater independence. If a lot of people from different geographical regions believe it, it holds more weight. If the sample of people who believe it are so incredibly well-diversified, there is no denying that there must be something there other than "OMG, you guys are so stupid!!". To put it in perspective for you, we are probably talking about over 50% of the world over the last 2,000 years (my estimation). So, yes, the "God theory" does not fit your criteria yet. That doesn't mean much though. I'm certainly not waiting for it because I believe that everything we know falls under a certain set of laws/rules, and God does not fall under or get defined by those same laws/rules. You are, ofcourse, assuming that He can be defined by those laws/rules, which, FYI, are supposedly created by God. I think it's imperative that when you enter these discussions, you have a clear understanding of the other side's argument. The fact that God will not necessarily be defined by rules/laws which you are aware of is very important to keep in mind.
I understand your point, but I am not arguing that God does not exist. I was trying to argue that believing in God is a qualitatively different sort of belief than believing in a scientific theory for which mountains of evidence has been collected. Grizzled claims they are fundamentally similar, and therefore there is no reason to distinguish one from the rest when making the generalized statement "If 75% of people believe X, then it is probably true." Even if I accept that this sort of statement could be true for scientific beliefs or other believes based on direct evidence, I don't think one can just extend it to apply to "faith-based" beliefs of any sort (including the supernatural). I don't really follow this. Whether a scientific theory is valid has nothing to do with what percentage of the population believes it. It is not like the the general population had a intuitive feeling about protons, and the scientific communitity came up with it in response. At least, I don't believe that's how it happened. Now, if lots of people believe in something, is that grounds for further inquiry? Sure. I will not dispute that. However, it does not mean we should take it for granted that this something "probably" exists. That is a logical leap I cannot make, unless I have reason to think that this belief has been well-tested. What you are saying here seems to support my argument. Belief in God is not fundamentally the same thing as believing in gravity or protons or the cellular structure of our bodies. It is a different sort of belief, and as such it is not valid to generalize "If 75% of people believe X, X is probably true" to it. I think that statement is only true for beliefs in things that are supported by direct observation or can be tested empirically.
Generally agreed. 75% of people believing in X doesn't make X true, but it does lend credibility. Much like surveying the employees in a company where the results show 75% think the working conditions are horrid - that has credibility. Whereas if 0.001% of employees said a spaghetti man walks around the premises at night, assigning the same amount of credibility to the response is a slap in the face of the other 75% - despite not being able to definitively prove one or the other without further findings. As always with these debates IMO, it is pointless because scientific observations are guided by different principles than those which can define God. I have a question out of curiosity. If Jesus PBUH appeared tomorrow and performed some kind of miracle - let's say Jesus PBUH splits the ocean. Scientifically, what can you prove out of that?
What's amazing is that you seem to have reasonably intelligent people engaging in debate about this. It's frankly hard to believe. You have durvasa, whose proven himself to be a statistical wizard, debating point by point. And then you have the nerve to make it sound like I have religion issues? When was the last time this thread was about religion? It's about logic and common sense here, bud. If you don't like your logic being pointed out as idiotic, r****ded, a step backwards for humanity, dumb, the most bass ackwards thing ever posted on this bbs, then you should think about changing it. Seriously, you're a guy who has for pages and pages now tried to rationalize a position that something is probably true because a majority of people believe it to be so. Besides the fact that this is inherently mind-blowing (could you imagine our textbooks taking the next step and just making stuff up, and then saying it's true because its believed to be so, and it believed to be true because it's in the text books - it's such ridiculous circular logic my head is about to explode), I can literally spend the rest of my life just just pointing out examples of where this idiotic logic has proven to be false, time and time and time again. If I could just prove a few times where it was wrong that should be enough. It'd be like gravity not working in select instances - scientists wouldn't just say, whatever, it must be a mistake, gravity is generally right...they'd research and figure out why the previous theory was wrong. But it's even worse then that, because it'd be like gravity being wrong a bunch of times...as is your mind-blowingly simplistic and moronic logic. Hey, look I did mention religion...it's way up there in my post earlier. Do you see it? This post must be about my religious insecurities!
By "luck" I mean an attribute which unnaturally predisposes someone to desired consequences. This is backwards. We don't do things because it will benefit us in the long run. It would be nice if we had that sort of foresight, but generally we do not. We do things for whatever reason -- it could be out of fear, or to fulfill immediate desires. I look at the the emergence of religious practices in that context. If you like. If you accept that god and religion served a purpose in group management, then why assume that such a group would fall behind others and be "naturally selected" out. I would argue the opposite is true. Groups benefited from the rituals and gods and complex belief systems because it strengthened the bonds, enforced discipline, and other reasons that I've already gone through. But even supposing what you say is true (and I'll stress, again, I do not), I still don't understand your argument. Are you suggesting that there must be a God that is protecting us from dying out due to our wastefulness? If you consider God and Religion such a monumental waste of resources that we could not have survived as a species believing in it, explain why you think whether it is invented or actually true makes any difference. The term supernatural is used by theists. God is supernatural by definition. He stands outside of all natural laws, necessarily because he is supposed to be the creator of natural law. It would be a logically impossible for God to have created himself, and therefore he must be supernatural. You say the question remains, but then arbitrarily you reject my explanation without reason. If you look at the beliefs of humans prior to the last few hundred years, there was all sorts of ridiculous ideas that did not in actuality further our understanding of how things are. And yet, humans were compelled to invent them. Why is that? That's because you live in an age where making things up randomly to explain the unexplained is widely accepted as foolish. You may not be willing to accept this, but as a species we are in fact much smarter than we used to be and science is a big reason for that. The first thing every scientist must do is admit his ignorance. That does not mean he should give up, nor (as you say) does it mean he should make up a fairy tale explanation.
I'd put it this way, and maybe this is what Grizzled is getting at. If lots of people believe in something I do not, and I have not yet seriously thought about how plausible it is, then I would be inclined to think about it more seriously. But, if after seriously thinking about it, I still do not believe it, then I am not going to just accept it as "probably true" because lots of other people believe it is true. So "75% of people believe in God" is not a reason to believe in God. It is a reason to consider more seriously why those people believe in God. Maybe there's something there I didn't consider before. Is that fair?
Okay, lets make sure we're using the same words even though you should be able to know my meaning by now(but still you try to dance around the semantics). Reread my post again and replace 'must' with 'is it probably', it is still faulty logic. Again, the point you're not touching is that many times in the past the majority opinion has been wrong. For you to say.."oh 75% of people(of course all of them are well informed, unbiased, and well educated, right?) believe in something...it is probably right..." is wrong...in fact it was thinking like this that probably perpetuated some of the worst atrocities in human history. "Yeah lets just accept it...the majority does, it's probably right...", that's ridiculous.
To me, personally, that's fair. I don't know about everyone else. Unless you can prove it. Can you prove it??
Its a very good book. I think it gives a good breakdown of the best arguments both sides (Christian theists, atheists) have to offer. The best arguments I've come across, at least. There is a website I came across recently which has a lot of interesting video pieces on the existence of God, the cosmos, and consciousness from a more philosophical and scientific perspective. Both believers and nonbelievers are represented. http://www.closertotruth.com
