No one has been to the sun yet we all accept that it burns hotter than anything we know. How do we really know anything? How do we know we actually put a man on the moon, or that 9/11 wasn't an inside job, or if there is such a thing as electrons because we can't see them???? The point is that the EVIDENCE is strong enough that we accept it. Evidence is subjective. Reality is as well. How does a religious scientist reject evolution? How do they explain carbon dating and such? I mean, it's beyond me how these people think. It's a different reality...where they dismiss pieces of evidence and accept others. We all build our reality in a way and it becomes part of our security. Sometimes people can't let that be challenged. I think that's what is going on in this case.
Invisible fan, I'm glad you let that Orr guy speak on your behalf. My response is - he is doing the EXACT same thing he is accusing of Dawkins of doing...fair enough to suggest that Dawkins is only addressing the matters he understands and not seeking to understand the minds of religious thinkers and the evidence they use...but the many written negative responses and critical evaluations/reviews of the God Delusion (of which I've read many) all pick apart what Dawkins has to say as being selective... The negative responses are all doing the same thing themselves, pointing out what he failed to mention, but they do nothing to answer the logical questions he raises... I mean these issues are eternal, and a book has to end at some point... Summing it up - how about you, or anyone else, tells me why I SHOULD believe in the christian God (or any god for that matter). And while your at it, try explaining to me why the vengeful (and the rest!)Yahweh of the Old Testament is supposedly such a loving being today...
i can't prove up God to you. i'm not interested in trying, really. i'm sorry that you were brought up in a faith that was so rigid that it couldn't survive reading a book with a contrarian viewpoint. that's not what i would call faith and it points to the failings of the Church (and religion in general) to point to God. please understand i don't mean to be insulting at all...i don't place any of that on you.
I've always respected and often backed up your posts MadMax. Nothing changes there as a result of my new found atheism. Still one of my favorite posters you are.
Lol. The thing is mate I feel liberated and certain with atheistic/scientific/human beliefs...I have never, in 26 years, despite everything the most respected people in my life (parents, teachers, church leaders, even alot of friends) tried to communicate to me, felt as convinced about faith and God. While others spoke of all sorts of personal experiences (healing, power of prayer, miracles etc) I found myself always inwardly skeptical...despite a real guilt brought on by my conscience... I still love and respect my parents and christian friends..its just now that I realise that its ok for me to think differently to them - and to be bold enough to be honest about it. as an aside - Madmax do you believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible? Partially literal? Do you believe in God being able to ''hear our thoughts'' etc?
I think it's sad you felt guilty for having doubts...that's part of what I'm talking about when i talk about failures of the Church. There are doubters in the Bible all over the place...David, Thomas, Habbakuk...all of them were doubters. They found faith in the midst of it, but they expressed doubts and frustrations with God. I'm not a literalist...it depends on what book of the Bible you're talking about though. Lots of different authors writing lots of different books for lots of different purposes. Yes, I believe the God who I believe created the universe is quite capable of knowing my thoughts. I'm just the created.
I didnt have guilt about doubting - I had guilt about accepting that I didnt believe it, and informing people like my parents (that I didnt want to upset/hurt/disapoint)...it was more than doubt...I just didnt realise how to express myself. This is a big problem with childhood indoctrination. Recently I had a discussion with my parents...I kind of already knew it but they confirmed that my mother became a christian because her mother (my grandmother) was very strict and also went to church herself because it was the right thing to do at that time...and my Dad became a christian so he could start dating my mother. And so I mentioned Dawkins statement about 'if I, or they, were born in Afghanistan, then we cannot deny we would be muslim (if anything). What makes us so lucky to be following the 'right' religion- and what makes us arrogant enough to think we are right and the muslims, hindi's etc are wrong. Rhetorical question really MM, dont expect you to try and rebuff/answer me on that.
What you claim selective, some people would call egregious. Dawkins trashes and dismisses theology as a apologetic waste of time, but his depth of the subject matter is relatively pedestrian compared to his biological expertise. Then he extends his attacks to any belief in God instead of primarily the Christian one. It's been a while since I read his and Hitchens' books. I don't think it's possible to quantitatively prove God. Doing so would invalidate faith. Some people want definitive answers. It's understandable, but our standards of living and making decisions already operate on factors beyond our control or ability to predict. Anyways, what are some of the logical issues you had in mind? Orr had a lot to pick with in the entire article. I don't know why I should believe in the Christian God either. I do think there are admirable traits in Jesus' teachings that flies in the face of human reason. Even if I did know why I strongly believed, I'd still consider whatever your thoughts were with respective dignity. I highly value the pursuit of all forms of knowledge and insight, and I rather respect the opinions of people who have formed an approach on their own time than jumping ship to what sounds or feels right. What Dawkins does in his forray in the debate is a great disservice in that regard because he marginalizes what religion has to offer with flippant dismissals, gimmicks and crude insults. Of course, he wouldn't even consider metaphysical thought as knowledge to begin with. Again, I'm no Christian, but this ties into that other thread about one religion. If you believe in what Jesus says, then He is the only Son of God. I'm not going to explain the rest because it'll sound trite and cliched, but even for a non-believer the implications of that can be a humbling thought experiment at the very least. And just by reading your recent replies with MM, I understand your concerns about "hereditary" religion or "dogmatic" religion. I could even totally agree with that! If there's no thinking involved, then it's not something I would want to be a part in. People can rattle off the cliche, but do they really know what it means? Even that question has a metaphysical onion to peel, but to someone like Dawkins, a cigar is only a cigar.
I haven't read The God Delusion but I've heard many of the arguments form it stated by others and it quoted. The biggest problems I have with these rationalist proofs and disproofs of God is that God by nature is something beyond rationality. To me faith is ultimately about the irrational. You believe because you believe. I can see the danger of that falling into dogmatism but at the same time what good is a belief in the metaphysical if it is subject to the logical laws of the physical. That's why I look at the Intelligent Design versus Evolution debates as being both fascinating and very problematic because the metaphysical and the physical get mixed up. I've frequently said that the problem I have with Intelligent Design is that it leads to intellectual laziness. Where a simple answer is drawn up, there must be an some unknowable creator, and then left at that. I think that rapidly becomes a scientific dead end. At the same time though I can see how there is a danger is totally ruling out the metaphysical as playing any role at all. While I think Darwinian Evolution is the most likely method for speciation that doesn't answer why there is speciation or life in the first place. There are questions that can only be answered metaphysically since why we can investigate a chain of physical evidence and causality there is no physical answer to the ultimate question of why any of this exist in the first place. I don't think as humans we are totally rational or totally spiritual but we need both even if they seem in conflict with each other.
Its not evidence that is subjective but the interpretation of it. Reality isn't so much subjective as it is relative. I think it is too easy to say that religion just causes a scientist to reject evolution and while I think the case for it is very strong I'm hesitant to come out and say it is the ultimate truth. At the same time I fully believe there is no conflict between Evolution and even a Judeo-Christian view of God. In my own mind I don't see why both can't coexists but that is partly what I'm trying to understand myself in this thread.
One thing I left out in that reply is that one could consider that thirst for knowledge my materialism. I guess irrationality will generally have negative connotation, but the ultimate in faith demands both the emotional and thinking aspects of an individual. That is a very loaded statement, and if you replace logical with empirical, your question becomes easier to address. By 'easier', it'll still be longwinded. The religiously motivated component of ID through politics displays a lack of faith. Maybe they never thought it through or are more motivated by numbers. To me, one can't quantitatively prove God. ID is not fascinating to me. It's a red herring disguised in scientific skepticism, and on the other side, there are extremist atheists looking to score points through blind worship. This is the current state of American religion As Seen On TV: "I do good things, then I get rewarded. Therefore God exists" "God doesn't exist, prove God to me so that I can believe." (You can even throw in, "Science gives me things I can believe") The material nature of these assertions sounds more like Satanism. No offense to anyone.... It's been a while since I've read a bio book. At one point in time, the Modern Synthesis replaced Darwinian Evolution as its successor. Articles do use Neo-Darwinism, but in the writer's eagerness to be recognizable, it's used liberally. I don't really know what's going on in the evolutionary debate anymore. So on the academic level, there's rich diversity in debate and conflict. But on the social level, public understanding is filtered largely through public school text books and media gatekeepers. No amount of science outlets or blogs can force feed information into the public consciousness like two candid interviews with Katie Couric... So there's different levels of understanding that's going on. Some ID proponents give the legitimate fear that science, such as multidisciplinary evolution, is becoming rigid and dogmatic. (Even if it did happen, there's not a thing they've proposed to fix the system...). But it's more likely the casual and passive observer is the one being a blind follower with respect to his limited and reactive understanding. I don't intend for it to sound rough. People who don't have a passion for a given field but are still interested are more likely to save time and wait for an "end game" or milestone discovery to catch up. And with the exponential progress over the last 70 years, it can almost be a college course just to keep up. This can boil back to me mentioning about the individual's lack of omniscience and making decisions with an unseen degree of faith.
aussie rocket, you have made great points, and I would like to step in here and share with you some experience I have had... I embraced a sort of atheism during high school and college I pretty much believed there was no gods at all, that man believed out of motives of guilt, fear, and various weaknesses and needs; but I maintained a belief in the supernatural or paranormal and felt like there were mystical or psychic powers that man could tap into. Here is what I have learned about God since then; There is not a reliable reference point for God on earth so to understand God based upon life circumstances is confusing at best. God is love. The concepts of love, forgiveness, and grace are very hard to see in Christian religion. I believe God has a great challenge to reveal His existence through people. The things that matter most to our hearts are the things that are most easily distorted and twisted also. Doubting God is not only normal it is reasonable and intelligent. Every bit of evidence in the natural world is marred, all the rational remains of God are damaged beyond repair, and life itself is in conflict with God. The person who does not have doubts has delusion. God's work is to reveal Himself to people who cannot see or hear Him; in a world that leaves few traces of His existence, without logical parameters or directions for the process. Jesus Christ came to be the link between man and God. In His story is the truth of love, forgiveness and grace; the logic of hope; and the revelation of existence. So many times by natural and rational thought we are trying to find God in places He doesn't frequent. First He must find us and we must be introduced. Then like blind men receiving sight for the first time we begin to see where He has been, what He has done and we get our first understanding of why we never saw it before. I have 5 children all raised in a pastor's home- worst place in the world for children to know God. All the reasons for logic to fail are there; They start out believing because of pressure from my wife and I, they follow through suppressing their doubts based upon guilt and respect; they come to be dissappointed and discouraged as they grow in reason and intellect. But all 5 of my children have sincere faith in God. I would have to say I believe God helped me stay out of the way.... Once my oldest son was in trouble in a Christian school, I was the pastor at the church where the school was. Finally the principle called me in afraid to confront the little trouble maker in front of me. The school principle laid out all the trouble my son was causing and how much he was damaging the spiritual life of other students. On the way home I basically gave my son the riot act; I came down hard, pushing every guilt button I could use. Half way home (he was 13 yrs old) he just curled into a fetal position on the front seat next to me and began to cry uncontrollably. He sobbed and slobbered and at first it just made me mad to see him act so babyish. Finally he looked up at me with a broken spirit and cried out at me "I will never ever be able to please you" At that moment my life was changed. I some how saw that I didn't love my son at all, I loved myself. I was angry and hurt because he let me down. I realized that I was a selfish, religious pr**ck. My son had not failed at all, I had failed him. I had failed to care about who he was, accept him, love him, encourage him, sacrifice for him, support him, and forgive him. That day I asked God and him to forgive me for being such a self centered and prideful man. I listed in detail acts of selfishness and arrogance that I had committed not only to him but my entire family, including my wife. I took responsiblity for the truth, I was the biggest hypocrite and sinner of all and I not only didn't deserve their respect (that they actually were very careful to give me) I no longer expected it. I committed to God that day to recognize how stinky selfish I am, how arrogant and how unloving I act. I made my goal to somehow get the beams out of my eyes and forget about all the specs I saw in others. I can tell you that was a turning point in my life. That son and his wife now live next door to us and he and I are as close as close can be. Love replaces doubts with faith, genuine faith, sincere trust. Until we find God's love, he is missing.
You'd have to compare them for yourselves and come to your own conclusion. Not take it all in as true solely because that's what your parents taught you. Again, I keep coming back to the question of what faith is. I hate when people make assumptions about people here but you've been kind enough to open up....I'd say you feel free because you never really lost faith. You can't lose what you never had. Rather, you feel free because you're able to be honest about it now, instead of wearing some less than authentic mask of religion...of saying the right things and going the right places and being with the right people. All that is religious crap that's short of honest. I can disagree with you about the existence of God, but I'm truly happy you're being honest with yourself about it now.....I honestly believe you're much more likely to discover God from that posture. If He's out there to be discovered, that is.
I totally agree that it is a long winded statement and even substituting "empiracal" for "logical" it still is loaded. Let me explain what I mean by citing a personal example. I believe in Karmic reincarnation and also with the idea of Karma being a force that is both individual but also beyond me. Following along with the other thread regarding whether you can be faithful to two religions my own understanding of Karma isn't as a rule of nature but as something that is more in terms of a Christian God. That Karma is a everywhere and gives me purpose. How I came to that belief is that accepting that there is nothing more than material existence to me strikes me as not only sterile but also so depressing as to make life unbearable. Taking empiracle evidence none of that is rational and I can't prove it or disprove it. Further I may very well just be deluding myself because I find the alternative to be depressing and have just created a fantasy to make me feel better. Richard Dawkins would certainly say that I have bought into the God Delusion and logically there is nothing I can do to counter that. My faith though isn't wholly dependent on logic or empiracism since there is no physical proof of a metaphysical reincarnation and the logical arguments can be chopped either way since they ultimately the are divorced from empiracal reality.
rhester, I really appreciate all your posts in the D&D on religion, evolution, etc. So definitely don't take this as an attack on you in any way....BUT, I notice a lot of your posts go off into somewhat random tangents that either become longer posts with sporadic Bible verses, or longer posts that are very "preachy". I understand you are both (i) a Christian, and (ii) a pastor, so this shouldn't exactly come as a surprise. Just thought I'd point out, that from my agnostic frame of mind, while your response and ensuing life story is great, I'm not quite certain it added anything to the particular line of discussion you quoted, in which aussie was questioning; "why Christianity", "why me as a Christian", etc, etc. Again, not personal. If all Christians were like you, clearly the world would be a much much much better place. And I understand "story-time" is likely an effective manner for a preacher to reach much of his masses....just from my standpoint, well, I read your response and thought, "great story.......and??...."
