WTF is this forum coming to? Awesome discussions on life, the universe & everything!

You still haven't proved that there is an absolute morality. You believe there is, but that is not a compelling argument for it. However I have explained how within an atheist framework you can have absolute morality in relation to the immutable natural laws that govern our functioning.

 

Sorry but I dont get that stance. Religion through it's creation stories etc has attempted to explain things we didn't understand. That's not unique to religion but it has often vehemently opposed anything which counters it's world view with a better explanation. Again, not unique to religion but I am only aware of religious groups arguing for intelligent design? It is absolutely a failure of the system as organized religion (which to me is separate to a belief in god) is an entirely man made construct. Religion also can not happily coexist with other faiths and non believers without leaving them be.

I would also argue that the great writers of the world tell us more about morality and human interaction than any religious text. Shakespeare > The Bible.

Why should religion deal with the moral/philosophical side of life? From my personal observations it's made a very poor job of it. Women are treated as inferior to men in the Abrahamic religions, sex and sexuality is treated as something dirty and sinful and body mutilation is widely practiced and we are told to live in fear of an all seeing being who will judge us when we die. Religions focus on death and the afterlife is also rather telling. It plays on the fears of the unknown and offers redemption for the price of faith and servitude. It's the ultimate confidence trick as no one comes back from the dead to tell you if it's true or not.

I would love to see a wide ranging study which compared the lives of people of faith against those with none. Would we see a difference in morality, crime rates and quality of life?

 

No, but you'd see that everybody believes in something, and that everybody has dysfunctional and prejudicial beliefs. Religion has no monopoly on that.

Religion is just another story. Stories are important; it's how we think and how we make sense of the world. Science is a story too --a really useful one supported by logic and facts, just like the stories we tell children to teach them social rules or warn them about the dangers of the world are. Religious stories can be useful in their own way. It's just that, like with science, or with stories-to-children, that use can be constructive or destructive. And it's always good not to take any story too literally.

 

I may have to steal that one.

 

So you believe that absolute morality is only available to those who have a higher power to call upon?

Moral universalisability, the more "proper" term for absolute morality, it far from restricted to deists. Many people would consider Kantian ethics to be universalisable, and hence objective.

 

Thing is though, they have this thing called 'evidence' & 'proof'; I can see that the world is round because of satellite photos, I can see the moon is made of rock because we went there- I can't see that 'god did it' because... yeah.

Certainly; I believe the world is round because I can go into the sky and fly around it, I believe the sky is blue because of light filtering through Hydrogen molecules ( or was it Helium?.. )- this is something that has been observed and tested, thus meaning whether you choose to believe ti or not is kinda irrelevant. I also believe antagonising christians yields some interesting results as they often resort to using weak arguments with no evidence to back up their statements; finding a highly educated one who can sustain a debate this long is fascinating and has turned up some great discussion, though the cracks and flaws in the argument are highly visible.

You're missing my problem with religion though. The stories are all wonderfully insightful and useful for guiding people down the path of not being an asshat usually, but you don't see scientists getting together and telling people to worship them ( not in the sense I mean anyway ) or to lead their lives according to some scary set of rules, and if you don't then fear the consequences ( though learning lessons about gravity and inertia are kinda useful, but also not relevant to what I'm getting at ).

I feel these videos make some very good points:





The issue with faith and belief is just that, they are a personal system of rationalising something- without evidence they are meaningless, even if they do help you sleep at night or make it through the day & come out the other side being a better person after helping people- you can help people & be a nice person without religion- its called being selfless & altruistic. Ofcourse, a true christian would aim to be these things because that is their 'calling'- are they trying to say that without the word of zombie jesus that they wouldn't be? Worrying thought...

 

Lol at the first video, New Atheist fundamentalism in a nutshell:

The list of beings that "CAN'T" exist made me chuckle. God's existence has been disproved (again) by the global epicentre of philosophy: youtube. Not a philosophical journal or a publication, but a secular humanist who wants to preach to his choir.

It's still not well reasoned debate... just more cheap shots at something that is perfectly logical and reasonable.

 

What is logical & reasonable about an invisible old man in the sky whom can create matter purely by thought? God is not Q, and this ain't StarTrek...

Just because a video is on youtube does not invalidate its content; you're talking to people on a computer right now- welcome to the age of digital media & global reach.

That video could have originated on a philosophical journal or discussion forum- chances are it probably did owing to its nature. Just because you don't agree with it's conclusions does not mean they are wrong; you just didn't like what the video had to say so you are attempting to discredit it any way you can = boo hoo.

 

Double post.

EDIT:

actually, let me expand on that last thought. What is logical about an immortal, invisible being, whom has the power to create the universe & shape everything in it to suit his ideal 'plan', who then after ~13.9 billion years decides to create some life on one of the little balls of rock, then decides after a few hundred thousand more years that he's feeling frisky and magically impregnates an arab lady in the desert, has a son to spread his word ( since he is all invisible and stuff and can't do it himself, dispite creating everything in the usniverse ), then let's his son die in a very unpleasant way because that somehow teaches a few nearby desert people the true meaning of what it is to live & suffer in order to further humanity.

Yep, perfectly logical & plausible to me ( trolling I am not, I am just trying to make sense of what you are actually trying to assert.... /error 404, sense not found ).

 

Although I only occasionally peruse this thread might I add that religion isn't necessarily about believing in a set god, or any god at all. In fact, religion (at least to me, which works since language is a subjective set of interpretations on reality) is just a belief in something, period.

The problem I see with you're challenge of the biblical version of God being logical or not is that you are using your preconceived notions of what is God and then challenging that preconceived notion. My point in that rather completely pointless statement, was this: Your interpretation of God is very different from another person's, and logical or not there is a sort of subjective reality that fits the form of one's mind.

I understand that it is illogical on a human rational basis. What I'm saying though is that it isn't religion that is the problem per-se. The real problem lies within the fact that humans are susceptible to a certain form of subjective morality, be it from religion or science, or hell a desire to eat spaghetti, all really do defy logic, and here's how I'll try to make sense of it because this is becoming more and more abstract and I want a whiteboard.

But then we get to the weird abstract ****, also known as the Descartan philosophy and potentially Humeian philosophy about epistemology. How can we know what logic is? And how do we know that our assertions are correct at all? We don't as far as I know, regardless of whether or not the concept of the abrahamic god is logical or not, it's still down to a matter of relativism because of subjectivity.

Hence, I don't think we can actually ever really argue about the existence of god in a meaningful way, because we must first define the borders of God and it's capabilities, what it entails and then dispute whether or not those boundaries (if there are any) can be broken or not. Not to mention that disproving god and proving god are both entirely folly quests in their own right. After all reality in itself is projected through the collective will.

 

I have always stood fairly strongly on this side of the fence:



However, i find Nexxo's point of science being based on faith, very interesting, and somewhat correct. A lot of what we are told and believe has only been seen, or postulated by a small few, yet we take it as gospel., and one could say the same for religion..

I come from a fairly weird point of view, in that im an atheist, yet believe that religion and faith are extremely important. I've been brought up in a very strongly CoE establishment, and went to chapel every day for 11 years of education. I dont feel brainwashed or spoon fed, I believe that religion, while i dont believe in its paramount to education. The bible might be full of a lot of lies and ill truths, but it is also full of a lot of good life lessons, which if even loosely followed, can make you a good person.

I understand why we have religion, in that it came about because we naturally wanted an answer to why things happen, and why are we here, and back in a time when we didn't have the scientific knowledge we have now, an omnipotent deity seemed like a good and fitting answer. In our modern society, I understand why people still want to believe this too, I just think its utterly utterly wrong when one side of the argument tries to shove its point of view down everyone's throat.. Richard Dawkins for example, if he presented and discussed both sides of the argument, I think he'd be far more widely approved that he is.

 

But that's correct :/ - there is no logical argument that requires an omniscient being.

The onus has been on the faithful (the vast majority of the planet, that is) for the last 1700 years to prove this is the case, and I've got to be honest, I'm not impressed by their working.

 

And yet we have flat-Earthers and fake moon landing conspiracists who challenge all that evidence --because they don't believe it. Irrational? For sure. But that's how people work, on both sides of the fence.

The very fact that you don't know whether it is hydrogen or helium suggests that you take it on faith just a bit. You take the scientific observations and explanations on faith: it just sounds like a more rational story to you than a beardy bloke in the sky, so you believe.

Of course the science is testable for yourself (mostly). But most people don't test it. They take it on faith that the tablets work so they take them (and ironically, often it is the belief that they will work that makes them work --gotta love the miracle of placebo effects). They take it on faith that the TV works, the mobile phone works, even if they don't understand how. Everyday little miracles in your living room, in your pocket, all the time.

 

But I, SuicideNeil and you, understand broadly how and why these little miracles work we might not care to or be able to test the underlying theory but its understandable. The faith that its magic is neither understandable nor testable.

 

We do, but we're geeks. we have a special relationship with science. Others have a special relationship with God, which they claim gives them a deeper understanding of faith that us atheists just can't grok.

I'm not saying that science and religion are the same at all; I'm just saying that most people have a similar relationship to both.

 

But I’m not trying to prove that it exists; I’m presupposing that it exists and demonstrating that such a moral framework makes more sense because it is entirely independent from the natural laws that govern our functioning. On that view, concepts of "right" and "wrong" are intrinsic, immutable, and absolute.

You say that morality can be absolute in relation to these immutable natural laws, but I still see a plethora of inevitable contradictions – it could be argued that murdering an at-large serial rapist in cold blood is desirable for the human race and would in fact be of great benefit to society, in which case murder would be the moral thing to do. Similarly, if there is any circumstance under which a different immoral behaviour can become moral, the moral framework is not absolute but circumstantial....ergo, relative. Just because you base a moral framework on something that is immutable does not mean that morality will be black and white.

“My conclusions might be right, therefore you are wrong.” Sounds like a boo-hoo to me. You are still revelling in unsupported assertions and unfalsifiable declaratives – the debate simply cannot progress if you keep playing the “God doesn’t exist; if he does, prove it” trump card. Even if you try to sound clever (like Richard Dawkins) and maintain that God’s existence is “improbable,” you’re still not establishing anything other than your opinion.

The two videos have no philosophical merit – it’s not that I don’t like them (I do, they made me chuckle, like I said), but they really don’t hold any water in this arena. I’d love to know how the guy reached his “logical” conclusions that it is “illogical” for that list of beings to exist; and I'd also love to know how comparing God to a carton of milk disproves his existence (or proves that he is illusory). Like I said before, it’s all ipse dixit presented boldly (by atheists, with an agenda) and passed off as cogent philosophy.

Oh, and you are trolling - every time you are deliberately pejorative or offensive, that's trolling.

If you’d like to elaborate on why it’s correct, I’m all ears. It seems to me that people like to regard an omniscient being as “illogical” off-the-bat so that they can dispense with the inconvenience of trying to refute it coherently.

 

While this thread is a little daunting, and most likely over my poor brains head so to speak, thought I'd just interject for a moment.

I personally believe in God, (much to the surprise of most of my friends when they find out oddly enough :/)
About the whole there is no proof, as other's have said, I take most of science on faith, sure I can read some stuff and be told some stuff by people that I've been told know what they are talking about.
But in the end, I personally don't KNOW it. Why am I sticking to the planet, because of Gravity, some magical force that's pulling me down. I don't know a lot about it, but I believe I'm on the ground due to gravity rather than anything else purely because that's what people have told me.
I'm not saying I think people are stupid for not thinking there is a God at all, merely saying that is doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.

(I apolagise if this post makes no sense, heat has definitely gone to me head )

Edit:
And SuicideNeil, I don't know if you're doing it deliberately, or it's just how you are, but you are coming across as a rather unpleasant person, certainly not one I'd like to talk to face to face about this :/

 

But isn't it illogical? What valid reasoning is there to pre-suppose the existence of an omniscient being? The onus shouldn't be on those who don't believe in the existence of an omniscient being to refute his existence, it should be on those who do believe to present a logical argument as to why he does. Until that occurs why shouldn't we deem it as illogical?

 

My point is that people say an omniscient being (eg the God of the Bible) is inherently illogical. I totally agree that the onus shouldn't be on those who don't believe in the existence of an omniscient being to refute his existence, but people who disbelieve in God still have the same questions to answer about everything they do believe - eg, the origin of the universe, morality (which is still being hotly debated), value etc. As some people have noticed I have deliberately steered the debate away from "proving God" because not only is it often fruitless, it's also a troll magnet.

Because that wouldn't be a logical inference. You can't infer total illogicality from shreds of possible or posited illogicality.

 

Makes more sense within your framework. Not necessarily in others. Sounds relative to me.

I see no contradiction. The rapist chooses to act in a way that harms others while knowingly risking harm to himself as people try to defend themselves. He is committing the immoral act of harming others and forcing others to harm him.