The Invisible Pink Unicorn (serious analysis please)

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DentArthurDent
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23 Jan 2009, 3:56 am

Orwell wrote:

DentArthurDent wrote:

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

The Aboriginals also have flood legends, as do some native American tribes...

Your point is?

The point in that observation is that elements of religious belief that are universal across several diverse cultures are likely to have some sort of common basis, and this lends credence to the idea that they are actually true (though it implies that at least several of these religions have lost and/or corrupted the original revelation).

I would have thought that if there was flood it is reasonable to assume that several cultures would record it. If they attribute the flood to their version of god it only displays their lack of understanding of global climatic change and in no way supports the god hypothesises

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Orwell
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23 Jan 2009, 4:00 am

Anyways, to answer the OP: saying "You can not absolutely disprove my belief" is a very stupid way of defending one's faith, and is deserving of mockery in the form of Pastafarianism etc. But on some level, religion is an emotional experience rather than a purely rational one, and so it can't, of its nature, be proven to you rationally.

And yes, I know that answer will not be satisfying to the non-theists on this thread. But it's the only answer I've got, so if you want a better one you'll have to look elsewhere.

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DentArthurDent
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23 Jan 2009, 4:08 am

Orwell wrote:

religion is an emotional experience rather than a purely rational one, and so it can't, of its nature, be proven to you rationally.

That is the only answer that I respect, provided the holder of the belief does not expect to have laws and behaviours forced upon those that do not share the same emotional experience.

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23 Jan 2009, 4:29 am

DentArthurDent wrote:

Orwell wrote:

religion is an emotional experience rather than a purely rational one, and so it can't, of its nature, be proven to you rationally.

That is the only answer that I respect, provided the holder of the belief does not expect to have laws and behaviours forced upon those that do not share the same emotional experience.

To each his own. The Prophet Muhammed said "For you your religion, for me my religion." I want my beliefs to neither be forced upon others nor prohibited from being expressed in public.

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DNForrest
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23 Jan 2009, 4:40 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

The Aboriginals also have flood legends, as do some native American tribes...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/science/14WAVE.html

A fairly interesting theory that the flood legends that happen with so many stories of ancient cultures/religions are the direct result of an asteroid/comet impact in the Indian ocean.

DentArthurDent
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23 Jan 2009, 4:44 am

Orwell wrote:

DentArthurDent wrote:

Orwell wrote:

religion is an emotional experience rather than a purely rational one, and so it can't, of its nature, be proven to you rationally.

That is the only answer that I respect, provided the holder of the belief does not expect to have laws and behaviours forced upon those that do not share the same emotional experience.

To each his own. The Prophet Muhammed said "For you your religion, for me my religion." I want my beliefs to neither be forced upon others nor prohibited from being expressed in public.

Cant argue with that, when the revolution comes I'll persuade my comrades to let you evangelise in public :wink:

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23 Jan 2009, 4:49 am

Orwell wrote:

DentArthurDent, you have previously asked for evidence of a God and I have described the cosmological argument to you, which maintains that a supernatural force is logically necessary for the natural world to exist. If I recall, that argument was rejected on the grounds of "I dunno" which, to me, is basically the atheist equivalent to "Goddidit." Instead of saying "Goddidit," atheists say "I don't have a better answer than you do, but your answer doesn't fit into a strictly materialist worldview and so I'm just going to say 'dunno' to avoid having to come up with an effective rebuttal."

What that is is him merely admitting "We can't explain everything, yet." Science can't explain everything right now, and scientists know damn well this fact, however, we constantly work to advance our understanding. Tell me, are you capable of explaining exactly how God or other such divine forces caused all of these things to happen, other than "God works in mysterious ways"? How, precisely, is saying "Science works in mysterious ways" any different? Saying that a supernatural force is necessary for the natural world to exist is bunk to me, it might be true, but in all likelihood, it just means we haven't yet discovered the means. Take a computer back 1000 years with a power source, wouldn't the people of that time say it was a work of supernatural devices? I'm just really annoyed by the argument of "If we can't understand it, it's the definitive proof of a higher power".

*Note: I am neither for or against religion, I'm merely a skeptic. Of everything.*

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23 Jan 2009, 4:57 am

DNForrest wrote:

iamnotaparakeet wrote:

The Aboriginals also have flood legends, as do some native American tribes...

I agree. At first glance of Ben's post I thought there was nothing in common between both genotypes of natives, rather interestingly though, if a catastrophe large enough happened to affect both natives more than an 6000 miles away, that could uphold the mythos after the real first-hand knowledge passed from generation to generation.

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23 Jan 2009, 5:08 am

DNForrest wrote:

That's just what I'm saying: they aren't. They both seem to me to simply be stock excuses passed out when you don't know the answer.

And no, I am not capable of explaining God's ways, nor am I capable of explaining all of science (though I am making better progress towards the latter than the former).

Quote:

Saying that a supernatural force is necessary for the natural world to exist is bunk to me, it might be true, but in all likelihood, it just means we haven't yet discovered the means. Take a computer back 1000 years with a power source, wouldn't the people of that time say it was a work of supernatural devices? I'm just really annoyed by the argument of "If we can't understand it, it's the definitive proof of a higher power".

You misunderstand the point, badly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_Argument_for_God It is not simply something which we are currently incapable of explaining or that we don't understand, it's rather deeper than that.

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DentArthurDent
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23 Jan 2009, 5:09 am

Orwell wrote:

I completely missed this response, and I have to say it is not up to your best. The god of the gaps says we don't know how that happened so we will blame god, science says as we don't know how this happened we will devise ways to try and understand it. Personally from the little I know of theology I see little difference between the god of the gaps and the cosmological argument, as I understand it they both say 'I dunno so it must be god'

Edit: just seen your post above and will read on the link you have given.

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23 Jan 2009, 5:31 am

Orwell wrote:

I probably didn't put my response clearly enough, but, even though I admit I had no previous knowledge of the "First Cause" argument (though I'm aware of the concepts through my own thought experiments), it's spot on what I assumed you to mean. You're defaulting the "First cause" to be God to me is simply the result of your background in religion, and a wish for your initial belief to be correct. Just as a person of science would default the "First cause" to be something that's defined by science. To sum it up: it isn't a definitive piece of evidence for one or the other. If anything, the "first cause" to me is what I believe to be the point where science and religion may merge into the very same thing, only seen through different perspectives (and therefore assumed to be different things).

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23 Jan 2009, 5:37 am

Orwell wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_Argument_for_God It is not simply something which we are currently incapable of explaining or that we don't understand, it's rather deeper than that.

Well I had a read. I'm not overly impressed to be honest. The crux seems to be the assertion:

1. Every finite and contingent being has a cause.
2. Nothing finite and contingent can cause itself.
3. A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
4. Therefore, a First Cause (or something that is not an effect) must exist.

Point number 2 is incorrect. Particles are created and destroyed all the time, they appear from nowhere without cause.
I'm rusty on the physics now, but I seem to remember there is a finite probability of particles simply coming into existence from nowhere, as is demonstrated in reality. It is known as vacuum fluctuation. The principle is well known and there are many experiments which show it to be real and quantifiable.

It can also be expressed very crudely as 0= 1 - 1

Overall you have nothing, but each term on the right is "something".

I'm speculating now, but it would not surprise me if at some point in the future scientists actually discovered that if you add everything up in the universe you end up with a grand total of nothing.

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DentArthurDent
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23 Jan 2009, 5:50 am

Yep I just read the article and my opinion remains, just because we do not know what caused the universe to exist does not therefore mean that a 'creator' was the cause, the simple answer is that for now we just do not know, our understanding of the universe is limited, even today they announced another breakthrough in quantum physics transfering information between atoms a metre apart (dont quote me I just caught it on the news).

Its seems to me that the cosmological argument is the last line of defence, and yet is pure conjecture.

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23 Jan 2009, 7:09 am

TallyMan wrote:

Orwell wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_Argument_for_God It is not simply something which we are currently incapable of explaining or that we don't understand, it's rather deeper than that.

point number 3 is also incorrect.

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23 Jan 2009, 7:18 am

Orwell wrote:

The cosmological argument, among other things, provides evidence that there was some supernatural force involved in the creation of the Universe.

This argument is "as dead as a doornail" ... since at least Spinoza. Spinoza showed clearly that a creator is not only not needed, but also impossible.

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23 Jan 2009, 7:20 am

Orwell wrote:

The point in that observation is that elements of religious belief that are universal across several diverse cultures are likely to have some sort of common basis, ...

They must have similarities: They are created by the same kind of brains, so the same kind of brains with the same lack of knowledge must produce similar kinds of madnesses. The other way around would more surprising.

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