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Denial of the existence of the supernatural to include a deity.
Denial of the existence of objective morality.
Denial that Jesus ever existed or, if he did exist, could never have been what he claimed to be.
Denial that the Bible is true.
Denial of all Christian doctrines.
Assumption that it's possible for something to pop into existence out of nothing (the old rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick without the rabbit or the hat) or that it's possible to have actual infinite sets (a never ending series of causes and effects).
...shall I continue?
You mean like not collecting stamps is a hobby, or not playing football is a sport? This has to rank up there with one of the most ridiculous posts you have ever made, and you've made plenty of those...
You are doing an excellent job Capo. I can see this pivoting on where the burden of proof lies. That's where I ended up in my one and only debate with Tiggie and indeed with old Boxcar on the validity of taking materialistic naturalism as the preferable, evidence based assumption, which put the burden of proof onto the theist to show that there is any evidence for some sort of 'god' input.
Your point that philosophical (hopefully logical) arguments about the existence of God can only ever be speculative and can prove nothing, is important. What makes it worse is that a supernatural being can do, be or think anything, so the argument can hardly be along any lines at all. Is it any wonder we have to prefer verified evidence as a default?
Fortunately, with Biblegod we do have some guidelines and can argue on that basis, as will surely happen here, if the debate progresses that far, though I can see it foundering on the rock of where the burden of proof lies.
So far Capo, as I say, you are making an excellent case for materialist naturalism being the infinitely preferable default -theory or mechanisms as an explanation for the way things are.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 04-01-2012 at 04:18 AM..
Let us be very clear, my point is that I wish to minimize the faith component by relying on repeatable verifiable evidence, and thus minimize my deviation from actuality as best I can. If something is not falsifiable, its truth value cannot be tested, and should be left out of consideration. It is essentially just noise, ad should be filtered out. This is the entire point of rejecting the supernatural, to remove error. Should what is considered supernatural today prove to be repeatable and quantifiable, then we can include it in the natural and study it just like we do all the other thing that were once considered the province of the gods(e.g. disease, celestial bodies, weather, etc..)
I understand and appreciate your point. It would appear that scientists have been trying to minimize the faith component for a good deal of time and I applaud their efforts so long as it's done without bias for or against the existence of the supernatural. Good science can correct poor theology.
I take it that you would then agree that all worldviews contain a faith component?
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Originally Posted by NoCapo
Back this one way up! I am not your strawman! I am not interested in disregarding any evidence! I wish to evaluate the evidence. Some evidence is very important, some makes less of a difference, and some is entirely useless in reaching a conclusion, but it should all be looked at.
I have very clearly stated my reason for not believing in a deity. Quite simply I have encountered no clear evidence for the existence of any god, and have found that, in general naturalistic explanations have far greater explanatory and predictive power, are testable, and are falsifiable. All of the theories and hypotheses about the supernatural including gods appear to have little support, and have virtually no predictive power.
Essentially, a huge reason for holding to a naturalistic viewpoint is that it works! Naturalistic explanations are responsible for the advances in medicine, technology, and science. It was precisely the abandoning of supernaturalism that led to the heliocentric understanding of the solar system and Kepler's laws of planetary motion. The reason you no longer get bled at the hospital, or that you don't have a sandpainting done instead of surgery is, you guessed it, naturalism.
Are you aware of the fact that the process of peer review has it's roots in the Christian seminaries of the 1500's and 1600's?
Are you aware of the fact that the vast majority of these early scientists were Christians?
This is where many of you get it wrong. Christianity frees one to pursue truth where ever it leads. God reveals himself through nature and scripture. Therefore, there's no need for a scientist holding to a Christ centered worldview to be biased towards making the information fit in any particular fashion in order to accommodate such a worldview.
Now, does this mean that all Christians are unbiased? Certainly not. However, it's just as equally possible and likely for a scientist holding to the naturalistic worldview to be every bit as biased in their interpretation of the evidence as any Christian.
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Originally Posted by NoCapo
A number of reasons. First, these are logical arguments, not evidence. Mystic and I had a conversation about this. You are never going to be able to prove the existence of something through logic alone. It is like the philosophers arguing about how many teeth a horse has. If you want to reach the truth, you open its mouth! In the same way, logical arguments are fine, but if the supernatural is not observable or testable, and we cannot reliably measure any effect it has on the physical world, why should we give it any credence?
As previously discussed, if the supernatural could be observed and measured it would logically cease to be supernatural.
Scientific investigation has it's limitations. As stated, there are many empirically unverifiable assumptions that scientists must make in order to conduct scientific investigation. This would be why we have such a field as epistemology (How do we know what we know?).
Again, I'm not looking for you to provide empirical proof but to simply provide philosophical reasoning (after all, this is a PHILOSOPHY forum) in order to support the coherency and logic of holding to a naturalistic worldview.
Does naturalism provide sound and logical alternatives to the classical arguments for God's existence?
Does naturalism provide sufficient REASON for the Bible to be disregarded?
Does naturalism provide sufficient REASON for denying the existence of Jesus or denying who Jesus claimed to be?
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Originally Posted by NoCapo
This is especially true for much of the supernatural which is intentionally defined in such a way as to be unfalsifiable. In any other aspect of life, if someone tried to sell us something with promises of how good it was, but we couldn't actually examine it, or test it, and the results aren't measurable, we would rightly call it a con.
"Intentionally" defined? Do you see this as some sort of larger conspiracy to deceive?
How does it's unfalsifiable and immeasurable nature provide sufficient REASON for denying it's possible existence?
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Originally Posted by NoCapo
Secondly, in both the arguments you mentioned, the concept of god-did-it has no explanatory or predictive value. If we assume, for instance that the bibg bang happened in a specific way, there are very specific consequences that allow us to make predictions to test the theory.
...and what would be the naturalists alternative to the two arguments?
It seems to me that "god-did-it" has significant explanatory value...at least until a more logical alternative is presented.
I have nothing against Big Bang cosmology. Still, I would ask what caused it? Also, what caused the space in which the bang occurred to exist?
Let's keep asking and let's keep searching and let the evidence lead us where ever it will.
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Originally Posted by NoCapo
By using a supernatural explanation, we remove all predictive power from the explanation. You cannot derive the behavior of matter or energy from the "god as creator" hypothesis. It is in effect a useless explanation that does nothing except stifle further inquiry.
Why are you convinced that it "stifles" further inquiry?
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Originally Posted by NoCapo
The logical reason is that there is no compelling reason to believe in the supernatural. By definition it is not repeatable, verifiable, or falsifiable. Naturalistic explanations provide far greater predictive power and allow us to learn and expand our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. In addition, naturalism requires no dogma, just a simple evaluation of the evidence.
You don't equate a presupposition of the non-existence of the supernatural with being dogmatic?
Would you be of the opinion that a presupposition that the supernatural DOES exist is free of dogma as well?
The problem with "evidence" is that it quite often boils down to subjectivity. IMO, one need not look any further than the end of their own nose in order to see empirical proof for the existence of God.
Atheists choose not to believe in Yahweh for exactly the same reason you choose not to believe in Allah, Zeus, Thor, Poseidon, Tezcatlipoca, Vishnu or the thousands of other dieties that have existed in the imagination of mankind since the beginning of civilization. Nobody expects you to actually defend your disbelief in all these other gods, why should we offer Yahweh special consideration just because Christian mythology happens to be part of our culture at this moment in time? A few hundred years from now, people will look at Christianity just like we look at Greek, Norse and Roman mythology.
A presumptuous assertion given the fact that you don't know what it is that I believe much less why I believe it.
However, if you think you can make the case that it's equally reasonable to believe in all of these other deities I'm all ears.
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Originally Posted by LindavG
There is no such evidence so it remains a what if question. If there were evidence of something preceding and creating the current natural world, it would just be incorporated into our understanding of nature. How would you measure the supernatural, what kind of evidence would affirm the supernatural?
You are betraying a bit of atheistic dogma here. "What if" does not automatically equate to can't.
"Evidence" tends to be quite subjective.
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Originally Posted by LindavG
As NoCapo already explained to you, there is a difference between holding the position that "no supernatural entities can exist" and "there is no evidence to support a belief in supernatural entities". I don't think you are unaware of this difference, you just choose to ignore it because it doesn't fit your hypothesis about our beliefs. I think most of us will agree with you that a positive belief in the non-existence of God is not a reasonable position to hold because it requires faith. I'm not quite sure why you think this is problematic though, because holding a positive belief in the existence of God also requires faith and is for that reason not reasonable, yet you think this is perfectly OK. I'm always confused when religious people criticise atheism as being "just" a religion and complain that atheists require "faith" to believe as we do. They're basically saying: "Well, you're just as unreasonable as we are!" Of course, it's complete nonsense. As Bill Maher put it: "If atheism is a religion then abstinence is a sex position".
Unreasonable faith (or blind faith) is just that...it's unreasonable. I'm of the opinion that there is every reason to believe in the truth of the Bible and the existence of God and the supernatural. If I didn't, I wouldn't believe it.
My only point in this thread is that naturalism relies on faith in the same way as any other worldview. IMO, naturalism calls for a great deal more faith than does Christianity.
Naturalism doesn't deserve any special status or free pass in the philosophical arena.
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Originally Posted by LindavG
Anyway, to answer your question: the reason for not holding a positive belief in the supernatural is that there is not one shred of evidence to support it. This would be more than sufficient reason in any other domain of discourse. If there is no evidence, the default position is not to hold a positive belief in it. If I tell you that there is an invisible pink dragon in my garage, you'd have no way to disprove it. Does that mean you should give my claim any credence? Again, the default position is to disbelieve it until I can provide some actual verifiable evidence (i.e. personal anecdotes won't do) to prove that the dragon does exist.
Again, "evidence" quite often tends to be subjective.
I'm not asking or demanding that anyone provide proof or empirical evidence and I don't really view this as a "default" position. As there are a wide variety of competing worldviews it seems logical to me to adopt the view that is most reasonable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LindavG
There is a difference between faith and evidence-based belief. Faith is belief without empirical evidence. The naturalist view does not rely on faith, it relies on evidence-based belief which is perfectly reasonable.
I would agree that there is a difference between blind faith and reasonable faith. If your position is that naturalism is more reasonable than Christianity I'm certainly willing to hear you out.
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Originally Posted by LindavG
As opposed to supernaturalism? LOL!
Lead on maestro! Please explain the logical coherence of naturalism.
I can only wonder how many are reading these posts ? Seems everyone on here has an agenda to promote what they have convinced themselves to be the" truth" and the justification their of.
I guess the reason religions have endured for so long, mostly intact, promoting the thoughts presented in a much less intelligent world 500 years ago, is that magic is often hard to prove one way or the other. Religious promoters use fictional stories like the Bible and other books, speeches, and hearsay, to prove just about any thing one wants to discuss or disprove. Its the mystery, the magic, the fear and the possibility all of us are getting things wrong, on both sides of the isle. Can anyone really prove the existence of God, as defined by most Religions? No , I have yet to see any real proof. Can science prove the reasonable facts that fly in the face of these religions?... I , in my opinion feel they can, they have and continue to improve/discover what out existence means in the Universe ,. I see little proof and credence coming from the religious side, only agendas, distorted facts, make believe, magic, just about anything that can promote their Church teachings what ever they are. I have yet to see any real discussions occur that can debate from a middle ground and an open mind .
You are correct in saying this. Atheists believe that most of Christianity is a falsehood.
However, there are some moral teachings which are still useful. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Understood. Still, there is a difference between believing some moral teaching to be useful because I myself deem it to be useful and believing it's useful because a higher power has established it as useful.
It goes to the deeper debate over the existence of moral absolutes.
You are correct in saying this. Atheists believe that most of Christianity is a falsehood.
However, there are some moral teachings which are still useful. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I must disagree totally ! forget the radical religious wackos, just concentrate on how much harm, wars, unrest, murders, and fleecing of the less knowing that has gone on in mainstream Religions. I agree with Bill Maher on this. What he says about religion is his most important statement and discussion.Most everything else is as an entertainer , political humor at its best !
The vast majority of atheists actually subscribe to naturalism. Naturalism relies most heavily upon blind faith or unwarranted credulity and it's adherents hold to specific doctrines - much like 'religion.'
Again, 'religion' tends to be a loaded term.
So.. your point is? That naturalists tend to have religious attributes? Like a regard for scientifically proven facts? That's not the OP's point, siily boy. A lot of atheists also eat carrots, and enjoy them! Does that make them "religilous" Carrotinoid-Heads? As in: "Eat your carrots or the Carrot God will come and turn you orange colored! The Carrot-Head's Hell!"
The OP's specific point, which you tried to hijack, is that those who eventually chose to not believe in your particular God do not go with any repeated and rote-chanted parrot-like pre-mandated behaviors. You know like these?
(BTW< this one may of particular interest for your hypocrisy/scorn, tigetmax? It's a mass for Catholic gay men... Where is Satan in this picture? I can't see Him?)
FACT: we atheists just don't believe in God at all, and the rest of our beliefs may or may not be related to that logical conclusion.
Of course, atheists tend to be far more rational, and thus they tend towards the sciences, engineering, math & physics, and so on. This also supports the "Naturalism" label you use with such ill-educated scorn. That only shows they know how to think, which is NOT, nor ever has been, an attribute of the religious.
In fact, they regularly show their particular scorn for that process, refusing to even read our links or to try out any of the studies that have so absolutely disproven all the old biblical myths. Wonder why that is?
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