Playing the Indian Card

Monday, February 26, 2007

Strong Reasons for Not Believing in God

EJ:
Descart started with another false premise, that there was an evil genius who planted the idea of a god. Those who planted the delusion in his head actually believed that god existed, thus they were not evil geniuses.

SR:
I find this assertion of yours remarkable—that Descartes postulated an evil genius “who planted the idea of a god.” Because it is a flat assertion, and it is flatly untrue; as anyone who has read Descartes would know. It is not even a plausible misreading.

What does that say? 1. You have not read Descartes. 2. You are prepared to state as fact things about which you have no idea, and know you have no idea. Which is to say, you are prepared to dissemble in order to appear to have made a point in this argument.

Why would you do this? It seems folly. Particularly since you had every reason to believe I had myself read Descartes, and would know if you had guessed wrong in your claim.

You might want to explain why you did this; to me, it smacks of whistling past the graveyard. I assume you actually care about the subject of the argument, and are not just in this for ego. Yet you are more concerned with seeking to make me or a reader believe the given assertion, than with whether or not that assertion is actually true. It is as if you yourself felt that the point that God existed was already lost or probably lost; and your strategy was only to avoid the general realization of this for as long as possible.

Still completely irrational, of course, since if there is a God, there is no way to hide from him. But common human behaviour. It’s just as given in the story of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve, knowing God directly, must have known there was no chance of hiding from him. Yet, knowing they have done wrong, they nevertheless jump behind the bushes.

Those who seek to contest religion like to claim that belief in God and an afterlife could be simply “wish fulfillment.”

But this makes no sense at all. Granted that there are some people who indeed wish for the existence of a God and an afterlife—those, roughly, who “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Those enumerated in the Beatitudes. But, in the natural run of things, there will be far more people who must hope it is not so.

After all, consider the alternatives. If there is no God, we can believe we are called to no more than seeking our personal comfort and our personal wants. We are free to do whatever we choose. If there is a God, we must submit our will to his. We have a boss, even in our most intimate moments. Not something most people would naturally wish for.

Similarly, if there is no afterlife, all that happens when we die is that our consciousness ceases. Hardly a frightening concept. If there is an afterlife, there is every possibility that it could be worse than the present state—we might be born again as a carbuncle, or end up in hell, in fact.

If we have done wrong, and there is no God, we can hope to get away with it. If there is a God, we know we will eventually be punished. Obvious incentive for anyone who has ever sinned to avoid belief in God—and all of us have surely sinned.

If we have some advantage over our neighbour—in looks, in wealth, in intelligence, in the circumstances of our birth—and there is a God, we must expect to eventually lose this advantage, knowing we have not earned it. But if there is no God, we can hope to keep it.

And, ultimately, if there is a God, he is the centre of the universe—and we are not. He is God—and we are not.

All this is hard to accept. Even the devout speak of passing through a “dark night of the soul” in order to grapple with and accept it. Or of “dying to self,” or of having to be “born again.” Accepting it, in other words, is as difficult as dying.

Fear of these implications of belief, I suspect, is behind most if not all atheism. It explains why atheists tend to be militant about it, whereas in all logic, if God does not exist, it should not be of any consequence if the next person believes otherwise. Indeed, nothing at all ought to be of much consequence.

Among other things, this means that the psychological, if not the logical, onus is rather on those who deny God’s existence to prove their point. Because, psychologically, the case seems clear that wish fulfillment is more likely on their side. What is remarkable is that, despite all the emotional incentives not to believe, almost all mankind has believed in principle, up to the present time. That in itself is a sort of proof.

EJ:
People had the idea the Earth was flat because the bible states there are angels at the four corners of our planet.

SR:
Jeff, you really should study myth and metaphor to understand it, rather than dismissing it as merely something “untrue.” Aristotle says that the ability to understand myth and to use metaphor properly are the marks of genius. That being so—and for now I simply assert it is so—most of the best and finest thoughts of mankind are expressed in myth and metaphor. Miss these, and you are dining only on the intellectual world’s table scraps.

Let’s look at the image of the four cornered world, for example.

The four-cornered world, familiar in Greek and Chinese thought, and probably other cultures as well, is not a spatial description of the earth. It is a temporal description, expressed in spatial terms; a metaphor. The four corners are the two solstices and the two equinoxes, in the first instance; though this in turn is only a paradigm of the necessary progression between two contraries. The “winds” which come from these four corners are the winds of change: the four seasons, in the first instance.

This has absolutely no bearing on the question of whether the earth, as a spatial entity, is round or flat. If proof were needed, note that it is a Greek concept, and, as previously noted, the Greeks were perfectly aware that the earth was round. So was Shakespeare, who uses the image several times; as many poets have since.

EJ:
Guess you don't know the story of Colubus if you think only farmers believed his ship would fall off the world.

SR:
You are taken in yet again by an urban legend, Jeff. As I told you before, you have to go back, when possible, to primary sources. The legend that Columbus alone in his day supposed the earth was round can be dated back to a historical novel by Washington Irving in the nineteenth century. A historical novel: a product, like, ironically, much of what we "know" about Santa Claus, of Washington Irving’s imagination. It just made a better story. Like the Da Vinci Code today, too many credulous people took it and take it as fact.

From their surviving writings, it is actually clear that Clement, Origen, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Isodore, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas—essentially all the early doctors of the church-- took it as proven that the Earth was a sphere. Note this in regard to the “four cornered earth” of the Book of Revelations as well: this was never taken by the Church as a physical description.

EJ:
An Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was burned to death by the Catholic church because his idea of an infinite universe disputed the Church's dogma that we were at the center.

SR:
That, possibly, and/or the fact that he held that Christ was not God, that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, not of God, that the Devil will be saved, and so forth. And/or possibly the charges of personal misconduct, and/or, according to Frances Yates, because he was believed to be, and may have been, a spy for the Queen of England and the Protestants.

We will never know. We don’t know what he was convicted for; the court files were lost long ago.

One thing we can be certain he was not convicted for was for saying that the sun, and not the earth, was at the centre of the universe. That was not against Church doctrine.

EJ:
Re your post: First there's an obvious contradiction of natural vs. a God, which is supernatural, therefore, unnatural. Thus, in essence you and Aquinas are arguing that natural phenomena is unnatural.

SR:
Remember, “supernatural” is your word, not mine. You choose to define God as “supernatural,” and then insist because of this choice of word that he can by definition have nothing to do with nature. That's tautological.

But even though you’ve chosen the playing field, this still does not work. For it must follow, then, that a superpower can have no influence on mere powers. That a supermarket can have no influence on a market. That a superstructure can have no influence on a structure.

You are working from a false definition—of your own chosen term. “Super” means “above,” “greater than,” or indeed “in control of,” not “wholly apart from.”

EJ:
We exist because there is inevitablity in randomness. If you played Lotto 649 a million times, it would not be a question of IF you would win, but how many times.

[SR:
Side note: you’re wrong, there, strictly speaking. The chances of winning the main prize at Lotto 649 are surely less than one in a million.]

EJ:
Because matter is ever-changing in an infinite universe, it's inevitable the physical stuff that makes us who we are will reoccur.

Now, here's a shocking argument you might not have heard: WITHOUT the random interactions of the elements, we would not exist. If there was some set, interlocking pattern to the universe, the necessary conditions for our existence could become occluded, locked out. Because an infinity of time has preceded us, our existence proves no such occulsion is possible (otherwise it would have happened already, because it has had forever to do so, the forever that existed before us).

SR:
Jeff, you have just proved the opposite of what you think you have. As you say, if time is infinite, and all possibilities occur at random, it is inevitable that, at some time or another before the present (given an infinity of time), a situation must have occurred that would lock out, as you say, the future possibility of our existence. Hence, we would not exist.

Yet we do. Hence, the fact that we do proves either that time is not infinite, or events are not random, or both.

Indeed, it rather tends to the conclusion that events are not random, but directed towards our existence.

5 comments:

Jeff Harmsen said...

I have not read Descartes for about 20 years because his arguments are obsolete. The bit about his premise of an evil genius I read directly from you post. You're saying you misquoted Descarte? I'll take your word for it.

So, you think people will run out into the streets to have orgies, go on murderous rampages if not for a god, because people will have no ultimate judgement. However, morals have been around since before religion was invented. Empathy and love are traits in our genes. Religion merely hijacks these qualities as if they had invented them. Moreover, as I have already pointed out, someone who does good simply because it's the right thing to do is more moral than someone who does good to avoid hell or to get into heaven with a god.

God at the center of the Universe? First, you have not proven there is a god. Second, we are nowhere near the center of the universe if there even is such a thing.

Girodano Bruno's history is quite well documented. Again, it's been about 20 years, but I remember it as if it was yesterday, my Astronomy professor explaining how the brilliant Itallian was murdered by the Catholic church for speaking the truth. It was a revelation for me.

Humanistic Atheists are not militant: we are terrified of the faithful because of your egregeous lack of humanity and reason. I do not want my children to face a nuclear holocaust. Religion is the most likely cause of this possible doom. You pretend to drink blood, you revel in cannibalism, you place your delusions of a god above your fellow man.

Let me ask you this point blank: suppose you have a dream and you are sure your God is talking to you and He tells you to kill your own wife. Would you do it? See the dilema your delusion causes here? If you don't do it, it means you really don't believe in God. If you do do it, you are insane.

I am sick to death of religious insanity.

For crying out loud, God as supernatural is not my concept, but clearly depicted in thousands of pages of biblical text. Walking on water is not natural, the parting of the Red sea is not natural. Perfection itself, is not natural.

Re 649: according to an expert on probaility, if you bought 250,000 tickets, it's a virtual lock you will win at least once. Moreover, as has been the case all along, you have missed the validity of my argument (there is inevitability in probability when given enough opportunity for a particular result to exist).

Considering the delusional haze that distorts your perception, I didn't think you would be able to grasp the fact that randomness is essential to our existence. Try reading it again. If you can be civil, I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have regarding the actual truth about your existence (not just my truth, but the actual truth I can prove with valid arguments).

Imagine an amature chemist who happens to find a cure for cancer. He approaches universities with his cure, but because he does not have a PhD, nobody takes him seriously.

Welcome to a day in my life! This will all change when my book is published. In a democracy, the cream always rises to the top, right?

Steve Roney said...

EJ:
So, you think people will run out into the streets to have orgies, go on murderous rampages if not for a god, because people will have no ultimate judgement.

SR:
Not exactly; they would still fear human opprobrium and human punishment. But don’t blame me for this assumption; it was plainly stated recently by an atheist writing in the National Post. Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to endorse it.

EJ:
However, morals have been around since before religion was invented.

SR:
It would be a neat trick to know that, since as far as we can tell, religion is as old as man. It is striking, though, that animals other than man seem to have both no religion, and no concept of morality.

EJ:
Moreover, as I have already pointed out, someone who does good simply because it's the right thing to do is more moral than someone who does good to avoid hell or to get into heaven with a god.

SR:
That’s a fair and a correct point. Right and wrong are right and wrong whether God exists or not. Therefore, the obligation on us to be moral exists whether we are atheists or Christians. I was wrong to suggest otherwise, except perhaps in a psychological sense—that those of us tempted could suppose we might “get away with it.”

EJ:
God at the center of the Universe? … we are nowhere near the center of the universe if there even is such a thing.

SR:
Don’t confuse the physical universe with the universe.

EJ:
Girodano Bruno's history is quite well documented. Again, it's been about 20 years, but I remember it as if it was yesterday, my Astronomy professor explaining how the brilliant Itallian was murdered by the Catholic church for speaking the truth. It was a revelation for me.

SR:
That version of the story would probably have been a revelation for Bruno as well.

EJ:
Humanistic Atheists are not militant: we are terrified of the faithful because of your egregeous lack of humanity and reason. I do not want my children to face a nuclear holocaust.

SR:
Good. Atomic bombs have been dropped, so far, exactly twice. Did a religious figure drop them? No; I don’t think Harry Truman counts as a religious figure. What nations have nuclear weapons today? The US, Britain, France, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, possibly Israel and North Korea. I count three expressly atheist regimes, six secularist regimes, though Pakistan might be a bit ambiguous. No religious regimes. Of course, there are very few of them.

EJ:
Re 649: according to an expert on probaility, if you bought 250,000 tickets, it's a virtual lock you will win at least once. Moreover, as has been the case all along, you have missed the validity of my argument (there is inevitability in probability when given enough opportunity for a particular result to exist).

SR:
The actual odds of winning the jackpot have been calculated at precisely 13,983,816 to one. Of course, that does not mean that, if you bought 14 million tickets, you would have a virtual lock on winning—only a better than fifty percent chance.

EJ:
So, is that what you think God is, gravity? … Gravity and ever-changing matter is all we need to explain our existence.

SR:
Gravity is only one force acting on objects, according to physics. Besides gravitation, there are electromagnetism and the “strong” and “weak” subatomic forces. A unified field theory is not yet with us.

EJ:
Aristotle let his pants down in his argument when he said, "Everyone understands this (the first movement)to be God."

SR:
Those are St. Thomas Aquinas’s words, not Aristotle’s.

EJ:
The concept of a god is an affront to the law of parsimony, an unnecessary complication

SR:
No; as Berkeley demonstrated, it is the assumed existence of the physical world that violates Occam’s Razor. It can all be explained with a single, rather than an uncounted number of, entities.

EJ:
By the way, it is possible to use most ontological arguments in favor of God's existence to prove Batman and Robin exist. For instance, you could say, "imagine a perfect crime fighter, one of perfect jusice, valour, etc." The world would be less perfect without these crime fighters, so they must exist

SR:
That is nonsensical, unless you can prove that this is a perfect world.

EJ:
Also, I can imagine Batman being in a situation where he is caught by Catwoman and cannot escape without help. Robin helps Batman, thus the two working together is stronger than the whole, thus Batman and Robin must be real.

SR:
And that is nonsensical given your original definition of Batman as a “perfect” crimefighter. If he is perfect, he cannot need the help of another to fight crime.

EJ:
Finally, if you ask me for proof of ever-changing matter, I could show you a star that has gone super nova or nova, I could boil some water, I could show you cell division.

SR:
Sure; but you would have to show it happening forever.

Jeff Harmsen said...

Good, so you realize we don't need the notion of a god to have morals.

Non human animals are not moral because they lack the complexity, (the evolution) of the human brain.

I have already conceded that not all tyrants are religious. The current threat of a nuclear war, however, definitely includes the delusions of religion. 55 million Christians, for example, believe a nuclear war in the Middle East will bring back Christ.

Re gravity: I never said it was the only force. Your argument from antiquity was that something had to initiate movement, that something has to be God. I pointed out that simple gravity is what gets the extistential ball rolling.

Simple probability amid ever-changing matter is infinitely more parsimonious than God as creator. This is because God is supposed to be of infinite complexity (i.e knows EVERYTHING).

My flesh eating friend, of course my arguments to prove Batman was real were nonsensical. That was the whole point. I.e the exercise proves the argumnets that "prove" God are also nonsensical. (And you accused ME of not understanding those arguments when I acctually appied them in a different context, right under your nose, and you missed the whole point.)

With your delusions, you ran into your cult's old friend, hypocricy. You say I'd have to show matter is ever-changing forever to prove it while believing in a god, a supposed infinite entity, something you can not show me at all, let alone for eternity!

Nice job Steve!

That matter is ever-changing is an inductive argument. There is not one example of matter that stays the same forever. The inductive argument I remember from philosophy class (again this goes back about twenty years) is "All crows are black." Do you have to look at all crows for infinty to make this assumption?

Again I point out, I can show you crows, I can show you matter changing. What can you show me of your God? Nothing, zilch! A book loaded with irrefutabley erroneous content, that's all you have. Yet, fellow human beings continue to be slaughtered in the name of their god.

Steve Roney said...

EJ:
I have already conceded that not all tyrants are religious.

SR:
Good; now can you point to any tyrants who were religious? Oh yes, I guess you have: George Bush, right?

Right.

I’m sure there are lots more where that came from.

EJ:
Simple probability amid ever-changing matter is infinitely more parsimonious than God as creator. This is because God is supposed to be of infinite complexity (i.e knows EVERYTHING).

SR:
Infinite complexity is not an attribute generally ascribed to God. One could as meaningfully say, as the Vedantists do, that he is infinitely simple.

As Berkeley showed, assuming the existence of one unchanging being is infinitely more parsimonious than assuming the existence of an infinite number of ever-changing beings.

EJ:
My flesh eating friend, of course my arguments to prove Batman was real were nonsensical. That was the whole point. I.e the exercise proves the argumnets that "prove" God are also nonsensical.

SR:
No; your argument for Batman is quite unlike the arguments for the existence of God; that’s what you’re missing. The arguments for God do not require the assumption that the universe is perfect; yours for Batman does. That’s a fatal flaw.

EJ:
With your delusions, you ran into your cult's old friend, hypocricy. You say I'd have to show matter is ever-changing forever to prove it while believing in a god, a supposed infinite entity, something you can not show me at all, let alone for eternity!

SR:
You’re the one who relied on an empirical proof; not I.

EJ:
That matter is ever-changing is an inductive argument. There is not one example of matter that stays the same forever. The inductive argument I remember from philosophy class (again this goes back about twenty years) is "All crows are black." Do you have to look at all crows for infinty to make this assumption?

SR:
Logically, yes. This is the fatal weakness of all empirical “proofs.” As I pointed out at the beginning of this entire discussion, they are far weaker than logical proofs.

Incidentally, here’s a handsome photograph of a white crow:

http://www.queensburyvillage.co.uk/index.asp?s=6&p=0

I trust you get the point?

Jeff Harmsen said...

Come now Steve, an entity that is omnipotent would be of infinite complexity, so much so, it's proof God does not exist.

My purposely ridiculous arguments for Batman are metaphorical for those of God because in both cases, the arguments begin with fictional characters.

In the example of "perfect" (no such thing) I merely used "perfect crime fighter" to prove Batman, the way you use "perfect entity" to prove God.

Re empirical proof: exactly, everytime you breath, everything you see is matter ever-changing. We can not see God anywhere.

The point about inductive arguments is that you can see enough to go beyond a reasonable doubt. There is no example of matter that stays the same forever.

I will check out the white crow. Interesting.