Remember that the gospels are stories written for certain communities, intended to transport a certain message. It's not that easy to pierce through that to get at the historical Jesus. But if you take the gospels at their word (and if you ignore the discrepancies) then Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, which means that the afterlife was central to his message. If you look at the NT in context, Jesus preaches that the end is near, that any day the Lord will come with an army of angels and destroy the earthly kingdoms to replace them with the kingdom of god, and Jesus will rule that kingdom and all just people will be resurrected while the unjust ones will burn forever. At least that's the message as transported by Paul and the synoptic evangelists. And incidentally this is also the majority view of NT scholars: Jesus as apocalypticist. There is however also a minority view that basically holds that Paul and the subsequent evangelist interpreted Jesus as an apocalypticist and told stories of him that fit into that mold, but that once you try to look beyond that layer added by the evangelists, he was actually preaching the opposite, that the kingdom of god is right here and right now, that it is for the people to take, that all they need to do is follow the commandments and form a large community, etc. with no emphasis at all on any afterlife. Interestingly, both views are very much at odds with the vast majority of Christian orthodoxy.
The important part is their unfalsifiability while simultaneously lacking any evidence, being highly variable and much more complex than the simplest model. Everything else is just mental gymnastics that don't mean very much. For example: How can god be the "ground of all being", while at the same time "being" himself? It's a cop out, one that doesn't make sense at all. Why not have a meganatural leprechaun who is the ground for god's being? And then a hypernatural tomato that is the ground for the leprechaun's being? Or maybe we should just scrap all that crap and concentrate on the basics: unfalsifiability while simultaneously lacking any evidence, being highly variable and much more complex than the simplest model.
If you do the research you'll generally find that these "made-up ideas" have their roots in human experience, whether that root is prayer, meditation, some kind of community ritual, or maybe just eating some mushrooms found in a cowpie. These experiences were codified and handed down (and perhaps dumbed down) over the ages to give us the religious beliefs and practices we have today. And yes, ideas evolve as we learn more about ourselves and our world, including metaphysical ideas. I don't have a problem with that. One person's copout is another's paradox. You expect all of reality to conform to your standards of an either/or proposition and the tools we use to navigate our physical existence. You and other strict materialists/positivists just plain deny the fact that there's anything beyond physical reality in the first place. So when you argue with Christians or anybody of a spiritual persuasion you're automatically going to misunderstand where they're coming from because implicit in their worldview is a notion that there is "something more", however that person might define it or be aware of it. And yes, they might be wrong. But then, so might you. Only if you have no idea what I'm talking about.
Three points: 1) I don't expect anything of reality at all, I just take what I can grasp. There's no use to speculate beyond that point. 2) If your explanation for something (god) results in a paradox, then it doesn't explain anything. Why even resort to it? 3) And of course you still have all the other problems on top of that. It's not only paradoxical, but unfalsifiable, highly variable, lacking any evidence and cut down by Occam's razor, all simultaneously.
Mate, I don't think even you know what you're talking about. All this talk of 'categorically different orders of beings' is just a distraction. This idea of a god as a 'source of all being' is just your definition of a concept, and concepts should be evaluated on their merits. Why does all being need a source, any more than the world needs invisible pan-dimensional leprechauns? Your distinguishing criteria are irrelevant to the matter under discussion, and just an excuse to regard god as a special case. I'm not flat out denying that there's anything more than physical existence. I'm just saying that if you expect a rational person to entertain the proposition that there is, they need something to hang their hat on. Just as if I expected you to entertain the possibility of leprechauns, I'd have to give you more than "well, you can't prove that they don't exist so you have to take my hypothesis seriously".
1) More power to you. Just keep in mind that not everybody who claims to grasp something that doesn't fit your experience is stupid or nuts. 2) Not everything can be easily explained in words. Your assumption that all experience should be easily explainable is just that, an assumption. Otherwise there'd be no need for poetry, just prose. 3) And yet people will still stand by their experience in this regard. Just as an exercise it might be helpful to check out some work in interfaith dialogue. They don't get as much press as the fundie psychos, but there are intelligent people of faith attempting to work out the differences between religions in a way that's mutually beneficial and doesn't denigrate apparently differing metaphysical assumptions or views. I think atheists could potentially learn a lot from this practice, as many seem to only want to engage people of faith as part of their quest to tear it down, and they either refuse to or can't understand the fundamentally different assumptions made about reality in general by believers of various stripes.
I rarely do. All this talk in general is just a distraction. Or maybe the inherent linguistic limitations should be acknowledged in any such definition of a concept. Got me. I'm only saying there's a long history of people claiming various types of experience of such a source. There is no such history regarding ipdl's. You choose to think those people are deluded. I think that's probable, but that they are attempting to describe something real. YMMV and all that. I disagree. I'm not expecting jack, and I don't care where you hang your hat. I just think you fail to acknowledge fundamentally different assumptions regarding the ultimate nature of "all this", and instead assume that religious people are experiencing reality pretty much the same way you are, with the addition of all this weird whateverness that you do perfectly fine without. I'm just not seeing much willingness to entertain the possibility that others' experience of being-in-the-world is drastically different than yours. True, but that just gets back to my point that you rejected, so here we are again.
Sure, but then it's either demonstrable, or meaningless to everybody else I'm not saying that everything is or should be explainable. Rather the opposite really. God is an explanation after all, one that is inherently paradoxical. I'm saying that it's more useful to have no explanation at all. Probably so. People believe all kinds of crazy things. And I will continue to dismiss these beliefs until I have good reasons to change my mind. Well, to me that's just mental gymnastics. I mean I have read a bit of what's going on there. They work out all kinds of complicated theological frameworks which might all be very intriguing, but they're all based upon premises that I reject and which have no foundation in reality. Either that or they're descending into semantic relativism which is just as useless.
I don't have a problem with ideas evolving either. I have a problem with inherited credibility when the older idea is disproven. In other words - god ideas start out as anthropomorphized beings behind storms or the sun or some other such attempt to explain things. They evolve into more and more powerful beings. Skeptical attitudes come along and question these things. Old ideas are debunked, new ones are too... but then someone says "oh but what I believe isn't like that, it's something you can't test". This is not a good reason to accept the idea or give it any kind of clout. You're building false equivalencies, something which has been dealt with extensively before. We might be wrong, so might they. Is that really the bottom line? If it were we wouldn't have computers and planes today, nor would we have a constantly moving picture of spirituality that is always trying to integrate the newest discoveries into it in order to better satisfy people's need to answer tough questions. Also, as benztown pointed out, no expectation is required to begin with. No, but their ideas can certainly be stupid or nuts. This is utter nonsense. You're saying we can't explain poetry? Living in reality and wanting evidence does not prevent people from feeling emotional connections and expressing them in poetic ways. nterfaith dialog is great. It is however no different than Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans trying to reconcile their two fictional universes. You seem to think they're can't be amazing experiences, beauty or emotion without spirituality. So, does spirituality require religion (Sam Harris would say no for example) and to get back to the beginning of this sub-discussion, why do you assume the existence of two categorically different orders of being? You criticized us for apparently making assumptions about things (assuming that they can always be explained or understood) even though we did no such thing. Where do you get "categorically different orders of being" as an idea that's more valid than, say, warp drive or FTL?
Because they're riddled with doubt and try to paint atheists as the enemy in order to convince themselves that they're right. It's called overcompensation. I dunno...you really got me there...
There are plenty of fairy stories about leprechauns. No. I am merely observing that their belief is not in any way rational or sensible. Whether the reason for this belief is delusion, insanity, a lack of critical thinking skills or a simple emotional frailty that prevents them from facing up to the the cognitive dissonance of their position I care little, and make no comment upon. I have no idea what all this semi-existential blather actually means. I suspect you don't either. Seems like you're kinda sorta trying to argue that people's yearning for meaning in their lives should excuse them throwing the rules of rational thinking out the window when it comes to explaining the things they experience. I make no assumptions about the nature of anything. I just ask people to give me a rational reason to buy into a concept before I entertain it as a serious possibility. Personally I think that's a fairly low threshold to set.
I think it's quite possible to separate the ideas from the claims they supposedly support. Religious people aren't deluded in the sense that they do genuinely feel things and they are indeed trying to describe those feelings. You just can't get from there to the existence of something unfalsifiable. I'm honestly not sure what you're getting at. Atheists aren't incapable of feeling the exact same things that religious people feel. They just don't label those things supernatural. The furthest we go is the starting point of "I don't know". If someone tries to convince me of something - whether it be gods or leprechauns - they need to go through the same process regardless of how old or acceptable or understandable one idea is. You are proposing that religous people go through a different process and I agree - but it is demonstrable that they are capable of applying the same reasoning that we do because they already do that for any number of ideas. But religious people don't do it for their god, alien abduction believers don't do it for UFOs and aliens and I don't do it for certain questions of soccer even today. So essentially you're still making things up and actually denigrating believers or atheists by labeling them as so different as being incapable of going through the same things.
It's meaningless unless it's put into terms another person can relate to. The few who were able to do so have inspired religions or become surrounded with students, or just provided the world with brilliant art. More power to you. I think we differ in that I don't have a problem with paradox. Sounds good. That's not really not the kind of thing I'm talking about, it's less about the complicated theological frameworks and more about finding a way to acknowledge and respect the experience of another though it may be drastically different than your own, which is much more difficult than it sounds. Edit: I'll try to respond to other posts later tonight. Told myself I wasn't gonna get into this shit on here again, but so it goes.
This is just mealy-mouthed talk to avoid calling a spade a spade. The simple fact of the matter is that religious believers do not hold an intellectually credible position. I accept that there are many different and complex underlying reasons that people believe in gods, and that the belief in god does not necessarily mean someone is stupid - and certainly not that they're undeserving of respect as a person. But let's not try and find excuses to pretend that the belief itself is in any way sensible. You wouldn't do it for the guy on the subway in the tinfoil hat who thinks that the CIA is scanning his brain.
That's like if I said, "I am just as certain that there is no intelligent life in other planets as I am that there are no microscopic pink elephants on the moon". Certainly both concepts aren't falsifiable, and I certainly I can make a decision within my own mind to deny the idea that either exists if I want to, but on the other hand if I want to make them equivalent to each other in terms of expecting other people to see and accept or reject both concepts equally, I would be foolish. I think likewise also it is foolish to expect that everybody else will equate the concept of God with the concept of leprechauns, just because you do. If it works for you, wonderful for you, but don't flaunt it as if by saying this you discovered some sort of existential truth that the rest of us are expected to also accept. Because no matter how many times you repeat that it is the same, and how much sense repeating it makes to you, the concept of God for many human beings is nothing at all like the concept of leprechauns.
It's not the same at all. Evidence can take on many forms. We have much better evidence supporting the idea of intelligent life and much less evidence contradicting that same idea as with pink elephants on the moon.
It is if you are looking at it purely from the concept of falsifiability. Which is all I was addressing in that particular post. If you want to talk about other elements in the discussion, go nuts. But the reality is that on some level, the arguments of theists striving for people to acknowledge the credibility of their viewpoint all basically fall back on the unfalsifiability of their claims. Which, as demonstrated, is no reason to ascribe credibility to any idea.
But even if there is no concrete evidence at all, the idea of "intelligent life in the universe" is a broader concept than a little pink elephant, more encompassing and thus more likely to be believed. Likewise, the idea of a superior intelligence in the universe -or beyond the universe- is a much broader concept than a jolly little intelligent green guy who is hiding in my backyard, and thus much more likely to be believed. It doesn't mean you have to believe either, but to equate both concepts is ridiculous.
Not exactly. Intelligent life, pink elephants and green guys are concrete ideas. The idea of a superior intelligence is vague and undefined. You may say that "superior intelligence" is defined, you simply take the meaning of superior and the meaning of intelligence and add them together. But we don't really know what that means and if you give it some sort of concrete definition (let's say a more advanced civilization) you are moving away from the religious position. As for beyond the uiverse, it's more obviously undefined.
I don't think they do. I have many friends and family who are honest people of strong faith, including my own father, and they do not fall on the concept of falsifiability. Religion may be a human creation, but it has been a part of human life since before written history began, and continues to be to this day and age. And it is so because it works for so many people, in their own lives and their own reality. It many not work for you, and it may not work for me. But to deny that it does works for great numbers of human beings would be to be blind. I don't literally believe in religion and dogma, but to say with assurance that there's nothing to it, that there is nothing behind it, and to compare it to something as silly as a leprechaun, is also in a way to ignore evidence and shut ourselves out of something simply because we don't understand it. I think all religion -and most philosophy- is a human attempt to understand something, and that something is valid conceptually, and there is a good probability that it's real, in the same sense that what we seem to perceive with our senses may be real. I mean beyond being non-falsifiable as a leprechaun might be.
I'm not talking about whether religion 'works' or not. I'm merely addressing whether it is an intellectually supportable position. Which it's not. Whether religion serves a valid purpose to the human psyche is a completely different discussion, and one I'm quite happy to concede. As are many atheists - see Alain de Botton's latest book for example, Religion For Atheists.
By superior I mean an intelligence we may not fully understand, in the same sense that an inferior intelligence may perhaps not fully understand us, but still may recognize that we are intelligence. We human beings are concrete proof of the existence of intelligence and of the amazing things that possessing intelligence is capable of. I could argue that we are little Gods ourselves, as we might ourselves find a way to create artificial intelligence and life. Hell, we might conceivably be able to create some sort of internally consistent universe, at least theoretically. If I can see in myself such great potentially in terms of ability to understand, create, dream of greatness -although granted it is limited by my own physical nature- then I am not going to shut off myself off to the fantastic idea that a much greater intelligence and creativity might exist, and might be responsible for much greater creativity, understanding and dreams than those I can come up with myself based on my own intelligence. I mean, you might not want to pursue such thoughts yourself, but to compare such possibilities as equal with the limited idea that a green little guy lives under my bed -as some are trying to do- is beyond ridiculous