Why bother with God? (General)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, May 26, 2011, 22:56 (4739 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,
> You don't seem to make any distinction between atheism and agnosticism. An atheist believes that God does not exist. An agnostic neither believes nor disbelieves in God. Withholding belief but NOT claiming that God does not exist is agnosticism, not atheism. In the context of the origin of life and of the adaptive or inventive mechanisms of evolution, if you say categorically that there is no designer (atheism), what alternative is there to chance? Of course your atheist scientist doesn't know HOW the mechanisms were formed. Nor does your theist scientist. Nor does your agnostic scientist. They can all say "we'll see" and they can all have varying degrees of confidence in their ability to find out. They are all engaged in the same research, and whether they believe in God or chance, or they have no beliefs, is (or should be) irrelevant to that research. What question, then, do theist scientists dodge that atheist scientists don't dodge? And to get back to your original statement: what "hard problems" are dodged by belief in design that are not dodged by belief in chance?
> -The distinction is getting blurred, dhw. I know you're using dictionary definitions of the terms "atheist" and "agnostic" but many atheists are identifying themselves under exactly the definition used by agnostics--for precisely the reason that they feel that the "agnostic" label gives unnecessary weight to the supernatural. Part of why I wish to complete our epistemological framework is because I myself simply don't know how to give weight to things like the paranormal. Five people who saw the same thing are only giving an eyewitness account of something, and that simply isn't enough for me to make a positive claim for its existence. The best I can do is say "They think they saw something!" If there isn't direct evidence, there's nothing for me to study. The best I can do is smile and nod when someone brings it up.-In terms of "dodging," remember that "God did it!" is a conclusion. I understand that science is essentially religionless and I still say there needs to be more religious scientists--though I'm not holding my breath. (At least not in the States. We inherited your Puritans, remember?) -> I complained that you (and Pigliucci?) misrepresented the argument against chance by focusing exclusively on the workings of evolution and disregarding the origin of the mechanisms that have made evolution possible.
> 
> MATT: As for your other claim, it is certainly appropriate to NOT consider something that I don't have any answer for. I don't have an answer for origins, so all I've got is what I DO know, which is certainly not nothing.
> 
> If it is appropriate for you NOT to consider the problem of origins, then clearly you are in favour of "dodging" the issue ... which is precisely what you accuse theists of doing! (You introduced the term ... I didn't!) And by ignoring the problem, you continue to misrepresent the argument against chance.
> -How? Be explicit. If we don't have an answer for something, how am I supposed to bring it into a discussion on evolution? You don't need to know how abiogenesis happened in order to study life, or clearly biology wouldn't exist. The question of origins is separate from the question of evolution. One studies life after it happened, one studies how life came to be. One analogize that evolution is identical the Standard Model of Physics. We can take you right up to the singularity, but not before. Before the Big bang = before life. -> dhw: If you are convinced that the USAF researcher has accounted for all the paranormal experiences related by Pim van Lommel, David, BBella and myself, plus a few hundred thousand others, I doubt if there would be much point [in further discussion].
> 
...
> I am not questioning the fact that perception is subjective, or that eye-witness accounts are notoriously inconsistent and unreliable. However, this does NOT explain, for instance, how people acquire information to which they have no known access and which is subsequently confirmed by third parties as being true, e.g. the death of someone far away, the location of an item that is out of sight, scenes that no longer exist. Your explanation seems to be that the people concerned and the third parties were all deluded. I would hesitate to make such a blanket judgement. Don't get me wrong ... I'm not asking you to believe. I'm asking you to withhold belief and disbelief until a satisfactory explanation has been found.-That's the whole thing--for me its not disbelief, but being in a situation where...-I have no frame of reference. How about that? There's nothing for me to believe because there's nothing for me to study--objectively they're just words on paper. What's the difference between paranormal stories and Christ's resurrection? If I give weight to a guy who said he was abducted by aliens, or saw a ghost--how am I to treat the Resurrection?-This podcast deals with "The Placebo Effect," unfolding the idea that the mind is capable of impacting healing. One includes a shaman who was convinced his rituals were lies... but they worked.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"