Why bother with God? (General)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, May 28, 2011, 15:32 (4738 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Saturday, May 28, 2011, 15:37


> ...Time for the breathalyzer?-Many atheists go back to the root etymology of the word atheist. (I think I've used this one here before.) The prefix 'a' meaning "without", 'theism' meaning "belief in a deity." Therefore, "without belief in a deity." I remember when I first saw that definition, at delphi.com (now about.com) in 1998 and thought "a-ha!" But I never expected it to catch on. It definitely has. (I've recently cruised through some postings on other atheist forums.) Agnostics are now categorized as atheists (fitting, because most theists ALREADY do that...), with atheism spanning a spectrum from strong atheism (Dawkins) to weak atheism (myself, dhw.) I know you have your trusty (Oxford?) dictionary dhw, but humans are allowed to change the meanings of things. It's one thing we do well. Many of my initial rebuttals to you when I joined... (3? 4?) years ago were because I felt I was having my position mis-characterized. 
 
> I have precisely the same problem with the examples you have given, but I specifically drew your attention to the one area of paranormal activity which DOES have a frame of reference. I can only repeat what I said before: Pim van Lommel, David, BBella and I have all given examples of people obtaining information to which they could have had no normal access. The information has been confirmed by third parties. As a neutral observer, I focus on this form of the paranormal because it is precise and testable in so far as the information has proved to be true. No-one can explain consciousness, and these examples could imply a form of consciousness, perception and identity that is independent of the physical brain. Until a satisfactory explanation has been found, I withhold belief and disbelief.
> -Again; words on paper. How would you separate true "paranormal information event" from a correct intuition? You can't. How do you know its true? You describe something as unexplainable as when I discussed having dreams that predict completely inane futures. I think what you 're discussing is the same machinery that causes my inane dreams. If it happens when sleeping, it happens when waking too. But that doesn't mean its actually information that teleported from one mind into another, or information that came down to me from a future that doesn't exist. In my case, I'm willing to accept that this event was a "like" dream that when an event happened, my mind snaps back to the memory of a dream. -Any rationalization I try to make about yours or BBella's experience is necessarily shallow and potentially dangerous. Events like that tend to always be about something very special and personal--which is telling in regards to the source of them! -> Remember that "Chance did it!" is also a conclusion. I repeat: what hard questions do theists dodge which are not also dodged by atheists?-The atheist position (putting on my Dawkins hat) is that the question isn't dodged at all. We're working on a solution for that. We accept chance for now, because there is no other viable alternative, no scientific description that yet bridges the gap. 
This is hardly a conclusion, but I promise that Dawkins would agree with my description from what I've read. The world of the modern atheist is one of near slavish devotion to the scientific method. All explanations are provisional, and they accept that. (Consequently, so do I.) -There aren't any theist scientists studying abiogenesis over the past 60 years, nor have there been to the extent I'm aware. I would say that their absence is evidence enough. -> -> But the discussion is not on evolution. The discussion is on the issue of Chance versus Design. You dismissed David's argument "Life is too complex to arrive by chance" as an attempt to dodge hard problems, two of which you identified as abiogenesis and cosmology. You now say it is "appropriate" not to consider abiogenesis! Ah, Matt, in the contest between xeno and xeno, who do you put your money on? ... This ... Chapter 1, not Chapter 2, of life's history ... is the core of the case for design, and for the belief that "life is too complex to arrive by chance".
> -Well, you got me there. For some reason I started down the evolution hole, but why... at any rate, shove this one to the dogpile. (After the red ellipse) The Watchmaker awaits...-> At the risk of being a bore (a risk I take far too often ... my apologies!), let me just reiterate my own position. Like David, I find it impossible to actively believe that chance could assemble the complex mechanisms which gave rise to life and evolution. Unlike David, I find it impossible to believe in an intelligent being of infinitely greater complexity that somehow just happens to be there. This leaves me open to the possible truth of both alternatives ... chance and design ... and hence also to the possibility that a) there is nothing, or b) there are dimensions and forms of existence, beyond the material world as we know it.-I'm with you on "actively believe" in chance. And among atheists that parrot, I would agree you have a good argument. But for those such as Dawkins--who I don't think has that *active* belief (dangerous, having not read his books) or are among the group that is deliberately redrawing the lines for freethinkers--that line is increasingly blurred.

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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.\"