Why bother with God? (General)

by dhw, Monday, May 30, 2011, 20:15 (4735 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt, your post is full of the happy sound of nails being hit on heads, so I'm only going to highlight areas that seem to me to require further comment.-MATT: When you discuss me thinking atheists "all being scientists," I spoke previously about atheism being pretty securely hinged upon the scientific method. -This is true to a certain degree, but it's also highly misleading. Atheism depends on a materialistic interpretation of the world, and as science deals with the material world, atheists like to give the impression that they have scientific backing. "Scientific" implies something reliable, tested, authentic. But science simply cannot tell us whether there is or isn't a creative intelligence behind the origin and evolution of the material world, and it requires an act of faith even to believe that it will unravel the physical processes.-MATT: The only point you're driving at in terms of atheists is an implicit (though sometimes explicit) belief in chance. But having spent time with those online communities, I didn't really get that sense.-I suspect there are two reasons for this. 1) The majority of atheists probably think only in negative terms: they believe there is no God, and that's it. They do NOT think of the further implications: namely, that if there is no God, life can only have originated through chance. 2) Those who are aware of the implications need to downgrade them. That is why so many, like Dawkins, lay huge emphasis on evolution, in their attempt to divert attention from their faith in chance origins to their scientifically based observation of the non-random elements of evolution. It may not even be totally conscious. People feel threatened when you point out the possible flaws in their cherished beliefs. That may also explain the vehemence with which fundamentalists of both sides attack us sceptics. -MATT: If anything else I think that most atheists are really not atheists but are agnostics who think they're atheists.-A delightful reversal of your previous suggestion that agnostics were in fact weak atheists! It may well apply to 1) above.
 
MATT: At the same time--and I know where this comes from--there's a powerful sense of rebellion and revulsion to the Christian faith (but generalized to faith at large) and so it becomes psychologically impossible to accept anything even remotely faith-like.-Nail firmly hit on head. The man-made institutions and myths of religion have a lot to answer for. That may explain why some atheists roar like wounded tigers when you try to explain to them that atheism also requires faith, albeit of a different kind.
 
MATT: You pounced on chance, I pounced on a radical thought: It is metaphysically possible that man has been wrong about *everything* "God" except that it exists.-Another resounding clunk. Chance is a major justification for rejecting atheism, but there is no way that the thousands of different religious images of a deity can all be right! Nor can people like you and me trust in ancient texts written by humans, translated and interpreted by humans, and often forming the basis of structures that have nothing to do with "truth" and everything to do with power. You say atheists reject "any God that has made its way into history", and you and I ... and I think David too ... feel the same. But I would be very interested to hear Tony's view on this (and Mark's, if he ever reads this).-On the subject of the paranormal, we are never going to agree, but I'm sure we shall return to it.-MATT: The question of chance vs. design is a false dilemma (as I've said before), you still can't answer it without solving abiogenesis.-This is a very important subject. First, by abiogenesis I understand the hypothetical process whereby life emerged spontaneously from non-living materials. It's important to agree on a definition here, because the word does NOT mean the origin of life. We know, of course, that life originated, but abiogenesis is just one theory. However, even if scientists were able to come up with a combination of non-living materials that reproduced and ... crucially for our discussions ... also evolved, they would STILL not be able to prove that it happened by chance. The very assembly of those materials would be a conscious act. And so I maintain that it is not a false dilemma. No matter what discoveries science makes, that question will always remain open, and the most we can hope for is a shortening of the odds.