Why don\'t we believe? (Religion)
by broken_cynic 
, Wednesday, August 03, 2011, 23:50 (4639 days ago)
A few reasons 'from the mouths of horses' to mangle a phrase: -http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2011/07/god-evidence-believe-world
Why don\'t we believe?
by DragonsHeart , Thursday, August 04, 2011, 00:18 (4639 days ago) @ broken_cynic
Why don\'t we believe?
by broken_cynic , Thursday, August 04, 2011, 00:28 (4639 days ago) @ DragonsHeart
Kind of redundant when it was linked at the beginning of the article I linked and directly addressed in several of the comments, but thanks, I guess. :P
Why don\'t we believe?
by DragonsHeart , Thursday, August 04, 2011, 01:08 (4639 days ago) @ broken_cynic
Actually, it wasn't linked, only mentioned, and, as you had given a direct link to the atheist side on the forum, I felt it only fair to put a direct link to the theist/Christian side on here as well. So, you're welcome, I guess.
Why don\'t we believe?
by broken_cynic , Thursday, August 04, 2011, 01:20 (4639 days ago) @ DragonsHeart
Well, in order to generate an actual conversation... between the two articles, which reasons (if any) do you find particularly compelling? Which do you find especially weak?
Why don\'t we believe?
by DragonsHeart , Thursday, August 04, 2011, 01:37 (4639 days ago) @ broken_cynic
One argument that I find particularly hard to swallow is simply the "lack of evidence that there is a God." If a person was raised in a completely undeveloped part of the world and didn't know what a guitar was, he would think that guitars simply do not exist, until proven otherwise. Not seeing the evidence isn't proof enough to me that evidence isn't there. You ask me to show evidence that there IS a God, I ask for evidence that there is NOT.
Why don\'t we believe?
by broken_cynic , Thursday, August 04, 2011, 02:15 (4639 days ago) @ DragonsHeart
Well, you could counter that by presenting evidence of the guitar... or god. But no one has any (objective) evidence for god, which is where your analogy completely breaks down.-Evidence doesn't generally lend itself to proving negatives. How would you provide evidence that dragons don't exist? The best you can do is demonstrate that they are a concept that comes from fiction and myth, but you have the difficulty of countering the fact that in those writings they are treated as real things and in many cases it seems the author may well have fully believed in them. The same goes for particular gods. We know enough about the politics and the human aspect of Bible's origins that it becomes silly to pretend divine inspiration. (A big reason why seminaries are infamous for producing atheists.)-Thus the burden of proof lies with the positive assertion.
Why don\'t we believe?
by DragonsHeart , Friday, August 12, 2011, 16:04 (4631 days ago) @ broken_cynic
But you can't take the absence of evidence as evidence of absence. Things just don't work that way. I had two friends murdered in 1999, and there is a serious lack of evidence in that crime, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened. Absence of evidence of the killer doesn't mean the killer doesn't exist.
Why don\'t we believe?
by David Turell , Friday, August 12, 2011, 17:30 (4630 days ago) @ DragonsHeart
dh: > But you can't take the absence of evidence as evidence of absence. Things just don't work that way. I had two friends murdered in 1999, and there is a serious lack of evidence in that crime, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened. Absence of evidence of the killer doesn't mean the killer doesn't exist.Thus the burden of proof lies with the positive assertion.-Kent" "Thus the burden of proof lies with the positive assertion." -The assertion that there is no God is a positive assertion. 'No God' requires faith just as much as 'there is a God'. and finaly, the agnostic has faith in that he has no way to know which is correct. All those positions are 'beliefs'.
Why don\'t we believe?
by broken_cynic , Saturday, August 13, 2011, 00:48 (4630 days ago) @ David Turell
Now that's a tortured bit of wordplay I've never seen before. "There is no X" is a positive claim?-So if I claim* that there is no Santa Claus, you would argue that the burden of proof is on me?-*even this is badly twisted. It is redundant to "claim" that there is no Santa Claus (or god.) Non-existence is the null hypothesis. If there's no evidence of a thing then it doesn't even enter into the picture until someone claims that it DOES exist.
Why don\'t we believe?
by David Turell , Saturday, August 13, 2011, 03:12 (4630 days ago) @ broken_cynic
Non-existence is the null hypothesis. If there's no evidence of a thing then it doesn't even enter into the picture until someone claims that it DOES exist.-But there are those multitude of religions that proclaim it (God) does exist. I know it is very difficult to prove a negative (your position). Their position should be less difficult.
Why don\'t we believe?
by broken_cynic , Saturday, August 13, 2011, 03:23 (4630 days ago) @ David Turell
Non-existence is the null hypothesis. If there's no evidence of a thing then it doesn't even enter into the picture until someone claims that it DOES exist. > > But there are those multitude of religions that proclaim it (God) does exist. -Er, that's my point exactly. Their positive claim. Their burden of proof.-> I know it is very difficult to prove a negative (your position). Their position should be less difficult.-I have neither need of nor interest proof of my position. (Proof has little place in this world outside mathematics.)
Why don\'t we believe?
by broken_cynic , Saturday, August 13, 2011, 00:42 (4630 days ago) @ DragonsHeart
Indeed, the fact that we in our multitudes have searched for evidence over thousands of generations and have yet to come up with one iota is not technically positive evidence, but it is distinctly telling.-How many times do you have to search the pockets of the pants you wore yesterday before you are fairly well convinced that they aren't there? We've got an awful big 'pocket' to search and we haven't looked behind every ball of lint and old credit card receipt just yet, but if those all-powerful keys are in here they're hiding themselves awfully well.-http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bayes-theorem/