Practical Consequences (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, November 01, 2009, 18:27 (5292 days ago) @ dhw

dhw, forgive the length!!!!
> George has drawn our attention to an article by Greta Christina, which attempts to debunk some of the beliefs held by religious moderates. She trots out the usual "God-of-the-gaps" argument, as if the atheist faith in chance and still unknown natural laws was not also a gap-filler, but then she moves onto three specific areas. In each of them, she understandably attacks the religious position (I have no quarrel with the argument that there is no scientific evidence for God), but seems blissfully unaware that all her comments apply equally to the atheist position. 
> 
I think you're engaging in hasty generalization here; while it is certainly true that many atheists claim that "science will ultimately solve those certain problems," that is scientism and isn't necessarily endemic to atheists. I-Though--and I must stress this--no other method of gaining knowledge has ever been as successful.-That said, faith in science is by no means an attempt at "gap-filling" as you suggest here. Most scientists are willing to admit that we don't currently have explanations for some things, or that certain explanations are inadequate--such as the evolutionary biologist that Turell shared with us yesterday (10/31). -I must also point out that at even at face value there isn't an assumption of faith--we know that life got here, and we know that for everything we've found we've had no reason to assert something other than an explainable and reproducible phenomenon of cause-and-effect, i.e. "natural" causes.-Her position--and it is a simple one--is that since there is no evidence for God, then it is reasonable to assert that God doesn't exist. Sagan's dragon is a *very* good analogy to use here. If I have no reason to accept a claim, then I shouldn't accept it. -Taking your own words: (I have no quarrel with the argument that there is no scientific evidence for God)-Than it follows that you should have no quarrel with atheism, and really you should accept scientific abiogenesis by default.-1. You agree that there is no scientific evidence for God. 
2. This means that an existence claim for God is something that requires belief, defined as "accepting a claim in the absence of evidence." -This inescapably means that the question of God as agreed to by you, is purely one of faith. -Now, in what way does not accepting a claim cause an atheist to suddenly be engaging in an act of faith?-We come back to the oft-quoted assumption of naturalism: "At best, we cannot discern supernatural events from natural events." What exactly does this say? Naturalism in its full context looks at supernatural explanations as unreliable. Why are they unreliable? Are they unreliable? You've demonstrated to me in previous posts that you don't think that supernatural claims are unreliable, that looking upon all the traditions of man you see commonality in that we are special and that we were designed by some being. I argued that the generality of this statement is so broad that it doesn't actually accomplish anything. Do you understand a little more why I say this? My other oft-repeated phrase is "Everything we've ever thought about God could be wrong." -Returning again to abiogenesis, since you agree that there's no scientific evidence for God, than we don't have any reason to consider any other means of creation than scientific abiogenesis. I say this because we do have some evidence of it. To borrow from George, it is more reasonable than the alternatives.-Returning finally to "chance," if you don't accept the claim that God exists, based on the fact that there is no scientific evidence for it, then you don't really have any other choice BUT to accept chance. We lack a mechanism, but we've still ruled out a deity by not accepting the existence claim. -In conclusion, if you agree that there is no scientific evidence for God, and you accept naturalism, how is her position one of faith? To me the question is one of believing or not believing, and there is no middle-ground here; you either believe or you don't. It is binary; off and on, 1 and 0. If there's no evidence of Sagan's dragon, you don't withhold judgment until it is positively proven that the dragon does or does not exist, you simply go on not believing.

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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.\"