Why bother with God? (General)

by dhw, Thursday, May 26, 2011, 14:15 (4928 days ago) @ xeno6696

With reference to life, reproduction, adaptation and innovation, I stated that "atheists expect us to believe that ALL these mechanisms were assembled by blind chance."-MATT: No they don't. There are certainly SOME. You ask any atheist scientist--he will tell you that we don't have a solution for origins. But that's not an admission of guilt, or coverup, or of "dodging the question." We don't know. When I participated in atheist forums, generally the answer you would get is "we'll see." Some expect science to give them an answer, others might be more skeptical, but it's kind of unfair to say "you say it all hinges on chance!" when they really don't. My own atheism was founded upon the principle "I withhold belief in God until such time that enough evidence can corroborate his existence." That isn't exactly a statement of "It's all chance!" There are atheists that declare themselves that way. Technically, I would still consider myself an atheist under the definition "does not believe in God." I don't. The belief ceases to be, this does not mean that I claim he doesn't exist, only that I don't believe. Is your characterization of atheists accurate?-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?
 
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.-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].-MATT: That the world we see is actually a model presented to us by our brain? It accounts for NDEs, and OBEs. It accounts for things we also DON'T see. A prime example: I witnessed a car accident about 11 years ago. The story of my wife and I completely contradicted the story from 2 other witnesses at different angles. My wife and I were sober, in good health, had good sleep--all of that. 
SO who was right? Us, or the other 2 people at the scene? My wife and I did the only logical thing and recanted. Maybe our minds were more on our conversation at the time. We looked up at the wrong instant. Who knows? But clearly we didn't see what we thought we saw.-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.