Religion III: Skeptical Evangelism, Psychedelic Shamanism, and other Religions of Us Hairless Apes

[rawmilkmike]

Post #1: http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/114423-tell-me-reasonable-points-proving-god-does-not-exists-or-religion-is-wrong/?p=6047973

Post #2: http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/114423-tell-me-reasonable-points-proving-god-does-not-exists-or-religion-is-wrong/?p=6048062

first part.

Because there is no better word to describe absence of belief. Agnosticism is not an absence of belief - it is the conviction that no evidence, for or against, theism, can be obtained.

That said, I think the distinction between the belief in the absence and the absence of belief is the least interesting bit of the discussion. Once we sort out what each side means by that word, why bother trying to convince the other side that they're using the word wrong? Get the consensus and move on to the heart of the discussion. Often, this is not possible because the whole reason why this arose was that some theists try to create an a-ha-gotcha moment against the athesists by proclaiming that atheists are just as reliant on faith as theists are. It's tedious.

The initial question:

“tell me reasonable points proving God does not exists or religion is wrong”

MY point:

“Life as we know it is obviously quite imposable” In other words, that which we call reality can't possibly be true.

In a nutshell:

“In science we make assumptions based on how things act. We develop a working hypothesis that works most of the time. When we watch Star Trek we believe in James Kirk and the Star Ship Enterprise even after we watch the blooper reel.”

The problem:

“Before I respond to any post, I must say that I have argued much more arguable subjects. Even then they always end up going in circles. I consider myself a bit of a raw milk expert and I got exactly nowhere here, arguing the safety and benefit of raw milk with people who in most cases admitted they knew nothing about it.”

Insightful viewpoint:

“Agrippa’s Trilemma can be summarised as the problem that when one justification is supported by another justification, there are only three ways that this process can go: either it goes on forever, or it ends with something which is unjustified, or it circles round to rejoin earlier justifications. Justification is endless, or arbitrary, or circular.”

http://www.philosophyideas.com/files/papers/Justified%20belief.pdf

This onslaught of questions is an obvious attempt to totally obliterate the initial question and my initial point:

1. Obvious in what way? - Rhetorical, you don't specify which belief you are referring to.

2. Wrong in what way? - Rhetorical, you don't specify which belief you are referring to.

3. Harmful in what way? - Rhetorical, you don't specify which belief you are referring to.

4. Whose standards are we using to judge these things? - Ours

5. Is Judaism's forced mutilation of the male genitals wrong? Rhetorical

6. Is the 7th Day Adventists' refusal to accept blood transfusion wrong? - No

7. Is Catholicism’s decision to bar women from the ruling cast of the Church wrong? - No

8. Is the condemnation of fornication wrong? - Yes

9. Which religions(I said religious beliefs) are necessary for every day life? - Belief that you have a reason to get out of bed.

10. In what way are they necessary? - They are necessary for every decision we make.

11. Which religions(I said religious beliefs) are necessary for science? - Justified belief

12. In what way are they necessary? They are the foundation.

[Sci-2]

An interesting article. The guy is a theist, so I do not agree with all of the arguments that he makes, but he offers some interesting criticisms of "New Atheism" as a movement.

Good article. I think it's really important to go back to serious philosophers when it comes to the theist vs atheist debate.

While he is a theist, his points seem in-line with the criticisms the skeptic Massimo's complaints about the New Atheist movement. (I think this is #966 in Castel's count of atheists complaining about New Atheism? :cool4: )

I would actually go so far as to charge many of the leaders of the New Atheism movement (and, by implication, a good number of their followers) with anti-intellectualism, one mark of which is a lack of respect for the proper significance, value, and methods of another field of intellectual endeavor.

[Seli]

The initial question:

“tell me reasonable points proving God does not exists or religion is wrong”

MY point:

“Life as we know it is obviously quite imposable” In other words, that which we call reality can't possibly be true.

...

?

Life as we know it is self-evidently possible. And its properties seem to follow directly from the basic physical description of our universe

.

That physical description itself might be only one possibility in a vast sea of physical models that would not sustain life (as we know it). But that is utterly irrelevant, since by definition we can only exist in a universe that can be described using a physical model in which we can exist.

So your point doesn't seem to make any sense from a scientific point of view. Not even from a philosophical point of view as far as I can tell.

[Gears of the Beast]

Well, it seems that's the way it is in law. Convince 12 random people of something and it's "true" enough to determine whether a man lives or dies, or is free or imprisoned. It's all about persuasion, not some sort of objective proof about reality. And persuasion is really just... marketing.

No, it's really not like that at all. Let's say someone is charged with murder, it is up to the prosecution to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that their claim (the accused murdered the victim) is true. The burden of proof is on the prosecution because they're making the assertion the accused is guilty. If the jury feel they have not adequately demonstrated the truth of their claim they vote not guilty. Not guilty does not mean innocent. It simply means the jury is not convinced of the accused's guilt. Similarly when one rejects a claim because it has not been demonstrated they're not asserting that the claim is false, necessarily, they're just saying insufficient evidence has been given to support the claim.

It's not really about persuasion or some objective proof about reality. It's about the evidence that there is to support a particular claim.

[Wise Fool]

No, it's really not like that at all. Let's say someone is charged with murder, it is up to the prosecution to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that their claim (the accused murdered the victim) is true. The burden of proof is on the prosecution because they're making the assertion the accused is guilty. If the jury feel they have not adequately demonstrated the truth of their claim they vote not guilty. Not guilty does not mean innocent. It simply means the jury is not convinced of the accused's guilt. Similarly when one rejects a claim because it has not been demonstrated they're not asserting that the claim is false, necessarily, they're just saying insufficient evidence has been given to support the claim.

It's not really about persuasion or some objective proof about reality. It's about the evidence that there is to support a particular claim.

There is rarely, if ever, going to be sufficient evidence presented in the context of an internet debate to persuade most persons to accept a God they don't believe in or reject one they do.

And about law, you haven't said anything to change the basic fact that people sitting in judgment of guilt or innocence are persuaded, one way or another, toward a judgment of some kind. And the judgment reached, despite all the "reasonable doubts" and "evidence" and "adequate" or "inadequate" arguments made, is often enough just plain wrong. Because persuasion is nothing inherently reasonable, it just is. We can act, as we do in law, that it yields something like justice, or truth, but that just isn't the case a lot of the times. As much as you or I would like it to be. Certainly not compared to the sciences.

[rawmilkmike]

?

Life as we know it is self-evidently possible. And its properties seem to follow directly from the basic physical description of our universe

.

That physical description itself might be only one possibility in a vast sea of physical models that would not sustain life (as we know it). But that is utterly irrelevant, since by definition we can only exist in a universe that can be described using a physical model in which we can exist.

So your point doesn't seem to make any sense from a scientific point of view. Not even from a philosophical point of view as far as I can tell.

In my reality everything has a beginning and everything is made up of something, even though at the same time I know that is not possible. Do you have another reality? One that doesn't include such a conundrum?

[Snow Dottir]

This whole thread reminds me of my favorite storyline from "Doom Patrol" ,yeah it's a comic but a really smart one, the Grant Morrison run specifically (one of my all time favorites ever), Here's a snippet from the D.C comic wiki database, "Crawling from the wreckage" About a place called Orqwith that was created by philosophers. Very. Cool.

"Orqwith can be destroyed if it is made to confront its own unreality.

Jane has just determined that exact fact. Orqwith is not supposed to be real. All they have to do is ask the two priests of the Ossuary why there is something rather than nothing, and Orqwith will be gone.

Confronting the two priests, Rebis asks them why there is something rather than nothing. The priest dressed in black responds that he is a liar, and does not know why there is something rather than nothing. The priest in white responds that he is an honest man, and that he doesn't know either. Thinking it out in its head, Rebis realizes that the priest in black must be the liar - and must therefore know the answer. Rebis poses the question again to the black priest, who responds that there is something rather than nothing - another lie. As such, Rebis reminds, Orqwith cannot possibly exist."

:::snip::

So is that really what it boils down to? Should we be asking ourselves this very question?

Why is there something instead of nothing? ETA:: or better, IS there somthing instead of nothing?

[Ranger275]

This whole thread reminds me of my favorite storyline from "Doom Patrol" ,yeah it's a comic but a really smart one, the Grant Morrison run specifically (one of my all time favorites ever), Here's a snippet from the D.C comic wiki database, "Crawling from the wreckage" About a place called Orqwith that was created by philosophers. Very. Cool.

"Orqwith can be destroyed if it is made to confront its own unreality.

Jane has just determined that exact fact. Orqwith is not supposed to be real. All they have to do is ask the two priests of the Ossuary why there is something rather than nothing, and Orqwith will be gone.

Confronting the two priests, Rebis asks them why there is something rather than nothing. The priest dressed in black responds that he is a liar, and does not know why there is something rather than nothing. The priest in white responds that he is an honest man, and that he doesn't know either. Thinking it out in its head, Rebis realizes that the priest in black must be the liar - and must therefore know the answer. Rebis poses the question again to the black priest, who responds that there is something rather than nothing - another lie. As such, Rebis reminds, Orqwith cannot possibly exist."

:::snip::

So is that really what it boils down to? Should we be asking ourselves this very question?

Why is there something instead of nothing? :leaving:

Ask Lawrence Krauss.

[Snow Dottir]

Ask Lawrence Krauss.

Hmmmm.

I don't know who that is but I'm assuming he has something to do with the "One guy is a liar and the other an honest man" scenerio??

I could have googled him and pretended to already know the Touche' involved here:)

[Stubby]

Well, it seems that's the way it is in law. Convince 12 random people of something and it's "true" enough to determine whether a man lives or dies, or is free or imprisoned. It's all about persuasion, not some sort of objective proof about reality. And persuasion is really just... marketing.

As before, what Gears said.

Otherwise, are you going to address the other points from my post, which took the issue of belief vs proof further?

[Sci-2]

Hmmmm.

I don't know who that is but I'm assuming he has something to do with the "One guy is a liar and the other an honest man" scenerio??

I could have googled him and pretended to already know the Touche' involved here:)

Don't ask Krauss, given he's provided an inadequate answer.

But the most irritating book of them all, and the best example of the new pseudophysics, has nothing to do with the multiverse. It is about where our single, known universe might have come from. In his 2012 book A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, the physicist Lawrence M. Krauss informs us that the universe came out of nothing. Sheer nothing. Nada. Zip. How does he know? Every leading theoretical physicist I have posed this question to, including the American Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg and the Dutch Nobel Laureate Gerard 't Hooft, have told me definitively that we have no idea where our universe came from: We can't tell what happened before, or even at, the Big Bang. If Krauss' screed is not pseudoscience, I don't know what is.

p.s. Hearty fucking plus-one to Doom Patrol!

[Gears of the Beast]

There is rarely, if ever, going to be sufficient evidence presented in the context of an internet debate to persuade most persons to accept a God

That's probably because there is not sufficient evidence of god.

or reject one they do.

You keep doing this false equivocation thing. As I've explained many times, there is no burden on one rejecting god to give evidence. If one was asserting that gods don't exist, that's a separate claim that would require evidence. However, when someone claims a god does exist and does not do anything to demonstrate the truth of their claim, it does not require evidence to reject this claim. It's like someone asserting that unicorns exist and saying "well you haven't supplied evidence to the contrary". No, that's a shifting of the burden of proof. As Hitchens said: "that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence".

And about law, you haven't said anything to change the basic fact that people sitting in judgment of guilt or innocence are persuaded, one way or another, toward a judgment of some kind.

aaaaaand you've shown you missed the point. And still don't actually understand how the courts work. Cool.

And the judgment reached, despite all the "reasonable doubts" and "evidence" and "adequate" or "inadequate" arguments made, is often enough just plain wrong.

The judgement is often wrong? Do you have evidence of this? I mean sure, we're fallible humans and we often don't have access to all the evidence so the courts don't make the right decision 100% of the time. I'm not saying the methodology used in courts makes it free from being wrong sometimes, so what's your actual point? Are you saying the actual methodology is flawed because it's not right 100% of the time? Are you gonna offer better system? Perhaps some intuition based psychic investigations? We don't know everything, all we can do is follow the evidence we have and try to make sound decisions, which is how the court is set up. If the prosecution cannot provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate the accused's guilt then we have rule that the accused is not guilty. It doesn't mean that the accused is innocent, it doesn't even mean definitely did not commit the crime. It just means that's the best call we can make with the information we have at that time.

[Gears of the Beast]

Don't ask Krauss, given he's provided an inadequate answer.

'Well, if the Huffington Post accuses one of the most respected physicists in the field of "pseudophysics", it must be true.'

[AndrewJ]

9. Which religions(I said religious beliefs) are necessary for every day life? - Belief that you have a reason to get out of bed.

I managed it just fine this morning without any such belief. So... not particularly necessary.

It really seems you are equating necessity with something that gives you comfort. I don't need beliefs either to simply get through the day or to be comfortable in myself and my life. I'm doing just fine without it.

(I've had harder, more unhappy periods in my life too. And those I did simply get through without needing to rely on religious beliefs to do so.)

[Snow Dottir]

Don't ask Krauss, given he's provided an inadequate answer.

p.s. Hearty fucking plus-one to Doom Patrol!

So this guy wrote his book in 2012 ?

Sounds almost word for word with the question in the Orqwith story. Much closer than the reference material he provided ! HAha

You're so cool, I should have known you're a Doom Patrol fan :smoking:

[Ranger275]

Don't ask Krauss, given he's provided an inadequate answer.

p.s. Hearty fucking plus-one to Doom Patrol!

Amir Aczel, the author, also says that the theory of evolution is flawed. He's an apologist following the "god-in-the-gaps" idea. His takedown of Krauss is about as reasonable as one written by Dinesh D'Souza.

[Suttree]

Amir Aczel, the author, also says that the theory of evolution is flawed. He's an apologist following the "god-in-the-gaps" idea. His takedown of Krauss is about as reasonable as one written by Dinesh D'Souza.

Look not that I agree in the slightest with "god-in-the-gaps" but pehaps instead of attacking the man, who does hold a degree from the worlds #1 public institution after all(Cal). It instead would be useful to explain what about said "take down" you disagree with?

But the most irritating book of them all, and the best example of the new pseudophysics, has nothing to do with the multiverse. It is about where our single, known universe might have come from. In his 2012 book A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, the physicist Lawrence M. Krauss informs us that the universe came out of nothing. Sheer nothing. Nada. Zip. How does he know? Every leading theoretical physicist I have posed this question to, including the American Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg and the Dutch Nobel Laureate Gerard 't Hooft, have told me definitively that we have no idea where our universe came from: We can't tell what happened before, or even at, the Big Bang. If Krauss' screed is not pseudoscience, I don't know what is. If I am going to believe him, I could just as well subscribe to the medieval "sciences" of alchemy or astrology. Krauss gives no evidence for his carelessly cobbled-together conjecture, but he makes up for it by his aggressive tone. Studying the book carefully, I found that Krauss implies that the source of his hypothesis is a research paper by the cosmologist Alex Vilenkin. At my request, Vilenkin sent me a copy of his article, and -- not surprisingly -- I found that what he says differs markedly from Krauss' conclusion. Vilenkin's universe does not at all start from "nothingness." It begins from a bubble of a preexisting piece of a very condensed kind of spacetime called a "quantum foam."

The universe is a marvelous place to live in. Well, it's the only place we know -- and we know a very tiny part of it. Telescopes reveal to us farther parts of this wondrous cosmos, and through them we learn about fascinating objects and phenomena such as neutron stars, black holes, supernovas, and exoplanets. Equally, high-energy particle accelerators and other experiments reveal to us the workings of the very small -- which always have a strong bearing on the nature of the universe as a whole. And of course theories are equally important. There is absolutely nothing wrong with speculation in physics -- and the correct theories are eventually confirmed by experiment and observation. But it is definitely wrong -- misleading and dishonest -- to preach to an unsuspecting public, mostly uninitiated in science, mere hypotheses as if they were confirmed facts. This isn't science, and it isn't honest scientific reporting. Physicists should be the purveyors of facts, not dreams.

[Ranger275]

KRAUSS: Well, the title of the book, "A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing" deals with this question. It's been around for as long as people have really started to ask questions about the universe and is really at the heart of a lot of the world's religions. Why is there something rather than nothing?

If we live in a universe full of stuff, how did it get here? And many people think that very question implies the need for a creator. But what's truly been amazing, and what the book's about is the revolutionary developments in both cosmology and particle physics over the past 30 or 40 years that have not only changed completely the way we think about the universe but made it clear that there's a plausible case for understanding precisely how a universe full of stuff, like the universe we live in, could result literally from nothing by natural processes.

And while it's a little pretentious, I'll be pretentious anyway, the idea, I think, is similar, if you think about it, to the origin of life, Darwin's demonstration that life, which appears to be designed here on Earth, the diversity of life can actually arise, that diversity can arise by natural causes.

And we don't yet know the true origin of life, but we think we'll understand it by chemistry, and what we're discovering is that in fact physics has suggested that maybe the same is true for the whole universe, that we don't need a creator.

And I guess most importantly that the question why is there something rather than nothing is really a scientific question, not a religious or philosophical question, because both nothing and something are scientific concepts, and our discoveries over the past 30 years have completely changed what we mean by nothing.

In particular, nothing is unstable. Nothing can create something all the time due to the laws of quantum mechanics, and it's - it's fascinatingly interesting. And what I wanted to do was use the hook of this question, which I think as I say has provoked religious people, as well as scientists, to encourage people to try and understand the amazing universe that we actually live in.

I think that there might be some back and forth about the word "nothing" here, to be honest.

[Sci-2]

'Well, if the Huffington Post accuses one of the most respected physicists in the field of "pseudophysics", it must be true.'

The Huffington Post isn't an author, it's a site with a collection of authors.

But if we're making appeals to authority, Nobel winning physicist Brian Josephson thinks telepathy is real, so if random people on a forum who likely don't have Nobels disagree I guess we can dismiss them as well?

Just an example, as I'm agnostic about Psi as I am about God & souls. And Josephson provides his own interesting creation story:

Life, Extended Mind, and Fundamental Physics

The problem of how life came into existence is a major challenge for biology. I shall argue for an explanation involving the idea that a more elementary form of life, not dependent on matter, existed prior to the big bang, and evolved at the level of ideas in the same way that human societies evolve at the level of ideas. Just as human society discovered how to use matter in a range of technological applications, the hypothesised life before the big bang discovered how to organise energy to make physical universes, and to make fruitful use of the matter available in such universes.

Biological Observer-Participation and Wheeler's 'Law without Law'

In Wheeler’s article the gap between acts of observer-participancy and physical reality was not filled in, an insufficiency that we attribute to the absence of an appropriate theory of observation. In the following we discuss a biologically oriented scheme where observation plays a central role, and show how it can lead to the emergence of physical laws. The structure of this scheme can be summarised as primordial reality → circular mechanics → semiotics and structure → technological development → regulatory mechanisms → emergent laws.

Here ‘circular mechanics’ is a reference to a generic scheme of biological organisation proposed by Yardley[3], encompassing among its aspects sign processes in accord with the semiosis concepts of Peirce[4], which in turn underlie processes of a technological character, among which we hypothesise are the capacity to form systems such as our universe, to which laws of a mathematical kind are applicable. In this way, we are able to link life, viewed from a generic point of view, to the origin of universes.

[Gears of the Beast]

The Huffington Post isn't an author, it's a site with a collection of authors.

It's a site that is notorious for posting pseudoscience. So it's kind of laughable that a Huffington Post article might be considered a reliable source of critique against established and respected scientists. There's probably legitimate scientific discussion to be had on Krauss' positions but some guy on Huffington Post spouting drivel about Lawrence Krauss being a psuedoscientist isn't all really the venue for actual scientific discourse. I wonder if any peer reviewed journals would publish this critique.

HuffPo aggressively promotes worthless alternative medicine such as homeopathy, detoxification, and the thoroughly debunked vaccine-autism link. In 2009, Salon.com published a lengthy critique of HuffPo's unscientific (and often exactly wrong) health advice, subtitled Why bogus treatments and crackpot medical theories dominate "The Internet Newspaper". HuffPo's tradition is neither new nor just a once-in-a-while thing.

Science journalists have repeatedly taken HuffPo to task for this, and repeatedly been rebuffed or not allowed to submit fact-based rebuttals. HuffPo's anti-science stance on health and medicine appears to be deliberately systematic and is unquestionably pervasive.