A-Unicornism and the True Definition of Atheism
This is a recanted essay!: As a result of feedback with others who have read this, I now recognize this essay as misleadingly incomplete and partially inaccurate. I keep it up as a record of how I have previously thought, but do not stand by all of it.
There’s an large debate over what atheism means, most of it oddly coming from those who believe in God (the theists). For example, Conservapedia, Ray Comfort, CARM, and Norm Geisler all talk about how atheism has to be defined as “someone who is definitively, absolutely, 100% certain that God does not exist”, and that anyone else is merely an agnostic. Ray Comfort himself continues to state that an atheist must believe that something came from nothing, or he is not an atheist.
But this is ridiculous in three ways:
First, it is a massive straw man. I haven’t met anyone who is “definitely, absolutely, 100% certain that God does not exist”. Every atheist, myself included, recognizes that a God who doesn’t want any evidence of his or her existence could not be ruled out. Even Dawkins in his book The God Delusion says that there is only most probably no God. You can’t just redefine atheism for everybody and attack that, you need to attack the positions that people actually hold.
Second, it seems very weird, unreasonable, and uncivil. What’s the point of going up to an atheist who says he lacks belief in God and saying “Oh, that’s not right. You clearly are definitely, absolutely, 100% certain that God does not exist”. You cannot redefine the other person’s belief for them. Us atheists have every right to dictate what atheism means and even change the definition if we want. Given that atheism also has no holy text or central authority, there is no reason two atheists even have to have the same definition of atheism.
Third, even as a straw man, it accomplishes nothing. The redefinition does nothing to actually give a reason to believe in God — it merely redefines the atheists as agnostics and pulls a little “Ha! You’re slightly uncertain, therefore I’m right!” as if that means anything. Just because people exist who say there is only most probably no God doesn’t mean that God is at all likely, especially the Christian one. Such uncertainty doesn’t at all indicate that there is any good reason to believe in a God.
Fourth, as a forced redefinition, it harms religions too. If everyone who is slightly uncertain becomes agnostic, then there are going to be millions of Christians who stop being Christians because they have doubts, there are going to be millions of Muslims who stop being Muslims because they have doubts, etc. In the end, you’re defining only the fanatics as religious or unreligious, and that’s something we really don’t want to have. Especially since there are shades of grey in the uncertainty section that you’re piling together, and since those who are fanatic are very unlikely to change their mind and thus it is rather stupid to even talk to them.
So how exactly do atheists fall into the category of “atheism” without being an agnostic? Instead of having Christian apologists like Ray Comfort tell you, maybe we should… um… ask the atheists what atheism means? Doesn’t that seem reasonable? As an atheist, I will tell you.
Agnosticism
Clearly, Ray and others are trying to replace atheism with agnosticism. But they make a mistake — agnosticism is atheism. It is also Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, and any other religion. Agnosticism is simply the absence of certainty in one’s worldview. It works like this:
Agnosticism is not a worldview itself, it is a second dimension of belief, an absence of certainty in either atheism or theism.
Belief works on two definitions — a dimension of quality (what you believe; theism vs. atheism) and quantity (how certain you are; certainty vs. doubt). Agnosticism is merely an indication and admittance of doubt. Almost all people, atheists and theists alike, are not absolutely certain of their belief. This lack of doubt is not a weakness but rather a sign of reasonability — it means you recognize you could be wrong. Agnosticism is the only truly rational position. Yet, why don’t we call everyone agnostic? How can atheists be atheists and not call themselves agnosticism? Let’s see.
The What and Why of Atheism
Atheism means one specific thing. A person who is an atheist is a person who is not a theist, just like a person who is apolitical is not political, a person who is agnostic is someone who is not gnostic (has a belief in absolute knowledge), and a person who is asexual is not sexual. That’s what the “a-” prefix means. Not a theist? You’re an atheist (though you may primarily call yourself something else, which is ok). There’s nothing more than that.
But why are there atheists? The definition requires no actual reason, so anyone could be an atheist for any reason. Think God doesn’t exist because cookies don’t taste good enough? That reason is utterly ridiculous, but the person is still an atheist. There is no requirement for a logical reason, and some apologists would even say that there is no logical reason that could lead to atheism. Of course, they’re wrong.
Here’s the reason more than 90% of atheists (including me) are atheists: they find no good reason to believe in God. I am an atheist because I feel reasonably unconvinced by theism. Others may doubt the reasonability of my rejection, and that is the matter of debate. I have outlined twelve reasons I don’t believe in the supernatural, which would include God. Supernatural claims generally don’t answer anything, instead they simply make the question go away. The idea of God itself is also flawed for many reasons.
“Belief in No God” vs. “No Belief in God”
There is a lot of debate over whether atheists have belief in no God, a belief that no God exists, or simply have no belief in God but recognize that God could, potentially, exist. I think this is a false debate, however. First, the debate over what it means to be an atheist is ridiculous for the reasons said in the beginning of this essay, but secondly I feel that both beliefs are essentially the same.
Consider a-unicornism. This is atheism, except replace “God” with “unicorns”. Unicornists are everyone who believes in unicorns, and a-unicornists are everyone who is not a unicornist. I am an a-unicornist and you very likely are too. I assume that more than 99% of the world’s population are a-unicornists.
We go around saying that “unicorns do not exist”. But what do we really mean when we say “unicorns do not exist”? Certainly we haven’t searched the entire universe for unicorns — perhaps there are unicorns on other planets. Perhaps there are unicorns on Earth but they’re just very good at hiding. Isn’t stating that “unicorns do not exist” kind of presumptuous, just like saying “God does not exist”?
I wouldn’t say so. I think we rather shouldn’t define “unicorns do not exist” so strictly. When we say “unicorns not exist” we are really saying “There is no good reason to believe unicorns exist” or “We are reasonably unconvinced that unicorns exist”. Until a unicorn is found, we are justified in being a-unicornists.
We do the exact same thing with faeries, leprechauns, Santa, living Elvis, UFOs, etc. They’re not logically impossible like square circles, triangles with five sides, or married bachelors. Faeries, leprechauns, Santa, living Elvis, alien encounters, unicorns, and gods all could — potentially — exist. It’s just that we have no good reason to believe in any of those claims. The same is true with gods and atheism. The statement by atheists that “gods do not exist” is the same as the statement by a-unicornists that “unicorns do not exist”. It is not an arrogant statement of absolute knowledge by any means. It is a statement of rationality given the evidence.
Atheists know they can be wrong to the same degree Christians know they can be wrong. Yet I still say that gods do not exist, and when I say that I mean there is no good reason to believe Gods do not exist. My main argument is that the case for God is nearly as unconvincing as the case for unicorns, and therefore I am justified in saying “God does not exist”.
We Don’t Need a “Killer Disproof”
There are still people who proclaim that you can’t believe God doesn’t exist unless you have some sort of disproof. A lot of people think that atheists need some sort of “killer disproof”, some evidence that is so overwhelmingly indicates that God is not real, in order to honestly be an atheist. While I do think that there are some reasons that come close to this disproof that I intend to share in the future, this killer disproof is simply not necessary. A lack of a convincing reason is enough to not believe. Even those who are religious understand that… with other Gods.
First of all, atheists and theists are very similar on practically everything that doesn’t have to do with God. But we also agree on about everything except one certain religion — the religion of the believer. We’re all a-zeusists — all of us don’t believe in Zeus. We’re all athorists — all of us don’t believe in Thor. We’re all ahorusists — all of us don’t believe in Horus. What are our reasons for not believing in Zeus, Thor, and Horus?
It’s not because we have some killer disproof of Zeus, or Thor, or Horus. For all we know Zeus might have had real encounters with the Greek people but then decided to step away from the world for whatever reason and is now hiding himself — we can’t disprove that. Same is true with Thor and Horus. But it’s not the disproof that matters here — we all agree there are no convincing reasons to believe in Zeus, Thor, or Horus. Yet we still say “Zeus doesn’t exist”, “Thor doesn’t exist”, and “Horus doesn’t exist” without being wrong.
Now consider the Christians and the Muslims. Both of them have listed numerous reasons to believe in their respective religion. Yet one side always finds the other side unconvincing. Muslims don’t have some sort of killer disproof of Christianity’s Yaweh, and the Christians don’t have some sort of killer disproof of Islam’s Allah. It’s not a matter of active disproof — it’s a matter of being unconvinced. Christians will still say that Muslims are wrong, not because they can disprove Islam, but because they feel Islam is entirely unconvincing. Likewise, Muslims can still say Christianity is wrong because they feel Christianity is entirely unconvincing.
Why We Don’t Need to Know Everything to Dismiss God
Another idea that has been put out there is that, in order to say “God does not exist”, the atheist must know everything — the atheist would have to have searched the entire universe and know everything there is to know about God. But again, we can use the unicorn example to show how this is ludicrous — we don’t have to have searched the entire universe for unicorns or know everything there is to know about unicorns to say there are no unicorns.
In the end, the answer can always be “God is still out there, somewhere”. But unicorns could still be out there, somewhere. It’s not really rational to be concerned with what merely could be possible, but what is probable. Unicorns most probably don’t exist, and based on the evidence we’ve seen so far, the same can be said about God.
Those who assert that atheists cannot reasonably say “God does not exist” and/or all atheists should be agnostics are, themselves, being unreasonable. Perhaps all theists should be agnostics too. Or is there absolutely no possibility the theist is wrong?
An Atheist By Any Other Name
Now let’s look back at attempts to redefine atheism. They seem really silly. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some sort of name debate over atheism. After all, I don’t go around telling people I’m an atheist — I identify as a naturalist-humanist. Other people don’t call themselves atheists but rather call themselves freethinkers, secularists, humanists, agnostics, physicalists, rationalists, empiricists, materialists, or naturalists. What are all these names and why are they all talking about roughly the same thing?
Most of it has to do with coping in a world where the vast majority believe in some sort of God and an annoyingly large minority think that those who are godless have no meaning in life, no reason to live, lack motivation for morality, and can’t seek justice, find wonder in the world, or love. Such burdens are placed on those that don’t believe in God to explain themselves as if they did something bad, whereas none of these burdens are placed on other religions. Since atheists are the most associated with lacking belief in God, it seems practical to flee that term for something else. Tell people you’re an atheist and they glare at you, tell people you’re a naturalist and they’re curious.
But there is another dimension that terms operate on besides pragmatism. This dimension is that of issue-focus. Atheism is a giant umbrella term for the lack of belief in God, of which people can attain through any reason.
- Those who call themselves freethinkers want to emphasize the liberating aspect of atheism where you think for yourself and don’t abide merely by domga. You can still be religious and be a freethinker if you believe objective, mind-independent facts point toward your religion instead of merely your holy text. Rationalists typically fit in here, saying that one should discern his or her worldview through considering the facts objectively, not through appeals to faith.
- Those that call themselves secularists are not particularly troubled by religion, but dislike the idea of religion within the government. Secularists primarily advocate separation of church and state along with religious freedom. You can still be religious and be a secularist if you think that religion, while great, has no place in the functioning of the government.
- Those that call themselves humanists generally emphasize the ability to achieve morality, meaning, and wonder without God — or emphasize seeing the world and humanity as it really is. Humanism has a more muddled definition, and some versions of humanism allow you to be religious and be humanist whereas some versions do not.
- Those that call themselves agnostics generally emphasize their uncertainty. They might either emphasize that God still has the potential to exist just like unicorns have the potential to exist, or emphasize that the cases for religion are stronger than many atheists believe yet still not strong enough, or emphasize that with such an enigmatic being like God one really can’t know if he/she/it exists or not. You can definitely be religious and be agnostic as long as you are not absolutely certain that a God exists.
- Those that call themselves physicalists, empiricists, materialists, and naturalists generally do not disagree on much. The exact differences between the four terms are complicated and up for debate.
- The general principles behind each are what I describe as naturalism — a belief that everything is reducible to matter-energy in space time, every event needs a physical mechanism, and that it is impossible to transcend or suspend the laws of physics — all adding up to the conclusion that the supernatural does not exist (just like unicorns do not exist). [I have later changed my opinion slightly on this, see "The Metaphysics Dilemma"]
- The typical debate is that empiricists say only that which science can prove exists whereas naturalists allow the inclusion of historical facts, personal observation, and logical deduction. I really doubt you can be religious and be any of these four things.
- Note that materialists here are those who follow the materialism philosophy, not those who are materialistic, or have a selfish obsession with money and other objects.
Here, I think the debate is a non-debate. While it seems that atheists can’t agree on what to call themselves, this is actually a good thing. Atheism is the umbrella term, and people are free to emphasize what they wish. Typically atheists are all these things, yet refer to themselves as simply one thing or another because of a desired emphasis. I personally like to emphasize naturalism and humanism, though I agree I am an agnostic secular freethinker.
There are a lot of different things to emphasize within atheism. People have the right to call themselves whatever they want. There is no reason to pidgeonhole everyone into a certain definition. You can’t just say “No, you believe what I say you believe, and what I say you believe is wrong” — that’s ridiculous, but that’s exactly what Ray Comfort and company are doing.
Atheism is Not a Worldview
One last misconception of atheism that needs to go away is the idea that atheism is some sort of worldview, like Christianity is a worldview. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in Gods, and nothing more. It is an umbrella term and a key feature of many worldviews, but is not a worldview in itself. Consider the fact that being an atheist says nothing about how you see morality, what your purpose is in life, how one gets information, what truths should be held and what truths should not be held (other than the existence of God), or anything about how you actually view the world (other than that you don’t view God to exist).
Just like atheism, theism is also not a worldview. Being a theist means you believe in God — it doesn’t tell you whether you are Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, New Age, Pagan, a Deist, a Pantheist, or anything else. Just like calling someone an atheist says nothing more, calling someone a theist does not tell you anything about their morality, purpose, or view on the world.
However, just as theism is split up into a number of different religions, atheism is split up into a number of different worldviews. Naturalism-humanism is one of these worldviews (and perhaps the most popular). It has a specific idea of morality, meaning, justice, and wonder, as I illustrate in many of my essays. Atheism specifically says nothing on any of these things. Atheism is not a worldview — instead a worldview is created from the above terms, such as the agnostic freethinking secularist naturalist humanist worldview many atheists do have (but some atheists do not).
Stop the Sweeping Generalizations
While the above does define the positions of a majority of atheists, it does not apply to all of them. There are actually many illogical atheists who dismiss God for no good reason. There are many atheists who honestly haven’t given much thought to the whole Jesus thing and might convert to Christianity. Yet there are many atheists who have thought a lot about religion and dismiss it for good reason.
This means we cannot peg generalizations onto atheists. We can’t say all atheists are naturalist-humanists — some are nihilists and some believe in souls. We also can’t generalize other factors, such as assuming all atheists are liberals, or even communists.
I ask those who interact with atheism to be reasonable. People like Ray Comfort seem to not care at all what atheists actually believe, but instead choose to attack their own straw man of atheism — if Ray Comfort spent ten minutes sincerely reading any atheist blog he wouldn’t be making such ignorant statements of atheists. I would even go as far as to accuse him of bearing false witness against atheism in all forms.
Just because the dictionary tells you what atheism means doesn’t mean the dictionary is right. If you want atheists to stop misrepresenting your religion, perhaps you should stop misrepresenting atheism? Instead of getting focused on the definition of atheism, why don’t we focus on the actual arguments and debates?
Please understand atheists in whatever term they refer to themselves and respect their opinions as much as they respect yours. Be civil, and don’t try to generalize onto atheists or redefine atheism for them. Let atheists tell you what they believe. You can see more on this in Ebonmuse’s essay “How Not to Convert an Atheist”, CARM’s “Mistakes Christians Make When Dialoguing with Atheists”, and in Greta Christina’s essay “Why Are Believers So Hostile to Atheists?”. The reverse also applies to atheists addressing theists.
Followed up in: Defining the Natural and Supernatural
Editor’s Note: More editing and some new material added on Dec 9, 2011.
Before commenting further, please note that this is a recanted essay that I no longer agree with.
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I now blog at EverydayUtilitarian.com. I hope you'll join me at my new blog! This page has been left as an archive.
On 10 Jan 2011 in Recanted. 73 Comments.
11 Jan 2011, 12:53 am
Just for the record,I am a secular theist who dismisses both religion and atheism…I consider there to be no possibility whatsoever that existence is not the consequence of a uniquely uncaused Infinitely First Cause,and no sign of credible evidence that that IFC writes books or founds official fan clubs for itself.Any religion’s particular ideas about God can be disproved without touching the necessity of an explanation for all-that-is.That explanation is by definition God.
14 Jul 2011, 11:05 pm
God is not a liar, the Bible is not a GOD , the Creator or Natures GOD.
Louis your right for being where you are , in your mind Truth is truth
What is the difference secular theist and a Deist ?
send Lewis an email & PLEASE get back to cin3@me.com, sorry I have a handicapt , so it is not easy, if you can’t let me know…THANKS , Louis
Much of our faith, all of it in fact, rests on trust, because there is no way to prove matters of faith. Period.
The only thing that makes your particular faith absolutely true, is your absolute faith. It is your faith that matters to you, not truth. And maybe a billion others believe similarly too, but if a billion people believe a lie, it is still a lie. That’s what Christians would say of a billion Muslims; that’s what Muslims would say of a billion Christians; and that’s what I say of two billion with blind faith.
– One Deist Φ
God LIFE
Nature is revelation enough, showing all that needed to be known of God. I understand now free to my own theories of existence and ideas about earth and its relation to the sun. The answer is love that was the meaning of life and our constant failure to complete the creation of life we are the ones to use this power to connect us all and give life reason to live that is Deity.
20 Jun 2012, 12:44 am
When Atheism came into being is did so because Agnosticism was not enough of a defined category to allow them the satisfaction of living under that banner.
That saw Atheism claim that God cannot exist without question. That is now not the case, and people try to hide the change…let me explain.
The true difference between Agnostics and Fundamental Atheists is;
Atheism is, at its core, a belief that God cannot exist based on the actions of God.
Agnosticism is the belief that God may exist, but ‘probably not’ based on the actions, beliefs and interpretations of humanity.
The difference between God and humanity is KEY.
In more modern times the reason why fundamental Atheism doesn’t work became pretty evident. Many realised God wasn’t the cause of all the problems in the world, humans were. And if they believed there was no God, they had to accept that as fact, which in the end disproves their original bias. This saw allot of Atheists scrambling to defend their belief…which they discovered had arguments that were just as hard to prove as the religious people they debated against.
Thus we now see Atheism merging with Agnosticism – more as a means of saving the term Atheism then anything of more substance.
In reality Atheism has become redundant and we should revert back to agnostic.
The scale of belief vs no belief is irrelevant as nothing in the universe can be proven. Ie. in Science they claim everything based on ‘Theory’. Now I understand what a hypothesis is etc… but it important to know when you are defining extremities on a scale they need to have distinct end points. There is NO distinct endpoint for someone with no belief whatsoever other then someone who cannot accept existence at all.
Thus I am interested to know what you currently believe?
I also want to be clear this is not in support of any ‘religion’ rather trying to clear up the Atheist/Agnostic mess that we have created for ourselves.
13 Jul 2012, 10:48 am
Here’s another problem with this argument…”Us atheists have every right to dictate what atheism means and even change the definition if we want.”
By that logic, a rapist can change the definition of rape, a murderer can change the definition of murder, and a child molester can change the meaning of Child molestation. If NOT, then why does the atheist have the privilege of redefining their beliefs, and not others?? Special pleading is going on here.
24 Jul 2012, 10:05 pm
It occurs to me what the real functional distinction between atheists and agnostics is: that is, what usually causes people to call themselves agnostics instead of atheists. Agnostics believe that the existence of an omnipotent deity is implausible; atheists believe it’s incoherent. The conclusion applies more strongly to agnostics than atheists. Whenever I’ve argued coherence, the agnostics challange me, sometimes heatedly. (The theists ignore me).
This must be distinguished from the strength of the belief. A rational atheist won’t be absolutely certain; we should be less than absolutely certain about our deductions. Strength of disbelief is correlated with its basis (empirical versus empirical and logical), but the correlation isn’t perfect.
24 Jul 2012, 10:29 pm
To further the previous comment; Empirical evidence was not around when the events proving the existence of God occurred. Those who were around accepted those events as fact and recorded them as ‘Knowledge’ in the form of the Bible. Once Knowledge exists, it does not continue to require our current level of ‘acceptable evidence’ to remain Knowledge.
Otherwise in the future we may have a new standard for ‘evidence’, does that mean everything already tested and accepted by empirical evidence is invalidated?
Alternatively if we are sent back to the dark ages and do not have the tools to conduct the necessary experiments to revalidate ‘empirical’ proof does all of the previous testing also become invalid? Will we think the world is flat again?
It makes no sense, throwing away Knowledge is one of the most counter-productive actions that can be taken and shows what TRUE ignorance is.
The only way to make Knowledge no longer Knowledge, is to develop a Theory to disprove it, then validate that Theory with the necessary amount of evidence. This then creates an environment where the onus is on those supporting the existing Knowledge to counter that Theory with further evidence at the same level (but there has never been a successful theory presented and tested which disproves the existence of a Deity).
Since the Bible is Knowledge by definition (anyone debating otherwise is welcome to prove their stance via an acceptable definition) the onus in on the Atheists to prove whatever Theory they have to disprove the existence of a Deity thus making that aspect of the Bible no longer Knowledge.
Until they do that they are rejecting Knowledge based on their belief in their own ‘common sense’ on what is plausible. This is in itself a belief system.
And we aren’t debating ‘which god’ do I believe in here, as arguably the Bible, Quran etc… are ALL Knowledge.
But before you debate WHICH God you must first accept the premise that a Deity exists. Atheists do not accept that, thus they cannot use ‘which God’ as an argument.
25 Jul 2012, 2:46 am
The atheist can instead adopt the counterfactual, that *if* God existed as specified by the Bible or Koran, *then* God would be the cause of all the problems in the world. Indeed, this is the Problem of Evil I have devoted many essays to outlining, the most advanced and recent version of which I articulate in “TheraminTrees’s Atheism, 3: Evil” and “TheraminTrees’s Atheism, 4: Skeptical Theism”.
However, this also is not the only reason one might think that no god exists — instead, one may appeal to other kinds of incompatibility arguments, like the ones I outline in “TheraminTrees’s Atheism, Part 1: Incompatibility”, “TheraminTrees’s Atheism, 2: Omniscience”, and “TheraminTrees’s Atheism, 5: Imperfection”.
Or one may simply lack belief in God because no “God” concept has been sufficiently demonstrated.
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I’m an atheist most broadly (I disbelieve in all god concepts), being a strong/positive atheist (affirming their nonexistence) to some god concepts and being a weak/negative atheist (mere lack of belief) to other concepts. See my new, replacement version of this essay “Defining Atheist and Agnostic” for more information.
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I’d deny that; the practice of empirical data did exist somewhat prior to the Bible.
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Yes, a counter-theory would be one way to disprove a theory, but there’s also another way — instead demonstrate that all the evidence for the original theory was in error.
The counter-theory is the way of positive/strong atheism. I have provided you with this counter-theory to disprove many god concepts; see my previous links above.
The debunking the original theories is the way of negative/weak atheism. To do this, we only need to refute all demonstrations of god put forth. I have so far personally done this for the ontological argument and Pascal’s Wager.
There are other good critiques of arguments elsewhere; in “God is Unproven” I attempt to catalogue them, though the project is unfinished.
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I would question your definition of “knowledge” if the Bible is knowledge by definition. Can you provide your definition? Are you arguing some sort of presuppositionalism?
25 Jul 2012, 2:52 am
Indeed, that’s a killer point. This is one reason I’ve recanted this essay and replaced it with “Defining Atheist and Agnostic”.
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I don’t think this divide is that neat — many atheists I know do not argue for incoherence. (Though all those who argue for incoherence are indeed atheists.) Indeed, I think you’re thinking of agnosticism.
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I agree — once you consider atheism as taking degrees of belief to multiple god concepts, and simply lacking belief in all of them (while affirmatively nonbelieving in some or none), agnosticism begins to make no sense. My current theory is that agnostics are atheists who simply do not want to self-identify as such for social reasons.
25 Jul 2012, 4:17 am
The link is to ignosticism, which I guess you meant, but I don’t understand it applies.
The way the language is *used* isn’t, of course, that neat. But, as you say, those who argue for incoherence are atheists. My corollary is that those who identify as atheists but don’t regard theism as incoherent would more properly be called agnostics, but they self-identify with atheism because they’re strongly antireligious.
Which makes an interesting contrast. You think agnostics are atheists who don’t want to self-identify as agnostics, and I think many self-styled atheists are agnostics who want to identify with atheism.
It’s an empirical question, but here’s why I think I’m right: desire to distance oneself from atheism because of mere connotation should lead some people who think theism is incoherent to declare for agnosticism, which you admit isn’t the case. The drift is in the other direction, plausibility-based nonbelievers calling themselves atheists, which can be explained by antireligious fervor.
Another test of our rival hypotheses is who are the most antireligious “atheists”–the incoherentists or the empiricists? I haven’t read them, but I think most of the “new atheists” are empiricists, not (“true atheist”) incoherentists. I think of what I know of the views of Harris, Dawkins, JT, and the late Hitchens. This would follow from their being “selected,” so to speak, from the agnostic population _based_ on their antireligiousness, whereas incoherentists span the gamut of degrees of antireligious feeling.
What’s the basis of this antireligious fervor among some who are in essence agnostics? Well, there’s a lot to hate religion for, and coherence arguments probably don’t make one hate it any more. But then, some of the new atheists, Harris and Hitchens, seem to have been motivated by a sinister wish to stir up Islamophobia.
25 Jul 2012, 4:21 am
“You think agnostics are atheists who don’t want to self-identify as agnostics”
Should be self-identify as atheists.
25 Jul 2012, 9:40 am
Not sure how to insert quotes sorry :)
God did not introduce all that is wrong in the world. This is one aspect that Atheists commonly misinterpret about the Bible. It was written for us, for our existence, like a bubble inside a bigger bubble (possibly billions of bubbles) of possible existences. God exists outside of our bubble, and we know from many scriptures that one thing exists inside our existence AND outside of our existence. That is choice. We have no knowledge if there are other existences out there with other creations, or what laws exist within God’s bubble. Or if there are other God’s (all theories). What we do know from the Bible is what is relevant to OUR existence, and when God is classified as Omnibenevolent that is within OUR existence, which is what you can classify as the ‘scope’ of the Bible. Since God knows what has been and is to come, he knows what we will experience within our Bubble of existence, so knows what is irrelevant and unnecessary to include in the Bible.
Choice saw the Devil go against God and transition from Angel to Demon. The world was once perfect, and everything that is wrong with it has been based on human choice. From the very first decision to go against what is right we began degrading, polluting and becoming a pestilence on this planet. What is wrong is caused by humans, based on our ability to choose, which is the purpose of our existence. We cannot blame our wrongs on our creator, it makes no sense. By preventing any wrong God removes choice, the purpose of our existence; regardless it has no bearing on what caused the ‘wrong’ on our planet.
Now God can be omnibenevolent and hell can still exist because he can create a neutral environment which retains the aspect of choice. Judgement is something reserved for the creator, but by providing us the rules and a clear explanation for how to seek forgiveness despite our sins he retains his omnibenevolent nature. Many Christians believe even once non-believers die due to God’s merciful nature there will be the chance for them to repent and be absolved of their sins (as do I, as it makes sense). Only those who reject him to the bitter end will be judged, as will be the Devil, for this is their choice, and being Omnibenevolent God allows us that. For those who have never heard of him; mentally impaired, abortions etc.. they will get that chance as will everyone else. I think I covered two of your items in 1 go with that one.
As for Gods omnipotence paradox, once again this is within the Bubble of our existence. So when put in terms of humans capability from their conception to the end of our universe as we know it, ANYTHING we are capable of (and moreso anything that anything in our existence is capable of) God is also capable of. This makes him Omnipotent without the need to get into discussions of what his capabilities are within his own existence, as he has no requirement to justify that to us as it has no bearing on us.
As for God committing suicide…well, this is, suprise suprise, once again within the realm of our existence. As ‘life’ is within our Bubble. Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God, are all one and the same. So technically yes God provided himself life as a normal man within our existence, and (arguably) committed suicide by allowing mankind to kill him when he could have stopped it in a heartbeat. Since he also exists outside of our existence that was nothing but a loss of life in our specific existence, life outside of our existence is not the same.
Omnipotence I covered above, once again; within our existence.
Omniscience is another interesting one which people often get wrong. Keeping in line with our bubble of existence. We can have entire free will, and since time within our existence is linear, God at any point in time can know every possible choice we can make, and every possible output from those choices cascading down to the very last choice the very last person makes until the end of our existence. Outside of our existence is irrelevant once again, and as God has power above and beyond us, the Angels, the Devil, he knows he will win in the final fight and cast the Devil out. As for who go’s to Heaven, we still have our choice, this is not predestined, but it will happen outside of our existence and will be our first choice after this world. Thus within the bounds of our existence God is Omnicient yet we retain our free will. This also explains how God can act ‘suprised’ as our decisions confirm one of the various paths one person may take at any point in time. God still knows ALL possible choices thus knowing everything.
Next.
Is God willing to prevent evil but unable?
God can prevent evil, as is willing on judgment day ;) This does not make him malevolent as I previous stated he has provided us clear instructions now on how to live outside of sin and will also give us an opportunity at the end to be absolved. This is not malevolence, it is mercy despite our choice to ignore him.
As also outlined earlier, evil comes from outside of our existence, there is no reason for God to explain where it came from. Why do you think he should when he has explained what it is and how to avoid it and be forgiven for embracing it?
The suffering of animals and babies all stems from human sin (as does all imperfection). It says clearly in the Bible animals lived in harmony before we brought sin onto the earth through our choice, childbirth also became painful at that point and imperfection entered. And as animals exist to support humanity they must suffer through our sin, both because they live within our existence and because they are there to feed and teach us. What humanity should do is dedicate their lives to removing as much pain from the lives of animals and babies as possible to make up for us causing that suffering to begin with :)
Let me know if you want me to go on. All I can say is rethink what you already assume is correct in light of the Bible and the definition of God being relevant to our existence. He has no requirement to justify to us questions we have that will have no bearing on our existence, and even many questions that do. The Bible was written for a specific purpose, are you suggesting God has answered in the Bible every question every human could possibly ask about anything at all? I don’t think I need to go too far with explaining why that makes no sense.
Regarding Empirical evidence it was probably a bad choice of words for that definition as Empirical does classify more then just scientific testing. To reword that point; I was referring to the strict levels of testing required to facilitate ‘scientific proof’ on a premise. The levels of validation required now for claiming something as fact is far greater then they were (read about the Higgs particle for an example of how many tests are required) thus as we refine testing techniques and increase our expectation on what defines fact that should not invalidate that which has already been validated without disproving it via an alternative theory.
Pascals wager is silly, it was created by a human so already irrelevant…and is a terrible reason to believe in God. Pascal’s wager would be better positioned to argue.
Knowledge on a Deity;
1. Knowledge exists on the existence of a Deity (Bible, Quran)
2. No Knowledge exists on the non-existence of a Deity, only theory
3. Thus if you are truly neutral it means you have not been provided any knowledge (baby, african tribe…whatever)
4. Once you know of the Bible, Quran you now have Knowledge and should accept the existence of a Deity based on it being the ‘best Knowledge available’.
5. If you are skeptical, go on a journey of questioning, developing theories and attempting to disprove the existence of a Deity. But you should not be an Atheist until you have a valid theory which you have proven that no one can disprove.
6. When someone counter-theories your argument, back to square one.
7. Rinse and repeat.
Note: you can choose to reject available Knowledge without a proven theory to counter that, but this then falls into the realms of a belief system.
Lastly.
Definition of Knowledge: Information and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.
So the first question we must answer before we go any deeper;
Is the Bible knowledge? Let’s break down the term Knowledge to better understand what it means.
1) Information – defined as “a sequence of symbols that can be interpreted as a message”
2) Skills – defined as “the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results” 3) Experience – involvement in or exposure to Information & Skills
4) Education – the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next.
So in summary the minimum requirements for something to be classified as information is;
A message which portrays the aims and habits of a group of people’s lives which can be passed from one generation to the next.
The Bible undoubtedly has a message.
And initially we will focus on 1 particular message, that is;
The existence of a Deity.
The Bible also undoubtedly outlines the habits of a group of people’s lives which has undoubtedly been passed from one generation to the next. But we will not delve too far into this other than to confirm it fits the definition.
Thus;
Yes, the Bible undoubtedly is classified as Knowledge.
More specifically;
Yes, the Bible undoubtedly provides Knowledge regarding the existence of a Deity.
I did cover allot here but happy to go further into any of this :) I enjoy open discussions and im on a constant quest for more Knowledge to better understand the methods our creator used to produce this incredible universe.
I was totally sold on the concept of evolution (which still fits with the Bible of course) until I read this site. It’s not specifically relevant to this discussion but its definitely thought provoking.
http://www.mathematicsofevolution.com/
25 Jul 2012, 12:51 pm
You enclose the word “blockquote” in at the beginning of the quote and /blockquote in the same marks at the end.
I can’t for the life of me understand why WordPress doesn’t make the process simpler.
25 Jul 2012, 5:15 pm
If I can add one caveat about incoherence arguments as the functional essence of atheism as opposed to agnosticism–”incoherence arguments” should be read broadly. You needn’t know precisely how theism is incoherent to be an atheist: someone with no philosophical sophistication can obviously be one, even without being able to articulate how religion is incoherent with any precision. The guy who says, ‘I don’t believe in any “god”: can you see it or touch it? Then it isn’t real,’ has the right idea even if the rationale he articulates can be easily refuted. Or the logical positivist who rules out religion based on the mistaken tenet that everything is reducible to “sense data” has the right intuition despite expressing bad philosophy. Or, likewise, the Popperian who says the hypothesis isn’t scientific because it can’t be falsified. Or the scientist who says the concept has no explanatory value, despite having no interest in explaining why.
25 Jul 2012, 5:23 pm
You were totally sold on evolution until some guy with a B.S. in math from Brigham Young (of all places) provided a mathematical argument you couldn’t refute. You were absolutely convinced that no one could refute this argument, after, one supposes, searching far and wide for someone who could meet the challenge.
25 Jul 2012, 6:44 pm
Funnily enough I wasn’t searching for evidence refuting evolution (as evolution or no evolution the Bible still holds); out of my own interest I wanted to understand based on the evolution of wheat in controlled environments how long it would theoretically take for a positive mutation to occur. So I went down the avenue of mapping out mathematically how that would seem to happen, but when it became a massive undertaking I did a quick search to see if anyone else had done it. They had, on that site. So I randomly stumbled on it but found it very interesting. As for where the guy grew up, sorry I wasn’t aware you needed to be born in a particular neighborhood to be considered smart enough to theorize anything, nor require any certain qualification for anyone to take you seriously.
As I said, not relevant to this argument, I thought based on the level of detail you go into in your research against God it might help to balance out your research to read some theory as to how science can also support aspects of it.
Its mysterious why there isn’t more information out there correlating maths to evolution; seems like a no brainer to me when we apply it to everything else. Not saying its proves or disproves anything yet, but it definitely helps to build an argument.
25 Jul 2012, 6:56 pm
@Michael:
Use angled quotes like “< " and ">” to render the blockquotes. I edited your comment for you. You can see this information in the “Comment HTML” instructions above the box where you comment in.
Response to your new objections forthcoming.
25 Jul 2012, 7:05 pm
thank you!
26 Jul 2012, 5:30 pm
Well we disagree there, as I do with most fundamentalists (although some nonbelievers won’t challenge you on this). It would be stupid to read through a claim by a person who flaunts his credential of a B.S. from B.Y.U. Such claims to refute this or that established scientific theory are a dime a dozen. Peter might oblige you, but I consider it important to point out that completely ignoring such a claim is completely justified, particularly when a poster presents none of the arguments. The chances are overwhelmingly small that a math B.S. from B.Y.U. could upset the evolutionary consensus–and, in addition, that his claim hasn’t been taken up by more credentialed persons.
The point is completely relevant to the debate with fundamentalists, who denigrate expert knowledge and pretend, narcissistically, that they are capable of evaluating every manner of scientific claim, without demonstrable training. The attitude of fundamentalists toward real expertise is as much a problem as their attitude toward the subject matter of science.
The fact that you grant credibility to the Christian bible as a source of truth doesn’t help alleviate a rational person’s reluctance to glance at your recommendations–except as an exercise, which I’m glad to forgo.
26 Jul 2012, 5:36 pm
<Use angled quotes like “” to render the blockquotes. I edited your comment for you. You can see this information in the “Comment HTML” instructions above the box where you comment in.>
Let’s see if it works. You should change your official recommendation
< I reccomend
26 Jul 2012, 5:37 pm
Seems not to work.
26 Jul 2012, 5:39 pm
I’m confused as to what you were trying to do…
26 Jul 2012, 5:41 pm
There you have it. It’s been long known that mutations aren’t random. The proclivity to produce positive mutations in a given range of environment is itself subject to natural selection.
26 Jul 2012, 7:13 pm
Please focus on one important point. I never said I had proof. Read my original post please.
“Not saying its proves or disproves anything yet”
As soon as someone starts getting heated on me claiming i’m discrediting science and believing in the Bible is ridiculous when they don’t even attempt to address anything I have said specifically, I tune off as the discussion will never be productive.
Let’s also not ignore the vast, and I mean vast amounts of people who make equally narcissistic claims about parts of scripture, with no credentials at all in the way of Biblical study. Do I ignore them, no…then I would be considered an ignorant Christian wouldn’t I.
You also completely glossed over my first sentence (“as evolution or no evolution the Bible still holds”) so clearly i’m not driven to prove God exists through questioning the current understanding of evolution.
My only point is that there are some very interesting theories out there (both supporting and opposing evolution), of which this is one I have found to be quite good.
Read it, refute it, or ignore it… But responding without reading will get no return thought from me in future.
As for;
Mutations are random unless you believe in Intelligent Design (?)
Natural selection operates via;
1. DNA repair at the base level (or failure of)
2. Offspring which are superior in their ability to survive or reproduce
It doesn’t change the fact DNA has no knowledge of if the failures will produce a superior change many generations down the track or not. Mutations would be occurring everywhere, at all times, which they do. Ie. random?
When regarding wheat mutations I should have said ‘successful’ mutation rather then positive. As there was no indication if it would be a positive or negative change. Natural selection was only in place as far as the failures in DNA repair at that point.
26 Jul 2012, 7:26 pm
I think we’re suffering an object-language/metalanguage confusion.
26 Jul 2012, 10:19 pm
Sorry to butt in, but whenever you define a mutation as “positive” you must state the context, for example the chances of a modern wheat plant mutating to a form with higher production is low, but the number of mutations that would better success in a wild environment are probably high. Strength of selection then has an amplifying effect (very “bad” mutations don’t reproduce).
26 Jul 2012, 10:35 pm
That is entirely 100% correct, and so you must also factor in the number of organisms of a type at the same state (which I did when I started looking into this). That said successive mutations must carry on generation after generation.
For organisms that reproduce incredibly fast this does seem plausible, though for those who have a limited population and reproduce only once in 5-10 years…that is a vastly different kettle of fish.
One must also compare all species, and determine if one rule applies for all or some mutate faster then others.
For very slow reproduction rates to show such drastic signs of change in such tiny timeframes, that level of change should indicate organisms that live a fraction of the time should be undergoing drastic levels of mutation which they aren’t.
The mathematics behind it seems to indicate there must be vastly different rates of mutations depending on the species, but this indicates there is control placed on mutation.
That’s why I find the whole thing so darn interesting :)
And when you say very bad mutations don’t reproduce, well they do. Many bad mutations carry through reproduction. And remember im not talking specifically about a bad mutation causing an impairment or death, it might simply be ‘useless’ providing no foreseeable benefit. And with the billions of possible individual random mutations that would have to stack up one after the other from one generation to the next without any control, its assumed there should be far more useless components flying around.
27 Jul 2012, 1:01 am
I was cheating for simplicity, I meant something like “the mutations which we generally regard as very bad, whatever the case, are those that stop the individual reproducing”, it’s sort of circular. Sorry time limits expand later.
27 Jul 2012, 2:58 am
Brief example it would be hard to imagine a situation where mutation X, which caused you to lose the ability to reproduce, would be considered a good mutation (but the common banana shs us there are always counter examples).
29 Jul 2012, 10:56 pm
I admire how JT got in that list. :)
Harris/Dawkins/Hitchens/JT all do endorse one particular kind of incoherence argument — namely the Problem of Evil, manifested in one of its many variants. So while they do argue mainly on empiricist lines (God is unproven and devoid of explanatory value, therefore we have no need to invoke God, therefore there’s no reason to believe in God), they do also occasionally argue on incoherence lines.
Now that I think about it, the Problem of Evil may be so ubiquitous that agnostics consider it too. And if they do, then I think that’s troubling for your dichotomy. And remember there are plenty of Problem of Evil variants — Hell is unjust, the Bible is full of atrocities, suffering in the real world, God isn’t revealing himself adequately, etc.
29 Jul 2012, 11:19 pm
I’d consider the POE a plausibility argument rather than a coherence argument: Do the world’s evils exceed what a benevolent deity would create? Are some of the evils gratuitous? The point isn’t argued on coherence grounds: it’s argued as an empirical test of conventional theism. I think it’s bad empiricism, but it’s definitely not logic.
In fact, I’ve concluded that the POE is itself incoherent. (See my discussion with Adamoriens in Comments on his latest blog posting.)
29 Jul 2012, 11:27 pm
I know the Bible says God gave us this “free will” thing and we (being specifically Adam and Eve, not actually us) used this free will to sin. But that leaves the question of why God-created beings would sin? Where did this imperfection come from? This is what my essay “TheraminTrees’s Atheism, 5: Imperfection” argues.
~
I’d still argue against that for all the reasons I said in “God, Babies, Hell, and Justice” — it’s never omnibenevolent to torture someone forever, regardless of what they’ve done.
~
Yes, it does make sense. It’s conveniently nowhere in the Bible, however. How did you come to think this is the nature of Hell? Just because it makes sense?
~
What kind of tragic fool is so idiotic in the extreme as to desire infinite torture?
~
I’m sorry, but this makes no sense to me. What’s a “bubble” in the manner you describe it? More simply and to the point, are there things God cannot do? If so, what do we make of omnipotentence? If not, then can God make it so he ceases to exist in all bubbles/what not?
If God knows our future and knows what we do, what do we make of our choices? Would you advocate for free will in despite of determinism, like I do?
~
Why the long wait?
~
Do you think that those who follow God’s “clear” instructions actually are free from diseases, natural disasters, etc.? Also, I put “clear” in quotation marks because I’m wondering what you make of the massive amounts of disagreement surrounding what these instructions actually are.
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Why is that the case? Why does God allow innocents to be punished for the mistakes of others? How is that fair or just?
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That may be what the Bible says, but the sciences suggest otherwise — Darwinian predation and disharmony has existed long before humans entered the scene. Do you think the Bible is literally true?
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No, but I am suggesting that there are unanswered questions, and these questions line up such that God’s existence is in doubt.
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Do you know why scientists require so many tests to verify the existence of the Higgs particle?
~
That’s just it, though. Why should I consider the Bible to be “Knowledge”? I agree that it contains stories about things, but so does the Chronicles of Naria, yet I don’t think Narnia exists. Do you? Do you have a counter-theory to disprove Narnia? What about the City of Atlantis, that Plato wrote about?
What makes the Bible particularly reliable to distinguish it from Narnia or Atlantis? What is the difference between “Knowledge” and theory anyway?
We can play a long game of me explaining to you my counter-theory and reasons for why gods do not exist. But at the end of the day, you still need to provide a reason why gods *do* exist. We both have a chip in this game, you can’t sit out and just attempt to bat away my responses.
~
The site makes a few errors already, from a bit of me reading it. I’ll give you three, here, but I’m not going to read the whole thing. If you want to argue that evolution is false, I’m going to have to ask you to personally summarize the arguments in this comment thread, or link to something shorter.
Error #1: Despite what the first essay says, the theory of evolution does not require gradualism. Punctuated equilibrium makes sense in terms of how environments shift and fossils occur. (See here)
Error #2: Despite what the first essay says, there are clear examples of transitional species, actually more than we would expect, and they aren’t in dispute, let alone “a figment of someone’s vivid imagination”. (See here and here.)
Error #3: Abandoning evolution does not automatically mean God created the Earth and all life on Earth. There are other theories, like a whole pantheon of Gods, or panspermia, simulations, or random chance, etc.
29 Jul 2012, 11:48 pm
I feel like that misses the point — if the world’s evils exceed what a benevolent deity would create, what is being looked at is the *incoherence* between benevolence and the existence of evil. The empirical matter is the figuring out if what looks like evil actually is evil.
~
I’ll look to it and maybe comment there.
30 Jul 2012, 2:31 am
Cheers Pete;
My theory is that one of the greatest gifts in the universe is to create life and provide free will. I guess with Atheism the complexity is greater, seeing as all life stems from mistakes. So why something born of mistakes can tell something else born of mistakes that their decision is a mistake makes somewhat little sense as well.
He provides us the choice in the end, he regards everything we do.
Everyone will have a chance at salvation.
There is a second Resurrection which initiates Judgement.
So while its not explicitly stated to me it is fairly clear that there will be an opportunity for those who have never heard of God or have been properly challenged to repent.
Not many I assure you. But one only needs to look around at much of the hatred in the world to know some people’s misplaced hatred of God (sometimes who they don’t even believe exists yet hate him anyway..there’s sense) would not only reject him but would do so despite any repercussion.
God created the boundaries in which we exists. He exists outside of it, he can see its edges, its extremities etc.. he knows what is relevant to it, and what we have no ability to comprehend. Everything within that existence has power, we have capability, and he knows our capability within our existence based on his creation.
When he tells us he is all powerful there is no requirement for that power to be above and beyond that of all the power inside our existence, as in relation to our existence that is all power. We can’t remove ourselves from our existence. So regardless even if he couldn’t remove himself from his existence, it doesn’t mean he isn’t all powerful in the context of the words he wrote to ours describing his capabilities in our existence (different to his existence).
I do advocate for free will, and I did explain how God can know our future while we retain that capability.
Why not? What is so long about it?
In terms of disagreement on the laws in the Bible. Its clear that no man shall judge. If Christian’s lived that way though people probably wouldn’t have as many issues with religion as they do lol… So people should ask questions, investigate scripture, and develop an understanding of right and wrong. But no one should judge, so as long as you are following what you believe to be right based on the Knowledge you have been given then you are doing the best you can.
And no they are not free from disease, or natural disasters, or anything that people who don’t believe are impacted by. But our suffering was brought on through our choice to sin, those who believe understand that we must live in the same existence as those who choose not to under the pain caused through the original sins of man.
Free will.
The Bible actually fits with evolution as well. With the theory of evolution comes multiple different potential explanations also. Humans may have evolved only to become man upon entering Eden once God was satisfied with their evolution. And in Eden animals lived in harmony to provide the newly evolve man a place to live.
Some believe that causing something pain is not sin, but rather pain caused by something else with a desire to cause pain for nothing but its own enjoyment/satisfaction becomes sin. This would imply there is a requirement for pain to exist for us to exist, perhaps so that even for people who do not believe in God and have never heard about him they still have some reason to not hurt another person. Without pain I would only guess how different our laws would be.
I provided my basis for Knowledge. Narnia has never been claimed by the author to be real for a start. Atlantis, I don’t know enough i’m sorry. Please provide me the links and maybe I can learn more to decide if people claim to have Knowledge of it or not. Regardless whether it exists or not has no direct baring on me, which is where the comparison between the Bible and these references doesn’t work (in my opinion).
If someone tells me something is real and provides me the Knowledge I will accept that. I may question parts, and if that leads me to Knowledge proving it doesn’t exist then I may believe that instead.
The issue is people are starting to demand 1st hand evidence prior to accepting anything as Knowledge, which is not the definition of Knowledge.
Im not sitting out, contrary to that all I have been doing is providing explanations for questions which you have raised based on my stake in the game “The Bible”.
Alternatively Atheists are the ones who really have no clear ‘stake in the game’ as they don’t have anything tying them to anything.
- Why defines right and wrong for an Atheist?
- Is the reason for humans existence simply to continue existing?
- Are all humans just mistakes in cell replication?
- How long ago did each race split from each others evolutionary chain?
- Has each race been evolving at different rates or at the same rate?
- Does that mean some people are superior to others?
- Is there an optimum genetic code?
- How are universal constants explained?
Just for a start they are some questions I would like to ask based on the theory that we came form nothing, and have evolved randomly.
I’m assuming you have a reference you would like to use here?
Now regarding the website applying math to evolution; if I could remove all of the text outside of the math’s itself I would. The author is clearly a Creationist and will write in a manner that is just going to downright annoy many Atheists, but no more then the vast majority of sites written by Athesist challenging the Bible *insert any number of sarcastic meme’s in here*.
So despite some of those references, ignore, hes human…the logic is all I was really wanting to highlight in applying math to evolution.
This would indicate that the process of cell replication forming mutations that eventually lead to a change in species are ‘triggered’, and would cause explosive amounts of mutation in those areas given there are trillions of possible random mutations cells could undergo.
What causes this trigger? It can’t obviously be environmental change as there are environmental fringe conditions all over the world yet we don’t see the wild amounts of required mutation in those creatures as opposed to others in more stable environments.
That indicates some kind of intelligent design?
I agree there are certain parallels one can draw between certain species in the fossil record. My takeaway from this site was proof that gradual, constant evolution is pretty much impossible unless Time changed.
The question then relates back to my original; what controls rates of mutation. Any kind of control in place of consistent and gradual progressive evolution shows signs of design or intelligence within the cells itself. The complexity also when one looks at all species; even with varied rates of evolution based on environment the rate of evolution within that environment would be consistent between all species. Thus for something that reproduces gradually over time to evolve quickly in a particular environment would suggest that organisms with a much faster rate of reproduction would be evolving at explosive rates to support that.
This relates to my earlier statement of ignoring his belief and just focusing on the numbers.
That said panspermia suffers from the issue of ‘what created whatever it was that created what existed before us in this universe’ which God does not suffer from as he exists outside of it.
Simulations might only explain our current existence, but one would assume then we are linked to something outside of our existence; whether that be code, another body, or a soul (so is not in that too different from the Bible).
And ‘is there more then one God’ argument might also have merit in the scope of Christianity simply if the Gods made an agreement that only one of them would interact with humanity. In that respect he is the one and only God in scope of our existence. Outside of our existence, it matters not, so is irrelevant to us.
So yes you are entirely correct in saying evolution not causing all life does not necessarily mean the Christian God is ‘the’ God; but seeing as many Atheists use evolution as a way to disprove Christianity (which as outlined earlier it doesn’t anyway) applying math’s to the functionality of cell replication as we know it today would help them to challenge things which they may have already accepted as undeniable proof in their own realm of belief.
30 Jul 2012, 4:43 am
This one is easy:
There can be one, multiple or none, depending on the situation you specify. For example I have the optimal genetic code for being me. I’m not trying to provoke you, merely provide a quick demonstration of the problem with this question (in it’s current form).
Trying to be helpful in a different way:
If you mean something like “for survival, in this universe” I’d reply certain spore forming bacteria might be the answer.
As to your question re races, you’d have to come up with a (genetically) meaningful definition of race first. As defining a “species” presents numerous enough problems, I won’t be holding my breath.
Also the use of the word “mistakes” is ripe with connotations, as these changes in genetic code have improved reproductive success, you could call them “corrections” ;)
30 Jul 2012, 6:28 am
The answer was generic on purpose and refers to the previous questions alluding to some kind of purpose for humanity. If nothing has set our design but mistake and survival; then survival would be the only answer really. Thus i’m interested to know if someone who believes everything formed from chance think’s once we can map our genetics and design humans would there be an ideal code and would that lean towards some humans being superior to others?
Seeing as race became a required ‘naughty word’ after the Nazi’s, humanity seems to rely on it being irrelevant then have any proven justification to support it as far as iv’e read. We look at animals and go “we can see a clear path of evolution, an increase in intelligence etc…” but when it comes to us we go “genetics is not everything, we are all individuals that are defined as much by what we think as our genetic code, to the extent what we think might be more correct then what we are genetically created as”.
This confuses me as we should be no different in our development. As in the evolution article Peter posted earlier, a common theory is evolution occurs the fastest in small populations separated from others in new environments.
So I would suggest the closest definition for race would be a distinct grouping of individuals who are separated by a significant distance or land mass preventing extended contact/reproduction with others.
There are clear enough differences between races that have originated from separate areas of the planet independent of one another to pretty easily draw some barriers and segregate what would appear to be varying evolutionary paths (assuming thats how it happened). Not to mention the discussion around neaderthals etc…
So the question does stand independent of the specific boundaries placed around a race, if evolution has occurred then when races split off they would have begun travelling down their own evolutionary path…and moreso those who entered a greater number of new areas and environments would have evolved faster as they continued to need to adapt faster and more often to constantly changing environments.
They are mistakes, are they are copied incorrectly? There are corrections, but that returns them to their originally purposed code and the mutation is lost. It is only when those mistakes build upon each other to a point they can provide a form of benefit enough to warrant that organism having an improved level of personal survival or an improved ability to reproduce would it be considered an improvement. But it remains an improvement driven by mistakes.
Alternatively the ability to reproduce more effectively can be a huge mistake in itself depending on the mutation.
30 Jul 2012, 7:51 am
Ok so races are a best statistically defined groupings with fuzzy edges, and they never truly separated, and now you could argue the races are merging. From a practical point of view I see your point, you can quite fairly say sub-saharan africans have a higher incidence of sickle cell anaemia than caucasians, or caucasians have a lower incidence of lactose intolerance than asians etc.
As for designing a better human, again you’d have to name your goal. For example, if your goal was maximum number of children per generation, in a human in british society in 2012, it might be better to choose genes that make it less likely for the human to receive a university education. That’s controversial.
In terms of genes you could probably work out which genes are least present in humans who meet your criteria, then define your races, and put them in some sort of order.
If I copy something and improve it, and there was no evidence the original was the correct version anyway, the label mistake seems stranger.
30 Jul 2012, 7:54 am
“Copied incorrectly” would imply it is the goal of life to copy 100% correctly, which may not be the case.
The evolution of evolvability is an interesting idea.
30 Jul 2012, 7:56 am
Gene frequencies would obviously be different in small communities with a low rate of genetic exchange, even without evolution in terms of mutation.
30 Jul 2012, 9:23 am
Dead right ;) The key here is that one could ‘argue’ certain gene’s promote more desirable offspring to support the ongoing existence of humanity.
Controversial indeed. Thus some of my other questions;
- What defines right and wrong for an Atheist?
- Is the reason for humans existence simply to continue existing?
Similar to someone forgetting their keys and missing and airplane, only for the airplane to crash. Or missing the number they wanted on a lottery ticket and accidentally circling the one beside it to win a million dollars. It still does not mean their original mistake was not a mistake. It was just pure luck that their mistake led to something which improved upon what their situation would have been.
Unfortunately as with evolution, 1,000,000,000 decisions later that money may have resulted in a few bad ones which caused a jealous girlfriend to murder him in his sleep. Which saw him dead instead of just poorer. Since its all random and all.
Pretty terrible examples, but you get what I mean :)
Not really, copy incorrectly just means that the function of the process to copy cells is to copy it in the same fashion. The goal of life may be something else entirely; but that would indicate a driver for evolution, what is that if not pure mistake? Getting into the realm of design at this point.
30 Jul 2012, 9:44 am
What defines right or wrong for an atheist?
On a practical level I’d posit many substitute “lessen suffering” or at least “do no harm” for moral “good” (which I can’t define by atheistic or theistic means).
On a philosophical level I’d say atheists and theists both just make it up as they go along, guided by preference, but they rationlise their choices differently.
On our purpose I’d say from a biological point of view survival and propagation is the purpose of life, but the biological point of view is not exclusive.
I think your analogies need altering, for example:
Organism A produces an exact facsimile of it’s genetic material every generation, over 100,000 years the environment changes, organism A is doomed.
Organism B changes it’s genetic code at a low rate, a subset of which have a chance of increasing reproductive success in varying environments, over 100,000 years the environment changes and a somewhat altered descendant of organism B is with us.
There are variables, clearly such as rate of environment change, rate of change of genetic code, probability of a change/mistake increasing reproductive success etc, but given the instability of the environment is it a “mistake” to have a somewhat plastic genome?
30 Jul 2012, 9:53 am
Of course defining “desirable” would be problematic in objective terms.
You could probably argue that in terms of numbers the Han Chinese are the “best” race.
30 Jul 2012, 10:39 pm
My Responses to Michael Answering My Questions
But only an imperfect person would freely choose to do something imperfect. So where did the imperfection come from?
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That doesn’t actually respond to what I said — I’m suggesting that even if someone made the wrong choice, it’s *still* unjustified to condemn them to Hell. Why does making a mistake with regard to choosing God merit Hell, which is presumably infinite torture? (See “God, Babies, Hell, and Justice”)
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I think you misunderstand their motivations — it’s not that they believe in God, but choose to defy perfect goodness in order to get tortured forever (the most colossally stupid thing possible — only Satan does that), but that they genuinely think God does not exist, and their polemic follows from that. Any rage you think is being directed at God is actually being directed at the concept as it permeates US culture.
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Does God know his own future choices before he makes them?
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People are suffering while God waits, and he’s waiting for no apparent reason.
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Can you demonstrate this? It seems very clear that the amount someone sins does not determine how much they suffer — for instance, there is far more suffering in the developing world, but there doesn’t seem to be more sinning in the developing world…
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Saying “Free will” doesn’t help answer this question. You might as well say “Seven”. What does free will have to do this? Do people lose their free will if God made it so that birth defects didn’t exist?
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Well, the creation order is wrong. (See also.)
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Sure. But there couldn’t have been just two people — Adam and Eve. There clearly never was such a population bottleneck.
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Even if that is true, they still existed and suffered (disease, predation, starvation, etc.) before humans even existed. Why?
30 Jul 2012, 10:41 pm
Answering Michael’s Objections to Atheism
I don’t understand what you mean by this. First, mutations are not mistakes, as there is no goal of evolution for which mutations are deviating. Second, even if mutations were mistakes, it would be a genetic fallacy to assume that humans also were mistakes.
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The standards for evaluating actions of the atheist’s choice. For me, I use utilitarianism.
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No.
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No.
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Skin colors changed in humans about 100,000 years ago when humans began to migrate. (See here.) Changes in skin color and culture are all there is to race.
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People of different races aren’t biologically distinct, so I can’t make sense of this question.
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Superior by what standard?
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Optimum by what standard?
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The answer isn’t known for sure yet. Possible answers include but are not limited to: (1) there are no other possible values the constants can take, (2) once set at random, there is nothing that can change the universal constants, or (3) the constants have stayed constant so far due to random chance, and could fall apart at any moment.
30 Jul 2012, 10:41 pm
My Response to Michael Proving the Bible
So? Why does the author saying it is real make it count as Knowledge? Do you think that Hercules exists, merely because the author(s) of the Hercules myths suggested their stories were true?
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Start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis.
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I’m not demanding first hand evidence, merely more reason to accept the Bible than the authors said it was true.
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What I mean is it isn’t enough to attempt to answer my questions — you have to provide reasons why I should take the Bible seriously.
30 Jul 2012, 10:43 pm
On Evolution
Can you link to the part with the math that you find relevant?
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No. What happens is that you have a stable environment which favors certain species over others, so mutations develop, yet don’t increase fitness, and thus do not get passed on much.
However, on occasion an environment will change suddenly and rapidly (think volcano), and this will change what is needed to survive in the new environment, and thus new mutations will catch on and new species will eventually develop. And remember that even these “sudden” developments (like the Cambrian explosion) take tens of millions of years.
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Evolution has not been gradual nor constant, so we’re on the same page.
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Quicker evolution does not necessarily imply quicker reproduction — it could just be that mutations are more likely to be favorable because there is a different environment. Likewise, quicker reproduction does not necessarily imply larger populations, because mortality rates could change.
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The other planet could have stronger evidence for evolution, for instance, that we just can’t confirm from here. It would evolve there, come here, and that would explain why we don’t see evidence for evolution here.
Though, of course, we do see evidence for evolution here, so the point is moot.
31 Jul 2012, 3:02 am
They didn’t freely choose they were tempted.
It’s not unjustified if they have been given the right instructions. It’s not a mistake if you stand before him and continue to reject his existence; that is blatant ignorance.
Where does it say that humans are smarter than Satan? If everyone is as smart as you say then Hell will be sparse indeed ;) I have that hope also. Just because there is a Hell doesn’t mean many, or anyone, need ever enter it.
I do also agree (though it’s a drastic generalisation) that most non-theists have a generic hatred for religion based on the acts of man but incorrectly reflect their hatred onto whatever Deity those humans follow. Ie. “gun’s kill people, people don’t kill people” mentality.
Some people just want to see the world burn.
As mentioned previously, he exists outside of our existence etc…
‘Apparent’ is the key word there.
Our existence must run its course; otherwise you may as well argue nothing should have ever been created to begin with.
God may have other reasons, and he may have good reason not to tell us what they are.
I did not indicate that there was Karma in what I said, but rather we have a defined existence and since we are all part of it what someone does has waves and could potentially impact everyone within that existence.
It is making a distinct change to a fundamental aspect of this existence which we have guided through our own decisions from the very beginning. Human’s were made to live shorter more arduous lives with numerous implications based on the original sins of mankind. So by removing an impact of those decisions made the decisions which caused those impacts irrelevant, negating an aspect of that choice.
Heaven/Earth and Light/Darkness on Day 1; creation of our existence through the Big Bang
Sky Day 2
Land Trees Day 3
Stars saw the settling of Earth inside a somewhat consistent solar system to reflect the night sky, a point where the next stages of life were ready to be initiated Day 4
Creatures born of water Day 5 (Fish, Reptiles etc.. Dinosaurs and Birds formed from originally designed reptilian/water born creatures along the evolutionary chain)
Creatures born of land and mankind Day 6 (Cattle, wild animals which would evolve from Day 5 animals and subsequently humanity)
Additionally;
“The heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array” comes at the very end of Day 6. This indicates that while creation of each of the objects within each of the first 6 days may have occurred in a somewhat linear fashion completion of even Day 1 did not occur till after Day 6 so using only linear progression of the text is not what I would consider a valid argument.
There was never an indication that their time in Eden was lengthy, nor that Eden was by any means small; there is no indication of this passage causing any kind of bottleneck of the sort. There always has to be a first of anything.
There is also no indication that the first use of Adam and Eve is consistent with the second or third, as with Day in the first passage. Adam may have meant creation and eve may have meant additional life. This may have transitioned to a singular couple within that grouping which would continue the story.
“But for Adam no suitable helper was found” indicates there were others, possibly many others that were all in different stages of being close to him.
I did cover one possibility in my previous response; …imply there is a requirement for pain to exist for us to exist, perhaps so that even for people who do not believe in God and have never heard about him they still have some reason to not hurt another person. Without pain I would only guess how different our laws would be.
We also don’t know exactly what animal’s relationship with God is. Or if they do suffer, or operate in the same fashion as humans do outside of just genetics. Do they have a soul, or will they cease to exist outside of this current existence. Does their pain actually matter at all? (I think it definitely 100% does to us and it should as we have the Knowledge to not cause it, but perhaps not at all to the animals themselves).
As there is no goal we can only assume a goal based on the purpose of the functions which exist. And cell replication clearly has facilities built around it which promotes reproduction in the same format and moreso protection and remediation to assist returning altered cells to their original state. For that reason when something does not adhere to specification; it is a mistake.
Otherwise every altered cell is not a mistake, and cancer cannot be considered a mistake. Moreso that would mean since there is no purpose for anything, no decision we make can be considered wrong.
Within what scope; utilitarianism at the individual layer, or within humanity as a species?
Does the happiness of the individual matter, or are decisions to be made to average happiness across all humans within the boundaries of a Government, or all humans period?
Which humans are capable of arguing the relevance of what makes whom happy?
If I make a human happy, and they believe they are totally happy, and that makes me happy; would that give anyone the right to say that is wrong?
If there are millions of happy Christians out there who’s belief makes them happy, why would you want to challenge their happiness?
Why do you think we exist then?
Specific to Utilitarianism What are we then?
So despite humans being subjected to the greatest number of varied environments in various tribal groups which is generally accepted to incur the greatest and fastest amount of mutation, clear differences in bone structures depending on environment along with other inherent changes based on location; you are suggesting that we are evolving so slowly that only our skin colour has changed?
Well there are distinctions, they are just minor and not considered to be sufficient enough based on what we define as distinct in other species. Even the most minor of distinctions may me 5,000-20,000 years of the beginnings in evolution.
Do you think based on humans obsession with not allowing one human to be considered superior to another we would ever allow evolution to actually occur to us?
Could we be the first species to actually work to prevent the one thing that made us?
Is our existence working against the fundamental mechanics of the universe?
Everything above is all of course taking evolution as fact.
It would relate to the purpose of humanity in my opinion; based on your response to that above (not yet given) do you think you could therefore decide what human traits are improvements, and possibly derive a standard?
How they formed from nothing?
There may have been a man that undertook such incredible deeds he had these passages written about him. Once again though Greek Mythology still supports the existence of a Deity. Why I choose Christianity over Greek Mythology is a separate discussion and one I would only really delve into once the person I am talking to has first established the best Knowledge available supports the existence of a Deity of some form. I personally don’t believe one generally jumps from being Atheist straight to Theist without getting back into the realm of Agnostic and learning more about the various forms of Knowledge available.
As for Atlantis; it seems there’s a number of possible interpretations of that one too which I would need to spend far too much time reading to see enough relevance to differentiate from Hercules above. But if there’s something specific let me know.
So you will only accept something as Knowledge if it benefits you in some way?
You can always accept something as Knowledge and choose to ignore it or argue your way is better.
we agree gradual evolution is an impossibility so I don’t need you to read any more of the site.
That is still assuming that mutations have to be beneficial for them to carry on in a stable environment. Why would useless mutations that neither benefit nor disadvantage creatures not still be accruing in those populations?
Ok what im trying to outline is that everything is coming into contact with new environments every day. And that organisms which reproduce very slowly also show immense levels of change, and much lower levels of population then other organisms which are less complex, reproduce far quicker, and have far greater populations. For those highly unique and complex organisms to survive such levels of change, within a changing environment, it would indicate there is a great deal of mutation occurring. Yet despite organisms with large populations entering changing environments with low productions rates one would expect the evolution to be far quicker. We are commonly seeing more and more species becoming extinct due to changing environments. There are levels of change, but not at the required rates to support the theory (in my opinion).
It still does not address where the origin came from, what created what created them, etc… eventually it has to address a ‘beginning’ within this existence.
Interesting dialogue : ) though its taking up alllllot of time now to respond. If you find you aren’t getting that much out of it just say so as I’m not here to waste anyone’s time.
31 Jul 2012, 4:17 pm
Problems of Suffering and Justice
1.) Why would a perfect person give in to temptation?
2.) Why would God allow this temptation to take place?
3.) What does it say about sin if sin wasn’t done willingly? Are you now punishing people for a mistake they couldn’t have avoided?
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1.) The instructions are dreadfully not clear. Do you know how many different religious instruction books there are out there, each with conflicting claims? Do you know how much disagreement there is about what each instruction book *actually* says? It’s not easy to follow them.
2.) Do you think blatant ignorance should be punished with torture?
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That doesn’t answer the question. Can he see the choices he makes outside our existence, before he makes them?
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Indeed it is. However, it’s impossible for us to know if there is a reason or not. God may have good reasons, but he just as easily may have evil reasons. How are we to know?
And I’m not arguing that we never have been created. It’s quite simple — just not create all the needless, pointless misery.
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1.) If the removal of birth defects occurred from the very beginning, there would be no issue.
2.) Birth defects aren’t actually a fundamental aspect of existence; I think we can definitely do without them.
3.) God has allegedly changed fundamental aspects of existence before (casting out of Eden, Flood, Plagues, etc.) and promises to do so again (God’s kingdom on Earth), and this doesn’t look like an issue.
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I don’t need the complete absence of all pain, merely the absence of pointless/needless/gratuitous pain, like disease. The existence of disease bears no relevance to our existence nor our moral development, and the rest of the physical laws could run the same.
It wouldn’t even bear problems for our ability to predict things because it would have always been the case, and would affect the animals that existed before humans ever did.
31 Jul 2012, 4:57 pm
Questions About Utilitarianism and Purpose
Whatever maximizes total happiness among all species, among all time, among all places.
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I’m not sure I understand this question.
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It could be wrong from a utilitarian perspective if there was something else you could have done instead that better maximizes happiness, or if it leads to outweighingly worse consequences down the road.
It also could be wrong from non-utilitarian perspectives.
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I don’t actually go out and challenge their beliefs that often. Remember that you came here; I never reached out to you specifically. I do this mostly as an academic exercise; see “The Good of Religion”.
However, I still might want to challenge happy religious people if (1) their religious beliefs are causing harm to other people, say by challenging gay rights or worse and/or (2) they want to be challenged because they want to be sure they aren’t living a lie.
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I don’t think we were created for any intrinsic purpose, but we evolved to be purpose-creators, and so we make our own reasons for existing, pursuing what we enjoy and participating in society. (See “Is Naturalism Bleak and Hopeless?” for more on this.)
Humans are more than *just* mistakes in cell replication / products of evolution. We are social creatures capable of engaging in meaningful projects and relationships, capable of understanding our universe, etc. (See “Reductionism Made Simple” and “Is Life an Accident?” for a bit more on this.)
31 Jul 2012, 4:59 pm
Evolution and Universal Constants
Two things:
1.) The large amounts of evolution you’re talking about takes place on the timescale of millions of years, and you’re looking at a timescale of mere thousands, so it’s no wonder you aren’t seeing what you’re looking for.
2.) There was more evolution than just skin color — there was the development of the entire Homo genus.
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Two things:
1.) We do allow humans to be considered superior to another — we have contests to determine the best athletes, we educate people to make them smarter, we only hire the workers of superior merit, we talk a lot about the best authors/artists, etc.
2.) I do have hope for transhumanism (PDF). This would be considering certain traits to be improvements, developing a standard, and then working to make vastly better modes of living.
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They actually do accrue in these populations. But they don’t proliferate as quickly because there’s no selection pressure to make them more or less prevalent, so they don’t develop all that fast.
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Evolution doesn’t have a built in “Oh crap, the environment is quickly shifting, better evolve faster to keep up”. Species just die, and better suited species take their place. So I’m not sure why you think mutations need to be faster than they are.
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First, we don’t know if they came from nothing. Our universe began from the Big Bang, but as for what caused the Big Bang there are again a variety of different answers: eternal multiverses (they always existed), quantum mechanics (some indication of uncaused causes), logical necessity (like how God exists necessarily so instead would the universe), etc.
31 Jul 2012, 4:59 pm
The Bible and Other Stories
You haven’t addressed anything that is distinctly out of order. To make it clear, here is the most egregious: The Sun (created on day 4) must have come before the Earth (created on Day 1) and before plants (created on Day 3).
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Sure, just like there may have been a Jesus who attracted lots of followers. But if you believe that all myths are real just because they’re written in a book by someone who says they are, it suggests a lack of critical reading and too much gullibility for my taste.
What I’m getting at is you can’t just say “Here’s the Bible, and it was written by people that we can’t prove were writing intentional fiction, even if they could have been, therefore God exists!” You have to give me a reason to actually take the Bible seriously as reliable history.
I think you’d enjoy Richard Carrier’s “Why I Don’t Buy the Ressurection Story” — it was very important to me when I was first studying Christianity seriously and was part of the reason I decided that Christianity is false. The Bible just isn’t particularly reliable.
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What, to you, makes certain knowledge better than other kinds?
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I will only accept something if it is reliable.
1 Aug 2012, 2:05 am
Problems of Suffering and Justice
Your definition of a perfect ‘person’ is one who is only capable of making a choice which is better than any other choice automatically without any ability to question that choice.
That is definitely not my definition of a perfect ‘person’, so we may need to agree to disagree on that one because I don’t think the purpose of people was to be created without choice.
Sin was done willingly, but one does not know explicitly what Sin is until a law has been defined.
We also do not know the full relationship between God and Devil, we know incredibly little about everything outside of our existence for reasons I have already stated. We know enough to know what he is, how to avoid him, and how he will end; and that is sufficient.
If God was to remove everything with free will that undertakes the most sin, it would not take long for nothing to exist.
I personally have no issue with the Devil existing, I’m just grateful more Angels of his power did not choose to rebel.
If you do your best, you are doing everything you can. I don’t see it’s that difficult to be honest, you are doing the right thing by searching for the best instructions and understanding what may be more relevant.
As I mentioned earlier no man shall judge another so you do what is best in your eyes based on what you know.
Torture is also another assumption; the Bible is clear that Hell is a Death and Heaven is Life. Hell is likely eternal non-existence, separation from everything, having your soul extinguished.
And if someone chooses to be ignorant in the face of the creator and choose to simply cease existing rather than trust in him; sure I think it’s entirely justified. Moreso then holding them in eternal life against their will.
I have covered this a number of times; it is outside of our existence so it has no relevance to God’s omniscience within his own existence since that is not defined in the Bible.
He has told us that his reasons are just, you do have the ‘choice’ to not trust him.
What is considered a defect? A gay gene?
Young earth Christians would suggest these were mechanisms put in place as an impact for our sins.
Old earth Christians may suggest the same thing, they may also suggest it is an inherent characteristic of evolution which has shaped this earth and is no different from other mechanisms for survival and evolution such as pain.
Defect is also incredibly subjective to a certain extent.
God’s decisions to judge humanity were his decisions to make based on the decisions we made. He did not change the fundamentals of existence, he used them. At any point in time during those events we still retain our ability to choose, and the impact of our choices remain.
Once again you want to remove what you think (ie. “I don’t need”) is the worst kind of pain based on what you think has no purpose. If disease never existed I’m certain you would then have an issue with whatever else is next on the list.
Taking an entirely non-religious view; Disease does do a very good job of ensuring effective population control. Without it overpopulation, starvation etc… would all be far more prevalent. In that world where Disease is not in existence perhaps your question would then be “why is there not a never ending supply of food, or why were we made to need food”?
Eventually it stems back to the question of why is there pain which we have covered.
I believe we all have a purpose, I believe we will all have pains to bare. But I believe those who can live through those pains, not blame others for them, and be an inspiration in spite of them; are the most incredible people on the planet.
Of interest to me regarding disease is how, if it has been around since the beginning; did it not prevent other life from existing. Since it can be everywhere, reproduce faster, evolve faster and not seem to be too concerned at all with overpopulation…how did we ever evolve past it? This is unrelated, discussing it just made me think of the question.
Questions About Utilitarianism and Purpose
Even to say I believe in world peace and we all sit in a circle with all the animals and hold hands has consequences. As everything needs space, interactions with other organisms and food to survive, of which all have associated impacts on everything else.
What singular laws can even be deduced within those boundaries?
Already you are getting to a point where you have to put happiness on scale based on actions.
Does human happiness outweigh animal happiness?
Do plants have ‘happiness’ considering scientists have begun to discover the feel pain?
Does humans happiness in 100,000 years factor in?
If any of the above are true; the true purpose of Utilitarianism sounds like it should be to end humanity though I’m happy to be corrected here.
The only reason I can see to not wipe humanity out in this scenario is based on their ‘potential’ in the future; which is unproven, completely assumed, and far outweighed by their actions throughout history.
I am also keen to understand who gets to make the decision on the scales of Happiness? Is it up to the individual? (this ties in with the question you mentioned you didn’t understand)
Once again what if you are doing something you, and they, truly believe gives them the most happiness? Since future is only assumption surely on the happiness measurement scale proven past and accepted current states far outweigh ‘potential’ future state.
As every action would need to function under the same relevant equation this would fall back to the humanity argument. I don’t see our ‘potential’ for greatness comes even remotely close to the damage we have caused and are causing to all life around us.
So there is more to your definition of right and wrong then just Utilitarian?
I know ;) I was referring more to making an effort to destroy something which does bring people happiness in a public environment not me specifically.
For instance, you work to disprove a religion which gives people various forms of happiness specific to that religion. Ie. Life after death.
My issue with that is;
In the scale of happiness you believe that people should first and foremost live by your scale.
Secondly due to everyone having to live in your scale of happiness millions of Christians should;
1. Be fearful and sad of oblivion for the rest of their lives
2. Incur despair through feeling like all their years of belief have been for nothing
So that;
3. There is no chance that they ‘might’ skip over the many references in the Bible specifying “Don’t judge” then subsequently ‘might’ have issues with gay marriage and once again ‘might’ assume they will then go out of their way to cause misery to gays because of it? (remember you are challenging everyone, not just those doing wrong by posting something in a public environment such as the internet)
This is another clear example of subjective scales, as I believe the impacts of ‘disillusioning’ someone far outweigh the benefits.
As a Utilitarian I would not have expected you to post information that could lead people to that realisation through chance; but rather only provide when requested and keep your own academic pursuits to yourself (as in your comment around people wanting to be challenged). In the same boat if someone asks a religious person if they think being Gay is a good decision, they can also respond; but should not just post anti-gay content out there in the open for people to stumble upon.
It sounds like “I didn’t mean it” comes into play allot in this scenario?
Peter: but we evolved to be purpose-creators, and so we make our own reasons for existing, pursuing what we enjoy and participating in society.
But some people’s purpose is more correct then someone else’s? Do we have the right to create purposes for other people if there is no intrinsic purpose?
In your own words “As soon as someone is telling you your purpose in life, you become a slave to them. Belief that you make your own purpose thus becomes a liberation from this slavery.”
Based on the entire argument in the happiness scale of utilitarianism this means we all define our own scale and no one should be capable of imposing on that scale or they are already defining our purpose.
But the ability to think is a mistake of cell replication. I get what you are alluding to but once again this doesn’t seem to fit with Utilitarianism. As based on what we know, our enhanced intelligence has done nothing but cause pain to everything else alive while brining minimal happiness in comparison.
We regularly need to drive our own happiness through our own means against the constant barrage of unhappy impacts others impart of us.
Recent claims suggest the more time we have to ‘think’ the more unhappy more people become.
Evolution and Universal Constants
Happy for these figures to be corrected;
2,500,000 years ago Homo turned up
200,000 since the anatomically correct humans turned up
That means it took 2.3 million years for the very early and somewhat vastly different Homo’s to evolve into something ‘human’.
Humans in south east asia seemed to have turned up 70,000-50,000 years ago.
So upon entering a vastly new environment with a lower initial population with 3% of the time available to evolve from ape to man, to say that there hasn’t been enough time to differentiate doesn’t fit with the concept of expedited environmentally controlled evolution in my eyes.
Not to mention the impacts culture has had on natural selection in those areas.
So if we are beginning to agree that there should be distinct differences between genetics in various cultures/races/breeds then we get to a stage where the question “is one culture/race/breed” superior again?
And here then we can begin to identify superior genes. Potentially what deserves to be retained and what to weed out?
Does ability to reproduce comes into play here?
How about the reduction in the ability to notice depression?
All of these things work directly against two of your previous comments about purpose and happiness. By directly interfering with someone’s natural creation we are impacting what would have been their purpose and altering what would have been their basis for judging happiness.
Is there any difference doing this before birth to after?
Can you name some just out of interest? I do know of references to vestiges which became somewhat useless and reoccurrences of holistic mutations which are justified as being throwbacks to earlier stages in the evolutionary lifecycle. I’m more interested in those which are new, and provide no benefit; but exist simply because it neither increases nor decreases the reproductive success rate of humans.
One would think if we can still randomly spit out a mutation to the extent of an entire nipple which occurred based on an ancestors gene from millions of years ago we would constantly be spitting out all the random mutations which didn’t stick through our evolutionary chain for the same reason.
All that it would have taken was one human to mutate something that increased its reproductive success rate or associated survival ability along with a mutation that did buckleys for that new and irrelevant mutation to carry on down the chain for at least an extended period of time.
Based on the amount of change between species on a linear platform carrying one of a trillion possible mutations which would need to be built upon by millions of other possible beneficial mutations to create a possible beneficial mutation that improved reproduction or survival, while at the same time minimising useless mutations while still changing it enough to become a new species has that much inherent complexity which is why I see it needing to be faster than it is.
I’m not saying evolution doesn’t happen period, just that it’s not controlled purely by environment and definitely needed a hefty head start based on its rates today and levels of change between species and their respective reproduction rates.
I don’t think there is enough evidence yet to convince me otherwise at this point.
So the mechanics of Atheist belief and Theist belief can begin to have a few parallels drawn between them at this point.
The difference being a Theist believes there are eternal entities outside of our existence which created us, because we must have been created and it is infeasible to assume an inanimate object could be eternal without being created by something animated. While Atheists believe there are inanimate objects that are eternal which are governed by universal rules that are also eternal, that exist because we need to be created from something and it is infeasible to think something could be animated before first being inanimate?
The Bible and Other Stories
Ok I’ll try again in more detail.
The common misconception is of the meaning of Day, and that Day 1 must end before Day 2 begins. Neither of these assumptions have any indication of being true, in fact they are more likely to be false.
Two key Bible passages;
“For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday”
when it is past, and as a watch in the night.”
“… that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years,
and a thousand years as one day.”
So creation of Day 1 being heavens and earth may have taken 1000’s of years;
also indicated at the END of Day 6 with;
“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.”
So I believe Day 1 extended across days 2-6, and Day is a way to categorise an action for God as opposed to a linear timeframe.
We know from the way water is made that the relevant dust and water molecules form before a star is born.
So…
Day 1 begins; Big bang (at a guess)
Earth is formless, nothing more than a cloud in space.
Day 2 begins; Water begins to form based on the reactions between H and O on surface material inside the cloud alongside standard reactions due to cold temperatures in that space.
Day 3 begins; Dust begins to combine (first mention of any kind of form at all)
Day 4 begins; Sun and Stars are created
Day 4 ends (might be later then this).
Earth gains more form and resembles a more complete earth (From Day 3)
Water finishes and sky forms (From Day 2)
Day 2 ends.
Plants evolve (From Day 3)
Day 3 ends.
And then onto the animals as described last time.
I’m not trying to convert you to believe it. All im doing is explaining to you why your core issues about the Bible are not justified within the context of the Bible. You are more than welcome to reject it based on “it suggests a lack of critical reading and too much gullibility for my taste.” Or “I will only accept something if its reliable” because that’s all about your own personal scale of reasoning. But when you take parts of scripture as a means to disprove the religion which are wrong and publish publicly, that’s where I take objection and feel the need to discuss.
In my opinion when you take entirely isolated lines of text from the Bible which have gone through interpretation and accept everything at face value without analysing and studying the possibilities based on what we know with science; that is a lack of critical reading.
Why did you choose to spend all this time on the Bible and not on any other form of religion? Did you put all religions on your Utilitarian scale of happiness and determine that Christianity causes more unhappiness then happiness to more people and species on earth in all time as opposed to all other possible religions people could take up?
First you need subject matter; and then you base the quality of the Knowledge first on it’s immediate relationship to the subject matter.
Once you have established which support each respective side (if the subject matter is a decision point) you study what you have available to determine what decision you take on your adherence to the decision point.
Sometimes you find multiple forms of Knowledge can co-exist all pointing to the same decision point.
Once you reach a stage where you have multiple possible forms of Knowledge that all share equal attributes in relation to the subject matter; you then need to delve deeper into the associated content surrounding the subject matter to determine what you believe is the best Knowledge.
And onward you go…over a lonnnng period of time.
My issue is people throw everything in the bin by starting at the end and working back; usually by reading what other people have apparently kindly summarised for them (like this site), many many times missing key information along the way.
Im hoping all that formatting comes out correctly!
3 Aug 2012, 1:28 am
Believing the Bible
Sure, and I will. But I just want to make it clear that this isn’t me being hyper-skeptical or anything, but based on you having an exceptionally flimsy standard of evidence, where pretty much anything goes.
For my last example, do you believe in fairies? Many books detail them and were written with the intent to tell the truth. And I don’t think you can *disprove* them.
There’s nothing internally inconsistent with making your threshold for evidence so low, as long as you consistently believe everything at this level. But as I said, this is not where I’m going to place my standard.
~
Fair enough.
~
The Creation Order
This isn’t very satisfying. First, it feels very confusing — you have things starting before but then not actually forming until much later, essentially creation is being narrated out of order.
Take the creation of plants on day 3. God says “let the land produce vegetation” and “it was so”, the “land produced vegetation” right there. It may have taken a thousand years to unfold, but it’s narrated in past tense like it happened before the creation of the sun is narrated — out of order.
Second, it’s all ad-hoc and unproven — it would be convenient if you could overlap the days just right so that creation happens in the order that the sciences say it does. But your challenge to the conception of day, your assessment that the standard assumption is likely false… how do you know that?
Besides, there is actually a fair amount of textual, linguistic, and historical evidence that has been marshaled in favor of 24-hour days — see from GotQuestions.org and from Bart Klink’s essay.
3 Aug 2012, 1:32 am
The Problem of Imperfection
My conception of a perfect person is one that always *chooses* to make the perfect choice. Indeed, why would they do any different? Why would someone go out and purposely choose the imperfect choice, that the person knows is worse than the other choices?
There’s no problem of free will here — the perfect person could have chosen the worse choice, but simply chooses not to, because there is no reason to choose the worse choice.
You may have a different definition of perfect person, but I challenge that it doesn’t make much sense.
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Hell
That sounds good, but there’s an amazing amount of disagreement over that. Let’s take just one — do you need to be baptized in order to go to Heaven? Some Christians say yes, some Christians say no. Who are we to believe? Why?
~
That’s all right and fine, but again not established? How do you know that Hell is likely eternal non-existence? What do you make of verses like Matthew 13:40-50, Revelation 14:10-11, Matthew 25:41, etc. that talk about Hell being of everlasting fire?
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God’s Omniscience
I don’t know what to say other than that response made no sense to me.
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God’s Benevolence
So this is just something you accept on faith?
~
A “birth defect” is a term given to congenital disorders. A “gay gene” (homosexuality does not trace to one specific gene) is not a congenital disorder. If you’re really worried about the term “defect”, let’s just go with something specific: Harlequin ichtyosis.
~
So where did the fundamentals of existence come from? And why can’t God change them?
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Sure, because I have a problem with all pointless suffering. A world without pointless suffering is possible, so it’s not like I’m being overly demanding.
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This is a lack of imagination — there are far more effective means of population control that also are much less painful.
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Not everyone lives through their pains. Recall birth defects — many of these are fatal in addition to being painful. What’s the point of being born, suffering, and then dying in just a few years.
3 Aug 2012, 1:32 am
Utilitarianism and Purpose
No one said it would be easy. But it’s also not impossible, and we can do pretty well to estimate.
~
No. Happiness is to be weighted equally at all times, regardless of where that happiness comes from. However, that doesn’t mean that humans can’t outweigh animals (or animals outweigh humans) depending on the circumstance.
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I’m not familiar with any research that shows plants can feel pain. But if they could feel pain, it would be morally relevant to utilitarianism.
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Yes. However, it is often exceedingly difficult to estimate the effects now on happiness 100K years from now, so it usually doesn’t get taken into account much. But that’s a problem with our ability to predict, not with utilitarianism.
~
It could turn out to be that way, though I strongly doubt it. Ending humanity now prevents all the happiness from humans that would have come from hopefully millions of years of future, and continual progress.
Also, human progress toward happier societies is not just assumed out of optimism, but clearly demonstrated from current trends within history — standard of living going dramatically up, happiness going up, disease/poverty/hunger going down, human rights abuse being less prevalent, etc.
We do a lot of damage, yes, and may do considerable more damage in the future. But we are learning how to do less damage as time goes on. So I’m hopeful, and furthermore think humanity should be allowed to stay around until it’s conclusively proven that we’re hopelessly damaging.
~
Are you asking how do we know how happy someone is? It’s usually inferred from input from the individual, though neuroscience may be able to tell us more in the future.
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Yes, but I personally don’t subscribe to them. You can see “Too Many Moralities” for a bit more on what I mean by this.
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Again, by what standard? A purpose is really whatever brings fulfillment to your life, and anything goes I’d say as long as you’re not harming other people.
~
Do we have the right to create purposes for other people if there is no intrinsic purpose?
Force a purpose onto them? Probably not, for that would surely make them unhappy, and backfire nonetheless. Purposes have to be personally and willingly adopted. However, counseling can help one adopt a purpose, and this could be seen as creating a purpose for others, but is totally fine.
~
I’m still not quite getting at what you’re saying, but let me try to interpret — are you saying “We figure out for ourselves what makes us happy, no one else should tell us what makes us happy, and if it makes me happy no one should be allowed to stop me from doing it”?
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Two fallacies you might be interested in: genetic fallacy and modo hoc fallacy.
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That’s clearly false.
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Who’s recent claims? On what basis were they made?
3 Aug 2012, 1:32 am
Why Argue Against Christianity?
Atheism doesn’t have to be about that — it’s very possible an easy to live a normal, happy, and fulfilled life as an atheist. In fact, very few atheists I know are currently fearful, sad, or feeling despair about death. I’ve written essays about this — see “Is Naturalism Bleak and Hopeless?”, “Do We Need An Ultimate Purpose?”, and “The Death of a Friend” for example.
So that’s where I disagree — I don’t think atheism comes at a cost, and the benefits of losing one’s religion are definitely there, should I be right. And you can see testimony from many deconversion stories (located at the bottom of the side) — there is a bit of a sting at first, but then they get over it and actually feel happier than they did previously.
And I’m not really that worried about people stumbling to this site by accident, ending up losing their faith, and then becoming sad about it. If they don’t want to challenge their own faith, they could always stop reading the moment they figure out what I’m talking about.
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Right. But there are an awful lot of judgmental Christians out there, voting against gay marriage and such. There’s a fair amount of harm to religion — see “But Religion is Useful!” for examples, and “The Good of Religion” for the counterbalancing point.
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Christianity is simply the religion that is prominent in my culture at both sheer number, vocalness in attempting to defend beliefs, and in the negative aspects of the “culture war”. No other religion comes close here. (I don’t defend this as the best use of my time from a utilitarian perspective.)
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Evolution, Abiogenesis, and Race
A common thread to all your arguments about evolution is that “it just seems to me like mutations should occur faster than they do”. But that seemingness just isn’t relevant — it’s an argument from ignorance.
Why do you think that evolution would be expedited in this scenario? What kind of developments were you expecting?
The environment wasn’t vastly different — humans were still able to survive in them, so selection pressure wasn’t as strong as you make it out to be. And despite this, we still had the decline of the Neanderthals and the rise of the Homo sapiens over this migratory timeframe.
Also recall that a mutation doesn’t mean something visible like a third eye or a sixth finger — it could be something as tiny as a missing gene that doesn’t amount to much. Indeed, the kind of macro-mutations you seem to be looking for are actually the sum of many mutations.
You might also be interested in this and this. After that, I’m afraid I can’t help you much further. I’m not an expert in evolutionary biology so I can’t really sort out your objection.
I’d suggest talking to an expert before thinking you’ve called evolution into question, however. I don’t usually want to appeal to authority and I’m certainly not basing my argument only on authority, but you do have to explain why over 99% of biologists accept evolutionary theory.
~
I’m not sure what you intend to accomplish with this question.
The possibility of certain superiorities (in athletics, intelligence, strength, etc.) being intrinsic to certain races has been tested, and the evidence is mixed, but somewhat present.
However, this doesn’t make a race “better” to another in a “slavery is justified” or “master race” kind of sense. Consider how the average male is stronger than the average female, but there are still females that can beat you up, and this doesn’t make males the “master” gender.
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I don’t see how this matters much at all, because the person in question doesn’t exist yet. It’s not like there’s some person waiting to be born who becomes upset because his purpose-to-be is altered. It’s no different than waiting to have a child rather than having one now, even though you end up with a different person than you would have had.
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Some. After birth, you have a specific person with set goals in life, and you can gain their consent. Before birth, you don’t have set goals yet, and can tend to just generally improve their quality in life. But don’t go around messing with fetuses before you know what you’re doing, because the risk of a mistake is great.
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I don’t think that would be infeasible to think that; you’re just looking to abiogenesis.
6 Aug 2012, 12:54 am
Believing the Bible
As I said with Hercules, and Atlantis, and whatever other examples you want to use; if the best Knowledge available claims there is, then I would accept they exist/did exist.
Why you would relate these things to religion is a bit beyond me; as fairies,
Atlantis and Hercules have no impact on my existence now or in the future.
Do they have an impact on yours?
With the proviso that any conflicting theories I have an investment in are remediated through additional investigation and comparison.
Hercules, fairies and Atlantis I could not care less about. I’ll ask again though, is there a reason I should read more about any of them?
The Creation Order
It’s not out of order at all, I would advise seeking out some professional Jewish help to gain a better understanding on the original text and not be blinded so much by the English interpretation in context of how you understand English to be.
I have explained, but you can choose to ignore.
The focus pure and simple needs to be on the meaning of the wording from the Hebrew text.
When there are clear justifications for problems you have with the text; yet you prefer to side with those whom conflict with your scientific understanding of creation, it is apparent you don’t want to reach an understanding with the text and look purely to find inconsistencies to prevent you having to accept it as ‘possible’.
This is a core issue I have with allot of Atheists, because they feel one possible interpretation is flawed they side with that interpretation showing a fundamental bias against religion.
Where does your bias stem from?
The Problem of Imperfection
You are creating your own impossibility here; choice and that kind of perfection are incompatible. You are defining your own version of perfect rather than accepting true choice may actually be the perfection of creation in mankind. We were not made to be omniscient, omnipresent etc… we are the perfect ‘Person’. We aren’t God.
Even our own definition of perfect is “Having all desirable elements, qualities or characteristics”.
There is no hard limit on perfect to say that a perfect creation is incapable of making a choice based on a lack of Knowledge if that creation was never made to have ‘all Knowledge’ to begin with.
It also puts no boundaries on a creation choosing to go against their better Knowledge, if the creation was made with the desire to have complete free will.
Hell
Just because there is disagreement does not make my point less relevant.
Scripture references show baptism is not required such as;
1. The thief on the cross who was taken to Heaven with Jesus unbaptized
2. Peter preaching to the Gentiles and explaining that they weren’t baptized but were saved through acceptance of the Holy Spirit; being God.
3. Abraham was another non-baptised but chosen by God.
What research have you done into that question and what conclusion have you come to supporting the alternative?
Regardless; No one should judge another person so if they do feel they need to be baptised that is between them and God.
Established; how do you want these things ‘established’?
Matthew, and all other references to Gehenna as fire; only reference Fire as eternal.
An eternal lake/pit of fire does can exist; which is Hell.
BUT that does not mean there is eternal torment.
Revelations lists it as a second Death, as previously explained this works in contrast to the many references for those being saved as having eternal life.
If you go to Hell, you may burn in fire as your soul is extinguished; and you will exist no longer. References included in the Jewish transcript also refer to extermination; its commonly themed as Death, not Life in eternal agony. An ‘eternal punishment’ sure, but this is not eternal torture.
Gods omniscience/benevolence
I would go read the previous responses. Again, his Omniscience is only relevant to our existence, our universe, as that is how it is described in the Bible. With respects to us, and all his creations (within the Bible), he holds all power and knowledge.
There are many references regarding what humans will do after Judgement once accepted into Heaven. None of them indicate any sort of evil, so im unsure why you would ever think such a thing?
‘Rule the Kingdom with God’ is one reference which stands out to me, as does God making those who rule with him ‘holy and perfect as God is holy and perfect’.
We may be his first creations to become Godlike once we enter Heaven, and through our trials on earth and burdens we carry; fully appreciate the responsibility of life before we are granted the capability to create it ourselves.
Pain
Ok so prior it was just ‘defect’; which could have meant congenital disorder and genetic disorder thus the question to clarify.
Purely on congenital disorders; once again this relates back to our previous discussions on pain and the environment man created through his own actions.
None of these situations are nice, but pain is necessary and man brought upon himself all of the burdens we experience in life.
One day we will find out; as to the relevance on belief in a Deity it is totally irrelevant.
Missed the point, previously you accepted pain is necessary. What I was saying is removing what you claim is pointless suffering would then lead the next form of pain to be considered pointless, and so on/so forth until all pain is gone. Which leads us to the previous discussion around why pain is necessary. I don’t think any pain is completely pointless.
I’m not suggesting this is the reason for it, just that there are benefits it provides.
Out of interest though what are some imaginative natural automatic birth control mechanisms you can think of?
Utilitarianism and Purpose
And the same can be said through peace in religion. The issue being people screw it up.
Why do you think the same level of peace and goodwill cannot be achieved via religion as with Utilitarianism?
Creating true Utilitarian laws is impossible while people differ in opinion; since it is Humanity defining law for Humanity, to be entirely fair every single person’s point of view must be factored into the equation equally. Without everyone’s consensus it would be nothing more than creating social laws based on selective studies which places some opinions above others, entirely undermining the concept of Utilitarianism to begin with.
Such as? Do the animals get a say?
Who gets to analyse a specific situation? Just those involved directly?
So we agree past and present are more relevant.
This is my issue with a number of your previous comments regarding Utilitarianism.
When discussing humanities survival, your argument is the future potential outweighs past and present; so it is definitely not a consistent approach to defining happiness.
Am I then correct in assuming that with the caveat that humans stay alive, and no one ‘hurts’ anyone else, past and present is more important?
If so this is already creating boundaries over what can make someone happy and defining a purpose.
That is still assumed, and it can also be assumed that for millions of years into the future we will still be slaughtering animals and mowing down more forests.
It sounds like you would uphold this argument though until such a time as we have removed wild animals and plants and found ways to survive on inanimate products we produce ourselves. Then it would be a case of “well that’s in the past”?
Let’s also not forget it has been proven a number of times humans are capable of creating weapons that can level cities, and easily have the capability of creating explosive and chemical weapons that can destroy humanity as we know it entirely…along with all other life of earth.
How can you justify our potential good as being even remotely as equal as our potential for being bad? Especially when you also have to factor in past and present in a higher ratio based on your previous arguments; in both instances we have shown to cause far more unhappiness then happiness?
Happiness going up, what studies? How does this relate to depression now being a leading illness in the 1st world?
Poverty/hunger going down; through impact to the environment and animals, at an alarmingly increasing rate.
All of those are also trends in certain countries, but in others the trend is the complete opposite. In fact in 1st world countries where there are less issues with living conditions and social stigmas the population is on decline while population in 3rd world areas continues to grow.
It has everything to do with technology, money, population and space. While we still have other things to impact negatively, we are ok, once we run out, watch what happens ;)
And that can be proven through history.
And when is that, when we have reached a point we can no longer survive anyway?
If others think the time has come to conclusively prove we are hopeless, does anyone else have the right to say otherwise?
Once again, people can easily start a war/cause harm through ideologies such as this…why you think Utilitarianism sets humanity on a better course then religion im yet to understand.
No I was asking, seeing as you have a fair opinion on what should make a Christian happy; do you have the right to think you have a better idea of someone’s happiness then them?
What if it makes them happy to be harmed?
Or what if harming them provides happiness to millions of creatures which outweighs the sadness/pain of a few?
So brainwashing is fine then?
And who decides someone’s purpose is unfit, thus requiring ‘counselling’.
Correct.
Well genetic fallacy just completely go’s against your previous comments about the past being a basis for defining a stance on present and future; though we have already shown how flawed Utilitariansm is in trying to define a happiness scale.
Atheists commonly overlook the genetic fallacy all the time when they decide religion is bad because history shows people who practice religion are bad.
There is also no relation to genetic fallacy or mod hoc fallacy to make the original mistake not a mistake; all they indicate is that the result of that mistake created something which can be utilised.
It’s also fairly evident these arguments were created as a means to justify purpose. Just because someone made a definition in this fashion does not mean the way we utilise intelligence does not cause harm.
The utilisation of intelligence, made possible through a mistake, still is entirely capable of causing more harm than good; which was the original context of my post.
Sure; removing the generalisation.
Out intelligence has caused far more pain to other living organisms throughout history and in the present then it has brought happiness to the same.
Intelligent kids linked to be the greatest social outcasts in childhood.
Do a google search for many links to various articles and studies showing how western society is not structured to support intelligent children, resulting in a lack of social development which will commonly carry through their entire life. Needless to say a lack of social development has a direct relationship to sadness.
The top 5 jobs relating to suicide;
Engineers, Physicians, Dentists, Vets and Finance workers; all require a high level of intelligence.
This of course in not a blanket situation, plenty of intelligent people can also be happy. But when looking at all people in all times, I’ve read far more supporting an increase in sadness.
The one thing which attempts to equalise this is creature comforts; but most come from an impact to the environment and/or animals, thus that needs to be factored in to the equation.
What evidence do you have to show intelligence increases happiness while reducing impact?
Why argue against Christianity
Yes but you are assuming people will have the same perception and acceptance of Death as you do. Do you first determine if someone can happily not care about the fact they will no longer exist, yet still retain an appropriate level of acceptance that their purpose derived from their own head is enough to provide weight to their existence?
This may be the case for someone living comfortably, but what about those who’s lives mean little to themselves let alone others, or are struggling to survive.
Do you think they will be just as capable of ‘fighting death’ as you are? I think your view is a little selfish to think because you can, everyone else should be able to.
And why do you get to use the comment “Atheism doesn’t have to be about that” when you continually ignore my constant use of the words “no man should judge another” when discussing Christianity?
It’s the same situation, you will have no additional benefit through Atheism to a person who knows not to judge other people; yet that person will never have the understanding that there is a wonderous existence waiting for them when they die.
You are also claiming anyone who fears death fears life? This is flawed.
You can fear death simply because you have young children you have not had the chance to see grow up and get to know. Knowing there is an afterlife gives you hope you will meet them there.
You can fear death because you love showing compassion so much you fear the joy you can bring will end. Knowing there is an afterlife brings you happiness in knowing you can continue showing your compassion for eternity.
There are many situations where this makes no sense and completely breaks your argument supporting the assertion of atheism as being beneficial to the belief in a religion.
Your second argument; we are all in this together; as a validation for accepting Death is also equally as flawed.
Are you suggesting people who fear death only do so for selfish reasons? (see above).
What I would like to know, is what do you feel the harm in believing in an afterlife instils on people?
Where? Be very specific. Tell me what disadvantages im being placed at by having a religion?
Are you telling me there aren’t millions of conversion stories to Christianity in existence?
Are you also telling me Christians are closet depressive? And don’t realise the untold happiness that comes with being able to accept there is nothing after Death?
Can you link me a deconversion story which actually provides benefits that doesn’t relate specifically to;
- Not being bound to fundamental views specific to a certain denomination
- Not being impacted by something caused by humans who follow that religion
- Not relating to Christianity vs. Science
As you can be a Christian and not be impacted by either of those three things.
I would challenge that those deconversions could have benefitted from simply a better understanding of textual interpretations of the Bible and realisation of what has been committed by humans as opposed to dictated by God.
If you are incapable of properly justifying why Atheism provides happiness that religion does not, then you are effectively leaving a hook out and expecting a fish to know not to eat the bait.
Let’s just hope the fish who eats the bait also reads the comments.
There are an awful lot of judgemental people out there…that’s what you should be saying.
Go fight those judgemental people where they are being judgemental
You don’t need to try to disprove a religion to do that, you can use one simple line which I’ve been repeating over and over.
“Don’t judge”.
There’s no need for narcissistic meme’s, there’s no need to hang the past out on a washing line; those two words are all that is required.
But instead you choose to believe without any validation that Christianity makes more people unhappy then happy, thus you should crusade against it.
This is flawed.
See previous comment, you need to stop defining Christianity as being the problem and start realising its individual people who interpret the text a certain way.
Why does Atheism solve this and challenging them on their interpretation and utilisation of the words “Don’t judge” does not?
//dropping further genetic discussion as I think it has progressed through relevance and is into purely a scientific discussion unrelated to religion. Happy for you to resurrect any specific paragraphs though if you feel they relate.
6 Aug 2012, 12:56 am
Will get you to fix up the blockquote issue above if you can? Sorry about that!
6 Aug 2012, 1:36 am
Vets win the suicide rate in Britain ;)
6 Aug 2012, 1:41 am
Fixed. I’ll get to the rest of your response soon.
6 Aug 2012, 1:58 am
Michael Ross, just a quick question to gauge you…
If religion were to be false, and yet provided a sense of security, and prevented unhappiness about death, would that justify the teaching, and belief of religion?
All else being equal.
6 Aug 2012, 2:21 am
All else being equal means there are no advantages or disadvantages associated to the teachings aside from the benefits you listed;
So unless there’s a hidden meaning in that post i’m not picking up on (?) then yes what would be the problem?
Also why do you ask?
6 Aug 2012, 2:29 am
No hidden meaning, I deliberately limited the question in an attempt to get a “yes/no” answer.
Why? The religion of my upbringing placed an inordinate amount of stress on it’s being “the truth”, and that it would make aspects of life (especially in the short term) unpleasant.
6 Aug 2012, 2:34 am
That no good mate, was the religion doing that specifically or was it the people teaching you the religion?
What specifically was it making unpleasant in your life?
I still fail to see the correlation between your reason for why and the original question, as obviously in your case you feel it wasn’t ‘all equal’.
6 Aug 2012, 3:48 am
It’s nothing I really feel like going into at the moment, but thankyou for your kindness.
In general my question is one I have difficulty resolving, in general the truth is extremely important but we often operate in ignorance and it’s is easy to think of examples where lying seems to be, if not morally upright, then in a grey area.
8 Aug 2012, 2:08 am
The Bible and Other Stories, Revisited
This is needlessly dismissive. I gave you links to what I thought was good linguistic evidence for the use of “day” in Genesis. You have provided no demonstration of the overlapping billion year periods that you somehow extrapolated from “a day is like a thousand years”.
I also gave you a description of why I thought overlapping creation orders (something I’ve never heard of from anyone other than you, is it an original idea?) was ad hoc and confusing, and you haven’t responded to that at all.
In response, you’ve just accused me of simply siding with those who disagree with you because it fits my bias. If that’s what you need in order to dismiss my discussion with you, then so be it. But if you’re going to flippantly dismiss me like that, then why should I continue to talk to you?
~
How do you know if the best knowledge available claims these exist? Your standard so far is that if you read it in a book that is not clearly fiction, then it’s true until proven otherwise. I still think that’s an exceptionally low standard that is going to lead you to believe in things like fairies, which you seem to actually take seriously.
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Perfection, Free Will, and Suffering
Incompatible? How so?
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True choice? What makes it the “true choice”? And again, why would someone who is perfect pick the choice that is clearly inferior? Just for funsies?
Adam and Eve had the knowledge to know not to disobey God, but they chose to anyway. Why would they disobey God, if not out of some kind of imperfection? Why does free will require sabotaging oneself?
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Just looking at the world as it exists right now and reading of some parts of the Bible, there seems to be a lot of suffering, and no reason for it to exist. Indeed, we’d be better off if it didn’t.
But I’m told that God has a “plan”, even though this plan is completely indistinguishable from there being no plan. Basically, it’s just looking at the Bible verses that describe God as good and having faith that they’re true, since we have no way to confirm it ourselves. Does that make sense?
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1.) Why is the pain from Harlequin ichtyosis necessary?
2.) How do the babies bring the pain of Harlequin ichtyosis onto themselves?
~
It is relevant because if we could have had different fundamentals, we could have a planet with much less suffering. And I suppose a better question is: how do you know God can’t alter the fundamentals of existence?
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You could just make people a lot less fertile. Or even if you needed to do the “wipe them out” method, you could at least make it painless. Many diseases involve slow, suffering deaths. Not cool.
8 Aug 2012, 2:08 am
Utilitarianism, Happiness, and Purpose Revisited
Utilitarianism isn’t necessarily an alternative to religion — if it turned out religion was the most effective way to secure lasting peace and goodwill, utilitarianism would tell us to do so.
Remember, I’m not out to get rid of religion. I’m just out to try to explain why I think it’s false. But another problem is that mistaken beliefs can lead to mistaken actions and mistaken priorities, and getting rid of these mistaken beliefs (we can still keep all the good parts, like ritual, culture, stories, etc.) could help.
There’s no indication that being nonreligious means you must live a depressing life. Indeed, the most irreligious nations still have very high standards of living and highest happiness rating (an imperfect metric, but still usable). The direction of causation seems to be that higher happiness leads to atheism.
Religion is just not necessary to sustain happy, healthy, moral societies.
~
Nah, just use democracy. Obviously if we can’t be perfect, the best thing we can do is to do as good as we can. And some laws are clearly better for total happiness than others, and those are the laws we should have. It’s not like if we can’t make everyone perfectly happy that we should give up trying to make the most people happy.
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Yes.
Anyone who wants to.
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How is that not consistent? There’s an awful lot of potential future.
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No. The closer future is just more salient because it’s easier to predict.
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I don’t think it can. Awareness on these issues is increasing dramatically. The number of vegans and vegetarians is on the rise. And eventually technology will obsolete these disasters too, by making it so we no longer need animals for meat (in vitro meat) or trees for production.
Again, the trends are on my side for optimism. There certainly is a lot of danger and disaster, but we’re establishing a track record of pulling through.
~
See page 65 of this report.
Also, it’s not clear whether depression is actually on the rise, or just more frequently documented because we’ve become to understand it more as a mental illness. We’ve also become much better at treating it.
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Easily? How? Why would people start a war over an ideology that says to maximize happiness, where wars definitely cause lots of misery? Yes, many wars have been justified by an appeal to the “greater good” (though more have been justified by religion), but that doesn’t mean they actually were for the greater good, and utilitarians understand that — wars cause a lot of misery and wasted resources often for little gain. Nowadays, utilitarians are typically very anti-war.
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In so far as happiness is a fact that can be studied, yes, I could actually know what is likely to make someone happier better than they could. You see this in real life, as people frequently appeal to experts to figure out how to be more happy.
Does this mean I can force them to change their lifestyle against their will, just because I think it will make them happier? No. Such a lifestyle change would… well… make them unhappy!
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That happiness is taken into account, but often is outweighed by the harm in real life scenarios.
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If it outweighs the sadness/pain, then it’s for the best. Though I don’t think you’ll find this actually relates to a real life example in the chilling way you might think.
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If that’s what you think of counseling, then yes…
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Usually if the person is purposeless, then they will seek counseling out of their own accord. Or they might have friends or family who think they “need help”, or they might end up imprisoned and counseling could be a way to help them. There’s nothing unusual or counterintuitive about this.
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Well if it’s bringing more suffering than happiness, then clearly it actually should be stopped. Wouldn’t you agree?
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So? They may be intelligent in knowledge of facts, but they have poor social intelligence, and that’s their downfall. So more intelligence would have made them happier, actually. Thus you actually prove my point that more intelligence doesn’t automatically mean less happiness.
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That’s a confusion between correlation and causation. Having higher intelligence didn’t *cause* their suicide. Rather, it was a variety of other factors, such as work stress.
Here’s the clincher: a better understanding of work stress and work environments could reduce these suicides.
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See this report (PDF). Individually, there is no correlation between intelligence and happiness. But as nations, the countries with more intelligent people are happier.
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I’m not saying that all religious people will become happier as atheists. But I do think a big disadvantage is living out something that isn’t true… if you care about that sort of thing.
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No, and it’s really not charitable for you to assume that I was saying that and make me spend time countering you. I was clearly just demonstrating that deconversions can often lead to happiness (just like conversions).
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This seems a bit ironic — why are you being so judgmental about the things I talk about in this blog?
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I don’t believe that, and have done nothing but repeatedly insist that I don’t believe that. I’m starting to think you haven’t actually been listening to me.
8 Aug 2012, 10:56 am
Creation
Ok here is one article, the reason I prefer to discuss then provide immediate links is to keep the relevance of the discussion between us on the merits of what we believe.
Quoting someone else just assumes everything on the website is 100% what I think. Anyhow as you have requested an ‘example’; http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/day.html
My previous comment (specifically);
Was entirely my own idea, based on the text. Though a quick Google search out of interest returned results indicating similar interpretations.
On fairies and Hercules I never said I did lol, I said IF the best Knowledge available said they exist, then I would be fine to accept they do.
On the contrary I’ve said a great number of times things like;
And
Perfection, free will and suffering
Because creating something to only make the perfect choice is creating something that has a pre-defined outcome, thus removing free will.
This is in context of the definition I provided in my last reply;
And regarding why; While I wouldn’t use the phrase “funsies” you are somewhat right in your definition of why they made the wrong choice. They desired more Knowledge, despite the risk.
Free will doesn’t require sabotaging oneself per se, but since it is a possible choice, free will would dictate this choice would not be prevented from being chosen.
True choice is the ability to choose whatever you want in whatever situation you are presented, no restrictions; within the boundaries of our existence.
Your issue seems to be a problem you have with why God would create us with a definition of perfect that allows for us the ability to sin. That does not mean we are not a perfect creation, that just means you disagree with God’s purpose for mankind being to provide us complete free will.
I can’t help you any more with this, if you refuse to accept God would create man with free will then you obviously don’t see as much value in free will as I do.
What you said makes sense, but no; its looking at the Bible verses explicitly outlining what our eternal life will be like, what we will be doing etc.
As per my previous comment on these references;
Shall we progress down reasons for why every individual sickness is necessary?
Man = mankind.
These specific babies did not bring it onto themselves any more then someone driving their car who get’s t-barred by a semi-trailer does.
But they were conceived into a world where these illnesses exist because of the sin mankind brought onto itself. (im saying that allot now).
Mankind (I believe) has capability through enhanced Knowledge to reach an understanding capable of eradicating these illnesses.
Which more money should be put into rather than where allot of it currently go’s in Science (my opinion).
Well I don’t know, I’ve been explaining why I ‘believe’ that is the case based on our previous comments around the prevention of an impact to our free will.
Allot less fertile may have resulted in a human race that did not populate fast enough to reach the numbers required in the time available to survive, defend themselves etc… We are purely speculating here.
And painless deaths as punishment would completely contradict the punishment that was placed on mankind.
You can think that is not cool, that is your opinion, which does nothing to disprove the religion.
Utilitarianism
This reference palms off references to other Atheist nations such as (Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia) as outlined in the report simply because it was a belief forced on them, it does not mean that can be simply discredited.
Your link argues because Denmark and Sweden rank highly in quality of living and are predominantly atheist (which they aren’t for that matter) that means atheism wins. Disregarding 1000 years of Christianity building them to where they are now.
Denmark wiki quote; Another study by Eurobarometer Poll 2005, 31% of Danish citizens responded that “they believe there is a god”, whereas 49% answered that “they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force” and 19% that “they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, god, or life force”.
Sweden wiki quote; In 2000, 82.9%[3] of Swedes belonged to the Church of Sweden.
So what we are basing a downward trend of church attendee’s by around 1% per year over a 10 year period as conclusive proof that atheism makes people happier after over 1000 years of Christianity developing them? That is a little ridiculous.
Not to mention, regarding that link;
Ireland is 5th in the first and 1st in the second link; beating both Sweden and Denmark in both polls; and is a primarily Christian nation.
So once again data is entirely subjective; not to mention you only have 2 already highly developed nations who have trended towards Atheism as your baseline; ignoring those in history to favour those current, over an incredibly miniscule timeframe.
Unfortunately despite your desire to change religion so it better fits with your own personal logic, that’s not how religion works I’m afraid.
Do you think “Do not judge” leads to mistaken priorities?
Do you think “Treat your neighbour as you would yourself” leads to mistaken priorities?
Do you think “Honour your mother and father” leads to mistaken priorities?
How about “Respect the government” and “Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules.”?
What is it you think the Bible tells people to do that can help society by being removed?
Neither is Atheism, your point being?
Are you suggesting Christianity is only necessary to support unhappy, diseased and immoral societies?
I would be interested to see how a poor, underdeveloped Atheist country stacks up.
It comes across allot like “I’ve learnt all there is you have to teach me, I’m moving out of home now Mum, I don’t need you anymore”?
You seem to think if you can act like a Christian without being a Christian it means there’s no point to Christianity.
Sadly that’s not the case; as my last comments clarified there are some things Christianity can provide Atheism can’t.
Additionally knowing there is a loving God who is with you at all times can be peace and comfort to many lonely and in need; among other things.
On the flip side I am still not aware of anything of benefit Atheism offers Christianity doesn’t.
Not that it’s the reason I’m a Christian; but if you were basing your decision on benefit to humanity Christianity offers more.
So far you have not been able to prove anything false, you just show why you disagree with God’s purpose for us. That doesn’t make the religion false.
Sounds a lot like previous quotes of mine;
So outside of the government and associated laws, then you utilise utilitarianism, and if theres any gaps you fill it in with whatever else works.
Im slowly developing a better understanding of what you have replaced Christianity with.
Looks and smells a whole lot like Christianity or any other number of religions to me (Government first (provided it is not imposing laws against Christianity) -> Christianity to fill in the gaps…don’t really need anything else though); just branded with a new name to once again make people capable of going “look at me, I can be good like a Christian but not a Christian, I came up with this all on my own so religion is unnecessary…”
Once again though it offers nothing more than Christianity.
So others have the opportunity to judge freely then? If you see something you don’t think works towards the happiness of those involved you can step in and intervene using whatever means necessary?
What about in private? If there is no one around to judge the situation, does that mean only the parties involved have the right to judge happiness?
As I said;
And at any time in that potential future humanity would only need to unleash this once.
Once again you are basing our entire future on a miniscule period of time, within a selective array of countries happily still blindly utilising products created by countries who definitely do not live up to your high standards for humanity; while completely ignoring the past and downplaying future risk.
And then there is your next comment;
This is a huge change from your previous comment justifying why thousands of years of negative impact to everything around us can be outweighed by ‘potential’ good in the far future; ignoring the potential risk, claiming selective countries progress indicates global proof of a near future as opposed to many other countries on earth still causing massive impacts with no sign of slowing.
Tree’s aren’t chopped down just for production and animals don’t die just for food, people need houses and as the natural environment shrinks so we continue to impact.
By now I would have at least expected whaling to stop.
No we are establishing a track record of passing the buck and hiding the issues. Why do you think economies are suffering in the West? Production countries such as China flourish as they continue to utilise the practices we have started to discard due to such impacts.
More importing of goods, more selling of companies and properties to overseas investors.
Illegal Immigration from neighbouring poor nations rises as they can fill in the low wage gaps for corrupt companies utilising their willingness to work for nothing; moreso many of those companies now depend on that labour to remain competitive.
But hey, as long as the West is ‘leading the way’ with human rights, we can ignore what goes on underneath right?
I’m sorry but our track record show’s nothing other than we are reaping the rewards of relative peace due to previously strong economies and technological advancements in military. Both of which were only made possible through negatively impacting others, and the environment.
Global suicide rates have been on a gradual increase over the last 50 years if that’s any indication.
In the US suicide has gone up considerably in the last 10 years.
I don’t see there being any possible confusion into the diagnosis of suicide.
Which has no bearing on the fact it is increasing.
So as per my previous question, if we do something to make someone unhappy, but then do something to make them feel happy again; does that end up in an overall positive?
I was waiting for you to say that. For the same reason people judge and cause others pain who are Christian. They use the ideology as a means to justify what THEY want to personally do, for whatever personal reason they have.
And someone like that can easily find a way to twist the ideology of Utilitarianism.
The problem is not the religion/ideology, it’s the person. Removing the religion/ideology will just see it replaced by something else and abused in the same fashion.
You talk about Utilitarianism like it’s completely immune to the issues that religion has been previous inflicted by (caused by individuals).
Christians understand the crusades were bad.
Christians understand wars are bad.
Christians ‘Nowadays’ as you say, and very typically anti-war.
There are no double standards here…
I completely understand what you are saying, but in your justification of Utilitarianism I would have expected along the way you would have gone “oh wait, this is exactly like Christianity, and I’m justifying it in exactly the same way”.
Now we get back to the judging topic; which Utilitarianism seems to embrace more than Christianity. Which leads me to ponder if the risk in embracing Utilitarianism is actually greater, seeing as it puts power in the hands of the person who feels they are more ‘Knowledgeable’ about the causation of happiness.
That is very open to abuse in individual cases.
For example someone could simply ignore your following comment;
You might say ‘that means they aren’t utilitarians’, and you might be right.
But that’s the same argument with Christians who judge and cause hurt to others, I would say ‘they aren’t operating as Christians’.
Beginning to see how it’s no different?
Another example is your quote;
You might not think this, I might not think this; but partial-educated fundamental extremist utilitarian down the road could easily run with this and cause some serious damage.
Christianity has been doing this for a long, long time. Yet for some reason groups are fighting to have these services removed from such facilities. It saddens me greatly when what they replace it with (if they replace it at all) offers nothing more, but rather less to those who may need it.
The point is the more intelligent children are the more they display a complete lack of social skills. It isn’t a lack of intelligence that causes this.
To say intelligence played no part is just as incorrect.
There are many many stressful jobs that require minimal intelligence that do not rank in the overall suicide rates at all, in fact no low intelligence stressful jobs are in the top 5 at all.
You would not have had the opportunity to be responsible for enough to cause that stress without the appropriate level of intelligence. You would also have a far lesser chance to focus on the stress and make yourself crazy thinking about your daily issues with a lower intelligence.
A good old quote from the Bible itself;
“To whom much has been given, much will be expected”
I’ll also revert to previously quoted suicide statistics overall. We are becoming more Knowledgeable as a global nation, and they are increasing.
Could, but hasn’t. And workplace health and safety, psychology and medications have been around for long enough now it should have had a serious impact. Once again you seem to prefer ‘possible future’ over proven current and past when it suits.
Refer to my previous comment;
As with the discussion above, sure intelligence plays a part, I completely agree with that. But in relation to ‘nations happiness’ this has been at an immense cost to the environment and other people to develop the strong economy and levels of peace these countries can now enjoy (but for how long).
A good question is this;
If your country was attacked, and being intelligent you knew that giving up without a fight would cause less deaths, less impact to the environment/animals etc.. would you?
My main point regarding this originally lead back to the argument that our evolution (in theory) of intelligence has done more harm than good; and will continue to do so.
Thus my point that our comfort and happiness has only been achieved at great cost, a cost I believe is far higher than the relative ‘happiness’ we now have. Especially when depression is a leading illness and suicide levels continue to rise.
What is it that makes you care about it exactly?
Are you afraid you’ll look silly in front of others who use the standard ‘do you believe in fairies’ comments you have already tried with me?
I for one cannot see how something like this would outweigh an eternity in heaven, learning things we would never conceive and experiencing things otherwise impossible.
A simple no is all that was needed and I apologise for making you waste the time.
My previous comment does seems ignored though;
Refer to my previous comment;
And
Regarding utilitarianism, I don’t judge you at all for following that one bit.
My purpose for questioning you on it was to see if you would begin to justify it in the same means as one justifies a religion; or if there was something new previously not available through religion. But based on your references and discussion, for me there was not and I believe I made a strong enough connect, so I can happily drop further discussions on it with that Knowledge.
So the following quotes I misread?
While in your link to The Good of Religion you also only touch on the issues above relating to ‘cultural issues’ caused by religion.
It seems your consistent theme in that link is;
If that was really the case, then everything we have been talking about can be scrapped and we can revert simply to the creation order which is your primary concern.
In this respect I have already provided ample examples of how this is not a concern to those willing to apply intelligence to the original Hebrew text. Simply because you can interpret a translation to be invalid does not mean the religion is false.
Rather, if you can interpret the original script in a way that still applies to current Knowledge it also remains Knowledge.
Once again, not trying to change you view on anything; just trying to understand what your core driver is for attempting to disprove Christianity and make sure any potentially incorrect interpretations/assumptions are queried for the sake of those stumbling across this page.
8 Aug 2012, 10:58 am
urgh embedded blockquotes lol, here I was thinking I had checked them all twice. Too late in the evening! Appreciate you fixing up that one too :) (Wish they had a preview button).
8 Aug 2012, 11:46 am
Should be fixed.
I’ll see what I can do about getting one.
28 Nov 2012, 2:32 am
In October, I announced a break on writing overtly about religion. However, I decided that I thought it would be unfair to make you wait longer than the 2+ months you’ve already been waiting for a response, and you talk enough about utilitarianism and free will (my more recent foci) that I think this can still be worthwhile. While it’s against the letter of my original pledge, I feel it does not violate the spirit.
Also, since this is 2+ months later, I’ll warn you that my beliefs may have shifted since I previously talked to you, and I may have forgotten what you and I meant by previous things we said, since the context is no longer as fresh in my mind.
With that said…
Creation, 24 Hour Days, and Order
That’s fair. To be honest, since neither of us are particularly well-trained in Hewbrew or biblical textual analysis, it’s really just going to be a battle of the links. Both of us have marshaled links for and against that I find convincing enough that I’d be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and drop this line of criticism.
That being said, I still don’t think you have adequately dealt with the *order* of events in Genesis, which was my original focus. You’ve said there’s a way to interpret the original text to say that these periods of time “overlap”, but you haven’t provided me anything to suggest that periods of time in Hebrew work like that. Instead, you just suggested “I get professional Jewish help”.
It’s one thing to say that the universe was created, then later the Earth, then later the plants, then later the animals. It’s another thing to group the universe and Earth (difference of 9.21 billion years) in the same day but then put the Earth and the Sun (difference of 60 million years) three days apart.
…And then it’s another thing to have things work *backwards*, having the Earth come before the Sun, our solar system before all other stars, birds before land creatures, and plants before the Sun.
How do you resolve all this flipping, backwards stuff, and groups of confusing and inconsistent lengths? Is there any other precedent for such a mess in Jewish narration elsewhere?
~
The Best Knowledge
But how do you *know* if it does? What standard do you apply? I think this has solid relevance for two reasons — first, how do you know you picked the right religion? What if the best evidence actually backed up a different religion?
Secondly, maybe fairies and Atlantis were bad examples, but the point is supposed to be clear — there are stuff of legends that obviously didn’t happen. Yet, if I applied your standard of evidence to these legends, I’d end up thinking they did happen, contrary to fact. Thus, I cannot trust your standard for evaluating religion.
28 Nov 2012, 2:50 am
Free Will
First — Where do you think choice comes from? To me, we make a choice because we wanted to pick that choice over another choice — choices come from our desires. We don’t pick our own desires; indeed, that would make no sense, for how would we choose what desire to have if we didn’t have any desires? Thus, our choices are fixed to what our desires are; how we’ve developed as a human. Thus, free will by your concept looks like it cannot exist!
Second — There’s nothing great about making an imperfect choice; that’s why it’s called “imperfect”; there was something better! What’s so special about free will if all it does is make us make bad choices? Why don’t you like pre-defined outcomes if those outcomes are perfect?
Third — Our choices are already restricted. For example, I cannot choose to teleport to Saturn, no matter how much I want to. Why is this not a restriction on our free will?
~
No, it means we have different definitions of “perfect”. Imagine you make a choice that is worse than a choice you could have made. Wouldn’t it have been better to make that better choice? And isn’t it perfect to be better? So wouldn’t a perfect being have made the better choice?
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Suffering
First — is it fair to punish someone (a baby) for the actions of someone else (a sinner)?
Second — if disease is caused by sin, why can it be cured by medicine?
Third — if disease is caused by sin, why don’t the most sinful people have diseases? Why don’t the most morally perfect people not have diseases?
~
The Benefits and Harms of Religion
Indeed. I never suggested we should force people to be atheist or die. Obviously totalitarian states are bad to live in whether they be atheist or theist. However, just because some atheist states are totalitarian doesn’t mean that we need religion — there are non-totalitarian states with high atheism and some of the most totalitarian places on Earth right now are very religious.
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I never said atheism makes people happier. I said atheists aren’t all depressed. And that’s quite clear, regardless of how much Christianity may or may not have got them there.
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Well, some governments shouldn’t be respected, but that’s beside the point. The bigger issue is that there is a lot of cool things that religions advocate. But there are also a lot of bad things too. I want more of the good things and less of the bad things.
Merely citing the good here doesn’t mean that people aren’t inspired by religion to have religious honor killings, kill people by forcing them to not get life-saving abortions, have stoning as a punishment, refuse access to condoms, have blasphemy laws, etc.
28 Nov 2012, 3:24 am
Utilitarianism
I mean, in so far as you think Christian ethics are about helping other people impartially, then yeah, utilitarian ethics are going to look a lot like Christian ethics. And yeah, if we can do it without religion, then we don’t need religion for it.
You’ve been trying to make a case that religion is *necessary* for a happy, ethical life. It’s not. I don’t need to offer more than Christianity (though I think having a more accurate worldview is something more, and I think utilitarianism shows far more concern for nonhuman animals than Christianity does), I just need to offer a replacement.
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I mean, more or less, yes. Though since people are notoriously bad at thinking what will maximize happiness, everyone is admonished to use lots and lots of caution. Obviously having everyone running around working at cross-purposes wouldn’t be good for happiness.
It’s also important here to call you out further on your obsession with not judging people. I agree that not judging is important in many situations and people on the whole are way too judgmental. But there are people who really need to be judged, like law breakers. Especially if there is no God to do the judging for us.
People judge things all the time, and we have to in order to know what to do. We constantly judge whether things are going well or not, whether people are treating us well or not, and how we can do things differently to get things to go better, etc.
~
But we’re living in the most peaceful time in all of human history…
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That’s a good point. But I think we are beginning to understand the causes of suicide better. My point is not that I’m a dogmatic optimist who is unwilling to see that there are problems with our current society. My point is that forecasts look good for continued increases in quality of life.
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More or less, yes. Generally people still don’t want you to do something bad to them in the first place, but most people are willing to forgive you if you “make it up to them”. Same general principle.
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Well said. I suppose that’s a danger to any philosophy, and there’s no way to get rid of it.
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I’d challenge you on that one.
~
But it’s not. First, utilitarianism is only a moral philosophy, it says nothing about what happened in history or what gods exist or how to gain salvation. It’s similar that we’ve both pointed out that philosophies can be perverted, but that’s really it.
I think it’s telling that when Jeremy Bentham first developed utilitarianism, he wrote against slavery and for women’s rights and nonhuman animal rights — all three of which were on the opposite sides of current history in the predominantly Christian culture.
Utilitarians have a great track record of being on the right side of history, even if it’s possible to tarnish it. Christians have not had the same track record.
As much as you say it’s easy to confuse utilitarianism, I think it’s a lot easier to confuse passages like “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death”.
~
But there are many, many intelligent people who did not commit suicide. The majority of people do not commit suicide. So clearly intelligence isn’t *deadly* all by itself. Just like it’s possible to be a happy atheist, it’s possible to be a happy intelligent person.
~
Both of us speculate about the future. I imagine the future will indeed have some problems. But I also don’t think that “Well, it hasn’t worked yet, so clearly it will never work ever”. A lot of these things are very new developments that have been only around for 50 years tops, often less than 20 years. Change does take time.
~
That’s just it — I would hate to base my life around an eternity in Heaven that doesn’t actually exist. If there is no God, there are real problems in the world that seriously need to be addressed, and I don’t have time to delude myself into feeling reassured.
~
I’m concerned with a lot more things more important than attempting to disprove Christianity. I actually think this is something I’ve changed my view on over time, since last talking to you. Hence the reason for my change of blog focus in the first place.
One thing that I come back to, however, is that the standards of evidence you apply to Christianity will be completely unhelpful in allowing you to solve any other pressing world problem. These are the problems that I want solved — poverty, hunger, disease, animal abuse… all sorts of suffering — and I need smart, clear plans to solve them.
I’m worried that those who fall into the thinking traps that I see lead people into being or staying Christian are those that will prevent them from helping out with the bigger problems.
28 Nov 2012, 4:17 pm
Also, another thought occurred to me while reflecting upon this comment exchange — sorry to keep beating on this. You mentioned that Christianity and Utilitarianism basically say the same things about what people morally ought to do. Thinking specifically about charity, I know that a common view of Christianity is that Christians are commanded to give to the poor. However, I notice that there is never any mention of doing so *effectively* — for example, giving to charities with demonstrated cost-effectiveness. Do you think that difference is relevant?