For KellyJay:
''Originally posted by bbarr
it is not rational to believe in God."
Certainly I agree with this, but I doubt many religious people who have thought about it disagree with this point. In my experience, their reply is not contradictory to this, rather, they say "God is outside of reason, and therefore the reasonabless of belief in him/her/it is no test of whether god exists." However:
When one talks about anything, one is really invoking and performing operations on the concept related to that thing. Ideas and concepts are best dealt with on the basis of reason. Asserting that "god is outside reason" is saying that a concept should not be considered in a rational way. They propose "faith" as a way to deal with a concept instead of reason, but give no indication why concepts amenable to rational consideration cannot be dealt with on this basis.
If God cannot be dealt with in a reasonable way, then no "acts of god" may be observed, experimented upon, or thought about except in an illogical or completely indecisive way. Thus physical phenomena, which by definition have some empirical record, are not results of a god. Furthermore, ideas that can be logically manipulated are not results of a god. So the religious person is left with two choices:
1. Insist that god is outside of reason, and accept the consequence that no part of human existence can be attributed to god besides totally valueless and irrational thoughts.
2. Retract that claim, say that god can be contained by rationality, and be forced to accept the already decided conclusion that belief in god is irrational.
That is some supreme being . It is strange that religious people, who apparently should be total nihilists, are sometimes so vehement. Anyone care to comment?''
''I do not profess to understand how life originated on earth. I will say one thing, however, and that is that from any sufficiently large system (physical, mathematical, whatever), certain well-defined types of order may inevitably be observed. Maybe have a look at:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RamseyTheory.html
" " /SzemeredisTheorem.html
Things like Ramsey's & Szemeredi's Theorems indicate that the "wishy washy" explanation is not "wishy washy" at all, since life is really just a well-defined ordering of studiable objects, and the universe a larger and more disordered such system.
Sorry about the little mix up there. I was really agreeing with Bennett's claim, but for slightly different reasons.
(Hey-I have to push the Cult of Maths-linked site somehow.)''
''First, "compelling" is a highly subjective term. What may be compelling to one person may be considered unimportant to another.
I think, and I apologise Bennett if I am erroneously putting words in your mouth, that "compelling" here means "enough to convince someone who thinks in a strictly rational way".
Second, nobody is privy to all of the "evidence" available to someone else. For example, a man can say "I love my wife", but be unable to prove it to you. Would you consider him irrational?
Are you insinuating that one's inability to find evidence/proof is at all related to the actual lack of presence of such evidence? Indeed, I would think him to be irrational about loving his wife unless he provided his reasons.
Third, "preventable" is not a meaningful term, given that it has been proven that the universe is a deterministic place, and that anything which has happened could not have possibly happened in any other way than which it in fact did happen.
(If you're just joining us, please take a moment and read the thread entitled "Freedom of the Will" - http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?id=3867)
I assume you are replying to my post based on the "originally posted by royalchicken" heading. My post, however, does not contain the word "preventable". I can only assume that you are replying to Bennett's locution about "preventable suffering", which concept I made no use of in my post. I also assume based on the fact that Bennett was the initiator of the "Freedom of the Will" thread that you are recommending I read it, in order to somehow repudiate claims in my previous post that the universe is not deterministic. However, I made no such claims. If indeed the universe is totally deterministic, then again I wonder how any religious model of God can have any effect, given that an "act of God" as presented in standard religious literature is an act of free will, albeit of a rather capable and accomplished being.
But the main reason why I disagree is that neither of the two alternatives (there is a god, vs. the universe spontaneously generated us on this marvelous little rock) have been proven or disproven in any rigorous manner. Thus, it would be irrational to conclude that someone favouring one alternative over the other is irrational.
When arguing about whether a circumstance is true, the responsibility rests with those who would affirm it. When at 3 o'clock this morning I was trying to show that any set with sufficiently large entropic measure is
a-uniform, I could not take my difficulty in doing so as proof or even evidence that the opposite is the case. Certainly, the existence is as you say uncertain, but failure of proof is no evidence in either direction. However, the fact that physical theories exist without mention of god that seem to concur almost exactly with observation while there is virtually no evidence that a god is required to start or maintain the universe as it is.
When Napoleon asked Laplace why the latter's Mechanique Celeste made no mention of the Creator, Laplace replied: "Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothese."
I am an atheist because none of my knowledge of how the world works requires the complex and difficult presence of a god.
It is irrational to accept a complicated epxlanation based on faith when a simple one based on reason suffices. This is exactly what a person does when explaining physical phenomena in terms of god when a physical theory already exists. Therefore it is irrational to believe that god has anything to do with the physical world. And if you read my earlier posts, you will note that I don't really doubt that the god in anyone's mind is a very real presence.''
Bold text is due to richjohnson.
Originally posted by Pawnokeyhole"I think you know something when that belief is true and when it's produced in you by your faculties working properly."
I wonder if you could also argue that atheism, like theism, is properly basic, in Platinga's sense.
-A. Plantinga
Plantiga is endorsing what an externalist theory of justification, according to which a belief is justified iff the belief results from belief-forming mechanisms or faculties that are generally reliable. On his view, a belief formed in virtue of the operation of such a faculty will, if true, count as knowledge. What this amounts to is the following: If it is the case that God exists, and we reliably form beliefs about God, then we are justified in those beliefs. Note that this is a conditional claim, it starts with "If God exists,...". So, if God exists than the theist is justified in an externalist sense, and if God does not exists than the theist is not justified in the externalist sense. As far as I can tell, this sheds no light on whether belief in God is rational, as the rationality of a belief will depend on the evidence to which the the believer has access, while Plantiga's notion of justification doesn't require of a believer that he can present any evidence for his beliefs. So, even if a theist has no internally accessible reason, no evidence he can present for his belief in God, his belief will still be justified on Plantiga's view if his belief was reliably produced by some "God-detecting" faculty or other.