You don't. (You make basic errors, such as in your misrepresentations of Darwinian evolution) But: if you continued to explore what the world as "an effect of God" must mean, you would end up losing the Abrahamic deity and finding yourself atheist. You won't, of course - that was just a phrase designed to avoid the accountability of a God projected from human creativity - but that refusal has effects: you live in bad faith from then on. Which possibly brings us closer to an explanation for the nature of the posting by overt Abrahamic theists on science forums.
You did. You started an entire thread on that basis. Scientology. Mormonism. The various revisions of the Bible. We have beer recipes older than the Quran. All the scriptures were new when first written by the men who first wrote them - most of them within the last three thousand years. The Great Pyramid was an ancient relic of a bygone day, a ruin without its casing, when the Bhagavad Gita was written. Of course not. It's perfectly ordinary misrepresentations and bad faith dodges and elementary mistakes by an overt Abrahamic theist on a science forum. The difficulty is in your (including their) behavior - your insistence on it, posting it on science forums, employing it as a basis for attacking science as a human endeavor and scientists personally for engaging in it.
2000 years of acting all serious about it makes no difference whatsoever. I'll believe in leprachauns and Jesus when I see one.
There is a big difference between being familiar with 2000 years of history and 20 minutes of browsing on an atheist hate site.
According to the article, its more a case of being stuffed by one's own shortcomings. Or to say it another way, one who can't be stuffed, gets stuffed. Ask a contemptuous question, get a contemptuous answer. In many cases, attitude is practically everything. Given that it so happened that we gave similar answers (although technically my answer came from google), its not clear why that alone is grounds for your contempt.
With your talk of the buddhist God Brahma and the connection between ancient Egyptian polytheism and christianity, you should try it occassionally.
Then no brownie points. When you drive a car at reasonably fast speeds, do you constantly take evasive action towards oncoming traffic or drive relatively at ease, under the assumption that oncoming traffic will remain the painted lanes?
Let's go with this. How do you know that theism isn't true, even if we have a propensity to see patterns? How do you know the observation of pattern-seeking being true, falls under one of the pattern seeking that isn't true? Prove that theism isn't true? Nice try. I was the one claiming that belief in God is natural. It's not a behaviour. Try again. The clarification is already there. Get over it and move on. Do you think theism is a behaviour? There are no new scriptures. There are no current book that compare. you said... It has everything to do with this thread. If you believe scriptures to be evidence of God, I am trying to see on what basis you draw the line between one collection of written records and another. On the same basis I don't regard this discussion as scriptural evidence of God. jan.
Perhaps you want to move the goalposts back to where they were? I thought we were talking about knowledge. I certainly don't know that it's going to rain or not when I opt to take a brolly with me. I assess the likelihood and act accordingly, so that if it does I am prepared and if it doesn't then no great shakes. Similarly when I drive I have reasonable confidence in the ability of other drivers. But I do not know that they will behave. So, when you feel like putting the goalposts back, let me know. Thanks.
I don't, Jan. I have never claimed God to not exist, nor do I hold the belief that God does not exist. I am simply asserting that just because we have a propensity to believe something does not make those beliefs true. or are you trying to assert that because others can't disprove it then it must be true? I don't need to. This is about what evidence you are putting forward for God being real (or Is), not whether I can disprove your belief. I have no intention of disproving it, and don't even think it possible to disprove that which I consider to be outside the remit of probability and falsifiability. One a personal level I need justification to hold beliefs, not to dismiss beliefs I don't hold. ??? So what if it's not a behaviour? It's not a cream bun either. Do you dismiss arguments on other non sequiturs? Yes, you were the one claiming the belief in God is natural - i.e. that one has a tendency toward belief in God. And I am saying that propensity toward a belief is no evidence of the truth of the belief. You have provided none, deliberately so. I am struggling to understand why, beyond your overall unpleasant demeanour in these forums. Irrelevant. What does age have to do with it? Are you arguing from antiquity? And on what grounds are you comparing? Which is...? Plus how does this tally with your "everything is evidence of God"? Or are you now going to clarify that what you said didn't mean this?
We are. The goal posts haven't moved. In all scenarios the knowledge is qualified by action. (If you didnt have a platform to connect the voice on the radio to rainfall, the action of bringing an umbrella wouldn't manifest, or painted lines in regard to cars, etc) IOW you couldn't talk about acting in a certain way unless you already had recourse to knowledge. We can look at behaviour in response to knowledge, regardless whether it does result in rain or a car crash or whatever. The point is that you have (or alternatively, don't have) faith in the weather forecast as determined by your taking (or not taking) the umbrella (assuming its not part of your plan for the day to get drenched). The one and only variable for assessment (at least as given in that scenario) is the weather broadcast. This is an example of a sort of faith that is characterized by a specific acceptance or rejection of an act. The car example was slightly different. That is trust (specifically, in other drivers), which you can argue is a more solid form of faith ... unless the painted lines have elaborate forcefield powers or something. Assuming you are not in throes of some PTSD issue, you are not individually assessing the level of confidence you have of each vehicle you pass, straining to see the antics of each and every person behind the steering wheel as they zip past you in a blur. This is a sort of faith that is characterized by a constant reliance on things, or something that goes on in the background. As such, the specific act here is some sort of abnormal suspension of normal action ... ordinarily two cars wouldn't approach each other at 100mph unless they had very clear ideas on which sides they were passing each other .... what to speak of hundreds of thousands of cars doing it at every moment of every day. If this knowledge (and subsequent trust) was not intact, things would look radically different. We know that, despite having so many plans for the days, weeks and years ahead, at any moment we can die. Every time we go to bed at night, it may be our last. Do you set your alarm to get an early start in the morning?
Well, I can't see them. Maybe you've just covered them up? So what knowledge do you think I am displaying in this scenario, just so I am clear in what you are trying to say? Confidence, not faith. Faith is complete confidence, whereas mere confidence is rather more of a sliding scale. Brownie points duly restored. Yes, I have some confidence, but I don't walk out of my house with the brolly open, and I don't know that it is going to rain. So what knowledge do you think I am displaying here. I'm not saying there isn't any on show, I'd just like you to clarify, please. And importantly where you see "faith"... those Brownie points are important to me! Maybe you have a different understanding of faith than I do. To me faith is complete confidence. How do you view it? There is certainly a higher level of confidence than in the weather forecast, but I still can't claim to know that any specific driver won't, for whatever reason, crash into me. If we all knew this then there wouldn't be such things as accidents, which happen precisely because there are times when the belief that another driver won't crash into you is false. To me that ability for a belief not to be true means that I can not know, at least until the event has passed. To me knowledge seems to require certainty. (Although I obviously don't know that with certainty. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) No.
Gods existence isn't in question for me, it is in question for you, which forms a part of your atheism. Just because you believe that we have a propensity to believe something does not make it true, has no bearing, whatsoever, on my theism. What others can and can't do, is of concern to me, regarding my theism. So try again. Then you're not in a position to question my theism as whether it is true or not, meaning the idea you have that people have a propensity to believe something that may not be true, is a condition of your worldview, which means it pertains to your atheism alone. Nor is it a propensity. No. One does not have a tendency to eat for the purpose of living. One eats whether one has a tendency or not. One may have a tendency to eat junk food, or healthy food. But one must eat as a course of nature, less one will not survive. Belief in God is natural, whether we have a tendency, or not, to pursue that belief. To not believe in God is either contrived, or based in ignorance. And I'm saying you're wrong. Read above. What part of ''everything'' is merely an emanation of God'' is unclear to you? No it's not irrelevant. If one has a propensity toward belief, then one adopts a behavior depicting belief. If belief in God is natural, then it matters not how one acts, one will naturally believe. So how is belief in God untrue? Who said anything about ''age''? There are no other publications we call scriptures abound. If man had inspired the scriptures, man would update, and or change them. No one can step outside of scriptures and come up with anything new. More than likely mans writing is based on scriptures, or some aspect of scriptures. The same basis I don't regard this discussion as scriptural evidence of God. Are you blind? This is your game Sarkus. You need me to say that, because you think it gives you an advantage. So you lie. Shame on you. jan.
So you believe the propensity to hold metaphysical beliefs is evidence that God is real? What is it that they do that is of concern to you? You seem to be suggesting here, as you have in the past, that theism is a wholly subjective issue. Is this what you are saying here? Secondly, I'm not questioning whether "your" theism is true or not, merely what evidence you have that God is real. As per the OP, and JamesR's subsequent clarification on the matter, this thread is for you to put forth what you (or other theists) consider to be evidence of God. Others, theists and atheists alike, are then free to question whether they consider it evidence, and also question why you (or other theists) do consider it evidence. That way we can perhaps better understand one another. Or you can simply dismiss any question, which begs the question of why you are bothering to post here in the first place. So where it says, even in the extract you originally posted: “A slew of cognitive traits predisposes us to faith,” and given that a synonym of predisposition is propensity, you're still arguing semantics? Where is your evidence for this? You keep asserting it. You had a 112-page thread on the matter and still you couldn't demonstrate where it spoke of belief in God being natural. Throughout that thread you seem to have misunderstood what the article was saying, and you have simply latched onto this notion that belief in God is natural. And now you simply repeat it as a mantra. So is your belief that "belief in God is natural" your main evidence that God is real? So you believe. So you think propensity toward a belief is evidence of the truth of the belief??? I am simply asking you to clarify, Jan. Why is it so difficult? I wouldn't know, Jan. Any more than I don't know how many of the beliefs people have are untrue. The question at hand, however, is not what evidence there is that belief in God is untrue, but what evidence you have that God is real. Are you presenting "belief in God is natural" as (part of) your evidence that God is real? When you say "no new scriptures" and "no current books" you are bringing the age of the scriptures into the discussion. So to answer your question: you did. Abound? Lord of the Rings hasn't been updated, or changed. Anything new with regard to what? What are you referring to by "mans writings [sic]" exactly? And where is your evidence for this assertion? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! So rather than explain yourself you answer a question for clarification with exactly what clarification was sought for. Do you ever wonder why people consider you a troll? I'm playing no game, Jan. I am trying to understand what you say, yet you run around like a blue-arsed fly trying to avoid having to clarify anything. Then, when you post something that seems clearly inconsistent, you accuse me of lying. Just a pity you have no wherewithall to actually engage with honesty and decency. Go back under your bridge, Troll Jan.
The knowledge is that the weather report does (or does not) correlate to weather. If that knowledge wasn't there, under normal circumstances, given that scenario, there would be no question of considering taking the umbrella. No, faith correlates to action. There may be various degrees of confidence, but the faith one is placing in a certain thing is necessarily singular, one way or another: it either is or it isn't. At the end of the day, you either have faith or no faith in the weather report, as characterized by either taking the umbrella or not taking the umbrella. There is no halfway or sliding scale since you cannot partially take the umbrella. There is no middle ground. Knowledge that the weather report is or is not reliable in regard to weather. Just to be clear, in that example faith either manifests in a yes or a no, as characterized by the decision to take or not take the umbrella. If you have faith, you take the umbrella. If you don't, you leave it behind. All sorts of ideas can come and go before or even after making that decision to act, but once you act, you have determined your faith (at least you have determined it, at that moment). In case you haven't worked it out yet, I am in the process of describing three different nuanced approaches to defining faith, as characterized by action. People (especially atheists!) commonly talk of faith in a singular sense when they are often mixing and matching things to suit the current form of their arguments. To go back to the umbrella eg, the "completeness" of the confidence in the weather report begins and ends at the point of taking or not taking the umbrella. That is the point it is defined as an "act of faith" (in this case, in relation to the weather report). The point is that you trust that they won't, unless there is some untoward behaviour (at which point you would instantly disregard whatever protection painted lines, etc offered). IOW the knowledge here is a certain prearranged agreement on traffic signs, road paint etc. The consequent action is adopting a "standard behaviour". Unlike the umbrella scenario, which culminates to a momentous yes/no, this sort of faith is stronger, and runs as a perennial flow in the background (and delivers an instant erraticness if it is broken or wavers in any way). Just to be clear, the act of knowledge is not "knowing other cars won't crash into me", but rather acting for all intents and purposes like they won't (the specific act being flying through a green light at an intersection or quickly passing oncoming traffic on a narrow road). Even though this faith is stronger, it tends to develop at a painstakingly slow rate (think of a person taking their first driving lesson) and if it is severely undermined can potentially be damaged irreparably. There is some space in this definition to introduce a spectrum (unlike the example with the umbrella) The very fact they are termed "accidents", suggest there is a standard of knowledge already at the fore. IOW calling them an "accident" is to identify the precise point the knowledge is transgressed. At which point, our trust is broken. You can sit back in your armchair and get all cerebral about it, but the field of activity demands an instant response. If you do have faith in the weather report, you do take an umbrella. If you don't trust an oncoming car doing donuts on the wet road, you adopt evasive action and don't rely on the road markings, etc to grant you safe passage. It may or may not rain. You may or may not be involved in a traffic incident. But that is neither here nor there when faith demands a follow up action. Then you sleep in and you miss your flight or get fired. Sometime later, you have another similar development on your calendar. Science has, as yet, not discovered immortality (or even a means to avoid missing a flight or getting fired), so once again you ruminate on the inherent impermanence of life as you contemplate setting or not setting your alarm. What do you do?
You've just shown us a good example of a delusion. You don't actually see God, you see some "patterns". I see patterns at the Kentucky Derby, Leprechauns are riding Unicorns in the race. You're already doing an excellent job of that without anyone's help. Ignorance is natural, too. As is using our vivid imaginations. True, I find Aesops Fables and Grimms Fairy Tales far better books for describing moral behavior, for example.
An excellent point. Similarly, just because you think God's existence isn't in question doesn't make it true. Indeed, since you are unable to question it, you can't really form an unbiased, rational opinion about it. For you God just is, with no reason, rationality or questioning. And that's fine. But with an attitude like that, you are not going to make any progress on a science forum.
