I Miss This Guy!

[ERICOPOLY]

What if a deity exists but "he" is very humble.  He doesn't in the final judgement punish those who haven't been worshipping him at every turn.  A deity that respects a diversity of views and opinions, even when at odds of his own.

 

Thus, what if he isn't proud?  Perhaps even he resents the assumption that he is?

 

Thus there is no need to go to church or pray for forgiveness.  One needs only to enjoy the world whether created by a deity or not.

[enoch01]

Perhaps a better way to phrase my view is to figure out how Proposition I is not simply tautological. Let's agree with both propositions.  Now what? What is the non-tautological distinction between the God paradigm and the subjective paradigm that makes the former objective? For example, you do something immoral in both paradigms. What's the non-tautological difference?

 

Since tautologies are true (necessarily so), I'm not sure it really matters, if all you were asking was how He could contribute to intrinsic morality.

 

But one possibility is to follow Robert Adams: "Any action is ethically wrong if and only if it is contrary to the commands of a loving God".  If true, this grounds morality in God's nature itself.

[Rabbitisrich]

Perhaps a better way to phrase my view is to figure out how Proposition I is not simply tautological. Let's agree with both propositions.  Now what? What is the non-tautological distinction between the God paradigm and the subjective paradigm that makes the former objective? For example, you do something immoral in both paradigms. What's the non-tautological difference?

 

Since tautologies are true (necessarily so), I'm not sure it really matters, if all you were asking was how He could contribute to intrinsic morality.

 

But one possibility is to follow Robert Adams: "Any action is ethically wrong if and only if it is contrary to the commands of a loving God".  If true, this grounds morality in God's nature itself.

 

Can you provide an example that would show the difference between a moral violation in a God paradigm versus a no-God paradigm? I'm looking for some method of discrimination that doesn't rely upon being true by definition.

[Parsad]

As for your bashing of gold I can now count several years of you bashing gold (as with Ericopoly) meanwhile in those years gold continues to set new highs and act as the perfect money. Eventually people like you will catch on about gold and at that point I will be selling it to you!

 

Gold is up 200% since the start of my fund.  Did you have at least 25% gold exposure in your fund? 

 

If yes, then kudos to you...but I will never ever buy gold...unless it goes back down to $330/oz, which is where I did buy it once before and put it in my safety deposit box.  But I sold it all when between $700-900...hey that was a 200% return in about 6 years...what do you know? 

 

By the way, there is no such thing as "the perfect money".  Cheers!

[Parsad]

I am pretty sure I had a 10 minute conversation with Leonard Mlodinow at a conference where he told me that God was unnecessary due to his research...

 

The key word here is "unnecessary". That's not the same as claiming to have proven a negative. It just means that the models of reality work just fine without having to postulate for a god.

 

 

 

This is worth emphasizing because the same miscommunications about logical reasoning keep reappearing throughout the thread.

 

Sorry but saying that god is unnecessary is extremely arrogant for someone who simply built a model which essentially reverse engineers an existence without reconciling that existence. I would be more impressed if the academics were more humble and admitted that their research confirms how little we know about our existence.

 

Moore, it depends on what your definition of God is.  Did you ask any scientist you've spoken to how they define it?  Do they define it is something specific such as Christ, Shiva, Mohammed, what have you; an omniscient being responsible for the creation of the entire universe; or something as simple as a higher intelligence that created us?  There are as many interpretations of God as you can think of. 

 

But if you tie it down to a specific religious text, I have a hard time seeing any scientist putting their faith in a book written by predominantly men with no supporting evidence.  If all we have to base our faith upon is a book or words from a spiritual figurehead, then how does the Bible, Koran or Gita deserve greater significance than a scientific textbook detailing evolution, the structure of DNA or theories about the Big Bang?

 

I would think that many scientists could not exclude the possibility of intelligent life outside of our universe.  If so, how can they exclude the possibility that higher intelligence had some part in creating us...be it accidental or deliberate.  The word "necessary" meant that you didn't need the word "God" to explain the universe.  Science will eventually answer many of the questions we previously assigned to the word "God", when we simply could not comprehend how something occurred.  Cheers! 

[Parsad]

Dual citizen Aussie (by descent) /US (born and raised)... check.  Actually soon it will be tri-citizen (UK).  My father was born in London and I can get citizenship by descent if I just apply (I'm in the process of doing that but it will take a few months).

 

Eric are you searching for the perfect money?  US, Aussie and now the pound?  Cheers!

[Parsad]

What if a deity exists but "he" is very humble.  He doesn't in the final judgement punish those who haven't been worshipping him at every turn.  A deity that respects a diversity of views and opinions, even when at odds of his own.

 

Thus, what if he isn't proud?  Perhaps even he resents the assumption that he is?

 

Thus there is no need to go to church or pray for forgiveness.  One needs only to enjoy the world whether created by a deity or not.

 

The other side of that, and equally important to me, is what if that deity is a merciless deity.  One who plays with our lives at will, allows children to be murdered or sexually abused, women to be raped and throws down earthquakes on the poorest of people simply to garner their devotion so that they may not be the next victim.  Would you want to go to a heaven ruled by a God like that? 

 

I can't help laughing hysterically every time I hear a winning athlete or award winner thanking God in their interview.  According to this logic, their God actually spends time deciding football or basketball games, and who is going to win an Emmy or Academy Award!  Maybe God is a bookie in Vegas!  ;D  Cheers!

[ERICOPOLY]

What if a deity exists but "he" is very humble.  He doesn't in the final judgement punish those who haven't been worshipping him at every turn.  A deity that respects a diversity of views and opinions, even when at odds of his own.

 

Thus, what if he isn't proud?  Perhaps even he resents the assumption that he is?

 

Thus there is no need to go to church or pray for forgiveness.  One needs only to enjoy the world whether created by a deity or not.

 

The other side of that, and equally important to me, is what if that deity is a merciless deity.  One who plays with our lives at will, allows children to be murdered or sexually abused, women to be raped and throws down earthquakes on the poorest of people simply to garner their devotion so that they may not be the next victim.  Would you want to go to a heaven ruled by a God like that? 

 

I can't help laughing hysterically every time I hear a winning athlete or award winner thanking God in their interview.  According to this logic, their God actually spends time deciding football or basketball games, and who is going to win an Emmy or Academy Award!  Maybe God is a bookie in Vegas!  ;D  Cheers!

 

Yes the merciless deity isn't one that I'd fancy spending any amount of eternity with.

 

Which leads to a question:

 

Why, I suppose, have the religious texts chosen a deity with a personality that effectively demands church membership and 100% devotion?  Eh?

 

I wonder what the membership would be like for the version where the deity let you believe what you want and he'd accept you unconditionally anyhow because he values diversity?

 

 

[Parsad]

What if a deity exists but "he" is very humble.  He doesn't in the final judgement punish those who haven't been worshipping him at every turn.  A deity that respects a diversity of views and opinions, even when at odds of his own.

 

Thus, what if he isn't proud?  Perhaps even he resents the assumption that he is?

 

Thus there is no need to go to church or pray for forgiveness.  One needs only to enjoy the world whether created by a deity or not.

 

The other side of that, and equally important to me, is what if that deity is a merciless deity.  One who plays with our lives at will, allows children to be murdered or sexually abused, women to be raped and throws down earthquakes on the poorest of people simply to garner their devotion so that they may not be the next victim.  Would you want to go to a heaven ruled by a God like that? 

 

I can't help laughing hysterically every time I hear a winning athlete or award winner thanking God in their interview.  According to this logic, their God actually spends time deciding football or basketball games, and who is going to win an Emmy or Academy Award!  Maybe God is a bookie in Vegas!  ;D  Cheers!

 

Yes the merciless deity isn't one that I'd fancy spending any amount of eternity with.

 

Which leads to a question:

 

Why, I suppose, have the religious texts chosen a deity with a personality that effectively demands church membership and 100% devotion?  Eh?

 

I wonder what the membership would be like for the version where the deity let you believe what you want and he'd accept you unconditionally anyhow because he values diversity?

 

What are you saying Eric?  That writers of religious texts purposefully chose a merciless and ambivalent God, simply to scare the crap out of people to gain long-term, devoted parishioners.  You can rebel against a tyrant, but how do you revolt against an omniscient, invisible and immortal tyrant?  ;D  Cheers!

[ERICOPOLY]

What if a deity exists but "he" is very humble.  He doesn't in the final judgement punish those who haven't been worshipping him at every turn.  A deity that respects a diversity of views and opinions, even when at odds of his own.

 

Thus, what if he isn't proud?  Perhaps even he resents the assumption that he is?

 

Thus there is no need to go to church or pray for forgiveness.  One needs only to enjoy the world whether created by a deity or not.

 

The other side of that, and equally important to me, is what if that deity is a merciless deity.  One who plays with our lives at will, allows children to be murdered or sexually abused, women to be raped and throws down earthquakes on the poorest of people simply to garner their devotion so that they may not be the next victim.  Would you want to go to a heaven ruled by a God like that? 

 

I can't help laughing hysterically every time I hear a winning athlete or award winner thanking God in their interview.  According to this logic, their God actually spends time deciding football or basketball games, and who is going to win an Emmy or Academy Award!  Maybe God is a bookie in Vegas!  ;D  Cheers!

 

Yes the merciless deity isn't one that I'd fancy spending any amount of eternity with.

 

Which leads to a question:

 

Why, I suppose, have the religious texts chosen a deity with a personality that effectively demands church membership and 100% devotion?  Eh?

 

I wonder what the membership would be like for the version where the deity let you believe what you want and he'd accept you unconditionally anyhow because he values diversity?

 

What are you saying Eric?  That writers of religious texts purposefully chose a merciless and ambivalent God, simply to scare the crap out of people to gain long-term, devoted parishioners.  You can rebel against a tyrant, but how do you revolt against an omniscient, invisible and immortal tyrant?  ;D  Cheers!

 

I wouldn't mind betting that when he gets to Heaven, Moore won't enjoy eternity with him not being able to tell us that we were wrong and he was right.

[writser]

I wonder what the membership would be like for the version where the deity let you believe what you want and he'd accept you unconditionally anyhow because he values diversity?

 

These faiths cease to exist. They are at the bottom of the foodchain in the survival of the fittest (faithest).

[berkshiremystery]

 

 

So reverse engineering our material existence allows scientists to be arrogant enough to say something they have made absolutely no progress disputing is unnecessary. Ok I get it now..

 

I might want to quote some of my favorite authors,... Richard Dawkins:

 

“Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”

 

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1194.Richard_Dawkins

[Parsad]

 

 

So reverse engineering our material existence allows scientists to be arrogant enough to say something they have made absolutely no progress disputing is unnecessary. Ok I get it now..

 

I might want to quote some of my favorite authors,... Richard Dawkins:

 

“Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”

 

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1194.Richard_Dawkins

 

That's another thing.  If religious zealots believe that God will protect them and punish those that trespass against them, then why the hell do they need to set off nuclear weapons or dirty bombs on civilian populations...or even crash planes into civilian buildings?  Maybe these religious zealots just don't have enough faith in their own Gods!  ;D  Cheers! 

[Green King]

wait minute correct me if i am wrong . Did Moore talk about GOD and religion as a way mentioned above ? Please show me as i don't have the ability to read that much.

 

It always felt like to me those things about religion are just straw man created by the new belief in sciences

http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry/dp/0553277472

to completely refute the product of the human consciousnesses from the past. That were created by scribes that wrote it through the interpretation of the world in their mind set (communcation with god) , laws and common belief it created. (a bit simplification) Should be impossible and productive.

 

But there are great profits that came from that investment of human consciousnesses.

Please do not refute it completely due some of it commercial or political changes due to its need for survival and corruption and control by other forces. (might also be simple deduction)

 

There are also many problems with science today. Academic environment where people are forced to herding. Where new ideas are not accepted due the conflict it has with the ideas of the current living professors. Tenure system where people do what they are told or is very commonly accepted until they get it. Also of precised industrial manufacturing takes place. The force into measurements. (such as numbers data models analysis patents)  were qualitative studies are hard to be funded since the variables involved so many that it is impossible to produce numbers. Making it hard for people to tackle hard questions. (some of these problems are also talked about in Poor Charlies Almanac.)

also this video in the context of linguistics

It dose not mean science its useless

Nor should the arguments above make faith useless.

After all we believe in the Margin of Safety and the Value investing fundamentals . 

there is no certainty in science so i don't think it can ever disproof anything 100% it needs to be continuously tested.

 

 

The key word here is "unnecessary". That's not the same as claiming to have proven a negative. It just means that the models of reality work just fine without having to postulate for a god.

 

Like occam's razor. It says that if you have two explanations for something, ceteris paribus the simplest one is probably true. In other words, you should remove unnecessary complexity and go with the simpler (thus more probable) explanation.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

 

For example, imagine we found a computer microprocessor from an alien species and had no idea how it worked. There's a group that studies it in detail and comes up with hypotheses about how it works, and then it tests them and sees if they were right or wrong. Over time, after many experiments they accumulate lots of knowledge about the alien CPU and they know how it works. Then there's a second group that says: "yeah, it works just like how the first group says, except that it also works using undetectable magic". Occam's razor would slice off the magic because it is unnecessary. The first explanation was sufficient in itself to explain the observed data, the magic was superfluous, or unnecessary.

 

Another way to understand this is via the conjunction fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy

 

I might be miss understanding what you are trying to say liberty. (please correct me i've been wrong and completely wrong many times before.

 

The explanation is simpler without God and still works therefore there is no GOD.

The explanation is simpler without God and still works therefore God's no existence is a possibility based on current information.

 

 

I might want to quote some of my favorite authors,... Richard Dawkins:

 

“Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”

 

Correct me if i am wrong berkshiremystery.

 

Going to the moon

Allocating resources of society that put people on a rock far away but multiple groups at the same time.

While we could of allocated that resources in curing diseases, solving major societal problems  or management our world better doesn't seem like a good investment.

 

At least flying into buildings doesn't cost as much.

 

 

Its a little late i am a little tired sorry for rambling again.

 

Anyways in my world both can exist. The unknown and the uncertain is my GOD isee him ever day in the ever changing events of the markets and world. The uncertainty underlining everything every day.

 

I guided through it with my faith in the margin of safety and the principle of value investing.

 

Sorry about the bad writing

[twacowfca]

wait minute correct me if i am wrong . Did Moore talk about GOD and religion as a way mentioned above ? Please show me as i don't have the ability to read that much.

 

It always felt like to me those things about religion are just straw man created by the new belief in sciences

http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry/dp/0553277472

to completely refute the product of the human consciousnesses from the past. That were created by scribes that wrote it through the interpretation of the world in their mind set (communcation with god) , laws and common belief it created. (a bit simplification) Should be impossible and productive.

 

But there are great profits that came from that investment of human consciousnesses.

Please do not refute it completely due some of it commercial or political changes due to its need for survival and corruption and control by other forces. (might also be simple deduction)

 

There are also many problems with science today. Academic environment where people are forced to herding. Where new ideas are not accepted due the conflict it has with the ideas of the current living professors. Tenure system where people do what they are told or is very commonly accepted until they get it. Also of precised industrial manufacturing takes place. The force into measurements. (such as numbers data models analysis patents)  were qualitative studies are hard to be funded since the variables involved so many that it is impossible to produce numbers. Making it hard for people to tackle hard questions. (some of these problems are also talked about in Poor Charlies Almanac.)

also this video in the context of linguistics

It dose not mean science its useless

Nor should the arguments above make faith useless.

After all we believe in the Margin of Safety and the Value investing fundamentals . 

there is no certainty in science so i don't think it can ever disproof anything 100% it needs to be continuously tested.

 

 

The key word here is "unnecessary". That's not the same as claiming to have proven a negative. It just means that the models of reality work just fine without having to postulate for a god.

 

Like occam's razor. It says that if you have two explanations for something, ceteris paribus the simplest one is probably true. In other words, you should remove unnecessary complexity and go with the simpler (thus more probable) explanation.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

 

For example, imagine we found a computer microprocessor from an alien species and had no idea how it worked. There's a group that studies it in detail and comes up with hypotheses about how it works, and then it tests them and sees if they were right or wrong. Over time, after many experiments they accumulate lots of knowledge about the alien CPU and they know how it works. Then there's a second group that says: "yeah, it works just like how the first group says, except that it also works using undetectable magic". Occam's razor would slice off the magic because it is unnecessary. The first explanation was sufficient in itself to explain the observed data, the magic was superfluous, or unnecessary.

 

Another way to understand this is via the conjunction fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy

 

I might be miss understanding what you are trying to say liberty. (please correct me i've been wrong and completely wrong many times before.

 

The explanation is simpler without God and still works therefore there is no GOD.

The explanation is simpler without God and still works therefore God's no existence is a possibility based on current information.

 

 

I might want to quote some of my favorite authors,... Richard Dawkins:

 

“Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”

 

Correct me if i am wrong berkshiremystery.

 

Going to the moon

Allocating resources of society that put people on a rock far away but multiple groups at the same time.

While we could of allocated that resources in curing diseases, solving major societal problems  or management our world better doesn't seem like a good investment.

 

At least flying into buildings doesn't cost as much.

 

 

Its a little late i am a little tired sorry for rambling again.

 

Anyways in my world both can exist. The unknown and the uncertain is my GOD isee him ever day in the ever changing events of the markets and world. The uncertainty underlining everything every day.

 

I guided through it with my faith in the margin of safety and the principle of value investing.

 

Sorry about the bad writing

 

You make some good points, green king.  Dawkins, the high priest of science as a religion, has some weird ideas.  For example, in Ben Stein's movie, Expelled, he expresses the opinion that life arose on the earth as a consequence of being visited by aliens from another world, a tautology of the origin of life if ever there was one. 

 

50 years ago, the priestly class of scientists was locked into the steady state theory of the universe, despite much evidence to the contrary, because the Big Bang theory was too close to the account of cosmological origins in the book of Genesis in The Bible.

 

40 years ago, the scientific priests of climate change herded away from much evidence of a human influence on global warming toward the more alarmist idea then that the planet was headed toward another ice age.

 

I make these comments in sadness as one who has jumped  through all the hoops to get published in a major peer review scientific journal.

[alwaysinvert]

You make some good points, green king.  Dawkins, the high priest of science as a religion, has some weird ideas.  For example, in Ben Stein's movie, Expelled, he expresses the opinion that life arose on the earth as a consequence of being visited by aliens from another world, a tautology of the origin of life if ever there was one. 

He most certainly does not think that. Being edited by a dishonest foe can yield weird results.

 

Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.

 

This 'Ultimate 747' argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.

http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/2394-lying-for-jesus

[enoch01]

 

Can you provide an example that would show the difference between a moral violation in a God paradigm versus a no-God paradigm? I'm looking for some method of discrimination that doesn't rely upon being true by definition.

 

A moral violation in a no-God paradigm?  I've been arguing this conditional: if God does not exist, there are no necessarily true moral propositions.  Well, I still think that is true.  As near as I can tell, you agree.

[meiroy]

 

Can you provide an example that would show the difference between a moral violation in a God paradigm versus a no-God paradigm? I'm looking for some method of discrimination that doesn't rely upon being true by definition.

 

A moral violation in a no-God paradigm?  I've been arguing this conditional: if God does not exist, there are no necessarily true moral propositions.  Well, I still think that is true.  As near as I can tell, you agree.

 

At first look it seems that morality (meaning a general concept based on the assumption that all people have certain rights regardless of who they are, their race and their sex) is quite uncertain compared to religious regulation (also called [religious] morals for some strange reason).  In practice, religious regulation is not that clear in itself and depends on specific people's interpretation.  It's enough to just take Christianity as an example, there are plenty of variations out there with differences in regulation.  Sometimes it depend on which Church you'd go to. Continue to add other religions and I'd say we'd be far better off relying on morality as defined in the first sentences.

 

(P.S the USA if composed of about 80% white, and religious distribution of all population is Protestant 51.3%, Roman Catholic 23.9%, Mormon 1.7%. I'll leave it at that).

 

[rkbabang]

What are you saying Eric?  That writers of religious texts purposefully chose a merciless and ambivalent God, simply to scare the crap out of people to gain long-term, devoted parishioners.  You can rebel against a tyrant, but how do you revolt against an omniscient, invisible and immortal tyrant?  ;D  Cheers!

 

I've said many times that if I believed that the god of the bible existed that I'd be his sworn enemy.  Sure he could kill me and torture me for all eternity, but that would just be further proof of my moral superiority to that tyrannical monster.  I've never gotten the people who worship god, because they are afraid of hell.  I don't worship power, I detest it.

[rkbabang]

 

I might want to quote some of my favorite authors,... Richard Dawkins:

 

“Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”

 

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1194.Richard_Dawkins

 

Just an aside, I love that site ^^^  "goodreads.com".  If you or anyone else here wants to friend me on goodreads click here:

 

http://www.goodreads.com/friend/i?i=LTM1OTg2Njk0NjE6Mzcw

 

I'm always interested in what people are reading to find ideas about what to read next.

 

[enoch01]

 

Can you provide an example that would show the difference between a moral violation in a God paradigm versus a no-God paradigm? I'm looking for some method of discrimination that doesn't rely upon being true by definition.

 

A moral violation in a no-God paradigm?  I've been arguing this conditional: if God does not exist, there are no necessarily true moral propositions.  Well, I still think that is true.  As near as I can tell, you agree.

 

At first look it seems that morality (meaning a general concept based on the assumption that all people have certain rights regardless of who they are, their race and their sex) is quite uncertain compared to religious regulation (also called [religious] morals for some strange reason).  In practice, religious regulation is not that clear in itself and depends on specific people's interpretation.  It's enough to just take Christianity as an example, there are plenty of variations out there with differences in regulation.  Sometimes it depend on which Church you'd go to. Continue to add other religions and I'd say we'd be far better off relying on morality as defined in the first sentences.

 

(P.S the USA if composed of about 80% white, and religious distribution of all population is Protestant 51.3%, Roman Catholic 23.9%, Mormon 1.7%. I'll leave it at that).

 

Thanks for your response.  These are some good points, as far as I understand you.  I agree: it does seem to me that morality can be more uncertain than religious regulation, and that equating morality to religious regulation is really strange.  Many times it's hard to answer the question: "what is it that I ought to do, or ought not to do?"  As you say, we are uncertain about it.  It's possible to learn in lots of ways: meditating, parents, trusted friends, prayer, solitary reflection, church, reading books, observing others, the list goes on and on.

[Cardboard]

This discussion is somewhat interesting, but sad at the same time. I mean, I often read about that investment being too hard to understand and what not and now you want to talk and spend a lot of time about the meaning of the universe and God??? Do your really think that science will ever explain it fully someday? I think not, since the beginning of time, we keep finding new things and IMO, it may well continue on forever. For example, if the universe is a fixed area then what is on the other side? On the other hand, can you imagine something that has no boundary?

 

Just the fact that I am able to think about that stuff makes me dizzy. What is that thinking capacity in our brains? Can it really shut down when our body stops being energized? The truth is that no one knows what is after, you can only "believe" in some solution of what is going to happen.

 

Pascal made a wager in the 17th century. You might want to read about it. Some people will say it is garbage, some will call it brilliant, but nonetheless, it is trying to put logic into the argument of the existence of God vs not. This guy was likely more intelligent than any of us here and he did not seal the deal based on some rebutals that I have read and this was once again in the 17th century! So you guys might want to get back to investing and let each individual decide how he or she wants to conceptualize or imagine life or not after death.

 

Relative to morality and society, I think that we have to abide by some form of code of conduct to avoid anarchy. It may be derived from some religion or philosophy, but at the end of the day it has to include some form of respect for each individual and provide enough "good" to satisfy the great majority at the likely detriment of some.

 

Cardboard

[Liberty]

Pascal made a wager in the 17th century. You might want to read about it. Some people will say it is garbage, some will call it brilliant, but nonetheless, it is trying to put logic into the argument of the existence of God vs not. This guy was likely more intelligent than any of us here and he did not seal the deal based on some rebutals that I have read and this was once again in the 17th century! So you guys might want to get back to investing and let each individual decide how he or she wants to conceptualize or imagine life or not after death.

 

Pascal's wager IS garbage because whether you believe in the supernatural or not should lead you to lead your life very differently. You can't have your cake and eat it too. The only reason people think Pascal's wager is any good is a deferral to authority: he's an old dead guy with a great reputation for being smart, so what he said must be right, yea? But if you actually think about it and putting it in practice in your life rather than just superficially in the abstract, it falls apart. If I thought there was the smallest chance that I could be tortured forever in a place called hell, I'd follow every damn thing the bible says to the letter and would probably live like an hassidic jew or whatever (or like a good hindu, etc.. depending). That's a very different life.

 

It's also a question of intellectual honesty and of deciding when to stop. If you don't see evidence for a god, why try to fool yourself into believing just in case? And then, how do you decide which god you should believe in and what prescriptions you should follow? It's not like everything all religions say is compatible (otherwise they wouldn't have killed each other for so long). And why pick the christian god? If random chance had made you born in india, would you be an hindu? Or maybe a muslim in Saudi Arabia? Or a buddhist in Japan? Or a zulu in Africa? How about a pascal wager where you claim to believe in thor and zeus too just in case? Why limit it to religion? How about a pascal wager just in case ghosts exist, or fairies, or werewolves? You never know... Besides, how do you know that f there's a god, he wouldn't prefer a sincere atheist who says "I just didn't see any evidence for it" to someone who claims to believe to hedge their bets?

 

Meh, Pascal's wager is a weak mind game, and certainly doesn't count as evidence of anything except the human power or rationalization.

 

I bet that if Pascal had been born today and had been showed all that science has done in the past 300 years, he might have a different opinion anyway... I'll never hold it against a bronze age or medieval peasant* to believe in all kinds of weird things. Human curiosity is such that it isn't comfortable to not know, so we make things up. We'd rather believe in something improbable without evidence than not know something. But that doesn't make those things true, and today people have a lot less excuses than a medieval peasant, because we have the method and the tools to figure out how things work.

 

*This reminds me of a book written by Le Ly Hayslip, a poor vietnamese peasant during the vietnam war. I was really impressed by all the superstitions that peasant have about ghosts all around their villages, and ancestors visiting them in dreams, and having to get a psychic before buying a house to ask ghosts about stuff, and building shires in the right place and such.

 

Do your really think that science will ever explain it fully someday?

 

Science doesn't have to explain the universe fully for any god to be proven not to exist. It's the other way around: The burden of proof is on religion to show evidence for the existence of god. Burden of proof is always on the person making a positive claim. If there's no evidence for something, there's no reason to believe it exists. If astrophysicists claim there's a black hole somewhere close, they have to show evidence for it. It's not: "if you can't prove there's no black hole, then there is one!" Even if science only explains 0.0001% of the universe, that has no implication on deities, unless in that 0.00001% we find evidence for one or many deities.

[stahleyp]

I am pretty sure I had a 10 minute conversation with Leonard Mlodinow at a conference where he told me that God was unnecessary due to his research...

 

The key word here is "unnecessary". That's not the same as claiming to have proven a negative. It just means that the models of reality work just fine without having to postulate for a god.

 

 

 

This is worth emphasizing because the same miscommunications about logical reasoning keep reappearing throughout the thread.

 

Sorry but saying that god is unnecessary is extremely arrogant for someone who simply built a model which essentially reverse engineers an existence without reconciling that existence. I would be more impressed if the academics were more humble and admitted that their research confirms how little we know about our existence.

 

Moore, it depends on what your definition of God is.  Did you ask any scientist you've spoken to how they define it?  Do they define it is something specific such as Christ, Shiva, Mohammed, what have you; an omniscient being responsible for the creation of the entire universe; or something as simple as a higher intelligence that created us?  There are as many interpretations of God as you can think of. 

 

But if you tie it down to a specific religious text, I have a hard time seeing any scientist putting their faith in a book written by predominantly men with no supporting evidence.  If all we have to base our faith upon is a book or words from a spiritual figurehead, then how does the Bible, Koran or Gita deserve greater significance than a scientific textbook detailing evolution, the structure of DNA or theories about the Big Bang?

 

I would think that many scientists could not exclude the possibility of intelligent life outside of our universe.  If so, how can they exclude the possibility that higher intelligence had some part in creating us...be it accidental or deliberate.  The word "necessary" meant that you didn't need the word "God" to explain the universe.  Science will eventually answer many of the questions we previously assigned to the word "God", when we simply could not comprehend how something occurred.  Cheers!

 

http://www.nih.gov/about/director/

 

He's a legit scientist.

 

"Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950), is an American physician-geneticist noted for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP). He currently serves as Director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Prior to being appointed Director, he was the founder and president of the BioLogos Foundation, an organization which promotes discourse on the relationship between science and religion and advocates the perspective that belief in Christianity can be reconciled with acceptance of evolution and science.[1] Collins also wrote the New York Times bestseller, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, which discusses Collins' conversion from atheism to Christianity, evaluates the evidence for Christianity, and argues for theistic evolution.[2] In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI appointed Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.[3]"3

 

Also, Anthony Flew, one of the world's biggest atheist became a theist (you could argue that it was due to his old age but if you read some of his writings at the time, he still seems to have it).

 

By the way, for whatever it's worth, I'm 31.

 

 

 

[Liberty]

Btw, the argument from "look, this distinguished scientist believes in god" is meaningless because:

 

1) Things exist or not regardless of who believes in them. It's the validity of the argument in favor that matters, not who provides it (in the same way that a lot of things that Einstein proposed late in his careers weren't accepted automatically by other scientists just because Einstein said it, they had to verify the evidence). If I see new evidence coming from that scientist, then that'll be something worth considering, but if it's still all the same old hand-waving, then it doesn't matter.

 

2) If you consider that this one scientist has weight, then you must not cherry pick and take into account the whole picture. And the whole picture is that the vast majority of high level scientists (especially those who study fields that are 'related' to life and the universe, like physics and biology) are either atheists or agnostics. So even that argument from authority isn't in favor of the supernatural.