This should be funny and not just because Kirk Cameron used to co-star in a sitcom. He and creationist Ray Comfort have challenged the guys who set up The Blasphemy Challenge to a debate and ABC has agreed to host it. You may remember Kirk and Ray from the wildly funny video in which they claim that the banana is an “atheist’s nightmare” because God made it so it would fit in our hands perfectly thus proving God exists or something.
Here’s the real kicker of this bit of news: Comfort is claiming he will scientifically prove the existence of God:
“Most people equate atheism with intellectualism,” Comfort added, “but it’s actually an intellectual embarrassment. I am amazed at how many people think that God’s existence is a matter of faith. It’s not, and I will prove it at the debate – once and for all. This is not a joke. I will present undeniable scientific proof that God exists.
I wonder what odds the bookmakers are giving for Comfort trying to whip out his banana argument. If he does it’ll just be that much funnier. As for Cameron, well, here’s what he’s going to add to this circus…
Cameron (“Growing Pains” sitcom and Left Behind movies) will speak on what he believes is a major catalyst for atheism: Darwinian evolution. The popular actor stated, “Evolution is unscientific. In reality, it is a blind faith that’s preached with religious zeal as the gospel truth. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was once a naïve believer in the theory. The issue of intelligent design is extremely relevant at the moment. Atheism has become very popular in universities—where it’s taught that we evolved from animals and that there are no moral absolutes. So we shouldn’t be surprised when there are school shootings. Cameron will also reveal what it was that convinced him that God did exist.
Oooo! I can hardly wait to hear what stunning revelation convinced Kirk to become a True Believer™!
Mark your calendars for May 5th as that’s when the hilarity will begin.
Note the bolded part. As seen from the outside, religion has nothing to offer at all that couldn’t be gotten elsewhere—without encumbrance.
On the other hand, atheism doesn’t offer me anything. The world is just the way it is, not the way I want to be. I’d rather limp along than rely on an imaginary crutch
I’ll use the arguement I’ve posted on other threads:
Lightning.
1000 years ago people believed that lightning was caused by a god (Yahweh, Thor, etc) There is a natural entity, that has easily observable natural effects- it his a tree, tree is damaged.
At some point we discovered that it is just a static electric charge caused by particles in clouds grounding.
One of the following must be true.
1) God did it 1000 years ago, and is still doing it now- science is wrong.
2) It was always static electricity, and God had never a hand in it.
3) God was doing it right up to the point the scientic explanation came into force, and at that point he stopped doing it.
3) is the most unlikely in my eyes- God runs the universe until we get a correct law for something.
1) would require believers to say “Although science says it has an explanation, they are wrong, and no matter what proofs you put in front of us, we will ignore them”
Which leaves (2). God never did it, even when we couldn’t explain it. A natural cause for something, but we can not identify the cause. Even though we could not explain it, it was not supernatural.
Please respond to this- you would be the first believer anywhere I have posted this to do so.
I’ll try. I cannot speak for all beliefs about God, so I will stick to the Judeo-Christian concepts. First of all, I agree that when confronted with something that we don’t understand, human beings instinctively turn to a supernatural explanation. Why this is, is an interesting question I think. But I don’t think that this fundamental situation of having to deal with the unknown has really changed much. And here I think it’s important to understand what was meant when people said that God made the lightning strike. I believe when the Bible talks about God doing something, there are two different meanings, or contexts, that is talked about. One is miracles, in which God does something outside of the usual course of nature, and the other is when God does something within the course of nature. I believe they are related, but, there are differences. For instance, in the Bible it talks about how one person plants the seed, another person waters it, but it is God who makes it grow. Now, people during this time were not ignorant of the natural “laws” that affected farming. They knew that if you didn’t plant a seed, and watered it, and made sure that it got sun, that it wouldn’t grow, and that all the praying in the world wasn’t going to change that on any regular basis. Their livelihood depended on this knowledge. But still they believed that God “did it”. Clearly they believed that God operated under natural conditions. So if you were to tell these same people that lightning actually occurs through movement of tiny charged particles, I doubt it would have changed their belief. I think their response would have been, “Ok, so that’s how God did it.” Please note that I am not here trying to show that this is actually true, but only that this is what was meant. So I would add another possibility to your list: 4) God did it 1000 years ago, and is still doing it now- science is right. Since science has nothing to say about whether God is working through nature, I don’t see anything contradictory about this. Whether this is actually true hinges on whether God created nature, since then he would ultimately be the cause of everything that happens in nature. But I have yet to hear a plausible alternative for the origin of the universe. The basic idea is that something does not come from nothing. And let’s settle the whole “Who created God?” argument by understanding that God is uncreated by definition. So why can’t the world be uncreated? This is actually a valid response, it’s not inconsistent to say that the natural universe has always existed. But there’s two problems with this that I see. First, at this time science doesn’t support this. Second, how could you ever show that the universe always existed?
One last point. There seems to be this idea that science is somehow cornering God into smaller and smaller gaps, and at some point we will uncover every corner and find that he is not there. In both ways in which it is said that God “does” something, science has not changed anything. In the case of God working through nature, science has described more clearly how this is done. In the case of miracles, these are isolated events, and so exist outside of the naturalistic view of science. We will always be confronted by the Unknown, and while science can explain how things work, it will never explain why things are the way they are. To ignore this question and say it has no meaning is to miss the whole point of inquiry that birthed the scientific method in the first place. Our philosophy should never originate from science, but rather our interpretation of science should come from sound philosophy. Otherwise we end up sticking our fingers in our ears and closing our eyes, saying that anything we don’t know doesn’t exist.
This is all I have for now. I appreciate the questions, and look forward to your response.
Thanks for the response- more thoughtful and polite than many True Believers we get here.
The point is, why do we need a god in this particular equation? What I am actually pointing out is that Creationists will point at something and say “You have no explanaition for X, Y, Z” and then say that indicates a Creator. My point is that it is just an unknown. Do you believe that God is driving the physical processes behind lightning? Or does it happen on its own, No God Required?
Welcome back, Aaron! Since you seem to agree that saying “God makes lightning” hinges on whether God created Nature or not, I’ll move along to here:
That’s the common sense idea, and for everyday phenomena it seems to hold- but quantum mechanics is counterintuitive, and a random fluctuation out of nothing might explain the origin of the Universe. But this is still speculation, to be sure.
Defining something into existence is very tempting, but I would rather see evidence. The problem with playing with words this way, is that you can prove just about anything you want.
For instance: the perfect unicorn, by definition, must possess every positive attribute, or she wouldn’t be perfect. Obviously, existence is a positive attribute, so she must exist to be perfect. You might imagine that such a unicorn does not exist. But if so, the unicorn you are imagining not to exist is not this perfect unicorn, who may not lack existence. Thus, you cannot imagine the perfect unicorn to not exist. Ergo, she exists.
Simply defining God as being “uncreated” by definition is exactly the same kind of trick, and is exactly as convincing.
First, what happened before the Big Bang, or even if it makes sense to say “before” the Big Bang, is still debated, and may never be known. Second, just because there are questions which science has not yet answered, doesn’t make the answer “God” any more likely. How could you ever show that God always existed? As I said before, positing an omnimax being as an “explanation” for the origin of the Universe explains nothing: you are now left with the problem of explaining the existence of what seems a very complex and unlikely being, and your “explanation” doesn’t add anything to our understanding how things work: it makes no testable predictions.
In the case of nature, God is not necessary, as I said. In the case of miracles, what miracles? Are there any? I sure don’t know of any.
Depending on what exactly you mean by “why”, I would say that answering the “how” questions also answers the “why” questions. The only difference is that “why” questions are “how” questions at the level of living things with purposes. For instance, if you ask “how did you open that door?” I could embark on an explanation at the level of turning doorknobs with hands, going down to muscular contractions, further down to ATP fueling cells and sodium ions propagating nervous impulses, and so on, down to the evolution of life starting from self-organizing structures, created from elements forged in exploding stars. If you were to ask me “Why did you open that door?” I might say that I wanted to get inside the house, because I wanted to get warm, because I feel better when I’m warm, and I try to feel better because it aids my survival, and traits that aid survival have been selected for, all the way back to the first replicators that were built from self-organizing structures, created from elements forged in exploding stars.
So you see that “why” questions, pursued down as far as one is able, become “how” questions. Of course, some people ask “why” questions about the entire Universe. To my mind, this is a category error: the Universe as a whole is not a living being with purposes, so “why” questions do not apply to it.
Happy Easter, or Ostara, from chilly Vienna, zilch
Aaron, please try to organize your thoughts into short paragraphs.
Yes, you might have found ancient people who would accept a naturalistic explanation of lightning, or of the plague (though that doesn’t seem to have been the case at the time). But they also believed these things were instruments of God’s wrath, directed at sinners.
Apparently (despite what scripture says) the most punishable sins are standing on a high place during a lightning storm, and letting rats accumulate in a community so that fleas can spread plague. If this is the case, the Bible should spell these things out instead of going on about blasphemy and pride and whatnot.
Only settles it for you, not for me. Christians are forever saying; “Look at how wonderful the creation is, it must have a creator!” But then when we say, “your god has to have a creator” we get the answer “but god is by definition uncreated!” You can’t have it both ways.
Tacking that definition onto the word “God” just means you are saying “Infinity plus one, can’t top that!”
The simple fact is, not everyone looks at creation and thinks “God”.
Aaron:
Please read my two posts of 3/16/08. The answer to the question is there, so some of us DO understand why many humans turn to a “supernatural explanation.” And, some of us, probably most of us on this site, DO understand why your belief is strong for YOU and making you feel it is the TRUTH. FOR YOU IT IS THE TRUTH. But, it is a subjective truth, that is why we fail to follow it.
Aaron, what zilch, DOF, and leguru said.
You notice the contradiction in the following two statements?
This is also known as special pleading: “Everything has to come from something, except the one thing whose existence I have to prove in the first place.”
The “god in the gaps” concept is very simple. Attributing currently unexplained phenomena to a deity is a cop-out, intellectually dishonest, and creates more problems than it solves. The better we understand nature, the fewer the occasions where this all-too-convenient cop-out can be applied (not that this stops the creationists).
Of all the god concepts, modern Deism is probably the least offensive: Some deity set things in motion and doesn’t intervene beyond that point. For all its minimalism and elegance, Deism still has the incurable problem of having to explain where the Deist god came from.
Science does go a long way towards explaining why things are the way they are. Having said that, if Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorems apply outside of the realm of formal logic, then science may not be able to explain all of nature. Please note that this a potential argument against more than in favor of religious belief.
I wouldn’t call philosophy entirely worthless, but it’s designed to ask questions instead of answering them. The very assumption that the natural doesn’t just exist, but has a deeper meaning is very questionable. Believers accept it as a premise, unbelievers consider it an unproven and perhaps unprovable conclusion. I myself don’t have a problem with the universe being indifferent to our existence and our existence being ultimately meaningless. Believers call this a bleak outlook, unbelievers consider it an opportunity to carve out whatever meaning we care to.
Exactly, elwed. Lots of confusion comes from the unexamined assumption that “meaning” is some kind of primal presence in the Universe: the evidence seems rather to indicate that “meaning”, along with “purpose” and “why questions”, is an evolved entity: without living things, there is no meaning. Thus, meaning evolved along with life. I agree that philosophy is not entirely worthless, but philosophy uninformed by science certainly is worthless.
Thank you all for your responses, I can’t get to them all, but I hope to respond to most as soon as possible. Most of you have made good points, and it has made me think a lot. A few things:
It is beyond the scope of science to show any such thing. I could not find the article on the website, but if you’re referring to the study that showed activity in the brain during certain religious exercises, the leap from that to showing that all cultures invent a deity is breathtaking. I guess the argument then is that if an experience causes a neural response, then it’s not real. It would be like saying that because when a person thinks about mathematics there is activity in the frontal lobe, therefore mathematics doesn’t exist. All experience is going to have some neural response, why religious experiences would be an exception I can’t imagine. In fact, if we had monitored your brain activity while you were making your argument, surely we would have seen activity. Does that mean that your argument has no validity? But in that case, you have not only cut the branch underneath me, but underneath yourself along with all rational thought as well. But I hope that is not what you’re saying.
I really don’t think I’m guilty of special pleading here, at least, I wasn’t trying to. I was not assuming the existence of an uncreated God, but only trying to clarify what is meant by the word “God”. If we are going to talk about the idea of God, we might as well know what we are talking about. If you want to talk about something that is created, let’s not call it God. I suppose “god” will do. But still, I’m not assuming anything. I’ll allow that the universe could be uncreated. But clearly there is some Thing that is uncreated, whether that be God, or something else. Maybe it’s quantum mechanics. But then I would argue that in order for this quantum mechanics to give birth to the processes that would eventually lead to the formation of minds that sought out meaning, that there exists a good possibility that quantum mechanics has meaning in itself, and has a purpose, and so would have something like a mind, and a personality. That’s just a thought, but I’ll think about it some more and post again later.
Aaron says
See my comment just above yours. It seems to me that the only things that have purposes and assign meanings are living beings. Does a rock have a purpose or a meaning? Only if there is a living thing to ascribe a purpose or a meaning to it.
Our lives are so inextricably bound up with purposes, meanings, and ideas of right and wrong, that it’s easy to imagine these concepts as being part of the framework of the Universe, like gravity or electromagnetism. But they are not: they are evolved entities, just as we are, and only make sense in the context of living beings. So I would say that while the Universe, or the natural laws that form the Universe, has meanings and purposes within it, and that there was the potential for meanings and purposes from the beginning, it’s only since life has evolved that there has actually been meaning and purpose.
I know that it’s hard to imagine complex structures like living things, and meanings and purposes (which are of course also complex) evolving from simpler forms. But examples can be seen right before our eyes, if we look at the right places: for instance, genetic programming, where computer programs are allowed to replicate themselves, with mutations, and compete at some task- the best are allowed to replicate for the next round, and eventually you get programs that work quite well. The field is still in its infancy, but already programs have evolved that are competitive with or better than human-written programs. This shows the power of evolution to create design- no designer necessary.
The EU is funding a project to do just that: Where angels no longer fear to tread. Chances are that god belief results from an evolutionary maladaption.
I haven’t read the Sceptic article, but I suspect that you have it backwards in that so-called religious experiences are not actual experiences resulting in a neural response, but neural activity resulting in a pseudo-experience.
Well, yes, you are. In a wider context:
How could you ever show that the alleged god has always existed? You don’t show it, but define the problem away. In other words, the claim that the universe (in some way, shape, or form) has always existed requires proof, but an uncreated god does not. Therefore, special pleading.
The term capital-G God carries a lot of ballast. If you want to assume an uncreated creator, “uncreated creator” works just fine to get your point across
Perhaps it is universes all the way down. In math, an infinite series can converge on some value. For all I know, an infinite regression of causes can converge on the equivalent of something uncreated. Philosophers are just so unimaginative when they insist on first causes…
elwed- it might well be a “mal” now, from our enlightened whole-earth viewpoint, but it might well have been a “bon” back when it got started, for those who had it. The same argument holds, of course, for the memetic side of god belief: it might well have conferred survival value to its holders, by aiding the formation of societies, and reducing fear of death for its warriors.
Interesting point, zilch, although saying that religion helped and therefore helps people to become more efficient killing machines is damning religion with faint praise. Going by that standard, the Islamists must be winning, because their suicide terrorists take the cake.
Aaron, please try this link: http://www.michaelshermer.com/2001/07/is-god-all-in-the-mind/
Sorry about the confusion. Dr. Michael Shermer founded the Skeptics.com site.
And, Elwed, I still think it is “turtles all the way down.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
I’m sure you would agree that this is both an unprovable and irrefutable statement. Still, it seems strange to me that the processes that gave rise to minds that seek out meaning could be meaningless in themselves. I, for one, will continue to believe that the universe has meaning until proven otherwise, because rational thought itself seems contingent on it. What will you do when even your thoughts become meaningless?
Wouldn’t this depend on your perspective? Isn’t it like saying this, that when a person sees something, it gets processed in the brain, so therefore there’s really nothing there, it’s only in his head? But there’s no reason to assume that there isn’t anything there; in fact, we all assume that our senses and brain activity give us an accurate view of reality. Why spiritual experiences are exceptions to this, I don’t see. Unless of course if you assume there are no spiritual or supernatural experiences. And I’ve asked before why we should assume there is no supernatural, but I feel that the explanations given involved some form of an assumption that there was no supernatural. Does the question even make sense?
Ok, now I see, and you’re right, it is special pleading. The reason I made the mistake, though, was that I was under the impression that you held the position that we cannot accept anything until it is proven. I fully admit that it requires faith to accept the notion of an “uncreated creator.” But at least I admit it. Does accepting the idea that the universe originated by natural means require faith? It seems clear to me that it does.
Aaron- I must say, it’s a pleasure debating with a believer who is obviously willing to examine his beliefs, and is willing to admit when he is mistaken. That’s something all of us could emulate, to our benefit.
Back to the debate. I said:
You replied:
True, my position is unprovable. But this is strictly true of any observation, outside of formal systems of logic. The statement “there are no unicorns” can also not be proven, but observation makes it so likely to be true, that it can provisionally be accepted as true. This is the way science works: nothing is ever proven, but what seems to fit the evidence is accepted provisionally as being true.
In the case of meaning, all the evidence I’ve seen so far shows it to be an evolved entity, only possessed by living things. Thus, I cannot prove that the Universe as a whole has no meaning, but since the evidence points strongly that way, I provisionally accept it as true, until such time as I see evidence to the contrary- just as I provisionally disbelieve in the existence of unicorns. Note that this “provisional” acceptance does not mean that I grant a fifty-fifty chance to the truth of the alternatives: many of the provisional truths of science are good enough that we can, and do, bet our lives on them.
Have I already mentioned William Paley, and his book Natural Theology, written in 1839? He came up with the allegory of the watchmaker:
An aside: I love gadgets, but try to avoid indulging myself too much- otherwise I would spend all my time playing. One useful gadget, though, is a PDA: equipped with Plucker, it can store anything I find online so that I can read it at my leisure, in the Schnellbahn for instance. Right now, I have about four or five Bibles, the Origin of Species, Natural Theology, and dozens of other interesting books on it.
Anyway- Paley’s argument made a strong impression on the young Darwin, and well it might: it is still the best exposition of the “Argument from Design” I know of, and still well worth reading. Paley was a naturalist who knew his stuff very well, and was filled with wonder at the apparent exquisite design of living things. Of course, rational thought, the ability to find meaning and purpose, is part of the exquisite design of Nature, and it’s quite natural to suppose that behind such wonderful design must lurk a Designer.
But as we know, Darwin later came up with another source of design: evolution, the result of replication, mutation, heredity, and natural selection. This is a perfectly adequate solution to the problem: design arises, given the right conditions (which are no doubt extremely rare), as a series of ever more complex whirlpools of organized star stuff feeding off energy (from the Sun for us Earthlings) and spinning out such marvelous things as ants, Bach chorales, and watchmakers. And I personally find that mind-blowing: far more amazing and wonderful, and of course more believable, than a God who just magicked everything, including Himself, into existence.
The self-organizing tendencies of matter, under the right conditions, can be seen all around: the rock candy crystals precipitating out of a sugar solution, the patterned rows of sand dunes or cloud streets, the spots and spirals of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction- these all show order emerging from disorder, at the expense of energy. Given world enough and time, this can lead to life, and meaning.
Why would my thoughts become meaningless? As I explained, meaning is an evolved entity, just as you and I and sequoias are. If I find meaning in myself, or in you, or in a sequoia, that’s just as real as my body, yours, or the trunk of the sequoia. True, meaning is ephemeral; someday I will die, and the meaning I hold for the world will die with me. That’s all the more reason to live life to the fullest right now while I can.
cheers from springy Vienna, zilch
P.S.- not strictly on topic, but all this talk of unicorns reminded me of the wonderful short story by James Thurber, The Unicorn in the Garden. Enjoy.
I would agree that religeons which threaten afterlife punishments to a credulous population certainly strengthen social cohesion. A society that has rejected religeon needs a strong social pressure to stop the whole thing disintergrating. Unfortunately attempts to impose this is seen as ‘nanny state’ and anti freedom, and people place person freedoms above greater good.
You can take this further. Are you a brain in a vat?
Solipsism is a philosophical and psychological black hole. We do assume that there is indeed a world out there, because doing otherwise leads right to a straightjacket or worse.
The assumption that our senses and brain activity give us an accurate view of reality is not correct, though. As any garden-variety optical illusion demonstrates, you have to allow for instrumentation errors.
Getting back to perspective… Many people have or claim so-called “spiritual or religious experiences”. While I attribute these to observational mistakes, self-delusion, or whatnot, they undoubtedly seem real to the subjects and my recollection is that these experiences have been linked to feel-good brain activity, which amounts to a reinforcing mechanism as well as primary cause.
The long and short of it is that subjective experience (using the term advisedly) doesn’t prove the supernatural.
My position is that “spiritual or supernatural experiences” have natural explanations, ranging from fraud to pranks to illusions to tricks of our mind.
In other words, you have to prove to me that spiritual experiences are objectively real. As stated above, I don’t doubt that people have spiritual or supernatural experiences, without hard proof I doubt that they are what the subjects believe them to be.
I refer again to the Griswoldian Catechism…
Simply put, I have no reason to assume that the supernatural exists, whatever it may be, or if it exists, that I should care.
*tips hat*
There is a Native American method of finding the correct answer to some complicated problem. Find at least ten really probable explanations and then pick the best one of those. We live in a very complex universe and it is not easy to make simple explanations nor solutions. When you find that the way you conceive something (internal rationalization of a phenomenon) is very consistent with the attributes of the thing observed (perception) and that other empirical evidence supports the same conclusion, you probably have a good understanding of the item. Realize that everyone’s conception will be slightly different based on their world-view, and you begin to have some mutual basis of understanding. Check here for the reliability of eye-witness accounts of any action: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20010516.html As The Baird said, “There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreampt of in your petty philosophies.”
The wonderful thing about technology and science is that it allows people to observe independently of themselves to some extent. I cannot build a unicorn detector, because I don’t know what constitutes a unicorn. I can watch evolution over time with instruments and records though.
The problem with religion is all these people claiming they’ve seen the unicorn, but not a single one can build a unicorn detector. Even so, the problem with unicorns is that once you’ve found one it’s just a randy horse with a horn.
Ok, I’m back.
Zilch, thanks for your comments, I have found it invaluable to think about these things and clarify what it is I believe and why I believe it, and perhaps to see where I am mistaken in my beliefs. I am still very human, and would like to sometimes just think I’m right and try to make others look stupid, but what’s the point? All that matters is truth, and living according to that truth. I appreciate how seriously you have taken my comments and questions, even if they seem like nonsense.
Elwed said:
You referred this to me a long time ago, and then when I responded to it, I believe it was you who called it a “frustrated rant.” I think you’re right, the whole thing seems like an emotional, mostly irrational outburst against anything religious, but, if there’s something in it that you don’t think is a frustrated rant, please let me know.
Well, I would say if the supernatural exists, then the implications for all of our lives are pretty significant. If this universe was created, then it was likely created for a purpose, and we, as intelligent and moral beings, probably have a role in that purpose.
That’s true, it doesn’t prove the supernatural, but I never claimed that it did. I was only trying to answer the claim that because “spiritual experiences” have a neural component, it follows that all religions are based on subjective experiences. But that obviously doesn’t follow.
From Zilch:
What kind of evidence would show that the Universe as a whole has no meaning? What kind of evidence would show that it does have meaning? This is a serious question, and may be close to the real issue. It depends on what you accept as evidence, of course; what is admissible in court. Oftentimes, atheists and theists both enter the same evidence in support of their positions. It’s really how facts are interpreted. Again, I would argue that the existence of nature does not imply that nature is all there is.
Besides that, have you seen the film The Privileged Planet? It may have already been discussed and ripped apart already here somewhere. If you have seen it, what did you think of it?
But this isn’t the kind of meaning and purpose I’m talking about. It is not the subjective, imaginary meaning that I really crave; that is as satisfying as an imaginary hot dog. I want the real thing. True, the desire is subjective, just as hunger is, but the fulfillment of it is not. Of course, maybe it’s not there, and I’m imagining it to compensate for the lack of it, but I would find it very strange that the one thing I want more than anything doesn’t exist. Could nature really orchestrate such a bad and elaborate joke as creating beings that do nothing but look for meaning, when there is none to be found?
Patness:
Patness, thanks for taking the time to explain this. I don’t know if I’m still not getting it though. Is this the same thing as saying that a supposedly supernatural cause leads to a natural effect? I don’t think we would have any disagreement there.
Absolutely. Pattern-seeking is the basis of human intelligence. It exists because there’s a huge survival advantage in spotting patterns. And it doesn’t automatically shut off when you look up.
I’m afraid you’re off the mark.
Perhaps it helps to know the history of the Griswoldian Catechism. The author known as Heathen Dawn (a guy) went from being an orthodox Jew to atheist to Wiccan. He spent a huge amount of time debating his personal understanding of polytheism on the Internet Infidels forum and the GC is the culmination of a couple of thousands of posts. Rather than being an irrational outburst, it closely resembles a condensed transcript of the actual debates. It is most definitely not directed against religion, but against philosophically materialistic atheism. In other words, he’s one of yours, not one of ours.
What the GC beautifully illustrates is the frustration of apologists running into a philosophically materialistic brick wall. I am perhaps being unkind calling it a rant, though. In any case, what was said in this thread about the supernatural will be echoed in the GC.
The author dropped off the Internet a couple of years ago and I haven’t made any recent attempts to see if he’s returned. It’s a pity he took down his site, because even if you didn’t agree with him, it made for interesting reading and I rarely say this for theist sites.
It’s a big if. We view it as a vanishingly small probability, while you consider it as a strong possibility.
If and likely and probably.
Let’s assume the universe was created. How do you know that it was intentional, that there is a sentient creator, and that the human species is not an impurity in a Petri dish?
You want there to be some deeper meaning. I’m content to exist and make the most of it.
No, but human intelligence can orchestrate itself so as to believe that the great dance of the universe as outlined by physical laws has the same sort of monstrously large ego and regard for humanity than humans themselves do. The universe and nature don’t care about you. So if you want things to care about you then you better look to your fellow human beings and yourself, and do right by them, because that’s all there is. Or to follow:
Again, it’s pure ego: What if the universe was created and it had no purpose? What if the universe was created for a purpose that had absolutely nothing to do with you, with humanity as a whole, with intelligent beings anywhere? What if if the universe were designed and we are completely irrelevant?
It’s geocentrism all over again. Christians dont insist that the Earth is physically the center the universe anymore (in public anyway), but they still believe the universe revolves around them.
Very well said, Julian.
WHAT?? The universe does not revolve around Xtians? Say it isn’t so!
Stumbled over this Wikipedia entry:
methodological naturalism
Perhaps that clears up a few loose threads…
Kirk Cameron is plain terrifying, look at the evil glint in his culty eyes!!!