I feel that, deep down inside,....

Double dipping because I feeeel like it.

Feeeeeelings nothing more than feelings..........Feelings, wo-ooooo-ooooooo-o feeeeeeeeeeeeeelings

Regards,

Consigliere said: “What I am doing is taking issue with the comparison that believing in God is like believing in the tooth fairy.  It is clearly not.

The issue I have with the comparison is that it is used by those who proffer it to say in a somewhat snide manner “You have but the mind of a child, you poor delusional soul.â€? Now, in many instances when the group here pistol whips a believer with that, the sentiment is justified.  There are many idiots that troll through the grounds here, and they should be hit over the head with the stupid things that they say.  There are so many more ways to do that though, rather than use a false analogy.”

You’re right, Consi - the comparison isn’t perfect.  Belief in god, while similar in most other respects to belief in the tooth fairy, plays out in a much higher-stakes game.

We get that you don’t like the analogy.  Clearly you’re insulted by the comparison to a child’s fantasy.  You seem to be saying; “I am an adult with complicated thoughts and an advanced education!  It isn’t right to say I have the mind of a child!”

But one need not have the mind of a child to harbor childish thoughts.  From outside the distorting gravitational field of faith, it is easy to see that believers are very selective about evidence.  If something goes their way, it proves god; if not, it is explained away - “well, uh, you see, god works in mysterious ways, and man is fallen and this is because god wants us to...”

Believers know all that about the mind of God?  How well do you understand the motives of your matrimonial partner (if any) whom you can see, touch, and with whom you can directly converse?  Do you always know why YOU do things?  But believers are always ready to jump in and say why god does this or that.

Or, why any current scientific mystery proves god.  But logically scientific mysteries prove the tooth fairy did it just as well as they prove god did it.

The unbeliever says, “Amazing, if true” and sees little dispassionate evidence for such an extraordinary claim.

You are being hypersenstive to my post Elwed.

It was just a general remark that preceedes what I addressed to you personally.

I’ll grant you that some theists sincerely believe that their prayers have been answered. However, that doesn’t make it so and I as I said before, while it may be tricky run statistics, I am not aware of a credible claim that prayers are more effective than chance. And to repeat something said elsewhere, any alleged effect that only marginally differs from the statistical expectations, no matter how hard you try, almost certainly doesn’t exist.

Now, about that f-word. It is commonly used in more than one sense and we could have a side discussion about epistemology to discuss this topic. The simplified version is that ‘faith’ can be understood to mean a justified belief or an unjustified belief and probably anything in between. Unless you disambiguate how you use it, we are free to interpret it in a way that suits us....

And what DOF said. I don’t question the sincerity of anybody’s belief, but if a justification is volunteered, it is open to critical examination.

What I am doing is taking issue with the comparison that believing in God is like believing in the tooth fairy.  It is clearly not.

The issue I have with the comparison is that it is used by those who proffer it to say in a somewhat snide manner “You have but the mind of a child, you poor delusional soul.�

I assure you my intention in defending the analogy is not to be snide, and as for having the “mind of a child,” isn’t that how Christians are entreated to be, “as a child,” when they come to Jesus?

You’re right, Consi - the comparison isn’t perfect.  Belief in god, while similar in most other respects to belief in the tooth fairy, plays out in a much higher-stakes game.

Right.  As I said earlier, the weight of an entire belief system doesn’t rest on believing in the Tooth Fairy, which to me is the ONLY thing that makes believing in gods different from believing in other sorts of invisible beings.  It is imperative that Christians maintain the childlike ability to suspend their disbelief to a sufficient degree that miracles, resurrection and invisible beings are unquestionably “real” and “true.”

No one would argue with the opinion that an adult who believes in the Tooth Fairy is delusional, but what I’m seeing Consigliere argue is that an adult’s belief in gods and demons should be exempt from the same scrutiny and skepticism.  And from where I sit, I think that’s simply because applying logic and reason would result in their entire belief system falling apart.

Consi, what I’d be interested to know is if you yourself are willing to suspend your own disbelief and extend the same courtesy and respect you insist upon for your belief in God and prayers and whatnot to those Pagans who assert that have felt the REAL presence of the God & Goddess during ritual, or have seen the exact results they asked for after doing a spell and asking the gods to intercede and grant their wishes?  Are the beliefs of those people as worthy of being immune to comparisons to the Tooth Fairy or other supernatural claims?  Or should they be categorized with other clearly delusional beliefs merely because they’re not part of the Christian tradition?

Consi:

That said, there is anectdotal evidence amongst a vast portion of the population that there is a God, and that He answers prayers.
90% of the American public believes in God.

And the Benny Hinns among us take full advantage of this situation.

Oh, and if you read the article which began this entry you would also see that 55% of American Christians believe that Noah is a relative of Joan of Arc.

Back on topic of the thread, I am raising two children to find their own “truth”. No god(s), only santa and the tooth fairy, two lies which I hope that they will eventually forgive me for.

I’ve been out of the thread of a couple of days, but I must say that your last point is an excellent one there, OB. Bravo! One of my pet peeves with some Christians is how they don’t want their own beliefs to be criticized as silly or false, but they’ll happily do the same to anyone else’s and the Pagan’s in particular.

Think about it, I think the Pagan’s beliefs are just as silly as anyone else’s yet I’m considered to be pretty Pagan friendly. That’s largely because they cause so little trouble for me and they seem to be happy to do their own thing and let me do likewise. They don’t give me much to complain about and they don’t care if I think their beliefs are silly.

Les: One of my pet peeves with some Christians is how they don’t want their own beliefs to be criticized as silly or false, but they’ll happily do the same to anyone else’s and the Pagan’s in particular.

Yes. If they say “this is what I believe”, then firmly plant a full stop and afford others the same courtesy of accepting what they believe, there would be little room for argument.

The obvious problem with all of this is that Christianity has effectively or literally elevated conversion of unbelievers to a matter of doctrine, thus there are some that feel obliged to spread the word and ignore “no solicitation” signs. We see them come and go on SEB…

For the record, I don’t compare religious belief to belief in the tooth fairy. The latter is a lie to children and doubt is not seriously challenged by adults (if at all). For those “raised in the faith”, doubt is not usually tolerated; those that acquire it in adulthood have presumably made a conscious decision.

The thing about Pagans that probably makes them easier to interact with is that they don’t have one book, one worldview, one “Truth.” They are free to choose any number of mythologies or traditions in their quest for spiritual enrichment, and there’s nothing that says they MUST believe that the gods they “work” with are “real” or “alive,” in the way that Christians must.  In fact, of the literally thousands of Pagans I’ve personally known, I can’t think of a single one who claims to have the sort of “personal relationship” with a deity that Christians say they have with Jesus (whom they insist is “alive").  I’ve also yet to encounter, for example, a practitioner of the Norse tradition who would say that the practitioners of Egyptian or Celtic traditions are “wrong” or being “misled by demons.”

This absence of strict dogma, in an environment where all paths are seen as equally valid as long as they adhere to the principle of “harm none,” along with the fact that it is always the “believer” or practitioner him/herself that is personally responsible for the “blessings” or “curses” that they experience, makes Pagans far less defensive of their beliefs than Christians, because the “truth” of their religion doesn’t rest upon the question of whether or not its adherents consider their deities to be separate, sentient beings that are, despite their invisibility to the rest of humanity, as “real” as the guy standing next to you in the supermarket.

Check out Pagan Ponderings - by a friend of mine who describes herself as an “eclectic atheistic Taoist witch.” She discusses the notion of deities as “real.”

Back on topic of the thread, I am raising two children to find their own “truth�. No god(s), only santa and the tooth fairy, two lies which I hope that they will eventually forgive me for.

Prickly!

My daughter was a bit more skeptical about my having lied about Santa because she knew for a fact she SAW him in the flesh when he came to our house quite late one Xmas Eve.  He walked right in the door (alas no chimney for us poor apartment-dwellers), took gifts out of his sack and placed them under our tree.  He then sat down and enjoyed the cookies and milk we’d left for him, after which he exited with a “Ho ho ho,” locking the door behind him.  All this my daughter witnessed, peeking around the corner from her room, because I’d gotten her up to see the “miracle.”

I’m a mean mommy, because in spite of her desperate pleeeeeeeeeas that I answer her question, “Who was it, really???” with something other than, “A Santa of my acquaintance,” (so I’m not REALLY lying - he IS a Santa, every year, all over Southern California) I don’t want her to lose that magical feeling that such a childhood memory invokes, and it does her no harm to have one little mystery among the multitudes of childhood fantasies she’ll eventually grow out of believing.

I’ve never talked about Santa or the Tooth Fairy with my oldest without also slipping in something to the effect that they’re not real.  We talked early on about how you could see all kinds of different Santas in the malls and on TV and whatever, and that was because they were all people dressed up in Santa costumes.  I suspect she might have still held on to the Platonic ideal of a real Santa somewhere out there, of which these were just cheap imitations, but that will dissipate in time.  I just don’t ever want her to think I’ve lied to her.  We talk about PRETENDING there’s a Santa, just like she pretends about other things.  And I think she’s not inquiring too closely into the Tooth Fairy, even though I offer to talk about it, because she REALLY wants that dollar.

This year, she had heard the story about how bad little children got coal in their stockings, and so she asked me why I didn’t get anything in my stocking at Christmas.  I explained simply that I had been too busy getting things for HER stocking and was too tired to get anything for my own.  She asked a couple of times, as if she were checking to see if I kept to the same story.  But we’ve talked a lot about fiction and nonfiction, so I’m sure it’ll all come together for her in time.

I just don’t know what I’m going to say when she brings up the “g-word.” I’d much rather talk about the birds and the bees with her than take on THAT topic.

We got into the god questions quite early on.  I let my daughter attend Sunday School with her cousins, whose parents are devout (and the oldest of whom will be a teen mom in a few months ).  At the time I’d been an out of the broom closet Pagan for over 10 years, so of course I’d been the target of salvation attempts by my brother- and sister-in-law.  Needless to say, the kid coming home and asking if I was afraid of going to Hell because we weren’t “saved” was the perfect opportunity to explain to her that Jesus couldn’t possibly “save” anyone any more than the brass statue of Ganesha or the ceramic Virgin Mary, or any of the other “gods” that adorned my home were capable of doing.  It’d be nice if they WERE real and all, but they’re just ideals and stories.

GM, that conversation when she was 4 (and all the ensuing “g-word” questions) was infinitely less stressful than a recent conversation where she asked me to explain exactly WHY she shouldn’t incorporate the word “bukkake” into her vocabulary.    All I could manage was, “It’s a certain type of pornography that’s rather gross, and for ADULTS.  Just trust me on this one!”

Little wench googled up a definition somehow (but thankfully no actual SITES)… DAMN YOU INTERNET!  Or not, because she hasn’t said it again, and admitted, “Eeeeewwww mom, you were RIGHT!” heh.

I would love to jump in again, but I have to get up early tomorrow to catch a train to the mountains for a week.  Have fun all!

No one would argue with the opinion that an adult who believes in the Tooth Fairy is delusional, but what I’m seeing Consigliere argue is that an adult’s belief in gods and demons should be exempt from the same scrutiny and skepticism.

OB, that is not what I’m arguing.  I readily admit that there are alternatives to explaining answered prayers, other than God did it.  A rational person could look at every answered prayer that I am aware of and come away with multiple conclusions, none of which are: God answered the prayer. 

What I am saying is that those conclusions are not the only rational conclusions that can be drawn.  Given that, there is no certainty in either direction, and no matter which direction one chooses based on their respective assessments, it requires a leap of faith in one’s assessment of what actually transpired.

This is not true with Benny Hinn or the tooth fairy.  Both can be disproven.

As to pagans, I’ve dated two gals that were pagans.  Hot is hot, Christian or not. Whether that is unequal yoking or a good omelette, I’ll leave it to God.  One, who was into Thor and a bunch of goddesses stuff that I can’t explain, because she couldn’t explain it coherently, actually took me to....I don’t know what it was called.  It seemed like a Halloween party (which is around the time that it occurred).

In short, I found the folks in attendance to be generally eccentrics and misfits. By the same token, I didn’t direct any that they were on the highway to hell either.  I simply don’t know if their prayers are answered or not. 

I evaluate claims of answered prayers by the credibility of the individual making the claim, not by a person’s religion.

Regards,

What I am saying is that those conclusions are not the only rational conclusions that can be drawn.

And this is, in a nutshell, where the deep disagreements between theists and atheists are rooted. I don’t actually deny that the more thoughtful theists can present a valid argument, but I happen to reject the premises these particular arguments are based on. And round and round we go.

If you wish to put it this way, some theists can present a rational argument based on irrational premises.

Double-dipping....

I evaluate claims of answered prayers by the credibility of the individual making the claim, not by a person’s religion.

Who else spots the fallacy?

Consigliere quoted then emoted:

I feel that, deep down inside,....

Double dipping because I feeeel like it.

Feeeeeelings nothing more than feelings..........Feelings, wo-ooooo-ooooooo-o feeeeeeeeeeeeeelings

Would you have preferred that I stated it was a fact rather than a personal belief?

I also have a feeling that you’ve built your faith out of an insincere desire to find a defining purpose in your life. I doubt that you actually believe in this god but instead crave something that will allow you to easily satisfy your curiosity and sense of wonder. You have succumbed to the popular practice of religion affiliation. You don’t welcome questions and you’ve limited the answers you’re willing to allow. You’ve claimed a processed theology that requires no further unraveling. You’ve settled for a fad and depend on it to represent your passions and posture. It’s the face you wear for the world.

Calling a god your father leads me to suspect you desire affiliation with nobility. Am I wrong?

OB and GM

Speaking from my own experiences raising my kids, I like the idea of pretending that Santa exists. I don’t see it as being much different than having an imaginary tea party with her friends, I just go along with what she tells me to do. Kids, I think, need to have their imaginations exercised every once in a while. 

My oldest one, who is 5 years old, still believes in Santa, but she is very skeptical and realizes not every Santa is “the one”, especially after having seen so many mall Santas. She “knows” that, despite the cheap imitations, a real Santa lives on the north pole. The Santa illusion has been relatively easy to pull off up to now but I wonder what she will say the next time my brother dresses in the ever rattier Santa suit and pays a visit during Christmas Eve with candy canes for all.(Santa is taking a break from gift giving). Will she know it is uncle? Will we need extensive counselling if she recognizes him? I don’t think so. Slowly, however, the realization will dawn on her that Santa is a prank, and she will have completed a rite of passage. Then, realizing that she is in on the joke, she will help perpetuate the myth; telling her younger sister and cousins to believe, all the while thinking of what a big girl she is now that she has been included into the adult (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) non-believer side.

As for how we are handling the GOD question, we say that we don’t believe in the concept and we don’t know. We are trying to encourage our kids to seek the answers for themselves. We have friends from different religions (Muslim, Christian, Hindu, etc) and we point out to the kids that some people have their rituals and ceremonies, whereas we don’t.

Words to live by (courtesy of Thomas Jefferson): Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, He must approve the homage of Reason rather than that of blindfolded Fear.

Would you have preferred that I stated it was a fact rather than a personal belief?

You can’t state that it is a fact, at least not as a fact with any support other than your “feeling.”

By the way, the intellectualization of feelings is typically exhibited by those who have difficulty allowing themselves to feel. The result is the expression of thoughts as feelings.

Regards,

I’m weighing in a bit late, but I tend to agree with Consi that the tooth-fairy/God analogy doesn’t hold.  Though, the reason I think such is the case is different from Consi’s.

It strikes me that the postulated properties of God (at least the Judeo-Christian conception of God) leads to a posited entity that is unfalsifiable.  There is no possible negative test for God.  There are possible negative tests for the Tooth Fairy.  The properties postulated for the Tooth Fairy, would allow us to demonstrate that it is unlikely that the Tooth Fairy exists.

This being the case it seems that God is not the sort of thing that is accessible to the empirical method (despite Kant’s claims to the contrary).  It seems then that we are left with deductive systems to attempt to identify whether the notion of divinity is either necessary or consistent with other more clearly known facts.  Now, it does seem pretty clear that God isn’t necessary (despite claims to the contrary by Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, Burridan, Ockham, and Descartes).  As such it seems the question is then whether God is consistent with what we’re pretty sure that we already know. 

The answer to this is less clear.  It seems that some of the proposed qualities of God aren’t in fact consistent with themselves let alone us.  For example omniscience and granting of freewill, unless one accepts a deflated notion of freewill or omniscience one cannot have both.  Also there seems to be problems with supposed properties of God such as his omnibenevolence and the presence of evil (and in great amounts) here on Earth.  There are also inconsistencies regarding the notion of concurrent omnipotence, omniscience, and the performance of miracles (though this is less of a problem, if one is willing to accept that God is to some degree capricious).  However, it doesn’t seem to me that there is a clear inconsistency with the supposition that there is some sort of creative or ordering divine force, it just seems that we have made numerous mistakes guessing its properties (if it exists).

That all said, simply because it isn’t inconsistent to suppose that some divine force exists doesn’t suggest that any such thing exists.  It just demonstrates that we cannot be fully certain that it does not exist.  Though, I would say that it’s pretty certain that the God described in the Old Testament, and later by Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant Dogma, cannot be as people have claimed him to be.  That all said, I do agree with Consi that belief in God is a matter of faith and asking for rational justification for universal belief in God is to somehow miss the point.  One can ask about a person’s personal reason for their belief, and one can ask a person to justify their nuttier beliefs, but I think it’s inappropriate to ask that a person be able to convince you to believe.

...the postulated properties of God… leads to a posited entity that is unfalsifiable.  There is no possible negative test for God.  There are possible negative tests for the Tooth Fairy…

...God is not the sort of thing that is accessible to the empirical method… we are left with deductive systems to attempt to identify whether the notion of divinity is either necessary or consistent with other more clearly known facts.
-Socialist Swine

So although God is a more extraordinary claim than the Tooth Fairy, there’s even less possibility of an evidentiary test about his existence. 

(continued) One can ask about a person’s personal reason for their belief, and one can ask a person to justify their nuttier beliefs, but I think it’s inappropriate to ask that a person be able to convince you to believe.

Sure, unless the belief is touted as a model for shaping public policy, “faith-based” spending, and school curriculum.  If it gets carved in stone and put in courthouses, embroidered on judges’ robes, and if you are branded a social pariah for failing to accede to even small expressions of the faith, it’s appropriate to ask for something more than unexamined tradition for justification.

If you’re going to spend the public dime, shape the minds of the public’s children, send them to kill and die in wars, and discriminate in hundreds of subtle ways, you better have something stronger.

To the God-shouters: got proof? Out with it!  If not, keep your faith where it belongs, in your church and your heart.

On the topic of this thread, why DO we lie to our children?  I told several “protective” lies to my kids when they were little, and have lived to regret it deeply. 

We want our kids to trust us, especially when they’re little.  They naturally believe anything we tell them.  Yet we lie to them.  Why?  How can they trust us?

Yes, we can simplify the truth when they’re little, and that’s OK.  It’s easy to make the transition to more detailed information later.

Also on the topic of this thread, how do we help our kids deal with being different?  Children are openly cruel about differences. (This does not justify lying to them.)

DOF,

Sure, unless the belief is touted as a model for shaping public policy, “faith-basedâ€? spending, and school curriculum.  If it gets carved in stone and put in courthouses, embroidered on judges’ robes, and if you are branded a social pariah for failing to accede to even small expressions of the faith, it’s appropriate to ask for something more than unexamined tradition for justification.

You have a point there.  In the case when religion begins to affect public policy, then there requires some additional justification than when it’s just someone’s personal beliefs.  I guess I should have been more careful to note the context dependency of the necessary degree of justification.  However, when I consider it, the public policy is shaped more by various properties that people attribute to God rather than the belief that some sort of divine force exists....

This comes back to the distinction between what one believes in and how one acts on that belief. I rarely take issue with the spiritual beliefs of others, but once the line is crossed into proselytizing or worse, trying to shape other’s actions, all bets are off.

Also on the topic of this thread, how do we help our kids deal with being different?  Children are openly cruel about differences. (This does not justify lying to them.)

Now that she’s thirteen, she’s got my permission to tell anyone who harasses her about our (lack of) religion, the outward signs of her physical disability, or anything else that she’s got no control over (like being white), “Obviously you were THROWN up, not BROUGHT up.  Now, kindly piss off and leave me alone.”

I’m with both DOF and Elwed that I couldn’t care less about people’s beliefs as long as they keep them to themselves (prosyletize me at your peril) and aren’t making laws using those beliefs as justification for trampling the rights of the rest of us.

DOF:

From the POV of the child:
I found the Santa thing absurd as a child.  My memory is pretty clear from about age 3, and I don’t ever remember believing in Santa.  I think my parents gave up on that one early on, but they didn’t really make a concerted effort--I could recognize my mom’s handwriting.

My mom was always honest with me about things like sex, our family happenings, etc.  Took me to funerals for family members.  All I can say is that I’m glad she did because I saw a lot of my friends flipping out when they discovered Santa was imaginary, their parents weren’t superheroes, people die, and sex makes babies.  Because she was honest from the start, these things took hold of me gradually and allowed me to make better choices later on.  My one complaint was that she raised me to have faith in God without a lot of tolerance for other positions. It was one of the worst things I had to deal with growing up. 
Not that I don’t trust my mom in general--I most certainly do.  But I don’t buy her religious beliefs for a minute.

Yes, we can simplify the truth when they’re little, and that’s OK.  It’s easy to make the transition to more detailed information later.

I completely agree.  I had a counselor in HS who was raised atheist Quaker.  She told me that she had the words of great humans, like Abe Lincoln and Kant, as her role models growing up.  She was still raised with ideals, but with real, historical examples (as opposed to hypothetical ones).

Also on the topic of this thread, how do we help our kids deal with being different?  Children are openly cruel about differences. (This does not justify lying to them.)

That’s one the kids have to deal with themselves.  Whether it’s belief in god or a big nose, kids are gonna be made fun of.  All parents can do is offer comfort and tell their kids to ignore/make clever insults toward the assholes in the world.  It builds a thick skin while exposing other children to things they may not hear about otherwise.

I remember a quote from Nietzsche about wishing turmoil on people because it makes you a better person...can’t find it

Well, that’s my take, and that’s why I’ll be raising my kids (if I have them) as atheists.
Children are capable of handling a lot more crap than we give them credit for, and if we give them more philosophical responsability from the start, they’ll be more likely to use that responsabilty wisely.