30 replies to this topic

[None of the above]

Lion6969, on 14 October 2012 - 01:33 AM, said:

God of the gaps is long dead as argument or even a taunt at theists, they moved on beyond that but the irony is that Dawkins and the like still hold on to dead and destroyed philosophical arguments. Seems like the atheist cant move on past the 40s. Catch up with contemporary arguments and reasonings from both sides!

Destroying people like Dawkins is a simple
Task in such arguments and a bit unfair on him. Hes a good biologist but that's it, he is not acquainted with other standards of knowledge, philosophy, history, philosophy of science etc.

It would be more accurate to say that the minority fundamentalist point of view of the 'literal creationist' has attempted to distance itself from the modern mainstream Christian 'god of the gaps' perspective.
The 'god in the gaps' belief is absolutely fundamental to modern Christianity.
Of course it's absolutely fundamental to religion and why humanity felt the need to invent religion to find ways to explain the gaps in our knowledge in the first place.

Which is why the majority of mainstream Christianity has completely accepted Evolution as fact and worked it into their ideology.
That's how a religion survives and remains relevant in an evolving society, not by clinging to a belief that allegorical creation myths are actually literal truths and denying the progress of proven scientific fact
But this isn't "news".
This rise of militant fundamentalist literal creationism is a modern US led problem, which is completely at odds with the 'progress' that Christianity has made in the last few hundred years culminating in public acceptance of evolution, even if only as a 'tool' of divine creation.
What the  fundamentalists have done in response to this progress within the mainstream church is to decide to distance themselves as far as possible by publically embracing the most obvious allegories as literal fact.
Gods forbid they should ever feel that they have 'won' against science, they would surely then be emboldened and start to embrace other even more unsavory literal interpretations of scripture!
These people are a Christian version of the Taliban. No better than that. While their power is weak they might smile and be pleasant, but they are dangerous deniers of progress who given any opportunity would be as 'good' for Christainity as the Taliban are for Islam.

But as I say, thankfully they are simply a vocal minority who must be opposed. Again, thankfully the mainstream faiths are already doing this, the Church of England even went so far as to issue an official appoloogy to Charles Darwin conceding in a statement that it was over-defensive and over-emotional in dismissing Darwin's ideas. It will call "anti-evolutionary fervour" an "indictment" on the Church".
http://www.telegraph...-evolution.html

You say that Dawkins isn't acquainted with "other standards of knowledge, philosophy, history, philosophy of science etc". Well his 'creationist' opponents most surely are not! Fundamentalist 'theology' is hardly a worthy opponent is it?

Edited by Atlantia, 14 October 2012 - 11:42 AM.

[Cybele]

The question of whether God exists or not is irrelevant, really, because people will have faith and believe regardless of whether or not he/she/it exists. What matters is how people let faith affect their lives and try to use their beliefs to shape their culture and politics. That is what any productive atheist vs. theist debate should be about, not trying to answer unanswerable questions.

Edited by Cybele, 14 October 2012 - 11:10 PM.

[SUPERSquatch]

Lion6969, on 14 October 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

Scientists and science can't know what was before the big bang empirically that's the point!

That's god of the gaps.

Lion6969, on 14 October 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

Science scope ends at singularity.

There are some pretty good ideas as to what happened before the big bang, though, that creationists blatantly ignore. You can find them by Googling "What happened before the big bang?"

Lion6969, on 14 October 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

However you will take a scientist explanation for what was before as gospel even if it's unproven and illogical!

Are you telling me that the idea of God isn't as equally or even more as illogical?

Lion6969, on 14 October 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

That's blind faith mate! Yeah creationist may use it as justification but not theists.

Not really. Just because we can't comprehend something doesn't mean it's false. And as I've said, there are pre-big bang explanations.

Lion6969, on 14 October 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

That's creationists for you predominantly christian creationists. Not me not theists at large. What atheists cling on to with dear life are philosophical premises from the early 20s to 40s, these premises have long been destroyed only for some atheist scientist to regurgitate the garbage! God of the gaps is a dead argument too!

You used the god of the gaps argument that there is no idea as to what happened before the big bang, even though that is false.

Lion6969, on 14 October 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

Just cause you ain't seen ONE, don't mean ain't out there does it? It also begs the question what arguments have you seen if any.....

I have seen many. Why don't you provide a good argument?

Lion6969, on 14 October 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

Clearly your not aware of how science functions, it's limitations etc. Go ahead try and disprove with evidence upto your standard, the very same empirical standard you expect from theists

Science doesn't say, "Let's disprove God", it says, "Is there a god out there?" So far, scientific evidence (more of a lack of it) has led me to believe that there is no god.

Lion6969, on 14 October 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

I never said you had to, but it's a field dealing with the subject. Just cause there is not evidence for something does not negate it's existence. Ie hobbit small people are fairy tales until bones of such were discovered in indonesia etc. Don't get me wrong I'm not for a minute suggesting leprechauns could exist, I don't believe they do based on reasoning not solely lack of evidence.

Couldn't the same argument apply to the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Lion6969, on 14 October 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

What would evidence be like if it did exist?

I don't know. There is no evidence, however.

[Alienated Being]

[Arbitran]

Am I the first to note that Dawkins is an atheist, not an agnostic?

[Alienated Being]

Arbitran, on 18 October 2012 - 03:27 AM, said:

Am I the first to note that Dawkins is an atheist, not an agnostic?

Sorry to have to be the one to correct you Arbitran, but Richard Dawkins has claimed an innumerable amount of times that he is not an atheist; rather, he is an agnostic, but he is atheistic in the same way as he is "a-faery-istic".

[Arbitran]

Alienated Being, on 18 October 2012 - 03:30 AM, said:

Sorry to have to be the one to correct you Arbitran, but Richard Dawkins has claimed an innumerable amount of times that he is not an atheist; rather, he is an agnostic, but he is atheistic in the same way as he is "a-faery-istic".

Intriguing. As a considerable Dawkins-ite myself, I'm surprised I hadn't heard that. In any case, I would certainly classify him an atheist: he doesn't believe in god[s], ergo, he's an atheist in my book.

[The Silver Thong]

Well since man can desighn a watch and that watch never fails then we must believe in a creator.  First 45 seconds wth

[Alienated Being]

Arbitran, on 18 October 2012 - 03:49 AM, said:

Intriguing. As a considerable Dawkins-ite myself, I'm surprised I hadn't heard that. In any case, I would certainly classify him an atheist: he doesn't believe in god[s], ergo, he's an atheist in my book.

Yes, I would also.

[eight bits]

Dawkins, like everyone else, can call himself whatever he likes. But what he chooses to call himself is uninformative about the question of interest: what does he believe about the ontology of God?

He believes that there is no god. That's it, that's as much confidence as any human being can muster about any contingent question: believe that the truth is some way rather than another, but acknowledge, however scrupulously, that you might be wrong. To be "atheistic" in the same way that most people are "afearyistic" is the most assertive way anybody possibly could be atheistic.

Atheists who play the agnostic card pay their respects to a Scottish theologian named Fiint, who, alarmed at the rising popularity of a non-atheist alternative to his favorite superstitions, wrote a book in which he distorted the history of Huxley's adoption of the word agnostic, ignored how the word passed into the langauge, and revived an obscure earlier usage in philosophy (yup, not knowing something), as if this was what Huxley "really meant."

Bull#. Huxley coined the word because everybody else in his debating club had an "-ism," and "Huxleyism" would have been vulgar or comical. Huxley probably never knew enough philosophy to have heard of the word being used before he hit upon it. Other people adopted his term, in part because it sounds cool, and in part because a lot of people who don't believe in the local gods also believe that the question of God is nowhere near being answerable except on prioristic grounds, which they find shaky as a guide to belief.

The only known indicator of human belief is a disposition to act. There is no reason to suppose that a believer (or believer-that-not)  himself would know the contents of his own beliefs except to observe his own behavioral disposition. For example, only people who believe that there probably is no God would pay good money to put that slogan on the sides of buses.

It is not a discriminator of certainty or uncertainty  that you would believe differently if compelling evidence were adduced. That is a tautology, it is what compelling means. I would change my belief in the Pyhtagorean Theorem if compelling evidence arrived.

Nevertheless, I am certain that the Pythagorean Theorem is true. There is no contradiction. I am also certain that compelling contrary evidence will never arrive, because there can be no such evidence, another thing of which I am certain. To believe something about anything is to believe something about the prospects for contrary evidence being adduced.

The bottom line, then, is that if Dawkins' self-description is accepted, then it must be amended for clarity to say that he is a Flintian agnostic. So are you, so am I, so is the man behind the tree. "Flintian agnostic" is a pretentious synonym for "human being." None of us knows with literal certainty the right answer to any contingent question.

As such, to say that Dawkins is a Flintian agnostic is uninformative about his views on the question of God. The ordinary term for his viewpoint about that is atheist. He believes there is no God; he believes this in just the same way, indeed, that he believes there are no faeries.

[Ninhursag]

Hey guys has anyone ever read any of Dawkins books?? What did you make of them?? Are they worth the read?

[Odin11]

Ninhursag, on 20 October 2012 - 10:47 AM, said:

Hey guys has anyone ever read any of Dawkins books?? What did you make of them?? Are they worth the read?

I've read:
The Selfish Gene,
Climbing Mount Improbable,
The God Delusion,
The Greatest Show on Earth,
and The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True.

I liked them all, but my favorite is The Greatest Show on Earth. His books on evolution are all worth it to read, if you like the topic. Although, I did not like The Magic of Reality that much, I know it was made to be a family type book but, for lack of better words, it was to dumbed down for me.

[Ninhursag]

Odin11, on 20 October 2012 - 09:01 PM, said:

I've read:
The Selfish Gene,
Climbing Mount Improbable,
The God Delusion,
The Greatest Show on Earth,
and The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True.

I liked them all, but my favorite is The Greatest Show on Earth. His books on evolution are all worth it to read, if you like the topic. Although, I did not like The Magic of Reality that much, I know it was made to be a family type book but, for lack of better words, it was to dumbed down for me.

Ok great, thanks .. I just heard about the guy recently and couldn't make up my mind what to think of him ..

[Imaginarynumber1]

Ninhursag, on 21 October 2012 - 02:08 PM, said:

Ok great, thanks .. I just heard about the guy recently and couldn't make up my mind what to think of him ..

Greatest Show on earth is a FANTASTIC book. As is The Selfish Gene. The God Delusion is also great if you're looking for some rational reasoning behind agnosticism/atheism.

[Bling]

Arbitran, on 18 October 2012 - 03:49 AM, said:

Intriguing. As a considerable Dawkins-ite myself, I'm surprised I hadn't heard that. In any case, I would certainly classify him an atheist: he doesn't believe in god[s], ergo, he's an atheist in my book.

Yes that's what I always thought....I'm confused now