Pushing God from gap to gap.
 

so when the river flooded and the crops grew and sustained people...Osiris did it.

when lightning and thunder crashed...Zeus did it

countless other unexplained phenomena have been attributed to gods...but these phenomena have since been explained without invoking a concious being who willed these things to happen.

every time we figure something out...we push "the God hypothesis" back further and further..into bigger unexplained phenomena...

although there are still people who maintain that God does miraculous things..healing the sick, for instance....or HAS DONE miraculous things..flooding the earth, creating humans (not via natural processes and evolution)..

God has pretty much been pushed back to the creation of EVERYTHING...this, at least, believers are sure of...

is this the last frontier for God?..is there any more room for God to be pushed back into?

if not..if most people continue to believe in God..even when he is pushed back to the ultimate extent...is there really any hope that, through further exploration of the universe and further understanding of it, people will let go of this belief?

the only "cure" if this is the case, it the knowledge of EVERYTHING..so that no room is left to place a god...we certainly can't expect to achieve that..right?

Why do people insist on filling up the gaps with gods in the first place?...hasn't history clearly shown that this is misguided?..How many beliefs concerning gods have to be later proven to be wrong before people acknowledge that maybe their own beliefs are of the same flavor?

What I really mean to ask is...which is a better tactic for ending a person's belief in a god...taking one of the gaps they propose a god "resides" in a and filling it...or showing the person why their tendency to fill these gaps with a god in the first place is illogical?

the former, as could be inferred by my rant, seems futile to me...as we have seen, people have no problem pushing God back as far as is possible.

Re: Pushing God from gap to gap.
 

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What I really mean to ask is...which is a better tactic for ending a person's belief in a god...taking one of the gaps they propose a god "resides" in a and filling it...or showing the person why their tendency to fill these gaps with a god in the first place is illogical?


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teach a man to fish

Re: Pushing God from gap to gap.
 

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so when the river flooded and the crops grew and sustained people...Osiris did it.

when lightning and thunder crashed...Zeus did it

countless other unexplained phenomena have been attributed to gods...but these phenomena have since been explained without invoking a concious being who willed these things to happen.

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“My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago..."

“It is simplicity itself,” said he; “my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant bootslitting specimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.”*

I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his process of deduction. “When I hear you give your reasons,” I remarked, “the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you explain your process.”

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The leap from "I (loosely) understand the mechanism" to "ergo, God isn't responsible" really is wonderful to behold.

I have no idea whether science will ultimately lead (back) to a God conclusion. I suspect nobody else does either. I do wonder why more people don't find the question as interesting as I do though. The rampant assumption that religion and science will ultimately point in opposite directions tho, just because once upon a time the pope and Galileo disagreed on movement (which, by the way, turns out to be relative anyway) - just blows me away.

Does this really seem clearcut to anybody?

Prodigy, the phenomena you named above are understood trivially better than they were in classical Greece. The sun's not a chariot, it's a ball of hydrogen (among other elements) undergoing nuclear fusion. So where'd it come from?

*Borrowed from "A Scandal in Bohemia", natch.

Re: Pushing God from gap to gap.
 

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The rampant assumption that religion and science will ultimately point in opposite directions tho, just because once upon a time the pope and Galileo disagreed on movement (which, by the way, turns out to be relative anyway) - just blows me away.

Does this really seem clearcut to anybody?

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It seems clearcut to me because religion doesnt seem able to accomodate facts which contradict its cherished beliefs. It seems to me that when science contradicts a religion's claims the response is to either attack the scientific findings or to alter the specific religious doctrine which has been challenged (through a "ahh - well that bit is figurative" approach).

It seems to me that the only way religion will get close to science is by following this latter course more and more, which rather than leading to it pointing in the same direction as science would end up pointing nowhere in my opinion.

Re: Pushing God from gap to gap.
 

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The rampant assumption that religion and science will ultimately point in opposite directions tho, just because once upon a time the pope and Galileo disagreed on movement (which, by the way, turns out to be relative anyway) - just blows me away.

Does this really seem clearcut to anybody?

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It seems clearcut to me because religion doesnt seem able to accomodate facts which contradict its cherished beliefs.

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Yeah, science too. Usually it takes a generation or two to iron out the old prejudices.

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It seems to me that when science contradicts a religion's claims the response is to either attack the scientific findings or to alter the specific religious doctrine which has been challenged (through a "ahh - well that bit is figurative" approach).

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^ isn't a bad approach, especially if the bit in question is figurative. Probably most of 'em are.

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It seems to me that the only way religion will get close to science is by following this latter course more and more, which rather than leading to it pointing in the same direction as science would end up pointing nowhere in my opinion.

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I meant, I wonder if science will end up at God, as religion does/did. Clearly the routes will be different.

Re: Pushing God from gap to gap.
 

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The rampant assumption that religion and science will ultimately point in opposite directions tho, just because once upon a time the pope and Galileo disagreed on movement (which, by the way, turns out to be relative anyway) - just blows me away.

Does this really seem clearcut to anybody?

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It seems clearcut to me because religion doesnt seem able to accomodate facts which contradict its cherished beliefs.

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Yeah, science too. Usually it takes a generation or two to iron out the old prejudices.

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It seems to me that when science contradicts a religion's claims the response is to either attack the scientific findings or to alter the specific religious doctrine which has been challenged (through a "ahh - well that bit is figurative" approach).

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^ isn't a bad approach, especially if the bit in question is figurative. Probably most of 'em are.

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It seems to me that the only way religion will get close to science is by following this latter course more and more, which rather than leading to it pointing in the same direction as science would end up pointing nowhere in my opinion.

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I meant, I wonder if science will end up at God, as religion does/did. Clearly the routes will be different.

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I'm really hoping that science will have the balls to say "I don't know" when they reach that horizon.

Re: Pushing God from gap to gap.
 

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The rampant assumption that religion and science will ultimately point in opposite directions tho, just because once upon a time the pope and Galileo disagreed on movement (which, by the way, turns out to be relative anyway) - just blows me away.

Does this really seem clearcut to anybody?

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It seems clearcut to me because religion doesnt seem able to accomodate facts which contradict its cherished beliefs.

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Yeah, science too. Usually it takes a generation or two to iron out the old prejudices.

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In the case of science, because revision of knowledge is part of the whole thing. Religion is much slower to change (if it changes at all).

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It seems to me that when science contradicts a religion's claims the response is to either attack the scientific findings or to alter the specific religious doctrine which has been challenged (through a "ahh - well that bit is figurative" approach).

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^ isn't a bad approach, especially if the bit in question is figurative. Probably most of 'em are.

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This is perhaps true (it's certainly my view of religious claims). But if religious claims are eventually going to be explained away as figurative then ultimately religion is just clouding the issue. Why not speak plainly rather than covering the meaning with claims which seem to be clear statements and which are actually only figurative?


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It seems to me that the only way religion will get close to science is by following this latter course more and more, which rather than leading to it pointing in the same direction as science would end up pointing nowhere in my opinion.

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I meant, I wonder if science will end up at God, as religion does/did. Clearly the routes will be different.

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I didnt fully appreciate this was your point. I dont think this is clearcut (although I dont believe it's what's going to happen). What I do think is that if we end up at God through scientific endeavor, then we will have good reason to believe in God.

Re: Pushing God from gap to gap.
 

I try to be understanding but the assumptions about believers on this board really grind on me after a while.

Guess what. Some of us are idiots who just jumped into something that sounded pleasant and made the world a little more clear. But many of us aren't and putting our faith in an all-powerful entity that we've never seen involved a little bit more than figuring out where lightning comes from or having a genie that grants wishes. For the record, God loves both the same, but moving on...

I get really tired of posts that make incorrect assumptions about the mindsets of believers from people who've never had that perspective and don't seem interested in really understanding what a believer's perspective is. The one thing a believer has in an argument that you don't is that he's most likely been on both sides in his life and is therefore aware of both perspectives. I'm not trying to be Mr. Arrogant, I just think that the previous statement is an important point to be aware of in these discussions.

Re: Pushing God from gap to gap.
 

KUJustin,

Please feel free to explain the 'believers' position, describing your 'God' hypothesis and the evidence that led you to believe it was true.

The above has been tried many times and doesn't hold water with many people who are very very good at thinking logically and evaluating evidence.

I'd suggest that the assumptions about the mindset of believers are usually not incorrect, and I have verified that by asking many believers about there mindset and the extent to which they were willing to examine their own beliefs honestly.

Many atheists are very interested in understanding the believers' perspective. I'd be interested in hearing perspectives on the whole spectrum from real knowledge about the universe, through outdated science and how it was improved, through believers in old-fashioned mythologies to the wonderfully interesting perspectives of delusional schizophrenics.

Nearly always, the interested atheists have more knowledge about religion, from a wider set of sources, than any of the believers I have spoken to.

And many of the schizophrenics will be adamant that you aren't interested in really understanding what their perspective on reality is.

Re: Pushing God from gap to gap.
 

I've never seen why people think this is such a strong condemnation of Religion. Our understanding of everything has progressed. Science has played a big part in that. It has improved our ability to understand things. Assuming that God exists, it has improved our ability to understand God. I don't think anyone claims a perfect understanding of God. So why shouldn't it improve as our ability to understand improves? That's assuming God exists. Of course if you take as your premise that God doesn't exist you hardly need your observation to condemn the belief in him.

PairTheBoard