Pushing God from gap to gap.

[jogger08152]

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Jessuit is correct.

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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.

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I'd be amazed if this were true. Certainly my experience has been entirely the opposite.

I suspect Sklansky would post an impressive score on Standford-Binet, but I doubt he has 1/10th of the religious knowledge of the first random rabbi, priest or minister you could talk to.

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But how many of those Rabbi's, Priests and Ministers have taken the time to understand the flaws with Pascal's wager, the unreliable nature of their own sources, the nature of circular thought and only searching for confirming evidence, and the contradictions brought up within their own religion and the existence of hundreds of other religions, cults and mythologies throught history.

Every UK minister I have spoken too has certainly been hugely lacking in that philosophical depth, and couldn't do much more than keep refering back to popular bible verses.

Im sure they have knowledge of the contents of their texts, but thats completely different than having understanding, knowledge and thought outside-of-the-box.

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Knowledge != understanding.

That said, I've always wondered about Anglican ministers: the church essentially spun off of Roman catholicism for political reasons, rather than theological ones, and its head is the King (or crown prince? dunno what the status is ATM) of England. I would think that would have to have a limiting effect on the sincerety of their faith. Does that seem reasonable? (Not f*cking with you or anything; I really do wonder about this.)

[PairTheBoard]

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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

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It's not a strong condemnation of the "religion" that you seem to advocate. What it is a strong condemnation of is the religion that is much more prevalent in which all the answers are claimed to be absolute. Many religious people would disagree with you that we are simply moving forward in our understanding of God, since everything they hold there beliefs on was written more than 1900 years ago. To many people the Bible is the only absolute truth. Without putting words in his mouth, I think it's these types that the OP is addressing.

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I agree that people who claim a Perfect understanding of God deserve criticism on that point. But just because people have strong convictions in the tenets of their Religion does not mean they claim a perfect understanding of God. I think if you question them closer you will find most of them admit they don't. They will admit that there remains mystery about God beyond their understanding. They may claim they have the Best understanding of all the religions. But as we look at Religions from the outside what we see are people with various understandings of something that they most all agree is not perfectly understood.

You can look at the history of science similiarly. It's not as easy to see because the nature of science produces relatively quick consensus most of the time. But there have still been cases of disagreements within science. And until further progress was made, all sides promoted their view with a strong conviction that it was the Best.

I think it is a valid criticism of Religions that tend to Close Off the possiblity of coming to a better understanding of God than the one they have. But if you make that criticism it's not fair to turn around and criticize them again when they do make changes to their understanding. The evidence is that they continue to change, however slowly, whether they admit to it or not. I think it's unfair to compare them to science and say, "why can't they adapt as quickly as science does". Religions are in a totally different situation as far as providing for the needs of those they serve.

Finally, Atheist attacks on Religion raise these types of criticisms to Objections to Religion itself. That is not fair. Criticisms do not amount to Objections. We can criticize science on the same basis. The scientific establishment often treats new theories with a kind of Bureaucratic inertia. Established figures are often given too much authoritarian voice. New theories sometimes have trouble getting an honest hearing. But such criticisms do not amount to an Objection to Science itself.



PairTheBoard

[jogger08152]

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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.

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I'd be amazed if this were true. Certainly my experience has been entirely the opposite.

I suspect Sklansky would post an impressive score on Standford-Binet, but I doubt he has 1/10th of the religious knowledge of the first random rabbi, priest or minister you could talk to.

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Rabbis, ministers or priests are a tiny portion of all believers. You would be suprised how little people who claim to believe in God know about the Bible for example. I'm very certain that the average atheist knows more about the Bible than the average Christian because the atheist has probably thought a lot more about religious stuff than the believer. Or perhaps not more in sheer quantity but at least more comprehensively than the Christian.

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My experience doesn't bear this out, but we grew up in different places. Unless maybe we're lumping (and more importantly disincluding) different subsets of people under our "atheist" and "theist" headings.

[bunny]

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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.

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Was this directed to me? I have been both an atheist and a theist (and I'm really unclear where I am at the moment) I also didnt mean to be saying anything about believers' mindsets - I was speaking about religion in general.

[luckyme]

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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.

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Interesting. Do you have a source for that?

The only data I remember seeing is that the huge majority of people worldwide have their parents religion.
Non-anecdotally, the only other source I can think of is that 100 years ago the bulk of the western world was religious, the percentage of non-religious is up now which would seem to indicate that non-believers were at least raised in religious homes. hmmmm, non-conclusive.

As a personal note, not meant to be evidence of anything other than it may be clouding my judgment, I don't know any personally that went through an atheist stage (bunny here is a possible net-person) and that includes a huge family that most have switched sects in all directions but stayed xtrian ( we now even have a couple mormons, if they are xtrians). We have gigantic family reunions and religion is not an off limit topic.

If you don't have any data, that's fine, I'd still be interested in your personal experience that leads you to believing that most theists have gone thru an atheist phase, since it is so opposite to what I've seen.

To your point that his having 'been there', how is that an asset to him? If I'm having a discussion with a theist, what would he add to his claim if he was formerly an atheist that a crib to coffin theist couldn't?

thanks, luckyme

[yukoncpa]

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If you don't have any data, that's fine, I'd still be interested in your personal experience that leads you to believing that most theists have gone thru an atheist phase, since it is so opposite to what I've seen.


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It’s also completely opposite to my experiences and I find the idea preposterous. To say that most theists have gone through an atheist phase then flopped back is like saying that most people went through a phase at about the age of 10 or 11 where they didn’t believe in Santa Clause, then flopped back to believing.

[David Sklansky]

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


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I've said this so many times I'm running out of gas.


I drop an apple to the ground. You say gravity did it. Now show that God wasn't necessary for the apple to fall.

There's even more which I haven't gone into because people keep avoiding the first step.

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Its impossible to show that the god of deism wan't necessary. Its easy to show that the god who had a son and will deny heaven to those who don't believe he had a son wasn't required for the apple to fall.

[jogger08152]

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


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I've said this so many times I'm running out of gas.


I drop an apple to the ground. You say gravity did it. Now show that God wasn't necessary for the apple to fall.

There's even more which I haven't gone into because people keep avoiding the first step.

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Its impossible to show that the god of deism wan't necessary. Its easy to show that the god who had a son and will deny heaven to those who don't believe he had a son wasn't required for the apple to fall.

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That actually sounds pretty hard too.

[jogger08152]

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If you don't have any data, that's fine, I'd still be interested in your personal experience that leads you to believing that most theists have gone thru an atheist phase, since it is so opposite to what I've seen.


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It’s also completely opposite to my experiences and I find the idea preposterous. To say that most theists have gone through an atheist phase then flopped back is like saying that most people went through a phase at about the age of 10 or 11 where they didn’t believe in Santa Clause, then flopped back to believing.

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Not quite. But I wonder if the theists went through a true "atheist" stage, or whether they just went through college and wanted to rationalize getting laid.

[David Steele]

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I drop an apple to the ground. You say gravity did it. Now show that God wasn't necessary for the apple to fall.

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What is important is that God isn't necessary for "the explanation". Showing (proofs) is not what science is about, its about explaining how things work.

D.