Is religion harmful?

[MidGe]

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You've said you don't believe in the God of the Bible. That logically means you hold an anti-theist position.

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ORLY

[NotReady]

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Its an interesting assumption that human tendency towards morality to optimise living in communities suggests the existence of a Christian God.


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What I've said is that morality(oughtness) requires God - otherwise all you have is what you describe - pragmatism.

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and whatever it was in reference to, its a terribly closed-minded thing to say.


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Miracles. You might notice that even Dawkins said something like "Some people's minds are so open their brains spill out on the floor".

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The atheist/scientific approach doesn't suffer from that shortcoming, and is continually revised to accept new information, such as if a miracle occured.


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How open are you to that if you deny the possibility of miracles?

[NotReady]

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If it occured, it MUST have been a miracle from God.


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Or friendly aliens. Or you dreamed the whole incident. Have you seen the movie Contact? At the end Foster is talked into believing her entire experience was just a hallucination. Sagan inadvertently answered his own questions about miracles.

[Alex-db]

We don't deny the possibility of miracles, we deny that there is sufficient evidence for a reasonable man to believe that something we would call a miracle has ever happened.

We could stumble across a slight definitional possibilty, because if a 'miracle' happens verifiably, it will be something that happened and we will look for the cause and mechanics behind it (a God perhaps?). But since it actually happened, that thing will be accepted as a part of naturalism, which might mean some people say its not a miracle. That isn't something I think we need to worry about btw.

[Alex-db]

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NR, could you respond to this point please? It seems like you're ignoring it.


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You've said you don't believe in the God of the Bible. That logically means you hold an anti-theist position. That means the universe is ultimately irrational or non-rational, that there's no mind behind the universe. Yet you act as if logic, morality and science make sense and as if nature has order. This requires you to hold to self-contradictory positions about the universe - you must be both irrational and rational at the same time. That which appears to be designed isn't actually designed, that which has no inherent order can be made systematic by a finite mind. You must believe that though there is no purpose to the universe the lives of men have significance. You must believe that though there is no absolute standard for morality there is some logical reason for behaving morally. You must believe that though all is ultimately chaos it's possible to distinguish one fact from another fact.

I'm not saying every individual actually goes through these mental processes in a self-conscious way, but that they are logically inferred from anti-theism. It's easy to see why this is so. If God is ultimate Reason and the Creator of the universe to reject Him is to reject reason itself - what can remain except self-contradiction? To deny that He created the universe if He actually did create it is to attempt to rationalize what you first state is irrational, and to state it's possible for a contingent, finite creature to accomplish the task - quite a whopper. To reject the absolute standard of morality and then state there is such a thing as good and evil, right and wrong, is self-contradictory.

I didn't come up with this. The history of philosophy is a road map leading to the recognition that on any atheistic basis all is absurd, but then living as if reason and purpose actually have meaning and that the brute facts delivered to us by the "great blooming confusion" of ultimate "chaos and old night" can be rationally comprehended by the mind of a being that popped up out of nothing for no reason.

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This looks full of logical errors, but some depend on your definition of rational. I took it to mean things which stem from laws of physics etc. So a naturalist believing rivers will flow downhill on any similar planet is believing in a rational universe.

I would argue that to be a theist is to believe in an irrational or non-rational universe. Theists suggest that a God frequenty contradicts logic to manipulate the universe towards events that would not happen in our rational expectations.

This means the anti-theist position is not self-contradictory.

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That which appears to be designed isn't actually designed, that which has no inherent order can be made systematic by a finite mind. You must believe that though there is no purpose to the universe the lives of men have significance

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Who thinks it appears designed? Who thinks lives of men ultimately have significance?

It is easy and not a contradiction to believe this:
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You must believe that though there is no absolute standard for morality there is some logical reason for behaving morally

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It is interesting to see this purported atheist belief system; it feels like theist propaganda and can't make sense if it is analysed intellectually.

[Hopey]

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You must believe that though there is no absolute standard for morality there is some logical reason for behaving morally


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It is interesting to see this purported atheist belief system; it feels like theist propaganda and can't make sense if it is analysed intellectually.


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NR seems to believe that if he makes that same argument often enough, eventually it will hold water.

It is just a more polished version of SAR's argument that "atheists have no reason not to rape, steal and kill".

[Subfallen]

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You must believe that though there is no absolute standard for morality there is some evolutionarily selective reason for behaving morally...

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FYP.

There is nothing "absolute" about rationality, logic, or morality. Something is rational if it meets our subjective standards for rationality. Something is logical if it satisfies our definitions of logical rigor. Something is moral if it coincides with our ethical intuitions.

Of course, our standards for rationality, our definitions of logical rigor, and our moral intuitions are all derived from thousands of years of human interaction with reality. So in a way, I guess this is as "absolute" a source of truth as one can imagine.

[Taraz]

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You've said you don't believe in the God of the Bible. That logically means you hold an anti-theist position.

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This is somewhat true. I think it is highly unlikely that the God of the Bible as you describe him exists. I am more sympathetic to deism, but I realize that there isn't much satisfactory evidence for that belief either.

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That means the universe is ultimately irrational or non-rational, that there's no mind behind the universe.

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The universe maybe be irrational or non-rational, I DON"T KNOW and I don't think it's necessary to hold a strong opinion on that to function in this world.

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Yet you act as if logic, morality and science make sense and as if nature has order. This requires you to hold to self-contradictory positions about the universe - you must be both irrational and rational at the same time.

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One point that you're missing is that just because these things make sense to humanity doesn't mean they make sense ultimately. Just because they make sense in a human society doesn't mean they would make sense for an alien society or for the entire universe.

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That which appears to be designed isn't actually designed, that which has no inherent order can be made systematic by a finite mind.

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Evolution provides more answers to me on the design question than theism does. It is not yet a complete picture of how things have happened, but it is an extremely elegant mechanism.

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You must believe that though there is no purpose to the universe the lives of men have significance.

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There might be a purpose to the universe, I DON'T KNOW. But, for me, the lives of men have significance because they influence the lives of other men. Your actions have consequences for those around. That is significant to me.

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You must believe that though there is no absolute standard for morality there is some logical reason for behaving morally.

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There might be some absolute standard for morality, I DON'T KNOW. A logical reason for acting morally is because it would be better to live in a society where people behave morally instead of one where people do not behave morally.

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I'm not saying every individual actually goes through these mental processes in a self-conscious way, but that they are logically inferred from anti-theism. It's easy to see why this is so.

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You are making the common error of assuming that an absence of belief is disbelief. It's true that I don't believe in the God that you paint for us. But I don't hold a strong belief about where everything came from, or if there is an absolute in this universe.

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If God is ultimate Reason and the Creator of the universe to reject Him is to reject reason itself - what can remain except self-contradiction?

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And what if God isn't ultimate Reason and the Creator of the universe? Then everything is meaningless? You remind me of Dostoevsky. Other philosophers have dealt with this objection.

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To reject the absolute standard of morality and then state there is such a thing as good and evil, right and wrong, is self-contradictory.

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I've previously stated in this thread that "I believe the world exists, I believe that some actions are better in certain situations than others (although I hesitate to call anything right or wrong)".

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I didn't come up with this. The history of philosophy is a road map leading to the recognition that on any atheistic basis all is absurd

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Many philosophers have disagreed with this position. Don't act like the argument is settled.

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but then living as if reason and purpose actually have meaning and that the brute facts delivered to us by the "great blooming confusion" of ultimate "chaos and old night" can be rationally comprehended by the mind of a being that popped up out of nothing for no reason.

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One more time, I DON'T KNOW if reason and purpose have ultimate meaning, I DON'T KNOW if we popped out of nothing, I don't NEED to know these things in order to live my life. What I do know is that the God of the Bible that you espouse isn't intellectually satisfying to me. I tend to deny that specific possibility, but I have chosen to reserve judgment on these ultimate questions until I find a better answer. Perhaps this answer may not come, but I'm willing to live with that. Perhaps it is also the case that your God hasn't revealed himself to me. It is certainly a possibility, although one that I find remote.

[Subfallen]

Excellent posts in this thread Taraz, very nicely done.

[Taraz]

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Excellent posts in this thread Taraz, very nicely done.

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Thank you. I guess now is as good a time as any to say that I don't think we should seek the abolition of religion like many atheists do. I think religion has a lot to offer people, but I think we should all work to emphasize that nobody has the answers to many of life's questions. Religion should also be open to intense criticism and revision like everything else. I know many on both sides think that revising religion is tantamount to saying it's 'false' or 'wrong' but that all depends on what purpose religion serves for you.