Why isn't DNA and Human Consciousness Enough For Some Christians?

[Taraz]

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Two comments:

1. Can we please stop using the phrases "religious people" and "theists" as blanket terms like they describe everyone who believes in any kind of God? It's really lame to argue against some literal fundamentalist version of a religion and then claim to have disprove 'God' for everybody. There is vast diversity within people who we would call 'theists', so let's not pretend that they all believe the same thing.

2. I think one reason why it's a little dishonest to compare God to a spaghetti monster is because people have felt 'God's presence'. I know a lot of us believe that this feeling is little more than a psychological phenomenon, but people use the term God to describe this phenomenon. Nobody use the term 'flying spaghetti monster' in this way.

So basically, people think God (whatever this term means) exists because they have direct personal interaction with some entity/force/neuronal firing.

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Thats not the point of the FSM. Also, FSM isn't a replacement term for God, it is a TYPE of God. This isn't exactly the same as the celestial teapot, IOW, its slightly more powerful than that.

I defy you to tell me I haven't experienced the FSM's noodly appendage in exactly the same way that txag has experienced the Lord in his heart.

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It's fine with me if you want to believe in the FSM. The problem is that we have thousands of years of history chock full of people who claim to have felt the Judeo-Christian God. Even if I don't believe in either God, this seems to make it more likely that the Judeo-Christian God exists. If you have no other information, I would contend that the more people who believe something the more likely it is to be true.

[Taraz]

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I think most Christians would agree to leave God out of public school textbooks if atheists would agree to leave atheism out. The controvery will continue so long as atheists combine evolution and atheism - Christians, as I've maintained throughout this thread, see evolution as synonymous with atheism, and I believe that's mostly the fault of the atheists. I don't have a solution for this concerning public education.

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The problem is there are people on both sides conflate evolution with atheism. I don't think it's fruitful to say, "you started it!" It doesn't really matter because it's perpetuated by both camps.

The controversy will continue as long as both sides feel threatened by the other.

[NotReady]

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The problem is there are people on both sides conflate evolution with atheism. I don't think it's fruitful to say, "you started it!" It doesn't really matter because it's perpetuated by both camps.


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I'm glad you agree the problem exists. I agree at this time it doesn't matter who started (even though they did [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]). I also think there are many on both sides who would like to see the controversy end - but I don't think it will completely, or will perhaps move to other issues.

[PairTheBoard]

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So before dinner starts you write on your napkin that you know he is going to propose ideas for which he has no scientific justification. Meanwhile, he writes on his napkin that he knows you are only going to entertain ideas that have scientific justification.

You may as well just exchange napkins and skip the dinner.

PairTheBoard

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Not quite, but usually that would be fruitful.

It's not the atheists terms that are the biggest problem, it's the 'rules' the theist plays by with everything but his own stance. If there were some way he could grant all the other religious claims and experiences and still have a basis for having his accepted as 'the' truth, it would be a fascinating conversation. Since that is a non-starter, we are essentially left without that route unless we go with a recent posters "god is whatever you want, ham sandwich."

It's that exclusive status for his claims that is a major problem. His atheism to other gods/powers claims yet not wanting the same reasoning applied to his. His denial of the validity of others 'sources' yet wanting validity granted to his personal sources.

What's a poor skeptic to do? I have two friends, both making conflicting religious claims about a truth that they 'know' from sources not available to me. On what basis do I say, "ok, Hortense, you've convinced me with your, your, uhhhh, ..well, I like the cut of your jib".

Essentially, the main problem for religious claims isn't atheists, it's other religious claims ... the head of the pin gets crowded quickly.

luckyme

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It's not science is it? And it's not like science where there's one science that everyone agrees on. All your friend can do is tell you why he believes what he believes. Your other friend will do the same. It's up to you what to make of it. If you want to dismiss it complaining it's not like science that's your business. However just as not everyone is of a like mind religiously, neither is everyone of a like mind with you.

PairTheBoard

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If all that is true, then how can this other person ever say anything so ludicrous as "The tenets of Scientology are not correct?"

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What he would say is, "I don't believe in the tenets of Scientology".

PairTheBoard

[Lestat]

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Proving evolution, which Darwin didn't do, of course, wouldn't disprove Adam.

Basically same argument.

I don't see how carbon-14 proves anything about the length of time God took to create, nor about what the word "day" means in Genesis.

What Bible information is shown incorrect?

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After what I considered to be a pretty enlightening exchange so far, this is where we run into problems and things get nasty.

<font color="blue"> Proving evolution, which Darwin didn't do, </font>

What is the "which Darwin didn't do," supposed to mean? Why put that on the end of your sentence? Is that an attack on evolution? Are you disputing it's validity?

<font color="blue">of course, wouldn't disprove Adam. </font>

Of course, not. But if evolution (which is a slam dunk to be true), is correct, then there couldn't have been an Adam. At least not in the sense that a literal reading of the bible would have us believe. As in "Adam was the first human to ever exist". So yes... It kinda does disprove that there was ever a man named Adam who existed before any other human.

[PairTheBoard]

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Your analogy is flawed. I think many atheists think theists believe in God for the same reason people have constructed mythologies, for instance that some god is necessary to explain a volcano, then they learn about magma, etc., so the god of the volcano isn't necessary. So atheists think that every natural explanation reduces the probability of God. But we don't believe in God because we don't also believe or understand natural law. We believe God is the Creator of natural law. Give me all the natural explanations you can, you haven't reduced the probability of God by one fraction. I've said this many times already, but Newton understood gravity and discovered the rules governing gravity, but didn't think that made God less likely. If you could show him a graviton he would say: "Who made the graviton?" If you could show him the natural process that produced the graviton he would say :"Who designed that process"? Get it?


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And you will have to say this many times again because it will be ignored, forgotten, and the atheists here will pretend they have never heard it so that they can continue promoting their same argument over and over again like robots.

PairTheBoard

[Taraz]

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Your analogy is flawed. I think many atheists think theists believe in God for the same reason people have constructed mythologies, for instance that some god is necessary to explain a volcano, then they learn about magma, etc., so the god of the volcano isn't necessary. So atheists think that every natural explanation reduces the probability of God. But we don't believe in God because we don't also believe or understand natural law. We believe God is the Creator of natural law. Give me all the natural explanations you can, you haven't reduced the probability of God by one fraction. I've said this many times already, but Newton understood gravity and discovered the rules governing gravity, but didn't think that made God less likely. If you could show him a graviton he would say: "Who made the graviton?" If you could show him the natural process that produced the graviton he would say :"Who designed that process"? Get it?


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And you will have to say this many times again because it will be ignored, forgotten, and the atheists here will pretend they have never heard it so that they can continue promoting their same argument over and over again like robots.

PairTheBoard

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I think the problem in this situation is the definition of God (not suprisingly). Some theists have used God to explain certain natural mechanisms. Who is God? He is, in part, the being who created the world in X amount of days, makes living creatures out of dust, performs miracles, etc. If we believe that God did these things and that there is no natural explanation for them, then scientific discoveries infringe upon who God is.

To some theists, and to some atheists, these discoveries make God less likely. If God was supposed to explain how X happened and then we discover some other reason for X, the probability that this particular conception of God exists is lessened. There is no getting around this fact. You have to change your understanding of who God is and how he acts on the world. Many theists are threatened by this. If you say that God does these things by acting through natural mechanisms, you are still changing who God is and what he does.

The problem from the atheist side is that they subscribe to the same literalist/fundamentalist definition of God. They subscribe to the notion that God, by definition, must be able to act on the world through some means other than natural laws. If the theist wants to insist that God does these things or has done these things, the atheist argument is correct. The argument fails, however, because there is a huge number of people who don't hold this conception of God.

[DougShrapnel]

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Your analogy is flawed. I think many atheists think theists believe in God for the same reason people have constructed mythologies, for instance that some god is necessary to explain a volcano, then they learn about magma, etc., so the god of the volcano isn't necessary. So atheists think that every natural explanation reduces the probability of God. But we don't believe in God because we don't also believe or understand natural law. We believe God is the Creator of natural law. Give me all the natural explanations you can, you haven't reduced the probability of God by one fraction. I've said this many times already, but Newton understood gravity and discovered the rules governing gravity, but didn't think that made God less likely. If you could show him a graviton he would say: "Who made the graviton?" If you could show him the natural process that produced the graviton he would say :"Who designed that process"? Get it?


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And you will have to say this many times again because it will be ignored, forgotten, and the atheists here will pretend they have never heard it so that they can continue promoting their same argument over and over again like robots.

PairTheBoard

[/ QUOTE ]God, isn't necessary for gravity to work. I have heard NotReady many times and I believe to have a general understanding of his disagreement. Conflating text book statements and the statements made by the likes of Sagan and Dawkins is a huge hang up for him, and he should suspend that line of attack. If any theists would attempt to put forth the theological assertion that God is necessary for gravity and demand that be including in text books, I assure you that the academic community would be in an uproar. Evolution, unlike gravity, has both sides in near agreement that it does slight god, when presented without bias. There have been a number of people that when confronted with the theory of evolution presented in an unbiased way, come to the conclusion that either the bible is true or evolution is. It's not just atheists that realize this. It's atheists and theists, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. This apparent mutual exclusivity is often done away with by a liberal interpretation. From were I stand, and it appears even NR agrees, that a literal interpretation of the bible and evolution can not both be true. There is no atheistic agenda to make this so. It's the reality of the situation.

The fact the gravity doesn't conflict directly with a literal view of the bible makes NR's point null. He would have a better point say with the scientific view that earth revolves around the sun, or that the earth is very old, or that whole flood story. All of which fundies have been at odds with since their discovery/ the discovery of an alternate explanation. A majority of religious practitioners have come to see that those scientific statements are true and what it says in the bible need not be taken so literally, or that the original literal interpretation wasn't the correct literal interpretation.

His substituting of gravity for evolution makes zero sense, where there are many different valid substitution, some which don't paint the fundies in such a glamorous light. I guess evolutionists can consider themselves lucky that they aren't being accused of blasphemy and deserving of being burnt at the stake. So it's not all lost.

To attempt to rebut NR's impending twisting of my words, I am not stating that evolution disproves God, I am stating that a particular well recognized literal interpretation of Genesis is mutually exclusive with the theory of evolution. Cue him to applaud his theory that evolutionists believe that evolution disproves god. Which isn't really wrong as such, we just have to change the word disprove. And replace atheists with Cocksey's army. That is "Everyone believes that God is unnecessary to the theory of evolution."

[bunny]

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What's a poor skeptic to do? I have two friends, both making conflicting religious claims about a truth that they 'know' from sources not available to me. On what basis do I say, "ok, Hortense, you've convinced me with your, your, uhhhh, ..well, I like the cut of your jib".

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I think you shouldnt be convinced by either of them. If one of them makes a claim which contradicts things you know then you should reject that one, leaving open the possibility that the other is right, a third is right or that they are all wrong. I have always felt that the subjective "private knowledge" argument is only compelling to the private knower - I never quite realised that was the sticking point with you (call me slow).

I presume a theist saying "I believe all this stuff, but you shouldnt give any credence to my claims." wouldnt offend your rational sensibilities?

[NotReady]

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What is the "which Darwin didn't do," supposed to mean? Why put that on the end of your sentence? Is that an attack on evolution? Are you disputing it's validity?


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You said Darwin. I said he didn't prove evolution. If you want a debate on evolution in general, a new thread might be best.

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Of course, not.


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Then:
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But if evolution (which is a slam dunk to be true), is correct, then there couldn't have been an Adam.


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That's beyond my comprehension. A=Not A?