Honest question. Is this site a religious site?

Carl Sagan's "Dragon" is a better argument than Dawkins' "Spaghetti Monster", imo. And much less quoted (if at all) by the atheists du jour.

The Dragon In My Garage
by Carl Sagan

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?

You use the same language and the same arguments as Dawkins. Not only "spaghetti monster" but also stuff like "you discredit n-1 gods, we discredit the whole lot". Read Carl Sagan's "Demon-Haunted World" for fresh inspiration.

You never answered dice/probability argument, possibly because you never understood it. The point there is that Evidence (or its lack thereof) Does Not Affect Probability - i.e. the fact that there is no real evidence for the existence of God does not mean that probability of his existence is super low.

I actually studied this stuff, and would really appreciate it if you would stop pretending that it is somehow me who doesn't "get it"

I've been accused of using the same language, not the same arguments. Essentially, all atheists use the same "argument" - we don't have enough reasons to believe in a god.

I'm surprised you haven't come across the Spaghetti Monster before: here Yes, it's silly. It's meant to be.

I think the whole probability thing got sidetracked into a mathematical discussion when it was actually a linguistic one about the use of the word "probably" and whether that was agnostic or atheist. You can still be an atheist and use it. God very probably doesn't exist.

I'm not trying to convince anyone. I don't know of anyone who has been convinced by rational thought from theism into atheism. I fully realise that one can't reason someone out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into in the first place.

Origins of the spaghetti monster

So I wasn't going to get drawn into this again, but just for the hell of it must come back on a couple of those points.

"The Spaghetti Monster does not come from Dawkins. He just cited it." - cited it from where? Are you saying he got it from you rather than the other way round?

"I don't just "regurgitate" Dawkins. A lot of atheists use similar vocabulary. It's inevitable." - Just not true - there are lots of people who call themselves atheists on this thread alone who use quite different language and arguments and have never resorted to spaghetti monster type arguments.

"I have given up with the whole dice/probability argument (for now) because I have been through it before and those who get it already have and those who haven't never will." - are you sure we're all not getting it or is it possible that this model doesn't actually work? You've had a statistician on here who knows about Bayesian probability, not to mention Cote who seems knowledgeable on the subject. Is it possible that people do understand, but just don't believe?

"the burden of definition rests with the believer" - certainly in the context of believers trying to convince others that their particular belief is right and others are wrong. But that's not what is happening here: you are the one trying to convince others that all religious belief is nonsensical, so I would say that the burden of definition lies very clearly with you. You can't say it's nonsensical and then say you don't actually know what it is.

It seems to me that religious faith varies hugely in its forms - just as any other kind of belief - by culture, personality and experience. The philosophical thinking of an liberal anglican, say, is likely to be very much closer to that of a liberal atheist than to a creationist for example. It makes no sense to just group together all the people who are happy to include the word God in their vocabulary and say they are all wrong without enquiring into what they actually believe and what these beliefs have in common. If all people of faith believed what you seem to think they do then I wouldn't hesitate to join you on the top of the atheist bus and have Dawkins' face tattooed on my tit.

Okay. I don't want to address individual people because I don't want to sound as if I am getting at anyone.

But these are a few of the points that have been sent my way, plus some other thoughts. Fairly randomly structured, I'm afraid - I don't have time to put all of this together into any kind of essay, but each bit makes sense in itself.

• The Spaghetti Monster does not come from Dawkins. He just cited it. It's just one example of a made-up god. It's meant to make people think about how and why that god is made up, and how and why (if at all - hint: not at all) that god differs from anyone else's.

• We can also talk about the Invisible Pink Unicorn if you like, staple of the old alt.atheism boards. Or the Celestial Teapot. Or we can make one up and call it the Spurgelflodge. All hail the Spurgelflodge. It can't be proved, it exists beyond human understanding (all go "ooooooo" like when you have seen a pretty firework) and its special power is turning base metals into chocolate.

• I don't just "regurgitate" Dawkins. A lot of atheists use similar vocabulary. It's inevitable. It's like criticising bike-enthusiasts for all talking about gears and chains and pedals. If we appear to use similar phrases it's because it's a very straightforward idea. That doesn't mean it is one for intellectual pygmies, or people who have somehow failed to grasp the "sophisticated" nuances of faith because they haven't read up on their theological philsosophy. I don't need to have read any studies of Greek mythology to know that Zeus is a mythological being. We can agree that dragons are mythical beings without getting into the precise minutiae of scale thickness, breath-intensity or wingspan.

• If you believe in "one single supernatural presence", I'm sure that's lovely for you. Just don't expect anyone else to do so without some form of evidence. Otherwise any wild claim you like is able to be supported, in theory - viz. David Icke.

• Consider Scientology. No, let's. Because it seems to be a "religion" about which a lot of Christians and atheists actually agree - they agree that it's basically a load of dangerous, overblown rubbish made up by a misoynist, wacko novelist with delusions of grandeur. But don't try telling Tom Cruise that. He is totally convinced of its absolute "truth", just as many fundamentalists of other religions are. So yes, poke fun at Scientology by all means. It's baloney. But remember that this is how some people may see your religion. And you have to try and explain why yours isn't similarly wacko. (By which I don't mean "nicer".)

• I have given up with the whole dice/probability argument (for now) because I have been through it before and those who get it already have and those who haven't never will.

• The "definition" thing is an interesting one, and here I just come back to what I said before - the burden of definition rests with the believer. Tell me what kind of god you are referring to and I'll tell you why I don't believe in it. Simple. And it is simple, I'm afraid - attempts to over-complexify and intellectualise faith are always going to be that, attempts, and they always feel wrong. If you want to tell me you believe in a god because, despite my sound intellectual and rational reasons for not doing so, you still do because you "feel" it or think there "must be something out there", as a lot of people do, then fine - I think we can agree we are coming from totally different places, will never agree, and can move on. But don't try and tell me I'm wrong because it passes my limited understanding. That way lies madness.

And no, in answer to the OP... this isn't a religious place!!

heh-heh...

there there UD, don't worry your pretty little head about it.

(sorry, couldn't resist)

I'm away for a couple of days doing Life and am the subject of more patronising than I can shake a stick at. Rest assured that I will be back later.

I think it's hilarious that this made it into classics!

and at Iorek's pith and perspicacity - try saying that when you're drunk.

I think that's just about everything there is to be said on the subject, no?

Yes, it's all about trying to eff the effing ineffable, I suppose.

I do agree that the definition of God can become so vague it's meaningless, if we try to find one we can all agree on. But at the same time, I think that deciding all the different definitions are different gods makes it impossible to have a general discussion about belief vs atheism vs agnosticism etc..... and I do genuinely believe that we're all strugging to comprehend the same incomprehensible thing.

PMSL.

That line deserves to be

This thread has now not only made MN classics, it's got quote of the week too
(Kay's response to my musings on Saint Anne being patron saint of women in labour and miners)

"Oh, I dunno, makes a weird kind of sense. In my third delivery, they did send a canary up to check for poisonous gas."

AMIS, I really like your post of 16:39, culminating in:

"We as believers are choosing to believe in that one God, though we disagree about the characteristics of that God, and in how we should respond. So your (or UQDs?) argument that atheists disbelieve in N gods, while believers disbelieve in N-1 gods and therefore we have to accept that you're only doing the same as us but more so, falls apart. "

I'm sure you are right, and that that tack by UQD fails.

But I worry that once we have this apparent idea of the one god, compatible with all the evolving interpretations of god, it is actually just too vague, too abstract, to get us anywhere.

God becomes just 'that which created the universe', etc.

Is it excessively verificationist to say that we can only attach meaning to a concept of that sort by at least beginning to define what sort of thing would count as evidence for the existence of the entity that it designates? Can we even begin
tomake sense of the idea that 'an agency' willed the universe into being? It is superficially meaningful, because grammatical, but is that enough? I don't know.

I'm trying to imagine how the OP could have only chanced upon Christian threads on MN...weird. And funny!

Well I suppose the assumptions are mostly based on what happened last week and the week before. Generally that putting the kettle on produces hot water and so on.

I remember being taught that the pavement is not as solid as I imagined, but made up of particles held apart by forces that could not be seen and were only vaguely understood. I was fascinated, but I continued to walk on pavements without worrying that the particles might decide to spin the other way and allow me to fall through. They'd never let me through before and previous experience is ok as a rule of thumb.

But you are right of course that some assumptions are very strange and lead to people making poor decisions.

In fact isn't that what psychoanalysis is supposed to help fix? That we grow up with rules learned as a child such as "tall people are more likely to hit you" "the color blue is safer" and don't realise we're basing decisions on them.

well onager God is just a metaphor for the idea of purposeful creation - God and science have no intrinsic mutual exclusivity - the very opposite. The bible is a way of explaining that God through metaphor and parables, etc. Just because a lot of people [though not the majority of christians] say fossils are fake, etc, doesn't mean there is no God [though I am open minded about the possibility either way]