Further to The God Survey: evidence

[UnquietDad]

Twiglett is conducting a God Survey here .

soph28 asked
"Just curious how many YES's have firm evidence for believing and how many NO's do?"

This is a thread for exploring that question.

It is clearly impossible to prove the non-ness of anything, whether that thing be the Christian God, Apollo, Ra or the Great Spaghetti Monster. Therefore one should not be expected to do so, but rather to examine the evidence and see if it is compelling. It's what you do with everything else.

You're at liberty to believe, for example, there's no such thing as gravity, or oxygen, or the Moon, but I can offer you compelling evidence to the contrary, to which there is little or flimsy counter-evidence. At the end of the debate you can carry on believing it doesn't exist, but the peer-reviewed, testable and detectable evidence is clearly there. And if, one day, compelling evidence is given that Newton's theories are wrong, this will be published, examined, scrutinised and weighed up - and eventually, if has the consensus of the scientific community, the new theory will be adopted. It's what happened with that Phlogiston , for example.

As soon as you start debating, of course, you end up having to define yourself in terms laid down by the other side. This is partly why Prof. Dawkins doesn't do it, much to the chagrin of creationists... Imagine having to debate with people who regularly asserted that the Earth was flat, or that the Moon was made of green cheese. You'd maybe do it once. And then they'd keep coming back again, and again, and again, demanding a platform with you. It enhances their spurious credentials to have a debate with a leading scientist, and does not add a jot to yours - in fact, it cheapens your reputation.

And I would agree with that becki

saadia: It isn't chance. That's the whole point. It really annoys evolution scientists that people reduce such a complex science to such a glib term.

peachy: is there anything you "do not believe" in? To the point where you're convinced there is no such thing? Because it's hard to prove, you know, that there is "no such thing as" X. The religious love to foist this impossible task on the sceptics, and then crow that they cannot prove their argument because they "cannot do" something which is logically impossible. Do you see my point?

I can't prove that there's "no such thing" as the Invisible Pink Unicorn - but until I have evidence to the contrary, I'm going to maintain my disbelief in him and not lead my life according to any edicts he may or may not give me.

BBS - interesting article. Comments on these bits:

• "Dawkins in the flesh bears no resemblance to the angry, hate-filled antireligionist he is portrayed as." (Yes, because that's a myth created by his religious opponents. Hardly surprising to find it's not true.)

• ?You?d be rightly written off as uncultivated if you knew nothing of the Bible. You need the Bible to understand literary allusions,? he says at the end of our chat. (Yes, and I agree with him. This doesn't mean he thinks any of it is true.)

• (And he's already tackled the "Einsteinean" thing in The God Delusion and has made clear it has nothing to do with the supernatural.)

• ?Well, people can understand a principle such as ?how would you like it if people did that to you so why are you doing it to them?? ? That comes from Christianity, I say. ?No, Christianity is one belief system that has adopted it.? (Absolutely right. Christians don't have a monopoly on "niceness".)

• "Words have power. He?ll never destroy the Church if he doesn?t understand the power of the Logos." (I'm not quite sure what the writer is getting at here. Dawkins can say "God help us" without thinking of "God" in a Christian way.)

Some of the comments underneath it are interesting. And some are clearly barking.

Yes, there is. I dont believe iin reincarnation (just giving an example doesnt equate to a belief, I am studying world religions)

I dont believe in there being more than one universe

I dont believe in hell or the existence of any form of divine evil

I dont believe harming people is ever right whatever religious excuse is made

I dont believe in judging poele on the absis of their beliefs but in treating all others as equals with the right to choose

I dont believe in organised religion- because Humanity has to big a tendency to distort

I don't believe a kind God would sit by and allow half of what goes on in the world to continue

I don't beleive in an unkind God: ergo for me there is no (personified) God

I believe each persons validity is determined by how they act towards each other not their faith

Pretty definite beliefs really

Nd yes of course I see the difference but the biggest belief for me is

I don't believe I am always right

Oh and I do believe in a sort of shared consciosness, a sort of divine humanity, which is I thik where God beliefs originate as morality etc as well, I believe this is a result of a shared evolution)

I haven't read the God delusion. I suppose I should.

I liked the article. He came over well I thought. I suspect the 'power of the Logos' thing is the writer demonstrating her academic credentials .

I accept that my belief is irrational BTW. I understand what Dawkins is saying. I understand what you are saying (but please invent some new faux divinities ).

But I still believe.

But I like The Invisible Pink Unicorn! Do not take His Holy Horn in vain!!

(I didn't make Him up, actually - He was around on usenet's alt.atheism group some time in the early 90s, and maybe elsewhere before.)

I take all of those on board, peachy, although a lot of them are not disbelieving the EXISTENCE of something but diagreeing with the practice of it, which is not quite what I meant. (e.g. I don't believe in hitting children, but sadly I believe there are people who do.)

For all the things you don't believe IN - reincarnation, hell, more than one Universe (and I happen to agree with you on them all) - you can't prove their non-existence. If I were ask you to do so, it would be like asking an animal to do an impossible circus trick just to laugh at it falling on its bottom.

I'm not saying that evolution happened by chance, I'm questioning why, in our solar system and in all the research etc that has been done into all the other worlds out there, as yet earth is the only planet that we know which has been able to sustain this kind of life. Is it by chance that conditions on earth just happened to be perfect?

I am just blown away by the idea that the universe is endless, and yet how can it be. I mean don't you hope that one day it will all be explained?

The way I see it, the world exists for us in a certain way because of the way we see things - the way that the light hits our eyes and is then interpreted in our brain. I think there are some things which our brains are just not designed to understand.

Science doesn't believe things will all be explained, it just aspires to this.

That's one area where I take issue with Dawkins - he claims we are at the point where we have a "near-complete understanding" of the way the Universe works, but I wouldn't be so sure.

As for only Earth having the conditions for life, so far, well, it's a big Universe and our reach is microscopic. We have't even ventured beyond our own satellite, let alone our own solar system. There is a belief in a "Goldilocks zone" around suns - neither too hot nor too warm - which provides the ideal conditions for life. All suns could have this.

It's very, very unlikely that life could have evolved in the way it has. A billion to one, perhaps. Luckily, there are more than a billion billion stars in the galaxy, so even if a billion of them have life, that's still in line with the odds.

The word 'belief' is troublesome IMO. Rationally speaking.

Isn't it mainly difficult lexically speaking?

Oh OK then...

Troublesome anyway.

Is your default position disbelief?

I would say I neither believe nor disbelieve something for which I have insufficient evidence either way. Like more than one universe.

I use 'belief' for when I am not doing the rational weighing up the evidence thing.

Spaghetti monster UQD, how could you forget the Spaghetti monster

evidence is a funny thing isn't it.

what you cite as evidence is peer reviewed papers and the word of people that have conducted those experiments.

my evidence is lived experience of what I perceive as something 'other'.

which one is more valid? Given that scientific theory is constantly being replaced/amended 'TRUTH' certainly does not reside in that domain in anything like an absolute sense.

I think there is a place (there needs to be a place) for mythos and logos. One without the other inevitably leads to bad.

and as to whether 'god' exists or not, it is laughable to suggest that it doesn't based on the fact that it's name has changed over the millenia. you are debating religion not god when you do so. and when you cite factional in-fighting you are doing the same. you're talking about religion and the human beings that create that.

May His Noodly Appendages forgive me.

Sophable!
Can you explain Ruth GLedhill's 'power of the Logos' comment?

But when I talk about religion and the human beings that have created that, I include the gods of those religions as part of that process. They are made up. Fictional. Not true. God is as real as Bilbo Baggins or Jane Eyre.

Anecdote does not equal evidence. Your personal experience is not evidence.

Scientific evidence would never accept the experience or opinion of one person based on a personal experience, as scientists know how easy it is to be deluded, mistaken, mad, etc. Therefore it takes a long time and years of peer-reviewing for a consensus to be accepted by the scientific community. Religion does not allow this.

Despite this, science is constantly open to new theories - as long as they can be scrutinised openly with access to all available evidence. Again, religion does not allow this.

Scientists admit when they are wrong. They aree constantly doing his - arguing, debating,, giving ground, making concessions. Richard Dawkins tells a story of a professor who came to visit and blew some guy's long-standing theory out of the water (on something very technical to do with cell biology - I don't remember the details) and at the end of the lecture the old professor went up to the visiting academic, shook his hand and thanked him for proving him wrong. can you imagine ANY religious practitioner doing this?

becky, if you look up karen armstrong on wikipedia you'll find asummary of mythos and logos and what they represent.

i'm with aldous huxley in terms of the 'perennial philosophy' and the mysticism that is present in all ages and all religions and I believe represents lived experience of 'god'.

here she is, a wonderful article

and this is taken from a letter written in response to the article and is brilliant imo:

'Disbelievers, hold firm in your holy skepticism. Only, don't stop there. Keep pushing that skepticism even further, into mystery and humility. Aim it on your own dogmatism and anger. Use it to unearth the hidden assumptions you've inherited from our age. Recognize that much valuable human knowledge and practice lies outside of what can be proven by math and the five senses, in the same way that much of what you value in YOUR OWN LIVES transcends what can be proven or controlled.

Believers, cling to your faith. It's a rock, and a gift. Only, don't let your belief calcify into concepts, phrases, schtick, smugness, exclusion. Allow your faith to give you the courage to laugh at every concrete certainty. '

sophable - that's a link to something called Pan's Labyrinth??

I think that quote is a bit disingenuous, tbh. You only have to apply it to "believers" and "disbelievers" in Flat Earth or the moon being made of green cheese or the Royal Family being secretly lizards - all quite serious convictions which have been held by otherwise sane-seeming human beings - to see how it perpetuates the idea that there is a simple "two-sided" debate here on the lines of left vs. right, or Coke vs. Pepsi.

Unquietdad, read a book called 'the Intention Experimant'

many of the things you cited in your list can be scientifically explained and proven. the power of thought, spiritual healing and the interconnectedness of all things are thouroughly investigated and tested and there are some astonishing results.

I've looked it up on amazon and it looks like the kind of American pseudo-scientific psycho-shite which I avoid like the plague.