Religion Discussion

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Dudeofteenage said:
Because you said



Unless one of those books actually showed evidence of the existence of God - which I'm pretty sure I would have heard about - all of that literature, no matter how respected the individuals are, is a lot of opinion, but not an iota of evidence.

If you want to believe in God it's no skin off my back, but claiming you have evidence of God's existence is laughable.
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Eh, depends what you consider evidence. Plantinga's "Victorious Ontological Argument" seems plausibly workable, provided you accept the coherence of the concept of a maximally great being and the validity of modal logic. His evolutionary argument against naturalism (not to mention Street's evolutionary argument against moral realism) would seem to provide some impetus for positing some sort of strategy for dealing with moral/epistemic nihilism. Obviously, there is no scientific evidence either way, but that is also true of any form of realism (including with respect to science and ordinary objects).

Basically, all I am saying is that it is not completely irrational to be (in some form) religious. There are reasons to be, provided you accept or are worried about certain philosophical/moral concerns. Ultimately, everything is going to depend on what you value, in terms of evidence or justified belief.

For my part, I halfway expect to die and find out that Spinoza was right the whole time.
 
The Giver said:
Basically, all I am saying is that it is not completely irrational to be (in some form) religious. There are reasons to be, provided you accept or are worried about certain philosophical/moral concerns. Ultimately, everything is going to depend on what you value, in terms of evidence or justified belief.
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The simplest is a variant of rational ignorance.

That is, the mental and emotional cost of putting a lot of thought into religious matters simply does not pay off. In fact, people who do it tend to be miserable. So if religion appeals to you for whatever reason, or you just find atheism to be a bummer, but nevertheless, there are more important things in your life, you're better off simply picking one of the popular varieties and getting on with your life.

For my part, I halfway expect to die and find out that Spinoza was right the whole time.
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Wouldn't shock me.
 
The simplest is a variant of rational ignorance.
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I agree, though I would say that it is possible to be informed, rational and religious. But yeah, the vast majority of people don't put any real thought into it either way. Plus, rationality is not, in my view, identical with science, since to be rational is just to not contradict one's self. Obviously, one could have a non contradictory belief system that defies science.

However, I do want to stress, if you deny the validity of science, you are still a moron, since that amounts to denying that one can learn from experience. However, if you can maintain some permutation of religious belief without denying such beliefs (and you can, Plantinga argues at length that you must maintain both, though I think he is wrong), then it would be possible to be rational, scientific, and religious (in some modified sense). But this requires more effort than anyone really wants to put forward.
 
The Giver said:
Plus, rationality is not, in my view, identical with science, since to be rational is just to not contradict one's self. Obviously, one could have a non contradictory belief system that defies science.
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Science is just empiricism. The only consistent position that isn't empiricism is rationalism. Both can be rational but I would argue that empiricism is superior
 
autisticdragonkin said:
Science is just empiricism. The only consistent position that isn't empiricism is rationalism. Both can be rational but I would argue that empiricism is superior
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Eh, the modern current in philosophy of science is a robust realism, which actually stands in fairly stark opposition to the dogmatic empiricism of the Logical Positivists and the Instrumentalists. The rationalist/empiricist debate has kind of fallen to the wayside in the wake of Hume. Kant doesn't fit into either category, for example. Most contemporary thought tries to avoid Humean/Cartesian Skepticism, while still maintaining some facet of realism or empiricism. A lot of it is indebted more to the divide between American Pragmatism (via Peirce/James), Analytic Philosophy (via Russell, early Wittgenstein), and Continental Philosophy (via Late Wittgenstein, Phenomenology).
 
I am an Agnostic, I find it much more reasonable to admit that you don't know squat about anything in the universe. We may know that the universe was created by two particles colliding with one another, and through time creating time and space itself, we know of molecules and matter, we know of the forces of gravity, we known chemistry and compounds, we create and understand technology, but yet there is still much more to learn and acquire knowledge about the universe.

I believe that there could be powers, well beyond our imagination. Not saying that there's some kind of god, but if there is one, it is certainly not the Christian one or the "ALLAH AKBAR!" one either as the universe does not base itself off of Human understanding.

It was once acceptable to think that the Earth was flat, now through science and testing, we know the Earth is round, or there are those people who believe it is some government cover up shing-dig.

Back to the topic, what do you idiots think? Are there forces beyond our understanding, are there beings beyond our comprehension, could there possibly be something watching us, out in the darkness in the space. I think that is the beauty and terror of it all, the great vastness, the great distance, the great unknown, for all there could be, knowledge of the impossible could yield terrifying or euphoric results.
 
I think that we shouldn't sit around idly contemplating whether things exist but actually go out and look for them. At the moment we really have no reason to have any position one way or another on what you are talking about
 
hood LOLCOW said:
I'm a Muslim myself, born in one of the highest Muslim populated countries. Personally, I have an interest in natural sciences, where I think I could see the magnificence of God, (considering I believe in one).
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Amin, brother.
 
I believe that a religion is inseparable from the culture that it comes from and that all established religions can be interpreted as expressing the values of their cultures metaphorically. I think that reinterpretations of religious texts are more equivalent to the challenging of cultural norms rather than a direct challenge on the factual value of the religious beliefs. I think that only young children interpret religion literally and that so called literalists actually intepret the metaphorical messages more strictly and see different metaphorical messages. I think that arguments over the factual value of a religious doctrine such as the creationism vs evolution debate are not actually debating anything because the side of creationism is arguing for the truth of the metaphor and the evolutionists are arguing against the literal truth of the doctrine

This doesn't imply that the creationists necessarily believe in evolution but rather that they will answer completely differently to such questions if they are somehow asked about evolution without it seeming to contrast with their religion. Maybe as simple as asking in another language may be enough but they would need to think about it in terms that cannot be related to their religious texts
 
I am a Christian, and I believe in God. However, I am not a person that believes the Bible is a historically accurate description of how the world came to be. I believe that God and science are not mutually exclusive, and that one can believe in Evolution and God at the same time. My theory is simply that perhaps prophets who wrote the Bible were given information from divine sources, that they either could not understand, and simply translated it as best they could, or perhaps they were misled intentionally because either God or the angels (whoever gave these stories to prophets) believed there was no way our more primitive ancestors could comprehend the true nature of the world.
 
Galvatron said:
I am a Christian, and I believe in God. However, I am not a person that believes the Bible is a historically accurate description of how the world came to be. I believe that God and science are not mutually exclusive, and that one can believe in Evolution and God at the same time. My theory is simply that perhaps prophets who wrote the Bible were given information from divine sources, that they either could not understand, and simply translated it as best they could, or perhaps they were misled intentionally because either God or the angels (whoever gave these stories to prophets) believed there was no way our more primitive ancestors could comprehend the true nature of the world.
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Although I think that the explanation of that position is flawed I think that that is the superior position because it enables a more fundamental conservatism than bare evolutionary psychology while still acknowledging science
 
I'm trying to find some sort of religion to belong to. I'm interested in the more mystical types of religions, such as Sikhism, Sufism, Hinduism, Jainism or Buddhism. I'm also drawn to neopagan and reconstructionist religions, such as Asatru, even though I'm a damn, dirty JEW.
I kind of feel like everyone belongs to a religion somehow, even if they deny it. I feel like communism, feminism and national socialism are sorts of secular religions. I'm not knocking them (well, except for naziism), I just feel everyone has some sort of belief about mankind and believes in theoretical concepts of some sort.
 
Abethedemon said:
I'm trying to find some sort of religion to belong to. I'm interested in the more mystical types of religions, such as Sikhism, Sufism, Hinduism, Jainism or Buddhism. I'm also drawn to neopagan and reconstructionist religions, such as Asatru, even though I'm a damn, dirty JEW.
I kind of feel like everyone belongs to a religion somehow, even if they deny it. I feel like communism, feminism and national socialism are sorts of secular religions. I'm not knocking them (well, except for naziism), I just feel everyone has some sort of belief about mankind and believes in theoretical concepts of some sort.
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Have you thought about reconstructionist Judaism
 
Abethedemon said:
I kind of feel like everyone belongs to a religion somehow, even if they deny it. I feel like communism, feminism and national socialism are sorts of secular religions. I'm not knocking them (well, except for naziism), I just feel everyone has some sort of belief about mankind and believes in theoretical concepts of some sort.
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Everyone belongs to a religion when you stretch the word "religion" to meaninglessness.

I would say a belief in the supernatural is important to the definition of the word.
 
Marvin said:
Everyone belongs to a religion when you stretch the word "religion" to meaninglessness.

I would say a belief in the supernatural is important to the definition of the word.
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I don't think that the belief in the supernatural is important because there isn't a clear definition of the supernatural
I think that the better definition is to describe it based on a shared community and customs as well as certain neurological phenomena
 
autisticdragonkin said:
I don't think that the belief in the supernatural is important because there isn't a clear definition of the supernatural
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There's a clear enough definition of supernatural for most people's purposes. I'm sure there are corner cases where people might argue forever about whether something is supernatural or not, but that's not the norm.
 
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