[quote]countingbeans wrote:
Just because the idea God would be indifferent bothers you, doesn’t mean it might not be the case.
[/quote]
Nah Beans it don’t bother me none.
In fact I quit going to church a long time ago, these days I worship Him by spending Sunday mornings (if you consider mid-day to be morning) scratching mah balls on the couch while I watch TV.
[quote]twojarslave wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]twojarslave wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]twojarslave wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]on edge wrote:
You have to prove the existence of god before you can even begin to argue morality comes from god. [/quote]
But you don’t need to prove the absence of God in order to say there doesn’t need to be a divine creator for morality to exist?
You can will facts from thin air based on your faith, but thumb your nose at those whose faith leads to a differing conclusion?[/quote]
Does one need to prove the absence of sorcerers to say that magic doesn’t exist, or does a simple lack of evidence give us enough to form an opinion on the matter?
[/quote]
There’s a difference between a lack of evidence and ignoring evidence. [/quote]
There is.
I think our differences on the matter probably boil down to the standards we hold for something to be considered evidence.
That’s just my guess anyway.
[/quote]
What standard is that?[/quote]
Simply stated, the evidence must be falsifiable.
To be clear, I don’t claim any certainty that God doesn’t exist. The existence of god is, after all, an unfalsifiable conjecture.
Nearly everyone denies the existence of all sorts of gods. My list is, in the case of monotheists, simply longer by one god.
[/quote]
It’s not conjecture. There are many good a priori arguments for the existence of God. A priori arguments that are in fact falsifiable. The fact that you are arguing this and not knowing that is pretty sad. You sound like a mindless Dawkin’s disciple. Not knowing evidence, being willfully ignorant of it does not count as no evidence. It simply means you don’t know what you are talking about.
However, all your pointing out is the criteria for scientific evidence. Which by definition would exclude little things historical evidence, eye witness accounts, hearsay of any kind which, in common circles, do count as evidence.
So all you regard as evidence for anything then, is science. So if science doesn’t explain it, it does not exist for you.
Speaking of science, do you believe black holes exist? After all, that’s technically not falsifiable. I can simply say they do not exist and you couldn’t prove me wrong. After all, nobody has ever actually observed one and unless you have put in the research, you don’t really know anything about them, it. It’s all hearsay. So if you do believe they exist it’s a matter of pure faith. You’re trusting in the hearsay of scientists who say they do.
[quote]magick wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
So what the terrorists did in France is cool then? If no objective morality, the standards they want to live by are violence and hence the attacks they carried out have no wrong in them since it seemed good to them.
That’s the rabbit hole jumping down. There’s nothing inherently wrong with terrorism, since that is the standard they choose to live by.
You cannot decry anything as bad or good, evil or good, it’s all just stuff neither bad nor good since those words then have no meaning.[/quote]
Morality means that there is an objectively, absolutely, true reason why X is good and Y is bad. That’s why morals must be objective to hold any meaning. You cannot say “murder is bad, except in these countless situations” and expect it to hold any real power as a moral. There is no such thing as subjective morality- It just means that you have an opinion. Why bother using fancy terms to say “I haven an opinion!”?
Rules, opinions, and all those things are essentially different from morality. There is no such thing as subjective morality, and whenever you make a claim towards something being a moral/immoral act, you must have an absolute truthful reason why.
As far as I am concerned, we cannot ever give an absolute truthful reason towards why something is good or bad? Murder is bad? Why? Because you killed someone! Well, what if that someone was trying to murder your family member? Obviously he’s breaking the moral code, what happens then?
Etc.
The point is- One can easily hold an opinion and act on it. I don’t understand why people think the absence of morality/claims to basic human rights/related means that we are neutral on everything and must remain neutral.
And, in this case, I think the terrorists are monsters and deserve to burn in a fire.[/quote]
Well, I don’t know where you stand now. Do you believe morality is subjective or objective? And whichever, why? You managed to say both without taking a stance.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]twojarslave wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]twojarslave wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]twojarslave wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]on edge wrote:
You have to prove the existence of god before you can even begin to argue morality comes from god. [/quote]
But you don’t need to prove the absence of God in order to say there doesn’t need to be a divine creator for morality to exist?
You can will facts from thin air based on your faith, but thumb your nose at those whose faith leads to a differing conclusion?[/quote]
Does one need to prove the absence of sorcerers to say that magic doesn’t exist, or does a simple lack of evidence give us enough to form an opinion on the matter?
[/quote]
There’s a difference between a lack of evidence and ignoring evidence. [/quote]
There is.
I think our differences on the matter probably boil down to the standards we hold for something to be considered evidence.
That’s just my guess anyway.
[/quote]
What standard is that?[/quote]
Simply stated, the evidence must be falsifiable.
To be clear, I don’t claim any certainty that God doesn’t exist. The existence of god is, after all, an unfalsifiable conjecture.
Nearly everyone denies the existence of all sorts of gods. My list is, in the case of monotheists, simply longer by one god.
[/quote]
It’s not conjecture. There are many good a priori arguments for the existence of God. A priori arguments that are in fact falsifiable. The fact that you are arguing this and not knowing that is pretty sad. You sound like a mindless Dawkin’s disciple. Not knowing evidence, being willfully ignorant of it does not count as no evidence. It simply means you don’t know what you are talking about.
However, all your pointing out is the criteria for scientific evidence. Which by definition would exclude little things historical evidence, eye witness accounts, hearsay of any kind which, in common circles, do count as evidence.
So all you regard as evidence for anything then, is science. So if science doesn’t explain it, it does not exist for you.
Speaking of science, do you believe black holes exist? After all, that’s technically not falsifiable. I can simply say they do not exist and you couldn’t prove me wrong. After all, nobody has ever actually observed one and unless you have put in the research, you don’t really know anything about them, it. It’s all hearsay. So if you do believe they exist it’s a matter of pure faith. You’re trusting in the hearsay of scientists who say they do.[/quote]
Like I said, we hold different standards for what we consider to be evidence. That’s not a knock on you at all, just a basic observation.
Having been raised STRICT Roman Catholic, I’ve had plenty of exposure to arguments for the existence of God, including ontological arguments, stories of miracles, bleeding statues of the Virgin Mary, you name it. It is not even that I actively rejected these arguments or that I didn’t want to believe, its just that I never had FAITH in them. I just didn’t buy it. My earliest recollection of thinking “this makes no sense at all to me” was shortly after my grandfather died at age 9. After that, I finished all of my sacraments up to and including Confirmation because it was expected of me. No other reason.
Again, I’m not trying to convince anyone that there is no god or that they should renounce their beliefs, but rather trying to give some insight into my lack of belief.
As far as black holes go, I’m going to go ahead and err on the side of trusting the process that has done a rather good job of explaining how the universe works, especially in the last several hundred years. I’m just a lay person with a superficial interest in astrophysics, but I’ve read enough Hawking and Kip Thorne to get my head around the concept. The explanations and mechanisms that I’ve read go well beyond “pure faith”, they provide explanations for phenomena that are testable and in-line with other explanations for phenomena, like the Theory of Gravity, for instance.
The “existence” of black holes is a prediction of the Theory of General Relativity, which is falsifiable through experimentation. The statement “black holes do NOT exist” is absolutely falsifiable. Not by me personally, but that’s not what I do.
To flip the logic around, falsifying the statement “black holes exist” would technically require you to observe the entirety of space and time. This is, of course, totally impossible unless you are some type of omnipotent trans-dimensional being (if you happen to know one, I suggest inquiring with said being). “Black holes exist” is just as unfalsifiable as the statement “all light bulbs will burn out” because falsifying that would mean finding a light bulb that burns for all of time. Simply being unfalsifiable doesn’t make either of those statements at all unreasonable.
This business of “belief” in black holes is really a red herring. Having the notion that black holes are out there doesn’t really shape my day-to-day life or any specific actions I take. That makes it is entirely unlike a belief in religion, which dramatically shapes people’s day-to-day life and the actions they take.
Make sense?
[quote]pat wrote:
It’s not conjecture. There are many good a priori arguments for the existence of God. A priori arguments that are in fact falsifiable. The fact that you are arguing this and not knowing that is pretty sad. You sound like a mindless Dawkin’s disciple. Not knowing evidence, being willfully ignorant of it does not count as no evidence. It simply means you don’t know what you are talking about.[/quote]
Most of the a priori arguments for God involve suppositions, conjectures, and stuff going on inside the head of the arguer.
Descartes: Whatever I perceive about a thing is true of that thing. I perceive that existence is contained in the idea of “God”. Therefore God.
Anselm, arguing from the opposite tack: We define God as “a being greater than which none can exist”. We understand what these words mean. We can imagine this being existing in reality. Therefore we can say that God exists in our understanding. Now, suppose that God exists in our understanding, but not in reality. But we’ve already established that we can IMAGINE a being greater than which none exists in our understanding, AND we can IMAGINE him in reality If something exists in the understanding alone, but can be conceived to exist in reality, then that thing can be conceived to be greater than it actually is. Which means that we can imagine God to be greater than he actually is. Which is absurd. So our supposition that God exists in our understanding but not our reality is absurd, and thus false. Therefore God.
Anything can be said to be proved a priori. Substitute the name of any deity, or even Santa Claus, in our opening premise, and it still works. Conversely, if anyone can imagine the NON-existence of God, then his existence cannot be said to be proved a priori, at least according to David Hume.
But in the end, why bother to prove God?
If he exists for you, then he exists. That’s what faith means.
End of story.
Evidence is either true or it is not. Science is concerned with the true sort. So is history and the law. Hearsay does not count as evidence in a court of law, nor does it in science. And eyewitness reports generally need to be corroborated in order to be believed. So if you can find someone who has literally seen God and written about it, that would be a first-person eyewitness report, and would count as evidence, but still of the unsubstantiated type.
Science literally means “knowledge.” People who do science do it in a systematic way, through observation and experiment, in order to increase the amount of knowledge we have. And yes, evidence is required for this. You either know a thing, or you imagine it to be true. “Science”, or knowledge, is concerned only with what we know, and can explain. There are a lot of things that science cannot yet explain, and therefore doesn’t yet know. In fact, the number of things we cannot explain through science grows steadily. In other words, the more we know, the more we know that we don’t know.
Incidentally, science doesn’t try to “prove” anything. It tries to DISprove what it supposes. This is called “testing the hypothesis”. If it can’t, then it considers its supposition to be true.
Faith does the same thing, except it doesn’t try very hard, if at all, to test its hypotheses, because that would be blasphemy.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
Again hat tip to Pat, but… I’d have to say the first step in determining if something is moral or not is answering the question: Is there a victim?
It solves the “murder” issues too. Is defending your life using deadly force against an aggressor murder?[/quote]
Is it moral to murder a man who wanted to steal your hat?
[quote]pat wrote:
Well, I don’t know where you stand now. Do you believe morality is subjective or objective? And whichever, why? You managed to say both without taking a stance.[/quote]
-I don’t believe in the concept of objective morality, because I do not believe that there exists a higher being who is capable of giving the rules.
-I don’t particularly believe that any of our opinion is more valid than the other, even if you have an abundance of evidence to support them. I am fond of talking about the Greeks and their belief that the Sun circled the Earth for this reason. The Greeks had absolutely every reason, and absolutely no reason whatsoever, to believe that the Earth circled the Sun. Every logical thought and evidence they had pointed towards the reality that the Sun circled us. Yet that was completely wrong.
I think this is a very important thing for people to keep in mind. Simple to remember, monumental in what it suggests.
-These being said, I believe the only “right”, the only “moral” (for lack of a better term, really) that people have is their ability to for action. Simply put- you want something? Work to achieve it. You want government to give money to the poor? Do something to make that happen. You want government to NOT give money to the poor? Do something to make that happen.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Evidence is either true or it is not.
[/quote]
Ummm…no.
Evidence is just evidence. Truth is something else.[/quote]
All right, then. If you object to the word “true”, then shall we say that evidence must be genuine and verifiable.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Incidentally, science doesn’t try to “prove” anything. It tries to DISprove what it supposes.
[/quote]
You gotcha your idealism and you then again gotcha your realism.
Ideally, science, or should I say scientists, doesn’t try to “prove” anything. But really, we all know it doesn’t quite work out that way. Don’t we?[/quote]
Science works that way.
Scientists don’t always work that way. There are bad scientists as well as good scientists. Bad science does not hold up very long to scrutiny, and bad scientists are generally excoriated by their peers.
Just like Christianity teaches us to love the Lord with all our hearts, souls and minds, to love our neighbours as we love ourselves, and to do to others as we would have them do to us.
In reality, it doesn’t always work out this way.
This is not because Christianity is flawed, but because Christians are human, and therefore not perfect.
See the difference?
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Most of the a priori arguments for God involve suppositions, conjectures, and stuff going on inside the head of the arguer.
[/quote]
Most of the a priori arguments for no God involve suppositions, conjectures, and stuff going on inside the head of the arguer. [/quote]
Yes. As Hume implied, a priori arguments aren’t really that useful for proving the existence or non-existence of God. As I also mentioned, it is neither necessary to argue for or against God’s existence. He exists, or does not, independent of our proofs, arguments, and beliefs.
[quote]magick wrote:
-I don’t particularly believe that any of our opinion is more valid than the other, even if you have an abundance of evidence to support them. I am fond of talking about the Greeks and their belief that the Sun circled the Earth for this reason. The Greeks had absolutely every reason, and absolutely no reason whatsoever, to believe that the Earth circled the Sun. Every logical thought and evidence they had pointed towards the reality that the Sun circled us. Yet that was completely wrong.[/quote]
Just for your reference, the first person to propose a heliocentric model of the sun, stars and planets was Aristarchus of Samos (a Greek), some 200 years before Christ, 1700 years before Copernicus, and 1800 years before Galileo.
The movie Agora, starring the lovely Rachel Weisz, tells the story of Hypatia, a Greek astronomer and natural philosopher (what we would now call a “scientist”) living in 4th-century Alexandria. The movie implies that Hypatia rejected Ptolemy’s geocentric model (which was the commonly accepted paradigm) in favour of Aristarchus’ heliocentric one, further finding (and we have no way of knowing whether this part is true) that she could predict solar eclipses more accurately by assuming that the earth and planets are in elliptical orbit around the sun, something that Johannes Kepler would not postulate for another 1200 years.
That last part may have been a slight embellishment, but what we do know for sure was that she was violently murdered (her clothes ripped off of her, dragged through the street until she died, and then her body burned) by a mob of Christians, many of whom having concluded that since she didn’t believe in God, and she spent her time with astrolabes and old manuscripts and such trying to find stuff out, then she must be a witch and servant of Satan.
So yeah. Science and Christianity have had an uneasy relationship for quite a long time.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
So yeah. Science and Christianity have had an uneasy relationship for quite a long time.
[/quote]
No, I don’t think so. [/quote]
That is your god-given right as an American.
You’re absolutely right. Oversimplification is one of my many character flaws.
Please do allow me to correct this.
Here is the story of Hypatia, direct from the pen of John, the 7th Century Coptic Bishop of Nikiu, lest I also be accused of relying on biased sources.
[i]AND IN THOSE DAYS there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through (her) Satanic wiles.
And the governor of the city honored her exceedingly; for she had beguiled him through her magic. And he ceased attending church as had been his custom. But he went once under circumstances of danger. And he not only did this, but he drew many believers to her, and he himself received the unbelievers at his house.
And on a certain day when they were making merry over a theatrical exhibition connected with dancers, the governor of the city published (an edict) regarding the public exhibitions in the city of Alexandria: and all the inhabitants of the city had assembled there (in the theater). Now Cyril, who had been appointed patriarch after Theophilus, was eager to gain exact intelligence regarding this edict.
And there was a man named Hierax, a Christian possessing understanding and intelligence who used to mock the pagans but was a devoted adherent of the illustrious Father the patriarch and was obedient to his monitions. He was also well versed in the Christian faith. (Now this man attended the theater to learn the nature of this edict.) But when the Jews saw him in the theater they cried out and said: “This man has not come with any good purpose, but only to provoke an uproar.”
And Orestes the prefect was displeased with the children of the holy church, and Hierax was seized and subjected to punishment publicly in the theater, although he was wholly guiltless.
And Cyril was wroth with the governor of the city for so doing, and likewise for his putting to death an illustrious monk of the convent of Pernodj named Ammonius, and other monks (also). And when the chief magistrate of the city heard this, he sent word to the Jews as follows: “Cease your hostilities against the Christians.”
But they refused to hearken to what they heard; for they gloried in the support of the prefect who was with them, and so they added outrage to outrage and plotted a massacre through a treacherous device.
And they posted beside them at night in all the streets of the city certain men, while others cried out and said: “The church of the apostolic Athanasius is on fire: come to its succour, all ye Christians.” And the Christians on hearing their cry came fourth quite ignorant of the treachery of the Jews.
And when the Christians came forth, the Jews arose and wickedly massacred the Christians and shed the blood of many, guiltless though they were. And in the morning, when the surviving Christians heard of the wicked deed which the Jews had wrought, they betook themselves to the patriarch.
And the Christians mustered all together and went and marched in wrath to the synagogues of the Jews and took possession of them, and purified them and converted them into churches.
And one of them they named after the name of St. George. And as for the Jewish assassins they expelled them from the city, and pillaged all their possessions and drove them forth wholly despoiled, and Orestes the prefect was unable to render them any help.
And thereafter a multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the magistrate – now this Peter was a perfect believer in all respects in Jesus Christ – and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the prefect through her enchantments.
And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her seated on a (lofty) chair; and having made her descend they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesarion. Now this was in the days of the fast.
And they tore off her clothing and dragged her [till they brought her] through the streets of the city till she died. And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and they burned her body with fire. And all the people surrounded the patriarch Cyril and named him “the new Theophilus”; for he had destroyed the last remains of idolatry in the city.[/i]
Yup. nary a mention of religion. Strictly political.
Probably. Much like the “Christianity” of that region and era.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
One of Varq’s and my favorite li’l quotes:
“…but man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he’s most assured, his glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep.”[/quote]
Yes indeed.
And leave it to Hitchens to be even more succinct than the Bard:
“There is nothing in this world more terrifying than somebody who believes he is right.”
Not Christopher Hitchens, by the way, but his younger brother Peter, who happens to be Christian.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
One of Varq’s and my favorite li’l quotes:
“…but man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he’s most assured, his glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep.”[/quote]
Yes indeed.
And leave it to Hitchens to be even more succinct than the Bard:
“There is nothing in this world more terrifying than somebody who believes he is right.”
Not Christopher Hitchens, by the way, but his younger brother Peter, who happens to be Christian.[/quote]
Sometimes right, but never in doubt.
One last commentary on Hypatia, just to bring this tangent back to the theme of the thread.
Anyone who can rationalise the actions of the Christian mob portrayed in the account above, who might defend the actions of men who would murder a woman for her being a “pagan” and an “idolator” (the word in Arabic is kafir, often rendered “infidel” in English) who “beguiled” people with her “Satanic” astrolabes and musical instruments, is the moral equivalent of one who would rationalise and defend the murder of Stephane Charbonnier and his staff, executed for the crime of insulting Islam with “Satanic” accoutrements like the pen and the printing press.