I consider myself to be very open minded when it comes to discussing God’s existence . . . just not so open minded that my brains fall out.
The reason why I lose patience with the Intelligent Design arguments is because I hear the exact same arguments over and over and over again with a nauseating regularity. They hear their arguments rationally debunked, and promptly disregard the counter arguments.
When I walk away and/or dismiss them, I’m sure that I seem closed minded . . . when it’s just my irritation.
The Kalam argument is a great example of what I’m talking about. It is (probably) the most debunked argument for God’s existence, yet Believers constantly use it now.
I also get irritated because they wish to suppress science education in schools in favor of religious doctrine when humanity is facing several existential threats, and we need scientists and engineers as a matter of survival.
Again, my irritation can be mistaken for closed-mindedness when I walk away from conversations about teaching I.D. in schools.
He can’t demonstrate it is possible, let alone that a deity exists outside fo the human imagination. As I have said repeatedly his unevidenced and irrational claim a deity created the universe has no more explanatory powers than a wizard did it using magic. just take a look:
How is a deity possible? @Sherlock-Holmes[Which part are you struggling with?]
How is the supernatural power to create a universe possible? @Sherlock-Holmes[Why is anything possible]
Where does the supernatural power to create a universe come from? @Sherlock-Holmes[From outside the universe]
How did a deity use supernatural powers to create the universe. @Sherlock-Holmes[By the use of will]
So that’s1 answered with I don’t know, two answered with evasive and irrelevant questions, and 2 answered with mre bare assertions that themselves explain nothing.
I have yet to meet a religious apologists of any stripe whose arguments demonstrated they knew what open minded meant. As with @Sherlock-Holmes rhetoric, anyone who doesn’t share his biased belief, and he immediately makes a bare accusation that they are unable to understand the evidence, except he goes further than this no true Scotsman fallacy, and makes the unevidenced assertion there is no point even trying to present any, which is of course a poisoning of the well fallacy if ever there was one. When his endless use of logical fallacies are exposed, with evidence to support those assertions, guess what his response was, an ad hominem fallacy making a bare accusation of bias to wave them away, no attempt to address them honestly at all. The irony is palpable.
I agree . . . yet I’m not above certain things either.
You guys know my feelings about organized religion, yet I lit candles of remembrance for people who have died, and I’m fasting in observance of the Day of Atonement . . . so how is that for hypocrisy and irony?
I can understand the fulfillment that comes from religion and being a member of a cultue . . . but not requiring society to adhere to my private ideas, or forcing my views on a public school system.
My secular Judaism gives me a sense of connectedness with a part of my family, and Yom Kippur provides me with a day to consider how I can be a better person.
I never have a quarrel with someone’s religious practice any more than I judge someone’s hair style, or which sports team that they root for.
My purpose in joining this forum (and participating in Atheism in general, as I’ve had articles and letters published) is addressing the harm to humanity that’s caused by religion . . . and I include Judaism just as much as everyone else’s religion.
Also ironically, I definitely spend more time and resources exploring atheism than I do on being Jewish.
Nothing can be empirically proven though, that’s why you’ll often hear “science doesn’t do proof” in these kinds of forums.
That’s a false statement too, if you can quote someone from the ID community who expressed that view I’d like to see it.
Which make a change from the usual naturalism of the gaps crutch we see so often here.
It’s a fact though, any claim about probabilities being high or low must be accompanied by data that supports the claim, which is this a contentious point?
When you say “debunked” do you mean proven to be false?
The arguments for God are philosophical not scientific, so many atheists miss this point and reason incorrectly that one can use scientific arguments to challenge philosophical arguments.
The proposition “The earth was created six thousand years ago with an inbuilt appearance of being much older” cannot be proven false using scientific arguments.
Proper scientists (like most of those theist scientists who drove the scientific revolution) understand this and don’t make fools of themselves in this area, but the less able thinkers (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens et al) know very little about philosophy and are constantly confusing the two disciplines.
I bet you’re circumcised though, and likely advocate it for others too. Circumcision is genital mutilation yet we’ll see many practicing Jews and atheists alike sing its praises.
Reminiscent of eugenics, make up some baseless statistic and then claim science support circumcision when there isn’t a healthcare system in the world that agrees with this, but who cares about peer review anyway eh.
Circumcision cuts a cis-man’s risk of contracting HIV by more than 50%. There are other diseases and illnesses that are prevented by circumcision.
Yet I do concede that if everyone used condoms properly, than this would probably be more beneficial than circumcision.
Despite humanity being “made in God’s image,” there seem to be fundamental design flaws in the human body.
The vermiform appendix may be an example (although there is research that indicates that it may serve an important role in maintaining a healthy intestinal biome, but even if this is true, the risks of peritonitis from an inflamed appendix vastly outweigh the benefit of this function), and another similar flaw may be the human foreskin.
And male circumcision is not to be compared with the female genital mutilation that is practiced in Africa, the Middle East, and in certain parts of Asia. Comparing the two is a straw man fallacy.
I don’t think that is necessarily hypocrisy, I like hymns, even gospel music sometimes, and love the engineering in cathedrals, and marvel at stain glass windows. I don’t want to extirpate religion from human history, I just don’t believe deities are real, and subject the claims about it to the same objective standards as all other claims. human emotions that manifest in religions are common to us all, the presence of those emotions are also elegantly explained by the theory of evolution.
I don’t your either, you’re just eager to carefully examine claims to see how valid they are, that’s why most of us are here. I don’t describe myself as an atheist just to label myself, I do so because it is an accurate descriptor of how I currently treat god claims, since I was born an atheist, and objective evidence has been demonstrated since to allay my doubts.
I guess you’re implying that philosophy and science should seperate? If so, then discussions of God don’t belong in science classrooms.
Or, let’s suppose that I misunderstood your point.
If so, please consider Aristotle. He argued that men have more teeth than women . . . and his arguments on the matter were utterly brilliant, yet they were wrong. He wouldn’t ask a woman to open her mouth so that he could count her teeth, as that was akin to labor, and only fit for slaves. In his view, the fundamental aspects of the Universe could be derived by thought alone.
Yet he was wrong.
As another example, Aristotle taught that heavier weights fall faster than lighter weights. This is pure common sense, and seems so obvious on the surface that it’s taken as a given fact . . . yet it is wrong. Gallileo even defeated Aristotle on his on turf by asking “What happens if we attach a heavy weight to a light weight by a long, thin cord? Does these two weights fall faster because the combination weighs more than either weight? Or does it fall slower than the heavier weight because of the drag imposed by the lighter weight?”
The only way to get to the truth is to drop two weights, and see for yourself . . . which is science.
So . . . I tend to believe that philosophy is useful and important as a tool for processing the facts provided by science. If–however–we only use philosophy in a vacuum, then we run the risk of falling into wrong conclusions, like Aristotle’s teachings about the number of human teeth, or falling weights.
These wrong conclusions can be dangerous, as I’ve claimed when discussing the Brescia church explosion . . . or when religious theocracies have access to nuclear weapons.
There’s nothing wrong with utilizing a day to have a ritual that reminds one to be aware of (and thereby improve going forward) those things we’ve done that may have hurt ourselves or others. It’s the same, imo, as gathering with friends and family on Xmas to share time, laughter, and love. It’s the same as participating in The Day of the Dead festivities in remembrance of those who’ve died.
Theists don’t corner the market on celebrations and ritual. Those things are important to us as humans. And remember, holidays have been appropriated throughout history. It seems to be quite the human hobby
If you see below, there are peer-reviewed articles on the health benefits of circumcision.
Yet I don’t dismiss your criticism of the practice out of hand. If we discover effective polyvalent vaccines against certain diseases, and educate new parents on the techniques and importance of genital hygiene for baby boys, then circumcision will probably be more of a cultural rather than a medical neccesity.
I totally agree, and apologists try this canard all the time, oh you get together ad celebrate xmas with family, why do you do that if you’re an atheist, well because I want a break to spend time with family and friends, and unlike religions I don’t have to time, resources, and influence to appropriate those of others and try and change what they mean to everyone else, nor would I want to, I happy to enjoy the time with family and friends for what it means to me, in an entirely secular way.
Well they already are separate subjects and always have been. Schools should teach philosophy though, as they do in Western Europe.
I’d never advocate for “God” to be much of a topic in a science class, perhaps with the exception of physics when considering metaphysical questions.
Yes, science is predicated on nature’s remarkable capacity for being rationally intelligible, most fortunate.
Be careful, when you use a term like “dangerous”, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
The world we live in is a continual power struggle, those without power want it and those with power want to keep it, this is all you need to know to understand the state of the human race, our eagerness for war and our willingness to kill, the “self” is everything, the self is mankind’s God and humans have served the self since the dawn of humanity.
