Quote:
Her:
i have an argument against your arguement against god.
so in saying there is no god you are acknowledging the possiblity of something called a god, you are associating the word "god" with something...whether that be a higher deity or a scary father-figure with thunderbolts. by associating the word you are affirming the existence.
of course this doesnt work because we all know that unicorns dont exist but we still have a word for them.
but it sounded good at first, yeah?
Me:
I am affirming the existence of something called "God." That something happens to be a meme; an idea that spreads like a virus throughout people's minds and adapts, like organisms undergoing evolution, so that it survives. Basically, only the "good versions" of the God idea get passed to other minds; versions that are good at not being forgotten, and being spread. Take the New Testament for example. One of the most powerful memes working for the New Testament God is the commandment to spread the message of Jesus Christ. If you don't do this, you go to hell. That is an example of a meme that will get passed on and will have a high survival rate; compared with other "pagan" religions, there's no wonder it overtook them--Thor never told his followers to preach Odin's wisdom, or anything like that.
Her:
who is the meme idea from?
and that isnt a very good argument...send me something else.
i was reading hick's arguments against the existence of god today, but they didnt work because he believes in god. but so do i and not even N will be able to convince me otherwise, so i guess it is hopeless.
have you read campbell?
Me:
No, I haven't. The idea of memes came from Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist who also wrote the God Delusion. Of course, any argument won't be convincing to someone who won't be able to be convinced otherwise, even if it is a good argument. That's the difference between you and me: while I have the ability to change my mind if the evidence supports it, your faith keeps you from choosing the rational explanation even with a lack of evidence, or in spite of evidence to the contrary. When science is advanced in a way that doesn't support religion, the religites wave their hands and say "oh well, it doesn't change *my* faith." But when something happens in science that supports their evidence-lacking belief, they grab onto it and go "see what this is!? God does exist, and science says so!"
Her:
that is entirely untrue.
first: if you could positively rule out the possibility of god, then i would be convinced. but that is impossible to do.
second: (ireally like these lists, by the way) i have had esperiences which i truly believe are experiences of an ultimate or divine reality. i dont know what it is, but i know it is there
third: science can say how everything works but it still cant say why. just because you know how protons and everything work doesnt mean you know why. you dont even know what gravity really is. so you cant disprove god.
so there is nothing rational about it. or any evidence to the contrary. i dont believe there is a guy sitting up in the sky, or in any tribal god, or anything like that. im talking about an ulitimate reality.
fourth: couldnt he have come up with a better name than meme? how about yannis? or fuccis?
Me:
Meme is a play off of "gene," it's the same idea, but less material. What you're saying by "if you could positively rule out the possibility of God, then I would be convinced" is "because you can't philosophically disprove X's existence, that means I believe in X." OK, Mrs. Smarty-pants, if that's the case, then please disprove to me the existence of a celestial teapot floating somewhere between here and mars, but too small to be detected by any means. You can't disprove its existence, so I might as well believe it's there!
This is one of the biggest irks I have with religion. While religion is the least backed by evidence and has the least claim to reflecting reality, it somehow has been allowed to say whatever it wants about reality, no matter how false, and not be questioned, because people "don't know what it is, but know it is there." Science, however, is always attacked when people say "You can't prove the universe really is like that!" Saying "I KNOW IT'S THERE I KNOW IT'S THERE I REALLY REALLY REALLY DO" doesn't make the slightest bit of difference as to what really exists. People believe in tarot cards, psychic readings, and horoscopes. Just because they truly, from the bottom of their heart, as-much-as-you-believe-in-God believe that fortune-telling works, it doesn't mean it does. All they do is cherry-pick the instances when the predictions have been true and throw away the times they haven't been. Just like you; whenever someone happens that appears to give credibility to God's existence, you grab onto that; when a newborn dies because his mom was addicted to crack when she had him, where is God then? Events that don't speak very much for God's benevolence and omnipotence don't seem to shake the believer's faith much, much to their discredit. How can I believe someone who manipulates the data to support their thesis; i.e., God exists because A, B, and C happened, while ignoring the fact that X, Y, and Z also happened?
Third: Your insistence on everything having a purpose (that's what why means, doesn't it?) is faulty logic. It implies a need to ascribe a design to everything, which in turn implies God's existence. I don't buy the "you can't say why it's like this" argument because it's circular reasoning; it assumes what it tries to prove, and then says "aha! So I was right!" You can't do that. I know I can't disprove God; all I can do is show how unbelievably improbable his existence is.
As for ultimate realities, science has done much more in that area than religion ever has. While the human eye can only see a very tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, science has opened our vista to much more. Our eyes can only see 300 nm's worth of wavelengths on the spectrum while science has allowed us to detect wavelengths as large as 10 million meters to as small as 1 picometer. What has religion done to open our eyes about the universe?
Her:
first of all, i have no idea what a pictometer is, so that was completely lost on me.
second, i did NOT say i was religious.i do think a lot of religion is bogus. like the eucharist "magically" becoming the body of christ? i have faith, that doesnt make me religious.
third, i never said God was omnipotent. and if your problem with religion is evil, well thats probably because you only know the augustinian theology of religion. God doesnt necessarily have to be all-powerful -he could just interact with a universe that he didnt create but can influence. do you know process theodicy? The ultimate reality is creativity continually producing new unities of experience out of the manifold of the previous moment. Basically god could have the power to either allow creation, or not allow creation. if he allows creation, then there is a probablity for both good and evil. so should he just not create humanityfor the sake of avioding hitler and auschwitz and your dead baby? so he lets it continue because he sees that the good (the ghandis and michelangelos and guatamas and socrates) outwieghs the bad. and you know this to be true as well, or you would kill yourself...but you know that life is inherently good. so god does not necessarily have to be omnipotent or all-loving.
i never said god had to be in control. i do think he exists, however, though not necessarily as the primary mover or creator or as omnipotent. i think i am more hindu in that sense.
concerning the teapot: i never said YOU had to believe it. i would prefer you didnt, it makes these talks all the more interesting. but i have had "experiences" (for lack of a better word in my sad vocabulary) that confirm to me that there is something (for lack of a better word lets call the something god) that exists that is more than this. and ultimate reality. and i do believe it seeks contact. communication. but not necessarily working.
okay to answer your last question: nothing. i wasn't talking about religion. but what has science done? tell us how many wavelengths, but not what those lengths mean or why they are. i think science is potentially useful and destructive, but it doenst contain all the answers. i dont think it ever will have THE ANSWER.
Me:
So basically in your third point you're saying God isn't omnipotent, but he allows the universe to exist. By allowing creation, he might as well have done the creating: if I witness a crime occur that I can prevent, that doesn't mean I'm not responsible even though I didn't commit it. Unfortunately for the ultimate reality, the only creativity is expressed through humans. And because God apparently does allow the good as well as the bad to happen, he's responsible for not preventing the evil from happening. I do not believe life is inherently good; being a believer in evolution in the strictest neo-Darwinian sense, I don't there there is any morality proscribed to a few self-replicating molecules that happened to come together a few billion years ago. And the idea that one would kill oneself if there was more evil in the world than good is simply laughable. Isn't that the easy way out? "There's so much evil in this world I'm going to cop out and kill myself instead of try and make it better." Regardless of whether there is more good or evil in the universe, suicide is no way to fix it. So, you admit God can have three qualities: he "allowed" the universe to exist, but didn't necessarily create it; he might not be omnipotent, and he's possibly not all-loving. Why, then, should we worship him and call him God?
It would help if you could elaborate on your "experiences," because human senses are notoriously awful at observing natural (supernatural?) phenomena accurately. This is why, say, people believe in ghosts when there's apparently no scientific way of detecting them.
In contrast to what many people believe, science is capable of giving "why" answers. In fact, one of the most pressing issues in modern physics is to answer why the universe exists instead of nothing at all and why so many universal constants have the value they do (say, the mass of a proton is what it is instead of something else).
Given all this, I can't conceive of a being who deserves to be called God.
Her:
okay so i am saying that when god witnesses that crime, he no longer has control over what is happening. he allows creation with the potentiallity for the good and evil, but he cant just stop indiviual events or anything. he can only stop all of creation. yeah he is responsible for the evil, but also the good which outweighs the evil.
i never said we should worship him. or her. or it. whatever.
and "god" is used for lack of a better word. allah. whatever again.
personally i dont like to think that god wants a bunch of little worshipers praying"oh good and gracious god" all the time and telling him how great he is. if he is then he will know it so what is the point: worship gets boring. i think he wants companionshiip.
you say that it is a pressing issue. but give me one example of a why they have answered.
but i am not trying to put down science. even though i find it annoying that is just because i dont have a math/science mind. and i actually like science when it is anatomy, or something that has nothing to do with math and equations. i think science is very valuable. i just believe that god exists as well. i havent decided how god exists. i probably never will. but it is fun.
and just becasue there is no scientific way of detecting something does not mean it does not exist. science is not all that capable. come on, we barely even get out own solar system. doctors cant even properly define the disease my dad has. people dont get autism.
okay maybe this will help to describe it though. do you know how people say that when you meet your mate, you just "know". this has happened to basically everyone ive met who is married. they just knew it was the right one.
so there are moments when i just "know".
so you cant concieve of a god. but you are a human. your brain is limited. your senses are limited. your emotions are limited.
and most of all your worldview is completely different from mine.
and who said god was a being. it could just be a force pervading all.
Me:
Given that you conceded God shouldn't be worshipped, isn't omnipotent, and apprently isn't omniscient either, it's hard to see why he should exist at all--or why we should call him God. Since the 19th century, the biological sciences have answered many questions philosophy and theology haven't. Why do you suppose humans are here? It's simply because we're good at surviving. If we weren't, we would have died out long ago. What is the meaning of life? To continue living. If any purpose can be given to life, it's to make more life, and make sure it doesn't die out. Other than that, there is no "purpose" other than what purposed we make for ourselves.
You're right on a philosophical level about existence, but that's hardly practical. Just because you can't definitely disprove something's existence does not make that a good reason to believe in it. Likewise, the vast majority of people who play the lotto do it because there's a *possibility* that they might win big. They give little credence to the fact that 99.99% of them won't win. For the same reason I don't buy lottery tickets, I don't believe in God. There's such a minutely and absurdly small possibility of a supreme being existing that it's folly to think otherwise. As for our solar system, science has got all the laws that describe it down pat. The theory's there, it's just that we haven't been everywhere firsthand. While new discoveries about the solar system happen all the time, it's not like we're expecting Saturn to suddenly shoot a giant cloud of toxic dust at the Earth because of something science hasn't figured out. We know pretty much what Saturn, and every other planet, will do for billions of years to come. If science is not "all that capable," there certainly is nothing else that is more capable than science.
And yes, I know about human intuition. I also know how easily it fails. Did you know 54.8% of marriages in the U.S. end in divorce? You can't tell me that such a significant majority of the U.S. "knows" they met their mate for life. I didn't say I couldn't conceive of a God, I said I couldn't conceive of a God that deserves to be called God.
Eh? EH?!
