h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

<> (Potholer)

Well quite. Whatever happened to all those miracles the Old Testament God was so fond of performing 2-3 thousand years ago? You know, those ones He would come up with from time to time to make people believe in Him? Does He not care anymore if people believe in Him or not? Is He getting fed up with the job?

az

Rather more than that - it's difficult to see *any* way to square physics with the continuous onmipresent influence of a powerful invisible deity without a huge rewriting.

It seems basically to be a case of people suggesting that the laws of physics really aren't as they appear to be, with the sole motivation being that they can keep on believing in supernatural things they have no actual evidence for, whilst pretending to pay lip-service to physics.

Likewise, appeals to QM seems nothing more than fancy footwork - an attempt to find a place left for one or more Gods to be hiding in.
Is there supposed to be some magical being in a parallel universe just tweaking the odd quantum event one way or another?

and what happens when our understanding of the laws of physics changes? Does the omnipotent being allow itself to just get boxed in further?
(b/c that happens fairly frequently)


Aside - I don't know who said that about QM, but it's basically wrong. As much as rolling dice is random, quantum mechanics is random. So in the exact same way that "God" could be affecting your dice throws, "God" could be tweaking QM events.

All right, I don't care. "non me ne frega un accidente."

I am tired of explaining to people who don't want to know...

azahar, ever hear of the *New* Testament?

<> (Della)

Who don't want to know *what*? Exactly?


az

I meant it's going around in circles.. and there's only so many times I can be bothered explaining my p.o.v., to people who are not the slightest bit interested because they *know* they're right, and are not the slightest bit interested in the qualities God might posesss. They *know* there's no such entity, and so they just feel comforted in their superiority, and press on regardless...

I don't really agree with that quote but was getting a bit fed up of seeing one person getting a lot of bashing needless to say I'm feeling better now

<> (Della)

Well, of course it's going round in circles, Della, because all you can say is that you happen to believe this or that about your particular god.

Belief in itself is not logical - though one *can* hold beliefs for very logical reasons. Where you fall down in the debate thing, Della, is that you simply say 'this is what I believe' and give no further information about that. So you leave people with a 'take it or leave' it response to what you say. And frankly, you can't blame them for leaving it since you don't say much else about your beliefs and why you have them.

What are these other qualities that your god possesses that you think nobody here is interested in? Can you explain them to us and why they mean so much to you? You see, that is something I could possibly relate to and understand - your own reasons for being a believer (other than saying you *just believe*).

az

<>

Nonsense.

<< Della, is that you simply say 'this is what I believe' and give no further information about that. >>

Nonsense again. I talked about what I believe to be the case about what you call "(my) particular God" (as if I own God!) The response was a lot of sneering and irrelevancy about the Old Testament, and some more irrelevancy about atheism/scientism and how it's *obviously* correct... which is where I lost interest...

Let someone with more patience, and who is better at explaining herself take over. I just can't. I should, but I can't.

Della, I disagree that anything I said to you was 'nonsense'.

If you have a strong believe in your god (not that you 'own' him but you do own this belief) then why not try to explain *why* you believe so strongly rather than just saying you do and leaving it at that?

The sneering and irrelevant responses that you perceive are not about your belief, but rather are about your inability to explain why you believe what you do. It's really not enough in a debate thread to say - 'well, I believe this, so there' - which is pretty much what you tend to do.

It is also not debate to say - 'well, everyone disagrees with me, so there' - because you don't really know that 'everyone disagrees with you'.

What you are doing is writing off a whole lot of possible interesting stuff that might actually support your own beliefs ... but you've got that chip on your shoulder and keep showing up as someone 'who nobody is going to listen to anyhow'.

Well, why not SAY more about your belief in a logical manner that befits a debate thread? Because not everyone here is a dyed-in-the-wool atheist - not even Noggin and certainly not me. And even atheists have manners (or should have).

So why not give it a go? Educate us, Della, about your particular belief and why you feel it is so important to you. And if anyone sneers about that they will only be making themselves look stupid.

az

>even atheists have manners<

Oo. I do like that!

az

<>

And it doesn't work anyway, because what matters is the logical implication of their *being* natural laws, and not the specific content of any particular law, whether accurate or otherwise.

We can probably agree that a God who lights the blue touch paper and retires, taking no further interest in his creation, is irrelevant to science, a non-question. He would also be an irrelevance to religion. Religion *requires* a god(s) that can intervene in the universe.

Two options: god is bound by natural laws, just as everything else is. But then god is an entity within the universe, discoverable by exactly the same means of observation and experiment as anything else - and we probably wouldn't consider such an entity as 'god' anyway.

Second option: god is not bound by natural laws. But now we have the "interface problem" mentioned earlier in the thread. There has to be a causal connection between what God does, and what the universe does at the point of intervention (and a causal connection between the state of the universe and god's knowledge). So god is bound by natural laws. In addition, if god is to be religiously or scientifically knowable, he must interfere in a way that is detectable, and can be demonstrated. Otherwise how do you know it's Him, and not some purely mundane event that we don't have an immediate explanation for?

Noggin

Hi Noggin

Why does religion require a god that can intervene in the universe? Would a religion that marvels at God's creation, in the knowledge that he will never do anything ever again not a religion?

Where the limits of religion are drawn is an interesting issue. I'm not sure how clear-cut limits could be.

Is the belief in the imminent coming of aliens to whoosh the faithful off to paradise a religion even if the people concerned claim that everything they believe is possible within current scientific understanding?

Is $cientology actually a religion, or just a tax-dodge for mind-****ers?

Is *faith* (belief in the absence of sufficient evidence) a sufficient *or* necessary condition to distinguish between a religion and a personal philosophy?

In the end, religion is only a category, and as such, is likely to have wooly edges. To the extent that 'religion' may be used as a category in reasoning or argument, it may need to be defined or clarified for a particular use, but having two people draw the boundaries of the word differently (or one person having different boundaries in different contexts) doesn't mean that either one is wrong.

I rather suspect that religion is a rationalisation of some sort of feeling, and so defining and limiting it as an intellectual idea may be a mistake.

'Religion' is something of a portmanteau word, isn't it?

Was it Tweedldee who declared, 'A word means precisely what I intend it to mean. No more, and no less.'

Or that could have been Tweedledum...

Also, if religion and a variety of feeling are somehow contingent, did one precede or give rise to the other?

As far as I am able to determine, one of the common characteristics of what we commonly call 'religion' seems to be a dogmatic assertion of something in the absence of reasonable evidence.
Of course, there may be some argument regarding the nature of 'reasonable', and/or 'evidence'.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/jesuscamp/trailer/

Humpty Dumpty it was.