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

I said this in another discussion, and I'll say it again here...

*everything* is a leap of faith, technically. This is because -

1) You can't assume that past history is any guide to future events. Or that it even existed.
2) Without past history, you can't deduce any underlying reason.
3) 'Pure' reasoning fails, as you can't assume logic to be a working system.

However, if people ask "what sex are you?" I say "Male". When people ask "is there a God" I say "no". I know there is no God as much as I know anything, and that's good enough for me. My claim to be male is not a leap of faith - why should my claim that there is no God be an automatic leap of faith?

True - it's possible that nothing is real, so what we "know" is all either assumption or, if we care about it a bit more, a leap of faith. Descartes and all that.

On a more everyday level: the fact that you are male is something you can claim to "know" better than anyone because you have inside knowledge. You may be wrong (you may be a brain in a jar) but you're more likely to be right than anyone else, and if you /are/ wrong then the question is pointless and we may as well just gurgle together in our jars. To get on with our lives, we accept your maleness as fact. Your gender is not in dispute (although, for me, online, I suppose I do have to take it on faith...)

But with the origin of the universe, you don't have any secret inside information that the rest of us don't (if you do, why are you holding out on us?!) and there is no consensus by which we can say "that is a fact" so your leap of faith is as good as anyone's, in terms of its rational basis.

A Creationist says that God created the world, and the semblance of its history. That sounds silly to me, and presumably to you. We can't accept it because it doesn't feel right. But the same applies the other way round, and no evidence or rational argument will ever resolve that one. Now, Creationism is an extreme example -- I haven't met any Creationists in the cast-iron seven-days sense who are actually able to think, though there might be one or two around. But I have met plenty of less fundy Christians who are just as rational and philosophically aware as anyone else. The most rational one's I've spoken to tend to say /yes/ evolution, /yes/ the Big Bang, but how come it was set up to happen that way in the first place? They say "God", I say "It Just Did". Neither answer is particularly impressive, or rational.

I wasn't trying to get all epistemological and compare the basis for believing in your sex or sexuality with the basis for believing whether there is a God. I was just saying that the processes that go on in your brain can be said to be similar. You can look at a man and a woman together, and decide you prefer one or the other sexually. You can consider all the evidence together, and you decide "there is a God" or "there is no God." The answer that comes out depends on the way you're wired.

Oh good - so you'll allow me to use my(and others) experience and knowledge - that makes things actually possible - I wanted to lay the groundwork a little...

A long time ago, a Christian scholar looked at the bible, counted ages and such like, and came out with an estimate of the length of time since creation (6000yrs, I seem to recall). At the time, Religious Scientists were highly pleased - here was a testable observation of christianity, and if it turned out that the universe HAD been around for 6000 years, then this would have been clear evidence for the accuracy of the bible, and impossible to refute.

Sadly, the prediction was out by several powers of ten, and the theory had to be adapted, to give either a God maliciously creating misleading evidence, or the bible being in fact non-accurate.

A similar thing happened when Paul was attempting to convert people. He claimed that Christ had said that the coming of the lord would happen in his own lifetime, so time was of the essence. This too is a prediction, and unless I'm much mistaken, that failed too.

In fact, I'd be hard pushed to find a single prediction that the Christianity theory made which actually came true. If it was a scientific theory, then it's long history of failed predictions, and rapid modification to take into account changing experimental data (IE time), would have caused it to be rejected as fast as Cold Fusion.

The claim that the universe is fundamentally logical, and without supernatural phenomena, has made a good deal of predictions, all of which have come true, and has not had to be modified by Evidence, well... ever. That's why it's the most convincing (for me) of the various theories.

Meta-theories (like Occam's Razor, testability, or the idea that our location in space and time should not be "special") are the only valid ways of distinguishing between two theories that both explain the available data - you are right that Christianity (all versions) explains the relevant data, but if you judge it by the various meta-theories, then it gets condemned as almost certainly incorrect. It's pretty much a model example of what the meta-theories are there to guard us against.

"if you /are/ wrong then the question is pointless and we may as well just gurgle together in our jars" - I call this the "Pragmatism principle", and have recently spent a long time trying (and failing) to convince Caledonian of it's reasonableness. I'm fully behind it - it's the only assumtion I bother making when I construct my world view :- Pragmatism works. Everything else follows in a sensible progression on from that.

It's true that theist theories have had to be revised continually and so their credibility gets stretched further and further.

Of course the "theory that the universe is fundamentally logical" is not a single theory, and has had to be revised continually in the same way. Relativity, for example, is a big revision that sounds totally counter-intuitive and downright illogical. It just happens to work. I take your point though: the difference is that a crackpot-sounding revision like Relativity generates testable predictions, whereas creationist accounts have had to be so drastically revised that they are untestable.

By insisting on testability we are applying the criteria of empirical science to theories that exist outside that tradition, so a theologian would still have room to manoeuver. It's good enough for me though.

I argued that atheism requires a leap of faith in my article on the subject, but over the course of time and through many arguments, my position has been changed. I now believe that atheism is a conclusion based on the evidence. An agnostic refuses to make a decision, and a deist chooses to ignore the contrary evidence, but an atheist still examines the evidence in favor... but since that is conspicuously absent, the atheism is unshaken. I had an extended stay in agnostic limbo until I got my hands on sufficient argument against deism, and at that point, I reached a conclusion. If someone has a challenge to that conclusion, though, I will gladly hear him out. This is a fundamental difference between a belief and faith... faith will be clung to stubbornly, but beliefs can be modified, exchanged, or discarded at need.

BTW... relativity may not be all it's cracked up to be... some scientists accelerated some photons to 300 times the speed of light. Impossible, if relativity is correct.

The major glaring error that I see in this entry is that Atheism is not the only alternative to the Christian worldview. There are nearly limitless beliefs and philosophies out there. Many with their own creation mythologies and views of the afterlife.

That's my main beef with Creationists. The gall of them to beleive that their Creation Myth is any more accurate than that of other cultures! It may be a fun comic venture to try to pseudo-scientificly explain the "truth" of non-Christian Creation Myths.

Why cant Valhalla, Tir na nOg, nirvana, or reincarnation be valid alternatives to the Christian Heaven and Hell? An infinite array of alternative afterlifes is much more appealing than the options of the Christian version and oblivion.

Yeah, I know. British and American atheists like to bash Christianity because it's what we've been subjected to most, and Judeo-Christian Creationism in particular because it's a barn door.

But that's not a logical fallacy in the question of Pascal's wager: if you like, you can re-formulate it by saying, well, whatever the truth is, atheism is a negative score or zero score at best. at least gives the possibility of a reward, currently rated by Ladbrokes at Infinity-1 to 1 against.

As an alternative, how about Caodeism, practised in Vietnam? It's several religions sawn up and welded together, with a big dash of Buddhism and a roster of saints that includes Jesus, Louis Pasteur, Michael Faraday and all sorts. Probably Babe Ruth and George Best too.

Atheism is definately a positive score if the Buddhists are right, cos I'm that much closer to enlightenment that Christians, Muslims, and Caodeists. (it's a mark of my education that that word brings to mind the cacodaemons from Doom2...)
Still a heck of a long way away, though...

Pascal's Wager Entry: http://www.h2g2.com/A341920

Relativity is actually a fine example of the workings of meta-theories. It comes out of the meta-theory that "physical laws and constants are the same for all observers", or "We're not special". Now, when you make the speed of light constant, the whole of relativity logically follows on from that.

Now, had you mentioned Quantum Mechanics....

Surely, whether you are Christian or not, you still have equal potential to go to Heaven or Hell. If God does exist, and you happen to be an atheist but have lived a good life helping others, then God will not send you to Hell? God, being "All good", would surely see that you have been kind and helpful, and these being qualities that Christians are supposed to have, you would be let into Heaven.

I think I'm agnostic, being that I am being swayed both by atheism and Christianity. Going by logic, atheism seems correct, but I'm still thinking about it.

~~A~~

Depends entirely on the branch of Christianity. Some reckon you can make it on works alone, others say that you're going to hell in a small basket you can carry in your hand...

There's no rush to make up your mind - keep thinking - keep checking the evidence - and eventually the side that's right will win... (that's us, btw )

Thanks.

~~A~~