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

yet did I not bring up perfectly unnatural phenomeni that shake the fiber of there or is there not a god/gods debate. Why some people are uncannily prone to suddenly catching on fire with little provocation. And the live toads/ links of chain that have been found deep underground/within lumps coal/ore? tribes that had no access to advanced scientific analytical machinery accurately plotting the paths of stars which cannot be seen with the unaided eye?
S'ppose everybody is still embroiled in middle east conflict subject.
My father studied anthropology and has quite a few opinions on that, since he alsop used to travel a lot, but
i am not him, so...& anyone?

very much
I left the middle-east debate debate alone as Noggin and Math and others were so ably saying what I would've said inadequately
as to the phenomena you mention I would claim they are not unnatural or supernatural but merely unexplained at present

"Whereas the religious can explain away the gaping holes in any organised religious system by saying that something is only symbolic (ie Noah's Ark or Creationism)..."

"What bothers me is when the religious claim that they have evidence on the level of scientific proof to suggest that God exists."

what bothers me is the phrase "the religious" being used as:
(a) a term of abuse
(b) a synonym for monotheism

signed
a religious polytheist

"Therefore, if you're an atheist you haven't got to prove anything. But if you believe in a god or many gods, it's rather up to you to prove the existence of your god, something that I fail to see that anyone has conclusively succeeded in."

Echo, why should I have to prove my beliefs any more than an atheist has to prove theirs? By that I mean: why should anyone have to provide some sort of proof for the basis of their value system? And, of course, if anyone has to do that,t hen we all have to do it, for to hold a firm belief in e.g. the superiority of science to provide a basis for one's value system is as much a belief as any other.

An atheist doesn't have to prove anything if atheism is, as I believe, an absence of belief. They don't have any beliefs to prove.

But I seriously don't want to get into those semantics again!

This is largely rooted in my own personal opinion, and may not have application to the world as a whole, but I believe that it's not very good to believe something just blindly, without having any reason to suggest that it is the right thing to believe. I feel the need for proof, and so since I haven't ever seen anything to suggest that I should be religious (I've never felt the presence of any 'other' beings, or seen any reason why something not of this world is responsible for things that happen in it) I am not religious. I take the view that atheism is the default position, and then if something religious proves itself to me, I would take a view consistent with that religious aspect. But if I then, on closer examination, find that this religion's 'proof' is not sufficient, I would revert back to atheism - an absence of belief.

I think that one should never believe anything without proof, so I require concrete evidence that something like a god exists before I would believe in it. This is why I have developed a sort of 'catchphrase' that 'God has the burden of proof.' But I suppose this is really more rooted in personal perspective than anything else.

I suppose I can prove my viewpoint, because I can show fossil evidence and the position of celestial bodies in the galaxy and scientific evidence like that to support my non-religious viewpoint and my belief that the earth came about without the aid of some sort of supernatural phenomenon. It just seems logical to me that if you're going to state something to be the case, you have to provide evidence to back it up.

If your 'religion' is really an ethical system and doesn't involve the belief in supernatural or, I suppose, unusual occurrences/people, then you wouldn't have to prove it. But to get someone (especially me) to believe something outside of the scope of our lives, proof just seems to be a natural requirement.

I feel like I just said *way* more than was really necessary there. I hope it all made sense.

oh, um okay.

EMR

And if your belief system defines deity as being within natural laws (accepting only that some natural laws are not yet understood or recognised) and does not refute any of the scientific theories of either evolution or physics?

I still don't feel any need to 'prove' my system is 'true'.

As far as I am concerned, I take the relaxed view that many heathens in antiquity never 'met' their gods, and seem from the surviving evidence to have been un-bothered by this, following the codes of conduct but not being particularly 'religious', while others were as thoroughly god-touched as I and some of my friends are.

The creation story of heathenry, which has only come down to us through Christian sources, was not regarded as a One True Way type thing, as you can tell from the references in the Eddas and the poetry of the time. It was regarded as a story, a myth with mainly poetic meaning. The traders and raiders of northern europe knew that their world was not actually bounded by Ice and Fire, they'd sailed all over it.

That was 1500 years ago...

It seems very strange to all the pagans I know that there are some people in other religions who regard their similarly poetic tale as literal truth...

Jez

<>

I think I'm inclined to follow Echo here. Although empirical/scientific facts and explanations have some role to play, and certainly constrain the *application* of a value system (since it's the real world that they're being applied to), it is impossible to provide a proof for the basis of a value system. Even where science can say "it makes sense for a social animal to act/think this way" this is still only a description, it's not prescriptive. Value systems can be subjected to analysis, but they are not a set of provable facts (leastways not outside the system of ethics to which they belong.

Noggin

An absence of belief is a belief in itself even though you may never think of a god or gods and godesses.



alji

Running the risk or starting another debate about semantics:

I don't believe in anything. I either know or I don't know.

You believe you know or don't know.

alji

<>

To be honest, I don't know. Once again, I am guilty of thinking within my Judeo-Christian sphere. I don't know people in RL that do not either believe in a triple-O god or are atheist; I guess I've just got used to talking with them.

I guess my main feeling is that if someone says 'I know this or that god exists,' my reaction is going to be '*How* do you know?' Because if it wasn't a spiritual matter, 'I just know' is going to sound a little silly. 'How do you know that William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet?' 'I just know.' In the case of this example one could produce a copy of Hamlet with Shakespeare's name on it, or really, if the inquirer was skeptical, find a copy of the First Folio and show them that. And then, if the skeptic says 'How do you know Marlowe didn't write Hamlet?' one could produce entire books, treatises and dissertations, all with reliable evidence. One could do a literary comparison of the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe, one could compare their respective upbringings. If asked for proof in this case, one could at least perform a brief Google search to prove their point. 'I just know.' would not be sufficient.

So why should religion be the exception?

Because of the "power" of religion - to illustrate the point: those who buy into it will believe that some badly dressed charlatan, while ranting on a stage for viewers to be saved by sending him money, can actually restore sight to a blind person or the ability to walk to a cripple simply by placing his hand on their forehead and knocking them over. I wonder why these "saved" people aren't back the following week showing off how they'd been cured [no, I don't really].

You know y'all, one of the things that makes me laugh about atheists and rationalists is their touching, almost religious, belief that science already has all the answers to life, the universe and everything.

Newsflash people, even the most optimistic scientists would admit to knowing only the minutest portion of the rules of the universe. After all that's why they are scientists, to find out more....!

Thus when a rationalist demands that us religionists give them proof in terms of the 'laws of physics or evolution' I can barely stand up for laughing. It's like saying that you can realistically prosecute a criminal case only having the title and foreword of a textbook on the law.

Now I agree that the Abrahamics' ancient sacred texts are pretty poor when given even a cursory comparison to our present knowledge of science. However, there is an entire industry devoted to biblical errancy which misses the point almost very time they open their mouths. They aren't helped by biblical literalists who also miss the point.

The point is context. Each ancient sacred text from the Bible to the Mabinogion was committed to paper in a specific historical and social context. They were written by fairly well-educated people with a particular knowledge of the workings of the universe. Strangely many of these ancient peoples had a far more advanced understanding than any following culture until at least the 18th century.

Both rationalists and literalists also fail to understand the amount of symbolic imagery used by people of those times. With a mostly illiterate and poorly-educated populace the use of such imagery was commonplace to enable the priests to get over the important social, moral and ethical points that their religion represented.

We continue to use this system of symbolic imagery today, but the role of educator of the masses has passed to the media, especially TV. I'm not sure they are any safer a pair of hands - are you?

Thus if we say that Sampson killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a mule, or that Beowulf slew Grendel, one needs to look beyond the story at the message it would have contained for its original audience. The man Jesus was particularly talented in this regard, and many of his parables have real meaning and use even today. So have Aesop's fables, the Norse Edda's and the Brehon laws.

Perhaps when the rabid literalists and rationalists grow up we can continue this conversation and find a useful rapprochement between science and religion.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\

Okay, I will backtrack here, seeing as I appear to have argued myself into a corner.

I don't ask that you use scientific principles to prove your beliefs. But it just seems logical to me that you have some reason for believing what you do. If you have a theory about how the world works, you can't just say 'I believe this because it is the case.' You have to say why it is the case and something along the lines of what led you to that particular belief.

I believe that all things have an underlying order, because systems such as evolution or physical forces or the orbit of the planets around the Sun suggest a sort of rationality that is not possible if everything is really chaos. I don't go quite as far as Dirk Gently and believe in the 'fundamental interconnectedness of all things', but I think there must be some thread that ties the universe together and gives it order, because the various scientific principles that we have established seem to depend on a sort of system of order.

That is an argument and/or a reasoning of the sort I had in mind. It does involve scientific principles, but it doesn't necessarily have to - I guess I'm just trying to say that you need a better reason than that a belief system involves fun rituals or you get presents at some sort of winter, solstice-oriented holiday. You need to try to prove it. It just makes sense to me that you don't argue something without backing up your thesis.

Hey, I'm not exactly questioning you peoples' beliefs (at least not on purpose anyway). Some of my good friends in high school were wiccas and agnostics. They don't really all worship "the devil," Much as the more "established religions" like to keep accusing them of. Or at least "the devil" that some of them might claim to worship(animist new age religions I mean), falls under a different definition than the monotheistic one, in that they are probably talking about something else. When you get down to it, I think the only people who would truly consider themselves worshippers would be Satanists andf for all I know they could be speaking in code too, just like the sufis and western witches and the like, that were oh so many years a predecessor to all that new age stuff. What is Zoroastrianism anyway? Do people consider it as more of a rteligion or a philosophy?
What of irradiation bubbles in rocks/mionerals that are analyzed to be so old as to make one wonder how any radioactive material can be left, usually the longer things are dead, the more radioactive decay removes the carbon-14,etc.)And what is the dividing ground, if any, between religions and philosophies, anyway?
-Thorn

We don't really all worship the devil? Well, that's good to know

Actually I don't see how anyone can accuse an agnostic or worshipping anyone, if they're not sure god or the devil even exist.

<>

Has anyone said that science already knows the answer to everything? I know I haven't.

<>

So, it's funny that you can't prove your own theory?

<>

OK, so priests knew that the Bible was symbolic, not literal, and they basically misled and lied to the uneducated masses so they would believe in the underlying morality of the religion? You sure that it wasn't to get massive amounts of money and power?

Weel, sure, but that was a convenient "perk" if you will. Getting to be able to manipulate generations, upon generations...Is what happens no?
And I didn't say I didn't believe in gnostics or agnostics really(even though that might trip up the meaning what with the double negative).
What about aliens? How come some people who don't believe in any particular faith can still claim to have seen s?
Are 6they in a sense constructing their own faith for themselves. Many people do this, anyway. that is what the more "established religions" (I suspect) are so vehemently against. You see if everybody did that then they would be out of a job .
-Thorn.

Meant