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

as a atheist you believe there is no God.

you have less proff there isnt a God than Christians have there is.

you have faith that God doesnt exist

Okay well I'll try not to loose the thread too much here but I've got a bit of catching up to do. Please excuse me if I don't address specific points to specific people but I can't remember who said what:

1) I would say that anything, including God, would be perfect in themselves, but could still exist in an imperfect environment, ie, a perfect tree could exist in imperfect soil, and therefore need to add, I don't know, fertilizer, or something, to maintain the perfect tree, while it can't be actually improved. Maybe that's just going to remain a difference of opinion.

2) I don't presume that God is perfect. I think others who have stated that God is perfect have done so on the basis of what their religion teaches them, or what their faith tells them. Since I am not working on the strength of either of these things all I am saying is that there might be a God, and if there is he isn't necessarily perfect.

3) I think the hope that there is no afterlife does imply some, however small, degree of doubt, as opposed to the certainty that there is no afterlife. There are two reasons that seem obvious to me for this. Either because you don't want to live forever, or because you are afraid to submit your life to such a judgement, should there be one.

4) Non-believers don't have faith that God doesn't exist. Fatih is what takes you beyond what can be proved, hence a 'leap of faith'. God cannot be dected by any acceptable scientific means but is found instictively and emotionally. God's existence, from a scientific point of view, is a hypothesis (perhaps that could make you a hypotheist?) but until it has been proven, it does not take faith to consider him to not exist. I think science and relgion think in different ways on points like this.

Icotan & Benjaminm,

With regards to Faith & Reason.

This is something gone over at length in philosophy, and it's simply wrong to say you can operate with just one of these if you take a Realist position (as Theism and Atheism are defined to be). The alternative position of Anti-relaism leads you to satements such as 'that you have no belief whatsoever', including statements of anti-realism, such as these, which is meaningless as a beleif statement.

Thus we all operate with some level of faith. If you would like to investigate this take a look at The English Logician Sir Michael Dummett. I recommend the Logic of Metaphysics. http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/dummett.htm

Some examples;

a) we may have faith that the world is not purely a phenomenological existence of the solipsist, that material things exist. This is an article of faith.

b) We may have a belief/faith in the Law of the Excluded Middle (so called Bivalency of Logic).

c) We may faith that our cognitive faculties are sufficient to be able to give us objective truth through naturalism.

Such axioms as these we can call atoms, and building a logical system around them renders us Logical Atomism of Wittgenstein, that was a precursor of the Vienna School of Logical Positivism - developed in the early 20th century and Verificationism of folks like A J Ayer.

There is nothing wrong as such with Faith, what is wrong is to say that you can Reason without it. To speak meaninfully we must agree some common axioms. It's simply a fiction to say otherwise. Many Atheists think this weakens their position, it does not necessarily, but you need to reflect carefully on this, as have philosopher have done through the ages.

A Philosopher that has done this in respect to how Scientific theories actually develop is Kuhn. The is a good aricle on this here A1049915

If you want to study this further, it worhtwhile to take a look at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-axiomatic/

Sorry for all the typo's must upgrade my fingers!

Firstly, philosophy does not come in a nice neatly wrapped package that can be consumed and then one 'knows' philosophy. There are various positions and arguments.

nicky:"as a atheist you believe there is no God."
Nope. Wrong. I'm just one of those who doesn't believe there is a god. In fact it shows the bias of society that there is even a word for someone who doesn't belive in something that cannot be determined to exist.
"you have less proff there isnt a God than Christians have there is."
Postulates proof of a negative, therefore a spurious argument. I don;t have proof of any deity/ies existing.
"you have faith that God doesnt exist"
Nope, just no evidence he/she/it/whatever does.

p4t:"and it's simply wrong to say you can operate with just one of these if you take a Realist position "
No it isn't. It is perfectly possible to operate on a non faith base, indeed i'd say it was preferable.
You seem to be confusing the ability to operate within a particular framework with a belief that that framework is in someway objectively correct.

But a knowledge of failed philosophy is useful in rebutting nonsense.

1/ Take a look at the link on Kuhn incommensurability, You say that 'operating on a non-faith based reason' is preferable. But your statement of 'preference' gives a hint of your bias.

2/ Your belief that you can operate without faith. Is an article of faith. Thus That renders your 1st statement either meaningless or false. (If you don't beleive me: Prove you can operate without faith analytically and/or emprically - A J Ayer is acknowledged to have failed to do so for Verificationism based on the this argumentation logic, so don't waste too much time).

As a result it's a silly illogical and irrational position to argue your position, and suggests you simply dont want to accept that you have faith within your worldview. Sorry to be blunt - but there it is.

Here is another article on the above position, about reason requiring faith.

http://baharna.com/psychozoan/9701/logical.htm

I quote...

"One can read a kind of final chapter in this chronological overview of the (Vienna) Circle in the rise and fall of A. J. Ayer in the pantheon of positivistic true believers. Once the most rigorous of the orthodox hard-liners, by the late 1950's Ayer had adopted an idealist critique that undermined the foundation of the verifiability principle itself. The later Ayer pointed out that the idea of verification as a guiding principle could not itself be empirically assessed and had to be assumed a priori. And what would justify a privileged position for this proposition, as against all others? Silence....

What Wittgenstein understood, and the Circle blindly ignored, was that the hallowed position of metaphysics was no accident. Hence the justly celebrated proposition seven of the Tractatus: 'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.' "

Verification Principle as an "a piori assumption" is just another way of saying having "faith".

"You say that 'operating on a non-faith based reason' is preferable. But your statement of 'preference' gives a hint of your bias."
a) you misquote me and b) what's that got to do with anything.

"Your belief that you can operate without faith. Is an article of faith. Thus That renders your 1st statement either meaningless or false. (If you don't beleive me: Prove you can operate without faith analytically and/or emprically - A J Ayer is acknowledged to have failed to do so for Verificationism based on the this argumentation logic, so don't waste too much time)."

So, first you state that I operate with faith then you use your statement to prove that my statement that I don't is false. Then you appeal to authority to back it up.

Um we do have evidence offered that God exists of types that science readily accepts. Forinstance many people claim to have seen God now, seeing things is one way of observing the universe, however the evidence itself tends to be, very unreliable and more importantly given scietifc method, virtually unrepeatable under controlled conditions.

Science does not dismiss God it fails to be convinced by the evidence put forward. It is also unconvinced about tooth fairies and Santa Claus.

one love

fair point, my bad use of the word 'evidence' to get my point across, although as our conclusions and reasonings are the same I shall let myself off with nothing more than mild reprimand.

Much as it pains me to say it, badger is right on this one. If you want to be really pedantic and cartesian about it, you could say that we're using faith by assuming that our senses can be trusted and that nothing about the world around us we perceive is necessarily real. But the fact of the matter is that I have no reason to assume that the world around me isn't real, and every reason to accept that it is real. Regarding gravity as real has never let me down, trusting that science correctly understands my circulation has always seen me right. Accepting that the world is the way I am told it is is based not on trust or faith but evidence. God is welcome to join the hallowed gang of things I accept as facts, as long as he can stump up the required evidence. Seems fair to me.

There is no god. I wrote it in a book. Must be true.

I know it doesn't help the argument much, but I thought I'd offer you this thought from the late Linda Smith, just because it's funny:

'I tend to feel that if God wanted us to believe in him, he'd exist'.

You express it brilliantly, Pilgrim4Truth, IMO!

i thought i believed in god but then a lot of crazy happened and woosh! my faith went flying out of a twentieth story window...nd if flew away never to be seen again...

When things are not going your way, it's easy to be frustrated with your earlier expectations, your turn in grief through denial, anger, bargaining to depression/disillusionment before perhaps acceptance and moving on (this is the so called Kubler-Ross grief process that is used a lot in counselling).

Our worldview sometimes goes through this process, as we find evidence for and against the position we previously held. Take a look at this link regarding the stages of belief A937767. You can see in this some of the same stages of Kubler-Ross process.

a/ For example some folks whose worldviews are challenged go into denial and take on some beliefs as being fundamental, somethings that cannot be challenged, and when further challenged become angry and react to the challengers with intolerance. Their reasoning is closed to a particular form that rules out a piori experience and wisdom of 'others' outside their closeted worldview.

b/ Other individuals reject earlier POV and take on others they feel are more resiliant and trustworthy, often such 'converts' are even more fundamental than those in the denial stage! Neverthless it is often the case to find later that these converts also eventually percieve the same kind of 'failure' and 'futility' built into the newly adopted worldviews as they had in the earlier ones.

c/ Then a more general disllusionment might occur, with some individuals consider post-modern irrationalism (where there is no belief that can be said to be objectively true) and you exist in a quagmire of relativism for example, hating open minded reason and living without faith. A kind of 'Misology'.

To my mind all 3 of the above responses to change are inappropriate (and IMO I see people holding them from Atheist as well as Theist POV's).

It brings to my mind the following quotes'

"...It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss'." (Socrates)

"...As the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters." (Plato)

I take these as meaning that we must 'soldier on' despite things not being easy. We must not give up on beleiveing that there is meaning and truth to life, and that keeping on open mind is crucial.

That last quote is a very important one for those who, in the words of C S Lewis, put 'God in the Dock' or on Trial. Requiring him to provide evidence for us to believe in him, to answer our questions on our terms of verificationism (subjective evidence not being allowed in court).

As such we become the law-giver, judge AND jury!. But the life that is at stake is not God's, but our own.

We need Faith in Reason as well as a fully Reasoned Faith IMO. We need to reject Misology and promote Tolerance.

Some remarks by GK Chesterton in the context of our conversation...

* Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. …
* It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas. …
* Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. …
* If it is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them.
* If it is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. …
-- Heretics, 1905.

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.
-- Orthodoxy, 1909.


Plus Some remarks by Jacques Maritain on the same topic...

The men of today have the very instructive privilege of watching the historic failure of three centuries of rationalism. It would be suicidal to blame reason. But they can observe everywhere, even in the economic order, what is produced by the claim of imposing upon matter the rule of a reason which itself refuses to be guided by the highest and most essential realities, and will be satisfied only with facile clarities. All rationalization inevitably engenders absurd results when it is not the work of an integral reason, which heeds the order of wisdom and of nature.
-- The Dream of Descartes, 1944.

Your argument is interesting pilgrim and I recognise a lot of what you are saying about converts but surely you're not suggesting that, having once arrive at a position, I mustn't let outside factors persuade me to change it? You also seem to be saying that 'putting God in the dock' by which, as I understand it, you mean challenging God to prove he exists, is wrong, and that I should just accept it. Have I understood you correctly?

I believe you must remain open to new information, experience and thought to adjust your worldview. Particularly when its not working for you in finding the meaning to life, the universe and everything !

As for putting 'God in the dock', this is about our expectations of our relationship with God maybe not being appropriate - about asking God to come to us on our terms, without us making a genuine reciprocal gesture (not being fully open).

For example if we expect God to come to us to prove he exists and cares for us, according to some empirical evidence that will stand up to objective analysis. And that does not happen, perhaps it does not so much mean that God does not exist, but that that kind of approach to God is not really valid.

Having a relationship with God is a bit like deciding to make a commitment of love to your spouse/partner. You may have to give up something, you have to take some risks, make a 'leap of faith' that this will work out.

For many folks that's too much to ask for, they are simply not willing to make that kind of commitment, they want things on their terms. So they end up in relationships that never really work out.

Something like that.

What I think - is that if you make an effort to open your mind to God, and sincerely seek him with the whole of your human faculty, you will find him. He's waiting on you.

.

Right, I understand what you're saying now. In which case, two things:

1. Obviously my marriage, in common with all marriages, necessitates faith, because I don't know how it's going to work out, on account of my being unable to see the future. Given that, comitting to one person until we both die requires a great leap of faith, I agree. However, I have undertaken it quite confident in the notion that my wife definitely exists. She checks out againsts all my senses, and I have indepedent verification and a birth certificate and everything. The trouble with applying that argument to God is that I am asked not to have faith in his character, that he will, as it were 'fulfill his part of the bargin, as I do with my wife. I have to have faith that he exists before I can even start considering whether I trust him or not, which leads me on to:

2. God can't be detected in the way that anything else can? Well I'll leave aside the idea that God, the creator, is the ONLY THING in the Universe that can't be detected, and get straight to my second point. The method that most people use to discern whether stuff exists or not is, as I said before, sensory evidence. Obviously I accept other people's evidence on stuff I haven't seen and experienced, but I expect the same quality of evidence. Why on earth must I be expected to completely abandon this reliable method now and replace it with blind faith, a system which hasn't done very well throughout the course of human history, on the whole. You've talked about what I have to put in to this relationship- but what does God have to put in? Turning up is always my number one, and once he does that, then I can decide whether or not to have faith in him.