Are You Religious?

[geodave]

Well, since I was asked, I don't believe creativity proves there is a God. It was just an aside about the difference in the Christian mindset between the forces of good and evil.

And MOST PEOPLE do not choose a religion -- they just pretty much stick to the one they are born into. I admire those who explore other options are being brave.

Also, I've read a lot over the years about ancient mysteries (one of my favorite subjects) and it's entirely possible that the religious history of many religions is misinterpreted. If you doubt this, try explaining Ezekiel.

[PB_guy]

I believe that you are correct, Dave. Most (emphasis on most) people don't choose their religious beliefs (including atheism), they fall into them culturally, most commonly via their immediate family. The interesting scenarios come where people take up a different faith, sometimes at severe cost to themselves. They can lose friends, family and even their lives. (Note the blasphemy provisions of many muslim countries that practice sharia laws.)

[BitBuster]

Yeah, I tend to listen more charitably to people who made a conscious choice regarding their faith (or lack thereof). I respect them a lot more than people who just run with what they were taught, without applying any critical thinking whatsoever.

[James]

Sorry for not replying earlier, but I wanted to make a complete response to everything that has been posted since my last reply. Warning: this post is VERY long. So long that the board is forcing me to do it in multiple posts.

In response to PB_guy and information, impossibility, dogma, eye evolution, worldviews:

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In response to Geodave on "suspicious" genomes, age of the earth, social Darwinism:


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[quote]While it's possible that all primates derived from one primate, there are some very "suspicious" things in the human genome, which make it unlikely (but still possible) that we evolved from apes unaided.

Such as?

The age of the earth is pretty much undetermined. However, since there are 11000 years of history in the Ulduvai gorge alone, it's hard for me to swallow 6000 as the age of the earth. If we are to believe the Sumerian record, earth is hundreds of thousand of years old (at least). Also, the remnants of the last ice age (12000 years ago) are pretty hard to ignore.

Now when you start talking billions of years, the science is much more sketchy. There's no way to know for sure if those dating methods are valid -- it's all theory. It's certainly possible, but it's not FACT.

The science is just as valid when you get to larger time periods. Do you have any specific criticisms? And nothing can ever be called a fact, if you want to get semantical. How do you know you didn't just marry a gigantic unicorn 5 minutes ago, and then the unicorn wiped your memory and removed all related evidence? You can't prove that didn't happen. Your state of not-marrying-a-unicorn-5-minutes-ago cannot be considered sure, and therefore not a fact.

Do you know why we had "jungle gyms" in elementary school? Something called "social Darwinism". Since kids are evolved from monkeys, they must be something like monkeys -- the child goes from monkey to human as he grows up. We all know this is pretty much bunk (and jungle gyms over concrete are stupid), but you see how dangerous and insidious a belief system can be. What if we found out tomorrow that tater tots caused cancer -- could we all sue the school lunch program?

dafuq? I literally understand none of this. Can you, uh, elaborate?

[James]

In response to PB_guy's "rebuttal" of the "29+ evidences" article:

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Note that even the evolutionist accepts that abiogenesis is statistically impossible, therfore it is assumed (taken on faith): "it is taken as axiomatic that an original self-replicating life form existed in the distant past"

The article does not state that abiogenesis is statistically impossible, it states that "abiogenesis is not considered in this discussion of macroevolution: abiogenesis is an independent hypothesis".

Nor is abiogenesis even said to be accepted (never mind due to faith) by the article's author; not only is he assuming a self-replicating life form existed for sake of argument, he says the origin of that life form is irrelevant! (i.e. abiogenesis does not have to even be correct; a deity could have created this life form and it would not affect the validity of anything in the paper!)

I am very tempted to bring up your thoughts on worldviews here. We are not even out of the paper's abstract and many words have been put in the author's mouth which he did not say or even attempt to say.

Section: Introduction to phylogenetics. Evolutionary phylogenetic trees are common. ie. "a method for determining phylogenetic trees based on morphology" But classification of organisms based on morphology was invented by Linnaeus, a creationist who believed that God is a God of order, and not chaos. A major problem with phylogenetic trees and other related models is the lack of evidence that supports the links between known organisms and their supposed fossil relatives. An alternate to the phylogenetic tree is the phylogenetic orchard, where each tree in the orchard is the original created "kind", approximated by family, and the branches of the tree going down to species and sub-species. see: http://www.answersin...lassifying-life

There is an absolute ton of evidence for common descent (and by extension, the phylogenetic trees that common descent is so often modeled by). The genetic evidence is certainly the most overwhelming; the 29+ evidences page does cover them in section 4, but the profoundness of the evidence is unfortunately not conveyed. Even if no other evidence existed, the genetic evidence alone would still be enough to support evolution.

An excellent page which explains not only the genetic evidence, but additionally why it is so overwhelming: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/ .Unfortunately, this article is very long. I wouldn't mind it if you skipped over this article entirely; in fact, that's what I expect you to do, as reading it all would take time that you probably don't have. It is a good read, though; so far every creationist that I've shown this page to that has taken the time to read the whole thing has dropped their "creationist" label entirely (a small sample size of 2, but still noteworthy).

AIG is infuriatingly vague. What constitutes a "kind", why can one "kind" never change into another "kind" by evolutionary processes, what does classifying by "kind" achieve, etc.? Straight answers to these questions seem hard to come by, which is unfortunate because those answers are absolutely necessary if we want to dissect the relevant claims. It's almost like the claims are designed with the intention of being unfalsifiable...

Since everything was created by a single Creator, could not the same thing be said about common design? That God would only need a single code for DNA? The argument proves nothing.

That is an unfalsifiable statement that contributes nothing and could be altered to "explain" almost anything. Such claims are essentially just ways of ensuring "victory" no matter how true the claim actually is (if the animal kingdom does not have a lot of similarities, then evolution is wrong, but if the animal kingdom does have a lot of similarities, then it's obviously just common design by God, and evolution is wrong! Q.E.D.)

While "common design, common designer" cannot be disproven, my best argument against it lies in the overwhelming evidence for evolution (and specifically the genetic evidence as posted above in that unfortunately long article). In my eyes, if an intellectually honest person accepts said evidence, they must necessarily conclude via Bayesian thinking that common descent via natural selection is a profoundly more logical explanation than "special creation" is. Of course, all bets are off if the evidence for evolution is rejected.

I found this statement astounding because it is so true, and so rare.Now for some problems with the assumptions.

Problems with Chemical Homology: http://www.answersin...ion-been-proven

"We have to realize that the entire line of reasoning by evolutionists is based upon a single assumption: that the degree of similarity between organisms indicates the degree of supposed relationship of the said organisms. In other words, it is argued that if animals look alike, then they must be closely related (from an evolutionary point of view)"

I stopped reading right there. I literally facepalmed. That is not at all what evolutionary theory is based on; if it were based on such an assumption, it would be a pathetic theory worthy of ridicule.

Problems with Homology: http://www.answersin...rities-homology

I have literally no idea what this article is trying to claim. I did notice, though, that it claims some stuff about a man named "Richard Dickerson" and his tests that he did that showed surprising results: "In this test, it turned out that humans are more closely related to the chicken than to any living mammal tested!", which AIG immediately pounces upon as clear evidence for a falsification of evolution.

However, doing a search for information about this study yields literally 0 results. There aren't even any mentions of this on other creationist websites. Funny how there exists this profoundly powerful piece of information which so obviously proves evolutionary theory incorrect and could revolutionize our understanding of the world as we know it, and yet it's literally only known to one specific creationist organization with considerable bias.

If you claim a conspiracy/dogma explanation for how that information is not widespread, you must first explain why that data would be released in the first place, as both the AIG page and external research on Mr. Dickerson show without a doubt that he was adamantly in favour of evolutionary theory and was even an expert witness on certain trials challenging the imposition of creationism into science curriculum. If he did an experiment that generated such anti-evolutionary evidence, and there really was a conspiracy involved, why wouldn't he just destroy, or alter, or otherwise be dishonest with the evidence?

I'm going a bit off-topic, but I thought that was worth writing.

[James]

To ManipulatorGeneral, on the subject of the Christian God being expected to create life:

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I could suggest attributes of God's nature that could explain why, with all knowable information at hand, He would decide to create rather than (as I sometimes joke) lounge around and mentally solve Sudoku puzzles for all eternity. The biblical understanding of God, as I'm reading it, is creative and personal, such that it gives Him pleasure to create and to share Himself with sentient beings; it's just in God's nature, so we would expect creative action when presented with this scenario. (Dave might have more input, as he commented on a similar status of mine; ask him.) The parents here could also relate this to why they decided to have children: not because they needed kids, but because having children pleased them. To gauge somewhat what I'm posing, you can test this thought experiment: what might you decide to do in God's position, with all knowledge and capability thereof? We can perhaps divert this thread to this thought now; I would argue that we all have ideas of what a god or gods should be and do, regardless of whether we even believe in any. I never had truly considered your query before, BitBuster, so thank you for asking it.

An omniscient being capable of choice is a paradox. A perfect being that feels emotion (such as pleasure) is also a paradox, depending on your definition of perfection. Additionally, one of the mandates of your God is that he must be worshipped; why, exactly, does this please him? Why does it please him to have people love him? Why would he create people and intentionally withhold information about his existence such that they end up burning in Hell for eternity as a result of using their God-given logic; does this please him?

But I digress...assuming that I could do anything I wanted, I would do nothing even remotely like what God purportedly did in the Bible. I cannot overstate how pathetic that book is, not least regarding its anthropocentricity. This extends to all human religions as well; if there IS a supernatural force that is responsible for our being here, human religions are the most ultimate insult to this force imaginable.

I also agree with BitBuster: "I guess I have questions about the utility that an omnipotent being could derive from lesser beings that are wholly his/her/its creation."

To Geodave, on the origin of creativity:

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I think this is probably a better argument than evolution to make people thing about God -- if there is no God, then where did we get creativity from?

What, exactly, prevents creativity from being formed through natural processes (i.e. evolution)?

Also, it's definitely worth noting that acknowledging a natural origin of human qualities such as love and creativity does not have to diminish our appreciation of these qualities. In fact, a natural formation of these qualities (and even life itself) is far more beautiful an explanation than religion could ever offer.

A comment on BitBuster's remark on the Bible:

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I think part of the issue is that even if you accept that there's a God, it brings up the issue of "which God?" Even Christianity has plenty of different sects, most of whom interpret the Bible in a different way (and within those denominations, individual people often interpret it a different way...).

Mm. One must wonder why, exactly, God would create a book that can be used to justify so many points of view that in fact it ends up justifing no point of view at all. You would think a being with infinite capabilities would be able to create some clarity, especially around points that are crucially important. Or, y'know, he could just come down and clarify things for us, but then he's no longer testing us by requiring faith, or something...

Of course, the inevitable response to this is that the book has gone through so many re-writings and so many re-translations and so on. But whose fault is that? You have a being of infinite capability that chooses to:

*reveal himself arbitrarily to a "chosen group" (lol) of people in ancient Palestine

*instruct fallible scribes to write down his will in a book

*leave the book for thousands of years to be altered by anybody with dishonest motives

*let the book be copied and recopied, translated and retranslated, by humans who are guaranteed to make errors at every step along the way

*let the contents of the book be voted on by humans in various councils

*etc. (see Documentary Hypothesis, Authorship of the Pauline epistles, Synoptic problem, how the NT canon was formed...)

...does that make any sense? (coincidentally, I can provide a viewpoint where all of this information makes perfect sense...)

[James]

To ManipulatorGeneral, on historical evidence and the argument from inconsistent revelations:

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Certainly a valid question; there are a few approaches by which I determine this. I find no historical evidence supporting religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism...(a lot more after this cut for space reasons)

What historical evidence for Christianity can you find? Genuinely curious. I think we've talked a bit about this before...

One other observation I make about the differing gods is the often-cited argument from inconsistent revelations: that all theists experience God, so why should one be any more credible than the other? It is obvious that not everybody can be correct, so the solution is, again, which god makes most sense. I find that positing the Christian God as true, or at least one of the Abrahamic ones, sorts out this problem:

I think you may have missed the elegance behind the argument from inconsistent revelations. People believe or have believed in Allah, the Jewish version of the Judeo-Christian god, the various Hindu gods, the Sikh god, East Asian gods, African gods, pagan gods, Ancient Greek gods, Ancient Norse gods, Ancient Egyptian gods, the Zoroastrian god, etc. - people believe or have believed in these deities just as fervently as you believe in Jesus Christ. People have profound personal experiences with every religion. How can you claim your personal experiences to be valid while simultaneously rejecting the exact same personal experiences that others claim? (My answer to this is hubris, by the way.) The argument from inconsistent revelations shows how extraordinarily easy it is for people to delude themselves with falsehoods. It raises not the question "which personal experiences are correct?" but rather "given what we know about personal experiences, how can we justify labeling ANY personal experiences as correct?".

To Geodave and PB_guy on the subject of "choosing" a religion:

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And MOST PEOPLE do not choose a religion -- they just pretty much stick to the one they are born into.

I believe that you are correct, Dave. Most (emphasis on most) people don't choose their religious beliefs (including atheism), they fall into them culturally, most commonly via their immediate family.

I would argue this is more evidence against religion (specifically, personal experiences). Why, if personal experiences are actually true, can one determine the nature of that personal experience (i.e. which God) by looking at where the experiencer lives on a map?

My parents are atheistic, but they never instructed me one way or the other. They taught me how to think, not what to think. I wish more parents did this. I ended up going from the "null state" of atheism to deism to atheism again to Christianity to atheism a third time(or something like that ). I'm pretty comfortable not only with what my thoughts on the issue are, but the process by which I came to those thoughts. I find it interesting that, what with this being one of the most important issues facing not only humanity as a whole but each individual human as well, that it is one of the least thought about. Critical thought, valued in every other area of life, is discouraged when it comes to religious issues. Perhaps it is the fear of not wanting to insult or disobey God by even considering the possibility that he doesn't exist. Perhaps it is because faith (the belief in something without evidence) by definition cannot be supported by critical thought. Perhaps it is because it makes people uncomfortable to think that they could be wrong about their view of the world. Perhaps it is because people have never even considered the possibility that they could be wrong about an issue such as this. I'd argue it's all of the above, but whatever the reason it's cool that at least some decent discussion can be had on the issue here.

Excerpt from Richard Dawkins' book "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution", Chapter "Before Our Very Eyes", section "Forty-five thousand generations of evolution in the lab", describing in detail an experiment which quite literally shows evolution in action, including the "addition" of "information":

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I'm not typing the whole thing out Here's a .pdf of the book, the excerpt starts at page 56: http://www.tocorre.c...192.7509.lg.pdf (note: it may take a while to load)

To myself:

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Goodbye, 8 hours of my life.

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Wasn't wasted, though.

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Also, PB_guy, I meant the spoiler above this one.

[BitBuster]

Re: the Bible (or any religious text), I always thought of it this way (assume for the moment that the book is, at the very least, divinely inspired):



Scenario 1: The original meaning has been corrupted by human error. Why then trust the book?

Scenario 2: The book is the literal word of God (or whoever/whatever). Why then is it so damn confusing and ambiguous?



I think the Bible even quotes Jesus as saying something along the lines of "Most people won't believe in what I'm telling you." Could it be the way he was telling it (or not telling it, as the case may be?).



I also question the idea of pure faith. Think of it this way: if I was around in 33 AD, and I saw Jesus die on the cross and then I saw him walking around a few days later, nail holes in his hands, you know what? I'd probably accept anything he told me. Heck, even if I just saw him raise Lazarus from the dead, or perform any other sort of miracle (that I could be reasonably certain was not merely a fancy parlor trick), I'd be inclined to believe. In 2012, though, all I have are several variations of a book, and the testimonials of millions of people who each see the matter in a slightly (and sometimes radically) different way.



I really don't mean to focus on Christianity. I really have similar questions about other religions. But being raised Catholic, and living my whole life in two towns in which Christianity is by far the dominant religion, it's the one I tend to be the most familiar with. Plus, it seems to be the one everyone here is generally focusing on, so...





(BTW, James, those 8 hours of your life were well spent, imo. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your comments; actually, this whole thread is quite interesting, for various reasons...)

[geodave]

Wow. I simply do not have the time to comment on all this.

I do have opinions on most of this. Let me just recommend what I think is the BEST explanation I've read of why a rational person might decided to believe in God. It's a small (but challenging) book by C.S. Lewis called "Miracles". The man died when I was a month old, and it's still the best thing I've ever read on the subject.

It is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE that there is no God, or for that matter, that there is no one else but me -- I think Sarte and his ilk covered all this long ago. If you really want your head to hurt, read DeCartes.

Anyway, my feelings about the human genome and human history are not mainstream and I don't have the facts here with me to argue them -- I was just sharing that I personally doubt that we evolved to what we are now without some sort of intervention.

I'm currently finishing up the book that the movie 2012 was based on. Now, that movie was mostly silly, but the book covers something that simply is unexplainable -- giant monolithic structures that are simply too old for us to have made them. These include the pyramids, as well as Macchu Piccu and sites in Mexico. We STILL don't have the technology that was required to build these things. And they are at LEAST 5000 years old. So what gives?

And the Bible is no help -- with it's references to demi-gods and genetic engineering. The fact is STUFF HAPPENED a long time ago and we don't know what it was.

[BitBuster]

I don't think a rational person can ever be convinced of anything*. And as Forrest Gump said, that's all I have to say about that.





*Ok, this statement is probably paradoxical. But treat it as a mystical statement, and suddenly its contradictions become its beauty. Or something like that.