Nature of God

[Arvestaked]

Originally posted by Anonymouse I do not believe in God because I can, I believe in God because I have come to that conclusion based on certain things. My belief in a God is not without justification. With that said, it is as ignorant to state that religion claims it has the answer, yet absolve science from the same thing, because science itself claims it has the answers. Fanaticism is not bound by anything. Religion is natural to man. Everything naturally evolves into a religion ( such as science ), because man cannot be confined with that which he finds himself in, the present, and science itself naturally attempts to answer our origin and the whys no different than religion in the traditional sense. I never claimed to revere or hold religion in higher esteem over science, but have claimed a difference between the two because of understanding, whereas you are clinging to one over the other because of preconceived notions, i.e. you are already determined to dismiss religion, without understanding religions themselves.

First, yes, I am determined to dismiss them because religion was born illogically. However I never dismissed the idea of a god; I only comment on his significance. And I have a perfect understanding of religion; you are being presumptuous again. One religion is not better than another to me. You on the other hand, are as determined to blindly accept one so do not opperate under the assumption that acceptance of religion is logically more sound than the dismissal of it. In addition, and I think loser has pointed this out, how can having faith make something universally true if people can have opposing faiths? The only common ground is testing.

You said: "I believe in God because I have come to that conclusion based on certain things." I would like to know what those are. I would like to know what has turned a potentially beautiful Satanist into whatever you are now. I cannot understand why someone would believe he exists as opposed to believe he might exist.

And, science does not claim it has all of the answers; science claims it has some of the answers...an infinitesimal amount of answers actually. So it seems that science is infinitesimally arrogant where religion is infinately arrogant.

[Anonymouse]

I do not believe in God because I can, I believe in God because I have come to that conclusion based on certain things. My belief in a God is not without justification. With that said, it is as ignorant to state that religion claims it has the answer, yet absolve science from the same thing, because science itself claims it has the answers. Fanaticism is not bound by anything. Religion is natural to man. Everything naturally evolves into a religion ( such as science ), because man cannot be confined with that which he finds himself in, the present, and science itself naturally attempts to answer our origin and the whys no different than religion in the traditional sense. I never claimed to revere or hold religion in higher esteem over science, but have claimed a difference between the two because of understanding, whereas you are clinging to one over the other because of preconceived notions, i.e. you are already determined to dismiss religion, without understanding religions themselves.

[Arvestaked]

Originally posted by Anonymouse Getting back to the claim that only through science/reason, can there ever be truth, since I am assuming Arvestaked is of the persuasion. If he is not, he should correct my assumption. So with that said, all scientists recognize that no theory is proven, it is tentatively held hypotheses of how our world function, i.e. belief. All theories are held in belief until something better comes along, such as quantum mechanics replacing Newtonian, chemistry over alchemy, or neuropsychiatry over psycoanalysis. At each point this is an ongoing process, we never know we are right, we believe we are. And we will hold dear to what we have until something better comes along. That is the way it goes. I cannot change it.

I am agnostic and so believe that even though a god is a possibility it is also an improbability and is insignificant. I believe that there are degrees of faith, as in how much faith you put in something and how much faith is required to accept something. Dusken did touch on this concept. Why would you just accept something because you can? Even scientists would say that any fact of science has a 99.9999...% of being true. But religion in most cases would have an infinitesimal probability or 50% at best (since it can always be the other side of a hypothesis). I do not see what the issue is with trying to achieve that high percentage with as many ideas as possible. It is counterproductive, in the sense of gathering knowledge, to decide that you have the answer until it is proven wrong. If we always did that, the entire present world would be a Spanish Inquisition! Saying that god exists is useless when it comes to gaining knowledge. That is the difference between the arrogance of science and the arrogance of religion: science says it can get the answer and religion says it has it.

[Anonymouse]

Getting back to the claim that only through science/reason, can there ever be truth, since I am assuming Arvestaked is of the persuasion. If he is not, he should correct my assumption. So with that said, all scientists recognize that no theory is proven, it is tentatively held hypotheses of how our world function, i.e. belief. All theories are held in belief until something better comes along, such as quantum mechanics replacing Newtonian, chemistry over alchemy, or neuropsychiatry over psycoanalysis. At each point this is an ongoing process, we never know we are right, we believe we are. And we will hold dear to what we have until something better comes along. That is the way it goes. I cannot change it.

[dusken]

Since you are not understanding what I am saying, I will step down from this argument. Throw whatever punches at this action that you like. I just do not wish to repeat myself only to be misunderstood and criticized for repeating myself. Good luck to Anonymouse, Arvestaked and loseyourname.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by dusken It was not a tangent if you are arguing for the dimissal of all knowledge. You are being hypocritical just by defending your position. Even if everything was based on faith, finding truth would not be done by accepting faith but by constantly seeking to evade it. It would be easy for all questions to be answered with the same idea: a god. But the fact that knowledge can grow without accepting that the answer to any given question is God, is enough of a reason to dismiss it infinitely.

Belief does not suggest that someone is accepting an idea with a lack of complete knowledge, which is what you are insinuating. Again, if all that exists is faith then one need not argue anything because you are even invalidating the idea of faith.

Atheism is well explained in Paul Atkins's "The Creation" and Michael Martin's "Atheism: A Philosophical Justification." I know that you will turn around and say "stop throwing out titles and make arguments" but there is a reason that the argument is books in length. However, I will say that a god can be infinitely lazy. And I will also add my own opinion: there are as many gods as there are minds but there are very few manifestations of scientific fact.

The fact is that one who now argues for religion is attempting to make logical sense of something whose beginings were illogical. There is no reason for an individual to make such an argument except for nostalgic preservation.

Belief never meant accepting an idea without evidence, this is why I said we reason only to an end and then we accept it on faith. No one invalidated the idea of faith, I don't know where you are getting this from. I did suggest that atheism is itself a faith, even though you will be adamant in stating so otherwise. Unless you had knowledge of everything there is to know, then you wouldn't have faith, that we don't and we are naturally finite and limited creatures, we naturally believe.

To be an atheist, one has to believe that matter has either always been here, or that it was produced by nothing from nothing. Yet that doesn't change the fact that it itself is a belief. This is my point that man naturally resorts to believing, because it is part of human nature, you must also believe that the mind you use for believing and reasoning came from that which was mindless and thoughtless, yet a belief nonetheless.

[Arvestaked]

Originally posted by dusken It was not a tangent if you are arguing for the dimissal of all knowledge. You are being hypocritical just by defending your position. Even if everything was based on faith, finding truth would not be done by accepting faith but by constantly seeking to evade it. It would be easy for all questions to be answered with the same idea: a god. But the fact that knowledge can grow without accepting that the answer to any given question is God, is enough of a reason to dismiss it infinitely.

Belief does not suggest that someone is accepting an idea with a lack of complete knowledge, which is what you are insinuating. Again, if all that exists is faith then one need not argue anything because you are even invalidating the idea of faith.

Atheism is well explained in Paul Atkins's "The Creation" and Michael Martin's "Atheism: A Philosophical Justification." I know that you will turn around and say "stop throwing out titles and make arguments" but there is a reason that the argument is books in length. However, I will say that a god can be infinitely lazy. And I will also add my own opinion: there are as many gods as there are minds but there are very few manifestations of scientific fact.

The fact is that one who now argues for religion is attempting to make logical sense of something whose beginings were illogical. There is no reason for an individual to make such an argument except for nostalgic preservation.

Atheism unknowingly attempts to refute probability and statistics and ignores the fact that it may not have to infinately defeat a god, as he may plainly manifest himself in the pursuit of answers, though it does succeed in making it illogical to accept a god as entirely fact.

[dusken]

Originally posted by Anonymouse Let's get back to the original argument that Loser was insinuating. You came and cherry picked one thing, us revolving around the sun, and got off on a tangent. My original point was that we only reason to get to faith, reasoning is a means to an end, faith. We reason with the given "evidences" in whatever we are reasoning about and when we see it is fair enough we then believe it is true. It cannot work any other way. You believe that all the answers come through science and reason, not the other way, and that in itself is a belief, it is faith. When someone chooses to not believe in a God it in itself is a belief. You believe that there is no God, you don't know that there isn't. It is why one cannot prove the non-existence of a God using the same criteria you uphold. To know that God does not exist one would have to know everything, for if there were just one thing he did not know, that might be that God exists. So, to be an atheist one has to resort to faith and believe God does not exist. The atheist leans on faith while he chides others for leaning on faith.

As much as I wanted to avoid the "faith vs science" battle, it seems the "super rationalists" among us have turned into that. What started with losers misunderstanding of faith and reason ( although because none of us make a mistake he will claim otherwise ), led me to constantly bring that up in the form of trying to distinguish the two; now has no mutated into "reason vs faith", those of the persuasion of science as absolute truth vs those who believe in faith as absolute truth. That may all seem to be dandy, but not what I was initially defending, and my assertions in fact do hold science in high esteem, it's just the scientist/rationalist/atheist assumes that only through science can one reach truth and when this happens then it becomes a dogma, faith based.

I have come to the conclusion that scientific theory, which is in many ways another form of faith, and religious faith, which is another form of a theory, have validity, and I wanted to avoid precisely that sluggish devotion to one over the other, yet it morphed into that regardless. I see both as metaphors which mirror reality and serve for a better understanding of whatever "reality" actually is.

And from that it follows that we have faith more than we follow with reason since we are spiritual beings. If you do not believe we are spiritual beings, that in itself is a belief, since what constitutes a spiritual being is exactly that, to believe, and to immerse oneself in all the things that are non reason, i.e. faith.

It was not a tangent if you are arguing for the dimissal of all knowledge. You are being hypocritical just by defending your position. Even if everything was based on faith, finding truth would not be done by accepting faith but by constantly seeking to evade it. It would be easy for all questions to be answered with the same idea: a god. But the fact that knowledge can grow without accepting that the answer to any given question is God, is enough of a reason to dismiss it infinitely.

Belief does not suggest that someone is accepting an idea with a lack of complete knowledge, which is what you are insinuating. Again, if all that exists is faith then one need not argue anything because you are even invalidating the idea of faith.

Atheism is well explained in Paul Atkins's "The Creation" and Michael Martin's "Atheism: A Philosophical Justification." I know that you will turn around and say "stop throwing out titles and make arguments" but there is a reason that the argument is books in length. However, I will say that a god can be infinitely lazy. And I will also add my own opinion: there are as many gods as there are minds but there are very few manifestations of scientific fact.

The fact is that one who now argues for religion is attempting to make logical sense of something whose beginings were illogical. There is no reason for an individual to make such an argument except for nostalgic preservation.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by dusken Not necessarily. I do not give it the credit you do. You have now accepted that there is no point in ever discussing anything because reality may be a dream. This is useless but if you feel that way then why do you bother posting? This is like that meaningless Selflessness thread where Arvestaked tried to convince everyone that selflessness did not exist. There is no point in arguing something like that because relatively speaking, it does.

Let's get back to the original argument that Loser was insinuating. You came and cherry picked one thing, us revolving around the sun, and got off on a tangent. My original point was that we only reason to get to faith, reasoning is a means to an end, faith. We reason with the given "evidences" in whatever we are reasoning about and when we see it is fair enough we then believe it is true. It cannot work any other way. You believe that all the answers come through science and reason, not the other way, and that in itself is a belief, it is faith. When someone chooses to not believe in a God it in itself is a belief. You believe that there is no God, you don't know that there isn't. It is why one cannot prove the non-existence of a God using the same criteria you uphold. To know that God does not exist one would have to know everything, for if there were just one thing he did not know, that might be that God exists. So, to be an atheist one has to resort to faith and believe God does not exist. The atheist leans on faith while he chides others for leaning on faith.

As much as I wanted to avoid the "faith vs science" battle, it seems the "super rationalists" among us have turned into that. What started with losers misunderstanding of faith and reason ( although because none of us make a mistake he will claim otherwise ), led me to constantly bring that up in the form of trying to distinguish the two; now has no mutated into "reason vs faith", those of the persuasion of science as absolute truth vs those who believe in faith as absolute truth. That may all seem to be dandy, but not what I was initially defending, and my assertions in fact do hold science in high esteem, it's just the scientist/rationalist/atheist assumes that only through science can one reach truth and when this happens then it becomes a dogma, faith based.

I have come to the conclusion that scientific theory, which is in many ways another form of faith, and religious faith, which is another form of a theory, have validity, and I wanted to avoid precisely that sluggish devotion to one over the other, yet it morphed into that regardless. I see both as metaphors which mirror reality and serve for a better understanding of whatever "reality" actually is.

And from that it follows that we have faith more than we follow with reason since we are spiritual beings. If you do not believe we are spiritual beings, that in itself is a belief, since what constitutes a spiritual being is exactly that, to believe, and to immerse oneself in all the things that are non reason, i.e. faith.

[dusken]

My appologies. I will redirect my finger pointing to the concept itself because it does, in fact, relate to what is being discussed here.