Why don't you believe in God?

[Luka Petrovic]

Well what kind of "BS" do you mean? an example would be good. Yes for sure, we do know much more thanks to scientific advancement, if you deny that... I have some news for you. However what I have a personal problem with is, how when something is labelled "scientific" people take it to heart and it can be very damaging. It use to be medical procedure to remove parts of people's brain as a medical treatment. this isn't some witch craft, but "science". Same goes for eugenics and tonsilitis . All were backed by "science."

[Nabz]

Come on sandwich. You cannot solely use science to justify your belief in not believing the existence of God. That's a belief itself so does that mean you hold a burden of proof?

You know that scientific proofs can be misleading? for example, the double slit experiment and the wave theory by Maxwell; both proof that the light is a particle and a wave whereas it can only be one thing at a time, you know. So science isn't always there to satisfy your doubts but may cause even more confusion, if you solely rely on scientific reasoning. And anyways, when was science able to give a proof for every existence in the universe? (sorry if i misunderstood your previous posts )

What i've been arguing with boss from the beginning is that you "cannot" use the same methods of justifying/reasoning/proving everywhere, which led me to talk about the TOK essay #5 really and boss kept saying that religion and mathematics are not linked whatsoever, which in fact is true but my whole argument was based upon examples where in one area you may use reasoning solely and in other you have to rely on other ways of arguing.

I believe that Religion can't be overlooked by just saying that "There's no proof for God's existence therefore there's no point of agreeing with his/her/its existence". It's not as simple as people think. I mean if you're just saying that then you may say the same in other Areas of Knowledge when you don't have a proof/reason for an assertion. Religion should be tackled just like any other AoK.

Remember that the theories of economics weren't there since forever although the idea of demand theory, that if price increases for a good or service, the demand for that would increase. My point for this example is that although the theory wasn't put into use, it was practiced since forever. Ok let me put it this way. You've probably seen videos of UFOs and couldn't care less as you've never seen one yourself with your own eyes but don't you think twice about this topic? I mean, you've never seen an alien (i hope) but do you believe that they "might" exist just like any other human being. Then you try to match the things together and say that the universe is infinitely huge, therefore there "may" be "some" chances of aliens existing. Be honest with yourself and tell me.

Edited March 2, 2013 by shad0wboss

[Sandwich]

Well what kind of "BS" do you mean? an example would be good. Yes for sure, we do know much more thanks to scientific advancement, if you deny that... I have some news for you. However what I have a personal problem with is, how when something is labelled "scientific" people take it to heart and it can be very damaging. It use to be medical procedure to remove parts of people's brain as a medical treatment. this isn't some witch craft, but "science". Same goes for eugenics and tonsilitis . All were backed by "science."

By BS I meant "god did it", essentially. Or the pixies from before. Really, any kind of explanation where you've just arbitrarily made it up with no reason or anything to point you towards such an explanation.

To be honest it seems to me that you've got a problem with how you feel science has been used and defined, which is absolutely nothing to do with the topic of discussion.

This is for several reasons. Firstly, it's not 'science versus religion', it's 'religion versus common sense' - and it just so happens that scientific arguments are used as part of that common sense. Even if every single scientific fact we've ever discovered turns out to be wrong, that would validate religion not one jot, because they're not opposites. They're not like hot and cold. It's like saying "if this tree turns out to be made of cardboard, then it proves there's a subterranean world deep within the earth's core where they sing songs and eat lost moles". Science being wrong doesn't make religion any more right because there are NO reasons why religion is right in order to even consider it as an alternative in some way. The absence of evidence is not evidence. So really, however you feel about science is completely irrelevant to how you feel about religion, except that somebody who is applying logical thought in one is going to be more inclined to apply logical thought to and therefore have some serious thinking to do about the validity of the other.

To give an opposite example, it's exactly the same as saying "Christians murdered and raped everybody during the crusades, therefore my baseless theory about the mating habits of owls being based on psychic rays is proven correct!". It's bad thinking. A does not follow B. Science cannot disprove religion (only cast doubt on its claims) and religion cannot disprove anything because it's not itself even been proven in the first place.

Secondly, to correct a degree of misinformation, it still is a medical procedure to remove or separate parts of people's brain for certain treatments. Removal of cancer, treatment of epilepsy, treatment of certain neurological pain syndromes. The main difference is that back then we had no idea what we were doing and were just trying random things because we had no other effective treatment for madness. Now we do have some idea what we are doing, we have identified some of the reasons why the procedure might work, and we still have no other effective treatments for some of these things bar removal or separation of brain areas. To be honest we still have a very poor understanding of a lot of the more complex features of the brain, although we have a great deal more knowledge than ever before. Back when we did used to cut out bits of brain for madness, that wasn't science, that was just random guesswork and frankly an abuse of other human beings. It was a desperate measure taken in desperate circumstances on a pretty wobbly basis. Would we do that now? Nope. Much like I assume the Christians would no longer mount a crusade against the Turks and rape all their women now, and that nowadays we'd prefer it if priests didn't fiddle with the little kiddies thanks very much.

The question is, are you going to leave somebody in unbearable neurological pain with a massive suicide rate, losing all their faculties as they die horribly and swift of cancer or constantly having potentially very severe epileptic fits - or are you going to try to do something to help? If your intervention proves to be helpful then I don't think any of the patients suffering from these things would write you a letter of thanks for denying it to them on the basis that we don't yet understand every single interaction of every neurone in the brain and what it's doing.

Eugenics was a mis-interpretation of the theory of Darwinism in much the same way that the 9/11 bombings are a misinterpretation of Islam and that Hitler mis-interpreted Christianity. Eugenics is indeed a science - in the sense that the word science just means "a systematically organised body of knowledge on a particular subject". But even religion is a science, by that definition. One could argue that they share a common feature which isn't held in the physical sciences which is that both eugenics and religion are based on a theoretical story with no evidence. Eugenics has been debunked and that's really the beauty of the whole thing - if something is wrong, then it's wrong. If religion is wrong then... well, it can't be wrong and you just have to go into denial.

Tonsilitis continues to be a problem for which we continue to remove people's tonsils if they have recurrent episodes, give antibiotics and so on, so I'm not 100% where you're going with that.

Anyway I suppose the main point I'm trying to make is that science and religion are not alternatives to each other. If one is wrong, to be honest it doesn't even matter because it doesn't follow from one being wrong that the other is right. Saying that something is not a cat doesn't mean it's automatically got to be a pig. It could be a dog, it could be a houseplant, it could be a rabbit, it could be literally anything. Even if science is a load of crap, which is a grand claim when there's so much evidence pointing in the other direction, it doesn't make religion right any more than a "not-cat" is a pig.

[Sandwich]

Come on sandwich. You cannot solely use science to justify your belief in not believing the existence of God. That's a belief itself so does that mean you hold a burden of proof?

From my perspective, you have a great deal of muddled thinking and thought processes going on here. I don't have a "belief in not believing". I just don't believe. I hold no belief. I don't believe that god DOESN'T exist any more than I have the belief that I don't believe that Haskjfhfiuhdnfuhg89frog is a word. This is because I've never seen any reason which would make me believe in god and I've never seen anybody use the word Haskjfhfiuhdnfuhg89frog. These are not active 'beliefs' in the non-existence of these two things, they are an absence of belief. There is, believe it or not, a state of mind where you have not come up with every single imaginary thing you can possibly think of and actively researched reasons to not believe in it. Just having no reasons TO believe in the first place is considered sufficient to not give a **** either way, which is more or less my view. You can take into account probability - the probability of there being an external being who is desperately interested in the lives of all of us, all-powerful, all-knowing and yet has left no shred of evidence of himself anywhere or ever intervened in anything? Very small. The probability of Haskjfhfiuhdnfuhg89frog being a word? I've never seen it, I've never seen a language like it, I've never seen numbers within a word, the only source of the word is when I just made it up in my own head. So I'd say again, very small. I can't claim that Haskjfhfiuhdnfuhg89frog is not a word and I do not belong to the Anti-Haskjfhfiuhdnfuhg89frog Society. I can only examine the reasons for its being a word or not and come to a sensible conclusion. If you asked me "Do you believe that Haskjfhfiuhdnfuhg89frog is a word?", I would indeed reply "No.".

As for randomly picking up examples, these are totally irrelevant. So a light acts as both a particle and a wave? Well great, we now know light acts as both a particle and a wave under scrutiny with two different experiments, let's try to find out how and why and what the essential nature of light is that if can do both of these things. Does it 'stop' me believing in science? No because the entire point of science is that when you discover new things which suggest your old thing was wrong, you try to find out why and what the actual answer was. You can be content to know that you've not found the final answer. Have we discovered what's going on with absolutely everything in the universe? Nope. Is there a reason why we should have done? Nope.

In all areas of knowledge except for religion, there is some sort of reason or motivation behind all assertions which are made. Religion isn't technically an area of knowledge on the chart, but that's because TOK is just an arbitrary diagram at the end of the day. Religion is based on knowing sod all but believing in it anyway. I don't understand why you've just told me about demand theory. No, I don't think twice about UFOs. My rationale for saying "yes something exists" is reliable proof that it exists. If there is no such proof for UFOs (and there isn't), then I don't believe in UFOs. This doesn't, for the record, make me a "UFO non-believer" or mean I have a belief that UFOs definitely do NOT exist. It just means I have no reason to think that they do. Much like with religion. Much like with aliens. Much like with pixies. Yeah sure there's a tiny chance that all of these things DO exist. But there's a tiny chance that anything I can come up with in my imagination could exist. So what? I'd be both crazy and a moron to take every single thing I can imagine as a truth until I can disprove it.

[Luka Petrovic]

No your right, parts of people's brains are removed, but its not their entire pre-frontal cortex, taking away their ability to have a personality. That is no longer dne thankfully. The whole removing of the tonsils thing is false science, doctors don't do it anymore, it was a medical misunderstanding that "knew" about and milions of kids went through a pointless surgery. I'm going to stop bashing science though, because there is a lot of bashing to be done for both "logic and reason" and for religion, which apprently has no traditions of philosophy, ethics and reason according to you. In the greco-roman world it was commonplace to kill perfectly fine, but "weak looking" infants, giving all life value kinda stuff, was a judeo-christian innovation in the west. Also please dont use the fact that the catholic church supressed science and orther types of philosophy, because that was politcally motivated and had nothing to do being religious, the arab world and the buzantine empirire we're also religious muslim and christian societies that continued innovating in the traditions of greek medicine and thought. Actually most docotors were monks, and one has to thank the byzantines as they basically kick started the rennisance when they crossed over to sicily with their greek science and math filled books. Sorry if that was too much of a tangent.

And actually, my dislike with how science is used has everything to do with this thread, its because science is raw data, once humans start to inteerpret it loses validity, even worse when we try and compete and sell it to each other. Everyday people understand science just as much as a serf understood the latin mass in the middle ages. Even if you take high school chemistry or physics you haven't a clue of how things really are. However when you slap on the label of science or dr. Infront of someones name, this piece of information becomes a fact of life. How about, cell phones dont cause brain cancers? It came from study done over several years, known scientists and medical professionals. OH wait! It was funded by motorola! Do you think logic, reason and true science had anything to do with this outcome. Perhaps a little, but the scientists got what they wanted. This happens all the time.

Okay so you say that there is not proof of god so you don't believe him, but it is an undeniable fact that millions of people through history and millions of people today believe there is a good. People of a low edication, people of a high education, black, white, nice and mean. Does this offer nothing? I dont expect you to look at this and say "I believe!!!!" But it is silly to ignore it as people have felt so strongly of it.

[Award Winning Boss]

Okay so you say that there is not proof of god so you don't believe him, but it is an undeniable fact that millions of people through history and millions of people today believe there is a good. People of a low edication, people of a high education, black, white, nice and mean. Does this offer nothing? I dont expect you to look at this and say "I believe!!!!" But it is silly to ignore it as people have felt so strongly of it.

No... not really. The amount of people that believe in something doesn't determine whether it's a fact or not. It can't stand on those premises otherwise extremely stupid things would be ok. For example, a large number of people thought it was justified to make Africans their slaves.

So to answer your question, it means very little. If 100 people believed in x because it was appealing versus 20 people believing in y because there's proof of it, you should gravitate towards y a lot more than x.

[Sandwich]

And actually, my dislike with how science is used has everything to do with this thread, its because science is raw data, once humans start to inteerpret it loses validity, even worse when we try and compete and sell it to each other. Everyday people understand science just as much as a serf understood the latin mass in the middle ages. Even if you take high school chemistry or physics you haven't a clue of how things really are. However when you slap on the label of science or dr. Infront of someones name, this piece of information becomes a fact of life. How about, cell phones dont cause brain cancers? It came from study done over several years, known scientists and medical professionals. OH wait! It was funded by motorola! Do you think logic, reason and true science had anything to do with this outcome. Perhaps a little, but the scientists got what they wanted. This happens all the time.

Okay so you say that there is not proof of god so you don't believe him, but it is an undeniable fact that millions of people through history and millions of people today believe there is a good. People of a low edication, people of a high education, black, white, nice and mean. Does this offer nothing? I dont expect you to look at this and say "I believe!!!!" But it is silly to ignore it as people have felt so strongly of it.

In chronic tonsilitis they do still use the option of taking them out if it's serious and recurrent. It does solve the problem pretty neatly although you're right they did used to do it perhaps to excess considering it was a surgical procedure and so not without its own risks. Still, those people never got tonsilitis again so I suppose it's moot! I know a few people who've had tonsilitis chronically for years and years and eventually got tonsilectomies so they're finally free of it.

Logic and reason =/= science. Logic and reason are intellectual thought processes. You can foul them up with mis-reporting, corruption and lies much like you can foul up anything else with that stuff. Whether Motorola swung the results and hid information, I have no idea. You could also say that they have a vested interesting in finding out a negative answer if people's internal fears were affecting their sales, so perhaps it was funded by them for positive reasons and you can feel a bit less paranoid. I have no idea. Discounting all information on the basis that Motorola once funded a project about brain cancer and mobile phone use which you're paranoid might have been subject to some dirty dealing plus in the past they tried lobectomies as an untested treatment for madness doesn't make an awful lot of sense to me. It has about the same amount of rationality as saying that a huge number of priests in Ireland have raped young boys and therefore the whole religion is corrupt. The religion doesn't say "rape innocent children" just like science doesn't say "please lie and cheat". You can't discount everything because of paedophile rapists any more than you can discount it on the basis that some people exist who fabricate information.

Peer review, publishing your methods and so on mean that most lies are found out eventually in the world of science. Take the whole stem cell thing in Japan - people tried to repeat that guy's experiments (as it is mandatory to publish your methods), it didn't work and the whole thing turned out to have been an elaborate web of lies. Even just life, to be honest, can give you a few clues. If mobile phones did indeed give you brain cancer we would see a rise in the incidence of brain cancer which can't be attributed to the many hundreds of other reasons for cancer incidence increasing. Have we? No. I'm not saying that nobody has ever lied about things, there are many famous examples of cover-ups, but the standards and methods used mean that the utmost is done to minimise all this stuff.

As for the whole data becomes invalid under human interpretation thing, that's just weak. Everybody knows the limit of data and interpretation, but if you want to continue to smoke cigarettes or whatever just because the link between lung cancer and smoking is based on data that's been interpreted by humans, be my guest. I shall not be joining you. You can assess the strength of the data yourself if you fancy - how strong is the correlation, what are the potentially confounding factors, how large was the population tested, how representative is the population studied of the one you're trying to apply the results to - if you're worried. Maybe some data doesn't lead to the conclusions originally drawn from it, but then that's why data is reviewed prior to being published, and read and commented on after being published. Say that all data is meaningless or that people shouldn't try to interpret it... the world would be one more significantly messed up place without it.

Millions and millions of people throughout history have been rapists and racists - people of a low education, people of a high education, black people, white people, nice people and mean people. Millions of people throughout history have believed the world is flat. Millions of people throughout history haven't believed in religion in the way we see it currently and figured they'd be shipped over the River Styx to reside with Hades. Millions of people sacrificed animals and indeed other people. Millions of people throughout history haven't had a clue about a lot of things, and it's only in relatively recent history that we have begun to. Hell, millions of people were Nazis. On that basis, the sheep argument seems kind-of stupid to me. Just because a lot of people have thought something or done something in a particular way, it doesn't mean they were right. You shouldn't decide something just because everybody else thinks it's right, it must be right and you should just swallow it and have no individual thoughts on it at all.

[Luka Petrovic]

What is individualthought? Very few of usevercomeupwithsomething original, and were any of those people wrong? And if so,by whose measure?

Oh and I just like using science, because it is so closely linked to reason and logic, I don't see why reason and logic cannot be reconciled with religion though.

Edited March 2, 2013 by Luka Petrovic

[Sandwich]

What is individualthought? Very few of usevercomeupwithsomething original, and were any of those people wrong? And if so,by whose measure?

Oh and I just like using science, because it is so closely linked to reason and logic, I don't see why reason and logic cannot be reconciled with religion though.

Individual thought is assessing something for yourself. It's the same thing as not jumping off a bridge because somebody says "jump!". It's to not blindly accept things you are told without ever filtering it and re-assessing the facts for yourself - "all black people are evil", "all gay people are evil". It's when you question and assess what is it that you're seeing and then think to yourself - okay, but on the basis of what I have seen and what I think, do I agree? As it happens, I don't think all black people or all gay people are evil. I know people who do and have told me so, and I know that millions of people have thought and continue to think exactly these things, but as it happens, I'm not in the business of mindlessly accepting and regurgitating other people's thoughts. I have had my own thoughts on this matter and concluded that these other people are spouting utter BS. Yeah I think those other people are wrong, and I think they're wrong by my own measure and sense of truth and honesty. My own measure remains open to the facts - so if they can clearly demonstrate to me the reasons WHY they believe black and gay people to be evil in a compelling manner that challenges my conclusion, my conclusion may change. However there are no facts and they have no arguments, so.

If you can reconcile reason and logic with religion, please do show me how! To my mind it is and has always been impossible as they seem entirely incompatible and based on a mass of unprovable, unjustifiable and false premises.

[Luka Petrovic]

See though, to someone else, from their experience they found that all black or gay people are evil. You can't use your own perception for that as its so subjective. To be clear I agree with you, homosexuals and black people are not evil.

And sorry if I made it sound like I'm selling a solution to reason and religions, i dabble in it as an interest and hobby, I'm afraid I can only take you so far. But none the less I'd be glad to continue.

[Nabz]

It feels like we're just trying to prove one wrong here. You have to agree that there has to be a source of everything. Don't you think that the legend of Adam and Eve provide enough reasoning for this existence? I don't know much on the theory of evolution. Can you outline how humans came into being? I think this is the question we should be arguing about really.

[Luka Petrovic]

Well I'm not too familiar with the creation stories of other religions, but i can testify that if genesis is taken literally, and not evangelical christian literally, it makes more sense than most people seem to think. That being said it never claimed to be the end all and be all of explaining the universe. Not all Christians are anti-logic. Some of the earliest christian theologians were also very educated and supported the scientific findings of the day.

[Nabz]

Well I'm not too familiar with the creation stories of other religions, but i can testify that if genesis is taken literally, and not evangelical christian literally, it makes more sense than most people seem to think. That being said it never claimed to be the end all and be all of explaining the universe. Not all Christians are anti-logic. Some of the earliest christian theologians were also very educated and supported the scientific findings of the day.

Not only genesis but bible and Qur'an state the same legends (Adam, Noah etc). They do provide a sequence to how human beings are evolved/came into being. I would love to know the alternative theories of how Humans were evolved overtime and what was their source?

EDIT: Btw, i'm against "gay" marriage, just like any other rationalist person out there, as it opposes the nature.

Edited March 2, 2013 by shad0wboss

[Luka Petrovic]

Its all in order and technically correct, the universe was made, solar system (sun, earth, moon), then plants and animals populated the planet, and then finally humans. Same claim as science, just that science has done an excellent job in figuring out the inner workings of everything. the 7 "days" of creation cannot be taken literally because we measure days with the movement of the sun, and if the light wasn't created on the first day, how could you possibly call it a day?

[Nabz]

where's Sandwich hidin'?

But seriously, this topic has become so much interesting thanks to the counterclaims by Sandwich. Respect!

Edited March 2, 2013 by shad0wboss

[Award Winning Boss]

It feels like we're just trying to prove one wrong here. You have to agree that there has to be a source of everything. Don't you think that the legend of Adam and Eve provide enough reasoning for this existence? I don't know much on the theory of evolution. Can you outline how humans came into being? I think this is the question we should be arguing about really.

No there doesn't.

Certainly not. That's ridiculous.

Abiogenesis then evolution.

[Luka Petrovic]

It feels like we're just trying to prove one wrong here. You have to agree that there has to be a source of everything. Don't you think that the legend of Adam and Eve provide enough reasoning for this existence? I don't know much on the theory of evolution. Can you outline how humans came into being? I think this is the question we should be arguing about really.

No there doesn't.

Certainly not. That's ridiculous.

Abiogenesis then evolution.

I'm not sure how that proves anything. It still had a source, just not an organic one, something had to be there for it to form from.

[Award Winning Boss]

I'm not sure how that proves anything. It still had a source, just not an organic one, something had to be there for it to form from.

What doesn't it prove? If you're going to regress all the way to the beginning of the universe, do so.

[Luka Petrovic]

It doesn't disprove anything, its simply a bridge between the creation of reality the universe and then life. Yeah cool theory, but what does it have to do with this debate.

[Award Winning Boss]

It doesn't disprove anything, its simply a bridge between the creation of reality the universe and then life. Yeah cool theory, but what does it have to do with this debate.

I'm not trying to disprove anything. He asked how humans came into being so I gave him an answer that could satisfy the question. Or do you have a problem with answering questions?