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karenmeal

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

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The existence of a god (or gods) as the creator is not actually a theory.



I know. It's an axiom!

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It is a very weak hypothesis which has not been backed by un-biased research.



No, it's not a hypothesis, which supports theories. Dont' confuse "theory/theorem" with "axiom/postulate."

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To use the word theory in a scientific manner is to give credence to an idea.



No, theory is a proposed explanation that is testable. "Theory" is not "fact." Fact - the dinosaurs died out. Theory - an asteroid hit the earth causing global devastation and killing them all off. Theory - supervolcanoes in India erupted, causing global devastation and killing them all off. Theory - a large supernova irridaited them out of existence.

So, theories are explanations for observable facts. There is lots of evidence to support the volcano theory. Lots of evidence to support the asteroid theory. Which is right? We don't know, but we can guess.

Go to the baseline assumptions. Axioms and theories are different things.


My wife is hotter than your wife.

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> Honestly, a scientist would be thrilled to prove evolution wrong,
>because that would mean his name would be remembered forever.

Indeed. There are many ways evolution and its underpinnings - radioisotope dating, genetic mapping, fossil reconstruction, similarity of evolutionarily-related structures - can be proven wrong, and any scientist who can do so would (at minimum) win a Nobel and have no trouble getting grant money for the rest of his life. It hasn't happened yet. Every discovery we've seen since Darwin's time has refined our understanding of evolution, not destroyed it.

I guess one might imagine a worldwide conspiracy of the "evolutionists" that every single scientist (except those brave souls of the Discovery Institute) is a part of, that they are systematically supressing vital discoveries that prove that women were created from the rib of a man, and that all land animals lived on a small boat at one point. But Occam's Razor applies there.

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>However, I personally find that Creationists, on the other hand, have
>no such openness of mind as that possessed by Group B.

I think there are nutcases on both sides of the debate, and that they're relatively few in number.

Case in point. I knew some very devout people in my church in New York. They believed most of what the church told them, and they also believed the christian creation story. But 90% of them also wanted their kids taught science in school, because they knew that would best prepare them for the real world of science. Creationism-in-schools reared its head once (there was a local teacher who liked to preach his religion in a math class, and would get into things like creationism) and there was a lot of community pressure to get him to stop, which he did. That pressure came from those same devout christians, because they realized that their kids needed to be taught math and science, not mythology.

To them, best as I could tell, there was a sort of "willful suspension of disbelief." Belief in creationism was, to them, part of the "dues" they needed to pay to call themselves a member of the church, and they maintained that by not thinking about it too hard. When they got questions from _their_ kids, they tended to answer with things like "the message of Genesis is that God loves you; that's what's important."

And while I don't do that same sort of suspension-of-disbelief, I see nothing wrong with _them_ thinking like that, and I admire their ability to put the welfare of their children ahead of their own beliefs. I think most 'creationists' are like that. I put that word in quotes because these people don't go around trying to get religion taught in schools or try to talk people into their way of thinking - they just have their beliefs and are happy with them. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

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Your whole argument relies on the claim that there are axioms in science that can't be proven. Your parallel lines example (that can't be proven) can be proven with a proof by construction and Kallend gave you a link that proves the 180 degrees rules. Where are these magical axioms that all of math and science are built on?

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Dark matter is a theory with a lot of support, because it would neatly account for observed behaviour of galaxies. OTOH the continued lack of any observations of dark matter is causing much head scratching and soul searching. No one will accept it as true until it can be demonstrated.



So, to paraphrase, "The existence of a God as the creator is a theory with a lot of support, because it could account for everything observed. OTOH the continued lack of any observations of God is causing much head scratching and soul searching, leading to the present debate as to whether or not there is a God. No one will accept it as true until it can be demonstrated."



Dark matter/energy theories make definite predictions that can be tested and will be tested and if the results don't agree, the theory will be discarded and a better one will take its place. Religion does not make testable predictions. Religion is not self-correcting. Religion says whatever happens is simply "the will of God".
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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The existence of a god (or gods) as the creator is not actually a theory.



I know. It's an axiom!

.



The axioms of Euclid may be unprovable, but they have formed the basis of a system of abstract logical thought that has proven to be consistent with the concrete, objective, reproducible and testable experience of hundreds of millions of people. This system has been used to build spacecraft that sent men to the Moon and pharmaceuticals that cure a multitude of diseases.

To the best of my knowledge, no religious derivation of the impossibility of trisecting an arbitrary angle with only straightedge and compass has been forthcoming. Can God trisect an angle using only a straightedge and compass? If not, why not?

Has any religious insight developed a new drug to assist Parkinson's sufferers?
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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"Your choice is to believe that the idiot trying to make some money out of christians etc..really believes in God and that is what all christians are out to do '

they may believe, they may not.My point was that thier activties in no way give evidence to gods existence as you claimed.

" but i pray and experience God everyday in my life cause it's the choice i made."
how do you know this experience u speak of is god and not something else perhaps your imagination?

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Your hypothesis is unclear. Are you saying that I am wrong? If so, state what you believe I am wrong about, explain why, and then if you have proven it, I will admit my fault as I did with kallend's burn earlier. In other words, show me with logic what I am wrong about without just saying, "You're wrong."

Isn't that what you have been suggesting people do in the first place?


My wife is hotter than your wife.

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"Well, he started it!"
"No I didn't! HE started it."
"Shut up, ignoramus!"
"No, you shut up, sinner!"

Somehow, I don't find Squeak's argument as to why the seculars shove atheism down peoples' throats to be compelling. Rather, I find both sides trying to shove their views down

I wasn't being serious, this argument is pointless and circular, and has been going on for centuries
You are not now, nor will you ever be, good enough to not die in this sport (Sparky)
My Life ROCKS!
How's yours doing?

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"Your choice is to believe that the idiot trying to make some money out of christians etc..really believes in God and that is what all christians are out to do '

they may believe, they may not.My point was that thier activties in no way give evidence to gods existence as you claimed.

" but i pray and experience God everyday in my life cause it's the choice i made."
how do you know this experience u speak of is god and not something else perhaps your imagination?





Nobody forces me to pray , as i was not brought up as a christian etc so i don't have that history ....But like I said it takes time to know how God works in your life specifically if you have made the choice to follow Him , I have at an earlier time in my life and for a very long time tested God and if He was real cause i did doubt and even denied His existence at some point ..but to many times i have been down and out in situations and to a point where i could not turn to anything or anyone but God - as soon as I prayed and not a second before that ,miracles(only way I can describe it) flowed out of life to straighten me up and make me strong again B| every time !! - It took a few years of experiencing God and being willing and totally committed to allow Him to work in my life -(it was an experiment) and then getting used to the way he does that - Now I realize very quickly when God is trying to show me something etc.. I also know that for every person it would be different ...I'll say it again You have to make a totally commited choice and God will reveal himself in ways that you would undertand and comprehend ...That process of getting to know Him better never stops - the thing is if you don't go that narrow difficult at first way you'll never know , i have been down all the other easy paths of society etc.. and have always returned to God cause really the rest of it suck BIG TIME ! He is the only Truth and i don't believe it anymore , i know it ... He's the only thing that have passed all tests from my personal point of view and the world and everything makes so much more sense now...God will change your view on the world - All i can do is tell you about Him cause i know Him...God will not force you to love Him - some churches will though and that's why i don't attend to them......
If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it

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No, it's not a hypothesis, which supports theories. Dont' confuse "theory/theorem" with "axiom/postulate."



Perhaps you should take you own advice?

Hypothesis: A tentative proposal made to explain certain observations or facts that requires further investigation to be verified.

Theory: A comprehensive explanation of a given set of data that has been repeatedly confirmed by observation and experimentation and has gained general acceptance within the scientific community but has not yet been decisively proven.

Scientific law: A natural phenomenon that has been proven to occur invariably whenever certain conditions are met. A formal statement describing such a phenomenon and the conditions under which it occurs.

Axiom: a proposition that is not susceptible of proof or disproof; its truth is assumed to be self-evident

"Billvon is a duck" is a hypothesis
General Relativity is a theory
Gravity is a law
x=x is an axiom

God is not self evident, therefore it is not an axiom. God has not been proven, therefore it is not a law. God has not been repeatedly confirmed by observation and experiment, therefore it is not a theory. God is a hypothesis.

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So u r sayig that you have seen your life improve when you turned to god. How you believe your subjetive experience can reveal the existense of deity is beyond me. Let me tell you of some other peoples experience. On sep 11th a few Muslims prayed very hard that their mission would succeed. Im sure the hunddreds of Christians whose planes were hijacked would have prayed their ives were spared. What happened? It would appear that the Muslim prayers wee answered and the Chrsitians were not. Does this prove that Allah is the one true god? I dont think so, but your logic would imply it. Im sure we could go back and forth with people doing well out of prayer and others not, but that is exactly what we would expect in a world with no god. Some people might prey and feel their lives improved others might prey and not (the latter was my experience when I was religious), would the existence of the former group lead to us concluding god exists? Of course not. It reminds me of the esp tests. People were tested to see if they could guess which out of 5 esp card symbols were hidden. By chance we can say 20% of guesses will be right. So each person should get 20% correct. But with a large group of pople we can also say that some poeple will do considerably better than chance, others will do worse. Does the existence of the better than chance group prove esp exisst?B[Believe it or not the new agers do say that some people have esp for this very reason] Again of course it doesnt, we cant take one bit of the data set as meaningful, that is why your personal expeirence is not meaningful either. You also fail to dinstiguish between correlation and causation. So prayer and improvements in your life have been correlated that does not imply they were causual. we have to look at the whole data set before we can even begin to think about meaning, and that inlcudes all the poeple who do prey and nothing happens. Some people have played the stock makret using astrology and made money does that mean astrology can be used to rpedict stock prices? Of course not , we would have to include those that lose at doing it before we would even consider such a possibility.
Lastly how do you know that the prayer was not acting in a simlar way to a placebo?

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So u r sayig that you have seen your life improve when you turned to god. How you believe your subjetive experience can reveal the existense of deity is beyond me.




That is exactly what i'm saying ...i'm not trying to convert you i'm only telling you that i have made a choice and this choice was well tested and thought through and currently experienced on a personal level and it works for me - The fact that it works for me does not prove God to you and does not have to ...but it proves God to me and that's what matters - I have made that choice and you have made yours and we will carry all the consequences that go with that - for now it's turned out brilliant for me and maybe everything you say to justify yourself is true but maybe it's not.At this stage i don't care cause currently i feel it has been the best choice i've ever made.:)
If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it

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If it worked for you I can undersatnd that. But dont you think that maybe degrades the concept of truth? After all if someone did well out of astrology that wouldnt make astrology true would it ? Do we asses truth based upon how it affects people. I tend to think something is true or not true independent of whether it has a positive or negative effect on someone. For example, if a straight man dated a transvestite but thought he was going out with a woman, it might be untrue to say he is going out with a woman but to tell him otherwise may have negatvie effects Truth is a seperate concept.Dont you think?

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can be proven with a proof by construction



Using Euclid's axiom as a basis! Its kinda like proving god exists using the bible as a proof!

Euclidian geometry is build on an axiom. It works in real life.

There are other geometries that are build on a different axiom: there is no line parallel to anothe passing through a single point; and there are an infinite number of lines parallel to another passing though a single point. Neither these axiom work in real life, but, these geometries are still usefull.

Some thing for imaginary numbers. Do they make sense in real life? No. Do they help in other aspects of math? Yes.
Remster

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God is not self evident, therefore it is not an axiom. God has not been proven, therefore it is not a law. God has not been repeatedly confirmed by observation and experiment, therefore it is not a theory. God is a hypothesis.



God is not testable, therefore is not a hypothesis.

And gravity is just a theory. Like evolution. :o
Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

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To believe in God or have faith in God or however you want to put it, is not in its self a bad or wrong thing.

The problems start to arise when such beliefs start to hinder the progress of mankind. I suspect that the beliefs of skysaintj do not impinge on the learning or progress of other people. When, however, people who hold such beliefs start to use them to coerce other people to ignore scientific advancements it becomes a problem.

Examples -
The University that was mentioned in Richard Dawkins video that suggested the dinosaur fossils on display were only 5-6000 years old is a problem.

That the President of the USA must believe in God in order to hold office is a problem.

Having a warm fuzzy feeling is NOT a problem.
Dave

Fallschirmsport Marl

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Examples -
The University that was mentioned in Richard Dawkins video that suggested the dinosaur fossils on display were only 5-6000 years old is a problem.



That is staggering, isn't it? It really makes me think that these people honestly have no concept of either time or human history.

Aside from Dawkins example that they are wrong on a scale akin to believing New York is only 15 feet from San Francisco, they actually believe (if they ever stopped to think about it) that the dinosaurs still roamed the earth when the Egyptians were building the first of the pyramids!

Mind boggling:S
Do you want to have an ideagasm?

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