Current Poll (Religion)

[Haunted]

Quoting novium from 16:06, 17th Aug 2007
"fairyology"? To be fair, I've never heard of it. You basically used new age concepts: but new age concepts are fundamentally rooted in pseudoscience. They aren't philosophies. They try to make things into science.

Crystal healing yes, the study of fairies no.

From wiki: "Theology finds its scholars pursuing the understanding of and providing reasoned discourse of religion, spirituality and God or the gods".

So it seems theology studies both. But it's not hard to argue that religion follows gods and so the study of religion follows the study of the gods. And the gods have as much proof as the fairies at the bottom of your garden.

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Now with 100% more corn

[Gubbins]

Quoting novium from 14:51, 17th Aug 2007
My star thing...I went over in great detail how it would not be considered incontrovertible proof. There is no such thing as incontrovertible proof in the realm on interpretation.

Again, see above (in your terminology): Proof vs. proof.

I guess I could sum up and apply my argument to the theist/atheist/agnostic thing and say that the default skeptical perspective isn't atheism, but agnosticism... as it recognizes that there is no way for us to discover the answers to the big question: Why?

To move away from agnosticism (in any direction) requires a leap of faith.

I agree with this up to a point. To move away from agnosticism requires either evidence or belief without evidence (i.e. a leap of faith)... or both.

If one accepts solely physical evidence, there is no proof of God, therefore no need for God, therefore it is unlikely that God exists. If one takes a leap of faith, then one is making a decision based on blind instinct. I'm just wondering what reasons one has to do the latter and base one's decision on something as arbitrary as faith.

I'd continue with this argument, but unfortunately I have a bus to catch and won't be able to get back to it until Monday. Enjoy...

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...then again, that is only my opinion.

[MaverickMenzies]

[quote]
An interpretation, obviously. As I have been arguing for nigh on 10 pages now.
[quote]

If the question of God's existance is purely interpretational and not answerable by appealing to physical evidence then doesn't it make the concept somewhat impotent?

To say that God is an interpretation rather than a natural (or a super-natural) phenomenon means that It cannot interact with our physical universe in the manner predicted by many major religions.

If you can embrace this position, then I would argue that you would be at odds with the many people who believe that God can intervene in our Universe.

This position of God as an interpretation is fine, but it is distinguisable from the notion that God has observational consequences.

I think that it is important to keep this distinction in mind.

[novium]

But you speak as if theology is trying to be biology. The habits and habitats of deities, etc etc.
"Theology finds its scholars pursuing the understanding of and providing reasoned discourse of religion, spirituality and God or the gods. "
*reasoned discourse*. the discourse about god/gods is about "the nature of God" not "what do gods like to eat?"

"Theologians use philosophical analysis and argument to understand, explain, test, critique, defend or promote any of a myriad of religious topics. "

Quoting Haunted from 16:10, 17th Aug 2007
Crystal healing yes, the study of fairies no.

From wiki: "Theology finds its scholars pursuing the understanding of and providing reasoned discourse of religion, spirituality and God or the gods".

So it seems theology studies both. But it's not hard to argue that religion follows gods and so the study of religion follows the study of the gods. And the gods have as much proof as the fairies at the bottom of your garden.

[hr]

Now with 100% more corn

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Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[novium]

Well, the reason you know is because I've taken that position before on other threads.

Of course, if you were assuming that based off my main argument through this thread, that would have been a very silly assumption to make, as I never argued *positively* for it. Nor was I setting anything up for a positive argument. It was an academic exercise.


My reason for belief is as I said in my earlier example... "the divine in me senses the divine in it".

I, like you, trust my senses. I admit that my senses could be wrong...but it's still what I sense. I chose, like you, to take the leap of faith and assume that sense is correct.

Quoting Haunted from 16:07, 17th Aug 2007

Quoting novium from 16:00, 17th Aug 2007
If you have time, read through this:
http://www.phdcomics.com/proceedings/vi ... sc&start=0

21 pages, you'll have to forgive me if I don't. Surely you have another, source?

But let me say now that I am a theist...

Somehow I think we all knew.

and I do not believe in the god of the gaps. Neither do I believe out of a fear of death.

Then, if you wouldn't mind, please share your reasons for belief and then the reasons for that particular god above all others?

[hr]

Now with 100% more corn

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Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[Haunted]

Quoting novium from 17:03, 17th Aug 2007
But you speak as if theology is trying to be biology. The habits and habitats of deities, etc etc.
"Theology finds its scholars pursuing the understanding of and providing reasoned discourse of religion, spirituality and God or the gods. "
*reasoned discourse*. the discourse about god/gods is about "the nature of God" not "what do gods like to eat?"

No, my arguement is: What is the point of studying the nature of something that has as much proof of existing as fairies or spacefaring crockery?

To make any comment on the nature of the gods, surely the gods must be real. Otherwise you are just setting yourself up as an expert in the imaginery, like crystal healers for example. Or as an expert in the study of the worship of the imaginery and how worshipping the imaginery affects our lives.

Actually that last one probably is a legitimate field of study. But for psychologists only.

[hr]

Now with 100% more corn

[Haunted]

Quoting novium from 17:07, 17th Aug 2007
My reason for belief is as I said in my earlier example... "the divine in me senses the divine in it".

A funny sort of gut feeling (perhaps yearning?) for something more than what you see?

Which god does this feeling point to anyway? Surely not Baal? Baal could just be testing you you know.

Your assumption goes further than mine. Mine is an assumption that all but the most eccentric philosophers (or stoners) take. You seem to claim knowledge of another sense, one you can't corroborate with others in the same way that two people can agree on the colour of the sky. A sense without a physical organ either it would seem.

[hr]

Now with 100% more corn

[novium]

No. not a yearning. Just a solid recognition.

All but the most eccentric philosophers? you do not know your philosophy. But then again, I already knew that, or we wouldn't have had the huge round and round and round debate we just did.

I claim the same "knowledge" you do. The fact that others feel as I do does not change your belief in your initial assumption. Why should the fact that you feel the way you do change my belief in my initial assumption (i.e. that my sense can be trusted).

Let us not digress into ancient pantheism, because it has little to do with what we term religion. (What we term religion is much closer to philosophy).

if you can avoid insulting my intelligence for two minutes, we might actually have a real conversation. I have tried to be fair to your beliefs. I have acknowledged that I have no way of truly knowing if what I believe is correct. And more importantly, I do not go around on a high horse, pretending that my philosophy is naturally superior to yours.

Do not get into the whole "sense without a physical organ thing"- that's backsliding. The initial assumption, remember, is the basis of the philosophy. I get it. you're a materialist. But you can't prove that materialism is right...and the step you took towards the materialist point of view is just as much a 'sense without an organ"

Quoting Haunted from 17:17, 17th Aug 2007

Quoting novium from 17:07, 17th Aug 2007
My reason for belief is as I said in my earlier example... "the divine in me senses the divine in it".

A funny sort of gut feeling (perhaps yearning?) for something more than what you see?

Which god does this feeling point to anyway? Surely not Baal? Baal could just be testing you you know.

Your assumption goes further than mine. Mine is an assumption that all but the most eccentric philosophers (or stoners) take. You seem to claim knowledge of another sense, one you can't corroborate with others in the same way that two people can agree on the colour of the sky. A sense without a physical organ either it would seem.

[hr]

Now with 100% more corn

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Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[Senethro]

No its not, God is a factual claim, you have no facts.

End thread.

[novium]

Ooh, boy Senethro, with a grasp of the philosophic arguments as keen as yours, why aren't you out there becoming the new Plato?

Quoting Senethro from 20:16, 17th Aug 2007
No its not, God is a factual claim, you have no facts.

End thread.

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Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[Senethro]

I didn't use philosophy to deduce the existence of my dinner, I used my tongue.

What you are trying to do is put god as being somehow beyond testable means. You can talk about theologies and interpretations but all you're doing is making a gap for god to hide in. This is why people come up with the annoying FSM and celestial teapot and they are quite apt analogies.

[novium]

So you believe in physicalist monism. Good for you. That doesn't make you right; you're still assuming that physicalist monism is True.

on edit: those analogies are false because they assume all believers are also ascribing physicalist monism. Which is not the case...and that is why such analogies are nothing more than preaching to the choir, and why it will never be anything but a strawman, and any other cliches you'd like me to bring up...
[hr]

Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[4???2]

"On the other hand, it's difficult to class several billion people as being collectively crazy with the same delusion, much as you may want to."

I don't think they're crazy, i think they're simple

[Senethro]

Quoting novium from 23:41, 17th Aug 2007
So you believe in physicalist monism. Good for you. That doesn't make you right; you're still assuming that physicalist monism is True.

Which is many less assumptions than you make, so I'm less likely to be wrong.

on edit: those analogies are false because they assume all believers are also ascribing physicalist monism. Which is not the case...and that is why such analogies are nothing more than preaching to the choir, and why it will never be anything but a strawman, and any other cliches you'd like me to bring up...

Reality is apparently not consensual. The teapot exists or it does not independent of how a bunch of bleating ape descendants define themselves.

[Haunted]

Lets ease back on the ad hominem.

Your right when you say I am unable to say eloquently why the physical universe is real, or indeed why anything is. How about, "it just is"? Someone with a better grasp of language could probably make this sound more convincing.

You obviously accept it as real. You can prove it is real to yourself by manipulating it, forming mathematical descriptions of it and so on. The same cannot be said of this 'other' reality you allude to. It is entirely in your head, you cannot observe it, experiment with it, make predictions or descriptions. Yes we can argue about the nature of observation (it's probably a philosophy no doubt) but at the end of the day, observation/experiment/reason works in the real world. The proof is all throughout science.

Quoting novium from 19:39, 17th Aug 2007
No. not a yearning. Just a solid recognition.

You still haven't answered which god and why.

Let us not digress into ancient pantheism, because it has little to do with what we term religion. (What we term religion is much closer to philosophy).

I disagree with this. Relgion is a set of rules on worshipping the supernatural and observing ritual and religious law. Religion champions 'faith' as a virtue. Belief in something without any proof of that something. Can you be so critical of FSMists since they obviously have faith (perhaps more than your average joe) towards their chosen imaginery friend?

I have acknowledged that I have no way of truly knowing if what I believe is correct. And more importantly, I do not go around on a high horse, pretending that my philosophy is naturally superior to yours.

Can you make a statement about your beliefs which if true would falsify them?
Do you believe in god as a personal god (i.e. he hears your prayers etc) or as a philosophical mechanism (i.e. the first cause)?

Do not get into the whole "sense without a physical organ thing"- that's backsliding. The initial assumption, remember, is the basis of the philosophy. I get it. you're a materialist. But you can't prove that materialism is right...and the step you took towards the materialist point of view is just as much a 'sense without an organ"

I think we're on the same page here. Your belief has no roots in physical reality then?
Do you believe the 'soul' is somehow also separate from the physical universe? Can you survive your own death?

I am sadly away for the remainder of the weekend, will be interesting to see where this goes.

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Now with 100% more corn

[novium]

Prove to me that physicalist monism is right. Prove to me that you can trust your senses.
Prove to me that anything is "True".

you can't. No one can.
You haven't even tried working through the logic of it all...you just keep stating "I'm right, and you're wrong, and so you're wrong, and I'm right"

Such reasoning seems oddly familiar.

Quoting Senethro from 02:29, 18th Aug 2007

Quoting novium from 23:41, 17th Aug 2007
So you believe in physicalist monism. Good for you. That doesn't make you right; you're still assuming that physicalist monism is True.

Which is many less assumptions than you make, so I'm less likely to be wrong.

on edit: those analogies are false because they assume all believers are also ascribing physicalist monism. Which is not the case...and that is why such analogies are nothing more than preaching to the choir, and why it will never be anything but a strawman, and any other cliches you'd like me to bring up...

Reality is apparently not consensual. The teapot exists or it does not independent of how a bunch of bleating ape descendants define themselves.

[hr]

Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[novium]

"It just is", as an answer, no matter how eloquently put, is still an opinion, not a statement of fact.

I can't prove to myself anything. There is no such thing as "proof". At some point, I am making some fundamental assumptions, just because you can't sit around navel gazing all day that basically boil down to accepting things as they seem, for the purposes of every day life. I would imagine it's a bit like newtonian and quantum physics. Everyday life operates pretty much according to the newtonian picture of things. You just have to go with it. Yet you can also remain aware that things get pretty damn weird and anti-intuitive when you follow the mechanics of things down to the level of quantum physics. The fact that daily life operates as it does not invalidate the quantum level of things. I would say philosophy is kind of like quantum physics in that it's important, and underlies everything, but for the most part we can live without thinking about it too much.

Of course, it's not a perfect comparison, because physics is after all a science (this will cause a problem in about a second)
But anyway, bear with me, imperfect comparison or not, just pretend that you can compare philosophies to physics. You're locked into the one view (the newtonian one, for example) so firmly that even when considering another view, you try to force it to fit within the conventions of the view you've already taken, and then use your view to show it to be wrong. Of course that doesn't work.

That is the flaw with questions like:
"Your belief has no roots in physical reality then?"

It's a bit like "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

There's no way to answer it without agreeing with your first premise, your first assumption. The second example is a bit of rhetorical trickery, and I don't mean to accuse you of that. But there is no point in my describing other philosophies until you stop testing them against the assumptions you've already made- the things you've taken on faith.

As to ancient religion and modern religion: that would be completely sidetracking. Don't tempt me... ancient history is my passion so explaining the whole thing would take some time. And I would not be able to stop myself. Just for now... trust me when I say that traditional religion in the classical world is so far removed from what we think of constituting religion- that hmm, how to say this... how about -that it's a bit like trying to discuss civic infrastructure in the terms of theology.

Quoting Haunted from 11:31, 18th Aug 2007

Your right when you say I am unable to say eloquently why the physical universe is real, or indeed why anything is. How about, "it just is"? Someone with a better grasp of language could probably make this sound more convincing.

You obviously accept it as real. You can prove it is real to yourself by manipulating it, forming mathematical descriptions of it and so on. The same cannot be said of this 'other' reality you allude to. It is entirely in your head, you cannot observe it, experiment with it, make predictions or descriptions. Yes we can argue about the nature of observation (it's probably a philosophy no doubt) but at the end of the day, observation/experiment/reason works in the real world. The proof is all throughout science.

Quoting novium from 19:39, 17th Aug 2007
No. not a yearning. Just a solid recognition.

You still haven't answered which god and why.

Let us not digress into ancient pantheism, because it has little to do with what we term religion. (What we term religion is much closer to philosophy).

I disagree with this. Relgion is a set of rules on worshipping the supernatural and observing ritual and religious law. Religion champions 'faith' as a virtue. Belief in something without any proof of that something. Can you be so critical of FSMists since they obviously have faith (perhaps more than your average joe) towards their chosen imaginery friend?

I have acknowledged that I have no way of truly knowing if what I believe is correct. And more importantly, I do not go around on a high horse, pretending that my philosophy is naturally superior to yours.

Can you make a statement about your beliefs which if true would falsify them?
Do you believe in god as a personal god (i.e. he hears your prayers etc) or as a philosophical mechanism (i.e. the first cause)?

Do not get into the whole "sense without a physical organ thing"- that's backsliding. The initial assumption, remember, is the basis of the philosophy. I get it. you're a materialist. But you can't prove that materialism is right...and the step you took towards the materialist point of view is just as much a 'sense without an organ"

I think we're on the same page here. Your belief has no roots in physical reality then?
Do you believe the 'soul' is somehow also separate from the physical universe? Can you survive your own death?

I am sadly away for the remainder of the weekend, will be interesting to see where this goes.

[hr]

Now with 100% more corn

[hr]

Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[Senethro]

I've an idea, how about you perform radical open brain surgery on yourself? As the only thing that you can be certain of is your self, when you directly interact with the matter constituting your self then the feeling of having the self change will surely indicate the absolute reality of the physical. (because if the brain is real, the scalpel is real, the hand is real and so is all you can touch)

Dualism is an unevidenced hypothesis and so monism must be assumed until this changes.

Of course, this won't prove physical monism to anyone but yourself as you can only communicate the experience to us in terms of analogies. Assuming you're able to communicate at all after this drastic procedure.

[novium]

Senethro, I wonder why you even bother responding. You're not contributing everything, and I do get tired of having to stop every five minutes to try and explain the basics to you.

[hr]

Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[oddly familiar]

Quoting novium from 12:49, 18th Aug 2007
Such reasoning seems oddly familiar.

HEY!!!!

No fair!

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saru mo ki kara ochiru