The Theist - Agnostic - Atheist Poll

Here's another video that I found quite amusing ... watch at your own discretion. It's only about 4 minutes long, and we have been mentioning Occam's Razor a lot here ... so it's even on topic.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: I somehow doubt that science will ever be able to say anything about what is outside our universe, since it is based on the physical rules of our universe. Maybe it will someday, but until then any speculation about how the universe was created and what lies beyond does not have any rational basis. Maybe we can use logic as a basis (what I tried to do using Occam's Razor), but there's no way to know whether our rules of logic apply. Whatever's beyond our universe might be so totally different that not only our logic might not apply, but that we might very well call it "divine" even though it might be totally naturalistic, but just from another point of view.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: Dean wrote: It is always tricky when you make a blatant "God does not exist" statement, because that puts the burden of proof on you - to be able to make that statement you have to prove that all gods do not exist, disproving one is not enough because man will invent another one that circumvents whatever proof you put up.  Occam's Razor will never remove doubt from the equation so all your naturalistic explanations of divine attributions will only remove gods from the detail, and the nett result of that will be deism. Why should the result be Deism? Occam's Razor disposes of that belief as well. There may or may not be a divine creator, but it isn't necessary for understanding the world to suppose there is one.

Negoba wrote: It's hard for me to separate philosophical thought from religious thought from even scientific thought about the basic nature of the universe. Add on top of the the literary idea of all discourse being metaphor at one level or another, and things do get murky. There are some logical boundary lines, and it may be an intellectual mistake to try and cross those lines. But it feels like a natural thing at least to me.   Eventually you can't read everything, and must resign yourself to not knowing certain things. We all choose that point differently, but life is easier if you choose rather than endless wandering.   At least Dean seems to be evidence of this.

Dean is evidence of the fact that life is easier if you choose rather than endless wandering?

Well, maybe so ... but I have chosen, too. I live my life based on the assumption that there is no god. I'm still sympathetic to spiritualism and mysticism in the way Sam Harris uses the words. That means that I might try meditation or contemplation, but knowing that these are concepts that happen within my mind, and have no bearing on the world around me.

It's hard for me to separate philosophical thought from religious thought from even scientific thought about the basic nature of the universe. Add on top of the the literary idea of all discourse being metaphor at one level or another, and things do get murky.

"being precedes essence" ... that's exactly the level of discussion that I meant when I called myself a (naive) realist.

Negoba wrote: Human thought is in a way metaphysical. It is a separate universe of sorts. You cannot measure it in meaningful ways (at this time, I admit.) Culture is also something that exist outside the physical world.   Now the interesting question is if human consciousness is the only thing that allows these kinds of worlds to exist.

Mmm, there are as many definitions of what a culture might actually be as there are identifiable cultures but for me:

Culture: Shared indigenous* beliefs and practices (with the addendum of *not necessarily localised  for such a phenomenon to arise where the practicioners do not share a concrete location e.g the internet etc ? - this qualification might be spurious methinks but hey ho...)

The practices part should really be a no-brainer (scuse the pun ) as these are physical activities consistent with the mental and social interaction that gave rise to the culture in the first place and follow naturally from the foregoing. It's all very well to posit that because 'culture' is but a human idea it somehow can be thrown in the metaphysical bag as existing outside reality, but what culture exists without a physical expression of same ? The kids next door don't need to believe snowmen are real just to learn to build one of the critters.

That must be the most long-winded way I have ever attempted to say being precedes essence (but then I never really shook off my existentialist phase all those years ago)

Mr ProgFreak wrote: Neither do I or any of the so called "New Atheists" ... I'm just repeating that since your post doesn't show that you got that message.

The New Atheists can not and will not make that assertion because they cannot applying the scientific method to it and are constrained by that limation.

Dean wrote: It is always tricky when you make a blatant "God does not exist" statement, because that puts the burden of proof on you - to be able to make that statement you have to prove that all gods do not exist, disproving one is not enough because man will invent another one that circumvents whatever proof you put up.  Occam's Razor will never remove doubt from the equation so all your naturalistic explanations of divine attributions will only remove gods from the detail, and the nett result of that will be deism.

Why should the result be Deism? Occam's Razor disposes of that belief as well. There may or may not be a divine creator, but it isn't necessary for understanding the world to suppose there is one.

Dean wrote:   I don't make that statement - by asserting that all gods are an invention of man I can back that up using every scrap of evidence used by theists - every word written about gods was written by man, they claim it is they are words of gods and are accounts of the actions of gods, but they were written by the hand of man.

Neither do I or any of the so called "New Atheists" ... I'm just repeating that since your post doesn't show that you got that message.

Dean wrote:    Mr ProgFreak wrote: Edit: And about the Deist position: Of course there is no good reason to believe that either. If you suppose an "Einsteinian" point of view ... I could agree with that, but it's simply a form of appreciation for how complex and beautiful our world is, and how it exceeds our capabilities, evolved apes as we are, to comprehend it. I like that position, but ultimately you of course have the problem of infinite regression (Who created the Deist god). Here Occam's Razor also applies: As strange as it may seem: Maybe there really was no first cause. As a programmer I know that any recursive algorithm must have a short-cut escape-route to avoid infinite regression, (Douglas Hofstadter explains this better in GEB than I can here and it has been a while since I last read it), so the infinite regression at the origins of the Universe (with or without a creator) must have had such an escape-route (or we wouldn't be here). The other point about this is we are analysing it backwards looking for the start-point - true infinite regression has a start-point but no end-point. Oddly, most theist and non-theist theories hold the view that there was no "before" - time started at the moment of creation and at the moment of the Big-bang.

Maybe we simply don't understand it. There might also have been a creator of the universe, and that creator didn't have a cause. How ever it might have happened, my position is: We don't know (yet), so we simply leave it open until we have more information. I simply don't feel the need to suppose that it must have happened by a divine cause.

Dean wrote:    /edit - I also believe (but cannot prove) that any computing problem that can be solved using infinte regression can also be solved without it. The classic "Tower of Hanoi" example that is used to demonstrate the use of recursion can be solved without it.

Iterative solutions of the Towers of Hanoi are much less elegant though (I know that's beside the point).

Dean wrote:   Mr ProgFreak wrote: Of course these discussions always depend on how you define words like "Atheist" or "Agnostic", but I think you know what I mean. I thought I did, but I'm still reeling from the notion that New Atheism is actually Old Agnosticism

Again, that depends on how you define Agnosticism. New Atheism is certainly different in that there is a commitment to acting in this world based on the assumption that there is no God (by using a capital G I hint towards the Theist God). Agnosticism, as it is commonly used, appears to me as a reluctance to commit yourself to either side. Such a position seems very illogical to me ... if you live your life based on the assumption that there may be a Christian God (for example), then you risk eternal damnation ... life under the sword of Damocles, and a somewhat likely candidate for death bed conversion. 

Dean wrote: No gods have been shown to manifest in, or interact with, the physical world, theists interact with the physical world and they believe that their god works through them, that is also a belief and not a proven truth.   Popularity will always increase with a good stage-show, miracles, feasts and ritual are an entertainment and a way of involving the congregation. Christianity spread through-out Europe using all these techniques, adopting, adapting and absorbing local customs to fit the message.

In early Christianity it mostly depended on the miracles though ... the concept of vicarious redemption, the emphasis of Jesus' suffering on the cross etc. ... those things were added after Christianity had been established as the official religion of the Roman empire. So, in a way, first it emulated the old polytheistic Roman Gods and myths, and then evolved to emphasize the aspects that distinguish it from those older concepts.

Dean wrote:   Not all christian churches put heavy reliance on miracles, the Protestant Reformation rejected them, Pentecost's have a different view of what a miracle is, in the modern world *i think* that only the Catholic church supports the view that miracles still happen.

They even invented new miraculous concepts along the way, such as the transubstantiation.

Human thought is in a way metaphysical. It is a separate universe of sorts. You cannot measure it in meaningful ways (at this time, I admit.) Culture is also something that exist outside the physical world.