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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 10:40:50 [Permalink]
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Wow! If I don't get enough double-talk here, I'll go read Spong:
| I believe, therefore, that atheism as a challenge to organized religion has a worthy vocation to fulfill. The real atheists are saying that the God they have encountered inside the life of the church is too small and too compromised to be God for their lives. If the church is dedicated to such an unbelievable, magical and miracle-working deity that it cannot admit to any genuine probing of the divine, then the atheist speaks a powerful truth. |
"Real" atheists, if there is such a thing, lack a belief in god. That's it. There is no need to "probe" the imaginary. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 10:44:01 [Permalink]
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I think the question I saw Dave ask is name something supernatural which is not a claim about the real world.
If you believe in astrology, you believe that the planets affect the real world. If you believe in faith healing, then you believe some divine energy has an effect on the real world.
Even a deist thinks that the god at one time or another had an effect on the real world. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 10:44:24 [Permalink]
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Gorgo wrote: | Talk to people who believe in an afterlife, and they'll tell you the same thing. Life is not acceptable, so let's create a fantasy world. |
Again you talk as if the mentality and motivations of some are that of all. Have you never talked to a person who believed in an afterlife because that made the most sense to them given what they've experienced, not because they just really really didn't want to die? Or someone who believed in it because they had a personal spiritual experience that they found convincing?
| Again, we're not talking about people who don't believe in these things, we're talking about people who do. You seem to want to confuse the issue. |
I don't think you understand the full spectrum of religious faith and spiritual experience. You are too sure of your own worldview to even be curious.
| Why are supernaturalist people so angry? They're not really any angrier than anyone else. |
They aren't so angry. And when they are angry, there are many reasons which are pointless to generalize about.
| They just make that anger sacred, but then, so do you and Dude and GeeMack. |
What does that even mean?
| You mean, some aspects of poetic atheism are not used for that purpose at all. As for those that believe in the supernatural, just talk to them, and they'll tell you. Once you point out what they've told you, they'll deny it, but if you ask, that's what they'll tell you. |
So basically, instead of really listening and trying to understand what people tell you, you project your own limited perception of reality onto them and then declare them delusional and/or liars, such as when you declared that Mother Theresa was an atheist even though she was no such thing.
| Your idea that such things are "comforting" are further proof that they have such an emotional rejection of reality, that they think making shit up is a good idea. Better to be discomforted and see things as they are, than to be comforted by lying to yourself. |
Most people are not comforted by the literal claims of religion, they are comforted by the sense of meaning and value they derive from religious experience. Two people can literally believe the same thing, and one be horrified by it, and another be comforted by it, totally depending on their mindset. And since meaning and value are subjective things created by conscious beings such as ourselves, they cannot be false.
| Or better, yet, accept yourself as you are, and not be too overly concerned about gaining your self-worth from some nonsense. |
Acceptance in the context of this sentence is a judgment of meaning and value, not a literal belief.
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 09/04/2007 11:52:26 |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
 Posted - 09/04/2007 : 10:46:45 [Permalink]
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Have you never talked to a person who believed in an afterlife because that made the most sense to them given what they've experienced, not because they just really really didn't want to die?
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YES!! That's what I just said!!!! |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 10:59:56 [Permalink]
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Again you talk as if the mentality and motivations of some are that of all.
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We are all human. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 11:49:55 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
I think I get it... you are saying you agree in principle and are thus asking me for a specific example of such a kind of theism that doesn't amount to atheism (like the priest who doesn't really believe but goes through the motions 'cause he thinks it is good for other people to believe.) Right? |
No, you're now confusing two different sub-topics in this thread.
One: I agree with you in principle and in practice that all types of faith should not be lumped together when we ask questions like "Is skepticism compatible with belief in god?" While this thread began with us talking about fairly naive god-beliefs, we can move on and examine any other sort of faith that we want to.
Two: Your assertion, "Supernatural claims are by definition not claims about the natural world." I had a point to make about this, and would like you to present an example of a supernatural claim with which to make it.| But haven't I given many examples already? |
Yes, you've provided overviews of other sorts of faith, and I appreciate it. But I especially appreciate the much deeper treatment of Spong's faith that you've offered here, because I can answer your question:John Spong helps but also confuses the issues of this thread in this article where he praises atheists who criticize most aspects of religion: Shortened link
Spong helps when he writes: | That is to say, theism is not what God is; it is what human beings have decided that God is. |
So theism is basically having a god-concept. Doesn't mean that god-concept resembles a or the real god, but it is a way for human beings to grasp that which we cannot understand. I once brought up this episode from Star Trek which I think bears bringing up again here – when Q takes a human to see the world of the Q continuum, but because the human is too limited and unable to truly understand the Q, they are presented as a virtual reality metaphor (the other Q are hanging out in front of a house by a road, and how they appear and the setting are all connected to some real aspect of their nature and situation.)
Unfortunately, Spong confuses the situation by rejecting all theism outright while making it clear he himself does believe in some concept of God. He may not be any kind of traditional theist, but he is a theist in that he does have and proclaim faith in a concept of God. He believes in God, he just rejects all clear definitions of God. To correlate this with Star Trek, John Spong is like the human who knows that the road and the house and the Q he sees are really just metaphors for something real and yet not fully comprehensible to the human mind. And when Spong criticism theism, he's criticizing the people who think the road and house and Q are literally accurate visions of the Q Continuum.
So John Spong's faith, his belief in God, is an example of religious faith that is compatible with skepticism. Do you agree? |
No, I don't agree. In your analogy, the Q exist. Whether or not a person believes he sees an accurate representation of the Q is secondary to the question of the Q's mere existence. An ant on a beach ball may mistakenly think he's on a flat plane, but he doesn't doubt the existence of something under his feet.
So if Spong believes in the existence of something for which there is no evidence, his faith is incompatible with skepticism, regardless of how well or poorly he can articulate what that "something" is or how badly he thinks he perceives it. It seems clear that Spong believes in something that he worships as God. His skepticism is reserved for the pronouncements of organized religion.
Now, if one's god-concept is so out-of-the-ordinary that it is along the lines of "you know that feeling you get when view a painting and it just 'clicks' with you? That feeling is what I call 'God'," then sure, one can maintain skepticism while being "faithful," but that's hardly a god-concept that requires (or even permits) "faith."| It is my contention that a growing number of people who call themselves religious and say they have faith and say they believe in God are becoming aware of the falseness of their literal belief. They still cling to the specifics of their God concept (such as when my mother clings to the rituals and traditions of the Catholic church), but if you ask them if they think their religion is correct and others are all wrong, they say no, and then explain something pluralistic along the lines of "many paths to the same place" (which is exactly what my mother and most of my progressive theistic friends say when we talk about this issue.) They recognize that they can only get in touch with the supernatural through this vision, that this particular faith is best for them, but that the vision they have isn't true to the reality of the supernatural and that many other visions (including atheism!) are equally valid. |
As soon as you say things like, "the reality of the supernatural," then you move the supernatural into the realm of empiricism. If it's real, then we should be able to test it. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 11:56:02 [Permalink]
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Gorgo wrote: | YES!! That's what I just said!!!! |
No, you said that they conceive of an afterlife because life is not acceptable, and you earlier said that they "hated reality". (Edited to add: you are insisting that their motivation is purely psychological, not rational) These are quite different from believing in an afterlife because it seems to make the most sense or because a person has an experience that he or she thinks is best interpreted as evidence for an afterlife. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 09/04/2007 11:57:10 |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 11:59:54 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
Gorgo wrote: | YES!! That's what I just said!!!! |
No, you said that they conceive of an afterlife because life is not acceptable, and you earlier said that they "hated reality". (Edited to add: you are insisting that their motivation is purely psychological, not rational) These are quite different from believing in an afterlife because it seems to make the most sense or because a person has an experience that he or she thinks is best interpreted as evidence for an afterlife.
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All that is immaterial. Talk to them, and they'll tell you what the Rabbi tells you.
It doesn't matter what makes the most sense to them. It makes no sense to me that I'm fat and bald and ugly and big and stupid. Should I make something else up because that makes more sense? You create the fantasy and "believe" in it because you don't think very much of yourself and your reality. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 12:12:17 [Permalink]
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Dave wrote: | So if Spong believes in the existence of something for which there is no evidence, his faith is incompatible with skepticism, regardless of how well or poorly he can articulate what that "something" is or how badly he thinks he perceives it. |
I disagree. How well or poorly he can articulate what that "something" is is key to my disagreement with you. I think that philosophical and mystical beliefs that are this vague and primarily rooted in transcendent experiences, feelings, and poetic concepts amount to no factual claim at all. They are merely contemplations on the ultimate mysteries of existence.
| If it's real, then we should be able to test it. |
We don't know this, we assume it based on our experiences so far, and as Matt pointed out earlier, pure skepticism wouldn't even make that assumption. For all we know, the scientific facts we accept today are like Newton's laws of physics; on to something true and certainly useful in our limited human experience, but far from the complete and accurate truth of all of reality. In fact, given all the amazing questions which remain, this is almost surely true of the current state of scientific understanding of reality. When dealing with questions of ultimate reality, we end up in the face of a great mystery and are humbled. For many, the search for God or spiritual enlightenment isn't about making any kind of claim about ultimate reality. It is about coming to acceptance that we aren't going to learn the answers to these great mysteries before we die. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 12:27:16 [Permalink]
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| All that is immaterial. Talk to them, and they'll tell you what the Rabbi tells you. |
You aren't even comprehending what I've written previously. I don't think the Rabbi said what you claim he said. What's more, I reject the notion that all theists think the same and talk the same about these questions as the Rabbi.
| It doesn't matter what makes the most sense to them. It makes no sense to me that I'm fat and bald and ugly and big and stupid. Should I make something else up because that makes more sense? You create the fantasy and "believe" in it because you don't think very much of yourself and your reality. |
What the hell are you talking about? That fact that you are fat cannot not make sense to you. You have a scale by which you judge that claim (for instance the medical definitions of overweight or obese) and then you evaluate whether that fact is true or not or can't be determined due to not enough info. In the case that it can't be determined, you might have a guess that you tend to believe in but don't claim certainty about.
But if something actually doesn't make sense, then you do need to come up with something that does make sense or else just accept that you aren't smart enough or knowledgeable enough to understand how it does make sense. Things which really don't make sense (in an objective sense) can't be real. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 12:47:30 [Permalink]
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| You aren't even comprehending what I've written previously. |
I can't even imagine the possibility that you and I would be able to figure out what the other is saying, so I'll just "believe" that you're a reason eating spider on the underbelly of the universe. Although, I won't really "believe" believe it, I'll just make it into a poetry kind of belief, that won't really affect how I believe, because everyone knows there is a continuum of belief that includes not believing, and the yes, even includes the Aerostar Van, which can't be tested, so it never gets a tune-up.
You can't be real.
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I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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| Edited by - Gorgo on 09/04/2007 12:49:01 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 13:32:08 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
I disagree. How well or poorly he can articulate what that "something" is is key to my disagreement with you. I think that philosophical and mystical beliefs that are this vague and primarily rooted in transcendent experiences, feelings, and poetic concepts amount to no factual claim at all. They are merely contemplations on the ultimate mysteries of existence. |
And what I've been saying is that if a person thinks of "God" as nothing more than a contemplation, then (A) it can hardly be described as "faith," and (B) such meditations are compatible with skepticism because they don't posit anything for which there is no evidence. We've got plenty of evidence that people think.| If it's real, then we should be able to test it. |
We don't know this, we assume it based on our experiences so far, and as Matt pointed out earlier, pure skepticism wouldn't even make that assumption. For all we know, the scientific facts we accept today are like Newton's laws of physics; on to something true and certainly useful in our limited human experience, but far from the complete and accurate truth of all of reality. In fact, given all the amazing questions which remain, this is almost surely true of the current state of scientific understanding of reality. When dealing with questions of ultimate reality, we end up in the face of a great mystery and are humbled. For many, the search for God or spiritual enlightenment isn't about making any kind of claim about ultimate reality. It is about coming to acceptance that we aren't going to learn the answers to these great mysteries before we die. |
When dealing with questions of ultimate reality, we must be talking about natural, and not the supernatural. And the fact that we've gotten stuff wrong in the past is no predictor that any particular thing we think we know now will change.
But, that said, our philosophical basis for knowledge tells us that we cannot ever know when we've reached ultimate reality. With that in mind, we're left with two choices. One, to constantly fret over what might or might not be real while never actually accumulating any knowledge of anything (in which case this discussion is pointless), or two, to decide upon a standard of evidence and testing that provides a pragmatic solution to our philosophical problem and appears to get us close to what might be real (called "science"). Hence, positing the existence of things for which there is no testable evidence is a rejection of the basis of our scientific enterprise, and even when the context is nothing more "absolute" than "I believe," creates a clear conflict with skeptical methods. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 13:40:00 [Permalink]
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Dave wrote: | And what I've been saying is that if a person thinks of "God" as nothing more than a contemplation, then (A) it can hardly be described as "faith," |
I am not talking about people who think of (in other words, define) God as nothing more than a contemplation. I talking about people who don't bother trying to define God at all, who reject the notion that God could be defined, but rather only contemplate God, and that action of contemplation is faith.
| When dealing with questions of ultimate reality, we must be talking about natural, and not the supernatural. |
I think part of the fundamental difference in our thinking on this matter is that you seem to regard the supernatural as a meaningless concept. I don't think anything supernatural exists, but I do think it is a meaningful concept. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 09/04/2007 13:40:28 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 13:43:58 [Permalink]
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Gorgo wrote: I can't even imagine the possibility that you and I would be able to figure out what the other is saying, so I'll just "believe" that you're a reason eating spider on the underbelly of the universe. Although, I won't really "believe" believe it, I'll just make it into a poetry kind of belief, that won't really affect how I believe, because everyone knows there is a continuum of belief that includes not believing, and the yes, even includes the Aerostar Van, which can't be tested, so it never gets a tune-up.
You can't be real. |
How am I supposed to take this? I really don't know. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2007 : 13:54:33 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
I am not talking about people who think of (in other words, define) God as nothing more than a contemplation. I talking about people who don't bother trying to define God at all, who reject the notion that God could be defined, but rather only contemplate God, and that action of contemplation is faith. |
Then there's no claim of existence, is there? Unlike Bidlack and Spong.| I think part of the fundamental difference in our thinking on this matter is that you seem to regard the supernatural as a meaningless concept. I don't think anything supernatural exists, but I do think it is a meaningful concept. |
I don't know how it can be meaningful, which is one of the reasons I asked you for an example of a supernatural claim. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Is Skepticism Compatible with Belief in God?
