This series is a continuation of my conversations with an atheist friend of mine. We began with religion and have now moved onto many other things. These are my edited responses from that conversation. The eighth entry concerns the purpose of science in my life and how religion fills in the gaps.
Here is how I view the end of science. Just because I can't understand the soul and heaven and God (if they exist) doesn't mean I can't understand everything else. If we understood the universe except for religion, then I would have to think about the end of science again, fortunately we’ll probably never fully understand the universe. Until then why stop pursuing science just because we one day might understand everything except religion? Just because we can't describe the soul or God now doesn't mean we won't some day get there. I think religion and science can describe the same thing, just in different ways. What I can call creation, you can call evolution and the big bang. One being right doesn't mean the other is wrong. If science, then not religion or if religion, then not science is fallacious, a dichotomy in the most horrid sense. Both can exist simultaneously and not only exist but help on another.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
This I Believe (20)
This is part twenty of my “This I Believe” series. I have had trouble over the last several years defining exactly what it is I prescribe to as a worldview. I hope to figure some of what I believe here.
I have one last thing to talk about for now (I’ll start this series back up once I come to more conclusions.): a thought that occurred to me a while ago. All the other times I’ve suffered a lack of faith it has been because I was mad at God for whatever reason, being depressed, loosing a friend, being lonely, etc. Right now though, I’m doing very well. I’m happy, productive, and usually around people I enjoy. So why am I having a hard time now? I think it’s because I’m finally not thinking like a child anymore. I am being very critical of everything that I am exposed to. I can step back and take a logical look at my culture, religion, politics, etc. and not have the influence of adults shade my judgments. And those judgments are very skeptical of religion. To again sum up my worldview:
I have one last thing to talk about for now (I’ll start this series back up once I come to more conclusions.): a thought that occurred to me a while ago. All the other times I’ve suffered a lack of faith it has been because I was mad at God for whatever reason, being depressed, loosing a friend, being lonely, etc. Right now though, I’m doing very well. I’m happy, productive, and usually around people I enjoy. So why am I having a hard time now? I think it’s because I’m finally not thinking like a child anymore. I am being very critical of everything that I am exposed to. I can step back and take a logical look at my culture, religion, politics, etc. and not have the influence of adults shade my judgments. And those judgments are very skeptical of religion. To again sum up my worldview:
1.)God is unreasonable, but because of his nature, God doesn’t have to be reasonable to human beings. No matter how unreasonable God seems, if reason cannot prove without any doubt God does not exist, religion can always claim that God does not have to be reasonable. Also if God does exist, He should not condemn a person to whom He gave logic and reason for logically thinking, as long as they truthfully consider the universe. Good acts can save.
- 2.)We cannot know all evidence in regards to the God question. God can neither be 100% proven nor 100% disproven. Questions will always remain. Reason is not helpful when it comes to religion.
- 3.)There is a small chance God does exist. Regardless of how small this chance is, faith can bridge the gap. Faith is believing when there is no proof. Notice I say no proof. If there is absolute proof God does not exist, faith no longer has a place. Also, faith without some doubt is not really faith. If one believes without any doubt, that is credulousness not faith. God requires faith, not blind following.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
This I Believe (19)
This is part nineteen of my “This I Believe” series. I have had trouble over the last several years defining exactly what it is I prescribe to as a worldview. I hope to figure some of what I believe here.
I pose the following question: Why did God stop performing obvious large scale miracles after Jesus? God could have a much larger following if he would just perform a parting of the Red Sea or some other active miracle.
Option one is that God doesn’t exist and the Bible is a myth.
Option two is that God needed the big miracles to start his following, but now that he has that large following, large miracles that interfere in the development of man aren’t necessary. And that He is trying to inspire faith of those who believe (e.g. what point is faith if the object of belief is obvious?)
The point I again want to make is that every time I think up or am presented with an argument against God, religion always finds some sort of loophole around what doesn’t appear to make sense. And that’s all it has to do, simply remind that the possibility exists for divinity, not rebuff an argument against it.
I pose the following question: Why did God stop performing obvious large scale miracles after Jesus? God could have a much larger following if he would just perform a parting of the Red Sea or some other active miracle.
Option one is that God doesn’t exist and the Bible is a myth.
Option two is that God needed the big miracles to start his following, but now that he has that large following, large miracles that interfere in the development of man aren’t necessary. And that He is trying to inspire faith of those who believe (e.g. what point is faith if the object of belief is obvious?)
The point I again want to make is that every time I think up or am presented with an argument against God, religion always finds some sort of loophole around what doesn’t appear to make sense. And that’s all it has to do, simply remind that the possibility exists for divinity, not rebuff an argument against it.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
This I Believe (18)
This is part eighteen of my “This I Believe” series. I have had trouble over the last several years defining exactly what it is I prescribe to as a worldview. I hope to figure some of what I believe here.
Here I want to comment on two concepts: faith and hope.
Faith, in the simplest sense I can think of, is believing in something, a thought, a person, a worldview, when you have no proof for the correctness of your belief. Faith also requires knowing that your belief is true regardless of a lack of evidence supporting that belief. I think that faith without doubt is not faith. Faith without some doubt is acceptance.
I am a follower of Kierkegaard in this sense. There will never be sufficient evidence to demand belief, but faith alone will be enough to demand belief. Doubt is the rational part of the brain telling you that what faith demands is nonsense. But by its own nature faith flies in the face of that and is meaningless without the doubt without which it is simply credulousness.
Hope, on the other hand, is wanting something when you have no proof for the correctness of your belief yet also not knowing or being sure how correct that belief is. Hope is wanting but doubting.
Hope is wishing something will happen, but faith is believing something will happen.
To make sense of this I picture an isosceles triangle where the two legs of the triangle are hope and credulousness, and the pinnacle of the triangle is faith. Faith requires some of both hope and credulousness to exist, but faith is not either of those two.
Here I want to comment on two concepts: faith and hope.
Faith, in the simplest sense I can think of, is believing in something, a thought, a person, a worldview, when you have no proof for the correctness of your belief. Faith also requires knowing that your belief is true regardless of a lack of evidence supporting that belief. I think that faith without doubt is not faith. Faith without some doubt is acceptance.
I am a follower of Kierkegaard in this sense. There will never be sufficient evidence to demand belief, but faith alone will be enough to demand belief. Doubt is the rational part of the brain telling you that what faith demands is nonsense. But by its own nature faith flies in the face of that and is meaningless without the doubt without which it is simply credulousness.
Hope, on the other hand, is wanting something when you have no proof for the correctness of your belief yet also not knowing or being sure how correct that belief is. Hope is wanting but doubting.
Hope is wishing something will happen, but faith is believing something will happen.
To make sense of this I picture an isosceles triangle where the two legs of the triangle are hope and credulousness, and the pinnacle of the triangle is faith. Faith requires some of both hope and credulousness to exist, but faith is not either of those two.
Friday, September 04, 2009
This I Believe (17)
This is part seventeen of my “This I Believe” series. I have had trouble over the last several years defining exactly what it is I prescribe to as a worldview. I hope to figure some of what I believe here.
This post poses an interesting question regarding original sin.
Here’s an interesting thought: God created the world in six days. Some time afterward Adam and Eve committed the original sin. From then on, all humans would have original sin that would have had to be cleansed via the Resurrection. If then it only took seven days to create the universe, why not just start over again? God is omniscient. He knew that from the original sin onward that everyone would be tarnished and would suffer. Why go though with the trouble on continuing with a sinful people? (Because He loves us and couldn’t destroy the future of everyone because of two people.) Why then did He let us continue for however long until He gets fed up with us and floods the Earth (the Noah story) and kills every human except for one family, who because of Adam and Eve all still have original sin and will then repopulate the Earth with people who will still have original sin. Why not just stop it from the beginning? Wipe out the universe, start over again. It makes no sense.
The best answer I can come up with is that because of original sin of Adam and Eve, all of His creations (even if He started over) would be stained as well. You can also call Adam and Eve a myth, an explanation of why God felt compelled to give us free will, a reason I find more believable. The problem is, if Adam and Eve is a myth, what else is? Possibly everything.
This post poses an interesting question regarding original sin.
Here’s an interesting thought: God created the world in six days. Some time afterward Adam and Eve committed the original sin. From then on, all humans would have original sin that would have had to be cleansed via the Resurrection. If then it only took seven days to create the universe, why not just start over again? God is omniscient. He knew that from the original sin onward that everyone would be tarnished and would suffer. Why go though with the trouble on continuing with a sinful people? (Because He loves us and couldn’t destroy the future of everyone because of two people.) Why then did He let us continue for however long until He gets fed up with us and floods the Earth (the Noah story) and kills every human except for one family, who because of Adam and Eve all still have original sin and will then repopulate the Earth with people who will still have original sin. Why not just stop it from the beginning? Wipe out the universe, start over again. It makes no sense.
The best answer I can come up with is that because of original sin of Adam and Eve, all of His creations (even if He started over) would be stained as well. You can also call Adam and Eve a myth, an explanation of why God felt compelled to give us free will, a reason I find more believable. The problem is, if Adam and Eve is a myth, what else is? Possibly everything.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
This I Believe (part 16 comments on the comments part 5)
After all the name calling, superfluous comments on everything ranging from my psychological state to the Christian thoughts on homosexuality, and approximately 400 posts and comments, the following three quotes sum up what I now consider my world view. I’m sure this will change, but it is what it is right now.
Wesley: “You're realizing you can't win an argument based on reason, so now you're falling back to, ‘Well, I know God doesn't make sense, but that's because God doesn't have to make sense. He's beyond our understanding, so he's immune to reason - he doesn't have to follow the laws of the universe was we know them.’ My answer to this is that if there were a God who made himself logically impossible to us, I'm sure he won't be surprised when people do not believe he exists.”
Anon2: “So Wesley, you don't see any convincing evidence for the existence of God. That does not mean there is no God. Since you cannot know all evidence, it is possible that evidence exists that proves God's existence, or at least supports His existence. Therefore, it is possible that God exists. If it is possible, then faith has its place.”
Wesley: “You say that ‘if it is possible that God exists, then [I] should be an agnostic.’ This is a very common criticism - the response is this: every atheist is infinitesimally agnostic. It is possible that your omnipotent and omniscient God exists, but it is infinitesimally possible. The point is this: there is some point at which an unlikelihood becomes an impossibility. If you are familiar with the mathematical concept of a limit from calculus, then you should understand this.”
These three quotes sum up my thinking about God and religion. Formally:
Wesley: “You're realizing you can't win an argument based on reason, so now you're falling back to, ‘Well, I know God doesn't make sense, but that's because God doesn't have to make sense. He's beyond our understanding, so he's immune to reason - he doesn't have to follow the laws of the universe was we know them.’ My answer to this is that if there were a God who made himself logically impossible to us, I'm sure he won't be surprised when people do not believe he exists.”
Anon2: “So Wesley, you don't see any convincing evidence for the existence of God. That does not mean there is no God. Since you cannot know all evidence, it is possible that evidence exists that proves God's existence, or at least supports His existence. Therefore, it is possible that God exists. If it is possible, then faith has its place.”
Wesley: “You say that ‘if it is possible that God exists, then [I] should be an agnostic.’ This is a very common criticism - the response is this: every atheist is infinitesimally agnostic. It is possible that your omnipotent and omniscient God exists, but it is infinitesimally possible. The point is this: there is some point at which an unlikelihood becomes an impossibility. If you are familiar with the mathematical concept of a limit from calculus, then you should understand this.”
These three quotes sum up my thinking about God and religion. Formally:
1.)God is unreasonable, but because of his nature, God doesn’t have to be reasonable to human beings. No matter how unreasonable God seems, if reason cannot prove without any doubt God does not exist, religion can always make this claim. Also if God does exist, He should not condemn a person he created with logic and reason for logically thinking, as long as they truthfully consider the universe. Good acts can save.
- 2.)We cannot know all evidence in regards to the God question. God can neither be 100% proven nor 100% disproven. Questions will always remain. Reason is not helpful when it comes to religion.
- 3.)There is a small chance God does exist. Regardless of how small this chance is, faith can bridge the gap. Faith is believing when there is no proof. Notice I say no proof. If there is absolute proof God does not exist, faith no longer has a place. Also, faith without some doubt is not really faith. If one believes without any doubt, that is knowing not believing. God requires faith, not blind following.
Friday, August 14, 2009
This I Believe (part 15 comments on the comments part 4)
This post deals with some of the comments from the post “Serious Conversations (part 7)” I’ve really focused in on just the things I felt were important.
Anon2: “All worldviews require at least some faith, but Christianity, as the only one that accurately portrays reality, requires the least, because its claims can be shown to be objective fact.”
Actually, no they cannot be proven to be objective fact, that’s the point. It only appears to be objective fact because you assume that it “accurately portrays reality”. I also think that moral relativism holds if there is no God.
Anon2: Agnostics are "atheists" when it comes to most religions. Why does the agnostic feel that it's quite all right to play dumb [when it comes to the Christian God] but not in the other cases? The agnostic must believe that he has evidence for the existence of the Christian God that prevents her from outright dismissing Him. (Actually, that's the best case scenario from an intellectual perspective. The worst case scenario is that the agnostic is afraid to admit that he does, in fact, dismiss God all together.) … If agnostics want to play dumb they have to explain why playing dumb makes sense in certain cases but not others. … The main argument I have heard that is pro-agnostic is that ‘Church wastes time’
Truthfully, I think that anything is infinitesimally possible. I choose to formally address the Christian God because that is the faith I was indoctrinated in. I suppose I could randomly pick some other infinitesimally possible deity and address him/her. In this sense I lump all popular religions together. I cannot prove or disprove any of them. They are all possible. The difference is that there is a tradition of belief that is why it is different to address all formal religions and ignore an obviously made up religion. For why I only attend a Catholic church see my previous posts, but to reiterate in short: Church is about the people and interacting with those good people, not just worshiping a deity that may or may not exist.
Anon2 referring to Occam’s razor: “the universe cannot replace God as explanation for its own existence. The universe is finite in both size and time. …How did this universe decide to create itself? …The laws of physics are designed with such precision that it is almost inconceivable that they could be the result of chance. …Random chance does not design such a well-crafted universe. All the atheistic explanations for such an exquisitely defined universe require the presence of trillions of other universes, of which ours is the one which happened, by chance, to have the exact physics required for the formation of galaxies, stars and planets. Therefore the atheistic explanation actually goes against Occam's razor since it requires some mechanism by which universes can sprout from some super universe and randomly change their laws of physics. The mechanism by which physical laws could randomly evolve would add further complexity. Design by an intelligent designer is obviously a much simpler explanation.
I am familiar with Occam’s razor, and it would be useful if you could prove that intelligent design is much simpler. The problem is who are you or anyone else to say that the multiverse is more complicated than an intelligent designer. It is relative. There is no way to prove it. How is it obvious that the multiverse or any other explanation is simpler than God.
I refer you to this post I made on the anthropic principle:
[…]
The weak argument refers to the selection of specific times and spaces in the universe for the development of intelligent life. In summary the weak anthropic principle says our existence coincides perfectly with conditions for intelligent life because life would not be around to measure the perfect conditions for its existence if those conditions did meet the needs of intelligent life. To restate, we would not be here to measure stuff if the stuff we were measuring precluded our existence. The strong argument generalizes the weak argument to include fundamental constants and forces of physics. The conclusion to this is we are in a universe where the forces and constants are such that we can exist. (Which, I know, is rather obvious.) An implication of this is that there are universes where forces and constants do not include our existence. So, we are left with a theory of the multiverse, that we are in one of an infinite number of possible universes.
By introducing this idea of the multiverse, the strong anthropic principle selects our universe as one in which life can exist. This is analogous to the weak version of the anthropic principle selecting our planet at our time for intelligent life, which is also somewhat analogous to the Darwinian theory of Evolution selecting our genes for life.
So, which is simpler a multiverse, which we cannot prove, or God, which we also cannot prove. At best these considerations leave us agnostic.
Anon2: “All worldviews require at least some faith, but Christianity, as the only one that accurately portrays reality, requires the least, because its claims can be shown to be objective fact.”
Actually, no they cannot be proven to be objective fact, that’s the point. It only appears to be objective fact because you assume that it “accurately portrays reality”. I also think that moral relativism holds if there is no God.
Anon2: Agnostics are "atheists" when it comes to most religions. Why does the agnostic feel that it's quite all right to play dumb [when it comes to the Christian God] but not in the other cases? The agnostic must believe that he has evidence for the existence of the Christian God that prevents her from outright dismissing Him. (Actually, that's the best case scenario from an intellectual perspective. The worst case scenario is that the agnostic is afraid to admit that he does, in fact, dismiss God all together.) … If agnostics want to play dumb they have to explain why playing dumb makes sense in certain cases but not others. … The main argument I have heard that is pro-agnostic is that ‘Church wastes time’
Truthfully, I think that anything is infinitesimally possible. I choose to formally address the Christian God because that is the faith I was indoctrinated in. I suppose I could randomly pick some other infinitesimally possible deity and address him/her. In this sense I lump all popular religions together. I cannot prove or disprove any of them. They are all possible. The difference is that there is a tradition of belief that is why it is different to address all formal religions and ignore an obviously made up religion. For why I only attend a Catholic church see my previous posts, but to reiterate in short: Church is about the people and interacting with those good people, not just worshiping a deity that may or may not exist.
Anon2 referring to Occam’s razor: “the universe cannot replace God as explanation for its own existence. The universe is finite in both size and time. …How did this universe decide to create itself? …The laws of physics are designed with such precision that it is almost inconceivable that they could be the result of chance. …Random chance does not design such a well-crafted universe. All the atheistic explanations for such an exquisitely defined universe require the presence of trillions of other universes, of which ours is the one which happened, by chance, to have the exact physics required for the formation of galaxies, stars and planets. Therefore the atheistic explanation actually goes against Occam's razor since it requires some mechanism by which universes can sprout from some super universe and randomly change their laws of physics. The mechanism by which physical laws could randomly evolve would add further complexity. Design by an intelligent designer is obviously a much simpler explanation.
I am familiar with Occam’s razor, and it would be useful if you could prove that intelligent design is much simpler. The problem is who are you or anyone else to say that the multiverse is more complicated than an intelligent designer. It is relative. There is no way to prove it. How is it obvious that the multiverse or any other explanation is simpler than God.
I refer you to this post I made on the anthropic principle:
[…]
The weak argument refers to the selection of specific times and spaces in the universe for the development of intelligent life. In summary the weak anthropic principle says our existence coincides perfectly with conditions for intelligent life because life would not be around to measure the perfect conditions for its existence if those conditions did meet the needs of intelligent life. To restate, we would not be here to measure stuff if the stuff we were measuring precluded our existence. The strong argument generalizes the weak argument to include fundamental constants and forces of physics. The conclusion to this is we are in a universe where the forces and constants are such that we can exist. (Which, I know, is rather obvious.) An implication of this is that there are universes where forces and constants do not include our existence. So, we are left with a theory of the multiverse, that we are in one of an infinite number of possible universes.
By introducing this idea of the multiverse, the strong anthropic principle selects our universe as one in which life can exist. This is analogous to the weak version of the anthropic principle selecting our planet at our time for intelligent life, which is also somewhat analogous to the Darwinian theory of Evolution selecting our genes for life.
So, which is simpler a multiverse, which we cannot prove, or God, which we also cannot prove. At best these considerations leave us agnostic.
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