Religion and intelligence

[♪alt13]

Sure, but you'll notice that my statement is pretty heavily qualified:


Labels are relevant most of the time, otherwise they wouldn't exist as labels very long. But I don't think it's helpful to call Tillich a theist and Comte-Sponville an atheist, because when you get down to brass tacks, they're more similar than different. And I would argue that, in general, atheists (as long as they're not firebrands like David Silverman) and the more liberal theists might discover they have a lot more in common than they think if they dropped the diametrically opposed labels for a moment.

I am drunk I will get bacj to you in the morning. I do agrree with your post.

 

[♪alt13]

FWIW, I believe in the existence of multi-dimensional phenomena that are beyond the reach of the normal human senses and are beyond even the most modern and advanced tools of scientific observation. You can call this having 'spiritual' or 'meta-physical' belief if you'd like. I would tend to think of a "religion" as employing religious forms and behaviors--e.g., churches, rituals, chants or mantras, etc., which might be considered logistical means to focus on the mind on the inner self or potentially invoke a profound experience.

I think that as a scientist, it would be reductionistic and scientifically irresponsible to categorically dismiss the human religious/spiritual experience on account of not being able to document it, measure it or account for it in a standardized way. Such spiritual knowledge and experience cannot be disproved due to the limits of our methods of scientific observation, while some phenomena can be readily observed, if not fully understood. There are a number of phenomena that cannot be readily grasped by modern science--for example the "dark energy" that comprises the vast majority of the observable universe, the structure of the human body at the sub-atomic level, the characteristics of time fields beyond our grasp, and so on. In fact, it is even often difficult to scientifically understand a number of more mundane phenomena, such as the human mind, memory, art, culture, humor, the origin of intelligence, etc.

Hence, the scientist who categorically dismisses spiritual knowledge and experience cannot do so definitively and might actually be the one who turns out to be narrow-minded and taking comfort in widely preached dogma.

I will get back to you as well. suffice it to say fot now that there are reasons/evidence for the existence of something llike dark matter. dark matter has an effect for which we are not certain of the cause. Dark matter just means that the universe behaves in away that points to the existence of extra matter. Ther is no definitive "dark matter" as far as sciehence is concerned. This is a wholly different thing than a religious belief.

 

[fishonjazz]

I am drunk I will get bacj to you in the morning. I do agrree with your post.

*bacl

 

[silesian]

For me, atheism, Judaism, Buddhism, Mormonism, Catholicism, etc etc all have the same validity and likelihood of being correct as each other (if that made any sense)

Basically, nobody really KNOWS **** about ****. So to me any religion , including atheism and Satanism, COULD be just as right or wrong as any other since we are all ignorant about the afterlife

If the afterlife were the only subject, then this would perhaps be true. But there are so many areas that are knowable that we can come to some objective conclusions. Let's create a religion that is based on the belief that the universe was created on the day their prophet was born in 1935, he is immortal, and that the earth will blow up in the year 2000. Same validity and likelihood as other beliefs?

 

[fishonjazz]

If the afterlife were the only subject, then this would perhaps be true. But there are so many areas that are knowable that we can come to some objective conclusions. Let's create a religion that is based on the belief that the universe was created on the day their prophet was born in 1935, he is immortal, and that the earth will blow up in the year 2000. Same validity and likelihood as other beliefs?

Idk what happened in 1935.
I was born in 77

 

[Gameface]

If the afterlife were the only subject, then this would perhaps be true. But there are so many areas that are knowable that we can come to some objective conclusions. Let's create a religion that is based on the belief that the universe was created on the day their prophet was born in 1935, he is immortal, and that the earth will blow up in the year 2000. Same validity and likelihood as other beliefs?

Ya know, the funny part, is that if we tried hard enough we could explain all of that and believe it, even today, here on Earth, in the year 2014.

I'm an atheist because I'm lazy. If you want me to believe God exists you're gonna need to spoon feed me the evidence. I'm not going to meet you halfway. I'm not going to "try" to believe. I'm not going to push the "I believe" button until it starts making sense.

I agree with fishonjazz in large part, except that I don't think it's equally as likely that God exists as that He does not. I have zero proof of His or Her existence, so I take the sceptics stance. I do not believe until I have reason to believe.

 

[Siro]

Ya know, the funny part, is that if we tried hard enough we could explain all of that and believe it, even today, here on Earth, in the year 2014.

I'm an atheist because I'm lazy. If you want me to believe God exists you're gonna need to spoon feed me the evidence. I'm not going to meet you halfway. I'm not going to "try" to believe. I'm not going to push the "I believe" button until it starts making sense.

I agree with fishonjazz in large part, except that I don't think it's equally as likely that God exists as that He does not. I have zero proof of His or Her existence, so I take the sceptics stance. I do not believe until I have reason to believe.

I think there is more to it than that (or less to it, depending on perspective). The question whether God exists or not is meaningless. It's like saying <insert mythical creature> either exists or it doesn't. But that is nonsense. God itself is undefined. Each believer has his or her own version, and they're all equally lacking in evidence. Perhaps the question is "the universe is either purposefully created or it isn't". That's more interesting, and scientific evidence can be used to push the argument one way or another. For example, if we find that the universe is the only reality, or part of a finite set of realities, then the cosmological constants become difficult to explain without a purposeful creator. It wouldn't settle the question, but it becomes a plausible explanation. But it would NOT necessarily point to a God, let alone a SUPERNATURAL God (whatever that means). Even if signs point toward conscious design, the universe could still be a simulation by beings living in a multiverse for example.

Adding insult to injury, people believe in the God of their religions, which is demonstrably false. That's what makes the idea that "but MY God is sophisticated and original" hard to swallow. Because 99% of those who believe in God are obviously wrong. So atheism is indeed the default position given our current state of knowledge.

 

[The Blue Elephant]

I think there is more to it than that (or less to it, depending on perspective). The question whether God exists or not is meaningless. It's like saying <insert mythical creature> either exists or it doesn't. But that is nonsense. God itself is undefined. Each believer has his or her own version, and they're all equally lacking in evidence. Perhaps the question is "the universe is either purposefully created or it isn't". That's more interesting, and scientific evidence can be used to push the argument one way or another. For example, if we find that the universe is the only reality, or part of a finite set of realities, then the cosmological constants become difficult to explain without a purposeful creator. It wouldn't settle the question, but it becomes a plausible explanation. But it would NOT necessarily point to a God, let alone a SUPERNATURAL God (whatever that means). Even if signs point toward conscious design, the universe could still be a simulation by beings living in a multiverse for example.

Adding insult to injury, people believe in the God of their religions, which is demonstrably false. That's what makes the idea that "but MY God is sophisticated and original" hard to swallow. Because 99% of those who believe in God are obviously wrong. So atheism is indeed the default position given our current state of knowledge.

I love how atheists just say there is no evidence for a god and they just dismiss it. I dismiss all the counters to the evidence pointing towards god just as easily. Atheism is not the default reason just because you say so.

 

[Siro]

I love how atheists just say there is no evidence for a god and they just dismiss it. I dismiss all the counters to the evidence pointing towards god just as easily. Atheism is not the default reason just because you say so.

A fully automated response that is completely irrelevant to what I said. Good ol' TBS. I guess some things don't change.

 

[AtheistPreacher]

Siro and I have had this conversation before, but it's been a while, so it seems like a good time for me to re-state some thoughts.

As far as the existence of God goes, my thinking these days usually begins with Charles Hartshorne's modal argument -- which is less an argument than it is a (partial) definition of God. Basically, it says that modality of God's existence is either necessary or impossible -- not contingent. In other words, the idea that God exists but might not have, or that God does not exist but might have are both nonsense. The reason I like this definition is that otherwise God is too small. Even if some being with supernatural powers existed that did not fit this definition, I simply wouldn't feel compelled to worship it, because this "God" would simply be a really powerful being that was an accident about how the universe turned out. Worshipping some being just because it has a lot of power strikes me as being as dumb as worshipping Andre the Giant.

But of course, if you buy into this argument (which many don't, particularly those who think it nonsense to regard anything as necessary), then the question of God's existence becomes one that is literally impossible to solve, because a thing whose existence is either necessary or impossible isn't a thing we can pull out of the universe itself and examine; if it were, it would be a contingent being. It would be like trying to pull the color out of red or the wet out of water. If this modal argument is right, then the entire universe is either necessarily tinged with God or not, and can never be neatly separated from it.

You should now be asking why it would matter under this definition if God existed or not. And my short answer is: it really doesn't matter. This is why I generally find the discussion of God's existence unnecessary and uninteresting -- because I don't think God's existence can ever be shown empirically. In this way I am an agnostic in the strong sense. And if you are someone who thinks that particular historical events or persons definitively demonstrate God's existence -- like the life of Jesus of Nazareth, Muḥammad, Siddhārtha Gautama, etc. -- then I will smile and nod, and be unconvinced. Don't get me wrong, I think their teachings are interesting. They all had great insight -- but I don't think that any of them are God, or even divinely inspired (well, okay, maybe divinely inspired in a certain sense, but we'd have to talk definitions).

Rather than starting with God, I've found certain religious philosophy -- most notably process philosophy and theology -- compelling on more mundane levels. In particular:

-I regard the scientific "mechanistic" view of the universe to be sheer assumption. I think it far more likely that there is an "interior dimension" or "latent consciousness" in all matter. There is no neat dividing line between life and non-life, and I truly doubt that there is such a thing as completely "inert" or "dead" matter.
-Western philosophy largely ignored relations between entities in adopting a subject-predicate ontology for most of its history, and our science has been tinged with it. I am not an expert in any science, but I understand that this has done a lot of shifting at the higher levels of science today. But at the level of popular science understanding, there is still not nearly enough appreciation of how important relations really are. Process thought stresses that relations are actually all there are, that relations make up the related things, rather than the other way around. All of this also means that I think western identity categories suck.

And it's only after returning to what I regard as more basic -- and ultimately more important -- issues like the above, that we might be able re-introduce the idea of a God and talk about what that might mean. We could talk about Tillich's definition of God as our "ultimate concern" or "being itself." We could talk about process conceptions like God being the source of unrealized potentialities, or God as receiving and unifying the world's activity. Or we could talk about some other conception of what God might be, but with the understanding that we speak in metaphor, and that whether we call it "God" or not has no effect on the thing itself, although it may certainly have some effect on you. At this level of discussion, the theist/atheist distinction is largely meaningless.

 

[Siro]

AP, fantastic stuff, but I have a problem with the idea of the "supernatural", and I would like to hear your thoughts on the subject. To me, supernatural means the same thing as acausal (non-causal?). What I mean is, for an event to be considered supernatural there must not exist any naturalistic mechanism that can account for it. That must be fundamentally true, i.e. it is not simply the result of hidden variables or shortcomings of human knowledge. So how can any entity act acausally? Isn't the very idea of action or intent necessitates causality? The typical response I get is "it is beyond our comprehension". That's not much of answer at all.

I am open to the idea of a natural god. As in, a god (probably a species) that achieved enough knowledge to create its own universe. But I cannot begin to fathom what a supernatural god even means.

 

[AtheistPreacher]

AP, fantastic stuff, but I have a problem with the idea of the "supernatural", and I would like to hear your thoughts on the subject. To me, supernatural means the same thing as acausal (non-causal?). What I mean is, for an event to be considered supernatural there must not exist any naturalistic mechanism that can account for it. That must be fundamentally true, i.e. it is not simply the result of hidden variables or shortcomings of human knowledge. So how can any entity act acausally? Isn't the very idea of action or intent necessitates causality? The typical response I get is "it is beyond our comprehension". That's not much of answer at all.

I am open to the idea of a natural god. As in, a god (probably a species) that achieved enough knowledge to create its own universe. But I cannot begin to fathom what a supernatural god even means.

I am in total agreement. "Supernaturalism" is bunk. If a "God" exists, it is part of the natural universe and does not get to break natural laws. In fact, one of process philosophy's/theology's foremost thinkers -- David Ray Griffin -- wrote a book entitled Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion, partly to address just this issue.

The usual response to this is, of course, that a God who can't intervene in the universe and perform miracles, etc., is not a worshipful being. To which process theologians reply that such a conception of God's power doesn't make any damned sense. I actually wrote a section on the Wikipedia "Process Theology" page on just this subject back in May, here.

 

[The Blue Elephant]

A fully automated response that is completely irrelevant to what I said. Good ol' TBS. I guess some things don't change.

Typical Siromar upset at god for giving him a **** life so claims himself to be too smart for god.

 

[Gameface]

I am in total agreement. "Supernaturalism" is bunk. If a "God" exists, it is part of the natural universe and does not get to break natural laws. In fact, one of process philosophy's/theology's foremost thinkers -- David Ray Griffin -- wrote a book entitled Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion, partly to address just this issue.

The usual response to this is, of course, that a God who can't intervene in the universe and perform miracles, etc., is not a worshipful being. To which process theologians reply that such a conception of God's power doesn't make any damned sense. I actually wrote a section on the Wikipedia "Process Theology" page on just this subject back in May, here.

Would such a God possibly be so wise and so capable through applied knowledge and understanding to actually "know all things" and by such knowledge be capable of exerting precise power in such a way that it manipulated the course of events into something knowable and premeditated?

 

[AtheistPreacher]

Would such a God possibly be so wise and so capable through applied knowledge and understanding to actually "know all things" and by such knowledge be capable of exerting precise power in such a way that it manipulated the course of events into something knowable and premeditated?

Well, first off, in the process conception, God does indeed know everything (past and present, not future). God is conceived as having two aspects: one that is a "lure for feeling" to all entities in the universe (i.e. luring them toward unrealized possibilities), and another that receives and synthesizes the world's activity. Mindful of this first aspect, process theologians who believe in God would say that God is constantly luring or persuading all creatures toward the good (which in process thought tends to be more aesthetic than moral), but that it is up to the creatures as to which possibilities actually get realized. They would deny that God had the power to manipulate creatures into a course that is completely predictable.

 

[carolinajazz]

I'm an atheist because I'm lazy. If you want me to believe God exists you're gonna need to spoon feed me the evidence. I'm not going to meet you halfway. I'm not going to "try" to believe. I'm not going to push the "I believe" button until it starts making sense.

Many people do not believe in a Creator because of the well-known abuses and corruptions that blacken the history of many religions. Is that a sound reason for disbelief? No. “The excesses and atrocities of organized religion,” says Roy Abraham Varghese in his preface to Antony Flew’s book There Is a God, “have no bearing whatsoever on the existence of God, just as the threat of nuclear proliferation has no bearing on the question of whether E=mc2.”

What is the basic reason you don't believe in a Creator?

 

[carolinajazz]

Would such a God possibly be so wise and so capable through applied knowledge and understanding to actually "know all things" and by such knowledge be capable of exerting precise power in such a way that it manipulated the course of events into something knowable and premeditated?

Jehovah can look “far into the distance” of time—the future!
The Bible is full of evidence that this is true. It contains hundreds of prophecies, or history written in advance. The outcome of wars, the rise and fall of world powers, and even the specific battle strategies of military commanders were all foretold in the Bible—in some cases, hundreds of years in advance.—Isaiah 44:25–45:4; Daniel 8:2-8, 20-22.

Does this mean, though, that God has already foreseen the choices you will make in life? Some who preach the doctrine of predestination insist that the answer is yes. However, that notion actually undermines Jehovah’s wisdom, for it implies that he cannot control his ability to look into the future. To illustrate: If you had a singing voice of unparalleled beauty, would you then have no choice but to sing all the time? The notion is absurd! Likewise, Jehovah has the ability to foreknow the future, but he does not use it all the time. To do so might infringe upon our own free will, a precious gift that Jehovah will never revoke.—Deuteronomy 30:19,*20.

 

[Gameface]

Many people do not believe in a Creator because of the well-known abuses and corruptions that blacken the history of many religions. Is that a sound reason for disbelief? No. “The excesses and atrocities of organized religion,” says Roy Abraham Varghese in his preface to Antony Flew’s book There Is a God, “have no bearing whatsoever on the existence of God, just as the threat of nuclear proliferation has no bearing on the question of whether E=mc2.”

What is the basic reason you don't believe in a Creator?

Lack of evidence. And if you read what I wrote there, you'll understand, I'm not standing by to be convinced. I will put zero effort into convincing myself. If there is real evidence it's gonna need to smack me in the face pretty hard to get my attention. Otherwise I really couldn't care less.

hint: Bible quotes are not evidence

 

[Gameface]

Jehovah can look “far into the distance” of time—the future!
The Bible is full of evidence that this is true. It contains hundreds of prophecies, or history written in advance. The outcome of wars, the rise and fall of world powers, and even the specific battle strategies of military commanders were all foretold in the Bible—in some cases, hundreds of years in advance.—Isaiah 44:25–45:4; Daniel 8:2-8, 20-22.

Does this mean, though, that God has already foreseen the choices you will make in life? Some who preach the doctrine of predestination insist that the answer is yes. However, that notion actually undermines Jehovah’s wisdom, for it implies that he cannot control his ability to look into the future. To illustrate: If you had a singing voice of unparalleled beauty, would you then have no choice but to sing all the time? The notion is absurd! Likewise, Jehovah has the ability to foreknow the future, but he does not use it all the time. To do so might infringe upon our own free will, a precious gift that Jehovah will never revoke.—Deuteronomy 30:19,*20.

I was asking AP about process theology, which I am not familiar with at all. I've spoken to the JW missionaries many times. Got the little blue book on my book shelf somewhere. Not particularly intriguing, tbpfhwy.

 

[Gameface]

Well, first off, in the process conception, God does indeed know everything (past and present, not future). God is conceived as having two aspects: one that is a "lure for feeling" to all entities in the universe (i.e. luring them toward unrealized possibilities), and another that receives and synthesizes the world's activity. Mindful of this first aspect, process theologians who believe in God would say that God is constantly luring or persuading all creatures toward the good (which in process thought tends to be more aesthetic than moral), but that it is up to the creatures as to which possibilities actually get realized. They would deny that God had the power to manipulate creatures into a course that is completely predictable.

Thank you.

So this "lure"? I suppose there is speculation as to it's nature?

Should I just read the rest of the wiki and come back when I have a real question?