Why do so many theists think they can back up their faith?
- Thread starter Bungalow Bob
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Let's try this gain. There are no leprechauns in the center of the moon. I am making this claim right now, without knowledge, observation, empirical evidence or experience with magical, supernatural creatures potentially capable of anything (man that sounds like a god). Is my claim that leprechauns do not exist in the center of the moon a faith based one?
So you were just arguing in bad faith? Great!
No, on the contrary. My faith was strong. But come on man, do you not see what I'm up against? Endless hypotheticals and what ifs about leprechauns and uncles, tireless goalpost shifting, etc. I've just reached the point where chasing Log's wild goose around has gotten tiresome and so I am tapping out for now.
No, on the contrary. My faith was strong. But come on man, do you not see what I'm up against? Endless hypotheticals and what ifs about leprechauns and uncles, tireless goalpost shifting, etc. I've just reached the point where chasing Log's wild goose around has gotten tiresome and so I am tapping out for now.
I ask you one final question in my previous post. I am making a claim that leprechauns, which I have absolutely no knowledge, proof, evidence or experience with do not exist in the center of the moon. By your definition, is that claim based on faith?
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
We have to assume all non-evidenced claims have low plausibility by default.
ROFL. Yet it makes it perfectly clear that the scientific method didn't derive from Christianity at all. It was in its later stages picked up by western europe, which happened to be mostly christian, but there's absolutely no causation link between the two.
Christian scientists had the upper hand for a few decades at best. The vast majority of scientists since then have been either atheists or deists. And once again, these were people who completely separated the two. People who can't separate the two are failures (eg Behe).
You haven't provided any single concrete argument to support your idea, it's just a baseless claim for a start, but also proven wrong by the actual history of science.
Right so in essence you're completely ignoring the articles I've provided.
Oh blame space....reading this amongst the rest of the debating here just cracked me up.
Same here. And, since we do not know about god, you cannot say for certain he is not what he claims to be. To make a definitive claim that you know he is NOT god, is a position of faith....is that right?
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
There's no evidence, so its a claim with low plausibility. I've asked theists repeatedly in other threads for an alternate criteria to evidence for giving claims about reality more weight, and I've never received an answer. What else do we use to discriminate between what is more probably accurate and what is less probably accurate?
Sanky Panky
Banned
We have made great progress in understanding molecular biology and genetics (which only lead to more questions as to the origin of species and life). I assert that life has to have DNA, because it is what needs to be explained currently. There is no reason to speculate on a completely different precursor to life, simply because the current one is unexplainable. Maybe now you see further the similarities with religious faith.
I guess it goes back to the whole gnostic vs agnostic. If you are sure that god doesn't exist, you must put your faith in the natural process.
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Progress is molecular biology and genetics CONFIRMED the theory of evolution. It didn't lead to more questions. What the fuck are you talking about.
He only reads what he wants to, man. Don't bother with it.
Count Dookkake
Member
Sanky Panky
Banned
It's what you can derive from the article. A nice set of untested hypothesis, but nothing more.
In most cases the theory has "adapted" to new discoveries. It's quite easy to do, except new discoveries present new challenges. Too many to give examples.
Dude Abides
Banned
Have we moved from arguing about abiogenesis to arguing about evolution?
It's called a scientific review, which summarizes dozens of scientific articles. As examplified in the one I've provided, which cites over 100 research articles (ie with actual data). maybe you should go and read these.
No it hasn't. Every new fossil discovered strengthens the theory. Every new bit of DNA sequence strenghtens the theory. Again you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Haha, of course.
So you're saying they're wrong and they have faith in it, amirite [/sankypanky]
You assume that we were always asking the right questions - do you think that if at one point we asked "how does Zeus shoot lightening all over the world?" - and then we find out that lightening doesn't come from Zeus but from somewhere else, we shouldn't abandon the old question and look at the new one? If we were wrong to ask questions with the assumption of how life must be, we acknowledge that, and update the question to match our criteria "How does lightening strike all over the world?" - This is basic bro. This isn't even kind of related to faith in any way, I don't know how you got to that conclusion.
EVEN if I was a Gnostic Atheist, it wouldn't matter - KNOWING that there isn't a God doesn't mean that I have to know what the alternative is.
If you could provide one example, that would be interesting - not because it gives your argument validity, but because I'd like to see where your heads at.
But like I said above - adapting to new information is a core tennet of science - do you expect people to ALWAYS ask the right questions? That requires already having all the knowledge you need. No, we ask questions that might make assumptions that are completely off - and sometimes by ASKING those questions we realize that, then we update our assumptions, update our questions, and move forward. Yay science.
For example take a look at memristors. Do you think that because we assumed for a very long time that such a thing wasn't possible, that when we recently found out it WAS possible, all computer science is now called into question and is now useless, or wrong, or whatever? What a silly idea.
oneils
Member
apolitical = without politics. It does not mean that you believe politics don't exist. It means you have no politics.
amoral = without morals. It does not mean that you believe morals don't exist. It means you have no morals.
atheism = without god belief. It does not necessarily mean you believe a god(s) does not exist. It means that you are without belief in a god. So, by that definition agnostics are atheist.
The problem is that the word has been coopted by certain people and turned into a synonym for evil, amoral, believing god does not exist. So people are justifiably hesitant in being labelled an "atheist." The word has so much baggage that people avoid it.
Everyone was an atheist at some point. We are born atheist. We are born without a belief in a god.
edit: I guess another way of explaining it is that these are not ontological claims, they are epistemological. I think I've used those fancy words correctly. If not, maybe the philosophy majors can let me know.
amoral = without morals. It does not mean that you believe morals don't exist. It means you have no morals.
atheism = without god belief. It does not necessarily mean you believe a god(s) does not exist. It means that you are without belief in a god. So, by that definition agnostics are atheist.
The problem is that the word has been coopted by certain people and turned into a synonym for evil, amoral, believing god does not exist. So people are justifiably hesitant in being labelled an "atheist." The word has so much baggage that people avoid it.
Everyone was an atheist at some point. We are born atheist. We are born without a belief in a god.
edit: I guess another way of explaining it is that these are not ontological claims, they are epistemological. I think I've used those fancy words correctly. If not, maybe the philosophy majors can let me know.
Sanky Panky
Banned
I won't get into evolution in this thread, but there are countless examples where they have to rework their understanding of the past. To say otherwise means you don't read research papers and take things at face value.
But we ARE asking the right question. What is the origin of DNA? DNA is the basis for our understanding of living organisms.
It would just say that the previously used method was wrong (like every method currently used for abiogenesis).
And atheists try to seem more reasonable by conveniently not taking a stand. A better claim would be that you don't believe in organized religion but you still know that there is still a possibility of god(s). Obviously that's not what we see in this thread.
Kinitari said:
But we ARE asking the right question. What is the origin of DNA? DNA is the basis for our understanding of living organisms.
Kinitari said:
It would just say that the previously used method was wrong (like every method currently used for abiogenesis).
And atheists try to seem more reasonable by conveniently not taking a stand. A better claim would be that you don't believe in organized religion but you still know that there is still a possibility of god(s). Obviously that's not what we see in this thread.
Who has said otherwise? And why is that something that looks poorly on the TOE?
The question of "Where DNA comes from" is different than abiogenesis - life from nonlife. With the latter, we MUST constantly update our understanding of what life or non life is. Or else it would be absolutely short sighted of us, and pointless to even ask the question. And like I said earlier, do you understand how so many discoveries can disrupt our previous concrete understandings? For example, the arsenic organism we found on our planet? If it can substitute arsenic for phosphate - who's to say more could be done? Maybe there could be organisms that use silicon instead of carbon?
Sure, maybe ever method we have used to recreate abiogenesis so far is wrong - just like every method UNTIL the finally correct method, to create a memristor was wrong. Theoretically, it was always possible, but practically, we never found a way to make it happen - then we did. Can you see how that translates into something like abiogenesis?
Nobody in this thread has EVER implied that they weren't the sorts of Atheists that want to, and desire to take a stand - its simply that wanting to take a standing, or being anti-theist are not facets of Atheism. The ONLY thing to know about Atheism is that it means someone who doesn't hold belief in God(s).
Dude Abides
Banned
I knew it. Scratch a fervent theist, find a creationist.
Probably one of the funniest things I've read in the past few weeks. Thanks.
We have 46 chromosomes, all other apes have 48. See? We're not apes lol.
Oh, wait...
oneils
Member
I have not read the whole thread, so I am not sure what the background is, here. Are some atheists in this thread denying the existence in god? If so, I don't really see that as a problem. That is an existential/ontological claim. They are "hard atheists." Not all atheists are "hard atheists," though.
Should they back up their claim that god does not exist? If so, logically, a negative existential claim cannot be proven. The burden is on the person making the existential claim. If you claim god exists, then we can't expect people to just fall in line without any evidence to support it. Seems reasonable to me.
Or, are the atheists here are saying "hey, you say god exists? then prove it?"
I don't really see the problem with that. People are well within their rights to say "no, i really don't feel like proving it to you. I have my faith, and it is good enough for me." That is perfectly fine.
Other theists, though, don't really take that position. They want us to share the same beliefs and will call us a sinner if we don't. There are jerks on both sides of the position. People are jerks. Can't avoid that.
Atheist doesn't have faith in God -> atheist doesn't have faith -> ??? -> does not compute? -> atheist must have faith in something -> atheist must have faith in natural process!
Natural processes causes stuff to happen all the freaking time. Natural processes are all processes that we have ever objectively observed! But how could you even possibly, even remotely call this faith? This is not some 'feeling' we have, some otherwise unfounded, unrational thought that has popped into our heads. Natural processes are what makes the world tick before our very eyes all the time. Of course we find it likely natural processes are behind lots of things we cannot immediately explain. They already do everything else!
Sanky Panky
Banned
Kinitari said:
Only the Raists' of the world. They say clueless things like Every new fossil discovered strengthens the theory. Every new bit of DNA sequence strenghtens the theory. Again you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
DNA is THE basis of life as we now it currently. Non-life to life means having transferable "instructions" (DNA) on how to produce life. No DNA, no instructions on how to make living organisms. The organisms that use silicon might be a fun project, but does nothing to explain how current life came to be.
Kinitari said:
Fine, we'll leave it at that. Always expect someone to ask what DO you believe then, and ask you to back up your faith.
oneils
Member
In the next 24 hours, will the earth rotates on its axis and night turns into day?
If so, is that a faith based assertion?
Sanky Panky
Banned
Yeah there are many here doing just that. I agree with the rest of your post.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Many? Are you absolutely sure you aren't confusing "the plausibility of God existing is extremely low" with "God does not exist"?
Haha. Please demonstrate how this is wrong. I'll take any scientific paper describing a fossil or reporting a sequence that contradicts the ToE. Apparently there's hundreds of examples so it should be easy.
RNA viruses. Prion.
Death Star could show up.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
What is this statement supposed to prove? Newborn babies have zero beliefs because they don't have the capacity for rational thought yet. We are born amoral, atheist, asexual, a-everything-you-can-name. We don't believe in evolution or gravity or that 2+2=4 when we're born either.
oneils
Member
Right. But like Evilore explained earlier. When we make these types of claims (tomorrow, night will turn into day) we are really saying: If all the conditions of the past gajillion years the led to night turning into day continue tomorrow, then night will turn into day again.
Gets pretty tedious if you ask me. That is what we are really doing, though, when we make these claims. Has nothing to do with faith.
Abiogenesis is when natural selection selects on the successfulness of a self-replicating chemical. DNA can be step much further than self-replicating molecules in the process of the creation of more modern life.
The fact that all pre-DNA life has died out is quite probable because DNA's structure is a more stable container of genetic information, thus making inheritance much more likely. Given that other genetic information carriers were likely less stable and made from organic materials, they were probably 'eaten' (if an applicable term to that level of 'life-chemistry') by DNA organisms. Furthermore, DNA is in many ways the exact double of RNA used to transfer information in all cells, indicating that RNA (which is a simpler sequence of amino acids) was its direct precursor.
Science has a much better idea of the origin of DNA than it does of abiogenesis. These two are distinct things, however.
oneils
Member
It is supposed to show that not all atheists necessarily believe that god does not exist. That's all. Atheism means we are without belief in a god.
crazy monkey
Banned
my ventromedial prefrontal cortex just gave me signal. loling all day.
Uhm, we (me and Raist) both are of the same mind. When we find something out, and we are wrong about a previous assumption - we see if the ToE is compatible with the new assumption - it always is, and usually, it STRENGTHENS the ToE! The ToE existed before we knew about DNA, and microbiology - when we obtained that knowledge, the ToE changed - but for the better.
Short of a time machine, we'll never be able to know with the level of certainty you want. We can use experiments to make observations, and we can use these observations to make 'guesses' as to how the process would work. If these guesses hold up to scrutiny and testing, we say "Well, looks like this is how it happened - it makes sense". Now, we don't say "THAT'S IT, WE FOUND THE ANSWER, LETS STOP DIGGING ANYMORE" - it's not how it works.
Your request for how WE, as in the organisms alive on this planet, came to be is a hard one to fullfill, because I have a feeling that even if we get a reaallllly good idea and have a lot of evidence to back it up, short of a youtube clip from 6billion years ago, nothing is going to convince you.
What's it with you and this word faith? Are you embarrassed to have faith or something? It feels like you don't like the idea of being the -only- irrational one. Here if it makes you feel better, I think that when every girl I've slept with tells me I am the best they've ever had, they're being 100% truthful.
Now we're both irrational - can you please stop throwing around the word faith?
I understand the meaning of the word atheism just fine. What I'm trying to understand is the relevance of a newborn baby not holding a particular belief. Newborn babies hold exactly zero beliefs about anything.
It was an example. Some people think (in this thread, quite a few times actually) Atheism MUST be an active rejection of belief. He is showing how a lack of knowledge/understanding/belief is also Atheism - and was giving an easy to understand example.
I'm fairly sure they believe that mommy/daddy are gods. Which may explain a lot.
So we're not born atheists after all?
Sanky Panky
Banned
DCKing said:
Absolutely wrong. Indeed DNA is a further down step in abiogenesis, because it is unfathomable to the human mind based on experiments that something as complex as DNA could spring up by itself (which was the abiogenesis hypothsis for a long time). The only "better idea" that scientists have about the origin of DNA is that it's individual parts (mostly RNA) came first. Therefore, scientists trying to test for abiogenesis have to hypothesize how RNA came to be.
Stanley Miller ("father" of modern abiogenesis) abandoned the notion of RNA being able to be made by natural processes in a pre-biotic world, so he had to turn to PNA which is even less complex than RNA. The problem of abiogenesis revolves around the question of how DNA (our current information mechanism) and it's components came to be.
Kinitari said:
And if the guesses don't hold up to scrutiny, yet you STILL say "welp, this is how it happened - it makes sense"? Can people question the validity of thet belief?
Kinitari said:
A topic insinuating I can't possibly have a basis for my faith is very inviting to me. It's fun to show the hypocrisy with some people.
Well we do know that eventually, assuming no divine intervention, the earth is toast which means that sunrises aren't necessarily guarenteed.
Is faith only a religious thing since that would contradict dictionaries the world over? The sun rising is definitely similar to the Biblical definition of faith (In contrast to a skeptics).
Faith in Christian Doctrine is largely confidence and nothing an atheist said actually has the abilty to break that confidence since they don't have the ability to disprove it which they admit there's no way to do.
Maybe it would be beneficial to know what non-religious people think God believers have faith in.
I can't speak for all the different types of faith out there, but that is what faith is and it's based on experience (That's all sunrises/sunsets are) and often to the point of tedium.
oneils
Member
Awesome. You understand it. Some don't. I was just doing what Kinitari pointed out.
What hasn't held up to scrutiny exactly? The Abiogenesis theory is not a very strong one, not yet - it's the one that currently makes the most sense, so people default to it if forced to make a decision - but a decision isn't necessary - you can say "This seems to be the most likely, but I guess we really don't know for sure yet" - what happens then?
You don't have basis for your faith, what you've tried to do so far is to somehow insinuate that having 'faith' in Science is the same as having 'faith' in something absolutely baseless. That has gone extremely embarrassing for you so far.
If you want to, focus on the fact that everyone has aspects of their life in which they are irrational with, that is a substantially better argument. But trying to put our scientific understanding of the natural world, and our trust in the processes that have pushed our civilization to the heights they are reaching and pushing past even those heights at an ever accelerating rate, on the same level as a baseless mythology - well that makes you look silly, and you will be (and have been) consistently ridiculed for it.
Accept that your faith in God is baseless, just like I accept that my belief in my unmatched sexual prowess is baseless, and move on a happy camper.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Doesn't matter, dude, we're obviously just a bunch of angry jerks who should keep our lack of belief to ourselves.
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