Re: [DMCForum] Re: God Squad

[Andrew <aos+yahoo@xxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, supremeadmiralsenn wrote:

> However, your post proves my point. You have to accept it, without it
> being shown to you, or else why bother? If you can't trust the person in
> charge of the universe with something....

This is recursive logic!  A because B because A.  Why A?  Because B.  No!  
Logic doesn't work like that.

You are quite welcome to look at the universe with illogic if you wish, 
but I just can't.  I tried.  I was raised in the church and around age 12, 
I started to realize that it just didn't work inside my head anymore, and 
thankfully my parents were reasonably accepting of that.  My mother 
believed that I would someday change my mind and come back to the church, 
and I can tell she's a little sad it hasn't happened yet.

As I said in my last post, I'm open to the idea.  It's not something I
reject completely.  I am open to virtually any idea until it can be shown
one way or another.  If people weren't willing to entertain seemingly
crazy ideas, we wouldn't have relativity or quantum mechanics, both of 
which are absolute fact, and both of which seem utterly insane until to 
study them enough to start to get a feeling for the big picture.  (Okay, 
QM is actually still insane at that point, but tough, that's how the 
universe works.  If a god did invent QM, it's a mean bastard.)

> I questioned God the most, and ran through all the scenarios of "what if
> this is wrong, what if they are right" over and over, and ended up at
> God anyway.

I'm glad to hear that.  You and I came to different conclusions (to date, 
at least), but we both gave it thought, and I think that's one of the more 
important things in this discussion.  There are entirely too many people 
on both sides of this issue who believe something without having 
considered the other side at all.  That is hardly the way to come to a 
fair conclusion.

> Umm.. I just said that you have to believe as if it was true without
> evidence. Personally, I think that God shows people who believe all
> the evidence they need.

More recursive logic.

> I sent a fairly long message to someone offlist last night that
> explained some of the reasons I believe, and I'm pretty sure I managed
> to sound like a wildeyed lunatic, but it was the truth. If you want it,
> I can send it to you too.

Sure.  Fire it off to me.  I'm probably more open minded than you think, 
and I do care.

> This is the thing that burns me. If you have faith in something, it's
> not unknown anymore.

It is indeed unknown.  It is supposed.  It is believed.  But it is not 
known.  I suppose this is just another point of our ideas of logic 
clashing.  I do get your point, but belief to me does not constitute 
knowledge.  Facts are known.  Intangibles are believed.

> If you can't trust in something and wait for it to be proven, I don't
> know what to say. How is that so hard a concept to grasp?

Oh, I fully grasp the concept.  I just find it amazing that people can 
operate on such illogical planes.

> Like I've said before, I believe that if you honestly have faith,
> you'll get all the evidence you'll ever need to see why God is real. 

And more recursive logic!

I know enough about psychology and neurochemistry to understand how
incredibly good the brain is at generatig emotional and biological support 
for things it believes, up to and including fascinating hallucinations of 
really outlandish things.  This is why people end up in asylums.  I don't 
think religious people are all insane, but I do think a lot of what they 
believe to be spiritual evidence of the existence of a god is merely the 
right neurotransmitters in the right places to make them feel a certain 
way.  God does it.  Fear does it.  LSD does it.  MDMA does it.  We are 
biochemical machines and it's important we don't lose sight of that in 
interpreting what we feel.

This is why scientists cannot have faith in that which they seek to prove.  
It is much easier to demonstrate something I believe than it is to
demonstrate the opposite.  This is why we often use what is called the
"null hypothesis".  If I believe something, instead of simply attempting
to prove it, I also seek to prove the opposite.  If I succeed at the
former *and* fail at the latter, I'm much more likely to have been correct
in the former.

> So prove to me that we evolved. Prove to me that there was a Big Bang...

Both of these theories can be proven beyond reasonable doubt.  Doing so is 
probably beyond the scope of this thread.  Not that it's not already 
pretty far beyond its scope.  :-)

> ...that God (who is supposed to be all-powerful I might add) couldn't
> create a universe in six days and make it appear to us as millions of
> years.

Never said it couldn't.  I think it a bit naive to hang onto the "days" 
idea, when Genesis clearly uses the concept of days to make the creation 
story more tangible to people learning it a thousand years ago, just as 
god is often anthropomorphized into this guy who looks something like 
Jerry Garcia's and Santa Claus's love child.  It's all about making a 
pretty heady story something that shepherds out in the field could 
understand.

If we move beyond that idea, and many of the other simplifications of the 
process presented in both Genesis creation stories, what we are left with 
is a story which is actually in remarkable agreement with provable 
geological record, and so I certainly don't reject it as impossible.

> Prove to me that we are actually right just because the math works out.
> How do you know we aren't inventing science and math to explain our
> universe out of "fear of the unknown" as you claim anyone with a
> religion is?

Science and math are discovered and proven.  Religion is believed without 
proof.  Therein lies the crux our of logical disagreements.

> Don't say "because it works to explain such-and-such" because God does
> too. Prove you're right. 

I would never do that.  That's recusive logic.  :-)

-andrew

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