Theory: Will the continued moderation of mainstream religions moderate them into non-existence?

"We've established that my senses COULD be fallible."

No, and frankly I'm stunned you still don't see it (irony intended). It has been established that our senses are NOT reliable, not that they COULD be unreliable -- that they ARE. That means we have NO qualification to make ANY definite statement concerning the existence of God or the universe, because our only method of observing such things is inherently unreliable. It's not some arbitrary 50% figure or somesuch.

Our perception of the fallibility of our senses is fallible. And so is your mother.

@Eden: You do realize you said this: "You have no clue if your senses are ever reliable" That is true, but all that means is that your senses COULD be unreliable. And you said it. You never posted anything showing that senses are always unreliable. If you did, please tell me where it is or show it to me.

CM -

Knowing nothing also implies knowing nothing about probability or percentages.

And in Eden's defense, he doesn't need to show that senses are always unreliable. You can never trust what has once deceived you.

Basically it boils down to: if you admit that you *could* be wrong, then you no longer know anything.

uclabb - your point is valid, I agree wholeheartedly. When I mentioned fideism before this was the point I was getting at.

What I am harping on is the implicit claim atheists and religionists make that they know something about the nature of God, when they do not.

But yes, at a core level faith is required to get anywhere.

I think, if you'll bear with me, this moment is worth it to quote from my personal philosophy I wrote a few months ago:

"Let me remind you of one the benefits of an underlying skepticism: humility. I have, in my “world of appearances,” shut out the supernatural because they do not “appear.” However I would chafe at the title of an “atheist,” because I am nothing of the kind. An atheist claims to know that there is no God, which is anathema to a skeptic. The only worldview I can adopt in the theological realm is that of “strong agnosticism” which states that not only do I not know whether God exists, I do not think I can know, and I do not think anyone else can know either. This is of course a leap from hardcore skepticism, because there are obviously some overt claims in that statement, but remember that I am not, strictly speaking, a skeptic.

I make this claim chiefly because I have never had an appearance that God existed, no more than any other fiction anyway. But, since absence of proof is not proof of absence, I do not go all the way to the atheist’s camp. I see that sort of “leap of faith” as arrogant and even quasi-religious, claiming to know anything about God (or lack thereof) claims more than I think I know.

This leaves ample room for tolerance. Any faith, any ideology, has claim. Though Scientology is often laughed at, so too was Christianity when it was young. Who am I to say that any one of them is right or wrong? Many believers, who face real-world evidence against their beliefs, retreat entirely from the traditional battleground of apologetics (that is, empirical proof) and instead either make lofty claims about how the beliefs cannot be abandoned because they are so traditional or cultural, or speak of how faith is defined precisely by lack of proof. It is that last that I hold special respect for. Not only are they level-headed enough to acknowledge that there is no physical proof for their beliefs, they are also, if tacitly, acknowledging that nothing can actually be known about the nature of God. But, in that vacuum, anything goes. So I cannot fault them for holding their beliefs as they are."

The world of appearances here refers to that which appears to me to be true. In other words, "the real world" as I believe I perceive it.

Faith in this real world and the implications of that are why I state in the quote that I am not strictly speaking a skeptic.

But yeah I hint at fideism in there.

So if I have convinced you all to back away from claims that you *know* there is or isn't a God, I declare victory. You can still believe however you like so long as you acknowledge this.


And I will say this: within the framework of the "world of appearances" the favor is toward the atheists, but again, that is within the framework of a world which may be fundamentally different than it appears.

It should logically follow that if something is unreliable, it is always unreliable. The fact that they can be "sometimes" reliable and "sometimes" not is the very reason we call them unreliable... and besides, what are you getting at here? Are you about to say "Sure, they could be unreliable, but they probably aren't"? Because you still haven't validated this at all. Nor can you, if you admit that you don't know when your senses are working and when they aren't.

@Eden: I'm saying my senses are either always reliable, or always aren't. I've never felt them decieve me, which means they never have, or they always have. But I don't know which one. So each has an equal chance of being true. Which is a 50/50 chance.

Again, CM, your assumption about the "chances" of something relies implicitly on knowledge you don't really have.

And also, not knowing anything also means not knowing anything about how reliable your senses are.

So they could be 1% reliable, or 99, or 100, or 50. You don't know.

@Thucy: You are misunderstanding me. I am not talking about what percent the senses are reliable. What you guys seemed to be saying was that the senses are either 100% reliable or unreliable. So I said that there is equal odds for each one, so there must be a 50% CHANCE that my senses are 100% reliable and a 50% CHANCE that my senses are unreliable.

Never "felt" them deceive you? Now you're relying on a sense to conclude that your senses are always or never deceiving you. That's begging the question.

The simple fact is that you don't know that your senses are reliable, thereby inherently making them unreliable, and so you cannot definitively draw any conclusions based on them. That's akin to using an old, beat up microscope in a biology lab and trying to finish a report.

Also: texasdeluxe:

Yes I think the moderation will moderate them away lol.

For a weak comparison, think of the pledge of allegiance.

Still recited in American schools, but really a meaningless relic.

Deriving from, like, real pledges of allegiance presumably in feudal Europe, the modern American pledge of Allegiance serves really no purpose but to make us feel good.

Neolithic farming villages were often non-religious, and they are considered the first civilizations. Only later did kleptocrats develop religion to manipulate the populace.

I still don't quite understand what our senses (and their reliability) has to do with god. God can't be sensed. Isn't god supposed to be beyond all that ;P

This whole debate about if our senses are reliable or not is just metaphysical masturbation.

We have to assume our senses are not lying to us (the classic brain in a jar philosophical thought experiment), because we don't have an alternative.

And my atheism doesn't involve knowing(absolutely) the status of God. I consider the existence of god or gods to be so unlikely that I live my life under the assumption that there is no God. Its impossible to know, but I'm fairly sure that there is none.

@CM ever heard of the "closed universe" model? as we know the universe is expanding, and thus the force of gravity towards the centre is increasing. now the closed universe model is when the force of gravity overcomes the expansion force and everything comes back to a single point. now the last time this happened was the "big bang" which is why I believe the universe is on a never ending cycle of creation and destruction.

@texas: If that's the argument, then the point that the existence of God cannot be known still holds.

@JK: That's perfectly acceptable. The problem being approached was the problem of people absolutely claiming to "know" God exists (or doesn't). If the assumption is lived out because one considers the existence of deities that unlikely, that's a different (and altogether far more acceptable) statement than saying, objectively, that the existence of deities is likely or not.

I have to comment on the God of the Gaps point made earlier. In my view this charge is better directed at 'evolutionism', This I define as the view that Natural Selection has the capacity to account for all of human behaviour and beyond. There is social darwinism, darwinistic economoics, darwinist psychology, and particularly Dawkins' memes etc. etc. All of this amounts to a predominantly atheistically inspired drive to find a theory of everything at the expense of the divine. Indeed if one looks at the history of the last century it is the Darwinist conflageration of sociology and biology that has much to answer for.

Finally would anyone like to speculate why avery large proportion of biologists are atheists, while the other sciences have a much larger proportion of theists/agnostics?

Going back to texasdeluxe's original question, I grew up in the UK, which is now a deeply secular society, with only about 10% of UK adults attending church on at least a weekly basis. I used to have no problems discussing my atheism.

I now live in Texas, where the equivalent churchgoing percentage of the population is about 50%. I regularly get involved in conversations where the other person assumes that I am an active Christian ("which church do you attend?", "that's why we go to church, isn't it?" etc.). That in itself is evidence to me that religion is simply cultural conditioning! When I first pointed out that I don't believe in God to someone who made this assumption, I got into a ridiculous discussion where he cited fatuous erroneous 'facts' as to why God would have had to intervene in the process of evolution for humans to have evolved in the timescale that they did. I now simply give non-committal answers to such questions/assumptions and have not yet been forced into a corner where I have felt the need to discuss my atheism. So it looks like even the bible Belt fails to live up to its evangelical reputation!

"Finally would anyone like to speculate why avery large proportion of biologists are atheists, while the other sciences have a much larger proportion of theists/agnostics?"

Would you like to provide your source for this claim?

To abgemacht

Bias of biologists to atheism when compared to physical scientists (one example there are others):

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/AboutScience/does_science_lead_to_atheism.html

Conclusion: there is no such thing as a neutral paradigm in science. All a decent scientist can do is be aware of, and open to, this and do his best (reference Tony Flew)

PS Any views on 'evolutionism'?

Religion is humanity’s baby pacifier, humanity sucks at religion in a desperate need to assure them that they are more than highly intelligent ants, that there must be a reason for their existence other than the result of their parent’s instinctive breeding imperative.

Mdrltc:

What you just said is a perfect justification for why we needed religion to advance out of prehistory. For, without a reason to live, why improve civilization? If all that matter to you is survival and reproduction, you'll be, well, where all the other animals are. Alive, but little else.

Don't misinterpret as saying I think religion is also necessary today, because I don't. I just think that it's not this scourge that atheists love to think it is. No more than language is anyway.

Because after all we all know that terrible thing, language, as caused so much death.

"Yo mama...."

We should also do away all forms of government, after all many a war has been fought between nations over governmental forms and ideologies. And while we are at it, lets do away with race/ethnicity. I mean, ethnic cleansing via genocide is one of the worst forms of conflict. The Nazis killing the Jews. Serbs killing Turks. Croats killing Serbs. The Abkhaz killing the Georgians. Bolsheviks killing Cossacks. Albanians killing Greeks. Greeks and Turks always at each others throats.

We may be able to say Palestien and Israel is religious, or it is over land, or it is ideology, but all of the aforementioned were ethnic conflicts with one particular one (Nazi Germany) resulting in millions upon millions of lost lives.

So do away with ethnicity. It is the biggest evil out there, then look to ideology (the Cold War was an ideological conflict that could have ended the world). Then, and only then, can you look to religion as a source of major conflict in modern society.

"Never "felt" them deceive you? Now you're relying on a sense to conclude that your senses are always or never deceiving you. That's begging the question." Of course, if my senses never have deceived me, than my feeling that they haven't deceived me is obviously correct. If they always have deceived me, than my feeling that they never have is incorrect, which makes sense, since my senses would be deceiving me.

@ texasdeluxe

"And I also agree that the world would be a far better place without religion. At least far more tolerant! "

Why exactly do you think it would be more tolerant? Is it that it would be devoid of something that you don't think we should tolerate? I mean, really, most people have some form of religion and most people tolerate other forms of religion. There is no reason that everyone should band together in the intolerance of religion in the name of making the world more tolerant.

What I'm saying is that religion is, by its very nature, intolerant. How can you believe and have faith in your own religion as the one true faith and accept somebody else's? I don't think I need to point out the many and varied cases of religious intolerance that do harm and have done harm in the world.

Contrast that with atheist and agnostic tolerance. How many atheists and agnostics force their beliefs onto others? They tend to be an accepting bunch (maybe too accepting?) I don't get many people knocking on my door on Sunday asking be to give up my belief in god!

Guys, can you stop debating CM? =P

Thucydides, every time this argument comes up you trumpet your philosophical skepticism like it's revolutionary. It's getting frustrating to hear you say that atheists are as dogmatic as theists, though if the terms were being used in their strictest most technical sense you would be absolutely correct. However, no respectable atheist would claim to know with philosophical certainty that God does *not* exist, you're just knocking down straw atheists. I prefer to call myself atheist agnostic. On a philosophical level, I do not know whether or not God exists, but I label myself atheist to reflect my practical beliefs in response to the religion around me.

Additionally, just because religion was a facet of much of early civilization does not suggest that civilization would not have existed without it. I have my own personal suspicions that this may be true to some degree, but I would certainly make no assertions to the fact. I think you underestimate human co-operation and the power of reciprocity. For two different kin groups to be united by religion suggests that they already interacted enough to share a common religion... so did they really need religion or were they already interacting enough through trade? Modern hunter gatherers comprise tribes of mostly kin, but most tribes are quite interrelated, and indeed one of the first things two strangers do is go through their respective family trees to look for a kinship connection. I would say that the first city states were not facilitated by religion so much as they were by the advent of agriculture. The reason large groups of humans didn't form wasn't because they didn't share a common set of beliefs, but simply because it was not sustainable until agriculture.

Draugnar, I think you underestimate the amount of religious fraud that goes on. This is not just the large scale prosperity gospel evangelicals either, but it happens with a great deal of individual churches.

"David Barrett, editor of the World Christian Encyclopedia, and a team of statisticians have been studying religious financial fraud for more than 20 years. Barrett and his team estimate that $27 billion will be stolen by
Christian religious leaders in 2009. Another sober fact: more money is stolen
each year by Christian religious leaders than is spent on world missions. This
crime wave is projected to grow to $65 billion in fraud annually by 2025.1 "
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24336837/An-Overview-of-Religious-Financial-Fraud

This is not to single Christianity, because it is true of every religion, from rabbis to Buddhist monks. Just because an organization is non-profit does not mean that excess money goes to charitable causes, nor does it prevent priveleged individuals from growing fat off the contributions of others. It is a common trend for non-profit organizations to pay their members incredible wages or to purchase material goods under the same umbrella, such that there is no "profit". It is the hard labor of rice farmers with faith that allow Buddhist monks to lounge about meditating and reading, while not contributing to social productivity, though it is arguable whether they provide value or not, while I would say no, it would seem the rice farmers disagree.

Thuryclides: there are reasons to live other than religion, pursuit of knowledge or happiness, for instance.

Agreed. An absence of religion doesn't equate to an absence of purpose (just a more realistic outlook perhaps ;P)