Comment by think-large | Hacker News Reader

Comment by think-large | Hacker News Reader

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Wow, very well written. I have a lot of respect for you.

Scientific models are man made abstractions on a reality that we cannot prove. You obviously put a lot of faith into those man made abstractions.

To say that a theistic god is a man made invention is an assumption on who created it. That would be distinctly eliminating the possibility of alien life forms.

Also you misuse Occam's Razor. It can't disprove anything without empirical data.

The bible is a man-made invention. The stories in it are disseminated by men. That does not disprove that there is a God who can interact with the real world in some way or other. It just means that as scientific knowledge refines their theories so must religion.

Also a few points, I'm an Aerospace Engineer. I know that there are tools that expand what our senses can observe, but they still must display information in a way that we can observe.

I'm curious though, would you mind clarifying this statement. >>It presupposes a lot more to assume an intelligent being capable of creating universes who either spontaneously came into being or always existed than to assume the same thing about the universe itself (i.e. dumb matter).

What about a hypothesis of a deistic God makes it no longer needed? If you move away from the physical sciences into those that study the human psyche, you'll see that much is left unexplained. It could be argued (albeit blindly) that any such hypothesis is no longer needed.

Natural sciences and behavioral sciences have no business explaining away each other. Religion is a behavioral science. You may deem behavioral science as superfluous, but it can't be cut away.

At least not yet.

Occam's razor was never meant to prove anything. It is a principle of economy of assumptions or hypothesis. In essence it says don't assume more than you have to explain certain phenomena. This is what I mean. We now have a good idea how universe itself can come from nothing, we don't need the god hypothesis to explain that one last ultimate question (why is there something rather than nothing. There is something because something is more stable than nothing). Our ancestors certainly didn't have that knowledge and for them god seemed necessary to "explain" this. Even though such god did not really explain anything, it just shifted the question further to where did god come from. Did he spontaneously come from nothing? Did he always exist? And why can't we just forgo such hypothesis (this is where Occam's economy principle comes in) and just assume universe itself either always existed or come into being from nothing (which is what current physical theory suggests). Why posit an intelligent being capable of creating universes, which raises more questions about where did this intelligence itself come from, rather than assume the same thing about the dumb matter (i.e. universe) itself.

I hope this clarifies what I meant above.

This whole argument is shortened into "deistic god can neither be proved nor disproved, but we no longer need him to kick off the universe for us. We now know how that too can happen without god".

However, I have nothing against deistic god. People who want to believe in deistic god will not receive any objection from me. I'm primarily gnostic (I know there is no theistic god) anti-theist (I don't think religion is a force for good in the world). Religion is not about deistic god. Religion is about people who not only know there is a god, with certainty, but they know his mind, what he wants us to do. It is this argument from certainty (which all arguments from faith are), that can easily be disproved. Note that I have not actually offered proof in my posts, the time and space and the forum itself are not the right places to do this. But I can recommend a lot of literature on this subject that go into great depth if you care to look at the evidence we do have.

I'd love to get any references you have. I enjoy learning from anyone who can keep an open mind. I do have to say that your comment about sheep herders, while funny (and accurate) was a little over the top.

Deistic or Theistic, if someone doesn't suck at religion I think that they should be left alone. Especially if that leads them to give money to the poor, teach in developing nations, etc. While it can be argued that those things have negative effects I've also seen some of the good that comes from it first hand.

I love this comic. I believe it sums up most of what I think about religion. The only thing I would change is the one where the father is teaching his daughter. There does need to be room for a parent to "express" belief to his children and acceptance when the children differ from the parent.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/religion

Agnostic and atheistic beliefs can be added to the above comic as well. :-) That being said, if you see someone sucking at their religion please school them and tell them I'm asking them not to make the rest of us look bad.

Here they are before I forget:

A Devil's Chaplain

Are You Living in a Computer Simulation

Arguing About Gods

Atheism - The Case Against God

Atheist Manifest - In Defense of Atheism

Atheist Universe

Biblical Cosmology

Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief

Darwin's Dangerous Idea Evolution and the Meanings of Life

Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark

Dossier Of Reason

Evil God Challenge

Forged

God - The Failed Hypothesis

God Is Not Great

Godless

History of God

Jesus Interrupted

Jesus Myth - The Case Against Historical Christ

Letter To A Christian Nation

Logic and Theism

Love Thy Neighbour - Evolution of In-group Morality

Lying

Misquoting Jesus

Superstition In All Ages

The Ascension of Yahweh_ The Origins and Development of Israelite Monotheism

The Christian Delusion

The Dialogues of Plato

The Early History of Heaven

The End of Faith

The Evolution of God

The God Delusion

The God Virus How Religion Infects Our Lives And Culture

The Moral Landscape

Who Wrote the Bible

Why I am not a Christian

These are just some of the books I have read on the subject, but there are others highly rated and recommended that I still want to go through. However, these are really good.

If this list seems daunting I would recommend a shorter list:

"Breaking the spell" by Daniel Dennett "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkings "God is not great" by Christopher Hitchens "End of Faith" by Sam Harris

But books by Steven Hawking "The Grand Design", "Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss and "Your Inner Fish - A Journey into the 3.5 billion year history of the human body" by Neil Shubin, are also great although somewhat more technical. All other books are softer read.

I failed to address your other main charge. Putting "faith" in man made abstractions and scientific models, that is so often put forward by the religious (and the guy writing the nature article as well).

Let's clarify beliefs first. There are two kinds of beliefs. One is based on evidence, logic, reason, testable repeatable experiments. Rational mind has no option but to accept their truthfulness (sometimes after laborious examination of evidence or step by step verification of logical deduction). You could go on and deny obvious truth, but that leads to cognitive dissonance and is rather mentally taxing. The other belief is opposite, it is not based on any evidence at all and it is called faith. You are believing things without having sufficient or any evidence for it. Note also that all religions are faith based. If they were based on evidence, religion would be a branch of science, it would be a scientific theory. Put another way, if you destroyed all holy books they would never be re-created again in their present form by future generations. But destroy all scientific knowledge and it will be re-created again. Why? Precisely because science is based on testing your ideas and models. This is why science is often discovered and re-discovered by independent people, living in completely different cultures. This is why science in China, or India is the same as science in USA or Argentina.

It takes no faith to believe in Newton's laws. Who hasn't watched their physics professor use compressor to pump out air of two glass tubes and see feather and metal ball fall with equal speed, or seen the conservation of momentum demonstrated etc. Yes, it takes a lot of effort to test and devise experiments, but it is doable and many of us have done it for large sections of scientific knowledge. In fact, if it weren't possible to independently replicate an experiment and verify the results, then someone is doing poor science. It's simple as that.

Contrast that with faith based beliefs. It all really boils down to you putting faith in other people who say there is a god, and not only that, they also know his mind, what he wants us to do. And people never ask for ordinary evidence from them for their extraordinary claims, they just accept it. And what brand of delusion of this kind you get indoctrinated into is highly correlated with where you were born. And isn't it also amazing that what ever religion you get indoctrinated into feels like the right one? :D.

In fact, all discussions with the religious people always boil down to "evidence or shut up". The rest of discussion degenerates into psychology and dealing with fears of leaving various delusions.

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