Mike,
You keep coming back to this "faith is a belief that finds supporting evidence" thing, and I have to take issue with that. I feel that I have searched for what I consider to be the most logical conclusion to my questions, and that search for truth has led me to believe in God. I didn't start out believing in God and then ran around looking for supporting evidence. I think our methodologies have been very similar; it is simply our conclusions that have differed.
Regarding "lessor Gods", certainly a point will come when accepting more than your own god will cause a conflict, and you'll have to decide which god you believe in more accurately (Zues may exist, for instance, just not as the ancient mythologies describe). This is a tangent that I don't wish to get sidetracked with, except to say that I agree with you to a point, but that explanations can be made.
Dawkins has made the case that intelligent design is not possible, but that life on this planet may have originated by alien life "seeding" the blocks of life to this world. This claim is not only self-contradicting, it is outright assinine. This is one example.
As for disagreeing with Jesus, certainly one couldn't hope to contradict God and still call themselves a follower of Him. But I could disagree with His apostles, or certain doctrines or events recorded in the Bible - even ones that i thought were true. This is a distinction, admittedly, that atheists don't have to make.
I always heard the quote as "atheism is a religion like bald is a hair style" in which case all I have to do is shave my otherwise full head of hair and reveal the fallacy of this idea. I suppose the same would hold true for calling it a hair color. "None" could arguably be called a color. But this is always going to come down to definition, and your slice of my argument refering to religion as a system of beliefs only portrays part of my argument. It is a system of beliefs regarding the supernatural that results in a call to action - that call may be to do nothing, but choosing not to believe is an active decision by a sentient being. This is the action to which I refer, not specifically a call to "preach the word" or some such thing. In this case, the NRA isn't quite a religion (although they do have some borderline dogmatic doctrines).
Your beliefs may not get tax exempt status, but your not-for-profit organizations do, same as mine. I'm not tax exempt just because I believe a certain way, but the institution I support is a registered 501(c), just like, oh, say, the HRC. Tax status has nothing to do with this debate.
I'm not offended that you think I'm wrong regarding atheism, and I'm not out to offend you, so I am glad you don't take offense. I just think you're defining the term too narrowly to purposely exclude your beliefs from the title of religion, simply because of the implications it would have to admit that you believe in something without proof. Likewise, you think I am defining the term too broadly and including too many groups. I'm not convinced that you are right, and clearly you don't agree with me. This is probably a reasonable place to put this element of the debate to rest. Almost.
I'll end by reminding you that abscence of evidence is not evidence of abscence. Hence, your evidence-based approach still leaves you with a gap that must be filled before you can make the claim that God does not exist (your claim is that nothing you have found shows evidence of God, therefore He must not exist. But since this evidence does not prove absence, you are making a leap of faith to conclude that it does). I am glad to see your intellectual honesty in admitting that you may be wrong. I would argue that the most honest thing to do would be to conclude that God may or may not exist, and that there simply isn't enough evidence one way or the other to make a valid conclusion. But that would likewise require me to do the same thing, since my belief in God is based largely on the same evidence that you have been citing, simply with different conclusions (I am assuming that God exists until shown otherwise, while you are assuming the God doesn't exist until shown otherwise). But this is exactly the point. In abscence of absolute proof, we each have to assume that our beliefs are true, how did you say it? oh yeah, "with our without proof." Neither of us has sufficient evidence to bridge the last bit of the gap into fact, so we must rely on faith alone to validate our beliefs. Hence, we are both religious.
On to bigger and more important things. Until next time.
Cory
PS- I have been working on an approach that will put you a little more on the defensive, since I agree that up to now we have really been defending God's existence more than you defending His abscence, but I want to be careful because I'm not interested in attacking or offending you or your beliefs. Dan made most of my recent argument in his last post, so I have scraped that one and am researching another approach. Before Christmas, I promise. Hopefully it's worth the wait.
Cory, I'm going to take issue a little with your assertion that without conclusive evidence it's an equal leap of faith to assume the existence or non-existence of God.
ReplyDeleteThere's a principal in science called the "null hypothesis". Simply put, in testing a hypothesis, there's an implied default position. For example, in testing whether a given medication is effective, the default position is that it doesn't. If no evidence of the efficacy of the medication is shown, we assume the medication to be ineffective.
This concept can be extended to the idea of evidence for or against the existence of God. In searching for evidence of the existence of God, the null hypothesis must be that he doesn't exist. If we flip it around, and search for evidence of his NON-existence, the null hypothesis is that he DOES exist.
Unfortunately, we can only ever theoretically prove the existence of God. It's easy to imagine positive, credible evidence for the existence of God. We cannot prove his non-existence. What would such evidence or proof look like (especially if we posit that God exists outside our own realm of existence)? As such, the proposition that we need to prove his non-existence is not only impossible, but nonsensical. Consequently, the null hypothesis is that God does not exist. That is to say, without positive evidence of his existence, the most rational position to take is that he does not exist.