Is there a God?

yes, and her name is Evelyn. Next question please. =)

Science seems like the best bet.

There could be a god but where is the proof? I could tell you that I have a huge penis. That doesn’t make it true.

I believe there is a purpose to life, because the alternative is bleak, and who wants to go through life without a purpose? I believe there is a God and that there is a reason for me to be here. I did get to witness the miracle of birth, twice, and that was enough proof for me. My reason to be here may just involve raising my two boys, but only time will tell.

oh yea, @beautifulsoul22 , welcome to Fluther.

I am pretty much certain that there is no God. Just as certain that I will never crack the jackpot in the lottery 10 times in a row.

No.

who the fuck knows (says my highly inebriated self).,

@johnpowell So…are you saying that it’s not?

No. Here you go: http://www.400monkeys.com/God/

I would love to know for a fact that there was a God. Unfortunately I’m big on the whole proof issue. Without the proof, I’m not a believer.

also i wouldn’t call something painful, dangerous and messy, that happens over 4 times every second, and that is only counting humans, a miracle

How should we know?

…says the unabashed agnostic.

And considering my goal is to get a double doctorate in Anthropology and Paleontology… Yeah, pretty sure I’m sold on that silly little evolution idea.

@beautifulsoul22 there are some great discussions on here. Look at the siblings questions.

i love it when these god questions pop up ~ fuuuuuck

@ragingloli: You can be certain all you want – but the fact is, you winning the lottery like that, it isn’t impossible. Just unlikely.

@jmah answering the God questions is easy, it’s the trying to answer the computer programming and quantum theory questions that give me a headache.

@ragingloli , I beg your pardon, but you weren’t there, and they are not your kids.

and on that note, I’m going to join my lady in the sack.

goodnight, jelllllehs…

@MrBr00ks: Since we’re addressing things that are not necessarily directed at us personally – I beg your pardon but your experience is only unique to you. And others opinions on the matter are just as valid. No matter my personal views on them.

well she addressed mine, and I do not get a response? That hardly seems fair.

@Psychedelic_Zebra dude, they all fuckin’ chap my ass..

have atem’, jellies.

@asmonet
i never claimed that it is impossible.

@MrBr00ks
i always thought for something to be a miracle it would have to be extremely statistically improbable if not impossible and fairly unique. While a birth may be special to you, on a broader scale, it simply is neither special, nor statistically improbable, since it happens thousands of times every second (this time including all life on earth).
you might have a point if your kids hovered out of the womb surrounded by a bright halo

Yes, there are many gods. There are many pantheons of gods. All of them a misrepresented though, as if they were conscious beings. The fact is that they are all entities that exist only in the mind of the believer, in the same way Big-foot exists in the mind of the hunters.

Welcome to Fluther!

@ragingloli that is the beauty of this life, is it not? To be able to define what we see, in our own little way?

@ragingloli: Admittedly, I misread your statement as more concrete than you perhaps intended. :)

@MrBr00ks Why do you equate purpose with religious belief? Do you think all atheists are without purpose?

I believe that either everything is a miracle, or nothing is. I think it’s a miracle I survived my childhood, then I think about the guy that was cutting down some trees and had a big one fall on him and pin his leg down. Then he cut his leg off with his pocketknife to free himself, and he survived. That’s a miracle, because I don’t think I could do it. Miracles happen, but then, they are all a matter of opinion.

I don’t know. The convenient thing about God is that he’s supposedly on another plane of existence that humans can’t even comprehend, so we’ll never know.

I’ve become more agnostic as I’ve gotten older. I still lean towards the side of believing there is one, however. But I don’t believe he’s the hateful vengeful “Gawd” of the fundamentalists. I won’t get into my personal beliefs here, though.

Mhm :)

I didnt say that, just responding to this part of the question: “Do you believe that there is some cosmic mystical purpose for us being on this earth for an all knowing all seeing but un-see-able being”.

@DominicX just remember, Evelyn loves ya! hee hee

@DominicX: I think I love you, little man. :)

@MrBr00ks Fair enough. So why must purpose be cosmic and mystical?

If you don’t see a purpose for your life, give yourself one.

@Psychedelic_Zebra @asmonet ^_^

I don’t know, It’s a mystery!. where did that quote come from? ;p. I suppose purpose doesn’t have to be, but the question was phrased in an interesting manner, so I felt compelled to respond.

@asmonet shhh, no guy wants to be called little, if you get my drift.

@Psychedelic_Zebra , lol.

Who knows????? If he/she exists, he/she gave me all I need to survive in this world and then sent me on my way. I am not big on the daily divine intervention theory.

But like I always say, I do believe in insurance. So when good things happen, I roll my eyes skyward (that is where the good god creature resides, right???) and utter a word of thanks. Just in case.

Yes, there is. How do I know? Because the Bible tells me so.

—QED

It does, doesn’t it?

I think a god is unlikely. That doesn’t mean that purpose is.

@MrBr00ks I get that, I just don’t like the logic you appeared to express in your original post; that being that there must be something inherently greater than ourselves to dictate a purpose to life. Personally, submission to a powerful being that is curiously undetectable, but yet manages to project a persona of great hubris, does not sound like a purposeful life.

Galileo said that it is the purpose of religion “to explain how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” In other words, religion is not equipped to deal with matters of science and science alone can not tell us how to conduct our lives.

evolution & creation, neither have been proven scientifically. The Big Bang, The Creator; are both just as tangible as each other, the two could be the same thing, we’ll never know.

@milla101 Proof is a matter of opinion, depending on the margin of error you are willing to deal with. We know E=mc^2 is correct to several decimal places, but there is still a (minute) chance it is incorrect or incomplete. Disproof however, is a fact. We know for a fact that the Earth is not flat, because it has been conclusively disproved. There is no more argument on the matter.

Evolution is supported by mountains of evidence, so the chance that it is false is extremely small. Creation is the imaginings of an ancient book written by non-scientific writers long before the bulk of our scientific knowledge was acquired, and therefore the chance that it is false is huge. It is only the evolution of religion that has kept the creation myth alive.

I don’t know
But I’m guessing not
I’m sure to know
When I’ve gone to rot

I’ve been writing about this this very morning and such a massive subject! I’ve come to conclude briefly that if there is a God,then he is not the omnipotent and omniscient God that some people would have us believe… It just doesn’t make logical sense at all. I’m still searching for the truth and for a God that does make logical, scientific, intuitive and intelligent sense.

@FireMadeFlesh
Creation doesn’t automatically mean the bible.
Evolutionary facts; no tangible, key word tangible, “missing link” has been provided that has been solid evidence to suggest a Factual link. Basing a claim on similarities, between humans and apes, doesn’t make it factual. Carbon dating cannot be used to determine prehistoric age either, why: (Do a bit of research on Carbon dating inaccuracies. These are just a couple sites I found to give you an idea.)

http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=3&t=23&m=1
http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/carbondating.html

Bottom line is, you cannot base speculation as fact. Creation, Evolution and the Big Bang are all possibilities, because there is not enough FACTUAL evidence to suggest that one is correct.

I’ll have to concur with @ragingloli on the miraculosity of child birth.
To quote a certain Dutch comedian on the subject: “A miracle? Pff. Rats can do it.”

I have a feeling that the only reason why the coming into existence of new people would be considered a miracle by anyone is because people just can’t seem to get it through their heads that human beings are not made of magic. It’s our instincts making us think a human is not just another physical object, but something completely different, a nearly divine entity.

@milla101: No.
In a nutshell: even in the complete absence of an explanation for the origin of the world, Creationism would NOT be a scientifically acceptable option. Blatant magic is not an answer. It relies on immense numbers of far-fetched assumptions out of the blue that would each be more mysterious than the very thing it tries to explain, it makes no testable predictions, and it doesn’t explain anything.
Evolution theory already enables medicine to save lives. Creationism will never help anyone that way.
Furthermore, there are mountains of transitional fossils (“missing links”, if you will), the similarities in both phenotype and DNA would even on their own be an excellent reason to accept common descent, and the error margins of carbon dating are on a scale where it hardly matters.
Common descent is an empirical fact. Creationism is incoherent, backed up by nothing at all and far too improbable even to consider as a possibility.
That is all.

@Fyrius God and Science are not mutually exclusive though

Yes, his name is Soichiro Honda, or perhaps Steve Jobs.

I don’t think there is a God in the way that humans have described him/her/them…

@Fyrius as usual, your answer has inspired me to proclaim GA.

It’s a pity that people only believe in things when there is “proof”.

Open your minds people ;)

@sebastian_von_tulu that explains your avatar.

@Psychedelic_Zebra ;)

@lynneblundell
Creationism and science are mutually exclusive, though. That’s all I’m saying up there.
Strictly speaking I do believe the scientific mind-set precludes belief in an invisible magic man, so that a scientist can only be religious to the extent that s/he is willing to look the other way as a scientist.

@Psychedelic_Zebra
Why thank you very much.

@sebastian_von_tulu
Open-mindedness is important, but so is scepticism. We need open-mindedness to be able to appreciate the full extent of all possible states of affairs, but we need scepticism to filter out which of those are worth taking serious.

“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas … If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.” – Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism (1987)

More importantly, there’s one important difference between scepticism and closed-mindedness. A sceptic, at least one that follows the scientific method, will change his mind at the drop of a hat if evidence against his beliefs and in favour of another view presents itself. A closed-minded person will just look the other way and pretend his beliefs remain uncontested.

@Fyrius Lurve for quoting Carl Sagan.

@Fyrius ok… the scientific mind-set does perhaps preclude belief in an invisible magic man…but that’s not necessarily “God” is it…There are plenty of scientists that support the belief in a deity

@lynneblundell
Right, right. To the extent that they can blur up the definition to make the conflict less direct. Yes.
I believe this counts as looking the other way, though; making definitions vague when the older, clearer definition is obviously false is very unscientific.

Incidentally, I would be very interested to hear your particular definition of god, because even with the usual “abstract force of the universe” tropes in mind I find it hard to imagine any definition that cannot also be described by the words “invisible magic man.” Is it a woman?

I absolutely, positively, completely believe there is a God. The God of the Bible.
I know that isn’t a popular sentiment here, but it is my belief.

@Psychedelic_Zebra: Fine, I love Dominic the big strong genius and able bodied man. That’s a bit wordy though.

I don’t currently have a definition of a God (I’m trying to erase the false notions from my brain cells) and I don’t make the mistake of thinking that science can explain everything…or even nearly everything..or that it can’t in the future either… but we’re not there yet…and all I was saying is that the Science v. God argument isn’t a valid starting point for me… they are not mutually exclusive, so I’m not closing the door on the possibilities yet….

and what the hell is wrong with magic anyway

@Fyrius: I think the point is that some scientists who do have faith in a deity or a supernatural being can be at ease with both mindsets by understanding that even science does not have all the answers yet, and likely never will know everything. To dismiss something as impossible or outright wrong without having proof either way would be a bit silly in a general sense. But one can have faith without it conflicting with their lives. Eh, I see both sides. Agnostics tend to always have the same comments in God questions.

Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Have at it all you people on opposite sides! I’ll get the popcorn. :D

I have trouble with the idea of God for one big reason, really. Where did he/she come from???

I don’t think that religion and science are opposites and can’t be reconciled (although I don’t think I could reconcile with most religions since I’m gay and, you know, feel uncomfortable when surrounded by people who think the way I was born is inherently wrong) but I do think that the scientific process has nothing to say about God. Science can’t be used to prove or disprove God. I wish people would stop trying.

@asmonet LOL, now I think I love him too, and I’m an old white guy.

@lynneblundell
Magic is awesome. But it has an inconvenient habit of not being real.

@asmonet
“To dismiss something as impossible or outright wrong without having proof either way would be a bit silly in a general sense.”
I’m afraid this is where you’re wrong, friend.
Russell’s Teapot comes to mind, as do the Flying Spaghetti monster and the tooth fairy. Ideas must prove themselves worthy of belief. They do not start out as “maybe” but as “probably not”. With no evidence either way, the default status of “probably not” remains in place. And that makes it very much justified to dismiss it without further argument, if not as impossible then at least as astronomically unlikely.

If I told you there is a velociraptor in an apron here baking pizza for me as we speak, would you not be a liiittle bit tempted to assume I’m at least probably full of shit? You cannot prove I have never revived a velociraptor and taught it how to cook.
They’re very clever dinosaurs, too. But they tend to use too many anchovies.

it’s true. and Fyrius’ Velociraptor makes a very mean Borscht

Personally, I don’t think that science and a belief in God are mutually exclusive. It’s just that if you accept science (as I do) it imposes certain constraints on what kinds of what kind of God or gods can exist.

Consider, for example, the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis which postulates that physical reality is a huge mathematical construct, in which the knower and the known are all part of the same recursive mathematical structure. Or, to put it another way, perhaps we in our single-point-of-view consciousnesses are all simply nodes of a much larger multi-point-of-view consciousness which, when taken all together approximates an all-knowing, all-powerful consciousness. Perhaps “God” is a giant conscious fractal, within which we are self-similar microcosms.

Such a “God” would not be supernatural. It would therefore require no worship, belief, or any acknowledgment of it whatsoever. And, it wouldn’t make much difference if there was any “proof” for its existence or not. Nonetheless, choosing to believe in such a God would be a considerable improvement over believing in any of the received supernatural Gods we now have, since any belief in the supernatural tends have immoral implications.

What if God is a completely human construct, a name we give to our collective will to be caring and respectful toward others. Would it make a difference? There is a spiritual impulse within us and it does not seem to matter much what name we give to it. We could view God as an emergent property that does indeed have an independent existence that dwarfs our individual selves.

@Fyrius: I was simply stating that to some people the idea of a god has been proven worthy of belief. And scientists are not all at odds with it.

And raptors are extinct and I doubt you have the funds or knowledge to bring one back, a standard apron would not fit and I imagine his little dinosaur hands would be ill-equipped to handle modern appliances. But I still think that’s a bullshit example.

he was funded by the illuminati, the saurus’ clothes are custom made and the appliances are especially crafted for the raptor’s hands, which by the way aren’t that small.

how did a question about God come down to a “size” question relating to the size of one’s hands? ;p

@MrBr00ks: Because the eleventh commandment said ”Thou Shalt Know That Size Matters”. Sadly it was etched on the back of the tablet so gets little press.

@asmonet
That’s not what you were stating up there. More pertinently, it’s not what I was reacting to. I was reacting to your assessment of what would be the right stance in the absence of evidence.

“But I still think that’s a bullshit example.”
Oh, I agree, it’s a complete bullshit example. Even without proof either way, and without referring to the burden of proof, one can still tell it’s almost certainly not true, which you adequately did just now. Well done.
The thing is that god is a bullshit example as well. Here too we have plenty of additional considerations to sway our assessment into one particular direction, which is another reason why I disagree with the agnostic point of view.

Even under what would be the most favourable definition to the religious, the notion of god still boils down to the universe being under the control of a sentient mind. There is nothing in the world that unambiguously implies this, which means it’s unfounded and out of the blue.
Sentient minds are extremely rare in the known universe, as exemplified by the fact that among the thousands of species on the one planet that is known to have life, there is only one (count them: one) species that is sentient, which means it’s improbable.
Ascribing minds to everything is furthermore a behaviour we have proven ourselves to be more prone to than a sane adult should, which means this notion is in all likeliness just a product of our imagination, just like the notion that shouting at computers makes them better “understand” what you want them to do.

Incidentally, a sentient mind just happens to be exactly what we are… which brings me back to the bullshit notion that minds are made of magic, and how full of themselves superstitious people tend to be. The notion of god is basically the belief that the fundamental nature of and final authority over all existence is someone like us.
For bonus points: he created it all so we could exist, he created us in his image, and it’s important to him what we believe and how we behave. Further bonus points can be acquired by calling atheists arrogant for denying the existence of the invisible magic man.

It is always surprising how many responses and discussion these god questions precipitate. I wonder if anyone ever changes their minds based on them???

@rooeytoo
Hahaha, yes, they do get many responses for such an old subject.
I think it’s because it’s a subject that’s important to many people and that many people have complicated opinions about. Or rather, very simple opinions backed up by complicated considerations.

@Fyrius
CREATION DOESN’T MEAN THE BIBLE FRIEND!
If you seriously base carbon dating inaccuracies and the “mountains of Missing link evidence” on wiki, I think you should go to your local library and read up on it a bit more.
Also, a serious lol at “Evolution theory already enables medicine to save lives”. What exactly are you talking about here, because that line is absurd.

@milla101
I have not even mentioned the bible, nor implied anything to that effect. Kindly leave your straw men out of this, “friend.”

And I’m glad you’re not rejecting my statements you don’t understand as “absurd” or anything before I’ve actually clarified them. Oh wait.

Evolution theory has many practical applications, yes. In the medicine and life-saving department, think for example of antibiotics; viruses evolve to become resistant to them, and understanding that they do so enables medicine to keep up with the arms race.
A Creationist style analysis that they just become resistant for reasons we can’t hope to comprehend would force medicine to give up and let people die.

The carbon dating inaccuracies fact was actually told to me in person by the American scholar Ken Safir when he gave a seminar on the evolution of the language faculty at my university.

And are you just going to ignore the transitional fossils simply because they are reported on a site whose reliability you underestimate? Would you be more convinced if I posted a lecture of an evolutionary biologist presenting a few of them?

Incidentally I think you could learn a thing or two from the methodology of Wikipedia, as well as about it. What you could learn about it is that they have very rigid and very effectively implemented standards of reliability, verifiability and objectivity there. What you could learn from it is what these words mean and how you can apply them to your own intellectual development.

At any rate, this is all moot to your position. Creationism is fucking magic. There is no place in science for fucking magic.

And I think I should tell you that the people who told you Creationism is a scientifically tenable position knew damn well that they were lying through their teeth.

This was on the original liner notes for Aqualung by Jethro Tull (1971)

1. In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him. 2 And Man gave unto God a multitude of names, that he might be Lord of all the earth when it was suited to Man. 3 And on the seven millionth day Man rested and did lean heavily on his God and saw that it was good. 4 And Man formed Aqualung of the dust of the ground, and a host of others likened unto his kind. _5 And these lesser men were cast into the void; And some were burned, and some were put apart from their kind. 6 And Man became the God that he had created and with his miracles did rule over all the earth. 7 But as all these things came to pass, the Spirit that did cause man to create his God lived on within all men, even within Aqualung. 8 And man saw it not. 9 But for Christ’s sake he’d better start looking.

@cprevite lol GA

People who don’t believe in evolution really shouldn’t be allowed to get flu shots.

@Fyrius: A lot of what you’re saying comes from a very Western point of view. And really, I’m not as invested in explaining someone else’s opinions as I would be if I shared them. I know at least one person who fully agrees with what I’ve said, because I’ve shown this thread to him. If he chooses to sign up and continue the dialogue I’ll more than happily watch it play out. Hopefully, he chooses to do so. I think it’d be interesting.

@asmonet Yes!!! I’m 100% for giving people who don’t believe in evolution last years’ flu shots. :D

Probably not.

@milla101 I know of no creation myth that is not textual in origin. I didn’t specifically mention the Bible, just old books written by ancients who were not scientifically minded.

As I mentioned in my previous answer, there is a difference between a known fact and a scientific theory supported by a mountain of evidence to the point of being beyond reasonable doubt. Evolution is the latter.

I am aware of carbon dating errors. I’m not sure if you are aware, but I am an ex-creationist and ex-Christian. Since I was 13 and realised that omniscience and omnipotence are unable to coexist I have been trying to save religion from itself. It is only since the beginning of this year, at the age of 18, that I have called myself an atheist. I know more about ID theory than most. You can tell me about carbon dating errors, the horizon problem, the Grand Canyon sloping the wrong way, Uranus spinning the wrong way, the flagellum motor, or any other creationist hobby horse, and I will hear nothing new. I don’t mean to be arrogant here, but evolution is as close to fact as we have, and creation is fundamentally flawed by the emotional a priori assumption of the existence of a god.

Fact is also not the only way we can attain knowledge. We know as a fact that the human chromosome 2 is a fusion of two chimp chromosomes. That is the fact, and from that we draw the inference that some time in the past a common ancestor underwent this fusion with great success. By itself it does not prove evolution, but it adds weight to the theory as do the thousands of other examples we know of.

@FireMadeFlesh: There are plenty of civilizations that never had a written language, but they sure as shit had a host of gods, goddesses and their very own creation myths.

You realize that the idea of a supernatural being or beings influencing us did not magically appear at the same time writing did, right?

@asmonet
If you have any non-Western points of view to share that you believe would contribute to the debate, I’m all ears. Otherwise, no offence, but I don’t give a flying duck what particular compass point is associated with these notions. Ideas do not belong to places.
Other than that, I’ll gladly wait for your friend.

@FireMadeFlesh
@asmonet is on to something here. I believe even the content of the bible had a long oral history before people first wrote it down.
Indeed, the people who dreamed up most creation myths were not only “not scientifically minded”, but in fact illiterate.
Other than that, I agree completely.

In my experience, those who say ‘no offense’ fully intend to commit one.

I’ve been a good boy. I didn’t say fuck.
Oh wait.
FUCK!

In all seriousness, if I had intended to offend you, I would have done it overtly and unambiguously.

eeeeeeeek, glad I bailed when I did…

@Fyrius: I wasn’t offended, kiddo.

@Fyrius
Don’t be folly you Implied it.
The idea of an “Infinite Creator” has nothing to do with magic, as you said, the Big Bang theory is based on an event that there was nothing which became something. The two could be in fact one in the same and neither can be proved otherwise. It’s speculation.
Milla out.

@milla101
Good riddance.

I am not folly I did not Imply it.
(Is this going to be the new rage, writing like this? It’s kind of cute. It wouldn’t look out of place on a lolcat.)
I said nothing to the effect that Christianity was involved.

As for the point you were trying to make, let me copy-past something I wrote a while back in this very thread.

“Even under what would be the most favourable definition to the religious, the notion of god still boils down to the universe being under the control of a sentient mind. There is nothing in the world that unambiguously implies this, which means it’s unfounded and out of the blue.
Sentient minds are extremely rare in the known universe, as exemplified by the fact that among the thousands of species on the one planet that is known to have life, there is only one (count them: one) species that is sentient, which means it’s improbable.
Ascribing minds to everything is furthermore a behaviour we have proven ourselves to be more prone to than a sane adult should, which means this notion is in all likeliness just a product of our imagination, just like the notion that shouting at computers makes them better “understand” what you want them to do.”

Bottom line: the notion of a creator is horribly far-fetched. The notion of the Big Bang being the beginning, significantly less so.
It’s the idea that something can come from nothing, against the idea that something can have existed forever, plus the plethora of other assumptions inherent in the notion that this something was intelligent had the power and will to create a universe.
Compare it to the notion that the universe has existed forever and the only difference becomes that Creationism achieves less with far more assumptions.

And again, this is moot to the position of Creationism. Creationism does not offer any answer, nor any possibility of ever finding any. It’s a scientific dead end. It’s throwing your arms in the air and saying “I don’t know, I give up.”
It is fundamentally unscientific.

@beautifulsoul22 Welcome to Fluther. Lurve.

@asmonet That is a good point. Of course currently accepted creation myths have since been written down, and the Bible is not unique. I find it interesting that the strength of a culture is the main reason people believe in a magic man making the world rather than the Australian Aboriginal myth of the Rainbow Serpent.

@milla101 If you think the Big Bang is about nothing becoming something, then you are severely misguided. The mass-energy always existed, but at the point of the Big Bang space and time dimensions began and the pre-existing mass-energy took a new form.

@FireMadeFlesh
Exactly. In fact, it is not the Big Bang theory which advocates creatio ex nihilo, it is the biblical creation myth. After all you have to ask yourself, where did “God” take the matter/energy from to create the universe?

@ragingloli I suppose it was borrowed from the golden streets of heaven, underwent nuclear fission to make it sound scientifical rather than mystic, and then lumped here just for us to evolve on.

@FireMadeFlesh I quite like that idea actually :-)

It’s impressive how prevalent assertive ignorance is, whether it comes down to claiming that there is no evidence for evolution, or climate change….etc.

There’s a great paper that goes some way to explaining this.

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own
Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1999, 77:6, 1121–1134

“In essence, we argue that the skills that engender competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills necessary to evaluate competence in that domain—one’s own or anyone else’s.”

In other words, the ignorant are by default often unaware of the extent of their own ignorance. Because to be aware of their own ignorance they would have to be more aware of the subject matter, as they are not, they end up coupling ignorance with an inflated perception of their own competence.

www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

There’s a great quote from Miller in the beginning of the paper.

“It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense. (Miller, 1993, p. 4)”

Shame these traits make such comfortable bed fellows, and that bullshit is so easy to propagate.

also this should answer OP’s question

Is there a god? We don’t know. We can believe there is one. We can believe there isn’t one. Or we can decide not to make a decision about our belief.

I think this notion of ”or that science is the way to go” is the source of all the trouble and many of the endless discussions. This “or” notion was purposefully created by narrow-minded folks who are afraid of people exercising critical thinking. If science were not the way to go we would not have CERN and the world wide web and this discussion right here on Fluther this very moment. No science also means no transistors, no computer chips and no cell phones. Imagine a young generation of kids without all that.

People are really getting tired of evolution denial over and over linking this with a discussion about religion and philosophy and purpose. Yes, there are people who are afraid of evolution for emotional reasons. We need to take that fear away. Our universe is wonderful. It is bursting with evolutionary possibilities. If people believe in God, evolutionary biology should not be the reason to give up that belief. If people want to give up this belief – which is fine with me – they should do it for other reasons. Naming science as the reason is irrational. The existence of God is not a scientific question.

@milla101 – Read a good book like

http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501/

and you will see how easy it is to debunk evolution denial. Whether you are a believer or nonbeliever evolution is the best theory we got to explain the living world. There isn’t a single scientific experiment or observation which is capable of disproving evolution. This is what science does. Trying to refute existing theories. If this gets achieved science corrects itself. Also find new theories for parts we can’t fully explain yet. Like how life got started on Earth.

@Critter38
I am so going to read that article. XD

@mattbrowne
I would contend that the existence of a god is fundamentally a scientific issue, just like the existence of anything else.
(But we’ve had the same debate before, to little avail, and I don’t think it would get us anywhere if I repeated myself here.)

@Fyrius – Yes, let’s not repeat old arguments. One observation: I’m under the impression that ‘the existence of a god being fundamentally a scientific issue’ is a minority view both among atheists and theists.

@mattbrowne “Imagine a young generation of kids without all that.” I don’t have to imagine it, I can almost remember it!

Recent studies in the “quantum” areas (physics, mechanics, gravity, alchemy) seem to point to a subjective, observer based and observer influenced reality universe, rather than the more traditional objective, “out-there” universe. If reality is in the eye of the observer, then the existence or non-existence of God (definition: the Supreme Being Who created all things) is a purely subjective belief depending upon the observers observations.

@Fyrius Yeah it gave me an “Ah Haaa!” moment when I first read it. :)

You might also be interested in the follow up articles, for instance

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~ehrlinger/Self_&_Social_Judgment/Ehrlinger_et_al_2008.pdf

With the wonderful subtitle: “Further explorations of absent self-insight among the incompetent.”

There’s even a name for these outcomes, its the Dunning-Kruger effect, named after the original authors. A line that is fun to drop now and again.

Bertrand Russell pre-empted their research with this quote.

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision”

Hey and they even won an Ig Nobel for this work back in 2000!

Except that “alchemy” reappeared when we began to understand supernovae and the gold mines they were creating ;-)

@mattbrowne
With all due lurve and respect to my fellow atheists and scientists, I don’t give a damn how popular my ideas are.

@Yetanotheruser
Actually…
Since quantum particles behave differently when observed than they do when not observed, doesn’t that prove there cannot exist any entity that always observes everything? We should get the same results all the time if there were.
Of course, maybe our kind of observation is different, et cetera. I dunno.

@Fyrius How do we know how an “unobserved” quantum particle behaves? Perhaps there is a different way of “knowing” other than observation?

@Yetanotheruser
Yeah, we can tell afterwards how it has behaved, by effects this behaviour has had. That’s how we know there is a difference.
(I’m specifically thinking of the Double-Slit Experiment here.)

But I’m no particle physicist, so I’m hesitant to draw conclusions from this.

Still, however, it’s quite a giant leap from “quantum particles are somewhat affected by subjective observation” to “there exists no objective reality at all and anything we can dream up is subjectively true.”
Would you say it’s a purely subjective belief whether there’s an invisible China teapot in orbit between Mars and the earth? If not, what sets this apart from a speculated history of the universe?

@Fyrius I present you with a quote from A Dialogue in Consciousness by __Stanley Sobottka, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Virginia, part of his Course in Consciousness.

10. What is God?

a. God is another word for Consciousness, which is what You are.
b. Transcendent God is pure Awareness, while immanent God is the Background of the objects of Awareness.
c. Thus, God is What is aware of objects, and God is also the Background from which objects arise.
d. The Background is not different from its objects. Together with Awareness they comprise Consciousness. God, Consciousness, and What-Is are all pointers to the same thing.
e. God, Good, and Love are all the same. Therefore, you are God, Good, and Love.
(end quote)

I don’t know about you, but this makes sense to me.

@Yetanotheruser
It doesn’t to me. To me it sounds like pseudophilosophical drivel.

@ragingloli I guess one person’s ceiling is another’s floor!

@Yetanotheruser If someone wants to say that when people are talking to or of god, all they are really doing is creating a distinct emotional inner persona in their pre-frontal cortex to bounce ideas off, and therefore, god is just another facet of ones own conscience. Then I agree. “God” is in many of our heads (thankfully, not mine).

But from what I can tell, that’s not what Sobotka is saying.

So what do we gain by combining practically distinguishable concepts (love, good) and throwing them in a big pot with the culturally diverse, specifically defined and divisive word god…and saying “that’s all the same stuff”.

Basically there is a lot to be gained for individuals and societies if we all did define god as Sobotka defines it in your post. But that doesn’t mean for one second that it is true. Lots of things are false but can nevertheless serve a purpose. Furthermore, such vagaries are often used as a means of preserving concepts which are untenable when defined more precisely (not saying that his was tenable).

Anyways, here’s the conundrum with the god concept as I see it.

1) First we have to accept that there are unlimited possibilities for the god concept (ie lots of things are possible in the universe….but this doesn’t mean they are true). The “possible” hides an infinite amount of the “incorrect”.

So without supportive evidence for the existence of the specific god being argued for, there is no valid justification for choosing that specific possibility, and therefore no reason to accept that specific possibility as any more likely than any of the limitless alternatives.

Therefore the more specific the concept of god, the more you have to justify. Coupled with a lack of accompanying evidence, this results in more logical flaws.

Hence the the more specifically defined your god, the less likely it is to be true.

2) Although there are limitless possibilities, our own capacity for reason enables us to discount some possibilities as meaningless or impossible.

If someone defines God as perfect, but requiring worship, this is fundamentally illogical. Then you end up with a concept that is not only specific (and thereby requiring directly supportive evidence to justify your position) but you also having to overcome the hurdle of the fundamental illogic being posited (why would a perfect being require worship). Same for an all loving god that allows eternal torture, or an omniscient god that is a sexual prude or bigot.

the faithful will often try to get around this by saying we are incapable of understanding god…which brings us back to how we can claim to know anything about a concept for which it is concurrently being argued as unknowable. If we cannot use our empathy and reason to understand god, we cannot judge god, and therefore we have no capacity to know whether god is good, or loving or anything else for that matter.

3) There has been a spat or “I don’t believe in Dawkins god either”, or “my god is more nuanced than that”, “god is universal energy” etc… Vague but concurrently targeted definitions (god is X), like Sobottka and others are embracing, just raises other problems.

First, God ceases to have any practical relevance or meaning (“that which defines everything, defines nothing”). Second, it is still anchored by the problems encountered above. In other words, how do we know god is love and good? If we lived on a planet with just love and good, and no god, what difference would there be between thatworld and a world in which god was present and was in fact inherent in love and good (but still worthy of distinction)? In other words, god is love and good; god takes a holiday…how would we know he/it/she/they wasn’t around?

At the end of the day it keeps coming back to 1) lots of people seem to want there to be a god(s), and 2) they prefer a unjustifiable answer to no answer at all.

@Yetanotheruser – Einstein once said: ‘God always takes the simplest way’.

So, maybe a more simple definition will do: ‘God is beyond nature’. Another version of this is: ‘God is beyond our understanding’.

Thanks for sharing Stanley Sobottka’s views!

@Yetanotheruser
It makes sense to you? Really?
Could you perhaps rephrase what it means in your own words?

I for one have no idea what this man is on about. I’ve been reading this list of assertions some ten times now and I still don’t see anything I would dare call meaningful.

Not to even mention that he begins by telling us what a word means which is completely different from what the rest of the English-speaking world has been using the word “god” for during at least the past millennium. No, “god” most definitely isn’t another word for “consciousness”. If it were, a nurse could say “the patient has lost god” and everyone would know what she meant. And dollar bills could say “in consciousness we trust” and people would be only mildly surprised that they chose a slightly different formulation to say the same thing.
Ergo, the unfounded assertion in A is absolutely wrong.
The same can be said for E. These three words have very different meanings.
I’d like to send this professor a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, with a note saying “I rest my case.”

And if you think this guy’s credentials mean he knows what he’s talking about, I’d like to point out that this is a physicist meddling with psychology, philosophy and semantics. He’s not even talking about his own branch of science. His field of expertise is an exact science, and the ones he’s talking about are all the way in the humanities!
Would you take a historian’s word for it if he tells you String Theory makes perfect sense if you assume that all perpendicular oscillations along the fourth spatial dimension gravitate towards Osiris? He has a PhD in medieval studies, after all.
And he even uses big sciency words I don’t understand but that sound smart.

Yeah, I’m with @ragingloli on this one. Pseudo-philosophical drivel.

@mattbrowne
It can get simpler still. “God does not exist.” XD

In all seriousness, “beyond our understanding” is the very opposite of “simple”. Simple things are easy to understand. Only something that will always be too complicated for us ever to wrap our heads around can be described as “beyond our understanding”.

And in general, postulating a hypothetical being to be beyond understanding is a horrible move. Giving up trying to understand a notion is a great way to ensure that you wouldn’t ever find out if the notion happens to be dead wrong.

My inclusion of Sobottka’s credentials was by way of introduction, not to say “Oh, this guy’s a professor, so he has to know what he’s talking about!”

Although, as I stated, his statements (at least the ones that I quoted) make sense to me, there are many of his concepts with which I totally disagree. I am not interested in starting or joining the Church of Sobottka.

My personal belief as to the existence of “God” and what that existence entails, is an extremely subjective belief, based as much upon feelings and other non-provable experience, if not more, as upon my own brand of logic…

I guess it all began back when I was a child, born into and brought up in a very strong Roman Catholic family. I actually entered a high-school level seminary for a couple of years. As a Catholic, and for many years after I left the church, I subscribed to the idea of an objective, patriarchal “God”, as traditionally understood by Western Religion, for several years, but that concept became increasingly difficult for me to swallow.

One of the most epiphanic moments occurred in my mid-twenties, when I actually understood what a friend meant when he stated:

“Reality is a mutually agreed upon mass illusion”

Sometimes he would say it as “mutually-satisfying, ”, or refer to it as a mass hallucination.

He passed away some twenty years ago, or I would ask him to explain himself.

What I think he meant is this: We all interpret our individual experiences by perception, not observation. Each of us has a unique experience. Some experiences are shared, forming consensus. Some are remembered, but each person’s memory is a little different.

If a group of people are in a room, and one wall of the room is red, everyone in the room can agree that the wall is red; but how do we know that what I see as red appears to ou as the same?

I’d put it differently.

Reality exists, but we filter that reality through sensory, retention, and processing equipment that to greater or lesser degrees causes fault with our perception of reality.

Luckily we have refined a way to circumvent these individual faults of perception through a collective process of systematic observation and experimentation called science. When conducted rigorously by multiple independent individuals, the consistency or divergence of results enables us to hone our understanding of reality to better and better approximate objective truths about the natural world and our place in it.

For those questions such as “Is there a god”, which science cannot answer, other “ways of knowing” don’t elevate in status or reliability because the best reality approximater ever conceived (ie science) left the field. Our assumptions, gut feelings, suppositions, intuitions, speculations, and other unsubstantiated beliefs are just as unreliable because, as you rightfully point out, we are then back to relying on our own biases, wishful thinking, childhood programming etc.

Nevertheless we can temper such biases by being intellectually honest about the limits of what we know, by demanding from ourselves that we examine the quality of the evidence for what we believe to be true, and by being distinctly aware of the strong tendency for wishful thinking to drag us into fairy land.

From this standpoint I don’t see the slightest reason to believe there is a god or gods as commonly defined.

@Yetanotheruser
Well, I think that development was definitely an improvement.

@Critter38
“For those questions such as “Is there a god”, which science cannot answer”
I still don’t agree that it can’t.
While it can’t disprove it, I think the scientific modus operandi can tell us exactly where the notion of god stands. Science often has to deal with things we have no conclusive data on. We still have ways to tell whether an idea is plausible or too bizarre even to consider.

The notion of god is an unfounded assertion that has been around for millennia, that started out making very concrete predictions that were untestable back then, that has been proven wrong in everything it predicted once people did find ways to find out (1), and that has each time been adapted ad-hoc to avoid the contradictory evidence, becoming less clear and less testable with each adaptation. Nowadays, it is still unfounded, it has become more unfalsifiable than ever, and depending on the formulation it either crucially depends on a notion that is absurdly unlikely or it is so vague that it has lost all actual meaning.
In a nutshell it is an immensely complex set of assumptions, and completely unnecessary now that modern science has more adequately explained most of the former mysteries it was intended to account for. Ockham’s razor tears it to shreds and it collapses under the weight of the burden of proof.
Many arguments for it have been given, (almost) exclusively by people who all already believed the conclusion to be true before they even started looking for arguments. Each of these arguments has been adequately refuted and revealed to be based on twisted logic (Dawkins 2006).

If this idea were unknown to us and a university freshman would come up with it and give it as an answer, he would get very bad grades indeed.

(1) Such predictions include but are by no means limited to: there are immortal people in the sky, lightning cannot be explained by anything other than an immortal man throwing bolts like a spear, the sun rising cannot be explained by anything other than an immortal man in a chariot, the origins of the planet earth cannot be explained by anything other than an immortal man creating it, prayer affects what happens in the world.

@Fyrius

Let X be the meaning of “God”.
Let Y be the sentence “God is beyond our understanding”.
Let Z be the meaning (semantics) of Y.

Now I content that Y is simple, Z is also simple and X is indeed the very opposite of simple.

My previous post was about Z. We need to keep the levels separate.

@mattbrowne
I find your semantic point of view to be obfuscating and not really helpful.
Yes, expression Y and its semantics Z are in themselves relatively simple. But if they are true, that necessitates the postulation of something that is more complex than literally anything in the known universe.
It’s on par with how the phrase “the moon is a turd” is a semantically very simple sentence, but nonetheless its meaning entails a huge load of complexity. For starters, we would need to postulate a life form that makes turds that big, explain what it ate to shit out a moon, how it can sustain itself with a diet like that…
So in terms of cutting down on the complexity, I don’t think you’ve done us much of a favour, chap.

Indeed, if we want to be minimalist about it, the right thing to do would be to discard this god idea altogether and see whether we can still make sense of the universe without it.

Science could theoretically provide supportive evidence one day if there is a god (no matter how ridiculously small the probabilities that you and I think they are), but (as you acknowledge) it can’t establish that there isn’t one (or the non-existence of any other non entity, no matter how silly). That was really my only point, if poorly worded.

The fact is as it is today, science can’t answer the question either way. We can reason and logic our way to discounting the possibility of a god, and stand on the shoulders of scientific advancements to try to justify such reasoning. But as things are I have a hard time agreeing unless I expand my definition of science outside the one I normally would use.

God can’t get past the hypothesis stage. But that doesn’t distract from the statement that science can’t tell us if there is a god (or not).

perhaps we’re talking past each other?

@Critter38
I think we might disagree on what criteria need to be met for something to qualify as an answer.

I for one would accept “that would be tremendously unlikely” as an answer. It’s not 100% absolutely conclusive, but then again nothing ever is in science.
In this sense I think science can answer the question.

@Critter38
“it can’t establish that there isn’t one (or the non-existence of any other non entity, no matter how silly)”
Actually it can. If a proposed object A exerts effects A’ on its environment, then science can look for those effects A’. If the effects A’ are absent, then it means that the object A, of which the effects are an inherent property, does not exist. Now you can say that the object still exists but doesn’t have effects on its environment, and that would be an object whose existence could neither be proven or disproven, but this object would not be object A, but an entirely different object B, because the inherent properties of object A, namely the effects A’ are missing.

In the same way, the God of the Bible is Object A. The inherent properties of A, A’, include things such as Biblical Creation (humans out of dust, speaking everything into existence within 6 days). Science has shown the absence of A’. Biblical creation did not happen. Therefore the Biblical God A, of which Biblical Creation A’ is an inherent property, does not exist.
Now you can say that God still exists, but he did not create the universe as described in the Bible. But this God is not the Biblical God, but an entirely different and separate God.

@ragingloli “Actually it can ”.....(two paragraphs later) “While it can’t disprove it,”

Which is my point exactly. I never defined “god” as a biblical god.

To my mind “god” is an often purposefully amorphous and ill defined multifaceted concept that is sufficiently slippery to be a bad scientific question.

Sorry for the misquote raingloli…I meant the second quote to be “Now you can say god still exists”

Im in the middle of the nightly bed ritual with my kids…gotta let this one go for now as Im too distracted to write clearly

@Critter38 Are you helping them say their prayers?~

One of the arguments used by theists to support their case is the reports of people with near death expiereinces about leaving their bodies and floating around. There is an experiment going on the test whether these people really have souls that have left their bodies. It is a bit of an odd epxeriment being done with heart attack patients. Pictures are being placed in the room in such a way that they can only be seen from above. The scientists want to know if these pictures will be seen by any patients whose souls end up floating around the room. Link

@LostInParadise
Whoa, they’re investigating that? Awesome. Can’t wait to hear the results.

But I don’t see how this could be related to the issue of whether or not there exists any god. Deities and afterlives are completely independent notions.

@Yetanotheruser Nope.

I love them far too much to encumber their beautiful developing minds with that kind of garbage.

@Fyrius , They may be separate issues, but belief in one tends to go with belief in the other. It gets to the issue of whether there are things can not be perceived by our senses.

@LostInParadise
If the issue is whether there exist things we cannot perceive, that’s really a non-issue. Of course there are.
That’s why we need to invent clever experimentation methods that allow us to extend our senses and study things we cannot naturally perceive, much like what these ladies and gentlemen are planning.

I know some people who do behavioural experiments to find out whether, say, a six month old understands that “moo” sounds more like “boo” than like “doo”. This knowledge is something that can’t possibly be perceived by our senses. You can stare at a kid until the cows come home and you’ll never know. That’s why you do experiments instead.
For example, showing an interesting little flashing light while playing “moo boo” and later on “moo doo”, and seeing if infants systematically lose interest sooner for one sequence than for the other.

@Fyrius, you are clouding the issue. What you are talking about is the perception of someone else’s perception (perception of infant’s perception), which is of interest but not what I had in mind. What I had in mind is the existence of objects like souls or supreme beings that we can not perceive through our ordinary senses.

I’m clouding the issue? I’m actually deliberately being more well-defined and consistent about this than you probably intend to be. I think it is you who is making the issue more vague than it should be.
You and damn near everyone, for that matter.
If we want to be scientific about this – and we do, since we’re talking about the ramifications of a scientific experiment – then we can’t afford to be vague.

Like I said, we already know a great deal about many things we cannot perceive through our ordinary senses – anything that requires a microscope or any such instrument would be a fine other example. We also know a great deal about many things that still cannot be perceived even through enhanced senses, such as what’s going on in the mind of an infant.
Whether what’s going on in there is also a process of perception is irrelevant. The point is that the phenomenon itself is impossible to perceive, and we can learn about it only through its surface manifestations.

So, what exactly is it that separates souls and deities from other imperceptible things? It’s clearly not whether we can find out about them through experiment, since just such an experiment is what started us on this subject.

I think I have a good guess what it is that souls and deities have in common, that sets them apart from any other phenomenon.
Magic.

My final word on this. When we use a microscope, we are still getting information through our senses. There are other things that can be detected indirectly through our senses. The infant study that you cite would be an example. If the experiment that I mentioned produces positive results then it would also be indirect evidence for the existence of a soul. If the results are negative, no conclusion can be drawn. People could always conjecture that souls can perceive when they are the subjects of experiment and that under such circumstances will not do anything to reveal their presence. The same could be said for any experiment to detect the presence of God.

if by magic you mean lack of falsifiability then we are in agreement.

“If the results are negative, no conclusion can be drawn.”
I beg to differ.
This is what null hypotheses are for, my friend. If the results are negative, that would vindicate a null hypothesis saying – at least – “the sample of brain-dead people we tested didn’t really exit their bodies and look around the room.”
Particularly if the test subjects still do report having out-of-body experiences, but they don’t match what they would have seen if they really had drifted around the room. Which is what I expect to be the outcome.
And that would strengthen the already strong hypothesis that souls are just made up by people afraid of a permanent death.

You could speculate that the test subjects could look around the room but just didn’t want to, or deliberately lied about what they saw, but you can find similarly far-fetched excuses to cheat your way around the results of any experiment. The only honest conclusion would be that it would be most reasonable to take this to mean that they simply can’t.

Hang on, why am I talking about this?
My point on this subject was that if souls could be experimentally verified, they would stop being mystical and magical, and thus they would lose their connection to the notion of the god.

I like that last point in small print. Unfortunately I do not think it will ever get a chance to be tested, because I strongly doubt the existence of a soul in other than a metaphorical sense.

I join you in doubting very much that its existence could be verified. But if it’s properly defined in non-magical terms, I do think we could find ways to test whether there is any such thing. This experiment would be a good start.
Non-existence can be proven, if we know exactly what to look for and where to look for it.
But I suppose it’s debatable whether the notion of “soul” can be properly defined in non-magical terms, without getting too far away from what it’s commonly understood to refer to.

Well. If you want to stop talking about this, then so be it.

I believe that there is a God and that He is Creator of the universe.

Duh

Absolutely not.