Please Don't Hate Me Because I'm an Atheist Isle

[Jeff]

The older I get, the less interest I have in going after people for their religious beliefs. So many family and friends that I think the world of are sincerely religious and I'm not interested in is driving a wedge between us. So if this kind of thing rubs you the wrong way, don't take it personally, just skip it entirely.

To that end, I tucked it in here to be out of the way.

Here's an interesting argument almost lost in the middle of an otherwise generic trying-to-promote-atheism-by-way-of-slagging-Christianity site:

Why won't God heal amputees?

Boils down to: if we accept as a premise that God heals (a core belief for Christians, it seems), why does he never ever ever heal amputees? No matter how good they are, no matter how devout, no matter how many people pray for them. Never. He can heal anything. And there are animals who regenerate limbs. And he made those. So why would god single out amputees as a group he was unwilling to help under any circumstances?

Why are the deity's limits in healing exactly parallel to what science and reason would have you expect to be the limits of healing were there no God involved at all? What possible explanation other than God not existing explains this?

I don't want to turn this into a sophomore year of college bad philosophy discussion, let alone a Christian slagging isle.

But seriously, this is an extremely good point. I grew up in a deeply religious family and am pretty good at coming up with answers from their end for various arguments. But I cannot see a counterargument to this point at all.

[matthew]

You are looking at it all wrong. This is closer to the truth.

[matthew]

I did not wish to trivialize a good argument.

This line I like:

What are we seeing here? It is not that God sometimes answers the prayers of amputees, and sometimes does not. Instead, in this situation there is a very clear line. God never answers the prayers of amputees.

[Doctor Rock]

That argument doesn't exclude the possibility that there is a god, but that he doesn't intervene in the universe.  The non-intervening god is the god of the deists.

In fact, I have little trouble with the deist view of god.  I don't believe in it, but it doesn't bug me much.  What makes me go is all the mumbo-jumbo that usually goes with regular religion, stuff that is obviously not true.  Virgin births?  Resurrections?  Angels?  Demons?  Immortal souls?  Reincarnation? Come on!  

[matthew]

I believe the argument was aimed solely at the claims that prayer works.

[Doctor Rock]

What possible explanation other than God not existing explains this?

I was commenting on this.  The fact that prayer doesn't work doesn't eliminate the god of the deists.   

[Jeff]

Fair enough.

[matthew]

What possible explanation other than God not existing explains this?

I was commenting on this.  The fact that prayer doesn't work doesn't eliminate the god of the deists.   

I realize that, I only thought that since Jeff was responding to the website, which refers to the alleged power of prayer, that this is what he meant by...ah, nevermind...

Deism is not exactly as mainstream as is once was, nor do I believe the rejection of orison universal amongst them. It would make sense that any prayer they might engage in would not be expecting it to be answered by God.

I am tired, alright?

[Jeff]

Hitchens vs. Blackwell. "Is this a Christian nation?"

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8ISylK4g6UM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/8ISylK4g6UM</a>

[Doctor Rock]

Ever heard of Bertrand Russell's teapot? 

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."

In other words, it is not up to me, the sceptic, to prove or disprove the unfalsifiable claims of religions. 

[Jeff]

The thing that drives me most batshit these days isn't even religion. It's the increasingly popular belief--whether it be amongst religious people, conspiracy theorists, UFO junkies, alternative medicine advocates, vaccines-cause-autism paranoiacs or whoever--that science is just someone's opinion, no more or less valuable than anyone else's.

Sure, legions of peer-reviewed studies with closely monitored methodology have produced near uniformly consistent evidence that there is no causal link between childhood vaccines and autism, but that's the opinion of those scientists. Jenny McCarthy's opinion is that her kid's autism had its onset right around the time he got his vaccines, so that caused his autism. The idea that these two things should be presented as "opposing viewpoints" as opposed to "hard evidence" and "some illogical shit paranoid people believe based on dim understanding of anecdotal evidence" is flabbergasting.

[Doctor Rock]

On atheism vs. agnosticism:

I think that the existence (or non-existence) of god is one of those unfalsifiable claims of the same order as Russell's teapot.  But that doesn't mean that I must sit in the fence regarding this subject, that is, just go "I do not know if god exists or not".  

In our particular context we usually get involved in arguments regarding the claims of monotheistic religions, christianity in particular.

To be a christian, you have to at least believe in the following:
 
- that Jesus was the messiah promised in the old testament.
- that Jesus Christ is the son of god.
- that god sent his son to earth to save humanity from the consequences of its sins.
- that Jesus was killed and rose from the dead after the third day (the resurrection).
- most christians believe that there is one god, but that there are three elements to this one god: god the father, god the son, the holy spirit.

All of these claims are unfalsifiable.  I have no proof that they are true, I have no proof that they are false, and I can't probably prove them or disprove them.   But do I really have to sit on the fence?   I mean, it is quite clear that none of these beliefs make sense outside of christian religious tradition.  

Therefore, I think that I can say with a great degree of certitude that the god of the christians does not exist.  Now, this does not exclude that some kind of god may exist.  But the only god that is compatible with what I know of the universe would be a non-intervening god, some kind of entity akin to the god of Einstein:

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."  Or "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."

In other words, a god who doesn't listen to prayers or cares whether we believe in him or not.  The god of the deists.  Going from this kind of god to "there's probably no god" is a breeze, simply because he doesn't really give a shit.  It's already as if he wasn't there. 

[Jeff]

Richard Dreyfuss did a bit on Johnny Carson once claiming that he believed there were three gods, all of them petty, spiteful, stupid, and mercurial. As a general rule, one would always be on your side, one would always hate you. Your lot in life day to day depended on the swing vote.

I don't know why I'm sharing this except that it always struck me as funny.

[Doctor Rock]

The thing that drives me most batshit these days isn't even religion. It's the increasingly popular belief--whether it be amongst religious people, conspiracy theorists, UFO junkies, alternative medicine advocates, vaccines-cause-autism paranoiacs or whoever--that science is just someone's opinion, no more or less valuable than anyone else's.

Sure, legions of peer-reviewed studies with closely monitored methodology have produced near uniformly consistent evidence that there is no causal link between childhood vaccines and autism, but that's the opinion of those scientists. Jenny McCarthy's opinion is that her kid's autism had its onset right around the time he got his vaccines, so that caused his autism. The idea that these two things should be presented as "opposing viewpoints" as opposed to "hard evidence" and "some illogical shit paranoid people believe based on dim understanding of anecdotal evidence" is flabbergasting.

Ditto.  That drives me up the wall way more than religious belief.   This constant confusion between opinion and facts drives me bonkers, and it makes a reasonable discussion pretty much impossible.  I mean it ain't that hard to understand: the Beatles suck is an opinion; the Beatles were called John, Paul, George and Ringo (or Richard) is a fact.  If you can't distinguish between the two, you are either stupid, ignorant or dishonest. 

[Doctor Rock]

I wonder: has Pat seen this isle?