Yesterday I wrote an article based on a piece by Natalie Watchover of LiveScience.com, called "Will Science Someday Rule Out the Possibility of God?" One atheist "Rational1" had a comment to make about it, though actually only tangentially.
He said:
Very few atheists attempt to prove God does not exist (Victor Stenger is a notable exception) and are instead content to say there is not evidence for the existence of God.The problem with atheists and most non-believers is their inability to have any faith in anything that thay cannot see, taste, smell, feel, and/or touch. Somehow air is exempt from their disbelief, even though the senses cannot detect it, but God is a concept/reality that just does not cut it for them.
As to the miracles, I can remain skeptical of those miraculous claims that your religion purports for the same reason that your are skeptical of the numerous and incredibly well attested modern miracles of Sai Baba ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba )
They tend to becloud discussion lest there be any challenges to their world view. After all, their world view is a naturalist/rationalist comprehension, and that is all there is. Rational1 did that in the comment above, which had nothing to do with the post I had written, other than to signal that Rational1 was "running helter skelter with his fingers in his ears" pretending that life is just as he sees it.
Since the commenter calls himself Rational1, let us try to see what a Rational1 might be. I take the liberty of speaking for him, since he did the same with me in his comment, where he claimed I was skeptical about something of which I have never had knowledge, other than in the last few hours, by his link in his comment.
It is reasonably safe to assume that someone who calls himself Rational1 is a Rationalist. Well, a Rationalist is one who holds views "appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification." Essentially, truth is to be deduced or established intellectually, and there is no room for the senses. Of course, truth has to be subjective, since if we are both rationalist and come to different conclusions, we must both be right.
That, of course, requires rationalists to be bereft of love for self or for others, because love cannot be deduced or reasoned. They could then be filled with self loathing, but that would not be rational, since it too is sensory. That leaves them as dead men or women walking, which, of course, can only progress to dead men or women lying in a cold grave.
So, you say, you know many rationalists and they love their spouse and their children, and they hate deluded conservatives and Christians and people of faith or whoever else they might target. The fact that they can feel love disproves rationalism, but that must be ignored, maybe as an anomaly, or something, kind of like Rational1 discrediting the miracles I spoke of yesterday, because, after all they come from those deluded religionists.
It is a slippery slope our friends the rationalists descend on, as they must suspend belief in things that are obvious to their eyes, if they choose to open them up.
Rational1 implied that there is "not evidence for God", though in truth there is more evidence for God than there is for him.
The purveyors of the very incomplete science of knowing how the world was created always run into one stumbling block in particular. How do you get something from nothing? To have a big bang, something has to cause it, or there has to be some matter present, and where did it come from? By stopping before reaching the end of the process, and declaring a new goal line, the rationalist is able to claim a position on the existence or non existence of God. However, anyone who has tried to solve a significant math problem, and quit just before the last step in the solution knows their answer is incorrect. It is one thing to be ignorant of how to complete the last step. It is another matter altogether to pretend that the last step is unnecessary, and declare victory without it.
I tried for many years to ignore the existence of God. However, I was open to the possibility that there was a God, and never called myself an atheist during those years. I did claim to be agnostic, which is really an uncommitted atheist.
Because I had a mother who prayed for me without ceasing for many years, God made himself known to me with some measure of regularity. I tried to ignore Him, but what He said to me was too compelling to brush off, and eventually I started, ever so slowly to respond.
I feel sadness for folks like Rational1 who have locked themselves out of possibilities that they cannot fathom since they are dependent on what they candeduce for themselves.
Thanks for the shout out.
ReplyDelete"The problem with atheists and most non-believers is their inability to have any faith in anything that thay cannot see, taste, smell, feel, and/or touch."
I can do none of those things with an electron, yet I accept their existence. Why?
Because I've measured the charge of an electron, used its charge to then calculate it's weight in a magnetic field, used its spin to design techniques for MRI machines and I have been know to stare at their scintillation on a phosphor screen as they show me images (CRT television).
I cannot see, hear, smell, taste or feel electrons yet I accept their existence. Because I have evidence of their existence.
"That, of course, requires rationalists to be bereft of love for self or for others, because love cannot be deduced or reasoned. They could then be filled with self loathing, but that would not be rational, since it too is sensory. That leaves them as dead men or women walking, which, of course, can only progress to dead men or women lying in a cold grave."
ReplyDeleteHow do I know my wife loves me, yet Angelina Jolie doesn't? Is there anyway by the words or actions of these two people that I might that one of them loves me or are that evidence somehow precluded from being considered.
"I feel sadness for folks like Rational1 who have locked themselves out of possibilities that they cannot fathom since they are dependent on what they candeduce for themselves."
ReplyDeleteI'm not locked out of what I can deduce for myself. Rather through science and scientific inquiry I have a wealth of fascination that leads me from the atom to the universe. And although my knowledge is contingent and subject to change as newer and perhaps more fascinating discoveries happen, I know that I'm exploring this universe I found myself in company of like minded people who seek truth and strive above all to test theories and reject those found wanting.
Science doesn't give the certainty offered by the thousands of earthly religions. But you can go to that cold grave that awaits us all knowing that while you may not have been right in all things you did your best to ensure that you weren't deluding yourself through lack of critical inquiry.
As to miracles, be they of the Eucharistic hosts, the holy ash of Sai Baba or the spoon bending of Uri Gellar one could do a lot worse that to keep the statement of David Hume in mind when he said in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding that:
ReplyDelete"no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."
Does that mean miracles don't occur. No. Indeed the revolution in 20th century physics (relativity and Quantum Mechanics) gave results that to a 19th century physicist would be deemed "miraculous".
We are surrounded by people making miracle (typically religious)or miracle like claims (homeopathy, ESP, clairvoyance). How do we assess the validity of such claims objectively and how by what reasons can we accept some and reject others?
Pardon the delay R1, but I was taking your comments to heart and have written the following:
ReplyDeletehttp://freethroughtruth.blogspot.ca/2012/09/science-disproving-existence-of-god.html
God Bless You
Michael Brandon