Where are you on Dawkins Scale? (10 Viewers)
- Thread starter *aca*
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oh they are 
I consider myself 6.9 because i think that there is a very small possibility that some sort of god could be defined in such a way that it could make it somehow possible.
These guys don't buy that. IF you can not provide the evidence, it does not exist. Basically, you can not make a positive claim (ie god exist) if you can not back it up. If for any evidence you provide there is a natural explanation, Occam razor comes into picture and your argument falls down.
Alternatively, they would make a positive claim (ie I KNOW that there is no god) and defend it.
Some of these guys have something like 40, 50 years of studying the issue and arguing about it. Many of them were christian fundamentalists at some point in their life and their quest to prove factually the existence of god led them to conclude that there none is and can not be none.
In most cases arguing with them is like watching Mike Tyson Vs. Goofy. It never lasts more than 12 seconds
I consider myself 6.9 because i think that there is a very small possibility that some sort of god could be defined in such a way that it could make it somehow possible.
These guys don't buy that. IF you can not provide the evidence, it does not exist. Basically, you can not make a positive claim (ie god exist) if you can not back it up. If for any evidence you provide there is a natural explanation, Occam razor comes into picture and your argument falls down.
Alternatively, they would make a positive claim (ie I KNOW that there is no god) and defend it.
Some of these guys have something like 40, 50 years of studying the issue and arguing about it. Many of them were christian fundamentalists at some point in their life and their quest to prove factually the existence of god led them to conclude that there none is and can not be none.
In most cases arguing with them is like watching Mike Tyson Vs. Goofy. It never lasts more than 12 seconds
Open mind requires readiness to change one's mind if the new set of circumstances arises.
Most, if not all, of the atheists i met online would accept the god as a fact if tangible evidence for its existence is provided. Many of them have been searching for years without success.
They are on the defensive because they have to live in the world where majority of the people base their decision in nowadays on bronze age mythology.
If you are so keen on it, there are many atheist forums on the net.
All you have to do is register, open a thread and prove them wrong
Most, if not all, of the atheists i met online would accept the god as a fact if tangible evidence for its existence is provided. Many of them have been searching for years without success.
They are on the defensive because they have to live in the world where majority of the people base their decision in nowadays on bronze age mythology.
If you are so keen on it, there are many atheist forums on the net.
All you have to do is register, open a thread and prove them wrong
I know it's not you who's claiming all these things, I'm just giving my opinion on them.
This is an obvious fallacy.
The bad news is Occam's Razor cannot come into play when talking about the beginning of the universe, because there simply is no "natural explanation" for it. So if you want to explain the beginning of the universe, every theory is evenly "plausible".
Which they cannot back up themselves.
Well, I think there isn't any renowned theoretical physician in the world who says the existence of god (as a creator of course, not claiming anything besides that) is impossible. I'm not impressed by anyone's opinion just because they are generally known as the most intelligent people in the world when regarding abstract thinking, but there sure isn't a convention among the intellectual elite that god cannot exist, so I very strongly doubt anyone can claim he knows why there can be no god.
This is an obvious fallacy.
The bad news is Occam's Razor cannot come into play when talking about the beginning of the universe, because there simply is no "natural explanation" for it. So if you want to explain the beginning of the universe, every theory is evenly "plausible".
Which they cannot back up themselves.
Well, I think there isn't any renowned theoretical physician in the world who says the existence of god (as a creator of course, not claiming anything besides that) is impossible. I'm not impressed by anyone's opinion just because they are generally known as the most intelligent people in the world when regarding abstract thinking, but there sure isn't a convention among the intellectual elite that god cannot exist, so I very strongly doubt anyone can claim he knows why there can be no god.
Open mind requires readiness to change one's mind if the new set of circumstances arises.
Most, if not all, of the atheists i met online would accept the god as a fact if tangible evidence for its existence is provided. Many of them have been searching for years without success.
They are on the defensive because they have to live in the world where majority of the people base their decision in nowadays on bronze age mythology.
If you are so keen on it, there are many atheist forums on the net.
All you have to do is register, open a thread and prove them wrong
Most, if not all, of the atheists i met online would accept the god as a fact if tangible evidence for its existence is provided. Many of them have been searching for years without success.
They are on the defensive because they have to live in the world where majority of the people base their decision in nowadays on bronze age mythology.
If you are so keen on it, there are many atheist forums on the net.
All you have to do is register, open a thread and prove them wrong
Bronze age mythology? That's a strong statement. Can you prove it's mythology or do you just assume it's mythology because it is inconvieniant to what you think is reasonable?
What I dont understand is this piece of logic:
It's impossible that the univers exists by and of itself, so therefore there must have been a God that created the universe.
But, when you apply the same logic to god, and ask who then created God, they say "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, noone created God, he just exists because he is God".
Double standards. If it's possible that God just exists why isnt it possible that the universe just exists, without anyone creating it?
It's impossible that the univers exists by and of itself, so therefore there must have been a God that created the universe.
But, when you apply the same logic to god, and ask who then created God, they say "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, noone created God, he just exists because he is God".
Double standards. If it's possible that God just exists why isnt it possible that the universe just exists, without anyone creating it?
Name one thing that exist and you have no evidence for it.
[qoute]The bad news is Occam's Razor cannot come into play when talking about the beginning of the universe, because there simply is no "natural explanation" for it. So if you want to explain the beginning of the universe, every theory is evenly "plausible".[/quote]
not correct. There is a decent theory that explains very well the beginning of the univers. It's called big bang and there is more evidence for it being true by the magnitude of 1000 than for existence of god. IF you can explain something using what is known (ie natural), unknown (or supernatural) is unnecessary.
As i said, to a certain extent, i really agree with you here. I think that question of god existence is ultimately unfalsifiable. On the other hand, any of the gods that i encountered so far were relatively easy rebutted and falsified with more likely natural explanations. You have to understand that there is no such a thing as absolute certainty. Only the level of probability and probability of creator god existing are much, much lower than big bang taking place
In God Delusion, Dawkins gives a statistics of the survey between scientist on this same set as in my opening post. Here is what he says:
"The equivalent of the US National Academy of Sciences in Britain (and the Commonwealth, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, anglophone Africa, etc.) is the Royal Society. As this book goes to press, my colleagues R. Elisabeth Cornwell and Michael Stirrat are writing up their comparable, but more thorough, research on the religious opinions of the Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS). The authors’ conclusions will be published in full later, but they have kindly allowed me to quote preliminary results here. They used a standard technique for scaling opinion, the Likert-type seven-point scale. All 1,074 Fellows of the Royal Society who possess an email address (the great majority) were polled, and about 23 per cent responded (a good figure for this kind of study). They were offered various propositions, for example: ‘I believe in a personal God, that is one who takes an interest in {102} individuals, hears and answers prayers, is concerned with sin and transgressions, and passes judgement.’ For each such proposition, they were invited to choose a number from 1 (strong disagreement) to 7 (strong agreement). It is a little hard to compare the results directly with the Larson and Witham study, because Larson and Witham offered their academicians only a three-point scale, not a seven-point scale, but the overall trend is the same. The overwhelming majority of FRS, like the overwhelming majority of US Academicians, are atheists. Only 3.3 per cent of the Fellows agreed strongly with the statement that a personal god exists (i.e. chose 7 on the scale), while 78.8 per cent strongly disagreed (i.e. chose 1 on the scale). If you define ‘believers’ as those who chose 6 or 7, and if you define ‘unbelievers’ as those who chose 1 or 2, there were a massive 213 unbelievers and a mere 12 believers. Like Larson and Witham, and as also noted by Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle, Cornwell and Stirrat found a small but significant tendency for biological scientists to be even more atheistic than physical scientists."
Scientists will keep their mind open, but they will not ignore the evidence (or lack of it)
[qoute]The bad news is Occam's Razor cannot come into play when talking about the beginning of the universe, because there simply is no "natural explanation" for it. So if you want to explain the beginning of the universe, every theory is evenly "plausible".[/quote]
not correct. There is a decent theory that explains very well the beginning of the univers. It's called big bang and there is more evidence for it being true by the magnitude of 1000 than for existence of god. IF you can explain something using what is known (ie natural), unknown (or supernatural) is unnecessary.
As i said, to a certain extent, i really agree with you here. I think that question of god existence is ultimately unfalsifiable. On the other hand, any of the gods that i encountered so far were relatively easy rebutted and falsified with more likely natural explanations. You have to understand that there is no such a thing as absolute certainty. Only the level of probability and probability of creator god existing are much, much lower than big bang taking place
In God Delusion, Dawkins gives a statistics of the survey between scientist on this same set as in my opening post. Here is what he says:
"The equivalent of the US National Academy of Sciences in Britain (and the Commonwealth, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, anglophone Africa, etc.) is the Royal Society. As this book goes to press, my colleagues R. Elisabeth Cornwell and Michael Stirrat are writing up their comparable, but more thorough, research on the religious opinions of the Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS). The authors’ conclusions will be published in full later, but they have kindly allowed me to quote preliminary results here. They used a standard technique for scaling opinion, the Likert-type seven-point scale. All 1,074 Fellows of the Royal Society who possess an email address (the great majority) were polled, and about 23 per cent responded (a good figure for this kind of study). They were offered various propositions, for example: ‘I believe in a personal God, that is one who takes an interest in {102} individuals, hears and answers prayers, is concerned with sin and transgressions, and passes judgement.’ For each such proposition, they were invited to choose a number from 1 (strong disagreement) to 7 (strong agreement). It is a little hard to compare the results directly with the Larson and Witham study, because Larson and Witham offered their academicians only a three-point scale, not a seven-point scale, but the overall trend is the same. The overwhelming majority of FRS, like the overwhelming majority of US Academicians, are atheists. Only 3.3 per cent of the Fellows agreed strongly with the statement that a personal god exists (i.e. chose 7 on the scale), while 78.8 per cent strongly disagreed (i.e. chose 1 on the scale). If you define ‘believers’ as those who chose 6 or 7, and if you define ‘unbelievers’ as those who chose 1 or 2, there were a massive 213 unbelievers and a mere 12 believers. Like Larson and Witham, and as also noted by Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle, Cornwell and Stirrat found a small but significant tendency for biological scientists to be even more atheistic than physical scientists."
Scientists will keep their mind open, but they will not ignore the evidence (or lack of it
)
ok. I am ready to discuss this. Still i am not ready to educate you. That's something you have to do yourself for yourself so the leg work has to be done by yourself.
I can prove that the bible is mythology. you can give me parts of the bible that are reasonable and factual, and for each one of reasonable parts i will put a ridiculous/cruel/ignorant part which could only be conceived by ignorant mind living in the bronze age.
The person who runs out of posts first admits that he (or she) was wrong.
I can prove that the bible is mythology. you can give me parts of the bible that are reasonable and factual, and for each one of reasonable parts i will put a ridiculous/cruel/ignorant part which could only be conceived by ignorant mind living in the bronze age.
The person who runs out of posts first admits that he (or she
) was wrong.
ok. I am ready to discuss this. Still i am not ready to educate you. That's something you have to do yourself for yourself so the leg work has to be done by yourself.
I can prove that the bible is mythology. you can give me parts of the bible that are reasonable and factual, and for each one of reasonable parts i will put a ridiculous/cruel/ignorant part which could only be conceived by ignorant mind living in the bronze age.
The person who runs out of posts first admits that he (or she) was wrong.
I can prove that the bible is mythology. you can give me parts of the bible that are reasonable and factual, and for each one of reasonable parts i will put a ridiculous/cruel/ignorant part which could only be conceived by ignorant mind living in the bronze age.
The person who runs out of posts first admits that he (or she
) was wrong.
It is anything but illogical.
Its rather simple. IF everything is created, who created god? You can define god out of everything, but then word everything loses its meaning. Which one is it?
Furthermore, we do not need "faith" in the "created" because its there and its tangible. We know that the universe exist. No faith needed.
Last, how do you know it's a "he" and not she?
Its rather simple. IF everything is created, who created god? You can define god out of everything, but then word everything loses its meaning. Which one is it?
Furthermore, we do not need "faith" in the "created" because its there and its tangible. We know that the universe exist. No faith needed.
Last, how do you know it's a "he" and not she?