Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments • Hacker News Board

Re: Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments

#51

Post by chrischen » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 2:49 AM UTC

moss wrote: post #49

chrischen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about statements like 1*1 = 1. I can be sure about that, but unsure about something like the existence of God.

I meant to be excluding things like that when I said "about the outside world". But regardless of how you think of statements like that, there are all sorts of others: * The sun will come up tomorrow. * Nobody is plotting to have me killed. * The lamp next to my couch is on. * Accelerating beyond light speed is impossible. * People other than me exist. that can't be proven logically, but that it's still perfectly rea…

The sun will come up tomorrow. We are 99.99% certain of that, so therefore it's safe to assume it's correct. And it's statistically unlikely for the sun to not come up.

But when making the claim that God does not exist, that claim itself is 100% certain to be uncertain.

So it's safe to assume he does not exist if no evidence has shown he does exist, but we still must acknowledge the possibility of his existence just as you must still acknowledge the possibility, however minute, that the sun will not come up tomorrow.

Re: Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments

#52

Post by chrischen » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 2:53 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #42

chrischen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about statements like 1*1 = 1. I can be sure about that, but unsure about something like the existence of God.

Your simple arithmetic is either a human definition or a part of a discovered system that we can't prove to be consistent and complete in itself.

1*1=1, the statement itself is a human definition. And so my point is if we define the universe as the world we reside in, and we define God as an entity mutually exclusive of the universe, then based on this definition God cannot be disproven. Assuming I exist because I am writing this right now, then the universe must exist because I must reside in something (and whatever that is is the universe). Now then God, what we have defined to be what is exclusive of this universe, cannot be disproven because we are in the universe. Therefore you cannot disprove God and this is infinitely impossible, whereas proving that the sun will come up tomorrow is not certain to be infinitely impossible yet.

Re: Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments

#53

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 3:08 AM UTC

danek wrote: post #48

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you discover that you can get nasty illnesses from being exposed to other peoples germs which are spread in their bodily emissions, indeed some of those illnesses can kill. You then have kids. Do you defend that truth by instructing them to wash their hands, cover their mouths when they cough, avoid contact with faeces, etc., to stop germs spreading? Or, do you have to wait until that child is old enough to d…

>> The Church has always sponsored scientific enquiry lol

Many universities (in Europe) grew out of monastic study and mediaeval universities were founded both by the wealth of princes and by papal bull. Individual scientists, Roger Bacon say, were provided a living by the church others, Copernicus springs to mind, were sponsored in their studies by particular bishops or similar Church luminaries.

The Catholic Church still operates at least one observatory which has been going since the 16 Century.

As highlighted in the Merton-Weber thesis scientific enquiry in the 17, 18 Century appears to have been pushed on by Protestant philosophy.

Re: Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments

#54

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 3:26 AM UTC

khafra wrote: post #43

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you discover that you can get nasty illnesses from being exposed to other peoples germs which are spread in their bodily emissions, indeed some of those illnesses can kill. You then have kids. Do you defend that truth by instructing them to wash their hands, cover their mouths when they cough, avoid contact with faeces, etc., to stop germs spreading? Or, do you have to wait until that child is old enough to d…

E pur si muove.

Galileo was educated in part in a monastery and at the Uni of Pisa (founded by a pope). He was sponsored by the Church to do his studies; when he wished to publish his pamphlet the authorities urged caution and refused to state outright that heliocentrism were true wishing instead to gather more evidence. Galileo went ahead pissed off the papacy and was censured.

Indeed if we consider Einsteins relativity then we might argue that the anti's were right to hold reservations as without an ether it is no more correct to say that the Earth revolves around the Sun than it is to say the Earth is static. I doubt they had this in mind though.

Re: Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments

#55

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 3:35 AM UTC

unalone wrote: post #50

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when we show there is no rational answer that is discoverable ...

I know, right? Like when we know there was no rational answer for the weather so we said gods did it. Silly scientists not realizing we haven't learned anything in the last five thousand years. They refuse to admit that it's impossible to find new answers to questions.

I was thinking more about application of Godels Incompleteness Theorem or the Church-Turing Hypothesis or even to take a more basic consideration Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

Based on the standard scientific and logical axioms the cause of the progression of weather is quite discoverable except that the chaotic nature makes it practically (at present at least) unpredictable.

Perhaps you believe the world is entirely Newtonian??

I await your answer with baited breath.

Re: Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments

#56

Post by foldr » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 4:48 PM UTC

joubert wrote: post #7

billybob wrote: post #3

I heard an interview where Dawkins said something like "if there is a God, He must have evolved." Maybe he was joking, but it didn't sound like it. Evolution is a biological process. It would have no bearing on a being who created space and time. Biologists should not presume to trump philosophy and theology, any more than preachers should dictate which biological theories are acceptable.

The reason he says this, is that evolution by natural selection is the only process that we know of that describes how complexity comes to be.

It surely can't explain the basic complexity of the laws of physics, or the complexity of mathematical structures like the integers. There are plenty of complex things which have no explanation in terms of natural selection.

Re: Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments

#57

Post by joubert » Wed, Oct 21, 2009, 2:38 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #56

joubert wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason he says this, is that evolution by natural selection is the only process that we know of that describes how complexity comes to be.

It surely can't explain the basic complexity of the laws of physics, or the complexity of mathematical structures like the integers. There are plenty of complex things which have no explanation in terms of natural selection.

"Basic complexity"?

Re: Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments

#58

Post by foldr » Wed, Oct 21, 2009, 5:22 PM UTC

joubert wrote: post #57

foldr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It surely can't explain the basic complexity of the laws of physics, or the complexity of mathematical structures like the integers. There are plenty of complex things which have no explanation in terms of natural selection.

"Basic complexity"?

Fine, the complexity of the laws of physics.

(And is it really that difficult to discern which reading of "basic" gives a non-contradictory reading in that context? Hint: a near-synonym is "fundamental".)

Re: Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments

#59

Post by jamesbritt » Wed, Oct 21, 2009, 8:36 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #46

jamesbritt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it does in that before looking at the relationship of gods and evil, you first have to establish what, exactly, are the characteristics of gods, how many gods are there, etc. Do theologians consider the case for all of concievable gods? Multiple gods? Only one god?

> Do theologians consider the case for all of concievable gods? Multiple gods? Only one god? Obviously, as has been explained, the problem arises in connection with all gods who are perfectly good and also omnipotent, so I don't quite see what you're getting at here.

"I don't quite see what you're getting at here."

Without first establishing the number of gods and their qualities, questions about how they deal with evil seems pointless.

Re: Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments

#60

Post by foldr » Thu, Oct 22, 2009, 3:50 AM UTC

jamesbritt wrote: post #59

foldr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do theologians consider the case for all of concievable gods? Multiple gods? Only one god? Obviously, as has been explained, the problem arises in connection with all gods who are perfectly good and also omnipotent, so I don't quite see what you're getting at here.

"I don't quite see what you're getting at here." Without first establishing the number of gods and their qualities, questions about how they deal with evil seems pointless.

Well now you're saying something quite different. Before, you said it was "necessary" to find out which (if any) gods exist before asking whether or not the existence of various kinds of god is compatible with the existence of evil. Now you're just saying that this particular sort of hypothetical question seems pointless to you. I can't argue with your lack of interest, but there is no reason to think that hypothetical questions in general are pointless; and in the particular case at hand, moral philosophers have learned a lot by investigating these questions. The question of whether or not evil is possible in a world created by a good and omnipotent God is basically equivalent to the question of whether or not it is logically possible for good to exist without evil, and this is a question of fundamental interest in moral philosophy (whatever one's religious beliefs).

It's worth repeating that the scope of the problem is very narrow with respect to classes of deity. There is basically only one kind of God for whom the problem of evil arises -- a God who is omnipotent and wholly good. The problem doesn't really arise in any interesting way for the Gods of non-Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions. For this reason, it's not the case that we have to catalog many kinds of god, one-by-one, and then consider the problem separately in relation to each kind of God.