RE: The Pots should stop calling the Kettles black...

It seems we have a case of mistaken identity here. I assumed you were the same anonymous poster that I’ve been conversing with for more than a week in this thread. I don’t apologize, because I think the context made it a reasonable assumption.

However, this mistaken information led me to attribute an incorrect context to your original post.

Looking back on your original post, I still see a lot of nonsense.

I do have an open mind, but your objection still ring false. Open-mindedness is nothing more than the willingness to consider new information. It doesn’t preclude rejecting that information.

What you’re saying isn’t new, and is still mostly wrong.

I stand by my original comments about “switching” between beliefs, so I’ll address your later post, there.

Yes, that’s true. You seem to think that science requires microscopes and such, though.

The abstract notion of “existence” is mostly nonsense. The practical notion is equivalent to “observable”, in sense that the proposed “existing” object has consequences that result in sensory impressions.

A “mind” is an emergent result of the complex biology and physiology of a brain.

Presumably you have some sort of supernatural connotations you want to ascribe to these things, but there are no rational grounds for doing so.

True. So long as it doesn’t matter whether those beliefs are correct, then it doesn’t matter. If the truth behind the belief is relevant, then we know of no other reliable method than science.

There’s nothing particular to me about it, it’s the method by which virtually all of the knowledge available to us in the modern world has come about.

Nor did I claim it was. Rationality is a broadly agreed-upon phenomenon. Your unspoken pretense that I’m somehow unique in my stance is disingenuous.

No, but I’m starting to see a trend in yours.

You seem to want to take the stance that religion and science are like two different tools in the toolbox we use in evaluating the world. This is akin to the NOMA notions Gould used to favor.

That’s a mistaken view. The only way we can seriously evaluate the world is through rationality. Thinking, deduction, reason, validation… that’s the process. “Revelation” is not another way of getting at truth, it’s indistinguishable from guessing. The methods of science aren’t “just another tool in the toolbox”, they are the toolbox.

You mistook my meaning. I’m not skeptical about theism, I think the question satisfactorily answered. Neither you nor the Mormon apologists in this thread have remotely offered anything new on the matter, so there’s nothing to reconsider.

I’m not skeptical about whether germs cause disease, or about evolution, or whether the sun will come out tomorrow. I consider these questions adequately answered.

On the other hand, I don’t believe that Jesus was an actual person, but I remain skeptical—I don’t think the evidence is really convincing either way. I’m skeptical of the health risks associated with second-hand smoking. I’m skeptical of whether Ann Coulter actually believes the nonsense she spouts, or if it’s just theater. I do have beliefs connected to these propositions, but I’m not confident in the evidence, so I remain skeptical. It’s just that theism ain’t in that category.

True. What makes them no more credible than Santa stories is that they’re based on what amounts to the same evidence.

As I was assuming you were Christian, I was referring to the Bible, in which the prescribed penalty for not worshiping Yahweh is death—a penalty repeatedly carried out.

For Islam, the parallel would be the Qur’an. I’m not particularly familiar with its content, only having read through it very quickly more than a decade ago. I certainly recognize that there are Muslims who differ in their interpretation, but it’s unquestionable that there are too many who see violence against non-believers as fundamental to Islam. I do recall seeing passages that could easily be interpreted that way, too.

Except that I’m not ignoring it. The idea that the Bible is about peace, love, and fruit loops is relatively new. It’s not “thousands of years” of exegesis. It was used to justify slavery in the US only 150 years ago.

The Qur’an has a worse track record—it’s still used to justify terrorism around the world.

Hitler was a Catholic until the day he died.

As I recently heard it put, “You shouldn’t strawman my arguments in substitute for your lack of reading comprehension.”

Bin Laden is unquestionably Muslim, and there’s nobody protesting that he’s innocent of the actions of which he’s accused. He expressly declares his motivations to be religious. Whether the rest of Islam agrees or not, it’s clear that his religious beliefs do not prevent his atrocities.

Let’s see… virtually everywhere a country under Islamic law shares a border with another country, there’s ongoing violence.

Christianity had similar behavior until the Enlightenment era, when secularism began to dominate governments. Governments in which freedom of religion is considered a central right are the same ones that have peace and prosperity.

The definition of “delusion”, in psychiatry, is “a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact”. Which part of that are you contesting?

Nor is it “the rest of the human race”. The non-religious population of the world is very nearly as large as Islam—probably bigger, if you split Islam into whatever the politically correct groupings of “good guys” and “bad guys” are supposed to be.

I think the video speaks for itself. If you think she’s sane, please seek treatment.

If you can’t understand the argument, then fine. I’ll be the Pinto. It doesn’t change the observable facts.

Words have meanings, and what “atheism” means is the absence of a belief in gods. Sorry if that’s not convenient for your position, but you’re an overpriced luxury gas guzzler that breaks down a lot.

And you accuse me of making strawman arguments. Laughable.

Atheism—the absence of a belief in gods—is a necessary starting position for objectively arriving at any conclusion. Anything else is circular.

Lacking such a belief just identifies you as irrational.

If all you knew about me was that I believed in supernaturalism, you’d still have no way of knowing whether I was a theist or atheist. If you knew that I was a metaphysical naturalist, then you would be able to conclude that I am also an atheist, as gods are inconsistent with metaphysical naturalism.

Of course, neither situation applies, here, as you know more about me than merely my acceptance of supernaturalism. What I’d written before you even came along clearly indicates I’m an atheist, a positivist, and a metaphysical naturalist, so considering me a “theist” based on the logic above is just sophistry.

Again, you’re right. But the fact that they do does make it so. If you look, you’ll see it all over the place when a theist tries to argue the existence of god. Even the Mormons in this thread don’t argue for their god, they argue for some abstract pseudo-deism.

Al Sharpton debated Christopher Hitchens a couple of years ago, shortly after Hitchens’ book came out. You can find video of the debate on YouTube, just search for their names. Al Sharpton doesn’t believe in an abstract deity that created the world and then ceased to interact with it, but that’s the “god” he insisted Hitchens couldn’t refute.

The tactic is rampant in these sorts of discussions.

Instead, you demand we let you stack the deck in the discussion.

Your god is a hypothesis, and demands proof if it’s to displace the null hypothesis—that there’s no such entity.

You accuse me of arguing against strawmen, but to do otherwise requires you to make a positive claim about your god and back it up with evidence. If you just want to say, “I believe and that’s that”, then no argument is required—you forfeit any right to claim legitimacy for your beliefs.

I don’t define what a god is, as I don’t believe in any. It’s up to you to bring the definition, and therefore up to you to bring some supporting evidence.

Not a non sequitur, it was my connecting you with the Mormon, who did claim the personal mystical experience.

Axiomatic beliefs still require support. Such support needn’t be deductive, as with the conclusions we draw from them, but they must at a minimum be consistent with evidence.

For them to be taken seriously as basic beliefs, they should pass the test of Ockham’s Razor, too. That’s where this particular axiom fails. Have you never heard of Russell’s Teapot?

Moreover, the attributes you assume for this god destroy any explanatory power it offers as an axiom, as literally anything can be explained by referring to it.

Not even remotely true. I don’t think it’s possible to know anything but purely logical facts to be true absolutely. So, I can know for a fact that there are no married bachelors, because the definition of bachelor precludes it, making it a fact of logic. I cannot know for certain that germs cause disease, however the evidence favoring it is overwhelming.

Analogously, I cannot know for certain that gods do not exist, but the evidence favoring it is overwhelming.

Then I suggest you jumped into the end of a long conversation without seeing what had gone before. Shame on you.

Actually, it’s the other way. Rationality (not atheism, as the absence of a belief doesn’t address it one way or the other) rarely leads to murder, as most murder is irrational. Very many interpretations of theism not only fail to prevent it, they actually demand it. The 9/11 attacks, and the murder of George Tiller are examples of it.

But why should we not? The fundamental problem here is that you reject rationality. Your beliefs are, by definition, disassociated from logic. This is not a reliable path. Why should we trust that you’ll come to any sort of sane conclusion?

Why do you not fly planes into buildings? It’s certainly not because you believe in a god—the 9/11 attackers were all devout Muslims.

Looked at another way, I don’t go around murdering religious loons. I think their beliefs are dehumanizing and harmful, but here I sit, not murdering a one of them.

It’s not because I don’t believe in a god, it’s because it’s irrational. A society in which murder is tolerated cannot last. I want a stable, comfortable life, therefore I want a stable society, and therefore I don’t murder people.

I can’t rely on your logic, because from where I sit, you reject some of its basic principles, like Ockham’s Razor.

You seem willing to insist that your beliefs are perfectly rational. If that’s so, then you can prove the existence of your god. Not in the sense of an absolute mathematical proof, but in the “beyond a reasonable doubt” sense of a courtroom. Trot out the evidence and back it up, otherwise nobody—including you—should believe it.

I have. I have also read material that suggest that he personally retained many of the theistic beliefs in which he was raised. I’m certainly no expert on Stalin, and I don’t really care to learn more about him. The “look at the communist dictators” strawman is yours.

They clearly didn’t believe what I believe. As I said before, atheism isn’t a starting point for anything. That their basic beliefs also led to atheism is no more than coincidence.

No doubt that’s how it started, but it worked so well that it taught us that religion was the problem. Religion is simply not necessary, and when left unfettered, becomes tyrannical.

Nope. I didn’t forget it. It’s a damn shame that most of Islam seems to have forgotten it.

Here’s an interesting bit from the article you referenced:

There was an increasing lack of tolerance of intellectual debate and freedom of thought, with some seminaries systematically forbidding speculative philosophy, while polemic debates appear to have been abandoned in the 14th century.

They buried themselves in their superstitions and lost everything. The plagues and foreign invasions certainly didn’t help, but whether you see those as causing the decline or being enabled by it, the end of the golden age also signaled the rise in superstition and fundamentalism, just as in the fall of Rome.

It proves no such thing. Those men were all early scientists. Today, extremely few prominent scientists profess anything more than a Spinozan-style deism. The US is among the most religious of western democracies, yet only 7% of the National Academy of Sciences members believe in a “personal” notion of a god.

The history of science since Newton and the others has been a long, steady erosion of the superficial compatibility between them. They remain compatible only to the extent that science doesn’t challenge some particular religious belief.

Newton gave a purely mechanical explanation for motion, and the purely mechanical explanations have only grown since then. Copernicus destroyed the idea that the Earth was the center of the universe, and we now know we’re not “special” in any sense—just one insignificant speck in an astoundingly vast nothingness. Galileo pushed for rigor in science to the point that it got him in trouble with the religious authorities. Darwin explained how all the apparent complexity of life comes about without any need for gods.

Darwin had the most dramatic effect on the process. A few decades after The Origin of Species was published, it rapidly gained acceptance among scientists. Its side-effect was to eliminate one of the biggest obstacles to methodological naturalism—earlier scientists simply had no good answer for the “where did it all come from” sorts of questions. Origin gave them one and religion in science has never recovered from it.

So long as religion insists on “faith”—on accepting certain facts as true without evidence—then it’s incompatible with science.

Nonsense. If science can’t say anything about it, it’s because it’s unintelligible. It lacks any real meaning.

If you claim otherwise, you immediately take on the burden of showing it. Where’s your evidence? If you have evidence, then you’re doing science. If you insist that the demand for evidence is somehow inapplicable, then your claim semantically empty.

Did you notice what they measured? It was the rate of increase of academic publishing. Not absolute output. Going from one paper a year to ten papers a year would have put them in the same position, but that’s not really indicating scientific progress.

That particular piece of data, as I read it, says more about the secularization of Iran that so many political commentators talk about. A growing middle class means an increase in demand for University education, which naturally leads to a growth in academic publishing.

I’m not trying to denigrate their success, I’m just saying it doesn’t really show that they’re any kind of scientific leader in the world today.

I was, of course, speaking metaphorically.

The rest of your points are connected with the mistaken identity problem, so I’ll leave them alone.