do you believe there is a GOD?

firesoul17 · May 2, 2010, 7:34pm

Yes.

Just, yes.

gotakun · May 2, 2010, 7:55pm

The existence of a god doesn’t become an axiom just because you WANT it to. You think axioms are arbitrarily defined, which would completely defeat the purpose of making a distinction between an axiom and a premise.

Unless I read that (and everything else I looked up about axioms) wrong, you ARE misusing the term. Your argument depends on a specific definition of axiom that doesn’t appear to be accurate.

So what do you want me to do? Show inconsistencies/flaws in the Christian bible, which can be assumed to be the belief system of the average Christian? Write a narrative of how the Christian lifestyle contradicts its supposed faith for many believers? You obviously only accept a very specific criteria for anyone’s proof of common knowledge to be satisfactory. Do you want me to give you links to other sources? You act like you have an argument, but you don’t; you’re just being ignorant and stubborn.

silence_kit · May 2, 2010, 8:36pm

you did read it wrong. you can pick any consistent set of axioms that you like and start deducting truths from them. what the link is saying that those truths may not be very interesting truths . . . it takes intuition to realize what is important and what isn’t.

a related (and maybe the same) idea: just because you can give names to things doesn’t mean that they are important.

You can do that–but the Christian is free to interpret the bible however he likes. It’s his faith, after all. This prob. won’t be very fruitful.

Maybe you can go somewhere with this. Of course, not all Christians are alike. I think your best bet is to try to find inconsistencies with the idea of an all-powerful, benevolent god. b@rium and mathboy in the old thread also gave you suggestions on how to argue that religion is inconsistent.

I don’t know what you mean by the first sentence. No, don’t give me links. I don’t want to have to read a bunch of stuff–I’m doing this for fun.

This is what I’m trying to argue (this is in response to what you have been saying in this thread and the last):

1) Religious people can have logically consistent beliefs.
2) Disagreeing with these beliefs boils down to a difference in opinion.

That’s something, I think.

I have been pretty rude during this debate, but in my eyes I am not being ignorant or stubborn. If anything you are the one being stubborn in your misunderstanding about how reasoning works.

dfa4ever · May 2, 2010, 8:44pm

No. I don’t believe in God or gods. And good luck to those who tell me I’ll be going to Hell for not having faith, I hope you attain your Heaven.

silence_kit · May 2, 2010, 8:46pm

ha that’s a pretty sweet line

gotakun · May 2, 2010, 9:19pm

Anyway, silence_kit, I believe the work is in your hands right now to prove your claims about axioms. I asked you to cite any argument that explicitly defines “god exists” as an axiom. Your claims have been disputed by more than one person, and none of my own research confirmed them, either.

There are, as I’ve said, an overabundance of sources pointing out the inconsistencies in Christian logic and the many contradictions of the Christian bible.

@1
Based on the complexity of mainstream religious beliefs, combined with the illogical literal interpretations of their texts, the unpredictability of individual interpretations, the prevalence of obviously fallacious beliefs (very common) and ignorance of the rules of logic, I would almost be willing to bet there is not a single person in existence who holds a logically consistent religious belief even resembling Christianity. As I’ve already said, “While it is possible, I don’t think it’s even remotely common. The belief system surely is not anything like mainstream religion and may necessarily not even include the belief in a god. The literal, ambiguous interpretation of the statement is possible, but I don’t personally feel it relates to the religion we’ve been discussing thus far.”

@2
This is a politically correct belief, but it is not necessarily accurate. If this was true, rejecting science is a matter of opinion, because you can define any arbitrary set of axioms and create a logically consistent proof to believe anything you want, even if it conflicts with scientific truths, because there is no way to obtain absolute certainty about even accepted truths.

dfa4ever · May 2, 2010, 9:19pm

@silence_kit: I’ve been reading your posts–nice job.

gotakun · May 2, 2010, 9:28pm

Oh, geez… Now he’s really going to think he has a valid argument…

silence_kit · May 2, 2010, 10:22pm

1) RE: disputes—I’ve provided rebuttals to those claims, and haven’t gotten responses . . . i noticed that you didn’t have much to say about the first part of my last post . . .

2) RE: your research—based on your previous post, you don’t really understand what you are copy/pasting into the reply window. I don’t think ‘not popping up in your “research”’ is a good metric for determining if something is true or not.

3) RE: example— think i gave this one before, but I’ll repeat it: this is the concept of religious faith. read karabee’s post below:

This is irrelevant to my argument, but you already knew this . . .

RE: 1—I will interpret that wishy-washy phrase as you agreeing. Good.

Yeah you could be a super skeptic and ignore scientific results. Your beliefs could be consistent (logical). Science does have its own assumptions you know. This is my point about doing any sort of reasoning (although science isn’t anything at all like deductive reasoning)—you have to assume some things to be true in order to get anywhere and these things you assume are neither logical or illogical—you accept them based on opinion.

I hope you aren’t bringing this up because you think that there is some religion | science dichotomy, because you don’t have to disregard the results of science to be religious.

gotakun · May 3, 2010, 12:10am

Yeah, I ignored the first part of your post like I’m ignoring your last one. You’re just being lazy and not wanting to put in any effort. The accuracy of an important prerequisite to your entire argument has been disputed, so making a short statement, pretending like you justified yourself adequately, then continuing on as if everyone is suddenly going to agree that you were right is not going to accomplish anything.

Also, when I ask you to cite a source, it needs to at least be a written article outside of these forums. It doesn’t have to be from some peer-reviewed scholarly journal, so it shouldn’t take you any time at all to find, assuming what you’re looking for is even out there…

gotakun · May 3, 2010, 12:41am

Okay, I read parts of an article that definitely agreed with your use of the term “axiom.” It even cited “god exists” as one, specifically. More than anything, it made me realize that this debate is a complete waste of my time.

silence_kit · May 3, 2010, 9:53am

hey when you rip on an entire group of people for being idiots, you should probably make sure that you aren’t saying stupid things yourself . . .

schaden · May 3, 2010, 12:35pm

Can you explain this further or give an example because at face value I read it as rhetorical jargon

Nothing has proved God does not exist, but you would have to disregard scientific intuition to believe he does exist

silence_kit · May 3, 2010, 2:09pm

every post I have written in this thread has talked about this. i’ve really tried my hardest to avoid jargon.

if the problem is that i just can’t communicate this idea well, you can try understanding the concept by reading the first paragraph of this wiki article: [Foundationalism</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundationalism]Foundationalism”>Foundationalism - Wikipedia) . That first paragraph says what I have been trying to say.

Example: I think this sort of divide (where in debate, the differences boil down to differences in ideology, and not one side is reasoning correctly, and the other, not) happens in politics all of the time. Subexample: where you stand on the national security/personal freedom tradeoff (this has become a very relevant issue since the Bush administration) really boils down to which one you value more.

scientific intuition isn’t very relevant because science can’t give you answers on whether god exists or not

schaden · May 3, 2010, 2:46pm

With people reasoning, sure I agree. Not with worldly, scientific reasoning, which is what we are talking about.

Exactly. Scientific intuition tells us that you can’t get any answers on whether God exists or not. Assuming makes an ass of u and me

I am good at sorting out useful information from BS, and have come to the conclusion most of what you say is BS.

silence_kit · May 3, 2010, 2:56pm

1) this isn’t worldly, scientific reasoning—the existence of god is something that science cannot answer

2) why do you make this distinction, and what exactly is this distinction?

you may not realize what you are arguing, but you are arguing that the only things worth reasoning about are things that come from the natural world. i think this is wrong. i’ve stated this before, but ethics, mathematics, philosophy are all things worth reasoning about not rooted in the natural world.

well, if you want to talk like this, i think that you really aren’t very bright. are you still having trouble understanding foundationalism?

gotakun · May 3, 2010, 3:04pm

When I’m unsure, I make a point to leave my statements open for corrections, which I did. No one else chimed in to back you up, but another actually did back me up. Also, you should be thanking me, because if I had not done your work for you, and not the modesty to admit my findings, you would still be in a bad position.

Or wait… Are you saying I shouldn’t rip on theists? Lol. I still think science and religion are mutually exclusive, but based on that article I read, it’s possible to stack as many axioms as necessary to explain away any otherwise illogical conclusions. Keep in mind, it’s just as possible for even the most delusional of all schizophrenics to have a logically consistent belief system. So even to admit the possibility is there doesn’t make religion any more credible, especially when considering there probably isn’t, as I mentioned, a single religious person alive who can achieve such a feat. Obviously, they can’t rely on the literal interpretation of their religion to achieve consistency for them. So I may not be allowed to claim that religion is illogical, but I still think it’s valid to say that religious people are illogical, and that religious people cannot (or at the very least, have not) achieve(d) a logically consistent belief system. I guess the possibility at least exists that people have examined their religious texts and annotated every inconsistency with an explanation, but it has never been brought to my attention before. Again, even if such a thing did exist, it surely is not agreed upon by even a majority of religious people. It also is still legitimate to believe it is not possible to logically conclude there is a god.

I also still would argue that there is a necessary dichotomy between Christianity and science. It is obviously possible to invent enough axioms to explain away the inconsistencies between the two, but I doubt anyone would truly believe such a far-fetched explanation of reality.

And something just doesn’t seem right about the “god exists” (and related) axiom(s) of religion… Do you have a source that might list the axioms of science, for comparison?

schaden · May 3, 2010, 4:03pm

Then essentially God is illogical.

Because reasoning with people is like trying to glue paper to water. This is more along the lines of the free will argument, but generally, just because you are hungry does not always mean you will go to your local taco bell every single time.

Ethics, mathematics, and philosophy.are with respect to people, not the natural world. And we are arguing if God exists in the natural world, not in our minds.

silence_kit · May 3, 2010, 4:35pm

i think there is a latin phrase for this type of argument . . . what is it again?

even if this was a popularity contest, throughout this thread I am pretty much repeating what mathboy and b@rium said in the last thread. 3 > 2 bro.

its not my fault that you don’t understand the things that you rip on . . . what I said was pretty non-controversial. you were wasting your time picking on that point.

i’m saying that if you want to make the claim that ‘religion is illogical’, then you should actually give reasons why it is illogical. after two threads of throwing tantrums about religion, you still haven’t found an inconsistency with it . . .

this phrase doesn’t really mean anything . . . here you are using illogical in the same way as ‘i don’t like this’

you are acting like this is news to me. it isn’t.

Right, in order to reconcile science and religion, you have to renounce the empirical (related to things you can observe or sense) claims that your holy text makes. This isn’t a new idea. St. Augustine (a major influence on Christianity) a gazillion years ago came up with this. Currently, this is also the Catholic Church’s official policy (please don’t bring up the galileo & related stuff in the past, please).

I’m confused. Are you saying that you want to relax your claim about (all) religion being illogical and turn it into ‘not all religious people have thought out their beliefs’? Or are you still holding on to ‘there does not exist a logical religious person?’

If it is the first, I agree with you, of course. If it is the second, well, instead of me going on a scavenger hunt on the internet because you ran across something you don’t like (this is silly–I really am not making empirical claims here), how about we pretend that I am that person and you question me about my faith?

How is there a dichotomy? Science cannot give you an answer about the existence of god. If your religion doesn’t make any empirical claims, then it doesn’t contradict any scientific findings. Where’s the beef?

I’m sorry that you don’t like it.

Re: assumptions of science. This isn’t some fringe idea. People have been thinking about these things for quite some time. [Scientific</a> method - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“Scientific method - Wikipedia”>Scientific method - Wikipedia)

Sithis · May 3, 2010, 4:45pm

I think that a number of people here are (or have been) getting empiricism and rationalism mixed up; implying that one relies on the other or that they are one and the same. This is not the case. Sciences (for example, natural science, which seems to be discussed a lot here) are primarily empirical. I think we can agree that logic falls more into the rationalist perspective; thus, just because something is not scientific i.e. empirically based, does not exclude it from being logical.

The argument seems to be:

Scientific observation/empiricism always leads to true premises
True premises through a logical system lead to true conclusions

I have a problem with #1.

I think I will throw something out here, at the risk of being acused of being schizophrenic; not sure if this argument has been made before:
If God is indeed omnipotent, would it not be in his power to make his existence empirically (or even rationally) unprovable by the human mind? This would leave only fideistic knowledge. Since religion is all about faith this, faith that, doesn’t God get what he wants?
That might seem “unfair,” but I doubt an all-powerful being gives a damn about human concepts of fairness.

Discuss.

do you believe there is a GOD?

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