"Oh, you're an atheist?"
"Yes."
"Prayin' for ya."
"Don't condescend to me, you pompous douche."
"Don't f*****' sweat it. I condescend to anybody with a moral position superior to mine. It evens things out."
"What? Morally superior by what standard, exactly?"
"Well, an atheist's moral stance is firmly grounded on nothing. A theist on the other hand, their moral stance is based on something that can't be established by any means. An emphatic nothing beats an unverifiable something, right?"
"Damn right. Pray away, brother."
"Amen to that."
11 comments:
Can't be established by any means? What about experience and history?
We're talking about establishing something claimed to be fundamental, universal. Experience and history in this particular area boils down to testimony. Now, testimony may be evidence in a court of law (where in any case, no one is arguing anything miraculous), but to establish anything claimed to be fundamental, eternal, testimony isn't sufficient. Heck, you wouldn't believe the bare testimony of a scientist on some observation of planetary motion he says he'd observed - he's making a claim of something fundamental and underlying! A claim like that has got to be testable, repeatable - or else it has zero probative value.
It's no knock on God to say that there's no means to establish God's existence. And there is no means. To clarify what I mean when I say "by any means," I mean a means of accomplishing that goal. If we could say, "From where we are, starting from nothing but the observable world, together with this means we've developed, we can establish God." - now that would be a means!
But to simply claim said establishment is a fait accompli, to say "oh, it was previously observed at some point. Somebody saw it." That's no means to establish anything. I don't think God would care to have any claim like that made, ostensibly on God's behalf.
I daresay God has quite deliberately excluded demonstrable proof of God from reality.
I think I have a post addressing miracles, someplace.
Point is, if God was interested in forcing proof of Godself upon us, surely you agree that it would be hard to miss. For whatever reason, God appears to take free will seriously - and has not stacked the deck with intrusive proofs slammed in humanity's face all day.
You know, the more I think about the way the world and the universe is, the more I find I'm constantly approving of the way God set things up!
(WHOA, JEN! My apologies for the fusillade!!
I do burn over with zeal at times, where God's concerned)
No need to apologize. I wanted to know what you meant. Now in your turn, please excuse the following:
I don't have a lot of time to parse what you said, but basically it looks like you're saying that God's creation and intervention in human history can't be proved the way you would prove a scientific principle or physical fact.
I can't argue with that. However, VERY FEW things can actually be proved that way! In fact, many of the most important, functional pieces of our mental furniture, the ones we depend on and USE, are proved to our satisfaction through some combination of testimony, experience, and common sense.
(And in fact, most "scientific" proofs are also accepted that way. After all, I can't go out and do all the experiments myself, so I have to believe someone who says he or she has tested them and found them to be repeatable.)
You say there is no specific data in the universe that we could start with, and arrive at God. I'm tempted to agree, because we know so little, and we would have to use human reason, which is fallen. However, in Romans (I think it's Romans 2) the Apostle Paul disagrees. He says that nature and the human conscience are all that anyone needs to deduce a moral Creator. The problem is that nobody really wants to.
In short, saying that God can't be proved the way you prove the laws of Thermodynamics is really just a dodge for people who don't want to find that He is there. I guess that's what you meant by saying He respects free will. He hasn't given proofs that can't be ignored by anyone who wants to ignore them.
I'm tempted to write a lot more because this is fascinating topic, but I've already rambled on.
I agree that very few things can be proved like that, especially if by things you mean events. But then, surely an event in human history is pretty trivial, compared to a question of how the universe (or even just the world) operates. You know - compared to something claimed to be a fundamental, universal principle?
And I agree science doesn't continuously re-test previously "proved" concepts - resulting in the occasional howler! Remember that gaffe over how many chromosomes we actually have? For half a century, everybody thinking 48 was the number, until finally somebody pointed out "dudes, it's only 46."
Science is a most human endeavor. Flawlessness is not among its claims, despite what its critics seem to think. Science is founded upon a central method that quite literally runs on flaws. The engine of the scientific method runs on the identification and disposal of flaws, and the goal is not perfection, but simply to knock one misunderstanding down and move on to the next. We're dealing with human theory here - we will never have to worry about running out of flaws.
So yes, I'd say God can't be proven scientifically, at least not so far. I don't necessarily say God can't ever be proven scientifically! Maybe down the road, who knows. Currently, we have nothing at all to go on in that regard. And that is all apparently as God would prefer it.
As to deducing the existence of God, if anyone wants to deduce God from reason, they should go to Aquinas not Paul. Paul just says it's possible. Aquinas goes out and does it, to the best of his considerable ability, at least! It wouldn't be fair for me to knock his efforts here. God, I am sure, chuckled at the sincerity of his attempt.
But it is very important to note about human reason: it can be laid out and followed. Step by step, and each step can be scrutinized for flaws. That is what reason is. Anyone who claims it is possible to deduce God from reason, but cannot lay out the steps they used to do so - that person is not asking you to believe in anything reasonable.
Reason can show its work.
Hm. But an afterthought: I don't think your comment that "saying that God can't be proved the way you prove the laws of Thermodynamics is really just a dodge for people who don't want [to believe]" quite works. I believe in God. There's nothing for me to dodge, by admitting that God can't be proved.
God doesn't call upon us to perform misdirection or obfuscation on God's behalf, after all. God doesn't call on us to claim things that are not so. It's no sort of dodge at all to say that at this point, we have no proofs of God.
Somebody should try to tell me whose purpose proof of God would serve. Because it doesn't serve God's.
AH! I found the 2-parter I did on "God Vs. Evidence"
Pt. 1: Physical Evidence
Pt. 2: Miracles
No, no! I didn't mean it was a dodge for YOU, since you DO believe. I guess I meant that God's unprovability is sort of a red herring, since it does not actually enter into the way most people choose to believe or not to. But some like to claim it does. That they would be happy to believe in God, but are captive to reason. And it enters into the rhetoric of folks like Richard Dawkins, who say that anyone who believes in God must be stupid.
Will have to come back and read your miracles posts, it's getting late for now.
PS I'm not sure I agree that historical events are less important (more "trivial") than basic principles. I think they are far more interesting. However the basic principles work, we know that they do, 'cause we live in this world every day. But ... WHAT HAPPENED? that's the interesting question, the one that leads to stories.
What I've found is, I really do look at the world precisely in the same manner an atheist does. I don't believe we run up against a wall in what we can learn and know via physical examination and scientific inquiry. I believe the universe is founded in (essentially) consistent, discoverable principles, that we will be able to make sense of without limit, to their entire extent - whatever that may turn out to be. It will take some considerable time to explore to that limit, even if our current rates of progress hold steady.
Now, that's not a bet or a personal dogma or anything. I could be wrong, but right now I tend to think not. There is no indication anywhere in the material realm that God has set limits on our understanding of nature, nor do I see any indication that at some point science will "run up against" God with a stop sign saying "go no further" (moral questions are not relevant to what I'm talking about - science will not be stopped by God's idea of morality, only by ours!). The very suggestion of God needing to step in and block knowledge impugns God's ability to design a universe that at its very bottom, makes sense. I have more faith in God than to credit such a thing.
I have more faith in humankind than to suggest we aren't equal to the task that has been set before us - for those of us who are interested in that sort of thing - it's not obligatory! There are plenty of other modes of inquiry before us besides inquiry into nature. We have the arts and humanities, and the spiritual side as well - worthy pursuits, all.
But what I'm saying is, God's unprovability is not a dodge whatsoever. The universe does indeed make perfect sense without God intruding as an explanation. I say this because of my faith in God. It seems unavoidable to me. I can't imagine a motive (of God's part) for it to be otherwise.
But again, I could be wrong! However God wants to set it up is fine by me. I expect the only stop signs we'll see are things like "oh man, turns out faster-than-light-craft-propulsion isn't achievable within the limitations of matter and energy."
I admit I'm a little on the pessimistic side about that one. Which sucks, because how cool would that be!
Jen wrote:
PS I'm not sure I agree that historical events are less important (more "trivial") than basic principles. I think they are far more interesting. However the basic principles work, we know that they do, 'cause we live in this world every day. But ... WHAT HAPPENED? that's the interesting question, the one that leads to stories.
Well, I love trivia! I love history. It's very human-interest. But it's just, you're never going to be able to park a miniature black hole in cislunar orbit and power the entire world's energy needs forever (or until the sun blows up) with it.
Nah, I'm not optimistic about science's chances of achieving that. It was just a wild example. Heck, some of the stuff we have already beats that, in terms of down-to-earth utility.
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