"You can't apply logic to god"
Offline Ah, those fateful words, one of the final fallbacks of the theist argument (in my experience, at least, which, I admit is mostly against relative intellectual lightweights). It seems so easy, so irrefutable; to refute it, you would have to use logic, which doesn't apply here (let's disregard the circularity of that argument). All rational, logical thought is for naught if a theist simply utters these words.
But, at the same time, excluding logic from the domain of God opens up a can of worms the size of God (infinite, in other words).
What if God doesn't exist, but is just pretending? What if God sent down his Holy Word in the form of the Bible (which is the absolute literal truth) but is going to send all of the Christians to Hell (which would make the Bible a lie, but you can't apply logic to God!)? What if all religions ARE true, and God is just playing a joke? How can we say anything about morality? How can we make ANY claim based on this God; after all, couldn't it be true and not true at the same time?
By playing this card, theists reduce their God to an incoherent nothing (not that it wasn't before) about which nothing can be said except
"I beleive."
And that is a very sad thing indeed.
If I am wrong on any point (including, but not limited to, spelling, grammar, and the question of God's existence), please correct me as quickly as possible.
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Let's not forget it's two retarded brother, "you just have to have faith' and "I will pray for you.' Sure to kill any debate.
Of course theists don't want you to apply logic to god. Fairy tales are by nature illogical.The theist lives in their little bubble of faith and belief that they alone are right. The sharp pin of reality is their worst fear.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
It's kind of funny, don't you think? They're building up a logical defense, with normative language, of something they acknowledge provides no justification for such. If it's not a logical thing, how can we determine logically how we should approach it; including the notion to specifically avoid applying logic to it? If there's no logic, no recognizable pattern to a thing, why regard it as a thing, since it's only the cohesion into recognizable patterns that determines our regard for anything?
When all you have is background noise, where do you draw the line around it, and say "This part of the noise is actually a coherent pattern we have no hope of understanding, and no justification for calling coherent?"
Doesn't that statement (You can't apply logic to God) usually come soon after they make the claim that "God created logic"?
Usualy has in my discussions - just wondered if anyone else had a similar experience.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
The supernatural somehow gets to be the big exception for all sorts of rules. Yet another abuse of that thinking is "everything needs a creator ... oh, except God. I mean, he's God."
Since logic can be applied to every other part of reality, the easiest conclusion to reach is that supernatural entities, being outside of the set of things to which logic applies, are not part of reality. Makes sense, considering they never actually show up.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
It's called, " I like what I believe, nanny nanny boo boo.....I can't hear you my fingers are in my ears.....LALALALALALALALALA........I can't hear you."
Once you've convinced yourself that a 3 card monty is a real card game, it is not only easy to buy it, it is easy to sell it too.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
If it's possible for people to want to believe something so bad that they convince themselves to believe it, then you yourself are susceptible of doing that, as you are a person too. If someone can want to believe that God is real so bad, that the want turns into a conviction, then it is possible for that to happen to atheists as well.
Your argument doesn't hold up well because:
1. If you think that only "religious" people are susceptible to clinging to certain beliefs, then you are ignorant. Or you think that your beliefs make you better than religious people or smarter than religious people, and then you would be arrogant. (And ignorant as well because religious beliefs and intellectual capability do not have a causal relationship).
2. In turn, if you think that any given person is susceptible to this, then you yourself are susceptible to it. If you are susceptible to it, then it's possible that you do the very same thing. You so badly don't want to believe that God exists that you cling to science or "logic" as a way of convincing yourself that you are right.
If you were just saying this as an insult to religious people, not realizing the connotations it also put on you, then you may want to rethink your statement. However, if you stand by this statement, you could be ignorant, arrogant or a hypocrite, with no way of proving that you aren't.
Anyone can delude themselves, but that wasn't a point he seemed to be arguing against. That makes your argument a straw-man.
[etc.]
What are you going on about? When did I say I wasn't human? I fart, pay taxes and will die just like every other human. Please tell me in your infinite wisdom how telling someone they believe in a fairy tale is arrogent?
"Thor does not make lighting||"
Theist, "YOU HATE ME!|"
You want to be a panzy about life and never tell people the truth, and let them wallow in sugar coated superstition and myth "just because", be my guest.
I however KNOW that gravity is not something you pray to, and evolution is not an AGENDA. Since when it it arrogent to challenge fairy tales with facts? If we never questioned, human beings will still believe that the world is flat and that the heart, not the brain, does the thinking.
You don't like my bluntness, SO? Do you need your diaper changed?
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Shenannigans. I can want to believe I can defy gravity. I can't.
Noone has said this. There are atheists who cling to irrational beliefs, and there are atheists who think that they're better than other people, but neither of those characteristics defines an individual atheist. Several times on these boards, atheists attack each other over issues of irrationality. We're well aware that we all have our ignorances and irrational beliefs. Atheists specifically avoid just one irrational belief, though.
Simply not true. Science and logic are designed with bias in mind. Since we already know that we will have a bias, there are mechanisms that work to eliminate that bias. A scientist who could be shown empirically (reliably) that there was, in fact, a variable "God" in the universe, would accept it wholeheartedly, given evidence. But there is none. So why would the variable go into the equation?
This must be from the "atheists have faith" line. It's just not true. "Faith" is still defined as belief without evidence.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Obviously you didn't understand what I was saying. Not once did I say "you aren't human." You basically said, "religious people have blind faith. they don't want to hear the truth."
Now here's what I said: if person A can have blind faith, that means that person B can have it as well. You can't tell a religious person they have blind faith with no way of proving that you don't have the exact same thing. Here's where arrogance MAY come in. If you think that people can have blind faith, but you are not susceptible to that, then you would be arrogant.
Recap:
If one person can have blind faith, than all people could have blind faith (including you).
If you think that it's not possible for you to have blind faith, then you would be arrogant.
Conclusion: It's not wise to just tell someone, "you have blind faith" when you could very well too. And you have no way of proving that you don't. And if you think "this person has blind faith, but there's no way I could" then you would be arrogant.
I never said that you were those things. But by your statement, you open yourself up to those things.
"Since when it it arrogent to challenge fairy tales with facts?" And this is the point I was getting at. If this is what you meant by your statement, then you needed to reword it because that's not what your statement showed. I never said it was arrogant to challenge ideas. What's arrogant is if you think that because you don't believe in God that you are somehow more open-minded than someone who doesn't or are smarter than someone who doesn't.
What does that have to do with what I said? I was talking about want turning into conviction, not belief turning into reality.
I think you misinterpreted the meaning of my post. If you noticed, I used "if" statements. I was going off what was posted by Brian37.
Again, I think that you misunderstood what I was saying. Brian37 posted a statement. My ENTIRE post was "If you what you said is true, then that means this, this and this." A statement was made and I pointed out the implications of that statement that it would also make about him. The reason my answers sound like generalizations is because I the post I was responding to was a generalization. If you have a problem with generalizations, take it up with him.
Yes, I agree.
Again, I agree. This is basically just a restatement of what you said in the first sentence, unless there's another implication you want to marry to this one?
This has been said before countless times:
Yes, we're well aware than atheists can be just as irrational as theists when it comes to certain topics, and most of us do not think ourselves simply 'better' or outright 'smarter' than all theists either.
And here is where you're outright wrong.
Atheists put their passions and emotions largely aside for a few moments while they review the evidence in front of them for understanding the mechanisms of the universe and the evolution of life. If I, personally, didn't demand this of myself, I'd probably be wallowing in fantasy about alien visitation and the existence of extra-dimensional horrors from beyond time and space, since that's where my passions and emotions are tied-up.
I have no active 'desire' to disbelieve in God. Show me compelling evidence for his existence, in fact, and I'll convert tomorrow morning (don't forget to grab your Nobel Prize on the way out, either).
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I think there was a misunderstanding in what you thought I meant. My last sentence about hiding behind science was not an "all atheists do this" statement. I was still playing off of the hypothetical possibilities that his original statement implicated. I was saying it's possible that someone could hide behind science or "logic" because they don't want to believe in God. Of course that's not true of all of them. I answered his question with a generalization because he stated a generalization.
In fact, your response proves my point. Saying "all religious people plug their ears and don't want to hear the 'truth'" would be like me saying "all atheists run from God and cling to science." Making generalizations of people based on their beliefs is a stupid thing to do. Your offense to my statement is the offense I take to his.
Okay, I'll try again, and be really specific. Maybe I went to many steps ahead to what you were implying.
Of course. Urban myths fall into that category. I used to think that recycling was a good idea. Turns out that short of aluminum cans and steel, it's basically a waste of resources. But my belief was that it was "good for the environment".
Everyone has the capacity to cling to irrational beliefs. But you're on an atheist website, the focus of which is one particular irrational belief.
The implication here is pretty clearly that believing in God is as reasonable as believing things that are tested via science. "Cling to science" is a misrepresentation. The most famous examples of using logic to convince one's self that one is right come from Thomas Aquinas.
Here you're hiding your criticism and insults in "if" statements, which allows you to pretend like the whole thing was simply hypothetical. It's weaseling. If you're going to insult the guy, go ahead, but to pretend that what religious people call "faith" (ie belief without evidence) and belief based on repeated testing are equivalent is ridiculous.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Like we don't see that around here. A lot.
It's essentially the old canard, "Science is a religion too, you know," or its cousin, "You can't learn everything via science." (Which is true, but usually they ignore the obvious things like philosophy or mathematics, and jump to "I have experienced God." )
Why is it that so many people find it hard to accept that we have found only one epistemology that works reliably and demonstrably? Why do theists insist on conflating a trust in a proven epistemology, and the ontology gained from the application of that epistemology, with religious faith?
Grrr.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
I think you have that backwards. I think he was talking about unreality turning into belief.
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
Because science admits it's not perfect, and the kind of person drawn to perfectionism can't very well get involved in something that won't give them the 100% true answer, now can they? No. Because that wouldn't be perfect.
Instead, it's "oh, science is only about 99.999999% sure? What about that little possibility?" So saying "God did it" is like collecting the whole set. There aren't any mysteries or gaps any more. Problem solved!
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Maybe I was too subtle?
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence