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Dragonshirt posted:The Abrahamic God? I mean, technically yes I suppose, in that I believe there is one supreme being, so therefore those Bronze Age people were worshiping the same god through whatever imperfect form they imagined it.
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Jul 18, 2016 02:28
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Who What Now posted:Why do you believe existence necessitates a god? Partially, I not found a viable logical framework that does not include a prime mover. The other part is my definition for god is not really more detailed than "that which causes existence".
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Jul 18, 2016 02:33
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If you need to believe in a prime mover I'm not really sure how God solves that problem.
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Jul 18, 2016 02:34
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Reveilled posted:Do you have any evidence for your assertion, then? Not off hand, no. I'll try and find a good article for you sometime tomorrow. Bel Shazar posted:Partially, I not found a viable logical framework that does not include a prime mover. The other part is my definition for god is not really more detailed than "that which causes existence". Why do you believe the universe was "caused", though?
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Jul 18, 2016 02:37
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OwlFancier posted:If you need to believe in a prime mover I'm not really sure how God solves that problem. Am I using the term incorrectly?
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Jul 18, 2016 02:39
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Bel Shazar posted:Am I using the term incorrectly? No you're using it correctly, I just haven't ever really understood how it is possible to satisfy a belief in a prime mover, if you believe that everything has a cause then so must have the thing at the front of the chain. And if some things can just be exempt from cause, then that can be assigned to anything. Basically either you believe in a causal universe, and thus the concept of a prime mover should be anathema to you, or you don't believe in a causal universe in which case you don't need a prime mover anyway. The concept of a prime mover negates the argument that brings it forth. Arguing that everything has to have a cause therefore there was one thing that didn't doesn't make any sense, and it didn't make any more sense when Thomas Aquinas said it.
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Jul 18, 2016 02:41
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Who What Now posted:Why do you believe the universe was "caused", though? Because the concept of an infinite universe never made any sense. I'm willing to entertain alternate theories, but none have ever seemed to hit the mark.
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Jul 18, 2016 02:42
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I would argue that an infinitely cyclical universe makes more sense than the idea of a prime mover.
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Jul 18, 2016 02:43
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OwlFancier posted:No you're using it correctly, I just haven't ever really understood how it is possible to satisfy a belief in a prime mover, if you believe that everything has a cause then so must have the thing at the front of the chain. And if some things can just be exempt from cause, then that can be assigned to anything. I'm not going to have a great answer for you because in the end my reasoning is circular and I can't claim anything better than a gut feeling, but taking all of the universe, with all of its histories and interactions, and considering those to be just a part of god settles the causality issue in my own mind. Though again, that's still the philosophical equivalent of "seems legit". However, that's why I believe.
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Jul 18, 2016 02:55
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Bel Shazar posted:I mean, technically yes I suppose, in that I believe there is one supreme being, so therefore those Bronze Age people were worshiping the same god through whatever imperfect form they imagined it. Nice dodge.
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Jul 18, 2016 03:51
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OwlFancier posted:No you're using it correctly, I just haven't ever really understood how it is possible to satisfy a belief in a prime mover, if you believe that everything has a cause then so must have the thing at the front of the chain. And if some things can just be exempt from cause, then that can be assigned to anything. Plus if you want to be a
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Jul 18, 2016 06:04
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Bel Shazar posted:Because the concept of an infinite universe never made any sense. I'm willing to entertain alternate theories, but none have ever seemed to hit the mark. What specifically doesn't make sense about it to you, and why isn't God being infinite not equally nonsensical to you? Edit: spoon0042 posted:Plus if you want to be a A perfect opportunity to use "skepdick" and you blew it. Who What Now fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Jul 18, 2016 |
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Jul 18, 2016 06:05
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Who What Now posted:Not off hand, no. I'll try and find a good article for you sometime tomorrow. To give you a bit of an idea where I'm coming from here, I'd actually agree that being convinced is a significant part of how we form our beliefs, but I do think choice is an important element, and while you might not be able to choose all your beliefs I think you can choose some at least. To take a trivial example, if I tell you I had french toast for breakfast yesterday, I think you can choose whether or not you believe me.
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Jul 18, 2016 06:57
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Reveilled posted:To take a trivial example, if I tell you I had french toast for breakfast yesterday, I think you can choose whether or not you believe me. I disagree. I think you can choose to scrutinize the claim, or choose to listen to an opposing view, but you can't choose to believe based on arbitrary will. If you believe the person making this claim, it's because you have been convinced of their trustworthiness, or because you can see no reason for them to be lying, or because having french toast for breakfast is perfectly plausible. If they tell you they had dinosaur meat for breakfast, that is implausible, thus you will reject it. We have a colloquial phrase "choose to believe", but it actually refers to the process of investigating claims, not belief itself. Bel Shazar posted:I'm not going to have a great answer for you because in the end my reasoning is circular and I can't claim anything better than a gut feeling, but taking all of the universe, with all of its histories and interactions, and considering those to be just a part of god settles the causality issue in my own mind. Though again, that's still the philosophical equivalent of "seems legit". However, that's why I believe. The point is that you can ask the same thing of God: what caused him? If you aren't bothered by him not having a cause, why couldn't the universe be uncaused? Why does God solve the problem rather than pushing it one step further back?
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Jul 18, 2016 14:29
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I don't know dick about physics, but it seems like the universe operates according to cause and effect. The infiniteness of a creator God makes sense in the way infinite expansion and collapse of the universe does not.
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Jul 18, 2016 14:45
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The Kingfish posted:I don't know dick about physics, but it seems like the universe operates according to cause and effect. The infiniteness of a creator God makes sense in the way infinite expansion and collapse of the universe does not. I would generally take the opposite view.
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Jul 18, 2016 15:04
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The Kingfish posted:I don't know dick about physics, but it seems like the universe operates according to cause and effect. The infiniteness of a creator God makes sense in the way infinite expansion and collapse of the universe does not. "Didn't all this come from a big monkey--the first monkey?" a monkey reasoned.
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Jul 18, 2016 15:25
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The Kingfish posted:I don't know dick about physics, but it seems like the universe operates according to cause and effect. The infiniteness of a creator God makes sense in the way infinite expansion and collapse of the universe does not. This makes no sense. Infinite Thing A is perfectly acceptable; Infinite Thing B is absurd. Obviously infinity is not the problem, otherwise Infinite God would give you similar consternation. Why is Infinite Universe so unacceptable?
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Jul 18, 2016 15:37
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:I disagree. I think you can choose to scrutinize the claim, or choose to listen to an opposing view, but you can't choose to believe based on arbitrary will. If you believe the person making this claim, it's because you have been convinced of their trustworthiness, or because you can see no reason for them to be lying, or because having french toast for breakfast is perfectly plausible. If they tell you they had dinosaur meat for breakfast, that is implausible, thus you will reject it. But you can potentially believe a person had french toast for breakfast, even if you're not convinced of their trustworthiness, can think of reasons for them to lie, and despite the fact that not having french toast for breakfast is also plausible, can't you? I can't speak for your own belief about my statement, but if you told me you had french toast for breakfast, I don't know you well enough at all to make a judgement of whether you are a trustworthy person, and since we're having a philosophical discussion you might be asserting the details of your breakfast as a thought experiment, and while french toast is a thing you could have for breakfast, there are a lot more things that are not french toast which you could have for breakfast (including nothing). Indeed, if I dwelt upon these issues for a while, I could probably convince myself that it's more likely than not that you are lying. If, knowing this, I continued to believe you (and made the concious effort not to dwell on those issues), am I not choosing to believe you? By choosing to ignore evidence which I know would change my belief, am I not choosing what I believe? To put this another way, if you would accept that we can use arbitrary will to choose to attempt to change someone else's beliefs, why can we not choose to attempt the same thing on ourselves? Descartes claimed to do this when he chose to discard all beliefs which he couldn't prove, and started over from "I think, therefore I am"? Do you believe he was lying, or mistaken, when he said he did this? And what about people who have an internal disagreement between their gut feelings and intellectual knowledge? To take a personal example, I was raised in a city riven with sectarian conflict. I'm from a catholic family, and that coloured my beliefs growing up. now that I'm older I realise that's all stupid bullshit, but when I meet someone from the protestant community of the city I have to make what I percieve as a concious effort to suppress the immediate emotional reaction that tries to get me to think less of them for this. If you asked me if I believe being a protestant makes you more likely to be a bad person, I'd say no, because I know it doesn't, there's bad people from both communities. But if I stopped exerting the willpower to overcome my gut feelings I think I would start believing that being a protestant makes you more likely to be a bad person. If this is not a choice I'm making, what is it?
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Jul 18, 2016 16:46
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Reveilled posted:But you can potentially believe a person had french toast for breakfast, even if you're not convinced of their trustworthiness, can think of reasons for them to lie, and despite the fact that not having french toast for breakfast is also plausible, can't you? I can't speak for your own belief about my statement, but if you told me you had french toast for breakfast, I don't know you well enough at all to make a judgement of whether you are a trustworthy person, and since we're having a philosophical discussion you might be asserting the details of your breakfast as a thought experiment, and while french toast is a thing you could have for breakfast, there are a lot more things that are not french toast which you could have for breakfast (including nothing). Indeed, if I dwelt upon these issues for a while, I could probably convince myself that it's more likely than not that you are lying. If, knowing this, I continued to believe you (and made the concious effort not to dwell on those issues), am I not choosing to believe you? By choosing to ignore evidence which I know would change my belief, am I not choosing what I believe? I think in this case you're choosing to just not give a poo poo what I had for breakfast. But claims of what a person had for breakfast are so commonplace, and are rarely lied about, and these facts I think would be enough to convince you I wasn't lying - so it's not about knowing enough about me, personally, but knowing about society generally. Conversely, if I had lied about inane things many times before, and it had been discovered, you might by default doubt what i say I had for breakfast. But none of the above is choice; it's all a result of factors that serve to convince you or not. Again, the choice is whether to explore claims in depth or leave them be; I don't see this as synonymous with choosing to believe, but if you do then we're just arguing semantics at this point. I guess to be more precise about what I'm saying, you can't choose to be convinced or not convinced by something, it just happens; it's a reaction. quote:To put this another way, if you would accept that we can use arbitrary will to choose to attempt to change someone else's beliefs, why can we not choose to attempt the same thing on ourselves? Descartes claimed to do this when he chose to discard all beliefs which he couldn't prove, and started over from "I think, therefore I am"? Do you believe he was lying, or mistaken, when he said he did this? I don't think he chose to discard his beliefs. I think he was convinced - likely by his own thought experiments - that he did not have the foundation for beliefs that he thought he did previously. Again, he may have chosen to undergo thought experiment, but the beliefs he was convinced of were not a product of his will. quote:And what about people who have an internal disagreement between their gut feelings and intellectual knowledge? To take a personal example, I was raised in a city riven with sectarian conflict. I'm from a catholic family, and that coloured my beliefs growing up. now that I'm older I realise that's all stupid bullshit, but when I meet someone from the protestant community of the city I have to make what I percieve as a concious effort to suppress the immediate emotional reaction that tries to get me to think less of them for this. If you asked me if I believe being a protestant makes you more likely to be a bad person, I'd say no, because I know it doesn't, there's bad people from both communities. But if I stopped exerting the willpower to overcome my gut feelings I think I would start believing that being a protestant makes you more likely to be a bad person. If this is not a choice I'm making, what is it? To use a hastily conceived analogy, this is like the difference between choosing to walk into a room and look at a painting, and choosing - after seeing the painting - what the visual content of the painting is. Your choice is suppressing the gut feeling, not what to believe. And that's assuming your premises are true, which I think is also up for debate - that is, would your belief really change in this situation? But just for the sake of the argument at hand, I've accepted the premise - which, by the way, is not the same as choosing to believe it.
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Jul 18, 2016 17:03
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I think we need to resolve to what extent people make choices at all before you get into whether it makes sense to choose to believe things. I'm not at all convinced what you describe as a conscious effort is something that you can stop doing. You clearly don't want to hold unfounded assumptions, so even if you have a bias creating such assumptions, in what universe would you ever stop fighting them? Also Descartes was not describing his actual belief state (or if he was, he was lying).
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Jul 18, 2016 17:06
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The Kingfish posted:I don't know dick about physics, but it seems like the universe operates according to cause and effect. The infiniteness of a creator God makes sense in the way infinite expansion and collapse of the universe does not. No wonder rural Bible Belt parents fret over sending their kids off to be "indoctrinated" at college. They might learn chemistry, physics, and historical context that undermines their good old fashioned fear of God we so carefully abused them with their entire impressionable childhood.
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Jul 18, 2016 17:18
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:I think in this case you're choosing to just not give a poo poo what I had for breakfast. But claims of what a person had for breakfast are so commonplace, and are rarely lied about, and these facts I think would be enough to convince you I wasn't lying - so it's not about knowing enough about me, personally, but knowing about society generally. Conversely, if I had lied about inane things many times before, and it had been discovered, you might by default doubt what i say I had for breakfast. But none of the above is choice; it's all a result of factors that serve to convince you or not. I guess what i'm saying is that I don't think being convinced of something is the same thing as believing it. I think you can believe things you aren't convinced are true. Consider if you'd see these two statements as meaning the same thing: "I believe Ada killed Bob" and "I am convinced Ada killed Bob". I see these as meaning different things, would you? If not then I think we are just discussing semantics which is fair enough. quote:To use a hastily conceived analogy, this is like the difference between choosing to walk into a room and look at a painting, and choosing - after seeing the painting - what the visual content of the painting is. Your choice is suppressing the gut feeling, not what to believe. And that's assuming your premises are true, which I think is also up for debate - that is, would your belief really change in this situation? But just for the sake of the argument at hand, I've accepted the premise - which, by the way, is not the same as choosing to believe it. I'm not really sure I understand your analogy. Maybe we should step back a bit, from the way I've described myself, what would you say I believe about protestants? Don't be afraid to say I'm sectarian if you think that's true here, I think it's a perfectly valid way to look at it and won't take it personally.
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Jul 18, 2016 17:21
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Reveilled posted:I guess what i'm saying is that I don't think being convinced of something is the same thing as believing it. I think you can believe things you aren't convinced are true. Consider if you'd see these two statements as meaning the same thing: "I believe Ada killed Bob" and "I am convinced Ada killed Bob". I see these as meaning different things, would you? If not then I think we are just discussing semantics which is fair enough. Yes, in a manner of speaking, there's a shade of difference between the two, but only insofar as what the word choice implies in everyday conversation. I would say the second entails the first: if you are convinced of something, you believe it also, but saying you are convinced is also doing the extra work of implying that you've identified the cause of your belief. But outside of that, outside of linguistic convention, strictly speaking, no, there is no difference. If you believe something you are convinced of it also, and if you are convinced of something, you believe it. If new information surfaces that makes you change your belief, fine, but that's still not you choosing it. quote:I'm not really sure I understand your analogy. Maybe we should step back a bit, from the way I've described myself, what would you say I believe about protestants? Don't be afraid to say I'm sectarian if you think that's true here, I think it's a perfectly valid way to look at it and won't take it personally. I can't really say for sure from the little you've told me. But even if you're right, that your belief switches depending on the success of your emotional suppression, that's still not you choosing your belief. The belief just....happens to you. twodot posted:I think we need to resolve to what extent people make choices at all before you get into whether it makes sense to choose to believe things. A good point.
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Jul 18, 2016 18:15
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Reveilled posted:I guess what i'm saying is that I don't think being convinced of something is the same thing as believing it. I think you can believe things you aren't convinced are true. Consider if you'd see these two statements as meaning the same thing: "I believe Ada killed Bob" and "I am convinced Ada killed Bob". I see these as meaning different things, would you? If not then I think we are just discussing semantics which is fair enough. I think this really is an issue of semantics. The way I, and I believe GW as well because his views seem to align pretty perfectly with mine as I understand them, are that believing something is a binary position about whether a statement or claim is true, and that you are said to "believe" something when you agree that that statement is true. So if the claim is "water is wet" then almost everyone would agree that statement is true, because their experiences and/or foreknowledge has convinced them, thus they are said to believe it. And your position on whether you do or don't believe is a product of subconscious processes and are determined before your conscious mind can really "consider" the statement. If you don't have any or enough experience or knowledge of the claim then you aren't convinced, so can't agree and can't be said to honestly believe that claim. The way you're using "convinced" in your example seems to be to indicate a belief held with a high degree of certainty or confidence, which is how I would use the term "know". My definition of knowledge is that it is a subset of belief, being beliefs held with the highest degree of certainty or confidence reasonably possible (because nobody can have absolute certainty). It's a matter of degrees in that case, and I think that there is a choice into how confident you're willing to say a belief is true, insomuch as choices exist at all. And while it may be possible to over time actively convince or brainwash yourself into believing something you previously thought was false or the reverse, but it's not something that can be done on a dime. I haven't forgot about finding an article about this, btw, I'm just busy at work but wanted to chime in on my lunch break.
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Jul 18, 2016 18:20
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:The point is that you can ask the same thing of God: what caused him? If you aren't bothered by him not having a cause, why couldn't the universe be uncaused? Why does God solve the problem rather than pushing it one step further back? An uncaused creator is easier to imagine than an uncaused creation.
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Jul 19, 2016 03:57
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Bel Shazar posted:An uncaused creator is easier to imagine than an uncaused creation. Only because it's been drilled into us for centuries. It actually doesn't make a lick more sense.
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Jul 19, 2016 03:59
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SedanChair posted:Only because it's been drilled into us for centuries. It actually doesn't make a lick more sense. Maybe. Hard to judge from within the belief 
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Jul 19, 2016 04:08
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Bel Shazar posted:An uncaused creator is easier to imagine than an uncaused creation. This assumes the universe is, in fact, a creation. There's no reason to believe that.
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Jul 19, 2016 04:29
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Who What Now posted:This assumes the universe is, in fact, a creation. There's no reason to believe that. I'm not assuming any type of intelligent design, but most of the current theories look a lot like a process of creation.
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Jul 19, 2016 04:56
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Bel Shazar posted:I'm not assuming any type of intelligent design, but most of the current theories look a lot like a process of creation. For god's sake pick a lane. Either you believe in an ancient creation myth to the exclusion of science and evidence, or you care about the science and evidence.
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Jul 19, 2016 05:00
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SedanChair posted:For god's sake pick a lane. Either you believe in an ancient creation myth to the exclusion of science and evidence, or you care about the science and evidence. Sounds like a pretty lovely worldview for everyone involved.
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Jul 19, 2016 05:13
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BrandorKP posted:Things experienced by others are compelling. Should I ignore the queer experience in my beliefs? Should I ignore the African American experience in my beliefs? I'm not either of those things. It's nonsense to ignore the experiences of other people, they are compelling and a rational reason to believe something. They aren't a sole reason, but again it's problematic to rule them out. That's not a call to not try to empathize or whatever, if for some reason you can't relate to the queer/minority/whatever experience, you have to try, you owe them that. But if you can't recreate a common relation, there's nothing you can do. The real question then is 'does such a basis exist between all people, or are some experiences too distinct to ever be reconciled', and there I remain an optimist in saying that, eventually, all barriers can be overcome. steinrokkan posted:Whatever happened to that Kyrie Eleison guy who only posted about the importance of pure Christian life and anime?
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Jul 19, 2016 06:15
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Bel Shazar posted:Sounds like a pretty lovely worldview for everyone involved. Did you think nice ones were available? Atomic weapons are real and humankind will be annihilated. No sense of creation or meaning will be evident in observing the resultant debris, any more than it is from the rest of space. (Since we're just saying what we believe)
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Jul 19, 2016 06:22
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Bel Shazar posted:I'm not assuming any type of intelligent design, but most of the current theories look a lot like a process of creation. And a bowl of wax fruit looks a lot like the real thing, too, but that doesn't make it so.
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Jul 19, 2016 13:17
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Bel Shazar posted:An uncaused creator is easier to imagine than an uncaused creation. Why? A creator by necessity must be more complex than its creation, you're essentially asking me to imagine not just the universe but also something intelligent enough to completely understand the universe in every possible way, that's a pretty big leap. If you want me to believe something is just there without really asking why I find that much, much easier to do with something inanimate and less complex than a creator god.
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Jul 19, 2016 14:04
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Bel Shazar posted:I'm not assuming any type of intelligent design, but most of the current theories look a lot like a process of creation. Most of the current theories makes the existence of a creator unnecessary.
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Jul 19, 2016 14:11
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OwlFancier posted:Why? A creator by necessity must be more complex than its creation, you're essentially asking me to imagine not just the universe but also something intelligent enough to completely understand the universe in every possible way, that's a pretty big leap. It betrays the nature of the creationist urge: it's not that a godlike super-being is more likely, it's that it's more comprehensible to our hunter-gatherer brain. The problem is that that isn't how the universe works. Nothing about the extremes of the universe actually "makes sense", because the nature of the universe isn't within the evolutionary scope of our dumb brains. That something makes intuitive sense should make you more skeptical, not less. SedanChair posted:"Didn't all this come from a big monkey--the first monkey?" a monkey reasoned.
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Jul 19, 2016 17:41
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I... guess? Though even then I find it stops being intuitive with a second glance. The same argument that makes intelligent design most appealing when looking at humans also begs the question of where anything as complex as a god could possibly come from. Like the universe yeah it's complicated but I can just accept it's there without necessarily needing to know why, but if you convinced me that there was such a thing as a god I think I'd really need to know where that came from, because such a thing is by definition far, far more elaborate and screaming of being created than an inanimate universe is.
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Jul 19, 2016 20:25
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SedanChair posted:Did you think nice ones were available? Atomic weapons are real and humankind will be annihilated. No sense of creation or meaning will be evident in observing the resultant debris, any more than it is from the rest of space. Perhaps a likely outcome, but it doesn't seem like a fact that would make it hard to reconcile the concepts of god and science. Who What Now posted:And a bowl of wax fruit looks a lot like the real thing, too, but that doesn't make it so. I may very well be wrong. I totally accept that. But for all intents and purposes it is an unfalsifiable belief. With the fruit you could at least check. OwlFancier posted:Why? A creator by necessity must be more complex than its creation, you're essentially asking me to imagine not just the universe but also something intelligent enough to completely understand the universe in every possible way, that's a pretty big leap. That just feels inadequate, but then again maybe that's just conditioning. Alhazred posted:Most of the current theories makes the existence of a creator unnecessary. I have seen a good bit of commentary to that point, but most of it seems to be opinions of the implications of a theoretical or experimental result. Happy to read more on the subject if you have a suggestion.
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Jul 20, 2016 05:36
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