Interesting points Rahvin, but I see no evidence to back any of them up.
Do you dispute that people generally are extremely gullible and will believe whatever they are told if it matches what they already believe or would like to believe?
Do you dispute that various known fraudsters have and continue to defraud people of their money and engender demonstrably misplaced belief?
Peter Popoff
Uri Geller
Sylvia Browne
John Edward
Benny Hinn
These are just a few of the people who have made millions of dollars duping millions of people into believing their bullshit - because people
want to believe that they can contact the dead and that there is an afterlife, that psychic power exists, that God will heal them,
In the case of Popoff, James Randi caught him using a radio earpiece with his wife acting as "the vocie of God" to give him his "miraculous" information (he would recite people's names, addresses, and ailments to people without being told. The victims had filled out "prayer cards" with this info before the seminar, and his wife read it off to him. Randi caught it on tape using a radio scanner). He was ruined when the tape was played on the Tonight Show...until a few years ago. He's back, doing exactly the same thing, making millions of dollars with the same act. People believe he heals them, they send him money expecting miraculous financial/spiritual/health gains, and it's all flim-flam and lies.
Even after he was debunked on national television just a few years ago.
Should I continue? Is my poor opinion as to the rationality of the average human being ill-founded?
You are also presenting your own personal view of the world here. That's fine, it's great, but please admit to yourself that you have your own bias just like the rest of us.
Did I ever claim otherwise?
I
try to maintain objectivity (which is more than most people I meet, who view "objectivity" as "somewhere in between both sides"). I'm still human. I'm not omniscient - all I can do is assess the most logical conclusion based on the evidence I have available.
With absolutely zero, zilch, nada, none, not-at-all evidence supporting the existence of deities/ghosts/the supernatural, and
plenty of evidence that human beings are ready, willing, and able to
make these things up with an impressive laundry list of frauds, hoaxes, and discarded disproven deities, what do
you think the most rational position is?
I think the most rational position is that I discard faith, because by all attempts to measure it we can see absolutely no effectiveness in prayer, and what people believe for subjective reasons has never had any better effect than simple guessing.
I think the most rational position is that I will not believe that god(s) or the supernatural exist until I have
evidence supporting such a conclusion, for the exact same reason that I will not believe aliens have visited Earth, that Bigfoot roams the forests, or that the Loch Ness Monster is a dinosaur.
I think the most rational position is that, since all examples of deities whose existence is
known, they have turned out to be false. Between the discarded and disproved gods of old (the Sun is not Apollo's chariot wheel; when the Aztecs stopped sacrificing people, the Sun continued to rise; neither Thor, Zeus, nor Jupiter throw lightning bolts; Poseidon does not rule the oceans) and all of the known frauds, I think it is
likely that the very concept of god(s) is a human invention, and that they are not likely to actually exist. The mutual exclusivity of most religions also shows that
most of them
have to be false, even if one of them is actually true in the end.
Note that, contrary to your ill-advised attempts to tell me what I do and do not have faith in, I do
not have
faith that no god(s) exist. I have absolutely no evidence supporting the existence of god(s), and minor evidence supporting the notion that all god(s) are likely to be human inventions. I follow where the evidence leads: I find the suggestion that god(s) exist to be highly unlikely, and would require extraordinary evidence to support such an extraordinary claim.
A lack of belief with enhanced skepticism because of the examples I have seen so far is very different from positive disbelief. I hold no belief that is not supported by evidence. If you disagree, please point it out. be specific.
quote:
"Positive" or "negative" is irrelevant. Accuracy is all that matters. Are you saying that human beings do not constantly and willingly delude themselves where the non-empirical is concerned?
Because I can show you an endless list of fraudulent psychics, televangelists, magicians, snake-oil salesmen, and others who used exactly that human willingness to believe what cannot be empirically evidences to their advantage.
"Accuracy" where the nature of human existence is involved is judged by what criteria? Because you focus a narrow view on some people who commit fraud, what does that prove exactly?
It proves that people are gullible, with more than personal anecdotes. It's not just "some." The fraudsters are more limited than their followers...but Peter Popoff
alone too in
$4.3 million per month in 1987 before his exposure. In 2005, his "ministry" raised over
$23 million.
That's
one televangelist. One. How many people did he fool with his fraud?
I could provide my own evidence of many people I know, and have known, who are intelligent, honest, logical, and pursue truth. Because some people choose to delude themselves, does that mean the majority do? And who is the elite group of people who get to tell them the difference between reality and delusion?
It's not an appeal to popularity or authority, LindaLou. There's no magic group of people who judges fact vs. fiction.
I would say that anyone who honestly believes that Peter Popoff is in communication with God and actually heals the sick in his seminars is
deluded. Wouldn't you? These people believe the claims of this man without demanding supporting evidence - they simply believe his assertions unquestioningly because they
want to believe it.
How does this differ from other types of faith? I don't see a distinction, except that Popoff has been positively identified as a fraud. The underlying phenomenon of
faith seems identical to me. Do you disagree? How? Please be specific when you tell me the difference between delusion and faith.
quote:
Human beings are not, by their nature, rational and objective beings. Logic and empiricism are not inborn. Only education (formal or otherwise) allows logic and reason to prevail over superstition and nonsense. By and large, the average person is an idiot who will believe anything he's told if it fits with what he already believes or wants to believe. That may be a negative view of humanity, but it's also demonstrably true.
I find this to be a very negatively biased view.
Your personal opinion is irrelevant. If you think I'm inaccurate, show how.
It is also rather emphatic in its condemnation of faith, e.g. "logic and reason prevail over superstition and nonsense." You seem to be painting a picture of poor deluded primitives who need to be handed the burning torch of science and reason.
I see literally no distinction between base superstition and the faith of organized religions. In all cases, we are talking about unsupported beliefs; confidence in the accuracy of a given assertion with no evidence supporting that assertion, frequently to the point of ignoring contrary evidence.
Religion just
formalizes the superstition into an organized tradition.
Not a vision I'm comfortable with.
Again, your "feelings" are irrelevant. I wasn't
happy to arrive at the conclusion that god(s), the afterlife, ghosts, and other supernatural beliefs are all most likely false. Emotion has no effect on the accuracy or inaccuracy of a given assertion.
While these are positive things, there is a lack of appreciation of any pre-existing positive traits. This is how imperialists thought.
And so you finish with an appeal to tradition. How nice.
I fully recognize that there are positive effects from religion, LindaLou. People give to charities, perform good deeds, and treat each other nicely sometimes specifically because of the dictates of their religion. It provides comfort about death, and answers to the otherwise fundamentally unanswerable questions like "why are we here?"
But that's not the topic. The topic is whether faith is fundamentally different in any objective way from delusion - and while it's perfectly possible to see positive results from deluded thinking, I see no distinction between the two.
Rahvin, it was late when I wrote the previous post and I'd like to explain my final few comments. I am not trying to cause insult and I apologise if I have done so, but I want to illustrate what I was thinking when I read your post. Again,
quote:
Human beings are not, by their nature, rational and objective beings. Logic and empiricism are not inborn. Only education (formal or otherwise) allows logic and reason to prevail over superstition and nonsense. By and large, the average person is an idiot who will believe anything he's told if it fits with what he already believes or wants to believe. That may be a negative view of humanity, but it's also demonstrably true.
Now I think learning is a great thing. The main reason why I debate with creationists is so that I have a steady supply of topics to research and learn about. Science has enabled us to understand our origins and the natural processes that occur on the earth and in the universe -- and how to use them for our benefit. I also believe that the ability to think logically is vital. While I personally believe that humans do have some innate capacity for this if they choose to use it, I also believe that training in logical thought can help to avoid many of the arguments and mistakes that people tend to make (including getting into some wars) and I am a firm advocate of logic becoming part of the school curriculum.
Having said that, I think your comments were clearly more loaded than this. From reading your posts, it's a simple deduction to take your definition of "superstition and nonsense" to mean faith or religion. Please correct me if I am wrong. We're not just talking about the belief that eclipses are ill omens or that lightning occurs when the gods are angry; IMO we're really talking about holding any world view that is not atheism. More disturbingly, you seem to be saying that education, logic and reason should naturally lead someone to abandon their faith and become an atheist. There have been interesting discussions in this thread about atheism itself being faith or belief and I don't think the atheists here have made convincing arguments about why this is not the case.
Again, I see absolutely no distinction between the unsupported beliefs of superstition and the unsupported beliefs of religion. Both are beliefs not based on evidence. Both fit the definition of "faith." Both are, from what I can tell, indistinguishable from "delusion," which has an almost identical definition. Religion is simply the formalization of a set of superstitious beliefs.
Also, I'd appreciate it if you'd stop telling atheists what they believe. It's dishonest. An atheist has as much faith as a shadow has light. Not all atheists are the same, and I'm sure you
can find examples of people who have a positive, unsupported belief that god(s) cannot exist. That's not me. I have no belief in god(s), in the same way that I have no belief in an invisible dragon looking over my shoulder, or intangible toilet trolls. I demand extraordinary evidence to support such an extraordinary claim. I further have evidence (as above) that many god(s) have proven to be false, and that people tend to believe as they want regardless of evidence or accuracy, and that people are willing and able to create god(s) from their own imaginations. In other words, I have
evidence suggesting that the concept of god(s) is a human invention, and that such things are unlikely to actually exist.
There is no faith involved. If you think there is, please point it out so that I can alter my position - I reject faith as an effective means of accurately modeling reality, and so if my current view of reality is somehow based on faith I will need to change that view. Please be specific.
If you can't, an apology for telling me what I do and do not believe would be appreciated.
Stile wanted to talk for a while about how it is wrong to try to force people to adopt your personal faith.
I've never advocated forcing beliefs of any sort. I may think that faith and religion are flim-flam and nonsense when its not outright fraud, and probably cause at least as much harm as good, but I don't advocate forcing people to embrace atheism. In every case in history where we have tried to force people to believe one thing or another (whether forcing Christianity, Islam, Atheism, or anything else), disaster has resulted. I favor outlawing only the harm religion sometimes causes - firm separation between church and state such that religiously motivated laws are never enacted (protecting all faiths and no faiths equally), anti-discrimination laws (to protect minorities and "heathens" who have traditionally been the target of religious violence), etc. I favor keeping religion the hell out of public schools, removing the tax-exempt status of churches, etc. But I do not in any way favor forcing people to convert, to Atheism or anything else.
IMO since it is impossible to prove empirically that there is or is not any god or aspect of the divine, an atheist has faith that the divine is nonexistent (or to put it another way, they believe that absence of empirical evidence is evidence of absence).
But that's not the case. Others have already explained this, and I've explained it a few times in this response already. But here we go again:
The absence of belief in god(s) cannot, by definition, be faith. There is no belief, so clearly there cannot be a belief based on no evidence.
Many Atheists, myself included, go a step further - all examples of god(s) where we
do know, god(s) have turned out to be false. It is reasonable to conclude that people make up god(s) to explain what they do not understand, or to offer a measure of control over what is uncontrolled, to have a place to turn when feeling lost or helpless. It is still possible that god(s) of some sort
may exist, but when we know for proven fact that people do make them up from their own imaginations, it's reasonable to conclude that, in the absence of
supporting evidence, other god(s) are likely to have been made up as well.
Let me put it this way: If I told you that there was an invisible hamster who lives in the sky and watches over us all the time, would you believe me? After all, you cannot objectively prove one way or the other that my invisible hamster exists or does not exist, can you? Does your lack of belief in the hamster qualify as faith? If, observing that all other cases of bizarre invisible critters of which you are aware have turned out to be completely made up, you conclude that I'm likely making up my invisible sky-hamster as well, would that conclusion be based on faith? Or is it based on the evidence you have available? Are you claiming absolute knowledge that the hamster does or does not exist, or are you simply rationally examining the evidence you have available and reaching the
most likely conclusion?
I don't believe in god(s).
I don't believe that god(s) definitely don't exist.
I simply believe that, with the evidence I have available, god(s) are not
likely to exist. I'll alter that belief immediately as soon as someone presents me with objective evidence suggesting god(s) are more or less likely to exist than I currently think.
Do you see any faith? Any belief that is not based on evidence? I don't. If you do, please point it out, and be specific.
So by educating people and at the same time telling them that the logical conclusion of their education is that they abandon their faith and become atheists, you are thinking the same way as Christian missionaries or imperialists who in past and present have converted people to their way of thinking and sometimes wreaked havoc on entire cultures in the process.
Whoa, stop the presses, scanners detect a massive strawman! The V'Ger probe has nothing on this one!
At no point did I
ever advocate telling people to abandon their beliefs. Never, not once, ever. I said that the only way to combat superstition and nonsense is through education and promoting logical and critical thought. Teaching people about science and how we objectively determine whether a given assertion or hypothesis is accurate or inaccurate and to what degree tends to have the effect of dispelling superstition by itself so long as students are encouraged to apply their critical thinking skills to their own beliefs as well as their homework. There's no need to tell them, "haha, god is stupid!" As I said above, every time we try to force beliefs, disaster strikes. I support no such thing.
If a person wants to believe in god(s), that's fine. I see it as irrational, even delusional, but most irrational beliefs and superstitions are harmless. Who cares if you believe in your lucky penny, or talk to your deity of choice every Sunday? Who cares that I'll think you're irrational?
I also, however, do not support preserving a culture for its own sake. If a culture believes the Earth is flat or that the Sun rotates around the Earth, for example, they should be educated in the objective facts that the Earth is an ovoid sphere, and that it orbits the Sun.
I favor teaching people facts as best we understand them. If those facts contradict their religious beliefs, they can choose to maintain their beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence, or adjust their worldview to be more inline with what can be supported by evidence. That's a far cry from forced Atheist-indoctrination.
They thought they were bringing enlightenment to the simple, deluded natives and never considered that there was any merit in the natives' original way of life. It's a bit of an extreme example but this is where I see the chain of reason leading.
It's also a gigantic appeal to consequence, and as such is irrelevant to the discussion of whether faith and delusion are functionally identical.
What's more, your premise (if I have understood it correctly) is easily falsifiable. There are people on this forum and in this thread who are as educated as you, or more so, and who know how to apply logic and reason -- yet they are not atheists. Why do you think that is?
Strawman. I never claimed that education guaranteed Atheism. I said that education is a method of combating irrational beliefs, because it builds critical thinking skills and introduces the concept of logic. There's no guarantee that a person will apply those skills to their own beliefs, or that such a person will reject their beliefs simply because they have no supporting evidence. Subjective "feelings" may not be evidence, but they can be very convincing. This is part of why I don't favor forced indoctrination, and why I think it's gone badly every time in the past: you can tell a man what to say, you can teach him how to think, but you can't change how he feels. Only he can do that for himself. I favor educating people on the world as we understand it through science, and letting them do what they will with their own personal beliefs.
I'm extremely outspoken against religion on this forum, LindaLou, but only because this is a specially designated place specifically set up to debate such topics. Out in the real world, I don't walk around challenging people's faith. Unless they try to convert me. Then we get to have a fun discussion on evidence, with the question "why should I believe you" thrown around liberally.
I don't claim to have absolute knowledge of anything. I don't know whether god(s) exist or not - I find their very descriptions in most cases preclude ever being able to make a conclusive case one way or the other. I simply find that the track record of past god(s) and the predisposition of people to make things up and to believe what others say without evidence make the prospect of the existence of god(s) to be very unlikely in the absence of any positive evidence.
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