God & the Fairy Tree

I'm not sure if I'm reading right but... unless you know the person personally the 'statement' is not worthy of exactitude. Speaking from my own experience, I was raised in a family of science, the term God certainly never made it to the diner table. There are plenty of people who have independently rationalized God's existence.

Well, the fact that they all call it "God" (in English, anyway) pretty much disproves what you're saying.You're asking us to believe that all these people, acting rationally and independantly of each other... arrived at the exact same religious conclusion as the vast majority of the people in their society.That's a little ridiculous. What you're asking us to believe is that there's something, then, in the air or water that makes people in America believe in God and people in India believe in Shiva.Clearly that's stupid. People in America tend to come to Christian conclusions because most Americans are Christians, while most people in India come to Hindu conclusions because most Indians are Hindu. Obviously.You'd never allow the same reasoning for languages, you know. If I were to come here and tell you that I didn't actually learn English growing up - that, working completely independantly, I developed my own unique language... that turned out to be identical in every way to English, you'd rightly call "bullshit." But make the argument about religion, and suddenly it convinces you.Evidence for the incredible power of religion to turn off parts of your brain, I guess.

you are a far more comfortable person than i. i am anything but convinced that i exist. i do, hoever, trust my stimuli and believe that it appropriately leads me to the conclusion that i must exist.people need comfort from the insecurities of the unknown because that's what humanity is all about. consciousness is the ability to ask how and why. unanswered, these questions leave us feeling powerless and useless. different people find sufficient answers in different places. for some, only science is sufficient; for others, only a god can fully answer their questions. despite the claims of the atheists, they also ask these questions and also receive comfort from their answers. this is the place that religion plays in society, but it does not require religion to fill it. this is mildly misaimed topic-wise, but nonetheless important. this is from whence come the theists protests that atheism is a religion. it's because it serves the same role of answering questions, because they are able to recognize that it is having an answer-not having a religion-that brings comfort to human consciousness.as such, the question of the importance in the sign of the fairy tree is not really "how do i respond to the answer that is given," but rather "is the answer given sufficient to comfort my need to inquire." if it is not, then you question the answer that is given until you get an answer that you are comforted by. if "jesus made the rainbow" isn't sufficient, you may ask about water and light. if that is insufficient, you may ask about photons and magnets and radio waves. if that is not sufficient, you may ask about quarks, then strings, then god knows what. it's simply about when you reach an answer that satisfies you. most people are satisfied that light is refracted by water. some are not.it's not even really about evidence, because many who believe scientific explanations don't even look at the evidence, it simply satisfies their need to inquire because it is sufficiently complicated or reaches a sufficient parity of questions. maybe a given individual just has to ask a series of four successive questions of increasing inquisitiveness to be satisfied, regardless of the answers given. it really all depends on the person.Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.

I like the use of the word "rationalize". It puts belief in God on the same level as stealing office supplies from work.Edited by Chiroptera, : typo

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

i think you haven't been reading this board long enough.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. On the face of it, it's not true. If life originated on earth without the intervention of living or intelligent beings, then, as a precursor, complex organic molecules must be able to be formed from inorganic materials that would have been found on the primeval earth through processes that would have occurred at that time.The Miller/Urey experiment verified that complex organic molecules can form from inorganic precursors. These results have been repeated and verified and therefore constitute objective evidence. In fact, all of abiogenesis research being done involves laboratory experiments (and perhaps computer simulations) that can be repeated and observed by different people.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

To my knowledge, the statement implied that the precise reason why a person would believe in God precludes independent though. - "rationality; reason, reasonableness the state of having good sense and sound judgment; "his rationality may have been impaired"; "he had to rely less on reason than on rousing their emotions" I'm not asking anything, nor am I referring to 'all these people'. Looking back at my own response, I see a simple statement relevant to my own experiences. Having said this, I'm not sure the rest of your comment is addressable.

why are invisible fairies necessarily supernatural? just because something is invisible doesn't require that it uses actual magic. maybe they have a rather natural ability to shift into and out of another dimension or to change phases or something. dimensions are highly natural. just because we haven't seen it or don't understand it doesn't mean it is necessarily supernatural.

Fascinating! I have no issues with anything here on earth. The big question is - 'Where did it all begin'(off topic) Not that it matters, but the Miller/Urey experiment was a farce. If you want to debate that, submit a new topic, and I will gladly demonstrate disprove its worth through scientific methods. Edited by pbee, : No reason given.Edited by pbee, : No reason given.

Huh? But you're the one you brought up the example of abiogenesis. Are you now admitting that your comment wasn't really relevant to the preceding discussion about the comparison between god-belief and fairy-belief?

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Please see Miller and Urey Experiment: What has changed? for a long quiet discussion of these experiments. You may add to that.

I did no such thing, the topic of abiogenesis was initially raised by someone else and I responded. And, I am now admitting that the comment wasn't really relevant to the preceding discussion about the comparison between god-belief and fairy-belief.

why is a belief in fairies automatically absurd?i heard guillermo del toro on fresh air recently and he said that the reason he makes his movies is that he never stopped believing in monsters. i guess the thing here is that just because you don't have evidence doesn't mean the evidence doesn't exist. (this is distinct from the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence excuse.) there are loads of scientific realities that were first made up science fiction and then when someone had the idea to look for it, they found some speck of evidence for it. if i'm not mistaken, dark matter is a good example, black holes, another.maybe, as i said to nator, fairies have a rather ordinary natural property that allows them to bend light and hide themselves? or maybe they are really skittish but entirely visible. there's plenty of animals we've only recently discovered. maybe they exist but their "magical properties" don't and our descriptions of them are inaccurate.of course, i know from incontrovertable evidence that all books tell of real people and real places and real events. they're real because they have a real effect on the reader. the relationships we build by entering these peoples' lives is real and thus the people. the only thing that makes people real is the impact that they have on other people. otherwise, dead people might as well not have existed at all. as such, anyone that has an effect on you is real.now. i'm not fool enough to think that being real necessarily equates existence, but i think reality is more important than existence. existence is improveable and based on perception. reality is the same, but reality changes your perception. reality is interactive; existence is not. perhaps you can't have reality without existence, but existence without reality may either be just as impossible or completely pointless.of course, in my mind, perception is inherently subjective, therefore because humans analyze evidence, it is always subjective, so i'm not really convinced by this whole 'must be defined by objective evidence' argument. just because there's a general consensus that a given thing meets a standard of proof does not make it objective. just because something follows the rules doesn't make it good. a cat is not a defective dog. that's not to say that creating standards of proof isn't useful or good or necessary or proper. it just means that standards does not equate objectivity.there is always the possibility of the black swan. does this mean we stop trusting that all swans are white?but assuming the general assumptions that there is such evidence and all that jazz. let's look at the difference between fairies and god.
do fairies/gods make promises?
do fairies/gods keep promises?
do fairies/gods work in peoples' lives to change them into something better/worse than before?
do fairies/gods interact with people?
do fairies/gods leave a record of acts?it really kind of depends on eyewitness testimony, which we know is flawed and we know accentuates potential proofs while ignoring negations. but then so much of our world is defined by eyewitness testimony.it's kind of like this. can you measure intellectual honesty? can you measure whether an artist really means something? is a poet necessarily aware of all the devices he may use and exactly why they provide the particular character or setting is foreboding or promising? a very astute one may be aware of most, but probably never all. can you tell if i'm being truthful when i say that the only trouble i have with my faith is ideology and dogma, but not the personality of god? does that mean anything? does it matter if god is really just the universal fuzzy?just because something has failed to be accurately described and properly witnessed and evidenced, does not mean that the evidence isn't there and that the thing does not exist. perhaps it's a logical loophole, but that doesn't make it less true.

That's the problem right there - you insist they're the same even if the argument is illogical.That means that no matter what the different argument for the different entities, they're always deemed the same, despite any plausable or none-plausible arguments for the respective concepts.They aren't the same or equivalent unless you can describe in each and every manner why, otherwise it's equivocation/evasion of the issue. Let's have a list of their traits - characteristics, that make them "the same" in no uncertain terms.At best you'll get three or four hits. The differences will be many many many more because they only share their transcendent quality. And infact one is a magical entity and the other is a supernatural entity, so there's our first difference.Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

I'm still convinced that the P.U. is unfair - but if you say it is to show how it's wrong to believe in something without subjective evidence, I would say that I agree if you would say it is wrong to CLAIM something exists without evidence. I think that's because of the shallow-factor though. It's an unfair comparison - and obvious attempt to ridicule the God-concept, rather than just using something neutral. That's why it's an informal fallacy, IMHO - because such terms are loaded.I see the thread is hitting meltdown so I won't nag you any further.