God & the Fairy Tree

Just back from another holiday in England (Cumbria this time) I thought I'd relate to you something I've seen there during a woodland walk in a beautiful garden. There was a tree with a small notice that went something like this: Of course this is just a little joke of the gardeners, and parents will probably enjoy reading it to their small children, and watching their reactions, but it made me wonder how this line of reasoning is any different from the religious variety that goes: if you don't feel the presence of God in your life, then it's probably "because you don't believe hard enough", or "because you lead a sinful life", or whatever ad hoc reason is given.Why should I interpret the fairy tree sign as an obvious joke, and take religious reasoning in the same vein seriously? To be sure, the form is identical, which leads me to regard religious people who buy into this kind of logic as the toddlers of our grown-up world. They are, as it were, intellectually immature. (I realize this may come over as arrogant and derogatory, but that is not how I mean it. It should be seen as a simple statement of my perception, detached from any emotional or judgmental connotations.)I wonder if any of the religiously inclined here can explain to me exactly how these two cases, the fairy story and the God story, are different.Faith & Belief, obviously.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Thank you all for your reactions so far. It's interesting to see this topic take off so quickly. I will answer some points in this one post. Fairies could have done the job equally well. In fact, there's more evidence speaking for the fairies than there is for God, because there is a lot of mishap in the world and as we all know, fairies are not always nice, so...Anyway, what I am saying is that there is no difference between the kind of the reason that was given for not being able to see the fairies on the one hand, and for not feeling the presence of God in one's life on the other. They're both ad hoc reasons. Yet, each and every one of us (yes: each and every one of us, don't fool yourself) smiles at the fairy story, but many people don't blink an eye when someone seriously proposes the same kind of explanation in the case of God. Why is that? What's so different in the God case that we have to take it more seriously than the fairies? Indeed, we cannot prove the fairy story, and we cannot prove the God story. Yet we deride the fairy story, and are expected to treat the God-believers with respect. Why? Please, explain to me how I am to know what to do in each case. So it's a matter of majority opinion? If that's the case, then what happens if the majority opines differently one day? Does that alter reality? Was there really once a pantheon of nature gods, and did that change when it became fashionable to believe in just one all-powerful god? I hope you see why I cannot accept this particular explanation. Well, apparently it is. Or else I would dare you to go around telling your friends that we should take fairies seriously.To sum it up: to date I have not seen a satisfactory answer to my question. As it stands, I will regard the God story in the same way as I regard fairy stories: as fables for immature minds. Prove me wrong, anyone.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

A mature mind, I think we all agree, is a mind that does not believe in fairies anymore. (Actually, that's the point of this thread, more or less.) But to me, maturity also requires consistency in one's beliefs and one's reasoning about them. To treat one ad hoc explanation quite differently from another is to be inconsistent. It's only in that respect that I think religious people are immature.I think you'll agree if I say that humanity has grown up in the sense that most of us don't believe in animated rocks, trees, rivers, & cetera, anymore. But for all the sophistication of our present-day "modern" conceptions of God, I think they're still proof of the intellectual immaturity of the people who believe them, specifically because of the inconsistent reasoning behind these beliefs.I am not saying that a mature mind leaves no room for belief. But there must be valid reasons for belief. The onset of science has taken away reasons for belief in God as creator and given us reasons to believe a different story. But the most important lesson science teaches us is that we must be consistent in our beliefs. And if we all agree that there's no valid reason to believe in fairies, as apparently we do, then, by the same token, we should not believe the God story, at least not for the invalid reasons usually given. If there's one reason to feel uncomfortable in this universe, it would be a creator with veto power over calamities, who apparently doesn't always use this power to avert them. That's downright scary.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

If you're implying that I think that fairies and God are the same, you are mistaken.In my version of logic, a different conclusion follows from your premises: we should treat both apples and oranges as fruits.

I am not implying that God and the fairies are the same, but that we should treat belief in them, and more specifically, the stated reasons for belief in them, in the same way. If we dismiss the reason we don't see fairies ("you have scared them off already", see my opening post) as irrational ad hoc reasoning, then we should do the same with ad hoc arguments for why we don't feel the presence of God in our life (again, see the opening post). I am afraid that's a bit of an oversimplification of the Pink Unicorn argument. It's not that they are the same, i.e. identical, but that they are equally absurd.Edited by Parasomnium, : UnicornsEdited by Parasomnium, : "of" -> "off"

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Einstein said: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler"You have gone and made a simple argument too simple, Mike. The particular argument is about the beliefs and the reasoning behind the Pink Unicorn and God respectively. [i]Those[i] are the things which are compared and deemed to be structurally the same, not the entities themselves. I don't think you can quote an atheist who ever argues the latter. The Pink Unicorn argument only purports to demonstrate the point that it is absurd to believe in something without any objective evidence whatsoever. The Pink Unicorn (who is also Invisible, let's not forget that!) is a caricature of the concept of God, designed to illustrate the absurdity of believing in either.The syllogism behind the argument goes:P: It is absurd to believe in something without objective evidence for it.
P: The Invisible Pink Unicorn has no objective evidence for it.
C: Therefore, it is absurd to believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn.Everyone accepts this syllogism, as long as it deals with the Invisible Pink Unicorn. But substitute it with God, and you have a major controversy on your hands.What I am asking is that people point out the fundamental difference between the two cases. So far, you are the only one who has come up with a concrete answer: shallowness, where I suppose you have a point.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

What I am after is why I should believe the following argument:"If you don't feel the presence of God in your life, it's probably because you don't believe hard enough."That's a bogus argument. Believing something harder doesn't make it more likely or true.When this type of argument is used in jest, as with the Fairy Tree story, we all know how to judge it: it's a bit of a joke we play on our children.But when the same type of argument is used in earnest, as with the God story, then all of a sudden we must respect it. But it's the same bogus argument! How can intelligent, mature people not see this? No, it doesn't, because I introduced the term 'intellectually immature' myself in this thread, and I get to define what it means for the sake of it. If you believe in God, because you buy certain irrational arguments, then in my view you are by definition intellectually immature. (This is not an ad hoc definition that I introduce here, it's right there in the opening post, although I have not explicitly stated it as a 'definition' there.)

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Objective evidence is evidence that is not dependent on anyone's internal perceptions or feelings. It should be verifiable and reproducible by anyone.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

I wouldn't think so, because there isn't any such argument. I know exactly why you believe in God: because you were taught to. If you'd been raised in India, you'd have believed in Shiva & Co. And you'd have been just as sure of your belief as you are now. Rationality has no part in it.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

You call yourself Catholic Scientist. Are you telling me that you singlehandedly invented Catholicism ... again?What do you suppose your belief would have been if you had been raised in Afghanistan? India? A remote tribe of Amazon Indians?It was an accident of birth that caused you to believe in the Judeo-Christian god. You were born into a Judeo-Christian society that taught you mainly about this particular god. You may have chosen for the Catholic version, but you were taught about it nonetheless.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

I don't have time for a response now, CS. But I want you to know that I appreciate your honesty. Talk to you later.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Of course, the evidence may exist. But whether evidence exists but we don't have access to it, or it doesn't exist at all, it makes no difference for the question whether or not it is reasonable to believe something without it. Without evidence (whether inaccessible or non-existent), where does the mental picture of a fairy come from? How do we know they have wings? That they are usually small and green? That they flit about in a spray of magical dust?The answer is that all this "knowledge" purely comes from our imagination. The question then becomes: is it reasonable to believe that what we purely imagine to exist, really exists? My answer to that question is "no". And it's "no" in all such cases. But for a lot of people, it's "no" in the case of fairies, but "yes", or at best "maybe", in the case of God.The question of this thread is not about the existence of, or evidence for, God or fairies, but about why many people apply double standards when assessing the validity of claims regarding fairies on the one hand and God on the other.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

It depends on the basis someone has for "knowing" something. If what someone thinks they know is based on independently verifiable facts, then no telling them differently will alter those facts. The facts can be checked and it can ultimately be ascertained whether what they think they know is true or not. Reasonable people will acknowledge the result.But if their knowledge is based on an emotion, or a feeling, or simply their imagination, then there is no objective way of testing that knowledge. (Incidentally, this also pertains to knowledge for which checking the facts is possible in theory, but impracticable in reality.) For example, if you tell me that you "feel" God's presence, then how can I ever justifiably say that you don't?The first form of knowledge is objective, the second subjective. Generally, you could, if you wished, apply double standards to subjective knowledge and get away with it, although this would be ethically dubious. But you cannot apply double standards to objective knowledge, because the facts provide the ultimate universal standard, available to anyone who wants to expose your attempt.This thread tries to expose the use of double standards in assessing the validity of certain religious claims. The fact of logic that ad hoc reasons do not provide valid explanations exposes people who jokingly use ad hoc reasons to fool children, but who demand respect when doing the same in order to seriously convince others.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Brenna, I don't know what that was all about, but it seems that you think we are having a fight or something. We're not, as far as I'm concerned.My repeatedly explaining the purpose of this thread is necessary, because people keep missing my point that it's not about the existence of fairies or God per se, but about the consistency of the reasoning behind the beliefs.And that includes you, as you have just proved.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

At the risk of invoking the wrath of Brennakimi, I'll restate my case.Picture some religious people with their children at the Fairy Tree. Let them be of the type that would say things like "if you don't feel the presence of God in your life, it's probably because you don't believe hard enough".Now they read the sign of the Fairy Tree. The adults smile at each other and have some fun with their kids, as the gardeners intended. Then I walk up to them, and ask them why they themselves don't believe the Fairy Tree story, like their children do. They say: "We all know that fairies don't exist, don't we?" "But," I respond, "the sign says that the reason we don't see them is because we have scared them off. Joking aside, isn't that reasonable?" They'll answer: "Of course not. If it was, you could prove anything."Maybe it's because they agree with the communis opinio, which is that fairies don't exist, that they conclude that something must be wrong with the reasoning, even if they are not as knowledgeable about logic and cannot name it as an ad hoc fallacy.But then they go somewhere and have a discussion about their faith and they commit the very fallacy they spotted at the Fairy Tree. I'm not making this up, it has happened to me. Not that I've met them at the Fairy Tree of course, but I have spoken to religious people who used this kind of argument to defend their faith. They were otherwise very sensible and intelligent people, whom I could reasonably expect to behave as I described above if confronted with the Fairy Tree.It's probably again the communis opinio, this time of a different community, that makes them oblivious to the mistake they make. Their belief is so unquestionable that it's somehow immune to the same kind of scrutiny they would otherwise employ to see through jokes like the Fairy Tree story, or more serious scams and deception based on the same abuse of logic.All I am wondering at is how this can be. I marvel at the apparent power that religious faith wields over some people that they lose their ability to reason well.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.