Who won the Collins-Dawkins Debate?

I've always had tremendous respect for you and your arguments, TL, and at times I've felt that if anybody could convince me of the inherent merit in religious belief and faith, it would be you. I'm telling you these things so that you won't interpret my next remarks in any tone but the one in which I'm writing them - a somewhat sad resignation to a truth I'd known all along.I think this post of yours really hit it home for me - religious belief and faith are about our own need for the things that happen to us to have meaning, whether they really do or not. You know? When millions play the lottery, one of them has to win, and the balls don't care whose ticket is the winning one. One ticket is the same as another is the same as millions to everybody who didn't win.But the winner? It's impossible for him to see it as chance. I mean you can look up public statements by people who win big in the lottery and I doubt you'll find more than a tenth of them that will ascribe it to chance instead of to a gift from God, or some kind of divine plan, or karma, or some other form of purpose in the universe.It's impossible for a lot of people to reduce life-changing events to chance; it's impossible for a lot of people to see themselves as data points in a population instead of, essentially, the only human being in the universe who matters.That it's impossible for them to imagine, though, does not mean that it isn't true; and every now and then you can watch someone viscerally retract from the idea that the things that happen to them aren't the result of divine purpose. You can literally watch someone decide that something is true because they want it to be true, and I felt that your post was one such moment.I apologize if this has been hard for you to read because I've always had a lot of respect for your belief, your reasons for it and the arguments you've put forth about it, and I've always enjoyed reading it when you talk about your community and how you live. And I hope you don't stop doing those things. But in this post, I think you really convinced me of my atheism. Maybe not your intent and I hope you won't think less of yourself for it. From my perspective, you gave me the chance to see something true, and I sincerely thank you for it, with no sarcasm or ill intent.

I was just worried that I was about to come off like "nya-nya, you're fooling yourself and you just let everybody see it, 10 points for the atheist team." I wanted it to be clear that my remarks were intended to share a moment of clarity that your post had, perhaps unintentionally, stimulated in me; not to score rhetorical points by striking at what you hold most dear.Luckily for me, you're of a charitable spirit, so clearly, you didn't even consider reading it that way. But, you know, sometimes believers take it personally when their personal life stories don't convince others to believe. My parents are kind of like that and so I don't really talk about atheism with them. Their church teaches them to see my differing beliefs as a personal failing on their part.Anyway, thank you for responding to my post with your characteristic humility. I think there's an incredible power that comes from human community and fellowship. Friendship, even. If faith in God is what it takes to unlock that power in your community, well, more power to you. For my own part I hope to find it through some means that doesn't have religion's pitfalls, but obviously it's not my place to tell your community how to live.

Not everything is knowable, and not every question has an answer. Answering those questions, as you would, with a method that produces knowledge indistinguishable from make-believe doesn't seem reasonable.How could that possibly be a path to truth? Can it be known if a given event occurred at random, or because God decided to answer a prayer? No, of course it can't, so coming to any sort of definitive conclusion one way or another must, by definition, be an exercise in self-deception.Anybody can make stuff up. And anything at all can be made-up. That alone should lead us to great distrust of putative "knowledge" that doesn't come as a result of rigorous inquiry.

I wonder if anybody is following the Sam Harris/Andrew Sullivan debate on Beliefnet? The debate between TL and Percy echoes Harris and Sullivan's counterpoints to an uncanny degree. Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan on Faith, Religion, Tolerance, Moderates, Bible, God, Islam, Atheism, Jesus, Christian Nation - BeliefnetI highly recommend the debate; perhaps it could serve as a model for our own discourse here.

IMO? Either learn to live with uncertainty, or recognize that if you choose to come to a conclusion at this point, you're just picking the answer you like best.I, personally, think that's unlikely to be a legitimate path to truth. But I guess some may disagree (again, by jumping to the conclusion that they like best: that "there are other paths to truth.")

I guess, but I'm looking at your path, and I don't see it leading anywhere special. And you've chosen to give me an insight into your thought processes (which I posted about, as you'll recall) and it doesn't look like a process that leads to truth, to me.I'm not here to tell you you're an idiot, or something; just that I could never be convinced by what seems to convince you.

I don't understand how this isn't a contradiction. Isn't that exactly what Harris is saying? That if you take a given proposition, even a Christian will probably require evidence commensurate with its improbability to accept it; but if a similar proposition is labeled as something to be taken on faith, suddenly that requirement for evidence is unnecessary?Indeed, faith doesn't require evidence. Isn't that Harris's point? I mean, why should we allow faith to be an exception to the requirement that extraordinary claims (like "God exists) require extraordinary evidence?