If I maintain the belief that 1+1=2, and I believe that whole-heartedly, are you saying I can't learn any other concept?

I do believe Bootyboy was saying that you have already subscribed to a set of beliefs and refuse to accept any other possible explanation, regardless of whether or not your belief has merit, or the evidence that contradicts it has merit. To compare your previous statement about your faith to your example of 1+1 being 2, if you were to say that 1+1=2 and nothing will ever make me believe otherwise, and then I provided absolute proof that 1+1 is 4, your response would be to ignore my proof.

"My beliefs and faith are set in stone."

If you believe a god exists, some sort of entity that appears to be powerful, where did IT come from? Wouldn't you think it would be harder, not necessarily impossible, to prove an entity suddenly existed and created the universe vs. inanimate reactive simple building blocks like energy to exist? So in theory, those who believe in god have a much longer way up the latter to prove a god exists, as it's a complex being (more complex than human!), than those who only believe in understanding the beginning of the universe as "building blocks" that created the universe. I vote for "let's understand the building blocks, we'll find the "entity" on the way if it does indeed exist".

Sounds like an argument from complexity. Dawkins sure likes it, but I don't find it convincing. We can't even define complexity absolutely enough to tell whether God belongs to the category. Who's to say God isn't inherently simple?

The bible suggests God had no origin. That is what we believe. He always existed.

Science, on the other hand, struggles with an explanation for the beginning of the universe. They suggest that "singularity" existed before the Big Bang, but no one has any clue as to why that was there to begin with. As a matter of fact, a lot of atheists as well as physicists don't even buy the Big Bang and singularity stories. Stephen Hawking has changed his story about a hundred different times because other scientists keep pointing out the holes in his observations.

This BBC article explains how a couple years ago, Stephen's claims were so wild that scientists were actually considering rewriting the laws of physics in order to make sense out of it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ hawking_prog_summary.shtml

Science is an attempt to understand the universe using things like physics and math. Thinking you could possibly unravel all the mysteries of this world and beyond using calculations and physics laws that were at one point being questioned is highly arrogant.

TPRoC wrote:

People could sit here for hours and refute whatever argument you come up with to support the existence of god; it isn't going to get us anywhere, because you simply refuse to change your preconceived beliefs to accommodate reality, and you have stated this clearly.

Atheists are no different. I've been on debate forums and YouTube videos arguing naturalists for about four years now and I haven't seen a single person change their beliefs. Your lot always claims to be the most open-minded, but that's as far as it goes. Claims. You never change, you never question yourself because you've already convinced yourself that a God does not and cannot exist and more importantly, you don't want him to exist.

Keeth and Jp have displayed the condescending behavior most atheists tend to share. "God does this, this and that to his creation, therefore he is evil and doesn't exist."

"Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?"

Science is an attempt to understand the universe using things like physics and math. Thinking you could possibly unravel all the mysteries of this world and beyond using calculations and physics laws that were at one point being questioned is highly arrogant.

I don't think scientists make this claim. They aspire to unravel the mysteries of the universe, but they don't necessarily believe it possible. With that said, science is nonetheless one of our more successful attempts in that regard, and it continuously develops. On the other end, Abrahamic religions haven't evolved much in the last millennia, and it is fair to say that though they answer many big questions science has not, they remain fairly obscure in comparison.

Woo, thread got longer. And also worse. :'(.

On the earlier ethics discussion, I'll just throw out my basic opinion re: what ethics/morality is because it's semirelevant and may be interesting to others. Note that my stance re: the nature of ethics is less strongly held than my logical positivism/materialism - that is, I'm less confident about my conclusions.

Ethics is the set of social norms/behaviours/etc. that are best for society as a whole, where 'best' here is vaguely defined as minimising suffering. As such, it is absolute (that is, there is an ethics), and universal (that is, ethics are the same everywhere), in much the same sense that mathematics is absolute and universal. Basically, the universality of ethics is definitional, as far as I'm concerned. Others may define the terms differently.

A few seminonspecific points that some people are missing:
- Not being able to prove or disprove anything does not mean all answers are equally good. You cannot disprove the idea that there is a teapot orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, for sufficiently small values of 'teapot'. That does not mean you may as well believe there is or not. The existence of anything other than yourself (And I would argue, the self) is ultimately unprovable. That does not mean solipsism is just as good as the position that there is a real universe.

I do not have to disprove a religion to (logically) not believe in it - consider that there are an infinite number of (mutually contradictory) religions, and I only have a finite amount of time to disprove them.

All current scientific theories are probably wrong, in the sense that they are not completely right. But their are scales of wrongness - as the line goes, Newtonian physics is wrong. Einsteinian physics is also wrong. But if you think they're as wrong as each other, you're wronger than both of them put together.

Belief/disbelief is not (assuming intellectual honesty) a choice. I do not choose to be an atheist. I simply see no compelling reason to believe, so I don't. I didn't choose not to accept Christianity any more than you choose not to worship Thor.

If you think I am biased, it'd be nice if you could maybe point out somewhere where I am giving an opinion undue weight (or undue levity!). Note undue. It is not 'bias' to favour the Theory of Gravity over Intelligent Falling.

Personally I don't see any condescension, but I'm sure you could read it in if you tried. To an extent there is a level of frustration that comes from running into the same poor arguments time and time again - if I had a penny for every time someone has said "You can't prove it one way or another, so they're both just as good!"...

Science works. If your philosophy or theology does not account for the way scientific exploration has uncovered so much about the universe, has improved our quality of life so much, has given us so much, in such a short amount of time, your philosophy or theology is wrong.

And, finally, if you think I'm wrong and you'd like to prove it to me, try to shoot down the problem of evil argument, because it's the single strongest postive argument against any omnimax deity.

The science comment was more generally directed at other people in the thread overall, rather than you specifically.

Logical postivism does not deny the usefulness of deductive reasoning. The PoE is almost wholly a deductive argument. Empiricism relies on deduction as much as induction (which is a form of reason). Basically it just means I think reason (including empiricism, which is basically reason) is the only means of finding truth.

Philosophy overloads a bunch of words in different places. Wittgenstein made some pretty huge criticisms regarding that.

Here I am using 'empiricism' in the sense of 'the scientific method' - i.e., hypothesis/test/refine. Basically, deduction/induction/abduction all wrapped up in one nice sandwich.

Toadfish wrote:

Ethics is the set of social norms/behaviours/etc. that are best for society as a whole, where 'best' here is vaguely defined as minimising suffering. As such, it is absolute (that is, there is an ethics), and universal (that is, ethics are the same everywhere), in much the same sense that mathematics is absolute and universal. Basically, the universality of ethics is definitional, as far as I'm concerned. Others may define the terms differently.

It seems you equate ethics with a variant of utilitarianism. This is a valid position, although I have to admit it's one I find repugnant. Attempting to bring impersonal calculations of utility into ethics sounds like an escape. It seems to me like a utilitarian might save a prominent surgeon instead of his son, if that surgeon could help enough people to balance the scales. This is not entirely on-topic, but if you're interested, you can find very good arguments against your position in literature.

And, finally, if you think I'm wrong and you'd like to prove it to me, try to shoot down the problem of evil argument, because it's the single strongest postive argument against any omnimax deity.

I apparently did not convince you, but I still think the best argument against this is that the problem of evil is simply not widely applicable enough. The only religion which arguably has an omni-benevolent deity (assuming ethics are, as you say, universal) which is also omnipotent and -scient, is Christianity. (Of course, my opinion being that ethics can't be universal, I don't find it applicable at all).

Islam as well. Considering that those are the two largest religions in the world...

I'm aware of several of the arguments against utilitarianism. I'm of the opinion that some of them stop working if you start thinking about situations in a prisoner's-dilemma kind of sense - sure, considered right now, killing that person and using his organs to transplant into these five sick people causes less suffering, but overall living in a world where people got killed for organs would be worse for everyone concerned, so we cooperate by not doing that.

Learning more about philosophy, I realized the mistakes in my above post. I may or may not revise it for the BYOND community, but in any case it was a learning experience and I grew from it.

Several points, namely through Toadfish, Jp, and Bootyboy have been incredibly beneficial and I continue to pursue learning and applying more logical methodology to my life. I appreciate the help, and whilst this post definitely marks my ignorance, I have no intention of deleting it until my blog becomes specifically for game design (if that), for a learning experience is always something good to reflect upon, even if I look upon it and laugh at my own stupidity.

I still have a lot to learn and appreciate the patience you all have provided. Look forward to future conversations with all of you!