----- Original Message ----- From: "Marvin Long, Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "BRIN-L Mailing list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2002 4:14 PM Subject: Re: Atheism Re: CD's
> On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Dan Minette wrote: > > > In other words, if you pressupose naturalism; then you can prove beyond a > > reasonable doubt that religion is wrong, right? I cut the rest of your > > arguement, because it appears to presuppose the conclusion. The real > > question is whether you can presuppose that naturalism is the only vaid > > understanding of reality. > > More to the point: You have to decide what "reason" is before an argument > about reasonable doubt can have any meaning. As far as I know, all > arguments for or against religion and or God (in the classical western > sense, at least) assume a framework of reason in which the answer is > presupposed in some way. > > The question is, which framework is better at explaining the world in > general? It seems to me that an atheist can choose a framework that > explains what and why religion is without contradicting the rules used to > explain how a TV works or who was at fault in a traffic accident. The > religious apologist, however, is obliged to make assumptions of a kind > that one is not allowed to make when explaining other kinds of phenomena. But, religion is not about phenomenon. Religion is no more a phenomenon than my awareness is. Again, you just presupposed naturalism, and that guaranttes the victory for the athiest. Lets look at some other things that, at the very least, a significant number of rational people believe in. 1) People are responsible for their own actions. 2) People have a choice in what they do. 3) The assumptions of the Declaration of Independance 4) Other people are self aware 5) Someone actually cares enough about me to freely sacrifice something for my benefit. None of these are proveable emperically. I also don't think they are irrational beliefs. > In order to sustain these assumptions, one must rely on faith as I define > it: a recurring and ongoing willingness to invest belief in that which > seems impossible or unprovable by the standards by which we understand > everything that is *not* religious. Not everything. Everything emperical. None of what is given above is proveable. > > So I need to ask you a question. If atheism represents a kind of faith, > then what is faith? That, except for self-awareness, which is no more needed than God or free will to explain phenomeon, but is accepted by virtually everyone, things that are not part of a model of phenonon are known to be false. Besides the problem of the one exception, there is a problem with realism itself. Realism has an extremely hard time reconconciling itself with modern phyiscs. AFAIK, the leading realistic interpretation of QM is MWI. MWI assumes that a plethora of undetectable universes are created every split second. And this is the best that realism has to offer. Other interpreatations posit real hidden violations of SR or backwards in time signals. > Before we argue more we should come to terms. What > is faith? Faith is belief without proof. >What is reason, if believing in God is rational? Reason is the process of going from accepted postualtes, using accepted rules, to arrive at conclusions. >I need definitions if I'm to understand what you say. What is religion? > Religions aren't a homogenous bunch, after all, and we cannot assume that > people living in different belief systems are going to experience faith in > the same way. >What kind of faith does atheism represent? Knowing that God does not exist, instead of simply saying "I dunno." > > Let me ask you one more question. Are you ready to discard everything else > > that can be argued against in this manner? The list is a lot longer than > > naturalists are willing to face. I find it very ironic that they run from > > the logical conclusion of their arguement. > > Please list them for me so that I can understand where you're coming from. I threw out a few already. Do they make sense? Dan M.
