----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Minette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2002 10:57 PM Subject: Re: Atheism Re: CD's
> 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. This bit came across a bit stronger than I intended. A more nuanced statement is that this type arguements against religion typically tacitly assume scientific like proofs are used for everything else that we assume to be true. The fact that we assume the direct vivid experience of being conscious, unseen by anyone else, is valid shows, IMHO, that other things are accepted without emperical proof. Dan M. > 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. >
