Here Jill, we'll make it easier for you. My belief in god is not like a belief in the tooth fairy, because a tooth fairy possess qualities outside of what it gives, outside of the hopes of a quarter under ones pillow, such as she has wings--a quality that the belief that source of comfort, the quarter under ones pillow, is not dependent on. 

My belief in God is not comparable to a belief in the tooth fairy, the belief can be made comparable to a person who believes that quarter will be under her pillow if she places her lost tooth their, even if it was her own father who brought it. Or can be comparable even to secular liberal believes that I find more fanciful than mine, such as the goodness of humanity, or the redeeming power of rationalism. 

A belief that a way can be made of not way, is drawing a contrast between despair and hope. for lives that bleed despair, void of hope in ones community, ones friends', neighbors (even if they are all very loving), technology, education, government, sciences, as was void of the poor blacks in the civil rights movement, the only hope that remains is unconstrained by these things, a way perceivable in no way. 

Such a belief has more in common with a child who believes that if she places her lost tooth under her bed, she'd be comforted by quarter in the morning, even if it were her own father who did so. Such a belief has more in common with some atheists belief of rationalism ridding the world of human cruelty the power of rationalism making men more moral, than it does with a belief in a tooth fairy.

For me it's rather simple, I believe all that I do good in life is not in vain, that loving humanity is not a wasted effort, that there is always hope, even in misery. Even if science doesn't lead us to conceive of such hope, even the cleansing power of liberalism doesn't do it for us, even the nature of man doesn't give us hope, that hope is still present. God can only symbolize whatever makes such hope possible. 

 

 

 

 

Tooth fairy: Brings comfort. God: Brings comfort.

Tooth Fairy: Parents perpetuate idea by making the tooth/reward exchange. God: Parents perpetuate the idea by demonstrations of belief.

Tooth fairy: No evidence for it, probably doesn't exist. God: No evidence for it, probably doesn't exist.

They compare exactly.

As for the rest of your post: It sure sounds like you just said that liberal/rationalist belief is more like tooth fairy belief because both bring tangible results, as opposed to god belief which brings only spiritual results.

I'm OK with that.

I maintain hope, even when "liberalism" fails, because I understand the mechanism of the failure. I don't need a sky-fairy to maintain that hope - symbolic or not.

"Liberalism" as a fanciful belief? How cynical do you have to be to think mankind can't improve itself?

 

Thanks Jill, for this time giving me more than a sentence. 

The distinction here is that God doesn't bring comfort in and of himself. Think of theist family saying grace before dinner, thankful to God for the food that's in front of them, it doesn't matter that God didn't rain down that food from heaven, or that the mother made and brought the food to the table, the family is grateful and comforted that they have food to eat. 

Let's think of the quarter under the pillow again, this time replacing the tooth fairy with God, the difference between the two is that the belief is not dependent on God himself putting the quarter under the pillow, in fact the father can put a quarter under the pillow. The comfort in God would be a belief that there will be a quarter under the pillow, but how it gets there is irrelevant to that belief. While in the case of a belief in the tooth fairy, it is relevant how the quarter got there. 

My parents could have been completely absent from the equation, and I would still have a developed a god belief, solely on the reflection of suffering, hope and meaning. Nearly all, if not all civilizations have developed God beliefs by the same reflection. 

Unbelievers have this weird notion, that theist  present God's existence as some sort of scientific hypothesis, like a claim that God exists under this rock, and if we lift up that rock we can verify his existence. But I'd wager you a $100 to the charity of your choice that you'd be hard pressed to find theist whether fundamentalist or not who make such claims. God has an inferred existence, like we would infer from a painting that someone painted it, and the only evidence for that persons "existence" is the painting.

I had unbeliever tell me sometime ago, when asked what it would take for him to believe in God, and he said if he prayed and saw Lamborghini fall from the sky with his name on it. Verifying if God has two arms or not is irrelevant, questions of his composition are irrelevant, a scientific verification of how this God exists is irrelevant, but his existence would be inferred from the Lamborghini that fell from the sky. 

If you read my above post to Hiswillness you can see what I infer god's existence from, from a life that has a narrative form, for it. 

I have no idea what you mean by spiritual results, since all the results for me have all been tangible, my hope is evident to me, manifested in the power of forgiveness, of love, servitude to others, humility, reconciliation,  etc.. all of which continually affirm my faith. A triumph over whatever sense of misery and despair that was once there is a tangible result, and in my view a spiritual one as well. 

Who said mankind can't improve itself? The question should be will it? And the question more important would be if so, by what means and what do you mean by improvement? Secular liberals of the civil rights era believed that racism and prejudice would succumb to education and the american creed, that was a fanciful belief. 

To me improvement of humanity, is moral progression, which I believe is possible, just not by any secular liberal ideas, or secular humanist ramblings. 

Can you fix this sentence. 

Please, tell me how, "having hope in despair", to believe no matter how hard our struggles are, if we strive on in hope, it will work out, is a belief in a nonexistent thing? Anymore so that beauty is a nonexistent thing? 

It seems you've been ingrained too much by pseudoscience, giving too much credence to memetics, which completely ignores the role of self-awareness and ones own subjective experience of the world. Religion, is a particular worldview, that is continually shaped and brought into question by ones own experience of it, a child is never 100% transplant of his parents religious views, as his ideas are continually shaped by his own self-reflection, and experience that differ from theirs. 

When I was a child it was easy to find myself at unease with the church, as my own experiences in life differed radically from those of our typical parishioner. As my own questions in life, brought on by internal self-reflection, left the religion as told to me in my youth, wanting, and easily dismissible. And it was those questions in my internal environment that very late in life brought me back to belief. 

Uhm....ok.....

Even when we make claims based on data, on evidence, our interpretation of the evidence, is a claim that the evidence reveals a pattern that validates it. Since evidence doesn't speak for itself, we have to recognize a pattern with it, to validate our truth claims. Yes finding a design pattern in the cosmos reveals that we infer patterns, but any claim we make based on data do. Such a claim can be, that the data reveals a pattern that infers an intelligence behind it. Like if we looked at two rooms that were changed since last night, there would be a distinction in the patterns of being changed by an earthquake that hit last night, and one in which everything was intelligently moved to different walls. We can make logical arguments in opposition to such inferences from these patterns, i.e. "no, the patterns created by the data don't reveal an intelligence behind it."

Someone replied here, that I tend to repeat my points several times, more than he sees as necessary, but when posters on here respond with barely thought out claims, you kind of have too. 

Uhm only if such a claim implies we can validate it as such. I can make a claim such as beauty exists, hope exists, but what sort scientific  evidence would I have to validate beauty existing? And even though beauty exists, can't a rational person still reject what i find to be beautiful? As I said before, I believe life has a poetic quality to it, a narrative, it would be silly for me to believe this without a belief in God, because God symbolizes that which can give life such a quality. I can coherently explain why I see life as such, and yet you wouldn't have to find it poetic or beautiful yourself. 

A sort of delusion among these parts, assumes that when someone makes a rational claim, that he is also making a scientific hypothesis, that a rational claim is one in which i compel you to believe in as well. Only positivists think that "rational" means scientific. As Terry Eagleton explains it: "For my claim to love you to be coherent, I must be able to explain what it is about you that justifies it; but my bank manager might agree with my dewy-eyed description of you without being in love with you himself."

Uhm, I doubt you do, since you seem to expound a Richard Dawkins school of thought, rather than a thought that is any sense informed by "how the mind works" learning of the composition of beliefs. If you had you'd probably sound a little more like humanist psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, than parroting the dopiness of the Sam Harris like. 

So please, don't BS me with your claim of understanding how the mind works, because nothing you've presented so far displays that. Someone who claims that a belief in God is similar to belief in a toothy fairy, know as much about the mind, as someone who claims dinosaurs walked the earth 6,000 years ago knows about science.

To summarize an actual understanding of how the mind works (Erich Fromm): Self-awareness creates a dichotomy in human beings, and lacking the ability to act on instinct alone, "we require a frame of orientation, a worldview, an object of deviation." 

God serves as the object of deviation, a way or orienting our instinctual desires that we oppose, to how we perceive we should be. God serves as an axle of the worldview, emblematic of what the worldview represents. 

Sort of like in the writings of Paul, as he describes an instinctual will, in opposition to a will of how he should be, longing for what he knows is bad, as an early reflection of the internal dichotomy of human nature: "I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want (Rom 7)." Elevating Christ to the status of God, creates Christ as the object of deviation, as symbol for how we should be, and a pivot to turn from a believers perception of wrong ways to right ones. 

Well, at this point I get to be more specific, since I'm a Christian, and God is not some sort of black hole, but revealed in Jesus Christ. 

Those persons you speak of may have made those sort of changes, but what was the object that led them to deviate from their previous ways of life? My fulfilling sense of life, reflection on misery, and it's new found hope, is a narrative, the gospel narrative of suffering and hope. In seeing the person of Christ, I'm confronted with it means to truly live, in a person who did know how to truly live, in a beautiful, remarkable, and powerful sense of life. While unbelievers can admire Jesus, only a believer can be empowered by him, as our King, our idol, our image bearer, our God in all that he can ever mean for us.

I claim Christ as the truth, the way, and the life, how can you argue with me that this is false under your previous premises? I can coherently explain why I perceive Jesus as such, even though I may not get you to agree with me. To afford such a claim on Christ, is to claim Christ is God to me. 

 

Not what I meant. God and the tooth fairy are the nonexistent things.

Straw-man. I don't subscribe to memetics. Were you to be the one and only person to have come to the conclusion that there is a god - making the belief purely from internal sources - then you'd not be a religious man, but delusional. But your beliefs are the result of both internal and external events. The specific belief system is external, however, coming from a book and a society's general belief in that book.

There is a significant difference between paradolia and a well tested theory. Surely you can see that the jump from "there are patterns everywhere" to "it must be designed" is fallacious?

It's silly to think that things like "beauty" can't be evidenced. And that quote doesn't seem to support your assertion that a rational claim need not be evidenced. In the quote, all that has to be established in one is in love. Why that would mean making others fall in love escapes me. There is a difference between the qualitative and the quantitative.

Ad hom, eh? (To be clear, you've attacked me for parroting Dawkins and "BSing" rather than just disagreeing with my arguments.)

There are plenty of world-views one could use as the root of the conscious dynamic that don't involve imaginary beings.

And for all that, the fact still remains that both god and the tooth fairy are products of the imagination. Abstract ideas that have some use to us, but do not necessarily represent the optimum method for dealing with life.

You appeared to forward a claim that god is inferred from the apparent design of the cosmos. Paradolia is the false sense of pattern - in other words, seeing signs of a designer in the intricacy of DNA (for instance).

It's confusing to me how you seem to say you belive in god as a being one post, and as a symbol the next.

The fellow assuming "a painting had a painter" in inferring design from the human form is having a moment of paradolia. It only becomes similar to the tooth fairy once he establishes a belief in the designer itself without evidence of the designer.

Kent Hovind.

 

You may make the $100.00 donation to your most local children's hospital. Please post the charitable donation receipt in this thread for confirmation after you've made the contribution.

Thanks.

And what is his actual claim, that falls under the criteria that I asked for?

Convicted fraudster Kent hovind believes (and promotes the belief of, through a lecture series he used to sell) that the Bible represents a scientifically accurate portrayal of the creation of the universe, Earth, life on Earth, etc. He even established a theme park (Dinosaur Adventure land - see www.dinosauradventureland.com) portraying humans and dinosaurs co-existing with each other, strictly based on 'evidence' from the Bible.

 

The list of people who actually believe that creation is a scientifically viable answer to the formation of the Earth is, frankly, huge. Hovind is merely the most notorious example.

Hey, chief?

 

I fixed your post.

 

EDIT: I erased the changes to your post. Apologies for that particular emotional reaction.

My opinion of you remains unchanged.

You're attempting to dance around the issue. I didn't come here to argue against a retard's notion of how things came to be.

 

You posted a pledge to donate $100.00 to a charity of my choosing if I could produce the name of one Christian (fundamentalist or otherwise) who believes that there is testable empirical data supporting God's existence. I produced said name. Now it just turns-out you were usin that as an empty to ploy to play a semantics game you feel is clever.

You never actually intended to donate $100.00 to anybody.

 

That makes you an asshole fraudster who can't put their money where their mouth is.

That more or less concludes my interaction here.

 

EDIT: For the sake of completion - I used to go out an canvass for donations. It was actually great work, but the downside was running into assholes like theidiot here every 5th or so house; guys/girls who never had any intention of donating anything, but would lie and say they'd make a contribution if you could answer 'X' question (posed rhetorically). Stupidly thinking that human beings were pretty decent, I'd often actually attempt to answer said question only to then have them spring some argument they thought was particularly clever from the obvious answer to the rhetorical question, which they posed just to feel good about themselves.

It's fucking ignorant scumbags like theidiot who essentially lay the groundwork for failure in developing countries for the sake of their smug grins.

I have to disagree that it is safe to infer anything that way. Once might postulate that, because something appears designed that it may have a designer, but in oder to take the step to the inference you need more evidence. To take that last step without evidence is to risk having been tricked by your own natural aptitude for pattern-matching (paradolia).

Since we don't need a designer to explain all these patterns, we can omit the hypotheses safely until (and if) we find some evidence of that designer. Parsimony.

Yes - they both make the assumption of an agent behind the scenes without evidence for that agent.

If you infer a painter from the pattern that is the painting, then yes, that is irrational. If you infer a painter because you see the pattern that paintings have painters, then you're being rational (though using something of a shortcut because we can't confirm every little thing.)

I'm weary of answering this one because I smell an emotional charge about it. Please pardon this cautious answer:

"Hope in despair" is not like beliving in the tooth fairy in that it does not posit an agent. However, such hope may not be reflected in reality - that is, what you dispair will not change and there is no "real" hope.

On the other hand, because we really can not know a situation so completely that we can with any certainty make such a declaration of hopelessness, the most rational choice is to maintain hope so that we can maintain our wits and faculties, lest by our own inaction we permit any "real" hope to pass.

Have you read Truman Capote? Salman Rushdie? If you're really stuck, you can check out Wikipedia's list of atheist authors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists_(authors)

Of course. That's because the hope you describe involves the production of some invisible elements that you can't exactly guarantee.

It amazes me to say it, but it seems you really wouldn't understand. I don't usually say that, but I've tried to convey the hope to you before, and it just doesn't seem to stick. Okay, one more time: there is always hope. Hope is just a different way of looking at the world. Hope is a survival technique, and sometimes it's a lie. We can't know the future, so it's not as though the lie is malicious, it's just the best way to keep us from panic.

Sorry, I'm not sure what you're answering there - are you saying an atheist with hope isn't much of an atheist? That seems a weak argument from someone who's never been an atheist before.

Well, its good to know you know how to snip out his post, and not understand what he said in context. But I'm not going to correct that for you, you can do that on your own.

An atheist who believes in an enduring hope, a hope that is always there, even in misery, would be as odd as an atheist who believes the cosmos have an intelligent design behind it.

 

 

Not until you're past your expiration date.

This took a turn for the surreal, did it not?

 

TheIdiot, Why have you not yet addressed my argument for being hopeful in the face of misery without the need for a god?

Ah, well Jill don't take it as me ignoring your argument, but it's been a busy day, and it's easy to take a few second breaks to write a response here and there, but it's not so easy to take a longer break that would be required to write your response, being that it would be a bit more lengthier than one or two sentences, and require a bit more thought to articulate decent enough. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for humoring me.

Partly my genes.  It is empirically demonstrable (and very well demonstrated, I might add) that people with hopeful attitudes are more functional in society.  That's a fancy way of saying that "hopefullness" is a selectable trait.  Since it aids societal functioning, we shouldn't be surprised that a societal species (humans) has become pretty much ubiquitously hopeful.

It should go without saying that only highly intelligent creatures can have any kind of long term hope, but somehow, I feel like I need to say it.

Anyway, I'm not sure that's exactly what you were asking, so I'll tell you what I think you want to know.  Personally, my experience and observations make me hopeful.  I've observed the world as well as I can, and people as thoroughly as I care to, and based on my knowledge of the past and present, it seems very likely that my future will be basically ok.

My genes can't change.  Until I die, I will always be a member of a species that is prone to hopefulness.

Sure, the world could change drastically at any time.  I doubt it will, though.

Enduring hope?  You mean, something I consistently hope for?  I hope I have a happy life pretty much all the time.  I have always hoped for peace as opposed to war, health instead of sickness.  I hope we figure something out instead of fossil fuels.  I hope we don't kill all the whales.  I hope my friends have happy lives.  I hope I don't get cancer.  There are a lot of things that I feel pretty certain I will always hope for.