then they should agree that there must be an intelligence behind the intelligence of our natural laws. But isn't that absurd? Its got to stop somewhere, so why don't we stop before we get to Gods. There is obviously no way to prove which God it is if they are not going to present themselves, so we might as well say, there is no God. If we ask a God to present itself unambiguously to us and it doesn't, isn't that exactly what we would expect if there really wasn't any God? What difference does a God that does not interact make anyway?
Committing to a hasty conclusion does not make one stupid.
I have read that 40% of American Scientists believe in God. It doesn't make them stupid or ignorant, it just means they've come to a hasty conclusion.
Stephen Jay Gould is reported to have said
"Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs"
That is a fallacy. It is a false dilemma. Did Gould mention WHICH religious beliefs? The contra to that are that his peers are not stupid and religious cosmogonies are not compatible with evolution. Potentially, Gould has an 80% chance of believing in the wrong god among his peers that believe in a god when you consider the following.
I think the reported 40% is a little high, but I'll go with it. It depends on how the question is asked, and which god it is that they believe in.
I'm sure that some percentage of Hindu scientists believe in a Hindu God, some percentage of Christian scientists believe in a christian god and so on and so on.
So of that 40 percent, break it down by religion, and it must be divided by the number of faiths, so if there are 5 equally distributed competing faiths in that forty percent, then only 8% are right if a god exists.
So how can the remaining 32% of believing scientists be wrong if they are so smart and a god exists?
Potentially, that is 80% of the pool of 40%, and overall 92% of scientists that don't believe in the RIGHT god or any god at all.
The 32% of believing scientists have OBVIOUSLY come to a hasty conclusion haven't they?
Smart people are not immune from social and political pressure or their natural bias to confuse complexity with intelligence.
It just shows that they haven't thought about it critically enough to catch up with their unbelieving peers that make up the majority or they have determined that if it doesn't make a difference, then they are better off lying about their belief, or the survey question or results were misinterpreted.
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The premise of your entire arguement is wrong. If fifteen blind men said a blue car was green, does it automatically become green? No. It remains blue.
As someone said: "Maybe the atheist cannot find God for the same reason a thief cannot find a policeman."
Hi jemurgor,
you need to work on your analogies.
How is a thief similar to an atheist?
so which god are you fond of?
http://thestarofbethlehemmovie.com/
Physics, in particular, Astronomy, tells us what God's name is. Watch this documentary of an research done into the astronimical star charts and history. This is a great opinion into Who God is.
Hello ole' buddy
"He doesn't interact with us anyway"
What if God told you, Lee, you are the only part of creation I made with the ability to interact with me? You are set apart from all other creation, made in my image and I set eternity in your heart(insides)just so I could communicate with you?
Although its so obvious even the rocks will cry out.
Damn I'm gettin all preachy ass in my old age. I really just wanted to come by and say hi. Mr. Loftus has you linked.
Hope all is well, feenocorbaggr
i want to get a clear understanding of your blog so i will attempt to further indulge in it at a later time. however, if you don't have a interaction with
God. Then how do you know about God?
If you get right down to asking many scientists who claim a belief in god, you will find them disavowing any particular denomination and if they claim to be a christian, and you start to ask them specific questions regarding typical christian beliefs, they end up revealing that they actually believe in the 'god of the gaps' tho few admit to that by that name. We invented god to explain things that we did not have an explanation for and as each thing GETS a scientific explanation, we push god out of that. "God didn't really create everything as it is, evolution did that and he merely provided the starting point," they will say. Physicist will tell you that matter, particles and their parts, take up 5 percent of space of somesuch tiny number so god can reside there in the unknown part. They point to things we DON'T know and say god must be there. It ends up being a reluctance to give up totally something they were taught by people dear to them. It is a laziness of thinking very deeply about it, for example, writing down what they actually believe item by item to find that there are contradictions that cannot coexist like the all-powerful and all-loving and the judging gods. And it winds up being a fear ultimately of taking a stand AGAINST it. So they push god far into the gaps so they can cliam to still beleive, but when you look at that invisible non-communicative non-participating non-responsive god, you have to then ask if it is relevant at all. If that god of the gaps is irrelevant, then isn't that about the same as NO god and aren't then we all really atheists? I suspect a huge percentage of that 40 percent are gappers. Nearly every scientist or even science teacher I have talked to is a gapper.
Smart people are not immune from social and political pressure or their natural bias to confuse complexity with intelligence.
Are you not biased in your atheistic viewpoint of the world?
The foundation of your argument itself is flawed. It's not technically a matter of "whose god is right" but a matter of "What is God capable of?".
All those scientists that believe in God find science to be a strong witness to the evidence of a higher being. Now Who that higher being is...depends on the religion. But the commonality is that complexity in science is so, that there had to be a higher being behind it.
Do you ever wonder, if there is a God---maybe JUST maybe, he might have enough power to limit your intake of knowledge about HIS power?
HI Te le ma Maria,
thanks!
I have imported this blog from DC, and I am almost finished with relabeling and cleaning up meaningless tags, but I will be posting something very soon. I have lots of material that wasn't really appropriate for DC sitting unused in my Googledocs, so it will take little effort to polish them up and publish them.
HI Feeno, kemarias, Reeza
This isn't Debunking Christianity, so I'm afraid you are going to have to define which Faith Group and God you're talking about before we can go forward.
There are thousands of Gods currently in use, but I can discuss them categorically, and some of them in detail.
Here's a list that I'm prepared to talk about right away
- Neanderthal burials
- Shaman sympathetic magic
- Mythology of Ancient Asia Minor, Indo-Aryan, Near East, Egyptians, Greeks, Roman, and some other that I can't think of right now similar to those
- Hinduism, depends on the sect but Generally, Henotheism between thousands of Gods with Vishnu as an Avatar coming to earth at least nine other times, the last time as the Buddah or Brahma worshiped as Brahma, Shakti, Shiva, or Vishnu.
- Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda
- Judaism, Yahweh,
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- Christianity, Yahweh as Jesus
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- Islam, Allah,
- Scientiology, Xenu
- Wicca, The God, and the Goddess
Excellent comment goprairie
Hi Chris,
we are all biased in some way, the important thing is to try to minimize the degree to which our bias prevents us from properly mapping our perception to the real world.
For example, if I were racist, then my bias would prevent me from getting an accurate picture in my head of anyone belonging to the race that I don't like.
We have to cross-check our perceptions with various other external sources to ensure that we have "triangulated" to an accurate representation of the real world in our head.
If I think that all blue eyed people are untrustworthy and lazy, then I really should base that on data and not what my daddy told me. I should compare what my daddy told me to as much other data as I can get my hands on in a practical amount of time. I should take into consideration what I experience, what other people experience (friends and strangers), and some statistical or demographic information from some independent source.
If brown eyed people think blue eyed people are lazy, and blue eyed people think brown eyed people are lazy, then both groups of people have a misconception somewhere that doesn't map properly to reality.
Hi Lee so glad seeing you bloging again.I agree how silly it seems to try guessing gods,just because we dont understand some things about life and what might come after.In my opinion guessing gods seems to me to have many more dangers than say guessing about the weather or why lightning might happen etc.
This might connect in some way to goprairies thoughts.'Hell' as an invention of the church http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=SF6I5VSZVqc
Hi Feeno you said..."What if God told you, Lee, you are the only part of creation I made with the ability to interact with me?"
Surely god needs to be able to talk freely with any of us if he exists,people often die sometimes from sickness sometimes often just in freak accidents.Surely it would be almost impossible for gods to be quite sure to get their word through to us,by only relying on needing certain people to help do it.
Hi Gandolf, feeno,
I could have pointed out that he thinks hes communicating to "his" God the way the Neanderthals thought they were "communicating" to the spirits, then inform him that according to DNA samples compared between humans and neanderthal fossils, the two are distinct and could not interbreed.
That means they were another type of human.
So that would mean, in his world view, that he would have to accept that the bible left out the "fact" that god must have created at least two sets of humans capable of "sensing" things outside the world.
And he may be as deluded as the neanderthal in thinking that his he communicating with his "spirits".
Either may be deluded and/or not be the "right" type of human.
;-)
I've got plans for an article which is an "introduction to Neanderthals" which will address all that. Right now I'm working on finishing an article about similarities between Jesus and Krishna. Unfortunately, i got bogged down with having to provide background on the Hindu scriptures.
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