by wobble 128 Replies latest watchtower bible
What I fail to understand is why the 'burden of proof' seems to be on creationists to provide undeniable evidence of the existence of an intelligent creator?
Because there is no need to prove that something does not exist. I do not need to prove that Unicorns, fairies or gods exist, it's up to believers of those things to prove it to me!
There is a teapot orbiting the sun, just like the planets do.
PSacramento - No I haven't read the book but I have heard Dinesh debating it. The evidence for NDE is dreadful. Susan Blackmore more a career out of trying to find good evidence for it and finally gave up.
I know its not a reason to dismiss the content of what he writes but I find D'Souza to be thoroughly obnoxious, he waffles about pseudo-scientific stuff he doesn't understand. His favourite word recently seems to be "quantum" as if it gives him credibility.
This life is all we get - but since we are here at all we are one of the lucky ones.
My evidence.
Christ.
Christ is all the evidence I personally need, but there is more
awesome!
I actually believe in Dragons, I am telling you I have seen them. oh and in magic...magic is awesome!
When I was a believer I was also smart, intelligent and rational..... So if I had those attributes why did I believe in God? Because I hadnt tested honestly that subject. I had been shown that I wasnt really testing it. I was being misled.
But due to the same desire to be rational when I was showned that I was not testing all my knowledge I realized how wrong I was.... Had I been irrational I would still be a Theist.... but thats just me.
Great comments all.
I am not substantially more intelligent or more rational as an atheist than I was as a believer and certainly my passion and core principles are unchanged. If I claim that religious belief is irrational I cannot square my current stance and if I claim that atheism is the more intelligent option I undermine myself since I am fundamentally unchanged.
As a believer almost everything fitted well and I employed my intelligence to build very sophisticated reasoning for my belief - this worked well for 35 odd years.
With the vast amount of information presented to me every day I have to choose / accept some heuristic to short cut the filtering of it all. This has meant I have had to privilege certain information and being an emotional being I have generally chosen that which caused me the least mental pain and provided the greatest felt reward. There was a time when I would get very teary and full of gratitude when I contemplated Christ or experienced the spirit and I 'knew' that I was experiencing the love of god and that I was being changed into a different person. When I felt such overpowering emotion it would have been illogical - according to my selected facts - to assume it was anything other than divine.
So where does that leave me? I think that religious belief and atheism have no great claim to intelligence or logic since neither are the cause, in other words it is possible to be thick as a brick and disbelieve in any god and likewise you can be the most logically minded professor and still give oneself to a divine idea. I would like to suggest that given a blank slate rigid logic would not lead to religious belief and secular intelligence would render faith in impossible stories untenable. Since we only get one blank slate in life , and our parents scribble all over that, it's difficult to retrospectively apply logic and intelligence and come to a probability weighted conclusion.
So the most difficult challenge is the one posed by the mirror and the most difficult question is to ask, am I wrong? Deconstructing oneself is the first step to accepting the painful but enlightening path that logic, unencumbered by prior magic based beliefs, leads. The logic is only as good as the inputs however, and intelligence is only as helpful as bias allows it to be. Oh and a realisation that however special you feel your magic experience is, it's not. Where logic and intelligence leads is a whole different matter - for me it's an awe filled material world that we are just beginning to understand and which any god cheapens and makes immoral, but that's just me.
With greatest respect to those posting on this thread, I still haven't heard a successful counter to my "burden of proof" argument (above).
Because there is no need to prove that something does not exist. I do not need to prove that Unicorns, fairies or gods exist, it's up to believers of those things to prove it to me!
First of all, the unicorns and fairies thing is Dawkins language, and more than a bit patronizing if I may say. Most creationists don't believe in unicorns and fairies, and the idea of an intelligence being behind the formation of the universe is in no way comparable with fictional creatures hiding at the bottom of the garden. Here is a famous Douglas Adams quote used by Dawkins:
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
Gardens are, by definition, a landscaped outdoor space. Just as unfathomable as a belief in fairies would be a belief that the hedges cut themselves, the lawn mowed itself, the gnome sat itself by the pond in a fishing posture, I could go on... To my mind, the only ones who have the burden of proof are those who choose to be dogmatic. Insisting that something exists is dogmatic, just as is insisting that something definitely does not, or could not exist. That's why I choose not to be dogmatic, because that frees me from the requirement to prove anything. You can call that "lazy" if you like, but I prefer to call it "cautious" and "patient" in the absence of irrefutable evidence.
Being dogmatic isn't in itself a bad thing, provided you are unquestionably and verifiably correct in your claims beyond ALL doubt. For example, we can all afford a little dogmatism when it comes to the Watch Tower Society's claims that it is God's spirit-directed organisation in accordance with scripture. It is demonstrably not what it claims to be. Its guidance, which it claims to be spirit-directed, has proved to be false over a course of many decades. The "increasing light" doctrine holds no water when examined under close scrutiny. Moreover, according to the scriptural criteria set forth in Deut 18:20-22 - it is a false prophet, because the things it has prophecied have not come true. I have just given an irrefutable argument that no Witness can argue against without appealing to emotional reasoning, twisted words and mis-applied scriptures that are used to prop up the "increasing light" doctrine, such as Proverbs 4:18. STILL - I would never call a Witness unintelligent or irrational for still failing to come to the correct conclusion, because most Witnesses are simply misguided and misinformed by what is essentially a cult.
Turning to the argument of creationism v atheism, I am not dogmatic either way because my opinions aren't well-formed enough. I can see arguments for both camps, and it's something I'm still in the process of researching, however I'm in no rush (and frankly, I can't see what all the fuss is about). My reason for not being dogmatic is this: I don't have absolute and final irrefutable evidence to lead me to either conclusion, and in the absense of this I prefer to keep my options open and read up more on the matter. If people feel the need to be dogmatic because Richard Dawkins tells them they should be, then they are very welcome to this. I just can't understand it personally, and I have yet to read anything that anyone has written on this forum to convince me I am wrong for being passive and open-minded on the subject.
Cedars
I don't have absolute and final irrefutable evidence to lead me to either conclusion, and in the absense of this I prefer to keep my options open and read up more on the matter. If people feel the need to be dogmatic because Richard Dawkins tells them they should be, then they are very welcome to this.
That is extremely patronising.
You are undecided becasue by your own admission you don't yet have enough information. Like others I do have enough information to be absolutely certain that every living thing on this planet evolved from a common ancestor through a completely unguided process.
Why do you dismiss my position as "dogmatic because Richard dawkins" says so?
Sometimes though Cedars, a story that involves talking animals, cosmic trickery, a garden of delights, galactic battles, winged flying humanoids and 4,500,000,000 km3 water ( since disappeared) has to be treated with the same weight as fairies and unicorns?
Most creationists don't believe in unicorns and fairies,
BUT.....they believe in gods (which I deliberately incorporated into my answer), which have as much evidence as Unicorns and Fairies. I could have used any mythical being. I know people who believe fairies exist, I ask them for evidence too.
Your reference to Dawkins and the garden argument is are straw man arguments, it is not what I said.
Fact - I see no evidence for fairies.
Fact - I see no evidence for Dragons
Fact - I see no evidence for God......
Show me the evidence!
