What a tit.
"Do you believe in God" is an absurd question! Why? Because.....
by Mr Fool 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
-
cofty
Mr Fool. At what point does somebody become a "believer" in your opinion? If I'm 51% sure there is no god am I a believer or am I stil humble? How about 52%? 60%, 80%, 90%, 99.9%?
What I'm trying, and failing, to say is that it is a virtue to weigh evidence and come to conclusions that are comensurate with that evidence.
Faux humility that pretends that nothing can really be known is paralysing.
-
slimboyfat
I think there is a difference between saying I "know" something and that I "know something for a certainty".
When it comes to evolution for example. For all practical purposes I agree that it is "true" in any conventional sense of the word. And it's worthwhile learning about it, and scientists who study it do a valuable work, whereas Creationists who denigrate it are wasting their time and everyone else's.
But am I 100% certain about evolution? No. How could I be? There are so many points where the knowledge chain could be weak. Has the evidence been interpreted and communicated completely accurately? Could new evidence overturn current knowledge? Are we looking at things in a human-distorted fashion that we cannot appreciate from our perspective?
It's not faux humility to acknowledge that, no matter how convinced we are about something, it's still always possible we are wrong.
-
rmt1
The recent Mars origin blip is an example of terrestrial evolution being up-ended. I think it's nonsense. I believe it's nonsense. I conjecture it is some planetary scientist who unconsciously devised a new way to get funding for a sexy theory that finally garnered testable evidence. I roll my eyes at it sternly, but I cannot know he may not be onto something.
-
Mr Fool
When it´s about God, I have made a journey - when I was young I hoped that God exists - later I went into a belief that God exists - much later I had a wake-up-call and questioned my belief - now, a few years later I´m not humble (and will probably never be), but I have the experiences of how it is to have a deep belief. But because I had a biased view when I was "in it", I was too blind to realizing it back then. I thought my path was the true way of life, but it was wrong. That belief made me even more arrogant (then before) without seeing it. (That´s also one of the main reasons why I´m so interested in these things)
To your question, Cofty, "51% sure there is no God". What about the other 49%? Do these 49% contains a counter-belief that there is a God? Or something else?
Personally, the question "does God exists?" for me it´s 50/50. Maybe, maybe not. I don´t believe in either of the sides.The best word I can use is that I´m neutral. (I will not use the word "open" again). What I have learned is that at least I don´t wish to go back to that believing state again, because that made me "bad to worse". And that´s a fact I have proven for myself afterwards.
Slimboyfat described it very well: "I don´t believe in God but I´m open for the possibility that he may exist"
-
-
-
rmt1
Hi cofty. I don't know who you address with some of what you assure. So since I can't fit the shoe, I don't wear it. In the event you were assuring me that evolution is a fact, insofar as responsible qualified scientists agree to act like grown ups and settle upon an undersanding that requires the least number or least size of black boxes, well, then I have to say thank you.
-
cofty
I was addressing you rmt when I said the Mars hypothesis concerned abiogenesis not evolution. The clue was when I prefixed it with your moniker.
Without getting pedantic about the definition of fact, theory etc it is not controversial to assert that evolution is a fact as sure as anything that can be known.
There are many details that are unknown.