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Can a Skeptic Believe in God? Responses to Panel Discussion

Dog said:
Do you beleive everything that everyone says?
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Chadd said:
Everyone might not be a liar... they just might be feeling different things, or whatever. That's why we have to take what love is, break down the definition... and measure it properly.
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It makes no difference whether some people are lying or whether the rest of the people are consistent in their feelings: something we call love still exists. Meanwhile, we haven't defined god, so we cannot tell whether it exists.

~~ Paul
 
something we call love still exists
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Well yes.. just as theists might claim 'something we call god still exists' because they 'know' and all these other people just 'know' it's true.

Perhaps you are thinking of love as a thing?
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It has to be a thing... or it is nothing lol
 
Mercutio said:
I did not hear it. Your description, however, does not surprise me.
That is all I will say.
Yup, I shoulda been on the panel.
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So, my dear Merc - WHY were you not there???? Since I don't care about labels I decided to relax and "enjoy" the panel. Considering Hal was outnumbered, it was quite a civil discussion, and I hope no one felt like he/she had to hold back. My surprise? When the audience was asked who "believed in God" in some form or other, about 1 in 5 raised their hands. :eye-poppi
This was a shock. I think people are on a journey and have to figure things out for themselves. Not everyone can be like Julia Sweeney.

Another thing that surprised me was that a couple of fellow-JREFers were concerned that the panel discussion might upset me in some way. I told them NO, that I'm secure in myself as a person and stand by the First Amendment. I also think atheists need safe havens to freely express themselves.

I wonder if a transcript of the panel discussion was taken. I didn't think of taking notes - I should have.
 
Chadd said:
Well yes.. just as theists might claim 'something we call god still exists' because they 'know' and all these other people just 'know' it's true.
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And they are right when they say "something we call god exists," as long as they define god to be, for example "a good feeling we get when we think of spiritual things." The problem is that they haven't defined what god is.

~~ Paul
 
Dogdoctor said:
The issue is what proof is necessary to believe something.
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Right.

Is it possible someone loves you? Is it possible a god like creature exists? I would answer yes to both. The proof would be quite similar for both. No clear logical evidence for either.
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Depending on your defintion of "god" we might already be in dissagreement here.

The proof would be quite similar for both? Well, maybe so. Only with peolpe that claim they love me the proof has been there for everyone to see! Everyone can see these people, touch them or punch them on the nose to verify their existance.

I can demonstrate clearly and beyond reasonable doubt that there are some people that might or might not love me.

Go on and show me that those Gods exist that might or might not love you. I won't be holding my breath.

Whilst you're catching up on that entire proving-that-god-exists stuff, I will write long essays on what I mean when I speak of love. I will then question the peolpe I demonstrated exist earlier on whether they would agree that they love me.

How's your proof of the existance of God coming along? Any progress so far?

I have now gathered a small group of people that claim they love me, based on some agreable and meaningful defintion of "love". Now comes the fun part where I get to be the sociopathic [rule8] and demand that they all prove their love. I am now drowning in hugs and kisses and perfumed love letters and chocoalte and pizza and Irish single malt whiskey and ....

well, anyways, I can show you peolpe that do the things and react in the same ways that you would typicially expect of people that love someone else.

Did you prove your god exists yet? Didn't think so. Well, I am off to enjoy my pressies ... ta-ta.

Rasmus.
 
paul said:
And they are right when they say "something we call god exists," as long as they define god to be, for example "a good feeling we get when we think of spiritual things." The problem is that they haven't defined what god is.
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They are only right if we can take their expanded definition of what god is and properly measure it. Much as those whom claim something we call love exists are only right if we can see their expanded definition and measure it (which can and has been done).
 
TheChadd said:
I don't think you can prove 'love' as a tangible thing exists until you define it...
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One can't prove something until it is defined? You seem to be suggesting words create reality, instead of the other way around.
 
Mercutio said:
There are Social Psychologists who have made a career of studying love. I have given behavioral analyses of love on this forum. Love, although a summary label for a wide variety of behaviors, is measurable (with the same constraints as any other variable--any given operational measurement is imperfect, although many operational definitions will converge on a consensus). God is rarely measurable. When we make predictions which depend on a god, we are then making empirical statements about god, which are thus testable. The difference is...when we operationalize love, it still exists. When we operationalize god...no such luck.
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Interesting. However love is human and tangible to humans whereas god is not human and may not be clearly tangible to humans. I was not aware that you could quantitate or measure love. I assume that all behavior that could be called love could be imitated and so there is no clear determination.
 
T'ai Chi said:
One can't prove something until it is defined? You seem to be suggesting words create reality, instead of the other way around.
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You cannot prove the existance of shwinkelduggers unless you have a pretty good idea what they are in the first place. How else would you or anyone else know that you didn't accidentialy end up proving that tuckermeers exist instead?

Rasmus.
 
No I am suggesting that until we define something we have no means by which to prove it as we have yet to codify what it is. I am not suggesting that something does not exist because we don't yet have a good definition, just that before we have a good definition we have no idea what we are there to prove.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
It makes no difference whether some people are lying or whether the rest of the people are consistent in their feelings: something we call love still exists. Meanwhile, we haven't defined god, so we cannot tell whether it exists.

~~ Paul
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ok Pick two people and prove that one of them loves the other.
Nevermind that lets see if love actually exists first. What is love? Can it be measured? How?
 
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Dogdoctor said:
Interesting. However love is human and tangible to humans whereas god is not human and may not be clearly tangible to humans. I was not aware that you could quantitate or measure love. I assume that all behavior that could be called love could be imitated and so there is no clear determination.
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You would be correct. Of course, one could assume that every psychology test ever given was responded to with lies. If you want, we can suggest that researchers in physics fudge their data, too. But...the truth is much more mundane. We can measure love. There is a history of development of scales to do so. As with any operational definition, any given one is imperfect, but we converge on consensus. There are scales we can use to account for some possible artifacts (social desirability, etc.)--there is actually quite a lot out there on the problems (and partial solutions) to measuring attitudes.

And we get much better results measuring love than, say, psychokinesis. And it is replicable.

As with most real things, the better our measures become, the more reliable our measurements are. The better our measures are regarding parapsychological claims...the smaller the effects.

As for god? We need a definition first.
 
The way it would have to be done would be that a definition of love would first have to be made... and then for each part of the definition, we would require some sort of range in which this persons feeling needs to be in order to qualify this as love. We then need a way to measure such feelings (definately possible)...

Anyway essentially what I would get to (i don't want to go all the way through my hypothetical experiment) is that once we have defined what love is and we can show that one person loves another according to the definition - it would not matter whether that person claims they do not love the other person... they would be wrong.
 
Dogdoctor said:
Ok define love first of all.
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As with any scientific endeavor, operational definitions vary, and as evidence is gathered, they evolve. That is what science does.

Robert Sternberg has proposed what is probably the most popular current definition of love, a tripartite definition that is replicable, falsifiable...yadda yadda yadda...and very popular with my students, too...
 
How can anyone say love exists or can be shown to be true if we don't even know what it is.
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That's why first we need a working definition before we can begin, however as mercutio has aluded... we do have some decent definitions out there.
 
It is hilarious to me that we have people arguing "you must define love", when the researchers who study it have been doing so since the early 70's.

Operational definitions don't have to be perfect, people, in order to be useful. Scientific progress is being made here. Perhaps a trip to the library is in order?
 
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