D'rok
Free Barbarian on The Land
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DtL, I hope you don't mind if I ignore your post...
....seeing as you are just part of the Mobydic...er Seven circle jerk.
Feel free. Just call me Deistic D'rok.
Proof of God
- Thread starter Dustin Kesselberg
- Start date
Feel free. Just call me Deistic D'rok.
Lonewulf
Humanistic Cyborg
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DtL, I hope you don't mind if I ignore your post...
....seeing as you are just part of the Mobydic...er Seven circle jerk.
Always a good reason to avoid answering a legitimate argument.
Senex
Philosopher
D'rok
Free Barbarian on The Land
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OK. Aside from your prickly demeanour, you are making some valid points:
1. Magical thinking is not exclusive to religion
2. Magical thinking occurs in the non-religious
I think that in a roundabout way you have admitted this:
1. Magical thinking occurs in the religious
Here's what you are not addressing:
1. Magical thinking is a necessary, if insufficient, condition for religion
2. Religious magical thinking is poor thinking, just as non-religious magical thinking is poor thinking.
3. Since magical thinking is a necessary condition for religion, religion is characterized by poor thinking
4. Poor thinking should be criticized and corrected.
Exactly; you're the one claiming that god exists, so the burden is on you to provide the evidence. Yet you're saying that's impossible.
Thank God the man survived.
Lonewulf
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Thank you, D'rok. You have put the points forth far more eloquently than I could.
Herzblut
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And I dislike the German weather, indeed. For me personally, magical weather claims are therefore highly important.
Provide evidence where I called you fool!
I called you ignorant. I proved my judgement to be valid. "RTFM before you call helpdesk support to answer your questions" is a notion I happen to sympathize with.
Pointing out your ignorance is a true statement of facts, dont let me re-re-repeat the evidence, no condescension.
I am above all and everything, you are right.
Oh, oh, oh. Rational thinking, first lession: if A is independent from B, then A cannot exclude B because in this case there was some kind of dependency between A and B to perform such exclusion. It isn't that difficult, right?
Start with defining "religious thinking" by providing references. Explain why you use this unusual term instead of the common "religious belief".
Oh - I know. It is because we talk about "magical thinking" and you hold the magical thinking that whatever sounds similar actually IS similar.
Poor little Lonewulf. No, no, no. It is not. Believe me. #sigh#
Then provide evidence to your claim.
Good luck - fingers crossed!
Yeah, right. What about this bloke, Carl Jung, and his popular "research".
http://skepdic.com/magicalthinking.html :
Two of the more obvious examples of magical thinking are Jung's notion of synchronicity and Hahnemann's notion of homeopathy .
http://skepdic.com/jung.html :
synchronicity
Synchronicity is an explanatory principle, according to its creator, Carl Jung. Synchronicity explains "meaningful coincidences," such as a beetle flying into his room while a patient was describing a dream about a scarab.
Yeah, right Carl.
The scarab is an Egyptian symbol of rebirth, he noted.
Hey Carl, very interesting!
Therefore, the propitious moment of the flying beetle indicated that the transcendental meaning of both the scarab in the dream and the insect in the room was that the patient needed to be liberated from her excessive rationalism.
Ehh... yes. Amazingly convincing science, Carl.
His notion of synchronicityis that there is an acausal principle that links events having a similar meaning by their coincidence in time rather than sequentially. He claimed that there is a synchrony between the mind and the phenomenal world of perception.
Did you ever get a therapy, Carl?
Carl Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist
No, no, no! That can only be wrong. He must have been a catholic priest or something. Because magical thinking is held and propagated mostly by religions, we all know that!
Jung believed in astrology, spiritualism, telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance and ESP. In addition to believing in a number of occult and paranormal notions, Jung contributed two new ones: synchronicity and the collective unconscious.
Yes! Here we go! A typical catholic! Claim proved!!
According to psychiatrist and author, Anthony Storr, Jung went through a period of mental illness during which he thought he was a prophet with "special insight."
Here we go again! Typically catholic!! Man, I hate these catholic sickos. They are all they same! Religion IS evil. If Jung is not a prove, then what?
Huh? What religion, you ask? What you mean by "what religion"? Bonehead! They are all the f***cking same! Why dont you get it?
What? He was a protestant? SO WHAT? This is all the same anyway! You just dont get it, you stupid protectors of an insane idea.
What? Magical thinking? That IS what all religions are made up of! It's ..eh.. "religious ..eh.. thinking". Or whatever. Who cares. Anyway, religions ARE the root of all evil. Just look around, you blind fish! That already proves I am right!
Studying? Man, you are a pain in the ***. Look, why shall I study anything that is just damn obvious. TO EVERYBODY!! Except to you tolerandish idiots, of course!
And next I'm gonna prove that the magical concept of homeopathy is actually nothing else but ..eh.. "religious thinking"! Actually - ALL malicious thinking is religious in the first place. We all know that. Just look around.
Herzblut
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tsig
a carbon based life-form
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Actually had a personal relationship with Jesus, but he broke it off.
It would seem that way, yes. To clarify - you are using it incorrectly.
How should I put this simply: You're wrong.
If there really is a god, then there should be some evidence for it somewhere. If the type of god you postulate is one that cannot be found, has left no evidence, and who has absolutely no effect on the world, never has had an effect, and never will, then certainly one cannot prove that god exists.
This, however, conveniently ignores two major points: First, that concept of a god is most definitely NOT the god of any major religion - generally, when people believe in a god that god has some sort of effect on the world, for example the god may have created the universe, or the god may answer prayers, or the god may be responsible for thunder. Second, that concept of god is USELESS. You have postulated a god that has not done and will never do anything. Applying Occam's razor ("Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.") one can do away with this concept of god immediately, because, well...this god doesn't DO anything.
To help explain why we can (and in fact, should) apply Occam's razor to a situation such as this, imagine the following scenario: Someone is explaining alpha-particle decay to you, and they provide you with an explanation that is scientifically correct. However, on top of that explanation, they provide you with an additional piece of information: That alpha-particle decay only occurs because inside every atom there is an 'atom-fairy', and the 'atom-fairies' decide when decay is to occur. Not only that, but the 'atom-fairies' are completely undetectable - no test you could run would ever detect the presence of an 'atom-fairy'.
The 'atom-fairy' hypothesis is perfectly consistent with what we observe when we study radioactive decay - after all it is exactly the same theory, just with 'atom-fairies' added! As such, you would be perfectly within your rights to discard the 'atom-fairy' hypothesis - you would be discarding an 'unnecessary entity'.
The same example holds true for god. The do-nothing exist-nowhere god is the easiest to dismiss first using Occam's razor, after all, it is by definition an unnecessary entity! From there, one can move onto claims such as, "Evolution is true, but god guided it." Ignoring for the moment the fact that 'guided evolution' would not actually describe what we see when we study evolution (i.e. It isn't actually progressing towards anything, it's just a process unto itself.), invoking god in a situation such as that is once again unnecessary: If one removes god's influence from the equation, it doesn't change anything about evolution. Occam's razor sweeps in again and declares that god has no hand in evolution!
However, if you postulate the existence of any other type of god, one that has at some stage in the past had an effect on the universe, then if god exists we should be able to find evidence for the existence of god!
The same issues I discussed above are relavent here. If you want to believe in a god that does nothing, is defined as being impossible to detect and without which the universe would be exactly the same as it is anyway, go for your life. Occam's razor disagrees, and so do I.
Also I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that for both the positive and negative claims above, the evidence you are looking for is the same in both cases: Regardless which claim one makes, you will end up looking for evidence that god exists. This should immediately tip you off to the fact that the burden of proof is on the person making the positive claim! Speaking of which, would you kindly stop asking me to provide evidence for the existence of god? Rhetorical or not, it's bloody silly to ask someone for evidence of something which they believe does not exist!
It certainly seemed that way, in that you were asking for proof of god's non-existence. This is identical to asking a person to falsify an unfalsifiable claim.
Yeah I know:
The statement "there is no god" is falsifiable.
It is falsifiable simply by finding one instance of a god.
The really ironic thing here is that if you had not included the "
" then, you would have been correct. That you seem to think that this is ridiculous is puzzling to me - what in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster do you think is incorrect about the above?That is great for science, and I am all for it.
But you have yet to show that the statement "there is a god" is simple to prove true and that the statement "there is no god" is simple to prove false.
Hint: all you have to do is find one example of god.
Ugh...again, and this is getting ridiculous. I do not have to find one example of god, because I am not claiming that god exists! Moreover, finding an example of god would not show that it is simple to prove the statement, "There is a god," and disprove the statement, "There is no god."
The proof that it is simple to prove/disprove those statements is, quite obviously, the fact that one only needs to present ONE (counter)example to prove/disprove the statement.
That no one has provided evidence that god exists is not proof that my statement that proving the existence of god is simple is false. If anything, it further suggests that there is in fact nothing there to prove the existence of!
And....
and....
and....
....oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were going to find me an example of god.
Why on earth would you think that? Not only have I never said that I would do so, I have on many occasions now stated that I do not believe that god exists! It is beginning to seem as though you are willfully missing the point...
1) I wish to prove the existence of perpetual motion machines.
2) I must falsify the negation of that statement - that is "Perpetual motion machines do not exist."
3) I must find an example of a perpetual motion machine.
I dunno, I'd simply go from (1) to (3)
And in practise many people do. However, the principle I was trying to demonstrate was falsifiability and why it is important. Moreover, when one thinks of things in terms of falsifiability it is much easier to determine where the burden of proof lies. This is because, as I pointed out earlier with my "flat earth" example, occasionally describing something as a 'negative' or 'positive' claim can be misleading. Far easier is to check for falsifiability of the negation of a claim: If the negation of a claim is unfalsifiable, then the claim is a negative claim, and cannot be proved. If the negation of a claim is falsifiable, then the claim is positive and can be proved.
It was not the proof itself I was trying to demonstrate, but rather the process that underlies the proof.
Except that you have misrepresented what I said. The word 'assume' has more than one meaning, and the meaning I implied was not, "To authenticate by means of belief," but instead, "To take on a position."
I apologise for not being clearer about this, I thought it was a clear implication. Regardless, that sentence did not mean what you thought it meant.
But here you are back to claim.
Of course I am. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I was always going to be going back to a claim, regardless of whether proof was found or not - it is simply a case of which claim I end up going to.
1) In order to prove that "there is a god".
2) I must falsify the negation of that statement - "there is no god"
3) I must provide evidence that "there is a god".
Just go from (1) to (3).
Again, already covered. I wished to explain not only the proof, but the underlying process at work.
It still doesn't change the fact that the burden of proof is still on the claimant who states, "There is a god."
Because there is no need to, and because it lends unwarranted credibility to the claim, "There is a god."
Were someone to ask me about fairies, I would not say, "I don't believe in fairies," because that carries with it the double implication that: 1) There are people who believe in fairies; and following from that 2) That the hypothesis for the existence of fairies has some sort of element of authenticity to it (because people believe it). It carries that implication because the subject of the sentence has been changed from 'fairies' to 'me' - I was asked a question about the existence of fairies, and I responded by stating that I do not believe in them. Instead, I would maintain 'fairies' as the subject of my reply, and state, "Fairies do not exist." From this it is just a short transposition to the existential statement, "There are no fairies," which has an identical meaning to the previous statement.
I do the same with god for exactly the same reasons. I see no reason to give one imaginary being preferential treatment to another imaginary being. After all, if neither of them exist, it is nonsensical to say that one is more important than the other!
Well, "conservational convention", why didn't you just say so?
Would have saved a whole lot of verbiage.
Because you cannot build a house from the roof down. There are problems with the foundation of your understanding when it comes to critical thinking, and simply telling you that it is a conversational convention would not have really solved any problems - more likely we would have ended up talking circles around eachother. This way, hopefully, we can fix the problems with the foundation also.
In a way, yes.
Forgive me for being curious, but in what way? From reading your post, it doesn't seem as though your position has changed greatly. For example, do you understand now why one cannot prove a negative? And following from that, why the burden of proof falls upon those who claim, "There is a god," and not on those who claim, "There is no god."?
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Herzblut
Master Poster
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To definition and deployment of the term "religious thinking".
You had used the term belief in relation to religion exclusively. After I came up with magical thinking, you all of a sudden invented "religious thinking".
Lonewulf, what reads alike is not alike by some kind of magic. But don't worry, I understand where that comes from.
Try what? I am awaiting with exitement your evidences provided in favor of your claim that the majority of religious claims are based on magical thinking.
Fingers crossed!
Herzblut
Paulhoff
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That there is a big daddy, mommy and/or daddies, mommies in the sky and all the other magic branches from there. They have any powers you what to give them and/or believe that they have and don't have to prove it.
Paul
Herzblut
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Yeah. Right. Just: where exactly do you locate some notion of thinking?That there is a big daddy, mommy and/or daddies, mommies in the sky and all the other magic branches from there. They have any powers you what to give them and/or believe that they have and don't have to prove it.
Paul
What do you think thinking is? Believing is the same as thinking, you think?
Counting is kinda thinking, right? Well, counting maybe 2-3 claims in your post, of which religion are those the majority of all claims?
Herzblut
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Lonewulf
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To definition and deployment of the term "religious thinking".
You had used the term belief in relation to religion exclusively. After I came up with magical thinking, you all of a sudden invented "religious thinking".
Lonewulf, what reads alike is not alike by some kind of magic. But don't worry, I understand where that comes from.
The claim comes from the very evident claims that almost all religions make.
You seperated protestant from catholic in your post above. Both subsets of Christianity. Then there's Judaism and Islamism, all have very core claims that fit within magical thinking. They all believe in a monotheistic Sky-Daddy, and act like he truly exists, spending time to give him prayer, to give him time in churches (or the equivalent thereof), thinking that Sky-Daddy will reach down and change reality to make their little lives more bearable, more survivable, and in the end, grant them immortality. How is that not magical thinking? Is it just wordplay to you? You change the words, so it becomes magically "non-magical"? That miracles become more "real"?
A virginal birth occurs, as a miracle. This is based on... hearsay, right? No evidence for it. Yet it's believed to have occured -- a virgin birth to a woman, which is an anomaly, an impossibility by everything we and science knows. This birth was a result of a god, who supposedly divinely impregnated her with his Son, Jesus.
That, right there, is all of Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant.
Then there's prayer. You linked to me a bunch of links involving magical thinking. Have you looked up Gambler's Fallacy? To quote:
Like, say, thinking that probabilities of survival increase because you pray to Sky-Daddy?
But wait, maybe that's not right. Gambler's Fallacy might not be it. How about this? The Law of Truly Large Numbers? I hear the claim that something was a "miracle" or "miraculous" because the only explanation for such an astronomically unlikely event was that Sky-Daddy came down and "fuddled" the event. Yet... there you go. Magical thinking.
Actually, I think the burden of proof is on you. List a single religious-based claim that isn't based on magical thinking. Please. Just one.
If you can provide one, we can move on from there and see just how it is that you think that you're so much smarter than stupid ol' me.
Herzblut said:
Adequately representing my viewpoint and giving a refutation. You are so much more knowledgable than me, so go ahead and show it already.
Show this stupid Wulf how the Great and Mighty Herzblut knows so much more. Fingers crossed!
Herzblut said:
What? You want me to quote it again? Okay.
Do you have any religious claims that are NOT like the above? Or shall we systematically move down the line and you show me how the listed are not "magical"?
Keep in mind that without virginal birth, the afterlife, and Sky-Daddy doing the Genesis with the universe, there would be nothing to Christianity or Catholocism, or Islam, or Judaism (though the latter part is more focused on the afterlife and sky-daddy).
If you cannot adequately refute the above, then I could easily claim that the core beliefs of Islamism, Judaism, Christianity, and Catholicism are based on magical thinking. Let's see here... the populations based on these statistics of world populations involving religion...
Hinduism has 900 million adherents, but I'll focus on that later. For now, I'm tackling the Big Four.
Though Judaism doesn't have a lot of adherents, so I might as well disregard that for now as well.
Let's see here, that's... 3.54 BILLION adherents (about) that subscribe to a system of faith that, at it's core, is based on magical thinking. So when I say that the big religions are based in magical thinking -- I'll be proven right.
Now, the majority of religions is more debatable; I would have to move down the list and demonstrate them one by one.
Does Scientology count, you think?
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Paulhoff
You can't expect perfection.
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Thinking has nothing to do with believing, unless now you have to play the word game to make a non-point, like a straw-man question.Yeah. Right. Just: where exactly do you locate some notion of thinking?
What do you think thinking is? Believing is the same as thinking, you think?
Counting is kinda thinking, right? Well, counting maybe 2-3 claims in your post, of which religion are those the majority of all claims?
Herzblut
Believing (not thinking, none is needed) in a big whatever in the sky, is magical thinking.
Paul
volatile
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Here's the other member.
(I'm glad wolfgirl's not around)
Pssssh, no need to be rude, BJ!
I just wanted you to conclusively disprove aether... I note you failed to do that, and you also ignored, yet again, the issue of falsifiability. I've tried, MobySeven's tried... you're still missing it.
All we're trying to show you is that the same reasoning you show "disproves" aether also "disproves" God. It does nothing of the sort, of course, but it should help clarify what side of the fence you should be on. You don't believe in aether. Apply the same critical thinking skills to the God hypothesis, and you'll have it.
We can't disprove aether. We can't disprove God. But I know where I stand, and quite firmly, on both of those questions. Why do you only take a position on one?
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Herzblut
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No, it is honest deployment of the phrase "magical thinking" to me.
Magical thinking is empirical, observation based reasoning. It is trying to detect rules of nature by concluding causal (mostly temporal or spacial) relationships. Thus, it is thinking. Analysing those conclusions scientifically, magical thinking does not necessarily lead to a maximum of accuracy. Nevertheless, it has been a highly valuable method of humans to gain valid knowledge about nature without which our species would have had no chance at all to survive.
Nowadays, magical thinking can be found systematically in pseudoscience - see again http://skepdic.com/magicalthinking.html and the links therein. The typical fallacies of magical thinking (e.g. holding coincidence for causality) are predominant assets of pseudoscience, not religion. Science, same as pseudoscience, aim to add to and progress our knowledge of the world. Religion does not.
I tried to give a description about the core notion of magical thinking.
Again, Lonewulf: your vague notion that "magical thinking" is any human notion you suspect to be "magical" is magical thinking in itself!
Or at least blatantly unsubstantial speculation.
How to overcome that? Studying. Forget your magical "awareness", study.
Talk to you thereafter, Lonewulf.
Herzblut
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Lonewulf
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Herzblut said:
So using God to explain the creation of the universe and the world, that prayer = higher likelihood that you can survive car accidents and be healthy (the Vatican is big on prayer, just see Dawkin's Root of all Evil for an example), that's not thinking and has no interest in "knowledge of our world"...? Prayer has nothing to do with, say, Gambler's Fallacy, an example of magical thinking? You're saying that I was utterly wrong with that?
Huh. Who'da thunk it.
So there's no religious claims that try to explain our world. Good to know.
Either way, you seem to be only perscribing to a single psychological definition or somesuch. I'm not. Faith subscribes to the "magical", to the "miraculous", to the "unproven". That is magic, it is magical. That is when I say that they think magically, that they subscribe to "magical thinking".
I am not a psychologist, so I do not use every word as the term that psychologists would use.
Thus, your posts have throughout this thread have been meaningless.
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