Is there evidence your god beliefs are true while other god beliefs are false?

[A Christian Sceptic]

You might not like me stating that so blatantly, but it doesn't make it any less correct. So I'll ask again - What would change your mind about the existence of god?

And I'll tell you again - I can't think of anything. You tell me what should. Maybe give me an idea of what should change my mind.

 

[articulett]

Either some invisible scientifically undetectable conscious entities exist or they do not--that is, they are all as imaginary as Zeus or fairies. There is no scientifically valid reason for believing in the former... yet believers do believe in the former... and they believe in particular versions which automatically exclude other versions. Not only do they believe in the former, they assign characteristics to their imaginary friends and claim to have access to some divine truths. That's just ridiculous. They don't believe each other's truth, because each has a truth invented in their own mind... god can be whatever makes you feel good or whatever you want to believe. You presume that you know some "truth" while you have rejected that means of knowledge for another. You reject Scientology and astrology for skeptical reasons... but you don't apply those skeptical reasons to your god. You cannot admit that the god you believe in might be as much of an illusion as Scientology's Xenu...

Keep trying to convince yourself... or the troll on this thread http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101899

You can't convince anyone rational that you are making any more sense than that doublespeaker... whom you may or may not agree with. But you come off similarly smarmy.

ETA: Christian Skeptic... I have re-read you. I guess I had thought you were saying that you looked at the situation skeptically and you've concluded that Christianity is true, and now you want to hone that truth. I guess you weren't saying that. Yes, there are ex-believers of all religions. I thought you were making the equivalent of this argument Tom Cruise could make, "ever since I've been using the principals of Scientology, my life has gotten better and more prosperous... that is proof to me that it works... that it's true... I will use my tools of skepticism to hone that truth and come to a clearer understanding of the truest truth of Scientology teachings I can find."

As you can see, that sets someone up for confirmation bias. If a visitor comes to your town at the same time as a natural disaster and you kill that visitor believing he brought the disaster... then the longer that disaster doesn't occur, the more you will think it's because you made the right decisions and that the disaster really was brought by that stranger. If the disaster does reoccur, you might look for the next person that needs killing. Once you have a belief based on a giant leap... your brain confabulates the truth is support of that belief... your brain is always trying to make sense of the world. Once Tom Cruise confabulates reasons as to how he knows Scientology is the truth, he will notice all evidence that confirms that belief and negate all other evidence.

Fundamentalist Christians are told that people will test their faith... so when they doubt, they think it's a "prophesy" fulfilled. Mormons are told to pray to know if the Book of Mormon is true and God will tell them... but that begs the question that there is a god and it's manipulative, because they are looking for signs and are likely to find them... and lots of Mormons get that sign... it doesn't make the belief true. I would like to think that some belief somewhere was more than this... but, like Randi, and many people here... I have just seen how easy it is too fool people... how people will grasp at stupid explanations rather than say they "don't know"... how some people cannot stand to think that they can be fooled in the same way that those they judge as foolish have been fooled.

I would like to believe that someone somewhere really believes something because it has a basis in some kind of fact or useful knowledge... but that just doesn't seem true. They all sound the same as my examples... as you. When something is true, like evolution, the data amasses like the decoding of genomes... when something isn't true, it's just semantics, and anecdotes, and tangential questions like Bigfoot believers and conspiracy theorists and crystal healing. Truth snowballs... scientists love amassing more knowledge and using that knowledge, but delusions just snowball in words and bs and nothingness and doublespeak.

I don't believe that objective truths can come through faith or feelings. I see no evidence that this is the case and lots of evidence that this is a major way people delude themselves.

 

[GeeMack]

Aren't there ex-Scientologists? Aren't there ex-Christians? If so, then apparently people can move out of beliefs and into others.

The only thing that we know by there being ex-Scientologists and ex-Christians is that people can move out of beliefs. It doesn't necessarily follow that people will move back into others. Your comment indicates that, after a whole lot of concise explanations, you still don't get it. Atheism is non-belief, lack of belief, disbelief, not believing, holding no belief, etc. And although there are surely atheists who believe there are no gods, and no matter that there are a lot of the faithful who can't seem to get it through their skulls, a lack of belief, the general position described as atheism, does not equal belief. Period.

Instead what I do is: I think I'll be sceptical of Christianity, therefore I will start looking at the parts I am sceptical of and start making some decisions on it.

I'm sorry if during that process I didn't come to the same conclusion as you, but I'm not going to toss it out the window until I have a reason to. So far, scepticism has only changed my views within Christianity.

Note my bolding. Yes, you will start looking at the parts you are skeptical of, but you'll blindly plod on through life refusing to examine the other parts. In other words, as has been mentioned many times by other participants here, your selective skepticism regarding your belief in magic means you aren't skeptical.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I've been busy in the Real World (TM) recently and have not had much time to follow this thread but, having read through it today, all I can say -- "Such a simple question. Such twisting foolish responses."

I'll return for more amusement when I have the chance.

 

[articulett]

And I'll tell you again - I can't think of anything. You tell me what should. Maybe give me an idea of what should change my mind.

Again... this is what makes you unskeptical. You are using the term skepticism to mean something more akin to confirmation bias. you are using words in funny ways to make the belief you want to be true sound logical to you. It's like Geemack said. Nobody claimed to know what should change your mind. Most skeptics don't believe in invisible immeasurable entities because there is no logical reason to believe in such things. You do. You apparently have decided that you are being profoundly honest and also skeptical by exploring whatever it is you are exploring in regards to your beliefs. To the rest of us... you are doing exactly what believers of things you don't believe are doing to shore up their beliefs. You have made huge leaps and presumptions and assumed facts not evidence to build up a fairytale that is internally consistent, but no more real or true than Scientology or Greek Mythology or Astrology.

Sure... you're as skeptical and honest as Tom Cruise would be in my example. And your belief is equally likely to be true and equally likely to be rejected by most skeptics. You believe that your beliefs are more logical and more likely to be true-- but there is no logical reason to believe that... you believe you are "being profoundly honest"-- we don't... we think you are being "profoundly unskeptical". You cannot admit to yourself that your beliefs are no more likely to be true than Tom Cruise's beliefs and yet you "believe in" yours... and not his. That seems a little dishonest. You dance around this fact, but that IS your position. Most skeptics would say you and Tom Cruise are equally deluded... because that's what the evidence shows!

And as Geemack said-- not believing in something... is Not a belief... although dishonest preacher men try to pretend it is... just like they pretend that Science utilizes faith (belief without or despite evidence) when Science utilize skepticism-- the opposite of faith along with the scientific method and an amassing of evidence in provisional support of a proposition.

It's not up to the person who doesn't believe in the thing indistinguishable from a myth or a schizophrenic delusion to prove that such a thing isn't real. It's up to those who believe in such nuttiness to present evidence as to why anyone should take their beliefs more seriously than Tom Cruise's beliefs or astrology beliefs or belief in leprechauns or belief that people are possessed. You believe in magic-- you have no valid reasons or evidence for that belief. You pretend you do while dismissing similarly unsupported beliefs. Prove to skeptics that your god is real and not the same as Tom Cruise's Xenu. There is no evidence I could give him to prove Xenu doesn't exist... how could anyone give you evidence of such? You cannot reason with faith. It's not Moby's responsibility to show you how you are deceiving yourself. His claim is that you are unskeptical. He has supported the claim as have you by asserting that you believe in something as unbelievable and unsupportable as Scientology and that you cannot imagine anything changing your mind.

To most of us, that's the opposite of skeptical. That's garden variety woo nuttiness... the same argument every woo uses to support whatever woo they think is true even though they never have any more evidence than you do.

 

[articulett]

I've been busy in the Real World (TM) recently and have not had much time to follow this thread but, having read through it today, all I can say -- "Such a simple question. Such twisting foolish responses."

I'll return for more amusement when I have the chance.

And the response twisters would recognize the foolishness of some other woo believer was using it... a Scientologist, Psychic believer, T'ai. They don't see how dishonest they are... how biased their application of skepticism when it comes to their own imaginary friends and unsupportable beliefs. To be a believer and a skeptic you are forced to play this semantic defensive word game I guess to keep the cognitive dissonance at bay. How can you be skeptical of other claims or dismissive of them, while believing equally unsupportable nuttiness? --By shielding it from scrutiny... and telling yourself that you derived your belief logically and not the silly way others have been fooled into really really believing similarly nebulous and unlikely things that make identical leaps in logic and begs the same presumptive question.

And when all else fails, demonize your opponent, ask tangential questions, toss out strawmen and pretend atheism is a belief and that skepticism is the same as faith. It is fun to watch the mental gymnastic they go through to keep their delusions alive. Maybe it helps keep them convinced. But to me it just quacks like a woo duck. Lots of words... nothing said. I can never find the point of what they say, and so I conclude they are playing a game in their heads winning points in a game as imaginary as their gods. They are doing what all woo do to keep from acknowledging their woo may not be true. They believe in things for which there is no evidence.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Few atheists would be willing to argue that musical beauty does not exist, is unreal, is illusory.. yet if asked to provide evidence (under the terms they have repeatedly applied to the OP) they'd be completely stumped.
Would that mean that enjoying music was 'unreal', delusional, wishful-thinking, a self-comfort dreamed up to soothe our fear of mortality..etc etc..?

Musical beauty is entirely subjective. There is no objective "musical beauty". Giuseppe Verdi, Mojo Nixon, Thelonius Monk, Ravi Shankar, Spike Jones, Hank Williams, Gyorgy Ligeti, Tom Waits, Dr. Dre: Can you objectively rate them in order according to the beauty of their compositions? No. You can only rate them subjectively. That is not to say that there aren't very real psychological reasons why people respond to music as they do. In fact, the great diversity of musical tastes supports the idea that "musical beauty" is a psychological phenomenon. So who is stumped when trying to address the nature of "musical beauty" again?

 

[Hokulele]

I will go one step beyond FZ's point and claim there is no one musical beauty. In addition to being subjective, music appreciation must also be culturally influenced and appears to be learned behavior. If musical beauty were innate to the human experience, any piece would be instantly appreciated by all people, rather than just a few, with others learning to like it (such as be-bop era jazz). I doubt you would see such a diversity of musical expression between cultures if weren't something dreamed up by individuals. In fact, the roots of music may be similar to the roots of religion as a type of self-comfort and self-expression (refer to the roots of American blues by black slaves).

 

[Foster Zygote]

I will go one step beyond FZ's point and claim there is no one musical beauty. In addition to being subjective, music appreciation must also be culturally influenced and appears to be learned behavior. If musical beauty were innate to the human experience, any piece would be instantly appreciated by all people, rather than just a few, with others learning to like it (such as be-bop era jazz). I doubt you would see such a diversity of musical expression between cultures if weren't something dreamed up by individuals. In fact, the roots of music may be similar to the roots of religion as a type of self-comfort and self-expression (refer to the roots of American blues by black slaves).

Yeah, ask a Kentucky bluegrass fan what he thinks of a famous Chinese opera.

 

[Hokulele]

Yeah, ask a Kentucky bluegrass fan what he thinks of a famous Chinese opera.

Or a Chinese opera fan what they think of Kentucky bluegrass.

Or pretty much anyone what they think of Gustav Mahler. (I like Mahler, and get picked on quite a bit for it.)

 

[articulett]

Geez no one would think "enjoyment of music is unreal"-- music is measurable, replicable, we can hear it... we can write it... it exists... so does enjoyment.... feelings exist... beliefs exist...

But none of these things means that invisible forms of consciousness exist-- not any gods or souls or anything like that... Those are inferences that are not supported by evidence. Woo always get opinions mixed up with facts. It's like they don't see why their analogies are so wrong and designed to prop up their god belief even though gods are not based in evidence... music and enjoyment of it are. Yes, music enjoyment happens in the brain and reflects an external source and perception of it. God belief resides in the brain, but there is no evidence of any external source that could account for perception of such. There's lots of evidence as to how people can be deluded and make wrong inferences about such things. Most people don't hear music that isn't there... that can't be detected by other means... that would be a delusion. The same goes for all gods.

 

[Belz...]

No? Why shouldn't it?

Because one doesn't follow from the other.

 

[Belz...]

Never mind, decided not to go down this direction ....

If you're content with the "Hitler was a Christian" and he's a great example of a Christian, that's fine. Doesn't seem that sceptical to me, though.

Well, 'tis a good thing that that's not what I said.

What I meant is that, contrary to what some people claim, Hitler was not an atheist. Sure enough, he had eugenics goals, but he WAS a Christian, and even made reference to religion a couple of times.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

I think Deists could answer the question in the OP with a 'yes', since their beliefs are almost entirely* outside the material world. I.e. that the universe exists and prayer has been shown not to have any effect, support their beliefs while indicating others are false.

*Apart from the belief in a soul and some Deists who believe God rewards good behaviour in the same life.

 

[Belz...]

Hooray, you are back to rational dislike of me rather than the irrational stuff that was hard to reply to.

You can see the thread direction any way you want. You think it floundered because of miscommunication. I have a different observation. It's been a struggle because there is a component of denial in those special rules applied to personal god beliefs. It stops the skeptic theist from going too far because cognitive dissonance is lurking nearby.

Of course in your case, I think it's mostly your cynicism here.

Silly question, Skeptigirl: is your avatar from the movie "spirited away" ?

I wanted to ask via PM but your box is full.

 

[Belz...]

If that was what I was concerned with - then yes, finding some sort of answer or forming a conclusion could very well be usefull.

Even if the conclusion is make-belief ?

So - as long as they are occasionally rechecking their faith in whatever I have no problem with them continuing their scepticism on other things or specific things once they have reached a conclusion on other things they were previously sceptical about.

When exactly do believers "check" their faith ?

Why can't people come to a different conclusion as you?

Because then they assert it as the truth.

 

[Belz...]

I see Herz brought the good old "morals come from Christianity" canard to bear.

How quaint.

 

[A Christian Sceptic]

Musical beauty is entirely subjective. There is no objective "musical beauty". Giuseppe Verdi, Mojo Nixon, Thelonius Monk, Ravi Shankar, Spike Jones, Hank Williams, Gyorgy Ligeti, Tom Waits, Dr. Dre: Can you objectively rate them in order according to the beauty of their compositions? No. You can only rate them subjectively. That is not to say that there aren't very real psychological reasons why people respond to music as they do. In fact, the great diversity of musical tastes supports the idea that "musical beauty" is a psychological phenomenon. So who is stumped when trying to address the nature of "musical beauty" again?

It seems to me all cultures have ideas that things are beautiful. They may not agree what they are, but there is a general sense that there is a thing called Beauty that they try to express / compare in the physical world.

 

[articulett]

It seems to me all cultures have ideas that things are beautiful. They may not agree what they are, but there is a general sense that there is a thing called Beauty that they try to express / compare in the physical world.

Yes, but beauty is clearly in the mind of the beholder. It appears that gods are too. But there is no measurable correlate on the outside. Visual beauty or music are actual physical things-- they exist... they are distinguishable from delusions or hallucinations of such things. Gods are not. But nobody thinks of their god as a hallucination or delusion... although by believing in one, they naturally categorize others as such. You don't believe in Scientologists, Xenu.... or Thetans. I'm sure you have good reasons for not believing in these things. But those same reasons could be used against your own beliefs. Your god is as likely to be a "delusion" as Xenu. From an evidentiary point of view, your god is no more logical than xenu or that someone's hallucination is based on something real that nobody else can measure in any way.

 

[Hokulele]

It seems to me all cultures have ideas that things are beautiful. They may not agree what they are, but there is a general sense that there is a thing called Beauty that they try to express / compare in the physical world.

As drkitten pointed out to you in another thread, beauty is something that can be quantified, analysed, and tested. The various elements that make something beautiful (whether it is music or flowers) can be separated and tested individually.

This cannot be said for religious beliefs, otherwise it would be easy to provide the scientific proof for or against god that you and others have requested repeatedly.