Can theists be rational?

[Bri]

IOW, it's not that it's an irrational guess or that she believes it unlikely, but the double standard of considering one likely with no/little evidence to support that particular belief and then turning around and condemning theists as irrational for holding their particular belief because they have no/little evidence to support them. I can't recall if you were of that opinion, but certainly there are posters here who feel that way.

Yes.

That's fine. I consider the guess that there is a god to be equal to the guess that there is no god. Neither is rational nor irrational. We are faced with a choice once we look at reality, so we choose.

I agree. Others who have posted on this thread seem to disagree.

When it comes to personal gods, where the gods exist only be means of dualism, that is a different situation -- that is not rational because dualism itself is not a completely rational position. It might be correct, though.

What definition of "completely rational" are you using? A common definition is "not incoherent." If it might be correct, then it's not irrational by that definition.

Certainly, there is little if any compelling evidence to support the notion of dualism. But that doesn't make it necessarily irrational to be of the opinion that dualism is correct, at least not by any definition I can think of.

-Bri

 

[Paulhoff]

All of this is speculation on your part. Reasonable speculation, sure, but speculation nonetheless.

With that speculation, I would then have to speculate that you are a person, or you are only one person posting using that name etc.

Unless you can prove that the universe other than here is different, then one can use all information known and so-called speculate that this is not the only planet with intelligent life, and with 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 plus stars alone in the visible universe, that is not a hard thing to do, at least for some.

Paul

 

[RevDisturba]

Are you claiming that the only possible explanation for a lack of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be a god?

Where in the bible (I am a open theist Christian) does it say that there can't be life in the universe? (other than earth)

Hint; It does not say that and in fact hints otherwise.

; {>

 

[Bri]

So just on these few known things why would one think that there are not more intelligent beings through-out the visible universe other then thinking that things have to be just right and/or that some so-called god had its hand in it.

Because there is no compelling evidence of intelligent life anywhere but our planet. God has nothing to do with that fact. We simply don't know the conditions and events by which intelligent life emerges, and therefore we don't know if the conditions and events were unique to our planet.

Your conclusion is therefore special pleading unless you also conclude that belief in extra terrestrial intelligent life is irrational. Neither a belief in a god nor belief in extra terrestrial intelligent life is a belief supported by compelling evidence.

-Bri

 

[Bri]

It's wise to remember that the majority is always sane. It's one of the main ways we define sanity.

Of course, it's not necessary to be insane to be irrational.

-Bri

 

[Bri]

Hello, I asked if you thought that, do you think you need a so-called god for that to happen.

No, of course not.

-Bri

 

[Bri]

I think I am going to have a lot of fun here! Who says that the theist has little evidence to support their belief systems? We have cosmological arguments which to be considered as such must be reasonable and logical. These cosmological arguments were founded by some of the greatest thinkers of all time. We have modern equivalents of those arguments supported by William Craig ThD PhD and Robert Koon PhD just to name two of many. I can think of twenty professional reasonable arguments for the existence of God that have graced the stages of universities from Berlin to Princeton.

Welcome to the thread, and to the forum. Given your background, it might be interesting to hear what you feel is the best cosmological argument for a god. To get you up to speed without your having to read hundreds of posts, we've been discussing a Bayesian argument having to do with fine-tuning and using it to compare other beliefs that are often considered "rational" (primarily the belief in the existence of extra terrestrial intelligent life, but others as well) in order to answer the question of whether there is some definition of "irrational" by which someone could say that belief in a god is necessarily irrational without resorting to special pleading.

-Bri

 

[Paulhoff]

No, of course not.

-Bri

So here we go again, show me how the earth is special then, that it is the only place where intellence can be.

Paul

 

[westprog]

Fine, when I get a chance later I will give you links to what materialism is. The rest follows. Whether others use the same words I do is beside the point. If you've looked this up, then you know that there is an interaction problem and that it is not explainable. There is nothing more to it. Magic is a word that denotes that the immaterial works through unexplainable ways. I don't know how to be more clear.

Yes, it does. We don't know because we can't know. If we can know the mechanism, then we aren't talking about an immaterial substance, but a material one. Explainable mechanism is the basis of materialism. The whole idea of an immaterial (other) substance implies that there is no explainable mechanism by which it interacts -- that is the interaction problem. There is no foundation for causality when we speak of incommensurate substances.

I don't think that it's surprising that materialism as a viewpoint has problems with God's interaction with the world. However, if the universe is viewed as a direct manifestation of God's will the problems seem to disappear.

 

[Bri]

Where in the bible (I am a open theist Christian) does it say that there can't be life in the universe? (other than earth)

I don't think I've implied anything about what the Bible says. I said that there is some scientific evidence to support the notion that there is no extra terrestrial intelligent life, and that whether or not aliens* exist doesn't really have much to do with whether or not a god exists.

-Bri

* The use of the term "aliens" is not meant to conjure thoughts of UFO's or anything like that. It's shorter than typing "extra terrestrial intelligent life."

 

[Darat]

I don't think that it's surprising that materialism as a viewpoint has problems with God's interaction with the world. However, if the universe is viewed as a direct manifestation of God's will the problems seem to disappear.

Which god and you'll have to also supply definitions for "will" and "manifestation" to make your last sentence have any meaningful content.

 

[Bri]

So here we go again, show me how the earth is special then, that it is the only place where intellence can be.

I don't believe that there is any compelling evidence that this is the only place where intelligent life exists. Nor do I believe that there is any compelling evidence that intelligent life exists elsewhere. I don't know how many times I've said that.

However, there is some scientific evidence that we may be alone in the universe, and that evidence has nothing to do with a god. Please read the article on the Rare Earth Hypothesis for more information. Hint: the hypothesis is a scientific hypothesis, and has nothing to do with a god.

-Bri

 

[Belz...]

I think theists can be as rational as anyone.

Indeed. As I've stated more than once, we each have our woo. Theists can be rational so long as the subject at hand doesn't pertain to their particular woo. Same for each of us.

However, some of us are trying to get rid of our woo. Others dwell on it.

; {>

What the hell is that, anyway ?

 

[Belz...]

Who says that the theist has little evidence to support their belief systems?

I, for one. Theists have NO evidence to support their belief systems. At the end of the day, all they have is gut feeling, and we all know it could as well be indigestion.

We have cosmological arguments which to be considered as such must be reasonable and logical.

Such as ? Fine-tuning ? That comes back to understanding not only probabilities but logic in general.

These cosmological arguments were founded by some of the greatest thinkers of all time.

Great thinkers aren't necessarily rational when it comes to their pet woo.

We have modern equivalents of those arguments supported by William Craig ThD PhD and Robert Koon PhD just to name two of many. I can think of twenty professional reasonable arguments for the existence of God that have graced the stages of universities from Berlin to Princeton.

Argument from authority. Being a PhD doesn't make them right. About anything.

Of course if you would of said empirical evidence that is more difficult. However in science there are accepted theory that has very little or no evdience to support them as well.

Such as ?

The earth and our galaxy may not be unique however it is a bit more special than the other extra solar planets we have discovered so far.

How so ?

 

[Belz...]

I don't think that it's surprising that materialism as a viewpoint has problems with God's interaction with the world. However, if the universe is viewed as a direct manifestation of God's will the problems seem to disappear.

That's nice. It's also a claim, and I'd like you to demonstrate this.

The only way that "God" is not problematic is if he's not omni-anything, and obeys the laws of physics. In which case, of course, he's not a god, but just an alien being. Ergo, "God" is problematic.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I don't think that it's surprising that materialism as a viewpoint has problems with God's interaction with the world. However, if the universe is viewed as a direct manifestation of God's will the problems seem to disappear.

Sure, as I've said, there are many potential solutions to the interaction problem inherent to dualism. Idealism (deny that there is a material world) is one solution, but it has its own issues, and it does not (as a monism) supply the usually desired outcome of a benficent God with us as completely independent creatures (as a monism, idealism suppies a mind producing thoughts that are the world and we are then just manifestations of God thinking, so we do not think since there is no "us" properly speaking).

To supply both a God who is responsible for the world and individuals who are morally responsible agents in a classical sense requires dualism, which puts us right back at square one with the interaction issue.

Epiphenomenalism is another solution, but that is as inelegant as solutions ever get. Magic is probably the best solution -- we just can't know.

The interaction issue is not a problem with materialism as a viewpoint; in other words it is not fallout from materialism. If material monism is true, then there is no interaction problem because there is no God.

The interaction problem only arises because of dualism. How do completely different substances interact? No one has solved the problem because no one can solve the problem with a mechanistic explanation. That is why I use the word "magic" to denote the issue.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

What definition of "completely rational" are you using? A common definition is "not incoherent." If it might be correct, then it's not irrational by that definition.

Certainly, there is little if any compelling evidence to support the notion of dualism. But that doesn't make it necessarily irrational to be of the opinion that dualism is correct, at least not by any definition I can think of.

-Bri

Rational -- Reasonable; thinking logically; having a compelling reason to think along certain lines.

If we want to conceive of this as moving from evidence to conclusion, then we can speak of the causal chain -- all consequences follow from previous causes. Dualism necessarily exists independently of the causal chain of events; so from that point of view it is not entirely rational/reasonable/logical.

Using other definitions of the word "rational", sure it is rational because it might just be correct. It might just be that a personal God rules the universe, even if that is not a logical position to assume based on the chain of causation, the chain of evidence.

 

[Beth]

The interaction issue is not a problem with materialism as a viewpoint; in other words it is not fallout from materialism. If material monism is true, then there is no interaction problem because there is no God.

I'm not very knowledgeable about the whole monist/dualism debate, but I don't understand how material monism precludes the existance of a creator god. Could you elaborate on that as a logical outcome of MM?

The interaction problem only arises because of dualism. How do completely different substances interact? No one has solved the problem because no one can solve the problem with a mechanistic explanation. That is why I use the word "magic" to denote the issue.

How do dark matter and dark energy interact with the 4% of our universe made out of ordinary material matter? Are they assumed to be of the same type substance (i.e. monism)? I was under the impression that we know so little about them that it was reasonable to speculate that they might be made of an entirely different substance.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I'm not very knowledgeable about the whole monist/dualism debate, but I don't understand how material monism precludes the existance of a creator god. Could you elaborate on that as a logical outcome of MM?

I should qualify what I meant by God up above, sorry (I realized it soon after typing). What I meant was that a personal God is not possible in the way that God is usually conceptualized. From a material monism perspective, what we call matter/energy/spacetime is all there is. What it actually is we have no clue, but that perspective rules out the possibility of another fundamentally different substance -- say, the divine. So, everything that is consists of energy (for want of a better term) following the set laws that we call the four fundamental forces and all can be explained by that.

A personal creator God would need to have a mind in order to plan and carry out creation. For this to happen, he would need to be made of something. If he were made of energy/matter, then he could not have created energy/matter since he is composed of it. So, he must be made of something else. But material monism, as a monism, precludes any other type of substance than matter/energy. So God, a personal creator God, implies dualism if you accept the existence of matter.

How do dark matter and dark energy interact with the 4% of our universe made out of ordinary material matter? Are they assumed to be of the same type substance (i.e. monism)? I was under the impression that we know so little about them that it was reasonable to speculate that they might be made of an entirely different substance.

Not a fundamentally different substance. If dark matter and dark energy are real, and if they are accountable by the standard model, and if they interact in our universe (which they seem to do), then they are something that we already know about to some extent (like say neutrinos), or they are fallout from the standard model. It is probably the case that the standard model is wrong and we are due for a new revolution in what everything is; or it is the case that what we currently think about dark matter and energy are wrong. I'm betting that we are due for a new revolution in physics.



One of the consequences of this way of thinking is this -- we live in a universe (duh). If we accept the conservation of energy as a true maxim, then it is impossible for something like a creator God to affect the universe because his interaction would violate the law of conservation. But the law of conservation of energy only applies to closed systems. What if our universe is not a closed system? I can see two ways to think about this issue -- it is possible that there is a closed system that includes a multiverse and there are purely explainable forces from other universes that interact with our universe and which could appear to be miraculous happenings (an entity arriving purely out of the blue without seeming explanation, but if we could see from the bigger perspective of the multiverse, we could explain it). Or, it could be that there is a divine realm that exists independently of the material universe -- dualism -- that interacts with our universe (which is not a closed system) through throroughly unexplainable means (magic).

Or it could be that the law of conservation of energy is wrong ultimately since it does not apply to God.

 

[Bri]

Rational -- Reasonable; thinking logically; having a compelling reason to think along certain lines.

Be more specific about what you consider a "compelling reason" when there is neither compelling evidence for or against something.

If we want to conceive of this as moving from evidence to conclusion, then we can speak of the causal chain -- all consequences follow from previous causes. Dualism necessarily exists independently of the causal chain of events; so from that point of view it is not entirely rational/reasonable/logical.

What does "not entirely rational/reasonable/logical" mean to you other than "irrational/unreasonable/illogical?"

Of course, quantum theory suggests events that are uncaused. So not all events are the result of previous causes (unless you're suggesting that quantum theory is "not entirely rational"). But maybe I misunderstood.

Using other definitions of the word "rational", sure it is rational because it might just be correct. It might just be that a personal God rules the universe, even if that is not a logical position to assume based on the chain of causation, the chain of evidence.

If dualism might be correct, then it's not impossible or incoherent. Granted, there is no compelling evidence to support it, but I'm not sure what other (if any) distinction you're making between a belief that dualism is correct and other beliefs for which there is no compelling evidence in order to consider dualism "not entirely rational" but other such beliefs "rational." Or do you consider all beliefs for which there is no compelling evidence "not entirely rational?"

-Bri