As far as God’s concerned, He knows the end from the beginning and He sees a little baby and that little baby could grow up to be Adolf Hitler, he could grow up to be Joseph Stalin, he could grow up to be some serial killer, or he could grow up to die of a hideous disease. God sees all of that, and for that life to be terminated while he’s a baby, he’s going to be with God forever in Heaven so it isn’t a bad thing.He could have made his theological points more clearly and he could have been gentler to the poor mother, but Mediate goes overboard. For one thing, Robertson didn't say that God took her baby because it "could've grown up to be Hitler." He's circling around some pretty conventional ideas: We can't know why God does what he does — allowing bad people to live and good people to die. And: When little children die, they go to Heaven.
Mediaite goes on question "this logic":
If Robertson’s version of God truly can see what he says He can see, then why didn’t he kill Hitler, Stalin, or all those serial killers while they were children? Did he see them draw a pretty picture or save a puppy from a fire and then assume that they wouldn’t [would've?] go on to become evil, so He spared them? Because that’s seems a bit short of seeing “the end from the beginning.”That's just atheist talk, essentially mocking (or failing to understand) the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful God.
Posts
127 comments:
Pat Robertson is important, and we should all talk about him.
Maybe we can get every Republican to answer for his comments.
For a guy who has been in the God business for a loooooong time, that's a pretty poor answer. I could have done a better job (anyone here could have).
Why is it that the only time I ever hear a peep from Pat Robertson, it is in the form of a liberal attack?
Do they have somebody assigned to follow him and listen for this kind of crap? Is that where the billions in political contributions go?
Thousands of things like that?
Mediaite and other sites like it will seize this as an opportunity to bash religion in general (and Christianity specifically).
"He could have made his theological points more clearly" -- maybe, maybe not. I don't think he's capable of expressing theological points clearly, certainly not intelligently. Robertson is no theologian, AFAIC. He's a hack, always has been.
"That's just atheist talk, essentially mocking (or failing to understand) the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful God."
Great comment.
The ways of God in this world are like Obama's policies in Iraq. They are wise and beinign and it will come out right in the end. Puny mortal intelligence is unsuited to understand the grandeur of his design and the providence of his methods.
Stalin? The King of all Atheists. The Atheist Grand Poohbah. Richard Dawkins just theorized. Stalin put atheism into practice. With predictable, predicted, and murderous result.
Luke 13: 1-5
At that time some people who were present there told him (Jesus) about the Galileans whose blood Pilate* had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.
He said to them in reply, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?
By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!
Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them— do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?
By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”
So should it be with children who die untimely of a horrible illness. Do they die because they are somehow more guilty than the rest of us? Of course not.
Pat Robertson puts the God in Godwin's Law.
"For a guy who has been in the God business for a loooooong time, that's a pretty poor answer."
Yeah, he's 85. When you are that old, I think you feel free to just say things however they form in your mind. People who love you will accept it and know it comes from the heart. There's liberation in age, and thank God for leaving some people to stay with us here in this world as they get older and older. God takes some babies from us and leaves some of us to get very old. We don't know exactly why. But there are special gifts the old have for us, and I have a problem with young assholes kicking him around for their daily social media sport.
I read a leftist once, who had an essay in "This Idea Must Die" who "explained" how free will was an illusion and human freedom did not exists so it should be ignored and society should be managed for the greater good with the collective will completely sovereign and individual freedom crushed.
I don't see how this is any different than a postulated being outside of the constraints of a deterministic flow of the universe who picks and prunes and manages this world like a garden for the "greater good."
Both philosophies are absurd. Only one is ridiculed.
I don't believe in free will either, but I don't want to step outside of the "illusion" of freedom and pretend that it is possible to know the actions that will lead to the greater good or to trust leftist, with their dismal historical record on the matter, to divine those actions on any account.
I guess what I left out was that both a world without free will and a world created by an omniscient God are on a path from creation to dissipation so the future is always "known" to something, either to God, or to the Universe itself, since it contains all future events at any instant in time. *Sort of* like DNA strands contain a human being.
Nice defense of his comments, Ann. I am impressed with your wisdom.
Having said that, dying young--or being taken young--has long been considered an act of mercy for the reasons Robertson so bluntly stated and others. Not usually expressed to the grieving.
Under a strict utilitarian calculus, there should be many, many pregnancies, most of which fail after "viability." I.e., most of those not-yet-born babies should die before they are born (or perhaps immediately after). All their sinless souls go to heaven and live for eternity with God in unimaginable bliss.
Yeah, he's 85. When you are that old, I think you feel free to just say things however they form in your mind.
Except he was like this even twenty, twenty-five years ago. Robertson has always been a facile, piss-poor theologian and loudmouth. Although I can't think of any televangelist which ever impressed me as much as the semi-anonymous old guys doing exegesis on obscure back-country radio stations you could pick up driving down to Maryland or over to Philly, in the places in between where the NPR and rock stations drop out.
If Robertson’s version of God truly can see what he says He can see, then why didn’t he kill Hitler, Stalin, or all those serial killers while they were children? Did he see them draw a pretty picture or save a puppy from a fire and then assume that they wouldn’t go on to become evil, so He spared them? Because that’s seems a bit short of seeing “the end from the beginning.”
Robertson did not give a sensible response to the grieving mother's question, and I expect that he would not give a sensible response to Medialite's questions either.
The Bible does not address such questions. The Bible assumes that eventually every human being will die (except for those who happen to be alive on Judgment Day). Eventually that particular child would did too. The Bible does not explain why this child died at age three and not at 33 or 103.
The Bible says God loves mortal humans, but the divine love does not cause God to make humans immortal. Until the end of time, God allows all humans to die.
All human beings are small and mortal, but God is stupendous and eternal. Religion is humans' endeavor to ponder and celebrate their relationship to God. Religious humans believe they can participate in that divine eternity, but only after time ends for them.
The mother of a dying three-year-old child certainly can pray to God to heal her child, but God's real relationship to the mother and to her child will remain mysterious.
After the child has died, the mother can pray to God for consolation. If she subsequently does feel consolation, then that is mysterious too.
God's love for us mortal humans is mysterious but eternal, and so we should love God in return, even though God allows us all to die until the end of time.
If Robertson’s version of God truly can see what he says He can see, then why didn’t he kill Hitler, Stalin, or all those serial killers while they were children?
The obvious answer is the alternative was worse; best of all possible worlds and all that. Not that I buy the response, but it is not an actual cogent criticism of the concept.
Answers like this are pretty common if you've walked in church circles. It reflects a couple of things:
One, answers like this really have more to do with the person answering than trying to help the grieving family. People who are confronted with death like this need to find a way of fitting it into their conception of God. So, they say really awkward and unhelpful comments. It's really self-interested coping. Ever experienced a tragedy or been in a time of crisis? There's always that subset of people who need to explain or need to find a reason or explanation when there isn't one.
Second, Robertson comes from a generation where the experts were assumed to have the answers. The most theologically accurate answer to this situation is "We don't know why it happened." Saying, "I don't know," is a very vulnerable situation, and previous generations thought it eroded authority. What they didn't realize was that an insufficient answer is worse than no answer.
Mike Sylwester's answer above is spot on in approach and tone. The Bible doesn't ignore death or complicated circumstances. Sometimes it gives explanation's, often not. What it does say is that any given death is not the end of the story and that God is still working. It also points to the reality of feeling hurt and grieving pain and loss, without negating it through some forced artificial reasoning like Robertson is doing.
Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan. Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God. - Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
The premise is that "God" is an extra-universal entity, consisting of a coherent energy pattern, that "created" the "Devil", angels, demons, plants, animals, and "humans", too, as derivatives and nominally independent entities. By this we know that God is imperfect, as all of his creations exhibit some form of dysfunction. The logical conclusion is that God created these entities and God the philosopher has described a religious (i.e. moral or behavioral) criteria necessary to identify and filter corrupt energy patterns. A premature death, including abortion, would undermine God's purpose. However, since God created the "universe" or laboratory to function autonomously, and God created humans to function autonomously, then intervention would also undermine God's purpose.
That said, perhaps God is not such a mysterious character after all. Humans, however, who grieve over death, lament wars, poverty, disparity, etc.; but cause are the cause of trivial deaths, debasement, discrimination (i.e. selective), especially the premeditated death of wholly innocent lives by the millions annually, are truly bizarre and mysterious.
Jason:
The problem with atheism is two-fold. One, it is an unacknowledged faith, or failure to characterize logical domains. Two, it is egoistic, with a predisposition to narcissism, which has underlain all the great secular failures from Church to country to minority rule to other forms of directed consensus.
That's just atheist talk, essentially mocking (or failing to understand) the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful God.
That's not atheist talk; that's science talk. While an atheist discounts the existence of god, the scientist points out the inconsistencies in the philosophical argument using reason and logic: if God is good, he is not God; if god is God he is not good.
Robertson, as others have pointed out, is as appalling as ever in his response.
Good luck to Mediate in attempting to figure out theodicy in a blog!
Everybody knows the best place to figure out why God permits evil is not in a blog per se, but in the comments section
If I were a believing man, I think that I would have started with I Corinthians 1:25 - "Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." God's plans are not only wiser than men, but his purposes are such that they can't even be explained by man's lights - the back half of Job as an example. Then bring it back to the child, and her passing from the vale in extreme youth, before the world could lay heavily on her conscience. Long years can often only offer longer temptations, trials, and evils, and many come to the grave heavy with sin and trespasses against those that they loved.
In former days, mothers lost more children than those that lived to adulthood. Progress has lessened this tribulation, as it has so many others, but that same progress has distanced the suffering from the resources which bore up their grieving ancestry. Some of that is the fruit of the tree of knowledge - Job's admonishment in ignorance before the majesty of the creator of the world is less impressive when the audience is so full of their presumed knowledge of that world. Some of that distance is the paradoxical closeness of the people with their leaders; the mighty of the church are no wiser than they ever were, but their limited supplies of wisdom are now taxed by the parochial questions much better answered by parish pastors, those who actually know the circumstances and requirements of the bereaved and beset. A prince of the church like Robertson is, sadly, a political creature with the ways of the world much more in mind than the small wisdoms required to deal with a grieving mother.
As a Christian it would be sinful for me to call Pat Robertson an idiot.
"But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, 'Raca,' is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell."
So I am just going to say that the Professor's answer:
"God takes some babies from us and leaves some of us to get very old. We don't know exactly why."
Is what any thinking Christian would have told a grieving mother. When someone is grieving and asks why they are not looking for a theology lesson, they just want someone to comfort them.
@jimbino,
While an atheist discounts the existence of god, the scientist points out the inconsistencies in the philosophical argument using reason and logic:
I was unaware that STEM training involved extensive training in philosophy. If I don't listen to philosophers railing on about science, why should I listen to scientists rail on about philosophy (or, even worse, theology).
Everybody "knows" stuff, jimbino. That doesn't make everyone an expert in epistemology.
And, the basic fact is, in history & right now, there are no shortage of theistic philosophers or scientists. Either they're all fools or things aren't as one-sided as you'd like them to be.
I eagerly await mediate's expose of Islam.
Have you ever had a friend or acquaintance tell you that he thought Jerry Falwell was right about something? IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE?
The only people that pay attention to what Falwell says are lunatic lefties.
Back at UW in the late 70's, the 700 club was the go to tv show for stoners.
Tim in Vermont wrote:
"Do they have somebody assigned to follow him and listen for this kind of crap? Is that where the billions in political contributions go?"
Groups like Media Matters for America, Americans for the separation of Church and State, People for the American Way, and (of course) the Southern Poverty Law Center keep track of Falwell, collect his weirder quotes, and use them in fundraising letters.
There are people on the East and West coast who believe that everyone between the Appalachians and Nevada spends all their time in front of the television watching Falwell. His actual ratings are in the tank, about 1 in 300 Americans watches Falwell, and he is not influential on the right, or in religious circles outside of his tiny viewership, as far as I can tell.
I hate that answer, mainly because it undercuts the actual point he is trying to make. If God is all knowing, he's theorizing that the death was a surprise. As if the child WOULD have grown up, but now the child is dead. To a true omniscient God, there would never be a "what if he grew up" side to the story. God would always know that this child was to die at 3.
I'm a Christian and I have to say that sometimes trying to put human logic to a spiritual raises just as many questions as it solves. Being a Christian and having faith isn't easy, as it shouldn't be. Some things are just mysteries because we cannot think and comprehend as God can.
If time travelers know not to kill Hitler, then surely God knows it too.
There's liberation in age, and thank God for leaving some people to stay with us here in this world as they get older and older.
Yes, just think of Alzheimer's as a loving God's last and greatest gift to us.
the scientist points out the inconsistencies in the philosophical argument using reason and logic: if God is good, he is not God; if god is God he is not good.
Being a scientist doesn't make one all knowing on every topic. A good scientist tests the data, not examines inconsistencies in philosophical arguments. Sheesh, we'd never have quantum theory if it was about examining inconsistencies in philosophical arguments. Inconsistency doesn't mean false, it also may mean it needs more data or better explanations. You have a very 1700s conception of science and scientists.
And a good scholar would know that obvious questions have likely received copious responses over the years. Which means inconsistencies to the unstudied are not necessarily inconsistencies for those who study the literature.
It's on this frequent situation of 'bad things happening to good and innocent people' (and its converse) that one is most surprised to find that believers don't realize the foolishness of their dogmas. In fact, they just dig in more and more.
I guess it is the ultimate litmus test. If you can 'rationalize' and hold to the 'all God's Plan' idea, they've (the mystics) really really got you.
If I was going to go back in time and kill Hitler, I would do it when he was a little baby.
Cuz he'd be weaker then. His Hitler powers probably didn't begin to develop until he was past puberty, say thirteen or fourteen years old.
"I guess what I left out was that both a world without free will and a world created by an omniscient God are on a path from creation to dissipation so the future is always "known" to something, either to God, or to the Universe itself, since it contains all future events at any instant in time."
I always wondered, if God already knows how it plays out why did he bother starting it up in the first place? And if everybody's actions are preordained, where's the chance for redemption?
Pat Robertson and Medialite. Two sources better left unplumbed when searching for truth and wisdom.
Pat Robertson really believes what he says. But there are things God keeps unknown from us for whatever reasons since He does not think the thoughts we think. It is where Robertson stubbornly goes off into that unknown that he can be made fun of easily or ignored.
Faith in known revelation from Sola Scriptura, as silly as it sounds, is the key to Grace. Don't leave home without it.
This exposes the theological problem of the interfering god. If god is manipulating things, how do you then explain why he didn't whack Hitler or Stalin. If a person would end up with a tragic disease, why not have them live until they get that disease?
Once you have a god doing favors, he becomes an asshole.
Due this dilemma, I've been an agnostic deist since I was very young (though never knew what to call my beliefs until recently.) If there is a god or gods, s/he/they set everything going and then must let nature run it's course. Perhaps god can give personal revelation or comfort, but only inasmuch as it doesn't violate the agency of anyone else.
(Put another way; if there is a judgement seat, under Robertson's theology, couldn't Hitler argue that had god simply killed him, or allowed him to die, during WWI he never would have done all those horrible things and that the holocaust god's fault.)
Coleridge said to a bereaved mother that God so loved her child that he took her to heaven to be with him.
Or look at The Invention of Lying (2009) an amusing DVD for the same story to comfort a dying mother, that gets the status of the remark right. It's meant to comfort, provide a narrative life fits in.
Dogmatics is another trick that goes somewhere else.
Joe said...
(Put another way; if there is a judgement seat, under Robertson's theology, couldn't Hitler argue that had god simply killed him, or allowed him to die, during WWI he never would have done all those horrible things and that the holocaust god's fault.)
If a sunrise is god's fault, then so is the holocaust. Simple.
Simpler: there is no god.
One real laugher from that book "This Idea Must Die" was a "scientist" proposing that "scientists" come up with theories about what happened "before the Big Bang" even though he admits it is unknowable, and the reason he gives is to deny the opening to philosophers.
Similarly, if the big bang was the first moment of time there can be no scientific answer to the question of what chose the laws of nature. This leaves the field open to explanations such as the anthropic multiverse which are unscientific because they call on unobservable collections of other universes and make no predictions by which their hypotheses might be tested and falsified. Edge.org
Didn't the idea that the universe was limited to what mankind could conceive of go out with the refutation of St Anselm's argument?
Now scientists are reviving St Anselm's argument in another form to protect their turf from philosophers who posit unobservable elements.
I have always been fine with the fact that human reason is limited and felt like if you believe that it is not, you must believe that the universe was created by some kind of "designer," not a by a random chaotic event.
I will say it again: Being an atheist is hard.
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
Simpler: there is no god.
Even simpler: The SF created us to enjoy our suffering. … The sooner we die, the sooner we defy His plans.
Young Hegelian says:
I was unaware that STEM training involved extensive training in philosophy. If I don't listen to philosophers railing on about science, why should I listen to scientists rail on about philosophy
Stick around and you might learn some philosophy here:
Philosophy embraces both science and math; indeed, they would have been roughly equivalent in the minds of Plato and Aristotle and the other Greeks who invented the concepts.
Have you ever heard of a PhD in math or physics? They are also considered "liberal arts," which, as the Free Dictionary says comprise: Academic disciplines, including literature, history, languages, philosophy, mathematics, and general sciences, viewed in contrast to professional and technical disciplines. Those professional and technical disciplines comprise medicine, law, engineering and technology.
Another thing you probably don't know is that where the US Constitution in Art I, Sec 8, Clause 8, provides
for Copyrights and Patents
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
it is Copyright that was provided for Science (i.e., philosophy and writings) and Patents for the useful arts (i.e., engineering and technology).
Any old hegelian would have known all that.
@SomeoneHasToSayIt
Because nobody, in the history of humankind, has ever considered the problem of theodicy.
Paddy O suffers from the same delusion as Young Hegelian:
A good scientist tests the data, not examines inconsistencies in philosophical arguments.
You are both confusing Science with Experimental Science or Applied Engineering, when you should be confusing Science with Philosophy.
Einstein, especially in his publications of the annus mirabilis did NOT "test data," but rather accepted the data and for the first time explained them, reconciling the existing "inconsistencies in philosophical arguments."
Yeah, he's 85. When you are that old, I think you feel free to just say things however they form in your mind.
He wasn't much better, theologically, 30 years ago.
If Robertson’s version of God truly can see what he says He can see, then why didn’t he kill Hitler, Stalin, or all those serial killers while they were children?
The only way humanity recognizes evil is for evil to be amongst us. Sometimes, you have to realize there is a force and cause greater than yourselves. And when people forget that, He shows what happens when others decide to live by that ethic that their wants and desires are paramount.
I wasn't sure about killing people as a soldier. It seemed wrong to be doing God's work.
Killing and evil is necessary. Keep in mind that, arguably, the single most important person in the Bible was actually Judas.
(Put another way; if there is a judgement seat, under Robertson's theology, couldn't Hitler argue that had god simply killed him, or allowed him to die, during WWI he never would have done all those horrible things and that the holocaust god's fault.)
No. If it hadn't happened, humanity would've assumed the Holocaust was impossible. Again, sometimes, you have to show evil exists. It's seldom pretty when you do so.
But it's hard to explain that humanity views life and death incorrectly. Death of an innocent sends them to Heaven, which is the ultimate reward. Death isn't necessarily a bad thing. He doesn't want us to kill ourselves but to enjoy what He has provided on Earth --- but there is paradise afterwards for those who confess their sins and seek forgiveness.
I always wondered, if God already knows how it plays out why did he bother starting it up in the first place? And if everybody's actions are preordained, where's the chance for redemption?
Let's say you have a child who keeps trying to touch a hot stove. You tell the child no but they try it over and over.
Eventually, you let them touch it once. You know what will happen. But it will show THEM what happened. You have to let people make their own mistakes on occasion.
As far as redemption, it's not that difficult to achieve. God isn't looking to punish folks.
Ron Winkleheimer said...
@SomeoneHasToSayIt
Because nobody, in the history of humankind, has ever considered the problem of theodicy.
And yet, no solutions. Imagine that. Perhaps the premise is wrong.
Perhaps the premise is wrong.
There are several premises:
1. There is a God.
2. God is all knowing.
3. God is all powerful.
4. God is good.
Conclusion: Bad things can't happen to good people.
I submit that premise (1) is in error. Occam's razor: simpler than countenancing the triple nature of an imaginary God.
"Paddy O suffers from the same delusion as Young Hegelian"
That I live in the 21st century?
That having read a lot in philosophy and philosophy of science means I have some background in what I am saying?
That just because I have great friends doing very advanced scientific work and talk with them, they should be ignored?
That scientists do science, and are not masters of every field because of some pure rationality and objectivity?
You make a lot of sense for an 18th century philosophy of science. But understanding has changed, especially in the last 100 years. It's quite a body of literature to catch up with!
Einstein famously rejected quantum physics for philosophical reasons. God doesn't place dice with the universe? Well, a limited philosophy of God and of the realities of science lead to premature conclusions.
To paraphrase another argument: If you run into an delusional person in the morning, you ran into an someone delusional. If you run into delusional people all day, you're delusional.
New CW song: "mama don't let your babies grow up to be Hitler"
Paddy O says:
You make a lot of sense for an 18th century philosophy of science. But understanding has changed, especially in the last 100 years. It's quite a body of literature to catch up with!
You win a degree in physics, not by mastering the discoveries of physics in the last 3 centuries, but by learning to think like a scientist; just as, you win a JD degree, not by mastering all the laws of the last 3 centuries, but by learning to think like a lawyer.
And it doesn't matter how many books you've read or how many friends you have doing advanced research.
I guess one of the reasons why I haven't amounted to much in life is I would have answered the grieving mother's question by saying, as apologetically as I could, "I really don't know."
jimbino said...
I submit that premise (1) is in error.
Of course it is. It is an EXTRAORDINARY claim, fantastical, in fact. As such, the burden of proof is on those who make it, despite their attempts (and illogic) to shift that to the other side.
@Paddy Owe'd never have quantum theory if it was about examining inconsistencies in philosophical arguments.
Maybe leave things you haven't studied alone, as you advised jimbino to do.
QM often doesn't sound like it makes sense when expressed in words. That has no bearing on its internal consistency. Square root of negative one doesn't make sense in words either, but it's a perfectly consistent concept with surprisingly practical applications.
I understand the believers' arguments that things that don't make sense to us make sense to God, but I'm not willing to take it on their authority.
@jimbino: You're not helping. Unlike the government of Cuba, Pat Robertson did not put homosexuals in concentration camps--the fact that you make excuses for Cuba but not for a very old and harmless man who has no power over anyone who does not choose to listen to him, does not help anything you have to say in defense of science or of atheists.
No. If it hadn't happened, humanity would've assumed the Holocaust was impossible. Again, sometimes, you have to show evil exists. It's seldom pretty when you do so.
You still miss the point. In god's effort to demonstrate evil, he condemns one man to hell. Moreover, there is a difference between allowing evil to exist and deciding which evil will exist. Once you start doing the latter, you become evil. And an asshole.
Then again, perhaps there is a god and he is a sadistic asshole. Or the entire purpose of life is for god to distinguish between who are the mindless sycophants and who will really think for themselves. If god wants sycophants, we go back to the god is an asshole theology.
Paddy O wrote:
"Saying, "I don't know," is a very vulnerable situation, and previous generations thought it eroded authority. What they didn't realize was that an insufficient answer is worse than no answer.
---------
So true. I know someone who is completely unable to consider the viewpoint of agnostics. He HAS to have an answer even if it means twisting logic inside out...which he does on a constant stream of Facebook posts. One that makes the regular rotation is some variation on the obvious intelligent design in pretty things. Never incorporates diseases or hideous birth defects etc. when in this territory. If you bring those up, he will point to how man's actions ruined things and caused anything bad. But..how did the intelligent design not nip this in the bud? I'm sure he'd be in favor of the term "Atheist speak".
Robertson, with all his expertise, essential told a grieving mom "Maybe God was just nipping things in the bud, k?"
Whenever I see his name, I remember watching him on his show during his presidential run, expressing his shock from just learning that a veto can be overruled by 2/3 majority...swiveling his head back and forth to his audience as if to say "Can you believe that?"
Since jimbino claims he is well-schooled in philosophy, perhaps he would explain to us George Berkeley's thoughts on the existence of a material universe.
"As far as redemption, it's not that difficult to achieve. God isn't looking to punish folks."
It's impossible to achieve if there's no free will and you're one of the ones God's known from the beginning will turn out bad.
Gabriel advises:
Maybe leave things you haven't studied alone, as you advised jimbino to do
would be a case of a faulty argument based on an (implicit) faulty premise, namely that I haven't studied philosophy and religion, while in fact I have spent time in mastering enough Greek, Hebrew, Latin, English, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese to do exactly that.
"It is illogical to conclude that the finite might apprehend the infinite."
Because you do not understand does not mean that there is no God. It does mean that you are not God.
@jimbino:would be a case of a faulty argument based on an (implicit) faulty premise, namely that I haven't studied philosophy and religion, while in fact I have spent time in mastering enough Greek, Hebrew, Latin, English, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese to do exactly that.
The faulty premise is not mine--I was pointing out to Paddy O that he was doing the opposite what he had advised you to do. I did not address whether he was justified in advising you to do that.
I do not care to see quantum mechanics slandered as "not making sense".
@mtroberstattorney:perhaps he would explain to us George Berkeley's thoughts on the existence of a material universe.
Berkeley was pretty cutting edge 300 years ago, but there's been a lot of philosophy since then, and a lot of science that philosophy has had to come to grips with. I'm not particularly impressed by the good Bishop's misunderstandings of calculus, and am not sure he's very relevant for disciplines where the math and evidence have gone much further than Berkeley could have followed.
IMO, these are the philosophers worth bothering with.
Aristotle, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Rand
There are many others that are fun and interesting (e.g. Heidegger), but those I listed
are kind of signposts on a straight-line of increasing wisdom.
Your opinion may vary.
Getting an interference pattern when we send particles through the 2-slit experiment one at a time makes sense to you, Gabriel?
There are things in quantum mechanics that "don't make sense". Presumably someday we will have a deeper understanding.
The underlying premise of the Medialite analysis is narcissistic anthropomorphism: "If I were God, I wouldn't allow 'bad' things to happen."
This type of thinking is typical of lefties and atheists who suspect, deep down, that they ARE God and are therefore duty bound to oppose God, Christianity and its offshoots, like family, sanctity of life, etc.
"typical of lefties and atheists who suspect, deep down, that they ARE God"
Wow..that is a bit of a leap there Hombre.
walter, if you think Pat Robertson is any sort of theological expert, that's your problem, not mine. He's Sean Hanity without the Irish charm and big heart.
Hell, I would argue that Robertson and his ilk are, hrm, if not exactly part of the problem with modern religion, at least a nasty symptom of the problem. They thought they could substitute impersonal mass media revivalism for personal religious communion, and the result was a lot of happy-clappy bollocks wedded to reductive political tribalism. A church should be a social beast, a creature of the village, God in the corner shop. As the American village emptied out and social cohesion broke down into the extended family (if you were lucky) and nothing above the family but the polis itself, these wholesale big-box superchurches and worse, TV evangelists filled the vacuum.
I bet some consider him to have expertise..though it's only indirectly my "problem". So his suggestion would not be approved by true "experts"?
And..your take on what he said? Based on your Corinthians extract, the silliness of Robertson's suggestion could just as easily be God's. This is part of the wonderful "design" of this construct. When it makes sense, exalt the wisdom, when it doesn't..point to man's inability to possibly understand.
@original mike:Getting an interference pattern when we send particles through the 2-slit experiment one at a time makes sense to you, Gabriel?
As much sense as it would make for them to NOT do it. The fact that it seems weird to you has bearing only on your mental state. Does it make sense for the French to say "pain" when they really mean "bread"? Each makes perfect sense; your discomfort only reflects what you are used to, not the actual logic.
The reason the particles interfere with each other is because even they don't know which particle is which. Let's say you have 50 in your gun and you send one of them them through. But you don't know that the one you sent through didn't trade places with the one of the ones in that were in the gun, and neither do they--and your prediction has yield the same answer regardless of whether that happened or didn't.
You've been getting away with not accounting for the possibility because the odds of bowling balls switching places is almost, but not quite, zero. If you lived many orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe no doubt you'd see bowling balls do it once or twice, and it would no longer seem weird. But it's all the same laws.
"Wow .. that is a bit of a leap there Hombre."
Just a hop really. Lefties aspire to omnipotence so they might impose their preferences, which, however transitory, they deem moral and true, on the rest of us. Atheists profess omniscience because they just know there is no God.
Omnipotent and/or omniscient look pretty godly from where I sit.
"As much sense as it would make for them to NOT do it."
What? One at a time Gabriel. ONE AT A TIME. What are they interfering with?
Nobody thinks it "makes sense"? Except you, apparently.
@Hombre: Atheists profess omniscience because they just know there is no God.
Practically zero atheists claim to have positive knowledge that no God exists.
Practically all atheists claim the existence of God is like the existence of unicorns or fairies--given the available evidence, we can safely discount the possibility of such a thing.
Do you know for a fact that there are no fairies or unicorns? Do change anything in your life to accommodate the possibility that they may exist?
It is comforting for the religious believer to score victories against the imaginary straw-atheist; almost as much fun as making young-earth creationists (who are not imaginary, or negligible in the population of American Christians), but there are much better arguments out there and it is not honest to pretend they don;t exist.
@Original Mike:ONE AT A TIME.
There's NOT "one". They are all, always, interfering with every other one in the Universe.
That's why I said "But you don't know that the one you sent through didn't trade places with the one of the ones in that were in the gun, and neither do they--and your prediction has yield the same answer regardless of whether that happened or didn't."
If there were no other electrons, there would be no interference. There are other electrons in the universe. They all interfere with each other all the time, regardless of what they are doing.
My take is "not my circus, not my monkeys". I don't have the woman in front of me, so I don't have to worry immediately about her emotional needs, which is what this is all about. Since I'm an agnostic, "God's plan" is all highly theoretical, even theological. If I were dealing with an actual, hurting person, I'd be going with some variant on Coolidge's bit about love, season with "her time in this world of pain was brief" as the person's personality and expectations warrant.
Theoretically speaking, the Christian God must have *some* purpose for making man walk through the valley; how that squares with a child too young to have been tested/tried/enlightened/whatever you think is the purpose of life, I don't know. Again, the ineffable will of God, presuming God exists.
"There's NOT "one". They are all, always, interfering with every other one in the Universe."
But they are not interfering with "every other one in the universe". They are interfering with ones that you send through your slits. In the future. If you think that "makes sense", I don't know what to say.
@Original Mike:But they are not interfering with "every other one in the universe".
They are indistinguishable particles and the equations that describe what they do have to be anti-symmetric under exchange. Every electron interferes with every other one.
They are interfering with ones that you send through your slits. In the future.
Why not the ones that went through in the past? The equations that describe the symmetry do not have time in them.
If you think that "makes sense", I don't know what to say.
It make perfect sense. All the electrons follow the same rules. They don't have to know which one is which and they don't have to know how far apart they are.
You THINK this doesn't make sense because you are not used to it and because you insist on using English instead of equations.
"It make perfect sense."
Bullshit. That experiment is held out as a classic example of quantum mechanical weirdness. Nobody thinks it "makes sense". Except you, apparently.
@original mike:Except you, apparently.
And every other physicist who ever did any work in the topic. Is it what you expect to see in day-to-day life? No. But that doesn't mean it makes no sense.
I think joint and several liability is weird, but it makes perfect sense legally. That a corporation is for some purposes is treated as a person is distasteful to some, but it makes sense legally. That Fall was convicted of accepting a bribe Doheny was acquitted of offering makes perfect sense, legally. These things are not illogical, although they are not everyday occurences and may surprise people who are unfamiliar with them.
But you are making a very bold statement by saying "it doesn't make sense", you are saying it is inconsistent or illogical, which is not true, or math wouldn't it. If you mean it's unfamiliar and surprising to you, which is a less bold statement, what does that prove, except that the world doesn't work the way you think it ought?
"And every other physicist who ever did any work in the topic."
Again, bullshit. I don't think you know what the phrase "makes sense" means.
Gotta go.
@Orignal Mike: I don't think you know what the phrase "makes sense" means.
I think that believing that electrons should have some way of knowing which one is which and some way of knowing where they all are, in order to not interfere and so accommodate the prejudices of people who don't spend any time studying them, doesn't really "make sense". I don't think it "makes sense" to expect electrons to act just like bowling balls.
I don't think it "makes sense" to be indignant about how the universe operates. It is a fact that it works this way and I don't think it "makes sense" to insist that the universe, if it were put together "sensibly", wouldn't work that way.
But I've only studied the one universe, you see, and don't have experience of others to form my opinions about which sets of universes have physical laws that "make sense" and which don't.
Gabriel: "Practically zero atheists claim to have positive knowledge that no god exists...." (3:47)
Merriam-Webster says atheism is: "A disbelief in the existence of a deity" or "The doctrine that there is no deity."
Your "available evidence" postulate is simply a ruse designed by Richard Dawkins to protect atheists from looking stupid when confronted with their actual position as reflected by the definition above.
However, for the sake of argument, if you are an atheist, feel free to detail some of the "available evidence" of God's existence that you have considered and rejected as inadequate.
Or not.
@hombre:Merriam-Webster says atheism is...
"A disbelief in the existence of a deity"
which agrees perfectly with what I said. "Disbelief" is not the same thing as "positive knowledge that no such thing exists".
Then you quote: The doctrine that there is no deity.
And then you fail to address my point: that there are effectively zero atheists who hold that doctrine.
for the sake of argument, if you are an atheist, feel free to detail some of the "available evidence" of God's existence that you have considered and rejected as inadequate.
I was born a snake-handler and I will die a snake-handler.
The neutral philosophy is agnosticism, not atheism. That said, at least theists discriminate between the logical domains, including faith and science. The contemporary secular world liberally and routinely conflates the logical domains, presumably for political, economic, and social leverage (e.g. social complex). The same cause that corrupted the ancient Churches, left-wing regimes, etc. Perhaps the scientific method was introduced to constrain secular excess, not Judeo-Christian philosophy that explicitly distinguishes between the four logical domains: science, philosophy, faith, and fantasy.
@hombre:a ruse designed by Richard Dawkins to protect atheists from looking stupid when confronted with their actual position
First, Dawkins is not the Pope of atheism. Second, it goes back a lot farther than him:
"Atheism is without God. It does not assert no God. The atheist does not say that there is no God, but he says 'I know not what you mean by God. I am without the idea of God. The word God to me is a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which by its affirmer is so imperfect that he is unable to define it for me.”
That's Charles Bradlaugh, in 1876.
The etymology of atheism is from the 1570s, from French athéiste (16c.), from Greek atheos "without god, denying the gods; abandoned of the gods; godless, ungodly," from a- "without" + theos "a god". The word was not coined to describe a positive knowledge of non-existence.
A dictionary definition that stated that Christians worship a wooden sculpture would be rejected by Christians as not accurately representing the views of most Christians. A dictionary that stated that conservatives are white male racists who hate the poor, women, and minorities would be rejected by conservatives as not accurately representing the views of most conservatives. This is not hard to understand.
Show me a representative poll of self-described atheists that shows the percentage of atheists who accept your characterization of their views. If it is above 5% I will cheerfully acknowledge them to be non-negligible.
@n.n.That said, at least theists discriminate between the logical domains, including faith and science.
If theologians have solved the demarcation problem, philosophers of science have not heard of it.
The neutral philosophy is agnosticism, not atheism.
And the United States is not a democracy, but a republic. And you're not a Christian if you don't worship a wooden cross.
You don't get to define your opposition away. It still exists, and can speak for itself.
Ann Althouse, I'm a believer, and I turn 64 in a few months. You made my day today. First, this blog post--you nailed it. Then your comment about old people, especially that last sentence: "But there are special gifts the old have for us, and I have a problem with young assholes kicking him around for their daily social media sport."
I feel pretty confident that Robertson's recent statement about infant deaths conforms with what he has been saying on the subject for many decades and is not a function of his age (other than that he still has a decent memory).
None of these commenters believes Allah exists. How is their nonbelief so different from an atheist's?
@Gabriel, re your posts of 4:55 and 5:04:
Asserting that modern atheists base their beliefs on the output of 15th or 19th century atheistic scholars is equivalent to my asserting that modern Christians base their beliefs on the works of Duns Scotus or Johannes Eriugena. It's just nonsense.
On the other hand, if you claim that Bradlaugh's statement reflects consideration of the "available evidence," as you have defined that action's relationship to atheism, your critical thinking needs polishing. His is simply a statement of unbridled materialism: If I can't see it, touch it or taste it, it has no existence to me. Nothing new there.
You are simply peddling bullshit here. I interact with atheists regularly on the Amazon sites and elsewhere. There is no thoughtful consideration of evidence going on, just scientism and overblown positivism confusing philosophical materialism with science.
They can describe the evidence for God's existence they have evaluated just as you can. That is, not at all.
@Orginal Mike:What an arrogant SOB. I'm guessing graduate student.
I got my Ph. D. in 2009.
I'm a recently retired physicist (though not QM) and I am unaware of any accepted explanation for the result I am referring to (you do know the experiment, right?). I guess I missed it, however, so I would greatly appreciate your link to said explanation.
Feynman's QED: The strange theory of light and matter is as good a place as any. His explanation for the two-slit experiment is different from mine (in English), but the math works out the same, as it must. The single electrons can be described as taking every possible path through the slits to the detector, but because the paths have different lengths the phase constant is different for each path. When you sum the paths you get the interference pattern.
But that's all words. I choose to explain it through the exchange symmetries of the equations that describe the states of the system--these were noticed first by Josiah Willard Gibbs in the 19th century--and he even discovered Planck's constant while he was at it. The clues were there even then.
I don't understand what you mean by an "explanation". In terms of what? To me an "explanation" is in terms of the quantum mechanical postulates, one of which is exchange symmetry. Postulates don't need explanation, all they need is justification, and agreement with experiment is good enough for me.
@hombre:Asserting that modern atheists base their beliefs on the output of 15th or 19th century atheistic scholars
I did no such thing You asserted that position was invented by Dawkins, and I refuted that.
if you claim that Bradlaugh's statement reflects consideration of the "available evidence,"
I did no such thing. I merely quoted what he said.
There is no thoughtful consideration of evidence going on, just scientism and overblown positivism confusing philosophical materialism with science.
Twice in one post you attributed to me things I did not say. I do not trust your characterization of what you say you read on Amazon.
I'm aware of Feynman's sum over histories formulation. And that's it? You know "that's what's happening?" And you're comfortable lecturing that not only is that's what's happening but that it "makes sense".
@Original Mike:You know "that's what's happening?"
It's the picture that best fits the available evidence.
And you're comfortable lecturing that not only is that's what's happening but that it "makes sense".
It makes as much sense as it NOT happening. Quantum mechanics is now in its second century, and its been very successful in explaining a great deal of experiment and its lead to a great deal of new discoveries that were impossible according to other theories.
What would you accept as an explanation? I've given you two. Why are they unsatisfactory? I asked you what you wanted it explained in terms of, and you didn't answer.
What postulates you do you allow me to assume, and which do you demand I justify? Let's find a patch of common ground and work our way to the answer from there.
"Quantum mechanics is now in its second century, and its been very successful in explaining a great deal of experiment and its lead to a great deal of new discoveries that were impossible according to other theories."
Absolutely.
"What would you accept as an explanation? I've given you two. "
Which two? Sum over histories and what else? (Not saying you didn't, just don't know what other one you're referring to.)
@Original Mike:I just don't know what other one you're referring to.
Exchange symmetry. The single electrons are not isolated. Any equation that describes the state of all the electrons has to be antisymmetric under exchange, and this is why there's interference.
Another way to look at it is that there's a wave that tells the electron where to be, and the wave of course creates the interference when it passes through the slits, and then when the wave hits the screen that tells the electron where to be, and that's why you get the pattern.
Now I never thought that through and never heard anyone talk about it, but it's called "pilot wave" and goes back to de Broglie, and there are classical analogs that show the same behavior as the two-slit experiment.
And of course you get the same math and the same results.
@Original Mike: Here's some of the classical analogue experiments.
In 2006, Couder and Fort have demonstrated that walking droplets passing through one or two slits exhibit similar interference behavior. They used a square shaped vibrating fluid bath with a constant depth (aside from the walls). The “walls” were regions of much lower depth, where the droplets would be stopped or reflected away. When the droplets were placed in the same initial location, they would pass through the slits and be scattered, seemingly randomly. However, by plotting a histogram of the droplets based on scattering angle, the researchers found that the scattering angle was not random, but droplets had preferred directions that followed the same pattern as light or electrons. In this way, the droplet may analogously mimic the behavior of a quantum particle as it passes through the slit.
@Jimbino,
There are several premises:
1. There is a God.
2. God is all knowing.
3. God is all powerful.
4. God is good.
And some missing steps, wherein we assert that God's all-knowing, all-powerful goodness would manifest in a Universe in which it is impossible for a bad thing to happen to a good person.
Conclusion: Bad things can't happen to good people.
We observe a Universe in which we think that ourselves, and other humans, have some ability to choose our actions. And that these choices would come into conflict.
Imagine I am trying to to a task, with the help of another person. Suppose I had a piece of wood, and was using it as a tool or lever. Then I get mad at the other person, and try to smack that person over the head with my piece of wood.
And God's all-knowing, all-good nature interferes with the wood, and turns it into something that is not hard and rigid, so that it cannot hurt someone else.
Would that Universe be better than the one we live in?
One way to resolve this is to assert the non-existence of any all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing Prime Mover.
Another way to resolve this is to assert that an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful Prime Mover has decided to create a world in which some of His creation (you and I, and all the billions of other humans who have ever lived) has the ability to choose what to do.
And that this Great Being has decided to let us suffer the consequences, for good and ill, of the intersection of our choices with the choices of others. And with the results of thousands of other life-forms competing for finite resources in various ways.
Now that I describe things this way, I see that I argue Occam's razor both for and against the existence of God. Depending on what assumptions I use while defining the simpler solution.
"Another way to look at it is that there's a wave that tells the electron where to be, ..."
And there in lies my point. We have more than one way to explain the result. It says we really don't understand what's going on (even though we certainly have developed the mathematics to predict it). I am far from the first person to make this observation.
@Gabriel, @OriginalMike:
I'm not a physics student, or a scientist.
But to my hazy knowledge, there is the mathematical model of Quantum Mechanics.
Similarly hazy, but I think there are three or four theories that attempt to explain why this model works. Each of which is incompatible with the others.
The Copenhagen model disagrees with the Many-Worlds model, and both disagree with the Standing-Wave model...but all use the same mathematical terms to describe the experiments.
Isn't there a different model, with interactions that reach backwards and forwards in time?
Anyway, I think you're talking past each other, by ignoring the distinction between the mathematics and the theory underneath the mathematics.
@Original Mike:It says we really don't understand what's going on (even though we certainly have developed the mathematics to predict it).
But that's no worse than with gravity, which almost no one describes as weird or not making sense.
@SJ:I think you're talking past each other, by ignoring the distinction between the mathematics and the theory underneath the mathematics.
Without observable consequences of the different theories, there isn't any scientifically meaningful distinction between them, or in having no "underneath" theory and just taking the math at face value.
The thing is the math was developed first. There is nothing disreputable about this, Newton did the same with gravity--developed the math, explored the consequences, and did not bother to try to explain why gravity worked that way or if it was invisible rubber bands or what.
Later the math is given some words to describe it and we call that an 'explanation'.
I agree with Ann's assessment of Mr. Robertson's comment and Mediate's comment.
The problem with Robertson's comment is it is more or less true, at least from his point of view, and it not offensive if you understand his thought process, but it is not particularly helpful or appropriate in the situation. He comes across like a Brainy Smurf type who knows a whole lot and is genuinely intelligent, but is unclear about the word "tact." Generally when the scenario involves a grieving mother, introducing Hitler and Stalin into the conversation is not in the top one thousand thoughts that come to mind. It's the sort of thing that someone who is really impressed with his or her own intellect says to essentially brag about how clever they are. Poor form. And I say this as someone who has innocently said similarly dumb things in the past. Live and learn.
And, yes, it is amusing to listen to people who are ignorant of religion to declare themselves theological experts. The Mediate analysis from an objective point of view is about as dumb as Robertson's statement.
"Anyway, I think you're talking past each other, by ignoring the distinction between the mathematics and the theory underneath the mathematics."
Gabriel thinks that because he can manipulate the math to describe a pilot wave (for example) that he understands the universe. I think there is an actual universe underlying the mathematics and want to know "does the pilot wave actually exist?" He probably will claim that's an illegitimate question.
"But that's no worse than with gravity, which almost no one describes as weird or not making sense."
Gravity is completely different. It is well explained by geometry.
@Original Mike:It is well explained by geometry.
Oh, that "space tells matter how to move, matter tells space how to curve" nonsense? What's the MECHANISM? Why does matter do that to space and how does it do it?
Why is inertial mass the same as gravitational mass? What's the mechanism? I know GR postulates the equivalence but what's the EXPLANATION?
I'm asking now, for third time: In what terms will you accept an explanation? What postulates do you allow to assume without justifying and which ones do you demand justification for? Once we have a common set of postulates, let's work from there.
Why do you keep ignoring this request, and instead just repeat that I don't understand what I'm talking about?
Ok, you don't like exchange symmetry: fine. What postulates DO you accept, so we can work from there?
Why do you l
@Original Mike:I want to know "does the pilot wave actually exist?" He probably will claim that's an illegitimate question.
If you want to know that, propose an experiment that can distinguish the existence from the non-existence of the pilot wave. Until you propose that, your question is not scientifically answerable. It is a just-so story that may have something to it later one when someone works out the consequences, but for theories with identical mathematical expressions this is going to be difficult to do. It's not illegitimate but it doesn't lead anywhere. It's like the "Why? Because!" phase my three-year-old and I are going through.
The way out of endless iterations of "Why" is to work back to a mutually acceptable set of postulates, which for the fourth time I am asking you to do with me.
"If you want to know that, "
Don't you want to know?
ANN: That's just atheist talk, essentially mocking (or failing to understand) the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful God.
jimbino: That's not atheist talk; that's science talk. While an atheist discounts the existence of god, the scientist points out the inconsistencies in the philosophical argument using reason and logic: if God is good, he is not God; if god is God he is not good.
No, that is not science talk. Science is a tool. Logic is a tool. It's like saying "that's not atheist talk; that's hammer talk" which is wildly inappropriate unless you are a carpenter, you worship Thor, or are listening to "Can't Touch This."
Science is about observation and experimentation used to make predictions. Anything that cannot be put through that ringer is not science. Science does not have opinions beyond hypotheses to test. A scientist who applies "science" to subjects inappropriate for science is either committing malpractice or is trying to fool people into thinking his personal opinion is fact.
As to logic, it is a wonderful and essential tool for thinking. However, it is completely at the mercy of the premises. Logically consistent conclusions are assured. Correct answers are not. Given the enormous number of unknowns that this topic has, if you think you have exhausted all premises in your reasoning, I can assure you are mistaken. We don't even know what we don't know.
Well..I had 2 additional comments here and someone else's response about 3 hrs ago and they're gone. What was that about?
I mentioned how Robertson's equivalent in Islam might console mom with the reward of virgins.
Of all the crap thrown about here, that's somehow crossing the line?
@Original Mike:Don't you want to know?
Without experimental consequences there is no way to know. It would be gratifying to me to see a predicted difference that would allow me to know.
For the fifth time, what postulates would you accept as comprising a legitimate explanation of the phenomenon you said didn't make sense?
jimbino: Philosophy embraces both science and math; indeed, they would have been roughly equivalent in the minds of Plato and Aristotle and the other Greeks who invented the concepts.
This is true, but also not relevant. Back in days of Plato and Aristotle, it might be more appropriate that they studied "knowledge." Remember that "philosopher" means "lover of knowledge." There was so much to learn that the ancient smart guys could dabble in many different fields and be good at all of them. For instance, Pythagoras was half brilliant mathematician, half cult leader. However, as time passed and more and more knowledge was built up, specialization became more and more necessary. One may stand on the shoulders of giants, but one needs to learn to climb that giant first. They got taller over time.
It must also be noted that over time what is and is not "science" has changed. Astrology and astronomy were the same thing for millennia, as were chemistry and alchemy. Science and philosophy had a similar schism for the obvious reason that they are very different things: what is and what should be.
Heck, these days even obvious sciences have very different levels of "hardness." Sociology is barely a science at all. Behold! xkcd's take on scientific purity:
http://xkcd.com/435/
@Gabriel: "Twice in one post you attributed to me things I did not say. I do not trust your characterization of what you say you read on Amazon."
I simply drew reasonable inferences from your posts within the context of our earlier posts. There was no rationale for your reliance on historical figures if their theories are not relevant to modern atheism. But I can certainly understand your need to justify your withdrawal by implying that I am not being candid. That is a common tactic adopted by folks who cannot defend their positions when they find themselves intellectually inadequate to do so.
Better luck next time.
Add to 10:42: "... intellectually inadequate to do so. [It's called,'chickenshit.']"
There, fixed.
Gabriel: Practically all atheists claim the existence of God is like the existence of unicorns or fairies--given the available evidence, we can safely discount the possibility of such a thing.
What? The unicorn thing again? Not exactly sure why atheists think that makes a clever argument rather than just sounding totally daft, but sure, why not?
Not to beat a non-existent horse, but the concept of "God" or, if you will, the more general question of "Where did I come from and why am I here?" is quite important. It's a tough question to hand wave. While the human experience tends to lend credence to the idea that things tend to be created by other things as opposed to spontaneously appearing from nowhere and therefore makes a creator a logical conclusion, I will admit that the concept of God from a human perspective is quite absurd. However, from the human perspective the big bang is quite absurd. Oh, don't get me wrong. It may be completely correct. It's still absurd. Giant explosion from a tiny dot of matter? Oh sure. (Bartender, you should cut him off.) Or you can just throw your hands up in the air and declare "I don't know" which while probably the most scientifically pure is pretty damn absurd in itself. There are no non-absurd answers to this question! So if you prefer your absurdity more than mine, feel free.
Also, my favorite unicorn is Twilight Sparkle. She comes from a (fictional) universe with both science and magic. Enjoy the sight of Twilight scientifically discussing comets while writing with a quill being manipulated by telekinesis. Or better yet, watch the scene where the talking unicorn argues with her magically time traveling future self about how she’s “not scientifically possible.” Absurdity can be so much fun!
I'm not a believer, but my own long-standing equivalent to Robertson's clumsy statement is this:
From God's point of view, our human lives are infinitesimally brief...even for those of us who live our fullest possible span of years. We're flickers of light that appear than as swiftly wink out. Following our instant here, we will live in eternity with God. In this world we are caterpillars who have not yet become the butterflies we will become in eternity. So, any tragedies or suffering we experience in this life are as transitory and insignificant--in the context of our larger existence in eternity--as a child's having dropped her ice cream cone or scraped his knee. The child's parents know that what the wailing child has experienced as a deeply awful calamity is nothing, a triviality in the context of the child's life as a whole (and will be quickly forgotten even by the child).
In short, why should God intervene in human affairs at all? None of us are human long enough for such intervention to be necessary or meaningful. The comfort humans can take from God is not that he will save us from suffering and death, but that he is there, and that we will--after death--reside with him. Anyone expecting anything more is being childish and does not understand the implications of their own religious beliefs.
Static Ping said...
It must also be noted that over time what is and is not "science" has changed. Astrology and astronomy were the same thing for millennia, as were chemistry and alchemy. Science and philosophy had a similar schism for the obvious reason that they are very different things: what is and what should be.
Whoa. That is way incomplete and wrong. Philosophy is "what should be"??? No.
Philosophy is: metaphysics (the nature of what exists); epistemology (how can we know and know that we know); ethics (how should Man live/behave); aesthetics (what is the nature/purpose of the Arts)
"For the fifth time, what postulates would you accept as comprising a legitimate explanation of the phenomenon you said didn't make sense?"
Stop being a child. The original comment was that quantum mechanics "doesn't make sense". It was a pedestrian comment, frequently made, that the results of quantum mechanics do not comport with every day expectations. Both you and I know this is true. You, however, wanted to show everybody how smart you are. Mission accomplished, Gabriel.
Robert - Keep that up and you'll turn me into a believer.
It's hard, of course, to design an experiment to prove or disprove the existence of God. But most God-believers have other superstitions that can be subjected to scientific experimentation, like the belief in the efficacy of intercessory prayer. Not only has it been shown not to have positive effects (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/healthhttp://http://www.davidmyers.org/Brix?pageID=122, but there is an outstanding $1M reward offered by James Randi to anyone who can show the efficacy of any paranormal intervention. (http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar-challenge.html)
In any case, those who believe in extraordinary phenomena like unicorns, talking snakes and donkeys, angels, giants, devils, assumptions and resurrections, water turning into wine, wine into blood and crackers into flesh have the burden of proof. If they continue to refuse to rise to the challenge, we scientists and other thinking folks have every reason to discount all those other phenomena they assert to be true and real and to continue to question why it is that they are allowed to vote.
SomeoneHasToSayIt: Whoa. That is way incomplete and wrong. Philosophy is "what should be"??? No.
Please enjoy this moment as it does not happen on the Internet very often.
I agree with your statement. My comment was incomplete. If I had spent more time on the comment, I would have phrased it differently, probably more like "what should be or what may be."
Philosophy is still not science, and quite obviously so.
jimbino: It's hard, of course, to design an experiment to prove or disprove the existence of God.
No, it is impossible. It is therefore out of the realm of science. It is not "science talk." A "scientist" who applies science to non-scientific inquiry is, in fact, not "thinking" at all, merely applying his or her own biases and trying to rationalize it as something greater than it really is.
And with the unicorns again. It is almost as if you do not take this topic seriously at all. You know, the whole meaning of life question. Kinda important.
Static Ping said...
Philosophy is still not science, and quite obviously so.
'Obvious' to you, perhaps, but not to me. But I guess some philosophy isn't. That much is true.
Perhaps you have not read Rand's works. Or, if you have, perhaps you have not fully understood them.
She calls her philosophy 'Objectivism', for a reason (pun intended).
It is objective. It contains objective and reasonable demonstrations. Proofs, if you like. Like science. Just accept the few self-evident premises, and the rest follows. A monumental
achievement. I've studied all the greats. She is right there with them.
I wonder what Schopenhauer would think of Rand. Wish I could arrange a meeting. He claimed a woman could never be a philosopher. Ha.
@Cook (7:34): That was certainly better than Robertson's drivel. From a Christian perspective a couple of things don't quite fit, but never mind.
I, for one, will pray that your appreciation of eternity with God will expand to the point at which you can find the salvation that has eluded you thus far.
Post a Comment