301. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79121 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 16, 2007 at 8:14 am

Epeeist (post 431, or #78914):

"I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensively: there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us." - Dawkins

I can accept this as the initial bit of an argument, providing that it goes on to say either that the class of such beings is empty or that the probability of such a being existing is low. - Epeeist

I wonder, have actually read TGD? Because if you have you know that Dawkins goes on to say that the probability if low.

So anyway will you now answer the simple question I asked you in post 378 and clarified in post 424 and this one?

302. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79118 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 16, 2007 at 7:58 am

Lauregon (post 430, or #78912):

Utterly bogus analogy. God is feared, walls aren't. Gods have been feared for eons.

Lennox in his debate made clear that he wasn't talking of a created God and he agreed that belief in any created God is a delusion; similarly I am here not talking of a fearsome God. You know, the ones who postulate an ontological hypothesis are the ones who define what they mean. So, again, I am not talking about your understanding of God, or of other peoples' understanding of God (there is a whole menagerie of such hypotheses as there is a whole menagerie of naturalistic hypotheses). I am defending my understanding of God. So feel free to argue against my ontological hypothesis, especially if you can find any argument to show that in some place it does not work as well as your ontological hypothesis, but the constant creating of strawmen is a waste of time.

Incidentally, my point above was that to let one's beliefs affect one's actions cannot be belittled as "acting out of fear"; so the analogy stands anyway.

If reality is such that God exists which implies fundamental justice, if our actions in this life have consequences in the next, then for people to avoid doing bad things is as reasonable as for people to avoid bumping into walls. - Dianelos

"Implies fundamental justice?" Says who, with what factual knowledge?

Says I who define the ontological hypothesis I am willing to defend, especially in comparison to naturalistic ontological hypotheses. As for "factual knowledge" probably you think that naturalism is built on factual knowledge; if so please present one example of it; if not you can't criticize theism for failing to do what naturalism doesn't either.

Where is the fundamental justice for those who are, for example, maimed and slaughtered in natural disasters, or, for another, born with hideous defects?

In the afterlife of course. But if reality is such as naturalists believe, namely one where there is nothing after death, then no justice is possible.

Surely the "God" person itself is not exempt from personal consequences for cataclysms spawned by "God's" personal creation, right? - Lauregon

That's a valid point I think. Some theists answer that this explains the suffering of Christ. In other words that in Christ God too suffered His/er creation. Beyond Christianity and its dogma of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ I'd like to answer thus: God is not an extra person out there somewhere; God is the whole of objective reality in which we ourselves exist. So all pain (but also all joy) we feel is felt by God too.

(And I submit that we all somehow deep down know that [justice will be] is true.) - Dianelos

All things considered, of course you do, but surely that couldn't be a superstition, could it? - Lauregon

Sure, this deep intuition that I as well as many people share could be wrong. But considering how much better my theistic ontology works than any naturalistic ontology I find that very improbable.

303. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79075 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 16, 2007 at 4:14 am

Phasmagigas (post 429, or #78892):

so the naturalistic belief system can lead to murder, well if what you mean is that real life generally can lead to murder then yes, we all agree on that one, murder for revenge, jealousy, gain, maybe even food but what we dont need is one EXTRA reason under a theistic belief system.

In some few cases, indeed in such cases where even fundamentalists claim scripture has been misinterpreted, it is true that theistic belief can become one extra reason. But in all cases naturalism REMOVES one reason for abstaining from doing bad things. It's a fact that by far the worse crimes against humanity in the 20th century have been committed by naturalists, and even though I believe that their naturalism was not the prime motivator, I also believe that the fact that naturalism removes one reason for behaving ethically plays a significant role in explaining that historical fact. In any case a naturalist cannot on the one hand pretend that only objective evidence counts and on the other hand hand-wave away very relevant objective evidence by noting, as Dawkins does, that both Hitler and Stalin had mustaches. It's not as simple as that. Both on conceptual grounds, and as evidenced by statistical studies of individual behavior, and as evidenced by historical fact one can reasonably arrive at the conclusion that naturalism is not conducive to ethical behavior. This is a problem for naturalism. Not a problem for the truth value of naturalism, but for the attractiveness of naturalism.

304. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79071 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 16, 2007 at 3:57 am

Phasmagigas (post 428, or #78885):

Indeed, only some knowledge about phenomenal reality is quite sufficient to get one through life.

but not past death eh??

Past death too. Theoretically one can only think about the phenomenal reality one experiences whether in this life or in the afterlife without thinking about what kind of objective reality produces it, but that's only theoretically. In the praxis we all form some idea about how objective reality is; the obvious but by now demonstrably false idea is that objective reality is just how it looks when we look around.

Well, incidentally, the same people think that my soul will also suffer eternally because of my ontological beliefs. But I find such is more of a curiosity than actually annoying. I mean who cares what these people think.

one would care if that somebody felt that it justified killing you (or another ) for it.

Let's try to keep some sense of proportion here, as losing that sense is a sure sign of losing one's mind to fanaticism: Compare the number of people killed by religious extremists every year with the number of people killed by traffic accidents, or cigarettes, or hunger, or malaria, or cancer. Or falling in their bathtub for that matter. Terrorism is an ugly phenomenon and we should do something about it, but there are far more serious problems out there.

:-) Right, it's funny to consider all the many a theistic sects which teach that only they have gotten it right and that everybody else is going to hell.

its bloody hysterical. BTW, you are in the right one yes?

Well, my church happens to be Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and at least in its popular expression does believe that only it has gotten it right and that everybody else is going to hell. But I believe that it is dead wrong in its dogma about hell in the first place. Actually, as far as I am concerned, the dogma of hell is the single greatest mistake of traditional Christianity, one I am happy to note not all Christian denominations, and of course not all philosophers, commit. Hell is just such a stupid idea. I wonder how long it will take for Christianity to outgrow it.

305. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79067 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 16, 2007 at 3:16 am

Phasmagigas (post 427, or #78881):

Nobody has done such and thought 'this is because there is God' either

lets get technical, maybe they didnt actually think those very particular 6 words but you can bet their belief in god was very much at the forefront of why the murder was committed. [snip] im talking about the main motivator in the psyche of the murderer IS god,

OK, let's think about what the main motivator is for suicide bombers blowing themselves up in the midst of civilians. You bet that the main motivator is their belief in God who will reward their actions, and I bet that the main motivator is anger born out of a sense of national injustice and humiliation.

How could we find out who is right? Well, a professional psychologist who is an expert on terrorists' minds would help, only I assume we don't have any such poster in this forum. But we may try out the following thought experiment: Let's take a terrorist T who is planning to commit such an act and let's suppose that you and I can actually change T's mind and remove one or the other motivator. So T1 is the same person with all the anger still there, but with all belief of heavenly reward excised from his or her mind. Contrasted to this T2 is the same person with the same beliefs in God and in heavenly rewards for terrorist acts, but with all anger excised from his or her mind. Who do you think is more probable to commit the terrorist attack, T1 or T2?

I think the correct answer is T1, namely the person who lacks any beliefs in heavenly reward but who has still all the anger. And I don't claim this only because of my folk opinion of how human minds work, but on objective evidence too: There are many people like T2 (namely people who have the same religious beliefs as T has but not the nationalist anger) and they do not commit terrorist acts. On the other hand there are some people like T1 (namely people who lack the belief in a God who approves and will reward them but have the nationalist anger) who do commit suicide bombings, for example the Kamikazi pilots in WWII. Or people who commit terrible acts directed against civilians, such as the atheist Peruvian "Shining Path" terrorists. Or, frankly, the British pilots who firebombed German cities, or the American pilots who firebombed Japanese cities and finally dropped atomic bombs on two of them, all of them knowing that they were murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

It's common knowledge that anger can move people to do some terrible acts while feeling they are doing the right thing. Belief in some heavenly reward certainly helps, but is clearly not the main motivator behind the acts of terrorists. Anger is. And if the West were serious about winning the "war against terror" it would remove the grounds for that anger in the Middle East. Which implies that Harris and Dawkins writing best-selling books based on the trivially wrong idea that it's religious beliefs that move people to terrorism is misguided - and therefore dangerous too. Why dangerous? Because if some day terrorists do manage to get some nuclear device and explode it in some US metropolis (an unlikely but possible event) then those who misrepresented the problem out of their dislike of religion will be partially responsible too. Harris and Dawkins may not be aware of it, but they are playing into the hands of the most reactionary parts of the US government who must be happy to see that not only the Christian fundamentalist loonies but now even secular academics with a large following approve the premise that anti-American terrorism is the fault of Islam.

306. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79040 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 16, 2007 at 1:06 am

Steve99 (post 426, or #78855):

Just a brief comment, as I found this most amusing:
Dianelos:

The way God objectively is, is our model of what is objectively good.

Steve:

1. Dianelos has a model of what is objectively good. (premise)
2. This model defines an objective God. (premise)

Dianelos:

Actually models are not used do not define what is objective, they are used to approximate what is objective.

I was nearly deafened by the sound of screeching brakes and skidding during this abrubt U-turn. Anyway, I assume that this now makes everything so very clear to everyone?

Oh, I see the misunderstanding. I meant he original proposition like when one says "That person is my model" which does not mean that that person is literally one's model, but rather is what one's model is based on. Anyway, let me clarify the original proposition:

The way God objectively is, is what our model of what is objectively good tries to approximate.

307. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79039 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 16, 2007 at 12:57 am

Lauregon (post 409, or #78740):

I agree with the problem and agree that it is serious (not to mention the US is such a big elephant that its problems affect the rest of humanity). But I disagree with the solution you suggest of "training people to believe in what is actually visible" – in short naturalism. Why not? Well, see it this way: Politics is the art of the feasible, and when a large portion of the US public believes that theism is not only true but the most important kind of knowledge there is then the chance of getting the US to teach only naturalism at schools is zero. The best solution, and that's something thoughtful theists and naturalists in the US could agree on, is to teach ontology at schools and to seriously discuss there the best ontological theories there are, and how they all are compatible with science. Young people will be then be free to make their own decision about which ontological theory strikes them as more reasonable, and make that decision on a good foundation of knowledge. At the very least young people will learn to recognize the fallacious (i.e. unsustainable in reason) elements of both popular theism and popular naturalism, which again at the very least will help them avoid dogmatism and fanaticism. And the same should happen in Europe, where young people normally only get religious instruction at school, so I think that here naturalism should be taught alongside religious ontologies too.

308. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79037 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 16, 2007 at 12:39 am

Lauregon (post 408, or #78736):

I never claimed such. – Dianelos

Perhaps, perhaps not.

No: I never claimed such. In order to have a meaningful discussion one is supposed to comment on the other person's ideas, and not construct a strawman to respond to. If you wish to respond to my posts then please respond to my posts, not to a post your model of a bogeyman theist might have written.

309. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79035 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 16, 2007 at 12:37 am

Dr Benway (post 407, or #78735):

Matters of fact affect our lives. Regardless of one's ontology - naturalism, idealism, dualism - any claim about the world is subject to the same rules of evidence.

Agreed.

Your constant appeal to theism vs. naturalism is a red herring.

I still have trouble understanding how you mean that. I assume it's not that you try to avoid debate using the old hypocritical gambit that atheism does not express a belief so it does not need any defending. So what do you mean? After all we all have some beliefs about objective reality (the reality that produces our experiences on which we base all knowledge we have), and there is a great disagreement about whether that reality is at bottom material and mechanical (as naturalism has it and as virtually all atheists in the West believe) or is at bottom spiritual and intentional (as theism has it)[1] And how objective reality is, is a matter of fact. And how one believes objective reality is does affect our lives. So the naturalism versus theism question is a valid one, and an important one. As I have already repeatedly pointed out to you even Dawkins (who is not the most knowledgeable person in philosophy) recognizes that the profound question is precisely that. And at the very least that's the question I am interested in analyzing. But you keep calling my stance "red herring", "false dichotomy" and so on. Well I fail to understand your stance: Am I not allowed to think and discuss about any question I like, especially a question that is deemed meaningful and important by many people?

[1]: Most theists believe that even though reality is at bottom spiritual and intentional there is also a part of reality that is material and mechanical, so I think it's fair to say that theism often describes a dualistic reality. According to my judgment this description is superfluous and problematic; I think that the strongest theistic ontology is so-called "idealistic theism" which describes reality exclusively in terms of experience. After all that's our reality: we exist in a field of experience in which we discover a particular kind of order which we name the physical universe around us. But this does not entail that the physical universe we discover in our experience is objectively real. That's the naturalistic intuition, which may be a very strong intuition, but which on closer study turns out to be full of paradoxes and really hard problems.

Theists feel justified in accepting God as a fact although no corroborative evidence for God has been demonstrated.

Right, I understand your position is that any matter of fact requires corroborative evidence before one can reasonably believe in it. So my question for you is this: That other people are conscious subjects and not just automata is a matter of fact, and one that you believe in. What is your corroborative evidence?

Dianelos, your assertion of moral superiority in the setting of your untroubled narcissism is truly something to behold.

I don't claim moral superiority for myself :-) I do not consider myself an especially good person (I don't have enough faith in God you see); the only thing I am actually proud of is that I refused to do military service which is mandatory in Greece, but that's about it. What I have been arguing here is not my own moral superiority but that theism is intrinsically morally superior to naturalism, in the sense that both in the best case and on average theism will motivate people to behave more ethically than naturalism. Which is I think very easy to demonstrate. Of course a naturalist is free to counter: "So what, that does not make theism true", but for a naturalist to deny that theism has this moral advantage is I think a loser's game.

Dawkins in his debate with Lennox discusses this issue, when he is challenged to comment on his claim in TGD that "you don't need God to be good" (ca min. 33 in the second file). He says that he can only think of two reasons for thinking one needs God:

1) That one would need a supposedly God-given book like the Bible to know what is moral, but then one must pick and choose from it which evidences that we don't get our morality from the Bible but from somewhere else.

2) That one must fear punishment by God or else desire reward by God in order to be good, and that "neither of these two is a noble reason to be good to say the least".

Now I won't discuss his first point (even though I could point out that there is an evolution in ethical thought in the Christian Bible up to Jesus' ethics which is not only a splendid moral code but probably insurpassable, and which has arguably inspired much of the evolution of the moral Zeitgeist Dawkins often approvingly points out). But I basically agree with his first point: it's our own moral sense that measures the moral sense of the Bible (and of any ethical belief system in general) and not the other way around. But his second point is clearly fallacious; after all it's moral behavior we are discussing here. The proposition "you don't need God to be good" entails the idea that theism is not conducive to moral behavior, and his second point above concedes that it actually is, but rejects such moral behavior on the grounds that it is not "noble", which is irrelevant even if it were true. And I don't think it's true anyway: If one studies in order to enter the University, one wouldn't say that the expectation of the reward of entering the University renders studying "ignoble". And if one before passing a street carefully looks to the right and to the left out of fear of getting hit by a car, that isn't "ignoble" either. To want what is best for one is an entire natural and sensible thing, and if reality is objectively good then it pays to be good and it's stupid to be bad.

310. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79025 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 11:22 pm

Ianmac1 (post 406, or #78730):

Instead, "faith is in general the persuasion of the mind that a certain statement is true (Phil. 1:27; 2 Thess. 2:13). Its primary idea is trust. A thing is true, and therefore worthy of trust. It admits of many degrees up to full assurance of faith, in accordance with the evidence on which it rests."

I think you are quite right. Indeed both the Greek word "pistis" we find in the New Testament and the English word "faith" that translates it are ambiguous, as both can mean "belief" but also "trust" (like when we say "I have faith in you"). From the context it quite clear that when Jesus of Nazareth spoke of faith he meant trust. After all everybody in Jesus' circle already believed in God, so clearly he was not telling people to believe in God (they already did) but to trust in God, a different thing altogether. And it's when one understands what "faith" means that one also understands one of the most misunderstood Christian premises, namely that faith is more important than works: it simply expresses the psychological fact that trust in God precedes good works. Indeed the way most Christians today live their lives evidences that they don't have trust (and hence faith) in God, no matter how loudly they proclaim their faith (by which they mean "belief"). So we have a huge confusion here in popular Christian thought, and it's no wonder that non-Christians get confused too.

311. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78922 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 12:08 pm

Dr Benway (post 399, or #78702):

Dianelos: ...and it's understandable that ancient tribes would mix their ideas about God with lots of mythology as well as with superstition and nationalist nonsense, don't you agree?

Steve: Yes. What puzzles me is why you do it (apart from the nationalist bit, of course).

Dianelos: I am not sure how you mean this "you"; I am not part of an ancient tribe.

Dr Benway: Another screw has come loose. To restate the above:
Dianelos: X does Y.
Steve: Yes, but why do you also do Y?
Dianelos: I am not X.
Steve (presumably): WTF?

I see you inserted a clarifying "also" in there :-) Anyway now I understand Steve's question; it's an example of the type of trick question that implies an arbitrary proposition, such as when one asks somebody "Do you beat your wife every night?"

Now of course I don't think that I mix my ideas about God with lots of mythology and superstition, so there is no way to answer Steve's question. But I can point out why in general people fall for mythological beliefs: they don't check on their beliefs but feel cocksure about them, and typically they ridicule or trivialize the ideas of those who disagree with them instead of seriously engaging with them.

312. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78917 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 11:46 am

Quine (post 398, or #78700):

But be forewarned, in the end of his book Drange estimates that the probability of the existence of God is much much higher than the probability of fairies living at the bottom of the garden ;-)

Be forewarned that a very very bad event with a probability of 10e-1000 is 1000 times more likely than another very very bad event with a probability of 10e-1003; neither of which are going to keep me awake at night.

Drange's estimate is in the whereabouts of 10e-1.

313. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78845 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 4:15 am

Quine (post 394, or #78694):

3. Predict some observation that would have to follow if the null hypothesis were true.

Watch him sleep.

Doesn't work. We observe ants sleep, but this does not say us anything about whether ants are conscious subjects or not.

I hope there is no misunderstanding about what "conscious subject" means (and incidentally "conscious beings" or "person" are synonyms of that concept). It means a being capable of having experiences.

314. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78841 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 3:59 am

Epeeist (post 388, or #78624):

So what is your position in respect to Dawkins's proposition that all creator God hypotheses are scientific hypotheses?

As I have said in a previous post, I don't have my copy of TGD here since I loaned it out. Therefore I cannot comment on Dawkin's hypothesis.

Right, but this is easily fixed. Here are the relevant quotes. Dawkins in the very preface of TGD writes (page 2):

"Perhaps you feel that agnosticism is a reasonable position, but that atheism is just as dogmatic as religious belief? If so, I hope Chapter 2 will change your mind, by persuading you that 'the God Hypothesis' is a scientific hypothesis about the universe, which should be analysed as skeptically as any other." That's the proposition at hand. The only question remaining is what Dawkins means by "the God Hypothesis" in chapter 2. So here it is (page 31):

"I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensively: there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us." Incidentally I think this is carefully thought-out hypothesis. Indeed virtually all theists would agree with Dawkins's God Hypothesis, so it's a fair and general exposition of a defining thesis of theism.

So, maybe now you can explain what your position is in respect to Dawkins's proposition that his God hypothesis is a scientific hypothesis.

315. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78835 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 3:38 am

Steve99 (post 387, or #78596):

2. This model defines an objective God. (premise)

Actually models are not used do not define what is objective, they are used to approximate what is objective.

This leads to some troubling conclusions: Given 1,2,3 and 4:

In analytic philosophy one tries to build inferences based on two previous propositions. Three are sometimes fine, when the case is quite clear. To base an inference on four propositions is almost always confusing. By the way it's not easy to build an analytical argument; on the contrary even simple arguments sometimes require much work: One must often move propositions around, think about what follows from what, think how to express one's propositions in a way that the inferences are solid, think about how to defend the premises, and so on. But writing down an argument analytically is a very useful exercise because it often leads to one realizing that one's argument is based on fallacious thinking, or helps one realize exactly on what premises one's argument rests.

It goes without saying that careful thinking is something all reasonable people (theists and naturalists alike) agree is a good thing. So to display careless or superficial thinking (perhaps motivated by the need to show how simple the issues really are) is never a good sign.

316. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78831 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 3:20 am

Dr Benway (post 386, or #78586):

Benway: Pre-linguistic creatures experience pain, clearly.

Dianelos: I agree, but that's clearly not what Dennett himself says in the article I linked to in post 342.

Benway: No. He's using "consciousness" to refer to self-representation, or selfhood. From the article: "If selfhood develops gradually, then certain types of events only gradually become experiences, and there will be no sharp line between unconscious pains (if we may call them that) and conscious pains, and both will merit moral attention."

Well, here Dennett is only saying that there is a gradual change from non-selfhood in which events are not experiences to selfhood in which events are experiences. But Dennett clarifying this gradual change only evidences that he thinks that there is such an initial state in pre-linguistic children in which there is no self there, and therefore also no experience, such as the experience of pain. I am happy to see that you too agree that that's nonsense.

He's not denying that pre-symbolic creatures feel pain; he's speculating that pre-symbolic creatures do not have an awareness of the self, and thus no awareness of the self-in-pain.

That's a clever spin, Dr Benway, but that's not what Dennett is saying. In the very quote you mention above he speaks that there is a state in which events (he means physical events in brains) are not experience, which means that the brain does react to painfully stimuli but at the absence of some actual experience of pain. That much is clear. After all, if Dennett really meant what you spin above, he wouldn't be writing about people being shocked by his belief. I imagine Dennett is realizing that he is becoming irrelevant among his peers and tries now to get some notoriety based on shocking value.

317. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78829 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 2:59 am

Lauregon (post 384, or #78556):

If you were to learn a lot more about what believers actually believe instead of relying on what you assume they believe, the antitheist warnings of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, et al, might make much more sense to you.

Well, Dawkins and Harris have already given many examples of such strange beliefs and why they are dangerous. And I agree that they are dangerous, without having to find out even more about the specific beliefs of each small sect around. What I disagree with is that these harebrained beliefs are the most dangerous thing around, and as I argue in post 414 above, it now seems that Dawkins and Harris are softening their original position too. Finally I think that religious beliefs are apt to become more dangerous where religion is not seriously taught as schools (as in the US) and where entirely nations are exploited or invaded or their autarchic (which must not be confused with undemocratic) regimes are supported, and their religion ridiculed (as in the Middle East). Therefore, it seems to me, "new atheism's" prescriptions for decreasing the dangers of religion at best do not deal with the causal basis of the problem and at worst push for the opposite of what would work.

A philosopher's "God" cooly pondered in the comfort of an ivory tower is considerably different from the "God" in the minds of most believers.

Quite so. Which is clearly one more reason for anybody interested in thinking about ontological truth to consider the God of the philosophers rather than the God in the minds of most believers. Which, Dawkins, despite his protestations of caring mainly about truth, has not really done before writing TGD.

318. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78823 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 2:39 am

Lauregon (post 383, or #78555):

We all wish for people to behave in an ethical manner. My argument is that theistic ontologies have an intrinsic advantage in this respect over naturalistic ontologies. - Dianelos

That intrinsic advantage would be spelled f-e-a-r of the all-powerful, all-knowing, omniscient "God." Take away the fear and/or hope of reward, and the advantage vanishes.

Well, I understand the sentiment but not the logic of what you write here. Let's take as an example a simple true proposition: "Walls are hard". Knowing this proposition helps us avoid bumping into walls and thus helps us avoid painful bumps in the head. But this doest not imply that our behavior is governed by the fear of walls, or anything like that. I mean, naturalists of all people would not suggest that we should try to ignore how reality really is, or that it is reasonable to wish for reality being different of what it really is, or that we should behave in a way as if reality weren't like it really is. If reality is such that God exists which implies fundamental justice, if our actions in this life have consequences in the next, then for people to avoid doing bad things is as reasonable as for people to avoid bumping into walls. It's what Buddhists call the law of karma: all actions have personal consequences even if these are not experienced in this life. (And I submit that we all somehow deep down know that this is true.)

319. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78819 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 2:28 am

Shuggy (post 381, or #78552):

Quaker meetings offer as much of a logical path to wicked behaviour as secular humanistic ethical systems do.

I was actually referring to the belief system of Quakerism, and not so much to the praxis of Quaker meetings, some of which may go astray. But anyway that's an interesting claim you are making; could you elaborate on it? From all I know about Quaker meetings I cannot conceive of them giving a "logical path" towards wicked behavior even in the praxis.

320. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78817 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 2:22 am

Shuggy (post 379, or #78546):

no matter how well a naturalist writes a book on ethics, that book will not make as much sense as a book on ethics written equally well by a theist

Can anyone make any sense at all of that sentence?

I thought its meaning was quite clear, but let me elaborate what I mean using an example: One of the basic ethical premises virtually everybody agrees with is that we should not exploit others for personal gain. Now according to naturalism there is no afterlife so the implications of one's actions from one's point of view go only until one's death. So, the naturalist reader will wonder: "Why shouldn't I exploit other people if it is clearly for my personal gain?" and the naturalist author of a book on ethics will have much trouble answering that question. Indeed the only possible way for the author to do that is by arguing that we should not always do what is the best for ourselves, and such a line of argument represents two problems: First any naturalist reader can quite reasonably reject this line of argument as sentimentalist nonsense, and second it's psychologically impossible for one to actually wish something contrary to one's own interest; this fact, besides being well known to everyone by introspection, is noticed by psychologists and discussed in the literature.

321. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78814 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 2:04 am

Steve99 (post 375, or #78539):

The way God objectively is, is our model of what is objectively good.

Most religious people's 'model' of what is 'objectively good' includes persecuting people like me. So God is objectively a homophobe.

The first proposition is factually false, and the second proposition is a logical fallacy, as it would not follow even if the first were true.

322. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78813 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 1:54 am

Phasmagigas (post 371, or #78532):

In other words no matter how well a naturalist writes a book on ethics, that book will not make as much sense as a book on ethics written equally well by a theist

im not sure this even deserves a response.

Well, feel free not to respond to any argument that sits uncomfortably with your ontological beliefs. Some theists do the same all the time ;-)

323. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78812 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 1:47 am

Steve99 (post 367, or #78527):

But when confronted with the argument (as well as with statistics) which say the obvious, namely that one cannot condemn an ontology's moral influence based on the worst things a very few of the people who hold this ontology commit, both Harris and Dawkins softened their position

First, Harris and Dawkins have never softened their position.

I think they have; here's the evidence:

Harris in the very first pages of his "The End of Faith" sounds like a Biblical prophet pointing out the terrible calamities that will befall humanity if people do not adopt his own ontological beliefs. Here are some quotes:

"It seems that if our species ever eradicates itself through war, it will not be because it was written in the stars but because it was written in our books; it is what we do with words like 'God' and 'paradise" and 'sin' in the presence that will determine our future."(page 12 – which is actually the second page of that book)

"Our technological advance in the art of war have finally rendered our religious differences – and hence our religious beliefs - antithetical to our survival."(page 13)

"Words like 'God' and 'Allah' must go the way of 'Apollo' and 'Baal', or they will unmake our world."(page 14)

"I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance – born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God – is one of the principles forces driving us toward the abyss."(page 15)

Pretty scary, huh? Religion, even moderate religion, as the terrible bogeyman who is the main threat for the survival of humankind. That book, which I think started the so-called "new atheism" phenomenon, was published in 2004. But then in his 2007 response to an article by Haidt (an article that mentions studies that show that religious people are on average more ethical than non-religious people) he now writes:

"The point [of new atheism] is not that we atheists can prove religion to be the cause of more harm than good (though I think this can be argued, and the balance seems to me to be swinging further toward harm each day)." Well, this looks like radical softening to me; from fire-breathing warnings about the evils of even moderate religion to conceding that it's not so clear whether religion does more harm than good.

(See:
http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,1631,A-Response-to-Jonathan-Haidt,Sam-Harris,page1#comments )

As for Dawkins, after arguing in this 2006 video that religion is the "root of all evil" (here's a typical quote "as we wake up to this huge challenge to our civilized values don't let's forget the elephant in the room, the elephant called religion"), in his 2007 debate with Lennox he sounds much more accommodating and now says "it must be admitted that science grew out of a religious tradition" (ca min. 24 of the first file), and "I would not for a moment say that all religion is bad, all religion is dangerous, that Christianity is dangerous, certainly only a minority of religious people are bad or do bad things" (ca min. 18 of the second file). Well, from religion being the big bad elephant in the room to I would not for a moment say that all religion is bad, only a minority of religious people do bad things – sounds like softening one's position to me.

Incidentally the fact that Harris and Dawkins have softened their position speaks well of their intellectual freedom and honesty. They were moved by anger to make some extreme claims, and when they realized that they backpedaled; that's what any reasonable person would do.

We are talking about things the vast majority of religious believe, and widespread harmful prejudices and attitudes actively supported by religion. These beliefs affect me personally. I am gay. The majority of religions condemn me. So how does this affect me? Well, in certain countries I could be prosecuted, with a range unpleasant sentences likely. Even in good old England, mainstream (not 'a very few') religious leaders have been campaigning hard to restrict my rights.

Ok, I can understand that the fact that the Bible condemns homosexuality emotionally bothers you, but let's keep a sense of proportion here. The Bible also condemns and calls for terrible punishment for women who have premarital sex, but this does not really bother modern women, including almost all religious modern women. The Bible also condemns and calls for the execution of those who blaspheme which would make most of the US population deserving of death. It also condemns those who break the Sabbath which would even make virtually all fundamentalist Christians in the US deserving of death. I suppose there must be some terrible punishment in the Bible for those who eat pork too. It's clear then that not even fundamentalist Christians take what's written in the Bible seriously, so I don't see why you should. The Bible is in this regard an extremely primitive document that only a tiny minority of the world population takes seriously (the ultra-orthodox Jews).

Now the Bible's homophobia, and xenophobia, and gynophobia are all understandable in the context of the very primitive times in which it was written and by the fact that its authors were expressing the common (and again easily explainable) aversion to all that's different. Indeed the aversion to what's different is a general principle not restricted to the religious discourse. For example in Stalinist Soviet Union there were severe laws and punishments against homosexuality, and surely these were not religiously motivated don't you think?

So you happen to belong to one more group that was discriminated against in the past for many reasons that are fairly unrelated to religion. Other such groups are women, slaves, non-white races, Christians, and so on and so forth. So who cares about lamenting the past? You know as well as any educated person does that you are on the winning side of the Zeitgeist. The remaining prejudices against gay people are quickly (historically speaking) crumbling away. And frankly I think you are being unfair to the Anglican church in your quote above, as the Anglican church was the first (or one of the first) to have consecrated openly gay bishops. So, and I hope you won't take this too badly, there is the concept of "cry-baby" to ponder.

324. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78793 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 12:05 am

Phasmagigas (post 368, or #78528):

behaviour is possibly similar on average, im sure i enjoy my meals as much as any believer but I can bet that throughout the entirety of human history, nobody has ever manually sliced completely through the hot bloody neck of a crying, defacating and vomiting adult male and thought 'this is because there is no god'.

Nobody has done such and thought 'this is because there is God' either.

Let's not trivialize the issues. Human behavior is a very complex thing, and if you are saying that ontological beliefs can play some role in shaping human behavior then I agree. So I agree that belief in religious fundamentalism has played some role in some peoples' murdering others, but by the same measure belief in naturalism has also played some role in some peoples' murdering others (even though in all cases other factors such as greed, anger or politics are probably the main motivators). But if one compares theism in general and naturalism in general in this respect the result I think speaks against naturalism, so that's maybe a path you don't want to go.

325. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78791 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 15, 2007 at 12:04 am

Bonzai (post 365, or #78524):

"Naturalism" is not an "ontology" that you just attach to science arbitrarily like your "God theory", it is the very working assumption of science.

No, that's just what popular naturalism would like to have you believe, because you see without this imaginary link with science, naturalism just hangs in there unsupported by reason. The working assumption of science is that the scientific method is a valid method for explaining physical phenomena. Now naturalists are very impressed by the scientific method, so much so that they believe it's sufficient for deciding ontological questions too, but that's all there is to it. It's conceptually obvious as well as evidenced by observational fact that you don't need naturalism to do science. In fact naturalism hinders science, in the sense that scientists who are also naturalists complicate their lives and waste time wondering about what kind of physical reality could possibly account for the phenomena that science describes, and are reduced to claiming an entirely series of mutually contradictory as well as highly implausible descriptions of physical reality.

326. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78787 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 14, 2007 at 11:52 pm

Steve99 (post 364, or #78523):

First you are talking about which point of view is more 'reasonable', and then you are talking about 'sufficient evidence'. There is no reason why the two criteria should be linked in any way.

Surely what is reasonable to believe and the presence of sufficient evidence are intimately linked.

Something I have pointed out again and again is that there is no reason why a species of slightly more evolved ape's view of what is 'reasonable' should bear any relation to what is 'true' or 'real'.

Interesting you should think so. That's how Plantinga also argues: that if naturalism and natural evolution are true then we should no trust our cognitive capacities. Maybe that's another advantage that theists have: we don't believe that naturalism is true and therefore we have no reason to doubt our cognitive capacity to discover what is true or real.

We know that our view of what is 'reasonable' is a very poor judge of what is true or real. If we stuck to what was 'reasonable', we would never have discovered black holes, we would never have come up with quantum theory or relativity, we would never have explored the far reaches of mathematics and logic.

I am not sure how you mean that. Surely we discovered general relativity, quantum theory, and so on, by the application of reason: We tried to discover the best explanation for the respective physical phenomena. That's how theism also works: we try to find the best explanation for the whole of our experience of life.

Unless you realise that reaching beyond "I dunno" using "What I want to consider reasonable" is deeply flawed, there is little point in continuing.

I think we can do better than "I dunno" when discussing ontology, i.e. when discussion how objective reality is. And I think most people agree with me on that; for example Dawkins in TGD goes far beyond "I dunno" when he claims the ontological proposition that "almost certainly no God exists" and then explains how reason has led him to that belief.

327. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78711 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 14, 2007 at 12:40 pm

Dr Benway (post 363, or #78521):

I am not sure what your point is, but the fact remains that ontological questions are a) meaningful; see how strenuously Dawkins and many others argue the ontological proposition that God doesn't exist, and b) important because ontological beliefs affect the quality of our lives and the way we behave – to a degree that I think is not at all insignificant, but probably not as dramatic as Harris and Dawkins think.

328. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78710 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 14, 2007 at 12:33 pm

Phasmagigas (post 362, or #78520):

in my day to day goings on I do not incorporate any theistic belief whatsoever, if there is a god then i'll have picked the wrong way to look at the universe/outside the universe and all inbetween, still i manage anyway.

Don't worry; most theists don't incorporate any theistic belief in their day to day goings either.

if there is a god then i'll have picked the wrong way to look at the universe/outside the universe and all inbetween, still i manage anyway.

Indeed, only some knowledge about phenomenal reality is quite sufficient to get one through life.

My issue is when people around me actually think that my 'soul' will suffer eternally for it!!

Well, incidentally, the same people think that my soul will also suffer eternally because of my ontological beliefs. But I find such is more of a curiosity than actually annoying. I mean who cares what these people think.

(if there is a god i'd be suprised, but even more suprised if there is a heaven and hell)heck, even those westboro baptists are going to hell according to many muslims!!

:-) Right, it's funny to consider all the many a theistic sects which teach that only they have gotten it right and that everybody else is going to hell.

329. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78692 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 14, 2007 at 10:29 am

Lauregon (post 357, or #78504):

By what means do you believe yourself able to know with certainty that your ideas about "God" are not mythology and superstition?

I never claimed such.

330. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78685 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 14, 2007 at 10:06 am

Dr Benway (post 356, or #78502):

The "naturalism" of Aristotle and Newton would have included God as an explanatory hypothesis.

As it is a fact that both Aristotle and Newton were theists it's false and grossly misleading to speak of Aristotle's and Newton's "naturalism". Theism and naturalism are opposing ontological views about objective reality: At the very least naturalism states that no supernatural beings exist, and at the very least theism states that a supernatural being does exist.

Still today the God hypothesis remains on the naturalist's table. However, until someone demonstrates a clear counterfactual to the null hypothesis, i.e., "a creator God does not exist," we've no reason to grant the God hypothesis any special confidence.

Well, I am not sure that methodology always works. Here is a counterexample:

1. Hypothesis: Richard Dawkins is a conscious subject.
2. Null hypothesis: Richard Dawkins is not a conscious subject.
3. Predict some observation that would have to follow if the null hypothesis were true.

Well? I submit there is no such observation that would obtain only if the null hypothesis (or conversely only if the hypothesis) were true, but maybe you'd like to suggest one.

There are many other examples of such hypotheses, for example "Objective reality exists", "We all live within a computer simulation", or "For about five seconds after January 1, 2001, a teapot was orbiting Jupiter", or "God saved a particular child in a major natural catastrophe", or "God guided natural evolution by affecting quantum phenomena that produce errors in the replication of DNA."

331. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78684 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 14, 2007 at 9:49 am

Steve99 (post 354, or #78466):

What I claimed was that the idea of naturalism was the driving force behind amazing discoveries. That does not mean that only people who believe in pure naturalism are able to make such discoveries.

The fact that both naturalists and theists can make amazing scientific discoveries proves that neither naturalism nor theism are necessary for doing such discoveries, and they are not necessary they can't be "the driving force behind" such discoveries, can they?

It just means that the naturalistic aspect of their thinking was the part that helped in this area.

Here you are probably using "naturalism" in the sense of "methodological naturalism" which is an entirely superfluous expression as it only means "scientific method" and has nothing to do with naturalism in the context of ontology, which is the context we are discussing here. But, sure, you're right: When theists make scientific discoveries they use the scientific method. And if it makes you feel better to call that method "naturalistic" be my guest. Word games mean nothing.

Well, if God exists then it's improbable that God has parted seas and burned bushes don't you think?

Yes, and that is precisely my point. We NOW think that it is improbable.

Right, theists (or at least many of them) have already outgrown their mythologies; let's hope many naturalists will outgrow theirs.

We NOW think that it is improbable he influenced evolution.

I am not sure what this means. God has designed all order we experience including the organized complexity of the species. That we can explain that complexity (as we can at least in principle explain all physical phenomena) on mechanical grounds, only evidences a particular property of God's design. If you call such a state of affairs "not influencing" then I agree with you.

I have few doubts that at some point in the future we will have a good explanation for the origin of the universe too.

I disagree on epistemological grounds. Science's job is to model physical phenomena as well as possible, but not to model the models. The models that science discovers are the end of the road as far as science is concerned. So, once (or if) science discovers the TOE (Theory of Everything), that is an ultimate model on which at least in principle all physical phenomena can be reduced in a coherent manner, then that's the end of the road; it's not science's job to explain why this model is as it is and not different. Incidentally in his debate with Lennox, Dawkins appears to claim that more powerful scientific theories are only more difficult to understand but not more complex. Now Dawkins is accustomed to using "complexity" without actually explaining what he means by that word, but anybody who'd compare the formal description of general relativity with the formal description of classical mechanics it substitutes will surely judge that the former is not only more difficult to understand but more complex too. Speaking of tendencies then, there is little doubt that if the TOE model exists it will be more complex than anything we yet know.

and it's understandable that ancient tribes would mix their ideas about God with lots of mythology as well as with superstition and nationalist nonsense, don't you agree?

Yes. What puzzles me is why you do it (apart from the nationalist bit, of course).

:-) I am not sure how you mean this "you"; I am not part of an ancient tribe.

As for God hiding undetectably behind quantum events, I only proposed this idea as a counterexample for those who believe in the objective existence of the universe and insist that Darwinism proves that God has not designed or guided the evolution of the species.

It isn't a valid counterexample. Because if your God hides behind quantum events, then there is nothing to stop an infinite number of other gods hiding behind quantum events, so it is no evidence for your God.

Oh, ok. So let me improve the former claim thus: "This idea is a counterexample for those who insist that Darwinism proves that no supernatural being has designed or guided the evolution of the species." So, to put it plainly, Darwinism does not prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster has not designed or guided the evolution of the species. And thus, obviously, Darwinism has nothing to contribute to the question of whether some supernatural being has designed or guided the evolution of the species.

All you have demonstrated is that something that can't be detected can't be detected

Actually what I demonstrated is that something that can't be detected by science can't be detected by science. You are right that this is obvious, but it apparently wasn't obvious enough for Dawkins who based his entire TGD on the premise that all God hypotheses are scientific hypotheses and therefore falsifiable by science.

Do you see any particular logical or practical problem in God creating our experiential environment exactly as we actually have it while at the same time keeping Him/Herself beyond the reach of science?

It is that if the only way you can allow for the idea of a God is the special case that He does not want to be discovered by objective observation, this sounds just so suspicious.

Well, I asked for a "logical or practical" problem, but you here respond with what can best be described as a "psychological" problem. I am not belittling your answer though; it expresses a completely reasonable point and naturalist philosophers have used it to construct a major argument against the existence of God, the so-called "argument from non-belief" (which many consider the strongest argument against the existence of God). You can read an exhaustive exposition of that argument and of theists' responses to it in atheologian Theodore Drange's "Nonbelief & Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God". But be forewarned, in the end of his book Drange estimates that the probability of the existence of God is much much higher than the probability of fairies living at the bottom of the garden ;-)

And don't forget that there a lot of extremely important facts that are beyond the reach of science, including the fact that we are all conscious beings, so it's not like the undetectability of God by science is some kind of unique case.

This is no argument at all. Even assuming that A is beyond the reach of science, it is no evidence that B or C or D is.

But this is not my argument above. I only point out that there are ontological facts that are beyond the reach of science, and so the existence of God may be such an ontological fact too. Therefore it makes sense for theists to claim that God is an ontological fact that is beyond the reach of science, just like consciousness is.

It is up to you show that your propositions are true.

Right, and as I have argued in the McGrath thread the proposition that theists should show is true is "Theism is more reasonable than naturalism" (after properly defining what kind of theism and naturalism they mean). You may ask, why not show that the proposition "God objectively exists" is true? Because such ontological propositions are very difficult to justify; for example "The physical universe objectively exists" is very difficult to justify too. But in the naturalism versus theism debate it's not necessary to either justify naturalism or theism by themselves; it's quite sufficient to show that one is more reasonable than the other.

332. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78671 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 14, 2007 at 8:18 am

The great teapot (post 353, or #78454):

That does not mean that because science can not give us an objective reality inventing things that we have absolutely no evidence for ranks alongside it.

I agree that scientific reasoning and ontological reasoning are very much different things. As for "inventing things that we have absolutely no evidence for" this is highly ambiguous and charged language; surely you are not saying that naturalists like Dawkins who believe in a particular description of objective reality have "invented" it without "absolutely no evidence", do you? But if you are not saying that then by the same measure you can't say this about theists who believe in a different description of objective reality. Both groups of people have their evidence and their reasoning why their particular ontology is the most reasonable to believe in, and if you really went down and seriously studied that reasoning and compared one to the other then 1) you'd certainly find that it's not clear-cut which side is right, and 2) you'd quite possibly find that theism's reasoning is stronger (not least because you'd realize how paradoxical the naturalist position really is). But if your're not willing to study the issues at depth but prefer to trust Dawkins's dictum that studying serious theology is like studying serious books about fairies (a claim he makes without himself having studied serious theology I may add), and if you prefer to endlessly repeat naturalistic platitudes like "there is no evidence for gods" then that's quite ok too. Many theists feel very comfortable in their mythological beliefs, so I don't see why naturalists shouldn't be entitled to their very own mythology.

Reason is based on what is reasonable to assume based on what we have experienced.

You're absolutely right. And it turns out that naturalism has much trouble even accounting for the fact that there is such a thing as experience in the first place, no matter explaining why our experience of life is like it is. (Via science naturalism only explains a particular part of our experience, namely our experience of physical phenomena, but via science theism explains that part too.)

Inventing things like gods is not reasonable because we have no evidence to believe that a god exists,

On the contrary, the fact that there is such a thing as experience is very strong evidence that naturalism (at least the kind of naturalism that Dawkins believes in, namely "scientific realism") can't be true, and how our experience of life is like strongly evidences that objective reality is centered in a perfect person who is traditionally called "God". But don't take my word for it :-)

333. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78553 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 2:53 pm

Veronique (post 352, or #78451):

I am sorry, I don't know enough about all the various religious positions in your list to answer which of them offer a logical path to wicked behaviour. At least all those that imply that the Bible is literally true do.

I think this is the point at which you may be undone. The people here, on this thread, with whom you are attempting to debate have a far wider ranging understanding of the multi-faceted tenets of the multitudinous array of religious dogma entrenched by the multitudinous cults and sects that go to make up 'the world's religions'.

Could well be that other people here know much more about the dogmas of the many cults and sects than I; maybe that explains in part their reaction to the idea of religion in general.

You, on the other hand, have constrained your 'reading', 'interpreting' and 'exposition(s)' of religious belief and faith to a very narrow embracement with which you apparently resonate.

Actually I am studying what is often called the "philosopher's God", namely thinking about God in a way that is not contingent on the various dogmatic beliefs of the various cults and sects. I think that's the only way to actually reason about God. And I use the conclusions of such reasoning to decide which particular dogmas of Christianity I happen to know about make sense and which don't.

It does leave you, however, vulnerable to the question that Dr Benway has posted with the sect/cult list of (formal) religious interpretation by sect/cult. Let's look at it again: [List of fairly to me incomprehensible –isms follows] You appear to have admitted this vulnerability. Do you think it would behove you to check out the variances in belief of Benway's list? May I suggest that it would, indeed, be a salutary exercise?

Well, it certainly looks like a boring exercise :-) Could you explain why you think this would be a salutary exercise? I hate doing boring things, but if this exercise is so salutary I might attempt it.

334. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78548 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 2:36 pm

Irate_atheist (post 350, or #78449):

Ah, yes. Mother Teresa. That well known birth control opposing, poverty celebrating, self-confessed agnostic.

Even if true, all that is irrelevant to my point in post 348 that Mother Teresa gave herself up to caring for others trying to emulate Jesus of Nazareth. The question was whether there is an example of naturalists displaying this type of behavior, which Styrer claims is easy and can be exceeded by naturalists.

335. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78545 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 2:25 pm

Epeeist (post 347, or #78442):

When somebody asks you about your position in respect to a proposition there are only 4 possible answers:

1. I don't understand what that proposition says.
2. I agree or tend to agree with it.
3. I disagree or tend to disagree with it.
4. I can't make up my mind whether I agree or disagree with it.

So what is your position in respect to Dawkins's proposition that all creator God hypotheses are scientific hypotheses?

336. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78543 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 2:21 pm

Styrer (post 344, or #78421):

Your conclusion after the first 'if' arrives, unfortunately, at a statement which is in no way an answer to my question, despite your attempt to present it as such.

I hoped for a more substantial comment from your part, but that's ok.

'Now we don't have direct access to objective reality' is a controversial statement, one which is extremely debatable, but your entire argument rests on our accepting it, as you do, as fundamental.

Indeed. I thought that the distinction between objective and phenomenal reality is pretty basic in ontology. Do you personally think that we do have direct access to reality? If so can you explain how it is that one directly accesses objective reality? And can you explain how come so many people, including so many naturalists, have in the past so often been proved wrong about their strongest beliefs about objective reality, and how come they still today so deeply disagree about objective reality? I mean can't they just go and directly look?

337. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78535 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 2:06 pm

Dr Benway (post 343, or #78405):

Pre-linguistic creatures experience pain, clearly.

I agree, but that's clearly not what Dennett himself says in the article I linked to in post 342. Unless that is my English reading comprehension is much worse than I thought :-)

But with no guide to help me sort the good theisms from the bad theisms, I'm afraid I can't allow any of the lot through my front door. Far too risky these days.

Quite so. We should all rather think with our own heads.

338. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78534 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 2:02 pm

Dr Benway (post 341, or #78401):

Obedience to authority isn't ethical. It's mere "might makes right."

True, and I never claimed otherwise. I think there is a big misunderstanding in this context. It's not like something is good because God says so or commands so. Rather something is good because God is so. The way God objectively is, is our model of what is objectively good.

On the other hand, this notion that God wants humans to utterly surrender, trust, and obey a higher power is infantilizing.

I agree about the "obeying" bit, but if one realizes that reality consists of a perfectly good God, to not trust God or indeed to not surrender oneself to that realization would be kind of stupid and indeed infantile I think.

[Obeying self-proclaimed books by God, or obeying self-proclaimed representatives of God] impedes the development of mutuality and negotiation between people as equals. It excites the primitive, fascist drives of our monkey brains, and makes us more vulnerable to manipulation by corrupt leaders. It hardens our instinctive xenophobia and makes peace between people of different gods more difficult.

If by "it" you meant what I put inside of brackets above then I couldn't agree more with you. In fact you put it quite well, and you reminded me of the book I am reading right now. It's a small book written by (gasp) two Christian pastors and it's called "If God is Love".

339. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78530 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 1:21 pm

Lauregon (post 340, or #78400):

All other things being equivalent a naturalist has one less reason to behave ethically than somebody who believes in some kind of personal afterlife where somehow justice is satisfied - Dianelos

Well, well, well! Creationist-masquerading-as- rational-scientist Dianelos has finally let the cat out of the bag. At last! Dianelos' argumentation isn't about science at all, as he would have us believe, but about social control achieved by means of instilled fear! Now who ever would have guessed that? Dianelos, you are SO outed! But it was inevitable, wasn't it?

Would you say that a naturalist writing a book on naturalism in a way that would move people who agree with that ontology to behave according to the "golden rule" is attempting "social control"? Of course not. We all wish for people to behave in an ethical manner. My argument is that theistic ontologies have an intrinsic advantage in this respect over naturalistic ontologies. In other words no matter how well a naturalist writes a book on ethics, that book will not make as much sense as a book on ethics written equally well by a theist (or actually by any religious person, even one who is a non-theist such as a Buddhist).

Here is why: All major religions, whether theistic or non-theistic, postulate a transcendental reality where personal life continues after death and where one's behavior in this life is not irrelevant, but rather has implications for one's afterlife. In other words all major religions postulate an ontology which is ultimately just, and therefore describe an objective reality where it never pays to do the wrong thing and where to do the right thing is always a smart choice. The details of how justice is realized vary from religion to religion and from sect to sect[1], but these details are irrelevant in respect to the fact that all these religious ontologies do in general move people towards ethical behavior to a degree that no non-religious ontology can.

[1]: A central dogma of Christianity in general and indeed of most Christian churches including the mainstream Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches is that those who sin and do not repent in this life will be condemned to eternal suffering in hell, and the rest, presumably a small minority, will be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven. For what's worth I think that this dogma makes no sense at all, does not match the idea of God's perfection, and does not even match with the words and overall message of Jesus of Nazareth as we find them in the gospels. But this is a quarrel I have with my fellow Christians, which I suppose is irrelevant for people in this thread.

340. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78525 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 12:53 pm

Phasmagigas (post 339, or #78399):

But I understand you don't wish to discuss naturalism and its implications.

the implications of naturalism, im not sure what you mean by that, can you explain.

Well, naturalism is an ontological theory, that is it describes how objective reality is, the reality in which we all exist and which produces all our experiences. Now clearly how one understands reality affects one's behavior. How much one's ontology affects one's behavior is debatable; Sam Harris argues that one's ontological beliefs affect one's behavior very strongly, but I doubt it noting that naturalists and theists display very similar behavior on average. Nevertheless one's ontological beliefs do to some degree at least affect everybody's behavior, and may affect the behavior of a few people very strongly.

Now the question is this: Which of the two ontologies we are discussing here (namely naturalism and theism) will tend to motivate people to behave more badly? Both Harris and Dawkins argue that theism is apt to have a bad influence on peoples' ethical behavior, and point at the terrorists who blow up people motivated by religious fundamentalism. But when confronted with the argument (as well as with statistics) which say the obvious, namely that one cannot condemn an ontology's moral influence based on the worst things a very few of the people who hold this ontology commit, both Harris and Dawkins softened their position. Now, in his debate with Lennox, Dawkins, after conceding that theism has not always a bad influence, introduced a new argument: That only theism can offer a "logical path" towards bad behavior. And this is true, as at least those theists who are fundamentalists may take too seriously what is written in their respective scripture and go out and do some terrible things. But then I wondered how naturalism compares to theism in this respect, and I have argued (since post 266 in this thread) that naturalism fares much worse than theism, because not only does it always offer a logical path towards bad behavior, but even fails to offer a logical path away from bad behavior.

341. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78519 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 12:30 pm

Dr Benway (post 334, or #78391):

You keep trying to sneak in your false dichotomy.

Sorry but I agree with Dawkins that the main question is naturalism versus theism, which are the dominant ontological theories in the West. We've been over this, see posts 472 and 547 in the "Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously" thread where I quote him.

I don't see how the words "theistic" and "naturalistic" add any meaning to the above.

In my argument these two examples only make sense in the context of the respective ontologies I state.

So we need other methodologies and other criteria to decide which ontological theory is the most reasonable to adopt.

What's wrong with "I dunno"?

:-) Well, strictly speaking there is nothing wrong with "I dunno", but we are made (whether by blind nature or by intentional God) with curious minds. And many people reach beyond "I dunno" and state their belief that one or the other ontology is more reasonable. Dawkins for example thinks that naturalistic ontology is the more reasonable one and indeed that the probability of the theistic ontology being true is very low indeed. But if you personally judge that there is not sufficient evidence to decide one way or the other (i.e. you remain in the "I dunno" state) then you are declaring yourself agnostic in this issue, which is an entirely valid cognitive position.

342. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78511 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 11:43 am

The great teapot (post 331, or #78386):

science cannot falsify God, because God is the very author of what science discovers (namely the order in the physical phenomena we observe),

Shouldn't the above statement have some sort of disclaimer attached to it like "in my wild musings" or "I believe" or "if we assume that".

In principle you are right, but it's very common to write a proposition without expressively stating that this is only one's opinion. For example when naturalists say something about the objective physical universe they don't use the disclaimer "in my wild musings" :-) or something like that. It is assumed that when somebody says something they are stating what they believe is true.

343. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78448 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 12:48 am

Steve99 (post 330, or #78383):

True. And how much has the idea of naturalism contributed to these achievements? Zero also.

Nonsense. The idea of naturalism is the driving force behind these achievements. It is the idea that the world is amenable to objective study.

Well, the founder of the idea that the world is amenable to objective study and indeed the paragon of that idea is Aristotle, who was a theist. And even though he lived in an era of very primitive religious ideas steeped up to the ears in superstition he rose above all that and thought about the so-called "philosophers' God", i.e. the God concept reachable through reason. The person who most revolutionized our idea about how the world can be understood through objective study is Newton, also a theist. Today there are several Nobel laureates in physics who are theists. So it seems that the idea that naturalistic ontology is behind science's achievements or behind the idea that the world is amenable to objective study is just another naturalistic myth. What naturalism insists is that the world is only amenable to objective study which is trivially wrong and hence the opposite of a contribution.

It is very clear. It is a shy God that abandons the use of parting seas and burning bushes and tries hides undetectably behind quantum events.

It is very clear. It is a shy God that abandons the use of parting seas and burning bushes and tries hides undetectably behind quantum events.

Well, if God exists then it's improbable that God has parted seas and burned bushes don't you think? That's just mythology, and it's understandable that ancient tribes would mix their ideas about God with lots of mythology as well as with superstition and nationalist nonsense, don't you agree? As for God hiding undetectably behind quantum events, I only proposed this idea as a counterexample for those who believe in the objective existence of the universe and insist that Darwinism proves that God has not designed or guided the evolution of the species.

A God that is always supposed to be out of reach of scientific detection.

Well, again, suppose that God exists. Then God could easily arrange the state of affairs in such a way that His/Her existence were easily detectable by science (i.e. by objective observation). But clearly God has not done that (for some reason or other we can discuss later if you like). So, suppose that God does not want to be detectable by science. Do you see any particular logical or practical problem in God creating our experiential environment exactly as we actually have it while at the same time keeping Him/Herself beyond the reach of science? And don't forget that there a lot of extremely important facts that are beyond the reach of science, including the fact that we are all conscious beings, so it's not like the undetectability of God by science is some kind of unique case.

What I am saying is quite specific, namely that science cannot falsify God, because God is the very author of what science discovers (namely the order in the physical phenomena we observe),

Yes, it can falsify God. If we find that what science discovers does not need an author - and that is increasingly looking the case - then not only is specifying an author redundant, but you have no basis on which to describe any author.

Perhaps we do have a basis on which to describe the author; after all it's not like scientific thought exhausts all kinds of reasonable thought there is. We reasonably believe that other peoples are conscious subjects, and we don't base that belief on scientific thought. The same goes for our beliefs in the existence of objective reality, or in the inductive method. We reason about ethics, and even Dawkins recognizes that science cannot help us decide what is ethical. So the fact that science does not need the God hypothesis does not by itself imply that we cannot reason about the God hypothesis you know.

344. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78447 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 13, 2007 at 12:13 am

Styrer (post 325, or #78366):

Having no absolute morals makes everything much easier and elevates us to be thinking and caring individuals above all those individuals the scriptures of any religion would have us emulate.

Really? :-) Could you explain a) In what sense believing that morality is not objective makes "everything much easier"? (I suppose you don't mean because it gives you more liberty to do whatever you like) and b) can you suggest some examples of non-religious people who are caring individuals above Jesus of Nazareth whom at least some religious people (Schweitzer, Mother Teresa, etc) tried to emulate?

And incidentally I found interesting the tone of your post: it sounds like an instruction to another member of the "us" tribe about how he should speak. I may often not agree with Steve's reasoning (I don't agree with Dawkins's reasoning either) but Steve at the very least has the guts to engage, and I find it remarkable that for the second time in a few days other posters here are giving him instructions about how he should behave.

345. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78403 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 12, 2007 at 5:03 pm

Steve99 (post 328, or #78377):

Dennett is of late expounding the ontological theory that animals (as well as pre-linguistic children) are not conscious beings

Knowing your reputation for (in)accuracy, I checked this out. As usual, you have it wrong. What Dennett claims is that they aren't fully conscious of 'self'.

Not at all; what Dennett claims is that they aren't conscious of anything, including pain. He says that without language there is no consciousness in the sense of something it is like to be. That there may be painful stimuli and reactions to them, but nobody there to actually experience them – and hence no conscious subject. He notes that people might be shocked by his suggestion and takes some pains discussing the ethical repercussions. See:
http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_10.html#dennett

I only mentioned this as an example of how ontological beliefs matter. But what the heck, I don't suppose anybody takes Dennett very seriously anymore. Oops, come to think of it I am afraid Dawkins does.

346. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78398 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 12, 2007 at 4:45 pm

Dr Benway (post 318, or #78345):

Disappointments abound. Earlier I was hunting around the house for a few absolutist rules to blindly obey. To hand was Simon & Schuster's Guide to Dogs. Totally useless. Then I picked up the Audobon Society's Familiar Trees of North America. Utter waste of time. My DVD drive had Placebo's Soulmates Never Die concert loaded. Not a single divine moral imperative in the entire fucking show.

LOL, and I am surprised at your taste in music. You didn't happen to have a "Unified Code of Military Conduct" or whatever these manuals are called around the house then?

347. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78396 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 12, 2007 at 4:34 pm

Dr Benway (post 311 or #78329):

It would be wrong of me to condemn all theisms if some are truly good and do not logically lead to wickedness. I'm so glad Quakerism is a good one. So to distinguish those theisms I ought to condemn from those I ought not... we make a list? Best get crackin' then!

I am sorry, I don't know enough about all the various religious positions in your list to answer which of them offer a logical path to wicked behavior. At least all those that imply that the Bible is literally true do. In any case I don't need that information for my argument. If, as we agree, at least Quakerism offers no logical path to wicked behavior then we have falsified Dawkins's proposition that all religion offers such a logical path. The second part of my argument is that all naturalism not only offers a logical path to wicked behavior, but even fails to offer an alternative logical path away from it (when even Biblical literalism offers such a path). But I understand you don't wish to discuss naturalism and its implications. And it appears that nobody else here wishes to answer this question either. Which I suppose is answer enough.

Let's suppose I am right and naturalism does not offer any logical path away from wicked behavior. Does this mean that naturalism has a critical ethical problem? Well, yes and no. Yes on the purely abstract/logical level but there is no critical problem on the practical level, as it is evident that many rational naturalists avoid as a matter of fact wicked behavior and are indeed good people. But even so a relative problem remains: All other things being equivalent a naturalist has one less reason to behave ethically than somebody who believes in some kind of personal afterlife where somehow justice is satisfied (as all religions theistic or not postulate).

348. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78389 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 12, 2007 at 4:12 pm

Styrer (post 307, or #78315):

As you assert that science cannot comment on ontological issues, particularly with reference to a deity, may I ask you if you then disagree with Dawkins' assertion that a universe with a god would be very different from one without?

If, as I imagine, by "universe" you mean the physical universe we observe around us and which naturalists postulate is all there is to reality (some postulate it is only a tiny part of reality, but never mind) and by "universe with a god" you mean that apart from this physical universe there is also some kind of supernatural realm with a God who has designed that universe and possibly interferes with the natural order of this universe then my answer is as follows: If God does not interfere at all then I don't agree with Dawkins. If God does interfere but not in a way detectable by the scientific method (say, interferes very rarely for example by saving a single child in a major catastrophe or by hurling a meteorite towards Earth to finish off the dinosaurs and open an evolutionary niche for mammals, or else by manipulating quantum phenomena beneath statistical relevance but in a way that can make a change, say for killing Schroedinger's cat or for guiding natural evolution) then again I don't agree with Dawkins. If God does interfere in a way detectable by the scientific method (e.g. by regularly performing miracles in response to prayer) then I agree with him. I hope to have answered your question; if not let me know. (Edit: Incidentally it's not like all theistic ontologies postulate that reality consists of a physical universe here, a supernatural realm there with God in it, and so on, but I tried to answer the question in the context of the ontology you suggested.)

At this juncture I would like to clarify what I think science's role in respect to ontological hypotheses is. Ontological theories are theories about how objective reality is. Now we don't have direct access to objective reality but we do have direct access to the phenomenal reality which is produced by objective reality, for example the physical phenomena that science studies, the various subjective experiences we have including how the color green looks like, and so on. Now if there are two ontological theories A and B that are compatible with all known physical phenomena then indeed science cannot help us choose between the two. That's why there are so many different interpretations of quantum mechanics; they all account equally well for the quantum phenomena we have observed. But if some ontology predicts the presence or absence of a particular physical phenomenon and that fails to obtain then this particular ontology is falsified. So if a particular theistic theory predicts that we won't observe moons orbiting the planet Jupiter then that theistic theory is falsified when we do observe such moons. And if a particular naturalistic theory predicts that space is absolute and that we should be able to measure the speed of the light rays reflected from Jupiter in respect to the movement of the Earth and such measurements fail to obtain then that particular naturalistic theory is falsified too. But as long as there are several ontological theories that account for all the phenomena known to science, then, obviously, science cannot help us pick which one of these is true or maybe closest to the truth. It's easy to see that it will never the case that we only have one ontological theory compatible with all physical phenomena, so science will never be able to serve as the definitive arbiter in ontological questions. So we need other methodologies and other criteria to decide which ontological theory is the most reasonable to adopt.

349. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78380 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 12, 2007 at 3:33 pm

Steve99 (post 305, or #78311):

Maybe you are unaware of how often science has falsified older versions of naturalism too, from the belief that space is absolute, to the belief that physical phenomena are deterministic, to the belief that space and time are independent, to the belief that physical reality is local.

But isn't that simply wonderful? I think these falsifications count amongst the highest achievements of mankind.

Oh, I agree. And that's why I also find it wonderful that science has falsified many fallacious theistic ideas too.

And how much has the idea of theism contributed to these achievements? Zero.

True. And how much has the idea of naturalism contributed to these achievements? Zero also. It was science's insights into physical phenomena that falsified both naturalism's and theism's many ontological fallacies. Naturalists and theists just sat back and watched how science demolished many of their previously cherished ontological intuitions. Serves them well; both naturalists and theists were too quick to make affirmations beyond what reason justified.

To reduce God to something 'beyond science' is nothing less that cowardice from people afraid to deal with the idea of his absence, and its implications.

I am not sure what you mean by "reducing God to something beyond science". What I am saying is quite specific, namely that science cannot falsify God, because God is the very author of what science discovers (namely the order in the physical phenomena we observe), as God is the author of much of our experiential environment that is indeed beyond what science can discover (namely how it is like to be a human being). On the other hand personal experience can falsify a God hypothesis, which is only proper considering that theism postulates a personal reality. If I understood them correctly, several naturalist posters here have explained that that was the reason why they have rejected their theistic ontology. Compared to that it's difficult to imagine what could falsify naturalistic ontologies.

350. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78376 by Dianelos Georgoudis on October 12, 2007 at 3:00 pm

Dr Benway (post 304, or #78302):

If that post is your idea of a "direct and clear answer" to my simple question in post 302 then we have some serious semantic differences :-)

Of course you are not answering my question about whether you agree with Dawkins's proposition that all God hypotheses are scientific hypothesis. That question was meant for Epeeist, but I see from his post 309 that after congratulating you for your non-answer he abstains from answering too. That's ok, I suppose naturalism's ways are mysterious.