The article said the parents had another child who had died of the same disease before, so it has to be genetic. I don't believe that the doctors hadn't warned them the first time around. I hope they won't try to have babies again, Since they expect the baby to be kept alive, it is like they knowingly bring in an innocent live to suffer (that is if it can feel suffering). I find that despicable.

I really have a problem with the pro-lifers. If they really believe in God should they ask why why the child is suffering like this in the first place? A God who did this, or failed to prevent this, even if exists, doesn't deserve to be worshiped or obeyed.

Comment 129 by Steve Zara :

What is the difference?

Believers claim moral authority based on the nature of God. God is either the definition of goodness or he is not. If he is just a clever alien, then he is not and he has no moral authority.

A significant justification, for me, for insisting that believers simply cannot back up their claims about god is to show that their insistence that they have moral authority in this world is groundless.

I don't see that, whether God is the true "alpha" or a gamma or just the cyber programmer the argument of Euthyphro still applies.

Also if we are in a cyber make believe world morality and moral authority are also illusions. So an illusory God having illusory moral authority over illusory beings, there can be no real objections to that anymore than the Holodeck Moriaty being tricked into taking a cyber grand tour of the universe. It would be as real as it can possibly be.(Edited: and in this scenario the theologians themselves would agree since they too live in this illusory world and wouldn't be able to peek out of it to notice that their God is a "fake", I put "fake" in quotations because for all intent and purposes he is the real thing! The cyber programmer is the foundation of reality for the little universe he created)

Again these are not taken to be part of a definition of 'god' but as properties of an actual existent object.

Definitions are attempts to capture the essence of supposedly existent objects/relationship. The empirical sciences (physics, say) use definitions as well.

Even in math, the working mathematicians' idea of definitions are closer to that of the empirical scientists than that of arm chaired philosophers. Many mathematicians think of mathematical relationship as having an "objective" existence (say magnitudes and shapes and their relationships) while formal definitions are device to capture these relationships. The natural and real numbers were known long before people such as Peano , Frege and Dedekind attempted to formalize them. They arose from studying relationships and rules concerning magnitude and counting quite independent from the formal theory (engineers and scientists use these concepts in very sophisticated way without ever studying the Peano axioms or Dedekind's cut). So these logicians were working on some formal models of a priori existent objects/relationship (I am simplifying a bit but I think you get my main point)

Philosophers and logicians often exaggerate the formal aspect of mathematics and they like to use set theory as an example, but Set theory is actually very far from the mainstream of mathematics. For most "interesting" mathematics naive set theory is quite sufficient and paradoxes can be avoided quite easily by limiting the discourse appropriately. Formal ZFC seldom comes up.

So I agree with Bethe123 regarding definitions. The theologians are trying to describe "God" in a formal way by coming up with a list, that is their attempt at a definition, but the list is inconsistent so their definition fails. But it doesn't mean that there is no being which would qualify to most believers as God.

Honestly, do you think it would make a difference if there is a being who is almost like God in the way that theologians describe except that he cannot square the circle or eat himself for breakfast ? (but Jesus could actually eat himself for breakfast if he drops by a Catholic Mass and takes the communion!) To most people, the alpha -omega thing is just a way of saying "really big" I don't think that needs to be taken literally, as beyond a certain point it is just difficult to imagine the fine difference like whether it is alpha or actually alpha 3 or a beta, so i think Steve is just nitpicking semantics.

An illusion of eternity is not eternity. We aren't talking about a trickster being. We are talking about a real Wizard of Oz, not a puppeteer behind a curtain. A being that gives the illusion of eternity is not the God that theists claim exists.

What is the difference? In my scenario existence is an illusion, reality is an illusion. An illusory eternal life is as good as anything one can hope for, and hope is also an illusion. In this scenario, we are all illusory beings.

I remember an episode of StarTrek where the holodeck character Professor Moriaty became self conscious, he held the crew hostage demanding that he be freed to explore space. In the end they tricked him and his lover into an electronic circuit where they could explore eternity forever. It was an illusion but it was as real as an illusionary being could possibly experience, so Captain Picard did hold up his end of the bargain. It was the best offer the Captain could make and Moriaty could possibly get, there was nothing shady about it.

Finally, a cyber-programmer isn't an ultimate creator. It's not a "necessary being" it's not an "uncaused cause", it's not a "ground of being", it doesn't inject a transcendent soul into a zygote.

We aren't talking about beings that could convince believers that they are god, we are talking about beings that have the attributes that believers believe in.

But you know that stuffs like "uncaused cause" were not even part of Christian theology until theologians clumsily trying to attach Christianity to Greek philosophy.

Comment 106 by Steve Zara :

comment 104 by Bonzai

That's interesting. I'm not arguing for the impossibility of evidence for what you might call God, then.

Although, your idea of god does raise the possibility of god being a liar! After all, Christianity does talk about hell and eternal life. Those would not be possible for your god to provide. So the Bible therefore contains an awful lot of untruths originating from God or Jesus.

Actually the gods are liars and they bragged about it, when they lie or deceive you it is called a "test", so there is nothing new here. :)

Hell and eternal life are not integral to theistic beliefs, these concepts didn't exist in early Judaism (I was told that "hell" literally means grave in Hebrew), nor do they in traditions that believe in some kind of reincarnation. The Catholic Church made up a lot of things as it goes along, including such things as purgatory and indulgence, for all kind of transparently self serving reasons, its teaching should not be taken as integral to theistic beliefs, or even Christianity for that matter. The understanding of hell also varies widely among self proclaimed Christian, from the literal lake of fire to a state of separation from God. The Gnostic Christians think that we are already in hell. The text can be interpreted in many ways which are equally consistent or inconsistent.

But the cyber programmer certainly can provide eternal life, or the illusion of it, what is eternity without the illusion of time? That is an old theme in science fictions. If the cyber programmer can create the illusion of time in our reality then it shouldn't be difficult to create the illusion of eternity. That would not be lying, because if everything real is actually illusory then there is no difference between the two anyway. As for hell, maybe like sticking one in an infinite loop? :)

Comment 103 by Steve Zara :

That is my understanding of God. It has been my understanding of God since I was a Catholic Child. It is the understanding of God of Catholic doctrine. My impression is that it is the understanding of god of most theists, but I will admit to not being sure.

Actually not mine. I was a "Catholic child" too but it was never told to us like that, it was just God is really, really big, he watches over us and cares about us, listens to prayers, Jesus died for us etc, etc. They taught that God created everything in the Universe, but technically there could be other universes outside of ours and they didn't say God created all the universes :) I guess I wasn't getting a good Catholic education in the old British colony of Hong Kong, so when I was 13 I decided that it was all bunk and refused to go to Church any more. :-)

EDIT: But curiously a nun told us that God also suffers and cries when we do, and we were told about God's wager with the Devil where the Devil claimed his due and God cheated by substituting the soul of a human with the soul of a dog to save the human (Do dogs have souls?) So it never struck me that God was all omnipotent.

@bethe123

Definitions are central to math for a couple of reasons. First, you can put all the intellectual work in the definitions, in which case the proofs are almost trivial. Or, you can have naive definitions, and then the proofs become somewhat more laborious. Second, it can often takes years for the modern and more general definition of a concept to be formulated, and so if you look at earlier texts, for example, you will often see definitions that do not on first glance seem equivalent to the modern definitions. Math definitions are the fruitions of years of thought...I don't know if that is reason why it was my experience that many of my profs had given them such emphasis on exams, but I would like to think it is the case.

Yes, but there is little reason to ask students to state a definition in exams. By being able to do proofs and solve problems you demonstrate you actually understand the definitions and know how to use them instead of just regurgitating them.

You see that with the way they do Stoke's theorem in differential geometry courses, it falls out from the carefully set up chain of definitions (as oppose to courses in physics, which follow a classical "advanced calculus" approach, it is more messy but intuitively more appealing) But there is no reason to ask students to define differential forms in an exam.

Well Grayling has this to say:

But particularly as regards a god: on the standard definition of an infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent etc being – on inspection such a concept collapses into contradiction and absurdity; as omnipotent, god can eat himself for breakfast…as omniscient it knows the world it created will cause immense suffering through tsunamis and earthquakes, and therefore has willed that suffering, which contradicts the benevolence claim…etc etc…to say nothing of local suspension of the laws of nature for arbitrary reasons e.g. in answer to personal prayer, which makes a nonsense of the idea that the world or the deity is rationally comprehensible: and if either or both are non-rational then there is nothing to talk about anyway.

That is an uninteresting observation. All it shows is that theologians are sloppy thinkers and their attempts to define "God" fail. It is not exactly news either.

But the notion of God is very real for many believers. That may or may not correspond to what the theologians say about it. As I said before, Zeus and the God of OT had none of the grand qualities attributed to God by later Christian theologians. But they were very real to the believers. So all Grayling shows is that the definitions by theologians capture the popular conception of God (or gods) very poorly and better ones are in order. It doesn't show that it is meaningless to talk about Zeus or Jesus. It doesn't show that it is meaningless to think there may be intentional beings which hold absolute dominion over humans and their affairs.

So if the purpose is to address religious beliefs we have to understand the actual conceptions of God by believers, however vague and contradicting to theologian's definitions, rather than pointing out the theologian's definitions don't make sense and call it a day.

As Richard has said many times, the theologians' idea of God has little to do with what the masses worship and hear from the pulpit. I think it applies here as well.

Comment 92 by Nunbeliever :

To Bernard Hurley:

No I don't think the discussion was about semantics.

Perhaps I was not explicit enough about what I meant with that it is all about semantics. What I meant was that the word supernatural doesn't make sense if you think more about it. Or not from a rational perspective at least. Hence, there can't be any rational evidence for the supernatural. From a semantic point of view one can argue that supernatural is just another word for not within the realms of reason. The problem of course is that religious people don't seem willing to accept this. The typical NOMA attitude. But if one accepts the premises above the fact that science can't deal with the existence of the supernatural means that you can't reason about the supernatural. Which is just another way of saying that belief in the supernatural can never be reasonable. Now, it becomes pretty clear why this is not a very flattering idea from a religious perspective. Whick is why religious people are so ambivalent in this regard. This is why I think it is all about semantics in the end. The religious are essentially playing with words. They want to eat the cake and have it too. They claim it is reasonable to believe in the supernatural but still argue that science can't deal with the supernatural. It does not make sense.

I agree that in a technical sense "supernatural" doesn't make sense, as "natural" encompasses everything that exists and happens. So by definition nothing is supernatural. But that is a trivial point,

With the God question the issue is whether there is a layer of reality (still "natural") which is inaccessible to us, to our science and logic because we are confined to our reality/diimension/realm and there is no way to peek out (this limitation is also "natural" in this scenario")

In my cyber game example (I am not aware of the paper Beth123 cited so it was entirely original. :)), the cyber creatures simply cannot access "the world above" and their reality, science and their logic are all created by some programmer which may not bear any resemblance to the 'actual' law (the programmer himself may be in a cyber game embedded in yet a "higher" reality) Just think of Alice in Wonderland.

Now in a strict sense there is nothing supernatural or mighty about the programmer, he could be just some unemployed geek living in his mom's basement who created the game because he doesn't have a social life. But in all real sense of the word he is GOD to the creatures in the game because he is the basis of their reality and can bend the laws of nature and logic (to the cyber creature) in every way he wants, (Now of course if he enters the game he might get defeated or captured like the creator in the movie Tron, but I digress. :))

Not that I believe we are trapped in such a way but if we are, we have no way to know. So I have two points

1) The Zara-PZ thesis may be correct in a technical sense but i think they are missing the point.

2) The very question is ill -framed because when we are asking question at this fundamental level (with God defined as an entity above our reality and is the basis of it) the very notions of logic, evidence, natural laws, etc are all open to challenge and we simply don't have an absolutely defensible framework to interpret what constitutes "evidence". To my mind that means questions raised at that level are too flabby to yield any useful answer.

Comment 89 by bethe123 :

In advanced math classes, such as taken by future mathematicians and maybe a few logicians, a large part of the examinations cover definitions --maybe even 50% of the test...Hurley was attempting to make a mathematical point in geometry...my reply was that he only would get credit for knowing the definitions.

Huh? That is news to me. All exams I wrote consisted of making proofs and problem solving. Once in a while may be there is a 2 mark question (usually a part of a longer question) asking for definitions but that's it.

Maybe in the philosophy department they ask for definition (courses taken by "logicians"), I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case. In my experience their mathematical logic courses are bogus.

I want to say something about "evidence". Facts only become evidence for or against a proposition when interpreted. But since we are questioning the very nature of natural laws the interpretive framework we commonly use to evaluate evidence is also open to challenged.

Say we are cyber creatures from my last post. There is no basis to assume that going by the rules, facts and logic inside this game would lead us to any insight about the world outside of the game. So the question "what evidence would convince me that there is a programmer and we are living in a game" is unanswerable/meaningless inside the game. And to Steve Zera, the programmer in this scenario is not God, but he is responsible for the "ultimate reality" in the game, so whether the cyber creatures call him God or Santa Clause seems to be only semantics.

I don't believe we are cyber creatures and that we are in a game, but ultimately I cannot refute this possibility either, hence my long held position that metaphysics and ontology are a waste of time. :)

Comment 73 by Nunbeliever :

I think that girl in the end of the Q&A summed up the whol discussion quite well. It is all about semantics in the end. If there is an entity that can break the laws of nature then we have to redefine our laws of nature as breakable and not absolute. Hence, that entity would not per se be supernatural but a part of our new defined physical laws. Smart girl :)

Is it really breaking the law of nature or just circumventing it? By that I mean something like flying. If an ancient guy sees a plane flying he would most likely think that is magic, breaking the rule of gravity (though he certainly didn't have a word for gravity, but he knew it well enough not to jump off a cliff) So that would seem to be breaking the law of gravity, but of course it doesn't, it is just apparently circumventing it (for lack of a better word, I am not trying to be pedantic here) using other laws (and gravity itself)

But what does it mean by the law of nature being breakable? If that is the case it basically means there is no law, and the world (?) is essentially a place of contingency. So that some alien/god suspends the law of nature shouldn't be that incredible, because there is no law that in principle cannot be broken in this scenario !!

Another possibility would be that there are laws but they are not the kind that we know, it would be like a computer game. There are law like behaviour programmed into the game. We are characters inside the game and we can learn these rules. But the implementation of these "laws" is based on laws in the outside world which are very different from the virtual version and is inaccessible to us.

So if we are cyber creatures in this game, would the programmer who created the game qualify as GOD(as in GOD OF Domain) for us?

Comment 45 by M D Aresteanu :

It's really simple. God, by definition, is a sky-hook or a strange assortment of them. It seems to me that God is an explanation which subsequently doesnt allow you to beg the questions it raises. It's cranes all the way up for me, so there can't be any proof for God. The only God I could accept would, in principle, be explainable using cranes, which defeats the whole concept.

No, gods and monsters are just names given to the formless, shapeless forces of life's contingencies for most believers. It is not a scientific model, nor is it taken to be one for most believers.

For many people, life can be terrifying and unpredictable, fortune, good health, success.. all these can evaporate in an instant. People invent stories to give these forces a name and a form, because once you have a name for it, you feel more in control. While the gods can be cruel and capricious, but there are ways to get on their good side, like through praying, bribery (offering) or even deception, so the gods are more controllable than the indifferent, random forces that shape our destiny, and this gives believers the illusion of being in control, at least to some degree.

Job was devastated by tragedies, through no fault of his own so he pleaded with God. God showed up and gave him a long speech of his awsomeness as the master of the universe. But did Job really give a shit? It didn't really matter whether the entity he was pleading with actually created heaven and earth, what mattered was the said entity allowed him to name his suffering and seek redress.

I only know of the TV's station's existence from a Linux forum where some guy asked for help because he couldn't access it, wouldn't be surprised if it is one of those stupid sites that only work for Windows or IE. :)

Sorry, the connection died when I was editing so the repeated post was deleted.

Comment 33 by Steve Zara :

Comment 19 by Bonzai

Hi again!

That's a very important point in this discussion, I agree. The modern ideas of theism aren't what they used to be. I'm fascinated as to how much this is a consequence of the rise of reason.

A more relaxed definition of God may be philosophically problematic but it may better captures the reality of what people actually believe.

Is it? I thought that an important part of what God is for most believers is to be ultimately powerful, to be the biggest safety net possible, to make sure the soul gets caught after death.

Again, a very good point, and something I'd love to know more about.

Hi, Steve, long time. :)

Well you don't have to believe that God is all powerful if it is just a cushy afterlife you are after. The Greek gods were supposed to be immortal and they had the power to also turn some of their favourite humans into demigods. For the normal mortals when they died they went to the realm of Hades. Hades was Zeus brother of course. The gods don't have to be masters of the universe to have dominion over human lives. :)

But seriously, I am not sure if God is a mainly a device to deal with death, iit is one of its functions for sure, but probably not even the most important one.. While most believers pay some lip service to the immortal soul and justice beyond the grave but I think it is more of a faint hope thing than what they are certain about. And they know it, or religious people would not grieve when their love ones die.

While religion is couched in the language of the other world in actuality I think people use it as a device to deal with anxiety from very worldly concerns. When a love one is sick, what do you think the Christian would pray to God for, that the love one recovers or gets a fast track to heaven? Based on Christian testimonies most of them converted because of very worldly experience, that God saved me from financial ruins, that I got out of jail because of God, that God saved my marriage, that God helped me quit drug, that I recovered from cancer even though the doctor gave me only 3 months etc...

Philosophical debate may be useful in engaging the sophisticated theologian. But as Richard Dawkins and yourself have pointed out repeatedly the God of the sophisticated theologian is not the same God that most believers know from the pulpit, so I think in order to understand and combat/channel religion in the society you must address the God of the masses who probably have little interest in arguing whether a Q like character would qualify as God in the ultimate sense. I think most of them will get down on their kneels if such a character shows up and promises to reward the just and punishes the wicked and all the other good things which we desire in this life,--and is able to deliver it.

I think Jerry made a good point. For most believers religion is not so much irrational, but rather nonrational. In other words it is not because the rationality filter somehow fails, but the belief is fast tracked through a different channel where the filter is intentionally disabled.

I have this idea that human beings are fundamentally utilitarians rather than rationalists. We employ reason when it is useful to us. But what is useful to us depends on a whole host of factors, value judgments and hang ups that are probably non rational (feeling good even at the expense of harming oneself physically, for example)

Nice chatting again man. :)

Comment Removed by Author

Comment 12 by Steve Zara :

Is a very powerful being, even with magic abilities, a god? I would say not. There seems to be a certain quality to gods, which includes being creators of ultimate reality, and being not just moral but somehow the source of morality. How can there ever be evidence of such ultimate powers, after all, we could meet this being called god, but a few minutes later that being's mother turns up and says "He's not the creator, he's just a very naughty boy".

I agree with you philosophically, but I think the quote above is the point of contention. I agree with you that even a super powerful being that can manipulate space and time with a snap of a finger (like Q in Startrek?) is still not God in the correct philosophical sense (as we understand it, see below) but is there a practical difference from the human perspective?

I should also note that before the advent of Monotheism it was almost a given that the gods were not the creators of ultimate reality. Neither the Olympians nor the God of the OT had such grandeur. You may say they were believed to be creators of some realms, but not ultimately reality. For the Greeks both the gods and men were the prisoners of fate, prophecies foretold the future of men and gods alike but that didn't stop the ancient Greeks from worshiping Zeus and building magnificent temples for him.

The idea that God is the source of all reality came from much later theological spin and the fact that, as more and more gaps where we once inserted God into was filled, the only remaining place to put him would be the inner of the quantum or the edge of the universe.

So what I am trying to say is that "being the source of ultimate reality" is not necessary a requirement for Godiness throughout most of human history. A more relaxed definition of God may be philosophically problematic but it may better captures the reality of what people actually believe.

Saw this many years ago: The biologist wishes that he was a chemist, the chemist wishes that he was a physicist, the physicist thinks that he is God... God knows that she is a mathematician.

Here is an excellent biography of Feynman's. It doesn't just relate a bunch of anecdotes, but also the man's science in some depth (yes, there are equations) and his thought on other topics such as, yes, religion.(He was atheist, though thought that religion might have some useful social role) It is also quite moving at times. Highly recommended.

Don't know how good does Krass's book measure up. I rarely read biographies.

http://www.amazon.com/Beat-Different-Drum-Science-Richard/dp/0198539487

vicktor

For instance, for most people, it is perhaps easier for them to donate a kidney to a stranger in need believing that when you die (and it will be sooner now) you will go to heaven (doubly so perhaps for the extremely good deed just performed) than merely because it was humanistic to do so.

I don't know where you get this from, sounds like something you just made up. Evidence please?

In fact I would think the opposite, Those who believe in the old school idea of heaven and hell would probably tend not to donate their organs because they think they might need them in the afterlife.

Actually I don't think Blair did as badly as some here think. For the most part they were not talking about the same thing.

Hitchens was arguing basically that the world would be a better place without religion, it is a hypothetical, what if proposition. His was a "philosophical" argument.

Blair, on the other hand, was taking as his starting point that the world is the way it is, and religion is a reality. He was interested in how to use it in a constructive, rather than destructive way,--and his "faith" is that this is actually possible. Being a politician rather than a philosopher, one shouldn't be surprised that he took such an approach.

Seeing in this light his example of Northern Ireland might not be as stupid as it first appeared to be. Even before Hitchen's rebuttal I was thinking "is this guy mad or senile?". But it sort of makes sense if you start with Blair's position that takes the state of the world as a given. Another such moment was when Blair was going on and on about how his foundation helps to promote inter-faith dialogues and understanding. Even a not so keen minded atheist would immediately retort by asking why aren't these people not talking to each other in the first place. But again from Blair's pragmatic position this is not too interesting,--and he would be wrong there,--rather it is more useful to discuss how to use religion as a vehicle to promote understanding. Blair apparently thinks that you can channel whatever positive aspects,--the true faith he calls it,--without the negative, this seems to be wilfully ignorant on his part.

In the end, Blair seems to concede most of Hitchen's points on humanism, the harm that religion has done, that one doesn't need to be religious to be good, politics and religion shouldn't mix etc.

So may be Blair was sort of addressing the question, but understood it in a somewhat different way than Hitchen. He wasn't talking in theoretical terms whether religion is good or bad, but rather, given that religion is a very real and potent force, can it be used for the purpose of good,--with "good" defined according to basically secular criteria. One can certainly argue against him on those pragmatic ground, but it would be more difficult and less black and white. Hitchens mostly sticked to philosophical/theoretical arguments instead, so in some way they were talking over each other.

I think he was right that the Middle East conflict was not just religious, or not even primarily religious. But that is a different and long topic.

Not the same. Religion is mythology AND political and social power to force you to live according lunatics who think they talk to unicorns.

I have to say this is one of Dawkins' finest speech, powerful, logical and doesn't mince word even by the "new atheist" standard. Congratulations, Richard, well done!

My only problem is that it is run on Apple proprietary technology. I would rather see an open source implementation.

rsharvey

So these thugs are making death threats, not on behalf of Muslim religious practices, but on behalf of Muslim culture.

I am actually trying to make sense out of the paragraph about Sayed being attacked and receiving death threats over the burqua issue. This guy is the accused in the fraud case, I am not sure what does he have to do with whether the witness would be allowed to wear a burqua while testifying against him. It is not his decision, he is the man in the dock.

Actually the question of whether parents have the right to educate their children in ways they see fit is a red herring. One can debate to which degree such right should be respected but it has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

The question is whether the state or the society has an obligation to fund and support parents who try to instill or indoctrinate their children with their idiosyncratic views and values which may be at odd with scientific and social consensus and are sometimes demonstrably harmful or wrong. I think the answer would be an easy "no" if religion is not involved. Why is religion special then?

Avhut

It takes quite a bit of sophistry to equate "faith" in reason to faith in dogmas.

Did you actually watch the video? RD's point is much broader than just science. A main point is that faith schools foster division and tribal identities rather than universalism.

You are just rambling and if there is a resentful fanatic here, it is you.

supernorbert,

Thanks for the links. Seems to be working!