Subject: Re: atheism
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Thu Jan 20 2000 - 12:23:18 EST
In a message dated 1/20/00 1:44:26 AM Eastern Standard Time, shok@netcom.com
writes:
<< But religious mandates are
the creation of man and are not biological in nature. That's like
saying our evolution produced art and literature; our evolution gave us
a desire to create art and literature, as well as an appreciation for
them, but it did not create them, we did.
And throughout human history, people have believed all sorts of silly
things that I have no reason to believe in. Religion is only one
contribution to a very large pile.
>>
I agree the complexity argument is going nowhere. I part of our differences
here has to do with the different paradigms we're working in. In a strictly
Aristotelian/logical/non-empirical argument (the way things used to be done),
I don't think, "as an argument," belief in a self-existent Creator outside
nature is more complex than other beliefs. I don't define complexity in
terms of "leaving unanswered questions," but in terms of "needing further
supporting hypotheses." This paradigm works with the assumption, "the most
rational argument wins," and understand that "rational argument" does not
necessarily include empirical observation. That's the paradigm I was working
in, and was the paradigm controlling scientific discourse for quite some
time. It was also the paradigm that Occam's Razor was framed within.
But now we moderns have switched to "he who makes the best obsevations wins,"
and a hypothesis that supports all observable data and explains it in terms
of testable, observable behavior. This is empiricism in a nutshell and, of
course, precludes anything outside of nature by definition almost. You can't
argue **against** the existence of God from this framework, you can only say
that you don't take it into account. I myself think this way...most of us
think this way, I suspect...when we're moving through the world in our daily
lives. We don't resort to "God" to explain the weather and other observable
phenomena (and very few did, far less than I think you recognize), but this
does not necessarily exclude the existence of God. It's just not addressed
at this level.
What I think you need to recognize is that the empirical paradigm is simply
one paradigm among many if we're talking about purely rational discourse, and
it's a mistake to identify its assumptions with all rational discourse. It
needs to stand and fall on the weight of its own presuppositions, and from
your post I think you're closed to even discussing them.
Now, to reference the above quoted paragraphs, I'm afraid I have to repeat
myself again. If we human beings do religion and do it consistently, and do
it to death, it's a "naturally" occuring phenomena because it is occuring in
nature. See, you're still thinking in a "supernaturalist" framework here, as
if what proceeds from the human mind comes from a source outside nature.
We've inherited that from the Greeks and still have not escaped it.
So you either need to abandon the accusation that religion is "man-made" in
the sense that it is "unnatural," or you need to admit that the human mind
exists outside, or above, or independently of nature -- which is a
supernaturalist premise.
Jim
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