I'm being brave..

[ablprop]

I think you're really reaching here. I understand your premise to be that God would make miracles look as non-miraculous as possible. But the natural world goes so much farther than just looking natural. It looks utterly unplanned - or, at least as unplanned as it could possibly be and still admit the existence of beings like us. If your idea is that modern science would reveal the presence of God, why is there not some clear sign, maybe the ten commandments written in tiny tablets inside every cell? That would convince me.

Don't you think your approach is dangerously close to self-delusion? You've posited a God who does everything possible to hide his existence. Doesn't it feel an awful lot to you like parents' stories to their kids about why Santa Claus is real, yet indetectable? Don't you think if you heard someone making similar arguments about Zeus or fairies or the Easter Bunny that you'd feel like they're stretching reality to encompass something they really, really want to believe?

I'm sorry to push, but you seem like someone who is on the verge of really seeing the world in a scientific way, and to me that means you're potentially on the verge of a great breakthrough in your life.

[joeactor]

Hey BB,

If you don't mind, let's look at it from a hypothetical situation - it may make it a bit more clear.

Let's say there is a story in a book with a miracle that has a full-grown elephant sprouting from a pumpkin seed.

Now, looking at this from the outside, your first question would probably be:

Did this event actually happen?

It might be a story to illustrate a point, or to explain the unknown at the time, or just a fable told to children.
Without some kind of other historical evidence that the event happened, it's a bit fruitless trying to explain *how* it happened.

Now, *if* you are able to determine that said elephant appeared to sprout full-grown from a pumpkin seed, your next question might be:

Are the observers reliable?

It may have been a magic trick, or some other optical illusion, drug-induced state, etc.

Next, you might research a plausible scientific hypothesis to explain the phenomenon.
Then come up with methods to test or replicate the event (or parts of the event).

So... First things first.

Did this event *actually* happen?

(p.s. I also agree with the others - if all miraculous events can be explained in scientific terms, they cease to be miracles)

[Whitney]

I read that there were women who were pregnant even though their tubes were completely blocked or the tissue was dammaged so badly that pregnancy shouldn't have been an option.

If  parthenogenesis is basically the self fertilization of an egg by just the woman then tubes being tied or tissues being damage wouldn't point to  parthenogenesis as the only option.  In fact, if a woman's tubes are blocked either an egg slipped through and she got pregnant the old fashion way or she had IVF (in vitro) would be much more likely than an egg slipped through (ie not actually blocked) and then  parthenogenesis happened.  With damage tissue same thing only the egg managed to stick to a wall of tissue the doctors previously thought was too damaged to nurture an embryo.

The only time you could positively confirm  parthenogenesis is if a person who has a completely blocked vaginal opening becomes pregnant.  And even then I swear that when I was researching this phenomena I came across a case where a rape victim had a vaginal defect which caused it to be sealed but became pregnant because she was stabbed in the abdomen and sperm got in through the wound (sorry for mental pictures, I tried to keep it as nongraphic as possible).

[DropLogic]

And even then I swear that when I was researching this phenomena I came across a case where a rape victim had a vaginal defect which caused it to be sealed but became pregnant because she was stabbed in the abdomen and sperm got in through the wound (sorry for mental pictures, I tried to keep it as nongraphic as possible).

Jeez..those are some motivated sperm.  Happens though...I got my wife pregnant when we were 19...through a condom, and birth control.  Go figure.

[Thumpalumpacus]

(Going to get a little religious here, but just to explain my thinking...not offended if someone disagrees, it's good for my ideas to be challenged Google, but a burning bush, so I'm told.

My big question about the stuff I found on the internet was is that actually possible? I guess I mean to ask how ligitimate is the claim of its possiblity? From what I keep reading I know that scientists haven't been able to recreate it, but then I read that there were women who were pregnant even though their tubes were completely blocked or the tissue was dammaged so badly that pregnancy shouldn't have been an option.

If parthenogenesis gives rise to messiahs,then there are billions of messiahs -- all of them insects.

Thumpalumpacus: what flaws did you find, because that's the kind of thing I'm looking for- was it in the tests done, or in the way it's reported? (To be honest, knowing will help me understand any other kind of research I read, too.)

Small sample size, in the main.  Further, preconceived notions, and credibility unwisely extended.  Finally, the idea that if indeed parthenogenesis is shown in mammals, the extension of this idea that it explains the Virgin Birth, which, to be fair, is your idea, and not his.

[Being_Brave]

Whitney, what you've said makes total sense to me. It would have to be a complete blockage of the cervix AND absolutely no intercourse in order for it to be a "proven" case. Since I can't find any kind of research on them, I have to assume it's a dead end, not valid.  I'll keep looking, but for now I'm back to "it's just a remote possibility", not actual fact.

ablprop: I actually might be delusional ), it doesn't matter so much to me if someone wants to say that it's missing details on atoms. I won't pretend to know, but I'll tell you what I think, about why it doesn't mention some things. When it came to which information was recorded in the Bible, it was likely that the men were getting a condensed account of what happened (so if the actual "beginning" took more than 6 days, who is to say that evolution wasn't part of it? The original word that was translated into "days" was yom, which also means "a long period of time", so it really could have been just 6 long periods of time...but considering that the point of the Bible isn't really to put a time limit on things, it wouldn't have been explained.)

[ablprop]

ablprop: I actually might be delusional . I know it takes a certain amount of crazy to just believe in something, but it's like when you feel like someone is looking at you, no real reason for it, just a gut feeling that tells you something is up. I think the big thing that kept me from continuing living agnostically is that I can't convince myself that everything really is unplanned.

Being_Brave:

Thanks for that answer. I'm in a transition in my own life right now, which is part of the reason I'm here. Two weeks ago, I would have avoided this conversation like a disease, because I felt it was not my place to question your beliefs. Now, having lost a friend to religion for the second time in my life, I'm feeling something myself, something that tells me religious belief really does close one off to a precious experience of life. Ignore me if you wish, but I can't not speak to this.

If you believe that the universe is planned, you must accept some terrible things. Consider this. When a male lion takes over a tribe, the first thing it does is kill all the baby lions. This makes perfect sense, because those babies are the progeny of the lion just deposed, and their presence keeps their mothers from being available to make babies for the new lion. This is natural selection. It is ugly, wasteful, full of misery and pain, and utterly, inescapably true.

If you want a human example, consider that most northern Europeans have a genetic mutation that allows them to consume milk in adulthood. This gene spread through the population because it was advantageous to survival. But think about what that means. Just because the gene was advantageous didn't mean it suddenly started appearing more in babies, at least not right away. No, what had to happen was, those without the mutation died, or at the least were unable to reproduce. Evolution works like a knife, paring and cutting and removing all that doesn't compete as well as the victor.

It is unfathomable to me that a religious person can claim this horrendous (and true) process as the way God wanted it done.

I once discussed this topic with a human anthropology professor. He claimed that the reason the genus homo outcompeted their australopithecine neighbors was that homo learned better how to work together. He cited as evidence of this communal fire pits and the like. I looked deeper into his argument. One of the remains found in these communal fire pits was the charred finger bones of australopithecines! So yes, they learned to work together, to exterminate their neighbors. That is natural selection.

There is great beauty in the natural world, but it is stark beauty, cruel beauty, beauty that doesn't care one whit about us and our feelings and desires. If there is triumph in the rise of humanity (and I believe there is), it is in our rejection of natural selection as an organizing principle for society. We allow the lactose-intolerant child to live. We help each other instead of taking advantage (which is the genetically sensible practice). We teach and nurture other peoples' children. We spend time writing books, creating art, discovering the world out of pure curiosity. We find joy. In short, we tell our selfish genes to go jump in a lake. This is the great victory that we humans have made over nature. In my view, we did it on our own, without help from any outside diety, and that makes the victory so much sweeter.

So my question to you is, if you believe this world really is planned, what does the plan tell you of the planner?

[joeactor]

joeactor: Thank you for putting it that way,(if miracles can be proven they aren't miraculous anymore), I get what you guys are saying now. I don't think I agree with it, though. It's like saying, "We don't believe it because there is no proof that it's possible, and we don't believe it because there is proof that it happened." (I guess you could flip that around in a way and say it about theists, too. )

... not exactly...

It's more like saying "We don't believe because there is no reliable source of evidence outside of one religious book comprised of a collection of often unreliable and contradictory stories"

It would be difficult enough to prove a virgin birth today, much less an account of one that happened 2,000 years ago.
Now THAT's a cold case file!

Ok, I'm a theist, so I have some leeway to speak on the distinction between faith and science.

With faith, you start with a conclusion (ie. a virgin birth happened), then try to find evidence to support that conclusion.
If you find evidence that contradicts your conclusion, you are likely to discard the evidence and continue the search... often accepting less-than-reliable sources to support your position on the issue.

With science, you start with a hypothesis, then try to find evidence to support it (similar, yes?).
The difference is: when you find evidence that contradicts the hypothesis, that means the hypothesis is flawed (not the evidence).
The hypothesis must be altered or discarded in this case.
A hypothesis that is supported by unreliable evidence will be undermined in time by peer-review, testing, contradictory evidence, etc.

Faith also has the "god" wild-card.  If something doesn't make sense or fit the facts, you can fall back on "god did it" and move forward.
Science has no such luxury.

... and yet, I still believe.  I'm just not saying in what ;-)
JoeActor

[Being_Brave]

That's just crazy to me that someone would walk away from a friend over religion. My best friends are Baptists, and I've heard people tell them it's not good to listen to a Catholic, but when it comes down to it whether or not they stick around depends on what they personally decide to do. I just don't understand why people drop a friend over different opinions like that.

If someone chooses to believe in a religion like Christianity they have to face the reality that both the good and bad have to be attributed to God. I wish more Christians understood that!! There's this misconception that God is only in charge of the fun, warm-fuzzies. When it comes to natural selection (including animals like the lions and lactose-intolerance, and disease, virus, bacteria, etc.) I usually come back to the same idea: without those things we would not have the healthiest animals to eat, we would not be as advanced medically, and we would have simply accepted life without asking "why did that happen?" A believer can still say "God did it" because of how it helped advance life. If God wanted us to become advanced, he would have made sure that we had to encounter those things so that it would happen.

When disease, famine, natural disaster, death, etc.. happen, I wonder if having nobody to "blame" it on acutally helps people heal faster? I can see that the anger towards a god would add to the emotional baggage, so I really am curious if it affects an athiest differently?

When I'm faced with a hard situation I don't really get angry at God, I just assume it happened for a reason and try to figure out what good the event could possibly have done me. When my cat died, I cried, and thought it was the end of the world. Then a few months later my dog was hit by a car, and it hurt, but I knew it wasn't the end of the world. When my Granny passed 6 months later, I really felt like the people around me were crumbling, but I knew from experience that someone elses death didn't mean my life was over. I worked through it by reconnecting with my father and helping him cope. Three months later (to the day!) my father passed. If I hadn't slowly experienced how to deal with death, that year would have destroyed me. I could chalk it up to good coping mechanisms, but in my family the best coping skill tends to be depression and alcohol, so where would I have learned it? Not saying my family sucks, but if I didn't have the mindset of,"It happened for a reason," I really would probably have joined in the misery. Do I thank God for death? No. Do I attribute my effective coping skills to life lessons? Yes. If I am to believe that God is to blame for both good and bad things, then I have to believe He put the bad things there so that I could learn the good things. (There are many BAD situations that I haven't had to go through, and my opinion isn't meant to negate them.)

[Heretical Rants]

I hear those ideas a lot, but I just don't see how tragedy positively shapes people, except that it helps to relate to other people that have experienced the same things.  We do require emotional release, but I can feel the same emotions by reading a well written book, and then I can safely return to reality, where those events do not affect me.

I also do not think that you have to experience the bad in order to experience the good.

My standing theory is that if there is a god, this world is, to it, something like the falling sand game.  You set up a system and see how long it can sustain itself and what changes it makes over time. Reproduction and destruction of subsystems is an integral part of this.

You interfere every once in a while, but for the most part you're just watching to see how it pans out....unless you're in a "build n' destroy" kind of mood.

[ablprop]

Being Brave:

You asked how atheists deal with disasters when they have no one to blame. I can only speak for one atheist, of course.

I believe we are party crashers. We weren't invited to this crazy party called the universe, and yet here we are. The universe went along just swimmingly for 13.7 billion years before we showed up, with our crazy ideas of morality and justice and fairness. But it is just those ideas, which we created for ourselves, that make us special, that make our lives worth living.

The world is unfair. Death is stupid. Ridiculous things happen for absolutely no "reason" at all. What we have is each other, fellow moral agents in this sea of unreason.

When we try to find meaning and reason and purpose in the world, it is a misfiring. Reason and meaning and purpose do exist - they exist in our fellow human beings. That's where these searches are properly directed, not at the hurricane or the disease or the horror of predation.

If a human had designed the system of the universe, we would consider that person incompetent at best, a psychopath at worst. A thousand sea turtles scramble down the beach. Nine hundred ninety-nine will die before they ever grow up. Asteroids fly about willy-nilly. Every once in a while, one smashes into a planet, spreading horrors. Nearby stars go supernova and flood surrounding solar systems with deadly gamma rays, killing every single thing in their path. This is the best God could do?

Instead, atheists (OK, I) look out at the universe and accept the evidence I see. The universe looks completely unplanned. Let's live our lives as if that is true. We are lucky, amazingly lucky, to be here at all. There's no one out there to take care of us. So what do we do? Huddle in a corner and wait for the inevitable end? NO! We (humanity) take care of ourselves.

That's how I see things. So far, so good.

[Tank]

@ablprop

Good post. You can make that at least 2 atheists, the and me!

[ablprop]

"Tanks!"  

[Tank]

BB

I feel that the human animal has evolved to see cause and infer effect. It's a hugely advantageous survival trait. I see a predator, it will eat me unless I do xyz, I see a prey animal, if I go this way it will go that way so if I go the other way I'll get to catch it. Note: to do the latter (the prey case) we have to imagine what the prey animal will do, we imagine the effect. Now, given we automatically process cause to effect we also do the reverse predict cause from effect. When we can't predict cause from effect we get stressed. Think about it yourself. You come home and there is post on the floor, one immediately sees the unexpected item (the post on the floor) and know that the post was delivered while you were out. Now think what you would do if you came in and there was a brick on the floor, far too big to get through the letter box. Think how confused and frustrated you would be, you may even be concerned and worried. What you have been faced with is knowledge (there is a brick on the floor) without understanding (why is there a brick on the floor), this dichotomy is really stressful, I would contend intolerably so.

Imagine you are a human ancestor on the cusp of becoming aware of abstract concerns 'Why does the Sun rise?' I contend that the creature that could dismiss this concern or through imagination substitute a cause would suffer less stress and thus have a better survival potential. I think superstition was a seriously important positive survival trait that helped humans get through the period where they had knowledge but not understanding. We now know more than we ever have and in a lot (most) cases we know enough to understand what is really happening thus when the Sun rises we know it's because we are on a large round rock orbiting 92 million miles from a huge round globe of fissionable gas. Thus the dichotomy our ancestors faced is less of a problem for us, but we still have our evolved propensity to defensive superstition and anthropomorphism thus we now have institutionalised superstition and we call it religion.  

Does this make any sense?

Regards
Chris

[Thumpalumpacus]

That's just crazy to me that someone would walk away from a friend over religion. My best friends are Baptists, and I've heard people tell them it's not good to listen to a Catholic, but when it comes down to it whether or not they stick around depends on what they personally decide to do. I just don't understand why people drop a friend over different opinions like that.

It happens.  Twice it's happened to me as well, both times as a result of a "born-again" experience.  It's sad to lose the friend, but I don't do ultimata very well.

If someone chooses to believe in a religion like Christianity they have to face the reality that both the good and bad have to be attributed to God. I wish more Christians understood that!! There's this misconception that God is only in charge of the fun, warm-fuzzies. When it comes to natural selection (including animals like the lions and lactose-intolerance, and disease, virus, bacteria, etc.) I usually come back to the same idea: without those things we would not have the healthiest animals to eat, we would not be as advanced medically, and we would have simply accepted life without asking "why did that happen?" A believer can still say "God did it" because of how it helped advance life. If God wanted us to become advanced, he would have made sure that we had to encounter those things so that it would happen.

The obvious logical conclusion is that, at best, God is amoral, and at worst, he is immoral, assuming a Christian conception of him.

When disease, famine, natural disaster, death, etc.. happen, I wonder if having nobody to "blame" it on acutally helps people heal faster? I can see that the anger towards a god would add to the emotional baggage, so I really am curious if it affects an athiest differently?

Not necessarily.  I think making your peace with the evils of this world comes to each person at their own speed, no matter their theism of lack thereof.

Yes. If I am to believe that God is to blame for both good and bad things, then I have to believe He put the bad things there so that I could learn the good things. (There are many BAD situations that I haven't had to go through, and my opinion isn't meant to negate them.)

Certainly an omnipotent god could devise a less-cruel method of education.  Unless he didn't want to.