John Polkinhorne is a respected theoretical physicist. He is also an Angelican preacher.
Another guy, a college professor, has heard all the arguments for atheism and read Dawkins, Harris etc., has extremely liberal social views and yet believes, not all of the Bible but just 'the important parts'. God is a large part of who he is and how he raises his family.
Why don't they use their brilliant minds when they think about their god?
Compartmentalization? If they find religious belief comforting and comfortable, why mess with it, after all. These people know perfectly well that there is no conclusive proof one way or another when it comes to a certain type of faith.
Yeah, I think let them be. There are so many other believers and the ignorance that they want to inflict on others that are more worth fighting.
Quote from: Recusant on May 27, 2011, 11:01:32 PM
Compartmentalization?
This is exactly my thinking. Back when I was younger, I had to do intellectual back flips to keep my religious faith. You basically have to put your faith in a little box, impenetrable to logic or reason or doubt. The instant the box fails, the faith fails. What helps is a group of certain claims by the church. Some of them are carrot and stick, basically, saying that skepticism of faith leads to hell and not questioning leads to paradise. Some of them also make it a moral issue, that doubt is like lust or wrath.
It's really sad, though, because intellectual religious people are missing out on so much.
Yah, I get to post here now that I have 50.
I think it's true that progressive liberal Christians will do less harm than fundamentalists. On the other hand when you have an intellectual like Polkinghorne advocating belief, that in itself adds confidence to lay people that his belief must be valid.
It seems by compartmentalizing, some people value comfort over truth maybe. ?
But then they are so proud they know the truth that their belief is correct. Hmm
I'm having a hard time understanding how the compartmentalizing works and all that goes with it.
I guess fear, cognitive dissonance, lots comes into play when compartmentalizing.
I'm just trying to get at the heart of this type of thought process. Getting closer!
Quote from: Poptop on May 28, 2011, 08:56:46 PM
Yah, I get to post here now that I have 50.
I think it's true that progressive liberal Christians will do less harm than fundamentalists. On the other hand when you have an intellectual like Polkinghorne advocating belief, that in itself adds confidence to lay people that his belief must be valid.
It seems by compartmentalizing, some people value comfort over truth maybe. ?
But then they are so proud they know the truth that their belief is correct. Hmm
I'm having a hard time understanding how the compartmentalizing works and all that goes with it.
I guess fear, cognitive dissonance, lots comes into play when compartmentalizing.
I'm just trying to get at the heart of this type of thought process. Getting closer!
Ever hear a religious persons claim that god is above logic?
Some of the things they say can be like saying that 'god (as defined) exists' and 'god (going by the same definition) doesn't exist' at the same time and then turning around and telling you that the subject is above logic and so such inconsistencies don't matter.
The worse thing is, I don't think they really even notice how compartmentalised their thinking is.
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 28, 2011, 10:06:27 PM
Ever hear a religious persons claim that god is above logic?
Some of the things they say can be like saying that 'god (as defined) exists' and 'god (going by the same definition) doesn't exist' at the same time and then turning around and telling you that the subject is above logic and so such inconsistencies don't matter.
The worse thing is, I don't think they really even notice how compartmentalised their thinking is.
Have you seen Religulous? There was a guy who plays the role of Jesus at a Biblical amusement park. Whenever stumped by Bill Maher about something, like the Holocaust, Jesus replies that it is God's plan, and God's ways are beyond our understanding. When you decide to maintain religious faith in the face of dissenting fact, you are leaving reason behind. We (atheists) know this, so it shouldn't surprise us how wacky some of these beliefs are.
Quote from: Poptop on May 27, 2011, 06:24:05 PM
John Polkinhorne is a respected theoretical physicist. He is also an Angelican preacher.
Another guy, a college professor, has heard all the arguments for atheism and read Dawkins, Harris etc., has extremely liberal social views and yet believes, not all of the Bible but just 'the important parts'. God is a large part of who he is and how he raises his family.
Why don't they use their brilliant minds when they think about their god?
Seeing as Polkinghorn has written several books on the interplay between reason and faith, maybe you could look there for an answer.
@fester30: I can't believe anyone would be inhuman enough to say the Holocaust or any genocide in history was part of God's plan.
This is why I try not to argue, because my brain hurts trying to understand how anyone can look at me with a straight face and say rape and murder are all part of his brilliant plan.
I once read a book two years ago my dad gave me about a woman who flatlined for 2mins and had a religious vision. She said she understood God's plan. IE: when a drunk driver kills an adult, its ok, because he learned his lesson, and only killed one human instead of hitting a group of kids. Last time I fucking checked, anyone hitting/killing an innocent human being because they are selfish emough to drink and drive hasn't learned shit. Are you really saying one human life means more?
What if that person was my girlfriend or my friend's husband/wife? Or my mother?
Someone being murdered is aweful! I love how no one question God sitting back in his relaxomatic, watching all this unfold like a choose your own adventure book.
-sweetdeath
Quote from: fester30 on May 28, 2011, 10:56:33 PM
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on May 28, 2011, 10:06:27 PM
Ever hear a religious persons claim that god is above logic?
Some of the things they say can be like saying that 'god (as defined) exists' and 'god (going by the same definition) doesn't exist' at the same time and then turning around and telling you that the subject is above logic and so such inconsistencies don't matter.
The worse thing is, I don't think they really even notice how compartmentalised their thinking is.
Have you seen Religulous? There was a guy who plays the role of Jesus at a Biblical amusement park. Whenever stumped by Bill Maher about something, like the Holocaust, Jesus replies that it is God's plan, and God's ways are beyond our understanding. When you decide to maintain religious faith in the face of dissenting fact, you are leaving reason behind. We (atheists) know this, so it shouldn't surprise us how wacky some of these beliefs are.
I have, in fact ;D Entertaining film.
Saying that something happens because "god works in mysterious ways" is essentially saying that you have an answer but give an non answer instead. It's useless.
Like..."I know why we exist, it's just the way it is."
Compartmentalization may be part of it. But I do not think their faith stems from a lack of knowledge in the improbability of god but rather a choice to view god as less of an ethereal interventionist punisher of sins, and more of an abstract psychological enforcer of moral guidelines. It could also be that these rationalist see the truth up to the point that they feel that it affects morality. And through certain lenses a godless world is an immoral world. So support of naturalism can only extend so far before god has to come into play for moral checks and balances. God is a crutch or a cocoon that is built because without god the infinite moral choices and the subjectivity of right and wrong become uncomfortable if not unbearable.
I have heard the arguement before that a Godless world would be chaotic and immoral, but i've always felt it was quite the opposite. I mean, look at us now. The most religious counries tend to have the most violence.
Ie: Afganistan. (Irony, am I right?)
Quote from: Poptop on May 27, 2011, 06:24:05 PM
John Polkinhorne is a respected theoretical physicist. He is also an Angelican preacher.
Another guy, a college professor, has heard all the arguments for atheism and read Dawkins, Harris etc., has extremely liberal social views and yet believes, not all of the Bible but just 'the important parts'. God is a large part of who he is and how he raises his family.
Why don't they use their brilliant minds when they think about their god?
They often are using their brilliant minds when thinking about God.
Historically the existence of the deity has been a central part of much of the best of human thought. From Liebniz's elegant
Monadology, to Keirkegaard's painfully honest
Fear and Trembling.
Faith is not, nor should seek to be, rational. For some belief in God is a valid way of interpreting and making sense of the parts of their lives which are not rational; what Tillich would call 'grounding ourselves'. for others the notion of void is too terrible, and belief can be a way of encouraging action (what Marx called Praxis). Interestingly one of the founders of the Selfish Gene hypothesis George Robert Price converted to Christianity and spent his final years giving all his possessions (down to the clothes on his back) to the homeless.
We all construct arbitrary meaning to keep us going through the day; if some people use God as part of that process, well, fair enough. Moreover I don't think that this tells us anything about their intelligence (though it may tell us something about their emotional landscape).
Quote from: Sweetdeath on June 03, 2011, 08:15:58 AM
I have heard the arguement before that a Godless world would be chaotic and immoral, but i've always felt it was quite the opposite. I mean, look at us now. The most religious counries tend to have the most violence.
Ie: Afganistan. (Irony, am I right?)
And Sweden.
Quote from: penfold on June 07, 2011, 03:06:19 PM
We all construct arbitrary meaning to keep us going through the day; if some people use God as part of that process, well, fair enough. Moreover I don't think that this tells us anything about their intelligence (though it may tell us something about their emotional landscape).
This.
There are some (strangely) intelligent people who are also theists. :o
Quote from: penfold on June 07, 2011, 03:06:19 PM
We all construct arbitrary meaning to keep us going through the day; if some people use God as part of that process, well, fair enough. Moreover I don't think that this tells us anything about their intelligence (though it may tell us something about their emotional landscape).
Would you say that fact is arbitrary? The more we learn about nature the more we realize it's all forces and computations, and biology is just accumulated complexity for the transmittal of genes. So if this is true and truth is my meaning then have i assigned an arbitrary meaning to my existence? Perhaps arbitrary in the sense that I made a choice to not believe in nonsense. However, in my case nothing about the meaning of my existence was constructed it just is what is real.
Originally I should have asked, how can these guys keep their belief if they've skeptically assessed their own belief system with rational thought ?
A quick summary of my understanding so far; they probably haven't deeply assessed their belief with logical reasoning because it's immediately obvious that their belief would not be supported using this method. Yet they desperately want both an irrational unsupported world and the rational one to coexist. If they cannot coexist they would suffer severe cognitive dissonance unless one of the conflicting thoughts were to be abandoned or the two conflicting beliefs were to be harmonized somehow. The belief arrived at by parental predilections, emotional inclinations and so on, is so much a part of who they are that letting it go would be too painful and disorienting. They keep both ideas and make them fit together, ironically by separating them and constructing the idea that science and religion address different questions. So they do what people are skilled at, especially intelligent ones, rationalizing away facts that are disconfirming.
"When men wish to construct or support a theory, how they torture facts into their service!" - John Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1852
"Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons." -Shermer
I'm interested in hearing penfold's answer to Twentythree ...
"Would you say that fact is arbitrary? The more we learn about nature the more we realize it's all forces and computations, and biology is just accumulated complexity for the transmittal of genes. So if this is true and truth is my meaning then have i assigned an arbitrary meaning to my existence? Perhaps arbitrary in the sense that I made a choice to not believe in nonsense. However, in my case nothing about the meaning of my existence was constructed it just is what is real."
Quote from: Twentythree on June 07, 2011, 06:36:33 PM
Would you say that fact is arbitrary? The more we learn about nature the more we realize it's all forces and computations, and biology is just accumulated complexity for the transmittal of genes. So if this is true and truth is my meaning then have i assigned an arbitrary meaning to my existence? Perhaps arbitrary in the sense that I made a choice to not believe in nonsense. However, in my case nothing about the meaning of my existence was constructed it just is what is real.
Facts about the world are not arbitrary. There are correct answers to certain questions about the structure of the cosmos;
empirical questions. However empirical facts about the cosmos do not provide answer to existential questions. A large part of being human is finding ways of constructing meaning from the chaos of our lives. Such structures are not empirical but necessarily private.
We fall in love, we fight and hate. We hold concepts like family and friendship. We crave food, sex and power and the craving makes us miserable. We are confronted by horrors, daily in the news, occasionally in our own lives. We all fear death.
While empirical systems can account for the 'how' of these things they cannot account for their inherent meaning to us. No matter how detailed an empirical description of love may be, it is not until we fall in love that its meaning becomes apparent to us. As the great musician Duke Ellington once said:
'Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is'.
For many, including myself, the arbitrary nature of our existence and the irrationality of the human psyche does not require God. However I can understand that for some people it would. Moreover it would be a mistake to discount turning to God as some kind of psychological weakness. For many God can be an enormous source of strength giving them certainty of purpose; something I envy as much as distrust.
I can understand that, it would be that this "meaning" is a product of both biological impulses or instinct and our personal interpretations of the meaning of these urges. So perhaps all love is born in the flood of Oxytocin that fills our brain but how we interpret the chemical sensation intellectually becomes meaning. We find personal meaning in the way we explain our own existence and the mechanics that lie therein. I do think though that there is a lot to be said about the way one perceives reality though. If we all build existential towers of meaning through behavior interpretation then those of faith are working with a different set of blocks. I have to disagree with the notion that there is no weakness in faith. Faith removes accountability from personal decisions. The atheist realizes the impact of each choice and fully bears the burden of any consequence, personally in this existence, now. Ideas of an afterlife, and the rewards or pains to be earned there, remove responsibility from the decisions in this life and in this reality. If you make a bad choice you can ask for forgiveness by some made up entity in the sky. If an evil befalls the world it was god's plan. Not how did we humans make decisions that brought us to this outcome. Being godless is being accountable, taking responsibility for the reality that our decisions create and that takes a lot more courage than blaming a ghost.
What keeps these guys in belief?
I would wager....fear.
There's always the human capacity for assigning spiritual significance to random correlation, or even fully, rationally explainable phenomena. For instance, a woman wakes up in cold sweats with a pain in her chest and a strong suspicion that her daughter is misbehaving in a very specific way. Turns out, the daughter IS misbehaving in that particular way. This was obviously a message from God, right?
Well, in fact, the woman has been dealing with a disobedient daughter for years now. In fact, given the constant and tenacious nature of the daughter's deviant behavior, it would be a discredit to the mother if she DIDN'T suspect that her daughter was misbehaving at a given time. This should cause any parent to lose sleep. As for the specificity of the woman's suspicion, with a little investigation, we find that the daughter has acted out in this precise way before. She has a record.
Oh, and the cold sweats? Menopause.
I don't think a lot of "faithful" types really take the time to analyze scenarios and seek rational explanations. They fall prey to the ignorance of our ancestors and make assumptions about spirits to fill gaps left by a misunderstanding of reality. Even otherwise brilliant minds.
Quote from: Will37 on May 28, 2011, 11:03:50 PM
Quote from: Poptop on May 27, 2011, 06:24:05 PM
John Polkinhorne is a respected theoretical physicist. He is also an Angelican preacher.
Another guy, a college professor, has heard all the arguments for atheism and read Dawkins, Harris etc., has extremely liberal social views and yet believes, not all of the Bible but just 'the important parts'. God is a large part of who he is and how he raises his family.
Why don't they use their brilliant minds when they think about their god?
Seeing as Polkinghorn has written several books on the interplay between reason and faith, maybe you could look there for an answer.
There are also some of Polkinghorne's talks on science and religion online: at the Faraday Institute (http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Multimedia.php) site (type in "Polkinghorne" into the search - note the 'e' at the end!) and at Robert Lawrence Kuhn's Closer to Truth (http://www.closertotruth.com/participant/John-Polkinghorne/78) site (there are doubtless other places as well, but these are the two I'm aware of).
The best way to find out why someone thinks something is to
engage with what they've said publicly in word and on the page rather than ask a bunch of people who've not met him why he believes what he does.