[quote=“Patrick, post:352, topic:3316”]
rational justification? What is that?[/quote]
justification based on the process of reason rather than evidential proof. I take it you understand that evidence does not necessarily represent proof. If I do an experiment my results are evidence towards the truth of my hypothesis. The only experimental data that are proof are those that show a hypothesis to be wrong.
if faced with a proposition you can either be agnostic towards it thus to abstain from judgement about the proposition or express a belief of the proposition to be true or not. To a new atheist however it seems to be possible to form a belief in the absence of evidence as you proposed in your statement whilst they claim that they can only form a non belief because they have no evidence. That is an incoherent statement as a non-belief in the face of a truth proposition would be the admission to be able to entertain a non-cognitive process in their brains- which would be stupid. As such, assuming that they possess intelligence I can only assume that they confuse not to belief something with with the absence of a belief. Considering that to me the only cognitive response to a proposition is to ignore it, to form a belief about it or to resolve the proposition by a proof, e.g. to acquire knowledge you must have a different understanding of cognitive responses that I would like you to explain so I can learn how you propose a belief to come about. It sounds interesting and would surely be helpful towards my study of the philosophy of science.
Ok, I will expand on it. I am agnostic to other people’s beliefs. I really don’t care to know what they are and I chose to be agnostic to them. I am also agnostic to just about everything I have read in the Bible. The Bible clearly is not a history book, and certainly not a science book. It is not even a book that is useful to form morals and ethics in 21st century America. To me, the Bible is just 2500 year old ANE mythology. Nothing more and nothing less. When people ask do I believe in this or believe in that, I usually say no. So I am a non-believer in what you believe.
I asked about an explanation of how you consider it to be possible to form a belief without evidence as you belief this to be possible.
Are you sure the book of numbers was not written to teach the calculus? If you believe the bible to be 2500 year old you should put a bit more attention to today’s date and put it in context. Perhaps you read a few “answers” too many
Yes, I believe that a person can form many beliefs without evidence, even huge amount of evidence contrary to the belief. People do that all the time. People believe in UFOs and astrology. Ask the billion Muslims in the world why they believe in the same God as you do and not Jesus as God. Beliefs can be in anything. And people don’t usually need any evidence to believe in them. How do I think this is possible? Two ways Childhood indoctrination and societal convention.
When was the Bible written/put together? OT about 2500 years ago NT 1900 years ago? When it was pulled together as a book, it is not relevant to me to live in today’s world.
[quote=“Patrick, post:361, topic:3316”]
When was the Bible written/put together? OT about 2500 years ago NT 1900 years ago? When it was pulled together as a book, it is not relevant to me to live in today’s world.
[/quote] your relativistic attitude to the bible is obvious, the us my suggestion to pay attention to detail.
[quote=“Patrick, post:359, topic:3316”]
To me, the Bible is just 2500 year old ANE mythology. Nothing more and nothing less.
[/quote] Were is your evidence for such a belief. Do you know that or is it based on indoctrination?
how do they do that if they have no evidence to believe in
you sound like you believe in a brain in a vat. How can they run a cognitive process without input?
do you have evidence to think or believe that that. Also, do you think that he meant that or do you believe that he meant that. At least I would not think you have faith that he meant to say that as I figuren you do not accept your belief to be true
forgive me, nothing personal but sorry, I could not resist
Yes I know that the Bible is a collection of stories written by human beings in the Middle East starting around 2500 years ago and ending about 1900 years ago. Tell me what you know as fact about the Bible?
It is called imagination. Humans have an amazing ability to imagine just about anything.
I meant what I said. You want to put the emphasis on the mental or subjective. Faith is based on both objective proof and mental interpretation of the truth.
Also faith involves all of life, including science. We never know anything for sure. People who say they do are lying to themselves. Science in particular is based on the view that all knowledge is tentative. Thus I found it interesting when I read that Dawkins told his followers that Christians secretly doubt their faith, assuming that atheists do not.
Of course faith is not certainty, so yes Christians do doubt their faith, but since it is the best understanding of life available based on our experience and the facts as we know them, we live our faith the best we can despite our uncertainties. Thus we are open to new ideas and facts to perfect our understanding of Life in all its aspects.
@Patrick wants to put the emphasis on doubt. If it is doubtful, it is unreal, but everything is subject to doubt. Many people refuse to vaccinate their children today because they “doubt” science. If people lived by their doubts rather than faith nothing would be done as he should know.
Patrick want us to live by science because he thinks that old prescientific knowledge cannot be true. That reminded me of Dawkins who in p. 1 of The Selfish Gene claimed that all attempts to understand humanity and the meaning of life before the publishing of The Origin of the Species are worthless and are best ignored. What Dawkins comes up with is the Self-Centered Gene as the natural, scientific view of Life and Reality.
Then at the end he proclaims that we humans have the ability to turn against our selfish creators. The question, I would ask is from where to we get this power to overturn the science of biology and Darwin, if not from the books and the ideas that present which were written before 1859. If the old ideas were wrong, the you need to show how the new ideas are right. Dawkins has shown how the new scientific idea of the inherent selfishness of life is wrong, and the non-scientific Christian old idea of the need to cooperate is right.
Furthermore as he indicates in Chapter 12 of the 2006 edition the selfish gene, survival of the fittest view of evolution is not true.
Not quite. People should be free to live life as they chose. In modern society everyone should have have enough scientific and critical reasoning skills to make decisions for themselves based on the science and reasoning at the time of their decisions.
First of all people are never free to do whatever they want to do. With that said, how so we get from where we are which is less than perfect to where we want to be. In my opinion we need both good theology and good science to do that. Science does not teach people how to act responsibly, while good theology does.
