Are Religious Explanations Always Facile?

[Quintessence]

the atheists are the group to whom young Christians turn to. At least in environment.
So, I'm interested in learning how they think and feel.

You're not wrong, I suppose. Back when I became annoyed at what I was being taught in terms of religion, I just concluded it was all bollocks and turned to atheists. The reality was I didn't really give any of it any proper study or thought. Most notably, I didn't understand how to properly approach mythology and interpret literature. Instead of grasping that our Pagan ancestors depicted the gods in anthropomorphic ways as a way of telling the story, I took it literally instead of comprehending that the sun is the god. Not the idol (the chariot) used to represent the sun, the actual sun. The actual sun is the most widely deified aspect of reality in human history. Once I understood that, the notion that there's no evidence for gods - and atheism in general - became untenable to me. The sun is literally studied by the sciences and was/is recognized as a god by many, many cultures.

 

[sojourner]

Remind me to rewrite the definition of void

Let me remind you that the word “void” is a loose English translation of the Hebrew term of the text. The term means (colloquially) “really, really chaos, or confused.” In other words, the world was unstructured to the extent that it was void of any order. This understanding correlates with early rabbinic interpretation. It does not correlate to being void of matter.

 

[sojourner]

And for all we know all the scientific knowledge we have, no supernatural things exist.

pssssst: entropy = a thing that happens in the expanding universe. Just like @thomas t you are talking about stuff that happens in the expanding space-time continuum. The start of the expansion is not necessarily the same as the start of the universe itself. For all we know, "the universe" existed eternally and simply "changed states" 13.7 billion years ago into an expanding space-time.

There is nothing to contradict this. We simply do not know.


The point you guys are trying to make, looks like trying to fight a war with action figures.

First of all, when did I ever state that God is an existent being? Second, I’m talking about the end, not the beginning. The expansion, in this model, will carry on until matter loses its cohesion.

 

[Audie]

In this video (minute 1:31:58 )

,

Richard Dawkins describes explanations that religions can provide as flat-out facile while he believes science is with him.

Granted, the Sun God coming with his chariot and lighting the day every morning… is a bit facile.

However, when Richard Dawkins says there is “probably” no God, see Atheist Bus Campaign - Wikipedia, how much less facile do you think this really is?

When he denies the creator proposition, he automatically favors the other option according to which the world* must be eternal in case he doesn’t want to embrace the idea of a self-popping-up world.

An eternal world or the Sun God…. what is less evidenced or more facile?

I personally hold that both is equally facile.

* By "world" I mean not only this universe but all the potential universes that purportedly existed before, too.

The word for god-explanations is vacuous, not facile

 

[sayak83]

In this video (minute 1:31:58 )

,

Richard Dawkins describes explanations that religions can provide as flat-out facile while he believes science is with him.

Granted, the Sun God coming with his chariot and lighting the day every morning… is a bit facile.

However, when Richard Dawkins says there is “probably” no God, see Atheist Bus Campaign - Wikipedia, how much less facile do you think this really is?

When he denies the creator proposition, he automatically favors the other option according to which the world* must be eternal in case he doesn’t want to embrace the idea of a self-popping-up world.

An eternal world or the Sun God…. what is less evidenced or more facile?

I personally hold that both is equally facile.

* By "world" I mean not only this universe but all the potential universes that purportedly existed before, too.

Not an atheist. But..eternally existing world is more evidenced in accordance with most current cosmologists positing a pre Big Bang universe based on current understanding of the laws of physics.

 

[Orbit]

Windwalker brings up a very good point. When I was Christian (for 47 years) I saw no reason to reject science because of my religion. Didn't St. Thomas Aquinas say something about science being appropriate for explaining the world, and religion was appropriate for explaining spiritual matters? Why confuse the two?

 

[ChristineM]

Let me remind you that the word “void” is a loose English translation of the Hebrew term of the text. The term means (colloquially) “really, really chaos, or confused.” In other words, the world was unstructured to the extent that it was void of any order. This understanding correlates with early rabbinic interpretation. It does not correlate to being void of matter.

I'll stick with the definitions, not apologetics

 

[PureX]

The moment we extend the parameters of existence beyond the beginning and end of the known universe, we can no longer logically presume that the 'logic' that governs probability in this universe governs the probabilities beyond it.

 

[Subduction Zone]

the universe is not eternal. At least scientists ascribe an age to the universe (13.4 billion years) Age of the universe - Wikipedia

I wasn't talking about the universe... I meant the whole thing: the universe + potential other universes before and after.

For all possible universe and their origin there is one correct answer:

We don't know yet.

There is no valid reason to say that there had to be a beginning or that they are eternal. Nor is there a valid reason to invoke a god. We don't know yet is never a valid reason to make up a god.


Now I think what you are trying to do is to shoehorn your own personal God, one that has been refuted, into the general concept of a god. You probably do not like Dawkins much because he has publicly ridiculed your version of God for all of the faults that he has. Worse yet he was correct in that ridicule.

 

[Subduction Zone]

if you say the world is probably not created by a God or any other higher force... this is identical to saying it's probably an uncreated world.
This is logic, in my opinion.
"uncreated" is another term for not created.
Right?

Why do you keep trying to ascribe arguments to people that they did not make?

 

[viole]

When he denies the creator proposition, he automatically favors the other option according to which the world* must be eternal in case he doesn’t want to embrace the idea of a self-popping-up world.

If we take relativity at face value, and therefore the tenseless theory of time is correct, then the Universe is eternal. Actually, the eternity (or better: the a-temporality) of the Universe looks pretty self evident and requiring no special leap of faith.

Caveat: the eternity (a-temporality) of the universe does not contradict BB cosmology. In the slightest.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Clara Tea]

Sun God coming with his chariot and lighting the day every morning… is a bit facile.
.....
When he denies the creator proposition, he automatically favors the other option according to which the world* must be eternal in case he doesn’t want to embrace the idea of a self-popping-up world.

Your blaspheme against the Sun God might very well result in him not coming with his chariot to light the day every morning. Then everyone will glare at you. He's the one.....he did it.

Atheism doesn't imply an eternal (static) world.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

In this video (minute 1:31:58 )

,

Richard Dawkins describes explanations that religions can provide as flat-out facile while he believes science is with him.

Granted, the Sun God coming with his chariot and lighting the day every morning… is a bit facile.

However, when Richard Dawkins says there is “probably” no God, see Atheist Bus Campaign - Wikipedia, how much less facile do you think this really is?

When he denies the creator proposition, he automatically favors the other option according to which the world* must be eternal in case he doesn’t want to embrace the idea of a self-popping-up world.

An eternal world or the Sun God…. what is less evidenced or more facile?

I personally hold that both is equally facile.

* By "world" I mean not only this universe but all the potential universes that purportedly existed before, too.

While both may seem "facile" to you, I think that there is a very great difference between the two. Let me see if I can try to explain why:

Claiming an "eternally existing world" (which I am going to interpret as universe or multiverse, not just our world, planet Earth) may seem as facile as claiming that it must have been created -- but there is growing evidence that this need not be so. Is that evidence complete? Not by a long shot, no. But does it provide strong pointers? Yes. Quantum theory, which is extremely well tested, does seem to suggest that matter can indeed arise from what is essentially "nothing." And once that's happened, then classical physics (which is subsumed into chemistry, etc.) can explain the rest.

The God assumption, however, contains within itself (usually denied by believers) additional assumptions which go unstated. These assumptions are that God has always existed, and therefore was not "brought into being" and that God also is of sufficiently complex nature to conceive of and create a universe of matter that is utterly un-godlike. But those assumptions raise a host of other, totally unanswerable questions, like if this God exists outside of the space-time continuum, what can it mean to have created time as well as space, and how could this God have any interaction with it, without abandoning its own nature?

 

[thomas t]

Trump's claims about election fraud are very likely not correct.

???
I didn't compare you with Trump.

I think it was a comparison. see above.

Which is a response to the claim that there is a god.

if it's true, he responds to a positive claim with another positive claim. The onus is on both sides.

The burden of proof is on the positive claim.

I for one did not make any súch claim here in the thread.
I say I believe in God.

So you are positing undemonstrable entities as the creators of undemonstrable universes?

no, I never did so.

Can I ask, why this focus on Dawkins? What makes him so special to you?

in the last three threads here on Worthy that had a poll, most atheists agreed with him.

Since you mentioned tornadoes, post #17, there is no evidence that they were any before the Big Bang took place.

I stay with my opinion, there is no evidence for the universe or the world being eternal. Science, as far as I know, cannot go back in time to any point before the big bang.




@Polymath257 if the world was caused (but not created)… I want to count that cause as part of the wider world.

And this wider world may be called “world”. For reasons of simplicity.

By saying “the world came into existence” I merely mean there was a start of it.

edited to fix the link for Polymath

 

[thomas t]

Maybe instead, try not fighting against science

I didn't.
Since this is an unsubstantiated claim of yours, as there was no quote whatsoever you used for backing up this claim....
I'll wait a bit before I reply to the rest of your posts.

 

[thomas t]

And that's precisely why such reduction is facile and overly simplistic.

I don't think it was.
Either the world was created or it wasn't.

Either the world has a starting point or it doesn't.

So we arrive at:
A the world was created with no starting point.
B the world was created with a starting point.
C the world was not created and does not have atsarting point (eternal world).
D the world was not created and does have a starting point.

That's what I said.

 

[epronovost]

I don't think it was.
Either the world was created or it wasn't.

Either the world has a starting point or it doesn't.

So we arrive at:
A the world was created with no starting point.
B the world was created with a starting point.
C the world was not created and does not have atsarting point (eternal world).
D the world was not created and does have a starting point.

That's what I said.

I completely understand what your point is, but it remains a reduction to the absurd as it ignores all the subleties of cosmogenenis and the research and philosophical argument on it. That's like if you said about biology that there is only two state of life: dead or alive. That's an absurd simplification and is, in my opinion, "not even wrong".

Yes, this reasonning is facile and caricatural as it ignores, side-step, misrepresent and caricature the problems of cosmogenesis.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Are Religious Explanations Always Facile?

Any that don't concern themselves with actually representing the reality we can experience and evidence to one another to some accurate degree, yes.

They are expedient, quick explanations for things for which zero evidence is presented or felt to be expected. Which is why the faithful very often find their backs against a very hard and uncomfortable wall when someone actually does ask a question about a provided explanation that exposes that it doesn't adequately cover all aspects of the reality we find ourselves in. Hence the reason that questions in many religious spheres are actively discouraged by the "authorities" of said religion, and the reason believers are so often to be found trying to convince people that they don't have the authority to question God, or that doing so is somehow immoral or harmful. There's nothing to these explanations. Nothing. The above items I commented on are the hallmark activities of people who know they are holding empty bags, even as they'd like to offer them to people as the solution to all their problems.

 

[Windwalker]

I didn't.
Since this is an unsubstantiated claim of yours, as there was no quote whatsoever you used for backing up this claim....

The title of the thread alone is a quote. Plus, I've read several of these "questions for atheists" threads of yours, and they usually have to do with rejecting science as an explanation for the natural world.

As in your thread title, "Are Religious Explanations Always Facile?" You call them "explanations", as if they argue against science. Then you set out to position them against what Dawkins, as an evolutionary biologist, believes in has natural explanations. Most clearly, you are not accepting science, and instead are arguing for a "religious explanation" (your words quoted).

I'll wait a bit before I reply to the rest of your posts.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I'd like to have meaningful discussion with you about this.

 

[sojourner]

I'll stick with the definitions, not apologetics

In this case, definitions out of context are moot, because we’re dealing with translation, not science. What’s necessary is to understand what the writers meant. The English term “void” cannot, by its definition out of context, be used as a baseline.

And it’s not “apologetics.” It’s exegesis.