Tom Capuder#Theists:
Some of you think the evidence for #evolution is insufficient.
Where’s sufficient evidence for a #god
____________________
an #atheist vs #faith
myrmepropagandistI'm confused why anyone would want "evidence" for God. Isn't faith supposed to be an evidence-free activity?
Exactly, which is a good reason to oppose it.
For instance, in the case of evolution vs. creationism, evidence favors one side, and nothing but imagination is responsible for the other.
Faith is pretending to know things you don't know. And that's never a good basis for decision-making.
Evidence free activities have value. They can help us to understand how our ancestors may have seen the world. They can allow one to experiences a sense of mystery and feel a real connection to the religious traditions of the past.
It's just important to remember that they are "evidence free" and won't be able to really tell you anything useful in the empirical sense.
Why is it necessary to use evidence-free methods to understand how ancestors saw the world? We have enough evidence in writings and archeology to make informed judgements about ancestors' behavior.
I often experience "a sense of mystery" when I contemplate the world and universe. There's nothing wrong with not yet having answers to mysteries. It isn't advisable, however, to provide pat, soothing, imaginary "answers."
We've learned so much as a species that it's no longer necessary to revere religious traditions of the past, none of which have any place in the real world of today, IMO. They should be assigned to the dustheap of discarded mythologies.
Religions provide social cohesion. People like them. They are important to human history. They shouldn't be forgotten or treated as obsolete, but rather, like folk stories practiced and celebrated with awareness of their limitations.
Of course many people won't want anything to do with this, and that's fine too.
Nate Gaylinn@futurebird @tomcapuder I've struggled with this. As a rational materialist, I reject religious ideas that are incompatible with science. For a long time, I thought that meant rejecting all of religion, and that believing in a higher power required proof of a higher power. But I now see that's misguided.
For me, it's because I had a superficial understanding of religion. A naive, literal view of the Bible is deeply problematic, but great spiritual thinkers have struggled with that since at least the middle ages. They found much better ways of engaging with these ideas that don't require false beliefs. And, like you say, it's largely about embracing ambiguity and non-literal views of reality.
So what is the basis for your belief in a higher power?
Bridget Phillips@tomcapuder @ngaylinn @futurebird St. Thomas Aquinas always made the most sense to me on this topic.
In school, I had learned all the "proofs" of the existence of God, which Aquinas ofc covers. But those never made sense to me; they always seemed to assume their conclusion.
And that's what I read Aquinas saying, too! He said that we only know of God's existence because they reveal themselves directly to us by our subjective experience.
Nothing else will do!