Comments by Dianelos Georgoudis

651. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57326 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 19, 2007 at 12:24 am

The great teapot (post 1504, or #57247):

Morality Paul, leave it alone. we are nice because we want to be liked and people to treat us nice. if we act like arseholes we increase the chances of someone knocking the shit out of us.

Nope, that moral theory doesn't work. For example if you would find a wallet full of money in a dark alley and can keep the money without anybody noticing then, according to that theory, you should keep the money. After all having all that money you would be liked more and people would treat you nicer.

652. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57325 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 19, 2007 at 12:16 am

Elli (post 1486, or #57166):

"Can you imagine any context where gratuitous torture would not be wrong?"

Easily. Where it does not breach any social contract (in the more abstract way that I discussed above).

Well, I don't know about what kind of abstraction you refer here, so let's discuss a concrete example: If a Nazi doctor who immersed Jews in ice water until they died in order to study their physiological reactions were to tell you that in Nazi Germany's social contract to use the inferior races for medical research was considered moral, would you agree it was moral?

For example, primitive man may have derived great enjoyment out of hunting other men, or perhaps females or fat females, or perhaps especially hairy men or men with different colored hair, and would not have felt a twinge of remorse at doing so if such behaviour was societally acceptable. Without an evolved sense of morality as is currently in human societies, and without any social contracts against the act, to cause another human pain and to derive pleasure from it is perfectly conceivable.

That's not what I was discussing. I am not discussing how to explain peoples' moral beliefs or behavior, nor whether that Nazi doctor felt or didn't feel remorse while immersing people in ice water until death. I am discussing our sense of morality, and how at least my sense of morality clearly tells me that that doctor did the wrong thing, and I don't care about the context or about what Nazi Germany's social contract was. Now I don't want you to feel bad about what I will write next, but speaking as a humanist (not as a theist), I find that the naturalistic understanding of reality can do bad things to peoples' moral sense. On the other hand, as a practical matter, I think most naturalists' moral sense agrees with mine, and either they don't know of the contradiction between their moral sense and naturalism, or else they prefer to live with that contradiction. In other works they think: here is what I believe about how the real world is, here is what I believe about ethics, and I don't care if the two cannot be put into a conceptually coherent whole. Which, as far as I am concerned, is far better than subsuming their moral sense to naturalism.

To be honest, I don't even understand your final paragraph.

Oh, ok. Let me elaborate. Let's consider a young man who agrees with the social contract theory of ethics. He lives in a society where part of the social contract is that all young men must do military service. Now this young man believes that it is immoral to learn how to kill other people and to promise that if ordered to do so he will kill other people. So he confronts an ethical decision: to do military service or else to refuse to do military service. According to the social contract theory of ethics what should that young man do?

Before answering consider the problem: If he decides against military service he'll be breaking the social contract and hence acting wrongly. But if he decides to do military service he'll be doing something he believes is wrong. So what does social contract theory say for this case? Social contract theory cannot very well advise the former, i.e. that he should break the social contract. But the latter implies that he should ignore his own moral thinking, which goes against all notions of free thought. So, what do you think this young man should do?

--

(As an aside: if you want to put some text you quote inside a square, simply write blockquote inside brackets <> before, and /blockquote inside brackets after that text.)

653. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57160 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 18, 2007 at 12:34 pm

_J_ (post 1480, or #57142):

Assuming you're using definition 2 [gratuitous: lacking good reason] (you are, right?): that's a definition of an opinion. The torture is judged to be gratuitous in someone's opinion.

No, actually I am not using that definition. By gratuitous I mean "lacking any reason". Incidentally the first definition in my dictionary (Webster's Online Dictionary) is "without cause", which is equivalent.

654. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57152 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 18, 2007 at 12:16 pm

Elli (post 1478, or #57136):

"Gratuitous torture is wrong, whatever peoples' opinion about this may be." is neither meaningful or meaningless. This is not a valid question.

Usually one considers only these two possibilities, but no matter.

Yes, there is nothing intrinsically right or wrong in a physical event. Of course not. Because "right" or "wrong" is only sensible when viewed from a context or viewpoint. You are miscategorizing "context" as "opinion". Within a society certain social contracts exist. Some are constructed and arbitrary, others stem from evolved behaviours, like altruism. From the context of our current existence of humankind, the breaking of social contract (from evolved morality to agreed law) is "wrong" precisely because it is a breach of contract.

I have two problems with this idea:

Can you imagine any context where gratuitous torture would not be wrong? And if you can't then what's the point to say it depends on the context?

And secondly, what happens if a naturalist finds that a particular social contract (say, that everybody should do military service) is wrong? Should the naturalist do what they think is right and break the social contract which is wrong, or not break the social contract and hence do what they personally think is wrong? Isn't this an irrational situation as far as ethics is concerned? After all any alternative the naturalist chooses would be wrong, and a theory of ethics where both to do A and to not do A is wrong is irrational.

655. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57127 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 18, 2007 at 10:33 am

Elli (post 1476, or #57117):

Consider the following proposition:

"Gratuitous torture is wrong, whatever peoples' opinion about this may be."

Do you think that this proposition is meaningful, or you think it's meaningless?

I am not asking whether you think that this proposition is true or false, just if you think it's meaningful or not. And I ask this because, as it turns out, according to naturalism this proposition is meaningless. Why? Because according to the way naturalism understands reality there is nothing intrinsically right or wrong in any physical event (e.g. gratuitous torture) and therefore ethical value judgments are always a matter of peoples' opinion about such events.

Now, I don't know about you, but to me the proposition above is eminently meaningful, and if naturalism has trouble with this then so much the worse for naturalism.

656. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57111 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 18, 2007 at 9:51 am

Dr Benway (post 1468, or #57060):

Nice of you to go into all that trouble. But please observe that in each of the cases you quote I am speaking of gaps or problems of naturalism and not of science. Those who respond consistently confuse naturalism with science and therefore respond as if I were talking about problems or gaps in science. This is particularly evident in your quoting me in post 541, where I explicitly correct Epeeist's mention of problems of science and make clear that I mean problems of naturalism.

I have often pointed out the obvious fallacy of equating naturalism (which is one particular ontological or metaphysical worldview) with science – but I understand it's not easy to change one's customs of thought. Maybe part of the confusion resides in the fact that many people consider the dozen or so interpretations of quantum mechanics as part of science. But these are clearly not part of science because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for any one of these mutually contradictory interpretations, and in fact no scientific experiments to sort out which are true and which are not (and that's why their number keeps growing). But if you can't falsify a proposition by experiment then it is clearly not science. What's more, really very few physicists work on such interpretations, and most physicists openly declare that they don't care one way or the other. So clearly, QM's interpretations are not science, but rather represent the effort of naturalistic physicists to describe what kind of naturalistic reality might produce the phenomena that QM models, according to their own intuitions about how such a reality should be. And the fact that they came up with so many, so different, so implausible, and so complex descriptions is one more problem for naturalism – but not for science. Quantum mechanics itself is doing very well indeed, thank you very much.

657. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57087 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 18, 2007 at 9:05 am

Steve99 (post 1464, or #56965):

And why exactly shouldn't theists use such [first-person] data?

Because it can be hugely misleading. We all know we experience illusions and delusions. I would be interested to know how you decide which personal data to trust and which to ignore.

Data are data; strictly speaking there can't be something misleading in the data themselves. What can be misleading is what we do with that data when we think about them. In all cases though I think the test of overall coherency described in post 1311 (or #55685) applies.

Having said that, I know what you mean. So let's call "misleading" such data that can easily move people to reason wrongly. But then all data can be misleading, including the objective kind of evidence that science uses. For example the complexity of the species is objective evidence, and even so people were misled by such objective evidence into believing that this complexity implies the presence of a designer. Darwin showed that this isn't so (even though let's note that "A does not imply B" is not equivalent to "A implies not B"). Another example: For centuries all scientific evidence we had made us think that physical phenomena are deterministic, at least in the sense that if you repeat the same simple experiment you'll get almost always the same basic result. But all that scientific evidence was misleading because, as we discovered early in the 20th century, there are simple experiments that produce completely different results, for example the double slit experiment. A third example: All scientific evidence we had led us to believe that if one observer sees event A take place before event B then all observers would see the same sequence, but it turns out that evidence was misleading too as Einstein found out. A fourth example: All scientific evidence that Einstein had led him to strongly believe that non-local phenomena do not exist. But all his objective evidence was misleading too because we recently found out that non-local phenomena do in fact exist.

Now you might argue that subjective (first-person) data are even more misleading than objective (third-person) data, but, considering the previous examples of how vast amounts of objective data did gravely mislead scientists more than once and sometimes for centuries on end, I think it won't be easy to argue that convincingly. But in any case, even if it were true that in general first-person data are more misleading than third-person data that would only imply that we must be more careful when using first-person data, but would never imply that we should not use such data. By refusing to take into account first-person data naturalism is simply ignoring a huge part of the data available, while, incongruently must find in the end a way to explain such first-person data anyway. I think that's a self-defeating epistemology for naturalism, and I really cannot see any reason for follow that path except in order to maintain its scientific pretenses. Anyway: hic Rhodus, hic saltus.

658. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57037 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 18, 2007 at 7:43 am

Philip1978 (post 1433, or #56769):

Can you see where I am heading with this, things happen on this world, in the universe, its mind bogglingly fun and exciting, there are things we can and cant explain but why oh why is magic added into it?

What world is that? What universe? If you mean reality as naturalism understands it then you are begging the question. You see it's not like:

theism = naturalism + God

If it were then what you say above would be reasonable: Here we have naturalism's understanding of reality, it works pretty well (actually it doesn't really but never mind), so why should I add to it some magical being like God? But theism is not naturalism plus God as many naturalists apparently believe. Theism is an entirely different understanding about how reality is. According to naturalism reality consists of a configuration of matter in physical space which is governed by physical (and hence mechanical) laws, and the whole total of reality is the Universe with such and such attributes. According to idealistic theism reality consists of a configuration of persons in a space of conscious experience which is governed by personal (and hence creative) will, and the whole total of reality is God with such and such attributes. So the choice at hand is: Which of these entirely different worldviews works best (for explaining the whole of our experience, for giving us both experiential and ethical benefits, for allowing a coherent understanding of reality, etc)?

But surely reason is better at making things work than magic? God waving his magic hands around to make things do stuff is beyond reason and sense.

Maybe you mean that idealistic theism's understanding of reality is magical, because things there are driven by personal will (God's or ours) and not by mechanical laws. But of course there is no reason for idealistic theism to respect naturalism's intuitions about how things should be driven around, or else earn the moniker "magical" by naturalists. And, incidentally, have you ever thought about how magical the naturalistic descriptions of reality really are? For example, the currently dominant "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics asserts that every time you switch on a light bulb you cause the entire physical universe to split into a huge number of similar copies. Philip flicks a switch and the entire great universe of ours, including the Earth and the Sun and our galaxy and all hundreds of billions of galaxies out there are instantly split into a huge number of copies. How much magical can a description of reality get? So let's not drag the "magic" criterion into our discussion, because it seems to me that any neutral observer who studies what naturalism actually says about reality will judge it to be far more – I mean way far more – magical than what idealistic theism says about reality. After all the idea of affecting conscious experience through personal will is a very natural idea that describes what we humans do all the time. Splitting the universe into many copies at the flick of switch is not.

You quote Douglas Adams, and let me tell you that I am great fan of his Hitchhiker series also; in fact, as in all great science fiction, some of his ideas (e.g. the improbability drive) makes one think and may have serious philosophical repercussions. But, no matter how much talent and imagination he had, he knew next to nothing about philosophy. In this very site there is video of his with Dawkins, Dennett and others, where Adams says somewhere: "There was of a huge importance to me to discover how fundamentally important to our understanding of the world is a proper understanding of the world as revealed to us by science." Well if he discovered that he only discovered a very common fallacy. After all that science "reveals the world" to us is a myth; science only reveals to us patterns present in our observations of the world, but our experience of the world is quite a different thing from the world itself. For example there are colors in our experience (just have a look around and observe all the colorful things around you) but in fact there are no colorful things in the world, even as understood by naturalism (there only exist things of different chemical compositions that absorb some and reflect some other frequencies of electromagnetic waves which then – somehow, naturalism doesn't explain that – cause us to experience colors). So everybody agrees that reality is quite different from how it appears to us. The fact that we experience the moon in the night sky does not imply that there is actually a moon out there; it only implies that whatever is out there causing the whole of our experience is also causing our experience of seeing the moon in the night sky. And all scientific studies of our observations of the moon and all knowledge that science discovers about the moon are independent from what is actually out there producing these observations, do you see that?

Now, naturalism makes the most obvious (and indeed quite plausible) hypothesis that there is a moon out there causing our experience of it following what science says about molecules, electromagnetic waves reflected by them, etc. So naturalism takes a scientific model and considers it reality (which kind of reminds me of the reification fallacy, Steve). But hey, that's swell. I don't see why one shouldn't hypothesize that reality is just like science models it. But it turns out that the naturalistic hypothesis works very badly indeed. One problem is that the two main scientific models we have, namely general relativity and quantum mechanics directly contradict each other, but let's overlook this problem. The main problem is that there are today literally hundreds of mutually incompatible naturalistic descriptions of reality. How can that be? Isn't naturalism supposed to "realize" science's models? Yes, but it turns out that since the advent of quantum mechanics in early 20th century these models can be "realized" in many different ways. The reason is that quantum mechanics models any physical system, be it one single electron or a galaxy, as a "wavefunction" that fills all of the universe and which represents probabilities rather than actualities. But what we observe around us are not probabilities but actualities; we see this apple located here as an actual thing and not a wave of probabilities located everywhere. So that's a very very deep problem that naturalism must deal with. Another very deep problem is that all science's models don't say anything about consciousness and conscious experience, for example they don't say anything about colors. But we are conscious beings experiencing colors (and many other first-person data besides) and we form part of reality. So suddenly naturalism must account with an indisputable part of reality (namely our conscious experience) that does not appear in, or is in some way implied by, any of science's models. Very weird, and no naturalist has really the slightest idea of how to solve this problem, which Chalmers has famously and understatedly called the "hard problem" of consciousness. Another problem concerns our experience of meaning and value, which again are concepts that do not appear anywhere in science's models. Please observe that the above problems are not science's problems, for science's models work very well; they are naturalism's problems. And they are ugly problems. The fact that so many naturalists feel so confident about naturalism only evidences how widespread and uncritically believed in are some of the prevalent mythologies of our times: Particularly, that naturalism does not face any really difficult problems, and that if there are some problems these are scientific problems that science will solve in good time (as it has solved so many difficult problems in the past), and that anyway any non naturalistic (and hence theistic) understanding of reality faces much uglier problems still and is besides quite unscientific.

I am still thinking to compile a list of such modern myth-level fallacies.

Now did your god or even Odin and his brothers organise the cold weather in the tropical climate to kill off the weakest creatures, then muck around with the genetics of the little baby creatures so that over a number of generations there are more animals with fur coats?

No, nothing like that. First of all, again, you must not imagine that idealistic theism asserts the same reality that naturalism does plus God guiding or interfering with nature. According to idealistic theism God produces all order present in our experience of physical phenomena. So, evolution by natural selection is nothing more than a (indeed very clever) idea in the mind of God, as are all explanatory patterns present in our experience of physical phenomena, including all physical laws or the Andromeda galaxy.

659. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56959 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 18, 2007 at 12:51 am

Dr Benway (post 1451, or #56885):

Dianelos has pointed to current problems in theoretical physics and cosmology which he feels are illustrative of science's limitations and therefore somehow supportive of theism.

You must be thinking of some other Dianelos :-)

660. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56955 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 18, 2007 at 12:35 am

_J_ (post 1439, or #56793):

The current majority opinion among atheists posting here seems to be that Dianelos' position boils down to a God of the Gaps belief.

If so, that's a misunderstanding. Nowhere in my argument am I using gaps in scientific knowledge (see the second part of post 1380 or #55899 where I answer a comment by Dr Benway about this.) Gaps in scientific knowledge have nothing to do with my argument.

But what I find truly remarkable is this: Normally one is free to design one's hypothesis for explaining data any way one likes, and then one checks to see if that hypothesis works. But in my argument I did not have to use that freedom, because as it turns out if you take naturalism and see where it contradicts our own condition as human beings then you are guided towards the hypothesis of idealistic theism. In other words, very remarkably, naturalism itself points to the right theistic hypothesis. In that sense and in that sense only did I argue that if you take naturalism's failings and connect the dots you get a perfect God-shaped gap. And in another post (1265 or #55389) I argued that in the history of knowledge it has often been the case that gaps are resolved by a paradigmatic shift in one's understanding, which is what I expect will happen in the case of peoples' understanding about reality too.

661. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56947 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 18, 2007 at 12:06 am

Elli (post 1438, or #56791):

There are some key posts. In post 333 (or #48459) I present my argument that it is more reasonable to adopt the worldview of idealistic theism than of naturalism. Post 470 (or #49000) is a shorter version of the same. My basic point is that one shouldn't discuss theism by itself but theism as compared to naturalism. When doing so several interesting insights are gained, for example that we don't have any objective evidence for naturalism either, so that all naturalistic arguments to the effect that there is no objective evidence for theism amount to blowing smoke.

Another key post is post 1041 (or #53733) where I discuss how one must reason about reality if one wishes to avoid begging the question. In other words I present there claims about methodology that are independent on whether God exists or not.

Post 1239 (or #55306) comments on some common naturalistic arguments. There is also a whole bunch of posts about the concept of evidence, including posts 89, 571, 756, 1092, 1131, and 1311.

Finally (and even though it's not directly relevant to my argument) posts 1225 (#55260) and 1304 (#55666) answer some detailed questions about my theistic worldview.

662. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56943 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 17, 2007 at 11:35 pm

Dr Benway (post 1423, or #56556):

Luke 3:11:

He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.

Right. And now one has one coat left. And what should one then do when seeing somebody else who has no coat? How do you think Jesus's ethics answers this question?

Dianelos 1304:

Actually it's have 2 coats, give 2 coats. True, and of huge ethical significance. To understand this is to understand the beauty of reality.

Dianelos, some might praise you for trumping Jesus in the charity department.

:-) But, actually I haven't, for to be exact what Jesus teaches is "have 2 coats, give 2 coats and your shirt too". Read Luke 6:27-38. Wait, that's so beautiful I will copy it here:

But I say to you who are hearing: Love your enemies, do good to those hating you, bless those cursing you, and pray for those accusing you falsely; and to him smiting you upon the cheek, give also the other, and from him taking away from you the mantle, also the coat you may not keep back. And to every one who is asking of you, be giving; and from him who is taking away your goods, be not asking again; and as you wish that men may do to you, do you also to them in like manner; and -- if you love those loving you, what grace have you? for also the sinful love those loving them; and if you do good to those doing good to you, what grace have you? for also the sinful do the same; and if you lend to those of whom you hope to receive back, what grace have you? for also the sinful lend to sinners -- that they may receive again as much. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again, and your reward will be great, and you shall be sons of the Highest, because God is kind unto the ungracious and evil; be you therefore merciful, as also your Father is merciful. And judge not, and you may not be judged; condemn not, and you may not be condemned; release, and you shall be released. Give, and it shall be given to you; good measure, pressed, and shaken, and running over, they shall give into your bosom; for with that measure with which you measure, it shall be measured to you again.

663. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56942 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 17, 2007 at 11:33 pm

Dr Benway (post 1422, or #56552):

...and because I find this claim is what best explains the evidence - the whole of it, both third-person (the gospels, the early history of Christianity, etc) and first-person (how it feels like when I think about it). So I do believe in the incarnation of God in Jesus, I do find special meaning and relevance in Jesus's life, and I do believe in the bodily resurrection as experienced by the closest disciples.

"How it feels like when I think about it" is the kind of subjective test one would expect in a manual on flower arrangement. Imagine if engineers decided upon the shape of an airplane wing by virtue of "how it feels" when thinking about it.

"How it feels like" is precisely what we mean by "first-person data", for example how beauty feels like, how love feels like, how pain feels like, how to do the right thing feels like, how to think about what the right thing is feels like, how a particular arrangement of flowers feels like, how the idea of spending the rest of one's life with a particular person feels like, and, in general, how to be a human being feels like. I agree that engineers building an airplane do not need such first-person data and shouldn't use them, but here we are not doing engineering. Rather we are trying to understand how reality is, the same reality that produces all data we have, both third-person and first-person. So it's a big problem when an ontology cannot account for our first-person data. And it's a big problem for that ontology's epistemology when it refuses to use that data, with no better reason, apparently, than that scientists and engineers do not use them either. As Chalmers says, data is data, and to ignore a huge and fundamental part of the data we have as human beings is to ignore a big part of what it means to be human.

The evident fact is that we all, theists and naturalists alike, do use such first person data all the time. Our ethical sense is an example: _J_ in post 1429 makes such a subjective evaluation when he finds something immoral at the heart of organized Christianity, namely that dogmatic and dividing faith trumps all other values. (Incidentally I agree that's immoral, I agree it exists, and I agree it's not far from the heart of organized Christianity). I trust we all agree that the concept of a god who is perfectly moral but sends most of his creatures to eternal suffering in hell is self-contradictory. But how come we feel so confident about our moral judgment in some cases at least? After all, how we value things is a matter of feeling and therefore completely outside the scientific discourse. Incidentally, even Dawkins agrees that ethical value goes beyond the theory of evolution; and apparently he agrees with and admires Jesus's ethics (see: http://richarddawkins.net/article,20,Atheists-for-Jesus,Richard-Dawkins ). So, if as a matter of fact we all use first-person data all the time, why shouldn't we use them when thinking about reality? It makes no sense. Especially when it is by now easy to see that science (which uses exclusively third-person data) cannot specify how the reality that produces them must be, because there are many different realities that could produce the same third-person data (as Plato and Kant knew long before some scientists realized it).

So we have a strange state of affairs: Everybody including scientists use first-person data in their thinking (and as I have argued it's impossible to actually go through life without using such data). But naturalists object to theists using first-person data when thinking about reality. And why exactly shouldn't theists use such data? Because naturalists (basically in order to maintain naturalism's scientific pretenses) do not use first person data either. Which reminds me of the tale of the tailless fox who wished all foxes were tailless.

In post 1039 you write:

I'm a physician, not a metaphysician. I don't give a rat's ass for anyone's "worldview." I'm content with scientific naturalism and don't feel the need to marry myself to a particular metaphysical point of view.

Fine, I have no trouble with your stand. You choose to be an ontological (i.e. metaphysical) agnostic, and don't find the whole question of how reality is beyond how it appears to be particularly important. And I agree that as long as you remain a humanist it's not important do understand how reality is. (It should be clear why I think that: By focusing on humanity's universal qualities and on one's own human nature one is focusing on how God (and hence reality) is too, after all we are created in God's image. If you think about it, humanism makes sense within my theistic worldview whereas it is rather arbitrary within naturalism's worldview. The same goes for Dawkins's admiration for "super niceness".) But in this site, and in this thread, we are discussing a popular and widely believed naturalistic claim: namely that naturalism's worldview about reality is reasonable while in comparison theism's is necessarily irrational, not based on any evidence, redundantly complex, unscientific, useless or even harmful, and so on – and I have been arguing that the opposite is rather the case. For that I have presented my own worldview of idealistic theism, which is an unorthodox and undogmatic version of theism, and also kind of a minimalist and necessary version. And using both third- and first-person data I have argued that idealistic theism works better than naturalism under all imaginable criteria.

664. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56691 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 17, 2007 at 12:51 am

Philip1978 (post 1420, or #56494):

Oh well I figured: if God is not a strict disciplinarian then why should I be? :-) But I will continue to read this thread sometimes and if I see something that moves me to respond I will. Before my signing off it was different: then I tried to respond to all significant posts I read.

Here is your statement again, does it make sense now? "Indeed, if people can live well while believing that Thor does not exist then so much the better: it only shows how many paths towards Thor opens for us, how really open Thor's arms are for us all." Thor does not exist yet Thor's arms are open for us? Odd, very odd!

No it doesn't make any sense to me, because I don't believe that Thor exists. But I believe that God exists, so the situation is quite different, don't you think? Or maybe you mean that theists should not say anything that only makes sense under the premise that theism is true. If that's what you mean then I want to point out that naturalists often say things that only make sense under the premise that naturalism is true (for example they may say things like "The human brain produces consciousness" or "Evolution by natural selection really happened"). Should I, by the same measure, criticize them for doing so? Or maybe argue that they believe in naturalism without having any evidence at all?

665. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56685 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 17, 2007 at 12:07 am

Dr Benway (post 1405, or #56352):

Pakistan is a nuclear power, so this is serious stuff.

Oh? And the fact that Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and atheist countries are nuclear powers is not serious? (Not to mention that the nuclear capability of some of these countries is thousands of times more deadly than Pakistan's.) Or maybe you mean that, compared to Islamic countries, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and atheist countries always respect human rights, never resort to aggressive wars on false pretenses, have never threatened to use weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations, and of course have never ever actually used weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations?

Or maybe you mean that Islamic grievances against the US are irrational and unjustified. Maybe you too believe that "they hate us because they envy our freedoms". US's historic and continuing meddling in support of dictatorships in several of their countries, its historic and continuous support of Israel's land grab, its building of military bases all around the Arab world, its invasion of Iraq as a response to 9/11 and the resulting half a million Iraqi dead, Abu Ghraib, and civil war – not to mention the Western intelligentsia's covert or overt mocking and/or demonizing of Islamic beliefs, sentiments and practices (including Dawkins's use of Islamic terrorism for shoring up his claim that religion is the root of all evil) – all that should not be relevant; Muslims should take it all in stride, after all the US is a good nation that only wants to bring freedom and democracy everywhere, and especially there where there is plenty of oil underground, unless of course it has a complying dictatorship ruling over such lands (e.g. Saudi Arabia).

The hypocrisy is really mind-boggling: When in 1983 a Soviet warplane shot a Korean passenger airplane unaccountably flying 500 miles off course into sensitive Soviet airspace where also an US intelligence plane was operating, it was one more example of the ways of the "evil empire". But when in 1988 an Iranian passenger airplane flying in its proper air corridor was shot down by a US warship illegally cruising inside Iranian territorial waters then it was a case of "when bad things are caused by good nations". And let's not forget what George Bush the elder (then vice-president of the US, and future US president, and future father of an US president) said over the incident "I will never apologize for the United Stated of America – I don't care what the facts are". And was the US captain of said warship charged with anything after having killed 290 civilians including 66 children? Nope. Actually some of the officers involved won medals over the incident. And was the American public enraged about their government having killed 290 innocent people? Nope. Actually 74% of the well informed American public (who enjoy the freest and best press in the world as we all know) opined that Iran was more to blame than the US. And what were American warships doing violating Iran's territorial waters and shooting around? Well, they were there to help America's good friend Saddam Hussein in the war he had started with Iran.
(See: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,967939-2,00.html
http://alt-f4.org/img/seaoflies.html)

So, how would you feel if you were the average Arab living today? Ah, but maybe now I do understand why they hate us; here is how it goes again: "They hate us because of our freedoms to kill, maim, destroy, rob, torture, and mock them at will".

My point? My point is that critical and free thinking is hardly present in the public discourse. Just mention the magical words "national security" and it disappears altogether. 13% of all Americans will die from cancer but their government spends about 100 times more on the war against Islamic terrorism which on 9/11 has killed about, oh, let me see now, about 0.001% of them. (Actually, by needlessly invading Iraq George Bush Jr has killed more Americans than Osama bin Laden, and has maimed for life 10 or 20 times more still). Islamic terrorism is a problem of course, but surely it's more easy, practical, cheap, cost-effective, safe and humane to solve it by removing its root causes than by invading and occupying Muslim countries, no? Now one may argue that George Bush Jr is stupid, but what about Richard Dawkins who, playing the same kind of drums that George Bush plays, starts his "Root of all evil?" worrying about these "would-be murderers all around the world who want to kill you and me, and themselves, because they're motivated by what they think is the highest ideal [of religion]"? He continues "Of course politics are important […] but as we wake up to this huge challenge to our civilized values don't let's forget the elephant in the room, the elephant called religion". So the risk of being killed by terrorists is our big survival problem and the major challenge to our civilized values? I thought that was hunger, or social injustice, or the destruction of the environment, or illnesses and pandemics, or the continuing risk of nuclear annihilation, or nationalism and the schizophrenic fragmentation of the world in nation states, or the increasingly yellow and unbalanced media that care more for entertaining and/or not upsetting their clients than for informing them, or the increasing popularity of narcotics, and so on. And as for the in comparison relatively small problem of terrorism, is it caused by religious fundamentalism or is it caused by peoples' grievances that often finds expression in religion fundamentalism? In "The root of all evil?" Jerusalem segment Dawkins, after once again droning about how religion "threatens rational values and civilization", points out that the Israeli Palestinian conflict has caused the death of almost 4,000 people in the area in the last 5 years! But firstly these deaths were obviously not caused by religion but by a long simmering and unresolved ethnic conflict, and secondly that number of deaths is about the number of people killed by cigarettes every 5 hours. Or by hunger every 4 hours. Or, if you only want to use deaths caused by conflicts, that's the number of people who die in Iraq under US occupation every 10 days, or were dying in Darfur at the height of the crisis every 1 day. Dawkins goes on: "I want to say that killing for God is not only hideous murder, it's also utterly ridiculous" – but I find what he says utterly ridiculous, after all it's not like that killing for some reason other than God is not hideous murder, not to mention that killing for God is really extremely rare, certainly much rarer than killing for money in any US metropolis. Now, Dawkins is certifiably not stupid. On the other hand to inflate the problem of terrorism way beyond any reasonable proportion and then try to sell religion as the root evil that causes terrorism is certifiably stupid. So what's missing? What's missing I think is critical and free thinking on his part. As they say you become like those you hate.

666. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56490 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 16, 2007 at 3:02 am

PaulEmecz (post 1400, or #56315):

Particularly on the issue of consciousness, I have heard many people claim that AI will soon provide us with proof of the naturalistic position. Turing was wrong, though. It is not enough to behave as though you are conscious – any conscious person will know that there is a difference.

As it happens I see no reason at all why we shouldn't be able to build computers at least as intelligent as people and therefore able to pass the Turing test. And once we build them the only reasonable belief will be that such a computer is a true conscious being and does not just behave as if it's conscious. (That's called the "strong AI thesis".) Why is that the only reasonable belief? Because the alternative would be completely arbitrary. As for me, I believe that a sufficient test for consciousness is the ability to distinguish right from wrong, i.e. to be able to think ethically. Finally I believe that all conscious beings (whether their origin is Earth's biology, alien biology, or artificial) live in an experiential environment where the overarching explanatory principle is God.

My beliefs don't contradict – I am happy to believe that Jesus died to reconcile humanity to God. However, I recognise that this is a long way over and above what I must believe about God for my other experiences to make sense.

Yes, exactly right (even though as it happens I don't believe that Jesus died to reconcile humanity to God). But let me elaborate on your main idea, for it's an important point:

I agree with you that the experiential environment we find ourselves living in does not make any sense without the God hypothesis. (In this thread I have defended the weaker claim, namely that the God hypothesis can make more sense than the physical nature hypothesis.) Specifically, the fact of one's being conscious and having free will in the first place, one's finding objective ethical precepts meaningful, one's experiencing ethical challenges all the time, do not make any sense unless a God - with the main properties of being a person, being objectively good, having created us in His/Her image with the goal for us to grow in virtue and thus become like Him/Her – exists. Let's call these the necessary attributes of God, or the necessary truths about God. By the way, the list above is not exhaustive, for example I think that the Trinitarian nature of God is also a necessary attribute. (Why? Because all conscious beings have that nature.) So this is at least how far any conscious being can go in their understanding of God.

Now orthodox Christianity (defined as the set of beliefs the vast majority of Christian organizations share) disagrees with some of the above by affirming the dogma of the fall of all humankind in the beginning and the dogma of eternal damnation for many in the end. To me, and I suppose to most atheologians too, the idea of a God who is perfectly good and also condemns many (actually most) of His creatures to eternal suffering in hell is self-contradictory, and therefore that idea of God is dead on arrival. (To be fair both some ancient Christian theologians and some modern groups have rejected that self-contradiction.) The most defining Christian belief though concerns the incarnation of Christ (the second hypostasis of the Trinity) in Jesus of Nazareth. I cannot see any reason why God doing so is a necessary truth, and therefore I don't believe that any conscious being could arrive at this, or a similar, belief. But, having myself by an accident of birth come in contact with this claim I have reason to believe it is true because I see no contradiction with God's necessary attributes and because I find this claim is what best explains the evidence - the whole of it, both third-person (the gospels, the early history of Christianity, etc) and first-person (how it feels like when I think about it). So I do believe in the incarnation of God in Jesus, I do find special meaning and relevance in Jesus's life, and I do believe in the bodily resurrection as experienced by the closest disciples. Here then we have an example of a second set of God's attributes that I find reasonable to believe in: those that are not necessary in all possible experiential lives, but are rather contingent on some specific experiences – in this case my own experience of Christianity.

Now what about other religious claims? For example, Buddhists believe in what we may call "Buddha enlightenment", i.e. a rare event where a human being is suddenly united with the deepest aspect of reality (what I call God). I have no particular reason to believe this claim is true, but neither any particular reason to believe it's false, so I am agnostic about it. And should we ever speak with alien races or with intelligent computers, they may claim other pieces of knowledge about reality contingent on their own particular third- and first-person data, and, who knows, they may be right too. You see, I don't think that God is mysterious in any way – in fact I find that claim misleading – but all the knowledge there is about God is clearly much bigger than what can fit anyone's mind right now. After all, all the knowledge there is about God is all the knowledge there is about reality; so arguably only God can have that knowledge :-) And maybe the fact that there are so many religious ideas is God's way of telling us: "Don't become dogmatic about me – if people can experience the sea so very differently depending on the time of the day and on the weather then surely people can experience me in many different ways too."

From the moment 11 year old students walk through the door, they are being made to question. What is truth? What is justice? We look at things from the perspective of six different religions, and from a humanist perspective, which involves students in not just developing their own opinions and being able to express them, but also in seeing how a different set of beliefs results in a different way of looking at the world.

I am not sure whether 11 year olds are cognitively mature enough to deal with such questions. To think about the meaning of truth, to think about the meaning of justice, to think about reality beyond phenomena, requires the capacity for abstract/structured thought (and also possibly life experiences) that I don't think children that young have. (Jean Piaget and Seymour Papert have rather convincingly argued that it doesn't pay to push children to understand beyond what their minds are capable of; at best you'll bore them, and at worst you'll teach them to become small conformists and hypocrites and learn stuff by heart.) As far as I am concerned (and I could be wrong of course) 11 year olds should rather be learning math by discovery, learning the joys of perceiving and creating art, learning how nature in general and their own bodies in particular work, etc.

The world COULD be the way I believe it to be, and naturalism certainly doesn't convince me to think otherwise.

Right. John Hick argued that the world is religiously ambiguous. And it clearly is that, at least in the sense that both religious and non religious people can lead reasonable and productive lives.

"Is it really right to hold onto these beliefs, in Jesus' miraculous resurrection, in Jesus as God incarnate?"

If one has good reason to believe they are true then why not? :-) But maybe we should all relax a little. If a benevolent God exists then I am sure S/He will not hold it against us if we followed our minds and our hearts where they led us but were in the end wrong in some particulars. God is certainly not some kind of exacting headmaster :-) After all, obviously, the meaning of life is not about what one believes but about how one lives; in fact the most practical value of true beliefs about reality resides in how they ethically empower us to live well. But the goal is the good life. So somebody who does not believe in God and even so finds it in themselves to live well comes closer to God than somebody who has all the right beliefs about God but does not live well. Indeed, if people can live well while believing that God does not exist then so much the better: it only shows how many paths towards Him/Her God opens for us, how really open God's arms are for us all.

667. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56318 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 15, 2007 at 2:03 am

Just very quickly (I am really not here):

PeterK (post 1399 or #56166):

In his book "Atheism: The Case Against God" George H. Smith says:
"Defining the concept of God is not an optional chore to be undertaken at the theists's convenience. It is a necessary prerequiste for intelligibility. Assuming that the theist does not believe his theism to be nonsense, he has the responsiblty of explaining the content of his belief. Failing this, to state that 'god exists' is to communicate nothing at all; as if nothing has been said"

Exactly right. Only that when theists do describe what they mean by God they are often derided by naturalists for making things up, or for giving their wishful thinking free rain. And sometimes they are accused for describing what they mean by God before actually demonstrating that God exists. Here is an example: God, being a person, has a defining property that is His/Her character, correct? Now consider a quote from a recent post (1371, or #55879):

Its not hard to see how absurd a discussion one can make this as soon as somebody supposes the he knows that character of God. Lets establish that there is one first, eh?

See? Theists should not describe what they mean by God. They should first establish that God exists and then describe what they mean by God :-)

668. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55903 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 7:45 pm

I think I must sign off here.

I would like to thank you all for a very stimulating discussion. This was great, and I have really learned a lot. But there is a big project looming up and I won't be able to continue here. In fact there are several interesting posts I would have liked to respond to, but could not find the time.

If anyone of you would like to contact me in the future, my email address is my first name at gmail dot com - In fact I would like it very much if you sent me a note so that I can keep your email address in case I want to contact you in the future. Also give my greetings to Epeeist when he comes back.

Thanks again, and good bye.

669. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55899 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 7:40 pm

Dr Benway (post 1363, or #55866):

How will you compare notes with me regarding the territory, without any notes? Without any words? Without any symbols?

Ah, but we both use exactly the same map, namely science. Scientific knowledge gives us sufficient information for estimating the complexity of the naturalistic worldview (actually an artificially simple one: a single physical universe based on atoms). It also gives us sufficient information (via neurophysiology) for estimating the complexity of peoples' experiential life, which is one part of reality as understood by idealistic theism. The bit missing is God's complexity, but here we can make an educated guess about how much complexity is necessary for organizing our conscious experience (we can think of this as a virtual reality game). Now we can play around with the numbers as much as you like, but I don't think it will change anything in the end-result, because simulating a complicated reality is always less complex the realizing it. As I already wrote in a previous post God would certainly not have to keep in His/Her mind the exact state of a particular atom in a galaxy in the other end of the universe just in order to give us the experience of the universe.

Anyway I think it's a pity we spent so much time on the issue of complexity, because it's really irrelevant in comparison to how well a worldview works on the practical and conceptual levels.

You point to gaps in current scientific understanding and you say, "Room for God!"

Nope. I have never pointed to any gaps in current scientific understanding, and I don't believe that the gaps there are (say the origin of life, the easy problem of consciousness, or the unification of the forces) are problematic in any sense beyond keeping science interesting and productive for a long time to come. And these gaps are certainly not God-shaped :-) Even better than that: I explained that according to idealistic theism to ask for a scientific explanation of the fine-tuning of the fundamental constants is meaningless, so effectively I have removed one gap naturalism considers a problem for science to solve.

Actually naturalism considers that all its problems are for science to solve. But clearly the hard problem of consciousness and the problem of ethics are not scientific problems because they refer to first-person data. But first-person data belong to reality too, the same reality that naturalism should account for, and naturalism has failed to offer any explanation for such data. Beyond its scientific pretenses, naturalism appears unable to produce a viable description of reality. That naturalism and science go together is simply a modern myth.

It was very nice talking to you, Dr Benway.

670. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55886 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 6:44 pm

_J_ (post 1269, or #55453)

I overlooked that bit:

And you must concede that the fact that this gap is God-shaped is kind of neat.

And you must concede that the way it has shrunk over the centuries to a fraction of its former size, changing shape the while, and still accommodates many different 'gods' around the world, is kind of suggestive. God seems to be made of something like jam.

I am not sure the gap has become a fraction of its former size, I'd rather say it has come into focus. Science by dispelling all the wrong theistic ideas of seeing God present in physical phenomena has actually helped theism look in the right direction. All truth helps truth, because reality is coherent.

As for accommodating many different god-concepts around the world I am not sure how you mean that. I think there is both truth and error in all peoples' understanding of God; I am sure there are errors in my understanding too. So what, the road may be long and winding and our capacity of understanding limited so we must walk slowly and talk a lot, but that makes the journey all the more interesting.

671. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55884 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 6:31 pm

_J_

post 1324, or #55743:

You are using an inadequate definition of complexity, which amounts to 'stuff I can count'.

Complexity is a mathematical concept; it certainly requires stuff one can count.

Since your god is immaterial and uncountable, he can't be part of a sensible equation.

Immaterial things, such as conscious experience, can be counted too. For example I could count how many pixels of information in my visual field I can resolve. But as we both agree on the scientific account of how our experiences are caused by the brain, it was much more practical and incontrovertible to use that knowledge. I probably exaggerated the complexity of our experience anyway.

Even giving [God] a 'generous' value in the trillions of trillions is just time wasting.

I assume that God is a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times more complex than the complexity of the conscious experience of all of humanity put together. I think that's a conservative estimate. Can you suggest any reason why a God that complex could not organize our experience of life?

As I see it my estimates are valid and idealistic theism's reality is much less complex than the simplest naturalistic reality (indeed too simple for being realistic anyway). But theistic idealism works so much better than materialism that the whole exercise of comparing complexities is academic anyway as far as I am concerned.

Still, there's no finite limit to the potential size of an Amazon wish-list, is there?

:-) I know exactly what you mean. Even worse, in my case the to-read list of already bought books keeps on growing. And our discussion here is not helping; on the other hand I think I learned more in our discussion here than reading books.

Post 1325, #55744:

Fundamentalism, in my dictionary and in my opinion, is defined as 'strict maintenance of a belief' – ie, believing something to be unalterably, definitely ('objectively' perhaps) true, and resisting changing one's mind about this.

I don't think that's a good definition; it implies that all mathematicians who believe that 2+2=4 in the way you describe are fundamentalists. When I use "fundamentalist theist" in our discussion here I mean "Biblical literalist", i.e. somebody who believes that the Bible has been inspired word by word by God and is literally true in all details.

Post 1326, #55745:

It's only a problem if naturalists use the same false understanding of 'objectivity' that you exhibit in the quote at the beginning of this post. Any intelligent user of the scientific method ought to realise that they are only ever in possession of working-practice 'objectivity' at best. Again, perfect objectivity is a myth. Hence, no conceptual incoherency.

Well I agree in principle as far as the meaning of objective evidence goes, even though it's quite clear what scientists mean by it: they mean the kind of evidence you can actually measure with an instrument in a way that everybody agrees is valid. So I don't think that "we feel good or bad, pleasure or pain, joy or misery." fits the scientific criteria of objectivity.

On the other hand I disagree with you about "objectivity" coming in degrees in the context of "objective truth" or "objectively exists". The meaning here is "pertaining to reality", "existing no matter what one may think about it". Something either is real, or isnt'; there aren't any degrees in that.

He thinks all value comes from god, which leads him to the belief that godless people can't have a similar sense of value.

I'd put it this way: All ethical good describes how God is. There are no godless people as we are all persons; we are made in the image of God, or, if you like, any description of what a human person deep down is describes God too. So to understand God is an obvious advantage for one's thinking about ethics. The problem I see though is this: I am not sure to what degree nominal theists (those who believe in God but have very little understanding of God and have lost touch with their own humanity) are really better off than atheists who don't believe in God but are more in touch with their own humanity. In fact I am sure they are not better off, because those atheists in touch with their humanity are in touch with the image of God anyway.

Post 1327, #55746:

But god fills all gaps. 'I don't care about string theory, darling. Go to sleep and stop asking questions.'

As I have explained already: 1) The explanations of idealistic theism have not the form "God did it" but rather "Here's why God did it". 2) Idealistic theism, as any non-naive religious worldview, does not stand in any opposition to science, quite the opposite: science after all describes the mind of God as far as physical facts and phenomena goes.

In fact, this is an example of fundamentalism: to posit a truth that no amount of data can persuade you to abandon. If your belief is designedly immune to falsification, you are engaged in 'strict maintenance of a belief': fundamentalism.

See post 1187 or #55123 where I have already responded to that. In the meantime I have thought of other ways to falsify my theistic idealism; you see any explanation makes predictions, and hence any prediction is falsifiable. A major prediction of my worldview is that I will continue to experience life after death, but here the falsification is such that I will never experience it happening as it were :-) But there are many other predictions. For example should I ever in the afterlife experience the final judgment where humanity is separated in two groups, the good and the bad, then my worldview will be falsified. Or should I ever experience burning in hell because of all my heretical beliefs my worldview will be falsified also.

What about falsifiable predictions testable in this life – beyond the few described in post 1187? Well here too my worldview makes several experiential predictions. It predicts that the more virtue I gain the more beautiful will everything in my experience appear to me – conversely if I don't grow in virtue no matter how many beautiful things I manage to collect around me this special all illuminating sense of beauty will not be gained. Or: The more I give the richer I will feel; on the contrary if I don't give to others I will feel poor. Or similarly: The more selfless love I give the more full of love I will feel; on the contrary the less selfless love I give the more unloved I will feel. Or: The more humble I am the more God-like I will feel; on the contrary if I behave with pride the more unworthy I will feel. Of course I am talking of Jesus's ethics here, and how they help one enter the so-called Kingdom of God, which as Jesus says is inside of us here and now.

Post 1328, or #55748:

One wonders why it's necessary (or how it could even be an exercise that's both meaningful and coherent with your own worldview) for you to seek 'coherency' in the bible at all.

Where did I give you the impression that "I seek coherency in the Bible"? That's so strange. Sometimes I read posts that are directed to me but I feel they are speaking to somebody else :-)

Post 1330, or #55750:

a Mickey-Mouse Magical-Kingdom kind of environment is not the most efficient one for us to grow in virtue.

But one in which a god-concept fills all knowledge gaps is?

It's not like that at all; I hope you don't think there are no knowledge gaps in my worldview :-) Of course there are, for one I don't know how to cure cancer.

Is striving to apply one's best-tested fact-finding methods to arrive at answers that will extend and improve people's lives and health not virtuous?

If by "best-tested fact-finding methods" you mean the methods of science then you are equivocating science and naturalism. Naturalism is not identical and is not connected to science. Naturalism offers no advantages whatsoever to a scientist. On the contrary it offers several conceptual disadvantages (e.g. the need to imagine a physical reality that can produce the physical phenomena that science studies and the consequent paradoxes, see post 1066 and the discussion of Schroedinger's cat) and ethical disadvantages (see the posts 804, 819, 864, and 929 – I think it's really easy to show that theistic idealism is more ethically empowering than naturalism).

No conflict, no progress – stasis. This is a description of death.

"No conflict, no progress" sounds a little warlike to me :-) and indeed is something Heraclitus said long time ago. I'd rather say:
No conflict – no incoherence
No questions – no progress

This is sincerely now my all-time favourite theistic account of Jesus' reappearance.

Thanks, but it's not difficult: Just imagine God as a very good person - it explains a lot. You know how they say that theists create God in their image? It's true in many ways, for example some people have built their God-concept using what's bad in them as model (vanity, greed, vengefulness, etc). But of course the point is to use what's best in us as model – and then we get a God of selfless and unconditional love, goodness to the core, limitless generosity, really marvelous creativity and really sharp intelligence, very great beauty, humanism and joy to the point of being childlike. Sounds too good to be true, no? But in fact that's how we ourselves are deep down.

672. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55877 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 6:11 pm

_J_ (post 1269, or #55453):

[…]the number and implausibility of the different naturalistic descriptions of reality will only continue to grow as it has been growing for the last 100 years or so.

A highly selective interpretation. Once again, the measure of 'implausibility' is 'What Dianelos finds incredible'.

The following are objective facts:

1. Before the 20th century there was basically one naturalistic understanding of reality, but since then the number of naturalistic worldviews has grown steadily. To respond to quantum mechanics naturalists have devised about a dozen mutually contradictory worldviews (the so-called interpretations of quantum mechanics); more recent suggestions are that we all exist in a computer simulation, and that the world consists of a two-dimensional hologram (which incidentally is a very interesting idea). To respond to the problem of consciousness naturalists have suggested various realities including one where consciousness is identical to the brain and one where consciousness is a emergent property of the brain and one where consciousness (as we understand it) does not exist. To respond to the problem of the fine-tuning of the fundamental constants the multiverse was proposed, as well as a cyclic version of the universe, a future negotiates with the past version, and even my modest extended wavefunction idea in post 1154. If you compute all the possible combinations by now the naturalistic descriptions of reality must be in the hundreds.

2. Since the beginning of the 20th the naturalistic descriptions of reality have grown increasingly implausible. Implausibility itself is subjective, but that people find something implausible is an objective fact, and it's objectively true that people are increasingly bewildered by naturalistic descriptions of reality (google quantum paradox or quantum mystery to get a sense of how typical it is for people to find that what quantum mechanics implies for physical reality is difficult to believe. Einstein famously strongly objected to quantum mechanics' implication that physical reality is non-local. Etc. So my claim has nothing to do with what I personally find incredible.

3. Since the beginning of the 20th century the complexity of the materialistic descriptions of reality has exploded. The currently dominant interpretation of quantum mechanics (the many worlds interpretation) is complex beyond imagination, in fact it asserts the existence of so many universes that almost any imaginable claim is actually a fact in some universe. (A simple example: should we assert a universe just like ours with us in it except that dead people resurrect all the time: it exists.) One more case in point: The multiverse theory designed to solve the problem of the fine-tuning of the fundamental constants multiplies all that by 10^99, or maybe by 10^99^99.

Now these are objective facts and we must face them. They don't say anything conclusive of course, they don't really "prove" anything. But they don't look good, because naturalists are increasingly looking like somebody who tries to describe something that isn't really there. At this juncture the standard naturalistic comment is "Science has solved many difficult problems in the past and these problems will be solved too" as if science has something to do with naturalism's troubles or as if it's science's job to solve naturalism's problems.

I think I gave an atom bomb example too. Unaccountably, you seem to have ignored it.

Ok, here I quote you from post 1253:

We don't even need to be talking about 'good' things, here – just accurate, productive ones. If Dianelosian Theism could tell us how to make atom bombs, and science couldn't, maybe no one would have the tingly feeling of self-righteousness, but we couldn't argue with the fact that DT (that's your theism now, by the way!) got results.

Science told us how to build atom bombs and as we saw both idealistic theism and naturalism are compatible with science (idealistic theism offers some advantages, but no matter). So, science and technology do not really belong to naturalism, do they? So if we leave science and technology out of the equation then what more can naturalism and idealistic theism offer? Well, as far as I can see naturalism can offer nothing at all (makes one think of the naked emperor I am afraid), whereas idealistic theism can offer quite a lot for understanding our first-person data.

Incidentally the kind of theism I defend here is called "idealistic theism" (or sometimes "theistic idealism"); google that phrase to find out more. The idea started with Plato and was developed by several philosophers including quite a bit by Berkeley. A major part of my worldview is the theodicy of Irenaeus, a 2nd century theologian. What I did here is to take the strongest version of idealistic theism I could devise and test it one to one against naturalism in order to justify that it's a much more reasonable worldview than naturalism.

You regard 'ability to be conscious' as the precondition of all of the activities of consciousness.

Yes, isn't it obvious?

No. It may seem obvious, but it is not obviously true. I think this is a big mistake you, and perhaps many others, are making.

My position here is quite simple really. We have two pieces of incontrovertible evidence: 1) Humans have the capacity for having conscious experiences, 2) Human conscious experiences correlate very well with physical processes that happen in the human brain. (the above are not objective pieces of evidence by the way, but they are very reliable nonetheless as virtually all naturalists find expedient to agree.) Virtually all naturalists infer from these two that the capacity for having conscious experiences is produced by the human brain, but this is an obvious logical fallacy. On the other hand, clearly, having the capacity for having conscious experience is a precondition for having conscious experiences.

But most probably naturalist philosophers and scientists who are working on the problem of consciousness will try any imaginable way.

Spot the dismissive tone!

Well let's focus on the content of my claim. It's an objective fact that naturalists have tried any imaginable way (or at least any way I can imagine and then some), and that nobody agrees with anybody. A good source about this is Blackmore's "Conversations on consciousness" and I quote from her introduction: There is so little agreement. And I learned quite a lot – how feeble was my understanding of many of the theories I knew about; how different were some of the people when you got to ask them face-to-face what they really meant; how utterly confusing the whole field is. That's an interesting book, by the way. Blackmore repeats some key questions in all her interviews, and it's interesting to see how differently her naturalist subjects (all A-1 people) responded to such questions as "Do you think you have free will?" and "Do you think there is life after death?"

:-P If that's how I sound like I should probably take a break and revise my communications skills.

Your communication skills are second-to-none, as I'm sure you realise!

No, I don't realize that. On the contrary I find it strange how difficult it is to communicate ideas that seem simple to me (but then I have been reading and thinking about these matters for many years now). Consider the following idea (from post 1041):

3. As there are many worldviews about reality that are exactly equivalent from science's point of view, we can't use science to sort them out, but must find some other method to decide which worldview is more reasonable to adopt.

It's indisputably true that many worldviews are exactly equivalent from science's point of view, after all there is large number of mutually contradictory naturalistic descriptions of reality that are all fully compatible with science. And the inference that if so then science cannot help us sort them out is obviously true. Still people keep asking me for scientific evidence for theism. And it never occurs to them to ask themselves what scientific evidence there is for naturalism – for there is none either. Or they think I am against science or something, see for example this recent quote: "You condemn science as a tool for understanding reality"

Or consider a quote from your post I am now responding to:

Because you are quite certain that naturalism is incapable of answering your question, because you have stated the question [about consciousness] in such a way as to rule scientific observations out entirely.

But that's not my problem; that's precisely naturalism's problem. There is no way to reduce consciousness itself to scientific observations. That's why no naturalist has ever suggested the slightest idea of how scientific observations might help us solve the problem of consciousness. No naturalist has even suggested the slightest idea of how to scientifically test whether some material system produces consciousness – never mind explain how it produces it. These are objective facts; you can validate them yourself (even though there is also quite some smoke being blown about).

You've said that you regard matter as patterns in consciousness, haven't you? So consciousness has been hanging about the while, shaping the process of evolution as patterns within itself, and has jumped on board (so to speak, associating itself with physical brains at some point when those brains became sufficiently complex to express consciousness in particular ways…?

How do you mean "shaping the process of evolution"? According to idealistic theism the physical universe is not objectively real; it only exists as a very intricate and interesting pattern present in our conscious experience of physical phenomena. One sub-pattern there is the presence of animals and other species. A deeper sub-pattern is evolution which explains on mechanical principles the complexity and variety of the species. I am not here trying to convince you of my worldview, really feel completely free to not be convinced by it. What I am trying to do is to describe my worldview. But I realize it must be very difficult to imagine such a reality – it goes against one's naturalistic intuitions.

But who "shapes" our experiential environment? God mainly, but also other persons with whom we interact, namely our fellow humans; also a big chunk is random. And what is natural evolution really? Well, like the great galaxies, and the shifting clouds, and the light glittering on morning dew according to the laws of quantum electrodynamics, natural evolution is an idea in the mind of God. (I try not to imagine what Dawkins would think about all this :-)

673. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55865 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 5:04 pm

Steve99 (post 1341, or #55777)

You are also neglecting that your worldview has precisely the same 'hard problem' of consciousness that others have.

Surely you see that a worldview that affirms that reality consists of consciousness does not have to answer the question of how consciousness is produced, whereas a worldview that affirms that reality consists of matter does have to answer the question of how consciousness is produced, right?

This problem is not just 'why does consciousness exist', in is also 'why does red look like THAT?'.

Correct, I have not answered that latter question because I don't know the answer. Again, I hope nobody here thinks I claim to know all the answers :-) But I do know how the answer looks like: it's contingent on the goal of our experiential environment which is to give us the opportunity to grow in virtue.

The relevant point though is this: There is nothing that naturalism explains and idealistic theism doesn't (because really naturalism does not explain anything beyond what science explains), and there is quite a bit that idealistic theism explains that naturalism doesn't, for example why we experience a physical environment in the first place, why that environment is mechanical, why it can be painful, and so on. (If you search back I have posted here those explanations.)

674. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55862 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 4:49 pm

Dr Benway (post 1338, or #55772):

Once you have "We decide what is good" you no longer require "God decides what is good."

I have never said or required that "God decides what is good". What I said was: "God is what's good, we are made in the image of God, and therefore we have the capacity to decide what's good". Do you recall how you introduced Hume's is-ought problem? Idealistic theism does not have that problem because God is our goal in goodness, so there is objectively something there that we imperfect persons ought to become more similar to.

You claimed greater explanatory power. However, you admitted that you were using the "argument from ignorance," which, by definition, explains nothing.

What I did (or tried to do anyway) is to show that theistic idealism explains everything that naturalism explains plus much more. I don't think mine is the "argument from ignorance" :-)

Incidentally, what naturalism explains is, as far as I can see, nothing more than what science explains. Naturalism itself as an ontology only offers a growing list of increasingly implausible and complex as well as mutually contradictory descriptions of reality – and with no practical usefulness over scientific knowledge whatsoever. Or maybe that's not entirely fair. There is one useful thing that naturalism produced: The naturalistic efforts to actually describe how reality is have shown beyond any reasonable doubt that reality is nothing like it appears when we look around us.

I'm not sure I entirely convinced you of the failure of your complexity point. Your error is one of equivocaton between the map and the territory:

I have estimated the complexity of the territory only: The complexity of reality itself as naturalism understands it (the simplest possible case: one physical universe consisting of atoms), and the complexity of reality as idealistic atheism understands it (namely a reality that consists of consciousness only). I think there is no error in my calculations, but anyway that's an objective issue that anybody can independently validate.

675. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55858 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 4:37 pm

Steve99 (post 1334, or #55755):

Let's review Goedel's Theorem for a minute. That proves beyond doubt that there will always be gaps in our knowledge.

First of all Goedel's theorem is about mathematical knowledge, and not about all knowledge. More importantly though Godel's theorem does not imply some limitation in our capacity for gaining mathematical knowledge (indeed math has not stopped with Goedel :-) Rather Goedel's theorem proves that there is a gap in all (powerful) formal systems, because there will always be true mathematical propositions expressible in that system that are unprovable in it. Why was finding that gap so useful? Because it shifted math away from the idea that it's all about formal systems. People think that Goedel's theorem has limited mathematics; in fact it has liberated it.

There have been some wonderfully coherent scientific theories in the past but which have been wildly wrong.

Right, and we found they were wrong when they stopped being coherent with our observations. Anyway, I am not claiming that coherency is a sufficient criterion of truth, of course it isn't. I am only claiming the obvious: that when comparing worldviews about reality coherency is one valid criterion.

[snip a list of issues already dealt with] I don't think there is anything much left, other than wishful thinking :)

Or maybe misunderstanding :-)

676. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55850 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 3:34 pm

Steve99 (post 1313, or #55691):

At the moment I am not questioning your anti-naturalistic stance, I am concerned about the apparent (in my view) invunerability of your worldview to reasoned argument, which to me makes it simply another form of irrational faith.

See post 1187 or #55123

677. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55732 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 5:48 am

Steve99 (post 1310, #55681):

This is very common Christian attitude, but I find it deeply puzzling. There is just as much (or as little, depending on your attitude) evidence for the resurrection of Jesus as for a huge number of other supposedly supernatural events before or after. Why pick *that* one? What is your evidence?

Here is my argument:

We know by observation that miracles - if they happen at all - are very rare. Nothing in my understanding of God implies that miracles should never happen, but my worldview does imply that miracles should not happen with any frequency, because a Mickey-Mouse Magical-Kingdom kind of environment is not the most efficient one for us to grow in virtue. So my worldview fits the objective evidence very well. Now there are many claims of miracles I have heard of. The only claim of a miracle I know of where I find it makes some sense to believe it actually happened is that Jesus's disciples experienced his bodily presence for a few days after experiencing him dying on the cross. But this particular belief is in no way especially important in my worldview, and my confidence in it is not particularly high, about 0.8 I guess. (I know that traditional Christianity makes a big fuss about Jesus's resurrection, and it's not difficult to understand why that is – but I don't see any relevance to discuss this here.) I may be wrong of course, and other claims of miracles I have heard of did happen, or miracles may happen quite often but in an understated kind of way. Who knows? I don't see any particular relevance in that question anyway; it's only when you don't believe in God that the issue of miracles becomes important.

In general, nobody has ever demonstrated any supernatural/miraculous abilities in a scientifically controlled setting.

But given your worldview, why should that matter one way or the other?

I don't know how you mean that. This piece of knowledge matters in the same way that any piece of knowledge about my physical environment matters: it helps me understand it.

678. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55726 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 5:02 am

Steve99 (post 1308, #55674):

Solipsism is not only the view that no other minds exist, but rather that nothing objectively exist.

And that is clearly the view of very young children. This is a well-understood part of child psychology. They have not yet set up the barriers between 'self' and 'non-self', so effectively what they are exploring is all 'self', with little or no sense of what 'objectivity' means at all.

Maybe you are thinking of newborn babies in the very first months of their lives. But even then I don't think it makes sense to call them solipsists. Solipsism is a worldview somebody arrives at after some thinking; newborn babies are just swimming in a sea of experiences they can't make sense of. Indeed at the very beginning they probably don't differentiate between self and non-self. But, anyway, I was talking about 3-year olds, and I assure you that 3-year olds do know the difference between self and non-self.

679. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55685 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 1:41 am

Steve99 (post 1303, or #55665):

I overlooked this bit:

Tell me... how do you distinguish between the 'self-evident' (but clearly unprovable) 'truths' you claim to know about, and the 'I am vaguely sure I am right about this' 'facts' like this?

That's a good question.

First of all let's be clear that we all base our worldview (whether theist or naturalist) on some basic unprovable intuitions, such as "I am a conscious being", "I am not all that exists in reality", "reality did not start 10 minutes ago", "the inductive method is reasonable", etc. Most naturalists use other unprovable intuitions such as "other minds exist", "the physical universe is real", etc.

So, back to your question: How can one judge which intuitions are reliable and which aren't? I suppose the answer in one word is: coherency. If an intuition is strongly connected (or at least compatible) with a worldview that is coherent, has no gaps, no paradoxes, no hard problems, does not clash with other deeply felt intuitions, explains more than any other worldview, is more experientially and ethically useful than any other worldview – then it's reasonable to consider that intuition reliable. Conversely if the truth value of an intuition (i.e. whether it is true or false) has little effect on the rest of one's worldview (e.g. one's intuitions about probabilities in cases such as the Monty Hall problem), and particularly if similar intuitions have been proven to be false in the past, then one is much less warranted to consider that intuition reliable.

680. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55678 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 1:23 am

Steve99 (post 1305, or #5669):

What about 'miracles' performed by current-day Indian mystics? Are those also God interfering, or are the just fake?

Let me clarify what I think first: According to my understanding God virtually never breaks the order S/He causes in our conscious experience, so any claims of repeated miracles are almost certainly false. The case of Jesus' resurrection is a special case: my guess is that God was so moved by the disciples' grief that he caused them to experience the bodily presence of Jesus for a few days after the crucifixion. You see God incarnated in Jesus had had the kind of personal relationship with the disciples that we humans have with each other, so that was really a special case. Currently I don't believe any other miracles were ever performed by God, and I wouldn't really particularly care if it turned out that the disciples did not experience the resurrection of Christ, or maybe only experienced some very strong case of grief induced mass delusion, or something. You see God's presence is here and now, so the importance of what exactly a few disciples experienced a long time ago goes only so far.

As for current-day Indian mystics I know next to nothing. I understand that they have some extraordinary abilities such as controlling their heartbeat and their body temperature, and so on, but these do not count as miracles I think. In general, nobody has ever demonstrated any supernatural/miraculous abilities in a scientifically controlled setting.

681. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55671 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 12:41 am

Steve99 (post 1303, or #55665):

Coming back to our discussion, by the age of three we all choose naturalism as our worldview, so naturalism is our initial choice. Makes you wonder ;-)

Makes me wonder where you get your understanding of three-year-olds.

Well, I have two reasons: First naturalism is the easiest/simplest way to understand our experience, so it stands to reason that that's the initial understanding we all reach when we are starting our careers as cognitive beings able to build worldviews at about the age of three. Second, I have a 3-year old daughter and she clearly believes that the world she sees around her is real, and that she exists within that world moving her little body here and there. She also clearly believes that the world is mechanical, as she is quite proficient in learning how mechanisms work. (She apparently believes that her parents are mechanical too, but no matter.) And she does not believe in supernatural/magical effects because she does not see any and nobody has told her any such stories. But I plan to tell her some beautiful magical stories, such as that an invisible angel keeps guard over her bed while she sleeps, or that a nice (but fat) Santa who lives in the North Pole gives presents to all children at Christmas time. A little later I will tell her about little Jesus and how he was born in a barn in a cold night and was warmed by the breath of animals, and how Jesus was a very good person who taught wonderful things and who liked children a lot, and so on. These are beautiful stories that form part of the magic of experiencing childhood. I wouldn't like her to miss that magic, the same way I wouldn't like her to miss the magic of the fairy tales of Andersen etc. Later she will outgrow and understand what's real and what's not, but I hope her mind will keep the openness and wonder and power of imagination she developed in childhood. In fact I think that as an adult you need such openness and wonder and power of imagination for understanding what's real and what's not :-)

Up to the age of three, most children are effectively solipsists, and the realisation that there are others out there of significance and value is a major part of psychological development.

Solipsism is not only the view that no other minds exist, but rather that nothing objectively exist. It's a worldview people arrive when pushed by the desire to be maximally skeptical and not use any intuitive knowledge at all. I don't think solipsism has anything to do with how a 3-year old understand the world.

682. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55666 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 12, 2007 at 12:08 am

Dr Benway (post 1301, #55660):

Guess I should have said, "Keep your cherry pickin' hands on your side of the table!

Have you any idea how unreasonable it is when a theist is accused of cherry picking? Would you rather have a theist be dogmatic? In all fields of knowledge people are supposed to test older ideas, to discover, and to learn. Are you suggesting that theists shouldn't do that? Or maybe, following the goose and gander principle, you'd accuse a scientist today of not following to the letter the science of the fifteenth century?

As for your list, my answers are as follows:

- Bible is "inspired" but not literal, word of God Some parts are inspired, yes. But it's misleading to say "in some special sense inspired by God" as all our inspiration, all our thirst for and love of truth, all our intelligence and reason and cognitive faculties come from God anyway. Some of that is visible in science, some in art, and some in religious scripture (and not only in Christian religious scripture by the way)
- original sin False. The only thing that exists is original imperfection
- trinity True, indeed one of the most important insights there are
- annunciation Didn't happen in reality, but the story is pregnant with meaning
- incarnation True, but its relevance is not that of orthodox dogma, namely to atone for our sins etc
- virgin birth False, and pretty meaningless too. I understand it goes back to an error of translation of an OT prophesy
- walking on water Didn't happen in reality, but the NT story carries some meaning
- have 2 coats, give 1 away to someone who needs it Actually it's have 2 coats, give 2 coats. True, and of huge ethical significance. To understand this is to understand the beauty of reality.
- crucifiction True, that's pretty much a historical fact
- resurrection True, in the sense that the disciples did experience the risen Christ in bodily form and therefore were truthful in their witness. That's one case where God interfered with the natural order S/He causes in our conscious experience, but God is not a strict disciplinarian you know.
- gifts of the holy spirit If in the sense of gifts specially bestowed to a chosen few, then false. If in the sense of the experiential life of us all then of course true.
- believe Jesus died for your sins, go to heaven False on too many levels to count; also very naive and very misleading to theists and atheists alike.
- Peter is 1st pope No idea, was he? I do understand he founded the church in Rome.
- girls stay silent in church Nonsense.
- don't be gay Nonsense.
- 2nd coming It's rather 2nd going :-) the first being when we left our mother's womb. But no, we won't experience in this life seeing Jesus coming back in glory sitting on the clouds, I don't think.
- separating sheep from goats If you mean some judgment day in the afterlife in which humanity will be separated in two, then false. On the other hand the way we live here is not irrelevant for the afterlife.

Then please explain what your method is for sorting crap doctrine from non-crap doctrine.

Coherency.

683. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55663 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 11, 2007 at 11:03 pm

(About the Monty Hall problem introduced by Dr Benway in post 1283.)

Phil Rimmer (post 1285, or #55593):

The Monty Hall problem gets me every time. Its such a struggle to explain it to myself. It never seems to become obvious.

Our intuitions about probability are very weak indeed. A good trick is to go back to the basics. You see probability theory discovers patterns in random phenomena (or in phenomena where we don't have all the information) as we observe them happening in the world. So one can always go back to the basics and actually simulate the world. That's called the Monte Carlo method of solving probabilistic problems.

In the case at hand let's construct two worlds: In the first world we never change our mind; in the second world we always change our mind - and let's count how often we win in each world. A final point: After we chose door #1, the host will always open a door that has a goat behind it before asking us whether we wish to change our mind or not. So let's simulate all that and see which is the better strategy (the letters "C" and "g" signify Car and goat respectively, the letters "W" and "L" signify win and lose; finally I use bold to identify the door that was opened by the host to show a goat behind it):

First world (there are three cases):

1. Cgg -> W (here the host could open either door #2 or #3 – it doesn't matter)
2. gCg -> L
3. ggC -> L

So with the strategy of never changing our mind and sticking with our initial choice of door #1 we win once in three.

Second world (the same three cases again):

1. Cgg -> L (here the host could open either door #2 or #3 – it doesn't matter)
2. gCg -> W (for we changed our mind and chose #2)
3. ggC -> W (for we changed our mind and chose #3)

So with the strategy of always changing our mind and picking a door other than #1 (and of course other than the opened door with the goat) we win two times in three.

Interestingly enough, if we just tossed a coin to decide whether to change our mind or not we'd win 1.5 times in three, which is better than just sticking to our initial choice.

Coming back to our discussion, by the age of three we all choose naturalism as our worldview, so naturalism is our initial choice. Makes you wonder ;-)

684. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55655 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 11, 2007 at 10:11 pm

Dr Benway (post 1292, or #55606):

Note that the "good thing" vanishes once you fill it in with God. You can't enjoy your gap and fill it too.

Once a gap has caused a paradigm shift it vanishes, yes. Moving from naturalism to idealistic theism is exactly like that: there is no gap anymore in one's worldview.

1. God must be at least as complex as the universe, as he instantiates every quark within it.

I understand your idea, but I never claimed that God instantiates every quark within the universe; I claimed that God instantiates every quale in our conscious experience. Big difference. And for doing that, God does not need to think of every quark in the universe: you don't need the information about the exact state of an atom in a planet around a star in a galaxy at the other end of the universe to instantiate our experience of the universe.

(To be precise, even though it's irrelevant in our discussion about complexity, it is not strictly speaking true that God instantiates every quale in our experience, as some change in our experience is random and some change is caused by other persons than God, namely our fellow human beings.)

Hey, keep your cotton pickin' hands on your side of the table! You lost your right to make that argument when you said this:

2. Theistic worldviews are trivially and entirely compatible with scientific knowledge, because God, being omnipotent and all, could produce all the phenomena that science studies.

Can't have things both ways.

Oh, now I get it. I should have clarified that by "theistic worldviews" here I mean "theistic worldviews (except the most naive cases)". I thought that was kind of implicit, as I have been clarifying this since I presented my case in post 333, from which I quote:

The case of science. Many naturalists point out the overwhelming success of science as evidence for the superiority of their worldview. But apart from the most primitive religious worldviews (read: the cases of fundamentalism or "literal scripturism" if you like), all other religious worldviews seamlessly and naturally absorb scientific knowledge by hypothesizing that the physical world that science studies is caused and sustained by the larger spiritual reality. This incidentally makes it impossible for any piece of scientific knowledge to contradict or be used as evidence against any of the non-fundamentalist religious worldviews. So a person who adopts any of the non-fundamentalist religious worldview loses nothing of the usefulness and relevance of the scientific and technological project.

We can judge Biblical morality by our standards of human decency, precisely because....

The social consequences of your statement are the same no matter what you put after that word "because." We can judge. By our standards.

Of course we can judge by our standards. I agree with you. Strictly speaking even theistic fundamentalism agrees with that: Adam and Eve eat in the garden from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, after all. Of course theistic fundamentalism also asserts that we must follow the Bible's ethical commandments no matter our judgment in the matter, but that's only one more example of why theistic fundamentalism is self-contradictory.

685. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55649 by Dianelos Georgoudis on July 11, 2007 at 9:34 pm

Goldy (post 1289, or #55599):

Dianelos - could you put into, say, 200 words what your theism is?

No, but I can come close: in post 470 (or #49000) I explain my theistic worldview and why I find it better than naturalism in about 600 words. (An older and longer version of the same idea is post 333 or #48459.) Another key post is 1041 where I explain methodological issues that apply no matter whether God exists or not.

Post 1225 (#55260) answers some specific questions about my theistic worldview. Post 488 (#49065) answers a specific question about Christianity.

686. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath