The Argument from Diversity

[spetey]

Hi folks,

First, I'm very pleased to have found this forum. I think more open debate, especially about religion, is crucial to the world's future. It is too easy in the days of the internet simply to find people who agree with you, and post only to their message boards, patting each other on the back for being clever enough to agree. So I salute you all for coming here instead!

Let me start with a little exercise in confronting religious plurality, what I like to call the "argument from diversity". Let's pretend that I believe in a god, but not the God of the Abrahamic tradition. Instead, I believe in Zeus, and the other Greek gods. Of course there aren't really any (or many) Zeus-worshippers these days, but let's pretend as an example, to stand in for all the other conflicting religions that really are out there today.

I suppose many of the Abrahamic tradition (Christians, Jews, and Muslims) would think Zeus-worshipping kind of silly, and perhaps worry that I won't go to heaven. Maybe you even fear I'll be damned for eternity. Nonetheless, pretend I believe in Zeus, and that I'm similarly worried about Christians (and Jews and ...), because if you don't worship Zeus properly--sacrificing lambs and such--you'll have to go to Hades and roll boulders up hills for all eternity, like poor Sisyphys.

Now here's the exercise: can you give me a reason to believe in the Abrahamic God--one that I don't already have for believing in Zeus?

Thanks for your patience... I look forward to a polite and engaging exchange.


spetey

[harvey1]

Ah-ha, harvey1, my old nemesis! Again, a pleasure to discuss this with you.

I hope it is all in fun. It's great having a forum such as this to exchange views to discuss things that many people just have little or no interest.

You did not state my argument correctly. The argument is not that evolution of ideas produces truth, rather it is that the 'testing' of ideas under a wide-ranging circumstance that produces a more sound belief system, hence truth. This is akin to philosophical reasoning with the added benefit that you are only keeping the most meaningful religious beliefs.

I agree that ideas can be tested for their reasonableness, and that this is a process somewhat akin to natural selection. But as for example Dawkins points out in The Selfish Gene (the book that suggested this analogy of idea-evolution in "memes"), ideas can propagate for all sorts of reasons besides their truth--consider astrology. The suggestion in the background of my argument from diversity is that religious belief is like that--it was "successful", as you say, but not because true--rather because it gave comfort. If we had reason to think it was true, it should be easy to give reasons to believe it and not Greek mythology or Hinduism, right?

Well, truth is a funny term since you cannot remove the pragmatic element from any definition of truth (as far as I'm concerned, anyway). Thus, pragmatic truths have a wide range of application, some of which might not apply to science or even to philosophy or religion per se.

However, pragmatic truths that are useful as a 'valid' explanation for the underlying cause of the universe, or underlying cause as to why bad things happen, etc, are specifically created as the ideas that portray themselves as this kind of truth are 'tested' and found wanting. This is why it is necessary for testing those beliefs in terms of their meaning to the people who hold those views. If it is a popular belief, then it is difficult for ideas to be tested by tough trials since they get a free hall pass. Astrology, for whatever reason, mostly fell into this category. So, it's value was harder to establish as truthful in the pragmatic sense of providing a good explanation. However, even astrology did evolve into astronomy, so even astrology can be said to have generated truth about the world in the sense of having 'valid' explanations. You might even say that numerology evolved into mathematics, so everything I guess has potential.

In the case of unpopular beliefs that really cause negative attention, these are the truths that really hold much promise in generating eternal truths. Unfortunately, quack beliefs fall into this category more often than not, so it is not always apparent which ideas are eternal and which are quackpot beliefs. The old hopper of time has a way of deducing this answer by way of unexpected events. For example, I love the scientific example of Maxwell discovering Faraday's magneticism theory as a young man, and being the genius that he was, was willing to gamble his academic career on Faraday being right (despite that Faraday was not looked upon in high esteem by others in the theoretical realm). Well, history proved Faraday correct and Maxwell turned out to be quite the brilliant genius that could mathematically explain Faraday's experimental findings as well as produce new predictions for his electromagnetic theory. In any case, I veered off a bit here, but the point is that the stone that was rejected by the builders here became the chief cornerstone. That is, there's something mysterious about how good ideas bubble up to the top once they are rejected and due to their meaning, they maintain a faithful group who preserves them and they are somehow justified once more philosophical evidence comes to light. In the case of the Hebrews, they held onto certain belief systems, such as, monetheism as an example, despite the popularity of polytheism, and later as ideas evolved further along, monetheism became seen as better than polytheistic perspectives.

Maybe they would have "evolved" a more concretely stated set of religious beliefs--but surely you don't think the beliefs would thereby be truth, do you? Surely, if the Abrahamic God exists, or if Zeus exists, or whatever, that is true whether or not the Gypsies come up with some other religion, right?

I see no reason why the Roma could not have evolved into a religion possessing great spiritual truths. I know little about them, so who knows, maybe they have such beliefs, I don't know. However, all I can say is repeat what I've already said, which is evolution takes time, it takes exposure to competition, and it must be tested. If the people having this experience migrate away, then this has very little chance of happening, although like the Israelites, they might migrate into a situation that later turns into that kind of situation.

The Hebrew and Christian metaphors, which are much older than the Emerson metaphors, are not in the same category. These metaphors are expanded upon every weekend in synagogues and churches throughout the world, so we can see how powerful religious metaphors are compared to general literature.

The metaphors of Shakespeare are expounded upon every day in universities around the world. I daresay the metaphor of Juliet being like the sun is better known than the Biblical metaphor of the contract to which you referred. But even if the Abrahamic set of metaphors were somehow more pervasive, I again don't see why that makes their content true.

Well, if the Shakespearean metaphors are limited to university classes, then it is like the trilobites that never made it out of the warm Permian/Triassic boundary oceans. In order for Shakespearean metaphors to start pointing to truth about God, then they have to be tested and found wanting and with that, comes more evolution until they start hitting upon some deep truths about the hidden structure of the world. I'm not saying that Shakespeare didn't do that by building his metaphors on previously existing ones, but if they are still in Shakespeare, then they can have much meaning, but without evolving further, they have not evolved much beyond that.

The same is true of the Hebrew scriptures. The books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers are older books, and they have evolution by the fact that J and P authors had given their input and then later a revisionist came along and edited them, however they are still needing their metaphors to be developed in order to grow much beyond the 6-9th centuries BCE. Fortunately, that was not the last of the biblical tradition.

As far as what makes this process produce truth, it is a combination of being tested such that the ideas are found wanting. The desire of the people to change so that their scriptures (and metaphors, etc) reflect the new beliefs which resolve their scriptural needs. Once the changes are made and the crisis is over, a period of inquiry sets in where people start to ask questions about the overall understanding of the scriptures, and they start the process all over of finding discrepancies again, and their situation also evolves which puts pressure on their culture, etc. Once a breaking point happens, they repeat this process. Now, I'm simplifying this, of course, but really, there is a lot of similarities between this and biological evolution in terms of what spurs speciation.

Now, looking at the larger picture, there is a God, and God is always spreading the seed of the word to change and develop knowledge of God. If people are receptive to this, then the evolutionary changes I'm talking about will even be more effective since, I believe, the ground that the seed lands on is fertile, that seed will produce more fruits. Anyone can receive God's inspiration, even atheists, however they may not realize they are being inspired by God.

I certainly don't want to leave the impression that all evolution (biological or memetic) is all naturalistic. It is methodologically natural, but metaphysically behind the scenes there is much going on. But, I think the seed of God's inspiration is spread out all over the world and throughout time, its just that there is an order to revelation (or speciation), and God has much patience in moving life along on whatever solar system or society that it is evolving.

... my whole underlying point is that religious belief evolves in reaction to intuitive evidence that comes available to the insightful mind that seeks meaning in the world.

If this is your underlying point, that there is "intuitive evidence", you should be very clear about what this type of evidence is, and why Greek mythology and Hinduism and astrology don't possess it, but the Abrahamic tradition does. Does the fact that it's "intuitive" mean that it can't be shared with those who disagree? That it requires faith, and not reason?

I didn't say that the Greek mythology or Hinduism, etc, doesn't possess truth. I would only say that the Hebrews had many of the most desirable conditions to spur their memetic evolution. That's not to take away anything from other religions, but some religions were not able to compete and therefore they failed away. Eventually, all current notions of religion will evolve into something much more spiritually minded, but right now our human evolution is not ready for that. Even though I don't know what that religion tradition is, I believe that we are on the right path and we are where we need to be right now.

To say it will be "more" truthful is to assume there already is "some" truth to it. Will astrology get "more" truthful as it sticks around?

If it is allowed to evolve through a belief testing process, then it might very well do so. I don't practice or believe in astrology, but I don't know if the world is mathematically precise or not. That is, I do think that catastrophe theory and chaos theory have global timing to them (e.g, periodic extinctions), but I don't know how many elements are involved in a metaphysical view of catastrophe. Heavenly bodies might be part of that mathematical alignment, I certainly don't pretend to know. For example, two decades ago the late David Raup showed the regular periods of mass extinctions, and then came evidence of the K-T asteroid. So, it seems odd timing on the part of an asteroid to hit the earth just when 26 million years rolls around and it's time for a major extinction. Now, there's evidence for a Permian-Triassic asteroid, which is especially odd given the timing. Perhaps its related to a passing supernova, etc, but there's also environmental issues that proceed by millions of years the asteroid, so do I think there's more to our universe than what we currently know? Yep. Do I think that's astrology? Nope. But, can there be some watered down version of astrology which later might be shown to be the case (e.g., a physical theory of global catastrophe theory in paleontology)? I don't rule it out.

It terms of scientific issues, it's best to let science answer those questions. In the case of philosophical or religious questions, these are ones that can be asked. Maybe we are fortunate in that philosophies tend to boil down to a few choices, whereas science has thousands of potential answers, so it is a waste of time to try and deduce what science will look like in a 100 years, or 500 years, or 5000 years, or 5 million years.

[spetey]

Hi harvey1! Yes, of course I was just being playful when I called you a "nemesis". I too have enjoyed the discussion.

I'll try to summarize my response more concisely here than I have in the past.

1. On "pragmatic truth": I don't want to know if Abrahamic religions are useful to believe--I've already granted that. (But only for the sake of argument--my actual view is that they, and the dogmatism they tend to engender, are on the whole destructive. That's why I'm in this forum!) Instead I want to know if it's true that the Abrahamic God exists in the same sense that, say, '1+1=2' is true, or that 'the earth revolves around the sun' is true. On the notion of truth I mean, it might be "useful" for Alice to believe 1 plus 1 is 2 and useful for Bob to believe 1 plus 1 is not 2--so that they're both "pragmatically true", if you like--but only one of them can be (traditionally?) true.
2. If you refuse to acknowledge such a truth, then I guess I'll ask instead: is there any sense where an Abrahamic religion is true but, say, Hinduism isn't? If so, why? That, you might say, was my original question. (I pick Hinduism instead of Greek mythology here since you seem to attach great importance to the idea being popular now.) If you're willing to say they're all "true" (although apparently contradictory), then I'm not sure what to say, except that it's a mystery why you would go to church (or synagogue...) instead of keep a statue of Ganesh. And is the atheist tradition also "true" in that sense? If so, then I'm glad we agree at least in some sense!
3. I quite agree that some current, popular beliefs are mere crackpottery, like astrology. And some other popular beliefs have good justification and were properly "tested" for reasons, like astronomy. I want to know: why think Christianity is in one of those camps, and Hinduism in another? How can you tell which ones got the "free hall pass" except by trying to reason through them?
4. I also quite agree that discarded stones that were once unpopular may turn out, when tested for their soundness, to be the right foundations after all. That's exactly what I'm suggesting for atheism. I'm suggesting that even though it's not so popular (in the US, anyway), that once we examine it, it will turn out to pass the test of reasons--it will fare better in the "evolution of ideas", if you like, than religions. So I'm asking you to join me in trying this test. To say that Abrahamic views have been around a long time and so far are accepted is no answer--unless it's also an answer for astrology and all the other examples.
5. You say that for an idea to never make it out of university and into church is like species never evolving out of the prehistoric oceans, because the ideas will not discover "the truth" about God. But that of course begs the question; I would say exactly the opposite. In other places in your response you also assume that there is a God, that believing in God is to believe in the truth, that even an atheist could accept the truth that there's a God--this all begs the question of interest to us. (That is, it assumes just what you're trying to establish.)

I'd like also to make a big-picture observation: I have said it is not helpful in this context to appeal to the "evolution of ideas", and maybe now I can be a bit clearer why. As you know, biological evolution is imperfect. There are mistakes, and anti-adaptive phenotypes persist due to flukes. So it makes sense to point to a particular phenotype and ask: "is this adaptive in the current environment?" (For example, humans' enormous craving for fats and sugar.) It does no good to say "well it exists now so it must be," because it might be a mistake. The biologists have instead to consider facts about the phenotype and its current environment, and reason synchronically, so to speak--appealing only to the way things are now. I'm suggesting the same about ideas. When asking "is this idea a justified one?" it does no good to say "well it exists now so it must be." It might similarly be a mistake that the idea exists now (as you say, for example, about astrology). So we must consider particular, synchronic reasons for believing the idea. That just is the test for ideas on which you put so much weight. So let's put aside talking about the evolution of ideas, and simply engage in it instead!

Put it this way: you say you "don't rule it out" that astrology might be evolve into a better idea, or that the current Abrahamic tradition might evolve into some greater "spiritual truth". Do you rule it out that the correct direction for this evolution to go is to say that astrology is false (the way, say, we have evolved out of belief in the flat earth)? Similarly, do you rule it out that the correct evolutionary direction for our spiritual view of the world is toward the conclusion that there is no God, and that meaning and fulfillment comes from elsewhere? If you do rule that out, why?

Thanks again!

spetey

[harvey1]

[*]On "pragmatic truth": I don't want to know if Abrahamic religions are useful to believe--I've already granted that. (But only for the sake of argument--my actual view is that they, and the dogmatism they tend to engender, are on the whole destructive. That's why I'm in this forum!) Instead I want to know if it's true that the Abrahamic God exists in the same sense that, say, '1+1=2' is true, or that 'the earth revolves around the sun' is true. On the notion of truth I mean, it might be "useful" for Alice to believe 1 plus 1 is 2 and useful for Bob to believe 1 plus 1 is not 2--so that they're both "pragmatically true", if you like--but only one of them can be (traditionally?) true.

Unfortunately there are no clear cut divisions as to what is 'true in a traditional sense' and what is 'true in an instrumental sense'. There are fuzzy divisions, and the line keeps changing ever so slightly. For example, prior to Einstein, Newtonian derived equations were the way in which astrophysicists calculated the orbits of planetary objects. However, it was not a perfect solution as the orbit of Mercury was not correct by those calculations. If you use those Newtonian equations for just a rough approximation because they are still useful at some level, then there is no argument on using these equations for such instrumental purposes. However, if you want to send a spacecraft to Mercury, it is highly recommended that you use Einstein's equations. At some point it might be necessary to consider Einstein's equations for their instrumental utility, and not so much for their traditional truth value.

So, what we really find accurate about science is not so much the results but more so the process we possess (i.e., the 'scientific method') which can produce Newtonian, Einsteinian, and some future theory of gravity results (etc). It's the process itself which is traditionally true, not so much the results themselves which may or may not be replaced by a better theory sometime later.

Similarly, what I tried to highlight in my responses is not so much a 'traditional truth' but a process. This process (which is akin to an evolution of religious ideas) can produce 'truths'. As to whether they are 'traditional truths' or purely 'instrumental truths' is not as relevant as having the process and taking refuge in the 'results' that best exemplify that process.

Like the Newtonian equations, we don't have to look at the previous results as false, we should look upon them as approximate truths. That is, they may not tell us what the truth is (in a traditional sense), but they do provide a good estimation of where the truth is, at least to a point of being satisfactory for our particular conditions at this time.

So, you see, your request to know if something is true (in a traditional sense) is not the right question. What you should be asking is whether the right process exists to produce approximate truths of God, and that I can answer: I believe so. And, based on this process, the Hebrews exemplified the best conditions for this process to be most effective. They had the necessary testing going on, they had competiting priest lines, storylines that needed to be reflected upon to avoid outright contradiction (at least to some reasonable degree), etc...

[*]If you refuse to acknowledge such a truth, then I guess I'll ask instead: is there any sense where an Abrahamic religion is true but, say, Hinduism isn't? If so, why? That, you might say, was my original question. (I pick Hinduism instead of Greek mythology here since you seem to attach great importance to the idea being popular now.) If you're willing to say they're all "true" (although apparently contradictory), then I'm not sure what to say, except that it's a mystery why you would go to church (or synagogue...) instead of keep a statue of Ganesh. And is the atheist tradition also "true" in that sense? If so, then I'm glad we agree at least in some sense!

Well, as I have tried to say, the process by which truth is generated, for me, is more important than how it is generated. I have no problem with revelation, for example, but anyone can claim revelation. The New Testament writers recognized this, and even Jesus is quoted as saying that by the testing of their beliefs the believer will know if the beliefs are true. In other words, the emphasis on truth creation is on the process.

So, did Hinduism have persecution? Did they have to cling onto their beliefs through a captivity by being taken to another land and then returned back? Did they see their brethren nation wiped out with only a few left arriving at their doorsteps with their scriptures in hand? Well, I don't know the history of Hinduism that well. I do believe that Hinduism had some good processes at work, probably not nearly as efficient as the Hebrews, so I would definitely look at the beliefs of Hinduism and see what beliefs looked appealing. After all, once you've been exposed to the process of truth creating, you can start looking at beliefs with your intuitive feel of those beliefs, and you might have some good insights that way. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, you have to give the benefit of doubt with the process itself, and to my knowledge, the Hebrews had the best process on the planet's history.

[*]I quite agree that some current, popular beliefs are mere crackpottery, like astrology. And some other popular beliefs have good justification and were properly "tested" for reasons, like astronomy. I want to know: why think Christianity is in one of those camps, and Hinduism in another? How can you tell which ones got the "free hall pass" except by trying to reason through them?

Well, I'm not saying that you skip reasoning of a belief and just accept whatever the mysterious process says is true. Everything should be based on rational investigation, it's just that when you compare religions, you are talking about events which cannot be verified, and a slew of events which are exaggerated or just down right religious myth. Hence, you cannot rely on rational investigation in a purely philosophical sense. You have to come to the table already prepared to believe that God is acting behind the scenes to reveal the key attributes about life and our existence that matter. Thus, in terms of philosophy, you focus on some key principles of the religion which rational inquiry can address, and then in terms of a purely religious investigation, you must do comparative analysis of the scriptures in terms of metaphors, prophecies, etc. The key in that sense is to look for allegorical meaning. The reason is that assuming that God is behind the process of truth creating, the scriptures will start to connect in areas where they should be totally unrelated. So, for example, I put a post on this board about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is a good example of allegorical meaning that you would expect to find assuming Christianity were inspired. The reason is that no one is going to invent a crucified Savior who is the only begotten son just to satisfy some allegorical scripture that many at that time would have probably not seen the meaning so overtly. Of course, I assume that later Christians did see this (as there are hints in Hebrews and elsewhere that this perspective did leak out), but the point is that these are the kinds of inquiry you must do in order to see the scriptural truth of a belief (i.e., beyond just believing on faith). This, of course, is what the early Christians did with showing Jesus as the Messiah by showing the allegorical meaning from the book of Isaiah, Psalms, etc.

Of course, I don't think an atheist would sympathize with such a view, but this is how I see the process moving forward in religious studies. Again, I'm not saying this is exclusive to the Hebrew religion, I'm very sure it is being done in Buddhist scriptures, Islamic scriptures, Hindu scriptures, etc. As well it should. This is how you evolve your religion. The criteria of preventing from going wild at allegorical interpretation is when you start contradicting the very tenets of the religion. So, for example, allegorical interpretations that suggest that Paul is the Messiah, not Jesus, is obviously against the main tenets of Christianity, and can never be accepted. Here is where the process of evolution helps you by allowing God to control things behind the scenes. This is part of the faith in the process which no one of faith can accept as strictly a naturalistic process (i.e., metaphysically naturalistic).

[*]I also quite agree that discarded stones that were once unpopular may turn out, when tested for their soundness, to be the right foundations after all. That's exactly what I'm suggesting for atheism. I'm suggesting that even though it's not so popular (in the US, anyway), that once we examine it, it will turn out to pass the test of reasons--it will fare better in the "evolution of ideas", if you like, than religions. So I'm asking you to join me in trying this test. To say that Abrahamic views have been around a long time and so far are accepted is no answer--unless it's also an answer for astrology and all the other examples.

If it is God's intent for humanity to evolve an atheistic religion that replaces all the world religions, including Christianity, then I guarantee that it will happen. The problem facing atheism is that it provides virtually no meaning to life and even hardcore atheists have a hardtime with that one.

[*]You say that for an idea to never make it out of university and into church is like species never evolving out of the prehistoric oceans, because the ideas will not discover "the truth" about God. But that of course begs the question; I would say exactly the opposite. In other places in your response you also assume that there is a God, that believing in God is to believe in the truth, that even an atheist could accept the truth that there's a God--this all begs the question of interest to us. (That is, it assumes just what you're trying to establish.)

I don't think it begs the question. The question isn't how do we know theism is better than atheism, if that is the question, my answers are all out of context. The question (paraphrasing) is how do we know that Abrahamic traditions are more justified than a Greek pagan religion that was wiped out by Christianity. The answer to that question involves a belief in God as working behind the scenes of evolutionary processes (i.e., cosmological evolution, stellar evolution, planetary evolution, biological evolution, etc, etc). I am not proposing a different level of intervention for each kind of evolution. What I am saying is that it doesn't matter what evolutionary context we are talking, God is very much active in each level, and it becomes evident within naturalistic processes that contain divine inspiration. In order for me to show why a dead religion is not as true as the Hebrew traditions, then (per my statement about evolution) you have to assume that if it were as true, then it probably would still exist. That's not to say that the Greek religious tradition had to go extinct. It just suffered time and chance like any biological species that had died in ages past. It wasn't perhaps necessary that those species died, it's just that they were gauged by God as not essential, and they went the way of their naturalistic fate. Only God can decide what to keep and what to allow the natural processes to take away.

I'd like also to make a big-picture observation: I have said it is not helpful in this context to appeal to the "evolution of ideas", and maybe now I can be a bit clearer why. As you know, biological evolution is imperfect. There are mistakes, and anti-adaptive phenotypes persist due to flukes. So it makes sense to point to a particular phenotype and ask: "is this adaptive in the current environment?" (For example, humans' enormous craving for fats and sugar.) It does no good to say "well it exists now so it must be," because it might be a mistake. The biologists have instead to consider facts about the phenotype and its current environment, and reason synchronically, so to speak--appealing only to the way things are now. I'm suggesting the same about ideas. When asking "is this idea a justified one?" it does no good to say "well it exists now so it must be." It might similarly be a mistake that the idea exists now (as you say, for example, about astrology). So we must consider particular, synchronic reasons for believing the idea. That just is the test for ideas on which you put so much weight. So let's put aside talking about the evolution of ideas, and simply engage in it instead!

Yes, there are mistakes in evolution. However, we have a very big difference of view. As a theistic evolutionist I believe there are no mistakes in the areas where mistakes would foil God's plan. So, if there is a mistake that must be corrected later, and it can be corrected later, no doubt those mistakes can exist in scripture. However, this is where allegorical meaning is very important since those corrections can be made as long as the intent of the scripture is fulfilled. So, as an example, circumcision was a mistake. It's not that it was a mistake for those people at the time, it's just that it served it's purpose, and now it must be looked upon as a 'mistake' that must be removed from the new covenant. It has a spiritual (allegorical) interpretation in Christianity, and therefore the scriptures must be seen from an allegorical perspective from Pauline times and beyond. In other instances, there were mistakes which weren't allowed. For example, the Hebrews had been taken captive to Babylon where, in the history of humanity, most tribes taken captive usually don't return in 70 years to their native land. Here is an example of a mistake that was corrected. It's not a mistake by God, it was a mistake in that something needed to be fixed otherwise the Hebrew evolution would have to be either ended, or perhaps from that point involve the Babylonians. Now, God has many options I'm sure, but God choose the option of overthrowing the Babylonians by the Persians and having the Persians sympathetic to the Hebrew people. It's the way in which God choose to correct that 'mistake'.

In terms of biological evolution, the dinosaurs were a mistake in that they were probably set to dominate the earth forever. Who knows, had the K-T asteroid not hit, they would still be here. God corrected that 'mistake' by bringing an asteroid and thereby bringing about their demise - giving mammals a chance to evolve. God could have worked his evolutionary plan with the dinosaurs, I suppose, but for whatever reason God choose to work with mammals. Of course, things that look like 'mistakes' really are fortitious events that God uses to bring about his will.

Put it this way: you say you "don't rule it out" that astrology might be evolve into a better idea, or that the current Abrahamic tradition might evolve into some greater "spiritual truth". Do you rule it out that the correct direction for this evolution to go is to say that astrology is false (the way, say, we have evolved out of belief in the flat earth)? Similarly, do you rule it out that the correct evolutionary direction for our spiritual view of the world is toward the conclusion that there is no God, and that meaning and fulfillment comes from elsewhere? If you do rule that out, why?

I am not in a position to rule out any future. All I can do is trust the process that I think is working, and that process combined with the rational elements in support of it leads me to a belief in Christianity. That belief requires that I also believe that these things will work themselves out and eventually God will be all in all. You might say evolution is complete when that day comes.

[spetey]

Back again!

You make a good point about approximate truth, harvey1--yes, there is some sense to be made of the idea that Newton's theory was closer to the truth than Galileo's was, and Einstein's closer than Newton's, and so on.

But sometimes theories aren't even approximately true, they're just wrong. For example, it isn't even approximately true that the earth is flat. It isn't approximately true that the position of Mars in our Zodiac influences whether we'll meet a tall dark stranger today. It isn't approximately true that there are witches or unicorns. I'm suggesting that religion is a "theory" like that: one that is simply wrong, and believed for reasons very similar to the reasons people believed in Zeus, or believe in Vishnu, or astrology.

So, did Hinduism have persecution? Did they have to cling onto their beliefs through a captivity by being taken to another land and then returned back? Did they see their brethren nation wiped out with only a few left arriving at their doorsteps with their scriptures in hand? Well, I don't know the history of Hinduism that well.

(Yes, Hinduism had a great deal of persecution, first by the early Aryan invasion, then from within by Buddhism and Jainism, then by the Islamic empire that nearly wiped Hinduism out, and then of course by the European colonists. I would say that over their very long history, Hinduism had a tremendous amount of persecution and other-cultural influence that would easily rival if not surpass Judaism.)

I do believe that Hinduism had some good processes at work, probably not nearly as efficient as the Hebrews, so I would definitely look at the beliefs of Hinduism and see what beliefs looked appealing.

See this is just the thing--how do you know that the process was "probably not nearly as efficient as the Hebrews"? You just said you don't know the history of Hinduism. So why are you so confident that their "evolution of ideas" is wrong, while the Abrahamic one is right? It's in places like this where it seems to me you simply assume what you're arguing for ahead of time. You need to give me some concrete reason to think that the Hindu evolution of ideas was a mistake while the Abrahamic one wasn't. (Or that the Abrahamic "theory" is more "approximately true" than the Hindu "theory", or something! Some reason to believe one and not the other!)

After all, once you've been exposed to the process of truth creating, you can start looking at beliefs with your intuitive feel of those beliefs, and you might have some good insights that way. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, you have to give the benefit of doubt with the process itself, and to my knowledge, the Hebrews had the best process on the planet's history.

The problem with intuition is that it can't be reasoned about and discussed. What can you say to someone who just has the "intuition" that Hinduism is correct, and that their "process" is the best of the planet's history? You're at an impasse, right? That's why we have to look past intuitions to reasons.

Everything should be based on rational investigation, it's just that when you compare religions, you are talking about events which cannot be verified, and a slew of events which are exaggerated or just down right religious myth. Hence, you cannot rely on rational investigation in a purely philosophical sense.

I don't see how what comes after "hence" follows at all! I would rather say: "Hence, you must rely on rational investigation (in a purely philosophical sense)." How else can you tell "downright religious myth" from ideas from a good "process"?

You have to come to the table already prepared to believe that God is acting behind the scenes to reveal the key attributes about life and our existence that matter.

Oh, well... if I have to already believe in God in order to discuss reasons to believe in God, then we're not going to get very far, are we? This, too, is what I would call "begging the question."

The reason is that assuming that God is behind the process of truth creating, the scriptures will start to connect in areas where they should be totally unrelated.

But of course I don't assume that God is "behind the process of truth creating"!

So, for example, I put a post on this board about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is a good example of allegorical meaning that you would expect to find assuming Christianity were inspired.

And why are the powerful allegories of The Odyssey or The Baghavad Gita not evidence they were similarly inspired truth?

The reason is that no one is going to invent a crucified Savior who is the only begotten son just to satisfy some allegorical scripture that many at that time would have probably not seen the meaning so overtly.

There are lots of reasons to invent a crucified savior, and there were many then, too--at least as many reasons as there were to invent a Vishnu or a Zeus.

... the point is that these are the kinds of inquiry you must do in order to see the scriptural truth of a belief (i.e., beyond just believing on faith).

What's the inquiry again? Noticing that there are metaphors and powerful images? And why can't this inquiry go the same for Hinduism? (Remember it's cheating to say "because those allegories weren't from as good a process" or "because you have to have the intuition that God inspired the Biblical allegories" or such.)

Of course, I don't think an atheist would sympathize with such a view, but this is how I see the process moving forward in religious studies.

Okay, well the idea behind the debate here is to try to appeal to ideas that the atheist would sympathize with. We start with shared premises and work our way from there.

If it is God's intent for humanity to evolve an atheistic religion that replaces all the world religions, including Christianity, then I guarantee that it will happen.

Grrr! This is not what I'm asking you to imagine! I'm asking you to imagine that the proper "evolution of ideas", as you insist on calling it, might bring us to a "more approximately true" belief that there is no God. I'm asking you to explain why that couldn't be the correct direction for the "evolution of ideas" to go. That's very different from there being a God, and that God deciding (for whatever sadistic reason) to make us believe atheism, which in that case would obviously be false.

<deep breath> Sorry if I sound frustrated. I do think it's a great exercise for both of us to try to communicate, and I'm learning a great deal. But sometimes I feel like you are reluctant even to entertain atheist ideas--even for the sake of showing them wrong.

The problem facing atheism is that it provides virtually no meaning to life and even hardcore atheists have a hardtime with that one.

I am a hardcore atheist, and I don't have a hard time with it. Actually I think life would have a great deal less meaning with an Abrahamic (or any other all-powerful) God. But again, even if belief in religion does provide "meaning", "comfort", and the like, that's no reason to think it's (even approximately) true. And it's certainly not a reason to think it's "more true" than Hinduism, in any sense of "true" (except perhaps a full-blown relativistic one according to which "true" just means the same as "I believe it").

I don't think it begs the question. The question isn't how do we know theism is better than atheism, if that is the question, my answers are all out of context. The question (paraphrasing) is how do we know that Abrahamic traditions are more justified than a Greek pagan religion that was wiped out by Christianity. The answer to that question involves a belief in God as working behind the scenes of evolutionary processes ...

You're right that the discusssion started as one about justifying the Abrahamic God over the Greek or Hindu gods. I thought we'd veered off. But anyway do you see how this very response I've just quoted again begs the question? My question: why should a smart Martian (for example) believe in the Abrahamic Gods and not the Greek (or Hindu) gods? Your response: because the Abrahamic God has made many people "evolve" ideas about that God. Do you see how that would fail to convince an alien who didn't already believe in the Abrahamic God?

... you have to assume that if it were as true, then [the idea] probably would still exist.

Why? Maybe it hasn't been thought up yet. Maybe the truth was forgotten, as the truth that the earth was round died out after Greece fell. Maybe belief in the Greek gods is the brick rejected by the builders that will be the cornerstone later. Why can't it be?

Yes, there are mistakes in evolution. However, we have a very big difference of view. As a theistic evolutionist I believe there are no mistakes in the areas where mistakes would foil God's plan.

Well you see "theistic evoultion" is another premise that you will not share with an atheist (or a smart Martian). It already assumes that God exists and that belief in God is not a "mistake" in the evolution of ideas.

In terms of biological evolution, the dinosaurs were a mistake in that they were probably set to dominate the earth forever.

Here again you appeal to "theistic evolution". The dinosaurs were only a "mistake" if you assume ahead of time that somehow homo sapiens was destined to evolve as a part of God's plan to create something in God's own image. To a naturalistic evolutionary biologist, the dinosaurs were no more a mistake than any other species, and their extinction was not a matter of God falling asleep at the wheel and waking up again--it was just a fluke, that's all, and there's no reason something similar couldn't happen to us.

I am not in a position to rule out any future. All I can do is trust the process that I think is working, and that process combined with the rational elements in support of it leads me to a belief in Christianity.

Well, I don't share the intuitive trust in the "process"--and I sure don't see why I should trust that process more than the one that resulted in Hinduism. So let's hear more about these "rational elements" instead. Again: why should a smart Martian--who doesn't already believe in God, doesn't already have the intuition that God is directing ideas, doesn't already prefer some allegorical stories to others because they talk about God and not Vishnu--why should that Martian believe in the Abrahamic God, and not Vishnu?

Thanks again!


spetey

[harvey1]

But sometimes theories aren't even approximately true, they're just wrong. For example, it isn't even approximately true that the earth is flat. It isn't approximately true that the position of Mars in our Zodiac influences whether we'll meet a tall dark stranger today. It isn't approximately true that there are witches or unicorns. I'm suggesting that religion is a "theory" like that: one that is simply wrong, and believed for reasons very similar to the reasons people believed in Zeus, or believe in Vishnu, or astrology.

The term 'approximate truth' doesn't mean anything unless we clarify what we mean by that term. What I mean by it is that there are reasonable enough circumstances which exist that makes the theory true in those reasonable circumstances. If I said any circumstance, then any theory is 'approximately true' since we can always imagine a circumstance when a theory is true. For example, astrology can be true in a world of a multi-universe where everything that can naturally happen does happen. In one of those universes, I can imagine a situation where the position of Mars does appear to influence the prospects of meeting a certain individual. Or, unicorns or those whose spells appear to work in such and such a universe, and so on. This, although possible, is not reasonable since you can justify anything of everything as 'approximately true' thereby overturning the whole notion (not reasonable in my opinion).

On the other hand, the 'flat earth' concept, as absurd as it sounds, is probably a candidate for an 'approximate truth' since an ancient people thinking of the world as 100 square miles is dealing with a roughly equivalent flat world. If it later proved that by including more area the flatness was no longer apparent (e.g., changes in timezones, etc), then the truth is less and less true. That might seem to make it a false 'theory', however by the same token, Newton's theories are entirely false for quite the same reason. If you extend your area of circumstance to quantum distances, then what is left of Newton's theory of motion to be true? Not much, since you have entirely left the domain that the theory is 'approximately true'. Thus, I can imagine reasonable circumstances where ridiculous theories are 'approximately true', and I can imagine reasonable circumstances where solid theories are entirely false in that context. Context is purely a human thing, and this is why you have to be extremely careful when talking about the notion of truth outside of context. First, we have to decide what is a reasonable situation to consider the belief approximately true (e.g., religious myth), and when it is reasonable to consider a belief 'approximately true' in any realistic situation (e.g., astrology predicting who you will meet on a particular day of the week). This issue will divide us, I can tell you that now. I see approximate truth in very general terms, and am willing to give some benefit of doubt to allegorical interpretation, not just of the Bible, but of any religion, just so long as I consider it reasonable (I can, afterall, only speak for myself on such matters).

So, did Hinduism have persecution? Did they have to cling onto their beliefs through a captivity by being taken to another land and then returned back? Did they see their brethren nation wiped out with only a few left arriving at their doorsteps with their scriptures in hand? Well, I don't know the history of Hinduism that well.

(Yes, Hinduism had a great deal of persecution, first by the early Aryan invasion, then from within by Buddhism and Jainism, then by the Islamic empire that nearly wiped Hinduism out, and then of course by the European colonists. I would say that over their very long history, Hinduism had a tremendous amount of persecution and other-cultural influence that would easily rival if not surpass Judaism.)... See this is just the thing--how do you know that the process was "probably not nearly as efficient as the Hebrews"? You just said you don't know the history of Hinduism. So why are you so confident that their "evolution of ideas" is wrong, while the Abrahamic one is right? It's in places like this where it seems to me you simply assume what you're arguing for ahead of time. You need to give me some concrete reason to think that the Hindu evolution of ideas was a mistake while the Abrahamic one wasn't. (Or that the Abrahamic "theory" is more "approximately true" than the Hindu "theory", or something! Some reason to believe one and not the other!)

It would be extremely ignorant of me to discount the 'approximate truths' of religions that have been in existence since 1500 BC, and undoubtedly have the kind of evolutionary history that I think is needed by a religion in order to evolve 'approximate truths'. I just won't get into the debate that my religion is better than their religion.

Although, at the same time, I won't back down from my main point that the Hebrews represent an extremely intricate and sophisticated history in their evolution, which gave them distinct advantages at 'approximate truth' creation that other cultures probably did not have. Persecution (or trial by fire) is a good sign that any particular religion had good opportunities to build truth, however, and I say this without trying to deny the truths of other religions, the Hebrews undoubtedly had more evolutionary presssures due to their very unique history. I have a strong reason to believe that no other major religion had their entire society (especially the priestly line) held captive and taken to a different land and were exposed to Babylonian and Persian religions for 70 years to the point to where they incorporated the beliefs that they thought were superior to their own beliefs. This is absolutely key to taking in the meme pool of other religions which had evolved very interesting beliefs. I have strong inclination to believe that this did not happen to any other culture in quite this dramatic fashion.

I also think it is unlikely that any other culture had as much exposure to Greek philosophy and Egyptian religious beliefs of resurrection (etc) as the Hebrews. I specifically mention the Greeks and Egyptians since they also had evolved some sophisticated belief systems, all of which I think improved the Hebrews conceptions. The Hebrews were stubborn on some things (e.g., monotheism), but were willing to entertain other beliefs that they thought would improve their views of God (e.g., resurrection of the dead, perhaps directly or indirectly from Egyptian beliefs). When you consider the shear exposure due to their central location and the empires that expanded into their territory, there cannot be many religions on the planet that had this experience alone.

Add to this the loss of their sister nation to the Assyrians (the tribes of Joseph), and the transfer of their religious traditions and priests to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the south, and you have yet another meme pool that gets ingrafted into their belief systems.

I'm always all ears to hear about and study other religions. I have a great interest in Hinduism, Buddhism, etc, however I have to give more priority in my studies to philosophy, science, the Hebrew Bible, and the Christian Bible from the perspective of my own interests.

You might find this disputable, but let me give you an illustration of why this approach is sensible. Let's assume that there are other planets throughout our universe that have evolved sophisticated cultures who each have pursued scientific pursuits. Now, let's say that some of those cultures have evolved science with math, some without, some using classical logics, some with non-classical logics, some with set theory, some with category theory, etc, etc. Added to this assumption, let's say that some cultures perfected science better than others and that as a result, some have a more scientifically accurate perspective of the universe that other cultures are missing to some degree (but all qualify as scientific societies to some reasonable degree).

If the above is true, one could make the challenge to our scientists that our science is on the bottom end of the spectrum in terms of our effectiveness at turning up scientific truth. That is, it isn't that we are just slower at developing scientific theories, the process by which we go about it is just not nearly as effective. We are just underachievers (I wouldn't say stupid since we just approached science in a manner that didn't turn out to be as efficient and it is just a matter of time and chance on how that happened). Surely you will agree with me that this situation could exist, and in fact, it probably does exist (assuming life evolves to higher intelligence on other planets).

Should the above realistic situation and the possibility that we are at the lower half of scientific efficiency dissuade us from believing our own scientific results of 'approximate truths'? Of course not! The reason is that even though we would certainly love to study the science techniques of other worlds, we cannot be dissuaded from studying science in our world by the mere fact that we are probably not as efficient as some. We know that we are obtaining success because our science is pragmatically useful, at least up to know, and there is absolutely no reason to stop just because in all likelihood we might be less than the best at it. This would prove especially so if we had at least some information about scientific methods from some of the other planets, and started to see that these other worlds lacked the kind of heavy amounts of testing that we engage in (i.e., we build more particle accelerators, put more scientific satellites in the air). True, we haven't scouted out all the planets in the universe, and there might be a few who have equal amount if not more testing than us, but we feel pretty satisfied that so far our testing is pretty extensive.

This is the situation that I see with the Judeo-Christian heritage. It went through continual testing, and the testing was dramatic and it really went through all the kinds of situations which increases the complexity of algorithms (i.e., in terms of genetic algorithms). Hence, if God is working with the world using evolution, I have every reason to believe that the process of evolution in the Judeo-Christian heritage is top notch.

Do I want to learn more about the evolution of other belief systems? Of course. Will it affect what I believe? Possibly and probably. In fact, I have already been influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism (cultures that I have visited extensively and have had opportunities to talk religion indepthly with people who were willing to share their religious views with me). At the same time, philosophically speaking, I see a great advantage of Christian theology in causal issues which I've discussed elsewhere.

After all, once you've been exposed to the process of truth creating, you can start looking at beliefs with your intuitive feel of those beliefs, and you might have some good insights that way. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, you have to give the benefit of doubt with the process itself, and to my knowledge, the Hebrews had the best process on the planet's history.

The problem with intuition is that it can't be reasoned about and discussed. What can you say to someone who just has the "intuition" that Hinduism is correct, and that their "process" is the best of the planet's history? You're at an impasse, right? That's why we have to look past intuitions to reasons.

I have no problem at looking at reasons, but if you discount intuition then you discount one of the main reasons for considering a particular belief as true. Let me give you an example. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union there were two major competing philosophies in world politics (this is not the case anymore, but it was more the case then). There was the view of free democracies that said that the flow of information should be as free as possible, freedom of religious belief, freedom of commerce, freedom of private ownership, etc. And, there was the controlled society of socialism belief that said that news should be controlled by the state, no much in the way of religious freedom, not much in the way of private enterprise, and not much in private ownership, etc.

Now, most of us in the West thought the East was wrong, and vice versa the East thought the West was wrong. If you've ever had an argument with a post-Marxist who now talk freely on the net (assuming you aren't one yourself), then you would know how this discussion we are having has much similarity in the way different religions perceive their own religion. The argument, I believe, is one of intuition. That is, there are reasons for believing something is right over another system, but reasons are often generated by people having particular world outlooks. If all you do is bring out reasons for a particular belief, you never really engage the individual on their world outlook, and this is almost entirely intuitive-based beliefs. The intuitive-base of freedom is that it is good even in the many individual cases where one can cite abuse, inefficiencies, etc. However, there is something of this intuitive sort that, I think, is the foundation of freedom:

"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

This, of course, is a quote directly from the Declaration of Independence. You can have all the scientific arguments in the world about whether trends are good with this belief or if they are poor, but at the end of the day, it is either you believe it or you don't. It is a matter of whether you intuitively accept it, or you intuitively accept a different set of intuitive beliefs that contradict this one.

So, I do believe in intuitive arguments. I believe that if someone makes a good intuitive argument (whether it be Hinduism, Buddhism, Islamic, Jewish, Taoist, Christian, etc), then I'll listen and if I like it, I will adapt to it. The evidence is what the founding fathers called 'self-evident truths'.

Everything should be based on rational investigation, it's just that when you compare religions, you are talking about events which cannot be verified, and a slew of events which are exaggerated or just down right religious myth. Hence, you cannot rely on rational investigation in a purely philosophical sense.

I don't see how what comes after "hence" follows at all! I would rather say: "Hence, you must rely on rational investigation (in a purely philosophical sense)." How else can you tell "downright religious myth" from ideas from a good "process"?

If all you want in the way of knowledge is what we can reason, then I suppose that you should reject religion. On the other hand, if you believe that there is a God active in the influence of creating atoms, molecules, DNA, and religious beliefs about the 'bigger things', then you will have very little access to those 'bigger things' if you only rely on what you can reason. This is because our reasoning is limited and we do not see truths that we are not directly looking at in particular contexts, and it might take 'evidence' that is not usually considered in philosophical contexts to understand.

If you need to believe the basics first, such as a belief in God, then of course you don't enter into this fray (although for some it can help to become a believer, but you don't seem like that kind of individual). For non-believers, I think they should stick to resolving God's existence on pure philosophical grounds first, and then the philosophical issues as to how such a God would interact with creation and on what level. If, such an individual did advance to the point to where they believe such a God would be active in building advanced structures with intelligent creatures (i.e., atoms to molecules, molecules to DNA, DNA to animals, animals to humans, humans to societies, etc, etc), then the study of particular religions would catch one's eye.

You have to come to the table already prepared to believe that God is acting behind the scenes to reveal the key attributes about life and our existence that matter.

Oh, well... if I have to already believe in God in order to discuss reasons to believe in God, then we're not going to get very far, are we? This, too, is what I would call "begging the question."

But, this is not the topic of your thread. That's a different topic. I would never talk about a belief in God by using the evolution of the Hebrew religion. It would be preposterous since how in the world can I prove God's existence from scriptures written by people who lacked even today's knowledge of science? The topic you raised is how do you show a believer in Zeus some reasons to believe in the Hebrew beliefs. I'm already assuming some kind of theist belief system on your part. That's why I'm talking about God's intervention in biological evolution since whatever God did then, you have good reason to assume he's doing now, just with our beliefs instead of biological organisms. Of course, this assumes the Zeus believer (namely, you?) is a believer in biological evolution (i.e., theistic evolution). If you need proof of evolution, then I think we are wasting our time...

The reason is that assuming that God is behind the process of truth creating, the scriptures will start to connect in areas where they should be totally unrelated.

But of course I don't assume that God is "behind the process of truth creating"!

But, a believer in Zeus would in fact believe that, at least that was my impression of your thread. If I'm dealing with a Zeus believer who doesn't think Zeus is working with our evolutionary past, then you have to tell me exactly what Zeus' relationship is with the creation of the world in terms of modern science (i.e., again, I'm assuming that as a 'Zeus believer' that you have some kind of answer for biological evolution that suits you). I have taken the approach that as a 'Zeus believer' in any modern context would have a theistic evolutionary belief. If not, then we have to start at a more primitive philosophical starting point.

So, for example, I put a post on this board about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is a good example of allegorical meaning that you would expect to find assuming Christianity were inspired.

And why are the powerful allegories of The Odyssey or The Baghavad Gita not evidence they were similarly inspired truth?

All the time I gain spiritual insight to literature and other religious scriptures. But, as I said, I only have so much time, and besides debating people (I actually came to this board to debate with fundamentalists about the allegorical meaning of Genesis, but none showed up...), I focus on developing the beliefs which I'm very happy with.

The same applies to philosohy. I have a number of philosphical beliefs that don't have anything to do with religion, and I'm sure that if I studied a belief in more detail by reading opposing views, that I might gain a much more well-rounded perspective which, if not in contradiction to what I already believe, it might at least expand my perspective. However, due to the lack of time to study every conceivable philosophical belief, I am content to have primitive views on a number of issues so that I can have more sophisticated beliefs (i.e., sophisticated to my limited capabilities...) on issues that I care more about. I think the primitive ideas that I have on some of these other issues are 'acceptable' and I'd be willing to debate them, but I know full well that I might learn a thing or two and that I might come away with an expanded view. Since I don't have all that time and energy, I'll stick with specializing.

So, based on my exposure to other religions, etc, I haven't been compelled to move to other religious views as my primary focus. I've certainly read a number of religious views outside my own, but I haven't seen anything compelling that I would drop Christian beliefs. There's just too many nuggets in Christianity, and it has helped my philosophical direction later (which I found superior, in my own way of thinking), that I'm content with that situation.

The reason is that no one is going to invent a crucified Savior who is the only begotten son just to satisfy some allegorical scripture that many at that time would have probably not seen the meaning so overtly.

There are lots of reasons to invent a crucified savior, and there were many then, too--at least as many reasons as there were to invent a Vishnu or a Zeus.

You miss my point. Your point may well be true, but nobody is going to invent a Crucified Savior just so that they can match with the story in Genesis 22. That would be ridiculous. The story in Genesis 22 stands as an interesting allegorical case study that shines brightly in behalf of Christianity. It certainly doesn't prove Christianity, but if you already believe in the religion, then these kind of allegorical interpretations are helpful to build a deeper understanding. It doesn't come automatically from one interpretation, but if you keep building and building, eventually new things come to light. This is why I'm so busy with Christianity and not much time for Hinduism. Don't get me wrong, I wish I could spend as much time studying Hinduism, but I just can't spend all that time studying every religion that exists.

... the point is that these are the kinds of inquiry you must do in order to see the scriptural truth of a belief (i.e., beyond just believing on faith).

What's the inquiry again? Noticing that there are metaphors and powerful images? And why can't this inquiry go the same for Hinduism? (Remember it's cheating to say "because those allegories weren't from as good a process" or "because you have to have the intuition that God inspired the Biblical allegories" or such.)

I'm sure if I were studying Hinduism, or Greek mythology, for that matter, I would find a great deal of allegorical meaning. However, in the case of Greek mythology, it did not possess enough religious meaning to survive. Quite frankly, the seed probably fell on stoney ground. In the case of Hinduism, the seed obviously did not fall on stoney ground. I think there is real content there to study. However, I keep getting back to the process of the Judeo-Christian religion. The story of the Hebrews and the Christians (where they actually converted an empire) is truly amazing. Christianity even converted the invading tribes that sacked Rome. Now, that's an amazing story for a religion with such humble origins. I just don't see Hinduism having those kind of obstacles. Of course, I'm always interested in listening to a Hindu... I did plenty of that on my trips to Hindu countries.

Of course, I don't think an atheist would sympathize with such a view, but this is how I see the process moving forward in religious studies.

Okay, well the idea behind the debate here is to try to appeal to ideas that the atheist would sympathize with. We start with shared premises and work our way from there.

Is it? The topic changed without my knowledge.

If it is God's intent for humanity to evolve an atheistic religion that replaces all the world religions, including Christianity, then I guarantee that it will happen.

Grrr! This is not what I'm asking you to imagine! I'm asking you to imagine that the proper "evolution of ideas", as you insist on calling it, might bring us to a "more approximately true" belief that there is no God. I'm asking you to explain why that couldn't be the correct direction for the "evolution of ideas" to go. That's very different from there being a God, and that God deciding (for whatever sadistic reason) to make us believe atheism, which in that case would obviously be false.

Well, this is a discussion on human meaning obtained from religious faith and what kind of evidence and world events that would be needed to convince people to give up theism. It could probably happen if people's IQ were increased using some new biotech discovery, and it just so happened that philosophy was in overwhelming advantage for the atheist. In that case, I could imagine atheism becoming the world religion.

Personally, I don't think it will happen since I think atheism is philosophically-challenged. But, that's just my opinion.

Sorry if I sound frustrated. I do think it's a great exercise for both of us to try to communicate, and I'm learning a great deal. But sometimes I feel like you are reluctant even to entertain atheist ideas--even for the sake of showing them wrong.

Not so, I just want to stick to the subject of this thread. If you want to discuss the existence of God, then this - in my opinion - is not related to which scriptures are inspired by God. First you have to have a belief in God before you can even entertain what scriptures, if any, a God would be inspiring.

The problem facing atheism is that it provides virtually no meaning to life and even hardcore atheists have a hardtime with that one.

I am a hardcore atheist, and I don't have a hard time with it. Actually I think life would have a great deal less meaning with an Abrahamic (or any other all-powerful) God.

It's difficult to know why some people can manage just fine with atheism. My own experience with atheists is not much different than my experience with creationists, to be perfectly honest. The difference is that once in a while you'll come across an atheist such as yourself who doesn't show some trait of aggressiveness about themselves (the Madalyn Murray O'hare type). Since most fall into the 'blind faith' category, I've mostly lost interest in debating atheists. Agnostics are generally the best to debate with, although they just can't make up their darn minds (that's a joke...). Any way, if someone is reasonable and fairly open-minded, I really don't care what views someone holds. I'm sure I appear to be irritating too (at least that's what I've been told...).

But again, even if belief in religion does provide "meaning", "comfort", and the like, that's no reason to think it's (even approximately) true. And it's certainly not a reason to think it's "more true" than Hinduism, in any sense of "true" (except perhaps a full-blown relativistic one according to which "true" just means the same as "I believe it").

I disagree. If there is a God, and God is in the act of creating and building structures upon previously evolved structures, then there is every reason to suspect that humans are just another rung on the ladder in the evolution of the universe. It would seem perfectly logical to me that such a God would extend meaning and truth to the extant that the organisms could accept those things. It makes perfect sense to me that as one belief system was finally mastered, that the belief system would receive competition so that it could be improved and evolution would take more steps forward. If humans lack meaning, they will behave in a manner that is eventually self-destructive, and that would be contrary to the whole concept of evolving organisms up the chain of further development, hence it would seem that such a God would provide meaning according to a manner which is consistent with how life evolved overall, i.e., with as little 'control' as possible while still moving the creation in the direction of complexity and intelligence.

I don't think it begs the question. The question isn't how do we know theism is better than atheism, if that is the question, my answers are all out of context. The question (paraphrasing) is how do we know that Abrahamic traditions are more justified than a Greek pagan religion that was wiped out by Christianity. The answer to that question involves a belief in God as working behind the scenes of evolutionary processes ...

You're right that the discusssion started as one about justifying the Abrahamic God over the Greek or Hindu gods. I thought we'd veered off. But anyway do you see how this very response I've just quoted again begs the question? My question: why should a smart Martian (for example) believe in the Abrahamic Gods and not the Greek (or Hindu) gods? Your response: because the Abrahamic God has made many people "evolve" ideas about that God. Do you see how that would fail to convince an alien who didn't already believe in the Abrahamic God?

No. Because if a Martian believed in a God that acts at all levels of creation and that the more evolution had a time to work, the more the creator's work would exhibit itself, then in such a scenario, all we would need to show is the most competitive/evolutionary active locations in the history of religion that also were still religiously active, and they would have found their "DNA and RNA and cellular" components of life. That is, if you believe in theistic evolution (as we would assume the Martians had this belief - and if they didn't, we'd have to get them to this point with other philosophical discussions), then you would also have to believe that DNA and RNA and cellular components hold a special place in God's handiwork. Likewise, we show them the religions that possess similar features as evolutionary processes at work, and then we are ready to show them the philosophical merit of the religion, and then the allegorical merit of the religion, and then they can focus most of their interest in a few religions at most. Probably some of the Martians will become Christians, some will become Buddhists, some will become Hindus, etc. If we tell them to come back in a few thousand years, we might have condensed the beliefs into one, so it's their choice to stay and watch, or come back later.

]... you have to assume that if it were as true, then [the idea] probably would still exist.

Why? Maybe it hasn't been thought up yet. Maybe the truth was forgotten, as the truth that the earth was round died out after Greece fell. Maybe belief in the Greek gods is the brick rejected by the builders that will be the cornerstone later. Why can't it be?

Well, the key word is 'probably'. Even the stone rejected by builders had a great deal of architects who protested that this particular stone was not used. The mammals were another stone rejected by the builders, but they were pretty numerous and active during the reign of the dinosaurs. In the case of Greek mythology as a religion, there are no temples, no religion having a few million, etc. True, anything is possible, but probably the only ones who bring up Zeus are the atheists and agnostics, and if people really did start converting to the Zeus religion, I can't see atheists and agnostics all of sudden being content. No, they would just bring up Christianity saying "how come you guys switched to Zeus? What about Christianity?" So, in all likelihood, the Greek religion is gone. No one knows for sure. But, of course, who knows, maybe Ptolemy science will apply on a quantum theory of gravity level, and then we'll all be back at square one (that's of course prior to the discovery of the new laws of astrology which take over astronomy once again...).

Yes, there are mistakes in evolution. However, we have a very big difference of view. As a theistic evolutionist I believe there are no mistakes in the areas where mistakes would foil God's plan.

Well you see "theistic evoultion" is another premise that you will not share with an atheist (or a smart Martian). It already assumes that God exists and that belief in God is not a "mistake" in the evolution of ideas.

We need to move away from this discussion and go directly to a debate on whether God exists. I see that this is needed.

In terms of biological evolution, the dinosaurs were a mistake in that they were probably set to dominate the earth forever.

Here again you appeal to "theistic evolution". The dinosaurs were only a "mistake" if you assume ahead of time that somehow homo sapiens was destined to evolve as a part of God's plan to create something in God's own image. To a naturalistic evolutionary biologist, the dinosaurs were no more a mistake than any other species, and their extinction was not a matter of God falling asleep at the wheel and waking up again--it was just a fluke, that's all, and there's no reason something similar couldn't happen to us.

The 'naturalistic evolutionary biologists' would have to be a metaphysical naturalistic biologists. I've attended lectures of naturalistic evolutionary biologists who were theistic evolutionists. The difference is that they accept methodological naturalism, they just believe that there is something more to the process of naturalism than meets the eye. There's some debate within scientific and philosophical circles to lay off on the metaphysical stuff. The reason is that science is extremely limited with respect to metaphysics. It might seem that natural is metaphysically natural, but science has no way to test for such a belief. And, the question has been posed, is it science's place to espouse metaphysical beliefs. To those who believe the role of science is physical theory selection and not metaphysics, it seems the answer is to avoid metaphysics. That answer is not so much as to appease theistic evolutionists, it is more to keep science focused on science and not metaphysical issues.

I am not in a position to rule out any future. All I can do is trust the process that I think is working, and that process combined with the rational elements in support of it leads me to a belief in Christianity.

Well, I don't share the intuitive trust in the "process"--and I sure don't see why I should trust that process more than the one that resulted in Hinduism. So let's hear more about these "rational elements" instead. Again: why should a smart Martian--who doesn't already believe in God, doesn't already have the intuition that God is directing ideas, doesn't already prefer some allegorical stories to others because they talk about God and not Vishnu--why should that Martian believe in the Abrahamic God, and not Vishnu?

This is not the right order of philosophical discussion. First you have to establish that some kind of ordering agent having a metaphsical intention for creation exists. Then you need to show that it would be active in every aspect of creation. Then you need to show that religion would be affected by it.

What I think I have done here is take the argument from this point to the point to where the religion of the Hebrews and Christians has an individual character that does to some significant degree separate it from the other religions of the world. I haven't been able to, and have no intention of, eliminating other world religions. Instead, I focus on the process of truth building, and why the Hebrews were well suited for that role. Since your questions are now moving into another discussion, it is time to start a new thread. I believe this forum has some existing forums for 'does God exist', etc. So, rather than using an active forum, perhaps you can think of a unique question that keeps it small and practical for our purposes?

[spetey]

Hi again harvey1! Goodness you're so prolific. You've made lots of good points, and also made lots of points that I'd really like to stop and refute. But instead I'll take a deep breath and pick what I think is the main issue. You seem to waver on it and I'm not clear where you stand.

The main question, as I see it, of this thread: is there good reason to believe in the Abrahamic God and not, say, the gods of the Hindus? (We'll set the Greek gods aside, though I still think there's equally good reason to believe in them.)

Sometimes you seem to say "yes", and you appeal to the unique history of the Abrahamic tradition, saying they suffered a large exchange of ideas and such. (And again I assure you the Hindu tradition also was greatly persecuted, and also interacted with a vast array of cultures and ideas!) Other times you seem to say no--a smart Martian with no antecedent intuitions on the matter could just as easily choose Hinduism, you seem to say, when faced with reasons to pick one or the other. You seem to want to say "I think Christianity is right, they think Hinduism is right, both have lots of good ideas, and eh, it's a toss-up. They're both [approximately? / pragmatically? / possibly?] true. But I'll stick with mine because it's as true as any other, and I'm busy."

Now I sure understand being busy--there's lots to know out there and only so much time. I too don't know everything about Hinduism, or Christianity, or... But the thing is, Abrahamic religions and Hinduism are incompatible. And when faced with incompatible beliefs, you only get to believe one or the other (consistently). And if there is a God or a Vishnu, then this is probably the single most important fact facing us in our short lifetime. If you think maybe the Hindus got it right, and you've been worshipping the wrong god all this time, then you'd better find out! Because otherwise you're just going to be reincarnated as a slug or something; you won't have made much progress in the Hindu "evolution of ideas".

But you see it's your indifference in the face of this huge problem that puzzles me. You seem willing to bank everything on the Abrahamic God even though you (at times?) are willing to say there's equally good reason to think the Hindus got it right--or at least that it's possible that should you study Hinduism you'd find they got it right. It's like putting all your life savings on a horse you heard was a sure bet, then later finding out there are other "sure bet" horses in the race, and keeping your life savings on the first one regardless. Right?

I think your analogy with different possible developments of science is in some ways apt. The important thing to see is what happens when scientists discover another, incompatible science.

Suppose you're planning a big expedition to Mars, and you've got it all worked out according to your science how to get people there; you send them off on trajectory x, for one thing. But then suppose you run into another culture (maybe the Australians!) with an obviously good science who say no no, according to our science you send them off on trajectory y! You don't at this point say "well, they've got their evolution of ideas, I've got mine, I'm a little too busy to see what's up with their science, let's just send them off on trajectory x." Instead you try to see which one of the two is right. That's how science often progresses. You treat disagreement as a genuine question of which of two (or more) options is true, and you try to settle the issue with reasons.

The point from my atheist perspective, of course, is not that there is a god or two and you'd better get busy finding out which ones do exist. Instead the point is this: religious believers--whether Christian, Hindu, or what have you--seem uninterested in checking the other religions to see which got it right. And it's this strange unwillingness on believers' parts that makes me suspect that their belief isn't about carefully weighed reason, like in science; that it's instead about "faith" and "intuition".

But once you're on that ground, you share it with astrologers, faith healers, racists who were "just raised that way", and any other dogmatic position that does not wish to engage in trying to find reasons to share with those who disagree. To the extent you're willing to say that you can give no reason to pick the Abrahamic tradition over the Hindu one, that's the extent to which I claim your belief is purely faith-based. And myself, I think belief by faith is horribly irresponsible--as much more obviously dangerous "faiths" like racism demonstrate.

In a disagreement you can only appeal to what's "self-evident" to both sides. Otherwise, if you insist on treating as "self-evident" what the other side denies, you simply will make no progress, and the issue can only be settled by good PR, or tanks, or what have you. But it's much better to settle it by reasons, right?


spetey

[harvey1]

You seem to waver on it and I'm not clear where you stand. The main question, as I see it, of this thread: is there good reason to believe in the Abrahamic God and not, say, the gods of the Hindus?

I have to run for New Year's, so I'll respond later to your post. However, the answer to your question involves an elaboration of 'approximate truth'. For example, some of your statements are not altogether (or necessarily) correct:

"But the thing is, Abrahamic religions and Hinduism are incompatible."

"If you think maybe the Hindus got it right, and you've been worshipping the wrong god all this time, then you'd better find out!"

"It's like putting all your life savings on a horse you heard was a sure bet, then later finding out there are other "sure bet" horses in the race, and keeping your life savings on the first one regardless. Right?"

"Instead you try to see which one of the two is right. That's how science often progresses. You treat disagreement as a genuine question of which of two (or more) options is true, and you try to settle the issue with reasons."

"To the extent you're willing to say that you can give no reason to pick the Abrahamic tradition over the Hindu one, that's the extent to which I claim your belief is purely faith-based.' (Note: not what I'm saying)

"In a disagreement you can only appeal to what's "self-evident" to both sides. Otherwise, if you insist on treating as "self-evident" what the other side denies, you simply will make no progress, and the issue can only be settled by good PR, or tanks, or what have you."

These statements need a response, and when I get a chance I'll provide it.

[harvey1]

The main question, as I see it, of this thread: is there good reason to believe in the Abrahamic God and not, say, the gods of the Hindus? (We'll set the Greek gods aside, though I still think there's equally good reason to believe in them.) Sometimes you seem to say "yes", and you appeal to the unique history of the Abrahamic tradition, saying they suffered a large exchange of ideas and such. (And again I assure you the Hindu tradition also was greatly persecuted, and also interacted with a vast array of cultures and ideas!) Other times you seem to say no--a smart Martian with no antecedent intuitions on the matter could just as easily choose Hinduism, you seem to say, when faced with reasons to pick one or the other.

Not exactly what I'm saying. Think of it this way. Let's say that a Martian came to earth, and they found our science to be different from that of their own. Now, since they have no way to judge our science from pseudoscience since their science is incompatible, and they really don't want to waste time studying pseudoscience, one of the brilliant Martians among them suggests that they look at our methods of science investigation, and the ones that show something similar to scientific methods, they will select those sciences to study. They find out through careful observation that biology, paleontology, archaeology, chemistry, physics, etc, all show a method that appears scientific. So, rather than study astrology, numerology, etc, they put a team together to each study a separate sector of human sciences. Some of the Martians study biology, some study paleontology, etc, and this is how the Martians decipher the approximate truths constructed by humanity.

Similarly, when the Martians what to understand the approximate truths of earth religions, they are going to study Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, etc. They will do so because the methods of each are similar to how they constructed the truths in their religions. However, they review our religious history on the planet, and they see that some religions of humanity have fallen by the weigh side, or they see that the major religions have evolved from more primitive roots, so they choose to save their resources and not study bygone religions (e.g., ancient Greek religions), or those of a primitive nature (e.g., animism).

You seem to want to say "I think Christianity is right, they think Hinduism is right, both have lots of good ideas, and eh, it's a toss-up. They're both [approximately? / pragmatically? / possibly?] true. But I'll stick with mine because it's as true as any other, and I'm busy."

Again, you misunderstand me. Let me give you a rough analogy which might help to understand my views.

Actually, much is made about the unification of scientific laws, etc, but in actuality there is much incompatibility in science, even physics. For example, quantum theory (i.e., the collection of quantum theories) and relativity theory (general and special relativity) have some common features (e.g., special relativity and quantum electrodynamics), however on the most part, quantum theory is not compatible with relativity theory.

(see, for example, http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive ... index.html )

Therefore, think of what I'm saying along the lines of this analogy. Let's say for argument's sake that Christianity is quantum theory, and Hinduism is relativity theory. These are two sets of theories are incompatible and are mostly incompatible, and yet both are highly successful theories. What I'm basically saying is that I'm a 'quantum scientist' and believe that the 'testing' in my field is extraordinarily successful. Yes, I agree that Hinduism currently looks incompatible, but I believe that unification is possible down the road once more testing and development takes place for both 'theories' and that, even though that is the future, I have every reason to try and convince young 'scientists' and skeptics of science to be a believer in 'quantum theory'. True, someone might come along and deny the truth of both 'theories' and say, like Barrett, that they aren't even approximately true, however I believe this is wrong since 'quantum theory' as 'approximately true' is the best explanation of the pragmatic success of the 'theory'.

Now I sure understand being busy--there's lots to know out there and only so much time. I too don't know everything about Hinduism, or Christianity, or... But the thing is, Abrahamic religions and Hinduism are incompatible. And when faced with incompatible beliefs, you only get to believe one or the other (consistently). And if there is a God or a Vishnu, then this is probably the single most important fact facing us in our short lifetime. If you think maybe the Hindus got it right, and you've been worshipping the wrong god all this time, then you'd better find out! Because otherwise you're just going to be reincarnated as a slug or something; you won't have made much progress in the Hindu "evolution of ideas".

As we see between relativity theory and quantum theory, incompatibility is common even within science. It's not that truth is not existing, rather truth is hard to be bound by belief systems of men. It's not a fraility of truth, it is a fraility of belief systems. This doesn't mean that we wave up our hands and forget the methods of understanding approximate truth, rather we move forward in our specific approaches, and hopefully at some point we'll have breakthroughs which will help resolve some of the incompatabilities.

Science also has a history of resolving incompatible theories (e.g., QED had three different formulations before Freeman Dyson was successful at resolving the three approaches and showing they were all equivalent). What that means is that someone is talking about X, and someone else is talking about Y. Both parties think they are talking about the same variable, but it turns out that they are each talking about something different.

But you see it's your indifference in the face of this huge problem that puzzles me. You seem willing to bank everything on the Abrahamic God even though you (at times?) are willing to say there's equally good reason to think the Hindus got it right--or at least that it's possible that should you study Hinduism you'd find they got it right. It's like putting all your life savings on a horse you heard was a sure bet, then later finding out there are other "sure bet" horses in the race, and keeping your life savings on the first one regardless. Right?

I see myself as a 'quantum theorist' (extending my analogy), and not as a 'general relativist'. I would love to study 'general relativity', and to better understand the world I might someday need to, but right now I only have time to put my efforts into understanding 'quantum theory'. I'm not judging the 'general relativists' since I see that their methods look pretty good (although as a 'quantum theorist' I think my testing has the best of any field of science...), so I feel I'm justified in putting my efforts where I have placed them.

I think your analogy with different possible developments of science is in some ways apt. The important thing to see is what happens when scientists discover another, incompatible science. Suppose you're planning a big expedition to Mars, and you've got it all worked out according to your science how to get people there; you send them off on trajectory x, for one thing. But then suppose you run into another culture (maybe the Australians!) with an obviously good science who say no no, according to our science you send them off on trajectory y! You don't at this point say "well, they've got their evolution of ideas, I've got mine, I'm a little too busy to see what's up with their science, let's just send them off on trajectory x." Instead you try to see which one of the two is right. That's how science often progresses. You treat disagreement as a genuine question of which of two (or more) options is true, and you try to settle the issue with reasons.

Actually, religion not only has to find compatibilities with other religions (if need be), it must also find compatibilities with philosophy and science. So, you have to pick your priorities. Quantum physicists who seek to make quantum physics compatible with classical statistical mechanics might have to neglect making it compatible with general relativity. There, is of course, work done by others to make GR and the quantum to be compatible, but the truth of the matter is that this might involve another new theory that has not been proven (e.g., string theory). In which case, you might better spend your time first trying to make quantum theory compatible within itself first (e.g., QM, QED, QCD).

The point from my atheist perspective, of course, is not that there is a god or two and you'd better get busy finding out which ones do exist. Instead the point is this: religious believers--whether Christian, Hindu, or what have you--seem uninterested in checking the other religions to see which got it right. And it's this strange unwillingness on believers' parts that makes me suspect that their belief isn't about carefully weighed reason, like in science; that it's instead about "faith" and "intuition".

I think many people are interested in finding comparisons between major religions. There are websites dedicated to showing how world scriptures have many similarties.

However, the 'reasoning' process by which religions merge is different than how they emerge in science. In the case of science, theories join together because someone like Dyson comes along and proves a connection between incompatible theories. In the case of religion, I'm saying it is God who makes this decision. God is the one who will determine what Christianity will become, and what Hinduism will become. And, it is done by the evolution process which God controls. We have no idea what is to happen in the future, and those future events will have an all-encompassing effect on the evolution of religion. I'm sure the priests of the Elohim tradition had no idea that their homeland would be destroyed by the Assyrians, and their priestly competitors in the South would be incorporating their traditions and the world would read their scriptures by their hands.

But once you're on that ground, you share it with astrologers, faith healers, racists who were "just raised that way", and any other dogmatic position that does not wish to engage in trying to find reasons to share with those who disagree. To the extent you're willing to say that you can give no reason to pick the Abrahamic tradition over the Hindu one, that's the extent to which I claim your belief is purely faith-based. And myself, I think belief by faith is horribly irresponsible--as much more obviously dangerous "faiths" like racism demonstrate.

There's faith involved, but it's not a blind faith. As I said, it is trusting in God's involvement in the evolution of the faith, studying the faith within context of philosophy and other findings (e.g., scientific), as well as studying the scriptures for allegorical understanding (e.g., my post on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob on this sub-forum), and this will help to understand the Christian faith. As time moves on, the evolution of the faith will proceed methodologically in a natural manner, and God will work behind the scenes.

In a disagreement you can only appeal to what's "self-evident" to both sides. Otherwise, if you insist on treating as "self-evident" what the other side denies, you simply will make no progress, and the issue can only be settled by good PR, or tanks, or what have you. But it's much better to settle it by reasons, right?

Self-evident is simply that, 'self' evident. The founding fathers of the American constitution even made this clear by saying 'we believe'. It is not something they were going to argue, or they were going to say anything further about it. Intuition is an appeal to those who believe in a like-minded way. Sometimes this does lead to war in the world, in fact the declaration of independence led to a war with Britain, and even after the war the Brits perhaps did not believe the same as these founding fathers. It is perhaps true that most people even in the American colonies did not believe as they. The popularity of this intuitive appeal spread after the Revolutionary War, and for whatever reason, it gained widespread agreement. Today, there are hundreds of millions of people that believe that those intuitive statements about freedom are valid. You might say that the evolution of this idea triumphed over the ideas of oppression.

[spetey]

Hello! Let me again skip big chunks to what I think is more key:

The point from my atheist perspective, of course, is not that there is a god or two and you'd better get busy finding out which ones do exist. Instead the point is this: religious believers--whether Christian, Hindu, or what have you--seem uninterested in checking the other religions to see which got it right. And it's this strange unwillingness on believers' parts that makes me suspect that their belief isn't about carefully weighed reason, like in science; that it's instead about "faith" and "intuition".

I think many people are interested in finding comparisons between major religions. There are websites dedicated to showing how world scriptures have many similarties.

However, the 'reasoning' process by which religions merge is different than how they emerge in science. In the case of science, theories join together because someone like Dyson comes along and proves a connection between incompatible theories. In the case of religion, I'm saying it is God who makes this decision. God is the one who will determine what Christianity will become, and what Hinduism will become.

You make an interesting analogy, harvey1:

• Christianity : Hinduism :: Quantum mechanics : General relativity

The analogy you wish to draw, as I see it, is that both are pairs of idea-sets apparently incompatible but (you'd want to say) approximately true, and one could reasonably devote one's (spiritual / scientific) career simply to one of them. This is a strong analogy for your case.

As I'm sure you're aware though, there are serious disanalogies:

1. QM and GR deal in very different realms, and only conflict in extremely specific and rare circumstances where things have always been mysterious anyway, and go haywire generally. That's why science can currently accept both as working theories at once. Christianity and Hinduism, on the other hand, conflict directly about their core subject matter: whether or not Jesus rose from the dead, say, or that Vishnu and Ganesh exist. It's much more like the scientific conflict between astronomers who thought the earth was at the center of the universe and those who didn't. This wasn't a minor conflicting detail--this was a major disagreement that needed immediate attention.
2. The reaction to the (comparatively tiny) conflict points in QM and GR was to initiate a furor of investigation and huge realms of scientific inquiry to try to settle this problem. They assume that something must be wrong with QM, or GR, or both. By contrast, there may be a few websites scattered about that compare different religions, and sure there are "comparative religion" classes, but I have never heard of anyone who treats it as a serious problem to be solved--as a serious disagreement where at least one side of the issue is fundamentally mistaken about how things work.
3. In science we can trust that human reasoning will eventually help us settle the issue; many seem happy to think, for example, that the issue between QM and GR has been settled (though of course there are many mysteries that remain). In the case of religion I think you are representative of almost everyone: they eventually appeal to ideas that other potential investigators can't share. You say, for example, it's God who will direct our ideas correctly. Imagine a QM physicist saying "well since the world works according to the laws of QM, it's the fundamental laws of QM that will determine whether QM or GR is right in the details." Doesn't this demonstrate circular reasoning? Doesn't it suggest the scientist doesn't really want to investigate the hypothesis that maybe the QM laws themselves need adjusting?
4. And in the case of two fundamentally different theories, it can't be just minor adjustments to Christianity that would do the trick. It may require throwing out the theory altogether, just as we did with the theory that the sun goes around the earth.

As time moves on, the evolution of the faith will proceed methodologically in a natural manner, and God will work behind the scenes.

Only if there is an Abrahamic God directing the "evolution". But you don't get to appeal to this idea when talking to me, or to the smart Martian.

Thanks again for your thought-provoking posts, and happy new year to all debaters on the forum!


spetey

[harvey1]

The analogy you wish to draw, as I see it, is that both are pairs of idea-sets apparently incompatible but (you'd want to say) approximately true, and one could reasonably devote one's (spiritual / scientific) career simply to one of them. This is a strong analogy for your case.As I'm sure you're aware though, there are serious disanalogies:[*]QM and GR deal in very different realms, and only conflict in extremely specific and rare circumstances where things have always been mysterious anyway, and go haywire generally. That's why science can currently accept both as working theories at once.

The problem with saying the theories deal with extremes is that it isn't an extreme for the universe, rather, it is an extreme for human sense awareness. It is at least conceivable (but not at all likely), that Martians could have evolved incredible senses that could detect quantum measurements as well as subtle gravitational waves and 'see' the space curvature of objects possessing mass. The Martians that evolved on this conceivable Mars would have to 'explain' not only the pull of gravity (as our ancestors), but they'd also have to explain the obvious incompatibilities with the world of the quantum with the world of gravitation on a large-scale. It's not too unimaginable that some cultures would form QM based religions and others would form GR based religions.

Christianity and Hinduism, on the other hand, conflict directly about their core subject matter: whether or not Jesus rose from the dead, say, or that Vishnu and Ganesh exist.

Let's suppose that I'm right, and the universe is self-similar. That is, a small sampling of input that properly represents large-scale features of the universe that you would think you would need vast technology to come to understand. Like the conceivable Martians with vast quantum/gravitational wave sensors, it's possible that the Hebrews could pay attention to self-similar traits that lead them to a QM understanding of the world, and Hindus could pay attention to self-similar traits that lead them to a GR understanding of the world. Both think they are describing the world since they are constantly receiving positive feedback to their understanding (i.e., new information seems to 'fit' with their 'QM' or 'GR' perspectives). It's just that their religions based on self-similar traits do not exactly match.

The Hindus and Hebrews both share at least one common trait, both are apt to talk in allegorical terms, in fact their culture requires it. For example, the Hindu term "Ekam Sat, Vipraha Bahudha Vadanti" means literally "Truth is One, though the sages know it as many". So, although there are striking differences, yet with this one phrase a whole class of differences come together as in the Hebrew phrase: "Shama' Yisra'el Yahweh 'Alhynv Yahweh 'echad " which means literally "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD". God is also identified as the God of Truth within the Hebrew Bible: "Into your hands I commit my spirit; redeem me, O LORD , the God of truth." (Psalms 31:5).

What this shows is that although there certainly are differences, it appears on the subject of God being truth and God being one, the Hindus and Hebrews were in agreement.

It's much more like the scientific conflict between astronomers who thought the earth was at the center of the universe and those who didn't. This wasn't a minor conflicting detail--this was a major disagreement that needed immediate attention.

It might seem that way to you, but the opinion of the one who matters most is God. You see, you can resolve any dispute between two parties by saying that their dispute is so far apart that one has to be false and only one can be true, but I don't think it boils down to those two alternatives. I can image a situation where one religion is like Richard's Feynman's formulation of QED (i.e., the path integral) and the other is like Julian Schwinger's formulation of QED. In the case of science it takes a Freeman Dyson to show that they are talking about the same world, whereas with religion I believe it takes the hand of God over evolutionary periods to show if or how the two different formulations cohere.

Also, I should state this, since we simply cannot rule it out. There is no guarantee in our world that things must 100% cohere. The idea of 100% coherence might haunt science for generations, and they might finally give up on this holy grail of science after we can no longer afford more and more expensive particle accelerators (etc). So, although I believe in 100% coherence, I do not rule the possibility that the limitations of language-based constructs, or limitations in reality itself, etc, might all prevent 100% coherence. I must admit, if you look at the shear volume of incompatibilities, the possibility exists.

[*]The reaction to the (comparatively tiny) conflict points in QM and GR was to initiate a furor of investigation and huge realms of scientific inquiry to try to settle this problem. They assume that something must be wrong with QM, or GR, or both. By contrast, there may be a few websites scattered about that compare different religions, and sure there are "comparative religion" classes, but I have never heard of anyone who treats it as a serious problem to be solved--as a serious disagreement where at least one side of the issue is fundamentally mistaken about how things work.

You are assuming that religion is purely a human invention with no behind the scenes influence by God. The thing is this, if the evolution of religion is being influenced by God behind the scenes, then humans may or may not see the patterns that are emerging between religions, and we certainly can't predict what will happen in the future (regardless if God is behind religion or not). Science might also be effected by God's hand behind the scenes activity (just like religion, which I strongly suspect that it is), however in the case of science, God's hand is much more restricted on what can influence the direction of science without upsetting the methods of science. For example, God could create the appropriate circumstances that allows enough creationists to slip through and get Ph.D.'s and teaching positions in universities, and then allow more of the public to side with creationism, and sooner than you can say 'Duane Gish', the scientific world is being affected by God's hand. However, such a move by God not only effects the beliefs of science, it effects the methods of science. If God allows humans to have their science undisturbed (i.e., not favoring Creationists, for example), then God is limited in effecting science (i.e., without effecting the methods of science).

With regard to religion, the methods of religion are much more generalized to evolutionary changes in general, and the patterns of what is being designed are much more difficult to understand - especially with incomplete information of the future. God might know there is a limited nuclear war coming in the 22nd century, and that might greatly impact religion in a way that God will allow knowing full well that such events will keep humanity from complete annihilation (just as a morbid example). Humans have no way of knowing the situation behind such cataclysmic events and how it will effect world religions and their evolution, so I wouldn't say it is a waste of time to study religions for comparative analysis, but it certainly makes it harder when dealing with unpredictables to the evolution of religion.

[*]In science we can trust that human reasoning will eventually help us settle the issue; many seem happy to think, for example, that the issue between QM and GR has been settled (though of course there are many mysteries that remain). In the case of religion I think you are representative of almost everyone: they eventually appeal to ideas that other potential investigators can't share. You say, for example, it's God who will direct our ideas correctly. Imagine a QM physicist saying "well since the world works according to the laws of QM, it's the fundamental laws of QM that will determine whether QM or GR is right in the details." Doesn't this demonstrate circular reasoning? Doesn't it suggest the scientist doesn't really want to investigate the hypothesis that maybe the QM laws themselves need adjusting?

You know, it really doesn't matter what the quantum scientist on the street believes about quantum mechanics. Most scientists are concerned with their own work, and that work might have nothing to do with which laws of quantum mechanics need to be adjusted. They would perhaps tend to think that's a problem they cannot solve at the moment, and go back to work on quantum mechanics, and would probably have very few reservations on 'selling' QM to potential grad students or the public in general. This is just a part of science.

Similarly, I think most moderate to liberal Christians realize that they do not have every i dotted and every t crossed with respect to Church doctrine. They realize, like most scientists, that at some point there might be corrections (e.g., 'when we all get to Heaven'). However, there really is no sense waving your hands and walking away from your faith simply because some doctrine m-i-g-h-t be allegorized or some belief m-i-g-h-t be wrong. What you do is very similar to the quantum scientist. You go to work and just assume those matters will be resolved in time. You trust the method that brought about revelation from God (or what you believe to be revelation from God), and instead you focus on the productive side of the faith which is to extend your knowledge on such matters that you can have an impact. So, for most Christians, this means studying scriptures and try to understand how those scriptures apply to their lives, or reviewing the philosophy behind the scriptures so they can come to grips with what they believe to be correct, etc.

[*]And in the case of two fundamentally different theories, it can't be just minor adjustments to Christianity that would do the trick. It may require throwing out the theory altogether, just as we did with the theory that the sun goes around the earth.

This is science, not religion. The analogy breaks down in this sense since it is not humans that ultimately decide how two different religions are bridged, it is God. God chooses by circumstances (e.g., the calling of an apostle Paul) to make a religion succeed when most would have given it no winning odds at all. However, the analogy between QM and GR still applies since the actions of God take the place of scientific attempts to bridge gaps (I know, we need another thread to discuss why it is justified to believe that God exists and is involved in human religion like this). In addition, throwing out false theories is something that naturally occurs once people lose interest in a religion, and again, this happens for many reasons - but God has much say in it. Christianity might have gone the way of the Essene religion (another Hebrew religion from that period), but instead God (I believe) inspired the apostle Paul and a few others, changing everything.

As time moves on, the evolution of the faith will proceed methodologically in a natural manner, and God will work behind the scenes.

Only if there is an Abrahamic God directing the "evolution". But you don't get to appeal to this idea when talking to me, or to the smart Martian.

As I mentioned, start another thread with exactly the question that you would like me to comment on. That thread isn't specific to the Abrahamic God since my statement here is a general theistic evolutionist stance, not necessarily specific to Abrahamic religions. The support for Abrahamic religion requires the theistic stance to being true, and if true, my argument in this thread, I believe, gets you from there to a reason to support and concentrate one's faith within the Abrahamic tradition.

This thread, as I understand it, is specific to knowing how someone can distinguish between a religion like Christianity and a dead religion like the ancient Greek religion. As a review, it is as follows:

- Hebrews had the necessary evolutionary mechanisms at play in their historical development by which they could construct truths (or approximate truths) of God

- Hebrews had the necessary evolutionary mechanisms at play in the metaphors and other literary devices by which self-similarity of the world could help lead them to construct truths (or approximate truths) of God

- Hebrews had the necessary evolutionary mechanisms at play in their scriptural developments by which they could construct truths (or approximate truths) of God

- Other religious cultures were much more limited at the above and didn't have nearly the 'testing' circumstances which causes one to drop beliefs and select more intuitive appealing beliefs or beliefs that have more meaning which are both indicators of truth (or approximate truths) of God, this is akin to a crude type of reasoning taking place over time

- Meaningful beliefs can bubble to the top and be the stone rejected by builders in that their pragmatic value keeps them active as philosophical investigation shows their value. A culture like the Hebrews was able to hold onto meaningful beliefs which gave them an advantage of developing truths (or approximate truths) due to this correlation between truth and maximum meaning of a belief.

- Hebrews also had extensive self-reflecting periods where they could assess the impact of the scriptural changes and ideas that had been provided, and therefore they were in excellent position to advance their beliefs further once a new round of testing begun

- God is involved with human religions and their development, so different cultures are always being prodded to develop their beliefs further, but not every culture is optimized for the evolutionary developments. In the case of the Hebrews, their situation optimized them to be furtile ground for the spreading of God's seed. The development of religion is methodologically natural, but it is not metaphysically natural

- Although the emphasis of our talks has been about truths per se, the real emphasis should be on the methods used by a culture to obtain truth. The methods are primary in order to decide if a culture is producing religious truths.

- Other religions (or secular literature, etc) that have success over time and have 'good' methods to produce 'approximate truth' can be a source for better understanding, but there is nothing wrong with sticking with what you already know has used outstanding methods, makes sense (philosophically and intuitively speaking), and has great allegorical back-up in the scriptures which underlie the doctrinal beliefs. The Christian religion qualifies on those grounds as a religion that meets those conditions of truth, and therefore one is not in a position to know every last bit of information of other world religions and compare as long as the Christian religion meets these particular truth conditions.

- The evolutionary developments in Christianity do have potential mistakes in them, however there has been a great deal of time in the development, so many mistakes have already been weeded out, but mistakes can exist at this point and they can also be removed later. No particular future can be ruled out, but the direction is one of fixing mistakes and increasing the truth content.

- Other religions can have their own approximate truths, but due to the wide-range of allegorical interpretation, some religious truths can later turn out to be allegorical. However, since the process is good for the Hebrews, the Hebrew beliefs have top notch priority in providing more fundamental truths (i.e., covering a wider range of truth conditions)

- Intuition is not based on constructing a line of reasoning in support of a view as it is about hitting upon something that should be taken self-evident. Hence, the Hebrews and other religions have much in the way of intuitive beliefs which must be taken seriously in terms of constructing truths. Since the Hebrews were exposed to a great deal of intuitive beliefs from the many empires and religions they came in direct contact, they had an advantage at accepting many intuitive arguments.

- God acting the same in any evolutionary context is a great selling point for theistic evolution working with the Hebrews, and therefore this consistency suggests that God was working with the Abrahamic tradition

- Atheism is unlikely to become a winning belief system because it lacks the meaning (a big crowd displeaser) and it is philosophically-challenged. But, only God can determine what belief systems will do well as humanity evolves

- Scientific theories possess a great deal of incompatibility, and religions are no different in this respect. However, this does not prevent scientists of a particular discipline to working without much thought about the incompatibilities of their field with other successful fields of science just as long as they experience good pragmatic and testing success. Since Christianity might be in such a similar relationship with Hinduism (or other competing religion), there is no earth shattering reason for a Christian to feel compelled to study Hinduism (or all other religions) in detail

- God evolves a religion in a way which cannot be predicted, so it is very difficult to know which beliefs of differing religions will be later seen as more true than other religions. Since we cannot know, we are justified to rolling up our sleeves and spending our time productively in a religion that conforms to the minimum criteria (e.g., testing, allegorical meaning, good evolutionary mechanisms at work)

- The Hebrew religion and Hindu religion at first glance look very different in identity of 'God', but there's evidence to suggest that they are very similar in this very important perspective of God's identity

- 100% compatibility in things related to truth might not be possible. There might exist incompatible theories and religions as a matter of language-based or reality-based limitations. Therefore, it might not be a priority that Christianity and Hinduism (et al.) are fully reconciled in the future. It might be the way things are to some extent