~gasp~ You killed Donatello! How could you!?
seiler88 said:
Interesting, you brought up some good points.
Just one major problem, I am a Christian and a student of science and my faith is not based only on emotion. You see science dictates for something to be fact you have to be able to test it and the problem with the atheist view is that it is just as untestable as the theistic position. Scientists have not been able to create life in a lab so until they do God's not going anywhere.
While I agree with your position on a rational level. (I'm not religious, but that's irrelevant.)
The reason you get into that position is that while, yes, 'something cannot be proven true' is logically equivalent to 'something cannot be proven false', and thus the supposed atheist position is no more logically sound than the religious position,
The reason this argument tends to get challenged so much by athiests is that science doesn't function that way in practice.
There's several things going on that undermine that position. (which, I incidentally don't especially agree with, but again, not relevant.)
Firstly, there's occam's razor. "if two theories make equivalent predictions, then the simpler one is correct" - This is often used in dubious ways, and people especially seem to ignore the
equivalent predictions thing.
It's also not a statement of truth. But a pragmatic one, because simpler theories are easier to work with.
In the same sense that in mathematics, 1 + 10 - 10 + 1 = 2, is the same thing as 1 + 1 = 2, but the second is simply more convenient.
It's not explicitly saying that the first statement is wrong, merely that it is harder to work with, and accepting it as valid doesn't really get you anything useful.
It's very much a pragmatic 'rule' rather than a guide to what's true and what isn't. (Though people love to misuse it to claim some aspect of 'truth')
The next is, that in spite of what pure logic might say, the scientific position turns out to be 'false until proven otherwise.'
As a personal point of philosophy I go with the logically equivalent 'true until proven otherwise', but I'll admit that while logically equivalent it is much harder to work with, because to really do it properly you have to accept literally
everything that cannot currently be proven as potentially true. You can't really pick and choose.
If you assume 'false until proven otherwise', you basically start with nothing, and never have to consider something unless it has some proof behind it.
This is much easier to handle mentally, which is likely why it is used in science. (as with Occam's razor).
But, it should be immediately obvious why taking 'false until proven otherwise' would lead atheists to take the position they do on religion.
The final one is 'burden of proof'. This one is a little mean-spirited in a way, but nonetheless, it has a certain logic to it.
Basically it is this: "The person making an 'extraordinary' claim is the one that has the burden of proving it to be true. the person who doesn't believe it is not in any way obligated to prove why not'
The reason why it's mean-spirited, obviously, lies in the choice of definitions for what, exactly constitutes an 'extraordinary' claim.
For science it's not that hard to work out. An 'extraordinary claim' is one that is radically different from all known established theories and laws that have to do with the same subject.
But when discussing something inherently unanswerable it does come across as a bit arbitrary.
Anyway, part of the reason I don't have any formal religious beliefs isn't because of needing 'proof' that God exists... But rather that there are so many elements of most religions that aren't 'unprovable' at all, they are outright false by any objective measure.
Strip away these blatantly false elements and I might believe it, but I'm certainly not going to blindly accept things which to me are obviously untrue.
Anyway, that was probably a totally unnecessary explanation. If so, sorry about that.
Call it a bad habit or something...
I don't know.
[hr]
As to the topic the video actually raises, I personally don't see any particular use for religious beliefs, but I can see that there might be some use to it for some people as a principle.
I question the notion that religious beliefs are special in this sense though.
The assertion that believing in fairies is less of a risk doesn't seem to ring true to me.
I first of all is highly dependent on what beliefs you associate with 'fairies', and it's consequences.
Secondly, if you include the effects having those beliefs have in regard to how people around you behave, truly believing something as seemingly silly as 'fairies' can have some pretty serious consequences in fact.
Being declared silly at best, or 'insane' at worst is not as trivial as it sounds...
