AFA-David, Rhian and others:

The Atheist Foundation of Australia uses this definition: “Atheism is the acceptance that there is no credible scientific or factually reliable evidence for the existence of a god, gods or the supernatural.”

Like Rhian, I agree. Yet the Divine – or Sacred Other, or God or whatever we choose as a name – is real. God is not supernatural and God is not an entity. God is not to be sensed through empirical means but through what I understand as its polar opposite perceptual modality, intuition. This perception uses symbols and analogue rather than the empirical data apprehended through what we usually label “the five senses”.

Thus, while science is invaluable in the exploration of empirical reality, it is foolish to use scientific methods to test spiritual reality. And, in the never-ending human quest for wholeness, we need to attend to both.

Rian,

You have to admit you threw in everything without answering the question where it can be analysed by a reasoning mind.

Your little story of the world where everybody dropped dead who did not believe in a god meant very little. I’m not sure of what you are suggesting.

Here is what you said, “It is supported by an accumulation of circumstantial evidence.” And then you go on to say, “It is in our strong, (largely) shared ethical sense and its connection to our capacity for transcendence.”

Does that mean that those without a belief in some kind of transcendence do not have ethical values? That is harsh and unsupportable by the facts.

You then go on to scripture. Ah, evidence from ancient writings. Those writings are not evidence for anything except that someone or many people wrote them. There is no supportable ex biblical evidence even though some say there is.

“The anthropic congeniality of the universe may point to purposeful design,”

Mmmmmm, I would question the validity of that when 26,000 children die each day from malnutrition and disease and all other sentient animals kill and eat other species, sometime horrifically in the billions.

“I believe Jesus was and is a uniquely human expression of the divine, in part because of the way his life and teaching contribute to that meta-narrative.”

Why not admit it, you believe that because you were indoctrinated to believe that. You could be a member of one of the other religions you say are heading in the same direction. That is not something you really believe or otherwise you would drop the Jesus thing.

I’m only asking you to think, is that so bad?

Anyway, it all boils down to that you believe because of spurious evidence and emotion.

David

For runner: http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/03/whats-wrong-with-gay-sex.html

AFA

The point of the story was to show that, if we had no choice but to believe in God, we would be less than human.

I did not mean that only believers are ethical, but rather that the existence of a strong ethical sense is a common human characteristic and is often (not always) related to our sense of the transcendent. By transcendence I don’t necessarily mean a supernatural power. Transcendence can be linked to our capacity to for empathy and altruism and is experienced by both believers and non-believers.

Many of our leading scientists express awe and wonder at the beauty and coherence of the universe, and they will often borrow religious phraseology to express that sense even when they are not in fact religious. Einstein said:

“To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms— this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.”
http://sciphilos.info/docs_pages/docs_Einstein_fulltext_css.html

Perhaps I am indoctrinated to believe certain things about Jesus, though my parents were not religious and I became a Christian as an adult. If I lived in a different time or place I may well have interpreted my experience of transcendence and its interconnections with my values and worldview through the framework of a different faith, or none. The important thing about religion is the reality to which it points, not the form its signs take.

Like crabsy, I fully respect the authority of science in the realm of the material and empirical, but there is more to life than that. I gave you an explanation of why I think faith is reasonable though not logically coercive. I can give you less “scientific” support for the importance to me of music or art or the Australian bush than I can for my belief in God, but they are real, too.

ASA-David

If you haven’t read my earlier post (immediately prior to yours) you should do so before proceeding with this one.

You wrote: <<You have to admit you threw in everything without answering the question where it can be analysed by a reasoning mind.>> This reads like a demand that only arguments or testimony based on logic and empirical data are admissible. You’re denying the availability of other human cognitive functions. I described one – intuition – in my previous post. Another is feeling – not emotion – which can be treated as the opposite judgemental mode to logic. (Feeling is used to make value- judgements for example.) Both of these cognitive functions have an essential role in investigation of spiritual reality.

Then you write about scripture: << Ah, evidence from ancient writings. Those writings are not evidence for anything except that someone or many people wrote them. >> Your obsession with “evidence” – empirical data – once again is your liability. If we are talking about the Bible here, it should be treated as a collection of human writings in which materials like memories, metaphors and narratives are combined to present the evolving human experience of a relationship with God. There are elements of history and some specific geographical references, but the Bible is not meant to be a scientific compendium, and nor should it be treated as such.

Just as each person has a preference for left or right hand, so we vary in our ability to function on the logic-feeling dimension and the intuition-sensation dimension. I’ve always needed to work hard to develop my sensation function. You obviously need to put in a similar effort to develop your intuitive perception. You might then understand (maybe even appreciate) what people like Rhian perceive and think

Crabsy
You said, “Thus, while science is invaluable in the exploration of empirical reality, it is foolish to use scientific methods to test spiritual reality. And, in the never-ending human quest for wholeness, we need to attend to both."
Where did this other reality, this spiritual reality, suddenly come from? Reality is that which we can perceive to be real via our senses. Your mere use of the expression “spiritual reality” does not guarantee that there is such a thing. If it did, then all you would need to do to establish other non-empirical realities would be to name them. You could have musical reality, emotional reality, introspective reality, poetic reality, unreal reality …. Then, presumably, you could argue that “in the never-ending human quest for wholeness, you need to attend to the countless realities that I have asserted into existence.”
There are two tactics that the religious resort to when the arguing gets tough. First, they speak as if merely asserting something makes it true. Thus Runner is convinced that all he has to do is assert that evolution is idiotic and it becomes so, and AGiR need only talk about the Soverignity of God and lo, there exists such a thing. The second is to take the argument out of the empirical domain to protect it from the depredations of evidence. I suggest that in arguing that “it is foolish to use scientific methods to test spiritual reality”, you have employed both.