God: the best possible explanation (moral ontological argument time)

GrowingSmaller said:

I was reading up on paragmatism as a way other than realism and anti-realism, and it was mentioned that anti realists accuse the (scientific) realists of replacing the authoritarianism and claims for objectivirty of the Church, displacing one system (religion) with another (science) but keeping the same "we have THE TRUTH" style of attitude.

Thoughts?

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I have no thoughts about that.

As my nickname suggests, I am against any form of dogma. Claiming to know the Truth, capital 'T', smells like dogma.

I'ld certainly say that science is the most reliable methodology we have to distinguish fiction from non-fiction. Is it flawless? Off course not. Does it provide absolute certainty? No. Is it the best we got / can do? Yes.

If there is a phenomena of nature that science hasn't answered or even can't answer... what makes you think religions can?

As some dude once said (forgot who, sorry): the origins of the universe are a big mystery. It's a hard problem to tackle and science is working on it. Will we ever know the answer? Who knows.... However, if the answer is provided one day, it will be provided by a scientist... not by a priest.

GrowingSmaller said:

Well relligions have "all the answers" but youll never accept a single one, unless it be according to scientific standards, so youve pretty much ruled out religion a priori

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No, not "a priori". I've ruled it out based purely on how it works (or rather: doesn't work).

I rule it out because it expects me to accept claims at face value without evidence.

So I know what makes you think that, and therell be no budgning you.

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You can budge me. All it takes is evidence.

My take, the world is ambiguous and uncertain, and therefore whilst science is good, its not necessarily the only take on things, especiially the stuff where science is not really meant to go (non empitically testable).

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So, can you give an example of such a thing?

Maybe I spend too much time thinking of philosophic questions and reading religious books. Or Im not smart enough to be the next Einstein or Hawking. So I have to take what is according to my personality and capcity - bu t you seem to have a grudge against this attitude, like we all ought to be scientists. Reason compells us, and I am the priest of reason!!!

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I never said any such thing.

I say that I'ld like people to raise their standards of evidence when it comes to accepting claims.

And I propose that you already do that. All people do. Some people just make a special case for their religion. I submit that theists would never evaluate other claims by the same standards as they use to evaluate their religious claims.

When I ask for the reasons of people to buy into theistic claims, it seems to me that according to those reasons / standards, they should also be believing in weird sexual experiments in spaceships conducted by aliens on abducted humans. They should be believing in bigfoot, godzilla, the lochness monster, etc...

In fact, according to those standards, they should be believing in multiple religions (if not all of them). Making the one religions they adhere to look like a rather trivial choice or geographic accident.

There is not consistency there. I feel like being consisten in my beliefs is important to me. I do my best to use the same standards in all area's.

Theists seem to do their best to have one set of standards for their particual religion and then another set for everything else.

GrowingSmaller said:

Well relligions have "all the answers" but youll never accept a single one, unless it be according to scientific standards, so youve pretty much ruled out religion a priori. So I know what makes you think that, and therell be no budgning you.

My take, the world is ambiguous and uncertain, and therefore whilst science is good, its not necessarily the only take on things, especiially the stuff where science is not really meant to go (non empitically testable). Maybe I spend too much time thinking of philosophic questions and reading religious books. Or Im not smart enough to be the next Einstein or Hawking. So I have to take what is according to my personality and capcity - bu t you seem to have a grudge against this attitude, like we all ought to be scientists. Reason compells us, and I am the priest of reason!!!

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Thus far us not being able to answer certain questions is not a reason to try to guess at an answer that has 0 evidence to support it. It would be as pointless as a 3 year old trying to answer a calculus problem, the chances of their guess being correct are so astronomically small I doubt that even if every 3 year old in the world across the time span of a century that there would be one 3 year old that got the right answer.

GrowingSmaller said:

If God is defined as the most excellent being, the "summum bonum" in latin, then if he is regarded as the cause of existence, then what better explanation could there be?

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You call that an "explanation"? Really??

"Inference to the best explanation."

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Which explanation are we talking about anyway - and what exactly is it meant to explain?