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Maybe you like: Micheal Shermer on strange beliefs...
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things.html

If the things you are told about life work for you, then there is little reason to go tearing up the foundations of your life, and the desire to not be alienated from your friends, family and peers is strong and often healthy.

infire, alienation doesn't just occur outside religion, it can occur within religion as well, into asceticism and extremism.

Traditionally, people have recognized three sources of knowledge: Revelation, Reason and Experience.

Ulysses, i agree. and more formally:

Revelation - hearsay evidence
Reason - a priori knowledge
Experience - a posteriori knowledge

if we want to talk about knowledge, let's do so conscientiously and realize that not all sources of knowledge are equal in merit. hearsay is historically unreliable and most courts dismiss any hearsay claims. but if we allow hearsay into this discussion, we should regard it with the utmost skepticism and demand corroborating evidence.

The interesting thing is that this presupposition, that science is the only tool for obtaining reliable knowledge of reality, is not derived from science itself. It is therefore self-refuting. Because if the legitimizing of science as the only criterion for objective knowledge has to be sought outside science, than science is no longer the only criterion for objective knowledge.

The same holds for materialist philosophies on reality in general. Scientism (the belief that the investigative methods of the physical sciences are applicable or justifiable in all fields of inquiry), empiricism (the doctrine that all ideas and categories are derived from sense experience and that knowledge cannot extend beyond experience, including observation, experiment, and induction), and other related philosophies, are philosophies that are not justified and legitimized by their own standards and criteria.

???

all the big words are there. sentence structure is fine. but it doesn't make sense in the end because one statement doesn't logically follow the previous. you go from defining a thing to a conclusion, omitting the rationale.

this type of pseudothinking is just confusing. trying to reply to it is beyond me.

so i will just quote another pseudothinker in response:

"Sound is the change in the specific condition of segregation of the material parts, and in the negation of this condition; merely an abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the negation of the material specific subsistence; which is, therefore, real ideality of specific gravity and cohesion, i.e. - heat. The heating up of sounding bodies, just as of beaten and or rubbed ones, is the appearance of heat, originating conceptually together with sound."
-Hegel

I see what you're saying. They way I see it though is within poker even beliefs from unknown information are still within a real tangible environment. We may believe the guy is bluffing and if we fold we'll never know for sure. However all possible outcomes are outcomes we know to exists and we know to be possible. He's bluffing or he's not. I'd like to think we can agree that while we have to believe one or the other; both are real possibilities we can understand and quantify.

It would kind of be like arguing over whether a particular cat we saw was brown or red. One person might believe or see it as red and the other might believe or see it as brown. Either way we know that brown, red and a cat are real things. Oversimplification I know but just trying to make a point.

That's how I see the difference in certain beliefs as being different. And some you can debate and some you can't. Once again not saying you shouldn't debate them just saying it's hard to debate them other then just for the sake of the discussion.

bjordan, yeah makes sense. but let's clarify something, are you saying the statement "there is a god" is unknowable or "there can be no gods?" i never say there can be no gods, period. that's not a scientific claim as in it's not disprovable. that would assume i have absolute knowledge over all space and time. i don't. but i assume the assertion that "there is a god" (a personal god that wants me to know it and worship it) is provable. either through reason or empirical evidence. theists have not proved this claim to me thus far; however, i have not used this to say "there can be no gods."

now some would say that makes me agnostic. but i find the agnostic label confused and schizophrenic and cannot recognize it as anything more than intellectual confusion/cowardice. for the sake of my sanity, i, like tHeBoYmUsTdIe, say, "But there is no good reason to believe it's god," and just leave it there.

and i'm sure there are atheists that go around trying to "prove" there can be no god. i'd debate them just as fervently.

Did you consider Gödel? If you add laws of thermodynamics it seems to me that God might exists but we cannot talk to him and he cannot talk to us.

Edit: Not an argument for God but for the possibility of a devine existence.

improva, it seems to me that this is just a formal proof of the agnostic position. there could be things beyond our imaginations. true. but this contradicts what the theists say, that this god wants us to know it. it does not follow that a god who wants us to know it is beyond our imagination.

i've also thought about the agnostic vs atheism question. ultimately i consider myself an agnostic in principle but an atheist in practice. agnosticism as i understand it is simply the acknowledgement that we cannot disprove the existence of god, just as we cannot prove his (its) existence. if logic and science have taught us anything, it is that you cannot prove a negative. that said, i personally see no evidence of the existence of anything resembling the judeo-christian gods nor those of any other religion on earth; therefore the atheist label.

on facebook under religious beliefs, i list secular humanism. it is considered a 'life stance' rather than a religion, which essentially says that man needs no sacred text to know right from wrong, and that humans should look to science, logic, and reason to guide its moral compass. i believe it is much less offensive to the religious than the term 'atheist' and lets people know that i am not simply an evil blasphemer because i do not believe in 'God', and that i have no personal agenda towards the idea of organized religion in general.

improva, it seems to me that this is just a formal proof of the agnostic position. there could be things beyond our imaginations. true. but this contradicts what the theists say, that this god wants us to know it. it does not follow that a god who wants us to know it is beyond our imagination.

That is what I pointed out with my ninja edit.

From Gödel it follow that is more to the universe than science can explain. That is a scientific fact. There are truths that cannot be proved or disproved. Let us investigate some of our options for picking a God with this in mind.

Option 1: God is a part of our scientific reality and he can communicate with us.
- This means that science can reproduce God. He becomes a product of man. A valid option.

Option 2: God is a part of our scientific reality and he cannot communicate with us.
- May or may not be true. A valid option.

Option 3: God is not a part of our scientific reality and he can communicate with us.
- This violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. This statement is false.

Option 4: God is not a part of our reality and he cannot communicate with us.
- May or may not be true. A valid option.

So it seems to me that we have to pick between options 1, 2, 4 or to claim that logic is false. I'm not sure what it means to say that logic is false. The very word is seems to lose it's meaning.

And why is that?

Because of the way it was structured wasn't a good way to facilitate an interesting debate, and because Lennox brought nothing new to the table.

Because of the way it was structured wasn't a good way to facilitate an interesting debate, and because Lennox brought nothing new to the table.

Yeah, I agree.

I thought that you meant that the subject of the debate was horrible.

he brought nothing new to the table. Is that a prerequisite? Then Dawkins should have destroyed him right? Instead he seemed rather weak. Doesn't make me want to read his book at all. Same goes for any debate he participates in. Not convincing.

he brought nothing new to the table. Is that a prerequisite? Then Dawkins should have destroyed him right? Instead he seemed rather weak. Doesn't make me want to read his book at all. Same goes for any debate he participates in. Not convincing.

Where do you find a fault in Dawkins reasoning?

I dunno. Been watching a lot of debates thanks to this thread, and it's more entertainment than formal study, so I can't tell you where his reasoning is faulty. It's a general feeling I get in every debate basically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ABkDDRmI0c&NR=1&feature=fvwp

lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P47OC439x88&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P47OC439x88&feature=related

I enjoyed reading the comments of people who took it seriously.