I came back to this post to draw inspiration from it and found several issues with it, that I now spot as a much older and more mature adult, almost 30.
God and other spiritual or/and religious topics are placeholders to be tabooed, so there can be many individual beliefs behind them. What is sound? Is it the wave or the phenomenon in the brain? Same with God. Every theist has his or her own little bubble of belief.
We cannot refute the ARGUMENTS for God easily, we have to refute the THINKING.
That is what the article indeed argues and tries to explain, but I feel it fails to highlight that some of the beliefs hiding behind a theists worldview are likely TRUE and VALID. It is hard to let go of the false beliefs, because they are entangled with true beliefs. This is the case of religion etc., not of specific false beliefs. The larger the Mystery word, the more stuff you can throw behind it.
There are broad and vague claims here, such as Occam’s razor being more productive than faith in history. Given how new the idea is, I wonder in what sense? And what evidence is there for this? Although I am inclined to agree, this is far from obvious.
Not all children of atheists grow up to be atheists. I feel this is worth pointing out
There are hard limits to scientific knowledge and what can be mathematically provable. Any belief, whether about God or something more specific, can hide behind our general ignorance.
In truth, this is why God IS the simplest explanation for many theists. We cannot explain prove within current paradigms how the always-has-been universe works, yet somehow we also claim to know it is growing in complexity and expanding all on its own. This may be true, but it is far from what a ten year old can easily grasp.
So let’s say God made it instead.
I feel this IS the Occam’s razor argument for theists. How can we refute existential off-the-shelf answers to someone who DOES NOT want to go through the rigor of experimental science and rational query in order to investigate the origins of everything? When we know from the start that we will most likely never find a perfect answer anyway? It is much simpler to reference a God who always was. The same goes for any field where there is a mystery that can be hidden behind our ignorance.
I came back to this post to draw inspiration from it and found several issues with it, that I now spot as a much older and more mature adult, almost 30.
God and other spiritual or/and religious topics are placeholders to be tabooed, so there can be many individual beliefs behind them. What is sound? Is it the wave or the phenomenon in the brain? Same with God. Every theist has his or her own little bubble of belief.
We cannot refute the ARGUMENTS for God easily, we have to refute the THINKING.
That is what the article indeed argues and tries to explain, but I feel it fails to highlight that some of the beliefs hiding behind a theists worldview are likely TRUE and VALID. It is hard to let go of the false beliefs, because they are entangled with true beliefs. This is the case of religion etc., not of specific false beliefs. The larger the Mystery word, the more stuff you can throw behind it.
There are broad and vague claims here, such as Occam’s razor being more productive than faith in history. Given how new the idea is, I wonder in what sense? And what evidence is there for this? Although I am inclined to agree, this is far from obvious.
Not all children of atheists grow up to be atheists. I feel this is worth pointing out
There are hard limits to scientific knowledge and what can be mathematically provable. Any belief, whether about God or something more specific, can hide behind our general ignorance.
In truth, this is why God IS the simplest explanation for many theists. We cannot
explainprove within current paradigms how the always-has-been universe works, yet somehow we also claim to know it is growing in complexity and expanding all on its own. This may be true, but it is far from what a ten year old can easily grasp.So let’s say God made it instead.
I feel this IS the Occam’s razor argument for theists. How can we refute existential off-the-shelf answers to someone who DOES NOT want to go through the rigor of experimental science and rational query in order to investigate the origins of everything? When we know from the start that we will most likely never find a perfect answer anyway? It is much simpler to reference a God who always was. The same goes for any field where there is a mystery that can be hidden behind our ignorance.