Why do you have faith?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

1. Social and familial obligations and commitments
2. Belief that organized religion is a vital institution in society and worth participating in and strengthening
3. Opportunity to participate in the good work the church does
4. Forces me to spend a couple hours a week Offline
5. Nice music, pretty candles, lovely buildings, etc.

To the extent I buy into the existence of a higher power it flows from those factors

Couple hours and point 3...what do you do in the church besides attend? I'd like to get more involved in that sort of stuff for mine but we've kind of really that sort of volunteer work dampered by Covid (we used to regularly do packing events for a local non-profit whose executive director attends us that provides low income students with food for the weekend, which I really enjoyed.)

[Donerail]

1. Social and familial obligations and commitments
2. Belief that organized religion is a vital institution in society and worth participating in and strengthening
3. Opportunity to participate in the good work the church does
4. Forces me to spend a couple hours a week Offline
5. Nice music, pretty candles, lovely buildings, etc.

To the extent I buy into the existence of a higher power it flows from those factors

Couple hours and point 3...what do you do in the church besides attend? I'd like to get more involved in that sort of stuff for mine but we've kind of really that sort of volunteer work dampered by Covid (we used to regularly do packing events for a local non-profit whose executive director attends us that provides low income students with food for the weekend, which I really enjoyed.)

"Besides attend" is pretty broad — I've been an acolyte, a lector, and a member of the altar guild. But specifically on community service, we had a similar sandwich-making program that also shut down b/c of COVID. My church at home also operates a transitional housing shelter for homeless families and has recently started a small farm that gives away fresh produce to local charities.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

1. Social and familial obligations and commitments
2. Belief that organized religion is a vital institution in society and worth participating in and strengthening
3. Opportunity to participate in the good work the church does
4. Forces me to spend a couple hours a week Offline
5. Nice music, pretty candles, lovely buildings, etc.

To the extent I buy into the existence of a higher power it flows from those factors

Couple hours and point 3...what do you do in the church besides attend? I'd like to get more involved in that sort of stuff for mine but we've kind of really that sort of volunteer work dampered by Covid (we used to regularly do packing events for a local non-profit whose executive director attends us that provides low income students with food for the weekend, which I really enjoyed.)

"Besides attend" is pretty broad — I've been an acolyte, a lector, and a member of the altar guild. But specifically on community service, we had a similar sandwich-making program that also shut down b/c of COVID. My church at home also operates a transitional housing shelter for homeless families and has recently started a small farm that gives away fresh produce to local charities.

Ha shows how different our churches our that mine doesn't have any of those things, and I don't even really know what they are besides a lector.

[Kingpoleon]

Let me be clear: I have never claimed to have any special knowledge that god does not exist with 100% certainty. This is why I routinely say "Doubt is a virtue" (and conversely, "faith is a vice"). Obviously I extend this maxim to my own beliefs (including that maxim itself), and I have never argued that god has been disproven or that the supernatural is impossible. My contention has always been that no body of evidence exists that would provide a sufficient reason for one to believe these things, and so there is no point trying to interact with reality while operating on the assumption that the supernatural world exists.

If I went around calling science evil and its advocates deluded or mentally ill, and then said I wasn’t very sure if it was false, I think I would confuse most people.

[Benjamin Frank]

This isn't necessarily faith and I don't care much for organized religion or necessarily believe that The Bible is the word of God as opposed to a book written by humans, but the science is quite clear that it's a miracle this universe and earth exist.

As far as I'm concerned you can either believe that there are literally an infinite number of universes or you can believe that there is a single creator of this universe. The math seems pretty obvious to me.

[John Dule]

Decent response. But let's look at something a little narrower in scope-- the Earth itself in comparison to other planets, as opposed to our universe in comparison to other universes.

There was a time when we didn't know other planets existed. We believed that the heavenly bodies were somehow different from our own in type; we did not understand that Mars was a planet in the same way Earth is, and we didn't understand that other stars are suns just like ours. Due to this rather limited perspective, we made the (fair) assumption that our world is the only one that exists, that it was made to suit us specifically, and that these conditions are the only ones under which life can exist. The first of these assumptions has since been proven false. The second, in my mind, is totally unsupported by evidence. It's quite possible that the third will be disproven in our lifetimes as well.

Now you are assuming something similar-- that our universe is the only one that exists, that it was made to suit us specifically, and that these conditions are the only ones under which life can exist. Now, these are not completely absurd assumptions at face value (though I will note that even if the second were true, you would still be multiple steps away from "proving" anything regarding Christian doctrine). But it's worth noting that every time we've assumed ourselves to be "special" in some way, we've ended up being proven wrong. We thought our planet was special-- now we know it's just one of trillions. We thought our genetic makeup was special-- now we know we're only 1% away from being chimpanzees. Now you are telling me our universe is special-- but somehow, I'm not buying it.

Let's look at this another way-- you used the nuclear fusion coefficient as evidence that this universe is uniquely structured to be conducive for life to exist. Your argument here is essentially as follows:

"If an aspect of our universe appears uniquely tuned to benefit human life, then that is a piece of evidence in favor of the universe being engineered to suit human needs, not the other way around."

But if this is true, then it logically follows that any aspect of this universe that is hostile to human life is evidence against the universe being engineered to suit human needs. How about the fact that 97% of the water on our planet is undrinkable? How about the fact that our planet is surrounded by a vacuum that will kill us if we enter it without sufficient protection? How about the fact that our sun will vaporize our planet in 5.5 billion years? There are innumerable obstacles and problems in our universe that make it difficult for life to survive. To our credit, we've managed pretty well so far. But it is very possible to imagine a world (and a universe) that is even better tuned to be conducive to human life, so the notion that this is the one set of conditions which would allow us to flourish is a fallacy on multiple fronts.

I apologize, but the notion that observable stars are comparable to observable alternate universes is absurd. The claim that there an infinite number of alternate universes, and that within all these universes the laws and constants of the universe are different, is itself a denial of the Copernican principle, which assumes that the laws everywhere else are like they are here. To begin to deny this would lead one to question why we should grant science’s assumption that light always travels at the same speed, or that other parts of the observable universe are bound by the same laws that bind our part. We’re not “1% DNA” away from being chimps. As Jonathan Marks explains in his book What Does It Mean to Be 98% Chimpanzee?, the differences between us and animals remain one of kind and not merely of degree. Furthermore, the first person to suggest humanity ascended from monkeys was Ibn Khaldun, an Islamic philosopher hundreds of years before Darwin.

I don’t think you quite grasp there is no “distinct Christian God” under classical theism, IE divine aseity, divine simplicity, divine impassability, divine immutability. The whole notion of classical theism is that it emerges again and again, in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Hinduism, and forms of Buddhism. Of course, the only way to know whether the Resurrection happened here is to, say, observe the evidence there, as people like N. T. Wright, Dale Allison, Pinchas Lapid, and Michael Licona have done. This is rather irrelevant - it’s like saying proving heliocentrism doesn’t prove climate change.

This triumphalist fairy tale of Reason and Science against Religion and Mysticism is sorely lacking in a historical basis. Heck, Ronald Numbers literally titled one of his books Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion, yet major figures in movement atheism continue to spread just lies built on lies to keep the fairy tale going.

(I should note that “carbon chauvinism” is itself the vast, vast majority’s view in the sciences, and the implications of fine tuning against naturalism have been noted by agnostics like Paul Davies and Michael Denton and even atheists like Thomas Nagel and Fred Hoyle.)

Now I want to address Susskind’s bizarre theory of eternal inflation in particular. There is no reason at all to suppose the fallacious reasoning to be accurate, and in fact other than giving a pretty story you haven’t explained why the multiverse explanation is correct and not fallacious. But even if we grant Susskind’s theory that the constant expansion of a universe creates multiple universes, there is no reason at all to suppose that either the laws of physics or the 25 constants would change as new universes are generated. Thus, even granting the fallacious premise, the conclusion is demonstrably wrong.

Although we may be able to conceive of a universe in which life begins at the first instance, it does not at all follow that this is logically or actually possible. Indeed, given how finely tuned the universe is, it is possible that this is the best fine tuning in all possible worlds.

Well, the nice thing about Susskind's argument is that it doesn't actually necessitate the literal existence of other universes-- just the existence of other possible universes (which your argument clearly concedes, by the virtue that you are arguing that our universe is somehow special or unique). Here you are, a living thing, saying "Isn't it amazing that this universe is perfectly balanced to suit my needs?"-- but in some hypothetical other universe where those needs are not met, there would be no life to wonder about these things. All your argument really proves is that "It's a miracle that in a place where life can exist... life exists." Which isn't quite as monumental as you seem to think it is.

Nevertheless, by all means, keep name-dropping people in the hope that they will somehow make your argument stronger.

Let me be clear: I have never claimed to have any special knowledge that god does not exist with 100% certainty. This is why I routinely say "Doubt is a virtue" (and conversely, "faith is a vice"). Obviously I extend this maxim to my own beliefs (including that maxim itself), and I have never argued that god has been disproven or that the supernatural is impossible. My contention has always been that no body of evidence exists that would provide a sufficient reason for one to believe these things, and so there is no point trying to interact with reality while operating on the assumption that the supernatural world exists.

If I went around calling science evil and its advocates deluded or mentally ill, and then said I wasn’t very sure if it was false, I think I would confuse most people.

A thing can be both possible and also so unlikely that anyone who believes in it can be considered unreasonable. Literally anything is possible. The problem is that people of your ilk treat "doubt" as if it's a sin.

[Kingpoleon]

Well, the nice thing about Susskind's argument is that it doesn't actually necessitate the literal existence of other universes-- just the existence of other possible universes (which your argument clearly concedes, by the virtue that you are arguing that our universe is somehow special or unique). Here you are, a living thing, saying "Isn't it amazing that this universe is perfectly balanced to suit my needs?"-- but in some hypothetical other universe where those needs are not met, there would be no life to wonder about these things. All your argument really proves is that "It's a miracle that in a place where life can exist... life exists." Which isn't quite as monumental as you seem to think it is.

Nevertheless, by all means, keep name-dropping people in the hope that they will somehow make your argument stronger.[/url]If a nuclear bomb were dropped on my head, and I survived, the odds of this would be probably something close to one in a quadrillion. Perhaps I ought to conclude it is of course perfectly natural to observe that I survived, given that if I didn’t I wouldn’t be here to know it. But my own suspicion, which I cannot prove to a determined skeptic, is that this is miraculous and worthy of some sort of explanation. If this fact isn’t worthy of any explanation, then how can any fact be worthy of explanation?

Susskind’s eternal inflation is rather explicit. The multiverse has been expanding forever, and each time it splits into multiple universes with a new set of laws. “It’s not that the universe is somehow contorting itself to accommodate us; it's just a diverse place and we find ourselves in a friendly corner.” This is an implausible statement if this is the only corner which exists, and yet again commits an inverse gambling fallacy - trying to explain a highly implausible event by suggesting that the more common events happen unobserved simply fails to explain anything we observe. For example, if I suggested that “the reason this monkey has spelled out ‘I CAN WRITE IN ENGLISH’ is because there are an infinite number of monkeys in a multiverse, and so one would invariably seem to only write in English” I would have failed to explain what I observed. Or, if I were to suggest that the reason the universe looks like it’s almost certainly 14 billion years old when it’s only 6,000 years old is because in virtually every other universe it looks like it is 6,000 years old, I would have again failed to explain this fact.

A thing can be both possible and also so unlikely that anyone who believes in it can be considered unreasonable. Literally anything is possible. The problem is that people of your ilk treat "doubt" as if it's a sin.

Really? Let’s say what America’s most prominent pastor says on the subject of doubt:

“A faith without some doubts is like a human body without antibodies. It is susceptible to attack.” Timothy Keller

Or perhaps you may have heard of these books called the Gospels or these disciples called the Twelve, who are regarded as the foremost of all Christian saints. They, in what can only be described as almost certain honesty, left a plain and clear record of their own doubts about Christ in the very Gospel of Christ, and these stories of doubt continue within the church today.

Nevertheless, I see no reason why under your worldview you believe in anything at all. Merely because you believe some things are true? But why, if moral realism is false, should you believe in things because they are true? If you object and say that it is good to have true beliefs, then moral realism is true - and this has vast metaphysical connotations.

[John Dule]

Nevertheless, I see no reason why under your worldview you believe in anything at all. Merely because you believe some things are true? But why, if moral realism is false, should you believe in things because they are true? If you object and say that it is good to have true beliefs, then moral realism is true - and this has vast metaphysical connotations.

This post-quote was broken so I didn't even realize you said something new until now. But in any case, it's not a matter of whether it is "good" to believe things that are true. In order to live in the material world, one must understand how it works. I suppose that if one has no interest in whether one lives or dies, then facts don't really matter-- but I'm assuming that most everyone is imbued with some degree of a survival instinct when I say that material reality must be understood.

[Dr. MB]

We used our minute independence to chose to enjoy separately from the Supreme Personality of Godhead....we wanted to "lord over" and "enjoy" ...

As soon as that separation occured, we took birth in the material world, to burn off our desires...

So now, as a fish out of water, we are flapping about , dumbfounded...always disturbed...and we have to accept so many sufferings, our own minds...sufferings others inflict upon us...the sufferings of mother nature etc.

The real lover of truth should inquire how to get out of this repeated cycle of birth and death...aquiring new bodies...

Purity is the force that elevates us and qualifies us to re enter the spiritual realm, our original home