Faith is believing something that you know isnt true.

[braces_for_impact]

I just wanted to drop this in here from our other thread, because in the context of this one, I think it's illustrative.

Originally posted by Lion IRC

You don't have to think about it.
You can just accept it's a glorious mystery.

Responding to this dishonest quote-mining.

The point I was making relates to a dogma held by the Catholic Church which the Church itself agrees is a mystery. I was calling it into question because it IS questionable.
I then freely admitted that one can, if they prefer, accept it as described - a sacred mystery.
Sacred mysteries don't require apologetics and frankly speaking... #pearls/swine

The notions that global warming has a cause or that the universe had a beginning are NOT mysterious woo.
And so I ask again, what is so objectionable (to atheists) about a cause being the product of personal volition?
Why so adamant that the Big Bang was either spontaneous OR inevitable?

I'm sorry you feel it's a dishonest quote mine, like I said, I think it's illustrated of the overall point of this thread. You go on to only illustrate the point better than I ever could with your little comment.

Sacred mysteries don't require apologetics and frankly speaking... #pearls/swine

It may seem dishonest to you because your mind is compartmentalized. You have walled your faith off from your reason. To others, this appears dishonest, because they insist on some consistency in their arguments, regardless of subject. Not you though. Otherwise answering your challenges would be trivial. We'd just chalk it up to the sacred majesty that requires no evidence and is insulted merely by the suggestion that it behave as any other kind of discourse and be subject to the rules of argumentation.

This is why I love watching "interfaith dialogue". All of you insisting your particular faith be exempt from the rules, while not accepting any of it from another's faith. Then we atheists come along and try to hold you all to the same standard. It's no wonder you tolerate each other easier than you tolerate us.

 

[Lion IRC]

You completely miss the point.
When the Church (correctly) calls something a "mystery" she is doing nothing more than the same type of honest admission of ignorance which we see in the scientific method.

And the Immaculate Conception of Jesus by Mary doesn't require justification in the form of apologetics. So to accuse me of failing to apologetically defend this type of dogma for the benefit of skeptics is disingenuous.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Global Warming - if it's not spontaneous and not inevitable - has a prior cause.
Do atheists get all worked up over the possibility that it might be the result of sentient personal beings?
No. So why are theists so trenchant in their belief that the Big Bang wasn't deliberately caused?

What does atheism have to do with anything regarding the cosmos?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

You completely miss the point.
When the Church (correctly) calls something a "mystery" she is doing nothing more than the same type of honest admission of ignorance which we see in the scientific method.

But science doesn't claim it's a mystery that the moon is made of cheese. Before you have a mystery you have to demonstrate a claim, have an observation that cannot presently be explained. This happens all the time in science. You know that.

Religious mysteries are not the same thing. And you know that too. The alleged mother of the alleged boygod Jesus was assumed into an alleged heaven - mysteriously. And this is the fourth glorious mystery of the RCC. I've heard women praying this stuff out loud in church buildings.

This assumption thing is a religious mystery concocted of silliness and undemonstrated claims. Your equating a woman flying away into the sky to live with not knowing the history in its entirety of the cosmos, and calling them the same thing strikes me as some kind of self-serving lie. You should be embarrassed to even state as much. Even your pope would agree with me.

 

[bilby]

It's worth bearing in mind that the word 'mystery' had a rather different meaning in the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods than it does today. A mystery was secret knowledge held only by a few people. In a time before the concept of intellectual property, guilds used various methods to protect their members from competition, and close control of the mysteries of a trade was one of these.

So if a person in the Medieval or Early Modern period described something as 'a mystery', he didn't mean 'nobody knows this'; He meant 'This is privileged information known only to a few select people, and not revealed to outsiders'.

Given their propensity to the archaic, it would be no surprise if the church didn't claim that nobody knows, but rather that they know, but they aren't going to tell.

The word 'mystery' was also used interchangeably with 'miracle', implying god alone knows how it was done, and he isn't going to reveal his methods. So there's a potential double meaning here.

 

[Lion IRC]

Global Warming - if it's not spontaneous and not inevitable - has a prior cause.
Do atheists get all worked up over the possibility that it might be the result of sentient personal beings?
No. So why are theists so trenchant in their belief that the Big Bang wasn't deliberately caused?

What does atheism have to do with anything regarding the cosmos?

I'm not 100% sure but I think atheists believe the cosmos wasn't caused caused by any sort of divinity. I could be wrong. Any atheists here wanna chime in?
I could ask you the same question. What does theism have to do with the cosmos?

 

[Copernicus]

The notions that global warming has a cause or that the universe had a beginning are NOT mysterious woo.
And so I ask again, what is so objectionable (to atheists) about a cause being the product of personal volition?
Why so adamant that the Big Bang was either spontaneous OR inevitable?

Global warming is an unintended consequence of carbon pollution--human beings taking a dump where they live, so to speak. It wasn't caused in the same sense that we normally think of when we talk about intelligent design. We just couldn't stop ourselves. So your analogy is a little off, although I suppose that one could argue that the Big Bang was some kind of divine flatulence in a manner of speaking.

Atheism takes no position regarding the spontaneity or inevitability of the Big Bang other than to reject the notion that an intelligent deity was a factor in its cause. Why are atheists so "adamant" about it? Well, they couldn't very well be considered atheists if they took any other position, could they? So ultimately all you are doing here is asking the rhetorical question: Why do atheists reject belief in God? That question has been answered repeatedly and will continue to be, whether you care to hear it or not.

There is no good or compelling reason to believe that some kind of intelligent superbeing caused our universe to come into existence. If there is necessarily something that always had to exist, then why should that be anything other than physical reality itself? We know that physical reality exists. If anything exists outside of the visible universe, it is likely just more of the same kind of stuff that we can see inside of our pocket universe. The Kalam Cosomological Argument never succeeds in proving the conclusion that a god is the necessary cause of the Big Bang. Like all such arguments, it asserts the existence of such a god inside one of its assumed premises.

 

[Rhea]

You completely miss the point.
When the Church (correctly) calls something a "mystery" she is doing nothing more than the same type of honest admission of ignorance which we see in the scientific method.

And the Immaculate Conception of Jesus by Mary doesn't require justification in the form of apologetics. So to accuse me of failing to apologetically defend this type of dogma for the benefit of skeptics is disingenuous.

It sound like you think these two are the "same". They aren't.

1. The Church calls it a Mystery and says to believe it and don't question it; indeed threatens to kick you out (or worse) if you question it.
2. Science calls it a mystery and everyone competes for the chance to prove it wrong, and everyone supports this effort excitedly.

They're not even remotely the same. They are, in fact, diametrically opposed reactions to the word, "mystery."

 

[Lion IRC]

You do not get kicked out of the Church for not understanding a thing that everyone agrees is a mystery. There's more than enough room in the Church for folks with varying degrees of understanding of the Trinity, Predestination, Transubstantiation...

Now, when the church of scientism allows intelligent design theory a seat at the same table and everyone "supports this effort excitedly", then you can resume your holier-than-thou stance.

 

[Keith&Co.]

They're not even remotely the same. They are, in fact, diametrically opposed reactions to the word, "mystery."

imagine if Joseph Lister found that attitude prevalent in medical circles. Or if he's adopted it, himself.

"Why do surgery patients die so often? And with such similar symptoms, no matter what condition the surgery was performed for."
"It's a mystery."
"Oh. Okay, I guess hospitals will just continue to be the place where the poor go to die."
"As it was intended..."
or "As it's always been..."
or "How dare you question the practices of Men of Medicine?!" (This was, actually, part of the response he got. When his research advanced to the point of suggesting that doctors were carrying infectious microbes around because they never washed their hands or instruments, thus the surgeons themselves were harming the patients, Doctors didn't examine his evidence or carefully replicate his experiments, they just got affronted at the suggestion that people who intended to heal were actually doing harm. How DARE he!)

 

[Rhea]

You do not get kicked out of the Church for not understanding a thing that everyone agrees is a mystery. There's more than enough room in the Church for folks with varying degrees of understanding of the Trinity, Predestination, Transubstantiation...

Now, when the church of scientism allows intelligent design theory a seat at the same table and everyone "supports this effort excitedly", then you can resume your holier-than-thou stance.

You keep leaving out the important part of the quote. Why doyou suppose you dk that so reliably?

“everyone competes for the chance to prove it wrong, and everyone supports this effort excitedly.”

It’s already been dutifully proven wrong.

Also, they kicked me out of church for questioning, so you’re wrong on that one, too.

 

[Rhea]

imagine if Joseph Lister found that attitude prevalent in medical circles. Or if he's adopted it, himself.

And yet, here we are, having accepted the proof eventually.

 

[bilby]

You do not get kicked out of the Church for not understanding a thing that everyone agrees is a mystery. There's more than enough room in the Church for folks with varying degrees of understanding of the Trinity, Predestination, Transubstantiation...

Now, when the church of scientism allows intelligent design theory a seat at the same table and everyone "supports this effort excitedly", then you can resume your holier-than-thou stance.

You keep leaving out the important part of the quote. Why doyou suppose you dk that so reliably?

“everyone competes for the chance to prove it wrong, and everyone supports this effort excitedly.”

It’s already been dutifully proven wrong.

Also, they kicked me out of church for questioning, so you’re wrong on that one, too.

I understand that some churches are more catholic than others. Although it's not clear whether the Catholic Church is the most catholic church or not, it is perhaps one of the most catholic of churches.

 

[Underseer]

I don't think it's the case that they know it isn't true. They honestly believe that they know it is true. If the evidence doesn't support this, they feel it's because we don't know all the evidence and something new will come to light eventually to show how they'd been right all along.

Faith is coming to a conclusion before there is justification for that conclusion, sure, but that's entirely different from believing something the don't think there's any justification for at all.

He was referencing a famous Mark Twain quote.

 

[Jobar]

What does theism have to do with the cosmos?

Haven't we been talking about the 'cosmological argument for the existence of God'?

I'd like to go back the the concept of 'mystery', which as bilby pointed out, can mean both a thing unknown to anyone, and archaically a thing known to only a very few. Lion, do you want to claim that the 'mysteries' of the Catholic Church, and of Christianity in general, actually have known answers, that can be comprehended by human beings with the proper information?

In the usual sense of 'mystery'- a question whose answer is unknown to anyone- you cannot answer a mystery by positing an even bigger mystery. In particular, you can't explain an unknown thing for which there is evidence, like the observable universe and how/whether it came to be, by saying that a God (for whom you have no other evidence than the existence of the universe) created it.

A mystery (in the usual sense) has no known answer. So you can't put forward 'no answer' as an answer!