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Theists: Please give me a reason to believe in your superpowered invisible overlord

I asked several pages back...

Please state your thesis in a few sentences.

I have read many of your posts, at least in part.

What I gather is you've noticed that people who are social reformers tend to be religious. And think this may be evidence of God - the topic of this thread.

Or something.

None of it seems to follow to me, but maybe I'm missing the import of your argument.

But again, if you have "no bottom line thesis", therein lies the rub.

Another saying: "If the student hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught".
 
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Fast Eddie B said:
I asked several pages back...

Please state your thesis in a few sentences.
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You paid no attention to what I just wrote.

<SNIP>
Edited by LashL: 
Edited for civility.



I repeat: A thesis is when one presents one optimum theory that fits all the facts. But if there is more than one viable answer, there is no thesis.

I have two alternate answers -- already submitted very clearly toward the bottom of p. 14 this thread -- to explain an odd and stubborn set of facts on the ground. Those are two alternate answers, not one. Ergo, no thesis, and I never pretended as much.

This pattern does intrigue me, however, because it is the only set of facts I know that might lead to one possible theistic answer without jumping through hoops. That answer is certainly not the only answer, but it is the only answer of its kind that I know that is even remotely plausible, when compared to other theist speculations on nonsense related to the Big Bang, about which many theists know little and care even less.

Fact: breakthroughs in social inclusiveness and meta-ethics tend to benefit any human culture lucky enough to experience them. Fact: the greatest breakthroughs in same tend, historically, to be traceable to a relatively tiny number of individuals. Fact: that tiny number of individuals is constantly engaged in introducing some new sort of theist idea as well. Fact: no such meta-ethics breakthrough is traceable to any pioneering atheist, even though one or two rank-and-file atheists here or there might pioneer in one social aspect but borrow their atheism from an already existent sector in the culture.

Now, SlowVehicle partly understood what I was saying, because he spotted that it evidently has to be an iconoclast of some kind to be truly effective in meta-ethical innovation. Fine. But the absence of any pioneering atheist among those innovators and the concurrent and constant irruption of pioneering counter-cultural theists in same seem to point to a possibility that recurring counter-cultural tweaks on deity are also indispensable to long-term social reform.

Is that a viable conclusion? Or might one just gain that impression because the most far-looking and effective pioneers in social altruism may just be the most prone to delusions as well? That's one possible answer.

Does that answer make sense? Suppose that's just a canard, then what? Well, if that's a canard, and if the most far-looking and effective pioneers in social altruism are not the most prone to delusions, then is there another answer? Do we see this pattern play out on the ground because both meta-ethics and autonomous experiences of deity are equally indispensable for the future of the species? That's another possible answer.

I have not yet made a final choice between these two answers. If/When I do, I will have a thesis. But in the meantime, I would like to put out the data I already have in order to promote general discussion -- and I have never pretended otherwise.

Stone
 
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Stone said:
But why do the two so often change simultaneously, often due to one and the same individual?Stone
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Because culture and religion are not two separate things, with bright lines dividing them up into independently changing parts.
 
Innocuous said:
Because culture and religion are not two separate things, with bright lines dividing them up into independently changing parts.
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I agree. All the more reason to be weirded out by this odd symbiosis apparently connecting pioneers in altruism with pioneers in theism.

Stone
 
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Stone said:
I agree. All the more reason to be weirded out by this odd symbiosis apparently connecting pioneers in altruism with pioneers in theism.

Stone
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Pioneers in altruism have historically been pioneers in theism for the following interrelated reasons.

1. Atheism and agnosticism, positions based on critical thinking and demands for evidence before accepting a given proposition, have a largely scientific basis.

2. The modern scientific method crystallized in the 17th and 18th centuries, with the writings of Bacon, Descartes, Mill and Peirce.

3. Therefore, historically, most people who have existed have been theists.

Given the above, any given person alive in ancient times -- including any given pioneer of altruism -- would have had a greater probability of being a theist than of being an atheist. This theistic belief system would, in turn, have influenced any message, law, rule, or behavioral stricture a given philosopher felt compelled to deliver to society.

Next:

1. The efficacy of altruistic behaviors in human societies is observable in the form of lower death rates, etc.

2. Theistic claims are untestable, but are likely to be "taken on faith" by a listener of the same general belief system as the speaker, especially when the speaker is a gifted orator.

3. Therefore, absent any possible appeal to empirical proof, claims of theistic origins for altruistic behaviors by orating philosopher-priests were the best and surest means of delivery of these behavioral strictures to the masses.

Add to the foregoing propositions the fact that effective means of social control behooved those in positions of authority, and we begin to see the basis of theism in government, providing a solid foundation from which the philosopher-priests could deliver their altruistic messages.

So there's the answer.
 
I like it. To break the very sketchy pattern Stone has seen would take another thousand years of increasing secular changes to religious systems. This won't happen quickly, given the numbers of theists.
 
I finally post an answer to Stone's urgent and oft-repeated question (see post #549), and abruptly his urgency fades and the question is no longer important enough to garner a response from him.

I'm content to let this thread fade into obscurity, since no compelling reason to believe in any deity has been offered.

Good night, all!
 
Vortigern99 said:
I'm content to let this thread fade into obscurity, since no compelling reason to believe in any deity has been offered.

Good night, all!
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I've been seeking out and considering arguments for God for around 50 years.

So far, nothing.

I still fail to understand what Stone is getting at.

But who know? Color me still curious, but skeptical.

Oh, and good night to you! :)
 
Vortigern99 said:
I finally post an answer to Stone's urgent and oft-repeated question (see post #549), and abruptly his urgency fades and the question is no longer important enough to garner a response from him.

I'm content to let this thread fade into obscurity, since no compelling reason to believe in any deity has been offered.

Good night, all!
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You just haven't seen his other thread, making the same arguments:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=278540

He seems to be concentrating his efforts there.
 
Vortigern99 said:
Pioneers in altruism have historically been pioneers in theism for the following interrelated reasons.

1. Atheism and agnosticism, positions based on critical thinking and demands for evidence before accepting a given proposition, have a largely scientific basis.

2. The modern scientific method crystallized in the 17th and 18th centuries, with the writings of Bacon, Descartes, Mill and Peirce.

3. Therefore, historically, most people who have existed have been theists.

Given the above, any given person alive in ancient times -- including any given pioneer of altruism -- would have had a greater probability of being a theist than of being an atheist. This theistic belief system would, in turn, have influenced any message, law, rule, or behavioral stricture a given philosopher felt compelled to deliver to society.

Next:

1. The efficacy of altruistic behaviors in human societies is observable in the form of lower death rates, etc.

2. Theistic claims are untestable, but are likely to be "taken on faith" by a listener of the same general belief system as the speaker, especially when the speaker is a gifted orator.

3. Therefore, absent any possible appeal to empirical proof, claims of theistic origins for altruistic behaviors by orating philosopher-priests were the best and surest means of delivery of these behavioral strictures to the masses.

Add to the foregoing propositions the fact that effective means of social control behooved those in positions of authority, and we begin to see the basis of theism in government, providing a solid foundation from which the philosopher-priests could deliver their altruistic messages.

So there's the answer.
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I've been battling severe back problems and I imagine that -- with a summer vacation coming up -- this may be my last post here for quite a while. Unfortunately, I don't see that we have moved any further forward in getting a handle on just what's been going on for the past few thousand years. You see, you still don't seem to quite get -- although one or two in the "Design for living" thread do seem to -- that the pioneers in altruism are not followers of their own culture's brand of belief at all. They are constantly flouters of it. They introduce all these fanciful new tweaks on the divine alongside their altruist/empathic social ideas, never coupling their altruist ideas with the culture's own theist brand at all. Clearly, this makes their selling job harder, not easier. So why do that at all? It's counter-intuitive. It's not logical at all. Yet that's what they do.

Furthermore, those who bother to introduce new brands of theism at all are clearly in a tiny minority. They are hardly in any majority at all. They'd be in a whopping majority if they grandfathered in their altruist innovations with familiar theist notions from their own culture. But that's precisely what they don't do. Instead, they tweak the religious powers-that-be's noses with newfangled notions of the divine that often get them into trouble instead of selling their altruist notions off the bat with no additional innovation. That puts them in a minority, both theistically and socially. They don't reflect their culture. Far from it. Ironically, in their eccentric takes on the divine vis-a-vis their culture, their numbers within their respective cultures end up in fact no bigger than those of the occasional atheist (who were actually more numerous in the first millennium b.c.e. than at any later time until the last two or three centuries).

This is why we can't say that your post has a real handle on what's going on. You're still not getting that any deitic notions coming from these altruist pioneers are constantly as counter-cultural as their altruism. That's why it strikes me as a weird symbiotic package of some kind, and certainly not a package that syncs up with anything in the surrounding culture at all.

Sorry,

Stone
 
#522 Stone
What is especially ironic is that the sloppy armchair guessers of today have it wrong and the earliest atheists have the generation of belief dead right.
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This morning I decided to look at the last page of this topic and saw this post of yours - very interesting. three cheers for ancient Greek atheists!
 
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Stone said:
You see, you still don't seem to quite get -- although one or two in the "Design for living" thread do seem to -- that the pioneers in altruism are not followers of their own culture's brand of belief at all. They are constantly flouters of it. They introduce all these fanciful new tweaks on the divine alongside their altruist/empathic social ideas, never coupling their altruist ideas with the culture's own theist brand at all. Clearly, this makes their selling job harder, not easier. So why do that at all? It's counter-intuitive. It's not logical at all. Yet that's what they do.
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And yet Jesus was still a Jew.
 
Stone said:
[ . . . ]Furthermore, those who bother to introduce new brands of theism at all are clearly in a tiny minority. They are hardly in any majority at all. They'd be in a whopping majority if they grandfathered in their altruist innovations with familiar theist notions from their own culture. But that's precisely what they don't do. Instead, they tweak the religious powers-that-be's noses with newfangled notions of the divine that often get them into trouble instead of selling their altruist notions off the bat with no additional innovation. That puts them in a minority, both theistically and socially. They don't reflect their culture. Far from it. Ironically, in their eccentric takes on the divine vis-a-vis their culture, their numbers within their respective cultures end up in fact no bigger than those of the occasional atheist (who were actually more numerous in the first millennium b.c.e. than at any later time until the last two or three centuries) [ . . . ]
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I think this phenomena can be compared to really great publicity ideas- they simply cut against the existing way of looking at things and dazzle us with new perspectives.
It seems to me you've yet to establish a causal relation between renovative theism and ground-breaking altruism other than mere social context.

All the best with your back!
 
pakeha said:
I think this phenomena can be compared to really great publicity ideas- they simply cut against the existing way of looking at things and dazzle us with new perspectives.
It seems to me you've yet to establish a causal relation between renovative theism and ground-breaking altruism other than mere social context.

All the best with your back!
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I like that way of putting it: Renovative theism and ground-breaking altruism. Thank you.

In my oversize OP here --

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=278540

-- I do in fact establish a clear correlative relation between the two. That doesn't necessarily prove a causal relation. But there is shown to be a significant connection, of a distinct kind, between the two, so it's now up to future researchers, historical, neural, anthropological, biological, behavioral and textual, to probe further as to why.

Stone
 
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