Choosing a faith

All the possibilities with zero evidence are equally improbable. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? I say ten, you say eleven. Which is more probable? Neither.All religious arguments are the same. No evidence anywhere to be found. "But I have a book full of unevidenced claims that I believe are true, and many others believe they're true, and that has to count for something." No.--Percy

This is as wrong as all the other times you were told it was wrong. Atheists and critical thinkers are no more trying to free themselves of God than of ogres, dragons or leprechauns. What part of "We don't believe they exist" don't you understand?You keep imagining that though you've been told countless times it is not a case of knowing deep inside that God exists while trying to deny him in order to gain freedom from his constraints, you keep thinking that's the case anyway. This is getting really, really old. Move on already.--Percy

In an absolute sense, we don't. Is murder immoral except in war? Many military units have chaplains. What do the chaplains say? I'll bet it isn't that killing the enemy is wrong. So much for your moral religion. You're looking for a certainty that doesn't exist. Making up a Guy in the Sky who you think knows for sure might make you feel better, but given all the immoral things that happen if He exists then He has no apparent effect. Or maybe we've misconstrued morality, for instance that murder is wrong, or lying is wrong. Maybe Trump is the most moral man on the planet. How would you know he's not? What you believe is based upon stuff you've made up, you have no evidence for anything, so anything is possible.But scientific research reveals an evolutionary basis that contributes to overall survival and expresses itself culturally and socially. Lots of evidence there. By these standards Trump is unambiguously immoral.--Percy

You misunderstood Tangle. His views don't include an "uncaused cause". He called it "the entirely imaginary full stop of the uncaused cause."
​ So no, there is no "uncaused cause," which sounds like religious/creationist gobbledygook anyway.
​ Again, Tangle called it imaginary.
​ All unevidenced claims can be dismissed without evidence.
​ Again, I think you misunderstood what Tangle was saying. But scientifically you are correct, no one's view can be proven since nothing is ever proven in science.But also scientifically, it is not a case of just deciding what beliefs you accept. It's how much evidence is behind what you've chosen to accept, and you've just conceded there's no evidence behind your views.As someone else already noted, you're trying to convince yourself that your views and our views are on an equal footing. They're not. Our views have evidence, yours don't. This is usually the point where, in the past, you've begun arguing that you do too have evidence.--Percy

History here says that positions that at least on their surface look easy to rebut draw many responses.--Percy

Krauss's talk begins at about the 13 minute mark.AbE:To GDR: I hadn't seen this video before. I only watched a few minutes beyond the 13 minute mark, by which time it became obvious he was going to talk about things I already know, but they may not be things that you already know. If you're curious about scientific views (i.e., evidence-based views) of first causes of the universe and also of how it might end then this is well worth listening to.I especially liked the pictures of Edwin Hubble, one of them showing him at work with an instrument. This should remind clerics and theologians that the way we learn about our world is not by thought exercises based on ancient religious texts but by studying the actual real world.It's as if you're on a long overland journey that has you changing horses every so often. Each time you believe that perhaps now you've found the right horse. But you'll never find the right horse because there isn't one.I think your journey is a worthwhile one, but I think you've misconceived the final outcome. The journey has no endpoint, no goal, because it is the goal.--Percy

Edited by Percy, : AbE.

The best use of your time is to make sure you maintain an income stream and health insurance so that you can take care of everything else.The next best use of your time is to take care of your health.The next best use of your time is to make sure you have food and shelter (I would have put this second, but your health issues deserve special consideration).The next best use of your time is maintain your social contacts and network, a key contributor to good health. Loneliness is a killer.Whether it's health or gold or finance or politics or religion or counseling, you have a knack for making poor choices. Dump the counselor. You have an outstanding health plan. Get yourself a genuine psychologist who is highly respected. If they can see you this Wednesday, run. If they have a year-long waiting list and charge at least $200/hour (before insurance) then you've found the right person.Since it will take a while before your first meeting with a good psychologist, here's an idea. I've known you for twenty years. At your next meeting with the counselor, teleconference me in. You can tell him beforehand that I think his advice is not conducive to good mental health. I'll tell him I think he should probe deeper and find out how you've changed as your health has worsened. I'll also tell him of your tendency to ignore your health issues, despite their seriousness. I'll also tell him how long you've been a member of this community and that everyone's noticed a change. I'll also tell him how the changes have coincided with your addiction to watching political and financial TV (i.e., YouTube videos) these last yew years. I'll also tell him how you have difficulty connecting facts to conclusions and that this makes you especially vulnerable to the appeals of not just the videos but of anyone with an emotionally appealing message.A good psychologist isn't just there to listen, though that is very therapeutic in itself. He's also there to dig under the surface to discover what you're hiding from him, to get behind the facade that is the face you want to present publicly, to ask the questions and to go places you'd really rather not be asked or to go because they make you feel uncomfortable, and to do this with no fear that you'll walk away because they're the only path to mental health, whether you choose to stay or not.--Percy

It's obvious that you think otherwise. Rather than assessing evidence on the merits you're cherry picking "evidence" to reach the conclusions you feel most comfortable with.
​ If I've missed some posts where someone has said something like this then I apologize in advance, but otherwise I have to protest in the strongest terms. I can't imagine anyone here on the science side saying that "science can answer all philosophical questions," and you can't help but know that no one has said this, because it's not like people have been vague and ambiguous about this.The point everyone is actually making and that you can't help but know they're actually making is that science, i.e., the scientific method, is the best way we have of developing answers to our questions about the nature of the universe. In contrast, the methods of religion lead to many different answers to every question.
​ Are you saying science need have no fear of the religious "goddidit" approach since no scientist has ever followed it? If so then that is just not true. Creationists constantly claim they're scientists who have concluded "goddidit". Henry Morris, founder of ICR, was a hydrological engineer who graduated from Rice University. Duane Gish, also of ICR, had a PhD from Cal Berkeley. Steve Austin had a PhD in geology from Penn State. Michael Behe, a professor with tenure at Lehigh University, has a PhD from Penn, originated the concept of irreducible complexity, and wrote Darwin's Black Box among other books. William Dembski, who originated the concept of specified complexity, has two PhDs, one in mathematics and another in philosophy, wrote The Design Inference, and has spent time at the Discovery Institute, was on the faculty at Baylor, and then at Southern Evangelical Seminary. I hope I needn't go on.
​ You should live this rather than just say it.--Percy

Relatively early in this process you should have reached some sort of conclusion along the lines of you're not going to find TRVTH. It's still a worthy exercise, but it's the journey that's important. The destination doesn't exist. I think you're hooked on a feeling. You're certainly not hooked on evidence. That's math, not science, and if you're working in any base except base 2 or 3 then the answer will always be 4. In base 3 it's 11. In base 2 the number 2 does not exist. You can't even say base 2 in base 2. You'd have to say base 10. It would not surprise me that there are other systems of mathematics where 2+2 does not equal 4, but what would be true is that in that system there would always be a consistent answer, even if it were stochastic.I think what you're trying to say is that science is tentative, always ready to change in light of new evidence or improved insights.--Percy

You're contradicting the hell out of yourself. One reaches conclusions by reasoning from evidence. You concede that in a scientific context what you have "is not evidence," but from this absence of evidence you are reaching conclusions anyway "based on what we do know." But "what we do know" is called evidence, which you just said you don't have.Stop tying yourself in knots. You're only confusing yourself through the use of synonyms for "evidence," like "what we know."You need to start following some basic rules for what constitutes evidence. Once you formalize a process for recognizing what constitutes actual evidence you'll be much happier. Then you can draw your conclusions based only on actual evidence, and then you won't find yourself saying something crazily contradictory like (paraphrasing), "There's no evidence but I've nonetheless reached these conclusions based on what we know."--Percy

It must have been explained at EvC a thousand times that you can't prove a negative, and that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. These are obvious and inviolable principles, but somehow you keep tripping over them. Scientific evidence is the only kind of evidence there is. The foundation of scientific evidence is observation using our senses, which we all do all the time. If the information you've gathered isn't something you experienced from the real world through your senses then it isn't evidence. What we call science is just a formalized, methodical, accurate and, increasingly often, technological way of gathering, analyzing and thinking about evidence.The important question is "What is evidence?" You may have been party to some of the past discussions about the nature of evidence. 1 Corinthians 15:6 says that Jesus appeared to 500 followers at one time after the resurrection. Is that evidence that it really happened? Trump says he won the 2020 election. Is that evidence that he really won? Neil Armstrong said he went to the moon. Is that evidence that he did? Is any claim anyone makes evidence?I would answer in the affirmative, and this is where replication comes in. It is the accumulation of reported observations, the accumulation of evidence, that gives us confidence in what we know.--Percy

No, murder is not a grey area. Your religious views are leading you into morally wrong choices, unquestionably wrong. Let me ask the same exact question but with a different example. Is murder wrong except when carrying out the court ordered punishment for a capital offense? This is not a grey area. The answer is yes, murder is wrong, no matter who wants to do it, even when it's the state carrying out the will of the majority. There are no just wars. I grant that that raises grave complexities, contradictions and conundrums. For example, if there are no just wars, then what was the proper response to Pearl Harbor? The American public was little handicapped by their isolationist principles. Probably the most common feeling after Pearl Harbor was a desire to take revenge on the back-stabbing Japanese, and they quickly abandoned isolationism to kill Japs.Or here's another WWII example on a smaller scale. Few people know that the Japanese occupied United States territory during WWII for about a year, the Alaskan islands of Kiska and Attu. Taking them back involved bombing and amphibious landings resulting in many casualties on both sides (hundreds). If murder is ruled out, then how should we have taken back the islands? I don't know. Maybe the Quakers have answers. Yes, those are the issues. Do I support war by living in a country that wages war on other countries? Am I complicit in the murder of Ayman al-Zawahiri (the Al-Qaeda leader recently killed in a drone strike)?There's evidence from WWII that even murderers have a conscience. Nazi Germany wasn't forced into developing gas chambers because of their desire for economy and efficiency. It was because they were finding that soldiers assigned to the death brigades that were machine gunning Jews and other undesirables into pits were increasingly suffering from what we would today call PTSD. You could almost say they were suffering from humanity or empathy.So the gas chambers were an attempt to save their fighting forces from becoming psychologically disabled. They instead built gas chambers at a number of concentration camps and began shipping them undesirables from all over by rail.
​ You asked if "there is an overarching definition of moral and immoral or is it whatever any individual or group decides it is." In the context of other things you've said it sounds like a quest for certainty.--Percy

I said that you're trying to argue our views are on an equal footing when they're not, because our views have evidence and yours do not. Your reply presents an example which has no evidence, so it is in no way representative of the discussion we're having. Your views have no evidence, ours do.A much better example that is representative of this discussion, one drawn from the real world, is the 2020 US presidential election. One view is that Trump won the election. Another view is that Biden won the election. The former view has no evidence. The latter view has tons of evidence.--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

You shouldn't quibble at all. You should say, "You're wrong." I can't believe I committed that slip-up.--Percy

Yeah, sure, Meyer's another "goddidit" kind of guy. Dump the Christian counselor, get a professional. "Christian counselor" is a profession? Isn't it just one of many forms of Christian indoctrination, like Sunday school and Bible study? Yeah, counseling, just one of the many forms of atheist outreach. Phat, please, see a professional.--Percy