I don't why people are being hardcore empiricists in this thread, but I'll come out and reject the notion that something needs to be based on observable fact to be reasonable.
Of course you would. That would render much of the current science unreasonable.
Take a proposition like, "My senses are a reliable guide to reality." Is this reasonable to hold? Can it be established through observation without begging the question?
The problem is that without your senses, you have no observation. To consider the senses unreliable is to consider all observation unreliable, and therefore, anything attributed to reality.
Otherwise, yeah, religious beliefs like, "God exists" aren't reasonable. I'm certainly willing to defend such a statement.
Using a relatively recent method devised by Popper. But for those who reject this standard, the arguments hold no sway.
It starts simply with pointing out the standard offered means of theistic justification aren't reasonable
You're going in circles here. By what standard are you calling them unreasonable?
If you argue that unreasonable beliefs are inherently risky, as theists and atheists alike may and often do, then it is quite simple why an atheist holds that such religious beliefs are dangerous.
So belief is dangerous because it is risky, it is risky because it is unreasonable and it is unreasonable because you say so. The New Atheists today do not call religion dangerous because they are based on risky/unreasonable beliefs. That isn't their argument at all. Their argument is more along the lines of, religion causing more death, religion stunting progress in technology, science, etc.
A theist who thinks atheism is unreasonable because of some compelling theistic justification may do the same in reverse.
Exactly my point. My point is that the claim is rather pointless because it has no persuasive value, unlike other arguments from reason. In order to persuade, you have to convince someone that Popper's method of falsification should be the determining factor between what is science and nonscience, reasonable and unreasonable. I see no reason to adopt it. Atheists love to use it because it serves their agenda so well. And yes, evolution bothered Popper becuse so much of it is based on induction, hence he changed his paradigm so it could be called science. The rest of the scientific community just went along with it.
A theist might be able to appreciate this and simultaneously agree when the subject is some mutually agreed upon unreasonable thing, such as ghostly visitations.
Quite right.
Kevin may want to, in the words of non-drunk Gadianton, nerf truth by forwarding arguments that ultimately allow one to call essentially anything reasonable - or at least strip our ability to call something unreasonable away - but that's Ok.
That isn't what I am saying. I am not trying to strip your ability to say anything, nor am I saying everything is reasonable. I am simply pointing out the fact that it has no persuasive power nor is it grounded in objective truth. It is a conclusion generated from one's own carefully designed paradigm.
We can merrily go on our way understanding that there is some coherent notions of what is reasonable and not that are better and worse and can be applied to what people think and why they likely think it. I'm not sure if Kevin, in his effort to rescue religion, appreciates just how radical what he is forwarding is.
This isn't radical at all, but it is clear you don't understand what I am saying. I am directly refuting JSM's failed attempt to prove religion is unreasonable.The only standard you have to determine such nonsense is one that you've created for yourself. The simple fact is we all believe things that are not grounded in observable fact. Evolution scientists and cosmologists forward all sorts of things that are not grounded in observable fact. That doesn't make belief in them unreasonable. Therefore, belief in deity is not unreasonable.
What on earth?
1) Dawkins thinks there are very good reasons why natural selection might favor the development of faculties that lead to God-belief, such as our infamous hair-trigger for inferring anthropomorphic explanations for observations.
And his arguments are incoherent, scientifically unsupported and based strictly on his materialism. There is nothing reasonable about them.
2) You are referring to his concept of "meme" which is metaphorically similar to genes, but not literally genetic.
You don't understand his meme concept if that is what you think. From the Selfish Gene:
"Memes should be regarded as
living structures, not just metaphorically but technically.(3) When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say, "belief in life after death" is actually
realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over.'
While I'm not a fan of the idea, a "meme" is a reproducing idea that propagates through humans through cultural exchange. It's supposed to behave similar to how genes do. Dawkins likens harmful self-replicating ideas, such as those who build into them the premise "don't question this," to biological viruses. He sees religious belief as filled with these "viruses of the mind."
If this is true, which seems unlikely give the citation above, then what makes belief in God a meme and belief in Evolution not a meme? They both transfer from brain to brain in the same ways you mentioned, culturally. So why is one a virus and the other not? The only clear answer is that Dawkins considers the "belief in God meme a virus because it is not just a metaphor. It is a virus, unlike other beliefs.
He just thinks it is more enlightened to not be religious. In a metaphoric sense, it is more "evolved," though Dawkins would be the first to tell you that evolution proper doesn't entail progress, just change.
It's amazing how much wrong you are able to pack in so few words.
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All you have demonstrated is your own unfamiliarity with Dawkins' argument, along with the usual misrepresentation of my positions.
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein