Posting this in the PB because there's no way it doesn't turn political.
In both scientific and philosophical terms, the existence of God can never be ruled out entirely. (God can never even be defined satisfactorily.) But nobody knows anything ABOUT God. Nobody knows what His word is. Nobody knows what his will is. Nobody knows if he hears or answers prayers. Nobody knows whether He cares if we capitalize his pronouns. A lot of people THINK they know, and sometimes they think it really hard -- but they don't.
The most odious, objectionable thing about Christianity is that it places VALUE on FAITH. You just can't get more wrongheaded than that. Faith is a vice, not a virtue -- I am tempted to say a sin, because sloth is traditionally ranked as a sin and faith is a form of sloth -- it means giving up on any rigorous search for truth and just accepting what you're told. And all faith in the religious sense is a form of wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is not always wrong but it is always suspect, and you don't need to be a philosopher to see why.
And don't gimme any crap about Non-Overlapping Magisteria!
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-Overlapping_Magisteria
From "The Case Against Christianity" by Michael Martin:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Christianity
He addresses arguments of the form that we ought to believe in Christianity because it is good for us to do so. These can be seen as pragmatic or ethical arguments - or, as he puts the distinction, believing for beneficial rather than epistemic reasons. Examples of such arguments include Pascal's wager and William James' attempts to justify religious belief in pragmatic terms.
He argues that there is a strong presumption that we ought to believe for epistemic rather than beneficial reasons. At this juncture he invokes W. K. Clifford's arguments in his famous essay The Ethics of Belief that believing without sufficient evidence is morally wrong. Clifford advances a number of reasons for its alleged immorality. Martin adopts these reasons, but adds an additional element: in addition to its violation of our moral duties, Martin believes belief without evidence contradicts epistemological duties which exist independently from ethics.
Martin accepts that, hypothetically, there are situations in which belief without evidence may be justifiable. He gives the example of the nuclear terrorist who threatens to destroy New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, unless you convert to Christianity.[3] He argues that, under such an unlikely circumstance, the rational and moral approach is to at least try to believe in Christianity. However, given that these are very rare circumstances, his implication is that in more ordinary circumstances belief in Christianity without evidence is morally and epistemologically impermissible.
In both scientific and philosophical terms, the existence of God can never be ruled out entirely. (God can never even be defined satisfactorily.) But nobody knows anything ABOUT God. Nobody knows what His word is. Nobody knows what his will is. Nobody knows if he hears or answers prayers. Nobody knows whether He cares if we capitalize his pronouns. A lot of people THINK they know, and sometimes they think it really hard -- but they don't.
The most odious, objectionable thing about Christianity is that it places VALUE on FAITH. You just can't get more wrongheaded than that. Faith is a vice, not a virtue -- I am tempted to say a sin, because sloth is traditionally ranked as a sin and faith is a form of sloth -- it means giving up on any rigorous search for truth and just accepting what you're told. And all faith in the religious sense is a form of wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is not always wrong but it is always suspect, and you don't need to be a philosopher to see why.
And don't gimme any crap about Non-Overlapping Magisteria!
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-Overlapping_Magisteria
From "The Case Against Christianity" by Michael Martin:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Christianity
He addresses arguments of the form that we ought to believe in Christianity because it is good for us to do so. These can be seen as pragmatic or ethical arguments - or, as he puts the distinction, believing for beneficial rather than epistemic reasons. Examples of such arguments include Pascal's wager and William James' attempts to justify religious belief in pragmatic terms.
He argues that there is a strong presumption that we ought to believe for epistemic rather than beneficial reasons. At this juncture he invokes W. K. Clifford's arguments in his famous essay The Ethics of Belief that believing without sufficient evidence is morally wrong. Clifford advances a number of reasons for its alleged immorality. Martin adopts these reasons, but adds an additional element: in addition to its violation of our moral duties, Martin believes belief without evidence contradicts epistemological duties which exist independently from ethics.
Martin accepts that, hypothetically, there are situations in which belief without evidence may be justifiable. He gives the example of the nuclear terrorist who threatens to destroy New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, unless you convert to Christianity.[3] He argues that, under such an unlikely circumstance, the rational and moral approach is to at least try to believe in Christianity. However, given that these are very rare circumstances, his implication is that in more ordinary circumstances belief in Christianity without evidence is morally and epistemologically impermissible.
