The problem I see with that position is that a couple hundred years ago "There's no need to assert the belief that the earth is not round. After all, it's obviously flat" in there. Or "there's no need to assert that illness aren't caused by little tiny living particles that infest our blood. Obviously it's caused by bad humours." Or so forth.
Ah, but the difference there is that those are *testable statements*, and there are people *making the positive assertion of these testable statements*.
Even leaving aside the idea of proving the truth of whatever bronze-age comic book gave you your God in the first place, if religions stepped forward with lesser real-world claims, like "my God will prevent me from coming to harm when I run my hand through this bandsaw!" or "conversion to my religion increases your performance on standardised tests!", those claims could be evaluated and determined to be either true or false, objectively.
Also: No, nobody educated in the matter thought the earth was flat, just like nobody even remotely educated thinks Intelligent Design has any merit. That's an aside, though.
There's a lot in my daily life that I'm told is science that I take on faith.
You're misusing the word "faith", here, I suspect. And the point is not to accept things because you're told they're science, but to accept things because they *fit*. If you can't see why the seasons and the phases of the moon actually fit the heliocentric model perfectly, and why fixed-earth doesn't work with the rest of the things you can easily see, I suspect you're not looking. And if you *do* see something that doesn't fit, you can find out either why it does fit after all, or discover something new.
But, as you say, you've gone pretty far afield of the original problem.
And my problem is, fundamentally, that "well, you can't prove it's NOT" is by no means any kind of reason to act on the basis of a proposition, especially when proving nonexistence is literally impossible, by definition. The fact that it's taken to be so in the specific case of gods is, fundamentally, a failure in thinking so vast as to be damn near indescribable.
It's on a scale with Fox News' "fair and balanced" practice of taking real news, then a trivially-disproven ultra-extreme far-right stance on the news, airing both as equally valid and equally true, and insisting that the truth must *obviously* be somewhere in the middle.
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Date: 2007-12-04 01:33 am (UTC)Ah, but the difference there is that those are *testable statements*, and there are people *making the positive assertion of these testable statements*.
Even leaving aside the idea of proving the truth of whatever bronze-age comic book gave you your God in the first place, if religions stepped forward with lesser real-world claims, like "my God will prevent me from coming to harm when I run my hand through this bandsaw!" or "conversion to my religion increases your performance on standardised tests!", those claims could be evaluated and determined to be either true or false, objectively.
Also: No, nobody educated in the matter thought the earth was flat, just like nobody even remotely educated thinks Intelligent Design has any merit. That's an aside, though.
There's a lot in my daily life that I'm told is science that I take on faith.
You're misusing the word "faith", here, I suspect. And the point is not to accept things because you're told they're science, but to accept things because they *fit*. If you can't see why the seasons and the phases of the moon actually fit the heliocentric model perfectly, and why fixed-earth doesn't work with the rest of the things you can easily see, I suspect you're not looking. And if you *do* see something that doesn't fit, you can find out either why it does fit after all, or discover something new.
But, as you say, you've gone pretty far afield of the original problem.
And my problem is, fundamentally, that "well, you can't prove it's NOT" is by no means any kind of reason to act on the basis of a proposition, especially when proving nonexistence is literally impossible, by definition. The fact that it's taken to be so in the specific case of gods is, fundamentally, a failure in thinking so vast as to be damn near indescribable.
It's on a scale with Fox News' "fair and balanced" practice of taking real news, then a trivially-disproven ultra-extreme far-right stance on the news, airing both as equally valid and equally true, and insisting that the truth must *obviously* be somewhere in the middle.