Faith is complete trust or belief in the absence of proof. Logic and proof aren't the same thing. Jets fans keep the faith in the absence of logic (Not really we are clearly BSing each other). I have faith in a higher power lacks proof but is logical based on our need to deal in the here and now with the certainty of our death in front of us.
you misunderstand what I am saying. even in a strictly material existence, if you believe in an infinite timeline you have to concede infinite possibilities. what infinity states, from a materialist perspective, is that life isn't special because every possible physical outcome will eventually come to fruition, including life. eventually the universe (whatever it is, either our sole universe or a collection of multiverses), would eventually spit out our combination. we were inevitable. so now if life, and in particular intelligent consciousness that can control physical matter, which we are, can exist naturally, what you have admitted by that claim that our very existence is strictly materialist and natural is that the idea of a God, whose basic concept is intelligent consciousness that can control physical matter, can be as equally a natural entity because all we are talking about is a much more powerful version of what we are. we aren't making up anything random or fantastical or beyond possibility at all with that concept. the only question becomes did that natural entity, which is completely feasible (and not the equivalent of rainbow unicorns because we are simply talking a much more evolved or powerful version that has the same traits as we do, which is natural) create this universe we can observe and exist in, and thus us? if what we can do is natural, then over an infinite timeline the possibility that something that we are, but has existed infinitely longer, is not offensive to materialism, and you have to accept it as a reasonable possibility. the only other option is to reject infinity and state that our visible universe is a finite entity with nothing beyond it, before it or after it. or say consciousness isn't material and a natural and inevitable outcome, thus a much more highly evolved and powerful version of it is fantasy and illogical, but then you can't rely strictly on the testable, materialist position.
if you ignore or dismiss the possibility of materialist conclusions it certainly is pointless and deluded. but there is no pointlessness in searching for reasonable or logical explanations for the possibility of what appears to be non-materialist answers but may simply be aspects of the material world that we do not have the ability to understand? we are pretty young species, so to say we know enough to dismiss anything that is beyond the concept of reason, is arrogant. and as I stated above, the concept of a God, framed in a different manner than the biblical version people who have an aversion to organized religion want to destroy, is not offensive even to materialist theory, so even though we cannot test it yet does not make it pointless to discuss, unless you have an agenda or bias against it.
Again, there's a difference between having an agenda or a bias and just not seeing the point in making such a distinction. Sure, okay... there might be a non-materialist answer out there, whatever that means. And we just can't see it right now. But maybe we will someday. Uh... the end? I mean, really, what comes after that? Because there's no such thing as "reasonably and logically searching for non-materialist answers." You yourself said it's beyond the concept of reason... so how can it be reasonable? Once we can test something, it's no longer outside of the material world, but rather a part of it. There are not two distinct sets of rules labeled "Naturalistic" and "Non-materialistic." The laws of nature would expand to include whatever it is we learned, just as it did for genetics, Newtonian Mechanics, and Quantum Mechanics.
It might be logical that a person would want to believe in a higher power... that's different from saying that it's logical that a higher power exists.
This is really it. Religions are dogmatic. No proof. You either believe it or not. Same is true for God. You can't show anything as a proof to God. Trying to convince someone that there is God is absurd. I believe in God. The idea of God comforts me. But I can't judge people who don't believe in God.
I agree. The only beef I ever have with those who are religious is when they try to tell me (or others) that it is logical. If I find out that someone is a Mets fan, I got no beef with that. They like the Mets. So be it. It's their favorite team. Good for them. If you tell me that you believe the Mets are the best team in baseball, I happily leave you to your belief. If you start trying to convince other people that it is correct to root for the Mets, or that your belief is the correct belief, then I raise an eyebrow. If you start trying to explain WHY the Mets are the best team in baseball, then you have opened yourself up to scrutiny of your arguments. And if many of your points are outright lies (MIKE PIAZZA HIT FORTY BILLION HOME RUNS), well, that rankles me even more.
Want has little to do with it. Just like the brain refuses to deal with certain traumatic experience faith in our mortality is not a want. Most people can't truly except that their stream of consciousness, the thing that makes them who they are will simply vanish on their death. Faith isn't just some want in this case it is a highly developed mass psychosis to allow us to efficiently operate on natures food chain. Even atheists who completely disavow a higher existence are very good at denial when it comes to their own mortality. That denial is no more a want than those who believe in God or some other higher power.
If you want happiness just accept the fact that nothing that is going to happen to you hasn't happened to billions of people before you. That's great peace of mind right there. Now if you were going to die as some kind of cosmic insult while everybody else lived on, well that would suck.
Every one of us is terminally ill yet none of us are really worried about dying. What until you have been diagnosed with a terminal disease and have months or days to live. I assure you breaking out Xanax is going to be an option. Our entire existence is based on survival which is fighting deaths door. Denial is most assuredly part of that survival. God is a great denial mechanism because it allows us to believe our consciousness in the form of our soul is immortal. There is no comfort in someone else’s death. There can be acceptance but acceptance is not about survival it's about letting go.
Fair enough... okay, so instead of saying that a person "wants" to believe in a higher power, let's say instead that they have a predisposition for believing in something... for all the reasons you mentioned. That still doesn't mean it is logical to believe in one, any more than it is logical to deny the fact that we will all, one day, cease to exist. Our strong desire/tendency to ignore that fact might be a social or even biological reality... but it doesn't add any weight to the argument in terms of actual existence of a higher power. Humans are inherently illogical about most things. The progress we have made as a species regarding our understanding of the universe happened in spite of our predilections towards believing in an afterlife, not because of those beliefs.
Personally I have no idea if there is a god or not. I don't rule either possibility out, and I don't pretend to have a definitive answer either way, so therefore I don't have an issue with anyone who chooses to lean towards one side of the argument or the other. What I do have a problem with is people who use religion purely as an excuse to remain intellectually stagnant. While it's convenient, and certainly less mentally taxing, to just settle on the notion that all the answers have already been discovered and were put in a single ancient book (whichever one you choose), that kind of thinking usually just breeds laziness. Most people who shit on the whole idea of scientific inquiry aren't threatened by the "science" part, they're threatened by the "inquiry" part. Not sure what existed before the Big Bang? Can't explain the jump from carbon atoms to organic life? Well then clearly you're full of shit because you didn't hand me the answers on a silver platter so that I can go back to not thinking - unlike this book did... Further evidence of this total infatuation with not knowing shit is the whole "Earth is less than 10,000 years old" thing, which 46% of Americans believe: http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/hold-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx I'm not even going to get into a debate about whether or not this is true, but instead I'll just ask of those 46%, how many even know WHERE that came form? Because it didn't come from biblical text, even though it's in the Bible now. It came from James Uusher's Annals of the World in 1650, and was added to Genesis later. (The actual date of creation is October 23, 4004 B.C) Any evolutionary biologist, paleontologist, geologist or theoretical physicist who has dedicated their lives to the pursuit of truth through scientific scrutiny can tell you exactly how their current understanding of things evolved and where those ideas came from. Most people who dismiss it all can't even tell you where their "truths" came from outside of "The Bible." (Which Bible? The King James? The Germanic? The Greek translations? Sea Scrolls?) For people who have truly put some effort into fleshing out their own theological leanings and have come to the conclusion that there is a god, fantastic. I have no problem with any of them, and in fact several of them are friends of mine. But don't disparage the beliefs of people who dedicate decades of their lives to discovery of fact, counter-argue with "because it's written down in the book," and then pretend those two conclusions are on equal footing. They're not.
I find it odd that the scientifically driven types on this board don't recognize the lab-tech style of the entity which they question so readily. Or the methodology. Hypocrisy within hypocrisy.
