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[Leafsnail]

I might not agree with their axioms, but there are, actually, incredibly compelling and strongly rational cases for theism. It doesn't, even remotely, do the actual work that's been done in the field of theology justice to deny that.

Isn't this the part where you give an example?

The point I was making was about burden of proof, which is a bit different from "day-to-day life" vs "rational argument". If you're both making claims, the burden of proof is on both of you to support that claim in order to convince the other party. Anybody who says, "Prove your side first, I don't have to prove mine," loses. It's perfectly acceptable to say, "There's no proof of God, so I don't believe in God," when describing what you believe, but if you're trying to make an argument about what is the rational belief to hold, it holds about as much water as, "There's no proof of God's nonexistence, so I believe in God". You're both saying, "There's nothing to budge me from the status quo."

I do try to demonstrate why not believing in god is the more consistent position - since there's no reason to favour a belief in god over any other unfalsifiable theory, it follows that you're giving god a special position for no real reason if you believe only in god and not everything else (I guess you could believe in everything, but a lot of those everythings would be mutually contradictory, again leaving you in a strange position).  I'm not in any way saying I don't have to provide evidence for my side - it's just that my position isn't "I believe that no gods exist", so I don't have to support that point in particular.  My position is "You shouldn't (meaning "you can't do it and maintain logical consistency") believe in a theory unless you have evidence for it (and there doesn't appear to be any valid evidence for theistic beliefs)".

Also, I agree with your second paragraph. I would generally prefer to approach that problem by attempting to convince them that homophobia is wrong in God's eyes. Failing that, yes, attempting to demonstrate that their faith is causing real problems and they should modify or abandon it would be acceptable, and I explicitly said that it's okay if the belief itself is problematic. That's entirely unrelated to belief in God having special privileges in the realm of argument. As I said several pages back (easy to miss and/or forget), there are all sorts of reasons to argue against particular deities or religions, but they don't apply to the concept as a whole.

Attempting to convince them that homophobia is wrong in God's eyes relies on an initial assumption that holy books are ultimately against homophobia.  And I don't see why this would necessarily be true, considering they were written in a time when homophobia was extremely widespread.  To be honest, I can't see homophobic interpretations of the bible as any less valid than most other modern interpretations (they're certainly more harmful, but I can't see them as fitting the scripture any worse).

So you say it should only be challenged in cases where it's problematic - but here there's another issue, in that the person with problematic beliefs could turn around and say "Well why aren't you saying that other guy's beliefs are invalid?  Surely the fact I believe that homosexuality should be illegal has no bearing on the validity of the basis of my belief."  And I'd have no answer.  If I grant one person a potentially problematic basis then I have no reason to deny another person's use of that exact same basis, even if I regard that person's beliefs as harmful.  So that's a reason why I feel these beliefs should be challenged in settings like these, even if the whole massive status quo thing and the fact that a lot of people want to shut the debate out of public life means that it's hard to challenge them in wider society.

This thread is getting worryingly semantic.

I'm trying to make non-semantic arguments, but I think a definition of the word "atheist" in the OP could really help there.

Also, apparently, my mind can spell atheism correctly, but misspells atheist as athiest :/

I before E except after C has a lot to answer for.

[Frumple]

Isn't this the part where you give an example?

*lackadaisically gestures at the Enlightenment* God of the Gaps, Deism, etc.

The medieval period in general's just kinda' rife with it, too, due largely to that whole "only major source of literacy" thing... some of the major Arabic powers in and around that time period are incredibly notable for producing rational theists, as well. These people were entirely aware of the logical problems with a theistic axiom base and didn't just ignore or downplay the issues involved.

In more modern times, I'd... have to go find my old school notes, which is more effort than I'm going to put forward But yes, there's continuing effort in the modern era to marry reason and religion, and in ways considerably more genuine than is often appreciated -- by either the non-religious or the religious.

But, you can look toward guys like Spinoza, theists (albeit of a sort that many lay worshipers nowadays likely wouldn't recognize as such) who didn't just throw out rationality. That sort of tradition has most definitely extended into the modern age and is engaging in good faith (heh) with non-theist ideology. I just can't remember any of the more notable names, bleh.

Primary point I was trying to make, though, is that saying that true faith is necessarily irrational just isn't something that's accurate. Theology is considerably more diverse than that, and it's just not really an assumption that's fair to make, especially if you're trying to discuss the issue meaningfully.

[EveryZig]

Christian theology for a very long time was incredibly logic driven and very, very strongly emphasized logic and reasoning -- many of the big medieval Christian theologians were superlative logicians and spent incredible amounts of time and effort trying to reconcile faith and reason; some of them did a very impressive job of doing just that, and to this day there is a relatively powerful school of religious thought within Christianity that holds that not only is unreasoned faith undesirable, it's actually incapable of being true faith. I might not agree with their axioms, but there are, actually, incredibly compelling and strongly rational cases for theism. It doesn't, even remotely, do the actual work that's been done in the field of theology justice to deny that.

It is possible I am being unfair to theologians after looking at too many fundamentalists, but I still have some issues with this.
I oversimplified earlier about religion having no regard for reason at all, but even theology is about reconciling faith and reason, which is still based on the idea that faith is in itself a worthwhile thing. I have the same objections to reconciling faith and reason that you might have to 'reconciling' astrology and astronomy.

(As a side note, I too have not found much in the way of specific logical theologians. I search for them every once and a while, but the closest I have ever come to finding them is the Anthropic Principle, which basically consists of assigning physical laws probabilities in order to make a gap into which a god can fit.)

[Cthulhu]

God of the Gaps is a compelling and strongly rational case for theism?  God of the Gaps is terrible, for your the theist as well.  Science doesn't move backwards, playing God of the Gaps will inevitably make your God weaker as science closes those gaps.

I wouldn't call deism rational either, at least not anymore.  Belief in a non-interventionist impersonal god is about as rational as belief in Sagan's invisible dragon.  It made sense in the enlightenment period, back before stuff like evolution and advanced cosmology had made atheism a tenable position for the thinking man, but now that we don't need an intelligence to invoke them I don't see why we should.

[RedKing]

Relevant comic is relevant. (Especially the latter bit, where he points out that religion has its' upside.)

[Frumple]

I wouldn't call deism rational either, at least not anymore.  Belief in a non-interventionist impersonal god is about as rational as belief in Sagan's invisible dragon.  It made sense in the enlightenment period, back before stuff like evolution and advanced cosmology had made atheism a tenable position for the thinking man, but now that we don't need an intelligence to invoke them I don't see why we should.

Yeah, not cluttering up the metaphysics unnecessarily is my primary reason for not accepting a lot of theist arguments, myself. There's people that disagree that a maximally uncluttered metaphysics is a virtue, though, and from what I've seen where a person falls on that subject is more a matter of taste than justification.

M'not particularly interested in actually providing the arguments that are going around nowadays... I honestly don't remember any of the particulars, nor can I recall (/or am willing to expend the effort finding) enough to hunt them down again. Those were just examples thrown out to show that, y'know, it's not all just FAITH FAITH FAITH NO REASON or whathaveyou (which is overstating Zig's original statement, I do believe, but it gets the point across.). Yes, a lot of the older stuff's been kicked into the ground pretty hard and etc, and so forth, and so on. That doesn't mean we get to posit the assumption that, simply because an argument is faith (and/or religion) based, it's irrational. S'not paying th'better theologians their fair due, and the issue isn't quite that simple.

(As a side note, I too have not found much in the way of specific logical theologians. I search for them every once and a while, but the closest I have ever come to finding them is the Anthropic Principle, which basically consists of assigning physical laws probabilities in order to make a gap into which a god can fit.)

Yeah, s'like I've been saying, I'm aware that they exist but don't remember exactly who they are... frankly, I'd have to make either a long distance phone call (am poor ) or a six hour road trip (in about a month and a half, when they come off vacation ) to talk to a couple of my old professors to get some good suggestions. Theology isn't really my field, I've just brushed up against it enough to have a degree of respect for it, even if I by-and-large disagree with the conclusions it tends to come to (and basically don't remember a bloody thing about the actual arguments). It's never good to underestimate the enemy, so to speak

As for the faith thing, just remember to clarify religious faith with that, heh. Everything's ultimately faith (i.e. unjustifiable -- in the stronger sense -- belief) based at the bottom, etc. Faith isn't just a worthwhile thing, it's a necessary thing. Strong skepticism can't actually be beat without it, unfortunately, and thorough skepticism itself is basically a useless dead-end.

[EveryZig]

I agree that any non-solipsism needs some amounts of assumptions, but that doesn't mean you have to start calling those assumptions a good thing.

It is probably unfair of me, but I keep getting the impression that (to mix some metaphors) logical theologians have an elusiveness that places them somewhere between the True Scotsman and the Loch Ness Monster.

[Leafsnail]

*lackadaisically gestures at the Enlightenment* God of the Gaps, Deism, etc.

Can you explain how either of them qualify as logically compelling arguments for theism?  Because god of the gaps to me is just the old "if we can't explain something yet we'll just say god did it and apparently that's evidence" while deism is the one that relies on faith most of all since its god does nothing.

Primary point I was trying to make, though, is that saying that true faith is necessarily irrational just isn't something that's accurate. Theology is considerably more diverse than that, and it's just not really an assumption that's fair to make, especially if you're trying to discuss the issue meaningfully.

So that's why I'd like you to provide me with a more specific counterexample, to show that it's not "FAITH FAITH FAITH NO REASON".  You can't just reference arguments and expect me to take your word for it that they're good.  I mean, I'm sure that theists can be otherwise logical and still hold their faith.  I appreciate that before modern science the case for god would be stronger.  I just haven't seen any actual logical arguments for why you should believe in god today... well, other than the creationist ones that rely on blatantly incorrect understandings of science or the data.

[Bauglir]

If you already believe in God, why should you stop?

[MrWiggles]

If your belief in god doesnt impact your life why still believe?

[Leafsnail]

If you already believe in God, why should you stop?

Because there's no reason to believe it over any other theory with no evidence (at least, no reason that's been presented - please present one if you think one exists).  You can't logically justify a position like that unless you decide to believe every other unfalsifiable theory, many of which are mutually exclusive.  So the reason to stop is that the position is logically unjustifiable unless you can construct a reason to believe in god over all the other idea.

[MagmaMcFry]

Then why should you start in the first place?

[MonkeyHead]

Then why should you start in the first place?

In my experience, because someone told them to, and devout faith took hold (which I am not saying is a bad thing, in all cases) before the ability to question what they had been told had developed (for whatever reason). Children don't invent God(s) - they are taught it/them as part of an education in morals or right behavior, which do form part of most faiths, but they most certainly do not have a monopoly on them.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Then why should you start in the first place?

Conditioning. Like every religion ever.

Not too often an Atheist household raises a fanatic Bantu Muslim.

[lemon10]

That is ignoring all the conversions to different religions (or going from aetheist/agnostic-> religion), yes, conditioning does account for the vast majority of religious people, but not all of them.