Consider all those people who intentionally or unintentionally permit actions from the religious community that they disagree with, yet remain silent since they see the people as being 'on the same team'.

Of course, people of all stripes are guilty of silent inaction. But these are large numbers, where the point is made by statistics, which I don't have. I will assume there is a far greater percentage of "silent inaction" types within the religious community than from a secular community.

I think it's precisely here that the argument runs into difficulty. Silent inaction is not a product of religion, but of human nature.

When Hitler rose to power, Germany was a scientific, philosophical and technological powerhouse, arguably the premier nation in all these fields. Yet this nation sat silent while Hitler espoused National Socialist propaganda and embarked on systematic 'genocide' of not only Jews, but also Gypsies, homosexuals, communists and religious opponents.

When Stalin and Mao embarked on separate pogroms in their officially atheist nations, the masses sat silent.

In the campaign against slavery, did the leadership arise from the secular or religious world? Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and the Quakers would suggest that Christians were active in significant ways.

Please feel free to study the available evidence rather than taking my thoughts at face value. Some germaine topics may be: charitable giving, volunteerism in causes of social justice, the current slave trade, child prostitution, and care for the marginal in society (inc. prisons).

The trustworthy person is trustworthy(I'll assume), because he has produced reliable results, results that have consistently passed the "filters" I've mentioned. This may be unintentional, but there are people who are logical geniuses that know very little about formal logic

You're thinking within a specific paradigm though. Trustworthiness in different cultural patterns may be denoted (for example) by:
- having well mannered children
- being consistently pious
- having a reputation for honesty
- helping neighbours consistently in times of need
- being generous with material prosperity

The Roman patron-client relationship is one possible example of some of this. To assume that all 'trustworthiness' has to do with rational thought is to ignore the role of 'morality' and other possible measures of trust.

If a trustworthy person has a belief that is supported by fallacious evidence or reasoning, the person then has an invalid belief. If you value a single man's trustworthiness in spite of his committing a fallacy, you're dismissing the trustworthiness of a large number of brilliant minds who have shown fallacies to be non-sequitur or outright false. The obscurity of this fact may seem like you're comparing one "trustworthy" man to a "method". But you're not. Even when we place values on the systems we use to gauge the truth, a trustworthy man is not justified having a higher value placed on him than the standards of reason.

Which means, you can't justify this example.

Every person has some areas of fallacious reasoning. It comes with being human.

A person who accepts a 'trustworthy' person's opinion has certainly made a justifiable choice, even by the standards of pure reason. The very nature of being 'trustworthy' is the accumulated record of 'wise' decisions/choices. To go with the statistically superior choice would be entirely justifiable. Justifiable does not necessarily equal correct of course.

Supernatural intervention is contrary to science. Christianity can only be rehabilitated by seeing all descriptions of supernatural intervention as symbolic. God does not exist.

Assertions without empirical evidence are also contrary to science, but that doesn't mean they don't exist...

You're thinking within a specific paradigm though. Trustworthiness in different cultural patterns may be denoted (for example) by:
- having well mannered children
- being consistently pious
- having a reputation for honesty
- helping neighbours consistently in times of need
- being generous with material prosperity

Are we no longer talking about the veracity of a belief system? A trustworthy person may have those attributes, but that doesn't mean his answers are any more truthful than another man with similar experience. What type of trust are you speaking of? I'd trust many men with my life, but I wouldn't trust those same men to answer a simple question about biology. They are not trustworthy in that way.

If a person who qualifies as trustworthy to you made a claim that was fallacious, would you defend the value you place on his counsel? Or would that value decrease? Is the man's answer of such high value that the fallacy can be ignored?

We might say that by the standards of reason, a viewpoint is fallacious, but for the person in the above hypothetical example that would not be an important critique.

If everyone in that culture used that fallacy to support said viewpoint, I'd say the entire culture is wrong. If you're speaking of value-based wisdom, then the point is moot, because there are often no true answers. Advice on what to do about a cheating spouse is different from the subject matter taught in our schools. Categorically different.

I think it's precisely here that the argument runs into difficulty. Silent inaction is not a product of religion, but of human nature.

I never said that silent inaction was a product of religion. But it's a component of it. As you point out, it's also a component in most every aspect of society. But this does nothing to my claim that silent inaction exacerbates the debate over Creationism. Even if every atheist on earth were the epitome of silent inaction, it has no bearing on my point.

But if you wish, I withdraw that point. It was merely discussion fodder. I didn't intend for the discussion to be about Hitler, Mao, and Stalin. They are very popular names in the forum archives, search for the conversations there if you wish, including the fact that only 1.5% of Nazi Germany were unbelievers.

A person who accepts a 'trustworthy' person's opinion has certainly made a justifiable choice, even by the standards of pure reason. The very nature of being 'trustworthy' is the accumulated record of 'wise' decisions/choices. To go with the statistically superior choice would be entirely justifiable. Justifiable does not necessarily equal correct of course.

I missed this, sorry. Yes, heuristics are a necessary part of life. Trusting the word of certain people is a common heuristic. The vast majority of times, we wouldn't need to second guess or question the person. But if the need ever arose, the rubric by which to weigh his advice is the "rational thought" that he is supposed to be an alternative to. Or were you not saying that a trustworthy person is an 'alternative', but rather, a shorthand path... a heuristic?

@ Interbane,
I was just enjoying the opportunity to explore a line of thought.

The main point from my own perspective is that people (whether believers or agnostics/atheists) have difficulty accepting things outside their own thought paradigm. To villify the opposition is thus often a reflection of our own inability to understand opposing viewpoints, and not necessarily a product of the other person being 'wrong.'

Doulos wrote:

Supernatural intervention is contrary to science. Christianity can only be rehabilitated by seeing all descriptions of supernatural intervention as symbolic. God does not exist.

Assertions without empirical evidence are also contrary to science, but that doesn't mean they don't exist...

Hello Doulos, welcome to Booktalk. You are quite wrong in your assertion. Bertrand Russell's teapot has no empirical evidence for or against it, yet the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it does not exist. Scientifically, we are right to assert that this teapot does not exist because the burden of proof rests with those who make extraordinary claims about the existence of imaginary things. Same for God.

ant wrote:
Religion has been and always will be a major driving force in the lives of millions. It's difficult for people to be happy with the explanations that atheists have for the meaning of life - we are highly evolved monkeys. I love my family because I love them and because it's important that my genes survive. I help my neighbor because it benefits the tribe. there is no reason for existence, we simply exist. the universe was created out of nothing.., and other meaninglessness atheists hold as true.

Trumpetting how we all lived on the bottom of the ocean does not resonate with many people wondering about the meaning and value of life.

I don't disagree with everything you say. I think we'd be crazy to value rationality above all other abilities, for example. But this idea that people who don't believe in God must therefore have no appreciation of the (as far as we know) unique capacity of humans to feel and express love or experience the wonder of the world is just plain false. Yet it is what you're implying. If atheists give scientific explanations for the development of life and assume correctly that we and monkeys have common ancestors, those are not meaning-of-life statements. It seems that you might be cherry-picking one or two atheists--who, I don't know--who might have said that the scientific facts place limits on the meaning with which we can invest life. In other words, straw man, as far as atheists as a class are concerned.

Can you explain to me why meaning needs to reside in a power outside of ourselves? Even if the universe has no meaning, why does that make meaning impossible for me?

Can you explain to me why meaning needs to reside in a power outside of ourselves?

This is a really great question.