That's not the big bang theory. The theory describes the actual bang. Actually, calling it the theory is misleading, as there's been several models used to explain the universe's birth and early expansion. There are even theories about what may have been before the big bang.

At the same time, common sense is a nonsensical concept. It places validity at the same scale as comprehension (or even willingness to comprehend). That you can deny something could possibly be true because you do not want it to be, or you do not understand how it could be true, or you do not want to understand how it could be true. Common sense doesn't exist in this context.

Even if you accept that common sense is a useful way to describe how your life experiences filter and inform your daily experiences, so that you use that label to describe how you might decide someone might be lying or up to something, cosmogony is not something that you, or any other human being, has as a life experience on any kind of basis. Common sense simply fails to inform you of what could be true or false about the universe's creation because you have nothing to relate it to. No actual experiences that inform you as to what a universe's creation might be like. Even if you start with the book of genesis, you have to admit that the description is rather vague and deus ex machina (God said this, and did this, and so it was).

While no one has yet presented the archetypal obviously true model of what the big bang must have been like, observations of the universe as it exists today are consistent with the probability that there was a big bang that created this universe.

And you can't coherently dismiss all of the work done on this just because one guy on an internet forum said something that you think doesn't make sense.

CocaColaAddict,

If you find yourself prefacing a statement with "No offense," odds are that what you're about to say is offensive. It's insincere and downright rude to insist that you're not being offensive when you most likely are.

 

 

*munchesmorepopcorn*

Correct.

 

Correct.

 

That's a bit summarising. I think it is more fair to say that for different peoples in different situations there are different truths.

For a desert tribe eating pork really isn't a good idea and neither is eating whale. It would be an economic and health-care disaster for many reasons.

But I don't think G-d would give the same laws to the Eskimos.

 

I don't see that at all.

Neither Hinduism nor Judaism convince their followers that everybody else is wrong. In fact neither religion really care about the beliefs of other people and several other religions are specifically acknowledged as true (or true to an extend) by scholars of those religions.

But I don't think you can claim that Judaism and Hinduism don't have what they need to survive just because they fail on one of the two points you list as essential. Both clearly still exist.

As for G-d answering our prayers, the most-often said prayer in Judaism is the one about a return to Jerusalem. That wasn't answered for almost 2000 years. But did Jews lose faith because of it? In fact it made the faith stronger.

On the other hand, I can imagine that a religion in which the authority answers all prayers would disintegrate quite quickly (as did, for example, communism where such was attempted) and religions that really do convince their followers that everyone else is wrong do have a tendency to become very violent and lose their way within just a few hundred years.

So perhaps you have it exactly wrong?

 

You have clearly never been in a synagogue on Shabbes eve.

 

There are also many things in the bible which palpably don't make sense. It is not an argument, it is a propagandist polemic.

There seems to be a basic problem with a whole half of the argument here: those arguing that there is a god, or that a belief in god is commensurate with science, start from an assumption that there is a god. You can't bang on about logical fallacies when you start from one. It is a trend which repeats itself with a depressing monotony. Essentially these people say 'the universe shows no overt evidence of having been created by an omnipotent being, yet despite this, let us posit just such a being, and explain how such a being could make it look as if it weren't there, or create these complex systems to function without the appearence of a driving intelligence behind them.' Essentially, 'the universe doesn't objectively look like it has been built, but we already believe it has been and would like to continue thinking this way.'

Over the years I have become increasingly convinced in the non-existance of a god or gods simply because the arguments in favour are so shoddy. That and there being no satisfactory evidence.
The internal belief that there is a god is not evidence, either. This is effectively the gist of the 'I feel there must be a god' argument. We can reconcile internal states with an abstract 'objective' examination of why we hold those beliefs, but that does not change the external realities (see Simon Blackburn's Essays in Quasi-Realism).

Very few, amongst them makeshiftwings, have made any intelligent arguments so far.

As for this:

This is despicable. It effaces true ethics in the name of 'God.' Justice is not tied to religion, justice is something else altogether. 'Duty' to other creatures is the root cause of ethics - to say this is because of a need to be dutiful to God is dehumanising, it fetishises good conduct in the most profoundly Feurbachian sense. It also absolves us from fully examining our own motives and what ought to motivate us - it becomes a case of following 'God' Will'; a celestial legalism.
Ethics can be traced to our own, natural selves. Two different readers of Darwin, from opposite political spectra, Kropotkin and Spencer, managed (amongst many others) to trace human ethical behaviour back to our altruistic urges and instincts of mutual aid. Not an abstract metaphysical 'duty' to an intelligence whose existance hasn't yet been proven, let alone his/her/it's 'goodness.'
To continue my trend of quoting from video games "The world is a lie. We see it for what it really is.... Laws do not come from divinity, but from reason. The Creed does not command us to be free, it commands us to be wise." (Assassin's Creed)

To turn to a little polemicising myself now, I'd paraphrase Bakunin, when he reversed Voltaire's formula: if there was a God, it would be necessary to destroy him.

I wonder if we're going to see any example to solidify such a statement here...

So you make up ethics and a rule set based on them?

What's the difference between your ethics and the rule set based on them and a religion?

 

Can you name one of those human tribes that follows such an approach and was able better to combat anything?

 

yes..HOMO SAPIANS!

How is that an excellent point?

I asked him how he decides what is right and wrong without religion and he just told me that he would do what Moses did and make up his own (although presumably without a god).

He didn't even answer my question, let alone prove anything about his position.

As for the "old trope": "Is God good because his actions are good? Or are God's actions good because he is God?"... who says the two are opposites? I rather think that if G-d exists there would be no difference between a "good action" and an "action of G-d". Those two simply don't have have an "if X then Y" relationship so the question which of the two is X and which is Y is meaningless. (I could with the same justification ask whether good ice cream is tasty because it is good ice cream or whether it is good ice cream because it is tasty.)

Between the people who find outdated artifical and false dilemmas and think they have therefore found knowledge not understood by those they disagree with and the people who applaud them for having done so there is just not much to learn, I suppose.

 

Actually, I did answer you. You just didn't distinguish between ethics and morality. I have clarified above.

As for the old trope argument: You haven't actually addressed the issue. Admittedly this is because the question posits a hypothetical quandry, and you answer as if ... I'm not sure how. Some bizzarre sophistry. I asked 'how can we determine that God is good' and you replied by saying 'God is good.'
They arn't opposites - one is a noun, the other is a description of the morality of a position. The question is how one relates to the other. So saying that they arn't opposites, but rather the same, makes no sense.
But taking you supposition further, if there is no difference between 'a good action' and 'an action of God', then no action brought about by God is bad (that is, not-good). So how can you define 'good'? What makes God 'good?' i.e., how do we ascertain 'goodness' and 'badness'? We return to the point of the question.

This isn't an outdated, artificial argument - it is one put forward by some of the greatest thinkers in the history of ethics, one of the questions that university courses in the philosophy of ethics start off with, because it helps us understand ethical realist stances, and the implications for normative judgement.

 

[edited, as with most, almost immediately after posting]

Unless there is a G-d and you hear his voice the only way you have to determine whether something is just is by what you were told by others.

 

Yes, but did the _animists_ do that without believing in a higher power they don't control?

I am looking for grand examples of tribes/peoples that used humanist systems of ethics rather than faith-based such. I believe the claim was made that such systems are obviously superior? So where are they?

As for the animist tribal systems; they were based on beliefs in the supernatural, not humanism, and as we can see among the remnants of these systems, they were quite barbaric. The modern romantic version of how tribal systems worked is quite different from how they did and still do work.

I'll give you an example.

One of the tribal conventions based on sharing amongs the community is the so-called blood feud which allowed one clan to avenge the death of a family member by killing the perpetrator or one of the clan of the perpetrator. This practice is a typical outgrowth of the animist tribal system humanity used for thousands of years. It's still common in more primitive corners of the world.

Jewish law, aka the Bible, introduced the concept of "cities of refuge". Those were cities (the Bible lists six) in which accused perpetrators of manslaughter who had been judged innocent could escape the blood feud and within which they would be safe from the clan of the victim.

In time laws against blood feuds became more common. But those laws always came "from above", i.e. were made by an authority who claimed they represented G-d's will and thus had jurisdiction to replace ancient customs the tribes came up with cooperatively.

I very much prefer the deity-based religion over the tribal cooperation system, thank you very much.

Another good example is women's rights.

In tribal societies, women are essentially property. They were (and are) sold to prospective husbands. It was the Torah (for the Jews) and the Quran (for Arabs) who first defined any kind of rights of women in those tribal societies. G-d (or people pretending to speak for G-d) introduced laws that the tribes were unable to make (or were unable to make and enforce without resorting to a claim that G-d wants those laws).

(Now don't confuse followers of pre-Islamic tribal rituals who claim to be Muslims but violate Islamic law regarding women with Islam!)

 

I was not aware that the priestly caste in Judaism was generally richer than the other tribes.

The decree to worship only one god didn't help the priesthood. Monotheism takes away from the power of the priesthood because people can approach one god much better than they can approach an entire pantheon.

This is why you historically find huge numbers of of powerful priests in polytheistic societies. In monotheism, priests are very different from polytheistic priests.

When Pharaoh Akhenaten introduded a monotheistic system in Egypt, the priesthood was very opposed to it. And after the Pharaoh's death, the old polytheistic system came back and was very much promoted by the priests. One theory goes that Moses was one of the priests of the monotheistic Egyptian religion and that the Israelites were a band of his followers.

Either way, the idea that monotheism is some sort of mechanism used by the priesthood to remain in power is false. Quite the opposite is true.

 

There is no such attitude and people do not agree about what things can be owned and whether ownership exists and whether everyone has a right to own things or not.

Try explaining to a nomadic people that they have an attitute towards stealing "your" land. You might instead find that nomadic societies often have no concept of land ownership at all.

You are trying to explain natural law to me. But the problem is that there isn't one.

 

 

 

Gah, yes, you're defining God, but you're defining him as something which is good. Which raises questions of what good is, and in what way God is good.
If I say the sky is blue, I am referring to a value of 'blueness.' The sky has the property of being blue. So if you say that God is good, then you are saying he has the property of being good. But that makes goodness an external value to God, so how can he be the source of values that differentiate between what is good and bad? Seriously, it's that simple.

As for 'not answering you', as I said, you conflated 'ethics' and 'rule-based morality.' Apparently pointing that out didn't clarify the answer. There is little else I can do.

 

And are you trying to piss me off? Did I ever say historical tribes had a humanistic ethic? Did I ever say animist tribes didn't have conventions by which their moral codes were enforced? No. The point was that these societies all had systems of mutual aid, constituted in various, specific social mores and functions. But the central theme was that an ethic that could be described as altruistic was a part of all these systems.
Seriously, do I have to summarise the entirety of Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, or Spencer's confidence in the animal instincts to provide a guide for moral action? The inter- and intra-species aid rendered by creatures in the wild? The way thse actions became customs in early language-based societies? The gradual codification of these customs as laws, both religious and secular?
No, there was no 'humanist ethic' in these societies. They were primitive, captives of their own ignorance and not yet fully self-aware (that's what philosophy is, to some extent, examining and becoming aware of our selves). Rather, the kernal of 'mutual aid' or 'altruism' was encased within their social conventions. The point of Kropotkin's analysis was that we can create a humanist, enlightened morality based on these natural impulses.

And no, those societies weren't perfect. They have been romanticised (just look at Rousseau) and had very negative aspects. But if the theory of antinomy teaches us anything, it is that contradiction surrounds us. These old societies teach us much about what makes us human, including the negative effects and actions. We can learn from both the positives and the negatives.
It is telling that you try to rescue old Judaeo-Christian society from this though, try to elevate them above their contemporaries. They had just as many faults. As for women, the Bible is astoundingly mysoginistic in many places. God is a violent dictator, especially (but not solely) in the Old Testament, who demands heresy be stamped out. When the Christians gained ascendancy by partnering with the emperor Constantine, they engaged in pogroms to extirpate non-believers (so quickly do the persecuted turn to persecutors in the religous sphere). And as for the priests, power is not solely measured in material wealth, but in obedience also; for centuries they remained the arbiters and interpreters of 'God's Will.'

Additionally, simply being religious, in the terms you appear to be thinking in, does not mean that the mutual aid impulses that we carry by instinct were non-existant in these Jewish societies. As goes for the other tribes mentioned above, these instincts were codified by religious/cultural doctrine (tradition).
You would do well to also pay attention to Feurbach and the concept of fetishisation. A devout believer in a god who does good attributes it to the grace of their god, to the inspiration of their religion, to the positive influence of their faith. In reality, their good work is their own. Their actions for others are a part of who they are, but religion has fetishised their god. Positive aspects are imparted to the god - it is 'good', 'kind', 'benevolent'. These are human words, loaded with human meaning. These aspects come back to the person in a form they do not recognise, imbued as they are with a new, religious significance. (This obviously leaves us with another trend in religious thought - that we are sinful, fallen, since all that remain are the negative aspects of human activity, all positive ones being ascribed to a god.)
It ought to be fairly simple to see how this works from the standpoint of the ethical naturalist approach. Behaviour influenced by mutual aid - generosity, sympathy, etc. - is ascribed to the religious convictions, whatever they may be, of the individual. You are doing the exact same thing with early Judeo-Christian society - the better aspects of their society, those we might judge as more positive than their contemporaries (who were not all alike, as you seem to imply, though I assume that is because this isn't really the place to go into each civilisation seperately) you ascribe to tyhem having a certain religion.