How can people still take the Bible or other the religious texts literally?

[Caracal]

I find it simpler just to respect people's beliefs without accepting them. Debating matters of faith is rather like trying to figure out exactly why any two people fell in love...looking into it too deeply doesn't really have you learning much.

I suppose a psychologist can answer your literal question.

I wasn't mocking a certain poster's belief. We were discussing conspiracies theories and I was using that as an analogy for how really intelligent people could believe crazy conspiracy theories.

The problem is that modern rationalism is, itself, a belief system which presupposes lots of unprovable ideas about cause and effect and a million other things. It only makes sense within a certain historically contingent belief system. You don't think these things because you're more logical and rational than other people, you think them because of a cultural world you inhabit.

Sure, modern rationalism involves "believing" certain things. But even if we use the same word as is used in discussing religion, we are not talking about the same thing. There is everyday rational belief and there is religious belief. They are qualitatively different. The belief that I use to navigate my way through the world is built up from my personal experience, vicarious experience and reason. My beliefs about they way the world works are open to change. Like others, I can use my experience and reason to come to conclusions and believe things that turn out to be incorrect. But, in general, I am much more likely to be "correct." That is — I am much more likely to interpret the world in such a way that I can act within it to bring about the outcome that I desire.

For example, I can say, hmmmm ....I don't feel sick at all and I thought I wasn't sick, but these CT scans show that I have a "mass" and the biopsy shows that it is malignant. Then I can also say I know (or believe?) that chemotherapy is literally poison (Taxol, to take but one example, is derived from the poisonous yew tree). But I also know (believe?) that its net benefit will be therapeutic because it will wind up killing more cancer cells than normal cells because the former grow at a faster rate than the former. Based on these facts (objects of belief?) I think that this course of treatment will be my best bet for a "cure" or long-term remission. I may turn out to be wrong about any number of these facts or beliefs. I doubt it, but we may learn that chemo doesn't actually work they way we think it works and in fact is usually worse than simply doing nothing at all. Or, what is much more likely, it just doesn't work for me, for my body and the genetic makeup of my particular cancer in exactly way we had hoped.

Alternatively, I could believe in the religious sense. Religious belief, from what I understand, seems to be defined the opposite of rational "belief." After all, if something were rational and easily believable, why would we need to have faith? God works in mysterious ways and all that. So, if I were a true believer, I would simply pray to God, the omnipotent being who has my best interests at heart and he would protect me. That's all I would need to do.

So, which belief or set of beliefs is "better"? That is, which is more likely to bring about the desired outcome (cure or long-term remission)? I think we all know the answer to that.

Of course, in the real world, lots of religious folk go and get treated with modern medicine ... in addition to petitioning the almighty. Why?

One possibility is that they don't actually believe what they say they believe — they don't actually believe that their God is omnipotent and capable of working miracles on the behalf of true believers.

Or, if they are deep thinkers, they will build up some complicated theory about how God is actually working through the oncologists and cancer researchers to bring about a modern-day miracle (their cure). But what they are actually doing is just adopting rational, scientific beliefs and reaping the benefit of medical science without giving science its full due. (It's not scientists doing this. It's God!)

Or, finally, they can just compartmentalize. They can say: I believe in medical science, so I'll get the chemo. But I believe that prayer will help me emotionally, so I will pray to give myself psychological/spiritual comfort. This latter is probably the least harmful way of approaching the situation, but I do not agree that it is somehow better than a full-on atheist approach, one great advantage of which is that you do not need to go through life compartmentalizing and attempting to believe different things in different circumstances.

But to go back to your post, Caracal. I agree that modern rationalism is historical and culturally contingent, not absolute (in any case, that is already implied by the qualifier "modern"). However, it is still the best "belief" system we have available to us at this time. Again, where "better" means most likely to produce the results one aims for.

Best for what aims? And who determines those aims? I think what you're saying is that it is best for your aims, which is rather different. Look, that's my relationship to bio medicine too, but it isn't like we both just were transported from a galaxy far, far away, saw this system, carefully studied it and decided it would provide the most benefit. Its a system that has a dominant place in our world and we have chosen to mostly go along with it.

The example you give, actually shows all of the ways in which it requires lots of faith. That cancer may not actually be growing much. Doctors know that some cancers are more or less malignant than others, but they aren't always that great at knowing which ones are dangerous. It is entirely possible you could have just gone on much happier and more content not knowing you had some mass that was never going to cause any problems. Even if it growing, there are hardly any assurances that chemotherapy is going to result in improved quality of life. It is certainly going to result in a whole cycle of anxiety and visits to the doctor and all the rest. Now, I'm not going to turn it down, but that's mostly because I've grown up within this belief system about the benefits of bio medicine, but if you go outside the metrics of that system (lifespan, chance of cure, etc) you could certainly make an argument that it isn't "better."

I'm not a theologian, or even very theologically inclined, but theologians have spent lots of time on questions of god and man's agency in the world and have come up with lots of different, sometimes complicated answers. I think the problem with most modern atheism is that they are unwilling to engage with it, which doesn't make for very interesting arguments.

[Caracal]

Wow. There is so much to discuss here. But in regards to your last point — morality — there is no reason to believe atheism or a more rational approach to the world is either immoral or amoral. There is no incompatibility at all between being an atheist and trusting science on the one hand and abhorring child trafficking on the other. Some eighteenth century philosophers referred to this an innate moral sense. But you can also see humans' moral connection to others as being an evolutionary advantage. Humans were simply more likely to survive if they behaved morally — if they cared for their children and others in their tribe, no matter what their belief systems actually were. Today, most parents have an entirely natural love for their children, their other family members and their friends that has nothing at all to do with religious belief.

Of course, humanity's natural moral sense only extends so far. It only extends to those who are close and not those who are "other." But here is where reason comes in. For those who have thought about it, they can see that it is indeed rational for us to extend our moral sense to others, to children whom we have never even met and who might be if another race because we understand that this will ultimately make the world a better place for everyone. Really, you don't need a God or a sacred text to do this.

I think you're accidentally making the case against your argument. Those kinds of arguments about the evolutionary advantages of some idea are about as unprovable as you can get. The problem is that you could always argue the reverse perfectly plausibly. In this case "it confers an evolutionary advantage to only care about your own offspring and not anyone else's." Of course there's no reason to think atheism is amoral or immoral, any more than there's a reason to argue that theism is.

[marshwiggle]

Wow. There is so much to discuss here. But in regards to your last point — morality — there is no reason to believe atheism or a more rational approach to the world is either immoral or amoral. There is no incompatibility at all between being an atheist and trusting science on the one hand and abhorring child trafficking on the other. Some eighteenth century philosophers referred to this an innate moral sense. But you can also see humans' moral connection to others as being an evolutionary advantage. Humans were simply more likely to survive if they behaved morally — if they cared for their children and others in their tribe, no matter what their belief systems actually were. Today, most parents have an entirely natural love for their children, their other family members and their friends that has nothing at all to do with religious belief.

Of course, humanity's natural moral sense only extends so far. It only extends to those who are close and not those who are "other." But here is where reason comes in. For those who have thought about it, they can see that it is indeed rational for us to extend our moral sense to others, to children whom we have never even met and who might be if another race because we understand that this will ultimately make the world a better place for everyone. Really, you don't need a God or a sacred text to do this.

I think you're accidentally making the case against your argument. Those kinds of arguments about the evolutionary advantages of some idea are about as unprovable as you can get. The problem is that you could always argue the reverse perfectly plausibly. In this case "it confers an evolutionary advantage to only care about your own offspring and not anyone else's." Of course there's no reason to think atheism is amoral or immoral, any more than there's a reason to argue that theism is.

Exactly. And my point was that regardless of whether one is a theist or an atheist, people don't calmly explain that a child trafficker is being "irrational"; they denounce the person as "evil" in some way or other. To be a complete rationalist, one should allow the possibility that someone else may rationally come up with a very different set of moral values, based on different circumstances, data, etc. However, rationalists seem to all have situations in which they exhibit moral outrage at the actions of others, suggesting that there is some part of morality which is either innate or ought to be self-evident, so that those who reject it are exhibiting not merely a different thought process, but willful anti-social behaviour.

To clarify; the rationalists are welcome to have their own morality. What is surprising is their insistence that everyone else must subscribe to some fundamental parts of it as well. The more universal the expectations, the harder they are to justify by some sort of dispassionate and unquestionable calculation.

[Treehugger]

I find it simpler just to respect people's beliefs without accepting them. Debating matters of faith is rather like trying to figure out exactly why any two people fell in love...looking into it too deeply doesn't really have you learning much.

I suppose a psychologist can answer your literal question.

I wasn't mocking a certain poster's belief. We were discussing conspiracies theories and I was using that as an analogy for how really intelligent people could believe crazy conspiracy theories.

The problem is that modern rationalism is, itself, a belief system which presupposes lots of unprovable ideas about cause and effect and a million other things. It only makes sense within a certain historically contingent belief system. You don't think these things because you're more logical and rational than other people, you think them because of a cultural world you inhabit.

Sure, modern rationalism involves "believing" certain things. But even if we use the same word as is used in discussing religion, we are not talking about the same thing. There is everyday rational belief and there is religious belief. They are qualitatively different. The belief that I use to navigate my way through the world is built up from my personal experience, vicarious experience and reason. My beliefs about they way the world works are open to change. Like others, I can use my experience and reason to come to conclusions and believe things that turn out to be incorrect. But, in general, I am much more likely to be "correct." That is — I am much more likely to interpret the world in such a way that I can act within it to bring about the outcome that I desire.

For example, I can say, hmmmm ....I don't feel sick at all and I thought I wasn't sick, but these CT scans show that I have a "mass" and the biopsy shows that it is malignant. Then I can also say I know (or believe?) that chemotherapy is literally poison (Taxol, to take but one example, is derived from the poisonous yew tree). But I also know (believe?) that its net benefit will be therapeutic because it will wind up killing more cancer cells than normal cells because the former grow at a faster rate than the former. Based on these facts (objects of belief?) I think that this course of treatment will be my best bet for a "cure" or long-term remission. I may turn out to be wrong about any number of these facts or beliefs. I doubt it, but we may learn that chemo doesn't actually work they way we think it works and in fact is usually worse than simply doing nothing at all. Or, what is much more likely, it just doesn't work for me, for my body and the genetic makeup of my particular cancer in exactly way we had hoped.

Alternatively, I could believe in the religious sense. Religious belief, from what I understand, seems to be defined the opposite of rational "belief." After all, if something were rational and easily believable, why would we need to have faith? God works in mysterious ways and all that. So, if I were a true believer, I would simply pray to God, the omnipotent being who has my best interests at heart and he would protect me. That's all I would need to do.

So, which belief or set of beliefs is "better"? That is, which is more likely to bring about the desired outcome (cure or long-term remission)? I think we all know the answer to that.

Of course, in the real world, lots of religious folk go and get treated with modern medicine ... in addition to petitioning the almighty. Why?

One possibility is that they don't actually believe what they say they believe — they don't actually believe that their God is omnipotent and capable of working miracles on the behalf of true believers.

Or, if they are deep thinkers, they will build up some complicated theory about how God is actually working through the oncologists and cancer researchers to bring about a modern-day miracle (their cure). But what they are actually doing is just adopting rational, scientific beliefs and reaping the benefit of medical science without giving science its full due. (It's not scientists doing this. It's God!)

Or, finally, they can just compartmentalize. They can say: I believe in medical science, so I'll get the chemo. But I believe that prayer will help me emotionally, so I will pray to give myself psychological/spiritual comfort. This latter is probably the least harmful way of approaching the situation, but I do not agree that it is somehow better than a full-on atheist approach, one great advantage of which is that you do not need to go through life compartmentalizing and attempting to believe different things in different circumstances.

But to go back to your post, Caracal. I agree that modern rationalism is historical and culturally contingent, not absolute (in any case, that is already implied by the qualifier "modern"). However, it is still the best "belief" system we have available to us at this time. Again, where "better" means most likely to produce the results one aims for.

The example you give, actually shows all of the ways in which it requires lots of faith. That cancer may not actually be growing much. Doctors know that some cancers are more or less malignant than others, but they aren't always that great at knowing which ones are dangerous. It is entirely possible you could have just gone on much happier and more content not knowing you had some mass that was never going to cause any problems. Even if it growing, there are hardly any assurances that chemotherapy is going to result in improved quality of life. It is certainly going to result in a whole cycle of anxiety and visits to the doctor and all the rest. Now, I'm not going to turn it down, but that's mostly because I've grown up within this belief system about the benefits of bio medicine, but if you go outside the metrics of that system (lifespan, chance of cure, etc) you could certainly make an argument that it isn't "better."

You are absolutely right in most of what you say here. The picture is very complicated when it comes to cancer treatment. And it is indeed possible that by taking treatment you will actually be sacrificing quality of life in the fleeting search for quantity. But being rational and making rational choices does not mean that you necessarily accept the standard institutional choice. You can rationally choose treatment because you think it is a good bet for you (after doing research and consulting with your doctors, you decide that you taking the treatment is your best bet to maximize the quality and quantity of life, or maybe maximize the integral of time and quality of life). However, you can also use your reason to take into account the inherent biases of the cancer industry and the reluctance of oncologists to recommend against treatment when you see that the benefits of treatment are much less likely to be clear cut in your particular case. So, let's say you have small cell lung cancer, you may use your reason to refuse certain treatments like prophylactic whole brain radiation and instead choose to travel overseas to a right to die clinic in Switzerland (well, if we were allowed to travel).

It is not as if the cancer industry is some kind of new religion that has take away your individual capacity of thought and choice. It is not a new religion simply telling us what we should do. In fact, in my experience, it is often the most religious who do not question what their oncologists have to say. In practice for them,  trusting God amounts to trusting the authority of individual oncologists and the cancer industry or rejecting their influence completely. Religious thinking tends toward more black and white and less nuanced realistic decision-making. In other words, it makes for worse decision-making.

I'm not a theologian, or even very theologically inclined, but theologians have spent lots of time on questions of god and man's agency in the world and have come up with lots of different, sometimes complicated answers. I think the problem with most modern atheism is that they are unwilling to engage with it, which doesn't make for very interesting arguments.

Just because an answer is complicated doesn't mean it is any better or more valid than a simple common sense answer. In fact, the very complexity of theological argument is useful for building up a certain mystique around religious authority. Take the arguments about the supposed Triune God. Already having an omnipotent God creates all kinds of thorny problems, most notably the problem of theodicy. Trying to somehow shove three Gods into one just makes things more complex, but doesn't necessarily make anything better for the average person (although it gives theologians a lot more to argue about). The simplest explanation is just to say, you know there is only one God. Or better yet, there is no God and bad things happen to good people because the universe is basically random and you don't magically not get cancer because you are a good person. Nor is God tying to teach you something through your cancer. It just is. End of story. It's a whole heck of a lot simpler and frankly much more believable.

Also, it may surprise you that many atheists are atheists precisely because they have engaged deeply with theology. (I count myself among them.) People might not know that one of the occupational hazards of going to seminary is losing your faith. (I did not go to seminary, but I was a very serious, philosophical Christian for a long time -  read Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, Tillich, engaged in very serious textual Bible study.) The true believers are usually (not always) the ones who have not really dug into their faith but simply believe what people tell them.

[marshwiggle]

Just because an answer is complicated doesn't mean it is any better or more valid than a simple common sense answer. In fact, the very complexity of theological argument is useful for building up a certain mystique around religious authority. Take the arguments about the supposed Triune God. Already having an omnipotent God creates all kinds of thorny problems, most notably the problem of theodicy. Trying to somehow shove three Gods into one just makes things more complex, but doesn't necessarily make anything better for the average person (although it gives theologians a lot more to argue about).

The triune God is like the wave-particle duality of light. The problem is that all of our experience leads us to see two ideas as distinct from one another. A single situation which violates that experience only shows that our previous categorization was an oversimplification.

It's a black swan situation. Until we see a black swan, it is completely reasonable to belive that "black" and "swan" are mutually exclusive.

Also, it may surprise you that many atheists are atheists precisely because they have engaged deeply with theology. (I count myself among them.) People might not know that one of the occupational hazards of going to seminary is losing your faith. (I did not go to seminary, but I was a very serious, philosophical Christian for a long time -  read Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, Tillich, engaged in very serious textual Bible study.) The true believers are usually (not always) the ones who have not really dug into their faith but simply believe what people tell them.

There are examples like C.S. Lewis of people who have gone the other way; atheists who became theists. Neither one "proves" which is right. And the reality is that most people, regardless of whether they call themselves theists or atheists, have probably not come to their belief system by a process of rigourous study, but rather they have adopted the basic worldview of their family, community, or peer group. Again, that doesn't make any belief system right or wrong.

Before Newton came along, most people adopted the Greek ideas about the physical laws. Now people similarly adopt Newtonian ideas. People in the past weren't more stupid, and people now aren't smarter; the default may be right or wrong, but it is (by definition) what most people wil automatically accept.

[Treehugger]

Wow. There is so much to discuss here. But in regards to your last point — morality — there is no reason to believe atheism or a more rational approach to the world is either immoral or amoral. There is no incompatibility at all between being an atheist and trusting science on the one hand and abhorring child trafficking on the other. Some eighteenth century philosophers referred to this an innate moral sense. But you can also see humans' moral connection to others as being an evolutionary advantage. Humans were simply more likely to survive if they behaved morally — if they cared for their children and others in their tribe, no matter what their belief systems actually were. Today, most parents have an entirely natural love for their children, their other family members and their friends that has nothing at all to do with religious belief.

Of course, humanity's natural moral sense only extends so far. It only extends to those who are close and not those who are "other." But here is where reason comes in. For those who have thought about it, they can see that it is indeed rational for us to extend our moral sense to others, to children whom we have never even met and who might be if another race because we understand that this will ultimately make the world a better place for everyone. Really, you don't need a God or a sacred text to do this.

I think you're accidentally making the case against your argument. Those kinds of arguments about the evolutionary advantages of some idea are about as unprovable as you can get. The problem is that you could always argue the reverse perfectly plausibly. In this case "it confers an evolutionary advantage to only care about your own offspring and not anyone else's." Of course there's no reason to think atheism is amoral or immoral, any more than there's a reason to argue that theism is.

I think God's existence is probably less provable.

As for the evolutionary advantage of loving your children: It doesn't have to be proven. It is more or less obvious. Ask yourself, which would help early humans thrive more? Loving and taking care their children? Or abandoning them? I don't think we need to fund any studies to settle to this. Also, do you think early humans needed a religion to tell them to take care of their children and/or other family members. But maybe you think early humans were so entirely different from modern humans, modern primates and modern mammals in general that we can't know anything at all about them?

Also, I'm not arguing that theism is immoral or amoral. I was responding to Marshwiggle who was suggesting (I think) that atheism and morality are incompatible (although I may have misread that). The point I was trying to make was not about morality. It was that religion is not the best way of making decisions about the world, practically speaking. And I think it is difficult to contest this.

[Parasaurolophus]

I don't know about literal belief, but judging from students and people on the internet, a big driver of religious belief simpliciter seems to be moral: they cannot imagine a non-religious basis for morality. That's patently silly, of course, and even just a little reflective thinking should be able to correct it. But since few of us get any real training in ethics and meta-ethics, the error can persist for a long time.

Similarly, most students/people seem to unreflectively believe in natural law theory (the idea that law reflects morality). It takes no time to disabuse them of the idea, once you actually get them thinking about it. Although it sneaks back in once you start talking about some of the problems with legal positivism and looking at particular cases. At least at that point it's chosen for reasons, rather than just some gut feeling.

I don't really know what it means to "believe" something

Like 'knowledge', 'belief' is surprisingly complex. You can build an entire (boring!) career as an epistemologist on the subject.

If you want to further the premise of your statement, I find it difficult to fathom that people "believe" in the necessity of government for things to "work" despite ample evidence as small as potholes and as large as the numerous genocides of just the last century to prove they do anything but. This is the religions of the left. At least I can't "disprove" the resurrection. I can easily prove the non-functionality of governments by pointing to over a hundred million deaths in the just the 20th century.

This is silly. People don't believe that government is necessary to deliver these kinds of goods; what they actually believe is that it's an efficient way of doing so--or, at least, more efficient than the alternative. And there's plenty of evidence for it, starting with better health outcomes in countries where the government provides healthcare. The evidence you cite here is not evidence for your thesis.

Compare: I can easily point to at least 100 billion human deaths over the course of human history, plus trillions of non-human deaths, to show that DNA-based life is futile, a waste of everyone's time, and an evolutionary dead-end. (The future is made of RNA!)

Here are a few things that "rational" people accept, but requiring a lot of what would be called "faith" in a religious context.

• Quantum mechanics. A quotation, perhaps incorrectly attirubed to Feinman says "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

Deferring to someone with mathematical expertise who can show you a proof, or the gaps which quantum phenomena are supposed to fill, seems like a stronger (and different) basis than deferring to someone's conviction that something is true.

• Consciousness. The "scientific" fudge on this one is to  say that "consciousness in an emergent property of certain systems." (Emergent property is scientific gibberish for "it obviously exists, but we have no clue how it works".)

I mean, sort of. It's true that we don't ultimately have a clear grasp of what's going on where complex phenomena like consciousness are concerned, because we don't yet understand the lower-level phenomena sufficiently well. But we do understand how emergence works in other contexts. You're a computer scientist, aren't you? Don't we understand how basic physical input, governed by a system of logic, gets translated into the top-level phenomena that are The Fora, or PhotoShop? Sure, the average person doesn't. But surely you, as a computer scientist, do.

The difference, of course, is that we haven't built consciousnesses, so we're not privy to all of the elements involved, or the steps required to put them together. But we can glimpse how it might happen, and a lot of good work has gone into thinking through just what emergence is.

• Free will. See quantum mechanics and consciousness. If brain function is either deterministic or probabilistic, the idea of "changing one's mind" is pretty meaningless. If we don't actually make decisions, our brains are an incredibly realistic simulation of it.

You're right that libertarian free will is incoherent. Unfortunately, we also know that hard determinism is false--it's the universal quantifier that gets it into trouble with our best accounts of the special sciences (e.g. lack of upper bounds on the velocities of moving objects in classical mechanics, it has an especially hard time in GTR, where it fails spectacularly and often, the Earman and Norton hole argument, wave-function collapse interpretations of QM, etc.).

Most people who study free will have been left to conclude that we're equivocating when we talk about free will, and that what we actually mean (or should mean) is something else; they adopt a position known as 'compatibilism', or sometimes 'soft determinism'. (Some interpretations of QM are friendly to determinism, however, and a fair few people have opted for that kind of account instead.)

• Morality. See all of the above. Show me a rationalist who does not think genocide, child sex trafficking, and so on as deserving of punishment.  But that requires an assumption of free will and a sense that all values are not completely culturally relative.

Cultural relativism is incoherent. For one thing, it ignores evidence of widespread agreement between cultures about most moral issues. (You couldn't actually have a large-scale society if people didn't share the value of truth-telling and the prohibition against murder, for example.) For another, it's not clear what's meant by a 'culture' in the first place. And there's plenty about our own culture that we don't understand; if you're a cultural relativist, then that means that you can't even judge members of your own culture (whatever that is).

Relativism can be attractive because we often have the intuition that we should avoid forming crude opinions of other cultures. But that's a problem with the quality of our knowledge, not with which culture we belong to. We're (rightly) nervous about interfering in the affairs of others, we (rightly) feel that we should be tolerant of others and their customs, and we're (rightly!) reluctant to express contempt for societies we criticize. But judging a practice is not the same as trying to change it, not every practice is equally admirable (else there'd be nothing to tolerate!), and to criticize a practice is not the same as to condemn an entire culture or be contemptuous of it.

The upshot is just that cultural relativism requires us not to engage in moral reasoning at all. And that's just silly.

As for free will... you're right that it's widely believed that free will is necessary for moral responsibility. It's not clear, however, that what's required is libertarian free will (which, as you know, is incoherent and thus doesn't do much to ground morality) rather than some species of compatibilism. More importantly, there are plenty of deterministic accounts of morality out there. Indeed, consequentialism is one of the most popular ethical frameworks out there, and it's perfectly compatible with determinism.

In any case, all of that is independent of the meta-ethical question of whether moral realism is true, or whether some species of anti-realism is, instead. (Interestingly, the case for moral realism today is closely tied to that for mathematical realism. IMO that's a much more interesting issue, but I guess that's why I'm not an ethicist, I only play one at the front of the classroom.)

[marshwiggle]

Here are a few things that "rational" people accept, but requiring a lot of what would be called "faith" in a religious context.

• Quantum mechanics. A quotation, perhaps incorrectly attirubed to Feinman says "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

Deferring to someone with mathematical expertise who can show you a proof, or the gaps which quantum phenomena are supposed to fill, seems like a stronger (and different) basis than deferring to someone's conviction that something is true.

The point is that quantum mechanics can be seen to work, even though any attempt to explain how is problematic.  The acceptance despite the lack of a reasonable explanation is faith.

• Consciousness. The "scientific" fudge on this one is to  say that "consciousness in an emergent property of certain systems." (Emergent property is scientific gibberish for "it obviously exists, but we have no clue how it works".)

I mean, sort of. It's true that we don't ultimately have a clear grasp of what's going on where complex phenomena like consciousness are concerned, because we don't yet understand the lower-level phenomena sufficiently well. But we do understand how emergence works in other contexts. You're a computer scientist, aren't you? Don't we understand how basic physical input, governed by a system of logic, gets translated into the top-level phenomena that are The Fora, or PhotoShop? Sure, the average person doesn't. But surely you, as a computer scientist, do.

The difference, of course, is that we haven't built consciousnesses, so we're not privy to all of the elements involved, or the steps required to put them together. But we can glimpse how it might happen, and a lot of good work has gone into thinking through just what emergence is.

Consciousness is entirely unrelated to intelligence (in this instance). To say that bigger, more complex systems can exhibit complex behaviour (as exhibited by many AI tools) is pretty well established. However, there is no remote rationale for self-awareness in any computational system.
I can write a trivial program to count the lines of code in that program, but no-one would remotely call that "self-aware". A program a billion lines of code is no more self-aware than a single line of code. A distributed system running on multiple processors does not exhibit an atom of self-awareness. Does anyone realistically (i.e. not in some writer's fantasy) suggest the entire Internet is actually self-aware?

Self-awareness is utterly and completely beyond any understanding of technology, despite any advances in things like natural language recognition which can allow some mimicry of self-awareness.

• Free will. See quantum mechanics and consciousness. If brain function is either deterministic or probabilistic, the idea of "changing one's mind" is pretty meaningless. If we don't actually make decisions, our brains are an incredibly realistic simulation of it.

You're right that libertarian free will is incoherent. Unfortunately, we also know that hard determinism is false--it's the universal quantifier that gets it into trouble with our best accounts of the special sciences (e.g. lack of upper bounds on the velocities of moving objects in classical mechanics, it has an especially hard time in GTR, where it fails spectacularly and often, the Earman and Norton hole argument, wave-function collapse interpretations of QM, etc.).

Most people who study free will have been left to conclude that we're equivocating when we talk about free will, and that what we actually mean (or should mean) is something else; they adopt a position known as 'compatibilism', or sometimes 'soft determinism'. (Some interpretations of QM are friendly to determinism, however, and a fair few people have opted for that kind of account instead.)

This illustrates my point; it obviously exists, so attempts at explanation are made, even though they are sketchy and incomplete. This again is faith, since the problems with the explanation do not prevent people from accepting the reality of the phenomenon.

Also, I'm not arguing that theism is immoral or amoral. I was responding to Marshwiggle who was suggesting (I think) that atheism and morality are incompatible (although I may have misread that). The point I was trying to make was not about morality. It was that religion is not the best way of making decisions about the world, practically speaking. And I think it is difficult to contest this.

I probably communicated badly. My point was not that atheism and morality are incompatible; morality can be based on many things. What is surprising is the concept of some universal moral expectations, to the point that people who violate those expectations are seen as somehow intentionally ignoring underlying principles. Care for one's own biological offspring is an example of something that has obvious evolutionary advantage; forbidding genocide is not so clear cut, since eliminating competition for resources would seem to benefit one's own offspring greatly.

[Parasaurolophus]

Consciousness is entirely unrelated to intelligence (in this instance). To say that bigger, more complex systems can exhibit complex behaviour (as exhibited by many AI tools) is pretty well established. However, there is no remote rationale for self-awareness in any computational system.
I can write a trivial program to count the lines of code in that program, but no-one would remotely call that "self-aware". A program a billion lines of code is no more self-aware than a single line of code. A distributed system running on multiple processors does not exhibit an atom of self-awareness. Does anyone realistically (i.e. not in some writer's fantasy) suggest the entire Internet is actually self-aware?

Self-awareness is utterly and completely beyond any understanding of technology, despite any advances in things like natural language recognition which can allow some mimicry of self-awareness.

The point of the analogy was that the top-level phenomena look nothing like their basic building blocks, and for someone with no experience programming or building circuits (for example), the top-level phenomena look completely inexplicable in terms of the building blocks. For them, sure, PhotoShop is billions of lines of code, but how do lines of code go from numbers to the pictures I see and manipulate on my screen? But the explanation is there, and not too hard for an expert to give.

Those who advocate for emergent accounts of the mind don't typically talk about consciousness as some sort of brute fact. They (typically) treat self-awareness as an artifact of the brain's cognitive architecture and its different modules, including various monitoring modules. The point is this: generally speaking, those who advocate emergent accounts argue that that a phenomenon like self-awareness is illusory. That's not to say it isn't real; it's just that its structure is not what it looks like to us, looking from the top-level down. (Not unlike what compatibilists say about free will, in fact.)

(It's absolutely true that not all emergentists think that, of course. I'm tarring with a very broad brush to make the point that, contrary to what you seem to believe, mysterianism is not very popular in accounts of the mind these days. It had a significant hold over the eighties and early nineties, but it's pretty well dead in serious circles. Folk belief is a different matter.)

This illustrates my point; it obviously exists, so attempts at explanation are made, even though they are sketchy and incomplete. This again is faith, since the problems with the explanation do not prevent people from accepting the reality of the phenomenon.

Sorry, I don't follow. What is the referent of 'it' here? Free will, or determinism, or something else?

More broadly, I think your account of 'faith' is overbroad. You can point to problems with just about any explanation of anything; not all problems with explanations are of a kind that should prevent us from accepting the reality of the phenomenon. The existence of some non-fatal problems with explanations doesn't mean we're taking everything on faith. In fact, I'd think that the very existence of a plausible, rational explanation is itself an indication that something is not being taken on faith.

[ciao_yall]

I am posting this after having been temporarily suspended from another forum for mocking the notion of a certain person's actual death and actual coming back to life after the equivalent of a long weekend rotting in the grave. Apparently, I have given offense.

However, how is it that full-grown, otherwise intelligent adults can believe literal accounts of the resurrection or other religious miracles?

Good people use religion to make themselves better people.

Bad people use religion as an excuse for being a**holes.

I can see which type you are based on your post.

[spork]

My wife, a very observant Muslim, went into gales of laughter when she watched this scene from A Serious Man. When I asked her why she thought it was so funny, she said "Because that's how religious people think."

[marshwiggle]

Those who advocate for emergent accounts of the mind don't typically talk about consciousness as some sort of brute fact. They (typically) treat self-awareness as an artifact of the brain's cognitive architecture and its different modules, including various monitoring modules.The point is this: generally speaking, those who advocate emergent accounts argue that that a phenomenon like self-awareness is illusory.

Shoot. I thought I existed. My bad.

[Parasaurolophus]

Shoot. I thought I existed. My bad.

As long as you keep thinking. But once you stop, all bets are off.

[marshwiggle]

However, how is it that full-grown, otherwise intelligent adults can believe literal accounts of the resurrection or other religious miracles?

The same way that full-grown, otherwise intelligent adults can believe that chemicals combined into self-replicating systems. (abiogenesis)

The point is that both the origin of life and the resurrection are considered to be essentially singular events; i.e. they are "one-off" events that are focal points of history. By definition, science is about patterns and repeatability. A completely non-repeatable event is not really subject to scientific analysis. That is the case unless and until there is a claim that such an event can indeed be replicated.

[Wahoo Redux]

This is the religions of the left. At least I can't "disprove" the resurrection. I can easily prove the non-functionality of governments by pointing to over a hundred million deaths in the just the 20th century.

Uh huh.  You think that is a rational non-zealous, non-religious comment?

I know very little about it, but there are scientists who believe that there is a neurological relationship to religion.