Creating God in one's own image:

[laconicsax]

For many religious people, the popular question "What would Jesus do?" is essentially the same as "What would I do?" That's the message from an intriguing and controversial new study by Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago. Through a combination of surveys, psychological manipulation and brain-scanning, he has found that when religious Americans try to infer the will of God, they mainly draw on their own personal beliefs.

Psychological studies have found that people are always a tad egocentric when considering other people's mindsets. They use their own beliefs as a starting point, which colours their final conclusions. Epley found that the same process happens, and then some, when people try and divine the mind of God. Their opinions on God's attitudes on important social issues closely mirror their own beliefs. If their own attitudes change, so do their perceptions of what God thinks. They even use the same parts of their brain when considering God's will and their own opinions.

...

In another study, Epley got people to manipulate themselves. He asked 59 people to write and perform a speech about the death penalty, which either matched their own beliefs or argued against them. The task shifted people's attitudes towards the position in their speech, either strengthening or moderating their original views. And as in the other experiments, their shifting attitudes coincided with altered estimates of God's attitudes (but not those of other people).

...

Epley's results are sure to spark controversy, but their most important lesson is that relying on a deity to guide one's decisions and judgments is little more than spiritual sockpuppetry. To quote Epley himself:

People may use religious agents as a moral compass, forming impressions and making decisions based on what they presume God as the ultimate moral authority would believe or want. The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing. This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing.

More at http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/11/creating_god_in_ones_own_image.php

God wants you to kick and rec this thread.:hide:

[murray hill farm]

1. How about this....

"You can safely assume that you have created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates the same people you do"
Anne Lamott.

[laconicsax]

2. Sounds about right.

[Angry Dragon]

3. I have done as he/she has asked

kick and rec

[laconicsax]

4. Hallelujah!

Glory Be!

[mopinko]

5. that is the conclusion that i came to when i took a comparative religion

class in high school. anyone who has looked at the panoply of religions in the world and in history can only conclude that people are looking in the mirror.

[MorningGlow]

6. And that's the whole point

God is not an "other". "He" is us. And yet for millennia people have tried to find God by looking externally when, really, we should be looking internally.

And if we are properly in tune with our own intuition, we'll come to the correct conclusions about what "God" is, and "what God wants", without projecting what we WANT "him" to be and to think onto our anthropomorphized entity.

[Nihil]

9. Excellent post. (n/t)

:toast:

[RagAss]

23. "The kingdom of heaven is within"

[bsd13]

7. The answer to "what would I do?"

Should be exactly the same as the answer to "What would Jesus do?", and that answer should derive itself from the will of God not from our own opinions. In other words the answer to "What would I do?" must at all times be submissive to the answer to "What would Jesus do?"

[darkstar3]

8. I think you missed the point of the OP.

"What would I do" is not submissive to "What would Jesus do," it's the exact same thing, because Jesus is what you make him.

[bsd13]

10. Then we might disagree on who Jesus is...

I don't believe He's a concept we mold in our minds, and create to be whatever suits our needs and our culture. He is God, eternal and supreme and yes entirely separate (as in set apart, aka holy) from all of His creation. That's what I believe and that's why I say that our wills need to be submissive to His. We don't make Him to be anything. We couldn't if we wanted to.

[laconicsax]

16. Did you not read the article?

I even excerpted a bit about this:

In another study, Epley got people to manipulate themselves. He asked 59 people to write and perform a speech about the death penalty, which either matched their own beliefs or argued against them. The task shifted people's attitudes towards the position in their speech, either strengthening or moderating their original views. And as in the other experiments, their shifting attitudes coincided with altered estimates of God's attitudes (but not those of other people).

When people changed their position, their estimate of God's position changed to match their new position.

[bsd13]

18. Yes, I see that and understand what's being said

I'm saying that God's position on issues never changes. Why would it? He is right from the outset on all situations. But ours are not normally right and we often need to rethink them to be in line with what God's position is on all issues.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[struggle4progress]

19. Yes, but one might expect that when people change their position, their estimate of

other abstract universals, like Reality or Logic, also changes: that is, if a person changes position, he/she is probably also likely to change to regard his/her new position as the realistic or logical position

[rd_kent]

27. Sweet Jesus, we got a live one!!!!

Dude, that was the whole point of the post. You just dont get it.



Can you prove any of what you just posted? Any at all?

[rd_kent]

26. DO you know what reading comprehension is?

I think the entire meaning of the post when right over your intellect.

[Meshuga]

11. I totally agree with...

..this:

"inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing"

It is obvious. Children like the ones in the "Jesus Camp" movie will turn out very different in values than the children from many other religious liberal congregation that focus on ethical values from their religion.

[struggle4progress]

12. No reference to a title or journal? The link indicates the study occurs in PNAS, but

there's no such paper on Epley's publication page: http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/html/publications.html

[Jim__]

13. The paper is available online.

November 30 early edition of PNAS. Scroll down to this title: Believers' estimates of God's beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people's beliefs, and then you read a PDF version of the article.

[struggle4progress]

14. Many thanks!

[struggle4progress]

15. I wonder whether this reflects a more general phenomenon, which really has nothing to do with

religious thought: namely, the natural tendency of everyone to believe his/her own ideas are more likely to be just and correct than the ideas of anyone else

The jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, once remarked (in his book on Common Law?) that everyone believes him/herself to be more more rational than anyone with whom he/she argues, and noted that if this were not the case no one would be willing to settle disputes by going to court

If one did a similar set of experiments in which one asked people to compare their ideas against some other universal abstract (like Reality or Logic), one would probably also find that people generally thought their own ideas more Realistic and Logical than everyone else's -- a fact demonstrated many times a day on discussion boards like this

[darkstar3]

17. While what you say may be true,

it does nothing to disprove the overall point of this study, which shows that Jesus/God/whatever is NOT an external and eternal source of morality, but rather a reflection and creation of the conscious mind.

[struggle4progress]

20. If what I suggested is true, then an argument entirely parallel to yours would similarly force

conclusions like "Reality is not external but is a reflection and creation of the conscious mind" and "Logic is not external but is a reflection and creation of the conscious mind"

Both of those statements are "true" in some sense, I suppose: some optical illusions, for example, demonstrate clearly that what we clearly see is not what is really there but rather some artifact of our own minds; and logic is similarly (in a way) not but a human linguistic production

It is common to take such arguments seriously but not too seriously -- I know hardly anyone who thinks the external world is purely a product of their imagination, even if they recognize that their imagination plays some role in constructing their mental map of the world; and although logic is (in some sense) a human linguistic invention, it could scarcely be useful if it did not somehow mirror certain aspects of the world

[darkstar3]

21. I said it MAY be true,

I have no way to verify your claims about "everyone", and neither does anyone else thanks to the fact that there are over 7 billion people in the world.

Regardless of that, your premise in the last paragraph of #15 is entirely hypothetical, not to mention the fact that it is comparing apples to oranges.

You see, no one with an ounce of self-awareness has ever claimed that "reality" or "logic" is entirely consistent and provides all the answers. That cannot be said of religion in general, and the Christian God specifically.

This study shows that those claims are false, and that God in particular is NOT consistent in any way. You may draw what conclusions you like from that result, but what it tells me is very simple: There is no God talking to us.

[Land Shark]

29. I've just completed my spiritual/psychological study on Darkstar3

I've just completed my spiritual/psychological study on Darkstar3, and in light of Darkstar's statement, namely (emphasis following is my own):

This study shows {...} that God in particular is NOT consistent in any way. You may draw what conclusions you like from that result, but what it tells me is very simple: There is no God talking to us.

A lot of people give high positive ratings to the following, yet still fundamentally misunderstand them:

1. General and Special Relativity
2. Calculus and
3. Logic

Still, once someone learns something about any of the above, we see a remarkable "egocentric" (sic) conformation between their personal beliefs and the laws of the universe, be they of physics, mathematical, or logical form. DOes it then follow, as regards God, and as it specifically does for Darkstar3, that "there is no God?"

By analogy between God and the theories of Relativity (and recalling that Einstein's relativity was rejected by most for numerous years), could anyone rationally conclude, based on the widespread misunderstanding on the part of many in the public regarding Relativity combined with their tendency to believe Relativity means what they want it to mean (rather than what Relativity really does mean), that there's no such thing as Relativity, just like Darkstar3's conclusion that "there is no God?" Further, Einstein "talked to us" through years of rejection, so the balance of Darkstar3's sentence "There is no God talking to us" doesn't save the position, because Einstein undeniably talked of Relativity, and wrote of it, and was widely misunderstood, and still poorly understand, even today.

Speaking from my own experience: People overall tend to poorly understand the Law. They also highly, even overwhelmingly, think the Law is on their side. Does it then follow that "there is no Law" or at least not one that "talks to us?" Or, does it even follow that the Law is what each person imagines it to be, nothing more than a fictive product of our imaginations? Law libraries in every county across the nation suggest both that there is "the Law" and also confirm the difficulty of its ascertainment in a small, select but famous class called "hard cases."

It seems that humans will also tend to view incoming study data as confirmation of non-religious views (not just religious views) if Darkstar3's message can be considered data indicative on this subject. If that position were appreciated, I'd consider it a good sign, indicative of a position of equality between the faithful and the non-faithful, a position from which diverse people can have real dialog, as opposed to just opposed camps tossing brickbats.

[darkstar3]

30. And you, too, missed the entire point of the article.

Not surprising. Let me just clarify the following point for you and for everyone else who keeps harping on the same concept here:

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT ABOUT CONFIRMATION BIAS. It simply shows, with scientific rigor, what skeptics have known for quite some time, namely that the religious in this world will find a way to claim that whatever god they worship is on their side.

The point that I made above is simple: God cannot be both pro-death-penalty and anti-death-penalty at exactly the same time, and this applies, of course, to any particular issue where religious people feel the need to weigh in with God's opinion. Further, this study shows that when people change their opinion, they claim that God has changed his opinion as well. This is God we're talking about here, the eternal force that is supposedly the same yesterday, today, and forever, and yet somehow these people have no qualms about claiming that God changed his mind??

When you combine these two factors, (the lack of consistency over time, and the lack of consistency among any homogeneous group of believers), it seems very clear that if there is a God, he isn't talking to anyone directly.

This isn't about people misunderstanding God, and it is certainly not about confirmation bias. It is about the fact that God seems very likely to be a psychological construct that is used by the religious to reinforce the validity of their own decisions.

You have focused on the out of context phrase "there is no God" in my post above, and used it with a false parallel to Relativity and Law in order to setup a nice little strawman. If you don't like the argument, then find a way to answer the argument without spinning off into completely unrelated topics and using strawmen.

[Land Shark]

31. Let me see if I understand what you're saying here:

I use the example of law in particular because (a) all religious wars were commanded by religious law, or claimed to be so justified, and (b) considerable evil beyond the religious domain including but not limited to secularly-justified "just wars" has also been caused by Law, so (contrary to some claims) it is not Religion but Law that has caused more strife in human history than anything else. SO, Law is like Religion in this sense.

Law is also widely diverse, seen in different iterations and forms all over the world. Like religion.

Everyone tends to believe the law is on their side. I've seen this in countless clients and on the part of opposing clients and opposing lawyers. When and if they become convinced the Law is against them (but the powers of rationalization and hardening of positions are indeed powerful) they rush to settle the case or even dismiss it entirely, if they can.

One can, and many people do, on a daily basis, do precisely what you say is "impossible" for God to do: Namely,

(1) they say that the Law is both pro death penalty and anti-death penalty. Let me use myself as an example, where i was a third-chair attorney in a death penalty defense team that ultimately saved o female client's life. To wit: in a death penalty state, in an ultimately successful death penalty defense, I helped draft a motion that argued that the death penalty violated constitutional equal protection doctrine under recent case law and so thus was NOT the law of the state in question, all appearances to the contrary. This is not an uncommon type of legal argumentation...). THUS, "THE LAW" CAN BE BOTH PRO AND ANTI-DEATH PENALTY, AT THE VERY SAME TIME, AND IN THE SAME STATE. Does this mean to you that the death penalty doesn't exist at all? Or even that the Law "is" whatever people wish it to mean? (Truth: there's quite a bit of wishful thinking heading into the courts, but a lot less of it walking out of courts...)

(2) You also say that "this study shows that when people change their opinion, they claim that God has changed his opinion as well." As I posted earlier, nobody that believes in God (a position necessary in order to ascribe an opinion to God in the first place) would ever intentionally and consciously take a position contrary to God's position. Therefore, if a clear and unambiguous rule from God is known, no change in position will occur. On the other hand, as with many issues, if one has to use inferences to arrive at God's will, then human rationality and thus error creeps into the process. AN earnest person (though wrong) would say they believed position X was GOd's will, and then when they learn new information that they were mistaken, they will then say position -X is God's will. Both can be and usually but not always are statements made in good faith. Yes, flip flops like this are embarrassing, but to ban "flip flops" is to ban learning and educational advancement. ALL THIS STUDY IS REALLY DOING IS IDENTIFYING "MORAL-SPIRITUAL THINKERS" WHOSE PERSONAL POSITIONS WILL ALWAYS TRACK CLOSELY TO THEIR BEST UNDERSTANDING OF GOD'S WILL -- USING OF COURSE THEIR OWN DEFECTIVE UNDERSTANDINGS OF THAT WILL.

I still don't see how this is so fundamentally different that the law is a "straw man" -- in fact the more I think about it the more analogous they become. Perhaps you can refute what I'm saying point by point?

[darkstar3]

32. Here's a point by point for you:

1. God and "the Law" are mutually exclusive, and no one has ever claimed that the law is consistent. The same cannot be said of God, who is referred to as "the same yesterday, today, and forever." So what you have here is a false parallel, used for rhetorical convenience.

2. You didn't read the study. You say here:
Therefore, if a clear and unambiguous rule from God is known, no change in position will occur.

From the article:
in another study, Epley got people to manipulate themselves. He asked 59 people to write and perform a speech about the death penalty, which either matched their own beliefs or argued against them. The task shifted people's attitudes towards the position in their speech, either strengthening or moderating their original views. And as in the other experiments, their shifting attitudes coincided with altered estimates of God's attitudes (but not those of other people).

I think "God's" position on the death penalty is quite clear, when merely two Bible verses are called into light:
Thou shalt not kill.
Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.

Yet even though the Bible seems quite clear on the usage of the death penalty, there is still debate in the Christian community about its usage. More importantly, Christians can have their opinions CHANGED on the issue by non-religious arguments and then claim that God is on their side.

So which is the simpler explanation?
1. That "God" exists and has an opinion on these important issues, but everyone down here consistently misunderstands his opinion and falsely claims that he supports them, even though he has the power to make himself clearly known to anyone he likes a la the burning bush? OR
2. That "God" is a reflection of the conscious mind?

I know which answer seems simpler to me...

[Land Shark]

33. I don't think that suffices for "point by point" but here goes;

Although I agree with you regarding the death penalty and what the Bible says, I'd also have to agree in fairness that other passages in the Bible at least make that position ambiguous (though the stronger position inheres in "vengeance is mine...". This ambiguity is sufficient to give refuge to those favoring the death penalty, at least until they go through a process of moral reflection at a deeper level. an exercise like that done in the study, where people are asked to walk a mile in the shoes of the other argument, is an excellent device to create that kind of moral reflection which, in this context, happens to be also the domain of God (life and death). As God is thought to be all good, and thus moral, any change in morality necessitates a change in "God's opinion" as well.

None of the study's findings are surprising to me in any substantial way. What would be really interesting, at least to me, is the follow-up questions that apparently were not asked, and those would be along the lines of explaining the change in one's personal position and the change in God's position. The answers to these questions would have revealed the more complicated and nuanced moral and religious territory that I'm suggesting here, instead of the stereotypical un-thinking Christian who simply projects his or her personal views onto the Supreme Being. I don't at all deny that any such folks exist -- on the contrary they do exist -- but I do deny that they define all religious believers or the vast majority of them.

Could some believers benefit from the wake up call that this study could be for them? Yes.
Do all believers merit or require the wake up call that this study is wished to be by some? No.
Can the existence or non-existence of God be proved by any poll of human beings? Of course not.
Can the existence, non-existence, or teachings of God be proved or discredited by the fact that people change their minds about God's teachings based on self-reflection? Hardly. One major branch of Christianity, namely LUtheranism, is premised on the ability of indidividual human beings to have direct unmediated relationships with God (not requiring a Pope or intervening priesthood, for example).

Many people have been called to extraordinary acts of self-sacrifice after substantial religious reflection. I don't deny at all that there are the kind of selfish religious thinkers that the study seems to highlight, but I definitely do deny that they define the entire field of religious beliefs in God.

[darkstar3]

34. Another attempt at simple dismissal.

First you offered a strawman, then you tried a false parallel, and now you're saying that the study is unsubstantial...

In response to your first paragraph, you're missing the point that the death penalty was just an example. This process was used for other issues as well, including abortion, homosexuality, affirmative action, and others. Are you going to claim that ALL of these issues are ambiguous? And if God's opinion on all of these issues is ambiguous, why is it so important?

In response to the rest of your post, you're trying to split hairs. "Oh this psychological phenomenon may apply to many other believers, but it doesn't apply to me or my friends." Well, it's good that you're finally admitting the validity of this phenomenon, rather than dismissing it, but can you or any other believer prove that it doesn't apply to you personally? Of course not, as proving God's opinion first requires proof of God.

[Land Shark]

35. Perhaps this will clear it up a bit...

While the death penalty, you say, is "just an example," I'll say that in various forms what I said about the death penalty does indeed apply to every single conceivable issue. This stems directly from freedom of conscience/freedom of opinion. Freedom ain't free unless one has the right to be wrong, so it's almost a cliche to say we've the right to believe the moon is made from green cheese.

IT IS ONLY A PROCESS OF INQUIRY AND RESPECTFUL DIALOG that rescues the absurdities that do occur in freedom.

In the study, some people were confronted (probably for the very first time since people usually don't do such healthy exercises as this) of trying on for size their opponents' arguments by actually adopting that position for a brief time - in order to advocate it in writing. Rather than calling this "manipulating" one's self as the study somewhat sarcastically calls it, I'd call it "forced or assisted reasoning," since any decent process of reasoning has to consider counterarguments in good faith and account for them in order to respond effectively. I'm going to teach a class next month in which I will give the closing arguments for BOTH sides in a famous murder trial: Am I 'manipulating' myself? It's closer to the truth to say it's a valid exercise for understanding the intricacies of any issue.

This psychological phenomenon is something all human beings are subject to. We can not analyze to any depth all issues that come up before us or else we'd often not make it out of the house each day. Instead, only certain things that seem to force our attention or truly capture our interest engage the cerebral cortex more fully. We all learn things from debate, discussion and sometimes even from arguments -- though rarely if ever does anyone announce it at the time. So yes, I admit the "validity of the phenomenon" as I understand it, which is to say that the data neither prove nor disprove nor say anything relevant about the existence or non-existence of God. I'm sure there are people who nearly totally project their own personal opinions onto "God" as they report them to us, but I'm saying that this study inflates those numbers.

Lewis Black could do a good comedy show on "Which One is Crazier: Some Believers Ideas of God, or Some Atheists/Agnostics Ideas of Believers?"

That being said, I"m not denying or defending every "crazy" out there, but I don't want to see everyone in some broad class stereotyped as purely projecting their personal opinions onto God. Surely some people do, but for those try very hard not to, the implication that this is all they do is pretty much pure insult.

FOr example, I believe it's the Lord's Prayer, one recited quite often, that says "Thy Will Be Done" (referring to God.) As I said before it's Thy will, not "my" will. That human nature means this substitution of Thy for My isn't always easy and is sometimes quite hard has been known for, approximately, three millenia. It's not a new discovery of the November 30, 2009 issue of some psychology magazine.

[darkstar3]

36. No clarification there.

Your entire post can be summed up in the sentence "Well, you're right, but I still don't want to agree with you."

You admit to the ambiguous nature of God's opinion on every subject of import, yet cannot answer why that opinion should be important in the face of its lacking clarity.

You admit that the psychological phenomenon explored in the study is valid and occurs in everyday life, but you say that telling people about this valid phenomenon is an insult and a stereotype, even though you cannot possibly prove you are not suffering from it yourself.

So you can't dispute the study, but for some reason you don't want people to talk about it. I wonder why...:shrug:

[Land Shark]

41. Actually, I said the necessary ambiguity is subject to resolution through PROCESS

When people stand off, even on their own TV shows, (ala Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer) they can toss talking points or brickbats forever. But when they are forced into a real engagement, as when Cramer went on Stewart's Daily Show, a type of accountability is created, and, in that case, Stewart demolished Cramer. The Daily show quasi-"debate" format is but one of many examples of types of direct dialog/give and take that are the kinds of "process" I'm speaking of that help to resolve the incipient status quo of freedom allowing for nearly any conceivable opinion to simultaneously co-exist.

Some analogous process would benefit here, as I don't think you're fairly characterizing what I'm saying at all, and if that process had a third party it could provide feedback, or perhaps a "ruling" if the process allowed that, on whether or not characterizations of yours (for example) or mine, for that matter, are fair or not, and whether or not questions have been answered. That would help move things down the road.

Until we can, for example, agree on a neutral third party (as just one but not the only example of process) we're stuck or stymied at the point where you mischaracterize my position. For example, the "insult" i referred to is to the good faith SELFLESS believers, whose personal positions (and assets, and time) have yielded to the results of a sincere quest for God's will, but who under the terms of the study are lumped in with "egocentric" believers who merely project their personal desires onto God. The study is an insult to a portion of the people classified as egocentric, but not to all -- and this is taking the study on its own terms, as advertised. I might take issue with and argue against the study but before doing that I would read the whole thing, which I haven't yet done. Therefore I give it the benefit of every doubt and take it at face value, and at that point I find it lacking in the way I've described.

[darkstar3]

44. You still haven't answered why this process is important.

Why is God's ambiguous opinion so important?

Why must this process be applied to debate between two adults?

Why do you wish to dismiss this study when you have already admitted that it makes valid points about "other" believers?

How am I mischaracterizing your position?

[Joe Chi Minh]

37. 'The same cannot be said of God, who is referred to as "the same yesterday,

today, and forever."

Yes, the same, but in his essence utterly unknowable, so 'inconsistent', doesn't begin to express it. The deepest mysteries are paradoxical, so your point about logic is bizarre. Why would God want to confine himself to the kind of logic we are limited to? He's even put limits on our minds' ability to penetrate much further into physics, in which paradoxes quite beyond our mind's capability to grasp increasingly proliferate.

Consequently, your conclusion:

"This study shows that those claims are false, and that God in particular is NOT consistent in any way. You may draw what conclusions you like from that result, but what it tells me is very simple: There is no God talking to us."

is based on a false premise.

[darkstar3]

38. Nice try, but false.

I'm not the one who made the claim "yesterday, today, and forever." That was the Bible, along with various hymns.

Yes, the same, but in his essence utterly unknowable, so 'inconsistent', doesn't begin to express it.
I'm not the one who attempted to claim that God was knowable. Believers make that claim when they attempt to say that God's opinion on an issue agrees with theirs.

So where exactly is the false premise that you claim I have used?

Why would God want to confine himself to the kind of logic we are limited to? He's even put limits on our minds' ability to penetrate much further into physics, in which paradoxes quite beyond our mind's capability to grasp increasingly proliferate.
Absolute tripe, based your own unprovable assumption that God does in fact exist, and another unprovable assumption that God is the reason for all current human knowledge and intelligence.

[Joe Chi Minh]

39. No. It would be a waste of effort responding to your post. You are too naive about

your own bizarrely inchoate assumptions. This extract from a recent Guardian article by Jonathon Chaplin should theoretically enlighten you, but ah hae ma doots, to put it mildly:

'The third objection – the weakest – is that religious faith is just irrational and so can never be the basis of democratic reasoning. The objection comes in cruder positivist forms, such as "belief in God is like belief in invisible unicorns": if you can't experience it through the evidence of the five senses, it doesn't exist. This 19th-century view was discredited ages ago by philosophers of science who recognised that human experience is a rich and complex phenomenon yielding reliable knowledge through many routes. There are more sophisticated versions, but all of them fail to see that faith is not an alternative to reasoning but its precondition. All chains of reasoning get going on the basis of presuppositions which cannot themselves be proved rationally. The objection also fails to see that secular humanism is itself a faith standpoint, resting on similarly unprovable assumptions such as the primacy of rational autonomy, the supremacy of natural scientific knowledge, or the self-creation of the cosmos.'

The fact is I only posted here in response to a friend's invitation, but truth to tell, I knew it would be pointless. The only religious folder I ever post to is the Catholic one, and that's not usually a hub of activity.

[darkstar3]

40. So, as you're unable to answer any of my questions,

you instead turn to a weak strawman from the Guardian? (The Guardian, REALLY?)

Did you have an answer, or were you just looking for an out from this conversation?

[Land Shark]

42. If the universe and all life was created from purely material chemical/mechanistic processes....

That is, if the CONSCIOUSNESS that we are each experiencing for ourselves derives solely on both the direct and the ultimate level from purely material physical things - the interactions of atoms and energies - that, if you think about it for a while, is EVEN MORE ASTOUNDING AND MIRACULOUS than creation by Creator is.

Just for starters, and by no means plumbing the depth of the physical miracle, if that's what it is, take mud, rock and water and so forth and figure out how it can self-organize into an inaminate object of even basic design complexity. Assuming that can be imagined, then figure out how this chemical stuff with the presence of random energy like perhaps lightning organizes itself into Life - namely self-healing, self-replicating or reproducing mobile life forms (without even self-consciousness as of yet).

I think even before one gets to contemplating consciousness arising from mere matter, a fair-minded person, without the least belief in our God Creator, will be astounded by the miraculousness of all that exists.

For now, instead of asking the question "Does God exist?" how about just acknowledging what I'd say is common ground for both believers and non-believers who think about consciousness and everything else arising from mere interactions of matter: it's absolutely astoundingly miraculous. It remains so after a university degree in science (Biology) for me. Actually, I didn't quite think of it in quite this way until recently when I read one of the most famous physicists in the world who made this precise general point, without intending to lead anyone to any conclusion per se.

This physicist merely pointed out that people act as if purely material causes for the existence of the Universe were some kind of "answer" to the questions of existence, when in fact if anything they greatly deepen the mystery and wonder of the universe if accepted as true even provisionally.

[darkstar3]

43. That ^^^ was a stirring reply.

Unfortunately, while all answers are replies, not all replies are answers.

You have not answered any points or questions I put forward.

Further, I disagree with you about the "miraculous" nature of life in this universe. Boggle the mind as it might, the life contained in this universe was bound to happen sooner or later. That is the direct result of the nearly ungraspable concepts of infinite time and infinite space. You've heard the old argument regarding monkeys, typewriters, and Shakespeare? This is no different.

[ZombieHorde]

22. "everyone believes him/herself to be more more rational than anyone with whom he/she argues"

I don't believe I am always more rational than those I argue against, but I learn best through argument and application of ideas.

I have even "won" debates against people I actually agreed with. Sometimes I need argue against my own views in order to understand my own views better. Argument is part of my thinking process.

[Land Shark]

25. If one doesn't understand one's opponents' arguments, one hardly understands THEIR OWN argument

The basic idea above is the crux of more than one semi-famous quote. Indeed, if something is an "argument" (a set of propositions and/or conclusions within the fabric of "debate" that would make an argument useful or necessary in the very first place) then it exists in contradistinction to other alternatives or positions. If one doesn't fully understand those other alternatives or positions, one's own argument is, at best, on weak and vulnerable ground. Any professional in argumentation, such as a lawyer, that's any good will admit to the necessity of anticipating and understanding the contrary positions as being key.

[Land Shark]

24. Interesting article, but seems to contain a fundamental fallacy

Can we imagine a person, believing in God, maintaining a position that is not only at odds with the will of God, but CONSCIOUSLY and thus intentionally contrary to God's will, for even a minute? Not really -- a believer would either scramble to distinguish God's will from his or her own, or else change their position TO MATCH God's will. That is, a correspondence, even a direct correspondence and not just a correlation, is what a believer properly seeks after, so to cite this correspondence as evidence of pure egocentricity is a fundamental mistake in that it conflates those who truly seeks and follow God's will regardless of their personal beliefs with those who follow only what's amenable to them personally.

That being said, despite a fundamental and near-dangerous distortion (if the summary above in the OP is a fair one) I think the article is useful and certainly deserving of publication as stimulus for an important discussion. Whether it comes to God, or the public good, or public policy, all too often what is claimed to be the Ultimate Good is just a personal opinion colored all too much by self interest. Understood this way, research like the above can have a healthy effect on not only religion but politics and philosophy as well. Understood more narrowly, research like the above is likely to create more heat than light.

Surely, there are all too many believers who impute to God their personal prejudices. The problem is that those who are not doing this, but instead truly seek God's will outside their own predilections in an earnest fashion, will also adjust their personal position to match God's if and whenever they are able to ascertain God's will. According to the study, however, this latter group of earnest, selfless believers will be measured as "egocentric" anthropomorphic believers in a god of convenience. Conflating these two is more than just a fine point, they're more like polar opposites being conflated.

On edit: TO prove the apparent thesis above, (given that correspondence beteen one's own beliefs and those attributed to God can't do the job) one would have to prove that there's no such thing as religious conversion/transformation that has causation outside the person; essentially that no one ever persuaded or converted another person to a belief in God that was previously anathema to them. But this would be impossible, since just starting with the famous Christian writer C.S. Lewis would reveal someone who in college was a militant atheist, and then was converted. The study above would seem to classify Lewis as "egocentric" because his beliefs on social issues would essentially match his assessment of God's views on the same. But this just goes to show the study "proves too much" and therefore proves almost nothing at all.