Did anybody else catch this programme this morning?

I liked how they decided to ditch the usual format for this "special", and they just put the theists on one side of the studio, and the non-theists on the other, for a good old ding dong.

Nicky Campbell presents a special edition of The Big Questions, from The Pyramid in Warrington. Distinguished theologians, scientists, philosophers and historians debate whether there is any evidence to support the existence of God.

UK viewers can watch it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... Episode_2/

Holy cow I live in Warrington. Arhhgh I missed this!

Bollocks to The Big Questions, it's just filled with the weakest apologetics imaginable and no one fucking notices. I'm not watching.

Thanks though

Sorry about that. I mean: thanks for posting, this should be fun watching my town on such a debate.

It's a stark contrast though since I've spent the last week watching in full many of Christopher Hitchens debates.

The big question for me is why are so many otherwise rational people agnostic about only the possibility of a god existing where they are happy to rationally conclude that fairies and other such obvious human fabrications are fantasy.

In any court of law for example, the case for god's non-existence would be found to be beyond all reasonable doubt and the logical conclusion would be drawn in precisely the same fashion and for precisely the same reasons as such a court would find the case for fairies, pink teapots, et al, to be beyond reasonable doubt.


Any rational person should draw exactly the same conclusion regarding god's likelihood of existence given that the evidence for all such fanciful, absurdly and blatantly anthropocentric notions, is exactly the same, i.e. none whatsoever.


Edit: poor parsing

hoopy frood wrote:The big question for me is why are so many otherwise rational people agnostic about only the possibility of a god existing where they are happy to rationally conclude that fairies and other such obvious human fabrications are fantasy.

In any court of law for example, the case for god's non-existence would be found to be beyond all reasonable doubt and the logical conclusion would be drawn in precisely the same fashion and for precisely the same reasons as such a court would find the case for fairies, pink teapots, et al, to be beyond reasonable doubt.


Any rational person should draw exactly the same conclusion regarding god's likelihood of existence given that the evidence for all such fanciful, absurdly and blatantly anthropocentric notions, is exactly the same, i.e. none whatsoever.


Edit: poor parsing

I would have thought that one answer to that is quite a lot of people have 'spiritual experiences', such as 'feeling one with everything', experiences of transcendence, timelessness, intense love, non-duality, and so on.

I agree that these are not evidence for God at all, especially if you define 'evidence' as naturalistic observations within scientific method. However, they can be taken as 'grounds' for religious belief, or just wondering about God. On the other hand, they can also be explained in terms of brain processes, or just as intense experiences, which have nothing to do with God.

Why some people do connect such things with God, I'm not sure.

I used to teach meditation, and over a period of a few days, about 30% of participants would have some kind of unusual experience, but as I said, this does not lead necessarily to any views about God. For example, I worked with a number of Buddhists, who were non-theists, even though they might experience 'satori'.

nunnington wrote:

hoopy frood wrote:The big question for me is why are so many otherwise rational people agnostic about only the possibility of a god existing where they are happy to rationally conclude that fairies and other such obvious human fabrications are fantasy.

In any court of law for example, the case for god's non-existence would be found to be beyond all reasonable doubt and the logical conclusion would be drawn in precisely the same fashion and for precisely the same reasons as such a court would find the case for fairies, pink teapots, et al, to be beyond reasonable doubt.


Any rational person should draw exactly the same conclusion regarding god's likelihood of existence given that the evidence for all such fanciful, absurdly and blatantly anthropocentric notions, is exactly the same, i.e. none whatsoever.


Edit: poor parsing

I would have thought that one answer to that is quite a lot of people have 'spiritual experiences', such as 'feeling one with everything', experiences of transcendence, timelessness, intense love, non-duality, and so on.

I agree that these are not evidence for God at all, especially if you define 'evidence' as naturalistic observations within scientific method. However, they can be taken as 'grounds' for religious belief, or just wondering about God. On the other hand, they can also be explained in terms of brain processes, or just as intense experiences, which have nothing to do with God.

Why some people do connect such things with God, I'm not sure.

I used to teach meditation, and over a period of a few days, about 30% of participants would have some kind of unusual experience, but as I said, this does not lead necessarily to any views about God. For example, I worked with a number of Buddhists, who were non-theists, even though they might experience 'satori'.

Experiencing spirituality and feeling one with with everything are, apparently, far more readily interpreted in a delusional manner which leaps gazelle-like to irrational conclusions with no discernable chain of reasoning between phenomena/experience and conclusion.

What really gets me is the total inconsistency of logic and reason many people, even otherwise rational people, exhibit when they profess to be agnostic about the likelihood of a god existing when they entertain no such agnosticism regarding the possibility of other, equally unlikely, entities.

james1v wrote:I watched it. The audience, seemed to have been loaded, with religious people. Or seals...

I initially thought they had seated all the theists on one side of the studio, and all the non-theists on the other. I was watching the programme, and was only half way through, when I started this thread.

However, you are correct. When Nicky Campbell opened up the "debate" to the rest of the audience it became apparent that the whole audience comprised of theists with the exception of the front row on one side. In fact, one believer specifically referred to "those on the front row".

hoopy frood wrote:

nunnington wrote:

hoopy frood wrote:The big question for me is why are so many otherwise rational people agnostic about only the possibility of a god existing where they are happy to rationally conclude that fairies and other such obvious human fabrications are fantasy.

In any court of law for example, the case for god's non-existence would be found to be beyond all reasonable doubt and the logical conclusion would be drawn in precisely the same fashion and for precisely the same reasons as such a court would find the case for fairies, pink teapots, et al, to be beyond reasonable doubt.


Any rational person should draw exactly the same conclusion regarding god's likelihood of existence given that the evidence for all such fanciful, absurdly and blatantly anthropocentric notions, is exactly the same, i.e. none whatsoever.


Edit: poor parsing

I would have thought that one answer to that is quite a lot of people have 'spiritual experiences', such as 'feeling one with everything', experiences of transcendence, timelessness, intense love, non-duality, and so on.

I agree that these are not evidence for God at all, especially if you define 'evidence' as naturalistic observations within scientific method. However, they can be taken as 'grounds' for religious belief, or just wondering about God. On the other hand, they can also be explained in terms of brain processes, or just as intense experiences, which have nothing to do with God.

Why some people do connect such things with God, I'm not sure.

I used to teach meditation, and over a period of a few days, about 30% of participants would have some kind of unusual experience, but as I said, this does not lead necessarily to any views about God. For example, I worked with a number of Buddhists, who were non-theists, even though they might experience 'satori'.

Experiencing spirituality and feeling one with with everything are, apparently, far more readily interpreted in a delusional manner which leaps gazelle-like to irrational conclusions with no discernable chain of reasoning between phenomena/experience and conclusion.

What really gets me is the total inconsistency of logic and reason many people, even otherwise rational people, exhibit when they profess to be agnostic about the likelihood of a god existing when they entertain no such agnosticism regarding the possibility of other, equally unlikely, entities.

But if you experience being one with everything, it seems reasonable to me to conclude that there is oneness with everything; if you experience 'transcendence', it seems reasonable to conclude that there is transcendence. There are lots of different names that you can use to describe this. Some Buddhists call it, just this. Well, 'God' carries a lot of baggage, this is true, but then again, experiences such as timelessness, intense love, non-duality, omnipresence, blah blah blah, have traditionally been associated with that name, so I can see why people do it.

If there's one thing I know about God, it's that trying to prove it is a recipe for farce.

The Big Questions bore that out. Team atheism, defying the herding cats tendency, was united and cohesive: Diana Fleischman and, to my surprise, David Aaronovitch were standouts. Even Peter Atikins kept it simple and on-message.

The theistic side of the room was a shambles. Andrew Pinsent was by far the strongest, but even he didn't manage to answer the question of proof, instead appealing to preference. The bishop kept losing his temper, and the farce came in inter-faith bickering over asserted truth-claims. The arguments were hoary stuff about design and first-causes.

Stand out clown was Islamic apologist -- "thinker" my arse -- Adam Deen, who constantly interrupted and patronized anyone unfortunate enough to engage with him. I'm impressed that Francesca Stavrakopoulou managed not to land a slap on that cocky face. Ill-mannered prick.

From a candid friend of theism: please, please stop treating it as a science!

John P. M. wrote:Haven't watched it yet - I think I saw a thumbnail for it on YouTube today too though?

Anyway. 'Spiritual experience' of oneness or a profound connection to or presence of 'Something' can be induced by drugs/chemicals, and manipulation of the brain directly, as far as I know. So it seems rather "mundane" (compared to the alternative view).
As for the 'teapot' and 'fairy' comparison that we atheists often trot out; it seems to me that the difference in the theist's mind is that these things are not meant to answer the Big Questions. And they imagine that God does. "Why/How are we here?", "How is everything else here?", "Where does our sense of morality come from?", and so on and so forth.
Some of us are content with or at least prefer the answers we have from a naturalistic POV (so far), others either haven't heard or understood those answers, or cannot live with them if they have.

Although I would say that the experience of 'being one with everything', or 'transcendence', or 'non-duality', means that there are no more questions. Or, as they might say in Zen, I am the question and the answer.

John P. M: They had an ex-triad gangster on the program. Scary SOB. He gave it powerful about his experience of God to prove God, and it rang hollow in the face of Aaronovitch's account of post-op delusions.

The shouty bishop got in a damn good point right at the end: the atheists and theists had both experienced the same things and chose to interpret them differently. Amen, brethren! It's telling that the most interesting point in the discussion came as it ended. The bish had tumbled that this irresolvable battle over stale "proofs" circles and circles until it runs empty and crashes and burns. If we'd just agree to drop this propositional approach to faith, our conversations would shoot up the interest-o-meter.

John P. M. wrote:

nunnington wrote:
Although I would say that the experience of 'being one with everything', or 'transcendence', or 'non-duality', means that there are no more questions. Or, as they might say in Zen, I am the question and the answer.

Because your rationality, reasoning and the "speaking" part of the brain "take a break", possibly? I don't really follow what you mean though. In a way I do, but... What does it mean? Does it mean all questions are answered? Does it mean all questions are rendered unimportant or meaningless? Does it mean that One answer covers them all? If so, I would think one could take that and make something useful of it when one "returns" from the experience. Why are there a trillion questions to be asked still when one "comes down" from the experience? To me, it's like when people on drugs think they solve all problems, write the ingenious answers down on a piece of paper, and when they come down, the writings are gibberish to the sober mind. I'm not really telling you this though, just trying to find a platform you can answer from so I can understand it.

I'm sure you know all this stuff! Most systems of mysticism take the dualist state, i.e. the self/not-self distinction (or subject/object), and see it as collapsing into non-duality, variously called satori, self-abandonment, returning home, the Beloved, and so on.

Now, normally it is the subject (or ego) which asks questions, quite rightly. That is one of its functions in life, but if the ego is transcended (or abandoned), many of these questions die away.

I suppose one criticism of this is that it is quietist, possibly, as in Zen, 'when hungry, I eat, when tired, I sleep'. Or in Christianity, some saints have said, 'I am a block of wood'. But, also, it has been described as perfect peace and unity.

But as you say, there is a to and fro journey also, the ego is not abandoned for all time (with a few exceptions, possibly). Then the ego starts buzzing again like an angry wasp, why, what, when.

Well, I will report back in another 30 years, if you like. This is how far I have come, and I have died a million times. I think it can give you amazing wisdom and appalling suffering. As they say in Zen, hell isn't punishment, it's just training.

Isn't there some interesting neurology going on? Huge chunks of our brains are non verbal - language is a very recent evolutionary phenomenon and I would argue directly linked to consciousness.

We go "goddy" when the majority non verbal brain tries to say something.

For the non-UK masochists:

I thought the atheists 'won' this easily.

But maybe that opinion is because I'm naturally more attuned to their arguments and regard anything theists say usually as bollocks. A religious person might think his side 'won'.

The islamic 'thinker' was a joke.....if he was the best of their 'thinkers' then I don't think there is much to worry about.

The Chinese 'gangster' was a scream......claiming 'god' was telling him to stop so he reformed himself.
Until one of the atheists asked why didn't god ask you to behave BEFORE the crimes.