Mike
> That there may be a psychological component/motivation behind
> a Christian's faith is irrelevant. After all, all beliefs involves some
> form of psychological component/motivation. Such motivations are
> even behind the practice of science (the psychological need to
> understand to better control the world around us). What's more,
> it has long looked to me like most atheists are also influenced by
> psychological motivations, as their approach to God/religion is very
> similar to the way a rebellious teenager reacts to their parents.
Chris
It's not irrelevant if his belief is based on psychological motivations
rather than facts.
Mike
> No, if you want to imply that Glenn's faith is nothing but a
> psychological motivation, then you'll need to do more than
> dare him to prove God to you. If his faith is nothing but psychology,
> it can only be so if indeed Christianity is false.
Chris
This is not true. In fact, if Christianity were true, people could still be
Christians for non-factual reasons, or without even knowing of the relevant
facts. When Glenn says: "I believe Chrisitanity because I have seen the
power of the resurrected Lord in my own life," this is psychology, not cold
hard facts. He saw the power of *something* in his life (that's the cold
hard fact), no doubt, just as many others have claimed to see the power of
any number of things in their lives and to have become converts to these
things for that reason. The question is *what* did he see the power of in
his life? *That's* a matter of interpretation. I've experienced the power of
pure, unadulterated, atheistic naturalism in my life (and I haven't even
read Dawkins' "Unweaving the Rainbow" yet!), but that does *not* mean that
naturalism is true. That's an *epistemological* issue, not to be answered by
such psycyhological means. I'm not going to argue whether God exists here,
but I *am* going to argue that this is not good epistemology, that "seeing
the power of X in one's life" is not a good reason to believe in X (or the
power of crystals, etc.). Oh, wait; I just did. :-)
Mike
> Thus, you'd need to
> prove the Christian faith is false to shoulder that implication.
Chris
No. Again, only that the belief is held for unsound reasons.
Mike
> But, of course, that would be off-topic for this listing.
Chris
Yes and no. If it were proved that God does not exist, in any form, it would
put a severe crimp in ID theory, so it's not exactly off topic. If
non-naturalism in general could be proved to be false, it would put an even
bigger crimp in desgtner theory, leaving *only* naturalistic design theories
as possible. In general, if any category of theories is proved to be
impossible, any true theories must be in one of the *remaining* categories.
Therefore, eliminating non-naturalistic ID theories (or subcategories of
them, such as theistic ones) would indeed be on-topic. That, in effect, has
been my strategy in my recent posts on the burden of proof issue (though I
didn't think of them in such terms when I was writing them). That is, I've
shown, I think, that, even when there is no *known* naturalistic explanation
for something, it is not justifiable to adopt a *non-*naturalistic
alternative unless:
a) it can be shown that naturalism is self-contradictory, and
b) that the non-naturalistic alternative must imply empirical
facts that rest on the non-naturalistic component in such a
way that these particular empirical facts would *not* be
implied by the theory of the non-naturalistic component were
removed.
If either of these conditions is not met, the theory is not yet ready for
prime-time scientific consideration.