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New Documentary Chronicles Road Tripping Scientists Promoting Reason
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Dennis Overbye reports in the NY Times that two years ago Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss set off on a barnstorming tour to save the world from religion and promote science. Their adventure is now the subject of The Unbelievers, a new documentary. 'If you think a road trip with a pair of intellectuals wielding laptops is likely to lack drama, you haven't been keeping up with the culture wars,' writes Overbye. The scientists are mobbed at glamorous sites like the Sydney Opera House. Inside, they sometimes encounter clueless moderators; outside, demonstrators condemning them to hellfire. At one event, a group of male Muslim protesters are confronted by counterprotesters chanting, 'Where are your women?' 'Travelogue shots, perky editing and some popular rock music, as well as interview bits with such supportive celebrities as Woody Allen, Cameron Diaz, Sarah Silverman and Ricky Gervais, shrewdly enliven the brainy — but accessible — discourse,' writes Gary Goldstein in the LA Times, 'but mostly the movie is an enjoyably high-minded love fest between two deeply committed intellectuals and the scads of atheists, secularists, free-thinkers, skeptics and activists who make up their rock star-like fan base.' The movie ends at the Reason Rally in Washington, billed as the largest convention of atheists in history. Dawkins looks out at the crowd standing in a light rain and pronounces it 'the most incredible sight I can remember ever seeing' and declares that too many people have been cowed out of coming out as atheists, secularists or agnostics. 'We are far more numerous than anybody realizes.'"
Where is it available? Or it has not been finalized yet?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Science doesn't need to disprove anything since there is no reason to believe in a god in the first place. Even if there is a god, it doesn't mean that any of the junk in the bible, koran, bhagavad gita, or harry potter is true.
You may experience violence if you voice your views in some countries.
http://thepiratebay.ac/torrent/8495137/Rise_of_the_New_Atheists_(_Unbelievers_Movie_2013)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100920/03361311077/richard-dawkins-points-fan-to-the-pirate-bay-to-see-his-latest-documentary.shtml
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
And how many Muslims do you know? Most Muslims also know when NOT to use religion. There are more than a billion of them - if half a billion of them did not know when to use it, I think we might have a tad bigger problem that we currently do.
Remember, the kooks you see on TV are like the kooks you see for other religions as well - they are the minority. Hell, the way faith is involved in politics in the US and informs policy decision (veiled as some other excuse) has done far more harm to the LGBT community than most other religions.
If you're afraid to publicly affirm what you believe, you probably don't deserve your beliefs.
>by Anonymous Coward
I agree.
"Science hasn't "disproven" the existence of *any* supernatural being, just as it hasn't "proven" the existence either."
It isn't up to science to disprove the existence of god or whatever you want to call it. As Sagan so eloquently put it "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and religion doesn't like to produce evidence.
On other hand though, when you look at how many gods mankind has believed in over the millennia (approximately 3000) the odds that the one particular god currently favoured is the right one is pretty darn small so as far as disproving it, no you're right, the particular favourite god of the moment (and this will change as it always does) may not be disproven, but it in no way stands out any more than all these other gods ever did and as such the probability that this god is any more real than any of the others is very tiny indeed. I certainly wouldn't go betting my life on being right about which one to pick.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Hard to explain it much better than that...
Science hasn't "disproven" the existence of *any* supernatural being, just as it hasn't "proven" the existence either.
Science doesn't have to disprove their existence. The basic idea behind science is pretty simple: prove it or it isn't real. As soon as your system of though allows any claim to be made with out verification, sanity goes out the window. In science, were I to claim that PI = 3, I would be laughed at as a quack and an idiot, and yet people can claim that there is an ancient jewish zombie and an invisible sky bully that rule the universe and nobody will call them out for being bald faced liars.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Science cannot prove or disprove something that by its definition is *beyond* science
by definition? you are just making that up. that's bullshit.
our current understanding does not explain many things. that does not mean they are all part of the set of unknowable or non-understandable things.
other than that, I'm not sure what else 'beyond' could mean, in this context. what exactly _do_ you mean by 'beyond'?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Science doesn't disprove anything.
Isn't the only thing you actually can do in science? Disprove or fail to disprove, but there is no prove.
This is why I don't tell people I am an atheist. Most people who proclaim it make insulting comments about others beliefs, like "sky faery". I classify this not as atheism, but religion hating. I think there is a difference. I don't really talk about religion, or unicorns, or any number of things I don't believe in. It really never comes up in my day to day life with people.
That being said, I don't believe I have a monopoly on the truth. I think I am right, but my views have changed time and again throughout my life. I don't know I am right, so how can I tell someone else with certainty they are wrong? I don't want people telling me I am wrong and arguing with me because they think they are right, why wouldn't I do the same for others. Mostly though, I don't care. Their lives are not mine to live.
Stop telling the non-Muslims how defective religion is - most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
I think Dawkins would say the role of religion is not to exist. That he would say that theism works against our interests more than it helps, so he would say no Christians understand the proper role of religion.
As for the spirit of your statements, there are so many extreme Christians in the United States, quiverful, southern baptists, LDS, etc. and so many middle-class average Christians who toy with theocratic ideas, that there seems to be a very real reason to proselytize atheism, if that would be your political desire, as it is for Dawkins. I can see an argument being made that its more important to advance the quality, culturally and intellectually, of the first world countries than to focus on improving other countries.
There may also be more people who are susceptible to ideological conversion and more people who could be affected by their message generally in the "Western" world.
There are language and cultural barriers that would make it less useful to tour the middle east.
And how many Muslims do you know? Most Muslims also know when NOT to use religion.
The statistics from Britain, where something like 30% Muslims want the UK to become a SA-like theocracy, speak a little different. Or are you suggesting that the majority of Muslims in other countries is less extreme than those living in the relatively liberal UK?
Ezekiel 23:20
"two years ago Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss set off on a barnstorming tour to save the world from religion and promote science."
That is exactly the wrong way to do things. I'm not going to argue whether it is reasonable or not to believe in both science or religion, because regardless of that if you frame an argument as A is wrong and B is right then everyone who already believes in A is going to get defensive and angry and be even _less_ likely to accept B.
If that's not actually a misrepresentation and he's actually approaching the perceived problem by trying to bludgeon the opposing side into adopting his beliefs then he's doomed to failure, and the whole things is really just a "feel good" tour for atheists to feel superior about their "enlightened" beliefs.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Science doesn't need anything, its science. The last thing I'd hope anyone would try using it to do, would be to prove an un-provable statement. That would seem to be the atheist version of heresy.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Dawkins can be obnoxious.
Rush Limbaugh is simultaneously obnoxious, obviously devoid of integrity in his stated purpose, and doesn't listen to the people he is meant to interview or debate. Oh, and he's a demagogue, intentionally playing against the passions and prejudices of his audience for personal gain.
Rush is worse
What you have is two different world views, that lack a single frame of reference to have an honest dialog. Doing anything other than trying to establish such a frame of reference ( which is what Dawkins et all do), is fruitless.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
First thing one should focus on to learn reason is logical fallacies, and the False Dichotomy, for example, "Reason versus religion", is right up toward the top.
What Dawkins et al are selling isn't reason, it's Logical Positivism, which has rather thoroughly run aground as of about 30 years ago. Not all questions are resolvable by empiricism and scientific method. Epistemology is far wider than that. Is rock music good? Prove it.
I'll get into the Reification Fallacy, that "not-X" is not something, it is nothing, regardless of what "X" is--including theism--another day.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Mass persuasion is a charged term. As is "ideology". Let us assume, probably correctly, that you believe a certain kind of culture is better than other cultures, then how do you express to people that they should agree? Persuasion on a large scale is a large part of what the United States tried to do when they printed a million common sense pamphlets. "Mass persuasion" is not a bad thing, surely, when we run ads to tell people to use condoms, wash your hands, avoid scams, etc.?
The point I'm trying to make is that Dawkins, and some other atheists, believe that theism is so noxious as to harm society relative to atheistic thinking. You can call it evangelism, or proselytization, or whatever you like. As to the eerieness of it all. How is it eerie if the arguments put forth for the persuasion are not agitprop but rather well-intentioned appeals to self-interest?
And how many Muslims do you know?
In the thousands ?
And I am not kidding.
Of the people that I know many of them are Muslims.
Many of them are very bright, except for one thing - you just can NOT discuss religion (or faith) thing with them.
Unlike the Buddhists or Christians or Jews where you can have civil discussion, or even debates on matter pertaining to whether if there is a "God" or matter such as "If the different religion worship the same God" or the very act of suicide bombing killing the innocent can be call "a service to God" ... you just can't have such discussion with the Muslims.
My background being from a Communist country (during the time I left China it was VERY ANTI-RELIGION) I can see the point from *both* the anti-religion standpoint and from the "God is my savior" standpoint.
I can have civil discussion with the Jews, with the Buddhists, with the Hindus, and with the Christians, in matters that I outlined above, but so far, the Muslims just can't discuss it civilly.
For them, anything that "threaten" and/or "weaken" their "belief in Allah" is "blasphemous" --- and in the discussion, I certainly never even have the thought of "weaken their faith" at all, but the Muslims just don't take it kindly if anyone DARE to question their religion.
That is why I say, if those two scientists are REALLY SO CONCERN of the negative effect religion might do to human civilization, they should stop proselytizing in the street of Los Angeles or Sydney.
They should go to Saudi Arabia, or Yemen or Egypt or Tunisia or Iran, and try to make their point across to the Muslims.
Anything short of that they are preaching to the choir.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Should I expect violence? Condemnation? Whatever.
If I understand the Quran correctly, if what it says was strictly enforced, you'd be "invited" to convert to Islam, and if you refused you could eventually be killed.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Great sentiment, well stated.
God bless you.
Again, I apologize. I should never denigrate your belief in a magical, invisible, physically-impossible grant-wishing space-dwelling "god" by referring it to as a "sky faery".
My deepest, most sincere apologies.
I would say, however, if ones beliefs are based on proof or disproof, then one is a pretty scary person. The one thing that I have come to learn is that my beliefs are exactly that, mine, and are not respective of anything that might be proved or disproved. This does not mean that science is beyond me. I am perfectly aware that when I flip a light switch I complete a circuit that heat up a filament(or excites a gas) that causes photons to be emitted. I do not believe that when I flip a switch that I am performing some ritual that causes the almighty to create light.
And even though I have worked through kepler's law, have worked out the deviations in the orbits classical and modern theories, I still believe that if no one dance the sun would not come back after winter. And I believe this not because no one can keep everyone from dancing at the solstice, but because it is pretty to think so. It matters not that reality does not fit the believe, or if no one else believes it. I am not going to go around supporting my ego by trying to convince everyone else it is true. I am not going to go out, like so many Christians, and kill those who do not believe, or kill children who might be effected by beliefs of others. I was raised to be content with my beliefs, and let other be content with thiers
So I will be grateful that there is such a wonderful place for us to live, and dance to express my thanks. I will pray in private and endeavor to treat people better than I expect to be treated, and sometimes just give people money because I can afford to, without any thought of how they will spend it. I will try not be attached to my stuff, as that absolutely leads to misery. I will remember that the world is somewhat effected by our actions, so if we want a world that is more to our liking, then we better in a way that could bring about such a world. Not expect others to live in a way that I would wish, because I can only be responsible for my actions, not others.
And if the people at reason magazine or the catholic church or the whereever are so insecure that need to demonize me, then so be it. I cannot be responsible for them.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Can Slashdot implement an alternate to the 'Anonymous Coward' sig?
I suggest 'Anonymous Nitwit'.
If they are SO REALLY CONCERN about religion ... Why don't they take their tour into the Middle East, maybe to countries such as Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Egypt ?
Maybe because atheism doesn't require martyrs? How is this +1Insightful?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
An honest dialog with a theologian? Most of the time, I have difficulty explaining the concept of an axiom (an assumption) to them, let alone getting them to realize that all statements fundamentally rely on them. Math grappled with this and formalized it over a century ago, and we're left with two main assumptions upon which the entirety of mathematics (and all of science by extension) are built. The difference here is that scientists can explicitly list the assumptions in their models, don't claim them to be the One Truth, and accept only falsifiable propositions beyond those axioms, whereas religious people seem incapable of accepting that their claims fundamentally rely on making one or more assumptions.
yes "by definition"
Yes, if you're talking about some teaching that is in dispute (existence of a 'god') then you have to look first to **those who believe in the thing** to define what it is they believe.
This is one of Dawkin's *biggest* shills...he pigeonholes anyone who isnt a hard atheist as believing in what Roman Catholics say. He makes *one* religious sect's views representative.
Classic straw man/red herring combo
But to definitions...it's a fools game to try to disprove a definition that is personal to every unique system yet uses the same term...'god'...some Jews teach that Yahweh or Hashim is a conscious entity that interacts with the world. Ex: The Burning Bush.
Some believe that it was an actual shrub that was on fire but did not get consumed, as the literal reading states...that is against science...
which would lead one to think that the literal account of a 'burning bush' was not true!
however, the believer can just put the whole quesiton into a bag, so to speak, and put a "supernatural miracle" label on it
it was a supernatural miracle by a supernatural being that functions beyond the laws of the universe as they see it
they can always that level of abstraction one step up the chain and say, "It was a miracle"
So just don't bother with the whole mess and ignore religious people who believe in God.
Now politics, say teaching Young-Earth creationism...that's **definitely** something we should all speak out against...but not b/c of 'atheism' but instead rally around science & the scientific method. Science and religion are separate things & one should not determine text teaching of the other in any combination!
It's a better argument b/c it avoids the false dictomies used by the opposition.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Rush may be worse...but IMHO it's closer than at first glance
Peel Rush's language away and he's a pure opportunist out to hustle for money/fame/power/recognition. Rush doesn't believe what he spouts.
Now, to Dawkins. He isn't a pure shill, he's an academic with a consistent approach. He's reasonable in conversation.
However, I'd argue that *both* are equally offensive in how they misrepresent **the other viewpoint** not just to make a rhetorical point, but it is foundational to their philosophical orientation.
If science can't prove *or* disprove a supernatural god then what point does Dawkins have? Why would anyone read his books?
He's not saying anything that hasn't been said for centuries...he's just doing it *now* and with University titles, degrees, positions, etc that make his opinion sell to the layman.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I think you missed the part where I stated that science makes its assumptions explicit rather than implicit. I didn't say anything about the validity of derived arguments from various sources of assumptions. I simply said that scientists make their assumptions explicit and religions deign not to, in general.
well said
My bad.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I disagree with the idea that religion is merely a collection of beliefs (I would suggest that your definition is a necessary but not sufficient component of religion), but I do agree that atheism is a religion. After all, how can one believe that a supernatural power does not exist except through faith? We have no proven means for detecting supernatural powers. At best, we can provide a lack of evidence of a supernatural power in order to support the idea that one does not exist, but if a supernatural power exists in such a way that is not measurable or quantifiable (and, by its very nature, it would make sense that a supernatural power could not be readily measured by our natural instruments), that lack of evidence means absolutely nothing.
So, at the end of the day, while I would classify atheism as a religion, in that it is founded on a faith-based belief in the lack of a supernatural power, I would not classify agnosticism as such, since agnosticism merely acknowledges that we do not know, rather than making a claim to the contrary. Put differently, both theism and atheism make active claims, though in opposing directions, whereas agnosticism, in its simplest form, makes no claim, other than that it lacks sufficient knowledge. Some forms of agnosticism make the additional claim that we not only lack the knowledge, but that we are incapable of attaining it, which would mean making a faith-based claim, since we have no way of proving that we are incapable of attaining that knowledge.
Arguments about proof or disproof, or the burden of proof, miss the point. To Christians, "proof" of God's existence is irrelevant. It's like asking a parent to prove that they love their child, or like asking J K Rowling to prove that Harry Potter is a good read. The proper response is a blank stare, with options on laughing out loud at the extent to which the questioner just doesn't get it.
I have no interest in proving whether God does or doesn't exist. But why does it matter?
If that sentiment still baffles you, try substituting "free will" for "God". It's still true, and for precisely the same reasons: the concept itself is so poorly defined that proof one way or another would require so many assumptions and caveats that anyone who didn't want to believe it, would immediately laugh it out of court.
The statistics from Britain, where something like 30% Muslims want the UK to become a SA-like theocracy, speak a little different. Or are you suggesting that the majority of Muslims in other countries is less extreme than those living in the relatively liberal UK?
That sounds like crap to me. Is there a credible, robust, citation to that?
soylentnews.org
Um... I imagine if Martin Luther translated the bible to any language it was German, not English. King James was one of those who translated it to English.
As far as your rant against AWG, I thought American wire gauge was not controversial.
Oh, I get it, you're talking about anthropogenic global warming. You know the beauty of science is that it's self correcting because it's based on an underlying reality that is not something that can be manipulated by humans. If the climate scientists are promulgating politically motivated science then sooner or later they will be found out and disgraced. The fact that there has been active opposition to their position for over 20 years and extremely active opposition for over a decade and they still haven't seriously dented the existing theory is an indication to me that the basics of climate science are probably good science. Maybe someone will come up with something like what plate tectonics was to geology but I wouldn't bet on it at this point.
I do not believe that when I flip a switch that I am performing some ritual that causes the almighty to create light.
I still believe that if no one dance the sun would not come back after winter.
I'm failing to see how the two scenarios aren't similar. For both, you were given, and did not personally discover, the model which describes them. Yet, despite claiming to believe the generally accepted model, you immediately give an example of how you disbelieve the generally accepted model, because it's "pretty".
You are a case study in why it's difficult to have rational discussions with irrational people. They'll only accept something once the odds are so overwhelmingly stacked against them that they'd look like idiots to their fellows irrationals. Arguments from emotion do not a rational discussion make.
Says the brave little Anonymous Coward . . .
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
That's fine for you, but I'm gay, and the overwhelming majority of arguments against my freedom and rights have religion at their base. That is why religion, or at least the concept that religion has a place in the formation of public policy, must be countered at every turn.
I applaud Dawkins and Krauss, and while I agree that they and others can sometimes be insulting in their references to believers, insults are nothing compared to what religion does to us.
I doubt they'd be a sociopath if they actually feared consequences. More likely, religion is a tool of sociopaths to manipulate non-sociopaths. Personally, I regard superstitious belief as the evolutionary result of having an incomplete model about the world, and failure to make correlations might result in you being eaten by a puma. As time goes on, and our models improve, we should work to eliminate superstitious beliefs that no longer match the model, and in many cases, are in themselves detrimental.
That's kind of how I feel about it. I don't believe in anything supernatural, period. But I don't need to join a club, go to meetings, fanboy some heros, and all that jazz. It starts to be a cult, even if not a religious cult.
Of course, rational argument isn't going to lever anyone out of religious beliefs, so maybe this kind of jazz is what is needed to break religion's stranglehold on public policy.
I suppose I'm just not the club-joining type.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
+5 Insightful. I, myself, am dictionary (simple) agnostic. There are things we do not understand, things that the best models available to us do not cover. This does not mean we should attempt to fill in the gaps for the sake of having something, anything in there. They should be left as gaps. Anything else is making an assumption. All models are based on assumptions/axioms, but making them gratuitously, and without making them explicit, is more harmful than helpful in the long run.
So why don't they take their road show to Iran or Saudi Arabia?
Conservative, mod down for violating
Actually, it's the other way around. Take the Loch Ness Monster, for example. It can be clearly and obviously proven to exist: catch one, point to it and say "See, there it is!" It's very obvious proof. However, I cannot similarly disprove its existence: I cannot point to the absence of the monster and say "See, there it is not!" Perhaps the monster is just somewhere else you haven't yet looked?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I'm going to post AC for this, because I have no desire to relive it. I have personally been beaten, and bodily thrown out of a door onto concrete, by multiple attackers, in an educational institution, in the US, for being what most people think of as atheist (though I don't actually believe you can prove the absence of something unfalsifiable in the first place, so I'm properly agnostic). Granted, I lived in the Bible Belt at the time, and didn't advertise the fact, but all it took was one person making a comment.
Science has also disproven many claims about god. True, as a totally abstract concept with no specific definition, god cannot be disproven. But as soon as scripture is written, it cannot help but make specific claims about the nature of god and the universe. In general those claims have not weathered well under the ever further-reaching methods of science.
Hope this helps. Here is some more. Think we can find similar numbers for any other religion?
I am an atheist. It's not an organization, it's not a belief, and it certainly is not a fucking religion.
If they start annoying me with it I'm gonna troll the shit out of them. I do this all the time and if they don't want to be screwed with they should keep their trap shut and leave me the fuck alone.
I'd have no problem with it if they managed to keep their 'beliefs' to themselves but it seems they have to drag it into school, government, and every-fucking-where else they seem to think they have a right.
My problem with them is large majority vote whatever way their pastor tells them and believe whatever crap they interpret out of their religious text. There is nothing more dangerous that stupid people in large numbers with a book that tells them whatever they do is right and the will of whatever deity they worship.
Religion is a disease and sooner or later it will be destroyed or mankind by it.
I tell someone else with certainty they are wrong?
I might not have a monopoly on truth but I can definitely tell some people with certainty they are wrong. There's a whole scale of wrongness and a lot of people frankly aren't even trying to be right.
Don't these sociopaths realize that people cling to their guns and religion? What happens when you take away their religion? Hmm?
But I jest. From an atheist viewpoint, religion serves a valuable purpose: to keep the real sociopaths in line. The only reason they don't run rampant is because they believe in Heaven/Hell, and God's omniscience.
Except for those who think that means they *should* run rampant.
Atheists like Marx believe that religion is the opiate of the masses, but they're fools to tell anyone that!
Yeah, I found his observation really offensive when I was a church-going schoolboy. But now I don't think many religious people even know what he meant: it's not about religion-as-a-drug, but rather about religion as a way to keep the masses under control. Apparently *lots* of famous leaders throughout history said the same thing, in their own words.
I vividly recall GWB at a memorial for some people he sent off to die in Iraq stating confidently that they were in a better place now. As if he (or anyone else) would actually know.
Apparently the neocons behind "intelligent design" were following the script from Plato's Republic: religious beliefs are good for the masses, though the Guardian class knows better. And they humbly consented to bear the burdens of being the Guardians and dealing with reality so the masses won't have to.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You may not support criticizing others for unjustifiable beliefs, but consider that the religious people who represent you in government essentially believe in unicorns and faeries. It's more than a little troubling that the people with so much power have such flawed reasoning.
You can't. But you can say with certainty that their beliefs are completely unjustifiable, and they have no legitimate, rational reason to believe them. And that's what atheism is. You have quite a distorted view of what atheist proponents like Dawkins actually do and say.
They never say that "the Christian god certainly does not exist", they only say, "the Christian god ALMOST certainly does not exist". In other words, the probability that such a deity exists is negligable for many, many reasons.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
No, that has to wait until we all get to Hell.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Supernatural" means "magical". He doesn't believe in magic and he thinks its childish for others to believe in magic. He defends that position fairly.
That's incorrect. Dawkins has acknowledged many times that deities could exist, but we have no reason to believe in them (empirical or a priori). Any such insults are directed at the arguments of people who profess to have such a legitimate reason to believe in a particular deity. And he's right to. Such arguments are invariably foolish at best.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Let's see, you ask me what kind of Ferrari I drive, I say 'none', and you say that's a kind of Ferrari.
And you express that idiotic view with a glaring logical fallacy: If religion is a collection of beliefs, it does not follow that every collection of beliefs is a religion.
Hope you were just out for a troll...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No. Modern science is predicated on the explicit stating of assumptions, and the formulation of a model from falsifiable hypotheses. It does not speculate that the Universe is only exactly as we know it. Instead, it explicitly says that we could be wrong, often are wrong, and presents a mechanism to process these new inputs. As for "supernatural"--the word is useless. If it exists, if it has any sort of existence, effect, instantiation, etc. (pick a word.. modern dictionaries reduce everything to "essence", effectively, just try looking up the core word in any given definition repeatedly, over and over. You'll always wind up at the same small subset of words.), then it is part of the Universe, even if we're not aware of it, and is natural.
I guess I'm thinking of scientific theories. You can't prove that the theory of relativity is true, but only fail to disprove it given the existing data.
I'm guessing now...
I think the theory, "there is a Loch Ness Monster" is not a valid scientific theory because as you demonstrated, it's not falsifiable.
To make it a scientific theory, you'd need to invert it and make the theory, "there is no Loch Ness Monster". This is falsifiable, for the same reason you demonstrated.
I think this is a lot more simple. What complicates it are people's egos that demand they aggressively defend a position, and that's incredibly frustrating when it's a position derived from faith. No wonder they get so upset. The ego can't lose, yet it has nothing to defend itself with at all, and that's an animal backed into a corner. Reason solves that problem, but requires maturity at several levels to implement.
Even positions derived from science and reason can be fanatically defended by scientists that don't want to listen to any arguments that may just force them to reevaluate their position. Scientists can have huge egos in that regard, and I think we see quite a bit of problems evidenced by all the articles about publishing and reproducibility problems. They are not perfect either, and subject to the same periods when they lack reason as well.
Faith is actually a very simple thing to deal with once you remove ego from the equation. Easier said than done, I know.
I personally believe such and such to be true, despite the complete lack of evidence supporting it. I know there is nothing to support the position, therefore I don't attempt to hold anyone else to the code of conduct that the position demands. It's my faith. Go get your own.
I'm not atheist. I believe in many, many, concepts and abstract ideas derived from decades of ontological excursions into my inner self, and attempting to use that knowledge to explain the world.
Quite often I don't feel included in Dawkins movement against reason having been replaced with religion. That's a shame, because they're is not all that much we disagree on at all. I do feel that reason must be used in our governance and construction of our "base" reality, and faith can be a personal thing not regulated or subject to governance.
It's not required that I reject everything not solely based upon reason to participate in such a movement, yet I experience quite the opposite. Even around here.
Those that make the fanatical demand to only adhere to reason are just as much a problem as the religious fanatics IMHO.
Those that make the fanatical demand to only adhere to reason are just as much a problem as the religious fanatics IMHO.
In a way, you're as fanatical, as is everyone. Everyone thinks that morality is something. I'm a relativist, so the only point I'm fanatical about is that morality is different for everyone, and we should keep that in mind when constructing social contracts and trying to be good to each other. Yet, I'm absolutely fanatical about this point, because I live by it, and think other's should, too. Whatever it is, you have an actionable belief that you think is the proper one, which you have clearly indicated by suggesting that Dawkins is just as fanatical as "religious fanatics".
What does fanatic mean? Here's my definition, your reason for acting the way you are acting is absurd. It is a personal judgement. So I avoid the word. The problem is you don't agree, 100%, with Dawkins method, and you don't think he should be trying to convert people to his method. Also, I bet Dawkins is more flexible in his appreciation of slightly differing philosophies than many religions.
I did a quick search and found this saying 40%:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1510866/Poll-reveals-40pc-of-Muslims-want-sharia-law-in-UK.html
... but I do agree that atheism is a religion. After all, how can one believe that a supernatural power does not exist except through faith?
There's your problem, right at the beginning. You're assuming that atheism means a belief that no supernatural power exists, rather than merely the lack of belief in the existence of a supernatural power. Lack of belief does not require faith and is not a religion any more than not collecting stamps is a hobby (to coin a phrase).
You refer to agnosticism "in its simplest form". The simplest form of atheism is the absence of belief, not belief in absence. To be completely general, there are actually four possible combinations: gnostic theist, agnostic theist, gnostic atheist, and agnostic atheist. An atheist can be gnostic or agnostic, and an agnostic can be theist or atheist. Using either word alone inevitably leads to confusion.
The term "agnostic" refers almost exclusively to agnostic atheists, while "atheist" by itself is more flexible. In general practice "atheist" also refers to the agnostic atheist—just with different emphasis (lack of evidence for a supernatural being, vs. lack of knowledge). Of the two, the emphasis on lack of evidence is more scientific. We don't emphasize how little we know about invisible pink unicorns when faced with the complete lack of evidence in favor of their existence. We require evidence of existence, not evidence of absence.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Many of [the Muslims I know] are very bright, except for one thing - you just can NOT discuss religion (or faith) thing with them.
To be fair, that's not exclusive to religious people. I've found strong narrow-mindedness in ivory towers as well.
As a personal anecdote, I chatted up a researcher from the VLA last August about his dark matter research. Big mistake. He could entertain no notions that weren't scientific dogma, but at the same time he couldn't cite experiments to refute anything in conflict with it. I was astonished at his certainty of belief - enough to remember the incident among a week's memories of Burning Man.
If you want your own anecdote, log on to the #statistics chatroom and ask any question that tugs at the foundation of why some things are the way they are. For example, ask why regression minimizes the squared error and not some other measure. The historical reason might surprise you, but check out the tone of the responses you get!
If you have been keeping track, many religious zealots post to slashdot. Ask economists to explain why "a little" inflation is good and what the optimum value should be without glaring flaws in the assumptions or "proof by opinion" or "proof by telling a story". Read any [scientific] article about obesity and survey the responses - many schools of thought are argued with rabid certainty, and no consensus.
Taking a completely evidence-based stand is really hard. Is free access to guns good for a society? The evidence-based answer is particularly well hidden because of framing, misused statistics, and emotional appeal.
I don't think anyone makes completely rational choices, myself included. It's mostly "strength of belief", that you get from listening to others, who themselves don't make rational choices.
I have no qualms against atheists nor people who believe in the supernatural. It doesn't bother me that either group of people exists. I do have an issue with those in these groups that ascribe to a system of hate and exclusion in order to identify the who's with them and who's against them. Ironically, the most extreme members of these particular types of folks so often fail to see they are what they hate. They operate in the same ways - they identify themselves as part of an enlightened, exclusive group that is superior to the other and engages in spreading that belief to others.
I was recently at our local high school football game and an older couple was passing out Richard Dawkins DVDs to the crowd. How is that any different than a holy roller passing out Bible tracts at a football game? How is Richard Dawkins going off on a barnstorming tour to save the world from religion different than Billy Graham going on a world tour to save the souls of the lost?
Science tells me that its understand of the laws of physics stops at a black hole's singularity? Does that mean I disbelieve the singularity exists because science has no way of describing the singularity? Superstring theory tells me that 10 dimensions of spacetime exist and bosonic string theory 26. Is it then possible that, if true, we can't (yet? ever?) comprehend events or life that takes place beyond our 3 dimensions of existence or that events from these dimensions can affect the reality of ours? Why is it when we speak of entangled quantum particles separated by billions of miles affecting each other instantaneously as a valid theory yet the very real experiences a significant amount of humanity have had and can only explain that it was God (does it matter that they call that experience Buddha, Jesus, Marduk, or Zeus?) as ignorant ramblings? That is, why exactly hasn't religion gone away after all this time?
I guess all I'm saying is, ignoring the veracity of the content of Dawkin's beliefs, simply recognize Dawkin's actions for what it is: I'm better than those folks over there and if you're smart you'd join my side and liberate yourself from your current misguided life. Personally, I choose to keep a more open mind to possible explanations of reality than Dawkins and (insert religious fundamentalist figurehead here) choose to.
I firmly and passionately believe in the flying spaghetti monster. Anyone who doesn't will be damned to eternally eating badly cooked pasta.
OK. Don't buy that one, eh?
I'll go along with W.C. Fields, "Everyone should believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink."
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I don't believe in nothing, I only believe evidence. To argue that not believing in religion is a belief itself is the kind of crazy thinking that typifies the religious, who in actual fact hold such beliefs to avoid facing their own irrelevance in cosmological terms.
Yes, as a matter of fact. My parents claim they were the ones who brought those gifts. However, I never actually saw them doing so. Therefore, I cannot rule out that they were in fact brought by Santa, or the Easter Bunny, or Tooth Fairy, etc.
I notice you left out the pedo-bear... repressed memories?
That's incorrect. Dawkins has acknowledged many times that deities could exist, but we have no reason to believe in them (empirical or a priori). Any such insults are directed at the arguments of people who profess to have such a legitimate reason to believe in a particular deity. And he's right to. Such arguments are invariably foolish at best.
After all, how can one believe that a supernatural power does not exist except through faith?
sigh. we have to cover this shit _again_ ?
one does not have to support that idea that some random object X does NOT exist. if we did, where would it end? spending our time saying that unicorns don't exist - that would be an act of 'faith' to you?
the side who declares that the amazing has happened (without ever any proof) has the burden.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
> he would say that theism works against our interests more than it helps ...
Dawkins especially believes that Christians have no business working in science. The oft-quoted example is how years ago, geological strata were described as "pre flood" (or ante-diluvian, to use the right term) and "post flood." This is used as an example of how science was deliberately hampered by religious people who insisted that there was a flood, complete with a boat filled with animals and a guy named Noah.
He's right about that example, but the fact is, there have been cases where anti-theism has done just as much harm to the cause of science. I cover two (of many) examples at my homepage (look for the Introduction to The Case For A Creator, if you're interested).
John Maddox, long-time editor of Nature magazine, is one example. Same as Dawkins, he was convinced that there was no God and that belief in same was actually harmful. During his tenure at Nature, you would NOT see an article favorable to the Big Bang theory (especially after the Catholic Church endorsed it), because Maddox didn't want to give any aid to the "religious nuts." (His term, not mine.) The Big Bang implied a beginning and he hated the very idea.
Hated it with a passion. He allowed his hatred for that theory to affect the objectivity of an otherwise very well-respected journal.
I remember it well. When the COBE results were announced in the 1990's, people whose primary source of scientific information was Nature mag suddenly found themselves a bit behind the curve. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
No, the GP is right. Your story is good but it's missing a subtlety:
Today, we have never caught a Loch Ness Monster therefore the parsimonious conclusion is that it does not exist.
You can't prove that it is true that it does not exist; you would have to prove that it is not true that it does not exist -- perhaps by finding a carcass.
But if there were a Loch Ness Monster carcass in front of us, then the evidence would be in and the parsimonious conclusion would become that it does exist. It would become difficult to disprove but not impossible: consider the brontosaurus, which was proven to have existed by pointing to a skeleton, but then proven not to have existed on further examination.
The idea is that a scientific theory (hypothesis) makes predictions and the theory is disproved when the predictions fail. If the theory makes predictions that come true, that's great, but technically validated predictions never totally add up to "the absolute truth".
Isn't the only thing you actually can do in science? Disprove or fail to disprove, but there is no prove.
That's a big part of science, but there's also coming up with "best descriptions".
Science is a way to come up with descriptions which encapsulate observational information. For instance, our notions of the laws of motion allow us to predict where a cannonball will land without consulting an almanac of weights, powder charges, and cannon angle. Half a page of equations encapsulates all the observational data.
Whenever a study makes observations and notices that the data appear linear, they are essentially saying "these observations are described by the simple, linear model". Occam's Razor, the scientific method, and Minimum Description Length are all the same thing.
This is why religion is at odds with science: science is predicting things from simpler models, while religion assumes the more complex model with less predictability ("God's plan is unknowable").
It's impossible to prove any simple model is correct (as in, this "unprovability" can be mathematically proven), but you can measure the likelihood of any two explanations. At this point in our knowledge, the religious explanation is far less likely than the scientific models.
The likelihood that the religious explanation is correct will never be zero. Zealots are just clinging to this last shred, pointing out (correctly) that there is still hope.
> That's fine for you, but I'm gay, and the overwhelming majority of arguments against my freedom and rights have religion at their base.
That may be technically true, but do keep this in mind: The Soviet Union under Stalin -- officially atheistic (and he would gleefully kill you to DEATH if you even suggested otherwise) (yes, my tongue is in cheek -- partially) -- persecuted gays and lesbians FAR worse than the United States ever has. Stalin and Co. considered it a "bourgeois affectation" and killed them by the trainload.
To this day, the Russian Federation continues to restrict gay and lesbian rights ... again, far more so than the supposedly "Christian" United States. Putin's argument has nothing to do with religion, either.
I understand your frustration, but be careful about believing (yes, I chose that word deliberately -- heh) bromides and truisms simply because of that frustration.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
I'm grant-wishing myself. The grant I'm currently wishing for relates to mitochondrial paternal leakage in birds. It is comforting to know that gods/sky faeries are in the same boat.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Excellent response. I was trying to come up with a way of explaining that atheism is not a belief system. It's an absence of belief in a god; nothing more, nothing less. Very different than saying, "I believe that there is no god."
For me, I'm a rational objectivist so I believe in objective reality as perceived by my (hopefully) rational mind. My atheism is a result of this belief; not a belief in atheism.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
You're both wrong in some sense.
Science cannot prove an absence - you cannot prove that there is no monster in Loch Ness, because maybe it's invisible or can fly or something else that lets it circumvent the rather exhaustive searches of the lake. But it can disprove specific claims - for instance, the "Doctor's Photograph" has been disproven (or rather, proven to be fabricated).
A scientific theory (explaining *why* something happens instead of just *what* happens) cannot be "proven" in the mathematical sense, but it can be disproven. Newtonian gravity has been proven wrong, for instance. However, for casual usage, you can say that a certain theory has been "proven", either in that a specific experiment was consistent with the theory while being inconsistent with others (eg. "the 1919 eclipse proved General Relativity" is a valid statement with this subtly different definition), or that the theory has been found consistent with a large number of experiments ("General Relativity has been proven correct" is not a valid usage of the technical term, but for casual usage is perfectly fine).
Much of this stems over confusion between a hypothesis and a theory. A hypothesis can be proven or disproven. Take the example hypothesis "with my computer as currently configured, clicking on "preview" followed by "submit" will cause data to be entered into a remote database". This hypothesis will be proven or disproven when I submit this post. This seems to be the usage you are using. However, a scientific theory cannot be proven, only disproven, as there may always be some circumstance that invalidates the theory. Using the example hypothesis "submitting a post to Slashdot will result in data being added to Slashdot's database", this may be disproven if my post somehow fails (if my incompetent ISP goes down again), but even if it succeeds, the theory is only "not disproven", not "proven". In this usage Hazem would be correct.
In the context of religion, there are many claims that can be disproven. For example, the Shroud of Turin has been disproven (it was forged sometime in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries). However, science cannot disprove the existence of a god (an omnipotent being by definition can violate the laws of physics). You may be able to disprove certain gods, if the religion commits to enough claims (I think we can safely call Zeus disproven, since we've explored Mt. Olympus quite thoroughly and have found no gods there), but long-lasting religions don't tend to have gods that can be easily disproven by experiment.
In a way, you're as fanatical, as is everyone. Everyone thinks that morality is something. I'm a relativist, so the only point I'm fanatical about is that morality is different for everyone, and we should keep that in mind when constructing social contracts and trying to be good to each other. Yet, I'm absolutely fanatical about this point, because I live by it, and think other's should, too. Whatever it is, you have an actionable belief that you think is the proper one, which you have clearly indicated by suggesting that Dawkins is just as fanatical as "religious fanatics".
I don't think you need to be fanatical at all. The truth does not require cheerleaders. I believe that there is a level of maturity such that a reasoned person is making the decisions, and will choose based up on reason.
That happens when you remove ego, and emotions, from the decision. I think the truly great leaders of our time acted exactly like that at least some of the time.
So I agree with you about what you want to be fanatical about. That's kind of the ideal world anyways. One in which people employ such reasoned decisions the majority of the time. That would be awesome.
Once again, you don't need to be fanatical at all. Embrace the fact that faith exists. Champion the good effects that come from it. Accept it for what it is. After that, just be passionate about explaining to people how they balance their faith in their decision making process.
Even atheism is faith. Oh yes it is. You can't prove or disprove the existence of deities and the various frameworks created around them. It isn't falsifiable. An atheist is not inherently correct even when you only apply well reasoned logic to it. It's the choice to only make decisions upon that which is falsifiable . That is a matter of faith that nothing else is operating that can affect your conclusion.
You might think that is a stretch. I'm only championing neutrality here. True neutral defaults to only that which we can work with in a tangible sense. When you employ that in your reasoning process, I think many things become self evident in nature.
The problem is you don't agree, 100%, with Dawkins method, and you don't think he should be trying to convert people to his method.
Not at all.
I think converting people over to the "method" is fine. It's not really belonging in a group of people anyways. What you are teaching is logic itself. Just teach the concepts of logic in its various disciplines. Can you imagine having that as 2 hours a day required for all children while in school? Yeah, holy shit. You would have some very smart people out there.
Applying logic can create a person that is beyond atheism. They just recognize what they know, and what they don't know. Everything else is logic. Even faith in a sense.
What I disagree with, is that Dawkins thinks he has to convert me in the first place. He doesn't. We are on the same team so to speak already.
I feel this way because quite often I get that reaction any time I discuss my faith (being asked) with so-called intellectuals that become a little bit condescending once you step outside of falsifiable territory. It's hypocritical to me.
Sorry, that is not the "Same as Dawkins", because Dawkins has repeatedly stated that deities could exist, but it's not worth making arguments about them. Dawkins is properly agnostic, not an Atheist. If he were to assert the negative existence of all deities, he would be an Atheist, but again, he has repeatedly refuted this claim.
I think Dawkins would say the role of religion is not to exist. That he would say that theism works against our interests more than it helps, so he would say no Christians understand the proper role of religion.
I'm not sure he would go that far. Remember that Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, and to him, there is always an explanation for why some feature or trait persists in a species. I think Dawkins would more likely qualify your statement with "now that we have science, we no longer need religion." I've read some of his books and there's a sense that you can justify the existence of religion as a socio-evolutionary trait of humans. Our early society demanded something, an idea both simple and powerful, to germinate around. Something that promoted beneficial traits, like a strong sense of community, and not to ask too many questions, all while "explaining" the natural world. This was religion's role. Something which would promote the survival of one tribe over another, so that the most devout tribe was likely one of the strongest. But, now that we have science, logic, and rational thought, we no longer need religion as the very core of our societies. The social nature of humans is both well established and self-sustaining (barring global catastrophe, of course), and I believe his opinion would be that we're long overdue to jettison the booster-rocket of religion, and rely solely on science and logic to be our main engines from here on out. Pardon the rocket metaphor.
That's my take on him, anyways.
By all the gods above, below and non-existent, that is the dumbest thing that I have read on SlashDot all week.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Actually, atheism of this sort is a religion. It's now even an evangelical religion - they're trying to spread it.
Oh, wait, "ha, ha, atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby! ha ha ha". Yeah, when was the last time someone went around telling everybody that they don't collect stamps and neither should you?
Do you have ESP?
You haven't succeeded in establishing a common language. You have to do that first.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.[1][2] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.[3][4][5] Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.[4][5][6][7] Atheism is contrasted with theism,[8][9] which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.[9][10]
And more Wiki:
Agnosticism is the belief that the truth values of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, as well as other religious and metaphysical claims—are unknown.
The GP is correct in this one. The commonly accepted connotation of atheism is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities, or, by forming the converse of that statement, the commonly accepted connotation of atheism is the belief in the rejection of the existence of deities. Furthermore, you falsely take agnosticism (a non-denominational, non-religious, concept) to be the inverse of Gnosticism.
A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis (esoteric or intuitive knowledge) is the way to salvation of the soul from the material world. They saw the material world as created through an intermediary being (the demiurge) rather than directly by God. In most of the systems, this demiurge was seen as imperfect, in others even as evil. Different gnostic schools sometimes identified the demiurge as Ahriman, El, Saklas, Samael, Satan, Yaldabaoth, or Yahweh.
what matters is if you're a voting block. Secularists aren't. It's hard to form a voting block around not believing something....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I find it funny people can have so much faith and certainty there's no God and use simple trite logic to prove it when the same simple trite logic proves that our universe is stranger than most think.
For example, scientists can't even explain one of the first observations each and every one of them makes - consciousness - self awareness in the way we experience it. By the same logic of Russell's teapot and Occam's razor wouldn't the "consciousness" phenomenon not exist, other than we personally observing it? Couldn't you in theory have a machine or a human being that behaved exactly as if it was self aware, but didn't experience what we experience? If not, why not? Prove it. Or conclusively prove that other people do or do not experience this consciousness you do. In short, explain your invisible little friend that is yourself and why others do or do not have their own little friends that is themselves.
I have no proof that others experience this consciousness, I have faith that they do because I experience it myself and don't believe that I am so special. But I find no way to prove it conclusively.
In line with the weirdness of our universe perhaps there both is and is not a God. Just like we've shown that stuff can be in a superposition. And each of us is also in a superposition, and what happens in the end for each of us depends on whether we interfere constructively or destructively.
If so, you clearly don't get to read some of the gems that I do. But I am in no way surprised by your comment given the baggage you drag around.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"Depends on who's asking and who's reading it. Polls are notoriously unreliable. Social science has a long way to go."
I agree with the guy who replied just above you. These polls (no matter their results) are pretty much always garbage.
Yet, surprisingly, polls in the US can be used to predict the presidential election results quite well. Polls are garbage if you expect a 95%+ confidence interval. For a general trend of the way people feel? They're usually pretty good. Polls aren't scientific, but they don't need to be.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Isn't the only thing you actually can do in science? Disprove or fail to disprove, but there is no prove.
Is that really true? What about using a theory to make a prediction, and then proving or disproving the existence of the predicted phenomenon?
One example: General relativity predicted gravitational lensing, which was found to exist as the theory predicted.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I've tried English, but that's pretty malleable. Too much goalpost moving. I try math, less malleable, but incomprehensible to most. I'd try C or Python next, but that's almost as doomed. Human language sucks.
Then I stand corrected on that technical point. (Seriously.) I try to respect the difference between atheist, agnostic and free-thinker.
He probably ought to watch what t-shirts he wears at some of these events. Just sayin' ... :)
I know, I know. He mostly attacks *religion* and not specifically the existence of God. For that matter, I attack organized religion myself. Have very little use for it.
What I especially object to are Dawkin's famous statements such as, "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world." That completely ignores that all through history there have been those who were intensely curious about nature BECAUSE they believed in a Supreme Being. They wanted to see how He did it. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
(1) Simply because science has no definitive means to describe a particular phenomenon does not disprove the whole of science, or any particular theory or hypothesis, nor represent evidence for a deity or set of deities. Nor does it mean science will forever not have a way to.
(2) The older couple passing out DVDs are not trying to tell you what legally consenting adult you can or can't fuck, or that you should remain indoors on a particular day, or that you should devote any amount of time to praying in a particular direction every day, or whether or not you can eat meat on a particular day, or that the members of the other gender are less than you, etc. What they might push is a stay in school mentality. The horror.
(3) Of course there are bad apples among atheists as with any group, but no soldier has ever killed a man, woman or child in the name of atheism. Aside from greed, God is the only other cause of war.
(4) For all the intellectualism you would no doubt like ascribed to your post, from the undeserved rating to the overt "I'm above even he" mentality, you are owed none of it. For one thing, the nonsensical "atheists are just as bad" view you've adopted / espouse is the common neckbeard position on forums and imageboards the world over. For another, whoever originally came up with the view was clearly not aware of Dawkins' actual views or work. He freely admits his errors. He freely points to where science has gotten things wrong.
Have a lovely day.
You might think that is a stretch. I'm only championing neutrality here. True neutral defaults to only that which we can work with in a tangible sense. When you employ that in your reasoning process, I think many things become self evident in nature.
I don't think it is a stretch, I think its irrelevant. I think calling it a faith when the word is used to describe methods clearly exclusive to empiricism is a malapropism, but nonetheless, I do believe empiricism is the only correct way to seek "truth".
I feel this way because quite often I get that reaction any time I discuss my faith (being asked) with so-called intellectuals that become a little bit condescending once you step outside of falsifiable territory. It's hypocritical to me.
Over the course of what you've written, I suspect you've met people being militant about "atheism". Do you think people are condescending if they think you're wrong? I think you used non-empirical methods to believe something, and I think that line of thinking can be more dangerous than straight empiricism. As I understand it, that is Dawkin's grand point. If you feel emotionally invested in your method, I can empathize with that.
I don't need to be condescending or think about it as us vs them. I don't care what words are used, atheist, agnostic, whatever. It's not about believing in God or not believing in god. It's about the empirical method I used to start and maintain a belief and my continual willingness to examine and synthesize new beliefs with the method. I also believe that I, and everyone else, would be better off if most people agreed with me. I'm not sure I believe that Dawkins should be doing what he's doing, but I suppose he could be a net positive force.
Again, I apologize. I should never denigrate your belief in a magical, invisible, physically-impossible grant-wishing space-dwelling "god" by referring it to as a "sky faery".
This post is an excellent example of why this attitude is so... well, laughable. Because (with a few exceptions, like Scientology, but that's a scam, not a religion) most religions don't believe god is magical, space-dwelling, or grant-wishing. As far as "physically impossible", well, that's manifestly false (something not physical can by definition not be physically impossible, in the same way that an algebraic equation can't be geometrically impossible). And invisible? Shit, air is invisible (well, mostly). Gravity is invisible. I suppose you don't believe in gravity?
What this kind of post shows is ignorance about what religious people actually believe. And making fun of someone out of ignorance is far more ignorant than actually believing in a sky faery.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
interesting
Plenty of times, or did the people living BCE not exist to you? Afterwards, you should also consider the East, as opposed to your Western-centric jingoism.
It isn't up to science to disprove the existence of god or whatever you want to call it. As Sagan so eloquently put it "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and religion doesn't like to produce evidence.
I would actually ask the same question. I would start by saying, yes, I am a Christian, and I have many reasons for that; but one in particular is the very existance of "stuff". The christian belief on "why there is stuff" has perhaps been well explained-- there is an eternal unchanging God who always was and always will be who willed everything into existance (I have no particular belief concerning the "how"-- a big bang works well enough, though).
The naturalist belief however seems more interesting. There is demonstrably no way to gather evidence from before the big bang: the big bang is, so the theory goes, what created our universe, and thus all measurements are confined to times following the big bang; anything we can interact with is both after and caused by said event. There are a number of theories for "why" the big bang happened, as I understand it; perhaps our universe was spawned from a multiverse, or another universe and so on all the way down. But the core problem seems to be the very thing Sagan (and Russel as quoted earlier) get at: just as christians such as myself are mocked for not having any evidence for our belief in a creator, I might wonder what exactly could justify a belief in an uncaused ball of inexplicable matter to inexplicably explode into the universe-- and what sort of nerve could then admit "and we can never actually prove it".
In the christian's defense, I would say that one cannot rationally explain that ball of matter without a "root cause" or an infinite regress; while neither is perhaps provable, the infinite regress seems to make no logical sense to me ("turtles all the way down").
the odds that the one particular god currently favoured is the right one is pretty darn small so as far as disproving i
This is begging the question: It only holds water so long as you assume from the outset that there is no God. If there is, it would stand to reason that there might be immitator religions which are false, and a true main religion.
Or to flip it around, there are countless beliefs concerning the supernatural; that being the case, why should ANY of them (including the belief that there is none) be correct? Except of course that leaves you with "nothing whatsoever is true". You cant disprove a particular idea simply by pointing out that there are a great many alternatives, and that therefore each is statistically unlikely, any more than you can prove that noone receives money from the lottery simply because it is statistically unlikely for any particular one of them to do so.
Hoping for actual insightful responses.
This sounds like Russell's Teapot. You've stated the existence of something difficult to believe, but by doing so anonymously and refusing even to name the educational institution, you've made it impossible for anyone to refute your claim.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
How many countries where Muslims are in the majority have such a theocracy?
What people say they may want and what people so when they have the power to do so can be very different things. Consider Turkey, Indonesia and a pile of other places - they don't want their equivalents of Priests having full control of the legal system or the state in general.
Having Church and State in one neat package is a way to have a nightmare for anyone the leaders do not currently see as perfect or even see as more perfect than themselves and thus a threat. Each are supposed to keep the other from excess.
There seems to be some biological revulsion to homosexuality since since the visceral animosity to it cuts across so many cultures. I think that, if anything, the Christian ideas of hating the sin while loving the sinner, not casting the first stone, recognizing that we're all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God, and forgiveness can make treatment of homosexuals much better in societies based on Christian values than in other societies,
The earlier statement about most arguments against homosexual rights and freedoms coming from religion has some truth (even if sometimes they're attempts to hide simple revulsion), but it also true that most of the arguments for homosexual rights and freedoms come from Christian ideals. For example, one of the most successful arguments has been homosexual rights are similar rights for black people, and civil rights for black people - indeed even the elimination of slavery - had deep religious roots and motivation.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Gravitation lensing may be the current proposed mechanism, but that could change in the future. It has been proposed as a theory, something that holds up under repeated experiments. It does *not* mean that it has been proven, which would imply that it was immutable. Science does not prove things. It is a method to construct a model, based on the core idea of explicitly stating your assumptions, constructing hypotheses, and then testing them repeatedly. Those with a high level of reproducibility become called theories. Eventually, after extreme attempts to disprove them, theories become established as laws. Laws can be disproven. Science operates with falsifiable statements, things you can potentially disprove. There exist no means of absolute proof.
most religions don't believe god is magical, space-dwelling, or grant-wishing
Can't speak for Sikhs and Buddhists with any degree of confidence, but certainly many Christians believe God performs miracles ('magical') and answers prayers ('grant-wishing'). We often refer to outer space as "The Heavens," which is, apparently, where God hangs out.
Have you read some of the things creationists wrote about him just for being a biologist, let alone after he wrote his books? That's the sort of thing he is addressing.
look, thanks, genuinely for your comment. I appreciate your thoughts.
however, I see sentence after sentence of false distinctions and old legacy dichotomies from philosophy books from centuries ago...
Look, this isn't about how *you* choose what you believe or what Dawkins thinks is the best way...it's about the boundaries of the entire conversation.
Here is a boundary: Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of a supernatural god
another boundary: Personal perception is a factor in all human interaction
no one can prove that their way of deciding the things that are **beyond science** is better than another's....
re-read that last statement b/c that directly contradicts your post...if it is a question beyond science, then you can still use **logic** but at some point it becomes **simple opinion** about which unprovable premise is more logical
Thank you Dave Raggett
Your faith despite contrary evidence is admirable :/
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Gravitational lensing, as a phenomenon, has been shown (proven?) to exist. There is more than one theory that explains it. Both General Relativity and the TeVeS flavor of MOND gravity can explain it IIRC.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The moment one proves the existence of the teapot, it becomes science and fact, not religion and faith.
That is where the scientific types get tangled up when discussing faith - logic and reason will never convince a believer not to believe. It is pointless to do anything other than realize these are two different knowledge domains.
If one believes in religion, one also believes in the importance of believing, especially in the face of contradictory information. Science, logic, and reason are either obstacles to surmount, or things worse down the same path. The more sense they make, the stronger they must be resisted.
To answer for GP post - there are many weaknesses in the human mind which *require* the belief in something more powerful and more compassionate, more perfect, more loving, and especially more understanding, than we are. To somehow hold that deaths in floods and earthquakes is something other than random noise in the human population - that whole cities and even civilizations destroyed has some part in a master plan.
The allure of nihilism is weak at best, and the explanation that in a few million years everything you ever stood for and believed in will not matter is abhorrent to most.
Yes, there is a need to believe in a deity, built in. And that will trump knowledge any day of the week, for most.
For simplicity, explain either the patriarchal or matriarchal society, which holds that what you do in life affects your descendants, and what your ancestors did affects you. Your name, possibly occupation, certainly race and religion, and unless you have resources your geography. The urge to pass down the family name, the euphemism of "the family jewels". Oh yes, we are hard-wired to need something that science has not yet given us, and faith and superstition fill that void.
I don't think it is a stretch, I think its irrelevant. I think calling it a faith when the word is used to describe methods clearly exclusive to empiricism is a malapropism, but nonetheless, I do believe empiricism is the only correct way to seek "truth".
Ouch.
I still think its relevant. If you exclusively limit yourself to empiricism, you negate an entire domain based upon non falsifiable statements. Logic precludes you from operating entirely upon empiricism without possessing some qualities and properties of faith.
To think otherwise is just as dismissive as those adhering to dogmatic belief systems dismissing our shared belief in empiricism being the foundation to cooperating with another.
Do you think people are condescending if they think you're wrong?
No, I think they are condescending when they instantly refute my statements without actually refuting them at all. The moment any aspect of non empiricism comes into discussion they can effectively Godwin the discussion.
That's frustrating. It makes any kind of lively discussions of an ontological nature difficult to have, and any kind of socio-political statements to be instantly without worth.
Yes, perhaps those are the militant people. I've got to be honest though, they are about as prevalent as the Tits-or-GTFO crowd. The level of arrogance present with strict empiricism is above average at least.
I'm not directing that at you specifically either.
It's about the empirical method I used to start and maintain a belief and my continual willingness to examine and synthesize new beliefs with the method. I also believe that I, and everyone else, would be better off if most people agreed with me.
I do agree with you. I just also believe that it doesn't preclude faith. You really can have your cake and eat it too.
Dawkins is of course going to be a net positive. That's a given. I just think that the movement would be far more efficient if it put more effort into the formal sciences around logic. They would reach more people, and find that they have allies they've been dismissing unfairly.
They've had experiences that they are unable to explain. Fine. The adjective "religious" is where the fantasy begins.
I can show you Newtonian gravity. Apples fall off trees. But that's been disproven too. You're missing the point. Science doesn't deal with absolute proof. It only gives us ways to disprove things, until we're left with things we can't easily disprove. Gravitational lensing is a name for a phenomenon which may be multiple other phenomena interacting, or it may be some singular phenomenon explained by one theory. It's a convenient label to refer to something by, not proof. Again, science doesn't deal with absolute proof.
Well, one question:
how much longer do you think that will be true?
Certainly, Atheism has no formal organization, but neither do many religions (see also "Wicca" as an example), so that cannot be a usable guideline. But there is even more damning evidence here: Atheism does have "saints" and "preachers" (e.g. Mr. Dawkins), it does have a dogma (centered around a fairly particular definition of "reason" as its central coda, I believe, yes?), and it certainly have its zealots (oftentimes more irritating than Mormon/JV missionaries, truth be told.) Also, they seem to have the same smug self-assurance that many religious folks carry.
Finally, your very post says (without specifically saying) point-blank that Atheism has very little tolerance for anything that may intrude into the full exercise of its tenets.
I daresay that there are times when Atheism is just as much of a religion as, well, a mainstream religious organization; with some people, it is even moreso.
Now, here's the deal from my POV: I happen to be Catholic, by birth and creed. I don't advertise it beyond disclosure here in this post, or when specifically asked - and I certainly don't go door-to-door or jam it down anyone's throat. I say as much because I'm here to tell you right now that you and I are only really different in philosophies, and in what we believe about those things which are beyond our 5-dimensioned realm (six if you count mathematics ;) ).
I guess I should also inform you that it gets "dragged" into {$arena} because at one time, it resided there. Take the schools for instance. Given the rise in violence, the fall of scholastic performance, and the outright degradation of character in our youth since religion left said schools says way too much about what its replacement has wrought, IMHO. Can't blame someone for thinking that maybe its return might fix a few broken things. If you have a better idea or two about how to fix these mounting woes, then let's hear them...
Finally, your statement that the Bible is "a book that tells them whatever they do is right and the will of whatever deity they worship." tells me that you have never actually read it, and are thus speaking in ignorance. The book is nothing of the sort, in spite of too-often being used as such by people with ill intent.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If I can try to sum up your position, you chose your religion because some things are currently unexplainable and you need to have an explanation, any explanation, for those things. Instead of admitting that we don't, and may never, know how the universe began, you've adopted a belief system that makes assertions about things that can't be proven (similarly, speculation about what preceded the birth of our universe isn't [absent any evidence or falsifiable claims] real empirical science). You don't seem to have any problems with any of the things that science does explain well, so is it safe to assume that your god is one of the gaps?
You've given no particular reason to have chosen Christianity, so it makes sense to assume that if you were born to Muslim parents, you would presumably be Muslim, and likewise for any other religion. Most people inherit the religion of their parents or communities, which doesn't paint a picture of religions representing universal truth. It's a learned behavior (addressing each unknown with "God did it."), just like eating, driving, and hygiene habits. If you hadn't been taught Christianity by your [parents, community, etc], would you have come up with it on your own? Then how can it be the truth?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
You've moved the goalposts by redefining well-defined terms. In particular, "gnosticism" has a wholly different meaning than how you used it (it's entirely unrelated to this discussion, so I won't dwell on it), and you've redefined atheism largely in terms that are typically applied to agnosticism. But those are just quick notes. The more important thing is that you claim to disagree with me, yet your concluding paragraph contains a restatement of the very ideas I put forward while perfectly exemplifying exactly what I was talking about.
Specifically, the distinction you draw and then elaborate upon in your last paragraph between atheists and agnostics (lack of evidence vs. lack of knowledge) is identical to the one I drew when I said that atheism came down to a faith-based belief at its most fundamental level. You've allowed yourself to get hung up on the difference between whether they "lack belief" or "believe in the lack", but you'll note that I never addressed that in my previous comment, because regardless of which it is, there is still the fact that, as both you and I pointed out, atheists believe that the evidence is sufficient...which is founded on nothing but faith. Albeit, it's a faith in science, which has proven itself trustworthy in dealing with most/all things natural, but we would also have cause for saying that it is not sufficient in dealing with matters related to this topic.
Honestly, I have no problems with people putting their faith in it to provide answers, so long as they maintain their intellectual honesty and acknowledge that they are doing so. As your unicorn example aptly demonstrates, there are plenty of times when doing exactly that makes perfect sense, and if you think that this topic is one of those times, then that's fine. Go forth, be happy, but recognize it for what it is.
so thanks again for your response...I acknowledge that you chose your words carefully and did not make hasty generalizations...
but you did say this:
You did, at the end say this
So you're not trying to say too much, but you are saying ***something*** about science that is important to the discussion.
I think you're right in that we are talking past each other with our definitions 'prove' and 'science' and 'scientific' and 'logical'
Beyond that, IDK...I'd like to hear your thoughts...I do understand what you are saying but I still think we may have more to discuss.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I'd say that "fanaticism" would be a better word there instead of "religion" althought it doesn't quite cover all of it. Jesuits don't have a problem with Dawkins and he doesn't appear to have a problem with them. Most Catholics do not see evolutionary biologists as the spawn of Satan. The long established Protestant Churches don't seem to either. IMHO the bunch that do have a problem with Dawkins would probably be called "the Merchants in the Temple" by Jesus.
Just to note, it is your position that is "extraordinary" by reason of the fact theism is the significant majority and so, that's the "ordinary".
"Extraordinary" does not mean "things I personally find really improbable".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Agnostic (from Ancient Greek - (a-), meaning "without", and (gnsis), meaning "knowledge") was used by Thomas Henry Huxley in a speech at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1869[9] to describe his philosophy which rejects all claims of spiritual or mystical knowledge. Early Christian church leaders used the Greek word gnosis (knowledge) to describe "spiritual knowledge". Agnosticism is not to be confused with religious views opposing the ancient religious movement of Gnosticism in particular; Huxley used the term in a broader, more abstract sense.[10] Huxley identified agnosticism not as a creed but rather as a method of skeptical, evidence-based inquiry.[11]
You need to learn some history.
The climate change "debate" has shown it does. The WMD hoax in Iraq has shown it does. The results of the North Korean propaganda machine have shown very graphicly what happens when you kill off any "cheerleaders for truth" that speak out against lies.
Currently there are a lot of people that oppose the very fabric of modern society for political ends and seem to want to go back to a "might makes right" system instead of something where reason and justice have influence. Sitting quietly while they corrupt easily swayed children is a worse choice than being a "cheerleader".
Replying again, since I should've requoted this: "Furthermore, you falsely take agnosticism (a non-denominational, non-religious, concept) to be the inverse of Gnosticism." What part of me saying that they're not opposites (but the parent of my prior post treated them as such, and that was what I argued against) did you not grok? I believe us to be in violent agreement, at least on the point of Gnosticism vs agnostic.
spending our time saying that unicorns don't exist - that would be an act of 'faith' to you?
Yes, and it is for you too. If someone makes a claim that unobservable unicorns exist, I have to take it on faith that they do not, in fact, exist. Few people would disagree that doing so is entirely reasonable, but I'd acknowledge it for what it is: a belief based on nothing but a faith that the lack of evidence is sufficient proof of their non-existence. As you said, when extraordinary claims occur, the burden is on the ones making them to prove their point, but the inability to prove their point does not necessarily mean that they were wrong; it merely means that the reasonable person should believe that they were.
If you feel that such a belief is reasonable here as well, then that's fine. As I said to another commenter, go forth, be happy, but recognize it for what it is. I have friends who are atheists, friends who are agnostics, and friends who are theists. I'm fine with any of them, but I've always found it a bit ironic when an atheist slams a theist for claiming a faith-based belief, without being willing to acknowledge that their fundamental stance is based on one as well, since it would mean yielding a piece of their intellectual high ground.
*posts link to philosopher's wind-bag attempt to logically "prove" god cant exist via teapot anaology*
BAM!
*wins /.*
Look, you didn't just PWN me by pasting a link and claiming victory without any context, discussion of my points, or any discussion.
That link goes to the wikipedia article on Russell's Teapot, which is some analogy that also involves some notion that b/c god is outside of science then those claiming god exists have the burden of proof.
1st. linking to an analogy that attempts to prove god doesn't exist doesn't prove or disprove my point that science/logic *cannot* prove or disprove it either way. You have to actually engage the topic and show why this teapot analogy is absolutely 100% perfectly proving that science is capable and indeed has proven all gods of all notions all over the world have not and will not ever exist
2nd I AGREE that if I was trying to convince you that Flying Spagetti Monster existed, then YES **I WOULD HAVE THE BURDEN OF PROOF**
But not every person who thinks a supernatural being exists is even religious or is trying to convince you to agree with them.
No one really gives a shit what *you personally* think in this case.
This is about boundaries, limits and **claims that have been made**
Dawkins made some very outlandish claims that have made him rich and famous...they do not withstand scrutiny and make us all worse off and dumber for having heard them.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Nothing is wrong with the language. You just need to listen with an ear toward understanding. Ironically, what you are trying to do is exactly what Christian Evangelists do. You have to understand their world view in order to effectively communicate your own. Of course, if you happen to meet a well trained Christian Evangelist, he'd be more than willing to help set up the common understanding. But don't go in expecting to convert a person based on your unassailable logic, and convincing prose over the course of a five minute conversation. People have free will, you can expose them to the truth any number of times but they have to decide for themselves what they believe.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I think the story is that three out of the four that debunked the great flood idea in geology were ordained Preists in the Anglican Church. The very devout Mendel was the founder of the field Dawkins is in.
There's a big difference between them and the creationist nuts willing to hide evidence that Dawkins means. He means extremists and not a big chunk of the global population.
I think what you mean and Dawkins means are very different things. I suspect you've picked up somebody else's strawman of Dawkins and been conned instead of building your own. It gets confusing because Dawkins has been "trolled" by creationists for decades and we get to see his responses to such things outside of the context.
Hey seriously that was a nice read. Thanks for commenting.
I take solace in the fact that Dawkins' notions are in fact not representative of the scientific community.
In my graduate program, I knew a few 'outspoken' atheists who loved to talk Dawkins stuff and we never, not once, got into any unsavory business when having philosophical discussions. They were cool as long as they saw I was cool. Very respectful if obstinate.
It is precisely because there are so many well thought out notions that don't fit into spirituality OR Dawkins' dogma that I compared him to Rush Limbaugh in the first place. He should know better.
Thank you Dave Raggett
(Puts on Irish voice): So would you be a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?
A lot of religeon is really about politics and belonging to a tribe - especially some of the US deep south merchant in the temple franchise hate cult stuff where Jesus would probably come in on Dawkins side against them.
A few points here.
Occam was theist. As the best possible implementor of correct application of Occam's Razor, theism was his conclusion.
Occam's Razor says absolutely nothing about likelihood.
Occam's Razor states that the simplest model should be used, -all else being equal-, for the purposes of conceptual economy. That is the only correct inference to what "winning" per Occam's Razor means.
Any difference in evidence whatsoever invalidates the use of Occam's Razor in selecting between two or more models. I assume you consider your model to have greater evidence.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I thought so too about Stalin and the Russian Church - but after the wall fell down real history showed it was a hostile takeover instead of an attempt to wipe it out (unlike plenty of other stuff Stalin did). There are still plenty of Church and State tangles left behind hence things like the response to Pussy Riot. Those restrictions are a symptom of that tangle.
Really? Citation please. Why is there this observer phenomenon that I experience?
Or maybe you're someone who doesn't experience it and hence don't know what I'm talking about.
I hate Illinois Nazis.
My point here is that human language is often insufficient to bridge this gap by itself. In linguistics, where we differentiate between the symbol used to represent a concept and the concept itself. When you speak to me, I necessarily (and unavoidably) perceive your concept through the filter of your training in language, filtered through my training in language, and ultimately this translates into some concept in my mind, potentially and often not the same one as you intended. There is no human language capable of skipping the two filters in the middle. There is no perfect method of communication.
Modern science is (arguably) predicated on methodological naturalism, which is quite distinct from philosophical naturalism.
The former says "since this is what science can investigate, we will proceed with that stipulation". The latter is the stance that only things science can act upon (e.g. physical matter) exist.
It's an important distinction, and well-worth reading up on in terms of the nuances--googling either term will yield plenty of material.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
If God is telling me what to do and what not to do, the question of whether or not God exists seems pretty important.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Funny thing is a Kingdom is a bit different to a Theocracy and the same can be said with Tribal councils. Try harder.
That's what I mean about taking reality into consideration and who is actually running things instead of what people say they would like.
Putting aside the fact that Wikipedia is not a primary source, your own quotes support my position: atheism is the absence of belief in deities, not necessarily belief in their absence except "in a narrower sense", what is sometimes referred to as "strong" or "positive" atheism. No doubt there are a few atheists who actively believe in the non-existence of deities. For most, though, it's simply the default position taken for anything lacking supporting evidence, and not an act of faith.
If you read past the first few sentences of the articles you quoted, you'd find pretty much exactly what I said in my previous post. To put it simply, if (like most agnostics) you don't actively believe in a deity, and at the same time (like most atheists) you don't believe you have certain knowledge that no such deity exists, then you can be describe by a reasonable person as both an atheist and an agnostic. Neither term is anywhere near a precision instrument, and there is no clear line of demarcation between atheist and agnostic.
Also, I was not referring to the Gnostic religion, just the more general concept that one has special knowledge regarding the existence of deities—the same sense used by the person who coined the term "agnostic" not so very long ago. That should have been obvious from context. Bonus points for knowing that bit of trivia, though.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
...They wanted to see how He did it. :)
A bit of a tangent, but that reminded me of a physics teacher I had who told us something like (more jokingly than seriously) "You know why I hope there's a god? Because the afterlife could be like a physics seminar, we'd all be sitting at tables, God would be up at the chalkboard, and we could ask him questions; "Hey, that thing about information lost in a black hole - how'd you do that?" (And God picks up the chalk...)
"Polls are garbage if you expect a 95%+ confidence interval."
What? Every political poll ever created is reported at exactly the 95% confidence interval.
For example, from the report linked by GGP post: "After taking into account the complex sample design, the average margin of sampling error on the 1,050 completed interviews with Muslims is +/-5 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence." (p. 57)
More generally, when reporting inferences from sample data you can always pick ANY confidence level you wish, and if it increases then the margin of error just gets bigger. Perhaps you meant to use some other phrase or idea in place of "95%+ confidence interval".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Actually, you really need to look up the definition of agnosticism. Loosely, agnosticism is the belief in a divine being but not a specific religion (god exists but is unknowable). Lack of belief is, well, lack of belief.
Belief in atheism is a belief. Accepting that there is no god based on rational thought is atheism without a belief system. Huge difference. So, if you don't mind a double negative, I don't believe that there is no god. I also don't believe that there is a god. In fact, I don't BELIEVE anything with regard to the existance or non-existence of a god. I accept based on rational thought and my perception of objective reality that no such thing as a god exists (although I maintain a scientific doubt about this since there is absolutely no objective evidence to support the conclusion either way).
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Hah! Throw out everything Phil Jones has ever done or reproduce it independently like the BEST group did and the answers still come out the same. There are thousands of scientists around the world who are studying the problem intensely. The thought that all of them are in on a conspiracy to bugger the science for political reasons strains credulity to the breaking point. It would have to be the biggest conspiracy ever and it would be impossible to hold a conspiracy that big together for any length of time.
Regarding hurricanes there was some speculation a decade ago about more of them but the IPCC has been ambivalent about that. Mostly what they say is that there is likely to be an increase in the average strength in the future. The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season was pretty quiet but the 2013 Pacific cyclone season wasn't. However, 2010, 2011 and 2012 are all tied for the 3rd most named storms in the Atlantic season so your "Reality is quieter hurricane seasons each year" statement is just wrong.
As for "No record lows anymore", I challenge you to find any scientist in the field that has actually said that. It hasn't happened. At most what they would say is that there will very likely be more record highs than record lows in the future.
I have read plenty on the subject but obviously not the stuff you read. Actually I have read some stuff from your side and most of it I find pretty laughable. Roy Spencer has some interesting stuff occasionally. I do read papers on the subject from time to time and I have read the IPCC AR4 WG I completely but they're a part of the conspiracy, aren't they?
I have no idea what you mean by "... you just repeat crap that has been debunked for over 5 years ...".
This is likely more true than not. Society and even familiy has historically sought to increase its safety in security as well as resources like food and of course labor by increasing its population. Homosexuality would deprive such benifits as so would masterbation that until recently was taboo too.
Whether this dislike of what would defeat population growth and hence the security of the unit is instinctual or learned might be a good question to explore. But it is something that doesn't need religion to flourish.
"I still believe that if no one dance the sun would not come back after winter. And I believe this not because no one can keep everyone from dancing at the solstice, but because it is pretty to think so. It matters not that reality does not fit the believe"
If you admit that reality does not fit this belief, then you don't really believe it, do you? What you have is a story that you like to tell, which is not the same thing. All you're doing in the post above is playing word games by not honoring the definition of "belief".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Agnosticism is NOT the belief in a divine being. It is the concept that we can't know if there is one or not, and refuse to assign a truth value to it. Nowhere in there does that statement equate to "I believe in a deity, but I can't personally know it."
From Merriam-Webster: "a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god"
You seem to be under the impression that the Russians by large are atheists. Or that the government still promotes atheism. Let me tell you something - religion is exploding in Russia. Big time, no, huge time!!
They are incorporating it (again, just like during the times of the Tzars) in the their patriotic, empire-like attitude. "The third Rome" , have you heard that [Moscow]? The Russians see themselves as the sole protector of Orthodox Christianity. The Russian tourists that I meet in my country spend all their time visiting religious sites. They talk about it all the time. Just yesterday a Russian businessman offered to buy one of the largest old buildings in the capital of my country [it would cost a fortune] in order to make a museum of Orthodox Christianity.
Tzarist Russia was a backwater, superstitious, low-educated, peasant-bashing, stupid and callous totalitarian hellhole. But man, were they religious! Now they come back to that state again, only at a different technological level.
In the way the state uses religion to fortify patriotism and instill a sense of righteousness Russia and USA are the two sides of the same coin. This has to do with empire-thinking more than it has to do with religion IMO [although a successful argument can be made that that every religion is an empire and behaves like one]. In fact I am aghast that the religious folk happily accepts to be used in this manner by the sate. But then again, they probably like it because the state will, in turn, place special privileges for their religious institutions. Why are you, religious people, behaving like prostitutes, I often ask? Have you no shame? Some sensible people in the military of the US have complained that they were/are used as racketeers; where are the religious leaders that say "we don't want our fate to be used as political tool".
Indeed. Religion kills rationality, just as sure as fear does. Might use the same mechanism, actually.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If you're afraid to publicly affirm what you believe, you probably don't deserve your beliefs.
That is the huge advantage of atheism: You do not have any beliefs! So you always deserve them!
Just kidding. Personal ethics is far, far superior to anything a religion can deliver, as religion gets always co-opted as a system to dominate people and hence is tainted and corrupted. The fairy-tales used by most religions are just childish. The Giant Spaghetti Monster is about as believable...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I don't agree. Scientology is a religion. It is also a scam, like basically all other religions (and most assuredly the mainstream ones) are. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they may be inseparable for all practical purposes. The other way round, every good scam has aspects found also in religion.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Things you completely misunderstand can indeed be a tremendous source of amusement. It is really simple: The pure state is the absence of religion. Once you accept that completely obvious point, everything else follows. Incidentally, most religions do not even deny this, they just call it bad or undesirable without ever giving a justification that makes sense to anybody in that pure state. So the simple truth is that most religious people had religion forced on them. That is why they do it preferably to children. They are used to be forced into things and do not understand what is going on. And later it is too late for many. However you find far, far more adults that drop religion than ones that take it up. That should also tell you something.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I am an atheist and a scientist. No, science cannot explain consciousness, it can only describe it. That is fundamentally different. That doe snot invalidate science and it does not create a need for religion. For example, fire could not be explained by science for a long, long time. That caused it to be the subject of more primitive religions. Today it can be explained down to the details (although some things are still unclear in the properties of flames...) I do not mean to say by this that science will eventually be able to explain consciousness, but that there is no need for it to be able to do so.
Dualism is a perfectly fine, religion-free idea to describe a possible source of both consciousness and intelligence (which also cannot be explained at this time), and a nice model that explains why science has trouble at this point. It even allows things like an eternal soul without requiring religion. This just shows that religions with that concept blatantly stole it.
Many atheists initially mis-identify dualism as religion, but it is not. It is a model, not an absolute truth you have to accept. A model can be wrong. It serves only to provide a possible explanation, serving to rule out that there _must_ be a different one (i.e. those provided by religions). As such, dualism merely points out that there is no need for religion in order to explain certain things that science cannot explain at this time. And when you add that religion itself can be very well explained by science, you start to get a complete picture.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it is a lovely work if you can stomach it.
-RAH
Dawkins isn't primarily trying to convert believers into atheists; he's trying to level the playing field so that it is as acceptable to criticise or even mock a religious or otherwise superstitious belief as it is to criticise or mock a political belief or any other kind. He is also trying to raise opposition to the institutional legislative advantages religion, particularly the Church of England, has in government, such as the seats in the House of Lords which are automatically assigned to CoE bishops, and to end the practice of governmental support of faith schools.
He's also made it quite plain that he doesn't dislike "religious people" in general - he is in fact close personal friends with many, including prominent bishops and other clerics.
You misunderstand what I meant about cheerleading for truth.
Being passionate about the truth, and vocal about it, is perfectly fine. You've taken me so far out of context that you are conflating my position with censorship almost.
I'm saying you don't need to push it to the point of fanaticism and degrade people doing it. It's virtues stand on its own quite nicely.
Hehe, it is unclear whether there are un-provable statements. Goedel's incompleteness is a hypothesis and very likely un-provable itself, but there likely cannot be a proof for that either. Sorry, but there is no certainty in that mental space. (Which is why so many people find religion acceptable or are unable to shake it: Without religion, a lot of things become pretty murky.)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Hope this helps. Here is some more. Think we can find similar numbers for any other religion?
You've got two US sources for a British social issue.
Sorry, but the only sources that cite Muslims want a Sharia state are factless media beat ups in Newscorp/Daily Mail or propaganda from the EDL and BNP.
The reality is quite different. Most Muslims want the opposite and would like Newscorp/Daily Mail to stop printing such nonsense.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
thanks for chiming in w/ an explanation of the teapot thing...I still think its a complete waste of time to consider but thnx just the same
"teapot" is in the eye of the beholder...
what i mean is, "a teapot orbiting the earth" is pure poppycock (said with English accent and foppish hair)
the analogy is that believing in some 'god' is just as patently ludicrous (more English fopping) as believing in a teapot or whatever
it's just like the Flying Spagetti Monster analogy
It's all just opinion too...it's your **opinion** that the proper analogy to believing in 'god' is [insert something ludicrous and nonsensical]
take **any belief system** hell even theistic Satanism...they all will tell you that their belief is logical or 'makes sense' given some precepts or inherent 'truths'
analogies don't prove anything...they are **opinions** of correlation meant to make a falsifiable point & aid understanding
Thank you Dave Raggett
Science disproves a lot of things. It proves a lot of other things. For example, science can perfectly explain religion. You just need to dig a bit deeper. Science does not say religion (any of the countless, inconsistent with each other ones) is wrong, it just says that is the wrong question to ask. Hell, science can even create quasi-religions and the followers will believe in them just as they would believe in naturally evolved ones. (As this is highly unethical, it is only done by the shunned scientific sects called "marketeers" and "politicians" today.) Fact is that people are willing to believe a lot of ridiculous things if they are presented right or indoctrination starts at an early age. This has been demonstrated experimentally a lot of times. It also has been demonstrated that beliefs negatively impact rational reasoning capability, for strong beliefs ("fundamentalism"), up to the complete obliteration of the afflicted individuals ratio.
So take modern memetic theory, the fact that believes suppress reason and the evolutionary mechanism, and you have a perfect explanation where religion comes from: Random thoughts that people had and that in some instances solidified into obsessions that proved infective. The less infective ones died out, being superseded by the more infective ones. Today, we see the end-result of that process, with modern science and education fortunately allowing many people to develop an immunity to these pests.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That may be technically true, but do keep this in mind: The Soviet Union under Stalin -- officially atheistic (and he would gleefully kill you to DEATH if you even suggested otherwise) (yes, my tongue is in cheek -- partially) -- persecuted gays and lesbians FAR worse than the United States ever has. Stalin and Co. considered it a "bourgeois affectation" and killed them by the trainload.
Right, you've just demonstrated your ignorance about the Soviet Union.
Aside from the fact Christianity flourished under the Soviets (opium of the masses is quite useful when the masses are starving) whilst other religious groups were forced out (the odd pogrom), the kind of "atheism" they tried to install was only atheism in name. They replaced blind obedience to god with blind obedience to Marx which was essentially embodied by the state, it was atheism as in "there is no god" it was not atheism as in "no religion".
Lots of people like to create a false equivalency between the Soviets and Atheism, without actually understanding either of them.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Education must really be going down the drain. Science can prove and disprove. Science works with probabilities and likelihoods, it is not balk or withe in most aspects. There are some limits, mainly that you cannot prove something is impossible in a general, unrestricted setting. (Which fact the religious use, but do not understand...) The thing about science is that it actually works and has demonstrated so time and again, unlike all other approaches tried.
Sometimes you also have to resort to use theories and models, and there the thing that well in practice is to use Occam's Razor: The least complicated theory or model that explains all the available facts is likely the correct one. When more facts become available, that assumption may get disproven or strengthened.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Scientists formulate things the other way around. You would start by asserting that the LNM does not exist, and then seek to disprove that hypothesis.
Indeed. One of the great thinkers.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If I can try to sum up your position, you chose your religion because some things are currently unexplainable and you need to have an explanation, any explanation, for those things
Not correct. As I mentioned, I have a number of reasons for being christian, I just gave the one that was relevant to this conversation. I also have no problem with things that I dont currently have an explanation-- with saying "yea, I just dont know that". The issue I was highlighting is that the atheist position seems utterly untenable, because aside from the impossibility of evidence, it seems impossible for there to even BE an alternative explanation that does not involve infinite regress.
You don't seem to have any problems with any of the things that science does explain well, so is it safe to assume that your god is one of the gaps?
That would be the "other reasons" i mentioned. The thread, as I understood it, was not on why I in particular am Christian, and Im not willing to have that full conversation on slashdot (unless I were quite sure that there were a sincere desire to hear it from the other person, and not just to ridicule / waste time).
If you hadn't been taught Christianity by your [parents, community, etc], would you have come up with it on your own?
I wasnt, really. Id say I became a christian in my early 20s.
The pure state is the absence of religion
Does that mean religion over the years has proven itself evolutionarily fitter than atheism?
For some of them, unfortunately yes. Not in all circumstances and not in truly modern societies. But then, so have the plague and cholera. In modern times less so.
I agree, that "the masses" may not be capable to live without some fantasy to tell them what to do. This is not an argument on how to control humanity (or the morality of doing so), it just demonstrates that success of a religion and its consistency with the truth are not related.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Certainly, Atheism has no formal organization, but neither do many religions (see also "Wicca" as an example), so that cannot be a usable guideline. But there is even more damning evidence here: Atheism does have "saints" and "preachers" (e.g. Mr. Dawkins), it does have a dogma (centered around a fairly particular definition of "reason" as its central coda, I believe, yes?), and it certainly have its zealots (oftentimes more irritating than Mormon/JV missionaries, truth be told.) Also, they seem to have the same smug self-assurance that many religious folks carry.
Only religious people think Dawkins is a preacher or a saint. You'll find Atheists that disagree with him and you'll find he'll happily debate with them.
You cant do that to a Christian preacher.
Further more, there is no code nor dogma. A lot of theists who dont understand what atheism is try to ascribe these things to atheism but only demonstrate their own ignorance. You cant really blame atheists from getting upset here, they're a diverse group of people with no common beliefs and you're trying to shoehorn them into a box that doesn't fit because someone who is atheist does not fit your world views. It's like if I were to say that all theists were kitten eating Hitler worshippers because I know this one guy who believes in god and who may or may not have eaten a kitten and has a picture that looks a bit like Hitler if I squinted at it.
But I wouldn't say that because I know how ridiculous it sounds and oddly enough, it's more sensible than your argument. That is the kind of wisdom that reason gives me, not a blind belief in a greater power but the ability to figure things out for myself.
No, Religion is a belief, atheism is the lack of belief. To use the old example, to say atheism is a religion is to say that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Atheism describes a lack or absence of theism. this is a very large area that covers everyone from non-religious to Buddhists and leVeyan Satanists. The only thing in common is that they dont believe in god but have radically different philosophies.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Actually, it is not. The problem is that it is self-referent, so it cannot be part of any theory as a theory has to be self-contained. Just as the halting-problem breaks out of computability theory, Goedel's incompleteness is designed to break out of any theory that attempts to prove it.
It really only is a hypothesis and an informal one at that. It is often called a "theorem" in the literature though, but that is a mis-use of the word and incorrect. (Yes, I _have_ studied formal proof theory.)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
As Sagan so eloquently put it "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
If I'm trying to support a claim that is 80% extraordinary, does my evidence have to be 80% extraordinary too, or can I get by with two pieces of 40% extraordinary evidence? I mean, Sagan's statement is a nice sentiment and makes a great sound bite, and all, but the moment you start judging the ordinariness or extraordinariness of claims and evidence you start to stumble off the path of science. Science is simple: Either the evidence supports the claim or it doesn't. That's all that should matter.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that establish inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems capable of doing arithmetic.
In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been proven on the basis of previously established statements, such as other theorems—and generally accepted statements, such as axioms. The proof of a mathematical theorem is a logical argument for the theorem statement given in accord with the rules of a deductive system. The proof of a theorem is often interpreted as justification of the truth of the theorem statement. In light of the requirement that theorems be proved, the concept of a theorem is fundamentally deductive, in contrast to the notion of a scientific theory, which is empirical.[2]
there's no MIDDLE EAST, it's AMERICANISM. There's Far Easy, dude..... Far far far far East. House of Rising Sun.
I thought I'd also leave you with this since you must be out of practice. There exist complete, formal proofs for both theorems. I'm not really sure where you picked up this misguided notion that they aren't theorems, but an appeal to authority ("I have studied") is useless when you don't back it up with a citation, unlike what I've done, from multiple sources now. Frankly, I won't believe a claimed authority on logic when they mix up theorems and theories.
This means that people who believe in BIC pens must believe in sky fairies. What's that? BIC Pens aren't like sky fairies?
People who rely on bad analogies to make an argument (like the 'sky fairy' argument, or calling climate science a 'religion' as a derogative) are making those statements because framing something complex that they don't fully understand as a caricature saves them the trouble of making a reasoned argument in support of their position. It's like saying "Jews are money grubbers" or "rag heads hate our freedoms", a blatant attempt to dehumanise, to classify their beliefs as something "other" - when in fact, their beliefs are just as justified by objective proof as your own. They have none, and neither do you.
If frustrates you that others don't rush to join your religion? It makes you angry that their beliefs contradict your own? Well whoop de do. Get over it. People have believed conflicting things for thousands of years, and by all accounts, will continue do so until the Sun swells up and we are boiled alive.
And how do we know you're the same AC?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Rush Limbaugh is simultaneously obnoxious, obviously devoid of integrity in his stated purpose, and doesn't listen to the people he is meant to interview or debate. Oh, and he's a demagogue, intentionally playing against the passions and prejudices of his audience for personal gain.
Dawkins hasn't been in Family Guy.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
American Wikipedia indeed does not concur..... indeed does not concur..... indeed does not concur.....
Certainly, Atheism has no formal organization, but neither do many religions (see also "Wicca" as an example), so that cannot be a usable guideline. But there is even more damning evidence here: Atheism does have "saints" and "preachers" (e.g. Mr. Dawkins), it does have a dogma (centered around a fairly particular definition of "reason" as its central coda, I believe, yes?), and it certainly have its zealots (oftentimes more irritating than Mormon/JV missionaries, truth be told.) Also, they seem to have the same smug self-assurance that many religious folks carry.
Finally, your very post says (without specifically saying) point-blank that Atheism has very little tolerance for anything that may intrude into the full exercise of its tenets.
I daresay that there are times when Atheism is just as much of a religion as, well, a mainstream religious organization; with some people, it is even moreso.
One very important point you're missing here is that Atheism/Agnosticism and other rationality-based belief systems generally base their 'dogma' on a scientific system - their 'dogma' is a variable, not a constant.
"In the end, there is simply no weapon more devastating than the truth, delivered in just the right way." - tnk1
IMHO not even remotely capable of being compared. Faith asks a question that atheism ignores. That's a similar trap as those who pretend science is a religion, not understanding that they are separate things and it's as silly a statement as insisting that tea is a kind of coffee. Mendel could embrace both science and religion. Darwin could embrace science and religion, he just had trouble with some extrapolated dogma that was really sitting on top of the religion. Dawkins embraces science and probably didn't care about religion either way until some Jim Jones types decided he was the antichrist just for doing the type of science he did.
Somebody has to point out the Jim Jones types while they are mixing up the Kool-aid. You seem to forget that Dawkins has not just been insulted but even subjected to death threats.
And your cognition of the events are reversed in many cases: you change the causality from what your PERCEPTIONS are, to what the known causality chain is.
So your "out of body experience" isn't proof of religion since these visions can be produced artificially in people who never died at all.
Religion doesn't give any reason for things to be the way they are. It doesn't answer "why morality" or even define it. Morality has changed where the religious texts have not. So it doesn't define it in the least.
And if mythology is merely "give us something to think about the world around us" science does that too. Religion doesn't do any different than that, but does it badly.
Religion doesn't do anything other than make people into easily identifiable tribes and easily identifiable "others".
Not just for statements of (a)religion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKcJ-0bAHB4
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
That being said, I don't believe I have a monopoly on the truth. I think I am right, but my views have changed time and again throughout my life
This is proof of ability to rationalize.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
You might think so, but see the counters against it that are documented in that article.
Paraphrasing one of them - "it's not the same, a god's so much bigger than a teapot, so it's easier to believe he exists".
Paraphrasing another one (or perhaps the same one?) - "blurble blurble, I'm an idiot".
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." is false.
It should read :
"Think about how stupid the median person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that."
That, sir, is the best comment in this whole thread. It's so rare to find a real True Neutral alignment this days...
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Coming out of the atheist closet among your friends and family can be just as daunting as admitting you are gay. I had a good friend get visibly angry with me when I said I do not believe in one god. In that perspective, he felt it was better to be a Muslim than an atheist.
So, yes, I am reticent to admit my unbelief.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Interesting. I normally don't think of bars as a place where the kind of people like to be so serious about their religion hang out.
If you are serious enough about Christianity (and immature enough) that such things will make you super-mad, wouldn't you still be trying very very hard to turn the other cheek?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
I think you are using the word "faith" wrong. Faith does not have anything do to with logic or philosophic arguments. Faith is the believe without any evidence, and in philosophy you are trying to prove your believes with arguments. Also logic is not faith. Logic is an invented system that is just played by their rules to their natural conclusion. You don't have to have faith in logic or believe in logic, you just have to accept the rules.
I personally find it very difficult to find anything worthwhile in ontological philosophy. Nature does not follow our primate instincts and even if you can show that something "must" exist (i.e. it is logical that is must exist) it does not follow that it really does exist. Maybe there is some law of nature that prevents that object to physically exist. So without empirical evidence an ontological argument is useless.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
You can't argue with people who don't think things through or listen to reason. Christian fundies are one such class of people, aggressive atheists like Dawkins are another. When slanging matches start, it's a little like watching Jeremy Kyle or Jerry Springer...
John_Chalisque
In a level playing field, you'd be able to have faith and non-faith schools both with support and see which is the better. Groups like the BHA seem to be campaigning for schools to be exclusively non-faith, based only on idealism without paying any attention to whether or not faith plays a functional role in learning and living (regardless of objective truth, which may seem like heresy to some, but it is an angle that needs serious consideration, since many things in everyday life and modern science are known to work, and work well, but for reasons that nobody understands).
There is a dire need to understand how faith functions in a persons life.
John_Chalisque
You're just describing human nature there, not an essential difference between science and religion. Most people doing science don't follow their assumptions to their ultimate philosophical consequences, and remain at a comfortable pragmatical ground.
Conversely, there are rational theologians (starting with scholasticism, which existed prior to the modern scientific method) that make all assumptions explicit - they just happen to use a different set of assumptions than positivism. This doesn't make them less rational, although it makes them less scientific.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
That's BS. I can agree that there is a revulsion against anything different, i.e. something that goes against the moral norm. In ancient Rome and ancient Greece homosexuality was openly and accepted until the Christian fundamentalist took over. You see the "revulsion to homosexuality" because Christianity took whole Europe over for over 2000 years with their dogma that homosexuality is "sin". But before that nobody cared about homosexuality and was even openly practices.
> For example, one of the most successful arguments has been homosexual rights are similar rights for black people, and civil rights for black people - indeed even the elimination of slavery - had deep religious roots and motivation.
Eh, no. Religion was always used to enforce and justify slavery and to suppress woman and black rights.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/slavery_1.shtml
Historical records show that Islam and Christianity played an important role in enslavement in Africa. The Arab-controlled Trans-Saharan slave trade helped to institutionalise slave trading on the continent. And during the age of expedition, European Christians witnessed caravans loaded with Africans en-route to the Middle East.
For many of these early European explorers, the Bible was not only regarded as infallible, it was also their primary reference tool and those looking for answers to explain differences in ethnicity, culture, and slavery, found them in Genesis 9: 24-27, which appeared to suggest that it was all a result of sin.
In the Genesis passage, Africans were said to be the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, who was cursed by his father after looking at his naked form. Moreover, in Genesis 10, the Table of Nations describes the origins of the different races and reveals that one of the descendants of Ham is Cush - Cush and the Cushites were people associated with the Nile region of North Africa.
In time, the connection Europeans made between sin, slavery, skin colour and beliefs would condemn Africans. In the Bible, physical or spiritual slavery is often a consequence of sinful actions, while darkness is associated with evil. Moreover, the Africans were subsequently considered heathens bereft of Christianity
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Science doesn't need to disprove anything since there is no reason to believe in a god in the first place. Even if there is a god, it doesn't mean that any of the junk in the bible, koran, bhagavad gita, or harry potter is true.
Sorry, but "what you believe is wrong and you should stop believing in it because I say so" is no better than the religious fanatics claiming that their religion is right and you should believe in it because they say so - there's no reason to believe that there was a creator but there's also no reason _not_ to believe that there wasn't a creator. Science can't provide evidence either way, so all anyone is ever going to do by proclaiming that their viewpoiint is right and that they don't need any evidence to back it up is cause a few more wars.
(For the record, I'm agnostic - I believe that the existance or nonexistance of a god is unknowable (unless one chooses to show itself) and therefore, ultimately I shouldn't waste my time worrying about it).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
They are theorems. They have been proven mathematically.
but I do agree that atheism is a religion. After all, how can one believe that a supernatural power does not exist except through faith?
So for you NOT collecting stamps is a hobby ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
This really intrigued me. I've never thought of atheism as a "religion" per se. It seemed silly to me, like calling someone who chooses to not watch sports a fan (see? silly!). But let's see what the dictionary thinks.
reÂliÂgion noun \ri-Ëli-jÉ(TM)n\
: the belief in a god or in a group of gods
: an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods
: an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion
The third definition is certainly interesting. If Dawkins and these other scientists feel strongly enough about their atheism to write books and make movies and go on lecture tours then I would posit that this interest/activity is very important to them.
So yeah, maybe hardcore atheism IS a religion.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
This guy is a personal hero of mine. He's one of those people "out there" you hope somehow never dies but just is always there, like a star.
For people interested in giving your kids an experience which will ground them as rational, free thinking individuals he runs a summer camp which teaches self reliance, and a respect for science and facts.
http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/next_article?article=5214&category=&videos=
The holy books of Judaism, Christianity, and Muslim read like exhaustive historical texts. If you can't find something significant in there that is disprovable, you're not trying.
Complaining that religion is not "easily disproven by experiment" is like complaining that the history of Russia has no experimental basis, and therefore must be false.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Yet another example of how empiricism misses the forest for the trees. Faith has everything to do with logic and philosophic arguments; those are the reasons why one believes what one believes. Faith is simply a conclusion one reaches about things which are beyond empirical proof. Because you can't see them and put them into a test tube and observe them, it doesn't mean they don't exist.
"You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. "
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Any and every person on the planet holds one or more beliefs or opinions you will disagree with. Singling out religion as one harmful dark and sinister belief is absolutely baseless.
Would you prefer an atheist politician who has utterly opposite cultural, solical, economic, political, diplomatic and military views as you, over a Protestant who you otherwise agree with?
It's particularly hard to understand this view today, when religious views are hardly ever deciding factors in legislation. Votes on LGBT policies never fall on religious lines, nor do all Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, etc., universally vote for or against them. Ditto for abortion, civil rights, affirmative action, social programs, economic policies, etc.
Where is the great harm that all these damn religious politicians are causing?
Where are the horde of atheists that voted the separation of church and state into law? Where are the atheists that are fighting to keep the protestants from repealing it? Where are these atheists judges that continue to enforce it?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I still don't agree that you are using the correct word. Faith is the believe in something or someone without evidence or sometimes contrary to evidence. As such poetry, love, romance and other non empirical (although those examples are all empirical) constructs, and philosophy and logic are not faith based.
From your quote: poetry, love, romance does not require faith because it is empirical. But the conclusion of the "picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond" does require faith because there is no evidence of a picture of the supernal beauty or glory beyond.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
There seems to be some biological revulsion to homosexuality since since the visceral animosity to it cuts across so many cultures.
Actually the Greeks an Romans didn't give a rat's ass what your orientation was. Nowadays it's an issue because the major religions make you into some kind of child-molesting hell-bound monster if you're gay.
I think that, if anything, the Christian ideas of hating the sin while loving the sinner, not casting the first stone, recognizing that we're all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God, and forgiveness can make treatment of homosexuals much better in societies based on Christian values than in other societies.
But first they need to get around their own self-righteousness and hypocrisy, and somehow resolve the fact that their 2000 year old book of mythology might actually be wrong. I'm not holding my breath on that one.
The earlier statement about most arguments against homosexual rights and freedoms coming from religion has some truth (even if sometimes they're attempts to hide simple revulsion), but it also true that most of the arguments for homosexual rights and freedoms come from Christian ideals. For example, one of the most successful arguments has been homosexual rights are similar rights for black people, and civil rights for black people - indeed even the elimination of slavery - had deep religious roots and motivation.
No, they didn't. Those were all "modern" advances in morality. Sure some used religious justification but in the bible racism and slavery were all a-okay as long as you followed some rules. Oh, and women were some for of sub-human.
"Hating the sin while loving the sinner" is just a bullshit way of justifying their actions. "Oh I don't think there is anything wrong with being gay. They're going to hell, but it's not like I hate them or anything." Whatever.
~X~
There seems to be some biological revulsion to homosexuality
What does this even mean? Is that a statement about science or related to science? It's gotta be, since biology is a natural science. So cite your references, or stop spreading lies.
True enough, but then think about delivering that line to an audience of 5000 people, half of whom have been drinking or toking. Which is mor understandable?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
> Faith is simply a conclusion one reaches about things which are beyond empirical proof. Because you can't see them and put them into a test tube and observe them, it doesn't mean they don't exist.
I wish it would be as simple as that. But what you call people who have faith in the biblical flood, or in Adam&Eve and genesis? That are things that are certainly not beyond empirical proof. In fact, cosmology and evolution have shown that those myths are not factual. There was never a global flood that killed all animals and humans and we are not descendants of just two animals and Noah's family. Also the earth and sun was not poofed out of nothing by god but was formed through natural laws (gravity and atomic fusion). Also humankind was not poofed out of nothing by god and we are not descendants of just two individuals.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Like in the example i gave, they don't realize how obnoxious they are. The point of my post was that people don't think they are doing anything wrong or offensive when they are.
Reality and knowledge and science is not limited to what one learns in school or what one was taught to believe. Most of us were taught, for instance, that Neanderthals went completely extinct, but we know have significant evident that many of us carry their genetic heritage. There is even evidence of a 'third race' of humans. Many may have learned Schrodinger equations in school, but do not know that they are subtly wrong. Reality is complex, and assuming we know, or that god plays dice with odds, it an emotional and irrational response.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Your point is irrelevant to this conversation. Obviously, it is possible for people to change their belief set. Obviously, it is possible to learn from cultures other than your own despite all existing cultural filters and language barriers.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I don't think it was about being christian as much as it was annoying. While the guy who got physical was raised to belive in God, the extent of worship and practice was likely thanking god when he got lucky or something.
I mean the guy sat through it several times before getting physical and warned him to shut up about it. I hang out in some rough bars, even worked at some as a bouncer (although not this one). People get upset over the dumbest things when drinking sometimes. I remember breaking up a fight because someone played rap music on the juke box. I saw a fight over some girl saying she got beat by one of them 15 years prior to the fight. Another time there was an off duty cop who kept trying to buy drugs and several people knew he was a cop and beat his ass. That was interesting because i was a witness at the trial, the defense said they beat him up because he kept interupting him on a date asking for drugs not because he arrested him several years prior. The guy ended up with one year probation and two weeks jail suspended based on the probation.
> You seem to be under the impression that the Russians by large are atheists
I never said that. You decided that I must believe that and then prepared an (admittedly interesting) discussion about it.
What I said was actually quite simple. Facts:
1. STALIN and those around him were committed atheists. They were serious. Forget what historians have tried to divine about his beliefs (or lack thereof) and go read what the dudes actually wrote. They weren't playing or pretending.
2. As a result of that viewpoint, Stalin and his cohorts sincerely believed that, since there was no God and no afterlife, the only thing that mattered was the here and now. If that meant that you were obstructionist to their view of the future, you were (at best) persecuted or even killed.
The point I was making here was that Stalin horribly persecuted gays, even though he was an avowed and sincere atheist -- so the idea that religion automatically results in anti-gay philosophy is a terrible oversimplification.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
I think I must have misunderstood what you were going for there. The creation of the universe is a problem that we humans are unlikely to ever explain satisfactorily. The religious explanation isn't any more solid or testable than the multiverse, etc explanations, so the most rational approach is to suspend judgement on the matter until a sound, testable explanation is proposed.
In my mind, the existence of God falls in the same category. I have no way to know whether a deity exists or not, so it doesn't make sense to come to any sort of conclusion on the matter.
[From a more humanistic standpoint, I reject the idea that living my life as a good person is not enough to win the approval of a just god. The idea that I could be punished eternally for doing all the good I can in the world, but not following arbitrary customs or worshiping some deity, is nonsensical and repulsive. That a good god would give us a sense of Justice, and then turn around and judge us like a capricious dictator or a petulant child doesn't follow. By that reasoning, it shouldn't matter whether or not I believe in God, even if there turns out to be one.]
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
The Loch Ness Monster is a unique case. It's quite possible to prove there is no such monster in the Loch, unless it has abilities far beyond being a mere monster (invisibility, dimensional shifting, etc). However, you cannot prove there isn't a similar monster somewhere in the unexplored depths of the oceans.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
As far as I can tell Sharia explicitly demands casual violence. I'd rather wear the slutty dress and keep some semblance of equality and rationality about our law thanks.
Other beliefs and opinions often have at least some rational basis and are subject to debate, religion does not. Furthermore, religion is directly responsible for much death and suffering throughout history, even into the present day. Other beliefs and opinions have nowhere near that death toll. So no, focusing on religion is not absolutely baseless. At all.
Whether it's the deciding factor in your country is irrelevant. Religion drives a great many political ideologies which still cause harm to this day, including abortion and LGBT oppression. Regardless of whether votes ultimately fall along religious lines, we wouldn't even be wasting time on these issues if it weren't for religion.
Wow, seriously, open your eyes. Even if you're British or Canadian where the religious right isn't nearly as rabid as they are in the U.S., they still influence legislation to the nation's detriment.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Polls are shit statistics because the sample population is self selecting. /.
Sir, do you have time to answer a short survey?
No, I'm busy posting on
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
Dude, your pants are on fire to such an extent that it's visible from space. I see four Islamophobes gave you uprates, though.
I have to say, that hasn't been my experience with the Muslims I've known. Admittedly my sample size is only about (quick inventory here) 8 or so. But still, I know one guy in particular who used to have long conversations about the Koran and the Bible with another Christian friend of mine. Even convinced him to try fasting for Ramadan (incidentally convinced me to try a traditional Lenten fast too).
The only topics I've found that can be really touchy with my Muslim friends are Jews and Muslims of the opposite sect (Shiia for Sunnis and Sunnis for Shiia). They can have some really nasty ideas about them, very reminiscent of the kind of stuff you hear a lot of Christians say about Muslims, and can be impervious to reason on the subject. Even that isn't universal though. One of my friends was raised Shiia in Iraq, but is proudly atheist and loves having long conversations with a Jewish (Israeli) friend about it. Those are fun.
I don't think that's what is being claimed at all. The distinction between "lack belief" and "belief in the lack" is important.
It seems you are assuming that in order for someone to be an atheist they believe they have enough evidence to disprove the existence of gods. But the GP is saying that it is not necessary to be an atheist and believe that he has proof that no gods exist, only to believe that there is insufficient proof that any gods exist. There's a difference.
Why are you assuming that the burden of proof is on the person without theistic beliefs?
Happy people make bad consumers.
Although I can't remember specifically which Middle Eastern country it was, one of in Richard Dawkins documentaries he did go and speak to some people. I think it was either Palestine or Israel.
The question of whether or not God exists seems pretty importan -- to you. I could not care less about this question. You look like a dog chaising your own tail asking it -- to me.
Yep, people can change, on the average, but you are remarkably dense, a perfect example of what I've been trying to get at, in various forms. Good day sir.
You don't seem to be following the argument.
There so very many things for which there is no evidence, that it becomes incredibly questionable for you to select just a few of them to believe in. If you believe in a god for which there is no proof, why not the Grey Men? the Invisible Pink Space Unicorn? Why not the flying spaghetti monster? Why not Russell's Teapot? Why not the dragon in my garage? Why not Harry Potter? Why not the Sasquatch? Why not Atlantis? I could go on for a very long time before I run out things that I could name that don't exist.
So how and why do you choose, with no supporting evidence, to believe in some things and not to believe in others?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Prof Dawkins may not serve God, but Mamon on the other hand...
I think I must have misunderstood what you were going for there. The creation of the universe is a problem that we humans are unlikely to ever explain satisfactorily.
I am convinced from a logical standpoint that there can be no explanation that does not involve something having existed eternally (which I do not believe the universe could), that is apart from the universe and capable of acting on the universe. As I said there are other reasons for why I believe in the God of the bible, but there is a reason that I don't find the atheist position workable.
From a more humanistic standpoint, I reject the idea that living my life as a good person is not enough to win the approval of a just god. The idea that I could be punished eternally for doing all the good I can in the world, but not following arbitrary customs or worshiping some deity, is nonsensical and repulsive.
That's not quite the Christian position; the position is that you stand condemned because of the very substantial bad that you (and all others) do and have done. If the standard on a test is to get a 100% or fail, its no good to point at all of the questions you got right while ignoring the many you got wrong. And if in fact there is a Christian God who is responsible for your very existence, it stands to reason that your ignoring and refusal to acknowledge or honor that God would be a very serious thing indeed.
The statistics from Britain, where something like 30% Muslims want the UK to become a SA-like theocracy, speak a little different.
Apparently, you have a different definition of "most" if the 70% that don't agree don't qualify.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I hope, for Dawkins' sake, if God speaks to him, he'll be prepared to listen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_converts_to_Christianity_from_nontheism
Quantum fluctuations remove the necessity of infinite regress, and pave the way to explain the entire universe as a zero-sum of existence.
What's to fear? I cheerily inform folks that I do not believe in their particular sky faery. Should I expect violence? Condemnation? Whatever.
Well, to be honest, if you regularly phrase it that way, yes. No one likes having their beliefs in just about anything dismissively insulted, especially when it's something rather central to their life. That's less about religion and more about just not being a jerk to people you disagree with.
Try treating someone's home country or favorite sports team that way and see if you don't get a lot of anger directed your way too.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
While I find your comment interesting, I would like to propose a different view. Religion, in itself, is one of the things that is trying to win the "survival of the fittest" contest. It is essentially a parasite living within the human race. It has survived through evolution (of ideas) and is fighting against atheism for survival. That's why it proseltyzes (for reproduction).
Really? So I assume that you either don't believe in a god or that the god you choose to believe in is a complete no-op. He doesn't do things like dump these things on you and expect you to obey, right? Or tell you to slaughter folks? In that case, I can certainly see being totally willing to ignore questions of actual existence and just assume. I mean, I couldn't care less about gods who don't have any effect on the real world.
But a lot of gods seem to want their followers to do stuff that they might not otherwise do. In a case like that, a good sanity check like, "Am I doing this in the name of Grand Cosmic Righteousness or because of voices in my head?" seems totally appropriate.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
yeah, b/c young-earth creationists *never* thought of that objection...
"created with apparent age" is how they explain that...done...**dusts off hands**
*no matter what logic you use* they can just draw a circle around it and label it a "miracle"
just stop the whole line of thinking...stop trying to disprove something with logic that is personal opinion....
it does no good to argue with a pig: you both get dirty and the pig likes it!
Thank you Dave Raggett
The fact that everything cannot be empirical and we have to "settle for" taking a few things on faith is not "religion" or doctrine -- it's society. Surviving within my social norms requires I trust people -- I cannot verify everything myself, so I listen to experts say that "light switches use electricity." IN fact, I've taken a science course and proven that bit -- but not everyone has. And there are a whole slew of things I take for granted until such a time that I have enough knowledge and inspiration to test it out myself.
We cannot breathe 100% oxygen -- for practical and health reasons. But the fact that we have pollution in the air doesn't give a value to the pollution.
We cannot prove every detail yet, but you sound like you are promoting the devil between the details rather than any admirable deity or way of life.
But I'll agree -- there is a lot of arrogance of empirical people -- and in my opinion, that's mostly because they don't recognize where they've taken things on faith and that they don't have all the answers. But being on shaky ground is empirically better than prancing around on nothing but thin air. ;-)
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
faith:
complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
or
strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
agnostic:
a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.
"someone who says "I don't know if god exists, but I have faith" they are an agnostic." You're just flat out wrong.
TL;DNR
the Above post makes sense to people who don't subject their beliefs to rational scrutiny. Hence, people of faith will say; "Wow, you beat them soundly in that debate." And of course they think some atheists are arrogant -- just as anyone today might grin a bit at someone carrying on about Zeus. The personality clashes are independent of the value of any system of logic.
Is there any ultimate arbiter of a "winning argument?" Yes, but you've got to adhere to scientific principles and theories that can be disproved, otherwise it's just a bunch of theologians arguing doctrines based on evidence of God's opinion.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Well said. This is why I'm agnostic, though I have no problem telling people that.
I won't pretend to know either way, and I'm comfortable with that. There are definite gaps in our knowledge, and while one should not rush to fill those gaps in with speculation, but hard reason, it's hard to ignore the fact that so many humans have believed in something over the millennia, and there are small experiences I've had that make me feel like sometimes something is pulling my strings on a cosmic level.
Personally, I don't believe in the anthropomorphic, personified personal god that "loves" us and listens to prayers; like Einstein said, that's just childish. But, also like Einstein, I won't rule out that there is, for example, something to it, maybe more akin to the "Force" for lack of a better description, that keeps total entropy and chaos at bay, kickstarted the big bang... -or any infinite number of other possibilities outside our current realm of understanding, until we evolve further.
When you think about, there is an apparent loss of logic when considering the beginning of the universe: how do you get something from nothing? Where tdid he stuff from the big bang come from? The singularity? Another universe? - then go back further and ask where that came from. You can do this ad-infinitum, but at some point you realize something had to come from nothing or just agree things were always here, neither of which makes a lot more sense than gods and spirits.
On the belief side of things, I prefer to see people practice spirituality over religion, if anything; the former is personal, passive, and generally malleable; the latter is typically organized, rigid, conformist, has a power structure and hierarchy, and is in some circumstances, obviously, oppressive.
I try not to hasten to pass negative judgement on anything in the name of science, because historically, that has often led to putting-foot-in mouth disease.
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction". -- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon". -- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.
On the other side of this coin are the religious devotees who refuse to question anything or use reason, and want to force their beliefs on others. Though frankly, outside of the most extremist muslims or christians, I generally find most "religious" people don't in fact do this. Still, I resent getting dragged to church on the rare occasion something in the family calls for it (wedding, funeral, etc) I wind up rolling my eyes so often they barely stay in their sockets.
This said, my concern is that the new wave of aggressive atheism might swing the pendulum too far the other direction; the smug derision, the name-calling, the "you will conform to our way of thinking or be cast out because you're wrong and we're right". This just perpetuates dissension, and is doing a lot of what religion has done wrong in the past.
Now, if I haven't managed to offend both sides at some point here, I'll be mighty surprised, because someone on either side of the argument is bound to reject my middle ground statements. But there they are.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
the existence of god, to people who believe, is not a "hypothesis" that they are testing and have some statistical margin for error
the whole point of the concept of 'faith' is that you make a 'leap of faith'....
people who believe say they believe something unprovable via hypothesis b/c of personal experience and faith
i just proved you wrong...so what...your 'logic' is just your opinion of what would be the most 'logical' approach
all I have really proven is that you cannot PROVE or DISPROVE the existence of a supernatural god, buddah, Xenu or whatever with logic or scientific inquiry
you can't prove or disprove it
Thank you Dave Raggett
I haven't read Dawkins but I read a book by Susan Blackmore years ago that sticks in my brain still - "The Meme-Machine" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meme_Machine Ahh the forward is by Dawkins :-)
Anyway, the idea is that the evolution of humanity is now primarily driven by survival of the fittest memes.
I think the collection of Science memes would be gaining on the Religion memes if it weren't for the fact that humans who have been infected with the Religion meme seem more likely to reproduce.
So ideas are only worth spreading if you spread them to people who will execute you on the spot for them? I'd be happy to teach calculus to people, but I don't think I'd be willing to get shot for it. Pretty sure that has no bearing on whether calculus is good or whether teaching it is a useful pursuit.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Why are you assuming that the burden of proof is on the person without theistic beliefs?
Agnostics would say "I cannot find a proof either way, so I do not know" and as such need show no proof as they make no factual claims, they only state their uncertainty on the matter.
Theists would say "I believe God exists" and as such may be called upon to try and show a proof for their belief
Atheists would say "There is no God" and as this is a definitive claim, there must be a proof for it to be considered a true fact.
If you make a claim that something is a certain way(such as God does or does not exist), you may be called upon to provide a proof of that.
If you claim that something cannot be known(such as an agnostic claiming it is not possible to know if God exists), you may be asked to provide a proof of that impossibility.
If you merely say "I have yet to see a convincing proof" then you have nothing to prove as you are stating an opinion about your own experiences and not attempting to assert anything as a fact.
Facts can be proved or disproved and any statement of fact can be challenged as such.
Does that help clarify things?
There does tend to be an effect where immigrants, concerned about losing their ethnic identity, become even more attached to the beliefs of their home country than the people living there are.
It's not as implausible as it sounds...
Dawkins is concerned only with enriching himself, hence his assholery.
You don't convince people that you're right by being an asshole.
You can prompt people to question their beliefs by asking the right questions.
Be friendly, be personable, don't be an asshole.
Be Penn Gillette, don't be Dawkins.
Evangelical Atheists are just as annoying as Jehovah's witnesses.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There seem to be a lot of people out here who think that all things that are unprovable or uncertain are equally likely. I can't prove it, but I don't think that's the case.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
oh
ok
i guess this whole fucking conversation is over then!
c'mon man...you just threw more abstractions into the mix which makes for more possible vertices of misunderstanding in the giant graph that is this conversation...
ok...it is your opinion that 'supernatural' means 'magical' in this context...if you asked people who are believers, many might say 'supernatural' means something that is wholly bigger than in the 'meta' sense of all nature...or they might say something that inherently defines the laws of physics continuiously...
I just wanted you to know that you haven't proven shit, or contributed one thing to this conversation with your point about "magic"
Thank you Dave Raggett
no...he's not insulting them!
why, he's just saying they're deluuusional and full of poppycock!
calling someone "delusional" is insulting
also, adding a layer of abstraction..."he's not insulting all believers, just any believer that claims to be sane and not delusional" is bullshit....everyone sees throught it
either/or....stop equivicating and at least own what you believe
Thank you Dave Raggett
According to wikipedia, [In quantum physics, a quantum vacuum fluctuation (or quantum fluctuation or vacuum fluctuation) is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space.....[this] means that conservation of energy can appear to be violated, but only for small times.
Which is a far sight from "everything came into being by quantum fluctuations".
Also, theres about a million problems with what you seem to be suggesting:
1) You're fundamentally suggesting that "there was nothing, and then it created something" which is even more problematic than infinite regress.
2) Quantum fluctuation is a theory about something that happens WITHIN our universe. We're talking about how spacetime itself could come into existence, not random particles.
3) Theres no evidence (and as I said theres no chance of ever gathering evidence) for something like that, so you could throw it out as a "maybe this is how it happened" (if you ignore the other issues), but never actually hold it as a belief without ignoring the whole "extraordinary evidence" thing.
I think that this is more important than a lot of people realize. A big part of it is seeing that a critical mass of people are willing to publicly say that they don't believe this stuff. The reports of a "rise" in atheism probably reflect a small number of "converts" and a very large number of people who have never believed in gods but who have kept their heads down because that's what the culture requires.
Imagine a society that throws virgins and infidels into a volcano. Then imagine that nobody in that society actually belives it does any good, but everybody stays quiet because they think they're the only ones and that saying something is a good way to get tossed into the volcano. In that case, I'm happy for anybody who expands the range of acceptable opinion, no matter how they do it.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
You don't seem to be following the argument.
There so very many things for which there is no evidence, that it becomes incredibly questionable for you to select just a few of them to believe in. If you believe in a god for which there is no proof, why not the Grey Men? the Invisible Pink Space Unicorn? Why not the flying spaghetti monster? Why not Russell's Teapot? Why not the dragon in my garage? Why not Harry Potter? Why not the Sasquatch? Why not Atlantis? I could go on for a very long time before I run out things that I could name that don't exist.
So how and why do you choose, with no supporting evidence, to believe in some things and not to believe in others?
My point was that the claim that "its obvious you shouldn't believe in a god because there is no evidence to support the existence of a god" has absolutely no more merit than "its obvious that you should believe in a god because there is no evidence to support the universe just popping into existence without the helping hand of a creator". Both viewpoints are equally valid from the evidence available, so either side arguing that the other is wrong is always going to be supported only by that side's faith in their own beliefs. I certainly think that the evolution-deniers can be refuted on scientific grounds, but at the end of the day we fundamentally don't know what started the creation of the universe - we have no idea if it was a random event or if some intelligence tweaked all the universal constants to be just right to create life a few billion years down the line and then kicked off the big bang. Nor is it likely that we will ever know this - its pretty fundamentally unknowable.
Some of your examples make absolutely no sense though - for example, given that J K Rowling has never tried to pass Harry Potter off as non-fiction, there seems little merit in people believing that it is non-fiction. The same cannot be said of various religious texts.
Also, things like a dragon in your garage are fundamentally knowable things - if you want to convince me that you've got a dragon in your garage then its a pretty simple job for you to just show it to me. If you refuse to show it then that can be taken as a reasonably good implication that you don't have a dragon. Conversely, the existence/nonexistence of a god is not knowable - if you want to convince me that a god exists there is *no way* for you to show me that god even if you wanted to, so the fact that you can't do this doesn't imply anything.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
The pure state is the absence of religion. Once you accept that completely obvious point, everything else follows.
Is that an axiom? Or a conjecture?
I'd argue that (if we're going down the path I think you think you're trying to go) a "purer" state is the absence of opinion or naïveté. But that never lasts very long, now does it? So, what fills that innocence? The worldly wisdom of *insert philosopher here*? Or the still, small voice of a real-actual God?
"I'd rather wear the slutty dress and keep some semblance of equality and rationality about our law thanks."
From your id I hope you mean a kilt rather than a "slutty dress". Don't you have some pride? Or better yet sensitivity to the eyesight/sanity of others?
Actually, atheism of this sort is a religion. It's now even an evangelical religion - they're trying to spread it.
Oh, wait, "ha, ha, atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby! ha ha ha". Yeah, when was the last time someone went around telling everybody that they don't collect stamps and neither should you?
That would be a great analogy if people used their stamp collections to justify homophobia and misogyny. Or if people used their stamp collections to justify wars. Or if people insisted that stamp collecting be taught in school in place of actual science while constantly spreading anti-science propaganda. Or if people were using the tale of the impending stampocalypse to justify ignoring environmental threats. Or if people were constantly insisting that non-stamp collectors are evil and will spend eternity being tortured while promising collectors of the correct stamps will get ever lasting bliss in a land of unicorns and rainbows. Or if stamp collectors ran huge non-profit corporations that meddled in the social policies and laws of states and governments. If stamp collectors did any of those things on a massive scale, that would be a really good analogy. And if stamp collectors did all those things, then it would be an excellent analogy because some of us non-stamp collectors would probably get vocal and tell people where to shove their stupid stamps...
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
I agree that there is a difference between the two and that it is important (I simply thought he was getting hung up on it when there were more important distinctions being glossed over). Where I would disagree (as I did in my last comment) is in using the terms he did to describe "atheism", since he's slapping the atheism label on agnostic ideology, hence why I said he moved the goalposts. Both the agnostic and the atheist would agree that there is insufficient proof that gods exist (some theists would too, though obviously most would not). The agnostics would stop there and say that the insufficient proof means that we simply do not know, but, by definition, atheists go a step further.
To quote from that Merriam-Webster link:
Unlike agnosticism, which leaves open the question of whether there is a God, atheism is a positive denial.
Claiming a lack of belief in gods is fine, but atheism is more than just that, since they say that there are no gods. If they don't, then they are not atheists at all. They're simply agnostics who've mislabeled themselves. Most of the arguments against what I'm saying here are rooted in redefining atheism using agnostic ideas and then pointing out that the things I've said about atheism do not hold according to that redefinition. But that should already be obvious, since I've readily admitted that what I'm saying does not apply to agnostic ideology.
It seems you are assuming that in order for someone to be an atheist they believe they have enough evidence to disprove the existence of gods.
That's close to, but not quite, what I am saying. Replace "disprove" with "disbelieve" and you'd have what I was saying. I'm not suggesting that they believe there is sufficient evidence to disprove anything (after all, if they had proof it wouldn't require faith, which is what I'm claiming is at the core of their ideology), but I am saying that they believe there is a sufficient lack of evidence for them to disbelieve the existence of gods. A subtle distinction, but an important one, and your concluding question relates back to it:
Why are you assuming that the burden of proof is on the person without theistic beliefs?
I'm not. If someone claims that unobservable unicorns exist, my choices are to either believe them or disbelieve them, either of which will be based on faith, since we have no observational data from which we can prove or disprove anything. The rational person will choose to disbelieve, and there's nothing wrong with that, since we've learned that it makes sense to place the burden of proof on the person making the extraordinary claim, but we should also note that the inability of the person making the extraordinary claim to provide sufficient evidence does not, in and of itself, make them wrong. They could be correct, but simply incapable of proving it. It's this inability by either side to truly prove anything that is the basis for my claim that atheists (as defined above, i.e. people engaging in a positive denial of gods) have faith at the core of their ideology.
Once again, however, if we're redefining atheism in terms typically reserved for agnosticism, then none of this applies. Does that clear things up a bit?
"They should go to Saudi Arabia, or Yemen or Egypt or Tunisia or Iran, and try to make their point across to the Muslims."
They also wish to stay alive. You said it yourself that this religious group responds with violence to any kind of religiously viewed challenge. In Egypt and Syria, they're wiping out christian minorities in towns. Tolerance seems to have little meaning especially under any kind of perceived challenge or need for revenge.
Another good one is "Off is a channel" or "Bald is a hair style"
You must have missed their parade, and the recent shitshow in London. Cameras have agendas too you think?
I would find it funny if he turned out to be one of them.
The third definition is certainly interesting. If Dawkins and these other scientists feel strongly enough about their atheism to write books and make movies and go on lecture tours then I would posit that this interest/activity is very important to them.
So yeah, maybe hardcore atheism IS a religion.
By that definition, here are some other religions: American Football, Soccer (the rest of the world Football), Cricket, Baseball, Capitalism (aka The Free Market), Communism, Social Justice, NASCAR, Basketball, World of Warcraft, Cheese making, Software Development, Science, Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Photography, Hiking, Fitness, Health, Nutrition, Hiking, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, Cosplay, Comics, The Second Amendment (of the US Consitution), Politics, and every other interest, belief, or activity that is very important to a person or group...
In other words, calling atheism a religion by that definition is meaningless and still does not equate atheism to an actual religion.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
That definition of "faith" seems to be so diluted that there is almost no reason to keep the word around, at least for the purposes of this debate. To take it to mean, "lack of 100% certainty" is fine in the general case, but I see it here being used as a cudgel to knock down all ideas as being equally likely. It usually goes something like this:
Person A: A million years ago, I created Jupiter and all of its moons out of pudding.
Person B: I suppose anything is possible, but I'm not going to take that on faith. It sound crazy. I need some evidence.
Person A: Well, you take it on faith that your wife and children aren't being eaten and regurgitated by goblins every night without your knowledge. Why can't you take my thing on faith too?
I think that Russell had it pretty dead on when he said, "When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others." The claim, "Well, you empiricists take stuff on faith too!" is pretty weak tea when your definition of "faith" is "100% certainty minus epsilon."
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
You are simply unfamiliar with what Islam really is.
They are quite trained to lie to non-believers. The doctorine of taqiyya.
I don't want to argue with you over what Dawkins said or didn't say...
His book is called "The God Delusion"...you can say "I am not insulting X" while you are *in fact* insulting X, just because you say you aren't doesn't mean that you aren't...
But I have made that point twice, and I think you get it...
Where do we go from here? Do we disagree or have we hammered it out?
Thank you Dave Raggett
Off is a channel, bald is a hair-style. Gochya.
"a book to me is far less annoying and 'in your face' than maher's video presentations, let alone a road show."
As opposed to christian evangelists, missionaries, and traveling prayer meetings. Give me a break, nothing they are doing hasn't been done by religion before and maybe it's time for some balance.
"it just seems too mean-spirited to me "in person" than in a book to be of much use in enlightening believers. mocking sarcasm isnt going to change anyone's mind."
Your response is proof that even in this country we have problems with religious dogma programmed into us from birth.
"He is also trying to raise opposition to the institutional legislative advantages religion, particularly the Church of England, has in government"
We have that same problem here in the US.
Of those 3000 gods you mention I believe in the one true one (with a margin of error of +/- one)
i think what he was getting at was that claims that fall outside the natural order, necessarily require evidence that cannot be explained by natural mechanisms.
Yes, and it is for you too. If someone makes a claim that unobservable unicorns exist, I have to take it on faith that they do not, in fact, exist. Few people would disagree that doing so is entirely reasonable, but I'd acknowledge it for what it is: a belief based on nothing but a faith that the lack of evidence is sufficient proof of their non-existence. As you said, when extraordinary claims occur, the burden is on the ones making them to prove their point, but the inability to prove their point does not necessarily mean that they were wrong; it merely means that the reasonable person should believe that they were.
If you feel that such a belief is reasonable here as well, then that's fine. As I said to another commenter, go forth, be happy, but recognize it for what it is. I have friends who are atheists, friends who are agnostics, and friends who are theists. I'm fine with any of them, but I've always found it a bit ironic when an atheist slams a theist for claiming a faith-based belief, without being willing to acknowledge that their fundamental stance is based on one as well, since it would mean yielding a piece of their intellectual high ground.
I have a friend that believes that if he lets go of a lead ball and wishes really hard, he can make it hover. I do not believe that. These are not equivalent positions, he is believing something without evidence, I am not.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
And how many Muslims do you know? Most Muslims also know when NOT to use religion. There are more than a billion of them - if half a billion of them did not know when to use it, I think we might have a tad bigger problem that we currently do.
Remember, the kooks you see on TV are like the kooks you see for other religions as well - they are the minority. Hell, the way faith is involved in politics in the US and informs policy decision (veiled as some other excuse) has done far more harm to the LGBT community than most other religions.
Unlike most Islamic states, the Christian USA doesn't persecute gays. At worst, there is debate over recognition of same-sex marriages. Gays are publicly stoned or jailed in large portions of the Islamic world.
The Gospel according to lolcat
The Merriam-Webster definition you're using (like many dictionary definitions of involved philosophical topics) is cursory and misleading. Anything that covers the subject in any depth will tell you that agnosticism involves what a person can know, and atheism what they believe (or not believe, as the case may be).
Agnosticism just says that the existence or non-existence of any god or gods is unknowable. An atheist simply doesn't believe that any gods exist. So, in fact, both an atheist and a theist can also be an agnostic. An agnostic atheist just takes the attitude that no amount of evidence can be used to support the existence of any gods, so it is pointless to believe that they do. An agnostic theist says that although there is no evidence for the existence of any gods, they choose to believe by faith.
The question to ask is which of the following two have more "faith": the atheist who sees no evidence in god and so does not believe in it, or the theist who also sees no evidence and does. I'd argue that one takes much more than the other.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Keep reading, please. Keep on reading. Eventually you'll hit the concept which I'm actually describing. So far you're close, but off the mark, my friend.
1. Uncaused cause is in the *exact same boat* as infinite regress. Both are assumptions. However, infinite regress, itself is an uncaused cause (how does infinite regress begin?)! Therefore its reasonable to suggest that not all things need a cause.
2. Quantum fluctuations are a physical property that can be observed from within the universe, yes. This says nothing about it being limited to the universe we're in.
3. The evidence is a laboratory. That's how they came with this explanation in the first place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_singularity
There are language and cultural barriers that would make it less useful to tour the middle east.
You could hire a translator. The main problem is there's still that whole "you would be hanged for blasphemy" thing.
The Gospel according to lolcat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Hard to explain it much better than that...
Both atheism and theism are making assertions so both have a burden of proof. An atheist asserts that the universe and self replicating life came into existence purely via natural means. That is a claim and thus has just as much of a duty to show proof as assertions to the contrary.
The Gospel according to lolcat
The only thing you can assume about me is that I find the question not relevant and not worth pondering. Any answer to it brings us no further to anything than where we start from. Hence I used the dog chaising tail analogy. I could use the phrase "mental masturbation" if you prefer. I never said I'm ignoring questions of existence, I'm flat out stating this isn't one of them. Another way to look at it is that I hold no belief at all. So the universal answer to any question you may have that starts with: "Do you believe in..." is "No.". Always. So yes, to answer your question, really, but not in how you understood it.
Prayer in public schools was banned in 1962. a lot has changed since 1962, and you're going to blame the banning of school-led prayer? Why aren't you blaming desegregation, or the drug war, or the defunding of NASA, or sex and violence on TV, or white flight, or increasing economic discrepancy, or oversaturation of fastfood and bad food, or hell, the conservative war on public education?
I am an atheist. My attitude is; hell i'll argue all day if you're up for it, it's stimulating and fun, but finding people to argue with ended for me in college. Changing people's minds is a fruitless task.
let me just remind you, silence is tacit agreement. You might not mind homosexuality, but your church does. you might not think abstinence-only would be very effective, but your church does. you might not think that condoms and contraceptives are the work of the devil, but your church does. We will object when your church tries to impose an arbitrary and absolute morality onto complex real-world situations.
It's hard not to paint you all with the same brush... when you're standing so damn close to each other.
the lord gave you a moral compass, i'd say he'd be disappointed if you didn't listen to it now and again.
Wrong. For someone to be an atheist they only have to say "I do not believe God exists", just as the theist states "I believe God exists."
It's a bit much to demand that people prove the veracity of their beliefs. Justify them maybe, but not a full proof. Even the commonly held definition of the agnostic who chooses neither to believe or disbelieve because of insufficient evidence has to justify their stance. For all the infinite claims that are possible, must one really withold believe or disbelieve when there isn't a full proof? And if not, why is there a special dispensation made toward God?
Happy people make bad consumers.
Losing a wee bit of personal pride is better than accepting theocratic rule, which would demean everybody.
"You might think that is a stretch. I'm only championing neutrality here. True neutral defaults to only that which we can work with in a tangible sense. When you employ that in your reasoning process, I think many things become self evident in nature.
Filthy Neutrals... you never know where they stand!
In fact, cosmology and evolution have shown that those myths are not factual. There was never a global flood that killed all animals and humans and we are not descendants of just two animals and Noah's family. Also the earth and sun was not poofed out of nothing by god but was formed through natural laws (gravity and atomic fusion). Also humankind was not poofed out of nothing by god and we are not descendants of just two individuals.
" In fact, cosmology and evolution have shown that those myths are not factual."
dna geneology can trace human origins to a central "cradle of life"?
"There was never a global flood that killed all animals and humans and we are not descendants of just two animals and Noah's family. "
where does it say global? if anything it was regional but large enough to cover a huge area...
" Also the earth and sun was not poofed out of nothing by god"
the earth and sun we're not created in a big bang that arose out of nothing?
" Also humankind was not poofed out of nothing by god and we are not descendants of just two individuals."
actually it says god made two people from the minerals found on earth (dirt) which molecularly is 100% true, and the bible doesn't say all mankind evolved from those two, maybe you should read it again without the atheistic blinders on....
Fair enough. I actually acknowledged your viewpoint in a roundabout manner when I mentioned the "reasonable person" in my previous comment. That is, just because we have to take something on faith does not mean that it is unreasonable to do so. You'll note that I made no assertions regarding the rightness or wrongness in taking something by faith. I merely asserted that we should recognize it as such.
where i wrote:
the earth and sun we're not created in a big bang that arose out of nothing?
i meant were* not we're, sorry
You seem to misunderstand Dawkins goal. Dawkins admits himself that he is not a true atheist, because he admits he cannot definitively prove there is no God. However, he says he is as certain about God not existing as most people are that the tooth fairy doesn't exist - which is to say there is no evidence that either one does. He isn't trying to convert people to atheism - he's trying to convert people away from superstition and belief without evidence (faith).
so when someone wrongs you, you wrong them right back?
got it, dawkins is quite the leader there...
...but there is a reason that I don't find the atheist position workable.
I think that this may be once place that our communication is breaking down. A scientific position is not the same thing as an atheist position. Since God is metaphysical and unmeasurable, science has no applicability with regard to its existence. Science is a method for testing measurable aspects of the world around us. It shares no ground with spirituality at all.
Dawson et al's statements are not coming from a place of science, but from a place of logic and reason. They are saying that believing something of which you have no proof is irrational. Logic and reason are the foundation of science, but they are not the same thing. Their position is best described as agnostic, anyway, which is how I would describe myself. I don't maintain that there is no God, I'm simply not in a place to know if there is.
That's not quite the Christian position; the position is that you stand condemned because of the very substantial bad that you (and all others) do and have done. If the standard on a test is to get a 100% or fail, its no good to point at all of the questions you got right while ignoring the many you got wrong. And if in fact there is a Christian God who is responsible for your very existence, it stands to reason that your ignoring and refusal to acknowledge or honor that God would be a very serious thing indeed.
This is just more of the capriciousness that I was talking about before. I'm judged for the actions of another and good deeds and intentions aren't enough to redeem me? But if I honor (appease) the angry God, I will not be punished? That's not justice. If our courts worked that way, we would decry them as irredeemably corrupt.
Why does God (an omnipotent, omniscient being) need to be acknowledged and honored by its creation in order to not torture it? This is the very description of a petulant child, not a wise God. In this view, The Gnostics's description of Yahweh as the demiurge was very apt. No perfect being acts like that.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Perhaps you should take your own advice, Mr. AC. Here, I'll help =)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism
Thomas Henry Huxley said:
Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle...Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.[8]
Philosopher William L. Rowe states that in the strict sense, however, agnosticism is the view that humanity lacks the requisite knowledge or sufficient rational grounds to justify either belief: that there exists some deity, or that no deities exist.[2]
So, agnosticism (even agnostic theism) holds that rational understanding is worth more than blind faith. How is this not a "rationality-based belief system?"
"In the end, there is simply no weapon more devastating than the truth, delivered in just the right way." - tnk1
Interesting. I had kind of absorbed what I thought was the meaning over time. Mainly from people I talked to who apparently shared the same misconception. That is, people would say they were agnostic with something like, "I don't believe in any specific religion. I'm an agnostic." Their usage of agnostic was more one of knowing which religion was correct was the issue.
One reason I enjoy doing crossword puzzles is I frequently find out that that there are other meanings to words I thought I knew or, like this, my understanding of the meaning was not correct.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
" but certainly many Christians believe God performs miracles ('magical') and answers prayers ('grant-wishing'). We often refer to outer space as "The Heavens," which is, apparently, where God hangs out."
miracles and magic are two different things if you are referencing what christians (and jews and muslims for that case) believe since magic is expressly identified as a sin (and those who practice it's craft) and god performs miracles, they are expressly distinct but acknowledged powers.
Prayers are any discussion between a believer and god, if you meant blessings then you'd still be wrong as you don't have to ask for a blessing, if you are trying to denigrate someone who gives to those who ask, then go slap your parents as they are just as stupid in your example.
"We often refer to outer space as "The Heavens," which is, apparently, where God hangs out."
if you wanted to make fun of those who believe that god exists in a plane of influence that is "above" or "beyond" our own then go make fun of string theorists as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory#Extra_dimensions
It would seem to me that we're pretty much on the same page then, as strange as that may seem. Just to touch on a few points...
Agnosticism just says that the existence or non-existence of any god or gods is unknowable.
It only does in its strongest form. Agnosticism generally says that the existence of gods is not known, rather than being unknowable. As for strong agnostics, I specifically addressed them all the way back in my very first comment in this thread. Suffice to say, I would argue that they are taking a faith-based stand, since they have no evidentiary basis for believing that such knowledge is unknowable.
An atheist simply doesn't believe that any gods exist.
Agreed. That's what I've been saying (or at least trying to say) all along, but the GP was redefining it to include not just agnostic atheists, but also plain old agnostics who don't choose a side. That was the issue I had with his definition and why I was pushing back against it.
I'd argue that one takes much more than the other.
Fair enough, and I never suggested otherwise. As I've mentioned in other comments, I agree that the burden of proof is on the one making the extraordinary claim to prove their point, and a reasonable person will take their inability to do so as cause for disbelieving the extraordinary claim, even if it has not necessarily been disproved. To expand on that last bit, a failure to prove an extraordinary claim does not, in and of itself, make it incorrect, so there is still that element of faith involved in trusting that it is, in fact, incorrect. That's all I was driving at.
So, am I correct in thinking we're on the same page?
Given the rise in violence
Violent crime has been falling for decades if not centuries. Levels of violent crime are at historic lows, and continue to plummet.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
"Science doesn't need to disprove anything since there is no reason to believe in a god in the first place"
i think it all stems from 100s (1000s?) of people (prophets) telling everyone they spoke for god and then just as they said would happen, miraculous events took place... over and over and over again. eventually people came to believe it was true.
now this lends to an obvious conclusion most people make, why doesnt god just prove himself OR why did he stop doing these things to prove he exists.
i guess it has to do with what he wants from us, belief, and more importantly the abilty to NOT believe but a path to understand if we so desire.
would dawkins be an atheist if he was standing before god? would anybody?
being able to not believe but still have the ability to is quite the balancing act and looking at today's comments it seems to have worked...
one last thing i'd like to add, if god appeared on earth today, and sufficiently PROVED to all he is as he says and everyone on earth believed, then he left... how long until we had this same discussion again?
1000 years? 2? 5?
keep in mind we have had problems keeping any type of media around and working even in the last 100 years.
i think what he was getting at was that claims that fall outside the natural order, necessarily require evidence that cannot be explained by natural mechanisms.
Ahh! So it's meant to mean we can't prove or disprove spiritual claims by looking at merely physical evidence?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I have faith that there is no giant invisible unicorn sitting next to me, that doesn't make that belief a religion.
...and I agree with you. It doesn't. To quote myself:
I disagree with the idea that religion is merely a collection of beliefs (I would suggest that your definition is a necessary but not sufficient component of religion)
I never made an attempt at providing a definition for "religion", nor did I make an attempt at providing an exhaustive list of the reasons why I believe that atheism is one (though I can see how that can be easily inferred from what I said, even though it was not intended). The faith-based aspect I discussed was merely one more "necessary but not sufficient" part of what makes it a religion. After all, we take things on faith all the time (e.g. the sky won't combust today, despite there being a non-zero chance that it will), but very few of them would ever be considered a religion.
I think so. Just to pick nits, though, I think much of the argument made by the strong agnostic is arrived at a priori, so evidence isn't really the point. They might be right or they might be wrong, bit it's a little unfair to say that it's entirely faith-based.
I guess the point I'm trying to make (and apologies if you touched on this already) is that with the exception of things established by strict logic (ie, given the following set of assumptions, the following conclusion must hold) all beliefs contain within them an element of faith. Some just require more than others.
Happy people make bad consumers.
An atheist asserts that the universe and self replicating life came into existence purely via natural means.
Please quote a real person, rather than attribute a quote you invented to an entire category of people. Otherwise this is just a straw man.
It certainly wasn't claimed by either the person you are replying to, nor the article linked, nor AFAIK Bertrand Russell.
(For the record, I'm agnostic - I believe that the existance or nonexistance of a god is unknowable (unless one chooses to show itself) and therefore, ultimately I shouldn't waste my time worrying about it).
That just means you're indecisive.
Fair enough, and that's something I'd agree with as well (I didn't touch on it, so you're good). At some point the world is built on a fundamental set of assumptions that we have to take on faith. Even basic logic is built on faith at a certain point, since we trust that logic itself is trustworthy (and if there are multiple universes, it may not be).
I just like to challenge people to recognize such things for what they are, and realize the point at which their beliefs turn into faith. There's nothing wrong with having faith at some point in our beliefs, so long as we recognize where it's at and are intentional about choosing to have it there. I've found that many of the folks here seem to be averse to acknowledging that any trace of their thinking is based on something that's taken on faith, and I've always found it a bit ironic when people, in their effort to claim the intellectual high ground, refuse to be intellectually honest with themselves regarding their most fundamental assumptions and beliefs.
Mammon on the other hand he doesn't serve either. He could make a lot more money than he does, but he often waives speaking fees and he donates to charities. Simply making a good living, even a very good living, is not the same as worshipping money.
Our problems are traditional and societal, not legislative and institutional. The CofE gets to appoint Lords; imagine if the Baptist Church got to directly appoint a number of Senators! Faith schools are also directly supported by tax monies in the UK.
Occam was theist. As the best possible implementor of correct application of Occam's Razor, theism was his conclusion.
And it might have been mine, given the knowledge of the 14th century. I very well might have believed that heaven was up there in the clouds and hell down below the earth. But thankfully science and philosophy has come a long way since the middle ages.
Occam's Razor has survived because of it's value as a principle in it's own right. Not because William of Occam was infallible. His personal belief in God and thus unwillingness to apply his own principle to religion is neither here nor there.
more along the lines of, "if you want me to believe you can defy gravity, there damn well better not be a giant magnet strapped to your back."
for example, if you say that intelligent design is real, then you better be able to tell me how evolution couldn't account for everything we see... or show me Yahweh's damn signature spelled out in our DNA or something. Occam's razor, show me something that would make me think God is the more probable explanation than whatever i'm seeing.
I have faith, I have faith that peer review is a bitch, and scientific consensus represents conclusions that I would come to myself given the time and ability to reach them.
Personal experience, as well as what's reported in the news everyday, disagrees with what you are saying. Not the part about Muslims being more touchy about religion overall - they very well may be; I must admit I don't know many if any Muslims personally - but that trying to spread reason and science among other religions, especially (IMO) Christians, is "preaching to the choir". There are a lot of Christians in this country (the US, that is) that genuinely believe in creation mythology, who think the world is six thousand years old, who reject evolution, who think the myths of the New Testament (raising the dead, feeding the multitude, etc.) are real, etc. and who certainly would not engage in any serious discussion about the existence vs. non-existence of God. I still recall that girl in 8th grade who told me she'd pray for me 'cause I was going to Hell - and that was in New York, less than 100 miles from NYC - I can't imagine what it must be like growing up in certain other parts of the US, even today. Dawkins et al still have plenty of work to do, right here in the US.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Not quite what I wrote. Try again.
This is begging the question: It only holds water so long as you assume from the outset that there is no God. If there is, it would stand to reason that there might be immitator religions which are false, and a true main religion.
That only applies if you don't consider time. You are a Christian, and so most of those other religions are not imitations, they originated before yours did. If there is an original and imitations, then yours is clearly an imitation.
The Christian religion came after the Jewish religion, from which it absorbed some beliefs and rejected others. What's that saying? That from the Christian point of view, Judaism was right, or it was wrong?
But it wasn't just the Jewish religion that Christianity absorbed. It also absorbed elements of paganish, such as yuletide, which was rebranded as Christmas.
If there's one true religion, and the others are imitators, Christianity is certainly an imitator.
Science may not be able to prove nor disprove a god. But science and history between them can certainly explain why people believe the various religions - and it has nothing to do with whether there's a god or not.
I'm merely pointing out HOW he became an aggressive atheist.
Oh, I understand what you're saying. Its just not at all relevant. We were discussing how to persuade someone who has a different frame of reference than yourself.
I suggested establishing a common frame of reference as a necessary starting point.
You suggested that language was so malleable that it was impossible to do so.
Which, sounds like you are trying to prove that gravity doesn't work. There is obviously something holding us to this spinning globe. Its obvious that people of different cultural references can break through their own filters, if they are willing.
I think you took offense at that point. My fault I guess. Pointing out arguments as not germane to the topic can be insulting to the one making the argument.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
When it comes to questions of what exists, we're dealing with a trilemma, rather than the dilemma you framed it as, since you can either believe it to exist (true), believe it to not exist (false), or not hold a belief (null), which are represented in this case by theists, atheists, and (classical) agnostics, respectively. You appear to have conflated the false and null cases. There are some edge cases, to be sure, but they can all be classified as one of these three, since it's impossible to lack a belief in A without implicitly rejecting it, unless you also lack a belief in B, in which case you would fall under the null case.
> dna genealogy can trace human origins to a central "cradle of life"?
DNA shows that all living things are related. We can even exchange DNA and still retain the same function. This is very strong evidence that life arose on earth once and evolved to all currently and past living species. The fossil record shows a continuously progression from simple to complex species, we can trace our ancestors back to 500 million years ego in Pikaia gracilens*. So the answer is yes.
> where does it say global? if anything it was regional but large enough to cover a huge area. ..
All the creationist and literal bible believers.
> the earth and sun were not created in a big bang that arose out of nothing?
No. The big bang theory is that space and time was compressed in plank space and plank time. So space (matter and energy) and time was already there, just compressed. Then came the "bang" with was the inflation of space and time. Theory of relativity shows that space and time are not separated and quantum theory shows that at very small space gravity and all the other forces should be one. Supersymmetry and quantum gravitation. Still work in progress.
> actually it says god made two people from the minerals found on earth (dirt) which molecularly is 100% true, and the bible doesnt say all mankind evolved from those two, maybe you should read it again without the atheistic blinders on. .
Dirt, mud, ashes, earth, dust, whatever. We all star dust. I do remember that Adam and Eve were the first humans.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikaia
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
This is not general incompleteness. These are two specializations that can indeed be proven and hence are theorems. If you had actually read the text, you would know that, as it is very clearly described.
Incidentally, I nowhere said that incompleteness is a "theory". You seems to be unaware what a "theory" is as you are using it wrongly.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
When I used the term atheistic, I was using it in the sense of naturalistic, or "a position excluding the existence of a god". I would also object to the idea that "spirituality" has nothing to do with the world around us: the christian belief isnt that there is the real world, and then theres the spiritual wworld, and the two dont ever meet; its that there is a God who is behind the measurable physical processes.
I get what youre saying, I just want to be clear that to my mind the two do interact even if you cant testably prove the existence of God. Id also want to be clear that something doesnt have to be testable to be credible: history is not testable, but it does provide evidence which we use to make credible claims about it. Likewise, I think there is evidence which makes the existence of God credible, even if it is not testable.
I would almost agree with your statement about "believing something without proof", but I would amend it to be "something without evidence": I dont think anyone could go through their daily life if they required hard proof before accepting anything, rather than going on credible evidence.
. I'm judged for the actions of another and good deeds and intentions aren't enough to redeem me?
The Christian creed is that you are judged for YOUR actions, and for YOUR intentions (and I would challenge that your intentions are always above reproach). The other issue is, if you commit a wrong (not meeting the standard of the law, for example), you cannot pay the penalty simply by meeting that standard going forward: that is simply doing the "bare minimum", and does nothing to account for the prior deficit.
Why does God (an omnipotent, omniscient being) need to be acknowledged and honored by its creation
If God exists, and is responsible daily for your ability to take breath, it seems self-evident to me that it would be a terrible wrong to refuse to honor him for that. Im not sure I could make it more plain, as I have difficulty seeing how it is not already clear. Its not that God has some need to feel justified, noticed, or whatever; its that his station deserves it and his justice demands a response when you fail to do so.
To put it another way and use an imperfect analogy, if you were to refuse to acknowledge or pay deference to a visiting head of state, our society would consider that to be a gross faux pas. Regardless of whether said head of state was gracious about it, noticed, or cared, everyone else would see it as such, and you would still be guilty of said faux pas.
The objection to the punishment for all of that is really not to the point, either; once it is established that it is wrong to dishonor God, for God to be just he would have to enact a penalty for that wrong. So really the objection is with the idea that its wrong to dishonor God, and/or the idea that God is just. You object because you say a perfect being would not act that way, and I would argue that a being that doesnt enact justice isnt perfect.
Dawkins is an embarrassment to science. Reason? Odd, disingenuous name for an anti-religion, antitheist tour considering that most religions give reasons why we're here, even though they often conflict, while atheists believe that there is no reason whatever that we're here, that the universe is an accident that "just happened" for no reason whatever.
You can neither reason your way out of nor into religion. You see, or you don't. Or you don't and believe those who do, Or you don't and pretend to, as many people do. You're not going to reason me out of believing in something I've experienced.
Scientists traveling on a pro-science, pro-logic, pro-math tour? I'm all for that. But folks of any profession, whether scientist or garbage collector, going on an anti-religion tour is a silly waste of time. There's no reason whatever for this tour. They're acting like evangelicals.
Dawkins is delusional. There's no way you can convince someone who has experienced God that God doesn't exist. We would all be better off if Dawkins would end his foolish quest to rid the world of God and do what he actually has training and experience in -- science.
Dawkins, talk science and I'll listen. Trash talk Jesus and Bhudda and Muhammed and I'll simply laugh at you sadly. It's a pitiful, meaningless quest. Scientists everywhere should be ashamed of this ignorant clown.
Free Martian Whores!
Uncaused causes dont require an infinite regress. Believing that the universe itself is eternal would not run a foul of the infinite regress, it just creates other objections.
Therefore its reasonable to suggest that not all things need a cause.
That goes against the foundation of all scientific inquiry; the very reason people do tests is because there is an assumption that causality exists. And I would agree that not all things require a cause (thats pretty much the argument with God), but if the universe has a beginning, then it does.
This says nothing about it being limited to the universe we're in.
You havent changed the core question: now we're asking "where did whatever created the universe come from".
From the article you linked, there isnt evidence, and its not in a laboratory:
t is impossible to see the singularity or the actual Big Bang itself, as time and space did not exist inside the singularity and, therefore, there would be no way to transmit any radiation from before the Big Bang to the present day
We can get evidence from after the creation of the universe, but not from before.
Even atheism is faith. Oh yes it is. You can't prove or disprove the existence of deities and the various frameworks created around them. It isn't falsifiable. An atheist is not inherently correct even when you only apply well reasoned logic to it. It's the choice to only make decisions upon that which is falsifiable . That is a matter of faith that nothing else is operating that can affect your conclusion.
Atheism is falsifiable, a God merely needs to present him/herself (Or a significantly witnessed old school miracle or magic).
Theism is not practicably falsifiable, an omnipotent all powerful but shy super being that you meet (and are judged by) only after death is not a measurable thing
I said the exact opposite of that. I even asked, in brackets, "how does infinite regress begin?". Infinite regress is an uncaused cause.
Quantum fluctuations are spontanious. So I wouldn't go as far as "all".
Look, you're missing the concept and what is being explored in the articles -- I hope you didn't just stop at the wiki. The experiment in the laboratory is the observation of quantum fluctuations, and measuring their effects. Specifically, experiments consistently show that the "emptier" a space is (the more energy we take remove from it), the more voletile it becomes. "Nature abhores a vacum." seems to be the reality. Assuming we start with absolutely nothing before the big-bang, this type of fluctuation is the most likely event to kickstart everything.
Also, it does no one any good to keep pointing out the obvious, that we can't directly observe this event. I don't believe I'm arguing this point. What I'm explaining to you is one of the current running theories behind the event. You can argue its premise, but you wouldn't be arguing with me. We cannot observe it because the CMB is opaque, and the plank scale is a real limit, at least for the time being. But we can study the laws of physics and try to work out how these things behave under different conditions.
The guy I was talking to when I wrote that post. It's close enough that I didn't even realize I wrote it until after it was submitted. Behold the ravages of age. I'm not even that old, yet. :(
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
No, the point was not that they don't like religious people. The point was that they don't like religion, and the undue influence of religious leaders.
I have noticed that there are a thousand Richard Dawkins on the internet, and all but one of them are made of straw. You have just made that a thousand and one. Slate has an article by someone who claims that Christopher Hitchens was wrong when he thought that banning religion would fix the world. Except that Hitchens never called for a ban on religion, and he certainly never thought that eliminating religion would solve all the world's problems. The number of people misrepresenting Hitchens has skyrocketed, because no one would dare do it while he was alive. And that makes me suspect that they know they are lying.
If you are going to criticize someone, could you please exert the slightest rudimentary effort to understand what they did in fact say. I'm quite certain that 99.9% of the disputes on the internet would vanish if people could just learn to listen.
And before you say that we don't understand religious people, please be informed that most of the atheists I know were devoutly religious for most of their lives before becoming atheists, and we not only understand it, we were there, which is more than I can say for most of the people slinging this nonsense. The deepest theological conversations I have ever had took place in atheist meetups, between former believers who understood theology very well--in fact, it was theology that made them atheists. And yes, this includes Muslims.
Please take the time to become likewise informed.
The term "atheist" is embedded in a language framework that considers theism normative and thus "a"theism as aberrant. (Theism: noun: belief in the existence of a god or gods, esp. belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.)
I reject this entire language framework, and its framing of theism (belief in god) as normative.
I would prefer to think of myself as someone aspiring to be a rational, appropriately skeptical realist.
While I agree with a right to freedom of thought, I take a dim view of the prevailing "irrational supernaturalist" (theist) mindset.
Followers in organized "irrational supernaturalist" religions should wake up and realize that the top leaders in their hierarchies don't actually believe in god. They believe that maintaining the pretense is a great way to maintain inordinate amounts of social and economic power. These leaders, if intelligent, are clearly manipulative cynics of the highest order.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Why post at all?
I think incapability stopped you from posting an intelligent response, not time constraints.
I'm familiar with this, but I always found the distinction between atheist and agnostic contrived. Having grown up in a place that had no religion I never even thought about it until I went to the US and had it thrust in my face at every corner. Was I an atheist or an agnostic ? The distinction doesn't make sense in that case. Nowadays I make the distinction between people who are quiet atheist/agnostics and those who are vocal about it. Which is what I had to become after some time in the US as some form of defense mechanism.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
That's utter nonsense. I'd say *most* politicians hold *numerous* beliefs that are not based on any evidence, and they are unwilling to debate or reconsider.
That's a pretty stupid thing to say. I'm pretty sure the combined death tolls of Stalin and Mao outweigh the sum total of all religious conflicts in modern history.
That makes no sense at all. If religion is to blame, why can't you show a clear breakdown of votes by affiliation? How could it be otherwise?
And name ANY issue you want, that you wish to attribute to religion, and I'm sure I can point to a rather non-religious country somewhere on the planet that similarly has laws against it.
Thank you for calling the US "rabid" and "religious right". Now I will point out that homosexual marriage was legal in the US before almost any other nation on earth. Only the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada beat the US by a year or two. The undeniably secular and oh-so-enlightened England was a downright laggard on this issue. Why weren't they advancing LGBT rights a century before the knuckle-dragging US with their "rabid", "religious right" population?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
(For the record, I'm agnostic - I believe that the existance or nonexistance of a god is unknowable (unless one chooses to show itself) and therefore, ultimately I shouldn't waste my time worrying about it).
That just means you're indecisive.
No, it just means I don't think there is any merit in making a decision at all, since that decision can never be based on anything beyond blind faith (which I do not posess).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Interesting.
I've never seen it as contrived, but I have seen agnosticism as a difficult place to stay for long, since on a matter this important, most people will do some soul searching, research, or mathematical proofs to try and work their way through the ideas and either come to a theistic or an atheistic ideology. It's rare that you find someone who truly is an agnostic, as opposed to an atheist who, as you said, simply isn't that vocal about it or, unfortunately all too common, is someone using their apathy as a reason to claim agnosticism, despite the fact that they clearly don't believe in gods.
You're absolutely correct about the use of "evidence" in place of "proof". Mixing up the two is a huge pet peeve of mine and I'm absolutely horrified that I did it myself.
On the other hand, I don't agree that it's rational to claim evidence of God without actually testing the hypothesis. If God actually has a measurable influence in our world, then you should be able to construct a framework that describes and predicts that influence, just like any other force. If that influence isn't predictable and testable, either because it seems random or because God is actively thwarting efforts to test it, then your framework is inadequate or the concept of God having a measurable influence is meaningless. Either way, claiming single otherwise unexplained incidents as evidence of God isn't rational.
Your claim that we are judged for our own actions, punished if we err, but forgiven if we worship sounds just like the corrupt court I described before. The idea that paying homage to the judge relieves you of guilt and punishment is horribly corrupt. If we commit crimes in our lives then we should all pay for them equally. That bribing the judge lets some of us off the hook isn't justice.
On your discussion of honor, I don't think we have any common ground at all. It sounds like a lot of authority worship that I don't understand at all. Expecting deference based on station or social standing is a very animal trait, and an extremely negative one at that. That failing to honor someone is some sort of grievous crime is something I can't get behind in the least. To take offense at not being honored is one of the most pathetic and small behaviors a man can exhibit. That a deity would not only take offense, but punish, a weaker being for that makes the deity sound like some sort of wild dog biting the neck of its smaller pack mate. I have no respect for that at all.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I really wish you would log in or create an account before posting in a philosophical discussion. Discussing stuff like this with ACs is like having a conversation with a series of different, but superficially interchangeable, shadows. There's a continuous moving of goalposts and redefining of terms that make it a distinctly unpleasant experience. I'm having this discussion here because I enjoy it and it's less enjoyable if I can't be sure that there's a common set of terminology.
On that note, your entire argument is about semantics and that is the most boring kind of argument there is. Back in junior high, I used to debate with my friends for days about stuff that only came down to a difference in the definitions of terms before we decided that agreeing to a common set of terminology was important to having a productive debate. When we came across words that didn't have an agreed upon definition, we would work out the definition before assuming that the argument of the other was bunk. In this light, your argument (which may be valid and insightful, but appears to hinge entirely upon differing semantics) looks very sophomoric. If you work on that, you might find yourself engaged in more rewarding debates.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
"3. Dawkins completely misses the role religion plays in humans affairs when there is a crisis. This is my most serious objection to his stridency. Try telling a simple family the reason their child is dying of cancer is due to possibly random DNA copying errors in a meaningless universe."
And that's better than telling the family that God loves everyone, and that's why He decided for inscrutable reasons to give an innocent kid a horribly painful and eventually fatal affliction, how?
most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
And how many Muslims do you know? Most Muslims also know when NOT to use religion. There are more than a billion of them - if half a billion of them did not know when to use it, I think we might have a tad bigger problem that we currently do.
Remember, the kooks you see on TV are like the kooks you see for other religions as well - they are the minority. Hell, the way faith is involved in politics in the US and informs policy decision (veiled as some other excuse) has done far more harm to the LGBT community than most other religions.
For me, religion is a social need, that brings peoples who think alike together. For example, change cities because of job and want to make friends, go to your friendly church (or bar). Need to really meet people that share your values, join their club.
As for religion, in times of stress, there is nothing better. I happen to be a doubter, but when I am stressed, I join my community for a while. Do I believe in all the ritual and fairy tails, and the "he said" that was documented 400 years after the fact? You have one guess.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I've never needed any blind faith to be an atheist.
Russell's tea-pot says it all. If someone wants to claim they are agnostic about the existence of a tea-pot in orbit around Mars, then that's not being open minded. That's being irrational.
With God, it's more indecisive than irrational, as it's just a case of not being able to decide between a story indoctrinated by parents, and taking a position based on rationality.
The christian belief on "why there is stuff" has perhaps been well explained-- there is an eternal unchanging God who always was and always will be who willed everything into existence (I have no particular belief concerning the "how"-- a big bang works well enough, though).
I really hate that God always was and just tells us that is his explanation...just like I hate almost everything to do with Christianity. Atheism may have its concessions, but its still backed more by science than any religion. And anyone that doesn't gloss over the Christian God and make tons of excuses for Him would admit what a inconsistent wreck of a being it is. I was a Christian too, and I know how this is done. But then one day I get fed up with trying to bend reality for an alleged being that doesn't interact or communicate or appear to exist in any way.
If God is telling me what to do and what not to do, the question of whether or not God exists seems pretty important.
If God is not real, explain the bible? Or those pesky traps that Satan puts in the earth and stupid sientists think are fossils.
God 1
Atheists 0
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That doe snot invalidate science
I for one, am looking forward to worshipping our new God Doe Snot.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Belief in atheism is a belief.
Atheism is a belief *about* religion, but that doesn't make it a religion.
I also have beliefs about planets, but those beliefs aren't planets...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why not the flying spaghetti monster?
Thou dost blaspheme the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Hast thou not been touched by his noodly appendage, and still thou dost not believe?
Stale beer and VD afflicted strippers for you in the afterlife dood.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That's fair enough.
My definition of God is certainly very narrow, because a God that has a physical manifestation would in essence just be another measurable force to be investigated. At least the physical manifestation would be observable and in that case it would be indistinguishable from any of the other aspects of the universe that science is already used to study. Since those manifestations would not be distinguishable from "natural" forces, it seems that a definition of God that includes them is overly broad. Ultimately, you could say that God is everything, but from that perspective this whole debate is a little meaningless.
I brought "spirituality" in as a placeholder for only the metaphysical portions of religion, because those are the only aspects of religion that aren't subject to scientific investigation. The other parts of religion are either history or actual testable physical phenomena (prayers having real physical results, miracles, etc). Spirituality isn't the best term, but nothing better came to mind at the moment.
You're absolutely right about using proof in place of evidence. It was just a slip, as I explained to Limecat, and I'm pretty horrified that I actually did it. If you replace proof with evidence in my post, it reads how I intended it.
With that out of the way, the discussion comes to finding an acceptable definition of God. I suspect that is at the root of much of the disagreement in this whole topic, but there's no reason we can't settle that once and for all here! ;)
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
you're being dishonest...you made a logical leap w/ no foundation very casually...
I put where you're being manipulative in bold.
See, it's ***YOUR OPINION**** than anything not 'supernatural' is by definition then definitely 'magical'
but that's your opinion, based on a definition of magic
You could define 'magic' by Arthur C. Clarke's Three Laws.
One of which states:
Your definition is bullshit, because your argument is bullshit, based on a false dichotomy. Arthur C. Clark would disagree with your concept of magic, that you can't credibly deny.
Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of an 'god' and any logic that claims to have a better way to decide the question is just an opinion.
Arthur C. Clark would disagree with your concept of magic, that you can't credibly deny.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I've never needed any blind faith to be an atheist.
Russell's tea-pot says it all. If someone wants to claim they are agnostic about the existence of a tea-pot in orbit around Mars, then that's not being open minded. That's being irrational.
A teapot is a human-made artifact - unless we sent it to mars there's no reason to believe it got there. Conversely *we simply do not know* how the universe came into being, so pretty much all answers that don't conflict with the known science are up for grabs as possibilities. I'm reasonably happy to dismiss the idea of knowing specificalities about any creator, but the idea that there may have been some intelligence behind the creation of the universe seems no more irrational to me than the idea that it all just popped into existence of its own accord - blind faith is required to make a choice between these possibilities, since there is no evidence either way.
(It should also be mentioned that if you assume that we will eventually have the technology to simulate our corner of the universe then statistically the chances that we're not just part of a simulation may be quite low, and that would certainly constitute our universe "being created by some intelligence").
With God, it's more indecisive than irrational, as it's just a case of not being able to decide between a story indoctrinated by parents, and taking a position based on rationality.
You're talking about _religion_, which isn't what I'm talking about at all. Religion is indoctrinated by parents and society - I'm talking about the fact that we fundamentally can't know whether there is a god or not, irrespective of what BS is spouted by religions. Atheism too is a religion - the absolute belief that there is no god despite absolutely zero supporting evidence, and is indoctinated by parents and society.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
A teapot is a human-made artifact - unless we sent it to mars there's no reason to believe it got there.
Who says it's a man-made artefact? Just because the ones you've seen up to now have been. What you're saying here is you can't imagine a teapot there with any other origin than humans. So why can you imagine a god with other than human origins? Are you suggesting that a god is a more likely phenomenon than a tea-pot?
Atheism too is a religion - the absolute belief that there is no god despite absolutely zero supporting evidence, and is indoctinated by parents and society.
Not as far as I've seen. Most atheists I've come across have parents that were religious. And most societies are more encouraging of religious views than atheist ones. Atheism comes more often from people laying aside their upbringing and thinking rationally.
What IS becoming more common is parents and society presenting a position of agnosticism. The "let people decide for themselves", "don't offend", "indecisive" position.
I wish that study had defined "Sharia law" clearly. There is a huge range of interpretations of Sharia Law. Without a specific definition, you might as well say "40% of Muslims would like laws that more closely match their particular morality, which is often governed by their religion".
Even atheism is faith. Oh yes it is. ...... It's the choice to only make decisions upon that which is falsifiable . That is a matter of faith that nothing else is operating that can affect your conclusion.
The choice to make decisions based on that which is falsifiable (or derived by the scientific method in general) also implies a fundamental thing: it means you choose to believe that that which can be observed and reproduced is real.
To do otherwise is what leads people like 'Young Earth Creationists' to disregard all the dinosaur bones and their geological dating. A wave of the hand and a bunch of evidence is no longer real.
A very careful person of faith, who deeply considers the boundaries and limits of religion, can, with practice, keep faith out of areas where it does not belong. However, that is rare. Faith based thinking inevitable leads to contradictions in reasoning.
tl;dr = your (and Dawkins) notions of the science and 'god' are base opinions carrying the relevance of your opinion on, say, the best Pizza Toppings
You interpreted Dawkin's comments thusly:
so that means anyone who believes in anything 'supernatural' is childish
by definition...it's a blanket statement that covers **anyone** who doesn't believe in hard atheism
you defend and support this statement...and in doing so make a logical error that undercuts your whole premise (and Dawkins as well)
**that's what we're talking about**
you are trying to Red Herring this discussion by doing definition gymnastics but the *core* is that you and Dawkins think that anyone who isn't a hard atheist is "childish"
its condescending bullshit...
there are all kinds of New Age concepts of a 'universal consciousness' that try to be based in science...several leading scientists have written about these topics informally, including Robert Oppenheimer & others who worked at the Eselen Institute in California.
you and Dawkins claim people are "childish" based on **your opinion** of the best way to answer questions beyond scientific inquiry
ITS YOUR OPINION...that's all it is...it's notion you can prove or ever hold a person accountable to in any way...
it has the level of relevance as you opinion as to the best Pizza Toppings
Thank you Dave Raggett
No it was just time. And you're still a fucking retard.
ha!
thnx for posting that, and you could've slammed me b/c I honestly didn't know Naturalism had become a "thing" in the whole disgusting "evoution/creation" god debate...I mean if you saw the same wiki I did the Naturalism (philosophy) really only became a thing in the last 30 years. That's fine but just sayin...
I had already read it, after I posted my comment of course...
As you might guess I think it's kind of bullshit, but so are alot of the arguments against it...I don't like any of it b/c to me it's just rhetoric.
Rhetoric is fine for a picnic on a Sunday afternoon or around the watercooler but its the how Dawkins tries to claim that **science** has proven **scientifically** that anyone who isn't a 'naturalist' aka atheist is Deluuusional
for fucks sake!
I want to keep real actual science separate from all of this...I used to do research and it's hard enough to navigate either office politics or university politics and keep your project focused on science and not marketing horseshit...
then this all gets into the conversation...I hate it
Thank you Dave Raggett
Here's the link directly to the 'naturalism' that is attributed to Dawkins, etc. The counter-arguments by people like Popper and especially Alvin Plantinga's critique are honestly equally as odious as Dawkins to me. Seriously Plantiga's notions of an 'evolutionary argument against naturalism' take just as many scandalous liberties with the concept of 'science' as Dawkins and I hate it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)
On the disambiguation page it's listed as Methodological Naturalism.
Seriously, do you see why Dawkins sticks out among Rush Limbaugh types to me? Not saying you have to agree or not be condescending but maybe your everyday life would go smoother (and all of us too) if we don't go down that road.
I'm totally fine with you being condescending to anyone for any reason...knock yourself out...let's just keep from using science where it doesn't belong
Thank you Dave Raggett
well this has been fun! thnx man
see this is where we differ...I guess just to put a bookend on things I'll elaborate
I think your notion, that:
'natural & skeptical thinking' will always arrive at atheism & any other conclusion is 'unreasonable'
is an opinion not provable formally (such as by syllogism or other language based logic)
Maybe you're right, but it's not formally provable...to get philosophical it is not formally provable because of the 'social construction' of reality via language limits human certainty to things that are communicatable and somhow formally repeatable. This is discussed alot in 2nd Order Cybernetics
I know I'm just repeating my last argument only substituting 'formally provable' with 'science' but I wanted you to see that my perspective is constant.
Any statement about the supernatural is opinion, not science or logic.
It's when you cross that border, into asserting ***CERTAINTY*** where you have none that causes me to raise objections.
As I said before I support you being an atheist, condescending to whomever you see fit, but to our greater discussion it's all about crossing that line of certainty.
Thank you Dave Raggett