Now, if they try and foist that belief on you as fact, but all means shred it apart if it doesn't fit your view, or beliefs about the things that are unknown.
You mean, if they start printing textbooks and trying to get them into public schools?
Related: I disagree about the "complementary" thing -- faith in the absolute *truth* of belief is at the core of most religions, not "we don't know, but maybe it's something like this".
If you believe it's *true*, then it freaks you out when your kids are exposed to "wrong" alternative viewpoints (like science class, like classmates with other religions or none), and you also don't subject public debates (like re gay marriage, birth control, abortion, religion in schools, etc.) to reason if you think your religion has the "true", inarguable answer already.
That's the conflict.
Agnosticism doesn't conflict with science (though many people ignore scientific matters of probability and even logical consistency), but most practicing religious people would not classify themselves that way -- they have some believe in the absolute *truth* of what they profess.
BTW, I should also mention that unfortunately many religions (particularly the stricter versions) say you won't be rewarded for simply being nice. If you have no faith (if you haven't accepted Jesus as your personal savior, for one example), you aren't going to heaven.
Not that I'm arguing with your approach to life -- just saying that this version of Pascal's wager doesn't really "work" any more than the original does.
Now, I've never understood anybody who said they believed in the bible but didn't take it literally.
Now, I'm an atheist - but I think you need to look up the word 'metaphor'.
That's his point. If it's metaphor, that means you have to interpret it and draw your own lessons & value from what you read. Shakespeare can be equally valuable -- he was a perceptive observer of humanity and our weaknesses.
Now apply the word "believe" to that.
How does one "believe" in a metaphor? You'd have to start drawing lines between parts of the bible that are "fact" and those which are just metaphor.
And then you have to acknowledge that these lines are human-drawn, and hence open to debate. And maybe none of it is fact, since we know much of it isn't... it gets messy, belief-wise.
If you just say "well, maybe it's all metaphor, but we believe there are truths to be found in the stories"... well, that's a view an atheist can share (yes, some of the fables in the bible highlight actual human problems...). If it's all metaphor, you don't even have to believe that God exists. It all falls apart.
Dude, you've said that now like 5 times... what's the point? I'm pretty sure you must know by now that I'm not putting forth some kind of absolute or faith-based position.
The reason the other definitions are listed is because significant numbers of people use them, in exactly this context. It's not bark of a tree/bark of a dog (that doesn't exist for "atheism", and is a separate definition for "agnosticism"). Multiple definitions doesn't mean one of them must be wrong.
As far as atheism, merriam webster has also has "ungodliness, wickedness" listed as an "archaic" definition, plus wikipedia mentions how the meaning has changed over the years (towards how I'd like to use it), so at least it's made some progress.
But other than poking at that, we're pretty much on the same page. I don't just use either word by itself in conversation, and absolutely a discussion with kids would be far more complicated, plus would need to include something on the history and current status of human religious belief... though I would mention my personal conclusions, and how I arrived at them, at whatever level the kids were old enough to understand. It's a different case simply because so many people disagree, often very passionately -- it doesn't matter if I think they're wrong, in most situations; everyone has to learn to get along with their neighbors.
Heck, the Santa Claus discussion couldn't be so simple either... (no, you should NOT walk around telling this to the 1st graders at school!).
I should also mention that after your post above, I'm doubting that you're interested in an intellectually honest conversation. Referring to my comments (or something you think I said?) as "ridiculous" isn't a good sign. "Well golly", sarcasm doesn't actually demonstrate anything beyond your own opinion.
If you actually want to have a discussion, it could be interesting, but if you're just looking for someone to shout at, or if you are unable or unwilling to actually explore the foundations of your own views, do not waste my time.
The comment about abandoning principles for the sake of scientific progress was aimed at your assertion that "the observable world is all we have to work with". You see, certain things are quite outside the observable world. For example, I am sure you have yet to observe that "the observable world is all we have to work with", simply because you haven't worked with everything you have to work with yet, not until your last breath.
Can you give an example? I already said above that by "observable" (possible not the best word) I'm referring to all sensory input as well as our emotional responses, memories, etc. -- the entirety of human experience. Everything that crosses our awareness. I think that's pretty obviously "all we have to work with"; please give some examples if that's wrong!
I'll hold off on discussing the rest of your post until we sort this out, because it's a fairly basic thing to build on (though I agree, we have to make some basic assertions to make any sense out of the raw input).
There are a lot of people using these words incorrectly. The secondary definitions you quote are examples of such confusion.
Word definitions are observed, not fixed by some central body (in English, at least). The reason multiple definitions are listed is because people *validly* use & understand these words in different ways. It's not confusion, it's language.
For example, many people claim to be agnostic but mean "I believe that there's some supreme power, but it's unknowable". That's not agnosticism, and if it's not deism it's damn close:
As long as you aren't using "believe" in the absolute sense there, that *is* agnosticism according to the definition you prefer, though. Once we agree that "no one can prove it", then it's a question of what conclusions we draw based on what we do know. Agnostic A might be 99% convinced that there is no god, and agnostic B might be 99% convinced there IS one, and hence follows their religion. They'd still both be agnostics (by your definition) as long as they both agree that we can't know for sure.
That's why I've been saying that's too broad a category to be useful to me. Sure, I'm in that group, but it doesn't say anything about my personally-reasoned conclusions about whether a god exists or not.
I'm not sure what you're saying about Deism -- the key element of Deism is that God doesn't intervene in human affairs. They clearly believe a god exists. Religious philosophies don't lie on a continuum; they scatter all over the place.
Atheism makes an affirmative statement. The atheist generalizes from "there is no evidence of god" to "there is no god". Not even the undetectable "Nature's God" of the Deists.
Again, this is the definition of atheism that *you* use, not everyone. Communication requires shared definitions, so if you're talking to someone who uses the broader definition, you may be misunderstood (and vice-versa as in our discussion...).
I agree that because the definition you're mentioning is common enough, I'm taking a risk if I just tell people "I'm an atheist" without qualifying it.
But if I just have one word (like on a form...) I have to choose between those common definitions; I'm still going to choose "atheist" simply because it's closer; for all practical purposes, I believe there's no god. Another way to look at it -- if you ask me "does Santa Claus exist?", I say "no". If you ask me the same question about god, I say "no" as well.
If you ask me "what proof do you have?!" for either one -- well, there's no absolute proof, just logical consistency, probability, Occam razor, and so on. But that's a philosophical discussion, not the response to a simple question about what is and what isn't (where we all operate on "probably true" whether we know it or not).
I also personally want to encourage people to continue migrating to the broader definition of atheism (i.e., the reasonable atheist), so I propagate that as much as possible. It's just a much more useful definition that encompasses a larger and more coherent group of people.
It also makes more sense given the word roots: "a-" is the greek prefix for "without" or "lack of", "theism" is belief in a god or gods. So "without theism" makes more sense than a positive "belief in god's nonexistence".
The PhD's (and most of white America) is racist at home and pretends like they aren't in the street. No one fools anyone.
If someone has a mental disability, call them retarded. That's what they are. When your jewish friend complains about the 25 cents he was shorted at Dunkin Doughnuts, even though he makes 100k a year, tell him to not be such a jew. He knows what your referring to.
The worst thing you can do is act one way in public and another at home.
Sure, telling racist jokes with your friends but clamming up in embarrassment when a stranger approaches is hypocritical and/or cowardly... but isn't that also one of the necessary steps in actually changing racist ideas? I.e., it's a big step to actually get people to feel that blatant racism is socially unacceptable (even if they feel differently personally); and hopefully the next generation might be a bit less racist at heart.
It's certainly important to keep discussing the subject; I'm not in favor of pretending to be "color-blind" when we know perfectly well that just about everyone has automatically different responses to people dependent on race... but discussion is a completely different thing from encouraging someone to use racial slurs just because they popped into their head.
Deism is the theistic belief that a supreme God exists and created the physical universe, but shall not intervene in its normal operation.
Agnosticism is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims -- particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of God, gods, deities, or even ultimate reality -- is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently impossible to prove or disprove.
Demographic research services normally list agnostics in the same category as atheists and non-religious people[1], using 'agnostic' in the sense of 'noncommittal'[2]. However, this can be misleading given the existence of agnostic theists, who identify themselves as both agnostics in the original sense and followers of a particular religion.
Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the affirmation of the nonexistence of gods,[1] or the rejection of theism.[2] It is also[3] defined more broadly as synonymous with any form of nontheism, including the simple absence of belief in deities.[4][5][6][7]
Many self-described atheists are skeptical of all supernatural beings and cite a lack of empirical evidence for the existence of deities. Others argue for atheism on philosophical, social or historical grounds. Although many self-described atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism[8] and naturalism,[9] there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere;[10] and some religions, such as Jainism and Buddhism, do not require belief in a personal god.
(including 2 paragraphs on Atheism and Agnosticism, since those are tricky....)
The main problem here is that the words are loaded, and the commonly used definitions both fall flat. Agnosticism (in the sense you use it) is far too general to be of any use. Many priests would admit to some level of agnosticism, in that sense: if some fantastic, unquestionable event were to happen that obviously and flatly contradicted their beliefs, they'd adjust. Also, regular people don't always grasp the idea of "unknowable"; they think "oh, agnostic: you don't know if there's a God, like I don't know if my keys are on the hook or still in my coat pocket... but you can't just go check, can you!" I have to be able to explain my conclusions without also needing to get into tangential philosophical discussions.
"Atheism" comes closer, but of course many people (yourself included) use a definition that's also next to useless because it describes very *few* people, and not me. Religiously anti-god? Huh.
Dunno where you're getting "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" from anything I said. Sure, there is no *absolute* truth in the real world, but that doesn't mean I check out the window every night to see if the Flying Spaghetti Monster will appear this time, any more than you check under your elbow every 5 seconds to make sure your desk hasn't been magically replaced with a walrus holding perfectly still. If it happened, you'd have to change a lot of views (maybe even just assumptions about your sanity) -- but it's not friggin' likely.
It's frustrating that there's no word which properly sums up my viewpoint (and yours as well, I think) -- there are plenty of us out there! -- but the vocabulary we have has been twisted for religious and political reasons for a very long time, and we have to make do with what we have. If you know of other words to answer that question that won't just elicit a blank stare, feel free to let me know....
The world that we can observe is all we have to work with
That is true if by "the world we can observe" you mean replicable data and by "work with" you mean "test scientifically".
I wouldn't be so strict, actually. Some of the things we can observe are not very amenable to scientific measurement, like emotional response and conscious memories.
We aren't robots, and our subjective experiences & memories are observable and valuable, though obviously harder to subject to hard science. These things are all still worth study, though -- we just have to operate at an accordingly lower confidence level (and draw softer conclusions) than we would for measuring electric impedance in a material, or something else easily replicable at a low level.
Certainly, our subjective experiences play (and need to play) a role in our daily personal decisions, and we can draw together enough fuzzy data to draw fuzzy conclusions ("a large number of similar choices tends to make people feel stressed", for example) that are useful.
Now, it's fine that we can apply the scientific method in some things that affect our daily lives, yet we are still left with these questions: What do want to observe? What do we want to work with? What is the goal, if any, of our studies? What are we trying to attain? What are we trying to avoid? What scientific tests do we make? What scientific tests should we NOT make?
Are you saying, for example, that we should abandon an ethical or moral principle we may personally have if it becomes a hindrance to some experiment?
No, and I'm not sure where you got that from what I've said thus far. I've been talking about drawing "truth" conclusions about supernatural things vs. natural things.
Also, there are reasons behind the morals that we hold more or less in common; they aren't supernatural either. Scientists operate within a society and within the human race. The decision to run an experiment (or not) is subject to the same moral context as any other decision, and the possible impact of the experiment on other people involves them directly as well.
If I can, for example, create some futuristic biological technology by killing a few million human beings as part of some scientific experiment, I still need to decide if I would dare kill. (Let us assume that I could kill so many people with impunity.) If I cannot dare it, then I could try looking for other experiment that would not involve murder.
If you could kill even a tiny fraction of that many people with impunity, than we as a society have made a huge mistake in entrusting a single (apparently insane) person with so much power. But I think this also just gets back to the fact that scientists are still human beings.
Since I have started to look at things as not being led by God it's easier to feel "I can change this situation/my attitude without the help of any God" rather than "this is how it's meant to be", or "this is a punishment for ignoring God's guidance" and that type of thing.
Interesting... I hadn't thought about it that way. If you're always looking for subtle signs from God that you're either going in the right direction (or not) then you could get fairly well twisted up when a series of bad things happens to you in all a row in spite of your best efforts.
I tend to think the healthiest mindset is to understand that I don't have full control over (or even full understanding of) what happens to me or around me, but I can *always* choose how I will react, for better or for worse: do X, do Y, get more info first, etc.. Then "wisdom" is mostly just better learning what choices can actually mean... and often the solution to starting to lock up from doubt, fear, etc. is to just lay the choice on the table, see what I know & can know, and sometimes just roll the die, choose, and roll up my sleeves and go ahead.
Well, I've gone my whole life so far believing in spiritual things, it's hard to change just like that. I was having trouble seeing the point in Christian existence, but now I don't even have any beliefs to go on, so I need to find some other reason to live!
That's an experience I didn't have to go through, luckily... I was raised as a practicing Catholic, but it never really "took" with me, so I never had any strong belief at the center of my life to then somehow replace -- I was also lucky not to live in a strongly religion-centered community; I've heard & read a few horror stories about people who find themselves shunned & reviled in their home communities after a loss of faith.
Finding meaning in life is something I do think about and talk about frequently enough, but it's a complicated question. Nowadays I tend to find it much less urgent -- if I feel that I'm loved and respected by the people I care about (and not by reason of deceit, obviously), that goes an awfully long way toward keeping me happy, and I can plan my life to some degree aiming in that general direction, plus testing my boundaries to keep things interesting and rethinking my assumptions as much as possible.
But it's easier for me than many people -- I think I naturally tend towards a good mood. I know plenty of other people who are far more likely to be sunk in self-doubt, anxiety, depression, etc... regardless of religious belief, regardless of actual measurable success on whatever scale. I think there are definitely some non-worldview-related (physical) factors that play a role in this... so even if you decide upon an "answer" for your life, you may just have it in you to constantly come back to the question... then the next step is just accepting that, I suppose.
I should have probably outlined the parts I agreed with tacitly instead of just trying to leap the part I felt I disagreed with....
I agree with you pretty much entirely about the limits of science, and the importance of understanding that all of science is basically "this is the best we can sort out, based on what we have observed so far". It is not fixed or final, and cannot be by its nature.
I disagree partly with this:
The problem is that the "triumphs of Science" are not the triumphs of Science at all; every technology, every new discovery, is in fact either a complete accident or a triumph of human creativity and imagination, imagination that produces ideas that are then tested by Science. Science is a test for ideas (not even the only test of ideas), not the source of them. And in order to test ideas, you need to have them first.
Except that those ideas come so very often from people "doing science" -- i.e., the discovery comes about in those "that's funny..." moments in otherwise boring scientific tests -- unexpected results that were only found *because* someone was experimenting with controls, hypothesis, etc. etc. and found a result that broke the expectation.
As for abstract truth being useless, this is an argument of semantics; I'd agree with the value of abstract logic, mathematics constructs, etc., though their "real-world" value comes back to the strength of the first principals -- that's what I meant by saying abstract truth is useless (I should have said "in isolation", maybe?). You have to tie it at some point back to one of those claims that's impossible to prove absolutely (as you said above).
Here's where we get back to what I was trying to argue with. Here, and in the GP post, it seemed like you are putting those "unproven claims" into the same bucket. I quoted this bit:
some things (like Science, like God) just can't be proved, no matter how convinced we are of them.
... because claims that are science-based are not equivalent as far as probability (or even logical consistency) with ideas based on the supernatural. The world that we can observe is all we have to work with -- so conclusions that we can draw based in some way on those observations seem rather more valid than conclusions that are not, and that difference is far more important in the real world -- where people regularly make important decisions based on their beliefs in God, etc. -- than the observation that we can't flag anything as *absolutely* true.
I'll leave it at that, since I may well have been reading some things into your post that weren't there....
I personally come up with several ideas a year that fail at least one of those criteria. I usually have some initial itch, do some quick googling to see if it exists, then focus most of my energy on finding a good domain name. Once I've registered that... then further design and/or development work turns up some fatal flaw, some fatal but subtle technical roadblock, or another project that I'd missed in my earlier searches that already does more or less what I want.
Fortunately I'm starting to get better about vetting them nowadays... I have a few random duds still floating around out there.
To the original poster -- if you want a technical review of your idea, I don't mind signing an NDA (hey, why not) and brainstorming over the course of a few emails; if I actually personally found the project exciting, it fit well with my experience, and I had the time to help (dunno at the moment) we'd either sort out rates, or eventual profit sharing or whatever. But a quick review -- sure, it's like a brainteaser; you can contact me through the form at http://www.emusictheory.com/contact.muse if you're interested (that's an idea that's still kinda ugly, but is working out).
Unfortunately, I think you'll find that most great ideas that can be implemented in a week or so have been tried... or there's some non-obvious but serious flaw.
Sounds to me like you're an agnostic, not an atheist.
No; an agnostic is unsure about whether there's a god or not. I'm quite convinced -- I've seen utterly no reason to believe in a god, so I don't, anymore than I believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
If somehow, against all odds, some kind of solid evidence for a supernatural god DID show up, I would have to rethink... but that's just how reasonable people function.
I'm not a "Santa Claus agnostic" just because I have to leave open the minuscule possibility that maybe there IS some guy who can violate all of the laws of physics to deliver presents to (Christian?) kids all over the world on Christmas Eve.
...so I'm quite aware of the way that memories can be affected - you don't have to be so patronising;)
See, I didn't do psych at university, so perhaps it's all more new and fascinating to me. The thing about memories being "rewritten" to storage after each retrieval is relatively new research, though, I think.... Hopefully I didn't come across as too patronizing; I'd been cheering you on for your various comments in this article, and finally felt like I had something to add here.
Again I'm not saying it's conclusive evidence, just saying it's the only pro-'spiritual' type evidence I've got so far
Understood; I guess I'm just poking at it because "evidence" seems like too a strong word. When your mum gathered you together to tell you your grandfather was dead, I would imagine she didn't bang on the wall and shout "hey kids, check this out!!" -- it probably wouldn't have been hard to put 2+2 together, even for an 8-year-old. Likewise, other people have stories of suddenly feeling upset for no apparent reason, or feeling a strange presence, or a sudden certainty that (the relative) had died, or a sudden inexplicable decision to telephone another family member -- the stories are all different, because there are so many different things that can take on importance in retrospect, and that we can interpret as a spiritual experience (and obviously that casts the net wider probability-wise).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't discount the possibility of other means of influence -- other forces that we have not yet detected, in other words. But I try to apply the same standards as for other potentially-observable (but doubtful) things, and if there's a simple explanation using the rules of the universe we *can* observe, that seems far more probable. James Randi still has his million dollars, for example, though it's easy to feel that *some* of those myriad people claiming dowsing power, ESP, mind-reading, etc. may actually be able to do something. They keep on trying, but when their convincing explanation hits actual scientific testing, it disintegrates.
So I can't rule anything out 100% -- obviously there are still so many things out there we haven't even started to understand! -- but I think I'm more dismissive of spiritual experiences/capabilities than you are.
Since there's no way to test atheism, mind you, it's not a science any more than any other religion.
I've got a bone to pick with this one... Atheism isn't a religion.
I'm an atheist; if somehow evidence actually appeared that indicated the existence of a god or gods, I wouldn't reject it. Likewise, if pink unicorns were found on Mars, I'd be convinced if reasonable evidence were provided.
Where's the religious belief? I simply don't go out of my way to belief in the existence of something that seems to be contradictory to everything we understand about the universe.
You wouldn't claim that your non-belief in the existence of Santa Claus is a religion, along the same lines.
Atheism is only treated differently because so many people *do* have an active strong belief in a god... but that does not make it more true. The evidence (lack, rather) is the same.
But what imposter will find it in their own interests to start a nuclear war... or any war for that matter?
An impostor who believes he is ACTUALLY imparting truth that comes directly from a supernatural and unquestionable source.
In fact, I think that's the ONLY sort of person who might find it in their interests to start a nuclear war (leaving outright insanity out of the equation, I suppose).
That's the power of religion, really -- that ability to convince people to do something that's completely against reason and even self-preservation. E.g., religious armies tend to win wars, because they'll usually defeat more sensible enemies who don't want to die. Sure, a lot of their soldiers die in the process, but don't worry, they'll be rewarded in heaven.
We just have to remember that while we have all the right to believe that what we think is the truth, some things (like Science, like God) just can't be proved, no matter how convinced we are of them.
Of course, if you want to play the mental games, there's no way to disprove that I'm not just a brain in a jar.
But science *exists* to set a reasonable bar for "proof". You're talking about some kind of abstract, absolute proof -- that's useless. Science is functional. It makes predictions and tests them -- not to absolutely prove an unquestionable truth, but to pass the bar of "extremely likely" so that this new rule can be assumed, and used as a building block for the next prediction. If new, contradicting evidence shows up, even for well-established theories, the model must be corrected. It's not "absolute truth", because we have no access to such a thing.
How can you put a belief in God into the same category? Belief in God involves no tests, is not subject to re-evaluation, and does not build anything useful on its assumed foundations. Science has given our species incredible control over our environment.
When my dad died I felt at peace that evening before I even knew he died, so that's the only evidence I have personally for the existence of some kind of spiritual link. Recently I've wondered if it could perhaps be due to some kind of quantum entanglement or something..
Some other considerations: - Any *other* night, a random feeling of peace, you'd have remembered it possibly for a few hours, then forgotten it entirely. Our brains are very good at sifting through an enormous amount of input data (most of which doesn't even reach your conscious mind) and highlighting the stuff that seems like it correlates. - High-emotion events (like learning of the death of a parent) dramatically change our memory of nearby events -- we automatically remember them as much stronger and more important they would have been otherwise. - Memories are "re-written" each time they are retrieved. Something that you have thought about over and over will have a much less reliably accurate memory than something that you are remembering for the first time. This is partly offset by "memorizing" the story you tell... but by then you've replaced the original memory with the words of a story. - Our natural grasp of probability is deeply flawed... this gets back to the article, actually. Because we are constantly discarding irrelevant observations, when coincidences do happen, we are much more likely to make a cause-effect conclusion than is actually valid. But "one in a million" coincidences are happening constantly, because we're surrounded by a constant stream of events.
I hope to God you haven't become an atheist! Especially a materialist atheist who believes consciousness is gone when the body dies?
Does the radio station go away when your radio breaks? Or just your ability to hear it?
Another perspective... I'm definitely an atheist, but "materialist"? That depends on which definition of "materialist" you use. I certainly don't think my happiness relies on the number of physical possessions I have.
But everything we have figured out so far supports the conclusion that consciousness disappears when the body dies -- before the body dies, actually, in some cases.
I've never found this concept traumatizing or upsetting -- that my consciousness and physical being will both close up shop, permanently, somewhere within this century. My role in my family, group of friends, country, species, life on earth... is small proportionally, but I am aware of the effects that my actions have (and can have) in all of these groups, and those effects will certainly linger on after my death in some way or another.
I won't endure forever, obviously, in any traceable form, but why should I want to? Life is *everyday* life. The vast majority of my time is taken up with normal, common decisions and interactions, just like yours. We can think about mortality and distance when staring up at the stars every once in a while, but we don't need any kind of final, comfortable solution to be able to put the question aside and move on with our lives.
The radio analogy isn't useful -- a radio is a simple output device that converts inaudible waves (radio frequencies) into audible waves (sound in human hearing frequencies). They communicate from one central location to multiple recipients. What does that have to do with consciousness?
Slashdot Mirror
Illustration.
Yup... sometimes I think it's just as well, since the world might be a better place if America loses some of their power (happening already, I guess).
But there are ways for that to happen that require less suffering from all of the citizens involved....
Now, if they try and foist that belief on you as fact, but all means shred it apart if it doesn't fit your view, or beliefs about the things that are unknown.
You mean, if they start printing textbooks and trying to get them into public schools?
Related: I disagree about the "complementary" thing -- faith in the absolute *truth* of belief is at the core of most religions, not "we don't know, but maybe it's something like this".
If you believe it's *true*, then it freaks you out when your kids are exposed to "wrong" alternative viewpoints (like science class, like classmates with other religions or none), and you also don't subject public debates (like re gay marriage, birth control, abortion, religion in schools, etc.) to reason if you think your religion has the "true", inarguable answer already.
That's the conflict.
Agnosticism doesn't conflict with science (though many people ignore scientific matters of probability and even logical consistency), but most practicing religious people would not classify themselves that way -- they have some believe in the absolute *truth* of what they profess.
BTW, I should also mention that unfortunately many religions (particularly the stricter versions) say you won't be rewarded for simply being nice. If you have no faith (if you haven't accepted Jesus as your personal savior, for one example), you aren't going to heaven.
Not that I'm arguing with your approach to life -- just saying that this version of Pascal's wager doesn't really "work" any more than the original does.
Not forcing -- oh really?
You probably haven't seen this news article -- but we all knew it was coming!
The proponents of the progressive agenda are finally showing their hand... Be afraid! Be very afraid!
Now, I'm an atheist - but I think you need to look up the word 'metaphor'.
That's his point.
If it's metaphor, that means you have to interpret it and draw your own lessons & value from what you read. Shakespeare can be equally valuable -- he was a perceptive observer of humanity and our weaknesses.
Now apply the word "believe" to that.
How does one "believe" in a metaphor? You'd have to start drawing lines between parts of the bible that are "fact" and those which are just metaphor.
And then you have to acknowledge that these lines are human-drawn, and hence open to debate. And maybe none of it is fact, since we know much of it isn't... it gets messy, belief-wise.
If you just say "well, maybe it's all metaphor, but we believe there are truths to be found in the stories"... well, that's a view an atheist can share (yes, some of the fables in the bible highlight actual human problems...). If it's all metaphor, you don't even have to believe that God exists. It all falls apart.
Exactly, and that's why the Flying Spaghetti Monster religion exists; as a rational point of comparison.
If someone presents an "argument" for Creationism and so on that is no stronger than your Pastafarian argument, well, that says something.
If you can't be more convincing than the FSM folks, get the hell off my lawn.
Ahem -- you're talking about the THEORY of plate tectonics, no?
Don't forget now, that's just a theory. Just like the "water theory" that the GP mentions. Right?
Heh heh heh....
Dude, you've said that now like 5 times... what's the point? I'm pretty sure you must know by now that I'm not putting forth some kind of absolute or faith-based position.
The reason the other definitions are listed is because significant numbers of people use them, in exactly this context. It's not bark of a tree/bark of a dog (that doesn't exist for "atheism", and is a separate definition for "agnosticism"). Multiple definitions doesn't mean one of them must be wrong.
As far as atheism, merriam webster has also has "ungodliness, wickedness" listed as an "archaic" definition, plus wikipedia mentions how the meaning has changed over the years (towards how I'd like to use it), so at least it's made some progress.
But other than poking at that, we're pretty much on the same page. I don't just use either word by itself in conversation, and absolutely a discussion with kids would be far more complicated, plus would need to include something on the history and current status of human religious belief... though I would mention my personal conclusions, and how I arrived at them, at whatever level the kids were old enough to understand. It's a different case simply because so many people disagree, often very passionately -- it doesn't matter if I think they're wrong, in most situations; everyone has to learn to get along with their neighbors.
Heck, the Santa Claus discussion couldn't be so simple either... (no, you should NOT walk around telling this to the 1st graders at school!).
I should also mention that after your post above, I'm doubting that you're interested in an intellectually honest conversation. Referring to my comments (or something you think I said?) as "ridiculous" isn't a good sign. "Well golly", sarcasm doesn't actually demonstrate anything beyond your own opinion.
If you actually want to have a discussion, it could be interesting, but if you're just looking for someone to shout at, or if you are unable or unwilling to actually explore the foundations of your own views, do not waste my time.
The comment about abandoning principles for the sake of scientific progress was aimed at your assertion that "the observable world is all we have to work with". You see, certain things are quite outside the observable world. For example, I am sure you have yet to observe that "the observable world is all we have to work with", simply because you haven't worked with everything you have to work with yet, not until your last breath.
Can you give an example? I already said above that by "observable" (possible not the best word) I'm referring to all sensory input as well as our emotional responses, memories, etc. -- the entirety of human experience. Everything that crosses our awareness. I think that's pretty obviously "all we have to work with"; please give some examples if that's wrong!
I'll hold off on discussing the rest of your post until we sort this out, because it's a fairly basic thing to build on (though I agree, we have to make some basic assertions to make any sense out of the raw input).
Whoa, hold on a second....
There are a lot of people using these words incorrectly. The secondary definitions you quote are examples of such confusion.
Word definitions are observed, not fixed by some central body (in English, at least). The reason multiple definitions are listed is because people *validly* use & understand these words in different ways. It's not confusion, it's language.
For example, many people claim to be agnostic but mean "I believe that there's some supreme power, but it's unknowable". That's not agnosticism, and if it's not deism it's damn close:
As long as you aren't using "believe" in the absolute sense there, that *is* agnosticism according to the definition you prefer, though. Once we agree that "no one can prove it", then it's a question of what conclusions we draw based on what we do know. Agnostic A might be 99% convinced that there is no god, and agnostic B might be 99% convinced there IS one, and hence follows their religion. They'd still both be agnostics (by your definition) as long as they both agree that we can't know for sure.
That's why I've been saying that's too broad a category to be useful to me. Sure, I'm in that group, but it doesn't say anything about my personally-reasoned conclusions about whether a god exists or not.
I'm not sure what you're saying about Deism -- the key element of Deism is that God doesn't intervene in human affairs. They clearly believe a god exists. Religious philosophies don't lie on a continuum; they scatter all over the place.
Atheism makes an affirmative statement. The atheist generalizes from "there is no evidence of god" to "there is no god". Not even the undetectable "Nature's God" of the Deists.
Again, this is the definition of atheism that *you* use, not everyone. Communication requires shared definitions, so if you're talking to someone who uses the broader definition, you may be misunderstood (and vice-versa as in our discussion...).
I agree that because the definition you're mentioning is common enough, I'm taking a risk if I just tell people "I'm an atheist" without qualifying it.
But if I just have one word (like on a form...) I have to choose between those common definitions; I'm still going to choose "atheist" simply because it's closer; for all practical purposes, I believe there's no god. Another way to look at it -- if you ask me "does Santa Claus exist?", I say "no". If you ask me the same question about god, I say "no" as well.
If you ask me "what proof do you have?!" for either one -- well, there's no absolute proof, just logical consistency, probability, Occam razor, and so on. But that's a philosophical discussion, not the response to a simple question about what is and what isn't (where we all operate on "probably true" whether we know it or not).
I also personally want to encourage people to continue migrating to the broader definition of atheism (i.e., the reasonable atheist), so I propagate that as much as possible. It's just a much more useful definition that encompasses a larger and more coherent group of people.
It also makes more sense given the word roots: "a-" is the greek prefix for "without" or "lack of", "theism" is belief in a god or gods. So "without theism" makes more sense than a positive "belief in god's nonexistence".
The PhD's (and most of white America) is racist at home and pretends like they aren't in the street. No one fools anyone.
If someone has a mental disability, call them retarded. That's what they are. When your jewish friend complains about the 25 cents he was shorted at Dunkin Doughnuts, even though he makes 100k a year, tell him to not be such a jew. He knows what your referring to.
The worst thing you can do is act one way in public and another at home.
Sure, telling racist jokes with your friends but clamming up in embarrassment when a stranger approaches is hypocritical and/or cowardly... but isn't that also one of the necessary steps in actually changing racist ideas? I.e., it's a big step to actually get people to feel that blatant racism is socially unacceptable (even if they feel differently personally); and hopefully the next generation might be a bit less racist at heart.
It's certainly important to keep discussing the subject; I'm not in favor of pretending to be "color-blind" when we know perfectly well that just about everyone has automatically different responses to people dependent on race... but discussion is a completely different thing from encouraging someone to use racial slurs just because they popped into their head.
Okay, wikipedia time, I guess:
(including 2 paragraphs on Atheism and Agnosticism, since those are tricky....)
The main problem here is that the words are loaded, and the commonly used definitions both fall flat. Agnosticism (in the sense you use it) is far too general to be of any use. Many priests would admit to some level of agnosticism, in that sense: if some fantastic, unquestionable event were to happen that obviously and flatly contradicted their beliefs, they'd adjust. Also, regular people don't always grasp the idea of "unknowable"; they think "oh, agnostic: you don't know if there's a God, like I don't know if my keys are on the hook or still in my coat pocket... but you can't just go check, can you!" I have to be able to explain my conclusions without also needing to get into tangential philosophical discussions.
"Atheism" comes closer, but of course many people (yourself included) use a definition that's also next to useless because it describes very *few* people, and not me. Religiously anti-god? Huh.
Dunno where you're getting "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" from anything I said. Sure, there is no *absolute* truth in the real world, but that doesn't mean I check out the window every night to see if the Flying Spaghetti Monster will appear this time, any more than you check under your elbow every 5 seconds to make sure your desk hasn't been magically replaced with a walrus holding perfectly still. If it happened, you'd have to change a lot of views (maybe even just assumptions about your sanity) -- but it's not friggin' likely.
It's frustrating that there's no word which properly sums up my viewpoint (and yours as well, I think) -- there are plenty of us out there! -- but the vocabulary we have has been twisted for religious and political reasons for a very long time, and we have to make do with what we have. If you know of other words to answer that question that won't just elicit a blank stare, feel free to let me know....
That is true if by "the world we can observe" you mean replicable data and by "work with" you mean "test scientifically".
I wouldn't be so strict, actually. Some of the things we can observe are not very amenable to scientific measurement, like emotional response and conscious memories.
We aren't robots, and our subjective experiences & memories are observable and valuable, though obviously harder to subject to hard science. These things are all still worth study, though -- we just have to operate at an accordingly lower confidence level (and draw softer conclusions) than we would for measuring electric impedance in a material, or something else easily replicable at a low level.
Certainly, our subjective experiences play (and need to play) a role in our daily personal decisions, and we can draw together enough fuzzy data to draw fuzzy conclusions ("a large number of similar choices tends to make people feel stressed", for example) that are useful.
Now, it's fine that we can apply the scientific method in some things that affect our daily lives, yet we are still left with these questions: What do want to observe? What do we want to work with? What is the goal, if any, of our studies? What are we trying to attain? What are we trying to avoid? What scientific tests do we make? What scientific tests should we NOT make?
Are you saying, for example, that we should abandon an ethical or moral principle we may personally have if it becomes a hindrance to some experiment?
No, and I'm not sure where you got that from what I've said thus far. I've been talking about drawing "truth" conclusions about supernatural things vs. natural things.
Also, there are reasons behind the morals that we hold more or less in common; they aren't supernatural either. Scientists operate within a society and within the human race. The decision to run an experiment (or not) is subject to the same moral context as any other decision, and the possible impact of the experiment on other people involves them directly as well.
If I can, for example, create some futuristic biological technology by killing a few million human beings as part of some scientific experiment, I still need to decide if I would dare kill. (Let us assume that I could kill so many people with impunity.) If I cannot dare it, then I could try looking for other experiment that would not involve murder.
If you could kill even a tiny fraction of that many people with impunity, than we as a society have made a huge mistake in entrusting a single (apparently insane) person with so much power. But I think this also just gets back to the fact that scientists are still human beings.
Since I have started to look at things as not being led by God it's easier to feel "I can change this situation/my attitude without the help of any God" rather than "this is how it's meant to be", or "this is a punishment for ignoring God's guidance" and that type of thing.
Interesting... I hadn't thought about it that way. If you're always looking for subtle signs from God that you're either going in the right direction (or not) then you could get fairly well twisted up when a series of bad things happens to you in all a row in spite of your best efforts.
I tend to think the healthiest mindset is to understand that I don't have full control over (or even full understanding of) what happens to me or around me, but I can *always* choose how I will react, for better or for worse: do X, do Y, get more info first, etc.. Then "wisdom" is mostly just better learning what choices can actually mean... and often the solution to starting to lock up from doubt, fear, etc. is to just lay the choice on the table, see what I know & can know, and sometimes just roll the die, choose, and roll up my sleeves and go ahead.
Well, I've gone my whole life so far believing in spiritual things, it's hard to change just like that. I was having trouble seeing the point in Christian existence, but now I don't even have any beliefs to go on, so I need to find some other reason to live!
That's an experience I didn't have to go through, luckily... I was raised as a practicing Catholic, but it never really "took" with me, so I never had any strong belief at the center of my life to then somehow replace -- I was also lucky not to live in a strongly religion-centered community; I've heard & read a few horror stories about people who find themselves shunned & reviled in their home communities after a loss of faith.
Finding meaning in life is something I do think about and talk about frequently enough, but it's a complicated question. Nowadays I tend to find it much less urgent -- if I feel that I'm loved and respected by the people I care about (and not by reason of deceit, obviously), that goes an awfully long way toward keeping me happy, and I can plan my life to some degree aiming in that general direction, plus testing my boundaries to keep things interesting and rethinking my assumptions as much as possible.
But it's easier for me than many people -- I think I naturally tend towards a good mood. I know plenty of other people who are far more likely to be sunk in self-doubt, anxiety, depression, etc... regardless of religious belief, regardless of actual measurable success on whatever scale. I think there are definitely some non-worldview-related (physical) factors that play a role in this... so even if you decide upon an "answer" for your life, you may just have it in you to constantly come back to the question... then the next step is just accepting that, I suppose.
I should have probably outlined the parts I agreed with tacitly instead of just trying to leap the part I felt I disagreed with....
I agree with you pretty much entirely about the limits of science, and the importance of understanding that all of science is basically "this is the best we can sort out, based on what we have observed so far". It is not fixed or final, and cannot be by its nature.
I disagree partly with this:
The problem is that the "triumphs of Science" are not the triumphs of Science at all; every technology, every new discovery, is in fact either a complete accident or a triumph of human creativity and imagination, imagination that produces ideas that are then tested by Science. Science is a test for ideas (not even the only test of ideas), not the source of them. And in order to test ideas, you need to have them first.
Except that those ideas come so very often from people "doing science" -- i.e., the discovery comes about in those "that's funny..." moments in otherwise boring scientific tests -- unexpected results that were only found *because* someone was experimenting with controls, hypothesis, etc. etc. and found a result that broke the expectation.
As for abstract truth being useless, this is an argument of semantics; I'd agree with the value of abstract logic, mathematics constructs, etc., though their "real-world" value comes back to the strength of the first principals -- that's what I meant by saying abstract truth is useless (I should have said "in isolation", maybe?). You have to tie it at some point back to one of those claims that's impossible to prove absolutely (as you said above).
Here's where we get back to what I was trying to argue with. Here, and in the GP post, it seemed like you are putting those "unproven claims" into the same bucket. I quoted this bit:
some things (like Science, like God) just can't be proved, no matter how convinced we are of them.
... because claims that are science-based are not equivalent as far as probability (or even logical consistency) with ideas based on the supernatural. The world that we can observe is all we have to work with -- so conclusions that we can draw based in some way on those observations seem rather more valid than conclusions that are not, and that difference is far more important in the real world -- where people regularly make important decisions based on their beliefs in God, etc. -- than the observation that we can't flag anything as *absolutely* true.
I'll leave it at that, since I may well have been reading some things into your post that weren't there....
I personally come up with several ideas a year that fail at least one of those criteria. I usually have some initial itch, do some quick googling to see if it exists, then focus most of my energy on finding a good domain name. Once I've registered that... then further design and/or development work turns up some fatal flaw, some fatal but subtle technical roadblock, or another project that I'd missed in my earlier searches that already does more or less what I want.
Fortunately I'm starting to get better about vetting them nowadays... I have a few random duds still floating around out there.
To the original poster -- if you want a technical review of your idea, I don't mind signing an NDA (hey, why not) and brainstorming over the course of a few emails; if I actually personally found the project exciting, it fit well with my experience, and I had the time to help (dunno at the moment) we'd either sort out rates, or eventual profit sharing or whatever. But a quick review -- sure, it's like a brainteaser; you can contact me through the form at http://www.emusictheory.com/contact.muse if you're interested (that's an idea that's still kinda ugly, but is working out).
Unfortunately, I think you'll find that most great ideas that can be implemented in a week or so have been tried... or there's some non-obvious but serious flaw.
Sounds to me like you're an agnostic, not an atheist.
No; an agnostic is unsure about whether there's a god or not. I'm quite convinced -- I've seen utterly no reason to believe in a god, so I don't, anymore than I believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
If somehow, against all odds, some kind of solid evidence for a supernatural god DID show up, I would have to rethink... but that's just how reasonable people function.
I'm not a "Santa Claus agnostic" just because I have to leave open the minuscule possibility that maybe there IS some guy who can violate all of the laws of physics to deliver presents to (Christian?) kids all over the world on Christmas Eve.
...so I'm quite aware of the way that memories can be affected - you don't have to be so patronising ;)
See, I didn't do psych at university, so perhaps it's all more new and fascinating to me. The thing about memories being "rewritten" to storage after each retrieval is relatively new research, though, I think.... Hopefully I didn't come across as too patronizing; I'd been cheering you on for your various comments in this article, and finally felt like I had something to add here.
Again I'm not saying it's conclusive evidence, just saying it's the only pro-'spiritual' type evidence I've got so far
Understood; I guess I'm just poking at it because "evidence" seems like too a strong word. When your mum gathered you together to tell you your grandfather was dead, I would imagine she didn't bang on the wall and shout "hey kids, check this out!!" -- it probably wouldn't have been hard to put 2+2 together, even for an 8-year-old. Likewise, other people have stories of suddenly feeling upset for no apparent reason, or feeling a strange presence, or a sudden certainty that (the relative) had died, or a sudden inexplicable decision to telephone another family member -- the stories are all different, because there are so many different things that can take on importance in retrospect, and that we can interpret as a spiritual experience (and obviously that casts the net wider probability-wise).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't discount the possibility of other means of influence -- other forces that we have not yet detected, in other words. But I try to apply the same standards as for other potentially-observable (but doubtful) things, and if there's a simple explanation using the rules of the universe we *can* observe, that seems far more probable. James Randi still has his million dollars, for example, though it's easy to feel that *some* of those myriad people claiming dowsing power, ESP, mind-reading, etc. may actually be able to do something. They keep on trying, but when their convincing explanation hits actual scientific testing, it disintegrates.
So I can't rule anything out 100% -- obviously there are still so many things out there we haven't even started to understand! -- but I think I'm more dismissive of spiritual experiences/capabilities than you are.
Since there's no way to test atheism, mind you, it's not a science any more than any other religion.
I've got a bone to pick with this one... Atheism isn't a religion.
I'm an atheist; if somehow evidence actually appeared that indicated the existence of a god or gods, I wouldn't reject it. Likewise, if pink unicorns were found on Mars, I'd be convinced if reasonable evidence were provided.
Where's the religious belief? I simply don't go out of my way to belief in the existence of something that seems to be contradictory to everything we understand about the universe.
You wouldn't claim that your non-belief in the existence of Santa Claus is a religion, along the same lines.
Atheism is only treated differently because so many people *do* have an active strong belief in a god... but that does not make it more true. The evidence (lack, rather) is the same.
But what imposter will find it in their own interests to start a nuclear war... or any war for that matter?
An impostor who believes he is ACTUALLY imparting truth that comes directly from a supernatural and unquestionable source.
In fact, I think that's the ONLY sort of person who might find it in their interests to start a nuclear war (leaving outright insanity out of the equation, I suppose).
That's the power of religion, really -- that ability to convince people to do something that's completely against reason and even self-preservation. E.g., religious armies tend to win wars, because they'll usually defeat more sensible enemies who don't want to die. Sure, a lot of their soldiers die in the process, but don't worry, they'll be rewarded in heaven.
We just have to remember that while we have all the right to believe that what we think is the truth, some things (like Science, like God) just can't be proved, no matter how convinced we are of them.
Of course, if you want to play the mental games, there's no way to disprove that I'm not just a brain in a jar.
But science *exists* to set a reasonable bar for "proof". You're talking about some kind of abstract, absolute proof -- that's useless. Science is functional. It makes predictions and tests them -- not to absolutely prove an unquestionable truth, but to pass the bar of "extremely likely" so that this new rule can be assumed, and used as a building block for the next prediction. If new, contradicting evidence shows up, even for well-established theories, the model must be corrected. It's not "absolute truth", because we have no access to such a thing.
How can you put a belief in God into the same category? Belief in God involves no tests, is not subject to re-evaluation, and does not build anything useful on its assumed foundations. Science has given our species incredible control over our environment.
When my dad died I felt at peace that evening before I even knew he died, so that's the only evidence I have personally for the existence of some kind of spiritual link. Recently I've wondered if it could perhaps be due to some kind of quantum entanglement or something..
Some other considerations:
- Any *other* night, a random feeling of peace, you'd have remembered it possibly for a few hours, then forgotten it entirely. Our brains are very good at sifting through an enormous amount of input data (most of which doesn't even reach your conscious mind) and highlighting the stuff that seems like it correlates.
- High-emotion events (like learning of the death of a parent) dramatically change our memory of nearby events -- we automatically remember them as much stronger and more important they would have been otherwise.
- Memories are "re-written" each time they are retrieved. Something that you have thought about over and over will have a much less reliably accurate memory than something that you are remembering for the first time. This is partly offset by "memorizing" the story you tell... but by then you've replaced the original memory with the words of a story.
- Our natural grasp of probability is deeply flawed... this gets back to the article, actually. Because we are constantly discarding irrelevant observations, when coincidences do happen, we are much more likely to make a cause-effect conclusion than is actually valid. But "one in a million" coincidences are happening constantly, because we're surrounded by a constant stream of events.
I hope to God you haven't become an atheist! Especially a materialist atheist who believes consciousness is gone when the body dies?
Does the radio station go away when your radio breaks? Or just your ability to hear it?
Another perspective... I'm definitely an atheist, but "materialist"? That depends on which definition of "materialist" you use. I certainly don't think my happiness relies on the number of physical possessions I have.
But everything we have figured out so far supports the conclusion that consciousness disappears when the body dies -- before the body dies, actually, in some cases.
I've never found this concept traumatizing or upsetting -- that my consciousness and physical being will both close up shop, permanently, somewhere within this century. My role in my family, group of friends, country, species, life on earth... is small proportionally, but I am aware of the effects that my actions have (and can have) in all of these groups, and those effects will certainly linger on after my death in some way or another.
I won't endure forever, obviously, in any traceable form, but why should I want to? Life is *everyday* life. The vast majority of my time is taken up with normal, common decisions and interactions, just like yours. We can think about mortality and distance when staring up at the stars every once in a while, but we don't need any kind of final, comfortable solution to be able to put the question aside and move on with our lives.
The radio analogy isn't useful -- a radio is a simple output device that converts inaudible waves (radio frequencies) into audible waves (sound in human hearing frequencies). They communicate from one central location to multiple recipients. What does that have to do with consciousness?