You have many points, and I would respond to each one, but for brevity I do want to some I consider more important than others...
I'll try to do the same, but no promises...
If there is a singular example of judging a philosophy by its abuse, this is it. You really don't expect me to defned the Catholic Church's record of dealing with the problems of child abuse by their clergy, do you? Seriously? If that's your example of religion gone bad, it's a good one. If it's your example of Christianity failed, well, you are well off the mark.
Probably, in that it isn't Christianity which told them to do this. For that, the most obvious example is likely the Westboro Baptist Church, or the individual cases of people hearing the Holy Spirit tell them to kill someone.
Well, to expand, legislation is always some expression of someone's intention. And informed by their morality, as all of our actions ultimately are. You seem as if you're assuming 'morality' is always a non-secular thing. It is not.
I'm not, but there is a difference between morality and ethics, and it's hard enough for a society as diverse as ours to agree on ethics, let alone morality.
I may be misusing these terms, so I should be clear: When I say "ethics", I understand this to be a topic which includes ethical systems like Utilitarianism, Divine Command Theory, etc -- basically, ethics is a discussion about what makes something "good" or "bad", "right" or "wrong".
Morality, on the other hand, is more prescriptive -- social mores as the result of ethics.
So, for example, the ethic might tell us that children should be protected. One morality that might come out of this is sex education -- we want children to know what's out there and how to protect themselves. Another morality might be censorship -- we want to prevent children from seeing what's out there. These two moral stances are often opposed, but they have the same basic principle as their base.
I'm a little fuzzy on this distinction, though, so I apologize.
Well, while Atheists would probably have different moral views than Christians (for example), they both do have some sense of morality.
Right.
I don't think there's really much difference between these when it comes to legislation, either -- for instance, an atheist might have a moral view that Catholicism should be banned, but that would also be a church-state issue.
First, if the point is to legislate based on values which are common to all of us, that legislation is doomed to fail, if it is even enacted. We are a diverse society in the U.S. and it is prety much bare majorities that are passing legislation. To ask for even a supermajority is too much.
Not for the truly basic values. For example, the idea that life has some intrinsic value, and that you'd better have a damned good reason to take a life, is nearly universal, and not just in this country.
Many of the disagreements about legislation aren't about the morality of it. They're about how it affects whatever group you care about (usually yourself), and many of them involve fundamental misunderstandings.
For the things we don't necessarily share, such as gay marriage, the pattern is usually an argument between people wanting to impose their morality on others, and people just wanting to do things on their own which don't affect anyone else. I'm not gay, and I'm not going to try (yet) to convince you that there's nothing wrong with homosexuality, or with homosexual married couples. What I don't see is why they shouldn't be allowed to marry.
Second, to 'enforce the bare minimum' is laudable, and used to be a goal of the Conservative movement. We are well past that, sadly. I wish we could have a minimal government, but the Liberal, Progressive, or Leftist movement in the U.S. seems determined to greatly expand government beyond the
I think Ruby fits that bill better than BASIC. Starts out without needing the baggage, but when you're ready for structured programming and objects, it's all right there.
And you avoid learning GOTO. I don't care how easy it makes initial learning, it's building bad habits that you're going to spend years killing.
I dont quite understand what youre asking, if that doesnt answer it-- the "form the justification takes" is love, patriotism, etc.
I'm asking for the process. For instance:
Love has been used countless times in history to justify a jealous killing.
That's not love, that's jealousy. Using love to justify that is a non-sequitur, anyway -- chances are, the one you love isn't going to appreciate the jealous killing.
By contrast, it's trivial to justify an atrocity directly from a religious text.
Well, as the first section of the book is basically "the history of Israel", and considering that those things happened historically, its not surprising to see mentions of them.
It's not just the mentions of them, it's the justification. It's where God actually commands mass genocide -- and where people who read it today are forced to make the most strained excuses for God.
In this very thread you will note several athiests doing just that-- claiming that there is no proof that the NT was written in the first century (there is), implying that "young earth creationist" is a subset of "baptist" (its not), assuming that, because the inquisition claimed the name of christ it must therefore be in line with christian belief (its not), etc.
I don't agree with everything every atheist does, but let's take these one at a time:
First, I don't think I claimed that there's no proof the New Testament was written in the first century, but I am curious what form that proof takes.
Second, that's an implication, not a statement, and there is a not-insignificant subset of Baptists (or at least, people who call themselves Baptists) who are also young-earth Creationists.
And the inquisition? It may not be in line with what Christians believe today, but it certainly is in line with what the Bible teaches. The Law of Moses says that if your family starts tempting you with other gods, you are to stone them all. Jesus says nothing against the old law, and when asked, says "Not one stroke of a letter will disappear from the Law..."
I'm sure modern Christians have a different interpretation of the Bible.
I am bothered when an athiest calls me dense
Haven't done that.
not based in logic,
Didn't do that either. I haven't seen a theology that's based in logic, but for all I know, you might be a perfectly logical person in all other aspects of your life (common), or maybe you even have a logical basis for your belief (never heard one).
launches into logical fallacy, ungrounded theories, and personal opinion,
Have I done this? Show me where.
That's not just a challenge -- I would much rather be proven wrong than forever be wrong. If I've made a fallacy, I'd like to know about it.
It is all the more distressing when there is apparently no understanding that a good deal of the things that supposedly "prove" the absence of God
Never claimed this, either. Atheism means I don't know that there is a God. I don't claim that I know there is not.
I enjoy discussion, but all too often these dissolve into a mess of rantings and demonizing, trying to pin all of the worlds evils on religion of all things.
That's the closest to what I did, and I didn't try to pin all of the world's evils on religion.
examine your own arguments in the same light and by the same metric with which you would judge ours
I did that, and that is why I am an atheist in the first place. I found myself making more and more convoluted excuses, and my beliefs were starting to sound absurd, even to me.
if you don't have existence then there's nothing about you to make the statement.
Well, again, it depends what you mean by "exists".
Suppose I write a program which says "cogito ergo sum." Perhaps it's even complex enough to believe it exists. Does it?
Now, suppose instead of a program, it's an imaginary friend. Certainly we'd be willing to say that they don't exist, except in the sense that someone, somewhere, is thinking of them...
But if we're willing to say that thoughts exist, then I can say, with some amount of certainty, that the world exists, at least in the sense that I am thinking about it. So either we say that imaginary things do not exist, in which case it's impossible to know I'm not a figment of someone's imagination, or we say that imaginary things do exist in a sense, and we can know that other things exist in the same sense.
Of course theory is wonderful but in practice I'm not stuck on the "cogito ergo sum" step of the consciousness bootstrap.
Right.
I'll just have to continue to rely on my existence and my cobbled-together series of beliefs.
Rather than try to root out the contradictions and eliminate them? That seems like a really lazy epistemology.
My point is that since there is only one solid, base postulate it's kind of silly to make fun of other people's beliefs. Each of us has a plethora of postulates that are ridiculous and can be mocked.
Go for it. Which of mine is ridiculous? In what way is it ridiculous?
And postulates can be contradictory as well. I think it's fair to mock people for a belief which is contradictory to everything else they believe, and contradictory to their own repeated observations.
Does the pot tell the potter that he doesn't exist? That the pot spontaneously sprang into existence and is an awesome bit of pottery all by himself?
This would be a relevant analogy if...
...the "potter" were there for the "pot" to tell.
...I had ever claimed I spontaneously sprang into existence.
...I had ever claimed I was awesome.
...I had ever claimed it was all by myself.
As it is, I don't really have much to say to imaginary characters. If God actually shows up, I'll have more interesting things to discuss than whether or not he exists. Pots can't evolve, while living things can. I didn't "spontaneously" spring into existence -- I came from my parents.
I would argue that the school, and the earth where it sits, and the teachers, and the people who taught the teachers back to the beginning, and the laws of physics that govern everything from the science you study to the curing process in the concrete used in the school's foundation come from God.
First of all, what do you mean? Are you only talking about the origin of things? In that case, why would you thank God and not some intermediary step? No one ever says, "Thank Ben Franklin I'm here today!"
Second, how do you know that? I can actually track down the people who are responsible for making me who I am today, and I can personally thank them (the ones who are still alive).
Finally, why do you only say this when there's a "miracle"? Suppose you had a friend who was an artist. If they showed you a masterpiece, you wouldn't say, "Thank God for the pattern the oil paints happened to land in on the canvas," or "Thank God you have the talents you do." No, you'd compliment them on their work.
But without God, it's all for nothing.
That's depressing.
Hell is full of doctors and scholars,
And what did they do to deserve eternal torture?
Human pride.
Pride?
Look up at the night sky.
What you are seeing is only a tiny fraction of what we know is there. Many of the faint points of light you see are stars, hundreds of thousands of times bigger than the Earth, burning in a nuclear inferno that makes Hiroshima look like a mere spark. But many of them are galaxies.
We know of well over a hundred billion galaxies, each of which has hundreds of billions of stars.
Most of the Universe is empty. Most of the places which aren't empty, we would die instantly. Our own sun is nothing special, just one of four hundred billion in this galaxy alone. Its place is nowhere central, nowhere that looks like it was chosen with anything approaching care -- and that's within our galaxy, itself one of over a hundred billion that we know of.
This universe existed for billions of years before us, and it will be here for an eternity after us.
Even in this solar system, we're a tiny speck of a planet orbiting a star tens, if not hundreds of thousands of times bigger and on fire. There are other planets here, and nothing particularly special about ours except life. But even in this solar system, life isn't exactly common.
And on this planet, you're one of billions of humans, but there are millions of other species on this planet that we know of.
And...
The bible, the holy spirit, and prayer.
And you believe that all of this was created for humans. That the creator of the Universe even notices or cares about humanity, let alone that he cares about your sex life. That the voice of the "holy spirit" you hear in your head is the creator of a hundred billion swirling vortexes of hundreds of billions of suns.
And you want to lecture me about pride.
That aside, all three of those are pretty useless ways of knowing things. The Bible is
Atheism is not based on evidence or reason; it's based on belief. Agnosticism is the only rational position.
Atheism is the lack of belief in a God. That's all it is.
There are many definitions of Agnosticism, but it doesn't really make sense as a "middle ground" between atheism and theism, because atheism is simply the logical negation of theism -- an atheist is anyone who is not a theist.
With the definitions I like to use, they're not even mutually exclusive; atheism and theism are about belief, while agnosticism and gnosticism are about knowledge. You're likely an agnostic atheist -- you don't know, but you don't believe. It would be possible to be an agnostic theist -- "I don't know, but neither do you, so I may as well believe."
If I say I'm thinking of a shape, but I won't tell you what it is or answer any questions, the logical choice is just to ignore me.
Oh, I'd love to, but if you're insisting your shape-you-won't-describe be taught in schools (given "equal time" with actual geometry, hoping to replace it someday), if you won't vote for a politician who doesn't claim to be thinking of the same shape, and if there are millions of shape-ists, it's kind of hard to just ignore you.
Atheism is like saying I'm not thinking of a shape
Nope, all it's saying is "I don't know that you're thinking of a shape." Read that carefully. The distinction between that and "I know that you're not thinking of a shape" is profound.
Except that you define the Christian problem as 'actually keeping church and state separate'.
Most prevalent. Of course, if we include Catholics, there's the institutionalized child rape -- I say "institutionalized" because of the Church's reaction.
But what's your point?
All legislation is someone's morality.
That sucks, if that's true. I'd hope it would be based on common ethics, instead. In particular, I really, truly, honestly hope that none of this is based on the Bible.
You would extend to the Atheist the right to legislate based on their morality, but not the same to a Christian?
Not sure what you mean. What morality would the atheist have that the Christian wouldn't?
The point is to legislate based on values which are common to all of us, and to enforce the bare minimum in order to have a society. Freedom of speech is a great example of this -- I don't think the KKK has anything useful to contribute to society, and I don't think there's much they say that isn't completely and disgustingly immoral, but I do think they have a right to say it.
If we move to a world where people can be censored because it's against someone's religion, where religious values are the basis for a government, just looking at the numbers, I'm going to guess Christianity loses and Sharia wins.
But there's the rub. what I accept as truth you do not, and vice versa.
Which is why it's important to have a good way of determining what is and is not the truth -- something unbiased, something we can all employ, so we can actually settle these kinds of debates.
am I entitled to my beliefs?
You have the right to believe whatever you want, and I have the right to call you a moron for doing so. You do not have the right to use government money for any belief you want just because it's popular.
To understand why I have this opinion, replace "Christianity" with "Scientology" and see what happens. Do you think people shouldn't be able to believe in Xenu, the evil Galactic emperor? Certainly, they should be allowed to. Now, should they be able to get public money to build shrines to Xenu? Should they be able to teach schoolchildren in a public school about Xenu? Absolutely not.
If your beliefs are not a core part of your identity, what are they?
A result of how I apprehend the world. I believe most of what I believe as a direct result of the evidence which has been presented to me, and I have little to no choice in the matter short of actual self-delusion. I would very much rather believe I could fly, but I can't simply choose to believe that without actually deluding myself into thinking it's the case.
Note that there are very, very few beliefs which even come close to defining you. For example, do you believe it's cold outside? Whatever you might believe, it's very easy for you to find out the truth. It's also not relevant to who you are -- wouldn't you be the same person if it was burning hot as if it were blistering cold? A nuclear holocaust might change your personality, but would you truly be someone else if the air outside was poisonous and radioactive, or would you just be yourself with a bit more stress?
Now consider the question of God. I don't know about you, but my beliefs about the existence of gods has no bearing on who I am. If I were to find out tomorrow that a god existed, I wouldn't suddenly be a different person. Likewise, as strange as it may seem to you now, most believers I see lose their faith are still the same person -- the largest change is that, sometimes, they develop a much greater appreciation for reason, and a much lower tolerance for bullshit.
Are you assuming that I have not exercised any critical analysis towarts my faith?
Not you specifically. However, most believers I've met have not,
i'm sure the grocers at the store where you purchased the food that enabled you to word "very hard" isn't at all offended that you give them no credit for the actions you are able to make after imploring their services.
"Word" very hard? "imploring" their services? Not even going to try to decipher that. But you did strawman me again...
the grocer didn't provide the food to you, you did, right?
i didn't say irrelevance was necessary OR sufficient for showing ignorant hypocrisy...
Without that, your mention of irrelevance is itself irrelevant, which is pretty hilarious.
i said the question was MORE than irrelevant
But this is what you didn't back up. It looks like what you're saying is that the answer to that question would be "hypocritically ignorant," and it looks like what you meant to say is that it's "hypocritically ignorant" to ask the question.
You still haven't said how it's either.
you really need read the book where you learned to reference God again.
You mean my second grade English book? Maybe you need that one, too...
Dude, I only know you from you post. And don't want to know one bit more.
Sorry you feel that way... Fortunately, most people don't judge me from a single post.
Regardless of how you see yourself, define yourself, or wish others to see you,
How I define myself isn't about how I wish others to see me. Most of the time, I don't care much how others see me. "Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," right?
you are making a very poor impression. By comparison, you've made the religious crowd seem to be the patient, respectful group and atheists to be hateful, arrogant, and insulting.
And how have I done so?
The most insulting thing I said was a direct response to an insulting thing the summary said, exactly tit for tat. Everything else I've said in this discussion has been a response, and I'm not sure any of my responses were hateful, arrogant, insulting, or even impatient.
I realize that merely being no worse than the religious crowd will generally lead to a perception of being much worse. I know I thought Richard Dawkins was an ass when I was still a believer -- "The God Delusion? Who does he think he is?!" But I'm not interested in tiptoeing around to make sure I make a good impression, to be sure never to say something even slightly offensive...
And then still have a few religious people ignore everything I said, and tell me I really do believe, I'm just in denial, and they can tell because I sometimes capitalize God as a proper noun. That's not even uncommon.
People are offended by my very existence, and there is very little I can do about that.
Now, what have people done here?
A few nonreligious people came out of the woodwork to support me. A few criticized me.
A few religious people came out of the woodwork to support me. A few not only criticized me, but actually called me names.
If it were possible to have any sort of objective view about all of this, I don't think I'd come out nearly as badly as you've painted me. It doesn't matter, of course, because everyone will see this with whatever baggage they have, so most people will see me as the villain largely because they are religious. But even if I was interested in making a good impression, I'm not sure why I'd be interested in trying to make an impression on people who have already made up their minds.
Im aware of equality, patriotism, justice, and love being used to justify just about every one of those, however.
And what form does that justification take?
By contrast, religion actually has these things in that holy book.
And Im rather curious that people point to religion as the source of all evils,
I don't. It is, however, a source of evil -- not just religion, but religious thinking. In particular, my claim is that faith is dangerous -- training yourself to believe something without sufficient justification, often something you know isn't true, leads to a state of mind that is entirely too easy to abuse.
for a claimed atheist you sure reference the bible a lot.
Knowing something about the Bible is part of how I know it cannot possibly be true. What is internally inconsistent cannot be true, it's not just a matter of not knowing at that point.
What, you can't deal with the fact that an atheist exists, so you have to delude yourself into thinking I routinely and embarrassingly lie about my beliefs in public just so you don't have to confront your own?
The problem is, even as "periods of unknown lengths," they don't work, because the order is all wrong -- both when you compare it to modern biology, and when you compare the two creation stories in Genesis.
Mostly familiar with Collins, whose reason to believe ultimately came down to seeing three frozen waterfalls, which he took to mean the trinity.
Is it going to be worth my time to look up what the others had to say about religion?
The point isn't whether the theist is intelligent. Certainly, there are and have been many intelligent theists. The point is whether their theism is intelligent.
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Ruby is a terrible language to teach programming, there is so much stuff that needs to be used responsibly.
In what way is it different than any other language?
Basic has GOTO. Java has ==. C and C++ have pointers, pointer arithmetic, memory allocation, etc, on top of goto and similar == problems.
monkey patching and other stuff should not be an option for someone learning programming basics.
Practically, it isn't. Someone learning programming basics likely wouldn't run into monkey patching.
Yes, and that's one of its stronger side. Using whitespace to delimit blocks of code is very natural to someone with no programming background.
...yes and no. Yes, it does help that it visually looks close to what it should...
But a tab is different than a space, and that's going to confuse some newbies.
no, it's specifically hypocritical to ask the specific question asked because any answer is irrelevant because...
Doesn't matter why the answer is irrelevant. Asking an inane question is not, by itself, hypocritical.
You have many points, and I would respond to each one, but for brevity I do want to some I consider more important than others...
I'll try to do the same, but no promises...
If there is a singular example of judging a philosophy by its abuse, this is it. You really don't expect me to defned the Catholic Church's record of dealing with the problems of child abuse by their clergy, do you? Seriously? If that's your example of religion gone bad, it's a good one. If it's your example of Christianity failed, well, you are well off the mark.
Probably, in that it isn't Christianity which told them to do this. For that, the most obvious example is likely the Westboro Baptist Church, or the individual cases of people hearing the Holy Spirit tell them to kill someone.
Well, to expand, legislation is always some expression of someone's intention. And informed by their morality, as all of our actions ultimately are. You seem as if you're assuming 'morality' is always a non-secular thing. It is not.
I'm not, but there is a difference between morality and ethics, and it's hard enough for a society as diverse as ours to agree on ethics, let alone morality.
I may be misusing these terms, so I should be clear: When I say "ethics", I understand this to be a topic which includes ethical systems like Utilitarianism, Divine Command Theory, etc -- basically, ethics is a discussion about what makes something "good" or "bad", "right" or "wrong".
Morality, on the other hand, is more prescriptive -- social mores as the result of ethics.
So, for example, the ethic might tell us that children should be protected. One morality that might come out of this is sex education -- we want children to know what's out there and how to protect themselves. Another morality might be censorship -- we want to prevent children from seeing what's out there. These two moral stances are often opposed, but they have the same basic principle as their base.
I'm a little fuzzy on this distinction, though, so I apologize.
Well, while Atheists would probably have different moral views than Christians (for example), they both do have some sense of morality.
Right.
I don't think there's really much difference between these when it comes to legislation, either -- for instance, an atheist might have a moral view that Catholicism should be banned, but that would also be a church-state issue.
First, if the point is to legislate based on values which are common to all of us, that legislation is doomed to fail, if it is even enacted. We are a diverse society in the U.S. and it is prety much bare majorities that are passing legislation. To ask for even a supermajority is too much.
Not for the truly basic values. For example, the idea that life has some intrinsic value, and that you'd better have a damned good reason to take a life, is nearly universal, and not just in this country.
Many of the disagreements about legislation aren't about the morality of it. They're about how it affects whatever group you care about (usually yourself), and many of them involve fundamental misunderstandings.
For the things we don't necessarily share, such as gay marriage, the pattern is usually an argument between people wanting to impose their morality on others, and people just wanting to do things on their own which don't affect anyone else. I'm not gay, and I'm not going to try (yet) to convince you that there's nothing wrong with homosexuality, or with homosexual married couples. What I don't see is why they shouldn't be allowed to marry.
Second, to 'enforce the bare minimum' is laudable, and used to be a goal of the Conservative movement. We are well past that, sadly. I wish we could have a minimal government, but the Liberal, Progressive, or Leftist movement in the U.S. seems determined to greatly expand government beyond the
Or Ruby, where you don't have to worry about indentation, and where Hello World is a one-liner.
And GOTO is bad enough that I do NOT want that to be people's introduction to programming. Try this instead:
loop { puts 'Hello' }
Same thing, less goto.
It's spelled "QED, bitches!"
I think Ruby fits that bill better than BASIC. Starts out without needing the baggage, but when you're ready for structured programming and objects, it's all right there.
And you avoid learning GOTO. I don't care how easy it makes initial learning, it's building bad habits that you're going to spend years killing.
considering this thread is in it's entirety about your ignorance towards your beliefs
Nope. This particular thread was about your claim that it's "hypocritical" to ask any question where the answer is irrelevant.
Yet you seem to be trying to change the subject to an argument you already gave up.
I dont quite understand what youre asking, if that doesnt answer it-- the "form the justification takes" is love, patriotism, etc.
I'm asking for the process. For instance:
Love has been used countless times in history to justify a jealous killing.
That's not love, that's jealousy. Using love to justify that is a non-sequitur, anyway -- chances are, the one you love isn't going to appreciate the jealous killing.
By contrast, it's trivial to justify an atrocity directly from a religious text.
Well, as the first section of the book is basically "the history of Israel", and considering that those things happened historically, its not surprising to see mentions of them.
It's not just the mentions of them, it's the justification. It's where God actually commands mass genocide -- and where people who read it today are forced to make the most strained excuses for God.
In this very thread you will note several athiests doing just that-- claiming that there is no proof that the NT was written in the first century (there is), implying that "young earth creationist" is a subset of "baptist" (its not), assuming that, because the inquisition claimed the name of christ it must therefore be in line with christian belief (its not), etc.
I don't agree with everything every atheist does, but let's take these one at a time:
First, I don't think I claimed that there's no proof the New Testament was written in the first century, but I am curious what form that proof takes.
Second, that's an implication, not a statement, and there is a not-insignificant subset of Baptists (or at least, people who call themselves Baptists) who are also young-earth Creationists.
And the inquisition? It may not be in line with what Christians believe today, but it certainly is in line with what the Bible teaches. The Law of Moses says that if your family starts tempting you with other gods, you are to stone them all. Jesus says nothing against the old law, and when asked, says "Not one stroke of a letter will disappear from the Law..."
I'm sure modern Christians have a different interpretation of the Bible.
I am bothered when an athiest calls me dense
Haven't done that.
not based in logic,
Didn't do that either. I haven't seen a theology that's based in logic, but for all I know, you might be a perfectly logical person in all other aspects of your life (common), or maybe you even have a logical basis for your belief (never heard one).
launches into logical fallacy, ungrounded theories, and personal opinion,
Have I done this? Show me where.
That's not just a challenge -- I would much rather be proven wrong than forever be wrong. If I've made a fallacy, I'd like to know about it.
It is all the more distressing when there is apparently no understanding that a good deal of the things that supposedly "prove" the absence of God
Never claimed this, either. Atheism means I don't know that there is a God. I don't claim that I know there is not.
I enjoy discussion, but all too often these dissolve into a mess of rantings and demonizing, trying to pin all of the worlds evils on religion of all things.
That's the closest to what I did, and I didn't try to pin all of the world's evils on religion.
examine your own arguments in the same light and by the same metric with which you would judge ours
I did that, and that is why I am an atheist in the first place. I found myself making more and more convoluted excuses, and my beliefs were starting to sound absurd, even to me.
if you don't have existence then there's nothing about you to make the statement.
Well, again, it depends what you mean by "exists".
Suppose I write a program which says "cogito ergo sum." Perhaps it's even complex enough to believe it exists. Does it?
Now, suppose instead of a program, it's an imaginary friend. Certainly we'd be willing to say that they don't exist, except in the sense that someone, somewhere, is thinking of them...
But if we're willing to say that thoughts exist, then I can say, with some amount of certainty, that the world exists, at least in the sense that I am thinking about it. So either we say that imaginary things do not exist, in which case it's impossible to know I'm not a figment of someone's imagination, or we say that imaginary things do exist in a sense, and we can know that other things exist in the same sense.
Of course theory is wonderful but in practice I'm not stuck on the "cogito ergo sum" step of the consciousness bootstrap.
Right.
I'll just have to continue to rely on my existence and my cobbled-together series of beliefs.
Rather than try to root out the contradictions and eliminate them? That seems like a really lazy epistemology.
My point is that since there is only one solid, base postulate it's kind of silly to make fun of other people's beliefs. Each of us has a plethora of postulates that are ridiculous and can be mocked.
Go for it. Which of mine is ridiculous? In what way is it ridiculous?
And postulates can be contradictory as well. I think it's fair to mock people for a belief which is contradictory to everything else they believe, and contradictory to their own repeated observations.
Then demonstrate it.
All of them. And yours too.
Where's your evidence?
Does the pot tell the potter that he doesn't exist? That the pot spontaneously sprang into existence and is an awesome bit of pottery all by himself?
This would be a relevant analogy if...
As it is, I don't really have much to say to imaginary characters. If God actually shows up, I'll have more interesting things to discuss than whether or not he exists. Pots can't evolve, while living things can. I didn't "spontaneously" spring into existence -- I came from my parents.
I would argue that the school, and the earth where it sits, and the teachers, and the people who taught the teachers back to the beginning, and the laws of physics that govern everything from the science you study to the curing process in the concrete used in the school's foundation come from God.
First of all, what do you mean? Are you only talking about the origin of things? In that case, why would you thank God and not some intermediary step? No one ever says, "Thank Ben Franklin I'm here today!"
Second, how do you know that? I can actually track down the people who are responsible for making me who I am today, and I can personally thank them (the ones who are still alive).
Finally, why do you only say this when there's a "miracle"? Suppose you had a friend who was an artist. If they showed you a masterpiece, you wouldn't say, "Thank God for the pattern the oil paints happened to land in on the canvas," or "Thank God you have the talents you do." No, you'd compliment them on their work.
But without God, it's all for nothing.
That's depressing.
Hell is full of doctors and scholars,
And what did they do to deserve eternal torture?
Human pride.
Pride?
Look up at the night sky.
What you are seeing is only a tiny fraction of what we know is there. Many of the faint points of light you see are stars, hundreds of thousands of times bigger than the Earth, burning in a nuclear inferno that makes Hiroshima look like a mere spark. But many of them are galaxies.
We know of well over a hundred billion galaxies, each of which has hundreds of billions of stars.
Most of the Universe is empty. Most of the places which aren't empty, we would die instantly. Our own sun is nothing special, just one of four hundred billion in this galaxy alone. Its place is nowhere central, nowhere that looks like it was chosen with anything approaching care -- and that's within our galaxy, itself one of over a hundred billion that we know of.
This universe existed for billions of years before us, and it will be here for an eternity after us.
Even in this solar system, we're a tiny speck of a planet orbiting a star tens, if not hundreds of thousands of times bigger and on fire. There are other planets here, and nothing particularly special about ours except life. But even in this solar system, life isn't exactly common.
And on this planet, you're one of billions of humans, but there are millions of other species on this planet that we know of.
And...
The bible, the holy spirit, and prayer.
And you believe that all of this was created for humans. That the creator of the Universe even notices or cares about humanity, let alone that he cares about your sex life. That the voice of the "holy spirit" you hear in your head is the creator of a hundred billion swirling vortexes of hundreds of billions of suns.
And you want to lecture me about pride.
That aside, all three of those are pretty useless ways of knowing things. The Bible is
it is quite hypocritical to preach the name of God while labeling one's self as simply "an atheist".
Neither of which I have done, and neither of which is relevant to this thread.
Atheism is not based on evidence or reason; it's based on belief. Agnosticism is the only rational position.
Atheism is the lack of belief in a God. That's all it is.
There are many definitions of Agnosticism, but it doesn't really make sense as a "middle ground" between atheism and theism, because atheism is simply the logical negation of theism -- an atheist is anyone who is not a theist.
With the definitions I like to use, they're not even mutually exclusive; atheism and theism are about belief, while agnosticism and gnosticism are about knowledge. You're likely an agnostic atheist -- you don't know, but you don't believe. It would be possible to be an agnostic theist -- "I don't know, but neither do you, so I may as well believe."
If I say I'm thinking of a shape, but I won't tell you what it is or answer any questions, the logical choice is just to ignore me.
Oh, I'd love to, but if you're insisting your shape-you-won't-describe be taught in schools (given "equal time" with actual geometry, hoping to replace it someday), if you won't vote for a politician who doesn't claim to be thinking of the same shape, and if there are millions of shape-ists, it's kind of hard to just ignore you.
Atheism is like saying I'm not thinking of a shape
Nope, all it's saying is "I don't know that you're thinking of a shape." Read that carefully. The distinction between that and "I know that you're not thinking of a shape" is profound.
Except that you define the Christian problem as 'actually keeping church and state separate'.
Most prevalent. Of course, if we include Catholics, there's the institutionalized child rape -- I say "institutionalized" because of the Church's reaction.
But what's your point?
All legislation is someone's morality.
That sucks, if that's true. I'd hope it would be based on common ethics, instead. In particular, I really, truly, honestly hope that none of this is based on the Bible.
You would extend to the Atheist the right to legislate based on their morality, but not the same to a Christian?
Not sure what you mean. What morality would the atheist have that the Christian wouldn't?
The point is to legislate based on values which are common to all of us, and to enforce the bare minimum in order to have a society. Freedom of speech is a great example of this -- I don't think the KKK has anything useful to contribute to society, and I don't think there's much they say that isn't completely and disgustingly immoral, but I do think they have a right to say it.
If we move to a world where people can be censored because it's against someone's religion, where religious values are the basis for a government, just looking at the numbers, I'm going to guess Christianity loses and Sharia wins.
But there's the rub. what I accept as truth you do not, and vice versa.
Which is why it's important to have a good way of determining what is and is not the truth -- something unbiased, something we can all employ, so we can actually settle these kinds of debates.
am I entitled to my beliefs?
You have the right to believe whatever you want, and I have the right to call you a moron for doing so. You do not have the right to use government money for any belief you want just because it's popular.
To understand why I have this opinion, replace "Christianity" with "Scientology" and see what happens. Do you think people shouldn't be able to believe in Xenu, the evil Galactic emperor? Certainly, they should be allowed to. Now, should they be able to get public money to build shrines to Xenu? Should they be able to teach schoolchildren in a public school about Xenu? Absolutely not.
If your beliefs are not a core part of your identity, what are they?
A result of how I apprehend the world. I believe most of what I believe as a direct result of the evidence which has been presented to me, and I have little to no choice in the matter short of actual self-delusion. I would very much rather believe I could fly, but I can't simply choose to believe that without actually deluding myself into thinking it's the case.
Note that there are very, very few beliefs which even come close to defining you. For example, do you believe it's cold outside? Whatever you might believe, it's very easy for you to find out the truth. It's also not relevant to who you are -- wouldn't you be the same person if it was burning hot as if it were blistering cold? A nuclear holocaust might change your personality, but would you truly be someone else if the air outside was poisonous and radioactive, or would you just be yourself with a bit more stress?
Now consider the question of God. I don't know about you, but my beliefs about the existence of gods has no bearing on who I am. If I were to find out tomorrow that a god existed, I wouldn't suddenly be a different person. Likewise, as strange as it may seem to you now, most believers I see lose their faith are still the same person -- the largest change is that, sometimes, they develop a much greater appreciation for reason, and a much lower tolerance for bullshit.
Are you assuming that I have not exercised any critical analysis towarts my faith?
Not you specifically. However, most believers I've met have not,
i'm sure the grocers at the store where you purchased the food that enabled you to word "very hard" isn't at all offended that you give them no credit for the actions you are able to make after imploring their services.
"Word" very hard? "imploring" their services? Not even going to try to decipher that. But you did strawman me again...
the grocer didn't provide the food to you, you did, right?
Let's see... when did I ever claim that?
Nope, I was building a syllogism, which is phrased as an if-then statement.
it's hypocritical to ask a question where any answer is obviously irrelevant.
Nope. That's not what hypocrisy means, not that I expected you to know by now.
i didn't say irrelevance was necessary OR sufficient for showing ignorant hypocrisy...
Without that, your mention of irrelevance is itself irrelevant, which is pretty hilarious.
i said the question was MORE than irrelevant
But this is what you didn't back up. It looks like what you're saying is that the answer to that question would be "hypocritically ignorant," and it looks like what you meant to say is that it's "hypocritically ignorant" to ask the question.
You still haven't said how it's either.
you really need read the book where you learned to reference God again.
You mean my second grade English book? Maybe you need that one, too...
Dude, I only know you from you post. And don't want to know one bit more.
Sorry you feel that way... Fortunately, most people don't judge me from a single post.
Regardless of how you see yourself, define yourself, or wish others to see you,
How I define myself isn't about how I wish others to see me. Most of the time, I don't care much how others see me. "Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," right?
you are making a very poor impression. By comparison, you've made the religious crowd seem to be the patient, respectful group and atheists to be hateful, arrogant, and insulting.
And how have I done so?
The most insulting thing I said was a direct response to an insulting thing the summary said, exactly tit for tat. Everything else I've said in this discussion has been a response, and I'm not sure any of my responses were hateful, arrogant, insulting, or even impatient.
I realize that merely being no worse than the religious crowd will generally lead to a perception of being much worse. I know I thought Richard Dawkins was an ass when I was still a believer -- "The God Delusion? Who does he think he is?!" But I'm not interested in tiptoeing around to make sure I make a good impression, to be sure never to say something even slightly offensive...
And then still have a few religious people ignore everything I said, and tell me I really do believe, I'm just in denial, and they can tell because I sometimes capitalize God as a proper noun. That's not even uncommon.
People are offended by my very existence, and there is very little I can do about that.
Now, what have people done here?
A few nonreligious people came out of the woodwork to support me. A few criticized me.
A few religious people came out of the woodwork to support me. A few not only criticized me, but actually called me names.
If it were possible to have any sort of objective view about all of this, I don't think I'd come out nearly as badly as you've painted me. It doesn't matter, of course, because everyone will see this with whatever baggage they have, so most people will see me as the villain largely because they are religious. But even if I was interested in making a good impression, I'm not sure why I'd be interested in trying to make an impression on people who have already made up their minds.
Im aware of equality, patriotism, justice, and love being used to justify just about every one of those, however.
And what form does that justification take?
By contrast, religion actually has these things in that holy book.
And Im rather curious that people point to religion as the source of all evils,
I don't. It is, however, a source of evil -- not just religion, but religious thinking. In particular, my claim is that faith is dangerous -- training yourself to believe something without sufficient justification, often something you know isn't true, leads to a state of mind that is entirely too easy to abuse.
for a claimed atheist you sure reference the bible a lot.
Knowing something about the Bible is part of how I know it cannot possibly be true. What is internally inconsistent cannot be true, it's not just a matter of not knowing at that point.
What, you can't deal with the fact that an atheist exists, so you have to delude yourself into thinking I routinely and embarrassingly lie about my beliefs in public just so you don't have to confront your own?
You did bring it up out of nowhere - how many people around here even RTFA, and you manage to quote the one line about zealotry.
Overreacted? Maybe. But it wasn't out of nowhere, and the response was almost a parody of what the summary said.
The problem is, even as "periods of unknown lengths," they don't work, because the order is all wrong -- both when you compare it to modern biology, and when you compare the two creation stories in Genesis.
Mostly familiar with Collins, whose reason to believe ultimately came down to seeing three frozen waterfalls, which he took to mean the trinity.
Is it going to be worth my time to look up what the others had to say about religion?
The point isn't whether the theist is intelligent. Certainly, there are and have been many intelligent theists. The point is whether their theism is intelligent.