(February 15, 2013 at 2:08 pm)Zone Wrote:(February 15, 2013 at 1:50 pm)Brian37 Wrote: No, there is a difference between not knowing something and assuming just to assume because it sounds nice.
Not everything from the supernatural realm, if it exists for real, seems to be necessarily nice though. And of course you could always end up in some kind of hell which isn't very nice at all. I don't see why this "other realm" can't exist seeing apparently some weird shit has always been experienced by some people somewhere in the world. And of course we quite know why the universe exists or exactly what happens when you die, so there's plenty of scope there for some actual other worldly or extra dimensional shit. Whether any religion has got it all nailed down I'm much less sure, and there are many of them all saying completely things.
(February 15, 2013 at 1:50 pm)Brian37 Wrote: Lots of things we might wish to be true does not mean we assume.
I don't think religious people are wishing God to be real any more than atheists wish he isn't, they just think he is.
(February 15, 2013 at 1:50 pm)Brian37 Wrote: Secondly, agnostic is not a stand alone word. It can go in front of atheist. I am an agnostic atheist.
I'm an agnostic agnostic then, there could well be a God or something like that, there are some cracking good arguments on that side of the fence I'm sitting on.
(February 15, 2013 at 1:50 pm)Brian37 Wrote: I am a flat out atheist in regards to past and current claims. Nothing presented so far is credible.
The concept of God seems credible to me, miracles slightly less so but it depends whether there is an actual supernatural interactive realm or not. There could be but I wouldn't know. I can't say I've seen a ghost or anything like that, even if I did I wouldn't be sure what I was seeing. But sure some people do experience some stuff, human experience isn't necessarily uniform.
"The God Delusion" Richard Dawkins
"The New Atheism" Victor Stenger
"Why people believe weird things" Micheal Shermer
Those explain best why it is really just "all in your head" when it comes to claims of supernatural, superstition, and woo in general.
"God" cannot be defined uniformly much less scientifically.
Now between these following choices which do you think seems more likely.
1. A generic god or a specific god is real?
Or
2. Humans are capable of making up and believing in things that are false?
Dawkins discribes this flaw in evolution in "The God Delusion" as this being akin to a moth mistaking a light bulb for moonlight.
In humans it is simply a mental placebo. We are mistaking our evolutionary drive to continue(the moonlight) for a superstition in the wishful thinking of eternity(the non existent light bulb in our head).
Our perceptions are notoriously flawed and God as a claim as a concept, is nothing more than human anthropomorphism, it is a reflection of our ignorance in the refusal to face our finite existence. It can be of true ignorance we do this(not having the knowledge), or willful ignorance(IE, still insisting on Santa being real when you grown, still insisting on it even with the knowledge to the contrary).
