Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?

[robvalue]

Thanks very much for sharing all your thoughts with us Emjay

I agree, "calling out bullshit" at every opportunity is probably an excellent approach for you to take. I have similar problems with other kinds of irrational thoughts which slither into my mind and build themselves up. If I don't address and smash them as soon as they get there, they feed on my anxiety and grow in stature. I then develop a mental block about them, which remains until I take some sort of action to demonstrate to myself the thoughts aren't true. Taking the action "is easy" in theory, but the mental block makes me scared to take it.

Maybe a bit of literally mocking "God" and "Jesus" is in order, telling them to fuck off out loud. Tell them they're a load of made up nonsense. Really lay into them, and observe absolutely nothing happening in response, contrary to what the bible "teaches" us. God went around incinerating people for such crimes. I've found vocalizing my problems to myself like this can really help, it breaks the internal feedback loop inside my head.

Regarding hell, how about this:

"Oh you're a real big man, God. You're apparently so powerful and wonderful, yet you're so fucking insecure about people liking you that you have to go around threatening your own creation with torture! Pick on someone your own size, you overgrown toddler. Why don't you come down here and face me, huh? You fucking coward! Pathetic! That's what I thought. You have no power at all. You just have brainwashed people doing your bidding."

[emjay]

Well it's been about eighteen years since it clicked 'there is no god', but in the time since, my confidence in atheism has grown mainly by learning and developing other much more plausible ideas about reality from science, psychology, neuroscience etc, rather than debunking Christianity. That's where I've gone wrong I think. To put it the terms of contexts, an unrelated (to Christianity) context of science/physchology/neuroscience has taken the forefront in my mind but the old Christianity context was never truly addressed, and thus never allowed to die. In my opinion only (I have no wish to misrepresent his intentions in any way... it's me that's thinking in terms of contexts, not him... I'm just saying how imo his behaviour would fit in practically with this model but not that that is his intention) it seems that Min addresses it all the time, leaving its tendrils no opportunity to get a foothold and top up the context, and it sounds like you've done the same thing but in a different way, by reading and getting involved in presumably debunking Christianity (as opposed to learning more about unrelated subjects)? I think you guys are on the right track... you can't expect to let something go unless you debunk it and cease to feed it. I don't mean I've deliberately fed it at any point, but by not challenging/dismissing every single thought about it that comes up, I essentially give it implicit authorisation to carry on doing what it's doing, which is maintaining and bootstrapping the context. That was my mistake... so now I think I'm gonna take the minimalist approach maybe not out loud but definitely in my head... any time a Christian thought comes up I've gotta say 'that's bullshit' or otherwise dismiss it

I think a good dose of the Socratic method as you find in Plato's dialogues is helpful for de-programming from dogmatism. It really helped me to read the Classics, a variety of Greek and Roman authors, and even those more ancient works like The Epic of Gilgamesh, to put into context the sensationalized triviality of the New Testament, i.e. the recycled themes and ideas that the earliest Christians borrowed from preceding traditions -- which were often articulated far more coherently, and (in my view) aesthetically more "divine," so to speak -- and then packaged specifically for the most gullible of the masses; which, by the way, is *still* observed to be what pretty much every moderately successful religion does. All you can do is be honest with yourself. You don't choose to believe what you in fact believe. Remain open-minded and at the end of day, you'll continue to forge your own beliefs, exactly as human beings were designed to do.

Though I will of course take on board your reading recommendations as interesting and helpful reads, that's not exactly what I meant (well it might have been what I thought I meant but now I realise it's not). What I mean really is that I shouldn't have to jump through hoops and become an expert in ancient history, philosophy, or any other subject to debunk something that shouldn't have been there in the first place... something that was put there without evidence and without my informed consent... ie indoctrinated. I don't need to jump through those hoops to 'debunk' any other religion and I shouldn't need to do it for this. I guess what I'm saying is that that which was acquired without evidence should leave without evidence, as a matter of principle and a stand against indoctrination if nothing else. Anything that is a belief not on its own merits but simply by virtue of being implanted by the back door, shouldn't have the right to require debunking. So what I'm now thinking is not to try and debunk it, which gives it more attention than it deserves, but instead to starve it of attention and let the context die out that way. And by starve it of attention I mean what I said before... mindfully dismiss/divert all related thoughts when they occur... so almost the same as before with the minimalist approach, but instead of 'that's bullshit' - which is a kind of debunking because it's a statement about the falseness of something - a better response would just be 'fuck off' as in 'fuck off unwanted thought' ...without giving it the extra attention of making a judgement about it. The fuck off is not necessary but just an optional extra I do have proof of concept with this because I have already used this method to defeat and deactivate unwanted thoughts/contexts before.... I just hadn't really thought of Christian indoctrination in this light before, as something that could and should be subjected to it, but I don't see why not... it's a context like any other. Anyway, in practice what it means is that even if a thought has an emotional pull - such as ideas about hell - it must still be mindfully dismissed. And over time that pull diminishes until a point comes where it's almost a joy to dismiss it and no effort is required at all. The frequency and number of related thoughts diminishes because doing this deprives it of all its triggers as and when they come up, and eventually the context dies out.... those pockets of 'core', self-supporting activation die out as well because of something called 'neuron fatigue'... neurons can't fire indefinitely because if they could it would indeed end up with loads of infinite feedback loops in the brain, which would waste a lot of energy if nothing else... so thanks evolution for neuron fatigue and just a little bit of speculation/hope here, since neurons are constantly 'learning'... not just how to better detect what they do detect (through synaptic weight changes... a function of their activity alone), but also what they detect ... they may come to represent something else, so they could actually be put to a useful purpose rather than storing the neuronal and general waste of space that is religion

Anyway, thank you for the reading recommendations I am interested in reading them, but just not in service to this goal... just in their own right

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Yeah, I'd agree with what you say above Rob... it feels good to trivialise it etc, but I would say that some things can't really be debunked definitively... if they could all the Christians on this site would have buggered off by now and in any case, contexts can be pure fantasy - such as a book - but still be coherent. The Flying Spaghetti Monster for instance is a coherent context in that sense, but once posited impossible to disprove. But this blanket, starve-it-of-attention mindful approach doesn't concern itself with debunking anything. You just make a decision to do it for your own good... and that can be the hardest part... and then all it is is a reliable, long-term method of shutting down a neuronal context. By being a blanket method it takes the arbitrariness out of it... you just do it for every related thought, big or small, because big or small it is a trigger and potential maintainer/bootstrapper of the context.

[bennyboy]

Yes.  All experiences, and nothing provably more than that.  Absolutely.  All that goes with a discovery-- hearing people talk about it, writing numbers on a paper, looking things up on the internet, 100% of it-- it's all experience.  Inferences beyond that may be judged on their pragmatic value, but it must be understand that theories of material are really theories of experience.

While I do not necessarily disagree, does not the "pragmatic" assumption of objectivity allow that impersonal descriptions of the world may be given, and adjudged to be objectively true or false, regardless of any single individual's experience?  Would you consider these to be "theories of experience," though said individual experience need not be included in the description?

Absolutely, they are theories of experience. When I throw two billiard balls together on a table, I experience the feel of my hands on them, their sound, and the sight of their movement in various directions. What I really want to study is why things, whatever-they-really-are-or-aren't, act the whey they do in my experience. Whether the billiard balls are things in a mono-materialism, or composite ideas in the Mind of God, or simulations in the Matrix, doesn't matter. I have my remembered experiences, including those of being informed about things in school, and my newly-perceived experiences, including either the process of doing an experiment or the process of googling a video about it and watching it on Youtube, and I want to see how they are connected.

Whether people are or aren't real outside my experience of them, I can still consider what they say. If they describe a mathematical relationship, say the formula for gravity, I can attempt to validate that relationship. If they say there's a Sky Daddy, then I can attempt to validate that, too. In either case, I am seeing if a proposed relationship (possibly proposed by figments of my imagination, but I don't care) holds true in my experience.

[Mudhammam]

Absolutely, they are theories of experience.  When I throw two billiard balls together on a table, I experience the feel of my hands on them, their sound, and the sight of their movement in various directions.  What I really want to study is why things, whatever-they-really-are-or-aren't, act the whey they do in my experience.  Whether the billiard balls are things in a mono-materialism, or composite ideas in the Mind of God, or simulations in the Matrix, doesn't matter.  I have my remembered experiences, including those of being informed about things in school, and my newly-perceived experiences, including either the process of doing an experiment or the process of googling a video about it and watching it on Youtube, and I want to see how they are connected.

Whether people are or aren't real outside my experience of them, I can still consider what they say.  If they describe a mathematical relationship, say the formula for gravity, I can attempt to validate that relationship.  If they say there's a Sky Daddy, then I can attempt to validate that, too.  In either case, I am seeing if a proposed relationship (possibly proposed by figments of my imagination, but I don't care) holds true in my experience.

Yeah, I see your point and I like how you put that. Do you think that the methods humans have developed or are capable of discovering are able to handle the sorts of questions in which you are interested, or is it perhaps a fundamental reality of experiencers, or of reality, that the further you travel along a path, the more the background recedes into the distance? Or do you think it is entirely possible that you are merely asking an empty question, something that doesn't have a true or false answer apart from the kinds of descriptions that we might now be inclined to give? (ex. of an empty question: asking if a club that dissolves and is later re-formed by the same number of regular members, if it is the same club or only one that is exactly similar to it?)

[bennyboy]

Metaphysical questions are always empty in that sense: if the question is well defined, you probably won't be able to find the answer; and if you leave the question vaguely defined, your answers are more likely to be determined by your chosen semantics than by what is real or true. Is there a "Sky Daddy"? No way, that's an incoherent idea. Is there "some kind of entity or philosophical quantity which is responsible for the existence of the universe?" Almost for sure yes, but it's up to you whether you'd call it God.

What if I define "mind" as the "ability to process information from one's environment?" Is there evidence for mind? Absolutely, but it's arbitrary whether one is willing to call that mind. So if I ask you, "Show me evidence that Susan has a mind," and you point to her brain activity, what does this mean? Is it evidence or isn't it? It is evidence only if we've already accepted it as fact that certain brain activity is evidence of mind-- i.e. it begs the question.

Not sure if I answered you or not. The short version is that reality itself may be dependent on our stance on it, much as the nature of a photon is dependent on how we interact with it-- it is in fact both / neither / one of a particle and a wave, and the truth "resolves" in response to our semantics and our chosen method of interaction.

"Evidence," then, is a very slippery thing, and whether X is evidence for Y may depend more on how you choose to define terms than on some objective reality underlying them.

[Mudhammam]

Metaphysical questions are always empty in that sense: if the question is well defined, you probably won't be able to find the answer; and if you leave the question vaguely defined, your answers are more likely to be determined by your chosen semantics than by what is real or true.  Is there a "Sky Daddy"?  No way, that's an incoherent idea.  Is there "some kind of entity or philosophical quantity which is responsible for the existence of the universe?"  Almost for sure yes, but it's up to you whether you'd call it God.

What if I define "mind" as the "ability to process information from one's environment?"  Is there evidence for mind?  Absolutely, but it's arbitrary whether one is willing to call that mind.  So if I ask you, "Show me evidence that Susan has a mind," and you point to her brain activity, what does this mean?  Is it evidence or isn't it?  It is evidence only if we've already accepted it as fact that certain brain activity is evidence of mind-- i.e. it begs the question.

Not sure if I answered you or not.  The short version is that reality itself may be dependent on our stance on it, much as the nature of a photon is dependent on how we interact with it-- it is in fact both / neither / one of a particle and a wave, and the truth "resolves" in response to our semantics and our chosen method of interaction.

"Evidence," then, is a very slippery thing, and whether X is evidence for Y may depend more on how you choose to define terms than on some objective reality underlying them.

I think I agree, though perhaps I would add: there are better or worse descriptions, and some questions might in principle have no "answer," nor demand one.

This possibly, as you said, begs a further question, which is whether or not any description can be objectively better or worse, or if that is a fundamentally subjective determination. But given that I think such a route probably tends towards self-defeating conclusions, or at the very least, extremely awkward ones, I would be inclined to defend the objectivity of rational value judgments.

[Chas]

No, I would not.  Any claim about the nature of a thing is meaningless without evidence of the existence of that thing.

Is your claim outside of the domain of these "things"?  Because your claim, that I should only accept its truth after conceding the validity of the evidence provided about the meaningfulness of its nature -- apparently (though paradoxically?) involving the property that it is a properly basic belief and does not require such evidence -- seemed to be conveniently lacking said evidence.

I have made no claim other than requiring evidence, your word salad notwithstanding.

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This possibly, as you said, begs a further question, which is whether or not any description can be objectively better or worse, or if that is a fundamentally subjective determination.  But given that I think such a route probably tends towards self-defeating conclusions, or at the very least, extremely awkward ones, I would be inclined to defend the objectivity of rational value judgments.

Value judgments are subjective by definition.

[bennyboy]

I think I agree, though perhaps I would add: there are better or worse descriptions, and some questions might in principle have no "answer," nor demand one.

This possibly, as you said, begs a further question, which is whether or not any description can be objectively better or worse, or if that is a fundamentally subjective determination.  But given that I think such a route probably tends towards self-defeating conclusions, or at the very least, extremely awkward ones, I would be inclined to defend the objectivity of rational value judgments.

The trick, at least to me, is to understand that absolute reality and reality-in-context don't have to be the same thing. In the context of mundane life, I can say that there's really and truly a book on my desk. I know that if anyone else comes into my room, they will agree with me that there is in fact a book on my desk. However, in a more universal context, I cannot be sure that the book, the person, and maybe even I, exist objectively. It is the given that things are real that establishes the context for truth and objectivity.

The problem is that metaphysical positions SET the context by which other truths are determined, so when we attempt to establish the truth of a metaphysical position, the truth statement will be either self-dependent, or automatically-defeated, or complete nonsense.

[robvalue]

Also, what we mean by "the book" is very much a macroscopic approximation. The intrinsic and inherent nature of the essence of "the book" is co-dependent on the stellar frequency resistance relationship between what we formally categories as an abstract effigy and the Newtonian microscopic entity which, quantum subplotting notwithstanding, form a bijection betwixt the Euclidian space as quantifiable by Q-theory, and the hollow gamma-pod knowable only by the extrapolation of the internal quad-field into tri-binary space.

[bennyboy]

Also, what we mean by "the book" is very much a macroscopic approximation. The intrinsic and inherent nature of the essence of "the book" is co-dependent on the stellar frequency resistance relationship between what we formally categories as an abstract effigy and the Newtonian microscopic entity which, quantum subplotting notwithstanding, form a bijection betwixt the Euclidian space as quantifiable by Q-theory, and the hollow gamma-pod knowable only by the extrapolation of the internal quad-field into tri-binary space.

LOL you are talking funny. Geometric crayon drawings, or it never happened!