At work.

(April 18, 2020 at 8:51 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(April 18, 2020 at 8:00 am)Peebo-Thuhlu Wrote: Uhm.... just a few points/questions.

Always willing to discuss these things! This is fun for me.

Quote:I have mental constructs (A 'Belief' if you will.) of a myriad of things. 

When I type the word 'Dragon', then any ond reading said word will have a concept which maps pretty much to the same (Or similar) idea, or concept  or belief of a hexapedal  scaled and flying creature.  (Flames optional).

Are 'Dragons' real? Does the term correspond to something 'Other' in the reality around us?

This is something that has been worked on a lot. 

Way back when, philosophers started wondering about how it is that the stuff "out there" could appear as pictures to us in our brains. Very roughly, they decided that there are two faculties at work. The first was often called "imagination," which had a meaning different from the modern one. It was the faculty that presented us with images of what's "out there." (Kant used the term "imagination" in this way.) The second was "fantasy," which they said was an activity in the mind recombining elements of things that we have taken in through the imagination. 

So when Aquinas said that there's nothing in the mind that isn't first in the senses, he didn't mean that to imagine a dragon you first have to see one. He was aware that we can make up stuff out of elements of things that we have sensed. 

Dragons can be imagined, but are not real. 

Quote:So, my 'Non-theism' as a term operates in the same way.

By this do you mean that you take God to be a creation of the mind, in the way that dragons are? That seems like a reasonable conclusion. I can easily imagine that people take elements they have experienced -- authority, goodness, power, and recombine these in the mind into an image of something fictional.

In the way I've been rolling it out on this thread, I'd say that you believe that God is a creation of the mind. Lots of people agree with you.

Quote:The other thing is going back to your disagreement with the lizard's mind thing.

Just what would change if, for example, lizards did in fact demonstrate obedience to dietys?

Say someone stumbles across a reptile (The size is optional) which when presented with the iconography any... heck lets expand and say every diety, assummes the appropriate pose performed by said diety's worshippers.

In all other respects. All we can tell is that it is, in fact, 'Just' a lizard (Well... novel species).

How might such a thing effect those who profess 'Belief'?

Granted, I am operating on the assumption that lizards don't have the concept of a deity. If there is evidence that they do, then I have to choose a different example. 

But it seems pretty likely that most animals don't have that concept.

Uhm.... wow.

What I typed, obviously, was all the wrong words since neither of your replies seem to match up with the meanings I was trying to convey.

So... no. In the first instance I was trying to show you how I use the term 'Belief' when I'm engaged in conversation.

Giving you my mind's definition, if you will.

The second one. Replace 'Lizard' with..... 'Alien' or 'Bandersnatch' or what have you. Some creature other than human which displays said responses to such presented iconographys.

Isn't parsing language fun!

Cheers.

The earliest superstitions would have been little more than ritualized habits - most superstitions still are.

These terms are derived from a point in history where we truly believed that human thought and human behavior were fundamentally different from that of "animals". In that context, it's not surprising that we don't regard our pets as superstitious even if they engage in recognizably superstitious behaviors. Another example of a lizard not being a machinist. It isn't on account of the animals in question not doing the thing, or being in some specified state - it's simply that they're not people.

As we've learned more about ourselves and other animals, this separation has become impossible to cogently maintain. I would even contend that there are plenty of animals with the kind of god concepts that might arise organically in children (or in the first humans to believe in gods, for that matter). They aren't a product of complex rational analysis, nor are they the product of indoctrination into elaborate claims like theism - more simple projection. Any creature that needs to be able to predict and understand it's fellows behaviors is capable of projection.

Quote:The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.

Xenophanes

(April 18, 2020 at 9:06 am)Brian37 Wrote: Outside our human species, sure, I wouldn't put it past other species of being superstitious. Other species certainly don't have human language. 

But I do know that my cat wipes it's paws on the floor just before drinking out of his water bowl. He also wakes me up every morning by jumping on my side in bed and digging into my ear to wake me up to feed him. 

I agree, other species don't have our concepts to a human language level. But other species DO seek patterns, and act on their observations. 

I think it is ignorant to assume humans are the only species that tries to figure things out. Humans are good at being humans, but we are not good at being cockroaches. How is it a cockroach you spot, suddenly knows you are after it and runs away? It isn't praying to cockroach god, but if the metric of "success" was based on numbers, humans should pray to a cockroach god. 

I am being sarcastic of course. But especially now, with this pandemic going on, I do get pissed at humans worldwide whom think we are an apex as a species. We are merely one species among trillions. Humans are actually an invasive species. We growingly conquer and consume, but our Achilles Heel is that we are increasingly becoming a victim of our own success.

It's a fascinating topic, and one that I suspect people have only begun to learn about. We have been very anthropocentric. 

When people taught gorillas to use sign language, it was clear that the gorillas had emotions. They could also lie. So there's a lot going on there. As to how concepts appear -- from the simplest animals to the more complex -- that would be interesting to know about. 

One of the things that should keep us modest is the knowledge that there are some concepts that some animals just can't get. Apparently rats can solve mazes based on pretty complex math, for example, but never manage a maze based on prime numbers. So rats just can't get that concept. It makes you wonder what is beyond the level of human possibility -- and if there are aliens out there who can get those things.

The notion of a prime number is far more complex than the notion of a god. As a point of interest, we've held and understood the latter for much longer than the former ourselves. As far as we can tell, no change in our cognitive apparatus was required in order to proceed from one state to the other.

That we implicitly privilege complex god beliefs -as- the notion of god is bound up in our cultural traditions - which is probably why a person who does not believe in those traditions but has immersed themselves in that traditions literature meets an impasse in discussing gods (and god belief) with a person who has a deeper and broader understanding of the notion than could be gleaned by staring at christian art.

Food for thought.

(April 18, 2020 at 5:11 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(April 18, 2020 at 5:00 am)Mr.wizard Wrote: The definitions of atheist and theist address the beliefs of people. Why does it matter if a lizard is an atheist? Is the lizard a theist?

The lizard lacks a belief in God. 

I maintain that the lack of belief in God that lizards, stones, and newborns have is trivial. If we really want to say that atheism is lack and nothing but lack, that's OK with me, but it says nothing about adult thinking people.

People who have heard religious claims and failed to accept them are not atheists in the same way that lizards and newborns are atheists. Atheist grownups reject religious claims according to standards of judgment. Examples of these standards include "revelation is not reliable" or "the Bible is not a good source of truth." 

These standards of judgment are things we hold to be true -- they are beliefs. Thus our atheism is the result of what we hold to be true. My atheism is not trivial in the way that newborns' atheism is.

It makes no difference how you reached your state of disbelief in a god, you can be an atheist for good reasons, bad reasons or no reason at all, the only requirement for being an Atheist is not believing in a god.

If it doesn't believe in god no matter weather it thinks or not it's an atheist

Even if a person did reject the claims of theism through an elaborate rational analysis, exactly as bel imagines...this would not be enough to make them an atheist. Plenty of our deconversion posts revolve around a period of belief in little g gods.

(April 18, 2020 at 9:19 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(April 18, 2020 at 9:06 am)Brian37 Wrote: Outside our human species, sure, I wouldn't put it past other species of being superstitious. Other species certainly don't have human language. 

But I do know that my cat wipes it's paws on the floor just before drinking out of his water bowl. He also wakes me up every morning by jumping on my side in bed and digging into my ear to wake me up to feed him. 

I agree, other species don't have our concepts to a human language level. But other species DO seek patterns, and act on their observations. 

I think it is ignorant to assume humans are the only species that tries to figure things out. Humans are good at being humans, but we are not good at being cockroaches. How is it a cockroach you spot, suddenly knows you are after it and runs away? It isn't praying to cockroach god, but if the metric of "success" was based on numbers, humans should pray to a cockroach god. 

I am being sarcastic of course. But especially now, with this pandemic going on, I do get pissed at humans worldwide whom think we are an apex as a species. We are merely one species among trillions. Humans are actually an invasive species. We growingly conquer and consume, but our Achilles Heel is that we are increasingly becoming a victim of our own success.

It's a fascinating topic, and one that I suspect people have only begun to learn about. We have been very anthropocentric. 

When people taught gorillas to use sign language, it was clear that the gorillas had emotions. They could also lie. So there's a lot going on there. As to how concepts appear -- from the simplest animals to the more complex -- that would be interesting to know about. 

One of the things that should keep us modest is the knowledge that there are some concepts that some animals just can't get. Apparently rats can solve mazes based on pretty complex math, for example, but never manage a maze based on prime numbers. So rats just can't get that concept. It makes you wonder what is beyond the level of human possibility -- and if there are aliens out there who can get those things.

Humans do not want accept that when we make claims of God/gods/dieities/super natural, all we are really doing as a species is projecting our own image, qualities, fears, narcissism, in a mirror. Much like a dog or cat will mistake it's reflection in a mirror as a rival.

But as far as "aliens" sorry. I can agree other intelligent life exists in a universe of trillions of galaxies. But outside of communication, time and distance and the physical energy to overcome those distances to see other life person to person, is out of reach. 

In the face of challenging old religion and old mythology, I warn those not to replace old mythology with si fi mythology. 

Cockroaches don't detect our movements from magic. They have evolved to sensor heat and smell. That is not magic.

We project the good shit too, in balance to fear and narcissism. I doubt that Bel will have trouble accepting that, it's more the case that hordes of people, believer or not, are referring to a specific type of god claim, and all that the rejection of this claim entails. It's not as if he tries to make his points by reference to obscure pre-columbian pantheons...even, more limitations within the already limited remit of theism.

Implicit bias due to cultural hegemony. In that context, the insistence that an atheist must have heard and rejected a god claim to be an atheist at least makes sense, even though it's ultimately wrong. Outside of that implicit bias...those silent assumptions, the insistence isn't even cogent, and it's still wrong.

An atheist doesn't believe in gods. No atheist has to read saint tommy and reject his propositions in order to be an atheist - and plenty of people who do believe in gods have read saint tommy and have rejected his propositions.

At work.

(April 18, 2020 at 9:46 am)Brian37 Wrote: But as far as "aliens" sorry. I can agree other intelligent life exists in a universe of trillions of galaxies. But outside of communication, time and distance and the physical energy to overcome those distances to see other life person to person, is out of reach. 

So. This is a thought I feel I must disagree with.

Take, for instance, the 1950's and 60's development of the 'Brute force atomic Orion'. A design that could easily conceivably reach Alpha Centauri A or B in about fourty years (Note you can 'Shave' years off if you only want to send the ship 'One way' and don't actually want to slow down when you get there. Much like getting the probe out to Pluto.)

So.... had people built the thing back then? We'd be getting laser pulsed pictures back roughly now of our closest stellar neighborhood.

So, if you add in 'Angagethics' as proposed by Niven and Pournelle, then a species whose only problem is ship time boredome could, conceivably and slowly spread out through a galaxy simply given enough time.

It's one of the 'Problems' for the Fermi paradox. Given the age of our galaxy. The 'Young' age of our Earth and Humanities time on it. Where are the 'Older' space faring civilizations that 'Could' be around?

Cheers.