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(July 26, 2014 at 12:07 pm)Tobie Wrote: This has been said countless times before on this forum, but Atheism is not the belief that there is no god, it is the lack of belief in a god. There are some atheists who, on top of not believing in a god, claim no gods exist, but the majority (at least here) do not claim that.
Also, science does not claim everything came from nothing - the Big Bang theory in it's current form says the universe started as a singularity, which is absolutely the opposite of nothing, because it is everything, but condensed infinitesimally.
Maybe this has been said countless times before. However, the thing which no one has thought about is that the new Atheist has redefined the faith. They say faith is purely religious concept that is to believe in something without any evidence for the existence of that thing. However, new atheists are completely blinded to the fact that their whole worldview is in fact a faith and indeed not only that but perhaps even more importantly that science depends on faith. Every scientist believe that the entire universe is intelligible that is we can in part understand it by using our minds that we have to believe before we do science.
Physics is powerless to establish its faith in the reliability of human mind simply because you have to have that faith that the universe is intelligible before you could do any physics at all. So here is the very odd thing the new atheist are railing against faith when they needed to believe their own worldview as well as to do science.
Faith, in religious context, is defined as a strong belief in the tenets of a religion based on spiritual conviction rather than evidence. Atheists haven't redefined it as that, that is what the word has always meant.
Physics is in no way a faith! There is huge amounts of evidence that the universe is intelligible to some degree - otherwise, science wouldn't exist. If you could never understand what was happening at all, then there is no way you could come up with a theory to explain what you are seeing.
Also, there is no such thing as an "atheist worldview". No two atheists will agree on everything beyond that they both do not believe a god exists.
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. - J.R.R Tolkien
July 26, 2014 at 5:31 pm (This post was last modified: July 26, 2014 at 6:40 pm by Jenny A.)
(July 26, 2014 at 11:35 am)Harris Wrote:
(July 12, 2014 at 12:57 am)Jenny A Wrote: I don't think it is a good mental health practice to fantasize that you know the infinite thoughts of imaginary entities.― Stefan Molyneux
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. --Richard Dawkins
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Einstein, Albert (1930). "Religion and Science" New York Times Magazine (Nov. 9): 1-4.
You're refuting my signature quotes? Really? Really?
I don't know what you think whether Einstein believed in god has to do with whether it's a good idea to think you know god's thoughts or whether you believe in all the possible gods, but Einstein did not believe in god, at least not in the way you are suggesting. Certainly whether he did has nothing to with evolution or whether atheism is a faith.
But you are so wildly mistaken about what Einstein believed that I find it necessary to quote him:
Quote:It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930 ---same article as yours.
Quote:Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.
Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray; quoted in: Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffmann
Quote:During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution, human fantasy created gods in man's own image who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate influence, the phenomenal world.
Albert Einstein, quoted in: 2000 Years of Disbelief, James Haught
He was a rather more complex thinker than you are. He did not go looking for god as an expatiation. He found god in the awe of what he discovered, not by miracle or personal revelation.
Quote: From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.
Albert Einstein
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
At the age of 67, Einstein wrote "Autobiographical Notes" detailing his opinions of, and early experiences with, religion and his transition to science:
Quote:Even when I was a fairly precocious young man the nothingness of the hopes and strivings which chases most men restlessly through life came to my consciousness with considerable vitality. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. Moreover, it was possible to satisfy the stomach by such participation, but not man in so far as he is a thinking and feeling being. As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came – despite the fact that I was the son of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents – to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a sceptical attitude towards the convictions which were alive in any specific social environment – an attitude which has never again left me, even though later on, because of a better insight into the casual connections, it has lost some of its original poignancy.
It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the ‘merely personal,’ from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspections and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in devoted occupation with it. The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of the given possibilities swam as highest aim half consciously and half unconsciously before my mind’s eye. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights which they had achieved, were the friends which could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen it.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
Wait, another theist trying to claim the aura of scientific respectibility by enlisting ole Al even as they denigrate science? Will wonders never cease?
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Prediction: out of hand dismissal as "not science," possibly referring to your link as a "junkyard."
Quiz him on the details once- if- he responds. If he knows them at all, you'll be surprised at how deeply he's misunderstood them.
Knowing this guys record, I will be dumbfounded if he even responds.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
This whole ludicrous attempt to lump science as faith can be summed up by:
1. I'm going flying in a commercial jet later today. I have faith that it will fly and I will not die.
2. I'm going to jump off a tower later today. I have faith that I can fly by flapping my arms and I will not die.
If you think these two "faiths" are the same, then you really shouldn't be allowed out in public, even if your preacher tells you that with faith you can achieve anything.
(July 10, 2014 at 6:38 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Today, I got a link to a playlist of TED talks, the 20 most viewed, or something like that.
In one of them, there was a guy talking about motivating people to buy a product from some company and he outlined what he called the "golden circle": a 3 concentric circles bulls-eye.
At the center, he put "why", in the middle he put "what" and at the outermost layer, he put "how".
And he said that most companies work from the outside inwards.
But the truly great companies work from the inside out.
So, back to these creatards. If we want to captivate them, we have to make them understand "why" we think the way we think, "why" evolution is correct... only then can we say what evolution is and how it works.
"why", the motivation that makes everything else fall in place.
We've been going at this all wrong, probably due to the creatards' fault always starting the conversation on some "conceived" faults of evolution... we keep showing them "how" evolution works and a bit of "what" it is..... we never show them "why". Our inner reason to accept it.
So, "why" is evolution right? "why" should I consider evolution? (Remember, this is not a "how" nor "what" question!)
- Beats me if I can verbalize it!
Perhaps it's because we need of a way to catalog all life on this planet and make sense of why it is as it is, why we see animals and plants like what they are?
Why do we see very similar animals, but with slightly different features... features which seem very well suited to the particular environments in which these different animals inhabit...?
I'd say this is the first level of acceptance of evolution, as it can provide an answer to these questions... a tangible answer, one we can easily visualize, even if it requires some imagination into long stretches of time.... but not too long, so it seems plausible that, as sexual reproduction mechanisms produce offspring with slight variations of features over their parents, the accumulation of such variations would, in time, given enough generations, lead to some form of adaptation to a particular environment.
And I got stuck in the "how" answer... darn!
I leave this to someone better in tune with the question. Best of luck!
Read
MIND AND COSMOS:
Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
Thomas Nagel
He is your brother in FAITH
wiki Wrote:Thomas Nagel (/ˈneɪɡəl/; born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics.
What does he know of biology and science?
Oh, very little!!
