(October 15, 2010 at 7:56 am)solja247 Wrote: I have empirical evidence that bigfoots and dragons dont exist...

I seriously doubt that is true.

(October 15, 2010 at 7:56 am)solja247 Wrote: I think the idea is more complicated than this, the idea of God is found in every culture

The idea of witches is found in every culture, what does that mean? Witches exist??

Quote:I believe to be objective you cant be a skeptic. I have seen how some skeptics here say that X didnt exist because there is no empirical evidence (Neither is there for Socrates, they just chop and choose their skepticsm). Also if you reject the idea of X existing, you have already made your mind up that he doesnt exist. Its like the belief in Santa Claus, we dismissed this idea that Santa Claus was real with a belief, we were being as objective as we can be and we didnt see any reason to believe in Santa or to think he is real. This is how I propose we discern the 'truth' we start with a belief eg. There is a God, untill there is empirical evidence or strong arguments not to believe in a God, a belief is more objective and perhaps more rational. So Im not overtly skeptic because I would not be objective and I would go insane (I would question my own absolute existence)

The claim is that god exists, so it is that claim that must be tested. The problem is that it can't be tested, because personal revelation is, by definition, first person, subjective, and not amenable to scientific scrutiny. As such, no one is under any obligation to believe one person's personal revelation over that of another's.

(October 15, 2010 at 7:56 am)solja247 Wrote: I think the idea is more complicated than this, the idea of God is found in every culture, whether it be a Rainbow serpent or YWH. But we know that these things are made up, we dont know if God is made up. Santa was clever marketting by Coca-cola but God is much more complicated. You can say that God was an evolutionary tool to help us get to the next state, however, you dont have empirical evidence to back that up. I have empirical evidence that bigfoots and dragons dont exist, but God is on a completely different level.

Sugar, I hate to knock a hole in your argument, but the ideas of the things I just named were also found in every culture. They might look slightly different, or have different names, but they're all the same. Joseph Campbell did extensive research on this. Dragon creatures, "little people", big hairy hominids running around, shapeshifters, ghosts, gods, they're pervasive. It's why the idea of "collective unconscious" emerged. We're all humans, and genetically we're 99% (give or take a few .somethings) alike. Human nature doesn't change so drastically from era to era or continent to continent that we couldn't accept that "god" was as much a part of a human need to understand or explain the unknown as any other mythological figure. The reason I don't believe there's a god is exactly because I don't have empirical date, any more than I believe there's a bigfoot or Santa Claus. I'm quite willing to change my mind if god comes out of hiding and reveals himself to me. I'm also willing to say bigfoot exists if someone throws a body at the feet of a geneticist.

Quote:Also if you reject the idea of X existing, you have already made your mind up that he doesnt exist. Its like the belief in Santa Claus, we dismissed this idea that Santa Claus was real with a belief, we were being as objective as we can be and we didnt see any reason to believe in Santa or to think he is real. This is how I propose we discern the 'truth' we start with a belief eg. There is a God, untill there is empirical evidence or strong arguments not to believe in a God, a belief is more objective and perhaps more rational.

I reject the idea that it exists because I have no proof. I don't reject it permanently. Science is self-correcting like that. The burden of proof is on the 'believers', not the unbelievers, as science doesn't prove a negative. After all I've been through in the past 2-3 years, no one would love more than me to discover that there was A) someone up there watching over me and/or someone to blame for the shit I've been through and B) that there is an afterlife. And C) that there is a sasquatch, but that's just because I'm a nerd. It would make my life a lot easier to happily place all my problems and worries into a divine being's hands and say "you fix it" like I would a broken toy to my parents. As you grow up though, you realize that your parents CAN'T fix everything. It's my personal opinion that this is the reason people cling to a belief in God - we're still scared to stand on our own and we want to know that even as grown ups, there's someone standing over us who can fix things when they're broken. There isn't. If there is, he's been watching too much TV while the kids get away with murder, literally. I've had problems with my father for years, including getting over abuse, but you can be sure that the minute I call on the phone and yell "Daddy!" he's there like white on rice. Where was god during the Holocaust? Stalin's regime? The Crusades? Pol Pot's shenanigans? If there is a god, he needs to show himself, and take blame for neglect. Or, if it was all part of his plan along with free will, people need to realize he's not a good god and more, as Carlin said, like an office temp with a bad attitude. But I digress.

Quote:Its enough to make me doubt, slightly. However, that doubt shouldnt become the answer, I have no reason to doubt that a man by the name of Moses didnt exist and was a leader of a clan called the Hebrews. I just disagree with Descartes, skepticism is not the answer.

I don't even know how to respond to this. Believing whatever someone else told you is a symptom of being somewhere around 14 years or younger. Do you also believe that Odin hung on the tree for nine days? Someone told me that. Someone also told me that I needed to buy a wooden box full of knots to house my Froud Faery tarot deck, because the fairies could then have access to the deck through the holes in the wood. Even though the deck frequently sits openly on my dresser where I can admire the artwork, as Froud's a personal favorite artist, no fairies have ever danced on it. Thank goodness I didn't take him at his word, I would have been out of $50 for nothing.

Quote:Atoms are not nothing, and natural selection is not mere chance.

Natural selection includes organisms choosing mates because they have features they find attractive. I want my kids to tan and be intelligent. Therefore, when given a line up, the super-smart guy I'm dating who has an olive cast to his skin is way more appealing than other choices. A female peacock sees a male with a fuller, healthier display. She wants her kids to be big and healthy too. This isn't all chance.

And I'd like to discuss with the people of Hiroshima if the basic building blocks of our universe are "nothing".

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(October 15, 2010 at 8:41 am)Darwinian Wrote:

(October 15, 2010 at 7:56 am)solja247 Wrote: I think the idea is more complicated than this, the idea of God is found in every culture

The idea of witches is found in every culture, what does that mean? Witches exist??

Only if they weigh the same as a duck.

Quote:The idea of witches is found in every culture, what does that mean? Witches exist??

Perhaps? I dont know if there has been enought study into the supernatural to dismiss it completely.

Quote:The claim is that god exists, so it is that claim that must be tested. The problem is that it can't be tested, because personal revelation is, by definition, first person, subjective, and not amenable to scientific scrutiny. As such, no one is under any obligation to believe one person's personal revelation over that of another's.

You would be a Christian if you had thought God answered your prayers. Personal revelation does very much so validate someone's belief.

Quote:Sugar, I hate to knock a hole in your argument, but the ideas of the things I just named were also found in every culture. They might look slightly different, or have different names, but they're all the same. Joseph Campbell did extensive research on this. Dragon creatures, "little people", big hairy hominids running around, shapeshifters, ghosts, gods, they're pervasive. It's why the idea of "collective unconscious" emerged. We're all humans, and genetically we're 99% (give or take a few .somethings) alike. Human nature doesn't change so drastically from era to era or continent to continent that we couldn't accept that "god" was as much a part of a human need to understand or explain the unknown as any other mythological figure. The reason I don't believe there's a god is exactly because I don't have empirical date, any more than I believe there's a bigfoot or Santa Claus. I'm quite willing to change my mind if god comes out of hiding and reveals himself to me. I'm also willing to say bigfoot exists if someone throws a body at the feet of a geneticist.

Dragons are not found in the Aboriginal or polynesian cultures to my understanding. Giant lizards and massive birds were part of their belief, which we know were true and did exist, not that long ago. so I wounldnt say all cultures.

Quote:I reject the idea that it exists because I have no proof.

You are trying to use science when philosophy is needed. Im not arguing from science, but from philosophy.

Quote:The burden of proof is on the 'believers', not the unbelievers, as science doesn't prove a negative.

I think arguments such as the ontological, cosmological, teleological and even objective meaning (We can only have absolute meaning, when there is a God)

Quote:It would make my life a lot easier to happily place all my problems and worries into a divine being's hands and say "you fix it" like I would a broken toy to my parents. As you grow up though, you realize that your parents CAN'T fix everything.

Neither do I, I believe in free will, we shape our on lives, as a Theist, I shape my life around God. So far it has been very beneficial.

Quote:Where was god during the Holocaust? Stalin's regime? The Crusades? Pol Pot's shenanigans? If there is a god, he needs to show himself, and take blame for neglect. Or, if it was all part of his plan along with free will, people need to realize he's not a good god and more, as Carlin said, like an office temp with a bad attitude. But I digress.

You are trying to blame God, if we want to blame anyone we should blame human nature, Hitler wasnt God so why are we trying to blame God? Perhaps our understanding of God is wrong?

Quote:I don't even know how to respond to this. Believing whatever someone else told you is a symptom of being somewhere around 14 years or younger.

I dont. I was listening to the Bible one day, contemplating if I should deny the Jewish history and I realised something, Joshua is history, the way there are talking about things, there isnt anything poetic in it either! I accept Jewish history because I dont see why I shouldnt. I believe a pagan by the name of Abraham was the first Jew, not the first follower of YHWH though.

Quote:This isn't all chance.

How is it not? Evolution is a series of chances which have allowed animals to create a niche, or be on top of the food chain?

(October 15, 2010 at 6:23 pm)solja247 Wrote: How is it not? Evolution is a series of chances which have allowed animals to create a niche, or be on top of the food chain?

Mutation determines which traits arise. Mutation is by chance. Evolution is the systematic sorting out of which traits survive. Evolution is not by chance.

Okay, I think I’m losing the original vein of the argument, so bear with me if I bring this back around.

You said:

Quote:Europe's population is dwindilling, so to keep the economies afloat they get immigrants from developing countries. The major problem is that most immigrants, to Europe are either Muslims or Christians.

As others have stated, I would love to see the source of this information. Statistics on a credible site would be lovely. However, I’m finding this hard to imagine, as every historical instance of immigration I’ve ever encountered involves immigrants leaving their home to a place of BETTER economic stability. Countries do not “get” immigrants. It’s not like there is some governmental board that walks into a country like a crew chief might walk up to Home Depot and say “hey, I’m short a few people – you, you and you, get in the truck”. These immigrants are going to Europe for: greater religious freedom, better economics, schooling, etc. Much the same way many people come here.

You used this argument to posit that because there is an influx of immigrants who are of a certain religion, we will see a decline in atheism. I hope you mean there would only be a decline in Europe – I don’t think America’s statistics would have any bearing here, where I’m told atheism is growing fast (whether because people are losing their faith, or just finally letting other people know about it, there are more factors here than what polls might suggest). If you indeed meant only Europe, Chuck and Darwinian addressed why it isn’t true, or why it might temporarily be true and then fade away.

But you say that this won’t happen because:

Quote:Whether the idea of God is a dellusion or not, Atheism isnt a very nice idea (You are a product of nothing and mere chance) most people will not adopt it, espically if they are from a developing country.

I’ve never had this conversation with someone from a ‘developing’ nation. I cannot speculate rightly on the statistics of who might be atheist there and who isn’t. But I do take offense to atheism not being a nice idea. In every conversation I’ve had about this, the opinion that atheism is “not nice” stems from two things: the fear that arises when the meaning we humans all seek appears to not be present in events surrounding us, and the sometimes unspoken implication that atheists have no moral center. For the first, at this stage in the game, there is always a “reason” for something happening; it just isn’t a supernatural one – that anyone has found evidence for yet, at any rate. Maybe the nice geologist and other resident scientists and science buffs can later explain the origin of the earth and universe all the way back to the “chance” beginning. For the second, you did not state as such, so I will not assume and address it except to say it’s not true.

Either way – there’s no reason a person from any socio-economic level might not embrace atheism. This could be all conjecture because it’s just the way I personally think, but I don’t spend my days asking the universe why I’m here. The bottom line is that I’m here…isn’t that enough? Since I’m here, what can I do to live life in the least offensive way possible to my fellow man, be happy while I’m doing it, find fulfillment, and maybe make a few lives better in the process? I don’t need a god to tell me this is how I should live – it’s a pretty well documented fact across species that cooperation and aid ensures health and happiness. I accept that some people need to take the theist path to discover this, but I find it extremely liberating to put that structure down and strike out on my own. There are many others on this forum who feel the same way, and many others in this country and around the world. Hence, I don’t see why others from developing nations, who move to better schools and economic statuses, wouldn’t end up adopting it as well – unless you DO want to argue that atheists have no ability to act this way on their own.

Quote:I guess the question is, would you prefer to live in a majority Christian or Islamic country?

Here’s the issue – you didn’t state what KIND of Christian or Islamic country. You are showing bias in your descriptions underneath this question by assuming that all Christians are gentle(er). Do you think that because a country became a Christian theocracy, we’d be safe from extremism? Leaving this nation purposely as a secular state was exactly because of that reason – each founding father had a particular religion they did not want to see gain power over all, whether it was one they merely disagreed with or all of them. So ask fairly, based on your description – would you rather live in an extremist Christian country? Perhaps a Protestant one that kills or jails Catholics? Or a Catholic one that does vice versa? Or would you rather live in an extremist Islamic country? Or Jewish one? Could you live up to the ridiculous number of laws that Jewish orthodoxy subscribes to? I was told by a Christian that no one could – that’s why Jesus was sent here, to make it easier to be a good person by just believing in him. I’m not saying you believe that, just trying to create a little perspective here. And what about the other way? Could you live in a moderate Islamic country that allowed other faiths? Or a Jewish one? Chuck was not derailing your thread. Your bias was being pointed out.

Quote:I don’t know how much you know about China, but millions of Chinese are becoming Christians. Atheism has no hope when Christians act like a loving community, like they do in China.

Source please. And specify where you discovered the Chinese, who I hear a lot of internal problems about in the news on occasion, are any different from any other human on this planet? Don’t turn a foreign country into a utopia for your religion. Especially since you later state that many churches are underground. If they are such a loving community, why are they underground? Who would have a problem with them?

And please look up anti-abortion violence on Wiki. You’ll find nice examples there.

And if I’m reading the rest of the responses correctly, the consensus seems to be that a good education, which would include logic and the scientific method (which does include skepticism, otherwise science would not continue to improve), encourages deconversion. Therefore we don’t have to worry about atheism not “flourishing.” As the world has a firm grasp on continuing to learn and grow, it would literally take the appearance of a divine being wiping all of this away to turn things back to totally theist societies, if there ever were such things, which I think we’ve already stated there weren’t.

So now that we’re arguing skepticism…you’re right – we are arguing from science, you are arguing from philosophy. We do not halt the scientific method as it applies to other areas of life, and so because none of us have had a ‘revelation’ or personal experience that we cannot attribute to something completely natural, we do not find the need to say “God did it”. Nor would the appearance of that revelation necessarily make any of us Christian specifically (pagan orgies appeal much more), though I do believe you meant only religious in general and I’m merely picking on you there. What you describe in your re-conversion, as it were, is a suspension of the scientific method we have all learned. The point of religion is that you don’t need proof. Faith is all. Yet you told this scholar there was no proof. And based on his answer, you halted the call for proof and went back to faith. If scientists did this, we’d have a huge mess on our hands. Again, to bring it back to the original argument, education, science, all of these things lead people to question, and if they continue following the scientific method they realize that lack of proof (and here I have to apologize, because science does not prove a negative, yet I think I phrased it as such initially) not only doesn’t prove non-existence, it doesn’t prove existence either. If you can’t depend on something’s existence, you’ve already blown a hole in the foundation of religion – faith. We’re basically trying to compare apples and oranges here.

Quote:Dragons are not found in the Aboriginal or polynesian cultures to my understanding. Giant lizards and massive birds were part of their belief, which we know were true and did exist, not that long ago. so I wounldnt say all cultures.

Toh-may-toh, toh-mah-toh. Seriously. You’re saying that because they didn’t have a made up version of a giant lizard, they didn’t have some equally made up creature to serve in a place they had an empty spot for? Just like you make some generalizations across the board, so did I. Don’t split hairs. Okay, let’s argue reality: in cultures that had no snakes, eels took their place. Humans have a need to fill voids. Religion/God fills a void. However, I find it curious that most dragons had serpentine appearances, and… gasp! Aboriginals had the Rainbow Serpent!

Quote:I think arguments such as the ontological, cosmological, teleological and even objective meaning (We can only have absolute meaning, when there is a God)

Please restate this – I’m not sure what you’re getting at.

Quote:You are trying to blame God, if we want to blame anyone we should blame human nature, Hitler wasnt God so why are we trying to blame God? Perhaps our understanding of God is wrong?

You’re damn straight. If we have an all-powerful being as described in the Bible, where was he when his “chosen” children were crying out to him while he allowed them to be systematically exterminated by someone just for “free will”. We have freedom in this country too, and yet our leaders seem to have more conscience than god and don’t allow a mass-murdering fuckhead to kill anyone who doesn’t fit in his racial, ethnic, sexual or political profile. Either A) God is a personal god as described in the Bible, and therefore a giant prick for sitting idly by or B) god is “not understood” because he is above these events, therefore not needing worship and or anything else. “We don’t understand god’s motives” is the “shrug” in every argument. Abraham argued with god, why can’t I? Israel means “wrestled with God”. Guess what God, my arms are out! Where are you? Am I not good enough? Were my elder relatives not good enough when they reached out and asked where you were before getting gassed? Where were you when the towers fell? Should I thank you and see your presence when my great-aunt lived, but others died? Where were you during all the exterminations that have gone on over the face of this earth – you supposedly created us, we are all supposedly your children. Wrestle with me!

…. Nothing. Wait…slight pain in my arms… nope, just the early arthritis from the weather pressure changes. Or it could be Joe Pesci. Hehe.

Quote:I accept Jewish history because I dont see why I shouldnt.

Let me let you in on a huge secret that Lew Black actually revealed anyway: we’re bullshit artists. It’s how we took over Hollywood. I’m being sarcastic, don’t get up in arms. If you’re getting Jewish history from the bible, you’re getting parable, not history. You want to believe that history. Who are you more likely to read, history according to Kim Jong Il, Thomas Jefferson, or Henry VIII? Pick one, and tell me why not the others. Realize that it’s because you happen to think one or the other is more accurate. Also realize that all of them, as time goes on, will have their histories picked apart – because history is a refinement of the art of telling FACTS, and those facts can be interpreted in a billion different ways according to bias, agenda, and other factors. THAT is why skepticism is needed. A thousand years from now, maybe someone will think my old tomagotchi pet was just an elaborate way to tell time, when actually it was a time waster. You say you don’t see why you shouldn’t – it’s because there are other sources that are older than bible writings that refute these claims. Or there’s a plain lack of corroborating evidence, written or otherwise. You’re on the right direction about Abraham though – check out Robert Price’s material on how a bunch of different gods coalesced into this idea of YHWH.

Quote:The idea of witches is found in every culture, what does that mean? Witches exist??

No. It means that idiots who believe in witches exist. Major distinction and it holds true for invisible sky-daddys as well.

(October 9, 2010 at 4:07 am)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote:Atheism isnt a very nice idea

I think its a fine idea. Better than the bullshit story with your murderous old god at its center.

What the fuck is so appealing about religion, anyway? I can see it for simpletons but anyone with more than half a brain has got to be able to see the holes in it.

Who are you to blaspheme the Almighty?

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(October 16, 2010 at 1:40 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote:The idea of witches is found in every culture, what does that mean? Witches exist??

No. It means that idiots who believe in witches exist. Major distinction and it holds true for invisible sky-daddys as well.

If I don't believe in plumbers and other do, I can say the same thing as you. Doesn't mean your perspective is correct.