Believe:

[Kyuuketsuki]

I think the experiments you first mention were an attempt to build a machine modeled after the human pineal gland. I am familiar with those experiments, and find them fascinating. The amount of periodicals aside, I think it is rash to assume we have a very complete view of the mind at all. What separates us from people of the past who would have said the very same? They were all proven wrong as our understanding grew through time. I think there are still things we will learn about our minds inner workings.

As far as I know this research is not based on pineal modelling ... apparently the research was reported in the US journal "Neuron", December 11

Of course,, I would be happy to explain more of what I meant by One True World. The capitalization is a jest. Silliness is important. It is a term I have coined (as of yesterday) to describe reality. Not the reality we think we know, but all of it. The entirety of the processes and functions that make reality possible. It is what is used in a court case. Provable reality aside from anyone's concept of it. (If a tree falls in the woods...)

OK, maybe you need to be a bit more careful on that kind of stuff because I (and I doubt anyone else part from Frodo who will naturally pop up and say he did) had no idea it was jest ... thank you for explaining anyway.

You said, "Perhaps, but some evidence isn't validatable, some is incompatible with the assertion made and some is just fictional,". I could not agree more. But I don't know if the debate over higher powers can be held to the same rules as forensics. As the physical world.

I'm in the Dawkins camp on this and I see no reason why ANYTHING cannot be held to the normal evidential standards and to claim that something is somehow excepted from them enters the arena of special pleading.

I understand and apologize about "I was blind but now I see..." thing. That is absolutely not at all what I meant for you to get from it, but I understand that you hear that from everyone. I am, unfortunately, not like everyone. I only meant that I do not need to have atheism defined for me. I am not as alien as you think, I have been known in the past to have similar views on this subject as yourselves. Can not any of you say "I was a believer, and then I became an atheist"? I mean it in the same way. With no offense, please.

I am cynical about those who claim to have once been atheist and now are not ... the problem is in part the nature of this place, this forum. We (atheists) are hear for a reason, we want to speak out we want to tell our stories to each other and get support from the fact that there are other atheists around us. That isn't true of a theist who comes here and it seems to me that when a theist in such an environment claims to have once been an atheist it is more likely being used as some kind of bludgeon to force a specific agenda. It's hard to confirm this but from time to time you will notice me challenging theists, in essence, to prove it and usually they can't so all we end up with is another non-validatable claim.

You also said "In essence the person who claims there are no gods is every bit as wrong as the person who claims there are ... neither has any validatable evidence,". Again I literally could not agree more. That is a point I was trying to make with the first post I made. That this is a debate of theory, of ideas. There is no solid evidence, only what we (choose too) interpret of what evidence there is.

So if there's no evidence we can assume there is no god and pour scorn on the claims of those who do.

If I may, it is not that you believe in not-god. It is only that you do not believe in god? Although it is contradictory to what I wrote earlier, I think I now kind of get it.

Er ... I think you got it

Oh yeah, and my belief, to me, has much, much more merit than a twinkie planet. Your personal reality: it's a stupid idea, my personal reality: the only thing that makes sense (my beliefs, that is). So i acknowledge your opinion, and only say that I too have one.

Opinions are like assholes ... everyone has one

Then, my friends, we are not as different at all. Not at all. I only wanted to say (in this thread I have hijacked) that I think you choose not-god, or not-belief in the same sense that I admit i choose god.

Seems to me you don't quite get the idea of rational atheism ... we don't choose not to believe, we don't believe because there is no evidence. In essence I could no more choose to believe in your god (or any other) than I could cut myself in half with a scalpel.

Kyu