(October 30, 2012 at 6:22 pm)DoubtVsFaith Wrote:(October 30, 2012 at 5:13 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Hehehe, can't believe this slipped by me Doubt, but did you just refer to the universe (being interchangeable with god, via your statements) as "him"? I think you're smuggling some stuff in with the concept of god that you don't want to talk about when you claim that it's "just the universe".....
Nah, I was the most active atheist on these forums for the first few years and my atheism hasn't changed one bit - I merely left partly to do other things and partly due to mental illness - I still believe a supernatural creator of the universe is about as likely as the flying spaghetti monster. I'm making a valid argument here, that is all.
My point is that whether I believe god is the universe or whether I just believe in the universe it makes no difference because in both cases I'm merely believing in the universe. It is just in one case I label it "god" and in another I don't.
It's funny that I said "him", but I assure you that's just out of sheer habit of 8000 odd posts on these forums with most of them being directed at theists, so when I argue with them about their "God" I refer to it as "Him" because apparently they somehow know that their god has a personality - is a person - and is male.
A physically blind person whould have more reason to "believe" in the universe than you do. You don't have to "believe" in the universe anymore than you have to believe in the floor below you or the ground your house sits on. It is emperical and does not need any type of "believing". You KNOW there is a floor under your feet and you know your house is sitting on real ground.
There is a huge difference between belief and knowledge and if people wouldn't confuse the two the world as a whole would be better off.
Calling the universe a god is stupid and vacuous. It is the same "it is bigger than me so therefor it is a god" is the type of stupid logic that lead people to believe that vocanos were gods.
Now if you are not arguing for pantheism please don't feed them. If you are arguing for pantheism then you simply have no case. You are merely swaping one form of woo with another.
Here is the progression of human psychology in our evol8utionary trait of comming up with all sorts of woo and superstition.
It starts with "it is bigger than me and it frightens me so because it has me in its grips it must be thinking so I should fear it so it must be a god". That is simply a reflection of the same fear and reward a baby feels when it gets a nipple or gets a spank.
That is ltterally where this placebo comes from. A baby's narcissism and fear.That is the part of evulution that manifests itself into credulous thinking.
The upside however to evolution is that we constantly have proven despite creating new woo and new superstitions we have overcome old ones. I am simply placing pantheism in the same rightful boat of all prior naked assertions and all the popular naked assertions still made today.
