RE: Athiesm is a Faith?
December 31, 2012 at 4:59 pm
(This post was last modified: December 31, 2012 at 5:18 pm by Angrboda.)
Italics on your text removed for readability.
It's a common error, in both atheists and Abrahamanic theists, but regardless, it is an error, and invalidates your entire point. I'm sure that believers in Zeus and Oden expressed similar sentiments, and few see the end of empire on the horizon, though history warns us of its inevitability. (for political empires)
(December 31, 2012 at 4:12 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote:Yes, and since you are the one implying that they may be equivalent, you bear the burden of demonstrating your claim. You haven't discharged this burden yet, and reliance on vague assertions, using ambiguous and ill-defined terms like 'faith' is not working in your favor.(December 31, 2012 at 3:49 pm)apophenia Wrote: Yes, many of the same processes of mind are used in coming to the atheist, secular or agnostic position as are used in coming to theistic conclusions; and even where they are not the same, it's often difficult for non-specialists to differentiate between different forms of reasoning. The human mind relies on a limited bag of tricks by virtue of its limited nature, and because of the properties of those tricks. But you are implying that when atheists or others come to the conclusion that your god (or any god) does not exist, they are using the same tricks in the same way, making their results epistemically equivalent, you are in error.easy to state hard to prove
(December 31, 2012 at 4:12 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote:This is a distortion of the historical facts, likely due to ignorance of the great variety and history of both religious and non-religious thought. This hasn't even been true during the tenure of Christianity. (I'll simply point to the Eleusinian mystery cults [~2,000 years], Confucianism, Pyhrronic Skepticism, Buddhism, Shintoism, The Heaven's Gate cult, Panspermianism, Taoism, and the Stoics, by way of counter-example.)(December 31, 2012 at 3:49 pm)apophenia Wrote: And I read your citation of Wisdom 2. ... Regardless, that a theme is old and perennial is no evidence that one religion's treatment of it has any validity, simply because it asks the same questions.I was not saying that one religion's treatment of it has any validity but rather that the debate between Athiests and Theists has remained very similar in essence for a very very long time and the concept of God is just to go away and become a myth for a large proportion of humanity just because Athiests want it to is going against the evidence of history.
It's a common error, in both atheists and Abrahamanic theists, but regardless, it is an error, and invalidates your entire point. I'm sure that believers in Zeus and Oden expressed similar sentiments, and few see the end of empire on the horizon, though history warns us of its inevitability. (for political empires)
(December 31, 2012 at 4:12 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: though I would suggest that what may happen is instead of the God-man society will substitute the Man-god because whatever we think is the truth is its clear that humanity is hardwired to look beyond the physical and try to reach to the spiritual.This appears to be an oblique call to the appeal that if something is natural it is therefore likely right. Even if something is an inevitable product of thought (and I would agree that this may be largely true for theism), this does not in any sense indicate that the contents of those thoughts are either true or justifiably believable. It doesn't. (Another counter-example; people for a long time believed that people were "natural statisticians," able to judge probabilities reliably via intuitions. Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory showed this to be untrue, and that human judgement about probability in situations of risk departs in a consistent and systematic manner from what would be expected if they were truly rational about the probabilities. What is 'natural' turned out to be reliably and predictably wrong.) Science itself shows we are capable of substituting epistemically justified beliefs in place of faulty intuitions.
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