RE: Theists: what does your god want for you?
March 23, 2013 at 11:43 pm
(This post was last modified: March 23, 2013 at 11:56 pm by jstrodel.)
You just said science three times. What about science makes it the best tool for understanding morality, love, marriage, families, the nature of work, the meaning of life, the origin of the universe, the nature of death, the nature of justice, politics, the end of the world and other topics? The last time I checked, science is a tool primarily used for aiding industrial manufacturing, military technology, medicine and learning about physical and biological metrics to study the natural world.
How can you even compare the two? Science has no answers to the above questions.
How about this: when you say science, substitute "atheistic philosophy" for all of the above, instead, to answer all of the problems left when atheists are successful in convincing people that there is no God and there is no meaning to life and they can do whatever they want.
You mention three epistemological terms: empirical, falsifiable and science. What is your preoccupation with epistemology? Well, I will give you this. I think you are an immature person if you think epistemology is more important than all the above things I mentioned, but as a young person and a student, you are more concerned with certain types of truth claims, I will relate to you on that level.
How does the epistemology of your philosophical beliefs which answer the above questions satisfy the conditions listed above? Correct me if I am wrong, but I will answer it for you: it is not empirical, it is not falsifiable, it is not science in any sense of the word. You have no answers to the questions that religion answers which meet those criteria.
It is almost as if what you have done is take a pair of calipers and measure something in an industrial machine tools factory and measured out certain precise dimensions, and claim that religious belief is fallacious because it fails to precisely measure God. Of course this is a ridiculous example, but this is basically what you are trying to do.
You create a standard that has certain features that appear rigorous to you, for whatever reasons you don't say. Then you put atheism into the category of "non belief" rather than belief in a comprehensive philosophy. Then you argue against Christianity because Christianity does not mean certain criteria that you mention that are evident in some aspects of your belief system: empiricism, falsifiability and science.
The only way you can get away with this is because you define your belief system in terms of a rejection of something else, rather than a real attempt to understand life and provide explanations for things. The reason that you do this is because you cannot put this on anywhere near the evidential status of Christianity. Your philosophy is not falsifiable and it is not empirical, but you hide this by saying that this is not a part of atheism.
Well, what the hell is atheism then? Why compare atheism to Christianity if atheism is only non belief, it isn't belief? If you had courage, you would list all your approaches to dealing with the necessary questions that Christianity raises and you would, if you were honest, describe the epistemology not only to reject Christian belief (actually which doesn't disprove it, it only fails to prove it from your perspective) but to describe the areas that Christianity describes (perhaps not all of them, but most of them, what is the atheist view of the family? how do atheists define this? under what grounds?).
How can you even compare the two? Science has no answers to the above questions.
How about this: when you say science, substitute "atheistic philosophy" for all of the above, instead, to answer all of the problems left when atheists are successful in convincing people that there is no God and there is no meaning to life and they can do whatever they want.
You mention three epistemological terms: empirical, falsifiable and science. What is your preoccupation with epistemology? Well, I will give you this. I think you are an immature person if you think epistemology is more important than all the above things I mentioned, but as a young person and a student, you are more concerned with certain types of truth claims, I will relate to you on that level.
How does the epistemology of your philosophical beliefs which answer the above questions satisfy the conditions listed above? Correct me if I am wrong, but I will answer it for you: it is not empirical, it is not falsifiable, it is not science in any sense of the word. You have no answers to the questions that religion answers which meet those criteria.
It is almost as if what you have done is take a pair of calipers and measure something in an industrial machine tools factory and measured out certain precise dimensions, and claim that religious belief is fallacious because it fails to precisely measure God. Of course this is a ridiculous example, but this is basically what you are trying to do.
You create a standard that has certain features that appear rigorous to you, for whatever reasons you don't say. Then you put atheism into the category of "non belief" rather than belief in a comprehensive philosophy. Then you argue against Christianity because Christianity does not mean certain criteria that you mention that are evident in some aspects of your belief system: empiricism, falsifiability and science.
The only way you can get away with this is because you define your belief system in terms of a rejection of something else, rather than a real attempt to understand life and provide explanations for things. The reason that you do this is because you cannot put this on anywhere near the evidential status of Christianity. Your philosophy is not falsifiable and it is not empirical, but you hide this by saying that this is not a part of atheism.
Well, what the hell is atheism then? Why compare atheism to Christianity if atheism is only non belief, it isn't belief? If you had courage, you would list all your approaches to dealing with the necessary questions that Christianity raises and you would, if you were honest, describe the epistemology not only to reject Christian belief (actually which doesn't disprove it, it only fails to prove it from your perspective) but to describe the areas that Christianity describes (perhaps not all of them, but most of them, what is the atheist view of the family? how do atheists define this? under what grounds?).
