(June 28, 2015 at 8:25 pm)pool Wrote: I went into that discussion as a strong atheist but i came out as a not-so-strong atheist which was a resultant of my own argument against myself and atheism.That sounds like a kind of subliminal self-programming. We don't control our subconscious, but we can influence it to some degree. We might think that taking the "devil's advocate" approach won't affect what we think and believe, but our subconscious is influenced by our activities, and it can adopt and reinforce behaviors that we perform routinely. If you are regularly arguing a side that you disagree with, you might find yourself accepting that side in spite of yourself.
It's not a bad thing, in the sense that it can give you a broader perspective on an issue. But you'll need to dig deeper than "we can't know everything, so maybe there's a god." Or you can go that route until you "find" the "evidence" that you need in order to believe. If that seems a bit far-fetched, look into Cotard's syndrome to see just how far the human mind can go in order to force the world to make sense.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
