Tentatively Christian; looking for a reasonable discussion

[Alex K]

Religious attendance/participation is a positive determinant of health (categorised by happiness and longevity), recognised by psychiatry and by W.H.O. It doesn't have to be true to be helpful...

You know, I can absolutely see that in some circumstances! If it's a positive experience, participation and community, it sounds plausible that it has these positive effects.
It may be statistically true, but may not be true in many individual's case. It may be correlated with other things. For all I know, people with bad (mental) health simply
participate less and there's in some cases no causal relationship.

[Mudhammam]

Religious attendance/participation is a positive determinant of health (categorised by happiness and longevity), recognised by psychiatry and by W.H.O. It doesn't have to be true to be helpful...

I'd be curious to know what element religion actually plays. If it is the case that people who bond over a common ideal and have a safeguard against confronting their fears generally benefit in some way, then we should expect the results to hold across all religious cultures... which kind of discredits the supposed effectiveness of religion itself.

[robvalue]

I doubt very much that religious participation by an atheist pretending to believe that everything they say and hear about religion is true is going to be a health bonus. We see evidence on this forum that quite the opposite of that is true.

You can't turn off being an atheist. So this is kind of irrelevant. It could only support the idea of trying to keep theists deluded. Which has plenty of downsides.

Any amount of feeling removed from reality and responsibility might make you feel better. Like alcohol or drugs. It doesn't mean it's a good idea overall. And I can't drink the religious alcohol if I don't know where it is.

[watchamadoodle]

Religious attendance/participation is a positive determinant of health (categorised by happiness and longevity), recognised by psychiatry and by W.H.O. It doesn't have to be true to be helpful...

I'd be curious to know what element religion actually plays. If it is the case that people who bond over a common ideal and have a safeguard against confronting their fears generally benefit in some way, then we should expect the results to hold across all religious cultures... which kind of discredits the supposed effectiveness of religion itself.

Another issue is proving that religious attendance is the cause and not just a correlation. The statisticians would probably need to use factor analysis (?), because I don't think most religious people would be willing to stop attending religious services to be the control group.

[robvalue]

That would be an interesting experiment. Take two groups of atheists, and make one of the groups all go to church and play along with all the religious stuff for a year. Then see which group is happiest after the year. Any predictions?

Studies on theist versus atheist are pointless, because it's not a choice. So whatever the outcome, it has no practical use.

Unless it shows atheists are better. Then it has a point.

---

Another thought:

A better experiment would be to evaluate a group of church goers, and compare their happiness to a group of ex-theists who have stopped all religious activity.

[watchamadoodle]

That would be an interesting experiment. Take two groups of atheists, and make one of the groups all go to church and play along with all the religious stuff for a year. Then see which group is happiest after the year. Any predictions?

Studies on theist versus atheist are pointless, because it's not a choice. So whatever the outcome, it has no practical use.

Unless it shows atheists are better. Then it has a point.

---

Another thought:

A better experiment would be to evaluate a group of church goers, and compare their happiness to a group of ex-theists who have stopped all religious activity.

I guess the problem with using ex-theists is that it isn't random. They may not have been true Scotsmen/Scotswomen. The only solution is to perform the experiment in Scotland.

[robvalue]

Lol, well yes, good point.

You'd have to use ones you really did believe. And that's not going to be testable so...

Maybe it's not the greatest idea.

[pocaracas]

I am 18 years old, raised as a Christian, and now beginning to ask questions and really figure out what I believe for myself. At the moment, I'm coming from basically a Christian perspective, but I am open to being convinced otherwise and looking to discuss the issues with someone.

Welcome aboard.
That's what the forum is - discussion.
Convincing people is an altogether different subject... I'm not looking to convince anyone that their pet god is very likely manufactured. But I may tell you why I think it is so.

To be honest, I'm a bit intimidated by the environment of the forum here. My fear is that if I try to have a serious, full-scale, in-depth discussion in this medium, I'll quickly be overwhelmed and bombarded.

True.. it has happened before...
People come here, convinced of some things, they put them out there, we correct them and... do it over the course of several pages... and then they don't have a way to sort through them all and either try to reply to all (impossible) or just give a general reply to the overall picture... or run away...

I don't want to be unable to reply adequately simply because of the quantity of messages by people disagreeing with me. I'd rather be able to discuss fairly back-and-forth, without being terrifically outnumbered. (which would make it impractical to adequately respond to everyone)

To that end, I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in starting a 1-on-1 correspondence with me? (hopefully it is not too out of place to request that) I'm looking for someone who is willing to be reasonable and civil, and help talk through the questions and issues I'm wondering about.

That's not what a forum is for.
On a 1-on-1 debate, you get one opinion... On this topic of atheism and atheists... well, we0ve been likened to a herd of cats... ever tried to have such a herd behaving and acting like a single mind?
Doesn't happen.

What I think and how I think about religion doesn't necessarily correlate with what another atheist thinks about religion...

To truly understand atheists, you need to gather a lot of voices to your inputs.
If you can't handle that, then stick with one or two that you resonate better and choose to reply to those. And, if anyone comes along with good points, then you can also address them.
Look at it cumulatively, not as an all-at-once thing.

Looking forward to hearing from you guys!

ditto.

[GriffinHunter]

Alright, thanks for the encouraging welcome, everyone.

At risk of being quickly overwhelmed and outnumbered, I'd like to begin trying to better understand where you guys are coming from. With the understanding that I won't be able to adequately respond and address every person who replies, my first question is:

How do you guys refute the "Kalaam" argument? (some kind of supernatural, transcendent force or "god" must exist because of the necessity for a First Cause which is beyond matter, space, and time)

[FatAndFaithless]

To put it shortly (and there are many here that will go into much more detail than I) the Kalaam argument relies entirely on ideas that only apply to the universe as we experience it now (and even then, the whole "cause" wormhole is hopelessly blurred and messy thanks to quantum indeterminacy), and tries to take the model of the universe we have now (which is only possible due to the nature of the universe after the big bang), and apply it to a time before t=0 at which our current ideas of space-time have absolutely no relevance.

We can't make any affirmative statements of any kind dealing with our universe before t=0 (or even the planck time for that matter), because our entire understanding of reality is predicated on the universe after t=0. We don't know if there even exists a time before t=0, or if that question even makes sense, or if there have been infinite universes before t=0, or if all time of any kind originated at t=0, and so on and so forth; it's a massive, enormous utter unknown (for now), and honest people will simply say "We don't know" when it comes to such topics. People who use the Kalaam are exploiting that giant 'unknown' as an opportunity to crowbar in metaphysical and theological ideas that have absolutely no justification, but have an attractive veneer because it's an answer to the great unknown that scientists readily admit. It just happens the answer that the Kalaam presents is unsubstantiated, appropriates scientific terms and ideas for unscientific means, and claims to have knowledge about an issue that cannot be verified, measured, tested, falsified, or reviewed in any way.

Not to mention the hugely vague and undefinable concepts of 'beyond matter, space and time'. There's no evidence to suggest there's something 'beyond matter space and time' at all, or if that's even possible, or what it would look like if it was.

The Kalaam is WLC's pet 'argument', and he frills it up with a lot of metaphysics and tenuous logic knots, but his premises only make any sense if you just accept his re-definitions of already defined terms, and just 'go along with it' and ignore the glaring problems in his argument.

(Folks with more thorough knowledge please correct me if I'm wrong, I just went for a short summary. Just the idea of "cause" could be an entire thread on its own.)