|
What is God?
|
 (August 9, 2015 at 9:05 am)Nope Wrote:(August 8, 2015 at 2:20 pm)pool Wrote: I used salt because if someone asks what the taste of salt is the answer would be salty. Nope,i didn't mean it in that sense. xD 
I think that there is a quirk of the human mind that makes it difficult for some people to be atheists. This doesn't make them bad or stupid but I wish that they wouldn't try to convince everyone that their religion is logical or true.
The human mind is wired to pick out patterns in random things. That is why some people imagine that they see Jesus on a slice of toast or faces in the cloud. I wonder if some people apply that to life. They see the random events in life and try to find a meaning or pattern to them even though there is no deeper meaning. God is so broad a concept that it is hard to define but I think the need to find patterns is behind the human desire to create religions in the first place. Maybe that is what god is in many people's minds, the ultimate pattern in life?  (August 9, 2015 at 9:05 am)Nope Wrote:(August 8, 2015 at 2:20 pm)pool Wrote: I used salt because if someone asks what the taste of salt is the answer would be salty. Hey, no need to get salty, man! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
"Every luxury has a deep price. Every indulgence, a cosmic cost. Each fiber of pleasure you experience causes equivalent pain somewhere else. This is the first law of emodynamics [sic]. Joy can be neither created nor destroyed. The balance of happiness is constant.
Fact: Every time you eat a bite of cake, someone gets horsewhipped. Facter: Every time two people kiss, an orphanage collapses. Factest: Every time a baby is born, an innocent animal is severely mocked for its physical appearance. Don't be a pleasure hog. Your every smile is a dagger. Happiness is murder. Vote "yes" on Proposition 1321. Think of some kids. Some kids." 
God is a mixture of:
1: Anthropomorphism of abstract concepts. 2: Primitive and unscientific explanations of natural phenomena 3: A Method used to control the masses by an elite cadre. 4: A way to explain dead relatives to their children as in "she's with god now" The concept of gods belongs to the infancy of our species and the sooner it's rejected by all the better. You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid. Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis. (August 9, 2015 at 11:33 am)Lucanus Wrote:(August 9, 2015 at 9:05 am)Nope Wrote: I know that I am getting nitpicky but salty is not the definition of salt. If I eat a grape, the definition of grape is not sweet. You know what else tastes salty (apparently)! You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid. Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis. (August 9, 2015 at 11:44 am)downbeatplumb Wrote:(August 9, 2015 at 11:33 am)Lucanus Wrote: Hey, no need to get salty, man! Yeah 
"Every luxury has a deep price. Every indulgence, a cosmic cost. Each fiber of pleasure you experience causes equivalent pain somewhere else. This is the first law of emodynamics [sic]. Joy can be neither created nor destroyed. The balance of happiness is constant.
Fact: Every time you eat a bite of cake, someone gets horsewhipped. Facter: Every time two people kiss, an orphanage collapses. Factest: Every time a baby is born, an innocent animal is severely mocked for its physical appearance. Don't be a pleasure hog. Your every smile is a dagger. Happiness is murder. Vote "yes" on Proposition 1321. Think of some kids. Some kids."  (August 9, 2015 at 4:21 am)pool Wrote:(August 9, 2015 at 3:55 am)rexbeccarox Wrote: Really? I've never encountered an atheist who would disagree with that definition... The lack of a belief in the existence of a god is NOT the same as the belief that there is no god. If you have no belief on the god question, you lack a belief in the existence of god, but you do not believe that there is no god. Now, if one does believe that there is no god, then one also (if one is consistent) lacks a belief in a god. But the lack of belief and the belief are two different things. In common usage, "atheism" can mean either "weak atheism" or "strong atheism," which are not the same thing. Here you can read about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_a...ve_atheism "Weak atheism" is simply the lack of belief in a god. "Strong atheism" is the belief that there is no god. One is the lack of a belief, and the other is a belief. So they are not at all the same thing. At this site, most people most of the time use the term "atheism" to mean "weak atheism." "A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence." — David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
(August 9, 2015 at 5:56 am)pool Wrote: I don't understand what the Theory of relativity is,but that doesn't mean that i don't believe in it,neither does it mean that i believe in it. I think my doubts will be cleared and i will live happily ever after if someone could answer what my course of action should be given the situation. (August 9, 2015 at 6:05 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: No. The default position is not "there is no god." The default position is that one does not know if there is a god or not. It is only after one considers evidence that it could become reasonable to say that there is a god or that there is not a god. Also, your characterization of positive claims is not quite right either. If we consider the claim: There is an elephant in my dining room. That is a claim that is such that, theoretically, evidence could be provided either for it or against it. If I showed a picture of an elephant in my dining room, that would be evidence that it is there. On the other hand, if I took a video of my dining room, with me standing in the room and rotating around the room, which does not show an elephant, that would be evidence that there is no elephant in my dining room. Other than the fact that you know that most people do not have elephants in their dining room (which changes things from what I am about to say), the default position, before you had any evidence, would be that you do not know if there is an elephant in my dining room or not. However, due to considerations of how often people have elephants in their dining rooms, the default position on this would be that there is no elephant in my dining room. That, however, is dependent on the knowledge of the rarity of elephants being in dining rooms, and so that is evidence that one brings to the situation. It is not a judgement made without any evidence. It would be quite different if we were looking at the following claim: There is a table in my dining room. That is quite common, but you also know that people sometimes repurpose rooms in their homes, and so there may be no table in one, or one may have just gotten rid of an old table, in anticipation of moving in a new one. Or it could be a new home, and no table has been moved into it yet, or there could be some other reason there is presently no table in my dining room. So you do not really know if there is a table in my dining room or not. Either claim that there is a table in my dining room, or the claim that there is not a table in my dining room, are both very plausible from your knowledge of how the world works, so either one could easily be true. And so you ought not believe that there is a table in my dining room, nor that there is not a table in my dining room, until you have some evidence of some sort. In this sort of case, one typically accepts very flimsy evidence, as either situation is common, and neither claim is likely to be of much importance to you. Going back to the god question, many gods have been disproven. For example, the problem of evil proves that there cannot be an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly benevolent god, as it would not be compatible with the world we observe. And we also can know that the gods that are supposed to live on Mount Olympus do not exist, due to visiting Mount Olympus and observing that there is no god there and no home for any god there. So there are many sorts of gods that we reasonably know do not exist. Now, if you say that we cannot prove that everything that might be called a god does not exist, that is true enough, because some people say things like "Brad Pitt is a god," and I defy you or anyone else to prove that Brad Pitt does not exist. So in any specific instance, we first will need to know what someone is talking about before we are going to be able to make a determination of whether the thing in question exists or not. If we find they are speaking gibberish (which is common enough when people speak of "god"), then we can reject their pretended claims, though we would not then negate their nonsensical sentences, but would reject them as nonsensical. "A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence." — David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
(August 9, 2015 at 1:19 pm)pool Wrote:(August 9, 2015 at 5:56 am)pool Wrote: I don't understand what the Theory of relativity is,but that doesn't mean that i don't believe in it,neither does it mean that i believe in it. If you don't know what something is, the first step is figuring that out. If someone tells you that a god exists, if you do not know what the person means by "god," then you are not in a position to say whether it exists or not. So, until you know something about that, you should neither believe that it exists, nor believe that it does not exist. It is only after you know what the person is talking about that you will be in a position to look for evidence. If you do know what someone means by their claim, then the default position is still that you do not know whether it exists or not, until after you get some sort of evidence regarding it. Then you should believe what the evidence supports, and you should believe in proportion to the evidence. Which is to say, you should only have a slight tendency to believe something if you have weak evidence for it, and a strong tendency to believe something if you have strong evidence for it. Right now, I am more certain that I am sitting in front of my computer, than I am that the car I have been using is parked out front. The reason being, I presently see my computer and notice that I am sitting in front of it, but I cannot see the car out front from my present position. It is possible (though unlikely) that someone has stolen the car since I last observed it. So my belief that I am sitting at my computer is stronger than my belief that the car is out front. In the case of the god question, if you find that the person does not mean anything by the term "god" (which is more common than you might think), then the proper response is NOT to say that "god does not exist;" the proper response is that the person is just speaking gibberish and is not really saying anything meaningful. "A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence." — David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
|
|
« Next Oldest | Next Newest »
|
