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To all religions/What makes you think......
#1
To all religions/What makes you think......
I invite any Christian, any Jew, any Buddhist, and Hindu, Muslim, any whatever, to answer the following question.

What makes you think, your specific religion and or sect, will survive forever? And I don't want puppets with hands up their backs responding. I want your personal opinion, not what your god or holy person or holy writing says. 

There was an oral tradition of religion long before written language. There are also lots of dead religions nobody believes in now.

What makes anyone think, say in 20,000 years, if humans manage not to blow themselves up in a nuclear war, or we don't get killed off by a meteor, or mega volcano, and we manage to stop global warming. What makes anyone think today's currently held worldwide religions wont morph into something unrecognizable or simply completely die out in 20,000 years?

And again, please don't respond with, "My blah blah blah says."

I want your opinion, not preaching, or selling.
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#2
RE: To all religions/What makes you think......
I admire your optimism.
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#3
RE: To all religions/What makes you think......
(February 24, 2019 at 12:30 pm)Brian37 Wrote: What makes you think, your specific religion and or sect, will survive forever? 

It looks as if any set of beliefs about the world breaks down after a while. (And here I use "belief" merely to mean "something we hold to be true.")

So rather than challenge others, it's maybe also interesting to ask how our own views are likely to hold up over the next millennium or so. 

I know of course that in the broad definition, atheism is merely a lack of belief in god or gods. However, the reasons that people have these days for rejecting the claims of religious people are frequently of an identifiable kind. Something along the lines of:

~ Science is the best way to know about the world. 
~ If there were a god or gods they would be the sort of thing that science could observe.
~ Science doesn't observe anything like that, therefore my lack of belief is justified.

I wonder how much of this is likely to last. 

It could go two ways, I guess. First, while this view is growing in some places, in other places traditional religion is still popular. There is no way to know which will gain popularity in the long run. 

Second, we might lose confidence in the scientific method as something which addresses everything we need to know about. Or there might be increased popularity in those older concepts of god which place it as something science can't address by definition. 

So our own view seems surprisingly fragile to me.
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#4
RE: To all religions/What makes you think......
(February 24, 2019 at 8:17 pm)Belaqua Wrote: ~ Science is the best way to know about the world. 
~ If there were a god or gods they would be the sort of thing that science could observe.
~ Science doesn't observe anything like that, therefore my lack of belief is justified.

I would rephrase your assertions:

To claim that science is the best way to know about the world, people being what we are, is not the same as saying science will last forever.

If there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly-good God, we should be able to observe evidence of his actions in the real world. An indifferent God, not necessarily.

A lack of supporting evidence for any belief is justification for a lack of belief.
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#5
RE: To all religions/What makes you think......
(February 24, 2019 at 7:52 pm)Abaddon_ire Wrote: I admire your optimism.

Don't get me wrong,  I think atheists depending on conditions can be just as tunnel visioned and delusional as theists.
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#6
RE: To all religions/What makes you think......
(February 24, 2019 at 8:31 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote: To claim that science is the best way to know about the world, people being what we are, is not the same as saying science will last forever.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Our current claims (including the one that science as it currently operates is the best way) may not last forever. 

Quote:If there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly-good God, we should be able to observe evidence of his actions in the real world.  An indifferent God, not necessarily.

According to your current framework for judgment, these things are true. And according to that view of things, there is no such evidence. This is what might change -- I don't know.

Quote:A lack of supporting evidence for any belief is justification for a lack of belief.

And any lack is a lack based on a framework for interpreting what evidence consists of.
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#7
RE: To all religions/What makes you think......
(February 24, 2019 at 8:44 pm)Belaqua Wrote:
(February 24, 2019 at 8:31 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote: To claim that science is the best way to know about the world, people being what we are, is not the same as saying science will last forever.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Our current claims (including the one that science as it currently operates is the best way) may not last forever. 

Quote:If there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly-good God, we should be able to observe evidence of his actions in the real world.  An indifferent God, not necessarily.

According to your current framework for judgment, these things are true. And according to that view of things, there is no such evidence. This is what might change -- I don't know.

Quote:A lack of supporting evidence for any belief is justification for a lack of belief.

And any lack is a lack based on a framework for interpreting what evidence consists of.

I think that Thor's second premise is currently regarded as suspect by most people who aren't highly partisan atheists.
We do not inherit the world from our parents. We borrow it from our children.
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#8
RE: To all religions/What makes you think......
(February 24, 2019 at 8:50 pm)Yonadav Wrote: I think that Thor's second premise is currently regarded as suspect by most people who aren't highly partisan atheists.

Yes, I think it looks self-evident and undeniable from a certain point of view. But that point of view may not be the only one. 

I've had people tell me that they have no interpretive framework for evaluating truth claims. They say they need no reasons to decide if something sounds correct or not. I was a little surprised by this, since I would be ashamed to say that my own judgments are made without justification. 

So I think it makes sense to examine our own set of criteria for looking at the world, and wondering where it might break down.
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#9
RE: To all religions/What makes you think......
(February 24, 2019 at 8:34 pm)Brian37 Wrote:
(February 24, 2019 at 7:52 pm)Abaddon_ire Wrote: I admire your optimism.

Don't get me wrong,  I think atheists depending on conditions can be just as tunnel visioned and delusional as theists.

Those are a rare breed. Every atheist I know would immediately change their mind if any evidence for a deity turned up. Such evidence never turns up. One can deal with that for a while, but eventually the lies get tedious. I can give a "for example".

On a different site I frequent, a user posed this question...

"Theists – Give me a reason to believe."

None of the resident theists even made the attempt until one wheeled out this gem from a believer...

"The OP asked why people believe,"

By any measure, that is a flat out lie. That is not what the OP asked in any way.

This is just one more example of how the faithful twist things, reality, themselves, into such pretzels.

I see it all the time. It's so bad that we have an internal support network to help the frontline staff manning the phones. The most abusive are invariably the religious.
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#10
RE: To all religions/What makes you think......
(February 24, 2019 at 9:16 pm)Abaddon_ire Wrote: The most abusive are invariably the religious.

I don't know about your call center, of course. It's sad that people think they have the right to be abusive. 

I am skeptical, though, that religious people are more abusive in general. Here is a post I read on our present site, from earlier today:

Quote:And what good do you think that will do, you decrepit fucking cum stain?

Oh, look! Other members can throw around insults too.

Say, "Hi" to your mom for me. I was almost your daddy but the dog beat me over the fence.

Listen up, you human cockroach: You are not the first to have disagreements with Brian. Yes, he can be shrill and he tends to go off on tangents. But he has been a respected member here since 2012 while you are a cocky, newbie piece of smegma that has only earned the respect of other conservtard pieces of shit.

You have disagreements with social liberals? That's fine. Discuss it. Throwing out insults and putting people on ignore won't advance your position. We can do the same thing, you syphilitic dripping of an orthodox Jewish gang bang.

It may be that we remark it more when people we disagree with are rude, and take it less seriously when atheists, who are, after all, more rational, talk in this way. But my experience hasn't indicated that atheists have themselves under control any more than others. 

(The recipient of the above post, to his great credit, didn't respond at all. Though it's commonly thought that we are supposed to respond in kind to this sort of thing, I feel that isn't helpful.)
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