Atheism

reply to post by ButterCookie


Agnosticism is not uncertainity about a theory,that's just a lack of skeptic disbelief in a theory that has been formed without evidence. That is NOT agnosticism

All agnosticism means is "lack of knowledge"

All atheism maens is "lack of belief".

Put them together, and what have you got?

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

Yet you do believe you're right MIMS. Your atguments revolve around it. You're certain.

...I'm not certain, though I understand that by the standard of evidence I have I can be nearly certain, though I am open to evidence to the contrary and will openly invite opposition to my positions to be vocalized.

And please don't feed me the line that you'd accept evidence and change your stance accordingly. Whoever makes that claim is lying.

So I'm a liar now? I'm sorry, but I already have done this many times in my life. Hell, I was a Christian who went in trying to learn more about his religion and then became an atheist. I changed my mind because I was exposed to more evidence. I was brought up Christian, spent 16 years being indoctrinated and taught about it by my family...and then I gathered more evidence.

Furthermore, I've been wrong on a number of issues of scientific, historical, and other sorts of fact. I am just as subject to fallibility as anyone else, which is why I allow my position to be malleable. I don't get angry at people who try to prove me wrong, I get angry at the people who do so poorly. I'm actually happier when someone succeeds than I am when they fail.

After all, proof in this larger question could maybe *strongly doubt* be produced and easily dismissed as advanced tech, or the eccentricities of the human mind. And some argue has.

Well, then it wouldn't be proof, it would be evidence that could point to a variety of explanations. Proof would be causal. If you had the right controls in place I could be lead to believe in evidence.

reply to post by confreak


Um...wow, so your position is that we're just ignorant? I'm sorry, but I'm most likely more well versed in the topics discussed between atheists and Christian theists than you are. Why? Because I get dragged into them in my day-to-day life, I studied them in-depth while losing my religion, and I've been arguing over them for years on this forum. Further to that, I'm actually minoring in Philosophy and do quite well in it.

Calling me ignorant because you disagree with me is just wrong.

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows


...I don't have wholehearted faith in science. I recognize the possibility for error, as do scientists themselves. Science works within error bars, though they tend to be very narrowly spaced.

I want to know what a major flaw in science is, as I keep hearing about it and nobody ever ponies up an example.

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

Dualist thinking at it's worst. All babies are agnostic, not atheist. Atheist denotes a choice, a stance, a answer of no.

No, atheism represents the presence or absence of a belief.

Life is a spectrum not a duality. And sometimes it's even a 4D grid perhaps even all the time. Just to take our and mine innate limitations into account.

I'd say a lot of life is a spectrum, but a great deal of it is also black and white. A light is either on or off, though there may be gradients of on and gradients of off, there is never really a place where the two meet.

Atheism is like that. There are some atheists who strictly believe in the non-existence of all deities, there are those (like the vast majority of atheists on ATS) who merely disbelieve in deities. Of course, that's an additional set of data, as the two still don't believe.

There are gradients of being broken as well...but there's still a common thread that the thing is broken.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


As long as you see the objective realm (that which the scientific method is concerned with) as pthe only point of validation, then you could not possibly begin to understand the allegories and parables which deal with the subjective realm and notions of happiness, joy, love and meaning....

reply to post by HunkaHunka


So who are you suggesting is incapable of love, joy, happiness etc.?

reply to post by awake_and_aware


Im simply accusing many atheists of stifling the differend...

In his work, Jean-François Lyotard has written of speculative discourse as a language game – a game with specific rules that can be analyzed in terms of the way statements could be linked to each other. The 'differend' is the name Jean-François Lyotard gives to the silencing of a player in a language game. It exists when there are no agreed procedures for what is different (be it an idea, an aesthetic principle, or a grievance) to be presented in the current domain of discourse. The differend marks the silence of an impossibility of phrasing an injustice. For Kant, the sublime feeling does not come from the object (e.g., nature), but is an index of a unique state of mind which recognizes its incapacity to find an object adequate to the sublime feeling. The sublime, like all sentiment, is a sign of this incapacity. As such the sublime becomes a sign of the differend understood as a pure sign. The philosopher's task now is to search out such signs of the differend. A true historical event cannot be given expression by any existing genre of discourse; it thus challenges existing genres to make way for it. In other words, the historical event is an instance of the differend.

Unlike the homogenizing drive of speculative discourse, judgment allows the necessary heterogeneity of genres to remain. Judgment, then, is a way of recognizing the differend – Hegelian speculation, a way of obscuring it. The force of Jean-François Lyotard's argument is in its capacity to highlight the impossibility of making a general idea identical to a specific real instance (i.e. to the referent of a cognitive phrase). Jean-François Lyotard's thought in Le Différend (The Differend) (1983) is a valuable antidote to the totalitarian delirium for reducing everything to a single genre, thus stifling the differend. To stifle the differend is to stifle new ways of thinking and acting.

Originally posted by awake_and_aware
reply to post by UB2120

 

It had to start of with somone thinking in that way.

So i guess i agree. Someone would have had to assume it in the first place. Like how children anthropomorphise inanimate objects such as volcanoes, earthquakes or tornadoes; it's that basic kind of thinking, where with little educational infrastructure, and scientific knowledge; you make assumptions based on perceptions and subjective thought.

Thankfully, we know better now, so we don't have to listen to what the preists say. And human decency doesn't come from religion, it precedes it

True religion is an insight into reality, the faith-child of the moral consciousness, and not a mere intellectual assent to any body of dogmatic doctrines. True religion consists in the experience that “the Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” Religion consists not in theologic propositions but in spiritual insight and the sublimity of the soul’s trust.

Your deepest nature — the divine spirit — creates within you a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a certain craving for divine perfection. Religion is the faith act of the recognition of this inner urge to divine attainment; and thus is brought about that soul trust and assurance of which you become conscious as the way of salvation, the technique of the survival of personality and all those values which you have come to look upon as being true and good.

The realization of religion never has been, and never will be, dependent on great learning or clever logic. It is spiritual insight, and that is just the reason why some of the world’s greatest religious teachers, even the prophets, have sometimes possessed so little of the wisdom of the world. Religious faith is available alike to the learned and the unlearned.

Religion must ever be its own critic and judge; it can never be observed, much less understood, from the outside. Your only assurance of a personal God consists in your own insight as to your belief in, and experience with, things spiritual. To all of your fellows who have had a similar experience, no argument about the personality or reality of God is necessary, while to all other men who are not thus sure of God no possible argument could ever be truly convincing.

Psychology may indeed attempt to study the phenomena of religious reactions to the social environment, but never can it hope to penetrate to the real and inner motives and workings of religion. Only theology, the province of faith and the technique of revelation, can afford any sort of intelligent account of the nature and content of religious experience.

Originally posted by Annee

Originally posted by UB2120
I was trying to show how children naturally start the foundations for religious faith. You don't have to put a name to God to believe in the existence of something bigger than yourself, nor do you have to belong to a religion.

But why would you? Why would a child create an imaginary omnipotent being.

I can understand a child creating an alter-ego of themselves - - - but applying to to something beyond themselves - - - that I don't get.

As the concept of the alter ego of prayer becomes supreme and divine, so are man’s ideals accordingly elevated from mere human toward supernal and divine levels, and the result of all such praying is the enhancement of human character and the profound unification of human personality.

Originally posted by awake_and_aware
reply to post by confreak

 

Exactly like the blind watch maker anology;

Man finds watch in desert, but knows that it isn't a construct of nature; nature doesn't put arbitrary objects and shapes together like that; it obviously has a designer, someone with forsight, nature has no forsight, evolution is has proved this ireffutably, the legacy of the genes remains, whether they are defective or not (our appendix is an example of this).

To assume creation has a designer is to agree the designer is also imperfect, and is unable to "go back to the drawing board". (The laryngeal nerve of the giraffe is an example of this)

Based on this information, and the "blind watchmaker" anology; i find your monkey/ancient structure anology to be less than progressive.

I don't think the atheist is as "bad" as the theist, in the sense that the atheist only relies on evidence, not superstition and assumption, and not belief formed by ancient men and written down in a book, in a time where evidence was little, and questioning priests was considered "sinful".

edit on 12/6/11 by awake_and_aware because: (no reason given)

If you think that is the case then look up the flagellum. It's a motor like sturcture found in bacteria.

Concerning your video post, as I said in another thread where you posted that, look at rocket engine designs. Engineers often use varying lengths of wire to control firing sequences and perhaps this nerve had a similar function.

reply to post by EarthCitizen07


Are you a 'thing'?
Do you need a label?
Does any 'thing' need a label?
What do labels achieve?
youtu.be...

Originally posted by HunkaHunka
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

As long as you see the objective realm (that which the scientific method is concerned with) as pthe only point of validation, then you could not possibly begin to understand the allegories and parables which deal with the subjective realm and notions of happiness, joy, love and meaning....

How is happiness subjective? Happiness and joy (which are the same thing...) can be measured! Love? Also can be shown to be a physical phenomenon! Meaning? Meaning is something that is built subjectively, but it's one of those things where it's dependent on the referent.

Also, saying that the objective realm is the only thing that can be validated doesn't mean that there isn't a subjective realm, it merely means that the objective realm is where things like 'facts' exist and the subjective realm is where interpretation of those facts exists.

reply to post by UB2120


Ken Miller knocked the flagellum out of the park ages ago. It's not a proof of intelligent design. In fact, there isn't a single thing that fits the criteria for a supposedly 'intelligently designed' piece of a biological system that has been found so far.

reply to post by EarthCitizen07

Originally posted by EarthCitizen07

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul

Strrrrrrrraaaaaaawwwwww maaaaaaannnnnn

Agnosticism is a separate issue of epistemology, not belief. Anyone who is not a theist is, by definition, an atheist. It's a binary position. Either the belief switch is in the on or off position.

You can make it as complicated as your imagination allows but in reality there are three positions to label people:

1)Theist-believes in dieties 2)Agnostic-don't know 3)Atheist-don't believe in dieties

No, there are four.

Gnostic theist
Agnostic theist
Agnostic atheist
Gnostic atheist

And yes there are *in between levels* but it becomes kind of silly imo...............

No really, those are the four major groups relating to belief and epistemology.

Yes, it does. And technology is merely an application of scientific discoveries, which are growing every day (no thanks to people like yourself).

I don't hate technology, I simply hate the arrogance it breeds from people who think they have "conquered the world" because they have gps, a good job, an expensive car, whatever.............

...so another straw man? You simply hate science, as you've been routinely opposing the application of scientific reasoning.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


I cant believe you just called happiness objective....

We are through... The next thing you will tell me is that beauty is also objective....

reply to post by EarthCitizen07


Sorry it took so long to reply to this, but I was debating whether I should get drunk first to ease the pain from the stupidity.

Originally posted by EarthCitizen07

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul

Here are some things that go against common sense:
Gravity (I don't see how the idea that
Spheroid Earth
Heliocentrism
Stars being the same sort of objects as our sun
Time is not constant
Energy and matter being interchangeable
Glass melting at low temperatures
Being able to dunk your hand in molten lead without losing it
Being able to dunk your hand in liquid nitrogen without losing it
The idea that a gas can become a liquid in the first place

...actually, I could just put it more simply: The vast majority of the body of scientific knowledge.

Most of the examples you listed are not counter-intuitive.

Every single one of them is!

Our understanding of gravity may be flawed,

No, what I was saying was that gravity is something that doesn't 'make sense'. Objects falling? Sure. Attractive force? ...what?

yes the earth is round and probably hollow,

No, the Earth is not hollow. We can conclusively test that. We can test that it has a solid core too. And the oblate spheroid shape of the Earth is not common sense, it took a guy an odd observation about the position of the sun over a well at a certain time of year and the application of measurements and mathematics to figure that out.

helicentrism means all the planets revolve around the sun, our sun is one of many stars in the universe,

How is this common sense? Last I checked, people got into a lot of trouble over that idea.

time is constant,

...no, it isn't. It's related to motion and gravity.

energy and matter are interchangeable,

Again, how is this 'common sense'?

glass melting at low temperatures I am not sure about,

Source.

dunking your hand in molten lead and liquid nitrogen for a few seconds without losing them,

Again, how is this common sense?

gas becomes a liquid at cold temperatures but in its natural earth state remains a gas.

What the hell is 'natural earth state'? The Earth makes up the vast minority of the universe.

I will put it simply...The vast majority of scientific knowledge makes sense....common sense!

...I'm sorry, but simply restating (and misquoting) my points and claiming they are common sense does not make that so. How are they common sense?

Now, can you please demonstrate for me the use of common sense in understanding the universe around us?

I just did!

...no, you didn't. You just claimed that things are common sense without demonstrating a damn thing. Simply saying so doesn't make it so.

The scientific process itself is normally not flawed but if you put in the wrong data then you will get the wrong results.

Well, of course...and that's part of what the scientific method avoids. Experimental design is meant to cover that.

The hollow earth theory, hollow moon theory,

Bunk and bunker. Neither of those is a theory, they're both a fringe hypothesis that are shown to be opposite to what the evidence shows.

our understanding of gravity in relation to electromagnetism, worm holes, antigravity, nuclear energy, etc...are probably not understood well!

Nuclear energy is one of those areas where we have a pretty damn good understanding, and I'm not sure about gravity and electromagnetism as of yet (I tend to avoid theoretical physics, and I'd hate to worsen my headache with some of that right now), worm holes are speculative, antigravity is beyond speculative.
.

The problem is what evidence you accept as proof.

And what evidence should I accept as proof by your reckoning?

And metaphysics has provided humanity with nothing over the three thousand years in which it has been practiced, while physics has provided us with...modern technology. Pretty much all of it.

The only difference between the two is that one is understood and accepted while the other is not.


You clearly don't understand what the word 'metaphysics' means. Metaphysics is a field of philosophy which is meant to deal with the underlying nature of reality.

Todays metaphysics will be "tomorrows" physics when the secret government allows it.

...metaphysics has never moved into the realm of physics and there isn't a secret government.

Indeed you have no valid arguements, just denying points for the sake of passing time.

No, I'm denying your points because they're invalid. You don't understand what 'demonstration' means, you don't understand what 'metaphysics' means, and you're just generally uninformed on science.

reply to post by HunkaHunka


Happiness can be measured objectively through the measurement of neuroreceptors. Beauty, in theory, could be measured objectively, though it would be on a case to case basis. We could measure what is considered beautiful from one person to another.

Of course, you're just appealing to ridicule instead of actually addressing my point.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


I just read your previous post upon which you attempt to assert the existence of some sort of absolute common sense. I suggest you read how things such as culture and language influence how things do or don't "make sense"...

The Geography of Thought

How we imagine the movement of time depends on what language we speak

How Language influences Perception

Language Influences Color Perception


I've come to understand that you speak only using one genre of discourse... the kind in which you point out where everyone is wrong....

You are not interested in an exchange of ideas, you are interested in the assertion of ideas.

The scope of human existence far outshines the imaginations of the scientist or the believer. We adapt very well to our environment, and to the extent we have same environments we adapt alike, however to the extent we have different environments we adapt differently. This adaptation process has a huge influence on how and why we perceive things as "making sense" or not. There is no absolute communis sensus, yet there are localized tendencies toward the same thought patterns...

Beauty and happiness are subjective qualities which result out of these localized experiences. Just because you can see neural activity in the brain does not mean that the qualities of happiness in all of their varied cultural diversity both collective and individual have been enumerated as one can do with an object.

I've come to assume that you have no comprehension of the subtleties of consciousness and their effect on the objective world.

You are more than simply an atheist... you are also a materialist, representing that as atheism in my opinion.

I would wonder if you would go so far as to say that the concept of self is just as naive as the concept of gods, as they both lie in the realm of the "interpretation of facts" as you put that..

Originally posted by theRhenn

Originally posted by MrFake
In the end, we're all the same. We just have faith in different beliefs.

And everyone wants to be right about what they believe, and everyone seems to want to be the one to express their knowledge of being right.

So I was slightly off. We're not just hippocrits.. We're vain hippocrits!

Vanity. Pride. Whatever, it all comes down to ego. People need to put it aside. Otherwise, there wil be no true debates on this subject. I'm not a fan of believing/not beleiving. That makes me think that those are the only two positions; my beliefs are more complex than yes/no.

But your right, there a lot of people who are only in the discussion so that they can be the one who is right. These people have no place in debate.

Peace