It’s neither arrogant nor “belief” to be convinced by physical and observable evidence.
And they’d be wrong. Such purely subjective experiences are not at all reliable. Why should they be taken any more seriously than someone claiming they were abducted by aliens, or hear voices sent by government microwave beams? And given that people have religious/mystical experiences that contradict each other, they don’t “prove” a thing; they can’t ALL be true.
They were relatively ignorant, yes. That goes with living in ignorant times. And they were irrational, or they wouldn’t have been religious.
Seriously? People have “religious experiences” - something that convinces them of the existance of supernatural powers - but these religious experiences never happen in any predictable or measurable way.
How is it that people of completely different religions can have religious experiences? Are all religions true, with all gods competing amongst each other to please their followers?
The very fact that most religions say that all other religions are false, and yet people have different religions claim to have the same convincing religious experiences with serve as evidence of their religion, is right there evidence that their religious experience isn’t the result of their deity but rather an effect of their powerful will to believe.
You’ve created a straw man argument. It’s not “they’re irrational because they have religious experiences, and hence, because they have religious experiences they’re not rational” it’s more like “these religious experiences are a placebo effect stemming from a very strong belief, and these religious experiences are always purely psychological, and cannot be measured or verified or predicted, which is exactly the sort of thing you would expect if people had deep religious convictions without any supernatural interference”.
When people speak in tongues, they’re not actually speaking ancient languages as they claim. They just think that speaking in tongues is part of their religions experience, so they babble something randomly in a moment of religious fervor, because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do.
People can convince themselves that they see ghosts, or that they’ve been abducted by aliens, or that they’ve been touched by God if it’s what they’re inclined to believe for whatever reason. People have a powerful ability to delude themselves in ways that ultimately give them some sort of meaning or satisfaction.
The people here trying to twist around with philosophical circle jerks and pedantic battles are on the side of those advocating that religions can’t be proven false.
Religious conviction is not necesarily a matter of intelligence, but a commitment to critical thinking. Smart people can take the comfort and delusion of religion if they don’t highly prioritize rationality. Willingness to see reality for what it is is more of a philosophical/character issue than one of intelligence, although you are more inclined to be rigorous in your thinking if you are intelligent.
Bold words for a minority position. If religious belief is indicative of irrational thinking, then we need to lock up about 80% of the country.
What the hell?
A) Who cares that it’s a minority position? Lots of correct things are a minority position. Is argumentum ad populum your best argument?
B) When did I, or anyone, say that irrational thinking is a crime that should result in jailtime? People are irrational about plenty of stuff.
When you have to reply with such nonsensical and tenuous arguments, it’s time for introspection.
… the sort of critical introspection skills that religious people tend not to have.
Since when have humans been known for an excess of rationality?
Please, by all means: prove religion false. I would love to see you do that.
You just proved my point. Saying “prove a negative! Haha you can’t!” is the sort of bullshit sophistry that you accused us of engaging in, when the reality is that it’s your side playing these stupid semantic and dime store philosophy games.
Kick is up…NO GOOD!
Wide Right.
You see, I’m an atheist.
Fine. Then you’re what, playing devil’s advocate here? Then your introspection isn’t under question, if you don’t believe the position you’re arguing.
Your arguments in the rest of the post are still extremely weak.
You’re the one saying 80% of the country is irrational because they have the misfortune of being infected with religion. Must be a scary world you live in, with so many irrational people running around, some of whom have launch authority over nuclear weapons.
Sorry, what straw man are you trying to address here? Did anyone say “If anyone has any irrational beliefs, then they must be dangerously irrational in all ways!”? Or what? Clue me in to the argument you’re responding to.
Bollocks. Let’s say the question is whether there is an elephant in my garage. One person concludes there is on the basis of pure assumption. Another person looks in there and finds no evidence of one and concludes there is not. You would say that neither came to their conclusion by examination of the evidence because there was none.
Do you want to think about that some more or should I save time and start laughing at you now?
This is a common prevarication. Atheists generally comment upon and consider the type of god that “yokels” (to use your term) believe in. Ask a religious “yokel” if his god does nothing and is irrelevant and the answer will generally be that no, their god created the world, and influences it now and has rules that must be followed and so on. Atheists tend to think the absence of evidence of any such god is telling and that belief in such a god is, in the circumstances, absurd.
But get into an argument with a theist apologist and they will tell you that atheists are being arrogant because they can’t positively disprove the theoretical possibility of an invisible deity that lives in its mum’s basement and never lifts a finger.
Who gives a flying fuck about such gods? The practical effects upon me of religious beliefs derive from (allegedly) pro-active deities who do not have the type of low profile that would permit them to exist without evidence. Any more than an elephant could be in my garage without me being able to see it.
Your position only makes a skerrick of sense if you shift the goalposts so that we are not engaging in a practical debate but rather indulging in a sophomoric gabfest about theoretical irrelevancies.
Yes, it IS scary. I have no particular desire to die or see someone else die because the world is dominated by lunatics. And someone dying because of that religious lunacy is something that happens quite often.
NM, it’s not worth it.
Religion as an entity (not specific religions, which may or may not have creeds of belief) certainly is a tool for engaging with and grappling with questions we don’t understand the answers to, and which may be unanswerable. Why do bad things happen to good people? I always knew my mother was going to die, so why do I feel so horrible, and how can I feel better in time?
Many religions go beyond this and have belief creeds, but religion as an institution is a tool for grappling with the kind of personal questions that the scientific method isn’t suited for.
But do you really feel better about your mother dying if you’re religious? I’ve never seen evidence of that. Never.
Making up answers, which is what religion does isn’t really “grappling” with questions. It’s more avoiding them, or just supplying the answer you want to hear.
And the “why do bad things happen to good people” bit is a “problem” created by religion in the first place. The real answer is “why wouldn’t bad things happen to good people?”; it’s only a problem because reality contradicts the claim of an all powerful, all good ( or even moderately concerned ) God. To someone who doesn’t buy the fantasy of God, there’s no mystery there at all.
OK. I have seen this be true for people. More broadly, I think customs like sitting shiva, holding a wake and/or having funerals are a helpful way to grieve in a healing way (feeling better in time) instead of a harmful way (falling into depression).
If it doesn’t help, then you shouldn’t do it, obviously, but I think people continue to do these things because they do help.
This is not true of my religious experience at all. I have never been given an answer by my religion.
I don’t think this is necessarily true; humans are pattern-matching. We want the world to make sense. However, the world doesn’t make easy sense. Sometimes it doesn’t make easy sense in a way that science can explain, which is most of the time, but sometimes it doesn’t make easy sense in a non-scientifically-testable way. People created god-ideas to try to make the world consistent, it’s not like some Babylonian women got in a huddle and decided it would be hilarious to see if they could get everyone to sing songs to a made-up woman who lives in the sky.
I think science now has found the answer to most of the questions that most early religions were dealing with, because that’s the way social progress works. But I also think religion can be a useful framework for dealing with personal questions that science can’t reach (yet?).
I’ve found a useful answer to those sort of questions: “I don’t know…yet”. Then I move on.