I think we have already established that none of this counts.
Regards,
Shodan
Diogenes, and presumably you, would dismiss every endeavor of the human mind besides science as worthless, and I’m ignorant?
You just contradicted your previous sentence.
Why? Occam’s Razor isn’t a law of logic; it’s an unproven assumption you (and I) make to keep our head from exploding with frustration. And why does it follow laws?
You and Samuel Johnson, huh?
Existence isn’t always intuitively obvious. When theists have said here that they believe in God because they have perceived Him, at least a few atheists have come back with, “You imagined it.” “It was disordered brain chemicals,” which both can’t be refuted, and can be used to disprove anything.
Explaining the origin of a belief isn’t the same as proving it. Usually people explain the origin of a belief in an attempt to dismiss it: “You deny God because you want to be free of pesky morality.” “Well, you believe in God because your afraid to admit there’s no Sky-Daddy who’ll catch you if you fall.”
So we should adopt a superrational game strategy, and be good. That explains why we should be nice to useful, powerful people who live nearby. It doesn’t explain why I should worry about the third-world guy whose ancestral farm sits over the petroleum reserves I need to power my precious wide-screen TV with robotic snack tray. What’s he going to do to me? Obviously, he’s an Untermensch.
Maybe game theory can be expanded to cover all of morality, someday. But at this point, I can’t say it’s scientifically proven that good always wins in the end, and evil is self defeating. I think this kind of reasoning is on the border of math and philosophy, anyway.
We’d still be here if Jeanie brought us all into being by wiggling her nose, and we might even have structurally-sound back suspension, a beak instead of decaying teeth, and male genitals placed sensibly in a steel vault rather than a funny-looking sack.
If I spend time crafting responses to later posts, I’ll starve and my house will overflow with garbage. The best response to New Atheists? If “new=proselytizing
and dogmatic,” I’ve never met such a thing IRL, just on the net, and once on the radio. The best response to atheists I’ve met has been to offer them something to drink, talk about their kids, or their dog, or stamp collecting, or any of the many things in the world besides religion. At the moment, I think the best response to a dogmatic Atheist/Christian/Zoroastrian/Greenpeace member, is to volunteer on a neurology ward full of conduction aphasia patients till you can talk forever about nothing, and as soon as your Guardian of Absolute Truth offers to share, to insist that he is doomed to eternal horror unless he breathes deep of the Sacred Yoni of Shamat and drinks the Semen of Peth. Offer to help. Start to become skyclad.
But I may calm down later.
Ever notice how religious debates almost always come down to this sort of philosophy 101 masturbation with silly YOU CAN’T KNOW ANYTHING NOW CAN YOU!!! arguments? It should be a law or something. SenorBeef’s law.
Explain Why we are here?
Science cannot explain this and IMHO probably never will.
Yes, because not everything has a philosophical reason. Shit happens. This is not only expected, but absolutely central to an existance where there’s no magic. That’s one of the big issues at stake here - some people cannot cognitively handle the idea that every action and everything that exists does not have some plan, some purpose. The way everyone says “everything happens for a reason” is a clear indicator of this mental weakness.
The universe is chaotic, unfair, and has no intentional purpose. There’s no magic in the world. I know this sucks. I’m sorry.
We’re here because our parents did the nasty.
Oh you meant a different “why”? Like, “what is our purpose”? Perhaps you could define “purpose” for me first…
I am here because a train designed through science transported me to a bus stop, where a bus engineered via science took me to a home designed and built using science, where I turned on this computer yada yada yada.
If it is proven as false then I am happy to accept that.
I am a scientist who uses ruthless logic but I am not blind to the inexplicable. I do not say “Because Science can’t prove it it must be crap”.
Logic is a critical element in our society but you cannot use it to explain everything maybe some things are beyond our little brains. I would never be so arrogant to say that I know everything.
No you can’t. Faith is not a logic based condition, by saying you have faith you are like a kid saying he is sorry for pushing his sister. Only he knows if he is truly sorry.
Both are wrong IMO. Please advertise your beliefs someway but let me come to you to ask more and understand.
Nup cannot define purpose, would never try. And I don’t believe that some super man is responsible for it all as well. religion is flawed and always will be. Look to the mystics within religions, they are the ones that are closer to God, whatever that is.
Why are you assuming there has to be a “why?” We have no reason to believe that we are here for any reason at all. If there is a reason (and there almost certainly is not), then there’s no reason that science can’t discover it. One thing is for sure, religion can’t give us any information about it.
As someone who was once an intense student of mysticism and its various methodology (much of which I experimented with first hand), I came to the conclusion (supported by scientific evidence) that mystic states of mind are just altered brain chemistry which can be fun, which can give some insights into the nature of consciousness and thought patterns, and which can imbue the subject with a false sense of profundity but which do not actually convey any useful information about the universe.
I think there should be a word for this too. It’s kind of a straw clutching attempt at epistemological equivocation, or a half-assed appeal to Cartesian doubt. It’s almost solopsistic in its philosophical emptiness and total lack of persuasion to anything. It’s like they know they can’t play on an even playing field, so they try to deny that the playing field exists.
Who said “worthless?” I just said no other method but science is useful for discovering information. If you are aware of another method for discovering information, please tell me what it is.
No, only the ones that amount to childish mental masturbation, like solipsism.
No I didn’t. Learn to read for context. The question of whether something exists is answerable by science, and science alone. Questions of value are a different matter.
It follows the laws of reality over there for the same reason it follows the laws of reality over here.
Why are you assuming there is not?
Why do you assume science can explain everything there is?
Why do you assume that religous study is not capable of providing answers?
You assume a lot of which you do not know.
Let’s leave out the assumptions then-please tell us what factual answer religion can give us that science cannot(he asks yet again, not really expecting a direct response).
So you honestly don’t really believe that murder is wrong? That when people object to murder, they are merely expressing a personal opinion that is by no means binding on anyone else?
Even if it’s the murder of atheists? Or homosexuals? Or people who dare to question Christianity?
Choose your answer carefully, Diogenes, and remember that people will hold you to those words in future discussions.
I’m a former smoker, and I don’t care if you smoke or not. It’s none of my business.
The default/null assumption is that with the lack of evidence, you don’t form beliefs about the intentions or purposes of things.
What can’t be explained by empiricism? When has there ever been evidence of magic in the world that defies observation and explanation? What could exist that science/empiricism couldn’t explain?
Why would it? Religions do not seek objective truth. What are people engaged in religious study going to discover?
Wait, he says murder being wrong is a matter of belief/opinion, so you ask him “you don’t really believe that murder is wrong”? He just said it’s a belief, and one he probably shares. Your question makes no sense.
He’s saying murder being wrong is not some law of the universe like gravity or how to figure out the area of a circle. It’s a social construct. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a useful one, or that we should allow diverging rules on who can murder based on opinions.
Wait, are you really expecting to catch him in some sort of “gotcha” moment here? Like, he’s gonna slip and say it’s okay to murder everyone except atheists?