[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
I think the problem is that many (not all) people who have been religious since birth don’t think …
[QUOTE]
That’s just it, Rev, they don’t think 
Dammit, stop saying “your sky god”! Okay, I get the idea: you’re going to use a goofy-ass modifier every time you refer to God so we know how ridiculous you find the idea of God. Do so if you want, I guess, but it’s not conducive to rational debate.
Yeah, actually it does matter whether or not I think God is a literally (or even metaphorically) a bearded man in the sky. There’s a significant difference between “It is plausible that X exists” and “It is plausible that a cartoony, symbolic, pictorial representation of X literally exists.” If I thought Republicans and Democrats were literally elephants and donkeys wearing stars-n-stripes top hats, I wouldn’t believe in them either.
Actually, they’re somehow connected. My responses to your first to questions would be : no, and no, because there’s zero obhective reason to assume there’s something before and after life. Why should there be? Of course, it would be pleasant to believe in such a thing, but why even entertain such an idea?
Now, how is this connected to pixies? Because to the questions you list, a number of people answer by assuming without any evidence the existence of a supernatural entity. As soon as you bring in the discussion your arbitrary supernatural entity of choice, I can bring in mine too. Or my “brain in a vat created and studied by ET” theory or anything else, regardless how apparently absurd.
Sure, though in many cases (like : is there something after death?) I think there’s absolutely no reason to assume the answer should be anything else than “no” and in many others (meaning of life?) that these questions are philosophical in nature and don’t have any objective answers. Finally, some others might have an objective, but yet undiscovered answer, but just making one up doesn’t cut it for me.
Then why even discuss religion with them at all? I mean, it’s not really one of those things that comes up often, generally.
But like you said, you don’t expect to convince them, and you don’t respect them, so there’s really no point in telling them they’re wrong.
I’ve found that most people will judge you on your actions, not on what you believe or don’t believe. If you’re friendly, generous, keep your word, etc., most people aren’t going to care much about whether you believe in God or not. There are a few bigots out there, of course, but they hardly make up the majority.
All I can say is that I’ve never had those experiences. My parents and grandmother are religious, as is my brother, and while it bothers them a little that I’m an atheist, I know that it would bother them a lot more if I killed somebody or died. That’s really true with most of the people I know who believe in a god or gods.
Um…fair enough.
Also pretty reasonable. If the question is “Don’t you wonder about X?” then “No I don’t” is a reasonable response.
My own sister is a wonderful generous loving person who honestly says “I don’t believe in anything” meaning an after life. Her belief or lack of it, doesn’t matter at all. She remains a wonderful generous loving person
Sure, you and I are in agreement. I’m not saying to concede the moral ground on these matters…just to postpone it while we work for change on more important issues.
I have encountered too many cases where different browsers display either/both ≠ and ¬ as hollow boxes rather than the characters intended. The convention of “!=” is pretty widely recognized and the characters appear under ALL browsers and fonts, so I went with that.
Incorrect; that’s the starting point of this thread. As an atheist, I can be confident that most people despise me, despite having no knowledge of me.
No. The poll says they don’t like atheists as a group…that doesn’t mean they don’t like you or wouldn’t like you. It’s easy to answer survey questions.
No, it doesn’t. An actual bearbed man creator god provides an equally adequate answer to questions people answer to with a more elaborate conception of god. Many theists have been content with a very simple conception of god/gods, and actually many still are.
No, there isn’t. Since there isn’t any evidence for the existence of the supernatural creature X, it isn’t more plausible than another randomly picked supernatural creature. A “complex” god, a bearbed human-like creator, Odin, an elaborate belief in river spirits in a shamanistic culture, a fairy-tale-like river-spirit are all equally plausible, because there’s exactly as much evidence for all of them.
The already mentionned “invisible dragon in the garage” doesn’t become more plausible just because I provide to you a detailled description of its anatomy, or give it some complex and difficult to grasp attribute. The IPU isn’t more plausible because it’s invisible and pink. Similarily, making your god more abtract doesn’t make it more plausible than a simple, basic concept of a very powerful bearbed man.
Since they don’t know me, they do hate me without knowing me.
It sounds like your reason for believing in God is the standard First Cause argument, which goes something like “everything has a cause that happened before it, so logically there must have been a Prime Mover who caused that first event to happen.”
It seems to me that this argument is completely, utterly destroyed by the simple observation that if a God is required to kick-start the universe, then you can use the exact same argument about God, and get stuck in a recursive loop. The argument cannot be valid.
Plus, the whole event chain that everything has a cause is contradicted by our current understanding of quantum physics. If this argument underpins your belief in God, I’m thinking you should reconsider.
But that doesn’t mean you have to hate them, and if they knew you, they might like you.
Unfortunately, the mere fact of someone’s privately held and barely discussed atheism is taken as a mortal insult by many, many people of faith. I wrote this in a previous thread over three years ago:
See here. The excerpt above comes from post 110, but I’m linking to the beginning because I think it’s a good read, and material to the current discussion.
The point is, a requirement that atheism be defended respectfully is disingenuous and basically pointless, because for many people, atheism itself is disrespectful and insulting. I wrote several long posts in the thread linked above that explain carefully why I personally have no faith but that do not attempt to talk anyone else out of their faith; and yet I am confident that my explanation of my own faithlessness will feel like a frontal assault on faith to a believer.
It’s an impossible thing you ask for, Cap, and while I will not be snide or smug or intentionally derisive as I argue for my position, I will not hold back in those arguments, because I take zero responsibility for how other people choose to perceive insults or disrespect. God = Odin = Zeus = Quetzalcoatl = Vishnu, and if somebody wants to be offended by that, too bad.
That’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it to try to illustrate the uselessness of “god” hypotheses as an answer for questions you don’t know the answer to. It is a simple, objective fact that Western theistic constructs have no more empirical support behind them than do tribal gods, Norse gods or pixies. They are all equally speculative, equally plausible and equally unnecessary.
Um…no dude, there is no difference at all. The evidence is the same for both.
FDude, who do you think you’re talking to? Do you really think I don’t understand theological abstracts or that I think you literally worship a bearded man in the sky? That’s not where I’m coming from at all. My point is not that the symbolic cartoon is ridiculous, therefore the abstract doesn’t exist, my point is that the abstract has no more going for it than the cartoon. “God” (no matter how sophisticated your definition may be) still has no more explanatory power, no more evidence and no more necessity than ghosts or elves or a super-intelligent council of telepathic aardvarks living in the center of Pluto.
How do you know? What makes you so sure you can rule out the IPU and Odin but not Yahweh or Christ? What’s the difference in evidence?
My problem isn’t the questions, my problem is that we have never discovered a reason to hypothesize magic to answer them. I am an empiricist. I see no reason to speculate about supernatural explanations as long as those questions can be answered without them.
To All It May Concern,
PLease, please, please, please, please, please, please, PLEASE stop arguing FOR Atheism by arguing AGAINST religious beliefs and a particular version of God. It is intellectually dishonest. The Initial Question is purely philosphical: How did all this, including us, get here. Answers fall into three philosophical camps;
Theist: there is a supreme being who started it all off
Atheist: there is not a supreme being who started it all off
Agnostic: I do not and cannot know if a supreme being started it all off
Three philosophical positions. Adherents to the first two believe thay have an answer to the question. Those who do not fall into the third category. Yes, there are sub-categories to all three.
To demonstrate that the first is not a religious position, consider that a person can adhere to it, yet believe that his god (small "g’, as in supreme being) his no interest in the lives of men, that man is not made in his image, that paying homage to Him is unneccesary or ridiculous, that we are not the point of His creation. He may simply have satisfied his curiosity with an an answer and never give it a moment’s thought for the rest of his life. This person is simply forming an opinion on “what started it all?” It is a philosophical position. Was there a Prime Mover, a First Cause?
Now, of the people who share a “Yes” answer to the Initial Question, some, none, many, or all, may choose to then make additional decisions regarding what they should do about the existence of this god. They may claim that he is benevolent, good, or loving. They may decide that they look like him. They may decide to worship him—in myriad ways. They may choose to believe that his existence requires—or prohibits—some action on their part. They may choose to formailize their beliefs and turn it into doctrine. They may believe that their doctrine represents the will of God, even that is divinely inspired by him.
Or, they may not.
The number of people who decide to take these further steps and the number of people who do not bears no weight on the validity of each position. The fact that at this point in time on earth that there are groups who have chosen/built a doctrine called Christianity, or Judaism, Muhammad, Hindism, Buddhism, or any other -ism does not negate the possibility that a person can share their answer to the Initial Question and stop right there. Fully stop.
When we are discussing Atheism, its opposing choice in the decision tree is Theism. Insisting that Atheism be argued for by contrastiing it with a particular strain of Theism is faulty and unfair. If you are going to argue for Atheism you must be willing to defend it against Theism in it’s purest form, not one of it’s subsets. It is quite possible to that Theism is correct and every religion that has ever entered the mind of man is 100% incorrect.
Some of you realize this and continue to do it. You do so because it is an easy way to validate your own position. If you are that intent on validating what you *want to be the case that you are willing to use flawed logic, there is no point in a debate. Ironic that you make the same mistake that you abhor in blindly rabid religious people.
So, please, argue Atheism by contrasting it with the purest version of what is it at odds with. By doing so you will eliminate wriggle room in your opposition. Because every time you argue against a particular version of Theism, you leave open the possibility that another version might be valid.
If you’d like to argue against Christianity or some other strain of Theism, that is another discussion. A religious one, not a philosophical one.
Thank you.
I was unaware of that. Thanks again.
No. It makes logical sense to say that all things are subject to causality, except that which is extra-natural. That would make god eternal. And that is certainly no more outlandish than claiming the matter and ebergy, in some form have been around for eternity, with no beginning.
Oh? Please elaborate.
I am willing to. Present the explanation. From what I’ve read, QM attempts to explain the random appearance of matter in a particular place/time, not it’s creation. But please, present a the QM theory that accounts for the beginning of everything.
I do not need to defend it. Theists are those making the claim. Let’s them bring evidences to support it.
I don’t believe in a supreme being starting everything because I’ve no reason to. It’s quite simple.