How can you distinguish your subjective experiences from hallucinations?
How can you distinguish your experiences from someone who has a subjective experience of Kali or Apollo?
Personal religious experiences may be subjectively convincing but they are objectively worthless.
Incidentally, it may interest you to know that virtually all of the classic religious experiences can be induced artificially either with drugs or by directly stimulating certain parts of the brain.
I didn’t realise I was usually snide… while I’d be the first to admit I sometimes give in to that, I wouldn’t say it was a regular thing. I’ll assume you’re onto something and try and cut back, though.
Your belief is interesting and pretty understandable. You’re right, you’re not an agnostic; I at least would define agnosticism as being unsure of whether or not there is a god, and you’re certain that “there is no god” is not the case. I think from the way you made your statement that you’re not a Theist either, because if you believe in a First Cause, that doesn’t necessarily have to be “a” god.
By the way, as an agnostic myself I disagree that there has to be a First Cause - all evidence tells us that there is always something that caused something else, and that there are no “starting” causes (at least, none that we have seen). Why not simply an infinite string of causation, as opposed to a single starting point?
No there didn’t, as has been repeatedly explained to you. Your entire justification for faith is based on a false assumption.
No one says that people can’t choose their own path. What the OP was about was that believers are unwilling to allow me to choose my own path without raising deep suspicions about my reliability as a citizen. As abd exanokem if I am honest about my path there is no way I could be elected to any public office. (You couldn’t run fast enough to give me a public office and I’m 83 with arthritic knees) However, a person shouldn’t have to lie in order to have a chance of being elected to one.
Forget the public office. I’ve already proved I can’t find the right home row keys on the keyboard.
Make that “As an example”.
Subjective experiences are just that, subjective; they tell you nothing about the objective world.
You’re twisting my words. I said “don’t” exist, not “can’t” exist. And, by the way, isn’t someone who fails to believe in god but doesn’t have enough evidence to deny god’s existence an agnostic by definition?
The “logical default” argument makes no sense. If I make a statement that there’s a bear in the woods, and you say there isn’t, the burden of proof lies equally upon both of us. Given the lack of hard data and the subjectivity involved in interpreting evidence, I fail to see how you can make a flat pronouncement on god either way.
You, too, are twisting the arguments. You’re equating a belief that something exists with a belief that something is going to happen. They’re not the same thing.
Forget religion for a moment. Let’s say that one person tells me that someone climbed the mountain yesterday and caused a rockslide, and another tells me that nobody was on the mountain yesterday and the rockslide happened because of water runoff. Neither of those positions is a “default condition.” Do I give them equal weight? Probably not. Based on my personal experiences and observations, I’d say it’s more likely that nobody caused it. But I wouldn’t make a hard fast pronouncement. I’d be the “rockslide agnostic” unless one side or the other could prove their position.
Taking it back to religion, you’ll never be able to prove the nonexistence of god(s). You can offer scientific explanations for phenomena that theists call “miracles,” but there’s simply no way to prove that things aren’t being guided by unseen hands. I fail to understand how you make that leap from “agnostic leaning toward disbelief” to “atheist” without just taking it on faith that there’s no god.
You actually believe that’s all I got out of it? Unbelievable. :rolleyes:
Try addressing the point instead of rolling your eyes at it.
No, an agnostic is by definition someone who feels he doesn’t have enough evidence to come to a conclusion either way.
Something I grant every time this topic comes up.
Because we feel that the existence of gods is something that needs to be proven. Call it an assumption if you like: without proof that gods exist, I operate under the assumption that they don’t.
An agnostic, by definition, is someone “who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God”. Thus, the atheist, who merely lacks a belief in God (or even “disbelieves in” God) is more open-minded than the agnostic; the agnostic, it he’s truly an agnostic, would still have to maintain that it’s impossible to know one way or the other even if a ray of light descended from Heaven, a great Voice spake unto him, everyone in the world heard the Voice in his or her native tongue, etc. I mean, gee, it could be space aliens, or a “mass hallucination”. Whereas the atheist, even the “disbelieving” atheist, and especially the “I haven’t yet been shown convincing evidence” atheist, could change his mind.
Of course that’s a silly and caricatured portrayal of what agnostics believe; many agnostics wouldn’t even use that particular definition of what it means to be an agnostic (the link even gives other definitions), and even the ones who do would probably object to my description of their position. However, these sorts of distortions seem all too common in discussions of atheism; people are perpetually telling us what it is we really believe, no matter how many times we explain ourselves. This is a pretty good Introduction to Atheism. Here’s one post where I tried to convey some of the complexities of deciding whether a particular person is an “agnostic” or a “weak atheist” or a “strong atheist”. (It can vary a lot depending on which God you’re talking about.)
Bell’s experiments demonstrate that either causality in a temporal sense or in a spatial sense (“locality”) can be violated.
As for your “matter creation” (and I would, yet again, urge you to read those other threads again in order to understand that “creation” is a poor choice of term really), Higgs field theory describes how “matter” arises from field fluctuations – it’s hoped that this will be demonstrated beyond doubt next year at the Large Hadron Collider.
Finally, what you appear to be arguing for as “God” in this case is a bare-bones deism, rather than the personal God of theism. One can be atheist but still deist like, say, Einstein.
But that’s a silly definition, which I’m suggesting we do away with. When a weak atheist says “I do not believe that any gods exist”, how is that not logically equivalent to “I believe no gods exist”?
Actually I think it might be 1/ω.
Like I said, only if you apply special rules to religion. Normally, a lack of evidence that something is even possible is considered a justifiable reason to deny it’s existence.
Because the only honest alternative is impossible, or at least insane. If I actually tried to think like you say, I’d have to consider all imaginable concepts, things, people, pasts and futures to be plausible. Religious people don’t follow the zero-skepticism you promote, or they wouldn’t be able to function. They just lower the standards of evidence for their religious beliefs, like I’ve been saying. The vast majority of possibilities and fantasies need to be dismissed out of hand, so we have the time to actually live. Therefore until there is evidence that a belief as crazy as religion is true, it should be dismissed as silly.
And once again, it’s the believer’s obligation to prove he isn’t a liar, a fool or insane. It’s not my job to pander to religious gibbering.
MEBuckner, I’ll summarise your post thus:[ul][]Young Earth Creationist God: You are a strong atheist[]Personal First-Cause God: You are a weak atheistHoaxmaster General God: You are a strong agnostic.[/ul]Surely all of these differ only be degree (ie. different positions of a Belief-O-Meter needle), since there could possibly be new evidence which shifted any one of them to >50% on your meter (eg, a bearded miracle worker leads you through memories only you could know)? If you consider the existence of a Hoaxmaster General less likely than not, you are surely still an atheist with respect to that theistic entity?
That seems fair enough. Really, I’ve never gone for the “agnostic” label; I just get tired of the “atheists are people who, by blind faith alone, are absolutely certain there is no God” straw man. There are some “gods” I’m very certain don’t exist; others, I’ve never been given any good reason to accept their existence.
I’m talking about what the word God invokes within most humans. Although the details of belief vary greatly it is connected to the questions I mentioned. Perhaps it is mere chance that IPU and pixies are not. It doesn’t matter it’s just a tag. I’m saying that tag is different in that respect than the others being used. It’s not an equitable comparison in that one area.
Perhaps, but subjective experiences are an essential part of life. I’m saying that subjective experiences are valid* for the individual * The experience may be misinterpreted a time and the path may wind in different directions but the subjective experience has a lot to do with judgements we make and the day to day choices that direct our lives.
By living together and interacting. By sharing experiences and continuing to seek. By making a commitment to the truth and requiring personal honesty, so when the time comes to let go of beliefs that at one time seemed imperative, we are able to do so.
Perhaps, but life is made up of both the subjective and objective. When I’m judging how how I am moved by a certain song does the objective then become worthless?
I have heard about it and it is interesting as well as inconclusive. Having done some chemical experiments in decades past I already knew that. 
Good question. There does seem to be some difference. Atheists here on the SDMB argue that atheism is a lack of belief rather than belief. If someone actively campaigns and asserts that there is no god with vigor that feels like a belief rather than a lack of belief. Would it be similar to the difference between a deist and a fundamentalist?
What’s all this “active campaigning” got to do with anything? If someone asks an atheist “do you believe in any gods?” and they answer “no” ie.[/]i “no, I believe in no gods”, or "no, I []idon’t believe in any gods") is that weak, whereas someone who volunteers the information is strong, or something? That, again, seems a poor criterion.
I’d say not, because they believe different things (eg. whether or not Jesus is the Son of God). Atheists weak and strong believe that gods aren’t real. Again, what’s the difference beyond the strength of that belief (ie. roughly how unlikely they consider any god to be)?