Actually it’s not a belief; it’s a heuristic argument, and one that is eminently practical. Are you suggesting that the Razor should be abandoned? In favor of what? “All other things being equal, the explanation that is usually correct is whatever I feel like?” I had assumed that you were suggesting that the Sun-centered model makes more sense than the Earth-centered model; if you reject Occam’s Razor, are you then saying that both are equally valid?
I disagree.
That’s rather obvious, isn’t it? Every argument any of us makes here is a statement of what we believe, and the supporting arguments are statements of why we believe as we do. What you’re saying is “We’re having a debate”. I believe as I do because I apply Occam’s Razor; and since the Razor is a sound logical principal, it makes perfect sense to do so.
We covered this already. Unless you have some new insight as to why argumentum ad populum is valid, Apos’ debunking of it still stands. I suppose you are going to say that logical fallacies are beliefs; but again, it’s not an arbitrary belief, but rather one based on logic and evidence.
We have spent this whole thread explaining why it’s nonsensical; certainly you don’t expect me to rehash the whole thread just because you made an 11th hour entry into it.
I disagree. A lot has been written, but I have yet to see a decent definition; and I include yours:
How is this a definition? The first part “the spiritual nature of humans” is tautological. Spiritual means “of the spirit or soul”. All you’re saying there is that the definition of “soul” is “soul”. The second part “regarded as immortal…” is merely saying the soul is immortal. Again, how is that a definition? What is it made out of? Why can’t we see it, or even detect it by any objective means? How does it interact with the physical universe? If it can leave the body after death, what holds it inside the body while it’s alive? And how can we even address the concept when the definition changes from person to person? For example, you define it as immortal, while others define it as the consciousness we experience while we are alive. Fessie seems to sometimes define it as an emotional connection to our surroundings. So yes, a lot has been written, yet nothing has been clarified.
Sorry, that is not objective evidence.
It is neither.
That is precisely the claim that has been made in this thread. The counter-argument was made that there is evidence that consciousness comes from the brain. Then it was posited that consciousness resides both in the brain and in the soul. Absent any objective evidence that souls exist, it is an unnecessary additional entity that is not needed to explain consciousness. It’s not a false dichotomy, because I am responding to the assertion that souls are needed to explain consciousness.
I question if you’ve really been following this thread.
I’m agreeing to disagree, too - I wouldn’t want to argue against the merits of skepticism and empiricism, or deny someone else’s experience because I don’t understand or share it. And I realize that my methodology for presenting my arguments breaks the “rules”.
It is interesting about familial backgrounds - my father’s grandfather was a Methodist minister & when we had a huge family reunion a few years back it was clear that most of the family is still atoning! The spouses they’d brought were interesting, vibrant people; the blood relatives were boring & “good”. The minister had a big family, my grandfather had 4 brothers and 2 sisters; one of the girls got pregnant out of wedlock (back in the 1940’s, when it was a HUGE deal) & the other girl never married, she’s had a tragic love life. So clearly I won’t argue that religion doesn’t damage people.
My father, who got his BS in Philosophy, was an ardent churchgoer, volunteered, taught and was an active proseltyzer until his senior year of HS, when he became an atheist. Total rationalist & empiricist. I maintain that he only gave up on the Savior, not the sin; he’s not a happy person.
Even more interesting is that through another branch of my father’s family I’m related to D. Elton Trueblood, who was a hotshot theologian and professor at Earlham College. Very progressive, from what I’ve learned - I only found out about this a couple of years ago.
So perhaps this is why I had religious experiences from early childhood - I sought religion, read kiddie bibles (along with a lot of other books; it wasn’t a total obsession). I made up my own prayers & tried to share them with my little friends who, of course, wanted nothing to do with it. I even devised a “church” out of a tent in my bedroom. I’m the one who wanted to go to Catholic school for first grade even though there was an elementary school right across the street (didn’t finish the year there, though, because we moved & it was too expensive).
Yet our family didn’t practice religion - I’ve been to various churches as a result of spending the night with friends as children do. Grandparents would take me from time to time. My father’s an atheist & Mom’s a lapsed Catholic, so no, I didn’t have any regular formal training. Perhaps that helped maintain its appeal, that I could find it on my own. I’ve had strong spiritual feelings of presence and received responses to my prayers for as long as I can remember; still, though, sometimes I forget to listen, or succumb to my fear, or go off on a tangent - I had a lot of doubt and skepticism as a teenager & college student.
One funny anecdote - at the family reunion mentioned above my sister agreed to play the piano for an “entertainment hour”, by which it turned out they meant singing hymns. Which was fine, I don’t mind singing along, Great-Aunt had provided lyric sheets & gave my sister sheet music. But since we’d not grown up w/churchgoing, my sister had no idea what the rhythms were - she had “Onward Christian Soldier” going at one pace & everybody else singing along (except for me) had to drown her out at the right rhythm until she caught on. We were the heathens!
To answer the second part of your question, I think that a lot of people use religion to bring a sense of order to their life, to give it greater meaning, to give themselves an extra tool for dealing with a crisis, to maintain humility when they succeed. I think it’s also a great way of giving up control over things you can’t fix yourself, by turning them over to God & trusting Him to take care of it.
Rather than being itself an emotional state, spirituality can relieve a person of the emotions they don’t have time to feel & let them concentrate on the present - that old saying “there’s no atheists in foxholes.”
Note that it’s not a panacea, it can be misapplied & it will often fail, as do all methods of living. And I’m sure other people will give you different opinions.
But do you assume any new thing is true until it is disproven, or do you assume it is not true until you have a reason to believe it? Are you aware of the mental chaos inherent in the former philosophy? It doesn’t seem possible to start from the position that every single one of the almost infinite number of things that might be true, is true. No action would be possible. I wouldn’t even be able to finish this post, because I would be forced to believe that the buttons on my keyboard are tipped with poison, and to continue typing would mean my death. I would have to believe it because it hasn’t been disproven yet.
I think it’s time for the Invisible Pink Unicorn to make its appearance. Fessie, do you believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn? If not, why not? Are you able to prove it doesn’t exist? If not, do you assume that it does exist?
There are undoubtedly a lot of emotional and psychological reaons for religious constructs(God, souls, afterlife etc.).A few of them you have already toucjhed upon.A lot of this has to do with how “God” and “religion”(specifically in my country christianity) have been defined.When someone is asked “Do you believe in God?”, more often than not their brains translate this question into “Are you a good person?” and without a moment’s consideration they answer “Yes”.Sometimes a professional athlete will, upon winning a game or match, “give all glory to God”.Likely because of his upbringing God has been defined as “humility” at some point and humility has been defined as “good”.If he were to stand there and say “well I trained all my life and worked really hard to develope my skills and it paid off here on the football field(wrestling mat, basketball court…whatever)” it would trigger a reaction in him and others listening that he was being “prideful” or “not-humble”(therefore “not good”) and slapping God in the face after he did all of this for him.That athlete never stops to consider whether God actually exists or not or whether his athletic skills can be accounted for solely by his training and determination(and the encouragement of others), without the need of any gods.
As for the “There are no atheists in foxholes” addage…this was the product of bigoted men.Likely military men.It is every bit as erroneous as “There are no blacks in the science lab’”.This phrase is meant to imply that when one is in imminent danger of dying he will ignore all rationality and believe in God out of fear.For some reason the bigots think this a good thing that there god be turned to under the most dire of emotional conditions when a person’s thinking is at it’s least clear and least reliable.
In any case it is completely untrue.there are tons of atheists who both literally and metaphorically reside in foxholes.There were many in the towers on 9/11.There have been times(not many) where I myself have felt I was about to breath my last breath and as fearful as the situation was my attempt at last words to the doctors around me was “make sure they have it down that I am an atheist.I don’t want ANY religious services if I die.”
I hope that this has not jaded you into thinking that atheists are, by nature, unhappy people. People are people, no matter what their religious and spiritual beliefs. I’ve seen both happy and unhappy atheists, and I’ve seen both happy and unhappy theists. Happiness can be reached in a multitude of ways; no particular belief system has a monopoly.
This is something that I wanted to ask about. I’ve often wondered, when people say that they recieve an answer to a prayer, what exactly do they mean? I would assume that we’re not talking about some disembodied voice or anything of that nature, correct?
Overall, I’d have to say that even though you weren’t raised in a highly religious household, you at least had a lot of religious influences around. I wonder if that would in any way explain your propensity to feel “spiritual”. After all, spirituality is not something universal to all people. I sometimes wonder how many people actually believe themselves to have some spiritual component to their existance, as opposed to just parroting what they’ve been taught to say and think. Not that I’m claiming theists of being automatons, but when one is told from an early age that something is true and unquestionable, it’s dsometimes ifficult to shake that belief even if you don’t really feel any truth in it.
I actually find that basing what I believe on the empirical gives me more of a sense of order than my short stint with religion ever did. I think this is because the empirical is forced to be consitant, whereas religion, spiritualiy, the supernatural, or whatever you wish to call it, is often defined as being mysterious and unknowable.
As for the part about giving up control of things to God, isn’t that really just a last-ditch effort to maintain control? I mean, here you have a all-powerful entity who supposedly views humans as His ultimate creation. If you can’t control something, well, there’s nothing that God can’t control, and He’s looking out for all of us because we’re so special to Him, so He will obviously control things in our favor.
This saying tends to be thrown around as fact by those who are religious. I don’t think the people who say that do so out of any sort of sense of superiority. It’s just that they can’t possibly understand not beleiving in a higher power when your life is on the line. As an atheist, I have to disagree with that old adage. I solidly believe in my system of understanding the world, and it’s not going to break down under pressure unless the pressure causes a total mental collapse of some sort.
Invisible Pink Unicorn sounds like a great name for a band. When I encounter someone who believes in something like that & they seem otherwise harmless, I do my best to grant them the chance they’re right, at least for a little while. Isn’t that what we all do in order to consider other viewpoints? I don’t base my life on their suppositions, no, but I’m willing to entertain possibilities.
I don’t think I ever said faith had to be blind, or even should - there is an efficacy component to believability, an empirical method if you will for testing knowledge that you acquired via spiritual means.
What bugs me about these arguments, and I suspect it’s endemic to the format, is that in order to debate we have to agree on boundaries and rules and definitions - and in so doing, we’ve created a subset of life which is not life itself. And that’s fine, but to then claim you’ve defined all of life doesn’t make sense. Haven’t you noticed that the people who win arguments are generally those who establish the definitions?
BTW, when I spoke w/my Master of Divinity friend the other day she remarked that she no longer sets goals because the things that are unfolding for her are so much better than she would have dared hope. She doesn’t want to limit the possibilities by defining them.
You keep asking about the physical sense of presence. Perhaps that term is too vague. Specifically I feel it on my skin as warmth and very slight pressure, and sometimes I feel an exterior energy as if someone else were physically there (although I’ve never seen anyone).
Hey, that’s another point - can’t you people feel it when someone’s looking at you? When someone else enters a room silently?
I also get a shudder in my solar plexus and I shake all over when I’m digging deep or really connecting with someone in a conversation. And, for the record, when I’m painting or drawing I can’t wear glasses (even though I’m becoming nearsighted) because the skin around my eyes is part of how I see and glasses block it.
And that reminds me of another point - did you guys realize that Beethoven composed extensively after he’d lost his hearing? That Monet painted those water lillies when he was mostly blind? In fact most visual artists don’t hit their stride until they’re in their 40’s, which is when most people’s eyesight loses some acuity.
I just knew that foxhole atheist thing wouldn’t go over.
But the thing I resent from atheists (who clearly aren’t necessarily unhappy people - although I had a cite earlier from the Journal of Clinical Psychology who said {as paraphrased in The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People} “regardless of what people affiliated themselves with, those who had strongly held spiritual beliefs were typically satisfied with life, while those who had no spiritual beliefs typically were unsatisfied”)…anyway, what I resent from atheists is the insinuation that having faith, religion, beliefs, is somehow a sign of weakness. That using them is using a crutch & somehow pathetic. Why just write it off? Why deny the opportunity to experience another aspect of being human? Plus everyone uses a zillion coping mechanisms, every day. The point is whether they work.
To me, life is difficult and becomes moreso as one ages, just because eventually if you live long enough you experience more tragedies. To me the dangerous crutch is the closing of one’s mind. The people I personally know who are in the most trouble are the ones most convinced of their own infallibility.
And I agree with you, GodlessSkeptic, the ones who equate faith with “goodness” are annoying.
I just want to chime in here that this is a GREAT thread. It’s absolutely amazing to see so many well-thought-out and well written arguments on both sides. I have been completely engrossed in it for a couple of hours, and I’m only part way through the third page. My compliments to all of you!
It’s 2 am and I have to go to bed now. I hope you folks don’t keep posting so much that I never get to the end.
But considering the “chance” that something is right, and believing it is right are not the same. You say you don’t “base your life” on it; why not? Because you don’t necessarily believe new things until given a good reason to, right? Perhaps Joe overstated it by saying he assumes things don’t exist until evidence is found. Would it make more sense to you to say that we don’t assume things are true until evidence is found?
No, I’m not going to believe that’s possible unless it can be shown scientifically. It would be fairly easy to devise an objective experiment to test whether people possess such intuition. I’m not aware of such an experiment ever being done, but I do know that scientific studies of so-called “psychic ability” are generally unconvincing. As for anecdotal cases of people “knowing” when someone enters a room silently, the most likely reason is that the person picked up on some very subtle cue, such as a shadow, a faint sound, an odor, a breeze, etc. Our brains pick up a lot of information that the “reasoning” part of the mind is not necessarily focusing on at the moment. How are you able to walk? Are you constantly making conscious mathematical calculations of exactly where to place your feet so that you don’t fall over? Of course not; it’s handled by a different part of your brain than the part that does math. And so it is with what we call “intuition”. Your brain figured something out without the decision-making part of your brain being involved. It’s not necessary to posit supernatural constructs to explain it.
That’s no mystery. By that time, he was adept enough of a composer that he didn’t need to hear it - he knew what it was going to sound like in his mind. Classical period music is very formulaic; it could be composed without having to play the notes on the piano. You saw the movie “Amadeus”, didn’t you? Remember the scene where Mozart is composing an opera in his head while he jots down the notes on top of his pool table? He didn’t need to hear it - he already knew what it was going to sound like.
I’m a musician, not a painter, so I’ll have to leave this example to someone else. I suspect there is a similar expanation. I do remember reading a theory that Van Gogh suffered from an eye problem that caused him to see “halos” around objects; and that the surreal effects in his paintings may have actually been how he saw things.
Personally, I find that such things show what amazing creatures we humans are. To me, throwing in unnecessary supernatural explanations adds nothing to what is already awe-inspiring. If anything, it takes away from it.
Since we’re talking about what we resent - I resent people who are so arrogant as to trumpet their beliefs and say “nyah, nyah! - I’m better than you because I’m happier.” My only reaction to this is to just think “get over yourself”.
Well I’m not sure if anyone here said any of those things. I’m sure I didn’t. I would definitely remember calling you “weak” and “pathetic”, and using the word “crutch”. And I don’t think I insinuated any of those things, either.
Yeah, I keep hoping theists will realize their fallibility, too.
I have learned over the years to NOT write off what someone claims, no matter how counter-intuitive or bizarre it sounds, until I have heard them out.Someone claiming that invisible pink unicorns exist may be employing a different usage of the word exists than I think of when I hear it, for example.At the same time however I will weild Occam’s razor like a katana as if I am being assailed by ninjas, if the claimant gets too silly with me.When someone tries to substantiate and unjustified existential claim via added unsubstaniated claims, i begin to lose patience.
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If it were empirical the first thing it would tell you is that there is no reason to believe in the spiritual to begin with.I don’t mean that as an insult.It’s just that ther is nothing empirically verifiable about spirituallity in the first place.
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I suppose here I am supposed to ask you to define “life”.The point about asking for definitions is that when someone claims “God exists”, to a skeptic this makes no more sense than “Xnorblard exists”.This is the dilemma of theism:1)If the theist claims God is unknowable, undetectable adn immeasureable because he is “outside” or “beyond” our reality, then he concedes that he(or she) has no grounds upon which to make the claim that God exists and would not know God from the Devil if he or she met the being…OR, 2)God IS defined in terms we can grasp or which lend itself to empirical verification and the skeptic is able to show God’s existence to be unlikely.
As for boundries, ALL things knowable or exploreable have to have boundries.This universe itself has boundries or science would be a complete waste of time.Without boundries, we would live in an “anything is possible” universe.In the “anything is possible universe” you cannot know anything because anything you think you discover can be shown completely wrong or illusory at any moment.You could not tell if you were feeding your children or butchering them at any given moment.
This does not mean that we know where all of the boundries/limits of our universe are but that is what science is for…exploring the limits.
In discussions such as these, boundries enable us to explore the possibilities and make decisions as to what is likely true and what is not likely true.
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No, this is wrong.You make it sound like a game of marbles where one side has made rules like “I get to shoot three times and you only get to shoot once!”.The so-called “rules” of rational philosophical debate are established as often by theists as nontheists and are agreed upon by people from all philosophical viewpoints for their effectiveness at minimizing logical fallacy.The “rules” of mathematics are not fair to people who want to think that 2+2=5 but you can’t argue their sensibility.
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As I have said, the belief mechanism is powerful indeed.It will convince people that a low-grade charlatan like John Edward is talking to their dead relatives though he is only using simple cold-reading tricks(and not even doing that very well).It has cause the entire nation to believe martian invaders were destroying the world, when all that was going on was a radio broadcast of the H.G. Wells classic The War of the Worlds(by Orson Wells and his theatre company).Many "witnesses even SAW with their own two eyes national landmarks being destroyed and neighbors killed by death rays and the like, though none of this actually happened.
We are pattern-seeking animals adn we WILL find the patterns and coincidences to support our preconceptions.We are also adept at creating memories on the fly to support these convictions.That is why police are not allowed to ask leading questions of potential witnesses(asking someone if they saw anyone run by is one thing but asking if they saw a white guy carrying a bloody knife is a no-no.Witnesses will often ‘remember’ the man with the knife even when there was no knife).
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Humans often feel like they have had such extra-sensory perceptions but this is, again the belief mechanism at work.There are countless explanations for such an experience but I will give one example here"We often feel unerved or stressed about things in our lives adn we are not concious that we are so adn certainly not fully concious of the underlying causes of these stresses.After turning around and seeing that the janitor(who the whole workplace refers to as “the creepy guy”) has been staring at you(well he was looking right at you when you turned around, right?), your memory does a quick search to just prior to when you noticed the creepy janitor and lo and behold you realize that you were feeling a strange, nervousness.Your mind does not bother to continue searching for possible explanations for what you were feeling and why you may have been feeling that becasue it is easier to connect the dots adn realize that this creepy janitor was setting off your “danger sense”.
The truth could be that your mother called last night and nagged you about your new boyfriend again and this stress has been sitting in your subconcious since last night.
I get the same feeling whenever I watch The Usual Suspects or The Terminator(the original…not the crappy sequel) or the three times I have seen Ministry live.
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I am not sure I have ever seen this particular study but I have seen similar studies before and they always have problems with how they are conducted.People with strong religious beliefs, for one thing, also tend to have a strong social support system(church functions etc.) and just having an affiliation of ANY kind dramatically increases one’s happiness.Atheists are often discouraged from having such affiliations because when we do we are accused of being an evil conspiracy out to do harm to religion or something.Also there are way fewer atheists in this country to begin with(around 14% of the US population as opposed to the 85% or 86% who are religious(I am going by the latest CUNY study and I don’t recall if there was a 1% “undecided”).
Trust me on this one atheists are no more unhappy in general than theists adn amongst philosophical and skeptical atheists(as opposed to people who just never heard of a god claim or don’t give it much thought) it has been my experience that we are actually a lot happier than most religious folks.
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I keep hearing theists talk about these “staunch” atheists who go around chastising theists but I have rarely spotted one(and I have talked to a good number of atheists).In any case I don’t consider a crutch a weakness either(it is a tool to use when a leg is not working the way it should).Religion & superstition are likely an evolutionary adaption that may well have enabled us to survive at some point.If man believed that evil spirits stalked the night, he was less likely to wander around in the dark near tar pits or lion’s dens.
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1)I do not just “write off” anything and religion I have given countless hours of thought to.
2)I cannot choose what I believe and do not believe otherwise I may well choose to believe in Santa Claus to experience another aspect of being human(in this case a child).I cannot choose to believe in God for the same reason that stage magicians have a hard time believing in actual sorcery, no matter how many cards or doves someone can pull out of thin air in front of him.
The question is not whether coping mechanisms work but whether they are TRUE.
I did not mean to say they were annoying as it is not their fault they have been told this by everyone they meet or see on TV since they were born.They only become annoying when they, as uyou put it “become convinced of their own infallibility” and start trying to mandate their religion.
No. Name one. One that can’t be attributed to, say, “reading stuff in a book and thinking it makes sense” and the like.
And I haven’t tried to disprove anything either, just said that there’s no evidence that the soul exists. There isn’t.
And no, “x” doesn’t necessarily exist, and there’s no such thing as existing “for them”. We’re discussing objective truths, are we not?
You know what? This describes certain types of mental illness perfectly. Do you claim that mental illnesses come from a higher power?
No matter what you may think of me, I experience a wide range of very deep emotions. I look into Pricegal’s eyes and feel my heart contract so strongly that I can barely breathe. I see birds flying and am filled with joy that I’m living in such a beautiful world. I watch a wonderful film and at the end of it I laugh or bawl my eyes out or just sit there, forever envious that I’ll probably never create anything so fantastic and moving. I look at the stars and think about the amazing distances that the light from those stars has to cross to reach me, and I realise that it’s a huge, mysterious, beautiful universe and I’m a tiny little part of it.
But I’ve never felt the need to sully that experience by inventing imaginary figures or concepts. There are explanations; why make up more?
I don’t get this paragraph. Could you rephrase it, you think?
Wrong. I haven’t acknowledged that non-empirical experience; in fact I’ve strongly stated that it’s based on empirical evidence all the way.
You know, that’s a great point. Now that I think about it, to make claims about the relative happiness of the 85% who are religious is kind of like saying that white people are happier than black people, as if it were possible to seperate out other reasons besides the simple fact that one is the majority and the other the minority.
So where’s the refutation of the brain receptor part?
Our differing use of the word “exist” demonstrates exactly what I mean about ownership of definitions (or meanings) facilitating a debate win. You insist that it can’t exist unless you can point to it or hear it or touch it with your hand; I say it exists because I perceive it. And the fact that “exist” carries that meaning for you is a subjective choice on your part.
It can be a game of marbles. Depends on the meaning assigned to the terms and how applicable they are to the larger reality of life. Invisible Pink Unicorns? Sounded like a game to me. If you think we’re describing all of life here, then I think you’re spending too much time online
BTW ** empirical anecdote alert ** I was at a life drawing seminar on Memorial Day when, at the end of the session, the model (who had never modeled before) remarked out loud that she could feel it when one of the artists was drawing her foot. According to her own words, she then looked down to see that in fact, he was drawing her foot. This wasn’t a response to prompts or even a conversation - just her astonished remarks to the group at large. Try that sometime as an empirical experiment yourself - just shuck of your clothes & pose for a class & see if you can feel it when people are drawing various parts of your anatomy.
When I’m doing portraits most people can feel my looking at them as a physical sensation - kids usually get a kick out of it, some adults find it disconcerting. And some people don’t feel anything.
I’m separating spirituality from religion in my arguments; religion is not God, it’s the study of God and sometimes it’s the manipulation of people in the name of God. God didn’t write the Bible, people did. People have done and continue to do horrible things in the name of God.
Now let’s say my portrait subjects feel the energy of my view as I’m drawing their portraits - either I’m capable of some sort of “magic”, or there’s a nonmaterial event taking place (from which arguments can lead to the existence of God, soul, etc). Much more reasonable to posit the nonmaterial.
blowero You seem so fricking empirical, I was wondering how your mom ever managed to potty train you. I mean, you wouldn’t believe you had to go until you had evidence that you’d gone! The thought amused me, anyway; yes I’m teasing you.
For cripes sake, I drag out a piece of empirical reality from a professional journal & you pooh all over it! Isn’t that the proof you were demanding? And I never said better, or happier - the term was “more satisfied”.
It’s interesting to me to watch the general knee-jerk reaction equating spirituality with religion, equating religion with an assumption of superior morality. Those meanings against which you’re arguing are evidence of what I’m saying - we’re all responding to realities beyond the parameters of this argument, we bring in additional meaning that is our own. You (by which I mean all you empiricists debating here) operate from individual subjectivity as if that were “it” all the time - that’s not far from experiencing a spiritual reality and finding that it exists for you. You know what you know based on what you perceived in what you saw/heard/felt, same as everybody else; none of us perceives the whole thing.
In addition to which, you don’t prove for yourself every aspect of “objective” reality that you take as real and known - you couldn’t, there isn’t enough time. You read what other people offer as “knowledge”, you weigh differing views and find what’s most sensible and useful and feels “right”.
So your term isn’t “crutch” but you do argue a diminishment. Does that have to be the case? If instead of an entity “religion” (which I’ll agree can cripple) the entity is an individualized “spirituality”, how does access to more diminish a person?
How about “thinking it makes sense, and then acting on it and having a positive outcome”? And in addition to reading it in a book, it can come from prayer or dreams and carry huge meaning. Not useful in doing math; very useful in struggling against one’s own fear.
I’ll definitely grant you one thing - I really, really wouldn’t want atheists to cease to exist, or skeptics. Keep being atheists. If it weren’t possible to not believe, then what value believing? As a Liberal I appreciate Conservatives; as a deist (is that what you decided I am?) I’m glad there are atheists. I experience moments when I doubt my view - perhaps you do as well.
You know, I’ve communicated more about religion/faith/God/soul here than in the whole rest of my life to date - by a fair margin. While I think we’ve all said asshole things from time to time (myself included) I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. And I’m sure we’re all more convinced of our own rightness now than we were at the beginning ;).
It really depends on their viewpoint. If it’s outlandish enough – like these people who claim that Planet X is supposed to come zipping through the solar system and flip the earth on its axis any day now, even though there is no astronomical evidence for the existance of Planet X – If it’s something like that, I’ll afford it so little of a chance that it barely registeres as a blip on my radar.
That’s pretty interesting. I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced something like that, but I can see how it could make one more likely to believe in this whole concept of spirituality.
It really depends. When someone walks into a room, they normally change the quality of the background noise slightly. If I’m not too focused on something, I can hear the change in the sound of the room and tell that someone’s there. However, this doesn’t happen with all rooms, and without that small change in sound, I have no way of telling if someone’s there or not.
The other part of what you asked was if I could tell when people are looking at me. The answer is, no. If I’ve just seen a creepy movie and then have to walk through a dark house, I might get the feeling of being watched, but that has never happened when I actually was being watched.
Well, first of all, there’s the fact that every portion of the brain known to receive input from the outside world relies on an actual, physical organ for that input.
Also, there’s the fact that no suggested mechanism for how such a receptor might work has even been suggested. I realize that you tend to not like using empirical methods to explain the spiritual, but as soon as you have something spiritual being given the functionality of a sensory organ, it falls neatly into the realm of science, and requires empirical proof.
You left out the third option, which is that the model subconciously notices where your eyes are looking and, because they already have a strong belief in the spiritual, their mind interprets it as a spiritual event where they can somehow “feel” your gaze.
This is just like the whole knowing-when-someone-enters-the-room thing. I’d be willing to bet that even people who think it’s spiritual are doing the same thing that I am, which is noticing the very slight change in the background noise caused by the presence of the person reflecting some sounds differenty, and occluding other sounds. They just notice it subconciously, and it becomes something spiritual to them.
Not quite true (at least, not for any empiricist I know). When deciding what aspects of “reality” to believe, we base that on what makes sense, not what feels right.
I’m not saying that we do full proofs for stuff, but we go one somethung a little different than a gut feeling of “rightness”. Although, it’s almost the same thing, in a way. To me, things that make sense and logically follow from what I already know just feel “right”. However, I base my decisions on the logic, not the feeling.
Okay, this might sound slightly inflamitory, but I don’t intend it as such:
As a small child, I was afraid of monsters lurking under my bed and in my closet at night. Of course, my dad would tell me not to be afraid, because if any monsters came out, he was stronger than they were and he’d get rid of them. So my fears were allayed. The knowledge that my dad would beat up any monsters that decided to show themselves helped me in my struggle against my own fear. However, the knowledge that helped ease my fear was false. I know now that there were no monsters under my bed.
To my way of thinking, using concepts like God to help deal with fears is like having my dad threatening to kick the monsters’ collective asses. Sure, it makes you feel better, but there’s another way to face fear that holds more truth to it.
No, I’m not comparing spiritual people to children. I’m just saying that there is more than one way to face that which you fear, and some are more realistic than others. Also, some are better than others. Consider, for example, a little girl who is constantly raped by her father. Maybe she’ll find God, and that concept will help comfort her. Or maybe she’ll have a complete mental breakdown and aquire multiple personality disorder (or even retrograde amnesia), which would serve to insulate her from her fear and allow her to live without knowing that it ever happened.
Both of those are legitimate ways to cope, but even I believe that belief in God is better than a mental breakdown.
As for deciding whether God is better than empiricism or not, well, I leave that as an excercise for the reader.
But of course! I never debate religion (or spirituality, in this case) with the intent of convincing the other person that they’re wrong. I do it to increase my own understanding of the world, including my understand of the beliefs of other, and my understanding of my own beliefs.
Of course, I also hope to convince any fence-sitters watching from the wings to join the Dark Side[sup]TM[/sup], but that’s just an extra perk.
Didn’t Joe or Blowero already answer that?I will take a look…
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You still misunderstand.I would not disagree that God or ‘souls’ exist in the same way that ideas exist.However what YOU are doing is to employ one usage of the word to argue one point and then switch usages to make a different claim.It is like me arguing that “Killing is good!”(with the implication that I am advocating murder or wanton life-taking) and supporting this statement by saying “I made a killing at the casino the other day and it was good!”.
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Invisible pink unicorns was an analogy and sounded nothing like a game!?!You are either being dishonest here or you have a hard time recognising valid analogies.The point of the IPU analogy was this:I claim to have an invisible pink unicorn in my pocket.Can you prove that I do not?If not are you going to assume that I do or argue with people who do not assent to this unsubstantiated claim?
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That is an anecdote but there is nothing empirical about it.The reasons why anecdotal evidence are not acceptable as support of extraordinary claims is because they cannot be scrutinised.There are a lot of possible explanations which make more sense than what you offer and I have no way of excluding these other, more rational explanations when all that is offered is anecdotes.
For example:Humans pick up on a ton of sensory input…very subtle clues every minute of the day.I am not going to take my clothes off but I guarantee you I can tell what part of me a painter is painting if I am modelling.I can see where his/her eyes are focusing, where the brush is working on the canvas and even what sort of shape the end of the brush is making(an old magician’s trick, where the magician would hand a notepad and pencil to the subject and ask him to draw a shape drawn at random from a deck of flashcards.The magician would then watch the end of the pencil to determine what shape was being drawn and afterwards “guess” the correct shape).
That isn’t even the simplest or most rational explanation and it is much easier to swallow than someone having ESP.
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I doubt it.Give us more than anecdotes.
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But that has nothing to do with my skepticism or atheism.I simply do not assent to the extraordinary claim that souls exist becuase the evidence and argument is lacking.
You left out about a dozen other, more rational explanations.If your “view” is sending out some sort of detectable energy than surely there is some means of…well, detecting adn measuring that energy.SUrely you could demonstrate this in a controlled environment adn while your at it collect $1 million dollars from the JREF!
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The physical sensation of having to go would be empirical evidence that one needed to go.Past observation and experiment would verify that this sensation was indeed a prelude to relieving bodily waste.
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As I pointed out in m,y refutation there was nothing empirical about the article that you passingly refered to.Studies such as these(as well as the “benefits of prayer” studies) are lacking because they cannot possibly account for all of the factors that go into quantifying one’s happiness/satisfaction.
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It is interesting to ME how you guys trot out terms like “knee jerk reaction” everytime we present a point/refutation you cannot answer.I do not equate religion in general with such a position.When a poster demosntrates such a disposition however, I call them on it.
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Sorry but that won’t work.I am a materialist adn I have argued exclusively from that POV as it pertains to objective reality adn not subjective notions about reality.
Objective reality:There is a brick wall in front of us.Neither of us are able to walk THROUGH the wall adn we both end up aknowledging the wall’s existence(and going around it).This is entirely verified through observation and experiment.
Subjective notions:There is an invisible “spiritual wall” in front of us.You stop and tell me that the spirit wall exists.I look around and do not see it then I grab you by the wrist and pull you through the area where you claim a wall exists.Nothing impedes us.No other person in the area reacts as if there is a wall there.
Objective reality:The spirit wall does not exist.
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Even if this staement were true to any degree, it is at best a “God of the gaps” arguement.Another fallacy.
Here is where you make a huge error in thinking.You are equating ordinary claims with extraordinary claims.Ordinary claism such as “There is a tree in my backyard{” do not require more than anecdotal evidence(usually).The implications of their truthfullness or falsity are relatively unimportant.Entire fields of study would not have to be thrown out or extensively revised if there were a tree in my backyard(or not).However, claims like “Sasquatch exists” or “we are being visited by UFOs” would require at least very strong(stronger than anecdote) evidence and controlled experimentation to verify as true.
“God exists” or “Ghosts exist” would require the very strongest, extraordinary evidence we could muster to verify them as true becuase if either existed all scientific knowledge obtained from thousands of years of observation and experiment would unravel like a frayed sweater when a loose thread is pulled.
This is why “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
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It may be that religion is a great panacea.Able to provide comfort to the believer in an uncomfortable situation but even if so, that is not the issue here.A sugar pill will greatly comfort someone who is on their death bad if a doctor tells them it is medicine that will save their lifeWe are arguing the true or false status of these claims.
And besides religion provides no added benefits to humanity and comes with a considerable amount of potential baggage.That is to say there is nothing the religious person has that I can not or do not have and I cannot use an omnipotent mystery friend to justify atrocities against humanity.
We have no choice in the matter.We will be unconvinced so long as no rational, convincing argument or evidence presents itself.
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Skepticism and atheism are not “worldviews”.Atheism is only a response to one specific question:"DO you believe in or willingly worship any gods?"Skepticism is a fancy word for “common sense”.I am not likely to ever doubt using common sense is a good thing.
The OP question was “Does the soul exist”, not “Can I posit an empirical argument to support the existence of the soul”. A “no” to the latter doesn’t negate the former.
Here’s the problem with anecdotes: they are subject to confirmation bias. It might seem really amazing when you make a guess at something and turn out to be right, but when you consider the countless times you have guessed at other things and been wrong, it’s not really amazing at all. In fact, by the law of averages, you HAVE to be right sometimes.
Here’s an example: I go to Vegas. I sit down at a blackjack table. Before the first hand is dealt, I say “I’m going to get an Ace.” But I don’t get an Ace. I do this 10 more times. On the 11th time, I again say “I’m going to get an Ace.” Then I get an Ace. Wow! I must be psychic. It seems truly amazing if I conveniently forget all the times I guessed wrong. That’s confirmation bias in a nutshell.
Joe:
Or the fourth option of the above-mentioned confirmation bias. A person who is actively looking for ways to bolster his/her faith probably isn’t going to take much notice of a subject saying “I feel that you are drawing my hand”, if the subject turned out to be wrong. The “misses” simply get forgotton, while the “hits” are remembered, and given more significance than they warrant.
I haven’t “demanded” any proof, and I don’t recall asking you anything about people’s relative satisfaction with life.
I fail to see how that is a meaningful difference. Either way, it sounds like you are gloating. And how is this germane to the topic, anyway? Does the fact that a particular idea might make you feel good have any bearing on whether it is objectively true?
No offense was meant. The two are generally considered fairly synonomous:
spiritual
1 : of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit : INCORPOREAL <man’s spiritual needs>
2 a : of or relating to sacred matters <spiritual songs> b : ecclesiastical rather than lay or temporal <spiritual authority> <lords spiritual> 3 : concerned with religious values
4 : related or joined in spirit <our spiritual home> <his spiritual heir>
5 a : of or relating to supernatural beings or phenomena b : of, relating to, or involving spiritualism : SPIRITUALISTIC
religious
1 : relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity <a religious person> <religious attitudes>
2 : of, relating to, or devoted to religious beliefs or observances
3 a : scrupulously and conscientiously faithful
I’m guessing that you object to the second meaning of “religious”, having to do with following the rules of a specific religion; but that’s not the primary meaning of the word.
You know, we practically begged you to define the word “spiritual”, and you pretty much left us high & dry; so I don’t think you have cause to complain that our usage of the word doesn’t meet your approval.
Has that come up in this thread? I don’t recall seeing it. I have seen other threads where the claim is made by some theists that their beliefs make them more moral than atheists, or questioning whether atheists can be moral. But I don’t think the atheists are the ones making the assumption. At any rate, I certainly never accused you of saying that.
In other words, you are arguing solipsism, no? You’re saying we can’t truly know anything objectively because it’s all filtered through our senses. We could be Keanu Reeves in a pod with a computer hooked up to our brain, right? Well, I can’t prove that you’re wrong, but it makes more sense to me to assume I am not a head-in-a-box.
You misunderstood me. I was saying that for me, attributing the accomplishments of a Beethoven or a Monet to supernatural causes does not make them any more special. If anything, the supernatural explanation diminishes the greatness of such people. I never said spirituality cripples people; I said supernatural explanations of natural phenomenon do not increase our understanding. It’s like if I said, “Beethoven was a great composer because of the Invisible Pink Unicorn”. Does that help you at all to appreciate Beethoven’s music?
Okay, I posit that the Invisible Pink Unicorn rules the universe from an apartment in New Jersey. I can posit no empirical argument to support the Invisible Pink Unicorn’s existance, but that doesn’t prove that it doesn’t exist.
Other than having a larger following, how is the concept of a soul any different that the IPU?
Shit! I tried to kill that post before it hit but it had already gone through.
The point is we can’t argue it here - the minute you use logic to understand you eliminate the possibility of understanding. Like how before certain types of microscopes were developed there was no way of examining some stuff because the process of preparing it for viewing rendered it unviewable. The thing that makes it impossible to study some human behavior because you change it by observing.
Having one person experience nonmaterial reality in my presence doesn’t guarantee everyone would experience it (I get your point w/the Vegas odds, yes, and I hate it when people misuse that); however it does mean that one person did experience it. It’s not like we asked her “did you feel this? did you feel that?” looking for the one positive. It was unprompted - and from the way she was sitting (on a riser several feet above the floor, looking at the ceiling as models are supposed to do) there’s no way she could see what he was doing, not even out of the corner of her eye, until she tilted her head down to look.
You’d have to be in my shoes, running into that kind of thing frequently, to change your beliefs about it. I’ve drawn people on the other side of a restaurant, carrying on their own business, who realized they were being watched.
Not only do I want to kill this thread. I’d like to strangle it.
But at least now I know what the IPU is. Where exactly in New Jersey?
If we’re discussing objective truth, then all of us have to be able to experience it. If we’re discussing subjective truth… the debate is meaningless.
You’ve said it yourself: anecdote. I bet that model felt the artist drawing her nose and her shoulder and her hand too, but when she looked it wasn’t correct so she forgot about it. Humans work that way. That’s a big old reason why anecdotal evidence isn’t evidence.
Without knowing more about your setup and the people involved, it’s impossible to discern the value of this.
As for feeling when you’re looked at… I can’t, and neither can you, probably.
No. This doesn’t show anything until we’ve made a proper controlled study of it. Are they “feeling the energy” or do they subconsciously register what you’re doing? Are you remembering the hits and forgetting the misses? We cannot know.
The difference is that what we claim can be objectively observed.
“Feeling” has nothing to do with it. When I read the staring study I linked to above, I read through the setup and the conclusion valuing it by myself. If I had found experimental error, I wouldn’t have linked to it nor attached any value to it.
But yes, a certain amount of instinct develops. For example, no-one has ever passed the preliminary tests for the JREF million-dollar prize, and whenever a new applicant shows up, I “feel” that he/she isn’t going to make it. When I see an ad for a wonder magnet or something, I “feel” that it’s bullshit, having seen such things debunked too many times. When I hear about a psychic finding a dead body, I “feel” that I’m not hearing the whole story, since I know that such stories usually turn out to be nothing impressive at all.
But my “feelings” are all based on past empirical experience.
Simply realising the roots of one’s fear and acting on that must be much more efficient. Fear of what, by the way?
I’m not an atheist. Where have I said “there is no god”?
