Patrick: I am an atheist. I do not believe myself to be the highest power or ultimate authority. This is a common myth that some theist’s hold about atheists. It isn’t true. This isn’t the same as saying it isn’t true for all athiests. I am sure there are some that do feel themselves as the ultimate authority, that is their problem (if it is a problem at all).
I request a clarification. Are you implying that if a person who believed in a higher power were egocentric that the egocentric person who believed in a higher power would believe that he/she is; moreover, that he/she is the higher power in which her/she believes?
Can you offer support for your claim that those who believe in a higher power are not egocentric?
slythe: Yes, I remember the 18 hours of static tape in the end of “Contact”. But that was revealed at the absolute end of the film. Before that, Foster’s character is trying to convince the world that what she know she saw was real, even though they claimed she had no “evidence”. But she knew what she saw was real, no matter how many people didn’t believe her. And, the point of the film - “faith” vs. “science”, was an interesting one - I don’t think it belittled either side. But the in-depth discussion of the film is really for another thread.
Only if I am trying to get you to accept it. Only if I think that you might or should believe me. Which I am not. I do not see that there is any hope that you will believe it. I am not here arguing that you atheists must believe me, or should believe me. I am not calling you “irrational” or “uneducated” because you don’t believe me. In fact, I am not attaching any labels to you at all. And, I still believe what I believe. So, my question now is, since atheists seem to think that theists are “irrational, uneducated” etc., what is to be done about it? Do you talk “reason” to us? Try to show us that there is no “proof” of our beliefs? Or just leave us to happily believe in our silly gods?
Perhaps you can cite a thread in which I make such a claim?
Perhaps you meant to say something else?
Perhaps you are not familiar with the idea that it is rude to attribute an attitude to someone who has never expressed said atitude?
Perhaps you should apologize?
Or perhaps you do not wish our conversations to be held within a framework of civility?
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Nen:
I think it’s rather self-evident. I’m saying that someone, a theist, that believes in a higher power, is not nearly as egocentric as an atheist.
Is that so hard to understand?
Yes, it is difficult to understand how you could make such a statement. Rather than claiming that your assertion is self-evident, would you please elaborate on your rationale for arriving at that conclusion.
Then how can you believe it?
Have you had a mystical experience yourself?
I don’t understand the analogy to ‘Contact’. I’ve never heard a description of a mystical experience (outside a few from the Bible, Koran and Book of Mormon) where God actually spoke to anyone like the aliens spoke to Foster. Always the experience is very ambiguous (yet very spiritual), and the person makes what they will out of it.
No, you are simply making weak analogies in support of the preposterous claim that you are not irrational (despite the fact that you’ve already admitted you are).
Your mother must be proud.
I for one, am going to mock your infantile beliefs and attempt to humiliate you at every turn. Much as your Christian brethern (and heck, lets face it, nearly every organized religion) have done to every culture they have come across throughout history - I will attempt to convert those godfearing fools who can be saved, and pity all the rest.
Yosemitebabe, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll leave you to your “silly gods” and not bother you or try to convert you to reason, if you promise to keep your “silly gods” out of the science classes, people’s private bedrooms, and the civil rights struggles of the gays and lesbians who are currently being attacked by fundamentalists.
I said: I do not see that there is any hope that you will believe it.
Because I have obviously had experiences you have not. And, you did not ask me why I do not see any hope that you will not believe it.
Something personal, and akin to mystical. But, it is not my obligation to explain it to you. As I mentioned before, I am not trying to convince you to believe anything here. I am not trying to “convert” anyone here.
Yep, people will make “what they will” out of it. There are people today who have experiences that are very clear, and often have physical/visual components to them. These peope are convinced that they saw something that confirms their religious beliefs. They may or may not be nuts, (many of them probably are having experiences that are “chemically induced” etc.) but they do have experiences. Just because you haven’t heard about them doesn’t mean that people haven’t been convinced that they had them. And you can argue with them, call them names, but they will still feel convinced that they had the experiences.
I said: I am not here arguing that you atheists must believe me, or should believe me. … In fact, I am not attaching any labels to you at all.
I am not claiming, or admitting I am or am not “irrational”. You are. My response is about what you, and other atheists are claiming about me and my ilk. By the way, you don’t know me, I am a stranger to you, right? So I don’t see how you really know much about me, other than what I type here. So many assumptions about someone you know little about, other than they claim to have beliefs and experiences that you do not believe, and do not share.
I wrote: So, my question now is, since atheists seem to think that theists are “irrational, uneducated” etc., what is to be done about it?
“Attempt” being the active term here. How can you “humiliate” me? I am a stranger to you. What are you going to do, TP my house?
(bolding mine)
Just what I thought. You are going to try to “convert” me and my ilk. Gee thanks. When a Christian (or other religious person) tries to “convert” you or someone else who is not religious, they are an asshole, a presumptuous asshole. Right? But when you try to do it, that’s different. Because you’re right. You’re enlightened. You have the answers. And you are going to share these insights with the rest of the deluded masses. Right? And this makes you different from the random idiot who is trying to “convert” you to their religion - how? Oh, yeah - you’re right.
Oh, by the way, the best way to impress some feeble-minded Christian is to “humilate” them. And then refer to their beliefs as “infantile”. Yeah, that’ll just reel 'em in. People love being treated like that. (You see how well it works when a obnoxious, hard-sell Christian tries such tactics on non-Christians!) Yeah, you’ll “save” a whole passel of us poor Christians when you attempt to “convert” us with that approach! 
Ack! Simulposts!
Hmmm…glad to know that you have cornered the market on “reason”, hun. So you will spare me your conversion attempt to “reason”? I feel so deprived! (that is sarcasm!)
Once again, you presume things about me that are not so. I am not a fundimentalist. I am not advocating any legislation dictating what people do in the bedroom, or dictating what is taught in school. Why do you presume that I would be for any of these things? What? Do you think all people of faith share the same brain and all have identical ideals?
Yeesh! Coop, my fellow atheist, do we really need to “mock” and “humiliate” others? I dearly hope that was sarcasm. Adopting the worst traits of religion hardly makes you superior…and you don’t even have irrationality as an excuse. 
Gaudere: I thought you knew me better by now 
You shouldn’t have to ask.
Ok, well all I said was not totally in jest. What you are proposing is some sort of intellectual/philosophical/theological relativism, in which all opinions are equally valid and equally deserved of respect. I simply disagree. Now, to be fair - I do not attempt to mock or humiliate those of faith, at least not outside the safe confines of these BBs - and I don’t think I’ve said much to that end even here - the claim that you are all irrational is sustainable and (in all fairness) applicable in some degree to all of us.
Also, I won’t let your ridiculous straw man attacks stand. I am not enlightened. I am woefully ignorant. Unlike people of faith however, I am aware of my ignorance. I have no insights for the masses. I am fucking clueless. I do know however, that the santa-claus-magic-god-thing is stupid. If thats not what your into, then I’m not talking about you, dig?
Cooper. Whew. Glad you were (mostly) kidding, but it was hard to tell, since I don’t know you, and cannot tell if you are bullshitting or not, (unless you were to use smilies liberally throughout your posts, which you did not.)
However:
If you are “fucking clueless”, how do you know? I mean, not to nit-pick, but if it is not your cup of tea, if you think it is utterly stupid, fine. I’m not talking about you not getting it, thinking it’s lame, thinking it’s the biggest load of BS ever. That’s one thing, and I’m not about to argue with you on that, or try to change your mind.
But do you 100% know that it is not true? About something intangible like that? Do you know 100% that people who have claimed to have experiences that sound absurd to you didn’t have them? For instance, I pretty much don’t think there is an Easter Bunny. I pretty much believe with all my heart that there isn’t one. But I cannot 100% know that it doesn’t exist. For all I know, there is some secret Easter Bunny Society, and their job is to keep us from the truth that the Easter Bunny is real. Maybe it’s a Russian Plot to keep us from the Truth About the Easter Bunny. Maybe the Easter Bunny is a UFO. Hell, even though those ideas are absurd, preposterous, I cannot know that they are 100% not true. I’m “fucking clueless” too, as it happens.
I guess I just don’t like the idea of some stranger telling me that they know that something I believe, something I experienced, it not true. I experienced it, I believe it, not them. And as long as I don’t try to convince or “convert” them, I don’t see why they should care to call me names, or say that they know anything about me or my personal experiences.
My Grandfather (PhD in Psychology) once said “Everyone is entitled to their own stupid opinion”
<chuckles>
I am of the opinion that one can believe whatever they wish, think whatever they wish, do whatever they wish, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my rights to do the same.
I think the entire god argument is absurd, it never GOES anywhere. We enter into these idiotic little rounds of polemics thinking that what we are saying has some small effect on our opponent, and it doesn’t. People are going to believe no matter what we do, people are going to not believe no matter what we do, change comes from within and is RARELY influenced from without.
I also think qualifying atheism or agnosticism is foolish, because belief in a god, or absence of that belief, does not constitute a religion in and of itself. There are irrelgious theists and religious atheists (buddhists, daoists, take your pick).
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious Carl Jung
I thought it sounded unlike you, Coop. Hmmph. Sarcasm doesn’t “read” worth a damn on the web. I suppose a lot of the fun of sarcasm is watching the credulous take it seriously.
But…but…then what will we talk about in GD??? :eek: I suppose there’s always Libertarianism, or Star Wars v. Star Trek.
First day and I am already being quoted.
Well color me orgasmic.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious Carl Jung
I agree - these arguements go nowhere! (Oh, sorry if I interrupted your “orgasmic” experience, Euri! And sorry if I misspelled…)
I don’t know what we’d hash out if it weren’t for these fun little exercises with the atheists and theists bashing it out. And they keep doing it, keep banging the same thoughts against the same wall. And here we are. I’m still a theist, as are many other theist Straight Dopers. The Straight Doper atheists here are still atheists. So, what exactly has changed…?
All I am aiming for is perhaps to convince a few people that I am not trying to “covert” them, or trying to alter the way they live their life. And all I ask is that they offer me the same courtesy. Many do, and will, but not all. And don’t know if that will ever change.
I am an active atheist voice in my community, not to promote atheism, but to promote civil rights. I am a member of the ACLU, and I give speeches with the NAACP (not black…not even american.but whatever ;))
I am for equal rights, and against any proselytization. I think we should keep our beliefs basically personal, because little good comes from spouting them to everyone.
I do like church picnics though…and I FUCKING ADORE CHURCH MUSIC…I still go to a little lutheran bible church every couple of weeks to participate in the fun things they do.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious Carl Jung
Ok, for a fun new twist on the debate, lets throw in some epistemology! First, let me note that I am refusing to take sides here. I do, however, find it very interesting when those who hold no religious beliefs of their own make statements like these:
What I find interesting is that folks who claim “Science” and “Rationality” as their basis for beliefs refuse to agknowledge that science is the search for knowledge, not the destination there. We do not know how anything works to a 100% degree of certainty. What we do have is a history of observations of how things appear to work. In other words, we understand things on a macroscopic level, but not a microscopic level. For example, I will assume that most folks here have a car. You get in, drive it, it gets you around. Fine. But we all know that a car is a collection of many different parts. What " collection" of parts determines what kind of car you have and how well it runs. If it’s a BMW, probobly well, if it’s a Yugo, maybe not so well. However, if I were to come drain the oil out of your car, and you drove it, pretty soon it would stop running. The entity “car” would not be behaving as it was supposed to, because the parts that it is made up of have changed. ( we would say “been damaged”) The observed behavier of “car” have now changed. Now, in the case of a car, we know how it is put together, we can diagnose the many different parts and replace those that broke and return the car to its previously observed state.
HOWEVER…
If you apply this same analogy to the universe, we do not posess the same degree of knowledge. All of our scientific laws and theorums (sp?) are based on the macroscopic level- the equivelent of if you turn the key, the car starts, steer left the wheels point left, etc…When you get to the microscopic level- the sub atonic, ** we don’t know how things work!**. “Laws” from the macroscopic leve no longer apply! particles move faster than the speed of light! It’s “magic” in the same way atoms would be “magic” to an ancient Egyptian. Without understanding the hyper-complex interactions of the sub atomic level, we cannot predict with 100% certanty what will happen in the observable world. What effect does this have on us? From a practical standpoint, none. We are all creatures whose entire awareness was designed to function in the observable world. Sub-atomic physics has no practical bearing on our day to day lives, we aren’t designed to function there. The fact that there is no guarantee that all the molecules in your chair will not jump 1 foor to the left and spill your ass on the floor does not keep you from asuming that they won’t. To live otherwise would be impossible.
The whole point of this post, is that we all have “faith” in something. The religious person has faith that his or her “God” exists and created/supports/runs the universe. The athiest who believes in “science” and “rationality” believes that there is some understandable and explainable basis for the universe. Neither can be proven (YET), so BOTHsides have FAITH that they are correct. Y’all may not be as far apart as you think.
{BTW, Naturally, the above does not apply to Cecil.)
Cecil said it. I believe it. That settles it.
I’m sorry, but there is a difference between making a conclusion, then looking for facts that fit your conclusion(or refusing to look at all!), and looking for the conclusion that best fits all the facts available!
Atheists do NOT claim to know the answers, we merely say that ascribing all unknowns to a particular “god” is a massive leap in logic that cannot be justified by the facts.
Religionists have no interest in facts that do not support their conclusion.