No, you are confused as to the issues here. The issue is not vote for candidate A, or vote for candidate B. In such a case, a person could vote for neither, or, both.
But the issue with believing in god is a single binary. Either you believe, or you don’t. If you are unsure whether or not to believe, then it usually stands to reason that you have not begun to believe.
No, you’re confused in how to apply this example to the believe or not example. In this case, BOTH options A and B are separately akin to the question of whether one believes in god or not. You either believe A, or you don’t. You either believe B, or you don’t. If you are unsure about which is true, A or B, then obviously you don’t believe either A or B, which is exactly akin to saying that you don’t believe in god.
No, we are simply describing a state. Either you’ve jumped off the cliff or you haven’t. Maybe you are considering jumping off. But you won’t have jumped until you actually do it.
Yes, but only in appropriate contexts. There is no shade of gray in a simple logical statement vs. its negation.
The only thing your amounts to is that a person doesn’t know what they believe. While that might make sense as a sloppy metaphor, litterally it doesn’t make any sense. Reporting beliefs is a matter of reporting what’s in you mind. So saying you don’t know whether or not you believe something is akin to saying that your own thoughts are unknown to you.
I think you’re just using prejudicial language. Do atheists really “stomp around”? Do they really “horribly maul”? You’re not really making a point here, just highlighting your bias.
I don’t get it. You say “many atheists cite themselves as knowing everything about religion”. Then you say “for instance”, and proceed to describe something that is not an instance of atheists citing themselves as knowing everything.
O.K., I get that you are bitter about everyone treating pagans with scorn. How exactly is that evidence that atheists are arrogant? I suppose you could say that everyone is arrogant, so why single out atheists?
Dude, you’ve been listening to too much propaganda. I’m not saying an atheist has never used a pentagram as a symbol, but it’s certainly not something the majority of us would do. Why on Earth would I want to invoke religious symbols when I don’t believe in them?
Well if people are joining up with the pagans because they have a chip on their shoulder, it speaks poorly for the pagans, not for the atheists. I really don’t get the reasoning. It’s like you’re saying “Lots of pagans have chips on their shoulders, therefore atheists are arrogant.”
I dunno, sounds like you have a martyr complex. I haven’t seen any atheists in this forum call you “stupid” yet. Has anyone said that?
I don’t think it’s true that atheists “generally think they understand everything about religion”. Speaking for myself, what I understand is that there is insufficient evidence for me to believe in God. Since I don’t believe in God, why would I want to understand everything about religion? I don’t need to join a monastery to know that I don’t believe in God.
I also don’t think it’s true that atheists generally “take to demonizing everyone in the image of Christianity.” That’s an awfully broad brush with which you paint all atheists.
I think your first sentence is betrayed by the rest of the paragraph. That’s like if I said, “I have nothing against pagans. I have something against pagans who worship Satan, cast spells, and sacrifice animals in their living rooms. They need to accept that they aren’t better or worse than anyone else.”
I mean, that’s just ridiculous. Saying you have “nothing against atheists” doesn’t mitigate your unfair characterization.
I’ve never felt that way, nor met anyone but, ironically, intensely religious mental patients who’ve expressed such views in any sort of seriousness.
But let’s be clear. You didn’t start out by saying anything about any random atheist you might find to be your single example of this claimed phenomenon. You said “atheists” unqualified. You said that “Maybe atheists’ arrogant [sic] is manifested in their belief that they are their own god.”
That means even a SINGLE atheist who doesn’t believe what you say atheists believe falsifies your claim.
Which means you lied about atheists. To say that you spread lies to slander others is now to express a factual statement.
Why? First of all, why would this phenomon be a serious one? Second of all, why would people that don’t believe in gods be MORE likely to think that they themselves are a god?
rjung posted a link to a site that specifically stated the use of a pentagram as an atheist symbol. I suppose that outrage is still fresh in my mind. I have seen it used in various other ways to symbolize anti-Christian sentiment, though.
You misunderstood my entire point. My point was that many people pass through paganism on their way to atheism, and those people are acting out of the chip on their shoulders.
For instance, Bobby is a Christian from birth. One day, he decides that it is all bunk. He gets resentful of having to go to church, and begins to believe that Christianity is everything that is wrong with the world. OK, that’s fine. He seeks to express his anger at Christianity by going to the polar opposite - what they always preached against. He goes out and buys a book on witchcraft, and begins calling himself a Wiccan. After a few years, he gets tired of it and finishes moving on to atheism.
He never truly believed in the religious nature of Wicca. He was an atheist seeking to strike out at Christianity. It is all too common.
Plenty. You haven’t read through the “Any BREAKTHROUGHS in theology lately” and the various Creationism threads? There are plenty of sweeping statements and rants against how evil religion is in those.
Maybe part of it comes from the snide sniping in those threads from atheists.
Probably.
I don’t believe I ever stated that atheists worship Satan, cast spells, and sacrifice animals in their living rooms. I did state that some atheists feel the need to force their religion on other people, though. I specifically differentiated between atheists who do do that, and those who do not, who I really don’t have a problem with, any more than I don’t have a problem with Christians who don’t feel the need to force their religion on other people.
In any event, Satanists are a subsect of Christianity, not paganism. Thanks.
Someone using hyperbole to say ‘that makes me feel like a God’ is simply using hyperbole.
Someone who says such a thing and means it as the litteral truth, is mentaly insane and needs help.
Neither has anything to do with atheism or theism. Since God is still a concept to atheists, just one they don’t believe is true.
I can see where you are coming from, but in general syntax, you are referring to the group of people know as atheists. Let it be noted that you could be referring to the arrogance specifically belonging to atheists, as well, though. There are better ways to put it, and we all have to be careful with qualifying who we are talking about, lest we make generalizations.
See now - you have just called me ignorant, yet you maintain that atheists are the arrogant ones. And in fact, you have misconstrued what I said. I said nothing about material gain. I made no implication that anyone worships for selfish reasons. My point was merely that if there is a complete, utter disconnect between man and God, wherein there is no interaction, then there would be no point in worshipping that God. Obviously, theist do not believe that there is a complete disconnect (that is called “deism”).
If we observe an effect, then we have made an observation. If we can make an observation, then we can test this observation for its validity. I don’t understand your use of the word “physically”.
Direct, sight, smell, taste, and hearing are not the only ways to observe things, and I’m quite sure I didn’t say that they were. We CAN measure time - with a device called a “clock”. Time is not immune from our observation. We know it exists because we observe it. Those observations can be, and are, tested scientifically.
And there’s the Catch-22 again. If you claim to have no way of knowing about God, then how can you claim to believe in God? If your senses supposedly don’t “work” for other dimensions, then how can you claim to sense God? The two statements are mutually exclusive.
Gotta bring up the IPU here, sorry: Would you say that the Invisible Pink Unicorn exists, or doesn’t exist? If the latter, is it arrogant to say so?
Metaphysics (which IS philosophy) is the discussion of the nature of existence; I don’t see how that proves or disproves God. It’s utter speculation. The fact remains that if you have no way of observing a thing, then you can’t say it exists. If you say “God did x thing”, then you can take x and examine it scientifically. It’s either going to stand up to scritiny, or it’s not. If God has never done an observable thing, then it’s meaningless to say that God exists. For me to say this is no more or less arrogant than for you to say that God exists. We obviously disagree. Why does that make me “arrogant”, but not you?
Not that I consider myself an authority on this issue. Others may have suggested the same ting as I do, I joined the isssue late. But I feel that both theists and atheists ar equally arrogant. I have no idea whether god exists. I think both proposals are equally silly. I do not claim to know what god is or what god is not or what god can do. All I say is that regardless of the existence of god, what humans, ALL OF THEM, claim god is, cheapens the meaning of god to me. I find it hard to believe that god(if there is a god) cares whether we worship him/her/it. If so that would indicate a degree a vanity which is not consistant with godhood.
No, I said that your comment belied ignorance. Hey, you’re the one who made some generalist statement about religion being about getting candy (spiritual or otherwise) from god. shrugs
Even if there were no interaction, that doesn’t mean that there is no point in “worshipping” that god.
You’re saying that physics understands time completely? I’m sure you realize that my point was that this is a different dimension than phsyical science, not comparing god to time.
How do you measure an emotion?
I would say that, scientifically, you have no clue if the IPU “exists” or not. A horse-like creature with a horn that absorbs all visible light could very well exist, somewhere. Is it arrogant to say it doesn’t? Not really, though it is arrogant to say that people who believe it may exist are ignorant.
It doesn’t, in itself. However, how do you measure, observe, recreate, etc metaphysical properties? Very differently than you do scientific ones, no? As you say, it is all in the mind. This is where the god force acts - on a metaphysical level. Metaphysically, you can hardly prove that anything exists or, in fact, does not exist. It is an entire different “dimension,” and trying to apply scientific process to metaphysics will only give you a headache. None of this means that metaphysics is untrue, and neither does it mean that god is untrue. You have something that you can not observe, and thus reject it on impulse. That is up to you. Are you arrogant for doing that? I don’t think so. Would someone be arrogant if they declared their sense of reality superior to all others? Well, yes.
Catch-22? Maybe, if you are an atheist. If you “observe” the metaphysical properties of god, it isn’t a catch-22 at all.
O.K., I don’t know if this is supposed to be a joke or what? To say that atheists literally “stomp around” and “horribly maul” is absurd. So you’re just completely off the deep end here.
Then can I take it that your entire point is that everybody is arrogant? So why post in this thread at all?
Fallacy of “small sample”.
I’m skeptical that the number of times this happens is at all statistically significant. I think this idea that most atheists are “angry at God” is horseshit. I’m certainly not angry at God; I just don’t believe there is a God. There is quite simply nothing there to be angry at. I’m not saying it never happens, just that it’s far less than people like to believe.
Nah, it’s not common at all.
Got a cite for anyone calling you “stupid” in an unprovoked manner? Got any where there aren’t 2 counter-examples of people who didn’t do so?
At least you’re honest.
Wow! I don’t think you could have missed the point any more completely. Yes, you never said those things, and even though I prefaced those remarks with “I have nothing against pagans”, it’s STILL a blithe judgment of pagans, isn’t it?" I was TRYING to mischaracterize pagans, to demostrate how the silly little caveat of “I have nothing against pagans”, does nothing to mitigate what I said. And actually, the fact that you mistakenly thought I was serious, and became offended, proves my point quite nicely. Thank you.
Double standard? There is no middle ground between knowing everything and knowing nothing? Agnostics don’t generally state, “I’m agnostic when it comes to love because I’m agnostic when it comes to God.” They’re different. I may not know God, but I know love. I can know some things and not know others. Though I generally don’t claim that whatever I deem as evidence of what I know is irrefutable and universally acceptable.
Because the fact of my existence is a HUGE question for me. Why am I here? Religion and science both attempt to explain that. But both are insufficient for many an agnostic. Contemplating whether fairies existed isn’t something that’s going to have a profound effect on my intense curiosity about why I’m sitting here right now breathing, laughing, thinking, feeling, etc.
Flying yogis, leprechauns, the Holocaust, fairies, psychics, ad nauseum, strike me as red herrings. I thought we were talking about God?
All I did was go to work today but when I got home to see so many posts, the possibility of catching up appeared too exhausting a task. Since I had a relatively rotten day, I’m not really in the mood to try. My apologies to those whose responses I didn’t answer. I think I’ve hijacked this thread more than enough. Anyone care to start another on this very topic?
In my absence, though, Zagadka has made so many good points that I would have attempted to make that it seems redundant to try to explain my thoughts further. There was one statement that seemed to me to be the most reasonable proposition so far put forth. That is,
I would imagine that Zagadka and I would differ in many opinions, likely diametrically opposed in some. But with an attitude like that, I have the utmost respect for the spirit of his quest.
And back to the OP again: arrogance is born out of forgetting the key word here. Individual.
Gee, isn’t it pretty arrogant of you to dismiss the religious faith of billions of people who DO believe that God cares about whether or not (and in what manner) they worship him?
O.K., you have just mischaracterized what I said for the SECOND time, AFTER I corrected you. You’re obviously just here to try to push people’s buttons, and aren’t interested in a serious discussion. There is a name for people like that, but the rules forbid me from mentioning it.
There is a significant difference between being open to new ideas – as were Newton, Galileo, the Curies, and Einstein – and failing to be critical of implausible ideas, or sticking ones head in the sand when faced with a choice.
I am not, for instance, open to the idea that the Holocaust is a hoax perpetrated by the Jewish conspiracy, or that practitioners of TM can learn to fly, or that Bob Holliway has actually managed to change the molecular structure of water with soundwaves.
Similarly, I am not open to the idea that god exists. Not because I adamantly refuse to believe it, but because I’ve spent years studying the proposition as well as studying science and psychology (albeit on a layperson’s level) and it’s clear that in 2004 there’s enough evidence to close the case.
