Essentially yes, however, that should not be taken to mean that I am some sort of emotionless robot. Nor does it mean that I lack imagination. I understand that, as you put it, ‘individuals [are] merely the consequence of a mutation’. We are only chemicals. However, that definition doesn’t help much when I’m listening to music or reading a book or eating pizza.
Maybe the problem is the word ‘merely’ in your sentence. The individual is the amazing spectacular wondrous random consequence of mutation. In general life, this isn’t important. I may think, and although it’s only electricity, my thinking has an outcome and a purpose. I don’t need to fabricate the existence of a soulto explain this; all I need to understand is that these electrical sparks are so complex that they create the wonder of human form. A soul explains this in a more simple manner, but lacks consistency when made to undergo rigorous examination.
Here’s an analogy:
Just imagine that I have a car. To explain my life, people have fabricated a soul, and to explain the way my car moves about, I could fabricate a soul for my car.
However, it isn’t really like that. My car moves because of all the mechanical stuff inside it (which I do not pretend to understand). But if I want to go to work, I don’t need to think about the car in terms of it being a collection of metal and physics. I just need to think of the car as something that takes me to work. I can accept that it does this without saying that my car has a soul.
Likewise, if I want to live my life, I don’t need to think about the fact that I’m a clump of proteins and chemical reactions. I just need to think about me and all the people around me as living, breathing, concious beings. But I don’t have to invent a soul for me to accept that conciousness.
Speaking purely as an athiest, I have always seen the belief in God, and belief in spirits, telepathy, Energies-unknown to science, tarot cards etc. as being much the same thing. Some beliefs simply have a larger and more enduring support structure that makes them more respectable.
To believe in God but NOT other psychic phenomena, alien abductions, etc. would seem an untenable position.
Reporter: Why don’t you accept the reality of psychic phenomena?
Religious person: Well, there is absolutely no evidence for their existance. No one but a fool would swallow that crap unless it is rigorously investigated, written up for peer review, and the results duplicated in other tests.
**Reporter:**OK, but you do believe in God?
Religious person: Well yes, . . .but that’s different!
In a way, it’s funny but in another way it’s incredibly alarming and dangerous. Objectively, there seems very little difference between the religious crowd and the tinfoil hat crew.
I notice that you build it up with amazing, spectacular and wonderous, but it’s still simply a consequence of mutation (in the atheist’s view). No atheist in this thread has yet disputed that.
If you’re saying that the brain is a “tool”, I would agree. And since the soul is not the brain, I agree that you don’t need to fabricate a soul to explain the brain. I disagree that the brain creates a human body, though.
As far as your analogy, I think I understood what you were trying to convey. I have one question though. Who’s driving the “car”?
If you say the “soul” or the “spirit” is “driving the car”, then who’s driving that car?
I would say the “mind” is “driving the car”. The mind is a process; it’s analogous (only in a very loose way, you understand) to the “software”, with the brain being the “hardware”. The brain generates the mind. Just as software cannot exist floating in nothingness, so the mind cannot live without the body.
I guess I’m not the average Christian. I don’t put much stock in cards (isn’t it simply chance how cards are dealt?) and do not hold any opinion on alien abductions, but I certainly believe spirit exists as well as communication in many forms. I also humbly acknowledge that I do not know of all of God’s creation, so who am I to say some things could not exist?
Mind is a thought process, agreed, and it’s also limited by the brain. Sometimes severly in some cases. Once the spirit leaves the body, the brain and the thought processes cease. The spark is gone. FYI, I believe the soul is the moral collection (or record) of thought and action.
As far as your first question, God’s granted me a learner’s permit.
I understand, and certainly make no claims to universal knowledge either.
Cards, crystals, and other divination techniques have been repeatedly tested and have invariably failed. On the other hand, most religions actively avoid making testable claims or make claims that are so vague they cannot be tested. Boils down to the same thing either way, no evidence and no way of testing the claims made.
I guess my question would be:
Given two supernatural/paranormal claims, neither of which can be proven to be correct, why believe either of them?
I agree in general with your position but (and I hope that I’m not being nitpicky) i disagree with a couple of your statements:
People are not a “random consequence”. Random mutation provides more material for natural selection to work with but the selection process, while
not guided or goal-oriented, should not IMHO be considered random. By saying that humans are a random consequence you’re setting up creationists’ favorite strawman.
I have to disagree with this. A soul is not a simpler explanation, it’s a non-explanation. It’s simply a name given to a phenomena the person can’t explain. It’s like saying “I can’t currently explain human consciousness, therefore it exists outside of natural law and is forever unexplainable.”
There are a lot of reasons given above for why I call myself an agnostic rather than an atheist. The theist and the atheist have more in common with each other than either has with me, because each believes that the existence or non-existence of a god is knowable. I don’t think it is. I don’t believe in a god (or many) because I don’t think sufficient evidence has been adduced either way. But, while I don’t believe in them, I would be hard put to furnish evidence that Moloch or Yaweh or Zeus don’t exist. I’m content to remain neutral.
As for telepathy, tarot cards, the Zodiac, and psychic vision, I can’t say. There seem to be some people who are more sensitive than most, but whether they can really “see” anything has yet to be demonstrated. Even if an individual’s “psychic” perception tests at greater than chance, it is obvious that some individuals have rolled a number of consecutive sevens far greater than chance would dictate. It doesn’t prove or disprove anything.
Alien abduction? Well, if it has happened there is nothing supernatural about it.
In short, I don’t believe in the supernatural. There is only the natural that is not yet understood.
davidm: all your nitpicks are correct - i wasn’t attempting to be definitive with my explanation, but rather allow an understanding of my beliefs.
edlyn: what mebuckner said; the mind is driving the car.
this is where our views differ. without the brain/mind, the human body is a lump of flesh.
that was my point. i was saying that despite not being created, and essentially a ‘consequence of mutation’, the human body’s importance should not be dismissed. life is a wondrous thing, but it doesn’t mean that it had to be created by a god.
desert geezer:
not so. the theist is willing to believe with the absence of proof; the atheist is not. there is no similarity there.
the problem i have with agnosticism is its lack of limits. to use the classic, i am going to perhaps shock and surprise you very much.
did you know that sitting next to me right now, there is an invisible pink unicorn (and yes, she is pink and invisible because if she had a colour, she would be pink).
do you believe me?
do you disbelieve me?
or, another example.
i’m going to tell you right now that george bush is desperate to declare war on iraq because saddam hussein slept with his wife and daughters. at the same time. and george wants revenge big time.
do you believe me?
do you disbelieve me?
really, how can an agnostic have an opinion on anything?
My point of similarity was that they both think god’s existence or non-existence is capable of being known. In that they are the same.
I don’t think your examples are relevant, gex gex. I only stated that an agnostic, unlike a theist and and atheist, holds that specific knowledge of a god is unknowable. That refers only to a god, not to anything else.
If you state that there is a pink unicorn next to you, I would have to say that I do believe that you see that, because you say so. But, since there is no evidence that unicorns of any kind ever existed except in the imagination, but abundant evidence that people can see and experience things that are not there, I would have to say that you are deluded.
If you state that President Bush’s reason for wanting to attack Iraq is his belief that Saddam Hussein had slept with his wife and daughters, I think there would be a good reason for believing that you are either delusional or just putting me on. Neither you nor I can get inside the President’s mind to discover something that he has not stated, but it could be proven by evidence that Saddam Hussein and the President’s wife and daughters had never met.
The question of god’s existence or non-existence is one which I see as unaswerable by any evidence. That is the agnostic’s view. Both the theist and the atheist believe that god’s existence or non-existence is knowable. The theist accepts it without evidence, and the atheist says there can be no evidence. They are alike in that they both believe that one can know.
The agnostic says no convincing evidence has been thus far adduced, and that is my position. An agnostic is open to evidence if any should be found, but doesn’t think the question is capable of proof either way. That is a profound difference between the agnostic and either the theist or the atheist.
So, if I declare myself an agnostic based on the definitions I just gave you, I’m not entitled to an opinion? To be valid, my opinion has to be based on your understanding of the world? Please.
I have experienced enough myself that I could not prove to you, so I do not require someone else to prove something to me. Does that mean I believe any claim? No, and I don’t worry about it or condemn it. If there is truth to another’s claim, in time I’ll understand that too. I think the first step is to recognize that not all things are proven by man’s scientific methods. :eek:
The atheist, or more accurately, this athiest believes that the specific knowledge of god is as knoweable as the specific knowledge of the Invisible Pink Unicorn sitting next to me is knoweable to you.
There is no evidence that gods of any kind ever existed except in the imagination, but abundant evidence that people can see and experience things that are not there. I would have to say that theists are deluded.
I’ve got this book that says it’s true, (and that Saddam has met Laura et al) - so it must be just as tenable a position as it not being true.
The existence of the IPU sitting next to me is unanswerable by any evidence. You could reach a conclusion where that was concerned: so why can you not reach a conclusion where the existence of God is concerned?
Not true. I (and I suspect most other atheists) believe that there is no evidence presented and hence no reason to believe. As an athiest, I do not ponder on whether there can be evidence or not, just that there isn’t, so why concern myself with it?
I believe I can know there is no god, just like I believe I can know whether my car has a soul that makes it drive around or whether time slows down on a monday to approximately half the speed it travels on a friday. This is why I can’t see how an agnostic can hold a position on anything. After all, it really isn’t knoweable whether on Mondays, time travels at approximately half the speed it does Fridays. (Of course, you must remember, a clock on Monday will measure time exactly the same as it does on Friday, but that is because the clock exists inside of time. As time slows, so too does the clock.)
And if you believe that you can know the ‘unknoweable’ things I have mentioned above, why can you not know the existence of god?
At a time in the future, a tower of 375 elephants stacked one on top of the other will appear in Kansas City, and they will have been ordered to appear there by a super-intelligent dolphin named Frank.
Isn’t that one of the things about being anything, though, even if we don’t all realize it?
I’m sure you would say that, speaking purely as an athiest [sic].
I think your analogy is flawed. It seems to me that belief in God is more like belief that one has had a dream. Not belief in dreams, mind you, but belief in a particular dream.
I had a dream a couple of nights ago that I got in a fight with Harrison Ford (and I kicked his butt–go me!). You can choose to understand that I experienced something different from what you have experienced; or you can believe that I am either lying or too foolish to know what I’ve experienced. But you will have a hard time convincing me that I didn’t have that particular dream, even if your explanations claim the cachet of science.
I suppose so, if we allowed you to define objectively. I would actually call that sort of objectively by the name “subjectively”.
Is it really all that “alarming and dangerous” that not everyone thinks and believes the same things?
Sounds like we got another evangelical agnostic here…
—The theist believes that God or a god exists.—
Yes: but which god? That makes a big difference: “god exists” is such a vauge term by itself that it could mean that just about anything exists.
—The atheist believes that no God or gods exist.—
That makes no sense: again which god? Do I have a strong belief that “freeipling” a god I’ve never heard of till this second when I made it up, doesn’t exist? No. I just have no reason to think that it does (in this particular case because I’ve never even heard it suggested that it does)
—Both lack sufficient proof to conclusively state either “God exists” or “God does not exist”.—
Not so: some theists have sufficient proof to conclusively state that their god exists. Those that worshiped Caesar as a god did. Those that worship existence do. Many worshipers of the more abstract gods claim to have personal experience that convinces them, even if its useless for demonstrating it to anyone else.
Don’t make stupid generalizations.
Sounds like we got another person who likes to label people here…
“Which god” exactly. One reason why this debate has lasted so long is that the definition of “God” is as much an issue as whether this “God” exists.
I should have worded it more appropriately as “Both lack conclusive proof to establish that God exists or God does not exist.” Technically, anyone can make a conclusive statement, regardless of the proof. This would include stating that Caesar is a God as well as relating personal experience that is useless for demonstrating it to anyone else (of course). If there was conclusive proof, further debate would be unnecessary.
I don’t know what “worshipping existence” means.
Don’t insult people in Great Debates. It does nothing more than make people like me less likely to want to participate here. If you really feel the need to make fun of people, do so in the Pit.
Never thought that for a second.
