Forgot one. Lib said:
Whaddaya mean, “even David”?!
oldscratch:
**
Not familiar with the concept of deism, eh?
David B:
Re: The Invisible Pink Unicorn, a one-eyed, one-horned, and a flying purple people eater living inside of Pluto…
Care to show me some evidence that these things DO NOT exist? Or even some evidence which leads us to deduce using methods accepted for such things that they do not exist?
If you can’t, then yes, I reject them on faith that they do not indeed exist.
Maybe you feel differently. But if you do, that makes you no better than the Creationist who says, “You weren’t there, so how do you know?”
Yer putz,
Satan :wally
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Satan said:
Of course not. Same for the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, etc. But you don’t need faith to not believe in these things. You merely need a lack of faith.
Then you are extremely confused as to what faith is. But other people have already told you that here, I believe.
From the Webster’s New World Dictionary definition of faith: “1 unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence 2 unquestioning belief in God, religious tenets, etc. 3 a religion or a system of religious beliefs 4 anything believed 5 complete trust confidence, or reliance 6 allegiance to some person or thing; loyalty”
None of these describe a failure to believe in something. They all go directly against the pseudo-definition of “faith” that you appear to be using. Those who say they don’t believe in God because of a lack of evidence for God obviously do require proof or evidence, so that’s not #1. #2 falls out immediately, as does #3. #4 doesn’t cut it because it is not anything believed, but rather something not believed. #5 and #6 deal more with the aspect of having faith in a person, so those don’t really apply here.
Are you taking logic lessons from FriendofGod now? :rolleyes:
If I don’t cook, am I a Chef who specializes in “non-food”?
If I don’t repair my own car, am I now a mechanic of “non-cars”?
If I don’t paint, am I now the greatest Minimalist who ever lived?
If I don’t care to participate in “religion”, am I now a participant of “non-religion”?
If you answer no, you get my point.
If you answer yes, you don’t.
But if you don’t cook AND you go around stabbing the hands of pot stirrers everywhere you find them, you’re at least a nut.
Okay, if you want to split hairs here, there is definitely a difference in “lacking belief that a thing exists” and “professing a belief that such a thing does not exist.” Statement A :“I don’t believe God exists,” is qualitatively different from statement B: “I believe God does not exist.” The first one cannot fit the definition above, but the second statement certainly fulfills definition 4.
This is the “lack of belief” versus “belief in the lack” dichotomy all over again. A belief in the non-existence of a being is still a belief, any way you slice it. That being said, I should also point out that people will often use statements A and B interchangably in the course of normal conversation, regardless of whether, on strict examination, they hold the softer or harder atheistic stance. And furthermore, their is definitely a real difference between the faith defined as “anything believed” and the faith called for and described by religious adherents.
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”-Rush
Yer putz,
Satan :wally
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Satan:
I was not ignoring your radiation metaphor. I just do not see how it applies to the question at hand. The point seems to be: “atheism might be incorrect because we have no tool with which to measure God”. Sure. I have never claimed infallibility, and I have never claimed that the existence of God(s) is impossible.
We might also on day find a tool to measure the aether and discover that it has been there all along. So what? When I say, “there is no aether,” I am not ambiguous about the question. I am not uncertain whether the aether exists or not. I am confident that the question has been explored and enough evidence (or lack thereof) has been collected. (If you ask me whether collapsed superstring dimensions exist, however, I will answer, “I don’t know”.)
This, to me, illustrates the real difference between a religious faith and my own atheism. I am quite certain in my conclusion. I am not at all certain in my infallibility. The possibiity exists that I will be proven wrong. If that should happen, it will not disturb me. I will not face it as a crisis. I will not feel that my world has been turned upside down. It would simply mean that new information changed the best model of my Universe.
Now, I gather from this thread that you have newly found some sort of spiritual belief. I wish you luck with it. I ask you, though, if tomorrow that belief were demonstrably proven to be false, how would it affect you?
By Oldscratch
I beg to differ…
The deffinition of atheism is a person that doesn’t believe in God. Since you can’t experimentally prove or disprove God it takes faith to believe or not to believe he exists.
I don’t understand why atheists have such a problem with the word faith. Is it because the idea of having faith in something that they can’t prove scares them?
PS please don’t get off on the lack of belief not being the same as disbelief. It’s all the same. You still have to choose to “lack belief”.
[pulling up a couple o’ lawn chairs…]
Edlyn, quick! Come and bring the popcorn!
[QUOTE]
**
By Oldscratch
No. It most certainly is not the same. For one thing, you’re leaving out the agnostics. They have listened, debated, and yet reached no definite decision as to whether God exists. They lack belief. They do not disbelieve. They are not denying God’s existence in the slightest, yet they also will not affirm it.
I am a soft atheist. The evidence has indicated to me that God, in all likelihood, does not exist. I lack belief in him. I do not actively disbelieve in him, because he may exist, even though I cannot prove or disprove it. It is analagous to the difference between not liking someone and disliking someone. Even though people might say “I don’t like him,” when their emotional state is actually one of active dislike, a soft atheist may say “There is no God,” when they really mean that they lack belief.
If the distinction is still beyond your grasp, try doing a little reading at:
Ok, this has been said time and time again and I guess I’ll have to repeat it…it does not take faith to not believe in a god anymore than it takes faith not to believe in unicorns (unless they are invisible and pink) elves, faeries, one-eyed-one-horned-flying-purple-people-eaters. You cannot “prove” they do not exist, but lacking any compelling reason to think that they do, one simply adopts the null hypothesis that they do not. And it is not a “choice.” I did not sit down one day and think “you know, there are a lot of pros and cons and evidence both ways, but I’d really prefer that there was no god, so I just won’t believe in one.” Lack of belief is just that: A lack of belief. Explain to me why you don’t believe in Odin, Zeus, Mithras, Lugh of the Long Hand, Vishnu and Osiris. Is it really a matter of faith? Do you have faith that an elf is not sitting on my shoulder right now telling me what to say? Do you have faith that I’m actually using a computer to type this and not just mentally willing the words onto your (and only your) screen? Or did you simply not consider those possibilities, and, now that you’re presented with them, dismiss them because there is no real “choice” involved, there’s no reason to consider them as existent and you probably couldn’t if you tried.
pinqy
Well, Spiritus Mundi has been saying this much better than I ever could, but I must say that I can find no logical fault with his arguments.
Some posters (Satan et al.) are saying “denying the existence of God is a matter of belief.” Of course, everything is a matter of belief if you want to be absolutely precise. e.g. I see a car in front of me, so I say “there is a car.” But someone might come along and say to me “how do you know for sure that there is a car? It’s an optical illusion, the IPU is fooling me into thinking there is a car, your brain is malfunctioning , etc… (pick one.)” So therefore I should be saying “My belief is that there is a car.”
Needless to say, that would be a cumbersome and ridiculous way of expressing oneself. Therefore I will say “There is a car.” If someone proves me to be wrong, then I will retract my statement and say “I was mistaken, there was no car.” But if someone says “your statement that there is a car is a religious belief” then I will vehemently disagree with them.
Affirming the existence of something without any evidence is religion. Denying the existence of something for which there is no evidence is logic or science, or whatever you want to call it. Of course, any logical person will revise their opinion once proof to the contrary will have been produced. To be perfectly precise, one should always start a sentence with “There is enough evidence to conclude that …” or “There is not enough evidence to conclude that …” I for one will not bother to adopt such convoluted and mannered expressions. If I look out the window and don’t see a car, I’ll say “there is no car”, disregarding the possibility that someone may have covered the window with a perfect photographic replica of the parking lot showing no car, when in fact there is a car in the parking lot.
There are logical arguments for the existence of God (e.g., Aquinas’s Unmoved Mover syllogism, as noted earlier). Remember now, by focusing on atheism we are ignoring much (most?) about the nature of God. This thread focuses merely on His existence (so don’t picture his form, or which religion’s holy cards are authentic, or if indeed He’s purple or pink).
Given our physical world (and our current understanding of it), is there not at least something reasonable in asserting that an infinite regression of physical agents is illogical?–i.e., there must have been some non-physical initation. Or put another way, does it not require some sort of faith to state, everything I see (which is physical) is merely the end state of an inexorable physical progression that simply always existed–no one created it–even though I cannot explain logically how that might have occurred?
You might not find these logical arguments satisfying (many do not), but I do believe that they at least place a belief in God (or a non-belief, for that matter) in a different category than faith in flying purple people eaters.
Arnold said:
Well, of course. We know how vehement those religious car believers can be!
Bob Cos said:
Maybe you do, but others don’t. And how dare you insult the faith of the one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater clan?!
I think there is some merit to this observation by Wesley Morriston, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado in Boulder:
"Everybody (even Clifford) has a faith in something that is not grounded in “sufficient evidence,” even if it is only a faith in the reliability of her basic sources of knowledge.
Our confidence in Reason itself is a faith for which we cannot provide any non-question-begging argument.
If this is right, then it isn’t only religious people who have faith!"
That is a conclusion similar to that drawn by V. S. Ramachandran in Phantoms in the Brain
Morriston has a really neat website that theists and atheists alike can enjoy.
As Spiritus noted, there seems to be a difference between faith that you will go to Valhalla if you die in battle and faith that people do not occaisionally turn into turnips when you are not looking at them. Besides, I don’t think the question is “do (soft) atheists have any faith in anything at all”–they may have faith that their wife will not cheat on them, or that one day they’ll win the lottery, etc.–but do atheists have faith in the non-existence of God? I would say no, aside from those who claim categorically that God cannot exist in any form.
As far as having faith in one’s methods of gathering evidence, well, I consider it a decent working hypothesis that I exist, that the world exists, and that I can use my senses and reason to find out true things about this world. I suppose it could be untrue, but it has kept man alive and allowed us to prosper so far, so I reckon I’ll keep it. Perhaps our senses and reason do not tell us true things, perhaps the only way to truly percieve the world is to use some sort of mystical sixth sense, perhaps I don’t really exist, maybe this world is just an illusion–but my hypothesis seems to work well in this world, and be shared by many.
Gaudere
If would seem that you and Spiritus are talking about the distinction that Morriston calls “natural faith” and “optional faith”.
As he puts it: “There is an important distinction between a faith (in the reliability of sense perception, for instance) that no one can help having, and a faith (a religious one, for example) that is not universally shared - and, for some of us, at least, is optional. I shall speak of the former as natural faith, since it is just as much a part of our nature as sex or digestion.”
I, like you, accept on faith that reason is a good epistemology for the natural world. Alas, that is the best that either of us can do.
The label “theist” fails in so many of these discussions because some theists believe in God solely through that natural epistemology. But even the devil believes in God that way!
The implication that those of us who have faith in God possess “some sort of mystical sixth sense” fails, too. It is not a sense at all; not in that way. It is merely our acceptance of our own experience. It is an empirical epistemology.
We rationalize it in the same way that we all rationalize our natural epistemology. It simply “feels right”, that is, it works well for us, seems always to be true, and is shared by many.
See, I don’t know if it’s exactly faith, although it is the only way I can think of to perceive the world. Say my senses and reason are unreliable for perceiving the world; say I just think I’m percieving the world correctly. Will it do me any good to assume this? It cannot be disproven, but I am disinclined to entertain such a possibility. If it’s true that I cannot perceive the world through reason and senses I don’t know what else I’d use. It’s rather a practical thing–I can either sit around and do nothing, since my mind and body are no good at knowing anything, or I can accept for the nonce they actually do provide valid evidence and actually interact with the world. I have two possibilities, one that, if true, means I basically give up right there, and the other that allows me to actually gather further information about the truth; I may as well go with the one that allows me to do something. I admit I took my senses and reason as being valid wholly on faith at first, but having reevaluated them I will accept for now them out of sheer practicality. Does that make any sense?
Actually, that wasn’t my intended implication at all. It’s just tough to imagine how one would percieve the world if neither your reason not your physical senses gave you valid information. The only thing I can think of is that you’d have to intuit it, but how could you test the evidence of this sense without reason? You may intuit that the truck coming towards you is not really there. Your senses might say it is, and you may feel pain when it hits you. How would you know that your intuition is true and your senses are not? If reason is not valid for explaining the world, why shouldn’t you be able to die by being hit by a truck that’s not there?
I think I’ve rambled far enough off the subject now. 
Gaudere
Definitely. But that’s all faith is.
Evidently, there’s this ubiquitous assumption among some atheists (not you, of course) that faith is some sort of struggle, that we have to squint real hard and grunt to believe.
Our faith is actually quite practical for us. At first, we were a bit intellectually and emotionally stunned as a whole new unfamiliar comprehension of all things settled upon us, but over time, speaking with God became as ordinary as speaking with you. At least, that was the way of it for me.
But you can. See Phantoms in the Brain, linked and referenced above. People perceive trucks that aren’t there and arms they don’t have. Their brain simply redistributes the senses, moving perception to the most convenient place. If you’ve lost an arm, your “hand” can itch if someone touches your face.
I think empiricism and reason go hand in hand, reason advising us how something should work, and experience advising how it actually does, and then reason helping to explain why our experience differed from what we expected.
Apprehension of God seems always to occur in the limbic system. And in fact, stimulation of the limbic system can actually cause you to believe in God. Ramachandran, reflecting on this, cautions skeptics (including himself) not to misinterpret this data, which, he says, can be used either way, to argue for or against the existence of God.
As I see it, from what I’ve learned here at SDMB (and I realize I have much more to learn), it is usually the empirical evidence that the atheist, at least the soft atheist, lacks. Would you agree?