# Who is more "open minded": Religious folks or non believers? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 17, 2016, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037 "2016-05-17T22:06:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037/141 "2016-05-19T21:36:52Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Thinking that there is no God is equally as much a belief system, just not the same one as Christians. In many cases, the commitment you speak of for atheists is to science and logic. Personally, being the analytical type, I find it most agreeable to put my faith in science. The label “belief system” could be applied to anyone who is capable of holding two thoughts in their head at the same time. But you are explicitly using that label as a means to draw an unjustified false equivalence between theism and atheism. Christianity and Islam are roughly equivalent “belief systems”. The scientific method and respect for evidence are fundamentally different. That’s why the replacement of one religion with another has historically been fairly insignificant; but compare how the world has changed since the paradigm shift of the Enlightenment. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037/142 "2016-05-19T22:49:57Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > The label “belief system” could be applied to anyone who is capable of holding two thoughts in their head at the same time. But you are explicitly using that label as a means to draw an unjustified false equivalence between theism and atheism. > > Christianity and Islam are roughly equivalent “belief systems”. > > The scientific method and respect for evidence are fundamentally different. That’s why the replacement of one religion with another has historically been fairly insignificant; but compare how the world has changed since the paradigm shift of the Enlightenment. Calling atheism a belief system in no way equates it with any standard religion. If anything, it’s the polar opposite of religion. But it belongs on the same line. Google ‘belief system definition.’ You’ll get this: > [@](#): > > A belief system is a set of mutually supportive beliefs. The beliefs of any such system can be classified as religious, philosophical, ideological, or a combination of these. ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037/143 "2016-05-19T23:01:17Z")
I am Jewish. Most Rabbis believe that the suffering of sinners will not be eternal – at most a few millenia. But no one knows. Pascal’s Wager still stands. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037/144 "2016-05-19T23:14:52Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > We’re pickier about the rules of gathering evidence. We like the scientific method, because it insists on duplication of observation – a visitation that only you saw, and no one else, is of very little scientific value – and repeatibility of observation – “Do that again!” Miraculous visitations very consistently fail both tests. Yes, true indeed. But consider the problem faced by Mr. A. Square of Flatland. He was a creature of the two-dimensional world in Edwin Abbott’s eponymous book. To him, “north,” and “up,” were synonyms. One day he is visited by a Sphere, who he experiences as a circle. The Sphere leaves his world, and Mr. Square experiences the circle shrinking and then vanishing. What’s happened, of course, is that the Sphere merely sank below the plane in which Flatland existed. Later, the Sphere yanks Square up out of Flatland, moving him through the heretofore unknown third spatial dimension. Later, back on Flatland, Square tries to explain what he has seen: “I went up, but not north,” he says helplessly. Now, there’s no question that the other shapes in Flatland are correct to regard Square’s experience as unpersuasive. As you say, it’s something he saw, and no one else did. But is it correct for Square to remain unpersuaded? I say it’s not, especially after multiple trips and other experiments that test his new model of the universe. Do you agree? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037/145 "2016-05-19T23:23:26Z")
So, again, what is your _purpose_ in belaboring whether atheism should be labeled a “belief system”? It’s such a vague term that almost anything constitutes a “belief system” under that definition, so your suggestion that this label implies some deeper similarity between theism and atheism is unfounded. To quote you again: > [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Thinking that there is no God is equally as much a belief system, just not the same one as Christians. In many cases, the commitment you speak of for atheists is to science and logic. Your words here are precisely the trope of the faith-addled, when they claim that those who reject their superstitions have just replaced “faith in God” with “faith in science”, creating a false equivalence by playing on different meanings of “faith”. The reason that the Enlightenment was so significant was precisely that the new “belief system” (if you must call it that) was _qualitatively different_ from what had gone before. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037/146 "2016-05-19T23:43:56Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Yes, true indeed. > > But consider the problem faced by Mr. A. Square of Flatland. He was a creature of the two-dimensional world in Edwin Abbott’s eponymous book. To him, “north,” and “up,” were synonyms. One day he is visited by a Sphere, who he experiences as a circle. The Sphere leaves his world, and Mr. Square experiences the circle shrinking and then vanishing. What’s happened, of course, is that the Sphere merely sank below the plane in which Flatland existed. Later, the Sphere yanks Square up out of Flatland, moving him through the heretofore unknown third spatial dimension. Later, back on Flatland, Square tries to explain what he has seen: “I went up, but not north,” he says helplessly. > > Now, there’s no question that the other shapes in Flatland are correct to regard Square’s experience as unpersuasive. As you say, it’s something he saw, and no one else did. > > But is it correct for Square to remain unpersuaded? I say it’s not, especially after multiple trips and other experiments that test his new model of the universe. > > Do you agree? The conditions you describe are, essentially, that a mysterious alien has genuinely singled out Mr Square to be the only one in Flatland empowered to gain access to experimental data. Such a thing is implausible but not impossible. I think the next step is for everyone to assume that Mr Square’s new data are genuine, even if nobody else is empowered to replicate his experiments, and develop a new model for the universe based on the data. If that new model that made superior _predictions_ that were detectable to all in the two-dimensional universe, that would validate Mr Square’s story. But If Mr Square’s experiences and observations had no implications whatsoever for the two-dimensional world, the situation is much more difficult. How would he know _himself_ that he did not (say) have a brain tumour and that all of his experiences were hallucinations? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037/147 "2016-05-20T02:05:40Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > So, again, what is your _purpose_ in belaboring whether atheism should be labeled a “belief system”? It’s such a vague term that almost anything constitutes a “belief system” under that definition, so your suggestion that this label implies some deeper similarity between theism and atheism is unfounded. > > To quote you again: > Your words here are precisely the trope of the faith-addled, when they claim that those who reject their superstitions have just replaced “faith in God” with “faith in science”, creating a false equivalence by playing on different meanings of “faith”. > > The reason that the Enlightenment was so significant was precisely that the new “belief system” (if you must call it that) was _qualitatively different_ from what had gone before. I wasn’t claiming that religions are the only belief systems, nor was I the one claiming that atheism _isn’t_. If you want to blame someone for belaboring it, **Czarcasm** seems to be the prime offender. I merely defended my point. Negatory. You confuse unsupported faith (i.e. religion) with supported faith (science based on observation and experimentation). Like, you know, evidence. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology#/media/File:Classical\_definition\_of\_Kno.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology#/media/File:Classical_definition_of_Kno.svg) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037/148 "2016-05-20T03:02:04Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > . . . the problem faced by Mr. A. Square of Flatland. . . . A lovely book. As a matter of fact, I was reading it on December 30, 1999. The narrative portion of the book begins, “It was the last day but one of the 1999th year of our era.” > [@](#): > > But is it correct for Square to remain unpersuaded? I say it’s not, especially after multiple trips and other experiments that test his new model of the universe. . . . The multiple trips and other experiments make it completely valid for him to be personally convinced. (As opposed to my friend who saw an angel in circumstances that could not be distinguished from hallucinatory.) However, he doesn’t have anything he can bring to the table; nothing he has experienced is available to anyone else. So everyone else is also correct to dismiss his anecdotes as delusional. There isn’t anywhere anyone can go with this kind of “personal revelation.” It can’t be examined, tested, viewed from other angles, performed in varying environmental circumstances, etc. It’s Fortean. It’s nice that people keep lists of such testimony, but, ultimately, it’s a dead end. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037/149 "2016-05-20T03:55:50Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Weird. I go to the ‘quote reply’ page and get a quote from Shodan and then Voyager’s. > > Anyway, lack of belief in a particular god among a universe of gods says nothing about the belief in the entire group. Disbelief in _any and all_ gods is atheism. > > Want some corollaries? (By no means an exhaustive list, and including the basis of the belief system.) > > There is no such thing as a god. Not necessarily. An atheist may just lack god belief. > [@](#): > > There is no such thing as an afterlife. The spiritualists didn’t seem to believe in gods very much. Farmer’s Riverworld was a a godless afterlife. So, perhaps, is recording yourself for reloading after you die. > [@](#): > > There is no supernatural force that will punish you for wrongdoing. > > There is no supernatural force that will reward you for doing good. Yeah, but many theists believe that also. When I did believe in God I got none of this punishment or reward thing from my rabbi. > [@](#): > > Things happen to you as a result of natural laws, randomness (which technically is a natural law), or your or others’ actions. This follows strictly from observation. Most theists believe the same for 99.999% of things that happen. > [@](#): > > There is no overarching ‘plan’ for the universe. I could believe in Zeus and believe this also. But lack of belief in an entity who could implement a plan directly implies lack of belief in a plan. That is direct implication, not a system which pretty much involves more than one thing. > [@](#): > > True knowledge can only be gained through the sciences and the scientific method. One can be an atheist spiritualist or New Ager who doesn’t believe this. Hell, ESP has nothing to do with gods or lack thereof. > [@](#): > > You are solely responsible for your own life, choices, and actions. Really? Impossible to blame your mother? Most atheists you see around here are acientific rationalists (as I am) but we don’t read people out of the atheist camp even if they are spiritualists. We don’t excommunicate people, even ones we’d like to. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037/150 "2016-05-20T03:59:46Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > . . . Most atheists you see around here are acientific rationalists (as I am) but we don’t read people out of the atheist camp even if they are spiritualists. We don’t excommunicate people, even ones we’d like to. We denounce them, now and then, for not being True Scotsmen. ---
**Author:** ![Rhodes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rhodes/32/273_2.png) [@Rhodes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhodes)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-more-open-minded-religious-folks-or-non-believers/755037/151 "2016-05-20T17:04:27Z")
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