The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. — [Bertrand Russell]
As an agnostic I certainly don’t have a problem with anyone choosing to be an atheist. It however has been my experience that many of the atheists I interact with oftentimes tend to be more dogmatic and intolerant than religious conservatives. My casual observation suggests that they definitely are more so than the average religious person. And oftentimes it is not only the religious that has to bear the brunt of their ire, even agnostics are labeled as wimps for being too soft on “the enemy”, the religious that is, and often are referred to as fence sitters when it comes to the general issue of belief. The following utterance by political satirist Stephen Colbert conveying the general sentiment: Isn’t an agnostic just an atheist without balls?
I know I’m generalizing but that is my personal observation based on my own experience. But let me relate an incident that highlights the typical mentality. The resulting consternation upon which this example is based was triggered by the following innocent email.
Good morning everyone. It seems that Monwabisi’s condition has worsened and he is in hospital again. His girlfriend relayed that he is at the Vincent Pallotti Hospital in the Poplar ward. He is said to be extremely ill. Guys, please keep him in your prayers and thoughts.
As innocent as this email was, all hell broke loose after the sender apologized for sending it to the wrong mailing list. She meant to send it to her department only, but chose a group email that sent it to all the staff at the university. The apology followed five minutes later, but soon afterwards emails flooded my inbox requesting to be removed from the her list. It became so bad that the secretary of the chancellor had to ask the operations manager to train staff on the “Reply to Sender” function (which is the default function on the GroupWise mail-server) and they used the “Reply to All” (incidentally not the default option which had to be deliberately selected).
The result was that hundreds of were forwarded in this way. By the third day the emails were still streaming in, upon which someone responded with the following.
To ALL those who don’t want to be part of this mail:
This was a simple mail, requesting prayers for one of our sick colleagues. What is so difficult praying for someone, why does that bother you so much?
If you can’t pray for him, just delete the mails that come to your mailbox and stop filling other people’s mailbox by requesting to be taken out of the mailing list. Tomorrow may be your turn to need prayers. How will you all feel being in Monwabisi’s shoes? The Bible instructs us to pray for the sick and to LOVE our neighbors as ourselves.
So, where did Ashley go wrong by asking us to pray for one of us that are battling with ill health?
The more people that pray for him the better.
Yet, this did not end the chain mailing, bearing in mind that these mails were also being sent to Monwabisi mailbox as well. This is when I thought I’d have my say and changed the email header to “Is this an Institution of Higher Learning?” and responded to the previous email, even though the author clearly had strong religious sentiments.
I agree fully with your email, and I hope the other 2000 or so people who cluttered the email system by purposefully selecting the “Reply to all” (as they had to as I purposefully did in this case), actually got your message.
I thought this is a university of higher learning? And that there may be half a chance of finding civilized intelligent compassionate people working here. I know there are, but this clearly had been an exhibition to the contrary.
I will keep Monwabisi in my thoughts.
I then received a mail with the header: Thank you for rebuking us, we really deserve it. Also sent to all, but then the emails stopped with the exception of the following.
Sorry, you might but I don’t deserve any rebuke!
Let me explain why..... I never ‘replied to all’, neither did I ask to be removed from the list. I am sorry to hear of a sick colleague, even if I don’t personally know him. But actually it is not about that, it is about boundaries. It is very inappropriate to send out an email asking the entire staff of a University to pray for someone. This is not what work place emails are for. If that was the norm where would it end?
We all know people who are in need of support. Can you imagine if everyone suddenly implored us, via internal mail, to call on devine intervention on behalf of someone else? We’d be flooded by thousands of letters on a daily basis. Use the social networks to do that sort of thin. (By the way they are far more effective).
It is equally inappropriate to send out a manipulative and sickly rebuke reminding us of some biblical injunction or telling us we might be ill tomorrow! It’s preposterous! I’m not a child that I need to be chastised. “This was a simple mail, requesting prayers for one of our sick colleagues. What is so difficult praying for someone, why does that bother you people so much?” Do you get how patronizing that is?
On top of that, in the correspondence comes an innuendo that I am neither civilized intelligent or caring! What do you know of me or anyone else on this campus? What is it about people like yourselves that believe it is alright and fitting to adopt a high moral stance because people didn’t respond in a way you thought appropriate...
To which I responded.
Let me not draw this out into a lengthy debate, someone made a simple mistake by choosing the incorrect group address (and invaded your personal boundary), and apologized very shortly afterwards. But moreover, with a very simple request, and all hell broke loose. I would not have known you were supportive of that stance, but now I do. By the way, I’m agnostic, but I respect others efforts to elicit concern for those in need, and why not do it by mail. I receive hundreds of spam daily, so what if a legitimate call for concern for someone in need slips in once in a while. If it offends you so much, delete it, unless it gives you some perverse gratification to air your objection to the world…
While I cannot say for sure whether this person is an atheist as I had never met him, he does exhibit the typical cynical demeanor in his tone. As far as those who sent the emails, I cannot say either, but more than likely are must be both religious and non-religious individuals who participated. This however is more reflective of the mob mentality referred to in this work, for, once the first email was sent, it appears as if others also wanted to be part of that dissent, and thus to show all that they also had something to say, no matter how ridiculous. Indeed I would’ve called the section Narcissism in Action because of the total disregard for Monwabisi and his circumstance; that the responders were more concerned that their boundaries were invaded.
Either way, whether he was atheist or not, this certainly is reflective of the growing narcissistic, uncaring mentality of our time. And just to remind you, this incident did not happen in urban US, but had taken place in Cape Town, a city on the southernmost tip of Africa.
© Newton Fortuin 2011
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Comments
It is my opinion that some atheists can, as you noted, get as dogmatic and intolerant as theists.
The incident you described was an unfortunate one...and one that could easily have been avoided. But humans being what they are, it is not unusual.
The "fence sitter" accusation pissed me off, but once again, humans being what they are, it is something to be expected. Mostly, I just shrug it off. I know that acknowledging that I do not know and that I do not have enough information upon which to base a meaningful guess...is not fence sitting at all.
As for the Colbert comment, that an agnostic is an atheist without balls...that is just a rewording of Madalyn Murry O'Hair's similar accusation.
There are times I think atheists are just agnostics without spines.
This comment should give any atheist a thought to ponder and an agnostic some encouragement for not following the crowd:
The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic. — [Charles Darwin]
You hanging-in there. Sorry? What to say?
I just got a Pop-Up ref: a "nonsympatico" `gin.
Whenever that happens I can't email somebody.
Pathetic . ..
Serious . . .
Who snoops?
It's a warning.
info is risked.
`
Martin E. Marty reviewed a book: Chesterton.
The Nightmare Goodness of God - Ralph Wood.
`
He's never uninteresting. It's provocative to read?
I have only read what Martin E. Marty wrote ref:
`
Wisecraker and Taunters. Atheist Choose a Belief.
It's their personal God? They Choose Alienation?
They restore Self? Ego? They are cocksure Atheist.
I always remember `Blaise Pascal ref: The Wager.
He was a Physicist. He wrote about `Probability.
Chesterton wrote: "Man As The Holy Monster."
He's radical. That means grounded. Pugnacious?
I've not read the book. I believe in a`Goodness.
God
Good
Awesome
Magnificent
Chesterton was simply Being Honest.
He wrote of Trauma. 700,000 Died.
Twenty nillion were wounded. Sigh.
He 'spoke' of Grace, Gratitude. God.
Goodness . . .
I pray to Some Unknown Presence.
I love the old words 'Pneuma' and
Force.
Primal.
Fierce.
Without some Faith in Good I sense:
Disturbance.
`
atheist languish
and deathbed
ask for pray
`
I hold nor doctrine, dogma, but I Believe.
I feel 'silly' trying to explain such Mystery.
Who can Fathom? Lord - use to mean that:
`
We finite humans are Lost. A Cosmic Order -
as something Lords - as in `Governs Cosmos.
Lord use to not convey a fundamental Idiocy.
Words get humankind all goofy and so Lost.
To be too independent or cocksure is Lost?
Who knows anything? Look at a Cosmos?
I'd Fear a certain Lost? Alienation. Fear.
Fear use to mean Awe? A Reverence too.
I go on & on and Lost? I choose a Belief.
I just can't find Word. Whatever. Wind?
Maybe the answer is blowing in the Wind.
I'll Pray for the Sick. Maybe Pray Help me?
He wrote ref: War at Verdum. Atrocities. Hubris.
Atheism is not nearly as obnoxious religiosity and I have never heard of atheists aroused en mass in fury to assassinate someone for mere belief. Atheists regimes, indeed, have performed massacres but these were not over religious matters but rather over the exercise of power and control over large numbers of rather demented people.
And this extract (which attempts to justify your assertion that atheists “tend to be more dogmatic and intolerant than religious conservatives”) has exactly zero confirmed atheists identified in its anecdote by your own admission?
I’m sure you will understand if I don’t navigate your link and learn any more about the demise of critical thinking…this post is quite example enough.
This is an interesting and useful observation. Religions do much more than merely present an alternate cosmic viewpoint. They are huge social organizations interpenetrating every aspect of the lives of believers in many ways, some very beneficial and others of a highly doubtful nature. For a believer to forgo all the aspects of a life into which he or she has been deeply embedded since birth to accept that much of it is fantasy and totally out of synch with pragmatic reality is no easy move and probably traumatic. Atheists do not conglomerate in that manner nor need their cosmic views to totally enclose all aspects of their lives.
Bertrand Russell
http://www.tnr.com/article/books/magazine/101716/islam-blasphemy-freedom-speech?passthru=NWQzMTQ2ODhhNmI4NzdiZTQwZGJmMzhjOTdlM2RjYmE
It illustrates how religion is terrorizing free thought throughout the entire world.
Whether such a sentiment apply to an invisible God, to a wooden or stone idol, to a hero or to a political conception, provided that it presents the preceding characteristics, its essence always remains religious…
A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity, but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardor of fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions…
Intolerance and fanaticism are the necessary accompaniments of the religious sentiment. They are inevitably displayed by those who believe themselves in the possession of The Secret of earthly or eternal happiness. These two characteristics are to be found in all men grouped together when they are inspired by a conviction of any kind.
To-day the majority of the great men who have swayed men’s minds no longer have altars, but they have statues, or their portraits are in the hands of their admirers, and the cult of which they are the object is not notably different from that accorded to their predecessors. An understanding of the philosophy of history is only to be got by a thorough appreciation of this fundamental point of the psychology of crowds. The crowd demands a god before everything else.
It must not be supposed that these are the superstitions of a bygone age which reason has definitely banished. Sentiment has never been vanquished in its eternal conflict with reason. Crowds will hear no more of the words divinity and religion, in whose name they were so long enslaved; but they have never possessed so many fetishes as in the last hundred years (even more so in the following century), and the old divinities have never had so many statues and altars raised in their honor.
It is thus a very useless commonplace to assert that a religion is necessary for the masses, because all political, divine, and social creeds only take root among them on the condition of always assuming the religious shape—a shape which obviates the danger of discussion. Were it possible to induce the masses to adopt atheism, this belief would exhibit all the intolerant ardor of a religious sentiment, and in its exterior forms would soon become a cult.
that’s from a book titled The Crowd: A study of the popular mind written in 1896. The section was titled The Religious Sentiment.
In essence your quote conceives as the human mass as being immovably stupid and ineducable and that this will never change. There has never in the history of mankind been, as today, such a huge number of people with bright inquiring minds and the opportunities to be aware of reality. No doubt this huge mass is in the minority insofar as the entirety of humanity is concerned but this can and must change. It is no longer a choice, it is a necessity for survival. Of course there is no necessity that humanity will survive the vicious idiots now in charge so busily manipulating the mass of humanity into suffering and murder and misery for the very temporary control and wealth they now have but there is a fury rising slowly but inexorably and if intelligence and understanding can wrest control for a sensible outcome there is a chance. It's slim but not impossible. It's not totally hopeless.
Hey good to see you back Newton. How have you been? Am good. James too as you wd see.
I rated bec this is an original piece of work even though you published it elsewhere first, and extracted it here. I also rated for the pertinent question you raised and for opening up a dialogue - that I believe is the true mark of honest writing and good thinking which your post reflects. IMHO.
Jan, may I ask what religious aggression is about if not for "exercise of power and control over large numbers of rather demented people"
Both religious and aetheists want the same thing! Control and power. Over people THEY consider to be demented. Right?
I am nevertheless delighted that polio is mostly gone.
I think a religious person would never ever say that it is inappropriate to pray for anyone at no matter what the circumstance or channels are.
An agnostic wdn't bother to even reply to the issue. Only an aetheist who has made it his job to repudiate any and every instance that makes people think of this idea called God that he has chosen to not believe in, wd definitely not let such a royal chance go by!
My answer to Mark the Canuck's doubt about aetheists not being "identified" in the anecdote comment. Thanks.
"Atheists do not conglomerate in that manner nor need their cosmic views to totally enclose all aspects of their lives."
Yours: that religion is an unnecessary happenstance that - like a disease (I.e. Polio) - needs to be eradicated.
Mine: that any form of fundamentalism - religious or anti-relgious - is greatly psychologically and socially destructive.
I think you and I are on the same wavelength, unless
in the intervening months & months & years
you have had a total hysterectomy of the soul.
Why cannot people simply accept Evolution?
Not only physical, but psychological?
Not only ontogenetic, but phylogenetic?
The rolling out, unfolding, motion of potentials...
Religion is mired in mythological, even magical thinking.
Which is more than gorillas or chimps or bonobos have.
From the myths, we cull the truth.
You cannot condemn the myths
without condemning the mythmakers.
The species...
"Pray for him. Keep him in your thoughts..."
People have been praying a long long time.
They still do! Who the damn hell can say with scientific
certainty that these energies are not
"real"?
"Grace" is a word the Religious Types use.
I use it too.
It is a nexus of energy, either of human, or superhuman,
origin...karmically genererated....
"Keep the good Karma going for him," would be
not as objectionable as mentioning prayer.
Ha.
What is "real"?
We prate about holistic medicine, the mind/body connection
(what a farce: to bifurcate them)
and yet take offense if a person with Christian mythological
memes says
something that
aint kosher.
blah. what alot of wasted typing dealing with damn fools,
newton.
more important shit to focus on.
everyone is cynical these days. expecting the worst from
their fellow humans.
Just how THEY want it.
Got to keep it short, BBing, and that's about all my thumbs can handle for now.
It appears none of us knows the answers to Ultimate Questions; we all apparently are ignorant of those answers. So there is no pride to be gained in being ignorant—something any intelligent person should be able to comprehend.
But there is plenty of pride to be obtaining in knowing that agnostics make an effort to acknowledge that they do not know…something most atheists, at best, want to make a side bar consideration.
So, YES, agnosticism, in my opinion, is superior to atheism…because it does acknowledge in a real way that we do not know the answers to those kinds of questions…and we are not willing to be lumped together with people who pride themselves on guessing answers that happen to be the opposite of the guesses of theists.
We do consider that a “superior position” and we do take pride in that.
The points you made here, Newton, are all well taken. Stick with your position. It is the superior position…even if the realization that it is the superior position causes some discomfort for some atheists.
Let me quote some of the comments Russell made in his later life:
Are agnostics atheists?
No. An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism. His attitude may be that which a careful philosopher would have towards the gods of ancient Greece. If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments. An Agnostic may think the Christian God as improbable as the Olympians; in that case, he is, for practical purposes, at one with the atheists.
What Russell perhaps is saying is that the difference between the atheists and agnostics is to maintain this state of dissonance or uncertainty about the greater underlying issues of reality. This to me is a mentally healthier position to hold, and therefore, I suppose, one could argue that it is superior. But then we are engaging the type of semantics that atheists are so notorious for. My view is that is simply is a healthier state of mind to have as one is not encumbered by the constraints of one’s particular brand of dogma.
Thanks for the response.
Inherently, Pascal assumes he can fool God into accepting him as an adherent by merely making open commitment to belief and holding in reserve a lack of faith but this demeans God into a gullible super being and, in effect, destroys the absolute powers attributed to Him. It is a self-contradictory proposal.
One cannot speak of “the atheist” any more than one can speak of “the believer” as if it were a rigid uniform standard product. There are many variations of each and especially in the case of the atheist, there is no dogma, no standard text one can refer to as the defining concept. The internal conflicts of believers as to what can and cannot be accepted have been the subject of violent bloody conflicts throughout the history of religions.
To a very large extent rationality and scientific rigor play a very important part in the rejection of religions and the much proclaimed theory that there is no conflict between science and religion is so open to obviously being false in current discussions that it cannot be taken seriously.
Adhering to scientific standards, a rational atheist submits religious proposals to the requirements laid down to scientifically accepted theories proven pragmatically in a rational life style. On that basis, no one walks on water, multiplies fishes and loaves endlessly or converts water to wine by will alone. There is no absolute denial of this but the probably of its occurrence is so diminished as to be easily relegated to that remote area where spooks, angels, vampires, little men from flying saucers, and frog princes frolic to the delight of children and those with childish minds. The various traditional religious practices such as praying, knocking one’s forehead on the ground five times a day, looking to religious texts for behavioral absolutes, etc. are so devoid of basic common sense as to be assumed, at minimum, to be severe neurosis or mild psychosis. That these activities are so general in humanity testifies, not to their validity, but to the unfortunate condition of humanity.
The random movement of air molecules in a room can theoretically result in them all gathered in one small corner of the room leaving the inhabitants to choke to death for lack of air. But anyone spending a lifetime carrying a face mask and an oxygen tank to remedy this improbable catastrophe can only be judged rather loony. The strict agnostic is more or less in this condition. The proposals of religions involving a superpowered non-apparent creator who’s many functions have been more or less clearly explained by the observed physical interactions of the universe have been so thoroughly undermined that someone who still maintains the possibility of its existence is carrying their philosophical oxygen tank in a way that, at least to me, seems pretty far fetched and not in the least healthy.
The problem is that they are attempting to impose the rational scientific paradigm which is perfectly suited for appraising and measuring material phenomena, to the greater scheme of humanity, and creation as a whole. So for instance I’ve found a half a dozen studies on happiness asserting opposing results merely because the metrics upon which the study was based was different in each study.
But can we truly measure happiness?
What those who impose a scientific paradigm on their thinking is that they lose sight of is science merely offers a methodology wholly suited for making sense of the measurable and observable, but it is just that. A tool. And one that a religious person can apply with equal rigor as that of a religious person. How one chooses to order and make sense of one’s inner world, is ultimately their business. Certainly one is bordering on the psychotic when one cannot draw a clear distinction between what is real or possible in one’s ordinary life, and sure, many a religious person may well be borderline psychotic because of their particular religious view. On the other hand for others it indeed helps them have more order and clarity in their lives, and thus to maintain even higher levels of mental and psychological health because of it.
Surely this is a good and beneficial outcomes though it does not conform to the scientific prescripts of rationality?
The following view by Alvin Toffler in the forward of the book Order out of Chaos authored by the 1977 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers is useful to consider in this regard:
"One of the most highly developed skills in contemporary Western Civilization is dissection: the split-up of problems into their smallest possible components. We are good at it. So good, we often forget to put the pieces back together again. This skill is perhaps most finely honed in science.
"There we not only routinely break problems down into bite-sized chunks and mini-chunks, we then very often isolate each one from its environment by means of a useful trick. We say ceteris paribus – all other things being equal. In this way we can ignore the complex interactions between our problem and the rest of the universe."
For instance one of the problems rational science has had is making sense of quantum physics. In particular one of the biggest scientific consternations was around Pauli’s exclusion principle. Basically it concerns electron pairs, and Pauli asserted that these pairs will always have equal and opposite spin, even if they were to find themselves on the opposite ends of the universe. Basically, the information had to be transmitted instantaneously, and for it to do so, it would defy our concept of the known universe, and indeed make rational nonsense of our conventional understanding of space and time—just as Einstein’s theory of relativity does. What this implied is that there therefore has to be a telepathic relationship of sorts between these electrons. And since this defied the cause-and-effect scientific view of the world, the notion was generally rejected by mainstream science.
However this principle had been proven in a number of experiments since then where electrons separated by tens of km’s would behave in exactly this way, where if one electron were disturbed, the partner electron would respond accordingly. This phenomena is referred to as Quantum Entanglement.
Naturally this is problematic as it does not conform to the general scientific paradigm, and as paradigms go, naturally makes it difficult for anyone encumbered by the associated worldview to internalize.
The only way we can internalize this type of information is if we do have or develop a paradoxical mindset. That is one that excepts reality as the four- dimensional space-time dimension of the greater universe that we can only sensorially prehend. The other, however, to accept that our reality is governed by forces and associated logic that it is intrinsically beyond our limited four-dimensional experience of it.
Alas, with science we may only be able to scratch the mere surface of what reality may actually be, though, because of our sensory disposition would never know exactly how much of it we alreadyo know, or what we still do not, and yet to be content with that lot…
Ultimately my view is that, if one chooses to view this intrinsically unknowable aspect as God until it does come under our greater comprehension through science, philosophy, or our own experience, they certainly have a right to indeed do so. But as they do so, to increasingly dispel the myths, superstations and monsters of our past.
And so, by dispelling one myth and monster at a time, we indeed will evolve.
Isn't that what science is for? A means to an end, and not the end itslef. If not, that is when science itself becomes an idol to be worshiped, and not the invaluable tool it was meant to be.
1. Fanatics like Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mao, regardless of their religious beliefs, have something in common with the religious fanatics who have slaughtered for their God in the past: they are absolutist ideologues. One does not need to be an absolutist ideologue to be an atheist. Nor does one need to be an absolutist ideologue to be religious. But I think it is more likely a religious person becomes an absolutist ideologue than an atheist, because there is not the same certainty of absolute truth in atheism. In the case of Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, they were not killing in the name of atheism, they were killing in the name of a political/economic ideal that they had elevated to the status of a religion, an absolute truth that had to be imposed on everyone; anyone who blocked them from evangelizing their economic faith had to be eliminated. Atheism in and of itself does not require or demand any absolutist ideology.
2. Fundamentalism is the adherence to a doctrine or dogma that is inherited via tradition. It demands specific beliefs and usually includes rituals and other required observances. The source of truth in fundamentalism is revelation and authority. Atheism does not involve an alternate positive form of these artifacts of fundamentalism; it involves the total absence of these things. Thus it is silly to say that atheists are the other side of the fundamentalist coin. What people really mean by this is that they think both atheists and fundamentalists are equally annoying because they are equally convinced they are right. But this does not mean that one side is not right and the other wrong. In fact, obviously one side is right and the other is wrong, it is just difficult to know which is which (especially for the agnostic).
So the agnostic does defer choosing a side in favor of waiting for some convincing evidence, or perhaps in the belief that the question is completely undecidable, that no such evidence will ever exist, and the question does not require an answer. But to be an agnostic, what probabilities do you assign to the chance that the theist is correct, and the chance that the atheist is correct? My perception of the agnostic is that he would have to say it is 50/50, either case is equally probable in the absence of further evidence.
I think that if you say the probabilities are 99 to 1 in favor of no God, you are much more of an atheist than an agnostic. The religious are 100 to 0 in favor of God. It is okay for the atheist to say yes, there is some small probability that God exists; after all atheism is based on an empirical scientific view, in which your views are falsifiable by new evidence. The atheist should be prepared to believe in God if presented with credible evidence of God's existence; however the atheist who has carefully examined the evidence sees none in favor of God and therefore concludes that a Bayesian analysis would cause one to conclude it is highly unlikely that God exists. It's kind of like getting on an Airplane; it would really suck if it crashed, but you don't believe it will crash or you wouldn't get on it in the first place. So that is atheism; there is no fundamentalist absolute faith that will continue to disbelieve in God even when presented with clear evidence of his existence. The fundamentalist religious believers though say that even if scientific evidence clearly contradicted God's existence, they would continue to believe in God, because they simply do not trust scientific empirical evidence. That is the only fundamentalism that exists, and it is inherently religious.
On the atheists side are two powerful statements: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
The atheist does not claim that the origins of the Universe are not mysterious. The atheist rejects first and foremost the notion of theism, a personal God that intervenes in our lives, knows or cares of our existence, that alters the laws of physics under special circumstances. Every single bit of credible empirical evidence ever collected confirms the atheist view that the Universe obeys fixed natural laws, and is not subject to the whims and wills of an independent all-powerful intelligence. No single piece of credible empirical evidence confirms that a mysterious force can ad-hoc modify or violate the laws of physics at will.
Once one rejects the theistic view, one must consider the Deistic view: is there some transcendent intelligence that started it all and then stepped aside. But if such an intelligence exists, what created it? An unpleasant infinite regress occurs that makes me seriously doubt that this is an option.
We know of many processes whereby something grand is created by something relatively small and inconsequential and without any intelligence or conscious intention involved: a small seed sprouting a great tree; molten magma leaking from below the earths crust giving rise to great volcanic mountains; algae, fungi, bacterial colonies springing forth as the result of invisible specs in the air; crystals forming spontaneously from invisible mineral suspensions, great stalactites and stalagmites forming over eons from tiny drips of mineral enriched water; the abiogenesis of DNA, RNA, reproduction and metabolism, and eventually cellular life on earth from a base of organic chemicals; the formation of stars and galaxies from vast clouds of hydrogen atoms. We know that these things happened, and we know a huge amount of the details of how they happened. We don't know everything, but none of that gives us any reason to doubt that they happened. There are also some examples of creation of great structures from tiny intelligences: humans building a bridge or a skyscraper, ants constructing miles of underground networks, great coral reefs constructed from colonies of tiny polyps. There are patterns here that can't be ignored, and challenge the notion that the Universe must have been created by a great intelligent all-powerful being.
The origins of the Universe are mysterious and may always be so. That is consistent with atheism. There are countless possible explanations for how the Universe came into being, only one of which is that it was an intelligent all powerful being with anthropomorphic properties such as goals, intentions, plans, desires, etc. As an atheist this one possibility seems incredibly likely to be human wishful thinking based on human egocentrism. My bet is on the possibility that the mysterious origins of the Universe is one of the billions and billions of other potentially unknowable possibilities that don't involve a human being's conception of an intelligence with plans, goals, and intentions.
As far as atheists being fundamentalists, you’re technically correct. However it is my view that atheism itself are beginning to assume these guises. That is evident in the attitudes of many as alluded to in the main piece, albeit it that is delicately flowered in what sounds on the face of it “rational speak”. Jan’s language certainly points to a particular intractable mentality, and yours certainly does as well. “Choosing sides?”.
What war are you on that there is a requirement we do so? That someone or some view must be right, and someone else’s must be wrong… that certainly is the same language used by a fundamentalist…
Though I admit, not all atheists are as intractable, but as I said before and can probably be attested to by most people you may ask, they appear on the face of it to be more fundamentalist in their atheism than most religious. Here I’m not talking about the average bible-belting American though.
See, on a rational level I hold much of the views you do about the nature of reality, and requesting a very high burden of proof to be convinced of anything that goes beyond my sense of reason. I do however am accepting of a theist right to hold their view and do not wish to convince them otherwise. That is, regardless of how irrational and nonsensical it may seem to me, or indeed may be…
Atheists tend to consider the possibility that there might be gods to be so low as to be not worth considering. Some atheists actually think that keeping open the possibility—which is to say that the truth IS unknown, is some kind of philosophical oxygen tank—which they consider to be unhealthy.
Too bad for both theists and atheists, who after all are essentially two sides of the same coin.
As you suggested in your original remarks, Newton, it is particularly jarring in the case of atheists, because they often talk about being scientific, open minded, and distances from theism—when often they are actually close minded, non-scientific, and much more closely related to theism than they are able to see.
It is simply wrong to say that the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century were killing in the name of atheism. Yes, they embraced a rational scientific world view, and in that respect they considered atheism to be correct and religion to be a harmful tool used to control and suppress the masses, per Marx. But their goal was not to establish atheism; their goal was to establish an economic and political system. It's quite simply historically incorrect to say that their primary goal was atheism. Atheism was not the source of their need to control others to the extent of killing them; that came from their absolutist authoritarian zeal, which is something quite independent of atheism. There is really no way you can get away with smearing atheism with the bloody atrocities of Stalin and Pol Pot, among others. You may as well give that up because its an obvious losing argument.
And I did not say that either theists or atheists must be correct out of some childish and divisive need to take sides. I said one must be right and one must be wrong because it is a logical necessity. Either there is a personal God who listens to prayers and has a personal relationship with each devotee, or there is not such a God. Either there is life after death, or there is not life after death. These things are not negotiable, regardless of how you might like to wriggle out of it. I'm not saying you need to decide which is right or wrong, or that you can know which is right or wrong. I just made my case why I think there is an overwhelming probability why the atheist case is correct, and I also noted that I'd be open to evidence proving that I'm wrong. Which I think demonstrates that I'm not a fundamentalist.
Dictatorships professing atheism and scouring religons did so because the religions were sources of competing power, not because they were cosmological theories.
Religious dictatorships such as that of Franco and Pinochet were no more humanitarian because of their religious orientation and there is no doubt that Franco had exceedingly good relationships with the Vatican. And there are reliable reports that many of th Nazis escaping the Allied victory in WWII were aided in their escape to South America by Vatican officials. Religion itself seems to have no healing power in this matter.
The recurrent brutalities and non-observance of basic human rights is rather obvious in Islamic cultures.
I just made my case why I think there is an overwhelming probability why the atheist case is correct...
That simply has not happened.
There is no "overwhelming probability" that the atheist case is correct...and no "overwhelming probability" that the theist case is correct.
I cannot see any reason to assign probability to either side of that question.
One, there is no need for a god.
Two, there is no proof of the existence of any gods.
Neither of those two “arguments” point to there being no gods involved in the REALITY of existence…and neither of those two “arguments” are a reasonable basis for assigning probability to the non-existence of gods.
Yes, I did make my case. You may think it's wrong, but I wrote it in my earlier comment here. I'm not sure you read it. Here's a short summary, but please read the longer version above and provide some argument against it.
My case for assigning probability, or perhaps not a quantity but a more qualitative sense of likelihood, is based on the fact that there is no evidence of an all-powerful intelligent being having altered the laws of physics, while there is an enormous amount of evidence of the laws of physics holding true, uninfluenced by contingent choices of an independent intelligence or will.
Also there are a huge range of possibilities for how the Universe could have come into being not involving an all-powerful being. On the other hand, if an all-powerful intelligent being brought our Universe into existence, there is no explanation for what brought that intelligence into being. This sets up a very unsatisfying infinite regression.
These arguments persuade me that there is a very very small probability that an intelligent all-powerful being created our universe or guides of controls it in any way. Since what is claimed without evidence can be rejected without evidence, and since extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, everything I know points to there being no God, and nothing I know points to there being a God. So I can not possibly regard the two cases to be equally likely, equally well supported, or equally deserving my validation. The atheist case is much much stronger than the theistic case in my opinion.
About religiosity being useful, it can be argued that it is. In fact most studies show that people with some or other form of religion have better psychological health i.e. less depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, stress, etc. I can cite them but they are very reputable studies by renowned medical institutions. Despite these apparent benefits I still choose to be agnostic and have raised my children that way.
Just finally here is something I wrote a while back about the scientific view, which I utilize circumspectly as well, but do not subscribe to it as an unconscious religion as appears to be the case in this post, hence the very apparent insistence on absolute correctness.
And so modern science is very much like the proverbial three blind men: by each holding on to a particular aspect of the elephant, claiming to know the nature of the whole beast; thereby reducing the magnificence of all existence to the mechanical workings of its individual component bits.
See, on scientific matters, such as on the level of ph. of a particular goatsmilk cheese, we can make a clear empiric determination. It therefore does not help to talk in terms of righnes and wrongness, or the probability when talking about the essential nature of reality. The best we can do is speculate or make some or other relative judgement, and be content that others may view the same “reality” differently.
Amazing how you have distorted my proposal that dictatorships are jealous of any competing power and whether those competitors were religious or otherwise was nota deciding factor.
Insofar as th glory of the universe is concerned, to put forth that the minuscule universe presented by religion which extended to a few planets and a crystal shell pierced by a few lights of unknown consistence for stars and claim it was more impressive than the scientific concept well accepted by astronomers of a huge space billions of light years across filled with innumerable galaxies bursting with flaming suns of all sorts interacting with each other in hugely powerful ways is, to me, one of the oddest statements I have ever encountered.
Again, science is the vehicle with which we have done that great exploitation, and may we journey even further into the yonder unknown…
But clearly, again, this discussion has gone in multiple circles. So let me conclude the discussion once again based on what have been said.
Atheists: our worldview is unequivocally right, everyone else is wrong and are fools for believing anything else, there definitely is no god, unless there are some definitive empiric evidence to convince us otherwise, and that all great evil gets committed in the name of religion.
Agnostics: the existence of god cannot be proven, but it is reasonable that people may create such a conception for their own psychological, emotional or other needs, no matter how absurd it may seem to me; we respect that they have this view regardless and will not attempt to persuade them otherwise; that is, unless an attempt is made to impose it on me, or am overtly judged by such proponents, or has clear negative social consequences on me and the society at large.
I’m happy to leave this argument at that.
Funny enough, while the one camp is defending their own worldview, the other is defending another’s right to have their view. Interestingly, the ones who are being defended in all likelihood would be as intractable as the ones who are attacking them, and thus that there essentially no real difference in their overall mentality.
This is absurd and reductionist, which is ironic because it's trying to make the point that using science forces us to limit ourselves to a reductionist blindness. When it comes to the natural world, there is no way to know anything about it at all except by empirical means. If we want to know the elephant better than the three blind men, we use people with eyes, and we consider it in every way that is interesting and important, including just sitting back and admiring it aesthetically, or swooning emotionally at how magnificent it is. There is nothing about being an atheist that prevents this appreciation of magnificence. Art, literature, poetry, psychology, and just the joy of being a playful silly human feeling love or awe or whatever, none of that requires God. You are playing a dishonest game by trying to somehow sequester atheists of into some kind of ugly reductionist limited corner of reality, and claiming that all the rest of the goodness of existence is somehow the reserved province of agnostics and believers and all the non-atheists. Really, how offensive and narrow minded.
"See, on scientific matters, such as on the level of ph. of a particular goatsmilk cheese, we can make a clear empiric determination. It therefore does not help to talk in terms of righnes and wrongness, or the probability when talking about the essential nature of reality. The best we can do is speculate or make some or other relative judgement, and be content that others may view the same “reality” differently."
This is just intellectually lazy. What is the "essential nature of reality" that you claim to be discussing here? I agree there are many things that it doesn't make sense to talk about rightness or wrongness, but these things are the stuff of human subjective experience, which is the activity of the brain. When we go outside of the human skull, we are in the domain of natural objective reality, and there are facts and non-facts.
For example, we can measure properties of the cheese, like the ph or fat content or temperature. None of this tells us it is good cheese, which depends on the human subjective evaluation of the taste. So yes, in terms of human taste, it does not make sense to think of objectively right or wrong answers to the question "is the cheese good?".
With respect to God, we can ask the question does God exist independent of the human mind, or does God not exist independent of the human mind. Just like a human can subjectively believe the cheese tastes good, they can also believe God exists, they can have emotional experiences that make them feel they are in communion with God, they can attribute phenomena the observe to God's generosity or benevolence, but all of that is confined within the human skull and has no relevance to the question about the natural world "Does God exist?" That question has an answer, either yes or no, that is quite independent of anybody's taste in cheese or faith.
To say that the best we can do is speculate, and give equal status to everyone's view is a completely lazy and irresponsible abdication of any kind of commitment to truth or reality. You have muddled together subjective human experience with objective reality, which is the common error of religious thinking. When it comes to providing electricity for your house, or designing an airplane, or a bridge that you must drive your family across, to take your attitude that speculation and individual opinion is the best we can do would be fatal. We can actually do much better than that; engineers can design the bridge according to known principles and know that it is strong enough, they can test it to make sure it will support the needed load.
When it comes to the question of God, it's not like the taste of cheese, or whether you like a color or a painting or a book. It's not a subjective opinion. There is a correct answer: either God exists, or God does not exist, and no amount of human wishful thinking, or speculation, or subjective opinion will change that.
See, that is your problem, you are attempting to locate god as much as you’re trying to disprove it. And indeed you’re doing so by attempting to be empiric, by exploringin the outer manifestation of reality. The attempt to locate god essentially is the problem of the atheist.
Our quantum entanglement experiment, however, suggests that even the greater physical world may not exist, that is if it is to be evaluated from a purely empiric objective. After all, how can information travel instantaneously through space and time, only if space and time does not exist to begin with. Yet we have to accept it does notwithstanding the results of the experiment. What it comes down to is that you are attempting to locate what may well not be locatable, and thus would indeed be a futile pursuit to begin with.
But to assert my previous point, we must agree to disagree and this is how we diverge:
The atheists view: our worldview is unequivocally right, everyone else is wrong and are fools for believing anything else, there definitely is no god, unless there are some definitive empiric evidence to convince us otherwise, and that all great evil gets committed in the name of religion, and therefore, that all religion should be eradicated (like a disease).
The agnostics view: the existence of god cannot be proven, but it is reasonable that people may create such a conception for their own psychological, emotional or other needs, no matter how absurd it may seem to me; we respect that they have this view regardless and will not attempt to persuade them otherwise; that is, unless an attempt is made to impose it on me, or am overtly judged by such proponents, or has clear negative social consequences on me and the society at large.
If it is accepted that god exist s only in the subjective space of the mind (of the gullible believers) and not a physical manifestation, so be it. The Christian view after all says that “The Kingdom of God is within”. Nevertheless, without the mind to perceive it, there would not be a universe to contemplate to begin with after all. So for goodness sake, give the believers their god if that is what gives them some solace.
FYI: the problem with dogmatism, is that it is impervious to reason, no matter how rational the defence may seem to the rationaliser.
It would perhaps be worthwhile to explore what you mean by "exist".
When I said, “That simply has not happened”…I was specifically responding to the notion that your argument provided an overwhelming probability that the atheistic case is correct.
Allow me to restate one thing I have said…and then take some of your specifics item by item.
The “atheistic argument” essentially reduces to variations on two items:
One, there is no need for a god.
Two, there is no proof of the existence of any gods.
Neither of those two “arguments” point to there being no gods involved in the REALITY of existence…and neither of those two “arguments” are a reasonable basis for assigning probability to the non-existence of gods.
So, let’s take a few of your comments and subject them to that take:
My case for assigning probability, or perhaps not a quantity but a more qualitative sense of likelihood, is based on the fact that there is no evidence of an all-powerful intelligent being having altered the laws of physics, while there is an enormous amount of evidence of the laws of physics holding true, uninfluenced by contingent choices of an independent intelligence or will.
How does that in any way impact on whether or not there are gods? What makes you suppose gods cannot act in any way they want? Could there not be gods who decide to create a universe; subject that universe to “laws of physics”; and see what happens if you let a few billion centuries pass?
Nothing that is happening in this universe in any way suggests the need for a god…we agree on that. But nothing happening in this universe in any way suggest that the existence of gods is impossible. The “laws of physics” do not impact on the question of whether or not gods exist…and do not impact in any way on the probability of the existence of gods. In essence, this argument is a variation on “There is no proof of the existence of any gods.” That is not evidence there are no gods anymore than it is evidence there are gods.
Also there are a huge range of possibilities for how the Universe could have come into being not involving an all-powerful being.
This is a variation on the theme: There is no need for gods. That is not evidence there are no gods anymore than it is evidence there are gods.
On the other hand, if an all-powerful intelligent being brought our Universe into existence, there is no explanation for what brought that intelligence into being.?
The same thing can be said of the universe always being. There is no argument here that there are no gods…just that there is no need for gods. That is not evidence there are no gods.
These arguments persuade me that there is a very very small probability that an intelligent all-powerful being created our universe or guides of controls it in any way.
There are theists who would use the same “evidence” you have to conclude there is a very small probability that there are no gods. They and you are both making gratuitous conclusions unwarranted by the “evidence” you are presenting.
Since what is claimed without evidence can be rejected without evidence, and since extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, everything I know points to there being no God, and nothing I know points to there being a God.
Existence itself is an extraordinary claim…and requires extraordinary evidence. None is forthcoming from theists or from atheists. We simply do not know what the Ultimate Reality of existence is. The best approach I see is not to guess either way…but instead to simply acknowledge that we do not know.
The atheist case is much much stronger than the theistic case in my opinion.
And theists insist their case is much stronger and more likely than the atheistic case…and it is my opinion that both sides seriously over-estimate the value of their estimations.
I suggest this, Jeff. Present the SINGLE most compelling argument you have for "there are no gods"...and let's discuss it at length. We'll see where it leads.
Frank's point is well taken. He admits there is no evidence of gods in our reality but since our reality is obviously incomplete there is this great hole in our knowledge which, with intricate reasoning, you can fill in with anything.
Jan’s point is well taken, however I would suggest that the “great hole” which theists would “fill” with “there are gods” and atheists would “fill” with “there are no gods”…ought simply to be acknowledged as “great holes in our knowledge.”
The guesses are wild, blind guesses and are of little more value than as fun items...like mice running the universe.
Whether somebody believes something is irrelevant to whether that belief is true. Truth is independent of belief.
You seem to be in the thrall of some kind of solipsism. Your last remark: "Nevertheless, without the mind to perceive it, there would not be a universe to contemplate to begin with after all.", together with your incorrect interpretations of quantum entanglement, and your claim that it could imply space and time do not exist, are signs that you are terribly confused. This discussion is pointless because these distortions place you in your own personal Universe beyond the reach of reasoned debate.
But I agree, this type of argument is doomed to go nowhere except that it allows the objective observer to make up their own mind in this regard...
I stated it in terms of probabilities, not certainties, saying I would change if proven wrong.
You continually twist your responses to not correctly interpret what I say, nor to directly address my arguments, but to repeatedly supply the claims about atheism that you held in advance and are unwilling to reconsider in light of any arguments. You continually assert that I am making statements of absolute certainty, when anyone who goes back and reads what I wrote can see I did no such thing.
Here is one thing I will say that there is no doubt about: your remark "Nevertheless, without the mind to perceive it, there would not be a universe to contemplate to begin with after all," is definitely not true, and anyone who thinks that is very confused. This is idealism, solipsism, it is foolish and completely misguided, as was your non-sense interpretation of the meaning of quantum entanglement. No information is conveyed faster than the speed of light; to believe that is a pop-science mistake worthy of a Deepak Chopra or other similar charlatan.
That I do not have an issue with, but you are also saying that that is the only correct view. Jan though appears to hold this view even more strongly. If that makes you happy and satisfies your conception of reality, so be it.
By this “I said either the atheist or the theist is right. This is simple logical necessity. Then I presented reasons why I think it is more likely that the atheist is right, which nobody has bothered to address or refute in any way” and the remainder of your argument around the probability that the atheist view is the correct one is to me a clear claim that you are of the opinion that you right in having this world view. No matter how you word it the implication of your utterances is clear. And furthermore, whether you like it or not, you rationalise that position, and I’m certain, will continue to do so regardless.
Because of this implicit belief in your rightness (albeit that you rationalise it) in my opinion remains no different to the point of departure of the religious, no matter how you may wish to sugar coat it.
And about “nobody has bothered to address or refute (the low probability that there is a god) in any way”.
Don’t forget, we, the agnostics are not making any extraordinary claims about god which must be proved or disproved. The Atheists and theists certainly are. So we have nothing to prove, or indeed disprove. We are completely open-minded and unencumbered on this issue, that is unlike the theists and atheists who are completely straightjacketed on this issue by virtue of their default mentality, and thus feel compelled to defend their position .
Perhaps you should take up Franks challenge in this regard?
And of course you added “So the agnostic does defer choosing a side in favor of waiting for some convincing evidence”. I think this says more about your worldview and mentality than agnostics who accepts that the question in itself is mute.
And about “This is idealism, solipsism, it is foolish and completely misguided, as was your non-sense interpretation of the meaning of quantum entanglement. No information is conveyed faster than the speed of light; to believe that is a pop-science mistake worthy of a Deepak Chopra or other similar charlatan”, I invite you to read my manuscript before you jump to that conclusion.
Here are some posts in this forum if that is too much: Living in Reality or Subjective versus Objective Reality.
About Quantum Entanglement, in my mind it does call for a philosophical rethink of the Newtonion understanding of the universe, as did relativity. Or do you simply look at the facts – i.e. that electron pairs can instantaneously affect one another from opposite ends of the universe – without some deeper reflection about the essential nature of reality?
Not looking at the philosophic implications of such paradigm breaking scientific findings is reductionism to the highest degree.
If this were what I'm doing, I could agree with this. What's actually happening is that you are engaging in bad physics and misinterpreting entanglement, which can be seen from this remark: "i.e. that electron pairs can instantaneously affect one another from opposite ends of the universe – without some deeper reflection about the essential nature of reality?" It's not your fault that someone who didn't know physics misinformed you. It's a very oft repeated and common misconception.
Here is what is really happening: the pair shares a wave function such that there is probability of one that each particle is in one of two different states. Both particles can not be in the same state. This is most often tested experimentally with photon polarization.
So if we were to measure the state of one particle, we would know the state of the other without measuring it. This is not the same as saying that measuring the state of one particle actually causes the other particle to be changed in any way, which is the common popular error that you are repeating. Based on some of the fantastic claims you have made, I assume you are probably using this error to make fantastic imaginary assumptions about the nature of the Universe, as is the common danger of having a little knowledge.
Here is an analogy that is easier to understand: say you have two friends, and you tell each that you are going to shine a red light in the direction of one, and a green light in the direction of the other. Then your friends travel out into space in opposite directions. Now you shine your lights, red in one direction and green in the other direction. As soon as the light arrives at each friend's location, they know what color of light their friend received. But there was no information being transmitted from one friend to the other saying "hey I got red" or "hey I got green". But for this to work your friends must trust you. In fact, you could fool your friends by giving them both red, and they would then be in error assuming the other had green. In order to avoid that error there would have to actually be information transmitted through space instantaneously, which is in fact impossible. In quantum mechanics this error is not possible because of the wave function properties at the time the entangled pair was created, before they were separated. You can trust that if one particle is in state A, the other is definitely in state B without having to measure it.
So I hope this helps you to see there is no magic information traveling faster than light, which is the mistake many people will tell you, but they just don't know enough physics to know what they are talking about. It is only an illusion that makes it seem like information is being transmitted, based on the foreknowledge that if one particle is in state A, the other must be in state B. This is the basis for quantum cryptography.
It was as if some ghostly bridge across the city of Geneva, Switzerland, had permitted two photons of light nearly seven miles apart to respond simultaneously to a stimulus applied to just one of them.
The twin-photon experiment by Dr. Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva and his colleagues last month was the most spectacular demonstration yet of the mysterious long-range connections that exist between quantum events, connections created from nothing at all, which in theory can reach instantaneously from one end of the universe to the other.
In essence, Gisin sent pairs of photons in opposite directions to villages north and south of Geneva along optical fibers of the kind used to transmit telephone calls. Reaching the ends of these fibers, the two photons were forced to make random choices between alternative, equally possible pathways.
Since there was no way for the photons to communicate with each other, "classical" physics would predict that their independent choices would bear no relationship to each other. But when the paths of the two photons were properly adjusted and the results compared, the independent decisions by the paired photons always matched, even though there was no physical way for them to communicate with each other.
Albert Einstein sneered at the very possibility of such a thing, calling it "spooky action at a distance." Scientists still (somewhat shamefacedly) speak of the "magic" of "quantum weirdness." And yet all experiments in recent years have shown that Einstein was wrong and that action at a distance is real.
The idea behind Gisin's experiment was not new. Since the 1970s, physicists have been testing a prediction of quantum theory that "entangled" particles continue to communicate with each other instantaneously even when very far apart.
Entangled particles are identical entities that share common origins and properties, and remain in instantaneous touch with each other, no matter how wide the gap between them.
Past experiments on entangled particles were carried out over distances of 100 yards or less. By showing that the link between two entangled particles survives even when they are seven miles apart, Gisin set a dramatic distance record.
"In principle, it should make no difference whether the correlation between twin particles occurs when they are separated by a few meters or by the entire universe," he said in an interview.
"This research is interesting not only from a scientific and philosophical point of view..."
I suppose one can argue the same thing in any way it suites one.
I used to be puzzled by agnostics, thinking that they just haven't taken the effort to think things through. After all, they're sort of sitting on the fence. But now I realize that many people just plain don't know if there is a God, and might think that it is not be possible to ever know. They are pulled both ways: On the one hand, most people have been brought up with religion. There is some scientific research that suggests that a religious belief might have provided a survival advantage to people. There is even research that found a "religion gene"! On the other hand, well you know, since we entered the scientific age about 300 years ago, these invisible magic Wazzits are sounding a little implausible and nonsensicle.
There is a common perception by both theists and atheists that agnostics are somehow torn between the issue of belief and non-belief—the 50/50 proposition Jeff alluded to. It simply is that we consciously choose to make the issue of god a relative non-issue. In other words it’s a zero/zero proposition. I for instance can very well have the same type of religious argument with a believer in god for having a negative viewpoint of an atheist.
I also do not feel I have to view myself as a minority of any sort as I do not truly feel myself a victim as I had become an agnostic by choice not birth unlike being gay or lesbian. I simply do not choose to make an issue of god as theists and atheists do, and thus to make it an overwhelming preoccupation of my rational life.
I also do not wish to align myself to a clan or a sect of like minds or others who may enforce my views. I choose to immerse myself in all views, and to eat the meat and spit out the bones as I do. I can learn as much from an atheist as I can from a theist.
I therefore am not a victim that has to demand equal rights as I willingly have chosen to go against the grain, and for that reason I would naturally be regarded as an outsider, and that is the price I’m very willing to pay. That I may be judged for having it is another person’s problem, it being their limited dogmatic mindset, and I choose not to make their opinion of me my own.
rated
Nevertheless, our ideologies dictate our actions. Since an agnostic accepts the possibility of a God, shouldn't he, in the name of decency for a very troubled fellow human, accede to an act of prayer on the basis that there is a possibility it might be of aid?
Hummm…I wonder if Jan, in the name of decency for a very troubled fellow human, accedes to an act of prayer on the basis that there is possibility it might be of aid should there be a GOD???
Unless of course, Jan Sand is saying there is no possibility of there being a GOD.
If that is the case, I wonder if Jan Sand would be willing to share his one best argument for asserting there is no possibility of a GOD?
He earlier wrote: Since an agnostic accepts the possibility of a God, shouldn't he, in the name of decency for a very troubled fellow human, accede to an act of prayer on the basis that there is a possibility it might be of aid?
So, using Jan’s reasoning, which I acknowledge I find defective, since he accepts the possibility of a GOD, he should, in the name of decency for a very troubled fellow human, accede to an act of prayer on the basis there is a possibility it might be of aid.
Wow! That is amazing. I really have lots of trouble imagining Jan “praying.”
I certainly wouldn’t.
On those occasions (there have been a couple here on OS) when I have been asked to pray for a particular individual, I normally write something like, “Well, as an agnostic, I don’t really do “prayer”, but my heart does go out to so-and-so…and I certainly hope thing do get better for him.”
Not sure why Jan thinks people who accepts the possibility of a GOD, as he acknowledges he does, should actually “pray”, but if he feels he should do it, I guess he should do it.
C’mon, Jan…you know that doesn’t work. You specifically said that a person who accepts the possibility of a GOD should accede to prayer in the situation you outlined. You have now confirmed that you accept the possibility of a GOD. So using your reasoning, you should be praying…and since I accept you as a moral person, I am assuming you are.
Since Frank has admitted he does not pray that means he is, for all practical purposes, a practicing atheist since the existence of God is thereby negligible and not worth reasonable attention.
Put that in the form of a syllogism…and you will get as big a laugh out of it as I got out of it when I read it. That makes no sense at all…and I can only guess that you are trying to get a laugh by being illogical. Egad…all people who do not pray are atheists. What some people will do to get a laugh!!!
Praying, of course, would be very useful if God' existence were a reasonable possibility.
Really? Why is that? You mean you cannot conceive of a GOD for whom “prayer” was of no significance? Jeez…you seem more intelligent than that. You’re not pulling our leg on this also, are you?
It's good to know that Frank and I agree on this.
Well, Jan, I didn’t actually agree with that last comment of yours, but I am delighted that you realize there are things we might agree on.
This is fun, Jan. Let’s keep at it. Although out of respect for Newton, we ought to try to stay closer to the topic he raised.
I must admit I am intrigued by a version pf God you propose where he is not responsive to prayer nor, as I must assume, any pleading by humans for His special intervention. As this jibes with no version of God in the formal religions I have read about it must be something original with you.
Much as I would love to take credit for creating this version of a GOD, I don’t think it reasonable to do so. I am sure many people have considered the possibility of gods that are not interested in being adored, worshipped, or constantly being asked to help.
I would really like to hear more elaboration on your part about this novel deity since you are the only one apparently familiar with it/him/her.
As I said, I doubt it is just me. But even if it were…it is no big stretch to imagine a GOD who actually is great enough to not give a damn whether the creatures in the universe it created actually pray to it…or adore it…or worship it…or even like it very much. If there are such things as gods, A GOD is a GOD…and can do whatever it wants.
Do you visualize this God as some sort of superscientist fiddling with humans like a biologist raising and experimenting with insects or rats?
Why not something along those lines? A GOD…all alone in the vast infinity of the INFINITE…with all the time on its hands that ETERNITY allows! Why not just create a universe and set some basic laws of physics in motion…and see what results? Matter of fact, my guess is if there are gods…that is exactly what they might do.
OKAY EVERYBODY…let’s get our projects started. Remember…you get all the space and time you want…and you can set whatever rules of physics you want…and you can have lots of things and such, but in the end…it is a self-contained, self-functioning universe that has to be created.
At the end of one hundred billion years, we are going to look ‘em all over. There will be prizes awarded for “Longest lasting universe”; “Universe that develops the most intelligent species”; and of course there will be a booby prize for the universe that goes bust first.
Very important—NO HELPING! Once your universe is in motion (we suggest using a Big Bang scenario to start things hopping)…everything has to happen according to the rules you have established before the Creation Event. Make the evolution from nothing to actual life work however you want…but it must develop on its own without further help after the Creation Event. NO CHEATING!!! After intelligent beings develop, if they do, they must do whatever they want done by themselves. No “answering of prayers” allowed. Any GOD caught intervening in any way is automatically disqualified from this competition…and from all other competitions during the next ten bazillion years.
I have a “theory?” Where did you get that? I suggested that it is possible to conceive of gods existing for whom praying would not be significant. You asked me for a scenario in which that could be. I gave it. It most assuredly is not a theory of mine. I have NO IDEA if gods exist or not…nor about their nature should they exist.
There are scientific speculations wherein even the initial creation requires no god…
Of course there are. And many appeal to me.
…and these atheist concepts are equally as likely as anything requiring a deity in my estimation.
Okay, I agree. I am still left with “I do not know if gods exist or not.”
“ Insofar as human interaction with a god is involved, what function does religion have with this uncaring god?
Beats the hell out of me. Probably none.
Now a couple of questions for you, Jan!
Earlier, you wrote:
I don't claim the impossibility of a God, any more than it's impossible there is a rhinoceros in my bathroom. I just figure the probabilities and act accordingly.
You also wrote (referring to gods):
When something is possible but has negligible probability…
How do you go about figuring the probability of gods existing or not existing?
What do you determine that probability to be?
Please post more often.
-R-
As far as whether there is a god or not, or that there may be some utility in prayer, here are a number of experiments by leading scientists which ought to at least shift your sense of improbability to a vague plausibility. Thought if there’s a god, I would rather make him/her/it an unconscious god of sorts as Frankl referred to in one of his books. Nevertheless, there may well be an underlying dynamic we are yet, if ever, to understand, and that this dynamic could well be construed as god—that is if one wishes to call it so.
Dr. William A. Tiller, a particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University conducted a number of experiments on the power of focused intentions on matter, and it appears to be conclusive, and had been repeated many times at a number of esteemed intuitions in Europe and the US. In one of the experiments he got a number of expert meditators to focus on one thought, for instance acid or alkali, and the intentions was directed at a container of water. On every instance the water was either more acidic or alkali in direct correlation to the particular intention (more than 5% from neutral). The same is true for bio-organisms as well, such as the sex of a sample of new-born mosquitos.
Briefly, the methodology of the experiment was based on exposing a group of 26 males and females to emotionally arousing stimuli (such as explicit pictures of accidents and sex) or emotionally calming stimuli (neutral backgrounds). In this experiment it was 30 calming and 15 arousing pictures. Participants were then strapped to a number of sensors that included an Electro-encephalogram (EEG) to measure brain activity and Electrocardiogram (ECG) to measure heart response. The participants were then showed the images in a controlled environment.
However the key was to detect whether any pre-stimulus was discernible.
A pre-stimulus is some physiologically measurable response that indicates that the body had in advance perceived what the stimulus would be.
And the results were conclusive in that:
Both the heart and the brain correctly intuited the stimulus in all individuals based on measuring the associated response before the respective stimulus was actually shown.
Specifically, the heart pre-stimulus was received on average 4.5 seconds before the images were actually shown, while the brain only responded 3.5 seconds before. What is also amazing is that the same sensors detected the exact same response when the respective image was eventually shown. Thus the pre-stimulus perceived by intuitive pathways was the same as that perceived by the eyes.
Besides the fact that future events were correctly perceived before it actually happened, the most amazing conclusion is that the heart seems to have been the primary entity responsible for processing this type of information.
The researchers also made assertions that were based on recent research, that: “the heart’s intrinsic nervous system not only makes adjustments to the heart’s rhythmic activity on a beat-to-beat basis, but can even override inputs from the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems”.
It further concludes that: “intuitive perception involves the body’s connection to a field of information beyond normal conscious awareness”.
That is considering that the heart, actually, is nothing more than a glorified pump when looking at the physically.
These studies have been repeated over the past 8 years and have not been disputed.
”argued about with Jeff, and it appears to have been settled, unless one wants to dispute the views of a renowned scientific institution.
The problem with the atheist view, again in my opinion, is that many (not all) proponents will not open to the possibility of any results that would contradict their underlying (unconscious) belief system. This however is as is the case with any other religious person. Thus they usually will seek a vociferous defence regardless of the voracity of the evidence. And if the data is convincing, usually by attacking the character of the persons doing the research.
As an agnostic I’m open to such results, but they do not provide me with conclusive evidence that there is a personal god. But then again, I do not have any attachment (a big word in science if it indeed is to be objective) to the end result, but that believers may have some basis for their belief. And in the first experiment’s case, that there is no harm in praying at all as it may well improve the odds of a better end result.
I still however am of the view that a practical course of action together with bringing together all your physical resources, and intellectual social and physical prowess together, tends to produce far more superior results notwithstanding.
Ahhh…so you think that acknowledging that one does not know something that one does not know is neither practical nor sane!
Interesting. A bit mystifying, but interesting. Thank you for sharing.
In any case, I take it that you have no logical or rational response to my two questions, so you are going to attack my sanity and practicality instead.
I understand. I’ve never had an atheist offer anything but variations on “there is no need for gods” and “there is no proof for the existence of gods.” And since we both realize neither of those themes will ever be evidence there are no gods, it makes sense to avoid using them.
Atheism, Jan…whether presented as “there are no gods” or “the probability of gods is infinitesimally small”…is guesswork just like theism is guesswork that there are gods.
If you ever want to seriously discuss that issue, just let me know. I’m here for you. But you are going to have to do much better than:
…These interactions interest me as some way to shine a bit of illumination on the most peculiar ways that Frank's mind functions, if that can be the correct term. Both his political views and his theological constructions deal in absolutes…
You are the one claiming you have determined the probability of gods existing…with absolutely no evidence or reasoning being offered for the claim. It is an absolutist’s claim…and hearing you suggest that I am being absolutist and you are not is beyond funny.
I suspect I am a lot more capable of understanding what you are saying than you think. But your arguments have deficiencies in them a tractor trailer could drive through, so I guess the best tactic would be to feign exasperation and break off the discussion.
It has been fun.
I doubt a team of quantum physicians and neuroscience researchers could solve the conundrum of the long dead blob upon apisa's shoulders.
About proof, there are others who have done varying experiments with intention. Another is the Water Experiment run by Russian physicist Konstantin Korotkov pointing towards similar results.
As much as one’s scepticism is important, I would not close summarily dismiss their work because I judge them to be quacks for doing so. Are there any peer-reviewed papers on their work, I’m not sure, but given the scientific attitude I’m certain there would not be very many people who would align themselves with this line of work out of fear of being professionally ostracised. This is a reality given the history of science where most of the greatest scientists haven’t only been lauded in posterity. The one’s conducting the experiments are however not junior scientists and have esteemed research credentials, so I don’t see why they would want to fabricate their results. None of them are wannabees…
About the intuition experiment, this had already been peer-reviewed, repeated and for published in independent journals.
All this is suggestive of is that there may be more to peoples’ beliefs than mere hocus pocus, and that they may contain some grain of truth, and that being cynical merely because that’s one’s default personality character does not help one in one’s own understanding on these matters.
Many of these individuals appear to motivate for a new-age agenda which is unfortunate, but usually that’s how it works, people are indeed attempting to prove their beliefs hence their motivation. I do however not buy their philosophical interpretations which in many cases are too simplistic. Nevertheless, while not absolute proof, their work suggests there may well be underlying dynamics we need to factor into our discourse on these matters.
The experiment is not about the utility of the experiments on their own. It surely is far more superior to change the acidity of water for instance with an electrolysis machine than merely with the power of intention. Our ingenuity is far more superior in that way.
Nevertheless if true - and I do at least of reasonable trust the bona fides of the respective scientists as they are not known to be fraudsters - then it at least calls for a deeper philosophical discussion on the findings. In any event, as I indicated, then it may be that the religious have some basis for praying.
I’m not attempting to prove their position, but using it in the context of the discussion. That is, I simply am pointing to your general argument that there is no need for prayer as there is no evidence that it actually works. I do not pray as I find that, if their indeed is an entity or artefact or aspect that responds to it, it does not appear to negate my normal endeavours to achieve my ordinary ends.
Nevertheless, if it gives someone else some sense that they are being aided, and that there is even the remotest chance it indeed may be improving their odds, they are not the loser for indeed doing so.
Their faith, though, will certainly prove futile if they indeed would have such faith in a complete vacuum.
I asked you why you asserted that the PROBABILITY of gods existing is so small as to be negligible…and you have not answered that question. What do you base your assertion of the probability on…and what have you determined the probability to be.
HINT: There is no way to set probability on this question…and you have not done so. You are simply asserting it the way theists assert there is a GOD. C’mon, we’re all friends here…in a friendly discussion. Man up…and acknowledge the obvious.
Religion has all these really crazy ideas that very imaginative people dreamed up that have no relationship to perceived reality and it says this is so and atheism simply looks at all this idiotic crap and says, simply, no.
Ahhh, if only it did that. But atheism does so much more. Some atheists assert there are no gods. Some assert it is impossible for there to be gods. Some merely assert an agnostic position and then use the word “atheist” because it apparently makes them feel brave.
C’mon…answer the question about how you arrive at the probability of gods.
That's not a faith any more than a lack of a lollipop is somehow something real that you can count which is less than the lack of two lollipops. All you have, Frank, is empty speculation and that is totally ignorable.
Actually, Jan…all you have is empty speculation and unsubstantiated assertions. But I am not chicken, so I do not want to ignore you. I’m still interested in your explanation of how you arrived at your probability assertion.
And by that, I feel you are also, from this point, totally ignorable.
Yeah, you said that earlier. But here we are in friendly banter once again. So…how about the answer we are all waiting for.
There is no way to set probability on this question…and you have not done so. You are simply asserting it the way theists assert there is a GOD.
My general outlook is pragmatic and I have a life to live in a rather constricted context of about a century, most of which has already been consumed. From my earliest childhood I found the most elaborate philosophical landscape presented by religions to be cluttered by monstrous nonsensical and unverifiable fantasies and what I found most disturbing was that these bits of unverifiable propositions are, and were throughout history, expected to be respected as absolute truths to be conformed to by adherents under pressures of torture and execution. They were not mere innocent theories on the nature of reality, they were powerful social tools eagerly applied to support a large class of economic leeches who made millions of lives miserable and caused all sorts of social crimes. This aspect of a belief in gods is not to be airily dismissed as an incidental side effect but must be acknowledged as a major factor in why this unsubstantiated belief is so widely distributed in human society.
The side of atheism, which is so vigorously disputed, is the refusal to accept for very practical reasons the rejection of this powerful and unnecessary burden on the rational necessities of human survival and living animals in conformity of their environment. This is very rapidly approaching a critical point in the quality of life of humanity and the rather disdainful approach of religious belief to all living things other than human.
Religion, and its weird fantasies, is no longer a sustainable colorful innocent dance of warped minds but a basic threat to existence.
video on Bayes Theorm
blog post on ontological argument
argument for impossibility of God
The instincts and their derivatives may be arranged as pairs of opposites: life versus death, construction versus destruction, action versus passivity, dominance versus submission, and so forth.
One therefore also add: theism versus atheism.
So for instance the person who is anti-gay may in fact have feelings towards other men, and therefore mask that emotion by his aggression towards men. In your case you appear to be masking your own religious sentiment – veiled as anti-religiosity – by your intractable position against those who have religious views.
About Frank being an absolutist, well, he’s attempting to point out how you are an absolutist as you cannot give even a vague proposition for your position, which from an agnostic’s perspective, certainly is an absolutist position— i.e. there is no god, unless there somehow is proof of this conception. We maintain there cannot be proof either way, so we place a relative value (or rather, relatively low value) on both ends of the argument.
And about:
They were not mere innocent theories on the nature of reality, they were powerful social tools eagerly applied to support a large class of economic leeches who made millions of lives miserable and caused all sorts of social crimes.
There is absolute truth in that. I live in Africa and I can see how the churches are leaching the poor and deprived of every morsel, and indeed, that is how Africans were enslaved by the imperialist colonizers to begin with. Nevertheless it’s a far better proposition than black witchcraft which includes organ harvesting of infants, cutting off body-parts and organs off the living, then burning them alive, and even foetuses being ripped out of mothers leaving both for dead. I hear this sort of thing on the news far too often out here.
Given that, and that humans appear to need their myths and legends as an opiate to get through their lives, I would rather settle for the former, as the effect merely is on the gullible individual who so chooses to abdicate their power. Nevertheless scientific evidence does convincingly prove that those with healthy religious beliefs are better functioning individuals with lower levels of depression, stress and substance abuse.
However, as debated over and over in this forum, when looking back over the past century, most atrocities were committed by governments who did it in the name of atheism. With the exception of Dharfur recently, only a few thousand (not tens of millions) were killed in the name of an Islamic State for instance despite Islamic fundamentalism, and usually as a consequence of war, not outright genocide.
Thus recently more brutal human evil was committed in the name of atheism by less than a handful of atheist states, than any other religious state in this period. That is bearing in mind that Nazi Germany too was essentially a secular state (the tents being National Socialism) albeit that they fabricated a religious fervour as part of their propaganda machine.
I will watch the video when I have some time but let me provide whoever is reading this a summary of the Bayesian Inference:
Bayesian inference derives the posterior probability as a consequence of two antecedents, a prior probability and a "likelihood function" derived from a probability model for the data to be observed. Bayesian inference computes the posterior probability according to Bayes' rule:
P(H|E) = P(E|H) .P(H)/P(E)
Note that when applying Bayes' rule, the evidence corresponds to data that was not used in computing the prior probability. stands for any hypothesis whose probability may be affected by the observed data; often there are competing hypotheses, and a decision is to be made based on their relative probabilities.
The interpretation of the factors in Bayes' rule is as follows:
• P(H|E), the posterior, is the probability in after is observed. This tells us what we want to know: What the probability of different possible hypotheses are, given the observe evidence.
• P(H), the prior, is the probability in before is observed. This indicates one's preconceived beliefs about how likely different hypotheses are.
• P(E|H) is the likelihood. It indicates how likely it would be to observe the evidence we actually observed, given a particular hypothesis: in other words, how compatible the evidence is with a given hypothesis.
• P(E) is sometimes termed the marginal likelihood or "model evidence". This factor is the same for all possible hypotheses being considered. (This can be seen by the fact that the hypothesis does not appear anywhere in the symbol, unlike for all the other factors.) This means that this factor does not enter into determining the relative probabilities of different hypotheses.
Jeff, I have a BSc in theoretical mathematics and did statistics on a masters level, this is a interpolation based on known facts which cannot be determined on this non-absolutist issue. I don’t know if you realise how absurd that sounds on the matter of determining the probability of the existence of god as every side can site innumerably many instances on the supposed statistical truth of their view.
Fascinating analysis. My observations on the idiocies of religion are, to you, religious impulses. My interest in reason and verifiable facts, on that logic are a suppressed desire for superstition and a love of untruth. My total disgust of totalitarian government is a desire to be subjugated. In other words, all mental attitudes are exhibitions of opposite inclinations. I am beginning to comprehend your approval of Apisa and I am appalled.
Your insistence that religion is the proper remedy for fear and ignorance by swindling people of their proper appraisal of real dangers and psychologically anesthetizing them with fairy tales and lies is something to be approved is also disgraceful.
It seems you and I also have little to discuss.
Then again, I was never disagreeing that your general view is wrong, but that we allow others the symbolisms, conceptions and mental fabrications they wish to make sense of the otherwise wholly inexplicable.
But moreover, it’s a useless exercise to prove or disprove the existence of god. Based on one’s unique experience, only you would know better…
Newton, I believe I have more or less indicated that there is no way to totally dismiss the notion of a god but the essential objective of my conversations has always been directive towards utility. As I have pointed out, Frank is deeply entangled with absolutes, a peculiar kind of medieval mind set that wanders off into ridiculous nonsense like speculations about angels dancing on pins and religious dogmas are rife with this freakish type of naive diversion. My evidently objectionable position that the existence of god is such a negligible possibility that it is easily rejected is based on more than the mere conjecture of the origin of the universe and the fact that there is much yet to know, it is a conclusion derived from many indications outside the ignorance of basic causes.
My general outlook is pragmatic and I have a life to live in a rather constricted context of about a century, most of which has already been consumed. From my earliest childhood I found the most elaborate philosophical landscape presented by religions to be cluttered by monstrous nonsensical and unverifiable fantasies and what I found most disturbing was that these bits of unverifiable propositions are, and were throughout history, expected to be respected as absolute truths to be conformed to by adherents under pressures of torture and execution. They were not mere innocent theories on the nature of reality, they were powerful social tools eagerly applied to support a large class of economic leeches who made millions of lives miserable and caused all sorts of social crimes. This aspect of a belief in gods is not to be airily dismissed as an incidental side effect but must be acknowledged as a major factor in why this unsubstantiated belief is so widely distributed in human society.
The side of atheism, which is so vigorously disputed, is the refusal to accept for very practical reasons the rejection of this powerful and unnecessary burden on the rational necessities of human survival and living animals in conformity of their environment. This is very rapidly approaching a critical point in the quality of life of humanity and the rather disdainful approach of religious belief to all living things other than human.
Religion, and its weird fantasies, is no longer a sustainable colorful innocent dance of warped minds but a basic threat to existence.
Actually, this translates to: I cannot justify how I assert that the probability of gods is miniscule…I am just asserting it because I want to assert it. Since I cannot justify it and don’t want to acknowledge that I am being obdurate, I will call Frank names; question his intelligence; and suggest he is mentally defective…and if you do not agree with me, I will do the same with you.
I must say, Newton, in a perverse way, this makes lots of sense on Jan’s part.
N ewton, the method for getting some grasp on probability involves evaluating factual evidence. Pure speculation gives none of that. Religion is pure speculation which is amusing but useless for asserting probability. Science is full of speculation but unless factual evidence presents itself there is no reason to respond to this with assertions of belief.
As I indicated you two guys cannot comprehend a simple statement.
That's pretty sad.
Very clever way to get around the “I’m not gonna play with you guys anymore” bit, Jan. I like it, because I am hoping you stick around.
N ewton, the method for getting some grasp on probability involves evaluating factual evidence. Pure speculation gives none of that. Religion is pure speculation which is amusing but useless for asserting probability. Science is full of speculation but unless factual evidence presents itself there is no reason to respond to this with assertions of belief.
Classical atheism is pure speculation also, Jan…but you don’t seem to have that problem when dealing with it.
In any case, YOU ASSERTED that there is a very low probability of gods existing. You still have not given a rational answer for how you arrived at this conclusion. And you now seem to be saying, “Since there is a low probability that gods exist it makes no sense to even talk about it, so I will not discuss how I know there is a low probability that gods exist.”
As I indicated you two guys cannot comprehend a simple statement.
Actually, as I’ve said before, we understand what you are saying. It is you who does not understand what you are saying.
That's pretty sad.
Indeed it is.
Oh No! But I have really grown to love and appreciate the atheist mascot, the Flying Spaghetti Monster! No one has proven conclusively that he (she... it?) does NOT exist. Therefore the safest thing is to give old FSM his due, just in case! He has a "plan" for us, and if we don't see it, well He does, after all, "work in mysterious ways". And let's remember that he is the tastiest Giant Magical Flying Being of them all!
I think the major way that an atheist differs from from an agnostic, besides of course not believing in a god, is that many atheists see harm done by religions and think that society is better off with atheism than religion. It's not so much the really bad stuff done in the name of religions, like the Inquisition, the killing of heretics, the current killings of people who don't follow strict Islam by the Taliban, or the subtle intolerance and discrimination against those who don't believe in the religion for a geographic area etc.
It's more the fact that when you plug up your mind with things that are not real, it is not open to receive reality, which is always better and opens up so many more satisfying possibilities. I don't see not caring if there is a god as being much of a virtue. There is so much to look forward to if one has the courage to look at things with eyes opened wide.
I don't see not caring if there is a god as being much of a virtue. There is so much to look forward to if one has the courage to look at things with eyes opened wide.
Of course I’ve been contending that the atheists’ eyes are not so wide open. And of course you confirmed it by this:
I think the major way that an atheist differs from an agnostic, besides of course not believing in a god.
By this you’re confirming that atheism is a belief, and as it goes with any belief one cannot avoid being blinkered in some way or the other about the object of one’s belief—either way, god is yet still the object of your belief.
What I can tell you is that I do not believe there is a god, and I do not believe there is not a god, i.e. I do not believe in god either way. All I know is that I just don’t know…
Spot on.
We agnostics are the true non-believers.
My participation in this discussion evolved around the peculiar mental acrobatic of flipping a negative proposal into a positive one. That a denial of belief is characterized as a belief strikes me as rather sneaky trick to justify a condemnation, and not at all particularly easy to accept.
On that basis I pointed out that a positive acceptance of the possibility of both a god and not a god required active confirmation. If it is positive to deny the possibility of a god then one must act accordingly and not perform any actions appropriate to a god’s existence. If it is positive to accept the possibility of a god one cannot ignore the obligations a god requires. To be of both minds is something of a quandary, especially so since an acceptance of the possibility of all types and varieties of a god puts one under the obligation to such an immense number of very strange active performances that a mind determined to adhere to this strange proposal would most likely shatter in the process.
This is why I raised the crucial query as to whether Fortuin or Apisa participated in prayer. Their response was indirect but I gathered that they did not. One must judge another person, not just in their comments but also in their actions which are a more truthful demonstration of their beliefs. If they declare a genuine conviction in the possibility of all varieties of a god they must be aware that that at least some of these deities are rather strict in their demands for conformity to life styles and dynamic actions. One cannot merely waive away the necessity for this conformity on the basis that proof of existence is not available. They have repeatedly stated that proof of non-existence is not possible.
Therefore, since non-action in this particular instance of conformity is confirmed, I can only conclude that Aspis and Fortuin are obvious hypocrites in this matter and they are, to all analyses and their own statements, performing atheists unable to admit to themselves of that fact.
Jan seems to be of the opinion that anyone who concedes the possibility of gods…MUST PRAY TO THEM. I suspect he also insists that anyone who concedes the possibility of gods MUST WORSHIP them.
But that is as illogical as his insistence that he has calculated the probability of gods existing…and has determined that the odds are prohibitively against such a thing.
Apparently Jan is unable to understand that one can even concede the possibility of the existence of a god like that monster described in the Bible…and still not pray or worship. In fact, one can concede that possibility and think the god to be a scumbag. “Bring on the Hell if that kind of god exists” is what accept.
In any case, earlier, Jan acknowledged that HE recognizes the possibility of the existence of gods…so if there is hypocrisy in not praying and worshipping…he would be guilty of such hypocrisy himself. The fact that he pretends he has calculated the odds to the degree where such action is necessary is an absurd justification.
But by now, you must realize that Jan is more interested in hurling insults than in actually discussing these issues in a rational, logical way.
He is the kind of atheist you mentioned and described in your initial post!
I judge probability by verifiable observation and that is conclusive in the matter of the absence of gods.
Since gods are often describes as invisible, ineffable beings…I cannot help but wonder how Jan manages to conclusively verify the absence of gods????
Could it be that Jan has simply arbitrarily decided there are no gods…and now is searching for a something upon which to pin that arbitrary decision to make it look like something other than an arbitrary decision. I can understand why he would want to do that, because simply saying there are no gods (or almost no probability of gods) would make his type of atheism seem too much like the theistic approach to why there are gods (which I think was the point of your original post.)
In any case, if Jan is being honest that he judges probability by verifiable observations, he must also conclude there is no probability of carbon based life on any planet circling the nearest three stars to Sol. No verifiable observations of carbon based life on those planets=no probability!
Jeez. Who woulda thunk it would be that easy.
Obviously, Jan.
You do not understand probability theory...and are misapplying the concept here.
If you want to discuss it, I will be delighted to accommodate you.
Well, Frank, you say gods are ineffable.
Definition: ineffable
[in-ef-uh-buhl] Origin
in·ef·fa·ble
adjective
1.
incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible: ineffable joy.
2.
not to be spoken because of its sacredness; unutterable: the ineffable name of the deity.
But nevertheless you are effing them all the time. Are you sure you know what you are talking about?
I realize you are biting your fingernails to the quick worrying about that aforementioned silent invisible rhinoceros which is somewhat effable (although probably not affable) who lives in your bathroom and there is no way you can verify it but you are damned sure it's there. Neuroses are very time consuming to cure and you've got to find the right doctor. Some are quite uneasy about rhinoceroses. Try warm milk before you go to bed. And urinate before you retire. Sometimes that works.Good luck.
Good one! I saw some other discussions where someone would attempt to use that same contorted logic to assert that because they don't believe in a god, atheists are pigheaded or intractable or some other adjective that a religious person wants to attach to them. The reason they do that is of course, to try to discredit them, and to attempt to convince them to say that religious belief has some merit.
Thanks to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, atheists have meat balls -- I have to remember that one!
One guesses blindly one way; the other guesses blindly the other way.
Neuroses are very time consuming to cure and you've got to find the right doctor.
Good luck with that, Jan. Just because we are tweaking each other here does not mean that I am not concerned for you...or that your problems do not matter to me.
I sooner try hunting for the Flying Spaghetti Monster…there’s a better chance of finding it.
Jan has said he has determined that there is almost no probability that gods exist. I’ve asked him to tell us how he determined that probability—and he has been unable to do so.
I would love for Jan to tell us how he determined that probability. Personally, I think it very, very unlikely that he can honestly do this. Jan is almost certainly doing what theists do…asserting one side of this question based only on a personal prejudice.
But, I am willing to discuss the issue with him or anyone. I suspect, however, we will just get more of the evasion and what he considers clever retorts.
There is no discernible alligator on the desk in front of me. I therefore conclude there is no alligator. I think also there is an overwhelming probability that there is no invisible alligator on the desk in front of me. And Frank says it is possible that there is an alligator that is invisible and makes o sound and you cannot feel, touch or smell it because it is a very special alligator. I think Frank is a bit nuts.
He tells me there is a god, possibly, that is unseeable, untouchable, unhearable, unsmellable, and if you took a bite of it, it would have no flavor. And on that basis, it exists. And I can only conclude Frank distrusts his sensory apparatus so totally he is a danger to himself. Because gods simply are not verifiably apparent and that's pretty good grounds for making a decision. When one becomes apparent I will rethink my judgment.
I intimated that in my daily interactions some atheists appear to be as dogmatic and fundamentalist in their views, just as some theists are. And I’m certain as many theists as well as atheists are tolerant and reflective as well. Then of course the same could be said of agnostics as well, though many of whom are silent observers and often even go to church as our Churchgoing Agnostic friend on OS does. These folks are usually labelled by atheists as wimps as they are not overtly crusading for their team.
The important thing is this: that doubt, confusion, uncertainty, is the fundamental prerequisite for an enquiring mind…
The type of atheist, however, appears to be a factor of personality dynamics. And that the atheists I was referring to, perhaps, are confusing caustic cynicism with reflective scepticism. Or perhaps that they merely have a caustic cynical personality type. This could be for many reasons, perhaps because they have been soured by bitter experience, and therefore the position they are taking merely is as a result of Reaction Formation, though guised in apparently logical tones.
But I’m merely speculating…
Maybe the atheists you interact with on a daily basis are of the most amiable reflective types around. And if you are atheist, the point is moot to begin with as you cannot but be seen as amiable and reflective, especially amongst the more reasonable folk who happen to see the world as clearly as you.
By the way, I think this is an important position to take—the anti—as the opposite dialectic is always useful in advancing society that the common ground be shifted to a more reasonable centre. Atheists have indeed done so. All activists have a purpose in this way, but I think that one should engage the entire dialectic process in one’s own mind, instead of raging against the object of one’s ire, so being unconsciously pulled in tide merely because one unconsciously is a slave to one’s default personality characteristics.
As Le bon intimated about the religious sentiment (a repeat):
Whether such a sentiment apply to an invisible God, to a wooden or stone idol, to a hero or to a political conception, provided that it presents the preceding characteristics, its essence always remains religious…
A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity, but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardor of fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions…
Intolerance and fanaticism are the necessary accompaniments of the religious sentiment. They are inevitably displayed by those who believe themselves in the possession of The Secret of earthly or eternal happiness. These two characteristics are to be found in all men grouped together when they are inspired by a conviction of any kind.
To-day the majority of the great men who have swayed men’s minds no longer have altars, but they have statues, or their portraits are in the hands of their admirers, and the cult of which they are the object is not notably different from that accorded to their predecessors. An understanding of the philosophy of history is only to be got by a thorough appreciation of this fundamental point of the psychology of crowds. The crowd demands a god before everything else.
It must not be supposed that these are the superstitions of a bygone age which reason has definitely banished. Sentiment has never been vanquished in its eternal conflict with reason. Crowds will hear no more of the words divinity and religion, in whose name they were so long enslaved; but they have never possessed so many fetishes as in the last hundred years (even more so in the following century), and the old divinities have never had so many statues and altars raised in their honor.
It is thus a very useless commonplace to assert that a religion is necessary for the masses, because all political, divine, and social creeds only take root among them on the condition of always assuming the religious shape—a shape which obviates the danger of discussion. Were it possible to induce the masses to adopt atheism, this belief would exhibit all the intolerant ardor of a religious sentiment, and in its exterior forms would soon become a cult. --- [Gustave Le Bon, 1896]
For alas, all wars, in the final analysis, are religious wars.
You keep “shoving” stuff into a lot of faces…and many people continue to laugh at your nonsense.
There is no discernible alligator on the desk in front of me. I therefore conclude there is no alligator. I think also there is an overwhelming probability that there is no invisible alligator on the desk in front of me. And Frank says it is possible that there is an alligator that is invisible and makes o sound and you cannot feel, touch or smell it because it is a very special alligator. I think Frank is a bit nuts.
Yes, I understand that because we disagree…you think I am nuts.
But if you are using the fact that you cannot feel, touch, or smell something…it makes more sense to say “it doesn’t exist” than that you “do not know if it exists”…then you really need help.
Is there any carbon-based life on any planet circling the nearest five stars to Sol? You cannot see any, touch any, smell any, hear any…but to suggest because you cannot, it makes sense to say there is no carbon-based life there is absurd.
That, Jan, is what you are unwilling to concede. So you are making up your version of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and pretending it is some great feat of ingenuity.
It isn’t! You are simply being silly…and you are showing that you do not know how to make a reasonable concession in reasonable debate.
Frankly, Jan…you have no idea of what “invisible” things are on that desk of yours…and some of the “invisible” things might surprise the hell out of you. There ARE invisible things on your desk…you should know that.
He tells me there is a god, possibly, that is unseeable, untouchable, unhearable, unsmellable, and if you took a bite of it, it would have no flavor. And on that basis, it exists. And I can only conclude Frank distrusts his sensory apparatus so totally he is a danger to himself. Because gods simply are not verifiably apparent and that's pretty good grounds for making a decision. When one becomes apparent I will rethink my judgment.
You would do much better to conclude that I am willing to acknowledge that not everything that exists is available for me to discern with my senses. Any intelligent human should know that, but apparently you are so interested in not being wrong, you cannot acknowledge it.
Hey, that doesn’t make you a bad guy, Jan. And the fact is you might be spouting all this nonsense only to give those of us reading what you write a laugh.
As mentioned before, the scientific method is very useful when measuring and determining the relative value or quantity of physical things. But it is important the separate the scientific study of the material world from our philosophic contemplations, and particularly on the most basic issue of god. As Frank mentioned before, if god exists it is intrinsically immeasurable, hence the methodology proposed by science cannot be used as a tool and therefore atheists have hamstrung themselves in this regard. Empiricism has its limits, and indeed, is most useful for studying material phenomena.
It’s very interesting how people limit their sphere of vision, i.e. they become tunnel visioned, simply because they impose a particular criterion on the existence of something, even if that existence may well be intangible, and therefore, intrinsically immeasurable.
We only know a fraction of the workings and the nature of the mind for instance, and that much of its workings are intangible. Behaviour and biological complexity also cannot be factored as a consequence of the mere physical/chemical aspect of the genetic code. We know how it works, but we cannot fathom the underlying workings as it too appears to be mostly intangible. I.e. that a yet to be defined informational aspect that “knows” the gene code must exist for biological complexity to seamless unfold within 4-dimensional spacetime.
But where does this informational aspect exist as it cannot be found in physical reality? Though because it does what it does, it nevertheless must.
And how can the simple chemicals Adenine, Guanine, Thymine and Cytosine (the logical building blocks of the DNA strand), account for this complexity?
Then there therefore must be some or other a dimension of reality we cannot perceive or measure?
It therefore is strange that many have the attitude that things that are not easy to study, because they are intangible, do not merit study.
For instance you can look into the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, a Canadian MD, biochemist and professor of psychiatry. He was a highly credible scientist and had done numerous work on past-life memories, basically asserting in journaled and peer reviewed articles that these past memories are credible and can be traced to instances of the respective people’s past.
When looking at his work objectively, without attempting to character assassinate the guy for doing the research, there appears to be more than reasonable basis for this. I did however not see this as a basis for reincarnation, but it does force me to rethink what I thought I had known until then.
On the other hand, if one has tunnel vision and insists on some or other empiric measure, one also would not be able to even look at the information through any type of objective lens to begin with.
Jan, if you want to perceive me as demented…do so. Whatever makes you happy is okay with me.
But if you suppose that the only things that exist are things that you can perceive, then you are in serious mental trouble. There are many things that exist that you cannot perceive…and anyone using the fact that something cannot be perceived as a reason for suggesting that thing does not exist…simply does not understand reason and logic.
C’mon, now. You realize that. Stiffen up your spine and acknowledge it, so we can move on.
The common phrase fits you well, Frank. You have taken leave of your senses.
Jan, you gotta do better than that. Calling people names rather than actually debating is the kind of things better suited to a playground than a forum like OS.
If you think the only things that exist are the things that you can sense…tell us why you think that is logical.
If you think the only things that are probable are things you can sense…tell us why you think that is logical.
(Actually, both are very illogical and you would probably do yourself a big favor to take the other side of each argument, but if you cannot find it in yourself to do that, your best tactic would be to drop the argument. The name-calling is a lark and I am enjoying sharing those items with friends, but the more you do it the sillier you look.)
You wrote: You really do need some help for your reading disability. I'm not calling you names, merely repeating your assertion that your senses are not useful in discerning a god. That's your claim. not mine.
Quote the specific comment I made that brings you to this statement.
75.
Alzheimer's can be devastating.
Yes it is...and nothing to be joked about.
Go through your comments and pick it out yourself. It's not up to me to jog your memory.
It is up to you to provide a quote that matches your characterization. I am willing to defend anything I actually wrote. You want me to defend your characterization of what I wrote.
I really would appreciate you offering the quote that you are suggesting is indicative of a reading disability.
By the way...why is it you have to offer a gratuitous insult in almost every post you make?
"You clearly stated that there are things indiscernible to the senses that must be acknowledged as valid evidence to establish the existence of gods."
Is this a quote from me?
I have done that every time.
"You would do much better to conclude that I am willing to acknowledge that not everything that exists is available for me to discern with my senses. Any intelligent human should know that, but apparently you are so interested in not being wrong, you cannot acknowledge it."
And my simple and pragmatic proposal is not to assume and respect existence of anything not discernible to the senses. Science in general is based on the concept that there are innumerable possibilities but they can be rejected and neglected until some means has been discovered to sense them. The useful and necessary terms, "existent" and "non-existent" are totally dependent upon sensory perception of one kind or another. This is basic, not only science but in rational living.
If your eyesight is so deteriorated as not to read anything but boldface have a friend or relative assist you.
At least you two can agree on that.
Well done!
But I’m determined to have the last say on this, hence I’m bumping a previous post.
All the best!
As mentioned before, the scientific method is very useful when measuring and determining the relative value or quantity of physical things. But it is important we separate the scientific study of the material world from our philosophic contemplations, and particularly on the most basic issue of god. As Frank mentioned before, if god exists it by implication is intrinsically immeasurable, hence the methodology proposed by science cannot be used as a tool and therefore atheists have hamstrung themselves in this regard. Empiricism has its limits, and indeed, is most useful for studying material phenomena.
It’s very interesting how people limit their sphere of vision—i.e. they become tunnel visioned—simply because they impose a particular criterion on the existence of something, even if that existence may well be intangible, and therefore, intrinsically immeasurable.
We only know a fraction of the workings and the nature of the mind for instance, and that much of it is intangible. Behaviour and biological complexity also cannot be factored as a consequence of the mere physical/chemical aspect of the genetic code. We know how it works, but we cannot fathom the underlying workings as it too appears to be mostly intangible. Furthermore that we have to imply that a yet to be defined informational aspect that “knows” the gene code must exist for biological complexity to seamless unfold within 4-dimensional spacetime. That is, a database of sorts must exist somewhere to interpret the code, and thus to determine that a particular sequence imply a particular eye colour. The point is that this is not determined chemically…
But where does this informational aspect reside as it cannot be found in physical reality? Though because it does what it does, it nevertheless must.
And how can the simple chemicals Adenine, Guanine, Thymine and Cytosine (the logical building blocks of the DNA strand), account for the vast array of biological and behavioural complexity? For instance how does swallows know their elaborate next building ability as they were not taught? It mathematically couldn’t have been in the genes, unless the gene is merely the key that unlocks the behaviour that is defined in some yet to be determined plane.
Then there therefore must be some or other a dimension of reality we cannot perceive or measure?
It therefore is strange that many have the attitude that things that are not easy to study, because they are intangible, do not merit study.
For instance you can look into the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, a Canadian MD, biochemist and professor of psychiatry. He was a highly credible scientist and had done numerous work on past-life memories, basically asserting in journaled and peer reviewed articles that these past memories are credible and can be traced to instances of the respective people’s past.
When looking at his work objectively, without attempting to character assassinate the guy for doing the research which is why he is largely ignored, there appears to be more than reasonable basis for this. I did however not see this as a basis for reincarnation, but it does force me to rethink what I thought I had known until then.
On the other hand, if one has tunnel vision and insists on some or other empiric measure on intrinsically immeasurable matters, one also would be completely incapable to even look at the information through any type of objective lens and therefore to be scientific to begin with.
I intimated that in my daily interactions some atheists appear to be as dogmatic and fundamentalist in their views, just as some theists are. And I’m certain as many theists as well as atheists are tolerant and reflective as well. Then of course the same could be said of agnostics as well, though many of whom are silent observers and often even go to church as our Churchgoing Agnostic friend on OS does. These folks are usually labelled by atheists as wimps as they are not overtly crusading for their team.
The important thing is this: that doubt, confusion, uncertainty, is the fundamental prerequisite for an enquiring mind…
The type of atheist, however, appears to be a factor of personality dynamics. And that the atheists I was referring to, perhaps, are confusing caustic cynicism with reflective scepticism. Or perhaps that they merely have a caustic cynical personality type. This could be for many reasons, perhaps because they have been soured by bitter experience, and therefore the position they are taking merely is as a result of Reaction Formation, though guised in apparently logical tones.
But I’m merely speculating…
Maybe the atheists you interact with on a daily basis are of the most amiable reflective types around. And if you are atheist, the point is moot to begin with as you cannot but be seen as amiable and reflective, especially amongst the more reasonable folk who happen to see the world as clearly as you.
By the way, I think this is an important position to take—the anti—as the opposite dialectic is always useful in advancing society that the common ground be shifted to a more reasonable centre. Atheists have indeed done so. All activists have a purpose in this way, but I think that one should engage the entire dialectic process in one’s own mind, instead of raging against the object of one’s ire, so being unconsciously pulled in tide merely because one unconsciously is a slave to one’s default personality characteristics.
As Le bon intimated about the religious sentiment (a repeat):
Whether such a sentiment apply to an invisible God, to a wooden or stone idol, to a hero or to a political conception, provided that it presents the preceding characteristics, its essence always remains religious…
It is thus a very useless commonplace to assert that a religion is necessary for the masses, because all political, divine, and social creeds only take root among them on the condition of always assuming the religious shape—a shape which obviates the danger of discussion. Were it possible to induce the masses to adopt atheism, this belief would exhibit all the intolerant ardor of a religious sentiment, and in its exterior forms would soon become a cult. --- [Gustave Le Bon, 1896]
For alas, all wars, in the final analysis, are religious wars.