The Religion of Atheism

[DanWall]

What's the difference between acne and a Catholic priest?

 

[Alc]

What's the difference between acne and a Catholic priest?

Guess: Acne usually waits until the teenage years before spoiling a child's life?

 

[DanWall]

Something like that
The proper answer isn't so PC....

 

[Alc]

Something like that
The proper answer isn't so PC....

I know
Thought I'd intervene before you got complaints.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Mike and Alisa and gmatriix

My experiment with dice is appropriate for this discussion, even for Alisa, who is on my side of the argument. You all missed the point.

Assuming that my experiment actually happened, the odds mean nothing after the fact.

Flip one coin. How did it land, heads or tails? You know, you only had 50% odds of that happening, right? Technically, WRONG. You had 100% odds that it happened, because it DID happen. The 50% odds would apply only to the NEXT time you flipped the coin. Once it has happened, its probability is UNITY.

Where this applies to the argument is that people who talk about the improbability of abiogenesis or evolution or the big bang are ALWAYS WRONG - if that is what happened. Their odds would only apply to it happening again the same way. Mike375, this is why I came up with the business of finding out the mechanism by which I performed this seemingly miraculous feat. If you can find evidence of the evolutionary trail, of the remnants of the big bang, of planetary accretion, etc. - then it HAPPENED. The ODDS MEAN NOTHING. Telling me how improbable something was is absolutely meaningless if that is what actually happened.

Which leads us to the quality of evidence. You say "Look around you" for the evidence of God's creation. But if you are looking at that evidence with a predisposition to accept it on faith, you won't question it. We who are skeptical will question it. For those who are religiously minded, please look up the story of Thomas, who is the origin of the phrase "Doubting Thomas" as someone who always questions things without blindly accepting them. Jesus DID NOT REBUKE Thomas for his doubt and would not allow the other disciples to do so either.

Mike375, you ask the question, "What did I miss?" The answer might be that you missed having sex with that cute girl some years ago even though you weren't married. Or you might have missed out on a learning experience with drugs or alcohol, even if you later decided it wasn't for you. You might have missed out on having enjoyment by living for today instead of living for another existence. I don't know, because each of us has had different life experiences and different opportunities. The point is, your belief colors your choices and will almost certainly cause you to make different choices than you would have made from my side of the picture.

As always, believe what you believe. But when talking about evidence, watch out. A casual reference to a natural phenomenon that can be interpreted in two different ways only amounts to a useless observation.

I'll step off in a different direction. For those of you who like Science Fiction as a reading genre, I highly recommend "A Case of Conscience" by James K Blish. You'll probably need to find it in a library because it is very likely out of print. It is a story about a Jesuit priest in a space-faring era who comes across a new culture. His problem? They seem to be highly moral - but absolutely atheistic. He has a crisis of faith because religious dogma says you cannot have morals without faith. The rest of the story goes through a lot of events that can be interpreted in either of two ways. If you are a believer in God, you see a set of divine events. If you are not, you see the same set of events in a totally different light. And every point in the story is balanced such that your beliefs will affect your understanding. It is a master work of fiction that leaves you with... a case of conscience.

 

[ColinEssex]

What's the difference between God and an American?

God doesn't think he is American.

Col

 

[Mike375]

Which leads us to the quality of evidence. You say "Look around you" for the evidence of God's creation. But if you are looking at that evidence with a predisposition to accept it on faith, you won't question it. We who are skeptical will question it.

The predisposition is not to faith/religion. Rather, it is moving to something with some evidence plus gut feel. But different personalities see the same thing from different angles.

For those who are religiously minded, please look up the story of Thomas, who is the origin of the phrase "Doubting Thomas" as someone who always questions things without blindly accepting them. Jesus DID NOT REBUKE Thomas for his doubt and would not allow the other disciples to do so either.

My grandmother used to call me Doubting Thomas becausing I was questioning the Catholic releigion by the time I was a teenager. Buying Dawins book from my pocket money at about age 15 did not help

Mike375, you ask the question, "What did I miss?" The answer might be that you missed having sex with that cute girl some years ago even though you weren't married. Or you might have missed out on a learning experience with drugs or alcohol, even if you later decided it wasn't for you. You might have missed out on having enjoyment by living for today instead of living for another existence. I don't know, because each of us has had different life experiences and different opportunities. The point is, your belief colors your choices and will almost certainly cause you to make different choices than you would have made from my side of the picture.

None of the above. Like many atheists you confuse a belief in a supernatural with being part of and following a formal religion. Think of God as Access You and I both have the same program on our computers. However, we will both interpret it and use it differently. For example, you are very strong on full normalisation whereas I am not. You have your reasons and I have my reasons but irrespective of our views on normalisation the Access software is still the same.

Let me go one step further. If you and I were to run some run some classes on Access the courses would have a lot of differences. But Access would still be Access. Now if an outsider was to look at our courses (and the contradictions) they would not question Access they would question us. Contradictions between our courses would not invalidate Access itself.

I am sure you can mount as strong an argument for full normalisation as I can for "breaking some rules". However, that is comparable to comparing churches like Catholic and Anglican etc.

 

[JamesLast99]

Mike and Alisa and gmatriix

My experiment with dice is appropriate for this discussion, even for Alisa, who is on my side of the argument. You all missed the point.

Assuming that my experiment actually happened, the odds mean nothing after the fact.

Flip one coin. How did it land, heads or tails? You know, you only had 50% odds of that happening, right? Technically, WRONG. You had 100% odds that it happened, because it DID happen. The 50% odds would apply only to the NEXT time you flipped the coin. Once it has happened, its probability is UNITY.

Where this applies to the argument is that people who talk about the improbability of abiogenesis or evolution or the big bang are ALWAYS WRONG - if that is what happened. Their odds would only apply to it happening again the same way. Mike375, this is why I came up with the business of finding out the mechanism by which I performed this seemingly miraculous feat. If you can find evidence of the evolutionary trail, of the remnants of the big bang, of planetary accretion, etc. - then it HAPPENED. The ODDS MEAN NOTHING. Telling me how improbable something was is absolutely meaningless if that is what actually happened.

Which leads us to the quality of evidence. You say "Look around you" for the evidence of God's creation. But if you are looking at that evidence with a predisposition to accept it on faith, you won't question it. We who are skeptical will question it. For those who are religiously minded, please look up the story of Thomas, who is the origin of the phrase "Doubting Thomas" as someone who always questions things without blindly accepting them. Jesus DID NOT REBUKE Thomas for his doubt and would not allow the other disciples to do so either.

Mike375, you ask the question, "What did I miss?" The answer might be that you missed having sex with that cute girl some years ago even though you weren't married. Or you might have missed out on a learning experience with drugs or alcohol, even if you later decided it wasn't for you. You might have missed out on having enjoyment by living for today instead of living for another existence. I don't know, because each of us has had different life experiences and different opportunities. The point is, your belief colors your choices and will almost certainly cause you to make different choices than you would have made from my side of the picture.

As always, believe what you believe. But when talking about evidence, watch out. A casual reference to a natural phenomenon that can be interpreted in two different ways only amounts to a useless observation.

I'll step off in a different direction. For those of you who like Science Fiction as a reading genre, I highly recommend "A Case of Conscience" by James K Blish. You'll probably need to find it in a library because it is very likely out of print. It is a story about a Jesuit priest in a space-faring era who comes across a new culture. His problem? They seem to be highly moral - but absolutely atheistic. He has a crisis of faith because religious dogma says you cannot have morals without faith. The rest of the story goes through a lot of events that can be interpreted in either of two ways. If you are a believer in God, you see a set of divine events. If you are not, you see the same set of events in a totally different light. And every point in the story is balanced such that your beliefs will affect your understanding. It is a master work of fiction that leaves you with... a case of conscience.

But the same idea would tell us the probability for God is 1- if that is what happened. So however unprobable anyone finds it , its meaningless if that what happened. So I don't understand what you are trying to get at.

 

[gmatriix]

Doc Man,

I guess you would have to have faith and trust in the Bible. The Bible says that "faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demostration of realities though not beheld" (Heb 11:1)

If a friend tells you that he has something for you, it would be your choice at that point to be skeptical or to doubt it. However, how would your friend feel if he knew that you did not trust or doubted him. It would not make him feel so good that you did not trust him just because you did not have any physical evidence to prove it.

James 1:6 says,"But let him keep asking in faith, not doubting at all, for he that doubts is like a wave of the sea driven by the wind and blown about."

So, whether you are atheist or believe in God and the Bible we all will have to wait and see what happens.

Does God really exist? Will God step in and correct the worlds problems? Does he care about human suffering? The Bible says "yes" and soon (2 Tim 3:1-5, Daniel 2:44, Matt 24:32-42,Rev 21:4)

We can try to answer and debate these questions forever, but the fact of the matter is........we all will just have to wait and see. We will just have to see if God exist and the Bible is right.

So you can believe that there is no God or you can believe that God exist. It is the choice that all of us have.

Time will tell if one is right or wrong.

Just my thoughts.....

 

[Rich]

Time will tell if one is right or wrong.

Just my thoughts.....

And if you contact Tim Brewer via this forum you'll be able to tell us the answer from the afterlife

 

[Atomic Shrimp]

So you can believe that there is no God or you can believe that God exist. It is the choice that all of us have.

Is belief actually a choice at all? Someone tells you something, you either find it believable, or you don't, or maybe something in between.

If you consciously choose to try to alter your own belief level in anything aren't you just deceiving yourself? (this applies in either case - whether you're trying to make yourself believe when that isn't your natural reaction, or if you're trying to make yourself disbelieve, when your natural reaction is to believe).

 

[gmatriix]

Is belief actually a choice at all? Someone tells you something, you either find it believable, or you don't, or maybe something in between.

If you consciously choose to try to alter your own belief level in anything aren't you just deceiving yourself? (this applies in either case - whether you're trying to make yourself believe when that isn't your natural reaction, or if you're trying to make yourself disbelieve, when your natural reaction is to believe).

It is still your choice to do whatever you want. Whether the choice is black/white/green/gray/purple/blue....or anything between anything....

Is a persons belief level the same as when they were a child. If you alter that belief...are you deceiving yourself?......hummmmmm....

Even if there is overwhelming evidence that something is true....you have the right and freedom of choice to not believe it.

 

[Alc]

Even if there is overwhelming evidence that something is true....you have the right and freedom of choice to not believe it.

But do you?
If your brain has decided that you don't believe something to be true then it must have decided that the evidence in favour of it isn't overwhelming.

 

[gmatriix]

But do you?
If your brain has decided that you don't believe something to be true then it must have decided that the evidence in favour of it isn't overwhelming.

The point was that you have the right to do whatever you want....believe how you want to believe...or don't believe at all.....the choice is yours....whatever you want to do or think or anything....its on you individually....

(Respectfully)
Time will tell if you are right or not....

 

[Atomic Shrimp]

I don't agree that you really have a choice - the choice you make will be based on whether you find the thing compelling enough to believe, or not.

Did you choose your own beliefs, gmatriix, or did you just believe things because they appeared true? Have you chosen to believe anything that doesn't appear true, or chosen not to believe something that does appear true?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

With regard to my statement that after the fact, odds mean nothing, to which the comment was offered that if God was our origin, the probability was ALSO 1...

Exactly so. Which means that it is important to somehow differentiate between possible origins and test them in some way. The story I was developing was that if you accepted the truth of the event (tossing 50 boxcars in a row with a pair of dice), you had some decisions to make as to how to interpret the observation.

Were the dice "influenced" (the "God did it" path) or was I just incredibly lucky (the evolution path)? Switching to the real world for a moment, there is a lot more evidence for the truth of the evolution path than for the Goddidit path.

A lot of the Biblical prophecies might have provided better evidence except that a lot of prophesied events were not independently corroborated by other historical sources. The miracles were not documented by other historical sources. Therefore, with single-source "proof" of prophecy and miracles, the Bible merely comes across as self-serving.

Folks on my side of the aisle simply have trouble accepting the circular logic that occurs when you use one part of the Bible to prove another part but cannot find external evidence from authors contemporary to the events in question.

Mike375, I understand the distinction between believing in a God but not in a formal religion. But NOW my question is, why bother if you don't also believe in a Heaven? What possible value is God in that case? Not even a decent explanation of reality.

 

[Mike375]

Mike375, I understand the distinction between believing in a God but not in a formal religion. But NOW my question is, why bother if you don't also believe in a Heaven? What possible value is God in that case? Not even a decent explanation of reality.

My belief in a supernatural is not to get to heaven. You can also believe in a supernatural or a god but not believe in God.

 

[Rich]

My belief in a supernatural is not to get to heaven. You can also believe in a supernatural or a god but not believe in God.

Christ! you'll be telling us next to listen to the ride of the Valkyries

 

[Mike375]

"God" is a specific god.

Belief or disblief does not depend on what you want.

 

[Rich]

"God" is a specific god.

Only as defined in the book of fairy tales