Yeah, that was the first thing I did when I woke up this morning, groggy and angry, don't know why...I prayed about it though. We're all ignorant monkeys, not just people that believe in religion, that's my the point. I knew I shouldn't have wandered into the D&D.
<br> I really hope this is a joke. Because if not, this is the epitome of what I described in my first post in this thread. tmoney is "that" atheist guy.
Yes, to be clear, it was a joke...sorry if the sarcasm didn't ring through, I guess this discussion is a little more serious than I thought it was.
... Could be many things, I am not one bold enough to speculate. An outside force behind the universe, If you will...
Belief in religion and evolution does not make your life any richer... The wonderment of not knowing what is out there makes life worth living for me. Maybe one day we will find out, and until then, I am not going to lie to myself...
An atheist could 100% agree with you that such a force might exist without contradicting themselves. It just always seems to happen that such an outside force somehow gets morphed into a very humanistic, personal god by theists during the course of the conversation.
So, if we 'had to' be made by a great force outside the universe... why wouldn't the great outside force 'have to' be made by an even more mysterious outside force? and so on...
I think you meant to say that it doesn't make your life richer. It certainly makes mine richer, as it does for millions of other people. I'm ok with the possibility that I'm wrong and I'll never know it. I find out that I'm wrong about stuff all the time, so why would I be afraid of being wrong and never finding out?
When you’re talking about 75% of the population of the world most random variables won’t come into play. We’re not talking about an isolated group of people who might have been influenced by some chance extraneous factor. If you were standing outside of a room and the door opened and 100 people walked out, and you pulled 4 of them aside and asked them if there was a chandelier in the room, and 3 of them said yes, that would give you a certain amount of information, but there would be quite a bit of uncertainty attached as well. Maybe some other factor was involved. Maybe the sun was shining into the room and reflecting off of something and these three were at an angle where it looked like there was a chandelier in the room but there really wasn’t, or example. If 75 out of the 100 tell you that there’s a chandelier in the room, however, then the possibility of that kind of error is greatly reduced. That many will have been looking at the centre of the room from many different angles, and 75% of them say that there was a chandelier. That is strong evidence. It doesn’t rule out all possibilities, of course. Maybe the chandelier was really a projection of some sort, perhaps a hologram, and it fooled most of the people there. But, when you have a large majority from a large and diverse population of people all saying that they believe in anything, then that is very strong evidence that that thing exists. That’s what the statistical analysis tells you. If a god or gods exist and it or they have an impact on our lives then it’s not just a philosophical issue. It’s a very practical issue, and one where there will be a lot of evidence. As it turns out, all of the major religions have books associated with them, so one kind of expert would be the scholars who have studied the books. Another kind of expert would be the ones who’ve had a lot of experience working with people and helping them with their spiritual issues. The problem at this point is not that there aren’t any experts. It’s the there are so many it’s hard to know which ones to look at. There are ways to deal with that problem, however.
I know I linked this to you before, grizz... in a thread about who knows what, but after you made this exact claim. but, please this time just google these terms: argumentum ad populum appeal to tradition conformity
I don’t remember if I responded to your or not last time but I will here. You are misunderstanding the argument being made in this thread. Argumentum ad populum states essentially that just because a majority of people believe something is true doesn’t necessarily mean that it is true. This is correct and I’ve stated exactly this a number of times already in this thread, including in the post directly above yours. You cannot say that just because 75% of the world’s population believes in a god or gods it has been proven that a god or gods exist. That would be a false statement, but it is very true that that 75% number is strong evidence that a god or gods exists. These are two very different things.
according to atheists, 75% of the world is crazy! and according to theists, atheists are crazy. neither have proof on either side just beliefs. the end. <insert pic of cool story bro>
Your reponse triggered some memories. I think that was as far as we got last time. (there were 2 other words this time though!???) I'll write more after a meeting. (It will probably be in about 3 hours though) quick wiki copy/paste though before I go (wiki'ed evidence just so we're on the same ground as to your intention for the word) and these last 2 copy/paste are the main thrust of your point? (just so i have some clarification for later?)
I’m not entirely clear on what your thinking is here, but I think I would suggest looking at the concepts of evidence, indirect evidence, and conclusive proof.
runs in a circle. reads left reads right up down ignores indiscriminately...? have fun with your causality; i can take a hint. Spoiler much like hitler, i'm pragmatic
This is an interesting argument, but it is flawed. A chandelier is a specific type of object, with well understood characeteristics. Moreoever, you can physically observe a chandelier. If a person says he saw a chandelier in a room that plausibly could contain one, I'd tend to believe him. It is not like I have doubt that chandeliers exist. So your analogy breaks down from that standpoint. Furthermore, your inference is only sound if we are talking about more or less independent variables, but clearly whether or not we believe in a god is not independent of the community we were raised in or live in. These "experts", as you call them, have no more evidence that god exists than any one else. They are experts in their belief system, and they may provide good counsel. I could say the same thing of a philosopher. But let's be clear: being an expert in what you believe does not make you an authority on whether what you believe is true. A crazy person may invent a fantastic world, full of vivid detail and intriguing characters, and he may believe this world to actually exist when it does not. In a sense, he is an "expert" on that fantasy world. Does that make him an authority whose beliefs I take seriously? Not necessarily.
