I'll skip ahead to this one and then go back, probably latter today. Yes, I think this is absolutely fair. And you're right, this was basically my point. As we've seen in this thread there are quite a few atheists who have completely irrational and ungrounded reasons for their disbelief. They have issues, let's say, and you can see how some of them act, and to the extent that they get grief this attitude is a significant contributing factor. (It's also important to note that there certainly are groups who call themselves religious people who give atheists and others grief for absolutely the wrong reasons, however. That's definitely an issue as well.) On the question of god, however, I think it is a very logical and well founded belief. We've just touched on the very most basic part of that question here, of course. As you said, the fact that 75% of the worlds population believes in a God is a reason to consider more seriously why those people believe in God. I would say that this is the extent of what we've covered here. I have some thoughts on the follow up questions as well, of course, but that's a separate issue.
But that is not what you said, you said it is probably true...that's a lot different than it is a reason to consider why the believe. Completely different. There are many different reasons why people believe in different Gods and there are many different types of Gods.
you should stop perpetuating this. no atheist in this thread has been irrational. moreover, it'd be impossible for you to know who is or isnt an atheist in this thread unless they came out and said so. I think you think some people are atheists who aren't (me, for example), and moreover, don't fully grasp the entire concept of rationality. The issues people have with your posts have been the idiotic logic you've used, which claimed that something existed/was true because a majority of people beleived it to be so. well, at least that's what you're logic was at first. then that shifted to probably true, and apparently now it's shifted to not necessarily true, but something interesting to think about. yay! your'e seeing the light. all kinds of things in the world are interesting and deserve more consideration. you've finally realized the fact that 75% of the world population believing in a God is an interesting fact and deserves more consideration. Again, vast improvement from "must mean God exists" and "means God most likely exists". I'd agree with the quoted part above, as I'd imagine pretty much every intelligent person on the planet would. your original logic, as was pointed out to you by many, made absolutely no sense. that said, considering your long inability to see that, and your continued insistence that there are a bunch of "irrational aetheists" in this thread, when on the contrary (and generally definitionally concerning aetheists, though not always) the "aetheists" have argued based on purely rational and logical merits, makes me think on the contrary the reason most "aetheists" get grief is because, ultimately, pure logic and rationality can't point to the existence of God anymore than someone insisting God exists because they say God exists. It's a belief. It's a faith. It's a hope that there is something bigger out there that in it's own way is looking out for us, and controlling this thing we call life and the universe and morality, and life and death and happy and sad, etc., etc. you want God to exist because a world without a God scares you, and "aetheists" represent a world without a God, and for you particularly they seem to be able to say to themselves, "hey, that's interesting a majority of people seem to believe in God...it doesn't mean I do, and it certainly isn't an intelligent or rational logic that should point to God....it's interesting, but in no way confirming" - and that just blows your mind that they are being so "irrational" and using such unsound judgement, cause God has to exist, right, because you believe he does, and your neighbor believes he does and so does that neighbor and his neighbor and the next guy, well, let's skip that guy, but the four families after them also believe in God, and it feels right, yada, yada.
You see, here you proved his point. This is irrational. It's absolutely irrational that you think that I HOPE God exists. It's no such thing and it shows that you have been retaining information in this thread very selectively. Your attitude is also precisely the attitude a lot of people have referred to earlier in this thread. It's an attitude of arrogance, whether intentional or not, sincere or otherwise. I know you will be quick to point out that you can believe/say what you like, and that's absolutely true. I'm just pointing out that to more than half the world, it is an arrogant attitude. It is exactly the opposite of durvasa's attitude which is an objective, logical, non-emotional disagreement. To me, either you know that what we believe is not a "hope" - in which case you are disrespecting the belief. or You don't know that it's not a hope. In which case, Grizzled's comments towards your behavior, though harsh, still carries some weight. Why you can't accept that someone believes differently than you do is, ironically, intolerant. I hope I haven't misinterpreted your comments, but that's what you appear to be saying here.
I haven't even read this thread in ages, and honestly couldn't care one way or another about the religious aspects of it. So if you managed to find the one word in my one paragraph that gets into religion that you think is wrong...eh, you're probably right. Moreover, as I think I've pointed at, I haven't stated what i believe in this thread (I may have in an earlier post months ago, can't remember), so can't for the life of me figure out what "believes differently than you do" means - you don't know what I believe and I really don't know what you believe. I honestly don't care that much. Why am I posting, then? Don't know. I saw the thread again, thought I'd take a peek to see if there was any substantive new posts to consider, saw the debate about something being true because 75% of people believe it to be so still going on, and I was blown away. What I've responded to, and been annoyed by, is an insistence upon using a rationale that makes absolutely ZERO sense. Because a majority of people believe in something DOES NOT make it true. It DOES NOT make it probably true. It makes it maybe true, maybe not true, and potentially interesting.... that's it. Taking offense to that reality, and then going on to call out others for pointing out the irrationality of the converse line of thinking, is ridiculous, and deserves to be called out itself.
I'll try being nicer if you try being less intentionally obtuse. Deal? And I see you've selected hand-waving today. Excellent selection, sir. It doesn't fit your preconceived notions, so you just shoo it away. I like it. Simple. Effective. Typical. What do I think I've posted? Did you read the last paragraph? Did you grok it? Any of these theories are more plausible (and a couple are surely probable since you appear to love semantic tail chasing) - try more reading from my suggested list when you erm...get time? Any of the posited hypotheses are more plausible than your tired old argumentum ad populum. Lots of people believe in horoscopes as well. And Miss Cleo's Psychic Hotline. And gnomes. And fairies. And that your heart stops beating when you sneeze. And that you can't get pregnant the first time you have sex. Somewhere around half of the US thinks the earth is less than 10,000 years old. The past is riddled with such things - there are only four elements - earth, wind, fire, and water. And that the world in flat. And that the earth was the center of the universe, or at least the solar system. Just because a lot of people believe something doesn't make it true or even necessarily true. I honestly can't believe your whole argument is predicated on a well-known logical fallacy that has been refuted time and time again while you sit there with your head in the sand. Honestly, go read the books I've recommended. Hell, PM me your address (or PO Box if you're distrustful) and I'll send you some of them direct from amazon. I'll toss in a logic book too, just for funsies.
I was specifically referring to you saying that Grizzled's belief is a "hope" that there is some kind of prize at the end of this all. That is different than what you believe clearly, and I don't even know what you believe. Grizzled believes in God and the hereafter. He believes that such a huge percentage of the population believing something is a significant sign/indication. Somewhere you guys got lost in the wording I suppose. But at no point in time was anything said to make you believe that he just "hopes" that what he believes is true. Anyways, maybe just a miscommunication or poor wording, I don't know. I'm just saying that if it was intentional, it was impolite, and if it wasn't intentional, then you have a lot of reading to do. On whether people believing something makes it true, that's a sub category of this topic. It's easy and convenient to isolate it and attack but I think it would be courteous to actually understand the paraeters and background of the thread before attacking the way you did.
One thing which may be worth considering (and I honestly have not thought this through, just pondering..) When was the first time someone believed in God? When was the first time someone declared the earth to be flat? Is that important at all?
To be clear, are you still suggesting that the fact that 75% of a given population believes in a god is evidence that a god exists? I think almost everyone in the thread would agree that it's worth asking why such a belief structure exists and the various pros and cons of such a structure but your earlier comments certainly suggest more than this latest post.
Atheism make sense if you believe that there is no reason to assume something exists without evidence for it. The problem I have with atheism is that our existence itself cannot be explained, how any why and when did it start. Existence itself might be evidence in favor of a higher power. It's the arrogance of atheism that bothers people, their certainty is no more irrational than than those certain God does exist. Accepting that there are things beyond our ability to concieve/percieve is the appropriate sentiment.
I would agree with that last part. Except it seems to me that religion does the opposite. An atheist or agnostic would probably admit that he doesn't understand how our universe came to be or what caused the Big Bang. Religions like Christianity personalize the creation of the universe so that it becomes something familiar. God is given human-like traits. He communicates with us, and He has a personal interest in our lives. Religion, to me, is based ultimately in an unwillingness to accept that our existence is a mystery.
Might be. But then again, it's just as likely that it isn't. So no real points scored there. Incorrect. Atheism doesn't have the burden of proof. So, if there is no proof X exists, and I say "X does not exist", it is more rational (albeit still an assumption) than saying "X does exist". And as for arrogance, I can't think of anything more arrogant than to think that 1) your species or faith is special and that 2) you were put here with divine purpose and intent and 3) that your claims require no evidence to be believed and should never be challenged. There's a litany of other examples of the arrogance of faith and religion, but it's really early and I haven't had my coffee, so that'll have to do. Religion is the most arrogant thing I know of that exists. Atheism is really the rejection of that self-importance and arrogance, and not just a substitution of one arrogance for another. I think if you look more into atheism, you'll find that virtually every atheist is agnostic on the subject of god existing, etc. So to assume that all atheists think that they *for sure* know god does not exist and *can not* by any means have their minds changed (even with extraordinary evidence) is false. Atheism is a lack of faith, and not an adoption of a faith that something doesn't exist. Edit: don't bother looking it up in the dictionary though, cause the merriam-webster people have the wrong definition... which atheist groups are trying really hard to change <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OozkaHxMvFA&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OozkaHxMvFA&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
If atheism is merely a lack faith, that's one thing. If it represents a certainty about the nonexistence of a higher power, that's another. I'll grant you that it's more rational than stories about God's existence that must be taken on blind faith. But any certainty about whether God exists or not is pretty baseless.
Even the staunchest atheist -- like Richard Dawkins -- admits there is not 100% certainty that God does not exist. His view is that it just seems highly improbable, particularly the type of personal God described in the Bible. These probability assessments seem to me to be very subjective, though.
I suggest to you that people do see the impact of God in their lives, and that this is why so many are saying that they believe in God. I think that the impact can be quantified as well, but this would also be a long discussion. How specifically to people experience and/or see God in their lives? There are a number of ways, but this is a big question.
How many societies believe in that kind of luck, then, rather than the "luck" that is really just a low probability event? I think you mentioned the rabbit’s foot a while back, and that does exist as a luck bearing device in some places, but I don’t think it’s all that common, and it doesn’t cost the individual very much. Carrying a rabbit’s foot around may not help you but it doesn’t cost you much either. I think it ends up being a minor waste of time and resources that would suggest that it would slowly die out. There’s probably a story behind the rabbit’s foot belief that would shed more light on why people believe it brings them luck. Sometimes we do things in a calculated way and sometimes, as you say, we just try things and the end up working. Either way the practices that work should stick around and the ones that don’t should die off, one way or another. You could theorize that a belief in god will at some point die off, but it’s been around for essentially all of recorded history and today we still see a very large percentage of the population of the world still believing in a god or gods, so there's not much of a foundation for that theory. Because if it’s not based on something real then it wouldn’t be a good management practice, because it would waste a lot of time and resources. A good management practice would be one that managed the group but didn’t waste the time and resources of the group. If a god or gods do exist then that would change the whole question. God and Religion would be a significant waste of resources if there is no real god, but if there is as god then the whole equation changes. Who is this god? What is the nature of his/her/its relationship with us? If there is a god then there may be a reason for the religious practices we see, but these questions are a separate issue. The issue here is simply that if there is no god, then the belief in god and the time, energies and monies spend on the religion surrounding that god would be a wasted, at least to a significant extent. I don’t use the term, and I don’t find it helpful. I would say that natural law is a reflection of God in a way, not something separate from him. Perhaps I would say that he is supranatural rather than supernatural. I think my problem is with the connotation that God and natural law are two separate things. It seems to me that the dictionary definition of the word doesn’t match the way it’s commonly understood, but if I’m wrong then I’m ok with the word. I don’t think I would agree with this interpretation, but maybe we’d have to look at some specific cases. I think that people don’t generally just invent reasons. I think people generally come up with theories that make sense at the time. Often there was some truth in them and they could at least partially be relied on, but later science has changed our understanding of the phenomenon. It was reasonable at the time to think that the world was flat, for example. Science is a continually advancing thing. People 100 years ago though they were much smarter than people 200 years ago, and people 100 years from now will think they’re much smarter than we are, but these are just measures of our accumulated knowledge. I doubt that there was ever a time when people simply randomly made things up. I suspect that the answers they came up with in the past reflected the knowledge and the best practices of the day. This is where research starts. You have a question that you don’t know the answer to.
Good. They need only come forward and explain what they see that makes them so sure that God exists, describe the impact, and we can set up an experiment to try to isolate this and study it. If God does exist and his impact is measurable, I think we all would love to see the evidence for it. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any such successful experiments. That is why belief in God is taken as faith. That's not just a word atheists use. I'll get to the rest at a later time. Others may tire of it, but I find these sort of conversations interesting. I hope at the end we can come to a common understanding.
"I doubt that there was ever a time when people simply randomly made things up." Signed, Every other religion but yours in the history of the planet.
Your knowledge of world history seems lacking. Completely ignoring religion (Dubious seems to have already taken a stab at that), there are countless times in history when stuff was just "made up", so to speak. Ever heard of the dark ages? Ever wonder why they were called dark? Because people knew so little and cared to learn so little and others were making so much up that was taking for granted, it was a dark period in the history of the world. How about something more tangible. Google John Cleves Symmes, Jr. This is a guy, not a scientist mind you, just a random guy, who convinces himself that the earth is hollow and you can sail into it from the poles (without even knowing you're sailing into it), and becomes so convinced by the idea, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that he goes on a long lecture tour, and in turn convinces thousands of others that it must be right, and Hollow Earth globes were made, etc, etc. Why? Who knows. But it wasn't reflective of the knowledge and best practices of the day. It was a guy who wanted to become known for something, latched on to something that at the time at least wasn't completely irrational and then pushed it and pushed it and pushed it and gained a loyal following. It happens. People make stuff up...all the time.
