I think, thesunofjuda is right to some degree. However, he is completely unaware of how atheists think. They're  not trained to process, for example, an intuitive, vaguely presented, or metaphoric, information. They also consider it as an advantage in being correct and precise. However, by this they lose some possibilities in communication and understanding. This involves an untrust in subjective information and belief in an existence of objective information. Atheists prefer others to define how they will think for themselves. They use logics, just like most of people, but they overestimate its possibilites.

You can exchange the word supernatural for imaginary. That might enable you to see why it's a very logical place to make a division.

His argument is an inept tu quoque.

You're forgetting that most of the atheists here, and probably in general, were indoctrinated into various religions since childhood. What separates them from believers isn't that they "lack training" -- they have the same training as most of them, sometimes more -- but that they chose to scrutinize those beliefs by the same standards they do to determine the validity of every other proposition one is faced with.

Metaphors can be used to help a person understand a concept, but they don't bear on the validity of it. Too often, mystics and such simply use metaphors to obscure the absence of substance in their claims. Something is like something else, but the thing hasn't been demonstrated in the first place so it's not really like anything. If they had qualities, it wouldn't be so easy to abuse these concepts.

Do you advocate being incorrect, then? It seems like you're merely objecting to wonkery when it treads on your own difficult to defend conclusions.

There's also the possibility that the ideas being communicated are vague because they're non-sequiturs.

Not at all. Subjective information must be trusted on a daily basis, but it's not an effective way of gauging the more objective facts about reality. If you want to know the dimensions of an object, you bust out a tape measure rather than eyeball it, if you want to know with any accuracy. You can measure multiple times and build on the probability that you're correct in your measurements.

That's a sneaky little ad hominem. So you're a free thinker because you impose whatever non-sequiturs you like on a situation? That's not freedom, it's incoherence.

I think the possibilities of logic, versus incoherence, have been made abundantly clear. Incoherence might work if a person never had to make a conclusion about anything, ever. But they must, and they do, and this incoherence merely provides the person an indefensible position.

  I agree Brian37 .... like I said, Pantheism is "one small step" .....  

, yeah , what's with the hocus pocus shit people hang on too ......  why why why ?        WE are magic ? How silly indeed !  ...... hey Brian,  yeah,  save a pantheist  too !   { at least the P dogs are much friendlier than the X dogs }

    Thanks .....  really ..... and again friend  ..... 

, and I also love cats !  .....  

Meow , yeah , we are ONE ..... cat's are god too !    Yeah god ..... but it ain't magic .... wish it was ..... but we could pretend .....   

naaahh, fuck that pretending, I AM the real shit ...... I don't do make believe ..... I AM only the nitty gritty ...... 

Thanks Brian , Reality is enough for me .....          

They don't refuse because they are rude; they refuse because metaphors are nothing more than metaphors. Its power as a communication tool has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I can understand perfectly the meaning of the following expression: "The sun was a bauble in the trees". But this is a metaphor and only a metaphor. All that it does is demonstrate a subjective relationship between the sun and a bauble, namely the way they look when seen through the branches of a tree. But the metaphor is not both metaphorical AND literal; the sun is not both LIKE a bauble and EXACTLY a bauble at the same time.

This is not a "we refuse to see it your way" situation. This is a "you can't eat your cake and have it, too" situation.

Either something is metaphorical or it is not. Period.

No it didn't. If it perfectly described the mechanism of reincarnation then it would simply be a perfect description of the mechanism of reincarnation. Metaphors are by definition not exactly what they mean. They are inexact and indirect.

To use the same metaphor as before, I do not actually mean that the sun is a bauble in the trees. And when you first hear me say that the sun is a bauble in the trees, you know that this is not a true statement, so you are forced to ask yourself "what does he actually mean by that?" Only by comparing certain aspects of the sun and of baubles can you successfully determine what I mean by that expression. We like metaphors because they tickle the mind. They relate something we know to something else we know, establishing an interesting relationship we may not have considered before. But they are never exact. The expression "the sun was the sun" is an exact description of the sun. The expression "the sun was a bauble in the trees" is not at all exact. It is an indirect description of the sun through a completely unrelated intermediary.

So it was either a metaphor---an artistic and purposefully inexact expression---or it was not. You cannot have it both ways.

This is all that atheists deny theists. It's not that we don't understand metaphor, we just understand that metaphor is ONLY metaphor.

Yes, that does happen. But that's why there are peer reviews. Do you think a certain scientist is using bad logic about something? Write an article about it and submit it to a periodical. Scientists are not protected from questioning.

Right. Because metaphors are, by nature, not precise. They are abstractions and only abstractions. They are communication tools and only communication tools.

Not psychological. It's just the realization the metaphors are only metaphors.

It's true that we don't automatically trust the sensory information gathered by others because we are not plugged into the other person's senses. The only way we can know what they are thinking or feeling is if they somehow communicate it to us through language.

However, just because we know that everyone has experiences we cannot know until they communicate them, this does not mean that we must accept as truth anything a person tells us they have experienced. People are perfectly capable of lying, misunderstanding, or being misled.

Take optical illusions for example. There are illusions that can make you see movement when there is actually none. There are illusions that can make you see colors that are not actually there. There are illusions that can make you see entire objects that are not actually there. And there are even illusions (my favorite) where an object is moving right in plain sight in front of your eyes (or in some cases appearing and then disappearing), and yet it takes you nearly a minute of scrutinizing the thing before you can see that any change is happening at all.

A person might look at such an optical illusion and say "nothing is moving". This is his sensory experience, but I do not---and in this case I should not---take his word as the truth about reality. There was movement. He simply misperceived or failed to perceive it.

Similarly, it is beyond the scope of our senses to detect that objects are made of molecules and atoms or that our bodies are comprised of billions and billions of individual cells. We need tools to arrive at such discoveries.

What a person sense is not enough. They have every right to say that they experienced such-and-such, but the recipient of their claim has every right to examine their claim and make a judgment. Did they really experience such-and-such or do they simply think they did? Is this person lying to me? Has someone else tricked this person? What is actually going on here?

As I said before, freedom of thought does not mean that people get to believe whatever they want and no one is allowed to question it.

Refusing to let your beliefs be examined is NOT free thinking. It is dogmatic thinking.

Right. If something occurs that does not match with what you currently claim to be true of reality, then we need to investigate the matter and explain its cause. If we need to alter our understanding of reality, then we can do so, but only if it has been demonstrated that we have sufficient reason for doing so. If it could be demonstrated, for example, that telekinesis is possible, then we would definitely have to admit that telekinesis is a real ability that people can acquire or inherit. But until it is demonstrated that it is a real ability, we do not have to take the word of anyone who says, "I experienced telekinesis once". For all we know, the person could be stoned out of his mind.

As for objectivity being a collection of subjective information, you are inching your way toward the problem of induction, which has been addressed multiple times on this forum already, so I won't launch into another one of those discussions. They're around.
 

Logic is not something that can be "rated" and therefore it cannot be "overrated". Until there is something else that works just as well as logic that we could use just as well in its place, there is no such thing as logic being "overrated". That's like saying that the sun is overrated in photosynthesis.

Right. It is definitely possibly to be logical but to miss the point. I often give an example created by David Mills to show how an argument can be internally logical while being completely false. It goes as follows:

"Suppose that I am the owner of a cabbage patch. One day I go to the store, and when I come home I find that my cabbages have been cursed. I know that there are three witches that live on my street, and I know that the first witch and the second witch are out of town on vacation, so I must logically conclude that it is the third witch that has placed a curse on my cabbage patch."

Internally logical. Completely untrue.

As you said, there are many variables (or you might say "levels&quot in the story that need to have their truth values examined. The story is internally logical, but it only works if we accept that witches and spell-casting are true phenomena.

Witches and spell-casting are known to be works of fiction, so even though this account is internally logical, we must dismiss it as a lie on account of the fact that it has fictitious variables. If witches or spell-casting were later demonstrated to be real, we would obviously have to change our minds and re-examine the story, and perhaps find it to be true after all. But until witches and spell-casting cease to be works of fiction, this cabbage patch story will not cease to be a work of fiction either, despite its internal logic.

This is how science works as well. Our conclusions are based on what we know to be true based on the information we've collectively gathered over centuries of observation and experimentation (and the fact that we have advanced science so far testifies that its methods are not misguided). We can change our minds, certainly, if we have sufficient reason for doing so, and science has done this. We used to believe the Earth was the center of the universe, but we later changed our minds. This does not mean that science is indecisive or simply guessing about what is true. We reach conclusions using only the information we have. When new information is revealed, we must obviously re-examine and sometimes alter our conclusions, but it is downright insane to distrust science or logic simply because they sometimes come to the wrong conclusions. (When they do come to the wrong conclusions, it's invariably man' fault---not science or logic's fault. Much like computers, it's generally the user that is the problem.)

It is not a taboo subject in the least. People can talk about it all they want. It's only when they start claiming that it is a true phenomenon that the red flags will begin to fly.

You've seen proof that reincarnation is real? I am skeptical. You can believe reincarnation is true all you want, but if you want me to stop thinking you're a crazy person, you'll have to convince me. I'm not just going to take your word for it.

You know, to a certain extent, reincarnation is kind of sort of real. After all, our bodies are made of the food we eat, and the food we eat is made out of the food that it ate, which was made out of the food that it ate, etc. It is not at all impossible that some of the water in my eye was once pissed out of Marilyn Monroe. So we are made out of former beings. Lots of them.

But you seem to be under the impression that the same consciousness is continually reincarnating in new bodies.

I am skeptical. I believe any alleged proof you have for such a thing is subjective woo-woo magic talk. You can claim that you "saw into your past life" all that you want, but I absolutely do not have to take your word for it. It is not at all impossible that you are lying, delusional, misguided, fooled, or have been smoking way too much weed.

You can believe whatever you want, but you can't call me close-minded simply because I refuse to take your word for it.

Right. Which is how we science works. This is how our explanations of reality are verified. Something must be falsifiable and able to be tested. If it is not falsifiable or able to be tested, we must continue to be skeptical or to suspend judgment.

A claim along the lines of "I was a dolphin in my past life" is not falsifiable or testable. The person can claim to have experienced memories of their past life all they want, and they are perfectly allowed to believe it, but they cannot expect us to take their word for it. We cannot test such a thing, and so we must continue to be skeptical or to suspend judgment.

Even if multiple people say, "I experienced memories of my past life", this is not good enough to be accepted as a scientific fact. For one, this is not a reproduceable test. For two, if it were reproduceable, it should be able to be tested and found to be true by ANYONE. Not just a lot of people.

Like sunofjuda, you seem to be confusing demonstrable facts with personal opinions. Something you experienced has convinced you that reincarnation is true. Okay, go for it. Have fun with that.

But suppose that I said a personal experience has proven to me that I have had a telepathic conversation with an oak tree. I can believe that all I want, but I can't expect others to believe that telepathic communication with oak trees is a fact, because it is not reproducible, falsifiable, or testable by anyone. It is my own experience. It's like saying scientists are being closed-minded if they don't accept that I have knowledge of a color called "engwark" that they have never seen.

Of course they can claim that its bs if it is not a part of the knowledge they label "true". Until it is demonstrated that it is anything other than bs, it will continue to be a part of the knowledge they label "bs".

This is not closed-minded thinking. This is healthy thinking.

This is exactly what I was talking about.

ATHEISTS CAN PROCESS METAPHORS.

I don't think you are able to "process" that metaphors are ONLY METAPHORS.

And it wasn't that I couldn't "process it". It's that you were equating dogmatic thinking and non-dogmatic thinking in badness ("coldness" ).

You still have no explained how the two are similar in any way. You are simply having fun with words, and that was the issue I was taking.

I can understand your metaphor, but your metaphor points to a lie.

To me, it's like you're saying that racism and non-racism are two extremes that are equally cold.

No. No they are not. One is definitely bad and one is definitely not.

Wrong. Dogmatic thinking refuses to alter its conclusions. Science does not meet this description. Nice try, though.

The bit about the money was a nice embellishment to a misguided statement.

Scientists need to do science. To do science, they need money. To acquire money, they need to ask people for grants. That is just the way the system works. Sometimes people give them grants and the project turns out a negative result. This is no doubt a disappointment to those who provided the grant money, but the hypotheses that fail are just as important as the hypotheses that pass.

People also give a lot of money to Christian churches, which is a worse choice.

Hm. I want to respond to this, but I cannot decipher its language. Sorry.

Atheists are not united by a dogma because atheism does not actually mean anything. We are not supported by a common something; we are supported by a common lack of something. It would be like discussing people who have no interest in traveling to France. What can you say that these people have in common other than their lack of something? Grouping them together would be like herding cats.

Atheists are no different. So speaking of an army of like-minded atheists is probably just as misguided. You'll no doubt find many like-minded atheists here, but that's only because the people who do not think like the atheists on this website are obviously not coming to this website! =]

Also, you've probably met plenty of atheists that do not fit your militant description. They probably just didn't bother to point out to you that they were an atheist. Many atheists don't care enough to even bring it up! =]

I don't agree with your perceptions.

No, it is pretty much absolute. The inquisitors were absolutely dogmatic and they spread their ideas by forcing people to convert through the most terrible methods of torture mankind has ever invented. It actually reached the point where inventing new, more excruciating methods of torture was considered an art form, and some of the methods were indeed ingenious in cleverness but absolutely terrible in their cruelty.

Take for example the practice of strapping a man down to a table, filling a metal pot full of mice, turning it over upside down on his belly with the mice trapped underneath, and then heating the pot with hot irons until the mice became desperate to escape. You can probably deduce how such a thing would unfold.

Or there was the one where they would tie a person's hands behind their back and tie their ankles together. Then they would lower a hook from the ceiling and hang the person from the hook by their wrists and raise them to the ceiling with a bucket of sand hanging from their ankles, thereby painfully stretching their arms and putting tremendous strain on the joints. They would let the person hang like this for hours, and then, to punctuate the whole affair, they would suddenly release brake on the hook, letting the person fall freely toward earth, and then they would stop the chain suddenly, thereby popping the person's arms completely out of their sockets. The victim invariably died of shock.

This was all even more monstrous given the way they found new victims. A person was tortured in order to make them confess their blasphemy. Even if a person had not blasphemed, they would always confess under such extreme methods of torture. But it was not enough that they merely confess. They were always asked to give names of other who had "assisted" them in their blaspheming. Because of the extreme torture, names were always given. You can see how this quickly adds up to millions of innocent victims tortured and killed over a period of 700 years.

This is the kind of thing you are comparing atheists to?

It is absolute hyperbole in every sense of the word.

Well, I can only speak for myself really, but the thing is, here, it's not a gap. The universe isn't supposed insofar, by pantheists, to be God, it is, rather, comprehended that the universe, us and everything, is indeed the very entity which has been contemplated and described in all (or at least most all) theological endeavour. The universe is one entity and it is comprised of the virtue, power and elegance of the being in question. It is God, we are god and belonging to god and the promises of theological revelation apply to this existence which is vaster and more elaborate in its wonder than we have yet discovered or imagined. In Pantheism, there is no magical being in the sky or any otherwise distantly removed aspect of the same there is only this existence; we just don't know the half of it.

Not really. Most pantheists take a more basic approach to see the universe as a living dynamic connected entity with at least one viable spring of collective conscious activity.

The comparison between the consciousness of the universe and the consciousness of man is made between living brain cells and the universe.

But in any case, biologically dead matter and black deep space are very similar, they both serve the same very great purpose - dead bio cells in supporting the existence of live biological matter and empty regions in space in supporting the existence of dynamic ones.

 Sorry for that not being on topic, Arch. To your original post, good job is all I can say, from what I can tell sunofjuda needs to get his his rather large bombastic state of inner peace up off his smoking chair three days a week and get an higher education. 

  Eloise    you are wonderful.

Gosh, I AM so lucky to know ALL you RRS fans. Really a blessing, RRS is godly !     I can now die at least half smiling, all I will need now is morphine ..... Thanks so much ..... we are ONE !        

What the fuck is it lately with all the people running around calling themselves pantheists but shitting on atheists?

Panthiests are basically atheists that feel a "spiritual" experience from contemplating the universe.

It's not the pot calling the kettle black.  It's the pot calling the pot black.

He's bagging on himself and he's too stupid to notice.

BTW Arch, the line where you say "You're just having fun with words." is fucking awesome.  It made me laugh.

  All You folks rock, Eloise is so fun , oopps sorry Watcher , I goofed ......  

But I must add,  I AM god and until you know that , shame on you !     

RRS is L O V E       

If I understand this correctly, then I don't disagree that metaphors can be used as aids in understanding.

However, the problem that theology tends to have is that the metaphors are not used as aids; they are used to reconcile.

A true metaphor draws a relationship between two things that are already known, such as a sun and a bauble.

A supernatural/theological metaphor draws relationships between things that are known and things that are not known, thereby shortchanging the listener.

For example, when a biology professor uses the lock-picking metaphor to help understand natural selection, the lock-picking metaphor is not our means for understanding natural selection. We know natural selection is true by other means. We know that locks and the process of picking them are true things. We are drawing lines between two things we already know. What we are attempting to understand is how they are (superficially) similar.

With the sun and the bauble, we know that there is a sun, and we know that there are baubles. We are drawing a line between two things we already know; the goal is to understand how they are superficially similar.

So the metaphor equation goes like this:

X (known thing) is like Y (known thing) because Z (superficial relationship)

When you take something like "god" or "reincarnation" and attempt to explain through metaphor, you end up with a completely different equation.

We can compare it to Ray Comfort's painter/painting metaphor. "The world is like a painting", he says, "and god is the painter." This is offered as a metaphor that assists in understanding, but is it really? Not at all!. It's really an attempt at reconciliation.

He is attempting to reconcile an unknown thing with known things by comparing the unknown thing to known things, thereby muddying the waters and stacking the deck. The equation looks more like this:

G (unknown thing) is like Y (known thing) because Z (relationship, presupposed since G is presupposed).

Metaphors can be used as aids in understanding, but---as with Ray Comfort's painter/painting metaphor---let's not just claim that that's what they're doing. Let's make sure that's what they are really doing.

Is that a problem with science, or is that a problem with people?

It is a problem with people.

I don't know anything about it, but it wouldn't be impossible for certain kinds of research to become prohibited if they were ethically questionable.

If they really care enough to help, why not just help? Why require the people to surrender their heritage? That's arrogant and heartless.

It's not that I can't defend my lack of agreement; I'm just not at all interested in pursuing that jazz.

It IS absolute. There are plenty of authoritative, self-important figures you could compare a person to without invoking medieval inquisitors, but you are specifically invoking the medieval inquisitors. Their uniqueness has nothing to do with their authoritative self-righteousness. Their uniqueness has everything to do with their violence and irrationality.

I'd advise making a comparison to a figure with less extreme baggage.