Two atheists were talking ...
Posted on: May 8, 2009 - 9:11am
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Two atheists were talking ...
Suppose we have a very, very, very smart atheist. If this atheist were trying to explain something (fundamental to their shared atheism) to a much, much, much less smart atheist wouldn't the lesser of the two be required to accept based on faith the arguments of the genius? (Note: I'm using faith to mean belief with no evidence)
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Are you saying if Dawkins were a theist you would "school" him in a debate? Are you working your way through college or something?
I meant ability to understand. If someone has the ability to understand then I assume they can gather the needed knowledge to understand the arguments.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Can't see why you're bothering, Thomathy. The guy has as much intellectual honesty as he has ability to express himself coherently, namely none.
Of course his rather stupid conflation of the two distinct meanings implied by the word "faith" raises an interesting proposition. Given that a very stupid person has trouble comprehending almost anything, then it follows, using OrdinaryClay's specious reasoning, that the poor benighted fool has to take almost everything "on faith", which of course then makes very stupid people the most religious people in the world.
Out of the mouths of babes and fools ...
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
His grammar is ok. His punctuation is crap though, and his little "n" looks as conspicuously incongruous as his underpants.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
It is almost all the reasons why I will never move to the south in one image. Everything from the "house" to the flag to the guns to the man, socks, hat, glasses...well just choice of clothing period.
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
My bad I guess. When I read it I took it as a "thanks for the help captain obvious" kind of remark.
Therein lies the logical failure of your argument. Allow me to convey this with a slight modification to you statement.
Or... unicorns, faeries, leprechauns, dragons. Each of those have ancient texts that describe them as real worldly beings.
Does that help you see your argument in a new light?
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
That statement is really, really stupid.
It is based on lack of evidence. Not believing in the existence of a particular object or entity, especially one that is not manifestly evident, is NOT equivalent in any way to believing in something else.
Another demonstration of your intellectual confusion.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Believe me, I understand the non-evidence argument. As I have said many, many times in this thread. The reality is that we do not exist in a vacuum. It does not matter that at the end of the process you conclude it is the lack of evidence that solidifies your disbelief in God. You had to have had evidence presented to you that you then concluded was not sufficient. Each process of disbelief is separate. You can not conclude that the inadequacy of the evidence for proving Equus Unicornis is inadequate to prove God.
This whole atheism is not a belief meme is profoundly embedded in the atheist community despite it being wrong. I think it says a lot about our psychological needs.
OC (to atheist)
OC: Do you believe there is a red monster in your closet at night?
A: No....
OC: So you believe there are no red monsters in your closet at night... therefore you have a belief!
A: I honestly wouldn't even have thought about red monsters if you hadn't..
OC: SHHH! The point is you believe something about red monsters giving credit to the idea that you can not not believe in something regarding red monsters. This validates the existence of red monsters in your closet! Checkmate!
A: Well it really is just a default position to your claim, not so much a belief but a lack of willingness to believe based off of insufficient evidence.
OC: quit with your mumbo jumbo semantics! You have a belief and therefore yadda yadda yadda....
See how ridiculous you are? Someone posits a claim and you are forced to take a binary stance. I believe or I don't believe. Not believing is default and with proper evidence one would without qualm believe.
The thing that sucks about your god is that even if he did exist, he'd still be unworthy of praise. That's why Christian "evidence" is so skepticised over, people actually have a reason to not want to believe in your god.
Also I think less evidence would be required for me to believe in unicorns than God. Unicorns are pretty much horses (which do exist) with horns... seems like its possible. God is claimed to be so incredible I'd need MORE evidence to accept that claim.
You have a naive understanding of the human mind. You make grand statements based on your incomplete hindsight of humanity.
This is very often at the core. John 15:25
Ironic that your desire to ridicule strengthens my point. (you probably won't see how, but if you reread the OP you will hopefully understand)
I'm very interested in seeing the mountains of evidence you must have for not believing in unicorns, the big foot, the Loch Ness monster, and the fact that I have 3 heads. Clearly the fact that there's no actual evidence FOR these things can't be enough, you have to have evidence AGAINST them, right?
Are you saying that everyone holds belief in YOUR god without someone else positing the claim? It would have to be your specific god.
BTW I was merely suggesting your "you have a belief" claim was silly and unfounded.
OOOH scripture HOW FUN!
Funny, that the passage suggests it was necessary for people to hate jesus/god without cause (no free will eh?) in order to follow the "law" of Psalms 69:4
Funny, that if you look at the WHOLE book alone you'd find tons of reasons to dislike god (which I don't since he probably doesn't exist). Then you look at the world/universe around you, his supposed creation, and find many more reasons to dislike this so called perfect being.
Silly little thing quote mining is no?
I never said "Hey if someone of authority told me unicorns were real I'd believe in them" just that it would take less verifiable evidence for me to accept the claim than a claim of any god. I think you fail to realize that being agnostic about something is not a bad thing.
Though I would agree that when parents tell you something is trust, it is very hard to break away from your trust in them. I admit to believing in Santa Claus, if only for a little bit.
Funny how I didn't help your point other than your assertion that I did.
If you understand it, why do you continue to bring it up?
What are you driving at? What is your point?
I think the idea of faith says a lot more.
I'm starting to see how I got you mixed up with paisley.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
When did this happen? Dammit! I never got my free hug!
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
It's a shipping thing. I contact the supplier with my order and the [hugs] are shipped in 6-8 days. Problem is I've been receiving the goods post date (meaning my customers could get ecuddli), so I'm searching for a better source. Due to the issue I've had to resort to my older commodity. Surprisingly I've been making money so I'm considering sticking to this format. I apologize for the inconvenience!
Chalk ^ up to being bored.
I'd be willing to take that challenge. Provided it were a debate about religion. It's pretty easy to find the logical flaws in faith based arguments.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
And taht is absolutely the case with God. People often claim to have evidence for God's existence (scriptures, testimonials, sightings of the virgin mary in bread, etc.) And I do not feel this evidence is sufficient to conclude that God exists. With such an incredible claim, I would want real, falsifiable, scientific evidence; not just stories or ancient documents or shapes in bread.
Absolutley. However, both have sufficiently inadequate evidence to prove their existences, and in this fact they are very comparable.
Then you must also agree that it is also "profoundly embedded" in philosophy and logic. Atheism as a whole does not necessitate a belief. Implicit atheism does not necessitate a belief. Even explicit atheism does not necessitate a belief (unless, as you are implying, you consider the belief to be "I believe the evidence is insufficient," which is of course true.) Only strong atheism has a belief comparable to religious faith associated with it. Not all athests are strong atheists, and thus not all atheists have such a belief.
Yes, I believe the evidence for the existence of god to be insufficient to declare that he exists. I do not declare that he does not exist. He may; yet I simply do not believe there is enough evidence to make a decision either way. Furthermore, I believe the rational arguments for the existence of god are deeply flawed from my study of philosophy; and that some atheistic arguments provide some grounds to be very skeptical about his existence. I also hold a belief that faith is irrational; again from the arguments of philosophy. Furthermore, I believe that because faith is irrational, it is a "bad thing," and thus I would not have faith in a god, but only believe in its existence through reason.
It is an atheist gimmick to claim the evidence set is equivalent for unicorns and Christianity, for example. There is evidence presented to people for Christianity. It is then rejected by atheists.
Such as?
Psalms 69:4 is not law.
The Bible convicts, and some people dislike that. This is no secret.
Are you an agnostic or an atheist?
Because atheists don't understand it.
They are unrelated. Each claim stands or falls on its own.
As indicated by the compulsive denial of having any faith despite clear evidence to the contrary.
Truth is "agnostic atheist" is a weasel word of pure invention because atheists don't want to face the reality of their faith. It is an oxymoron. If you believe the evidence is inadequate you are an agnostic. If you reject the evidence then you disbelieve and are an atheist.
This is a non sequitur.
Inventing more weasel words does not make your point stringer. You are repeating yourself
I don't believe you are being ingenuous here. I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that you have never been presented with evidence for Christianity.
Sorry, I should have quoted the whole post there for that to make sense, so here:
So what I was really asking is how is the evidence for god more compelling than the evidence for unicorns. I've certainly never seen any evidence for miracles or anything like that, nor have I been presented with an argument that doesn't commit a logical fallacy. So tell me, exactly what piece of evidence makes god more likely to exist than unicorns?
Which evidence is more compelling is for each of us to decide. The volume of presented evidence is much larger for Christianity then unicorns. The kind of presented evidence is qualitatively very different for Christianity then unicorns. If you are an atheist you have rejected both (I assume). Proclaiming each set equivalent post facto based on the fact that you rejected both is an illogical and transparent rhetorical gimmick played by atheists.
The fact there's more crazy talk regarding god than unicorns doesn't make it any more true.
Zero evidence for god, zero evidence for unicorns. Seems equivalent to me. If there was some actual evidence for god I wouldn't be an atheist, especially considering an infinitely wise being should have no trouble convincing anyone of it's existance.
You still don't seem to understand. In the case of God you rejected more, and different kinds of, presented evidence then you did with unicorns. Like I said, just because you post facto consider them all inadequate does not change this fact.
Your lack of belief (in God) is in fact believing in your non belief( in the evidence). You positively believe that the evidence presented to you is not correct. Just because you can not grasp that does not mean it is not true. You also filled the void left by the lack of a God belief with other beliefs which in the end results in a world view.
Why do christians always think there is a void in people that don't believe in their gods?
Is it because you spend so much time thinking about appeasing them that you couldn't fathom...being free to make your own decisions and taking responsibility for them?
Or maybe it's "What will you do with those hours on that one day that are now free"?
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
I'm beginning to think there is a primal fear of not having something to worship in these individuals.
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
Ok, so I've spent more time dealing with claims of a god's existence than unicorns'. So what? That doesn't change their plausilibility, both are still just as unsupported by any evidence, so both claims are equal to me. If you believe things depending on how much people repeat them, I'm not surprised you're a christian. Just because more people have taken more time to make more shit up about a god still doesn't add any more credibility to the idea.
Your belief in the validity of your reasons for believing that your belief in the existence of God doesn't mean you actually do have a sound basis for your belief(s) either.
See I can play your silly word games too.
It is arguably meaningful to talk about 'belief in a belief', as Daniel Dennett does in 'Breaking the Spell', meaning that you believe that some specific belief, such as belief in God, is a good and justified thing that one should aspire to despite lingering doubts.
'Filling the void' is a blatantly presumptive use of words to imply that 'belief in God' is such a fundamentally important thing that not accepting it leaves a massive hole, but that is a post facto psychological truth, only really applying to people like yourself who have adopted the belief and made it such a major part of their world-view.
Even for those, unlike myself, who did believe in God and then found on further, deeper thought and investigation that it doesn't hold together under serious, honest scrutiny, where there may well be some sort of such void felt initially.
But for myself, there are just so many other aspects of my understanding and approach to the world, which have developed since my earliest awareness, that the fact is that 'belief in God' was simply not one of the possible 'beliefs' or assumptions about reality which I picked up, since it never made much sense to me in comparison to, and in the context of, all the the others.
My assumptions and beliefs about different aspects of reality developed to a significant extent in parallel, with constant comparison between relevant aspects of different strands of thought to continually refine and adjust them based on how well everything fitted together. I say this to emphasize how your talk about post facto assessment of the evidence just does not seem to apply. It seems to me more applicable to typical God beliefs, where I see blatant manipulation, ignoring, and twisting of evidence to justify an already adopted belief. Not saying it never happens outside that context, we are all human, but the tendency to do it to support a currently held position is explicitly recognized and highlighted when assessing or re-assessing a 'belief' - I would rather think of 'working assumptions' - and is a key part of my world-view, based on a generalization of the scientific method.
That nagging, guilty feeling that I may be avoiding paying attention to some evidence or information that 'threatens' my ideas is a sign that I do try to address, realizing that to not confront such evidence threatens the integrity of a deeper belief, or value, that of intellectual honesty.
So to characterize my current beliefs as 'filling the void' left by the absence of one particular belief is to give that belief a special status or importance that it simply does not warrant, IMHO. You could equally say that about any other commonly held belief that I do not happen to share.
I really do put it in a similar category to belief in fairies, demons, and to a slightly lesser degree, Santa Claus. Demons and spirits particularly, since they do seem to fill a similar 'void' in other cultures, especially in China, that 'God' does in Christianity.
But 'my belief in my non belief', is just a distracting and confusing way of referring to the simple fact that I judge the evidence for God to be grossly inadequate to the point of hardly qualifying even as hearsay 'evidence'. 'Belief' in the validity of my assessment of the evidence is a different category to belief in a God. Otherwise you can form an endless sequence of ever more convoluted statements like 'I believe in the correctness of my assessment of my reasons for accepting the validity of my belief that the evidence is inadequate" and so on.
The core of truth here is that different beliefs in what kinds of things should count as valid reasons to justify a particular position on some contentious topic, or even the elements that make up a 'world view', is at the heart of such endless debates such as we appear to have in this thread.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Semantics are important. It is a game to ignore semantics and replace them with bombast, as you often do, so as to avoid the simple truth. Some were convinced that their God beliefs were wrong. Others heard the arguments but never accepted them. In either case there was belief in the anti arguments. These are just as real as any other. The semantics have meaning. The resultant beliefs have real consequences in your life.
If I don't believe the evidence it's not that I believe I don't believe, it's simply the fact that the argument/evidence is inadequate and I don't believe it to be true. Not that I believe and I don't believe, I know I do not believe. Your just playing with words now. Your argument is if atheists have faith, which in your op doesn't present such a case, it presents a case of trust and the ability to comprehend an opinion and argument regarding a person's position in regards to the possible existance of god.
I never had a belief in god, I have no void to fill as such. The world view we have is not based on if god exists or not, but on the reality of our experiences and what we have learned. Some have learned to believe in a god, others simply do not believe in such said gods due to various reasons, mainly the lack of evidence, others don't even know what a god is.
With that said your OP relies not so much on faith but on trust and the ability to comprehend the argument at hand being used. I do not have to have faith in someone per se to understand their arguments or the evidence they present. I have to be able to comprehend their argument/evidence and then even if they are a person of authority, weather or not their claims are good enough for me to be believe they are true or not without me being able to test it myself as true or real, until such said time that I can test those claims.
But faith is what the theists have in regards to god, as there is NO evidence at all to back up the claims of god, on the contrary much of the claims about god have been over the last 2000 years, more depending on which religion your talking about, have been refuted in so many ways.
But in the end I do not need to believe in my non belief, I cannot do that, if you were able comprehend the mistake your making. Now what I can do is believe the arguments against god as true, I can believe in evidence, what I cannot do is not believe in lack of evidence nor believe in non belief. Your argument is a game of words really, and in the end your exchange the word trust and faith as if they were mutually interchangeable, which they are not. Atheists do no have faith in their beliefs, they have lack of evidence for god. Which makes it a non belief in god. That's it, nothing more nothing less.
You are just repeating what others have said. I guess you thought if you said it would somehow magically become true.
Well, OC, you haven't refuted it yet where your "atheists have faith too" argument has been shredded.
My wife tried the "you use faith all the time" argument on me using the light switch example - the one that says every time you flip a switch, you have faith that the light will come on.
I responded "No, that's expectation based on repeated trials. Faith would be knowing the light is out but flipping the switch anyway believing it will come on."
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
He can be both, it's not like they are mutually exclusive. One is a statement about belief, the other is a statement about knowledge.
Theism is belief in a god or gods.
Atheism is lack of belief in any gods.
Agnosticism is the rejection of claims to spiritual or mystical knowledge.
Most people here are probably agnostic atheists, or "weak atheists".
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
However you have yet to refute it, in otherwords your still playing word games, either you don't understand what faith means, and the difference between trust and comprehends that you presented in and faith which you are trying to make an argument for, so far your entire argument isn't about faith but trust and the ability to comprehend. It maybe repeating, but it's not like you actually made a case for atheists and faith yet.
OrdinaryClay, as you seem to have trouble understanding atheism I will repost this from the other thread here.
Atheism is the lack of belief in any god. It is not rejection of a god as existing, or the belief in no god.
This means that if you are not aware of the concept of a god, you are still an atheist. You have not rejected anything.
You assume everyone knows about at least one religion. This is not the case.
It is the same as someone who doesn't believe in flying purple monkeys. That is not a rejection of flying purple monkeys, they are not even aware someone believes in flying purple monkeys.
Now if someone came to spread the word of flying purple monkeys to that person, and the reply was "Prove it." followed by the person saying "No, you have to trust me."
Then that person said "You are crazy." That is the closest thing you will probably see here to a rejection of the concept of flying purple monkeys presented by the "purple monkeyist's" extraordinary claim, without providing any proof of it.
It is still not a rejection of flying purple monkeys however, it is only a rejection of the person's story with no proof.
Now if you say "There are no flying purple monkeys" then you are rejecting the idea of flying purple monkeys. But I don't see most atheists say "There is no god." I see most atheists rejecting a story told to them by people with no evidence, who are saying "trust me". There is a very clear difference.
You are making an assertion in your definition that all atheists are hard atheists, when in fact that is a small minority of atheists. To make that kind of assumption (that atheists are all hard atheists) would be drawing an incorrect conclusion of the atheist population, and would therefore make any conversation you have with an atheist difficult due to your preconcieved notions that atheists look at the world in a specific way, when in reality they only look at the world differently than you do because you decided to worship something.
Theism is why we can't have nice things.
I addressed this - see post #31.
Where you equated faith with trust in spite of the fact they're not equal?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Yet again, learn to read and comprehend, you actually might figure out your mistake. Your are still equating trust as faith in the OP, no where have you proven that atheists have faith at all.
Let me clarify this for you
Faith: belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust. At this point in the OP none of these apply.
Trust: assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something b: one in which confidence is placed
both are defined from merriam webster dictonary. Now the OP you are describing trust, which is the dumb atheist trusts that the smarter atheist is speaking the truth on the subject until they can verify/comprehend that it's true. Faith is nothing something atheists have, with the exception of maybe complete trust in somebody like a doctor, but again that's not the same as faith in which believers have in god.
How well put, OC. Let's see you start with your own obvious trangression here, your use of the words "faith" and "belief", especially as you seem aware that you have somehow addressed this issue already when the charge was levelled against you previously.
You did nothing of the sort
Here's how you do it. Both these expressions have various applications semantically, all of which can be replaced with readily understandable plain English alternatives. For reasons of clarity let's drop both "belief" and "faith" and just use the more semantically correct expressions.
For example, should I say that I believe you to be wrong to have a belief based on faith, what I am really saying is that I have a reasonable certainty based on what I know that you are wrong to have adopted as a fact an assertion without evidence. What I am not saying is that I blindly believe based on no evidence that you are wrong to have a certainty based on experience which is based on trust. See what I mean?
Now, you take any - and I mean all - of the expressions you have peppered this thread with and in which you have purposefully obfuscated your own meaning through use of these phrases with no semantic precision whatsoever, and rephrase them using more correct ones. After all, as you say, semantics are important. Otherwise you're just talking bullshit interpretable only by yourself, and that seems a strange thing to do on a discussion forum.
Well, outside of ones populated by the odd christian, that is.
Begin with:
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
*facepalm*
I am not saying they are related. I am saying there is just as much evidence for unicorns as there is for your god. Care to answer now?
Exactly what have I taken on faith?
More importantly, why is faith a desirable quality?
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
How much are cheap hugs? If I were to get one of the outdated free hugs what are the chances of getting ecuddli?
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
You haven't even given an example of belief without justification! Your example is an argument from authority.
Faith is belief without justification.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
Only in the sense of blind faith. I have complete faith, for example, in OrdinaryClay responding stupidly to just about any point made to him and I can cite a shitload of justification for my assuredness on that score.
It would help the discussion - and it would educate OrdinaryClay tremendously - if we all discontinue using expressions like "faith" and "belief" in a manner which presumes that he understands their meaning from the context in which we use them. That's ok for intellectually honest interlocutors with demonstrably more than three functioning brain cells. It doesn't work with thicks and is as unfair to them as their stupidity is irritable to us.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
No, you are still confused. I did not say trust was faith. I said trust is not evidence. So it can not be used to claim no faith. You may establish trust based on evidence, but trust is distinct from the evidence used to establish it. Oh on the contrary, atheists, have faith that there was no God required to create physics.
Read post #126 (and related posts).
Admitting one has it is just a matter of self honesty, which I consider a good thing. Others like to pretend they don't. I suppose for psychological comfort. If your self image requires you to pretend your mind is all powerful then admitting you have faith can be painful I suppose.