Carl Wieland, the creationist clown from Australia, wrote a bitter article denouncing atheists and scientists for refusing to give him a platform to yodel nonsense on, and one of the things he did was link to my my public refusal to debate him. Unfortunately, what that meant is that all of his Too-Stupid-To-Know-They’re-Stupid acolytes came charging over to declare that creationism was too scientific, evolutionism is a religion, scientists are afraid to debate their pet idiots, you’re all mean poopyheads who call us names, yadda yadda yadda. It’s turned into a regular storm of argument that has filled up the thread with over 1100 comments.
I’ve closed the thread and added an invitation to resume in this one, if they must.
One thing I’d like to see the creationists consider is a simple fact. When scientists make interpreting the totality of the evidence their priority, with even the believers among scientists regarding the natural world around them as part of their god’s message to human beings, they come to the conclusion that the book of Genesis is a myth or a non-literal parable of some sorts, because it does not line up at all with the physical evidence. The rocks speak out against the earth being less than ten thousand years old, and the molecules in our bodies all speak for billions of years of descent from a common ancestor. The only ‘evidence’ for a young earth is a very specific, and rather skewed, interpretation of one book written by a scattered conglomeration of non-scientific priests, accompanied by a lot of unfounded ‘revelations’ by seers, mystics, and obsessed numerologists (oh, and a related question to you creationists: how many of you are aware that many of the details of the creation myth that you regard as gospel truth have their source in the visions of the Seventh Day Adventist prophetess Ellen White and her agent, George MacReady Price?).
Now be honest. If you peel the Bible away from the argument, just pretend for a moment that it doesn’t exist, do you appreciate the fact that there is no independent evidence to support the story you draw from it? Think like a heathenish pagan who has no respect for biblical authority, and you’ll realize why your claims have no weight. What creationists are always trying to do is to cobble up some of that evidentiary support for their beliefs, while refusing to acknowledge that their entire claim rests on a presupposition that the bible is a valid source of prehistoric information.
If you did honestly try to separate your beliefs from your religion, you’re probably a bit dizzy and nauseous right now. Go ahead, go back to embracing your clumsy old book…but realize this. Here, you’re arguing with a group of people who not only disbelieve your crutch, but actively despise it as a source of lies. You can try to pretend that the source of your doubts about science are polonium halos and the Grand Canyon and missing transitional fossils, but we see right through you: we know the only thing propping up your absurd beliefs is the Bible.
And guess what? It’s just another cranky old book written by cranky old men who tried to replace their ignorance with a foolish certainty.
Brownian. Are you feeling ok? That was rather restrained for you.
I have a huge urge to hug Brownian right now.
I don’t think he was thinking at all. lol
Sven DiMilo wrote:
Indeed. He does love the No True Christian™ defence – whenever anyone cites examples of Christians being clueless about their belief system his argument is that he’s never met a Christian who didn’t know the bible from top to bottom and backwards.
Oh, and he loves to claim that all the findings in science are evidence for his god’s existence, despite this making precious little sense. Then again, when believe you’ve been given magic woo-glasses by a god then I guess you’ll believe anything.
notnotconfused blabbered:
The Bible is “God’s word”? That’s so adorable! Reminds me of being seven years old, sitting in Sunday school…
Poor Brownian. So shy about expressing himself. We’ll have to work on that…
Wait til you see this one
Heddle is actually pretty nice and reasonable in person. I enjoyed talking to him (we discussed science and politics–I don’t think religion came up at all).
That can perhaps be best described as:
*smack*
negentropyeater (#454)
Sounds like something’s changed or changing in the way your brain functions. (Damn you, Owlmirror, for getting there first!) Wouldn’t be at all odd in my book to interpret a change in your inhibitions, emotions and patterns of thinking as something mystical since there’s very little other context offered by our culture, and the alternatives, such as mental illness (which is probably technically wrong in your case), are generally stigmatized.
Paying attention to my brain is something I was taught to do as part of monitoring my emotions. Thanks to that, I have a decent, if completely informal (and not at all constant), awareness of how I think. I can exploit the disinhibition in the mode between sleep and waking to boost my creativity; I can catch myself unintentionally making up a rationalization to explain a random observation; I notice that my use of language in thought varies–sometimes I think almost entirely without words, and sometimes I compose my thoughts into fully grammatical English sentences. Periodically (earlier today, even), I experience mild disassociation and will feel like a back seat driver to my body which keeps acting like the “normal” me, following all the same social cues, using all the same words, even though “I” am not at the wheel. Most of all, I notice that the brain is strange and what we consider normal consciousness is an elaborate illusion.
So while I am crazy, I don’t think you are; I think your brain function is changing and your usual illusion is fraying a bit. And I think a lot of “spiritual” stuff (chanting, meditation, fasting, solitude) has been developed and retained precisely because it hacks the illusion. If you indulge in that sort of stuff, it’s like you’re poking even wider holes in the places your illusion is coming apart. I second Owlmirror in that you’d do well to see if you can find a cause, but whether you find one or not, don’t hesitate to play with your own head!
~*~*~*~*~*~
Rorschach (#486)
Maybe use this for your next poll:
Do you think stupidity is best fixed with:
a) a chainsaw
b) a hammer
c) a pitchfork
d) a hatchet
~*~*~*~*~*~
Brownian (#499)
He might be telling the truth there. Do we have any reason to suppose he’s a troll who believes what he says rather than one who says it with the specific intent of getting everyone riled up? I’m not asking that rhetorically, either. He smells like a phony to me, but I could always be wrong.
these two sentences are contriadictory. if you really HAD read the comments, you’d know that a lot of people here have already read the bible.
…eight, nine, ten. Raises Brownian’s glove…
Oh, I don’t doubt it. While I disagree with much of his reasoning, I like what heddle brings to discussions and he’s certainly far less odious (or ignorant) than the many of the other Christians who post here.
Some object more to the Calvinism he espouses than they do him as a person (just ask Patricia what she thinks of heddle), but that’s not how I feel – as far as I’m concerned the god of any Christian sect is a vile monster; it’s just a matter of scale.
bobocop blathered:
Why not? The Bible is God’s word after all, ain’t it? What if your God has a god-sized sense of humor, and is just fuckin’ with ya? Maybe the YECs are right, and everything we know about the age of the earth is an elaborate hoax so that your imaginary father figure can have a good laugh at everyone’s expense.
And frankly, I don’t think your God is gonna take too kindly to you calling him a charlatan and a fraud, His sense of humor only goes so far…
Other than holding what most of us here would consider pretty reprehensible beliefs, he’s pretty nice on here too.
Sorry about the lack of restraint above, but this dude can’t abide patent fakery. And I’m cranky because I’m trying to write an algorithm for random rounding in SAS for data confidentiality (where a number ending in 1 has an 80% chance of being rounded down to zero and an 10% chance of being rounded up to five, a number ending in 2 has a 60% chance of rounding down to zero and a 40% chance of being rounded up to five, and so on). Goddamn SAS.
I meant break off my post to think about the topic; I didn’t mean a break from the entire conversation itself.
At any rate, I’ve completed what I wanted to address, for now.
Hugs!!!!!!!!! (trolls annoys me too)
still not paying attention to professor.
same here, but with the distinct difference that I had to learn to monitor the vagrancies of my brain on my own*. I’ve had these sublime reactions negs is describing, as well (though, in my case they were prompted by nature rather than religious architecture), and it’s not only overwhelming, it feels like it could be addictive once you get past the first (“cleansing” so to speak) emotional outbursts.
—-
*which probably just means my crazy is smaller than your crazy; anyway, my method is decidedly not to be recommended, if only because the learning process was 15 more or less miserable years
pdferguson wrote:
Ah, but you have to remember that the Christian god knew all about this thing called genre, and when he was inspiring the bible, he made sure that some things were written in genres that indicate that people are to take the words literally – but he also threw in a few words here and there which ended up being written in genres that let people know that they’re only metaphorical.
Determining which is which, of course is easy nowadays – everything that makes the bible look like a collection of folk tales formed out of the imagination of middle-eastern tribespeople is written as a metaphor; everything that can be backed up by science, and/or reflects the current sociopolitical climate and attitudes of the individual Christian reading it, is written to be taken literally.
You want to know how clever that god was? He even managed to switch back and forth between genres within the verses themselves! That’s why it’s still okay to hate teh gays but it’s okay to do so while enjoying a fine lobster dinner while wearing clothes of mixed fibre after engaging in your favourite Sunday afternoon sport of picking up sticks.
It occurs to me that the respondents might have been thinking of the implicit inversion of meaning that correlates with a sarcastic/ironic tone.
==================
And I was surprised to see him even assert (in a thread from summer 2009) that he “doesn’t buy any of the God proofs”.
Although since he was contradicting himself a lot, it’s possible he got confused.
==================
Wow! That sounds almost exactly like some of the descriptions of temporal lobe epilepsy that I’ve seen/read.
However, I am not a neurologist. This is not a diagnosis.
This might provide more information as well:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrain.shtml
Also, Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran.
And this essay by Ramachandran.
WowbaggerOM #489 wrote:
I see it as Scylla and Charybdis: if you avoid one, you run into the other.
Christians who argue that their religious beliefs are not just reasonable, but well supported by empirical evidence and even science will accuse atheists of stubbornly refusing to acknowledge what ought to be plain to them. There’s an argument here — and it plays out just like arguments against pseudoscience. Both sides recognize the debate.
But Christians who agree that their religious beliefs are irrational, and that their faith is a matter of personal choice, have now shifted what they consider the most important belief in life into the area of personalities. They choose to believe because they have an affinity to the source of all Goodness and Love, and humbly seek the divine connection — and looks like the atheists don’t. There’s no debate. There’s no reasoning. You are either the kind of person who recognizes God, responds to His presence, and embraces the purpose of existence — or you aren’t. The atheist’s problem lies with the heart. Fortunately, it’s not their place to judge.
I’m not so sure this second sea monster is the nice one. I think I’d rather someone thought I was being stupid.
Really? You think there is geology that lines up with Genesis? There were Geologists contradicting that idea over a hundred years ago.
I also have a challenge: you read the Bible. Read Genesis, Deuteronomy, Matthiew, and Revelation especially, then spend five minutes thinking about it and tell me if you still think it was written by a deity. Then if you aren’t daunted by that challenge take a class in Geology or Biology at your local community college. If you manage all of that and learn something in the process, you might not look like such an asshat next time you come around here.
I suppose you think this is terribly witty, but it is actually kind of sad. The Flagellum would not have started as a motor but would have evolved as separate proteins that eventually came together in a synergistic fashion to produce the modern structure; probably through at least one less functioning (but still beneficial) intermediate. Physiological features that evolve independently can sometimes come together in ways that produce more than the sum of the original (still beneficial) parts. Such is the case with the flagellum, the eye, the immune system, and all the other silly examples Micheal Behe likes to drum up when he is milking your ignorance for a payday. The answer is that the flagellum didn’t always exist in its current form, but the proteins that make it up always conferred a benefit to the bacteria that carried those genes.
Now you: how does a creationist model account for the domestication of crops by artificial selection? If “Goddidit” how would your model suggest we improve our agricultural yields?
Since I’ve never been a Christian (or a religious believer of any kind) I’ve never been able to truly understand how someone who believes in god (or magic, or astrology or whatever) thinks – only hypothesise and extrapolate.
One of the reasons I like coming here is because it exposes me to how contemplative Christians think – this adjective is significant; while there are plenty of Christians around me the majority of them are like the majority of Christians worldwide – they don’t think any more about what makes them Christian than I think about what makes me Australian; i.e. it’s an accident of birth, not the result of any conscious decision on their part.
For me the hardest part of understanding how a Christian like Leigh thinks is that there is (as I see it) a fundamental problem with making the leap from believing in a god to believing in the specific god of the Christian religion. While my atheism applies to all gods; I have a specific dislike of Christianity, which I find flat-out illogical.
While I could accept a god who was somewhat coy about revealing him or herself, I couldn’t cope with one who isn’t logical.
I’m not so sure this second sea monster is the nice one. I think I’d rather someone thought I was being stupid.
I’ll take being stupid over being wantonly ignorant any day. I’ll take being stupid for a hundred, Alex!!
I don’t see this, at least not in Leigh’s statements. It’s not about personality; it’s about personal experience — which I think she acknowledges might very well be something that happened only inside her brain (perhaps a temporal lobe seizure?). And it is/was entirely contingent on circumstance: If she experienced God, it wasn’t because she had any particular “affinity for the source of all Goodness and Love”; it was that “the source of all Goodness and Love” reached out and contacted her. That’s not something that she even implicitly claims that she had any control over or natural ability for — at least as I read what she writes.
I still think she’s making logical errors in her religious beliefs, but since she’s not putting those beliefs above empirical reality, and acknowledges up-front that those beliefs may not be based on empirical reality… I could argue with her about parsimony and consistency, but if she’s aware of the inconsistency and failure of parsimony, I’m not sure what else I would have to say.
I was about to type a response to this, and then I realized that the sentence is ambiguous. Do you mean that Christianity specifically is flat-out illogical, or your specific dislike of Christianity as compared to other religions is flat-out illogical?
In some ways I prefer the fundie who thinks that the Bible is 100% empirically valid if you just have the right interpenetration. These people might be crazy and misguided, but at least they seem to think that the world view they choose should have some degree of truth to it. This indicates to me that they value the truth, but haven’t their heads around the idea that they could be misinformed by a perceived authority.
The other kind have already conceded that there is no merit to the Bible other than the fact that certain ideas within it happen to make them feel good; ergo, they don’t give a shit about reality as long as the lies have a pleasant flavor. I keep hearing that these are the good ones, since they usually don’t try to teach kids that fossils are actually Lincoln logs left around by Satan. To me it just seems like an unprincipled outlook.
Of course the fundies have a talent for being the most OBNOXIOUS people on earth, so there is that too…
My position is this: the failure of any and all revealed religion to provide compelling reasons to believe in any gods means that either they do (or once did) exist but don’t care whether or not we believe in them; or, alternatively, that they don’t exist at all and never have.
I live my life as if it were the latter, but I’m not going to be all that upset if I somehow find out it’s the former.
In terms of Christians trying to show that their beliefs are rational, I remind you of facilis who tried to argue that 2+2=4 is proof that Jesus died on the cross, for how else could 2+2 be prevented from being -328.57? And I also remind you of John Knight who argued that the problem of induction could only be resolved if there were someone to maintain the laws of physics, i.e. Jesus died on the cross for our continued accurate measurement of gravity.
Then there was Silver Fox who argued argumentum ad Dox Day, apparently that Dawkins made a claim about religion being child abuse not correlating with suicide rates means that God exists. And who could forget Vox Day himself, with his ultimate argument for god (or was it against atheism?) which he hadn’t bothered to write it down yet so he needed to have a radio debate with PZ. And someone (I can’t remember) had the fascination with Gödel’s Ontological Proof. And not to forget Randy Stimpsons’ teleological argument for the existience of a deistic God – evolution violates shannon entropy and it’s just biologists aren’t good mathematicians so they hadn’t worked it out yet.
And those are just the few big ones I can remember, gotbotters and creationists are just dime a dozen. Yes, I’ve already heard the Word and the Word ain’t that good. And no, your objections to evolution are not sufficient grounds to overturn the cornerstone of biology; I first you suggest you learn what evolution is before triumphanting too hard. And despite Plantinga’s status as a philosopher, his evolutionary argument against naturalism doesn’t really make the case against being a naturalist, beliefs can be tested by intelligent evolved agents as we are.
Holy fucking shit.
By George, I think you got it. Sophistry ad nauseum, all presented earnestly at our doorstep, so to speak. No wonder we get a bit cranky now and then…
Brain Hertz wrote:
The former: that Christianity is flat-out illogical. I can’t say with all certainly that other religions are or aren’t because I know next to bugger-all about them.
The ones I vaguely recall were quite a while back! Local search suggests it was Penrose who set them all off on that imaginary track a couple of years ago. Eg here and here.
Quack films are the sorts of places they get their nonsense if not more directly wound up and told to go forth by AiG, Chick tracts etc.
Thanks for the clarification. I’d certainly agree that Christianity is flat out illogical, but add that so is every other religion I’ve looked at for any length of time. I wouldn’t actually single out Christianity as especially illogical.
I suppose theoretically I could just keep looking at more religions in the hopes that eventually one of them will turn out to have a rational basis, but after the first few I start to sense a pattern…
I consider all religions to be illogical in the sense that they base themselves on deities who wants us to be worshipped and revered and so forth, but do very little to help us reach the conclusion that they do exist. Then again, I consider the very idea of a super-powerful being desiring worship to be illogical to being with.
I’d give far more credence to any religion that posited a miserable, evil, piece-of-shit monster than I do to any that paint their deity as an all-loving, all-powerful good guy. Despite the former making far more sense, no-one seems to base a religion around it – at least not anymore; the early Church made sure of that.
Of course, when worshipping a piece-of-shit monster god doesn’t make him any less likely to smite your pious ass than the non-believer down the road, what the hell’s the point anyway?
Owlmirror #525 wrote:
Oh, I wasn’t pointing to Leigh in particular, only addressing Wowbagger’s larger category of those Christians who admit that their faith has no rational basis, it’s a choice to believe. Actually, if I understand Leigh’s rationale correctly (haven’t read the whole thread), she’s claiming some sort of empirical private evidence — and admitting uncertainty in her interpretation — so the emphasis isn’t on just being the sort of person who can recognize God in those places where the hard-hearted blindly pass Him by.
Whenever faith is made into a great virtue of the heart, those without it are automatically diminished. They “don’t want to believe.” When the fundamentalist tells me that I just don’t want to believe that there is a God who created a heaven and hell, they do have a point. It’s not the underlying reason I’m an atheist, of course, but they’ve at least hit on something we can agree on. In fact, I’m rather proud that I am the sort of person who would rather not have most of humanity condemned to eternal torture (and more than a little suspicious of those who think this situation absolutely delightful.)
But the more Sweetness and Light and No-Bad-Consequences the God, the worse it is, to be the sort of person who “doesn’t want to believe.” What kind of monster wouldn’t want universal, eternal, bliss, bliss, bliss to be true? I almost prefer the cranks who have their mathematical proofs and fulfilled prophesies, to those who smile blandly and smugly agree that it’s all Faith.
The knave abideth.
He was a morpher, who called himself Peregrinus at that time.
But he did inspire the Owlmirror Ontological Proof of Omni-Pony-ness.
Granted the postulation that there exists an equality of desires with equines, it would logically follow that we would all have ponies.
(Not that the general idea was original to me, but then, the Ontological Argument wasn’t original to Gödel)
OK, I see. Yeah… that’s way syrupy-smug.
Still, for the “Sweetness and Light and No-Bad-Consequences” sort of God, it occurs to me that one might rebut them with a sort of reverse Pascal’s Wager:
If the believer is right, then there’s no harm in the long run in not having faith. After we all die, this nice fuzzy-puppy sort of God will welcome us “home” as prodigal children. Faith won’t be important anymore, because we’ll all know — and those who didn’t have faith in life will be just as welcome as those who did.
If the believer is wrong, though, then they’ve been fooling themselves. They’re spending their entire life fooling themselves, while you’ve been spending your entire life trying to not fool yourself.
They may not agree that not fooling yourself about God is a good thing… but if there’s no Bad Consequences to not believing, then how is it a bad thing?
It may be that under that sort of rhetorical stress, the sweetness and light of the God being argued for might slip — but that gets you back to a condemning sort of God, which contradicts their original premise, and knocks the smugness down a bit: They actually do believe out of fear, not because they’re “nice”.
Sastra wrote:
That isn’t, however, the way heddle and the Calvinists see it – they see it as neither a choice nor the result of a rational process; they claim to believe because their god changed them into believers. They’ve found a few verses that support this and that’s enough for them.
And that, to an extent, is fine with me; by that logic their god, if he exists, doesn’t want me to believe in him – and if he is, as they claim, just, he therefore can’t punish me for doing so.
It’s pretty safe to say that they are all illogical. My favorites, however, are deliberately so, as if they were designed to defeat our human spiritual gullibility, or at least to stop us inventing useless myths about how/why things are the way they are. Pity it didn’t work.
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
“And that, to an extent, is fine with me; by that logic their god, if he exists, doesn’t want me to believe in him – and if he is, as they claim, just, he therefore can’t punish me for doing so.”
I’m pretty sure Calvin considered him to be a jackass.
Folks, there is no need for anyone to defend me, though I appreciate your concern for my feelings.
Here’s the deal: I first came to Pharyngula from a link on the Beliefnet Origins of Life forum, where I was engaged in defending the ToE from the creationists there. Good times and very good people; small audience.
Pharyngula gets, what, a hundred thousand hits per day? Plus, PZ gets a large number of links from creationist sites. That makes this blog a prime battleground in the war against science.
I’m a foot soldier in the battle. My interest is, and always has been, in defending the integrity of science education. I don’t have the scientific background that many posters have. My utility, as I conceive it and such as it is, lies in the possibility that I can convince my fellow Christians that their religious beliefs need not preclude an understanding of and appreciation for science. At the very least, I hope to sow a seed of doubt in the minds of those lurkers who are starting to shake free of their indoctrination, and show them that the demonization of science they’ve heard is a lie.
I know that when I talk about my faith, I’m going to take some friendly fire; this is an atheist blog. I just don’t see that I’m much use if I don’t talk about it when an appropriate occasion arises.
It’s okay. I’m not mortally wounded.
I’ll be back a little later; Mr. Science and I are taking in the Chuck marathon on SciFi, as all good nerds should be doing.
“It’s pretty safe to say that they are all illogical. My favorites, however, are deliberately so, as if they were designed to defeat our human spiritual gullibility, or at least to stop us inventing useless myths about how/why things are the way they are. Pity it didn’t work. ”
Oh hay, I didn’t notice this.
Actually, I’m willing to say it worked out pretty well, but only because China and Japan are weird.
The common people blend together several belief systems. This may be why Japan is so hilariously flippant about Religion in general. What you’ll see from them doesn’t quite match the Theologians, or rather, their equivalents. From what I understand, what you’d see from a Taoist Priest or Zen Buddhist Monk would be varying amounts of professed faith in the other belief systems of the area, but very little attempt at applying those other belief systems. For instance, the Monk might profess a belief in Kami, but they’re not really going to figure into his koans or his thought process.
Of course, I could be wrong, as I’m just an interested amateur rather then say, an Eastern Studies major or whatnot.
Getting heddle onto the matter of evil per Calvinism was an interesting experience.
1) God is definitely all good.
2) The heart of humanity is naturally evil.
But God, being all good, could not have been the source of the evil in the human heart.
So where did the evil come from?
heddle says “I don’t know”, and refuses to discuss the matter any further.
You’re on track. Easter Religions are rather fluid. A Taoist can enter and worship in a Buddhist temple and vis versa. Of course there attempts to segregate worship, such as the arrival of Neo-Confucianism and Shintoism after the Meiji Restoration. However, it’s still the case that “faith” isn’t solid, and where a Taoist chant doesn’t cover what you want, you can always turn to Confucianism, Buddhism (which ever sect is fine, apparently), Mudang, Shinto, and so on. A professed “faith” is just whatever was convenient for you at the time. Southeast Asia is slightly different issue, since most of the native animism was absorbed into either Theravada Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or Catholicism.
*eyeroll
Okay, I’ve had way too much pasta and Zinfandel, but here goes, Netanyaupeter@454 or whatever your name is, they’re called emotions, and yes, we all have them. I cry at Hubble images, certain pieces of music and any story with love across time and space as the theme (STTNG Inner Light is a great example). Why? Who the fuck knows? But I don’t think that because there are emotions filling me with awe or sadness or deep love, that some god exists (though, in all fairness, I once did). With feelings of awe or reverence, don’t ask why, it just kills it. Just enjoy being a human. Now if you’re actually hearing voices, get to a neurologist pronto.
Sastra, your prose is absolutely silken, you must be a writer.
Actually, that was one rather irritating thing about heddle – he’d go on, at length, about what different parts of the bible meant and how it supported every conceivable aspect of his belief system without any shred of doubt; however, hit a hot-button topic like ‘whence evil?’ and all of a sudden he’d become the soul of humilty and insist that his god’s revelations were shrouded in mystery and far beyond the ken of a mere human like himself.
The last few posts are very interesting, but seem to confirm my belief that said epistemological challenges do less to (in my assumption) destroy superstition than to supplement a grab-bag belief buffet. Sure, it’s fun to observe, but it fails to deliver thoughtful, skeptical, fully developed human beings. I do give it credit, however, for obeying the laws of natural selection when it comes to belief systems, which no Western religion has done so far.
Pareidolius @ 550,
A well known commenter here, do make an effort at common courtesy will you.
I think it is blatantly obvious to anyone who can read that Neg was referring to more then an emotion like watching the end bit of “Titanic” when he experienced that.
Hearing voices/auditory hallucinations is a cardinal symptom of schizophrenia, which puts it in the realm of psychiatry, not neurology.
She’s not writing prose here, and I suspect she would be slightly offended at the term “silken”…:-)
Michelle B @ 433 — You have articulated, far better than I’ve yet managed to do, my relationship with my chosen set of religious metaphors. My principles are almost entirely humanist; my beliefs about ethical behavior are not derived from the Bible.
It’s the emotional content of the later description of God’s relationship to humanity that I find attractive, particularly the bald statement from the elderly apostle John, who just states that God is love . . . and that if we don’t love one another, we can’t be loving God.
I have found that I have become more loving, more patient, and more tolerant (or at least, more able to love people where they are, and not where I think they’re supposed to be, in their personal development). I have been surprised to find that I’m therefore more effective in introducing new ideas, and perhaps even in softening some of their more authoritarian/judgmental stances.
I speak here of my family, in which I’m the sole exemplar of a liberal and a liberal Christian, not of the Pharyngula community, though I hope that I have influenced some of our visitors.
Indeed. facilis was especially stupid, his proof that it was Christianity was the impossibility of the contrary (if all cars ain’t red, they must be blue), and when it was pointed out to him that his position was circular (a death kneel if ever there was one when arguing logic), his only response was “How can you say its circular if you cannot account for it being circular?”
Ended up getting banned for deciding to parody a fundamentalist and it was indistinguishable from his normal rhetoric.
Rorschach,
Sorry, but in my view Sastra’s comments can be iron fist in a silken glove; she is the 800-lb gorilla around here. No-one does it better.
Wowbagger,
Sounds like Gnosticism.
Leigh,
You’re Mollyworthy, even!
Another (Aussie) ex-Sevvie here.
One of the experiences that helped me escape the cognitive clutches of the church teaching was an address to a bunch of (nominally) SDA uni students by a couple of “creation scientists”. (Heck, it could have been Wieland or one of his cronies for all I know – it was a while back now and I didn’t bother remembering their names.)
One of them told us – amongst other things – that when a lecturer talked about (say) evolution (as opposed to the church’s version of the creation story) we should stand up and ask if they had a witness account of their version – because we did, in the Bible, so his must be wrong.
And he was rather surprised when some of us found ourselves standing up and telling him that was a rather stupid idea – and why :-)
Leigh,
Have you considered you might have equally done so without god-belief, through your own efforts alone, as you’ve grown older and wiser?
It’s not as if you have a control to judge by…
David Marjanović @152, quoting me:
I’m sorry, David; you’re never tl;dr for me, but I somehow overlooked the question (though I remember the rest of the post, and I assumed your later question was rhetorical).
He asks:
I didn’t ever find that wishing to believe God exists was worthwhile. After my mother’s death, I would like to have believed, and for a while I tried to persuade myself . . . but it was impossible.
But after I began to believe that God does exist — then, yes indeed, I looked for a religious community. And yes, I chose a belief system. Some I looked at and discarded; if some set of dogma did not accord with my ethical foundation, I chose not to believe it. I settled on Christianity, but as you may have noticed, I haven’t embraced a lot of the dogma and doctrinal baggage that many perhaps more-traditional Christians find no fault with. The doctrine of Hell, for example, is utterly pernicious, and poorly supported Biblically to boot. Not that it would matter to me if it were; I’d still reject it.
You may find my God rather pink and fluffy, completely silly, heretical, or merely the product of brain farts I’m too naive to properly evaluate. That’s okay by me; I like him a lot, and you’re doing fine without him, so I guess we’re each following our own path successfully.
Reminds me of the Law & Order episode from last night, bad trashy white girl kills cop, gets convicted, “finds god” in prison, gets sentenced to death, human rights groups protest coz she’s cute and “found god”, gets executed anyway and is fine and dandy with it coz jebus will look after her and lead her to a better place….
Your god sounds just like my Beck’s beer Leigh.
Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM @ 438:
I was wrong to have used the word evidence; you’re right, we should reserve it for its use in science and law. Say rather that I have personal experiences that are convincing to me, but that cannot be reproduced, some of which could perhaps be construed as coincidence or serendipity . . . and others which could, of course, be temporal lobe seizures. I do assert that I still seem to have my faculties, haven’t been deteriorating over a what is now a period of twenty years, and haven’t engaged in any aberrant behavior other than this unfortunate tendency towards mysticism.
Oh, no, even the Bible, flawed document though it is, doesn’t say that:
Hurlin,
I don’t see how a fundie who interprets the bible literally can indicate to you that he values the truth.
Sastra @ 521: Perhaps that second sea monster exists, but I am not he. The condition of your heart seems to me to be just fine, with or without God. There is nothing wrong with atheists; in fact, I find them to be people who think a lot about what it means to be ethical, who strive to uphold our (shared) humanist principles, who are working for a more just society, and who are passionate about rationality. These are good things that we should encourage in our society.
I wish more of my fellow Christians could emulate these qualities. There might well be fewer of us, but we wouldn’t be so dangerous.
Rorschach @ 491: Too bad I don’t believe in telepathy: you made an eerie hit on the raspberry ice cream. Actually, it’s raspberry ices I’m a fool for. Mr. Science brought in two different brands for my birthday. I was in heaven.
and @ 560, you said:
Odd, I like Beck’s, but I don’t remember it being pink and fluffy. Are you sure you’re not thinking of the raspberry ice cream?
Pareidolius,
like everyone, I’ve had many emotional reactions to various situations in my life. It was the unexpectdness of this particular situation and the strength of the emotion that surprised me.
I have visited many beautiful works of architecture before, many beautiful churches, but never felt compelled to kneel and pray and cry. This was a first (I’m 45 years old).
I didn’t hear any voices.
I didn’t conclude : God is pushing me to do this, as I have always considered the existence of Gods an unlikely possibility.
So I’m just trying to find a rational explanation, and I thank Owlmirror for having provided me with various directions to look into.
My comment was in reaction to Leigh’s comment. I understand where she is comming from, but I advise her to do the same, knowing that she seems to have a hightened susceptibility to mysticism, she should try to investigate further and challenge her interpretation of the various signs.
I think believing in God in such situations is easy, it’s searching for the truth that’s hard. But much more rewarding.
Negentropyeater @ 562:
It is entirely possible that something in your brain has become wired a little differently than it was before. If the symptoms begin to worry you, become more frequent and seem to represent an uncomfortable break with reality, perhaps you should seek medical help.
But your experience at the tomb of St. Francis is similar to some that I have had. Over time, you may come to see these experiences in religious terms. But you certainly need not; rational explanations are at hand, and you may find those more congruent with your overall belief system and with the way you choose to live your life.
The crying can be rather disconcerting; I know, because I do it too. The first Symphony of Science video brought me to tears repeatedly. Standing before the Great Buddha in Nara was a profound and solemn experience for me.
These experiences are yours to interpret. I have no desire to proselytize you, but if you should ever want to discuss them, you can reach me at leighwilliams at austin.rr.com.
Negentropyeaster, our last two posts crossed; mine was not in response to your # 565.
The invitation stands, however. Some very interesting work is being done in neurology, particularly in fMRIs, that probably bears on our situation.
Owlmirror, I like your idea of the reverse Pascal’s Wager very much.
If my fluffy pink God is what I believe him to be, you’ll be pleasantly surprised after death. And I’ll get to meet you face-to-face, which I will enjoy very much.
If he doesn’t exist, and I am self-deluded, then I’ll die. Being dead and finished, I will not care a bit.
If I am wrong in a different way, and God is not fluffy and pink, I’ll see you in Hell. We probably won’t like the climate, but the company will be good.
Dear prof Myers,
Seeing that you clearly come from an intellectually superior position, why did you have to resort to the tactics employed by a 13-year old when challenged by creationists? Surely you have evolved more than that. I was under the impression that you were some or other world leader (otherwise you wouldn’t be one of the main attractions at the Atheist Convention in Oz), yet you act like a pre-pubescent teen. Apologies for the snide nature of the following, but no wonder at age 52 you still haven’t received a full professorship.
Similar to a large portion of the commenters here, I strongly suspect that the only reason you call yourself an atheist is to tick off your parents. Why don’t you try a similar stunt (the finger picture) with a muslims? Come one! Be a man and put a picture of Mohammed eating pork while watching some naked women dance on your front page. Show some conviction for your position.
Then to all the atheists who say that theirs is not a faith/religion. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (despite what you may think, the actual authority on the English language), atheism is defined as “belief that there is no God”. Any word ending in -theism implies belief. Therefore atheism is your religion. Any argument to the contrary shows ignorance towards the English language.
To everyone harping on about peer-review and especially Malcolm (previous thread #415) who said “science is not subjective”. Ever heard of Climategate? If you try and publish something that goes against the current paradigm, no matter how good your scientific credentials/research/facts/whatever, it will be disregarded. Scientists have to defend their grants, as well as the political and religious ideologies associated with those grants.
Science has long since lost its objectivity.
Leigh Williams,
it seems we’re wired the same way :-)
So far, this hasn’t changed anything to my everyday life, nor my general worldview and my strong repulsion to anything religious. It doesn’t bother me in any way. I just find myself doing small things that I didn’t do before, like praying before I go to sleep, without actually believing that it has any effect. I just seem to do it as a kind of superstitious reflex.
@569: CJD is a bitch. You have my sympathy.
Modder,
Explain how Richard Lindzen gets some of this published then ?
The rest of your comment is more of the same, just a big pack of lies.
Modder,
Guess he was reduced to their level, so as to make it plain what he meant.
You don’t know what evolution is, do you? :)
Have you read the post?
Have you read any other posts on the site?
Have you read the comments to this post?
I thought not.
Do you always base your opinion on what you’re told, not on what you’ve seen? :)
And your evidence for this is what, exactly?
Are you even aware of what scientists do, i.e. what is the Scientific method?
Heh. TSTKYS!
Lying kook @ 569,
Not bad as an example of how to try to cram as many lies and fallacies into one statement as possible, but not the worst we’ve seen….
* Facepalm*
Dont tell me this guy is an aussie please…
John asks me in post 558:
I’d like to think I’d have mellowed some, but honestly, I don’t think I’d be who I am today.
Michelle B. said @ 433:
That may be the right explanation. I do believe I had spiritual help — those metaphors and constructs have meaning for me — but certainly being mindful was very important. Perhaps that alone was enough.
5 to 1 he is one, or at least an Ozresident :
Leigh,
That reply has all the hallmarks of an extemporaneous response — hence, I take it as “no”.
I take it then you don’t consider any other belief could have achieved what change you’ve experienced since picking a religion.
(PS Do Methodists say the Credo¹? I can’t see how you could do so honestly).
—
¹ as Catholics do.
(The Nicene Creed, basically).
Modder, my dear kook, if you hold a ridiculous position riddled with fallacies and contrary to everything known about the real world, you should expect to get ridiculed. QED, dear boy.
And if you think the so-called Climategate proves that AGW is wrong, you’ve just demonstrated all over again that you haven’t a clue about science and about how it’s done. In what conceivable way could a small group of researchers manipulate every climate scientist in the world and have the power to control what’s published? And for what possible purpose? How can anyone with enough functioning neurons to post on the internet possibly be so gullible as to swallow this absurd proposition?
You are aware that it was the Chinese who hacked those emails, are you not? Their goal was to derail the Copenhagen talks because if the Communist leadership doesn’t keep that economic engine going on the backs of coal-fired electricity plants, they’re going to face a revolution.
Re #569:
Way to fail at background research! See crackergate.
I’m sure there was one of those retards around here quite recently (ie ridiculously misunderstanding in that manner how the term “atheism” is actually constructed). Could it be the same one or have they gone forth and multiplied (at least meme-wise)? :-/
I’ve just got to express my fondness for Becks beer. Though I’ve only ever drank the “brewed under licence” stuff I can get in Australia. That’s still quite good, though I have a german becks sitting in my cupboard awaiting me to get an aussie brewed becks for a direct comparison.
On the flipside…
No, theism is not a suffix. Theism conveys a particular belief, atheism is the negation of that.
Take the word moral. Now amoral implies without morals, not moral of itself. For moral isn’t a suffix…
John, we say the Apostles’ Creed. I’m okay with it as a tradition, except the “resurrection of the body” part which I view as a holdover from Judaism. I like traditions, even if I think of some of elements as metaphorical. I like the liturgical calendar, too.
Oh, and specially for Modder, who seems to be too stupid to search the Oxford English Dictionary, here’s the concise version :
Please explain how atheism, the belief that there is no God (or better, the absence of belief in any God), matches the above.
You are aware that it was the Chinese who hacked those emails, are you not? – Leigh Williams
Do you have a source for this, Leigh? I hadn’t heard that even suggested before.
you must be a moron to quote a definition without even understanding what you are quoting. To say “-theism” is a suffix indicating a belief shows a profound ignorance towards the English language.
“Theism” is the root word, meaning “belief in god”, the “a-” prefix signifies negation, so atheism is “without belief in god” or alternatively, “belief in no god”.
knockgoats,
the dailymail came up with that story.
But it’s the dailymail, and they are very fond of baseless speculations. The evidence they present is very thin, to say the least.
sorry, here’s the working link
Spoken like someone who has never actually been awarded a grant.
Regarding atheism. So you have different theories of word formation. All fine and well. Just remember that even though theism can stand on its own (meaning the “belief in gods or a god, esp. a god supernaturally revealed to man” from the Oxford) it always implies some or other form of belief when combined with different prefixes. Therefore, whether you see it being used in conjunction with different prefixes or as a suffix (which is immaterial actually), it always refers to a belief. In terms of what the word means, go and consult the Oxford Dictionary (any version from Pocket through to full size). It will tell you the same thing. Atheism is a belief. Period. Unless you know better than the dictionary compilers, of course.
I suspect you actually mean agnostic. agnostic —n. person who believes that the existence of God is not provable. —adj. of agnosticism.
SEF, thanks for the link to crackergate. That was remarkably brave (said in a sarcastic voice). A whole rant and rave about catholics (long enough to make anyone doze off) and right at the end a blurry picture of a banana peel and a Quran thrown in for good measure. I am talking about something in your face like the finger picture. But I guess that is too much to hope for. He can do the math.
Correction Leigh. No chinese hackers in Climategate. Whistle-blower. Why don’t you read http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Monckton-Caught%20Green-Handed%20Climategate%20Scandal.pdf ?
It is written by a skeptic and slanted against AGW, that I will concede. But despite that, if what is contained in this article doesn’t make you sit up and wonder, then I don’t know what will. And yes, it is possible for a handful of people to exert that kind of influence. Anyway, what difference does it make whether it was a chinese hacker or a whistle-blower that brought the information to light? The information remains the same. Read that document (it is a bit long at 43 pages, but that shouldn’t be a problem for a highly educated scientist like yourself).
You say that I do not have a clue about science. Interesting, seeing that I work in the environmental field, responsible for the design of environmental solutions for new plants and to ensure that these new plants conform to the latest and greatest (IFC or local, whichever is stricter) environmental standards. This includes atmospheric dispertion modelling, which is model-based. Nothing like a good fudge factor to get the results you desire. The GIGO principle is in force.
Oh yes, I know about Salem’s Hypothesis. No need to bring it up.
Just because you fake your data to fit your desired result doesn’t mean that others do.
Modder,
compare what you wrote :
#569 : atheism is defined as “belief that there is no God”. Any word ending in -theism implies belief. Therefore atheism is your religion.
#588 : Atheism is a belief. Period.
See the problem ?
Hint: I underlined something to make it easier for you.
negentropyeater, I humbly withdraw the atheism =faith/religion comment. It should be substituted with atheism = faith. Humble apologies. I stand corrected.
In defence though: faith n. 1 complete trust or confidence. 2 firm, esp. religious, belief. 3 religion or creed (Christian faith). 4 loyalty, trustworthiness. [Latin fides]
By the way, I have the Pocket Oxford English Dictionary on my computer. I don’t even have to consult the internet. I have the actual application, copyright Oxford University Press.
If you’re in a humbly withdrawing mood, how about we continue with the next sentence:
I suppose you’re used to agreeing with the ignorant, though.
MikiZ, I don’t fake data. If the dispersion model shows a larger than expected footprint, we go back to the drawing board and look for better environmental solutions. If it becomes to expensive to build the new plant and conform to environmental requirements, then there is no project.
At present one of the projects that I work on (expected capex of just under $1b) is in limbo due to the much larger than expected cost of environmental compliance. This excludes and CCS solutions. We haven’t even looked at that yet. We must first see if we actually have a project.
Oh, Miki. Go and read the document that I have provided a link to above.
Josh, there is an old adage that says: those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. My master’s degree research was done with a grant. No idea where the money came from, but the university provided me with the funding. And my results differed from what was widely expected. Got some flak at a conference in August where I presented the results because I made the wrong people look good.
Rorschach and negentropyeater. I am not an Ozzie. Not even close. Never been there. Large time-zone difference as well. Why does it matter? Do you have a problem with Ozzies?
Nothing of smoking gun nature there. That proves your a less than truth teller, a troll trying to create doubt where there is no need for any.
As a working scientist for 30+ years, your science and use of science is weak/none-existent.
Yep, your posts are a good example of GIGO. Example, atheism is a religion. Utter garbage.
Modder,
Why don’t you read Monckton’s interview with Associated Press and see for yourself what kind of lying nutcase beyond parody he is.
As for Richard Lindzen’s publications.
Anything that he published before 1998 when Michael Mann’s hockey stick became gospel with the IPCC was still fairly easy. And he published lots before then.
Since then his articles have mellowed quite a bit, except when he published in economic or energy focused publications. Those are much easier to publish AGW articles in because their agenda allows for that.
Modder,
Still wrong.
I’m not the one who put these two sentences next to each other, in the same paragraph:
In the most generous interpretation it’s an unfortunate conjunction. In the most obvious one, an admission of fraud.
I looked at the pdf you linked. Any “paper” which uses the phrase “science hate-crime” is deeply deluded. If you’ve been the victim of a hate crime, you’ll know why.
I wish there were a market for betting on the veracity of Monckton’s public statements. I’d make a mint reflexively betting against him. He’s a pompous puppet for propagandists preying on the perplexible portion of the public.
I’ve also had direct correspondence with him on a semi-public mailing list where he clearly lied about things he did not understand.
Yawn, denialist is still an evidenceless denier. What an idjit. There is a reason we prefer the peer reviewed scientific literature for information. The chances for bald faced lies is much, much reduced compared to denialist rants…
If you think atheism is faith based off that definition of faith, then your ignorance is only outweighed by your smugness.
Modder,
read :
So your statement that papers that challenge the consensus view of AGW can’t get published is incorrect.
When they have some merit, they do get published. And, if necessary, they can get challenged afterwards. That’s how science works.
The problem is that there have been very, very few papers submitted for publication by scientists that go against the consensus view that have any merit at all.
Yes, mine is based on conformance with reality – what words mean in general usage. How about yours?
You’ll get yourself in a lot of trouble if you try to claim the word “atheism” implies “faith” in the sense that you use the latter word.
The word “atheism” quite happily encompasses “a current state of disbelief in theism that the disbeliever concedes might change were additional compelling evidence to arise”. This method of updating one’s assessments of the likelihood of some position being true based on the currently available evidence is pretty much what science does. It’s also pretty much the opposite of what religion does – i.e. profess to hold a belief to be true regardless of any evidence or lack of it (and consider it a virtue to do so). And *that* religious mode of belief is what most people think of when they hear the word “faith” – and hence why applying it to the atheistic position I described at the start of this paragraph is utterly wrong.
Leigh, the god of the Bible is not “pink and fluffy.” This isn’t a matter of dogma or doctrinal baggage.
NerdofRedhead, I come to a different conslusion than you and that makes my science weak/non-existent? Interesting! Of course, since you are old and a long time scientist you are infallible. My bad!
By the way, you appear to be a bit slow. I already retracted the atheism is your religion statement in #591. Atheism is your faith. The concepts of faith and religion often get intertwined as can be seen from the definition of faith in the Oxford.
I know you despise that statement, but it is true.
Yes, keep up, Nerd of Redhead, lest his galloping leave us in the dust. Oh, and you’re old! Ha, old! Old!!!! OLD! Maybe that’s why you’re also SLOW! Modder is YOUNG and FAST!
No, you are showing what an unintelligent liar and bullshitter you are. Atheism is disbelief in deities. Period, end of story. The fact that you behave like a creobot and come to a conclusion, then try to find evidence for the conclusion says all I need to know about your lack of scientific credentials. What a liar and bullshitter. Now is time to present your creobot ideas.
“NerdofRedhead, I come to a different conslusion than you and that makes my science weak/non-existent?”
No, you /fail to provide evidence/ and your science is weak. You’re an idiot. Do you understand what evidence is?
Yes, just like Sir Patrick Stewart’s hair colour is bald, or the reason there’s a complete absence of stamps from my house is that my hobby is not collecting them.
Could you be more wrong? I’m going to say you couldn’t, but I’m not going to be that surprised if you demonstrate otherwise.
@ Nerd #607:
Tiny (but significant) semantic nitpick:
Atheism is not necessarily the *disbelief* in deities (although it can include this), because disbelief (at least in some senses of the word)implies the active belief that deities do not exist. Atheism is the lack of belief in deities, a subtly different but philosophically distinct position. It’s the old weak/strong atheism thing…again! ;-)
Belief of lack =/= lack of belief. Etc ad extreme nauseum!
Louis
*wheezing old man voice*
Faith is used when evidence for something can’t be found. There is no evidence for deities. Ergo, disbelief is the parsimonious position, and is not based on belief (faith), but rather evidence. Still no real evidence presented, just delusions of evidence.
*shakes cane at Miki Z :)*
Now to breakfast and cleaning the snow off the driveway.
Even from the definition of faith you outlined above, atheism isn’t even close to being faith.
Please explain.
*Waits for a Godwin*
I always wonder why so many religious people seem to insist that Atheism is a religion, or a form of faith…
Honest answer: Because they can’t fathom any different thought process. See: Brit Hume saying ‘Tiger should be a Christian!’.
It’s true that there is such an adage. Like most old adages, however, it’s full of shit. A very large portion of the total amount of scientific research that gets done is done by people who are employed in teaching positions.
Modder:
Let me ask you something… what does “asexual” mean… then tell me why I’m asking you that.
Asshat.
Its because they care whether what they believe is true (whether or not it actually is). Unfortunately, it happens that their beliefs are FAR, FAR from true, which is what inspires all the bizarre mental gymnastics about “biblical order” or “we need Jesus so that 2+2 can equal 4”. They need to feel that they have proved their beliefs intellectually.
What the fundies don’t value is science. They tend to feel that truth is something dictated by the most powerful authority and to them science is just another authority alongside the bible (read God). Of course God has to be the most powerful authority, so anything that contradicts “the biblical truth” is obviously a trick, and you are an idiot for believing satan’s lies etc. etc.
So I guess what I’m saying is that a fundy is someone who values the truth, but has a totally closed mind, and can’t come to truth because he won’t consider new evidence.
On a personal note, I started my world view in a similar place; I knew the bible was literally true because people whom I trusted told me it was. When I was about 12 I started reading the bible because I wanted to understand what God wanted of me, and I got pretty freaked out given the level of coercion, weirdness, and inconsistency I found. I eventually turned to science, but initially I trusted it as an authority, and then later developed intellectually to the point where I could understand why I should trust science as the best method for obtaining information and drawing conclusions.
Rutee,
so does that mean they think nobody can be non religious ?
Or is it because they think deep inside that their faith is weak and get comfort from thinking that atheism is just another weak form of faith ?
I can understand that an atheist doesn’t like to be referred to as religious. Afterall, chances are if he’s atheist, he doesn’t like religions. But why would a religious person insist on calling atheism a religion, is it a pejorative term for him ?
Why does it seem to be important for so many of them ?
IT’S THE NULL FUCKING HYPOTHESIS
There go you basic science credentials
“pink and fluffy”?
HOORAY!!
Finally someone has offered some specifics about God. Now if you will just tell us where to point the spectroscope so we can test this hypothesis …
There go your basic science credentials
*mutter*
Fixed. Disbelieving means to withhold or reject belief. In other words, not accepting a claim as true. Believing a claim is false also falls under that definition, but that does not exclude the state of being undecided. Then again, I’m basing this off an American English dictionary. Yours could be different.
Why bother with Modder,
The theistic hack?
Whose reasoning’s odder
Than a bull on its back
And from watching him plodder
Through the usual cack:
This Godder is fodder
For Pharyngula’s pack.
“Rutee,
so does that mean they think nobody can be non religious ?”
Well, I can’t speak on all nuts without qualifications anyway, but the understanding I have of the evangelical loonies in Merika is indeed something similar to that. I’ve been following a reading of Left Behind that also annotates why these things are there. For instance, the One World Faith in that stupid series is because of an honest belief held by the jackasses who wrote it that nobody actually believes in their religion, unless they’re Real, True Christians. Everyone knows that Jesus Christ is the only REAL god, therefore nobody else can honestly, sincerely believe in anything that doesn’t follow him. Including Christians who aren’t REal, True Christians.
I don’t say that to specifically claim it’s what’s at work with Modder (Though his retraction of Athiesm as a Religion may be based on it), but as an example of a complete lack of understanding of others’ motives, of the worldviews of anyone not-you, that Evangelicals and other fundies appear to have.
609: Yes, just like Sir Patrick Stewart’s hair colour is bald, or the reason there’s a complete absence of stamps from my house is that my hobby is not collecting them.
Could you be more wrong?
Yes, he could, and you’re not nearly as right as you presume.
Traditionally, theism and atheism are seen as poles on a continuum where agnosticism occupies a middle ground. Thus theism encompasses those who believe in a god, atheism encompasses those who think no god exists and agnosticism encompasses those who take no position on the question of gods. In recent years, many atheists have sought to alter this traditional view. They want atheism defined as a mere lack of belief in any gods. Pursuant to such a rubric, anyone without a current god-belief –- like a Christian sleeping or thinking about something else, someone who is mentally ill, a baby, or even a rock -– is an atheist. Moreover, they want to say that agnosticism isn’t about belief at all, but relates to knowledge. Accordingly, a Christian who doesn’t claim certainty (who doesn’t claim to know — which should be all of us — is also an agnostic.
Let’s be clear that an argument as to the better definition of atheism is perfectly appropriate. But many atheists want to avoid that discussion altogether and presume that the argument is already decided and to accuse theists (usually Christians) of dishonesty for not having yielded to their favored definition. This thread provides evidence of such behavior.
As best as I can tell, current dictionaries are split over whether atheism is a mere lack of belief or whether atheism includes a specific denial. However, the more specific professional works, such as philosophical dictionaries and encyclopedia, all define atheism as something like “‘[a]theism’ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God.” (J.J.C. Smart in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
The OED defines atheism as “[d]isbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a God” and, to be clear, defines disbelief as “[t]he action or an act of disbelieving; mental rejection of a statement or assertion; positive unbelief.” Accord, Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (2nd Ed. 2001)(atheism is “the doctrine or belief that there is no God” {#1} and “disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings” {#2}, while disbelief is “the inability or refusal to believe or to accept something as true”). The Compact Oxford agrees (atheism is “the belief that God does not exist”). So does Merriam-Webster (atheism is “a disbelief in the existence of deity”; disbelief is “the act of disbelieving: mental rejection of something as untrue”). Moreover, no less an authority than Michael Martin (in Atheism: A Philosophical Justification) makes the same admission: “If you look up ‘atheism’ in the dictionary, you will probably find it defined as the belief that there is no God. Certainly many people understand atheism in this way. Yet many atheists do not, and …[Martin goes on to argue for his preferred definition].” Even the Skeptic’s Dictionary concedes the point: “Atheism is traditionally defined as disbelief in the existence of God. As such, atheism involves active rejection of belief in the existence of God.”
Some atheists wish to stress the point that some dictionaries include the passive definition of atheism. True enough. Activist atheist efforts have borne some fruit. Moreover, comprehensive dictionaries are more descriptive than prescriptive and tend to include all possible options. But concise dictionaries, designed to provide the most common and best definitions without all the baggage, go the other way. See, e.g., Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (atheism is “a disbelief in the existence of a deity” while disbelief is “the act of disbelieving”); The New Oxford American Dictionary (2nd Ed. 2005)(atheism is “the theory or belief that God doesn’t exist”); allwords.com; Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary; and the American Heritage Dictionary.
Note that in his famous “The Presumption of Atheism,” Antony Flew (ironic, no?) concedes that the new atheist view requires that atheism “be construed unusually. Whereas nowadays the usual meaning of ‘atheist’ in English is ’someone who asserts that there is no such being as God’, I want the word to be understood not positively but negatively.” The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd Edition 1999) addresses this very point. It provides that “atheism [is] the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense denotes merely not believing in God and is consistent with agnosticism. A stricter sense denotes a belief that there is no God; this use has become the standard one.”
Hurlin
I’d think anybody who believes something (type : the earth is X number of year old) thinks it’s the truth. Otherwise he wouldn’t believe it.
What does it mean “to value the truth” if what you believe in is evidently false ?
@ negentropyeater #614:
It’s because they (at least some of them*) secretly do know that faith is an inferior/bad thing and they want to try and pretend their betters are really down on their own level.
* This can be seen from other things they say. It’s similar to the way some of them want to have their own science because, deep down, they do know that science is the bestest thing ever. They want that science label (without going to the trouble of actually meriting it, of course) and they want to falsely force the faith/religion label onto the opposition (ie those who don’t deserve that demerit).
Oh, I didn’t answer the direct question. Yes, I do think they think you MUST rely utterly on faith in an authority, and any claim to, say, reality, or to an equally dogmatic stance not based on anything but blind faith, because evidence can’t enter into it. Why? Because they do.
@ MrFire #620:
Hmm… basic credentials but an acid test. Alkali won’t really have made it as a cool word until it has a similar colloquial use or phrase in some hot topic.
#626
“Just because somebody doesn’t understand the subtleties of a philosophical argument doesn’t mean they can’t go write a dictionary definition. And they do.”
–Matt Dillahunty
LOL!! An atheist authority?! You are too funny. You’ll find the word “authority” carries little weight here.
Of all the arguments from authority, the Argument from Webeter’s is the stupidest.
Pursuant to such a rubric, #62 is pretty damn stupid.
Modder,
Is my aleprechaunism (disbelief in leprechauns) a faith?
negentropyeater,
Having recently spent some time arguing with some fairly sophisticated Christians at the BioLogos blog, I think the reason for the bizarre “atheism is a faith” trope is the recognition among many such people (although I think Modder’s just parroting a debating point he doesn’t understand), that theism (and a fortiori Christianity) cannot supply rational arguments for its claims, and so must be accepted on non-rational grounds. It therefore becomes rhetorically necessary to maintain that atheism and naturalism are similarly dependent on a non-rationally motivated choice. However, this ignores the justification of atheism and naturalism as defeasible assumptions, made on the grounds of parsimony. As I’ve hinted to Modder above, my grounds for disbelief in gods in general (doctrinally orthodox Christianity is necessarily false, due to the doctrine of the hypostatic union) are exactly the same as my grounds for disbelief in leprechauns, and I’ll revise either disbelief if presented with good enough evidence or arguments. As part of the arguments mentioned, I specified numerous occurrences that would lead me to question and indeed abandon naturalism – and found one of them arguing that I would not have to abandon naturalism if – say – the Rapture took place or the stars suddenly rearranged themselves to spell out “I AM THAT I AM”!
The rhetorical strategy they have adopted does have the consequence that faith (in the sense of non-rational belief) is considered both a supreme good (when it’s Christian faith), and a weakness (when it’s atheist “faith”). It can be most amusing to watch as they switch back and forth between the two as occasion demands, without any apparent awareness.
note to robocop:
all you’ve written doesn’t make atheism a faith (which was Wowbagger’s and many others point).
Also note I didn’t correct Modder @590 for wiritng that atheism is a belief.
See also Louis’ comment @610
So what was the purpose of your comment ?
631: You’ll find the word “authority” carries little weight here.
Indeed, Martin could be in error as to what the favored/standard definition of atheism is. So could Flew. And the OED. And the Cambridge Dictionary. And the Stanford Encyclopedia. And the Skeptic’s Dictionary. And….
Laugh all you’d like, but unless and until you provide some actual evidence that they’re wrong, your laughter is more than a bit foolish.
634: So what was the purpose of your comment?
While I don’t argue that atheism is a faith, a common argument made as to why it isn’t is that atheism is devoid of belief — that it’s a mere lack of belief. That argument, at least as it relates to the favored/standard definition, is patently false.
Robocop #626.
Well, that was… long.
Bullshit. You may decide that’s what it provides because it lends you a platform from which you could launch that diatribe of yours. What a small part of this thread (which is in fact two threads) provides is a very brief debate with doofus modder that atheism is not faith.
Where in that screed of yours do you conclusively show otherwise?
@ 975robocop #626:
No, agnosticism is on a separate axis – of how well you can know something, not what that “knowledge” is (ie gods or no gods). Agnostics used to be people who believed that god(s) did exist but that it was impossible to know his/their nature.
So, agnostic atheist is the default position (encompassing both axes).
Modder @569, Ah yes, scratch a creationist and a climate denialist bleeds (not a bad thing, mind you).
Let’s look at your beloved “climategate” Modderfucker. A hacker broke into an email server at East Anglia University and stole well over a decades worth of email. A decade of email for a whole department–that’s a lot of email. But then, for some reason, they decided to release only 50 MB. Hmm, now why would that be. And what is more the emails released are isolated single emails divorced from their context and conversation. The released emails were specifically selected to make it appear as if there was something untoward going on. And yet, every independent review, including one by Associated Press, found no evidence of any serious wrongdoing. None. Pettiness? Sure. Injudicious language? Yup. Frustration with and disparagement of denialists? You betcha! But no manipulation of data or the peer review process, no questionable scientific behavior. Bupkis.
So what we have here is a situation where even given a release of an edited set of emails selected specifically to raise doubt, only the most jaundiced of eyes can find any suggestion of wrongdoing.
And what is more, as Leigh and others have pointed out–there’s absolutely no effect on the mountains of evidence that tell us we are irreversibly altering the climate of the only known habitable planet!
So Modder, I’m afraid you will have to find some explanation of the utter failure of anti-science types like you to have any impact in science. One could posit lack of intelligence, but I suspect that not all creationist/denialists are as dumb as you are. No, I figure that the utter ineffectiveness of creationists in biology/geology and of denialists in climate science arises because you don’t have anything constructive to add. Your refusal to examine evidence critically leads you to reject critical ideas for understanding the phenomena under study.
What is more, since science is about evidence, and you guys refuse to acknowledge evidence, and because none of you have any authority because of your woeful failure to contribute anything useful to the discussion, any “debate” between scientists and anti-science types will inevitably degenerate into name-calling and character assassination.
So, PZ is actually being nice by declining yall’s invitation to debate. It saves him the trouble and you the embarassment of having him tell you to fuck off in person. Have a nice life.
Tired semantic sophistry games. I don’t know where you’re going with this. We’re not at odds with dictionaries here. I don’t ‘believe’ in the absence of gods in the same way that theists ‘believe’ in gods. I ‘believe’ in the absence of gods the same way I ‘believe’ in gravity. No article of faith there, no trusting in things unseen; just an induction based upon the information I have before me. And if I had no information to process, if the hypothesis had never been presented to me, I would similarly have no belief in gods. You say so as much yourself @626 in your ridiculous attempt at some kind of reductio ad absurdum:
Robocop,
OK, I am an agnostic, so I don’t have a dog in this fight. However, I would suggest that atheism can run over a broad spectrum. To see this, it may help to look at the issue from a Bayesian point of view. Certainly, we can all agree that the question of the existence or nonexistence of any particular deity cannot be settled with empirical evidence.
One could be an atheist by simply asserting he believed there is no god. He would in effect be assigning a probability of zero to the existence of said deity. If this were the case, no amount of evidence would convince him. He would find some other way to explain it. That is a faith.
It is quite another thing to simply say that deities are one of many things for which we have zero evidence. And why should one have to take a position on something for which there is simply no evidence? Why not simply “not believe” in the deity. In this case, one doesn’t even assign a prior probability to the existence of said deity. That is not a “belief” or a “faith”, and it certainly is not a religion. It is merely a recognition that even Maximum Entropy won’t allow you to pick out a Prior for that one–and that’s why Pascal’s wager is bunk.
My wager is that most of the atheists here would fall into the latter category–their a-the-ism is the same as Knockgoats a-leprechaun-ism.
It means you are in denial.
My initial point was related to the difference between people who earnestly want to believe that the Bible is true (probably overgeneralized as “fundy”), and people who will try to tell you that believing is useful because it makes them feel good. Both of these types are in denial. It seems to me that the former kind is more in denial, because they don’t like the idea of entertaining “useful” falsehoods.
I also don’t like the idea of entertaining useful falsehoods. I would tell you that’s because I value the truth, but I dropped the Bible when it started to look like a book of falsehood, so your pointed questions about what it actually means to value the truth are valid.
What I am getting at is that a lot of the fundies seem distinctly more uncomfortable with the idea that their holy book might be a bunch of crap, than a lot of the “mainline Christians”, who are always babbling about how “useful” it is and how it “makes you a better person” to believe the stuff. I’ll drop any claims about valuing truth since I’m not here to lawyer for Christians of any stripe.
BTW, its “Hurin” not “Hurlin”. Its a Tolkien reference.
640: Tired semantic sophistry games. I don’t know where you’re going with this.
I’m more inclined to think it’s aspiring to precision and accuracy rather than sophistry. Does atheism include a denial or is it entirely passive? The traditional view is that a denial is required. Many atheists today want a broader definition. Possible reasons include a simple belief that it’s the better definition, a desire to inflate numbers, an effort to avoid a proof burden, or some combination thereof. There may be others I’m not thinking of. As for where I’m going with this, this spat is a pet peeve of mine. I also find the irony delicious that there are so many dogmatic assertions about what the real definition of atheism is that are so ignorant of the actual evidence. These are often made — not surprisingly — by those who proclaim the strongest possible commitment to evidence.
robocrap:
I don’t think you understand why I was laughing.
Certainly, we can all agree that the question of the existence or nonexistence of any particular deity cannot be settled with empirical evidence. – a_ray_in_dilbert_space [emphasis added]
No we can’t! I specifically stated that it is my atheism with respect to gods in general that parallels my aleprechaunism. The existence of evil is extremely strong evidence against the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent god; conversely the existence of good is extremely strong evidence against the existence of an omnipotent and malevolent one. Many gods have specific, testable claims made for them, so their non-existence at least can be established empirically. However, there can by definition be no empirical evidence against the existence of an omnipotent and infinitely shy god, whose purpose is to conceal its existence.
“I also find the irony delicious that there are so many dogmatic assertions about what the real definition of atheism is that are so ignorant of the actual evidence”
You’re really going out of your way to look for proof of hypocrisy, aren’t you?
There’s no evidence for or against a definition of a word. Words are human constructs. Do you not understand the difference between seeking evidence of objective reality, which goes on whether or not we find that evidence, and changing the definition of words, which only mean what we as humans say they mean?
@ 975robocop: First, I am going to call you out on quote-mining. You say:
What it really says is this:
(emphasis added)
Second, if you are so hung up on the original use, technically everyone is atheist because in the original use atheist referred to anyone who denied the existence of the pagan gods. So Christians are atheists, and were commonly referred to as such initially (or the Greek or Latin version of the word). So your argument from the original use of the word is pretty silly.
If (theoretically) a person is raised with no knowledge whatsoever of god and no concept of religion, is that person an atheist? Is active denial required in this instance?
641: I am an agnostic, so I don’t have a dog in this fight.
I don’t either, particularly because I am generally sympathetic to the idea that adherents of a particular viewpoint ought to be able to define what it is and what it means (it’s off-topic, but I react strongly to claims made by atheists as to what faith really is, in part at least, for this very reason). I tried to be careful to emphasize what the favored/standard definition is rather than make a claim as to what the better definition is. I also think your Bayesian continuum idea has merit (though I confess to a far less than good understanding of Bayesian statistics — I found Unwin’s The Probability of God fairly interesting, however).
647: First, I am going to call you out on quote-mining.
Like Martin, the Skeptic’s Dictionary has a preferred definition which doesn’t comport with the standard definition. Since I make no claim as to what definition <1>ought to be used, it wasn’t quote-mining to omit it.
[I]f you are so hung up on the original use….
I’m indifferent to original use and am well aware of why Socrates was put to death. My point relates to the standard/favored definition. So your argument based upon the original use of the word is pretty silly.
648: If (theoretically) a person is raised with no knowledge whatsoever of god and no concept of religion, is that person an atheist?
By the standard definition, no. Similarly, babies aren’t atheists and I, while watching the Chargers and not considering these matters at all, don’t (magically?) morph from Christian to atheist.
As for where I’m going with this, this spat is a pet peeve of mine. – robocrap
*yawn*
Yes, robocrap, we’ve noticed that you have the kind of petty, limited mentality that believes debates about the meaning of words are important. Most words (like “atheist”), have a range of related meanings, and what is important is not to use words outside this range (because that is misleading), and to be willing to distinguish within this range where necessary, for clarity. For most purposes, it doesn’t matter in the least whether you define atheism as “lack of belief in gods” or “believe that there are no gods”: both states of belief can be expected to have much the same effects on behaviour.
Yeah but this argument can’t be settled with a dictionary. As Rutee points out, it’s a word, not an arbiter of reality.
Ok. I do not possess a belief in gods, and will not entertain or muse upon the notion that there are, until convincing evidence comes along. How would you classify me? A Schrodinger’s theist? I don’t know if you’re trying to say “There’s no such thing as a real atheist” here, but if you are, what’s the point? And if you’re not, what are you trying to say?
Would you have a problem with this in of itself?
That’s not the atheist dogma as I understand it, but I’ll pay a visit to atheist HQ during my teabreak and get back to you.
No more burden to prove there is a god than there is to prove that there are no leprechauns, as Knockgoats pointed out.
robocop –
the argument that started this whole debate was idiot modder asserting that atheism = faith.
You have come in and decided to change the facet of the discussion into a semantic quibble over definition, for reasons only you know…
We get it, and we’ve heard it from you before… except that there was no need for your rant here.
Atheism is not faith, that was the argument and you are not arguing against that position (as far as I can tell)… so wtf??
Just move on already.
I found Unwin’s The Probability of God fairly interesting, however – robocrap
You will persist in providing further evidence of your idiocy, won’t you?
Amen Brother.
:-D
However, I’m not surprised at all. The idea is widespread over here that a god that could be proved would be a rather miserable being – puny enough to be grasped by the puny minds of Puny Humans™, as opposed to infinite, omnimax, and ineffable. In fact, there are teachers of Catholic religion that hold to it.
But no, Plantinga goes on: how can you test anything without trusting your imperfect senses and your monkey brain unless God guarantees your perceptions and thoughts are reliable?
That’s because Plantinga doesn’t know about evolutionary epistemology – the idea that those whose senses and reasoning faculties were too unreliable have all already died out because reality killed them. “Status as a philosopher” my ass.
Fuck the pseudoproblem of induction. Why do I think the sun will rise tomorrow? Not because I induce it from previous observations – I don’t. Instead, I deduce it from the laws of physics (gravity, conservation of impulse, etc. etc. etc.) and the fact that if anything planet-sized were to come along before tomorrow morning and mess with the Earth’s rotation and/or orbit, we’d already have detected it.
You mean he loved Big Brother and believed everyone should?
Strange that he doesn’t take it one step further. After all, God could just create evil ex nihilo, as Isaiah 45:1–7 says:
Of course that would raise the question “why does God create evil?”, and heddle would again have to retreat to ineffability.
…though… most of us have emotions that aren’t that easy to trigger that far. Or at least not the same ones. Crying? At a Hubble image? I just sit and stare and stare and stare, trying to discover more and more in the detailed picture…
But what makes you think he’s likable? What makes you think he’s “pink and fluffy”? What makes you think you’ve understood him that far? Where do you take that knowledge from?
That’s what I don’t get. I don’t understand why you think the belief system you (and I) like best is the most likely* one to be true.
Sure, I don’t need to understand it, as you demonstrate beautifully in comment 568. But I’m a scientist. I want to understand it anyway. :-)
* Pun intended.
You are following a path. I’m not. <broad grin> Indeed, I have yet to see evidence there is a path in the first place!
That word… it doesn’t mean what you think it means.
:-D
Dude, how many full professorships in development biology did you believe there are in the world?
FAIL.
The OED is a descriptive dictionary, not a prescriptive one. It records usage instead of making it up and ordering people to imitate it.
Random fact: Did you know the OED is a historical dictionary, which means that the first sense given for any word is the one that is attested first, no matter if it even survives at all?
Where I come from, Catholics recite the Apostolic Creed in Sunday mass, and the very lengthy Nicene one (which basically alludes to every single heresy that had occurred till then) only at Easter. Oh, and, “of the body” doesn’t occur in the Apostolic one at least in German.
You don’t even get the meaning of the word theory right. A theory is something bigger!
Concerning Climategategate (the scandalous quote-mining of hacked e-mails), it has been discussed all over ScienceBlogs (not just this one blog) throughout December. Go and read.
And? As long as you managed to defend your results, I don’t see a problem.
:-D :-D :-D
Day saved. :-)
And indeed, agnostic believers exist. They’re called fideists.
Me @652:
Ach, now that line means something.
651: Most words (like “atheist”), have a range of related meanings, and what is important is not to use words outside this range (because that is misleading), and to be willing to distinguish within this range where necessary, for clarity.
Modder was challenged based upon a non-standard and disfavored use of a word. Since that challenge doesn’t follow using the standard/favored definition, the claim was and remains highly misleading, even though (in my view) a refutation is acheivable on other grounds.
652: As Rutee points out, it’s a word, not an arbiter of reality.
I’m not as sure Humpty Dumpty was right as you seem to be.
Oh for gibbering hairy fuck’s sake:
Words, people, are not magical. Their definitions depend on context and can be (shock, horror, quick fetch the fainting couch and smelling salts) altered by the user.
It’s trivially obvious that if a user of a word wishes to be understood by others then they had either a) better use that word in a manner, and with a definition, that is commonly recognised or that they can refer to, or b) define the word they are using very clearly and unambiguously.
Read the philosophy surrounding and about atheism, theism, deism etc etc etc and you will find the word “atheism” used in both the sense of “lack of belief” and “belief of lack”. In the sense of “lack of belief” it’s (again) trivially obvious that babies are atheists, they lack a belief in a deity. Mind you babies lack anything other than an appreciation of fodder, faeces and immediate family! Moving the line from “god: general” to “god: specific”, it’s trivially obvious (again) that christians (or jews, sikhs, hindus, muslims etc etc etc) are “atheist” with regards to, say, Thor, i.e. they lack a belief in Thor (they may even actively believe in a lack of Thor).
But so what? This isn’t some atheist inclusiveness, this is a simple recognition of a specific state. This fact doesn’t swell the ranks of atheists, it is merely a very simple refutation of the (oft heard) claim by certain theists that babies are members of a religion from birth or that atheists are somehow a breed apart. Someone ignorant of a specific religion’s deity is obviously an atheist with respect to that deity. It is hardly the same species of “atheism” as that of an informed adult who has considered the available evidence and philosophy and come to a conclusion either that god(s) do(es) not exist or that they do not believe in god(s). Getting one’s panties in a bunch about this is nonsensical simply because if *this* is where the debate is, then the debate, such as it is, is epically fucking stupid.
Luckily, the atheism/theism debate is not tangled up in trading definitions of words or attempts to appeal to common prejudice. It’s rooted in the much more satisfying areas of epistemology and formal logic.
{takes a big drink}
Sorry, but the asinine word games of the perpetually benighted annoy the living piss out of me. And yes, I know that that and many other things make me a bad person! ;-)
Louis
Modder was challenged based upon a non-standard and disfavored use of a word. – robocrap
Where? I may have missed it, but I don’t see a challenge to Modder that depended on the “no believe in gods” sense of atheism.
BTW, it is highly “non-standard” to use either “religion” or “faith” in a sense that includes atheism, however defined – indeed, it is simply a currently fashionable Christian rhetorical device. How odd that that did not evoke your wrath.
“652: As Rutee points out, it’s a word, not an arbiter of reality.
I’m not as sure Humpty Dumpty was right as you seem to be.”
You’re going to argue that we as humans created words and chose their definitions? That their definitions change with time, and as culture changes (Example: Negro. Racial Slur in Merika, absolutely bog standard word for the color Black in the Spanish-speaking world)?
Louis (#659), you make an excellent point but for one major problem. If you visit a predominantly atheist discussion board, in my experience if someone even suggests the possibility that atheism includes a denial, the hordes will descend not to claim that it’s a bad suggestion. Instead, they will suggest that it’s a demonstrably false and pernicious suggestion. A representative example of a dogmatic claim that atheism doesn’t include a denial can be seen here (with related links).
Modder, in what version of English is it possible that “without belief” means the same as “with belief”? If you are without something, how can you be said to have that something?
robocop,
as was already pointed out, agnosticism is not the wishy-washy middle ground between theism and atheism. like light and darkness, theism and atheism are not two competing belief systems, but the quality of either possessing one or not. To use Augustine’s metaphor about good and evil, there is no “source” of darkness the way that there is a source of light. Dark is just the absence of the light. Atheism is the lack of theism.
Agnosticism is not simply being undecided about whether you believe. It is a philosophy about whether it is possible to know anything about god at all. Agnosticism is the oppposite of Gnosticism which believes it is possible to “know” God directly (and without priestly intervention). Agnostics believe that the existence (or non-existence) of god cannot be known by man.
These are two different things entirely, the first (theism/atheism) is whether or not you believe god exists, the second (gnosticism) is whether or not it is possible to know (not just believe) that god exists.
Bobocop just cannot get his little pointed head around the idea that the reason why atheists dislike the use of denial is because it implies that a big sky daddy exists and that atheists are denying it’s existence. It is very funny when used by Terry Pratchett in his Discworld novels but really annoying when someone is serious about it.
Which has fuck-all to do with what w.r.t. this discussion, initiated by modder, that atheism = faith?
Christ on a cracker, robocop, are you saying you came in here looking for a semantic throwdown because some other thread on some other blog got your knickers in a wad?
The point that is trying to be made here, over and over again, is that the only person all that concerned about the word-games regarding the “One True DefinitionTM” of atheism is apparently you. The rest of us are just annoyed by it.
Fine then. I’m not an atheist.
I’m a “Up to this point I’ve seen exactly shit-all as far as anything coming even remotely close to suggesting there is a higher power and so following that I have no reason to think there is one. However should anything amazing come about that is strong evidence for a higher power I’ll take it into consideration.ist”
660: Where? I may have missed it, but I don’t see a challenge to Modder that depended on the “no believe in gods” sense of atheism.
Every challenge which claimed that atheism couldn’t be a faith because atheism is, by definition, a mere lack of belief fits the bill. My favorite was the one I quoted (“just like Sir Patrick Stewart’s hair colour is bald, or the reason there’s a complete absence of stamps from my house is that my hobby is not collecting them,” but “IT’S THE NULL FUCKING HYPOTHESIS” was very good too).
BTW, it is highly “non-standard” to use either “religion” or “faith” in a sense that includes atheism, however defined – indeed, it is simply a currently fashionable Christian rhetorical device. How odd that that did not evoke your wrath.
My wrath wasn’t necessary as that point had been amply conveyed by others.
661: You’re going to argue that we as humans created words and chose their definitions? That their definitions change with time, and as culture changes (Example: Negro. Racial Slur in Merika, absolutely bog standard word for the color Black in the Spanish-speaking world)?
No. But I would argue that dictionaries serve both descriptive and prescriptive purposes.
664: Bobocop just cannot get his little pointed head around the idea that the reason why atheists dislike the use of denial is because it implies that a big sky daddy exists and that atheists are denying it’s existence.
I have no objection to your dislike and no objection to your use of and arguing for your preferred definition. My objection is to misrepresenting that definition as standard and dispositive.
“Glory” means “a nice knock-down argument”, indeed.
re 666:
Congrats, BDC on getting the perfect comment number for that!
robocrap,
Allow me to channel MAJeff…
fap-fap-fap….
Yawn, Robocrock is still a boring fool, without any physical evidence for his imaginary deity. His deity is like the Higg’s particle, still spectulative. One can’t be in denial over what doesn’t have evidence of existence. However, with the LHC ramping up, the evidence for the Higg’s particle might be found. The same can’t be said for Robocrock’s deity, which is vaporware.
Allow me to channel a kakapo…
flap-flap-flap…
Janine –
Heh. that made me laugh unexpectedly loudly… I’m not entirely sure why.
“No. But I would argue that dictionaries serve both descriptive and prescriptive purposes.”
Would you argue that it’s absolute?
Owlmirror #540 wrote:
One might do this, but one won’t: people who believe in the “Sweetness and Light and No-Bad-Consequences” sort of God, virtually never bring up Pascal’s Wager — at least, not the wager where Hell is involved. If they believe in Hell, then they don’t believe in the Sweetness God.
If they make a wager at all, it would be “why not try acting as if you believe in God, and see if this doesn’t help you start to believe in God, and see if this doesn’t start to make you a better person, which will make you believe in God even more.”
The value of believing in God is taken as a practical matter, and isn’t seen as God’s test for salvation.
John Morales asked me:
Not at all. I feel quite sure that the Baha’i faith, gentle and loving as it is and full of spiritual discipline, would have been very efficacious. Buddhism, also, can lead to enlightenment for a devoted practitioner. A UU church would have been a good place for me.
As Bahá’u’lláh said, “The tabernacle of unity hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers. Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.”
Unfortunately, in deep East Texas I would have been quite alone in those spiritual practices, and I find it’s helpful to have guidance and company along the path.
Well, probably because ‘the hoards’ are aware that strong atheism – the active denial of gods – is a positive claim that has to be supported as such.
I think that you will find that the majority of atheists tend to be of a softer sort – no belief because of insufficient evidence to believe rather then active belief in the opposite.
HOWEVER you can be a strong atheist with regards to specific gods whilst holding a weaker position generally. Certainly that’s how I look at things, when not describing myself as an ignostic apathist…
Wowbagger #541 wrote:
It’s not all that fine, I think. The Calvinist interpretation of God’s “justice” isn’t going to fit in with this happy view, because they define it as “whatever God does” — and so it needn’t meet any human concept of “fairness.” God is allowed to “punish” unsaved mankind for doing what it cannot help but do on the principle that 1.) He is the Boss and 2.) there’s nothing morally unjust about flushing a toilet. The damned are basically plot devices.
Oh man. That stopped in the 1950s or something.
“The damned are basically plot devices.”
Ah, the Left Behind principle.
robocop #643 wrote:
I generally avoid getting into semantic debates on what terms like “atheism” and “agnosticism” really mean, because, like most philosophical terms, the meanings are flexible and varied. Plus, I’m tired of them.
But, aside from habits of clarity, atheists often care about the definitions because they are trying to preempt 3 all-too- common bad arguments:
1.) Everybody is born believing in God.
2.) God exists, and atheists are denying a known fact.
3.) Atheists are positive that God can’t exist, and wouldn’t believe no matter what.
If you don’t make these bad arguments because you can see they’re bad, I wouldn’t worry too much about why atheists feel the need to argue against their semantic tricks.
Rutee, it is impossible to number all the evils of Ellenjay’s craptastic series (although Fred’s doing a heroic deed of cleaning the stables over at Slacktivist.
But one thing I’ve noticed is that in Apocalyptic Fundyworld, people are merely plot devices. That’s as true for the alleged good guys as it is for the damned.
Some are toilet paper, and some are shit, but really everyone is flushable.
‘Glory’ is to ‘nice knock-down argument’ as ‘OED atheism’ is to:
A: cabbage
B: MrFire’s atheism
I admit my definition of atheism is slightly different to OED atheism. But they do not bear a non-sensical relation to one another. Analogy fail.
If you want to argue that I’m stretching the meaning of atheism by saying it’s the null hypothesis of ‘is there a god?’, be my guest. I won’t admit to a fine grasp of all philosophical terminology. Given that this is irrelevant to the points raised by Modder, I will, however, accuse you of being a timewasting bullshitter.
So if I am an atheist, I would be bound to behave as an OED atheist. Anything else and I become a word-that-has-yet-to-be-invented.
I mean, seriously. You derailed the thread for this?
Re Leigh Williams #677:
In other words, there are significant advantages (and avoidance of serious disadvantages) in belonging to the biggest local gang (or at least appearing to belong to it convincingly enough to fool friends and foe alike).
While we’re discussing semantics, I’ve been wondering if the dictionary argument can be swung the other way. If I’m not an atheist because the Christian’s interpretation of the dictionary definition says I’m not, does that mean that everybody who fits that same dictionary’s definition of “Christian” is a Real True Christian™? I mean, if we are deciding who does or does not adhere to a philosophical position based solely on a survey of dictionary entries, then why not?
SEF, I don’t doubt that many adherents of any faith have that utilitarian motivation.
I merely meant that there were no congregations of Baha’is or UU’s closer than a three-hour drive away, and as a single woman with two small children, working 50-60 hours a week, that wasn’t practical for me.
975robocop:No. But I would argue that dictionaries serve both descriptive and prescriptive purposes.
That’s kind of tautological isn’t it? I mean, you’re not really arguing anything there.
MrFire: So if I am an atheist, I would be bound to behave as an OED atheist. Anything else and I become a word-that-has-yet-to-be-invented.
No you don’t have to because dictionaries serve both descriptive and prescriptive purposes. See? Tautological. Doesn’t do nothin.
Sastra @ # 682.
Poignantly elegant… as usual.
Nerd #672,
Higgs particle, not Higg’s particle. Peter Higgs is the physicist who came up with the theoretical framework that predicts the existence of that particle.
Sorry, couldn’t resist :-)
670: That there are no gods is indeed the default hypothesis, just as is the case for leprechauns: in general, if someone claims that a particular type of entity exists, we ask for evidence: in the absence of evidence, we might say that we do not believe in such entities, or that we believe there are no such entities, and in the general case, no-one will quibble about the difference.
In the general case, you may well be correct. But let’s suppose (and please forgive the oversimplification in advance) that:
(a) Person A has spent huge amounts of time studying string theory and the ideas associated with it and concluded, based upon that research, that alternative universes almost surely don’t exist;
(b) Person B has studied the issues at length but has not yet reached a conclusion about alternative universes;
(c) Person C is aware of the subject generally but hasn’t done any serious thinking about alternative universes;
(d) Person D has never heard of string theory and the ideas associated with it;
(e) Person E is severely disabled mentally;
(f) Person F is an infant; and
(g) Person G studied the subject extensively some time ago and concluded that alternative universes likely exist, but hasn’t had even a passing thought about the subject in quite some time.
All of the above can be said not to believe in the existence of alternative universes, at least in some sense. Do you think it’s a mere “quibble” to see the differences in their positions as noteworthy?
675: Would you argue that it’s absolute?
No, because definitions can and do change over time. That said, as Walton pointed out, “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,” no matter what Humpty Dumpty says.
678: Well, probably because ‘the hoards’ are aware that strong atheism – the active denial of gods – is a positive claim that has to be supported as such.
I think that’s an entirely plausible explanation for why they wish to reject the standard/favored definition.
680: Oh man. That stopped in the 1950s or something.
So you agree with Humpty Dumpty — words mean what you want them to mean, neither more nor less?
682: If you don’t make these bad arguments because you can see they’re bad, I wouldn’t worry too much about why atheists feel the need to argue against their semantic tricks.
You make a decent point, but I’m no fan of countering semantic tricks with other semantic tricks.
684: So if I am an atheist, I would be bound to behave as an OED atheist. Anything else and I become a word-that-has-yet-to-be-invented.
Nope. Again, I have no quarrel with your making the case that your favored definition is better and ought to be used.
686: While we’re discussing semantics, I’ve been wondering if the dictionary argument can be swung the other way.
That’s a good point and one reason why I’m generally sympathetic to the idea that people ought to have the right to define themselves and their positions the way they want.
Thanks for the correction, and yeah, that’s the spirit in which I meant it. My bad for the over-excitability.
By the way, SEF @630: now there’s a word game I can be down for! Just know that either way, I was just trying to write a corrosive reply…
I retract my statement about Chinese hackers and the stolen East Anglia emails.
I victimized myself with confirmation bias. Mr. Science and I speculated that the Chinese might be behind it, and I, not following closely, glanced over headlines on Google news. Poof! Speculation becomes “fact”. Really, I know better. My apologies.
If certain theist didn’t get their “jollies” from pretending that their god is a self-evident truth that the whole world can see for themselves plain as day, then there wouldn’t be all this haggling over the word “deny”. That’s what it all comes down to. Lame theists spoiling the party and getting their jollies.
Negentropyeater, I will will say five Hail Ramen in penance later. I suspect I have seen Higgs on one of the Nova epidsodes. DOH!
There is no effective difference in their postions. Everything is imaginary until proven otherwise with physical evidence. That is the parsimonious position. Degree of knowledge is irrelevant. Welcome to science, not sophistry.
@ Leigh Williams #687:
Whereas I’m quite sure they do – to the extent to which they think at all of course (ie it will mostly be a subconscious motivation for many). We’ve had a few religionists on here with exactly that sort of concern about the consequences of losing their faith. Plenty of religionists change faith (or avoid doing so) to obtain the spouse (or even the job) they want.
PS to #696:
i.e. I didn’t intend to imply you were at all unusual in having a certain amount of pragmatism in allying yourself with your current group. However, I don’t regard it as an honest thing to do – especially since these gangs who pretend to have a unity of belief actually turn out to consist of individuals who each have very different personal beliefs from the ones to which they profess via their gang membership. It’s expedient but not ethical.
697: I didn’t intend to imply you were at all unusual in having a certain amount of pragmatism in allying yourself with your current group. However, I don’t regard it as an honest thing to do – especially since these gangs who pretend to have a unity of belief actually turn out to consist of individuals who each have very different personal beliefs from the ones to which they profess via their gang membership. It’s expedient but not ethical.
So you think it’s unethical to belong to a political party?
So you agree with Humpty Dumpty — words mean what you want them to mean, neither more nor less?
No. Words have the meaning assigned to them by usage. A word means what somebody in your speech community understands you to have said when you utter it. A dictionary describes this usage and assumes a given speech community. Outside this community or at a time later than the dictionary was printed, usage may not conform to the description.
“Speech community” bears a lot of weight there, so let me be plain. Dictionaries are typically written assuming a majority speech community with subsidiary definitions for embedded or minority speech communities. So ‘a theory’ is ‘a guess’ to the majority speech community of colloquial standard American English speakers, but to the minority community of scientists and academics generally “theory” has a more precise meaning, which a good dictionary will also give. Pharyngula comment thread regulars, or, more inclusively, committed atheists active on the Web, could be said to form a speech community in which the OED (or whichever) definitions may be inadequate to fully describe the usage of certain terms of interest to the community. That doesn’t mean that, within the community, words can simply drift arbitrarily away from their standard usage, as with Humpty Dumpty, it simply means that nuances and connotations may exist that would be opaque to non-members of the community.
It’s odd that people want atheist to be the positive denial of something. It seems like the way it is painted, they are trying to push it into a self-defeating system – that one has to in effect prove a negative to be an atheist.
With such a stringent definition, it really isn’t that useful as a descriptor. That the word atheist has come to mean in effect “agnostic atheist” is better really, as what agnostic has come to mean is something really different.
CJO (#699) — Your summary view is consistent with my own. Thank you, particularly since I had not thought of the “speech community” aspect of it before. You make good sense.
@ 975robocop #662:
You appear to have misunderstood I’m afraid.
1) I don’t remember atheist message boards being the paragon of what is true, nor atheists all being sublimely virtuous informed philosophers, nor the behaviour of people on the internet being the arbiter of truth and accuracy. What happens when you visit a predominantly atheist discussion board is…{deeeeeeep breath}…SUPREMELY IRRELEVANT! Atheists are fallible human beings too. Especially on message boards!
2) There’s one problem with your link: it says precisely what I’ve been saying. There is more than one “atheism”. Atheism is a description of a specific position on a specific question, not a philosophy or an ideology. It certainly isn’t a competing religion. (I’ll get to a clarification of this last bit later on) It’s not a dogmatic claim at all, you have just misunderstood it.
Notice your casually shifted goalposts also: denial does not necessarily equate to disbelief. The linked article doesn’t say that atheism doesn’t include disbelief, it makes a brief but clear distinction between lack of belief (weak/intrinsic atheism) and belief of lack (strong/explicit atheism). It even clearly notes the differing active and passive definitions of disbelief in that holy of holies, the dictionary.
I’m an atheist. What am I denying? Nothing. Do I deny that god exists? Nope.
Let’s use an uncontroversial example to illustrate this. I tell you I have ten million pounds and a Ferrari in my left pocket, and Angelina Jolie performing an intimate personal service upon me in my right pocket (I am telling you this with slightly crossed eyes). You are, as a sensible human being, naturally sceptical. You do not believe my wild and exciting claims, you require some kind of substantiation. You do not believe me. This first state, one of scepticism, is not a denial. Neither do you believe (at this stage) that my claims are false, you merely require some form of evidence that they are true. The burden of demonstrating my claim to you the sceptic rests on me as the positive claimant. This is analogous to weak atheism. You lack a belief that my claim is true.
However, you being an intelligent human being, might go even further. You might say that my claim that I have ten million pounds and a Ferrari in my left pocket, and Angelina Jolie performing an intimate personal service upon me in my right pocket is utterly ludicrous. It is logically and physically impossible, say you, for ten million pounds, a large sports car and an adult female human to fit in my pockets. You’ve moved beyond mere scepticism and into active disbelief. Good on you, in this case it appears the most sensible option. Ferraris in pockets indeed! The very thought! This second state, one of active disbelief, is also not a denial. Denial in this context would require that the claim is at least partially evidenced. You would have to be denying the evidence presented (not that I have provided any yet!). You are not merely sceptical, waiting for evidence, you are actively disbelieving my claim in the absence of any evidence and in the utter logical absurdity of the claim. This is analogous to strong atheism. You believe my claim to be untrue.
BUT! There exists a third state! I then produce a Ferrari (dinky toy sadly), a check for ten million pounds from the National Lottery (i.e. ten million real pounds that can be banked, not Monopoly money)from mmy left pocket, and reveal that, by the use of mirrors and misdirection, mirabile dictu, Ms Jolie was in fact scrubbing and rinsing my balls the whole time via my right pocket. Shocked (and probably rightly appalled) you stammer “I d-d-d-d-don’t believe it’s true! You lie! My eyes decieve me!” etc. You are denying the evidence before you, you don’t merely doubt my claim pending further data (scepticism, weak atheism), you don’t merely actively disbelieve my claim because of its lack of evidence and incongruity , you boldly deny that it is true despite the evidence that my claim was actually representative of reality.
The third state, denial, is a bad thing. To suggest that atheism of any stripe is denial, or is based on denial, involves the implicit claim that there exists evidence for atheists to deny. That is a bad suggestion. That is demonstrably false and pernicious. Unless of course you have concrete, unbiased, reliable, reproducible, rational evidence for the existence of a deity that is. I await it with baited breath if you have it. Please don’t disappoint me with the usual round of apologetics and logical fallacies that we are all very, very painfully familiar with.
3) Strong atheism as a faith position. This is the clarifcation I promised above.
If there exist super strong, extremely explicit atheists that claim with 100% certainty that no gods at all exist in any form anywhere at any time, then these rare beasts are acting, to a degree, on faith {gasp, stop the presses}. Is it the same degree of faith that a theist operates on? Nope, but it still relies on an absolutist faith claim to some degree. Hence why the nuance of the article you linked quite appropriate. People are strong atheists regarding specific conceptions of god, quite appropriately too (no evidence, logical impossibility etc are perfectly rational bases for active disbelief in a claim).
Extending that active disbelief beyond the specifics of individual conceptions of god to more general cases still works, as long as the details of those general cases are defined and unevidenced etc. Extending it further to a universal active disbelief in even the very possibility that
it’s all pixies underneathany deity exists requires a leap beyond what logic and reason can do. It requires a leap beyond what any valid epistemology can do. It requires faith.Does it require the same degree of faith as believing in a series of absurdities in the face of evidence to the contrary? No. It barely even requires the same type of faith! But some degree of faith is required.
Anyway, enough! What annoys me about this isn’t that it’s controversial or novel. It isn’t. It’s the basics. This is the uncontroversial crap that philosophers etc have done before they consider the tough stuff. It’s frustrating to constantly have to rehash this. Meh, some expert philosopher will probably disagree with me (where’s Wilkins when you need him?).
Louis
Good Lord, this thread is trucking along! As regards the definition of “atheist,” the Blag Hag posted a nice brief rumination on the subject yesterday.
Not that it’s relevant but yes (somewhat). The political party system is responsible for a lot of what’s bad in government – and I think the unethicality of it is a contributing factor in that. It leads to people supporting bad things in order to obtain something else they want (ie it’s another way, aside from religion, for good people to do evil).
If it is constructed to present itself as SEF described in the post you are arguing:
… then yes. Actively claiming membership to a political party that in truth does not represent your true political views, purely as a matter of personal convenience or for the social benefits could be considered unethical.
One could argue that a large portion of the republican party is constituted of such individuals.
Are you just in an argumentative mood today or what?
The dictionary definition of atheism as a form of denial is obviously written from a believer’s viewpoint. This allows them to brand everyone who does not believe in their god (or in a god in a different culture that they accept as being a different aspect of their own god) as “atheists”. So pagans are atheists, Robocop is an atheist, the Pope is an atheist, Satanists are atheists, etc. This type of atheism is the bad-word atheism used to put people down and dismiss them, and the people using “atheist” that way are inherently ignorant or uncaring of what the person being labeled by that word actually believes. Clearly, people calling themselves “atheist” do not mean it in that way unless they are being snarky.
@706
Well, at least Webster’s dictionary now lists “wickedness” as an archaic synonym for atheism. I suppose that’s progress.
aratina, your point is pitch-perfect. A dictionary definition rightfully reflects the most prevalent usage of a word; since atheists are a small (but fast-growing) minority, it would seem safe to assume its definition would reflect its usage by theists, would it not?
well fuck. I go to sleep, and this thread just explodes. alrighty then, from where I left off:
lol. If I wanted to piss off my parents, I’d have to become a fundie creobot. Religion just isn’t very important in my family, and I think my dad might be an atheist, too.
fatwa envy is so predictable and boring…
you’re half right. the word -theism means “god-belief”. however, the prefix -a means “no”. thus, a-theism is literally “no god-belief”.
Ignorance of the English language, indeed.
language does not work that way. as has been mentioned, the prefix -a negates the word that follows.
most atheists are agnostic atheists. these two words are not incompatible.
Appeal to Authority is actually a logical fallacy, not a valid argument.
quite; and incidentally, none of the above can be applied to atheism. atheism is merely the current conclusion from available evidence. given evidence of dieties, we’d change out mind; there just hasn’t ever been any.
Slacktivist’s LB Fridays are the only way I could ever get through that junk… but it’s something I’d suggest to every aspiring writer. It’s a weekly lesson in how NOT to write! :-p
well, I guess tradition is wrong then! nothing surprising there, really. like I said, agnosticism and atheism can happen simultaneously; they don’t have to be points on a sliding scale.
oh look ma, a strawman!
oh FFS… just like everybody who considers themselves a Christian has the right to do so by their definition (which usually conflicts with hundreds of other definitions), so atheists get to decide whether their atheism is of the strong or the weak variety. as you said, dictionaries are descriptive, and in any case usually behind the times in word-evolution. Arguments from Dictionary rarely yield a discussion worth taking seriously.
evidence for the meaning of a word? beyond the fact that it is used in that particular way?
I get the suspicion that you too suffer from the delusion many religionists fall prey to that words are concrete things with concrete meanings.
so you are going to insist on telling us what we believe or don’t believe based on a dictionary? once more: words are not immutable, concrete things with concrete, immutable meanings. language simply doesn’t work that way (if it did, there would be no Christians today, since whoever invented that word would not recognize any modern practicioners as what he described with the word).
regardless of whether atheism is active disbelief or passive lack of belief, a negative can never be proven; therefore the burden of proof is always on those who make positive claims, whereas the negative claim is the default hypothesis.
quoted just because it bears repeating, and says what I was trying to say above much better :-)
random interesting factoids are awesome. I shall have to remember this the next time someone pulls an Argument from Dictionary
oh look, another strawman!
*goes on Molly list for January*
would you believe that my library doesn’t have any Terry Pratchett books in it? Guess I missed my opportunity of getting acquainted with this writer back when I was divine ;-)
dude, even if atheism was indeed active disbelief in gods, it still would be evidence based rather than a faith. atheism so strong that evidence cannot change it (i.e. certainty of your belief) is extremely rare and non-existent on atheist message boards.
the weak/strong atheist discussion is irrelevant to the fact that atheism isn’t a faith.
are there differences? sure, but they’re more marginal than you imagine. They’d ALL be varying degrees of a-multiverseists (specifically, agnostic a-multiverseists, even for Person A), the same way there’s varying degrees of atheism, which can all be described with the the word “atheism”, whether you like it or not.
the discussions of the degrees of atheism happen; but they’re still all atheism, and all of them except one are forms of agnostic atheism… and that one form is exceedingly rare and therefore it would be idiotic to use that one rare form as the actual definition of the word “atheism”.
in the U.S., where there are only two? I’d personally say yes.
I would consider that very likely…
I did not write that. between “I was” and “divine” is supposed to be “in Seattle; the Seattle Public Library is”
:-p
Has anyone so far found a dictionary entry in which the definition for atheist is something to the effect of “term applied to self solely for the purpose of ticking off one’s parents”?
No?
Gosh, I guess when one is right about the existence of God it doesn’t matter that one is wrong about every other damn thing, but you’d think the Father Above might take some time off from fixing high school football games to nudge a humble believer’s #2 pencil towards the right circle once in awhile.
I did not write that. between “I was” and “divine” is supposed to be “in Seattle; the Seattle Public Library is”
:-p
Perhaps on Conservapedia?
Nerd #695,
Sure, but it doesn’t mean that the belief in that imaginary thing can’t be justified.
Take the Higgs boson for example. No physical evidence (yet). But a coherent theoretical framework that predicts its existence, and most physicists believe in it.
Unlike the Higgs boson, there’s no coherent theoretical framework that predicts God’s existence (afaik). Nor that of Leprechauns.
SEF said:
Hah! I am a liberal Christian . . . which almost always means, “I am a religion of one”. Well, two; Mr. Science and I agree on all major points. As Will Rogers said, “I don’t belong to any organized political party; I am a Democrat.” It’s like that.
Joking aside, most liberal Christians agree on a good many points; and we very often agree on social issues.
Why should I concede the label “Christian” to the Religious Right? I think I have a better right to it than they do; alas, so few of them seem to be following the instructions of the Christ.
When we’re talking about appropriate scientific word usage, then you bet your ass there are occasions when many of us here know better than the damn dictionary*.
______________________
*operating on an assumption that I have that many many people see dictionaries as prescriptive, whether or not the dictionary in question sees itself that way.
Given what Angelina Jolie is apparently doing, I’m surprised you didn’t have more typos.
They think the same thing, and they have history on their side.
basically, Christianity just isn’t a force of good in the world, but the existence of liberal Christians makes it look like it is. it’s really not helping the fight against the evil spread by religion.
I speak from experience. I still haven’t managed to convince my mom to leave the RCC; she doesn’t believe in anything RCC-ish, but she considers them a charitable organization. which on the surface they certainly look like, because of the thin layer of liberal Catholics, but underneath is a festering pit of evil; and her money supports that.
So, I really wish all those fuzzy Christians would just pack their bags and leave that umbrella, because IMHO their existence gives the nasty core of organized religion too much of a positive cover.
Well, that’s a fairly important distinction, don’t you think? The possibility of the existence of the Higgs boson wasn’t just conjured up out of thin air… I’m not sure comparing the theoretical existence of the Higgs boson to conjured products of the human imagination is a fair analogy.
I know, I’ve read several articles in American Scientist and Scientific American on it. And, like the top quark, I expect it to found eventually, just like the authors of those articles. But they were very careful to maintain that it is a hypothetical particle. (I’ve read where Hawkings hopes they don’t find the Higgs boson so that new physics would have to be developed, but he really expects it to be found.)
That is the point I have been trying to get across to Robocop ever since he arrived and started spounting his nonsense. Now he appears to be trying to set the ground for the old fallacy that believing in his imaginary deity is the default position, and atheists are the deniers. He can’t have the burden of proof upon him, as he knows he can’t show the required evidence.
negentropyeater –
re-reading it, I think i misunderstood your comment… sorry… you can ignore my #719…
Jadehawk said:
I agree with you. I’ve stopped giving the Methodists money because we can’t seem to get over the hump of gay ordination and there’s no way for me to keep my donations local to our liberal church; we’ve redirected our charitable giving to specific projects and to Habitat and other organizations.
Celtic,
it’s not the absence of physical evidence alone that makes belief in God so unreasonable, it’s also the absence of any theoretical framework that might predict its existence. There’s not even a coherent definition of the term.
negentropyeater –
Yes… i understand that, and was trying to say the same thing in #719, only I had misread your initial post and didn’t realize that you were actually making that same point.
As I said, sorry for the confusion.
702: You appear to have misunderstood I’m afraid.
Actually, I think you have misunderstood. You may be surprised to learn that I think there is a tremendous amount to commend in your defense of one particular definition of atheism. My quarrel is not with your proposed definition per se. My problem is with pretending that the favored/majority position doesn’t exist and can’t apply. And, at the risk of pushing this thread even further afield, I also think that self-definition primarily based upon what one is not is typically counterproductive and more than a little sad. Not that any of you need to care what I think, or even should, but I suspect that for something anything like an “atheist movement” really to take hold (not that it would or should be labelled that way — I recognize that atheism entails no necessary system of belief), atheists are going to need to be clear about what ideals, views and goals they affirmatively support, whether as humanists, secularists, brights or something else. Of course, it’s far easier to destroy than to create.
705: Actively claiming membership to a political party that in truth does not represent your true political views, purely as a matter of personal convenience or for the social benefits could be considered unethical.
It could be, but in the usual case shouldn’t be. If you want to be involved in politics, you typically need to pick a side or start your own. If you’re unwilling or unable to start your own, you generally ought to pick the party that’s closest to you and your views, join up, and try to work to get some things done.
Are you just in an argumentative mood today or what?
It was an honest question. Almost nobody (or at least nobody who thinks much about things) can find a group that’s anything like perfectly compatible, so I was surprised by the charge.
709: regardless of whether atheism is active disbelief or passive lack of belief, a negative can never be proven….
Your overall comments have already been answered, but I want to point out that this is a common fallacy.
720: Now he appears to be trying to set the ground for the old fallacy that believing in his imaginary deity is the default position, and atheists are the deniers.
Wrong again, Nerd.
Thread closed, again. Go here. Careful, merging traffic.
when you live in a society where the positive is considered a given, then it becomes necessary to declare that one doesn’t accept that given positive via such a self-definition.
In societies where religion isn’t so pervasive (and, worse, prescriptive), there’s fewer “atheists”, not because there’s fewer people who don’t believe in gods, but because it’s no longer something that needs defining.