Atheist or Agnostic?

@Aon: Come on, we're on your side! It's the Gnostics we need to fight.

edited 8th Jun '11 7:32:48 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

LIES.

@Bobby: If liking the idea of a God, being okay with It's possible non-existence and disliking organized religion is what you mean, then yes I return the high-five.

Organised religion I have mixed feelings on, TBH.

I don't think I'm agnostic myself, but that's a semantic can of worms I really shouldn't open in this thread.

I think gods probably exist. But I think they obey the laws of physics, they are just so beyond us in every measure. They are superintelligent, superhappy and practically immortal, and control the resources of entire solar systems. But I don't know if they exist. Does this make me an agnostic theist?

That sounds vaguely similar to Buddhism's view of gods. They have to follow the same rules they're just above us and understand those rules much better than us. And have ways of fucking with said rules without artificial aid.

They also live a long time.

Wait. If you're talking about gods that are simply long-lived, but mortal, technologically advanced, but obeying the laws of physics, and in a much more advanced state of civilization than we are, who don't interfere much in the lives of humans - then aren't you just talking about a hypothetical alien race?

Basically. Everything is living in Buddhism and all living things are bound to reality and must die. Even ghosts and people in Hell have to die...

Which is interesting...Because maybe there really are deva out there! And asura too! A proud and violent warrior race that visited us in the past...oooooh.

There are also gods who do meddle with human lives quite a bit. They tend to be asura or lower level realm deva. Or Bodhisatta god forms. The Bodhisatta can basically reincarnate as whatever the hell they want.

edited 8th Jun '11 9:31:40 PM by Aondeug

@On The Other Handle

Here's a very interesting Dawkins quote:

edited 8th Jun '11 9:33:07 PM by LoveHappiness

But...I think alien civilizations most definitely do exist, because of the trillions of inhabitable planets in the universe, and it's likely enough that one of them is that far advanced, so...I'm a theist, by that definition? Huh. Well, I still won't call myself that, because it's fairly rare that a definiton of god(s) involves nothing at all supernatural.

Edit: Yes, that Dawkins quote sums up why I still wouldn't call myself a theist despite believing in Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.

edited 8th Jun '11 9:35:07 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

Yeah Buddhism's definition isn't one I've come across too often with other religions...Since they're not supernatural. Preternatural maybe, but everything is natural in Buddhism. There's laws. Things follow them. Shit ends and the bits that made up that shit become other shit and take on a new form. And these things are all made up of little bits that work together and live off other things made up of little bits...

Souls work this way too. Which are just the consciousness and some...thing...that exists separately. It too is made up of little bits that break up and reform to make new things.

edited 8th Jun '11 9:36:41 PM by Aondeug

A new word is needed.

edited 8th Jun '11 10:39:29 PM by LoveHappiness

God, no more new words, please. "Atheist who believes in aliens" should suffice.

That, dear lady, is Made Of Win.

"Imagine"? Absolutely. Imagination is the process of mental picturing, and no theologian can "imagine" God. Can you mentally picture omnipresence? I know I can't. However, the more important question is whether theologians can concieve of God. Dawkins is confusing imagination with conception, I suspect. If Dawkins is suggesting that some finite alien could be greater than the Greatest Concievable Existent, he must have a deeply impoverished (not to mention paradoxical) conception of God.

This looks like assuming materialism to me. Yes, if one assumes that anything intelligent must be complex, I agree that that is an incompatible idea with any form of theism I know of. The more important question is whether materialsm is true.

edited 27th Jun '11 3:33:22 PM by Arthur

Well, Dawkins' books tend to promote materialism, and that little excerpt most likely followed a long passage about why it's true, if my experience with him is any indicator.

Actually, it didn't. The passage quoted is from "The God Delusion", and I happen to own a copy. No such "long passage" about materialism appears anywhere in it, to my knowledge. Materialism is simply presumed throughout.

edited 9th Jun '11 8:58:27 AM by Arthur

And I don't see the issue with this, materialism being obviously correct and all...

O RLY?

While this looks to me like the start of what could be a fascinating debate, aren't we derailing here?

Dammit, I liked this derail.

So did I...

I'll start a thread.

And so I did.

edited 9th Jun '11 11:21:08 AM by BobbyG

Really? You don't see any need to question materialism? Calling something "obviously correct" is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Personally, I do see "the issue" with implicitly endorsing a metaphysical paradigm that is not self-evident and failing to question it. After all, you presumably reject every rival metaphysics, so why endorse this one? Calling it "obviously correct" cannot begin to answer that question.

Surely Dawkins himself would approve of us questioning his implicit premises.

edited 12th Jun '11 1:01:59 PM by Arthur

An excellent point, but I started the other thread for the express purpose of containing this derail.

I question the value of even having a metaphysical paradigm. It's obvious that materialism is useful as a methodological paradigm. Aside, perhaps, for Occam's Razor, I don't see any good ways of reaching a conclusion as to whether it or some other metaphysical paradigm is true.

Yeah, the philosophy I posted earlier was just an attempt at finding out if Occam's Razor and Cogito ergo sum together would put a monistic system (be it idealistic or materialistic) ahead of a dualistic system or not, and if I could define a functioning monistic system.

The result is pretty much what I expected, and it thoroughly relies on previous philosophical enquiry that each of us have done regarding the connection between our mind and the physical reality.

But it's only useful in cases where you'd want to know for some reason whether or not Occam's razor prefers a particular metaphysical paradigm. If you don't start from Occam's razor, you'll likely find a different answer. So what I did was very typical of philosophy: idle thinking put on paper and spread around for food for thought. It's nothing conclusive.