To be honest, the recent fracturing of the atheist community over issues of social justice suggests that atheists need no lessons from the hyper-religious in finding others to hate. In my own personal experience, vituperative atheists are just as likely to have very stupid beliefs as religious people (though usually not the same ones - Christ mythicism and scientism vs creationism).
Also, I'm getting really sick of this continual equation of devotion and intolerance. I suspect that if one was to do a survey, the least-bigoted religious will strongly correlate with the most educated about their own faiths. Certainly, the Muslims most likely to become jihadi terrorists are not educated in madrassas, but faculties of engineering.
edited 14th Dec '15 1:12:24 PM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der ParteiI still maintain that any given "community" of atheists is almost inevitably going to be full of intolerant jerks, because mosts atheists have no reason to band together with other atheists to form a community. Atheism isn't a practice or set of beliefs, it is a lack of adherance to a certain type of belief system, so it doesn't involve any activities or ceremonies that would require you to be part of a group. Atheism as a definable concept only exists in relation to religion, so pretty much the only time atheists would feel the need to track down other atheists would be for anti-theistic activities or discours.
I'm not surprised that many people don't mind if you say you are an agnostic but start to treat you like you blasphemed if you say "I'm an atheist." I personally find the agnostic position to be more rational than that of the atheist.
The agnostic is basically saying "I can't be absolutely sure, but I don't think so." The atheist is saying "I know." I get nervous around anyone who says "I know" that something doesn't exist. The rational approach is "we haven't found anything that disproves our theory yet," not "we absolutely know this."
Plus the more extreme atheists have given atheism a bad name. When is the last time you met an extreme agnostic?
edited 14th Dec '15 1:53:44 PM by Bense
TBH, I sometimes feel like people prefer the term "agnostic" for the same reasons that some people are afraid to identify themselves as "feminist" and instead go for a broader term like "equal rights supporter" in order to avoid the baggage of negative connotations, rather than because there's much of a difference.
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The agnostic says "We will never know for sure." The atheist says "I don't believe in theistic gods." These things are not mutually exclusive.
I don't see what the issue is with an atheist looking at the available evidence and concluding that a higher power doesn't exist. Is there really a fundamental difference between "God doesn't exist" and "According to our extensive amount of scientific evidence there's little probability a god exists"?
The fault of this question lies in the second part. God is not empirically and/or scientifically testable (I assume this is what you mean by 'evidence', and that you're using its modern meaning). You can't even test people and get the same coherent results over a given period of time, so, why would you use the scientific method to test a deity, when the very non-empirical nature of the question to be proven or disproven leads to said deity being "out of scope", as some say in scientific parlance?
Also, if you're gonna deal with the Abrahamic God, how would you be able to even gather evidence on Him?
St. Thomas Aquinas proposed that God is Existence itself - not the Universe, but Existence. Can you gather evidence on the Universe? Sure, it's perfectly possible. Gathering evidence on God/Existence itself, however...
My point is, atheists rely too much on their 'logic and reason'TM, which is often based on natural scientific principles. But, again, the scientific method, proof and evidence was conceived and formulated for the purpose of studying natural phenomena. That's it.
This means, that among other things, the demand for proof (proof in the modern sense, not in the ancient Greek sense) requires that an experiment or a test be repeatable, which is not doablenote .
The construct of "scientific proof" is simply not designed for this sort of deep philosophical question. Which means that you gotta use philosophy and theology to argue your position, not natural science.
To tie in with the subject matter, the so-called atheophobia or a distrust of atheists (at least the New Wave of Atheism) also partly stems from a paradigm of thinking and life experience which most people simply don't understand (cue the cliché line 'People fear what [or who] they do not understand), beyond the basic notion of atheism. This paradigm tries to assert itself on a type of logic which does not match the logic of other people (which, consequently, leads to a polarization on matters of morality, ethics, and so on and so forth) and, on a co-opting of areas note to the detriment of most theistic people who also can, want and are qualified to participate in some or all of these areas.
This need of co-opting areas may also be related to how certain countries conduct their balancing policy in regards to matters of faith and reason (the US does this badly, judging from what Fighteer told me in the Economics thread) in their education system, which atheists may feel it's detrimental to their unbelief and their scientific inclinations.
edited 14th Dec '15 5:23:55 PM by Quag15
Well we can't exactly test whether or not a god exists but we can certainly test the validity of various claims made in the Bible and other religious texts. If the Bible isn't accurate then there isn't a whole lot of evidence for God's existence. Sure you could still say a deity exists and we haven't found evidence but that's just the God of Gaps argument which has its own issues.
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"a typical example or pattern of something; a model"
IE, "A paradigm of virtue", it's an old term.
The "God of the gaps" approach is both uncommon and unsustainable, as their "evidence" dwindles every time there's a scientific advance.
Most go for the figurative Genesis view that God kicked off the whole shebang, and occasionally interferes, not that he's a puppet master constantly keeping everything going just-so.
Now I don't rule out the idea that he did create everything at once, as, accepting God as omnipotent automatically means evidence for a different cause could have been planted, but that's on a theological level. On a physical level everything points towards the big bang, evolution, etc, and if you don't accept that you can't function as a scientific level.
I might have gone off track a bit towards the end but I'll leave it.
edited 14th Dec '15 5:41:39 PM by Joesolo
I'm baaaaaaack![]()
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English is not my first language, so I might end up using unclear terms at some point. See this
and the philosophical branch of epistemology.
Which other things you think are 'incomprehensible gibberish'?
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Well, the God of the Gaps argument never came across my mind, so, I guess my position and intention was different from the one you perceived in my post.
edited 14th Dec '15 5:36:45 PM by Quag15
TL;DR version of Quag's post, for some of us God isn't about physical evidence, proof and fact, he's about ideas, concepts and beliefs, the things that are inherently mailable and not possible to pin down with science.
"TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY"
It doesn't work does it? And for some of asking for 'proof' of god is like that, it's like trying to find an atom of justice.
edited 14th Dec '15 6:31:09 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
You'll have to excuse me, I never went to college. Instead, I learned how to operate a lathe and rebuild broken machinery. So words like "Epistemology" are beyond the scope of my understanding. I just looked it up, and the definition made no sense either.
I'm reminded of a commercial I heard on the radio once, while I was driving to work. The guy talked for a full thirty seconds and the only coherent words I could discern were "innovative business solutions." All the rest was catch-phrases and buzzwords that were apparently meant to sound impressive, but was complete gobbledygook to me. I presume he was selling something, since it was an ad. And I gather from the context that it was a service, rather than a tangible product. But beyond that, I got nuthin'.
edited 14th Dec '15 8:09:49 PM by pwiegle
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.Basically.
I think it's important to emphasize that "agnosticism" is merely a "qualifier" of "i don't know". there are different degrees of this ("we don't know right now" vs "it is impossible to know"), but you can be an agnostic atheist or agnostic theist, or just an agnostic if you honestly don't know.
i think a big problem that a lot of the atheistic community doesn't realize is that even without deities, spirituality is still something very important to society. Religious creeds have just traditionally been one way for humanity to connect with its spirituality, there are many other ways. people want to feel fulfilled.
edited 14th Dec '15 5:55:41 PM by wehrmacht
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It's never to late to learn new things, and trust me, nobody here deliberately uses words to confuse or impress, but we can often get into very deep technical discussions that use a lot of topical jargon, be it theological jargon, medical, psychological or political. There's a reason I regularly recommend this place as somewhere for my fellow meat space politics students to read and debate things, we have some seriously good academic levels of discussion here.
TL:DR The weird words are technical jargon, yes we're a bunch of academics, but you're welcome to join us, it's never to late to learn new things.
edited 14th Dec '15 6:30:32 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranAh, ok, my apologies for not adapting my language (it's also the first time I've seen you in these forums, so I didn't know your background). Also, what Silas said
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Epistemology is basically about trying to figure out the nature of the stuff we know (what it is or what it means, how do we know, and so forth).
Also, thank you Silas for doing a TL;DR of my post
. Gabrael was right about you.
@wehrmacht: You're quite right.
I'd also add that religion and/or spirituality also plays and played a role which shaped the cultures and traditions of our world.
edited 14th Dec '15 6:08:53 PM by Quag15
That's another thing: the internet shorthand. I have to look it up to figure out what all the abbreviations stand for.
Okay, "TL;DR" means "Too Long; Didn't Read," and "DL;DR" means "Don't Like; Don't Read," but what does "DI" stand for? Or was that a typo?
I've known some computer programmers since the Stone Age (before Windows), and back then netspeak abbreviations were necessary because instant messages were limited to about twenty characters, total. But now, when you can send entire pages of text, it seems kind of lazy to me. And don't even get me started on the atrocious spelling and grammar nowadays...
edited 14th Dec '15 6:27:08 PM by pwiegle
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.It was a pair of mistakes due to me not holding down my shift key properly and typing fast (I type at such speed at times that letters will end up in front of letters they should be behind, normally that's not a problem as my spell checker catches it, but when I'm using abbreviation that I rarely use...), now fixed.
Also as the whole point of a DL:DR is to shorten something it feel like something that should itself be kept short.
Fair point on the spelling and grammar, just remember, not everyone here is a native English speaker and even amongst those who are some of us having learning difficulties related to spelling and grammar specifically.
edited 14th Dec '15 6:32:43 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranHey, I'm far more likely to give a free pass to someone for whom English is a second (or third) language. It's the half-literate clods who can't even string a coherent sentence together in their (ostensibly) native language that provoke my ire.
Anyway, I've taken us off on a tangent for long enough. Back to the actual topic...
edited 14th Dec '15 6:39:35 PM by pwiegle
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.Ted Cruz says atheists are not fit for presidency [1]
. Strange how there is no mention of it in the mainstream American media, while Ben Carson's tirade against a conjectural Muslim bid presidency being quite the hot topic.
I think you are using the wrong Discworld quote here. This one is about how things like justice and mercy are artificial concepts created by humanity. They have no basis in reality and have no meaning beyond what Humanity chooses to give them. Here is the full quote:
Are you sure you didn't mean to use Dorlf's quote from Feet of Clay about proving the existence of life:
"I Suggest You Take Me And Smash Me And Grind The Bits Into Fragments And Pound The Fragments Into Powder And Mill Them Again To The Finest Dust There Can Be, And I Belive You Will Not Find A Single Atom Of Life"
"True! Let's do it!"
"However, In Order To Test This Fully, One Of You Must Volunteer To Undergo The Same Process."

The hyper religious have a hatred for everyone.
And the hyper religious are quite a minority.
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes