I’m off to a Science-Fiction convention in Philadelphia, www.philcon.org , where I will be participating on a panel entitled “Imagine No Religion”, debating whether we will ever see a truly religion-free world. Are we witnessing the last throws of mythology, or are we doomed to follow false gods for the next millenium?My take is that we must remember that the USA is very religious, and nearly alone among civilized nations in that respect. As the world approaches a global economy, we WILL see a dramatic downturn in religion, and I predict that this will happen in the next century or so.Then again, I also predicted a Gore landslide victory. What do you think?I’ll be back Monday.
I’m not the one professing fantastical friends and intra-personal relationships. Were I to do so I think I’d agree with you.
As it is I seems like you are feeling backed into a corner, and are resorting to desparate name calling. If I’m wrong I apologise and ask that you explain how “the atheist thought” is wishful thinking or self delusion?
I’m not sure I even know what “the atheist thought” is, other than not holding a belief in god or gods.
It’s a good thing we don’t every have to prove the love of our families because that philosophy will never prove it exists.
JustinW,
My defult skeptical position for lack of evidence was in relation to Jerry’s alledge personal relationship with his god. ie. that it has no epistomological value.
Yeah, sorry for the terminology. I was refering to beliefs of athiests.
Give me a definition of love, and I’ll gladly prove it.
I’ll never be able to give you scientific validation. Although, I’ve heard of Christian scientists who can somethings but I don’t have anything to do withthat stuff because it has nothing to do with faith. Have you ever heard someone say that love without trust means nothing? You can never scientifically prove love so you have to have faith based on your relationship. It’s no different.
Good question – but way off the topic.
I think that would fall into inductive reasoning. ie we can provide evidence of ‘familial love’ and as the evidence mounts we can assign a confidence level in the truthfulness of that ‘love’. i think you are dead right that it can never be proved.
Having said that, it has no apparant bearing on the validity of a personal relationship with an imaginary super-friend.
Prove the love of a husband for his wife
Give me an example
Sorry to breat a dead horse, but as a group atheists hold no beliefs. The common factor is a LACK of belief in god or gods.
Please note that the absence of belief is NOT the same as the belief of absence.
For sure as individuals were are likely to hold other beliefs – but these are many and varied and nothing to do with atheism.
My relevance was that it’s not imaginary which I know from my relationship.
Sorry about that. How should I refer to what you guys believe or how you think about things?
A type of love isn’t a definition.
Jerry,
Examples of evidence of familial love would, I think, be:
- Smiles between family members
- Effective communication,
- Hugging
- Kissing
- Spending time together
- Helping each other when in need
- Staying together through the years
etc, etc
Get the idea?
With all due respect, you do not KNOW anything of the sort. You do however believe it.
If you believe you know, then all you are doing is deluding yoursel.
‘Love’ is a chemical. Oxytocin. They inject it into rats and it makes them cuddle. My wife and I have fantastic chemistry, and I’m cool with that explanation of our love.
HeathNZ
hmmmm…. I tend to not think of it as being contradiction and confusion, but I think I can see where you would get that from. I like to think of it as revelling in the irrational.
I have a decent background of being educated in the church along with supplemental reading of both secular and religious authors who help me get a better understanding of what I believe. I’ve veered off into the extreme philosophical left of religious belief after getting a better understanding of how creeds, canons and edicts came to be. I find history fascinating, especially religious history.
The confusion you’re probably picking up on is me working my way through information that better informs what it is that I believe. So, I have a rational side that inspires me to read on, while I also have my emotional side that is willing to accept what can’t be proven.
That willingness has been prompted by living in a community (especially my extened family) that is probably the most ernest, giving, accepting and loving group I’ve ever witnessed. As you’ve probably seen, it’s more what people do than what they say that inspire a belief or non-belief. I don’t think we win points or not if you become a christian or if I become an atheist. We get points for creating peace, a common ground, cultivate respect and so on.
Confusion isn’t as disconcerting to me as contradiction is. At times I’m confused because the same people who are really good and loving (like my family) can be like everyone else… angry at times, bitter, hurtful. We all vary from time to time. I think at times we’re all confused, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Contradiction is what I try to stay away from. Help me out here… what have you picked up as being contradictory?
Jerry that is the crux of the matter. Atheism is NOT a belief. You cannot refer to a belief of atheism because on does not exist.
I understand, that as a theists, this is a difficult concept to comprehend. It is, if you like a shift of paradigm.
By reading and debating you should be able to understand how we think about things.
Spanders,
My comments recontradiction and confusion were ill-considered and certainly not meant to offend. I actually find your approach refreshing in its openness and honesty.
I think you yourself have stated a few times that you positions are at times inconsistent. It is to this inspecificity that I was referring rather than something in particular. If I am imagining such a stated position, please accept this message as a retration.
Jerry,
It should be easy for you to see things from our perspective because there are so many gods that you don’t believe exist. We only disagree about one, afterall. Take your feelings about Zeus and Vishnu and apply to your god as well, and you have us. A reasonable person has to have some kind of standard for probability of truthfulness before believing things. You have one too, but you choose to provisionally suspend it when it comes to christianity.
They don’t prove anything. I could randomly pick someone off the street and spend time with them or kiss them but it doesn’t prove anything.
Thank you for your comments. I’ve likewise found some of your comments less intimidating or offensive here.
What do you mean by that?
Do you believe in ghosts? Unicorns? Big foot? Of course not. Everyone has standards when they decide whether to believe things or not. Adults know that magic doesn’t exist. Most people, unfortunately, prefer to ignore their rational mind when it comes to popular supernatural beliefs. No mythological religous claim has ever been real in the past, and they’re not real now.
Hey HeatheNZ,
no worries at all. I didn’t find it ill-considered. I don’t take that sort of thing personally. One of my few hot buttons, oddly enough, is when people consider me to be a conservative christian. Man, that freaks me out.
I think your comments were on target and I think I really don’t want to be contradictory. I can be inconsistent at times (how can I believe in evolution and God at the same time… I haven’t worked that one out thoroughly, but it doesn’t really move my beliefs one way or the other). It’s the contradictory part that I assign to ideas that I don’t like, so I’m sensitive to that and appreciate when people let me know when I am being so.
I really appreciate when people take the time to read what I write, so please, feel free to critique. That’s one way for me to learn. So, no retraction needed and thanks for even considering what I write!
You asked for evidence – not proof. Did you miss my post about inductive reasoning. I simply stated that such proof can never be made – it is a logical impossibility. All you can do is gather evidence to increase (or decrease) the confidence of your conclusion.
I think it depends on the definition. You’re right that I shouldn’t have used the word “prove” earlier (it implies the removal of all doubt, not just reasonable doubt) but I still think that if given a well defined set of conditions to meet, love could in fact be proved.
JustinW
I guess you could have such a high degree of confidence that it could to all intents and purposes be proof. But that is vastly different to a formal proof. I’d have to maintain that because it is approached by inductive argument it can never be formally proved.
Plus as you rightly point out, how the hell does one define love anyway?
What if you defined love as a set of behaviors or emotions that could be verified with experiments and brain scans? I think I’ve just shot down my own argument. That’s really “verification”, not “proof”. Damn.
The other problem with love proof is the temporal aspect.
If I love you now, does that mean I will love you in five minutes time? Does it mean i loved you yesterday.
How can my love be so fickle:?:
bi11h (imposter billh)
Wot you talkin’ ’bout Willis?
Jerry,
If you are still around, the following is a more erudite expression of the point I was trying to make
JustinW
I found the way you wrote this very funny. Thanks for providing a bright spot to my hectic, hectic day.
Lol@ Justin.
Nor do yours serve as proofs for me. That’s my point.
That’s the opinion of a non-believer.
jerry, what I think is being said is that you cannot use your faith to proove your beliefs. What I think will be argued is that the beliefs of many atheist have been proven by scientific method that is tangible, testable, provable. There is no way to put faith in a crucible to test its viability with concrete, measurable results.
I suspect you would then say that you can test faith and see outcomes, but this is only true in abstruce ways. You cannot test a hypothesis of faith and arrive at a theory based on measured results. There is no way to quantify faith.
I think it is futile to try to put faith and god in the same light as science. If one says to you, you cannot prove that god exists, the only logical answer in my mind is: you’re right, I cannot prove that god exists; I cannot expect to out reason an atheist; I cannot expect you to believe as I do and I can see where you’re coming from and respect your opinion. I have chosen to believe despite evidence to the contrary.
As soon as you get into the discussion that god and faith can be proved, you’ve lost. The only reasonable way to approach this sort of thing is to say, yes it’s a little nuts, but it’s what I believe. Then you buy them a beer and talk about how we can make the world better. Beer drinker… philosopher.
Jerry,
I wonder what you think my convictions are? Perhaps you could elicidate.
Two problems with this statement.
First you need to think about the difference between an opinion and an argument. Until you can understand this distinction your debating skills can be likened as bringing a knife to a gun fight.
Second, you have committed the logical fallacy of Poisoning the Well by alluding to Freud being a non-believer. FYI it’s using an argument that might wel be true but is totally irrelevant to the topic.
One might assume from this commnet that you will only give credence to people that believe the same things you do. Do you see the potential folly of doing this? You are setting yourself up to be taken in.
My advice, for what it’s worth (and I suspect it will be dismissed summarily) is to arm yourself with a broad knowledge and navigate a logical path to supportable conclusions.
Good luck on your journey!
Right, I agree. I was equating that to the faith in your love for a person. Since actions do not prove love I believe it’s a true statement that your love for people is based on faith in them. On one hand you say you don’t put iany stock in anything that cannot be proven while putting faith in people.
I agree. I cannot prove God scientifically anymore then you can disprove God spiritually. That’s our problem when debating these issue’s because we think on a different planes. I was hoping that if I showed you that you do show faith in something that cannot be scientifically proven then you might understand Christian beliefs to some degree.
That may be so because I may not be as intelligent as some of you. My speech may not be as pollished either. I’m just doing the best that I can to communicate my belief system while at the same time gain an understanding for yours.
Jerry, I think it’s fair to say that most of us have a good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of faith. We also have a pretty good understanding of the many and varied forms of Xianity.
Unfortunately we see no good reason or argument to accept any of them as valid. On the contrary we can see many strong arguments pointing to Xianity’s lack of validity.
If you are seriously interested in looking at the topic from an atheist perspective you need to realize that we value reason and argument, and devalue faith and belief. I think it is pretty much as simple as that.
Fellow atheists: I used the ‘we’ term quite a bit and apologize if I am talking out of turn.
jerry
I would suggest that I may be one of the closer ones on this board as I am a Christian. I think in a similar way, but probably a much more liberal way. Here’s the trick I think, ask questions to get a better idea of what plane atheists are on. Make it a two way street. Listen to them first. Read their thoughts. Then throw in some of your ideas tempered by what you’ve read and understood of where atheists stand. That way it becomes a dialogue where each of you may be willing to see from each other’s plane.
With all due respect, you are not thinking rationally or reasonably – just wishing or dreaming.
I know this sounds derogatory, but it is not intended that way.
KENNEDY
Irish and Scottish: Anglicized form of Gaelic ? Ceann?idigh ?descendant of Ceann?idigh?, a personal name derived from ceann ?head? + ?idigh ?ugly?.
They don’t prove anything. I could randomly pick someone off the street and spend time with them or kiss them but it doesn’t prove anything.
It might prove that you are a slut-just a joke!
What if we are just sacred cows of the BORG. OKay, intelligent cows, but our main function is to provide the BORG with a home, a meal and a means of transportation.
The whole story is at http://www.theborg.info
Are we symbionts with the BORG or do they influence our behavior more than we think?
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