Atheism isn’t a group, an organization, or a following. It is simply someone who doesn’t do any of those things. The only difference between us and all those with a religion, is that we believe in one less god (many in Hindu’s case).
Also, the burden of proof lies with the positive existential proclamation. The default presumption when I claim I have a 13 inch cock, excluding proof, must be that it does not exist.
I understand your sentiment, but I also understand what is being said here.
If you install stumbleupon, for example, and set your preferences to include atheism, you will find a whole bunch of pages devoted to it. What do you think those pages all read like? Well, they read a lot like religion.
The best part of all those atheist websites I’ve seen is how they all have these great essays and videos (really, some of them are pretty cool and very insightful), which will invariably never bee seen by followers of organized religions. It’s like a big circle-jerk.
Paul is Drunk, I like you, but you are so full of yourself that I want to give you a wedgie and take your lunch money just to knock you down a notch.
Let’s define it this way: All three categories are relatively recent (especially in opposition to each other; or in their current meanings), despite what the websites might tell you. You people are trying to objectively define the universe using tricky terminology no one agrees about that merely etches out some vague categories in world views that have only developed in the last 200 years.
Just to make my point clear: If the nature of the universe and/or human experience can be summed up in a word, how do you know that word even exists in English? Because your own experiences are so universal?
Except of course atheism isn’t based on “hypothesis and speculation” it’s based on… you know.. reality.
When you look at the evidence it’s not that a god probably doesn’t exist.. it’s that a god CAN’T exist. God is a self contradicting, self refuting concept.
If god does exist and he created everything, he is a fucking pompous asshole. Also he is probably a she or an it. But god probably does not exist anyway. As for the whole meaning of the universe thing: simply a question we will never know. Just enjoy the small things in life.
An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings. An agnostic is one who believes it impossible to know anything about God or about the creation of the universe and refrains from commitment to any religious doctrine. Infidel means an unbeliever, especially a nonbeliever in Islam or Christianity. A skeptic doubts and is critical of all accepted doctrines and creeds.
Namelis, are you fucking idiot? Have you never heard that expression before?
It means that even a die-hard atheist will think about praying with confronted with death.
The saying is as old as god damned foxholes. It’s a trite bit of cleverness that is more about human nature than the retardo atheism/religion debate on the innernets
Religious people trust their deity to protect them and believe that life after death will be paradise! Therefore, I contend that there are ONLY atheists in foxholes.
Just sharing that quote. I was unable to find the author however.
If you want to be an athiest, fine by me. You don’t believe in God or Heaven or Hell. Cool. It’s just not something I want to gamble on. If you’re right about the subject, and when I die, I just lie in a hole in the ground until I decompose, What have I lost? But if I’m right…
Good point Caio. I am a fucking idiot.
Never thought of it that way. Always thought that “there are no atheists in foxholes” was some sort of a redneck burn about the army, instead of a real expression.
That does flip the argument a bit. Were afraid to die, and we makeup stuff to ease the concept of non-existence.
“But if I’m right…”
Then you’re probably still going to hell. There’s thousands of mutually exclusive religions, what are the odds that you picked the right god to worship and worship in the correct way?
Religous people accept a diety/dieties as a supreme being. To whom which all mankind has to answer. One who will judge everyone based on there adherence(is that a real word?)to set guidlines outlining basically how to be an all around good person. Thou shalt not kill/steal/lie, thou shalt not bang my wife while I’m at work, ect.
My question is this: Are people athiests simply because they deny the presence of a higher power, or is it so they can pretend not to be accountable for their actions in life?
“Damnit Morpheus, not everyone believes what you believe!” -Jason Lock-
“My beliefs do not require them to.” -Morpheus-
@the3g_ipwn
That’s only one category of religion. How you do know you won’t be judged by a glorious death on the field of battle? Or by whether you know the Riddle of Steel?
Atheists don’t deny anything. As Paul already said, the burden of proof lies with the positive existential proclamation.
Interesting thought. 3g_ipwn.
I’ll give you an answer from a hardcore atheist perspective.
The problem is that religion is just a form of thought control. It basically embroiders a device in your mind that prevents you from thinking. Don’t take this as “religious people are stupid”. It’s more like “why bother thinking about it when it can be answered by god and I don’t have to waste my time finding out”.
The clash between science and religion is a good example. Evolution for example, we found out how a certain part evolved over time, mean while the creationists just go “God did it”.
Ok. God did it how? Just miracled it into existence? That yields no useful knowledge about the universe.
And about the accountability.
I am accountable. I’m accountable to my friends, to my loved ones, to the people around me, to my government.
Oh yea forgot about that one Puulahi.
I am accountable to myself.
For example I feel cruel for taking a stray kitten away from its mom, even though he could hardly survive the winter. He sits now in the living room meowing for his mom. Even though its for the better.
@... im-postle-able:
I contradict you by saying: Of course religion isn’t based on “hypothesis and speculation†it’s based on… you know.. reality.
So…has that gotten us anywhere?
I know the explanation is probably literally in the Bible but please explain: Where exactly is God self-contradicting and/or self-refuting?
Now for reboot: The proof may lie with the positive existential proclamation but not only with it! If were talking about something where neither it’s existence nor it’s non-existence is proved BOTH sides have to bring proof. Just sitting on your ass and saying “well, prove it exists” doesn’t make your position any more legitimate.
And finally: Who tells me atheism isn’t just a form of conspiracy to dispose any morality or compassion so we can live in a society where we don’t have to care about our fellow human beings anymore?
Is religion something we make up so we can all feel warm and cuddly because Jebus watches over us or is atheism something we make up because we are afraid to accept the existence of a higher being (God, the Great Watumba or whatever) so we don’t have to live by some form of moral code?
And I think I’m d’accord with Nietzsche when I claim that any atheist who wastes his time on morality (which is a principle for wussies) while he could get rich at the cost of others who can’t defend themselves is wasting his time and is definitely not acting logically.
The funniest thing about Atheism is that it specifically goes against Christianity and Islam. Native American – or basically most pre-literate – religions, for the most part, would go unscratched by any of these arguments. Confucianism is perfectly safe. The majority of Hindu swamis would agree with you in full, Namelis.
Christianity, Atheism, Islam, Scientology, Agnosticism, whatever. They’re all the product of basic Western concepts and constructions. I find it funny that you people are arguing debates that pre-date Christ and both basically taking the same side using the same mental tools, but differing over trifling details.
Who made up the old metaphor about the two frogs arguing at the bottom of a well?
reboot:
I don’t know that any religion is right. Some would say that, in itself, makes me non-religious. I’m gonna blow your mind now because I am truly a wierdo. I do not believe that any one current religion is 100% right or wrong. I agree with Caio (hurl) that all present day forms of religion have been shaped by centuries of corruption. I also agree with Namelis1 that all religion has been molded into a tool of mind control. What I do believin is at the heart of all religions. Live well, be kind to others, and treat every breath of air as a blessing for the next one is not guaranteed. Creation/Evolution is a miniscule portion of religion pulled from its origional context for the purpose of personal gain.
Namelis1:
See above. Also Evolution is the theory that in the vast epmtiness of prehistoric space, two stars collided and sparked the dawn of everything that has followed. Wait a minute. Two stars? I thought you just said it was empty. Where the hell did these 2 stars come from?
I think there is a great deal of truth to be found in both theories, as well as a great deal of false hoods.
Thanks. I have no idea who you are, so I have no opinion of you one way or another.
However, atheism has always existed. Diagoras of Melos is a good example. He lived and died during a time in which those accused of atheism were capable of being executed.
Which (and I’m no longer directly directing this at you, Caio) is ironic from a modern religious viewpoint. Under Christian or Islamic religions everyone from his time would have gone to hell anyway, because they didn’t follow their specific god, but many gods. They didn’t even get a choice, as those religions would arrive for many years later. In essence, the god represented in either religion condemned all people up to the foundation of their religion to a hell they never even knew existed.
Not trying to make a point, I just find it ironic.
Who ever said there had to be a beginning? Time as a linear construct is mostly a western idea stemming from Judaeo-Christian ideas.
In an infinite amount of time, all things will come to pass an infinite amount of times. Who ever said ours was the first Big Bang?
In fact, with Chaotic Inflation Theory (or “Bubble Universe Theory”) we may not even be the singular universe.
@no one in particular…
As the Romans said, “Never mix politics with wine.” As my nom de plume suggests, I should abstain from following this conversation further. Have fun, all.
@Goldfinger
“Just sitting on your ass and saying “well, prove it exists†doesn’t make your position any more legitimate.”
Yes, it does. Its called a null-hypothesis. We assume that the null-hypothesis is true until there is overwhelming data to the contrary. Usually something like 90% to 95% confidence is required. @the3g_ipwn
“Also Evolution is the theory that in the vast epmtiness of prehistoric space, two stars collided and sparked the dawn of everything that has followed.”
WTF? Star collisions have nothing to do with evolution.
I think it was Einstein who during his own research, discovered that the Universe definately had a beginning. He subsequiently retired from his study because he aslo knew something else. Everything that has a beginning, has an end. Einstein left his research in fear of the knowledge that his new found theory would uncover. He now knew that the world would end, and was afraid to know how.
Now I’m not about to argue with Einstein. He’s got a pretty good track record so far.
reboot:
You fucktard. The whole argument is derived from the disagreement on how the Universe was created. How can you brush aside the “BigBang” theory?
@the3g_ipwn
EVOLUTION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW THE UNIVERSE WAS CREATED! Hell, it has nothing to do with how life started, all it describes is how life develops into distinct species with different characteristics.
Einstein never left his research. He worked on Grand Unified Theory practically until the day he died. Everything else you said is also patently wrong.
“However, atheism has always existed. Diagoras of Melos is a good example. He lived and died during a time in which those accused of atheism were capable of being executed.”
Right, my point was that christianity and atheism are both a product of western rationalism, and that the debates are largely rooted in Greek thought and Greek mental tools which we’ve inherited.
Listen: the Ionian schools – debatably the founders of western rationalism – are mainly known via Plato and the Stoics. To my knowledge, not a single one of the Ionian authors survives except in references and quotations. So what do we even really know about these guys from the perspective of historiography? Fucking fuck all.
Now Plato, the man who invented the western concept of the “soul” was an atheist as well, but believed in a higher existence defined by ideas, which he associated with the soul itself.
The stoics, likewise, rejected the old myths and replaced them with an atheistic great spirit from which all souls are derived and eventually return.
Have you ever seen Atheists on the Internet quoting Strabo as an early atheist? Read the intro to the geography sometime. He was a fairly typical Stoic, although he didn’t seem to care either way. That quote actually comes from his attempt to defend Homer – the Greek equivalent of Moses – and to say that he (homer) was still the greatest arbiter of objective truth with or without Gods.
The Greeks might have come up with the basic impulse that the mythologies weren’t true, but it barely matters. The mythologies were probably imported from Anatolia. The original Greek religion – the fundamental pulse of Greek thought – was probably in its original form a highly conceptual, myth-light one like we find in Hector’s Theogeny.
The point is, what we in the west, when confronted with a divide between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ is merely another way of explaining basic issues fundamental to our worldviews.
Listen, what a culture believes is just a single element in how a culture organizes and behaves itself. If anything it’s a reflection of social organization, rather than a defining feature of social organization. Religion doesn’t “control” people or “brainwash” people, it explains what people believe and how they behave in a particular culture.
The Greeks replaced Homer with Jesus and Moses and continued to have the same fights about the nature of truth – ones that the Jews never had.
Read the Talmud sometime. You’ll quickly realize that the Jews saw contradictions in the old Testament, but ones that never even occurred to Christians, and which then solved in very non-Christian ways. Only a century later, the very Platonistic church fathers answered all the completely different contradictions in the Bible and answered them with the help of Plato and Plautinus. Because Christians – like scientists, atheist, muslims – are basically just Greco-Romans that borrowed a few foreign stories.
And, now, Atheists are using what is primarily Aristotlean logic to shoot down religion. Often they’re using the same types of arguments St. Augustine used. Hell, there are passages I could quote from Augustine where I could just cross out ‘God’ and replace ‘Science’ and post it on my blog and you’d never know?
Is that really a problem? No, not really. Like I said: religion, mythology, science, philosophy… it’s just a way for culture to explain itself.
Oh, yes, and what is the big bang, anyway, but a Prime Mover? Or a creationist God? Another Prime mover? Same shit, different terminology… maybe some more sophisticated observations, but had we allowed other cultures to flourish as ours has, they’d have probably reached equally sophisticated methods of observation by now, and come up with vastly different conclusions.
@Paul_Is_Drunk & legal system: Too bad we’re not in a courtroom.
@The Matrix: Rebooted & statistics/null-hypothesis: Too bad we’re not doing math here. I could just take your line of argument ad absurdum by making my null-hypothesis “God doesn’t exist!” Now, can you find any overwhelming data that supports the alternative hypothesis?
There’s a certain reason that up until today no mathematician has found any proof for the (non-)existence of any god whatsoever.
The problem is: We don’t have any proof for the existence of God. Fine. That doesn’t prove his non-existence. The only thing that could prove that would be a coherent proof AGAINST the assumption of his existence – which we don’t have. And that works vice versa. And as long as we cannot prove anything believing in God and not believing in God are just constructs we can either adopt or not adopt. And while it is arrogant to claim to KNOW that God exists it is just as arrogant to claim to KNOW that he doesn’t. So why all the proselytising?
“EVOLUTION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW THE UNIVERSE WAS CREATED! Hell, it has nothing to do with how life started, all it describes is how life develops into distinct species with different characteristics.”
You see, kido. This is exactly why you get ass whipped on here every single night. You argue evoulution over creation theory, yet claim that one has absoutely nothing to do with the other.
That’s like saying apples are better than oranges because oranges don’t exist.
Hey, guys. Check this out. New guy thinks he knows more about science than me. @the3g_ipwn
At this point, I’m going to have to ask you: are you literally crazy? Are you on your meds? I haven’t argued evoulution[sic] over creation theory anywhere in this thread. I just started off by pointing out the absurdity of your watered down version of Pascal’s Wager. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
The words “stars” or “universe” don’t even appear in that article. Now, please, explain to me how colliding stars has anything, anything at all, to do with evolution.
BTW @Caio
That’s a really great post up there. That’s something I’m really going to have to think about and do some research on. Its not often that I encounter a idea on the internet that is really new to me. Kudos, sir.
The problem I have w/ Pascal’s Wager (should’ve stuck w/ mathematics) is the assumption that you lose nothing by believing and being wrong. I think you do lose something, maybe a lot of somethings. If your wrong you’ve spent your very limited time “believing” something that is false and have based other beliefs and thoughts on that falsity. I think Pascal knew better and prolly didn’t believe, but like Descartes, decided to keep that to himself. Surely he would have deduced that a wager is not belief and any God
would know your “belief” was not true faith. The only other option is to make yourself truly believe and that negates the whole point of the wager. I think it was CS Lewis that said “The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”
Look douchebag, If you want to sit on your fat ass, eating cheetos and plagerising everone on the internet, go right ahead. When the hampster wheel in your head sparks an origional thought, let me know. Don’t pretend to be educated because you can regurgitate the published works of learned men.
@The Matrix: Rebooted: I’m glad you understood it because I said it in the stupidest and longest way possible.
What I should have said is this:
The local tribe, the Ktunaxa has this big long cycle of myths about a mountain spirit playing tricks on humans, who were defended by Wolf Spirit (a trickster like Cayote).
It’s pretty long, I heard it in full in three sittings, and heard parts of it from a couple other elders.
If you memorize this myth, you’ll memorize exactly all the mountain passes around this valley that are prone to landslide. And, according to the elder, that’s why you need to learn it.
Now a geographer would come in and start doing his normal aristotlean stuff: Defining various features based on common features, fitting rocks into their categories, blah blah blah. And in the end *he would come to the exact same conclusion*.
Because the elder and the geologist are teaching their community the exact same thing: To know which passes aren’t safe to climb.
Each is just a method of explaining the world to other members of your tribe, really.
If you’re interested in this kind of thing, the key word is ‘ethnohistory’. It’s basically like Boas/Sapir put into a diachronistic context; or like understanding now just how cultures via how they change. That’s pretty much everything I did in grad school and it is very new and exciting, and seems to actually fit the facts.
@Caio
That is really interesting, because on a smaller scale, its clear that major breakthroughs in science require changing the models of how we think. Such as going from classical to quantum mechanics. So its interesting to think about how, on a more fundamental level, our thinking is shaped (and maybe limited) by those cultural models. I would hope that eventually we would come to the same conclusions, like the geographer and the Ktunaxa, but there’s no guarantee of that. And there’s no reason to believe that development would be in the same order, like a culture that develops fusion before the wheel. I’ll definitely be giving this more thought in the future. @the3g_ipwn
LOL, what have I plagiarized? I “pretend” to be educated because I have multiple degrees in scientific fields. Check out the forums, I think I’ve sufficiently demonstrated my credentials around here.
“I have absouletly no fucking clue what you are talking about.”
That’s the problem. She has a well thought-out point that directly addresses you’re main argument. Meanwhile you’re quoting Morpheus.
Sorry, if I seem like I’m picking on you. Its just that your the easy target of the day.
reboot:
“EVOLUTION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW THE UNIVERSE WAS CREATED! Hell, it has nothing to do with how life started, all it describes is how life develops into distinct species with different characteristics”- taken from your post-
“evolution is the process of change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next.”-taken from a link you also posted-
@the3g_ipwn,
I’m not going to argue with you, because your comments over the recent weeks have led me to the conclusion that you have the mental capacity of a small child.
You are the embodiment of ignorance and arrogance on the internet. I hate you.
I guess you’re going to have to take my word for it, but I didn’t even look at that link until long after I had submitted the comment that you just quoted. Really, I just know a fairly accurate definition of evolution off the top of my head. Education pays off.
@the3g_ipwn
I’m fairly certain I wasn’t responding to whateverthehell you posted as mine was also directed at reboot and the posters he was referring to.
Oh 3g_ipwn I love you. Best. Troll. Ever. That or a very illiterate soul indeed. Though who am I to criticize intelligence, I am a fucking idiot as Caio pointed out.(No hard feelings, because it’s true)
I also love how religion threads spiral out of control on MCS.
More I think about it, the more pointless it is to argue over the internet. There’s no way I am going to be convinced of god, and no way a believer will be convinced otherwise.
This has something to do with mankind having trouble admitting a wrong. Most people (including me) would rather die that admit doing a wrong. We’re not machines and we’re not gods, we do stupid stuff all the time.
I can imagine how stupid it must feel devoting your life to a faith, only to rejecting it later. That is a very harsh barrier to cross. Same goes with pseudoscientific medicine, spiritual healing, astronomy, pyramid schemes, and just about any other quackery of mankind.
Still, the dialogue is extremely insightful, especially at exposing the lack of education on the believer behalf.
Now don’t confuse these concepts together. I really smiled when you mentioned something about stars colliding. You got me there. How very clever.
Just take a moment to know your enemy if you really want to hit where it hurts. Nonsense just gets you laughed at.
If you really set off to collect all the knowledge about the atheistic model of the universe, you’ll note that it really doesn’t require two stars colliding(lol!). Just one blowing up hehe.
Really the only mystery that can’t be explained is the Big Bang. This is because there was no time before the Big Bang, and its really hard to do experiments or observations when there is no concept of time.
That was some great reading there. What you’re describing is exactly why while I choose to live without the “supernatural” in my life, I still enjoy learning about religions, local beliefs, etc. I have not heard the label “ethnohistory” before. It is quite fitting.
Atheism isn’t a group, an organization, or a following. It is simply someone who doesn’t do any of those things. The only difference between us and all those with a religion, is that we believe in one less god (many in Hindu’s case).
Also, the burden of proof lies with the positive existential proclamation. The default presumption when I claim I have a 13 inch cock, excluding proof, must be that it does not exist.
However, I have proof. Go ask your mother.
I understand your sentiment, but I also understand what is being said here.
If you install stumbleupon, for example, and set your preferences to include atheism, you will find a whole bunch of pages devoted to it. What do you think those pages all read like? Well, they read a lot like religion.
Atheism on the internet IS a religion.
The best part of all those atheist websites I’ve seen is how they all have these great essays and videos (really, some of them are pretty cool and very insightful), which will invariably never bee seen by followers of organized religions. It’s like a big circle-jerk.
[shrug]
you’re all going to hell…
Paul is Drunk, I like you, but you are so full of yourself that I want to give you a wedgie and take your lunch money just to knock you down a notch.
Let’s define it this way: All three categories are relatively recent (especially in opposition to each other; or in their current meanings), despite what the websites might tell you. You people are trying to objectively define the universe using tricky terminology no one agrees about that merely etches out some vague categories in world views that have only developed in the last 200 years.
Just to make my point clear: If the nature of the universe and/or human experience can be summed up in a word, how do you know that word even exists in English? Because your own experiences are so universal?
Agnostics are pussies. Pick a side!
Except of course atheism isn’t based on “hypothesis and speculation” it’s based on… you know.. reality.
When you look at the evidence it’s not that a god probably doesn’t exist.. it’s that a god CAN’T exist. God is a self contradicting, self refuting concept.
I didn’t know us atheists were in a religion. I was always under the impression that it was simply a disbelief in God. Boy was I wrong!
If god does exist and he created everything, he is a fucking pompous asshole. Also he is probably a she or an it. But god probably does not exist anyway. As for the whole meaning of the universe thing: simply a question we will never know. Just enjoy the small things in life.
Also {Shrug}
An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings. An agnostic is one who believes it impossible to know anything about God or about the creation of the universe and refrains from commitment to any religious doctrine. Infidel means an unbeliever, especially a nonbeliever in Islam or Christianity. A skeptic doubts and is critical of all accepted doctrines and creeds.
@im—-whatever:
When you strongly define yourself by your disbelief in something, I don’t know if you can say your worldview is just hyper-saturated with objectivity.
“there are no atheists in a foxholeâ€Â,
Way to troll the3g_ipwn.
Yes, atheists are peaceful and don’t go to war. Good point good point. Thanks for the heads up on that.
@the3g_ipwn
Hell no. One of my best friends is an atheist (and I mean HARDCORE atheist) and he’s a marine.
Namelis, are you fucking idiot? Have you never heard that expression before?
It means that even a die-hard atheist will think about praying with confronted with death.
The saying is as old as god damned foxholes. It’s a trite bit of cleverness that is more about human nature than the retardo atheism/religion debate on the innernets
Religious people trust their deity to protect them and believe that life after death will be paradise! Therefore, I contend that there are ONLY atheists in foxholes.
Seriously, what kind of survivalist cave do you have to live in to not understand or apparently to have even heard that expression? It’s a funny joke.
You’re like Oprah and her over 9000 cocks thing, fuck’s sakes.
Just sharing that quote. I was unable to find the author however.
If you want to be an athiest, fine by me. You don’t believe in God or Heaven or Hell. Cool. It’s just not something I want to gamble on. If you’re right about the subject, and when I die, I just lie in a hole in the ground until I decompose, What have I lost? But if I’m right…
Good point Caio. I am a fucking idiot.
Never thought of it that way. Always thought that “there are no atheists in foxholes” was some sort of a redneck burn about the army, instead of a real expression.
That does flip the argument a bit. Were afraid to die, and we makeup stuff to ease the concept of non-existence.
Seems like humans are hardwired for god.
Humans hardwire themselves to worship some fairy tale god. Look at history, this is not something new.
“But if I’m right…”
Then you’re probably still going to hell. There’s thousands of mutually exclusive religions, what are the odds that you picked the right god to worship and worship in the correct way?
Just a thought here.
Religous people accept a diety/dieties as a supreme being. To whom which all mankind has to answer. One who will judge everyone based on there adherence(is that a real word?)to set guidlines outlining basically how to be an all around good person. Thou shalt not kill/steal/lie, thou shalt not bang my wife while I’m at work, ect.
My question is this: Are people athiests simply because they deny the presence of a higher power, or is it so they can pretend not to be accountable for their actions in life?
“Damnit Morpheus, not everyone believes what you believe!” -Jason Lock-
“My beliefs do not require them to.” -Morpheus-
@the3g_ipwn
That’s only one category of religion. How you do know you won’t be judged by a glorious death on the field of battle? Or by whether you know the Riddle of Steel?
Atheists don’t deny anything. As Paul already said, the burden of proof lies with the positive existential proclamation.
Interesting thought. 3g_ipwn.
I’ll give you an answer from a hardcore atheist perspective.
The problem is that religion is just a form of thought control. It basically embroiders a device in your mind that prevents you from thinking. Don’t take this as “religious people are stupid”. It’s more like “why bother thinking about it when it can be answered by god and I don’t have to waste my time finding out”.
The clash between science and religion is a good example. Evolution for example, we found out how a certain part evolved over time, mean while the creationists just go “God did it”.
Ok. God did it how? Just miracled it into existence? That yields no useful knowledge about the universe.
And about the accountability.
I am accountable. I’m accountable to my friends, to my loved ones, to the people around me, to my government.
Why can’t humans just be accountable for their own actions? Why does their have to be a third party?
Oh yea forgot about that one Puulahi.
I am accountable to myself.
For example I feel cruel for taking a stray kitten away from its mom, even though he could hardly survive the winter. He sits now in the living room meowing for his mom. Even though its for the better.
@... im-postle-able:
I contradict you by saying: Of course religion isn’t based on “hypothesis and speculation†it’s based on… you know.. reality.
So…has that gotten us anywhere?
I know the explanation is probably literally in the Bible but please explain: Where exactly is God self-contradicting and/or self-refuting?
Now for reboot: The proof may lie with the positive existential proclamation but not only with it! If were talking about something where neither it’s existence nor it’s non-existence is proved BOTH sides have to bring proof. Just sitting on your ass and saying “well, prove it exists” doesn’t make your position any more legitimate.
And finally: Who tells me atheism isn’t just a form of conspiracy to dispose any morality or compassion so we can live in a society where we don’t have to care about our fellow human beings anymore?
Is religion something we make up so we can all feel warm and cuddly because Jebus watches over us or is atheism something we make up because we are afraid to accept the existence of a higher being (God, the Great Watumba or whatever) so we don’t have to live by some form of moral code?
And I think I’m d’accord with Nietzsche when I claim that any atheist who wastes his time on morality (which is a principle for wussies) while he could get rich at the cost of others who can’t defend themselves is wasting his time and is definitely not acting logically.
The funniest thing about Atheism is that it specifically goes against Christianity and Islam. Native American – or basically most pre-literate – religions, for the most part, would go unscratched by any of these arguments. Confucianism is perfectly safe. The majority of Hindu swamis would agree with you in full, Namelis.
Christianity, Atheism, Islam, Scientology, Agnosticism, whatever. They’re all the product of basic Western concepts and constructions. I find it funny that you people are arguing debates that pre-date Christ and both basically taking the same side using the same mental tools, but differing over trifling details.
Who made up the old metaphor about the two frogs arguing at the bottom of a well?
@Goldfinger: Nietzsche said we all wear masks. I want mine to be a Nietzche mask!!
reboot:
I don’t know that any religion is right. Some would say that, in itself, makes me non-religious. I’m gonna blow your mind now because I am truly a wierdo. I do not believe that any one current religion is 100% right or wrong. I agree with Caio (hurl) that all present day forms of religion have been shaped by centuries of corruption. I also agree with Namelis1 that all religion has been molded into a tool of mind control. What I do believin is at the heart of all religions. Live well, be kind to others, and treat every breath of air as a blessing for the next one is not guaranteed. Creation/Evolution is a miniscule portion of religion pulled from its origional context for the purpose of personal gain.
Namelis1:
See above. Also Evolution is the theory that in the vast epmtiness of prehistoric space, two stars collided and sparked the dawn of everything that has followed. Wait a minute. Two stars? I thought you just said it was empty. Where the hell did these 2 stars come from?
I think there is a great deal of truth to be found in both theories, as well as a great deal of false hoods.
@Goldfinger
The positive existential proclamation bearing the burden of proof is the entire basis for our legal system.
@Caio
Thanks. I have no idea who you are, so I have no opinion of you one way or another.
However, atheism has always existed. Diagoras of Melos is a good example. He lived and died during a time in which those accused of atheism were capable of being executed.
Which (and I’m no longer directly directing this at you, Caio) is ironic from a modern religious viewpoint. Under Christian or Islamic religions everyone from his time would have gone to hell anyway, because they didn’t follow their specific god, but many gods. They didn’t even get a choice, as those religions would arrive for many years later. In essence, the god represented in either religion condemned all people up to the foundation of their religion to a hell they never even knew existed.
Not trying to make a point, I just find it ironic.
@the3g_ipwn
Who ever said there had to be a beginning? Time as a linear construct is mostly a western idea stemming from Judaeo-Christian ideas.
In an infinite amount of time, all things will come to pass an infinite amount of times. Who ever said ours was the first Big Bang?
In fact, with Chaotic Inflation Theory (or “Bubble Universe Theory”) we may not even be the singular universe.
@no one in particular…
As the Romans said, “Never mix politics with wine.” As my nom de plume suggests, I should abstain from following this conversation further. Have fun, all.
@Goldfinger
“Just sitting on your ass and saying “well, prove it exists†doesn’t make your position any more legitimate.”
Yes, it does. Its called a null-hypothesis. We assume that the null-hypothesis is true until there is overwhelming data to the contrary. Usually something like 90% to 95% confidence is required.
@the3g_ipwn
“Also Evolution is the theory that in the vast epmtiness of prehistoric space, two stars collided and sparked the dawn of everything that has followed.”
WTF? Star collisions have nothing to do with evolution.
Paul_Is_Drunk:
I think it was Einstein who during his own research, discovered that the Universe definately had a beginning. He subsequiently retired from his study because he aslo knew something else. Everything that has a beginning, has an end. Einstein left his research in fear of the knowledge that his new found theory would uncover. He now knew that the world would end, and was afraid to know how.
Now I’m not about to argue with Einstein. He’s got a pretty good track record so far.
reboot:
You fucktard. The whole argument is derived from the disagreement on how the Universe was created. How can you brush aside the “BigBang” theory?
@the3g_ipwn
EVOLUTION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW THE UNIVERSE WAS CREATED! Hell, it has nothing to do with how life started, all it describes is how life develops into distinct species with different characteristics.
Einstein never left his research. He worked on Grand Unified Theory practically until the day he died. Everything else you said is also patently wrong.
“However, atheism has always existed. Diagoras of Melos is a good example. He lived and died during a time in which those accused of atheism were capable of being executed.”
Right, my point was that christianity and atheism are both a product of western rationalism, and that the debates are largely rooted in Greek thought and Greek mental tools which we’ve inherited.
Listen: the Ionian schools – debatably the founders of western rationalism – are mainly known via Plato and the Stoics. To my knowledge, not a single one of the Ionian authors survives except in references and quotations. So what do we even really know about these guys from the perspective of historiography? Fucking fuck all.
Now Plato, the man who invented the western concept of the “soul” was an atheist as well, but believed in a higher existence defined by ideas, which he associated with the soul itself.
The stoics, likewise, rejected the old myths and replaced them with an atheistic great spirit from which all souls are derived and eventually return.
Have you ever seen Atheists on the Internet quoting Strabo as an early atheist? Read the intro to the geography sometime. He was a fairly typical Stoic, although he didn’t seem to care either way. That quote actually comes from his attempt to defend Homer – the Greek equivalent of Moses – and to say that he (homer) was still the greatest arbiter of objective truth with or without Gods.
The Greeks might have come up with the basic impulse that the mythologies weren’t true, but it barely matters. The mythologies were probably imported from Anatolia. The original Greek religion – the fundamental pulse of Greek thought – was probably in its original form a highly conceptual, myth-light one like we find in Hector’s Theogeny.
The point is, what we in the west, when confronted with a divide between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ is merely another way of explaining basic issues fundamental to our worldviews.
Listen, what a culture believes is just a single element in how a culture organizes and behaves itself. If anything it’s a reflection of social organization, rather than a defining feature of social organization. Religion doesn’t “control” people or “brainwash” people, it explains what people believe and how they behave in a particular culture.
The Greeks replaced Homer with Jesus and Moses and continued to have the same fights about the nature of truth – ones that the Jews never had.
Read the Talmud sometime. You’ll quickly realize that the Jews saw contradictions in the old Testament, but ones that never even occurred to Christians, and which then solved in very non-Christian ways. Only a century later, the very Platonistic church fathers answered all the completely different contradictions in the Bible and answered them with the help of Plato and Plautinus. Because Christians – like scientists, atheist, muslims – are basically just Greco-Romans that borrowed a few foreign stories.
And, now, Atheists are using what is primarily Aristotlean logic to shoot down religion. Often they’re using the same types of arguments St. Augustine used. Hell, there are passages I could quote from Augustine where I could just cross out ‘God’ and replace ‘Science’ and post it on my blog and you’d never know?
Is that really a problem? No, not really. Like I said: religion, mythology, science, philosophy… it’s just a way for culture to explain itself.
Oh, yes, and what is the big bang, anyway, but a Prime Mover? Or a creationist God? Another Prime mover? Same shit, different terminology… maybe some more sophisticated observations, but had we allowed other cultures to flourish as ours has, they’d have probably reached equally sophisticated methods of observation by now, and come up with vastly different conclusions.
@Paul_Is_Drunk & legal system: Too bad we’re not in a courtroom.
@The Matrix: Rebooted & statistics/null-hypothesis: Too bad we’re not doing math here. I could just take your line of argument ad absurdum by making my null-hypothesis “God doesn’t exist!” Now, can you find any overwhelming data that supports the alternative hypothesis?
There’s a certain reason that up until today no mathematician has found any proof for the (non-)existence of any god whatsoever.
The problem is: We don’t have any proof for the existence of God. Fine. That doesn’t prove his non-existence. The only thing that could prove that would be a coherent proof AGAINST the assumption of his existence – which we don’t have. And that works vice versa. And as long as we cannot prove anything believing in God and not believing in God are just constructs we can either adopt or not adopt. And while it is arrogant to claim to KNOW that God exists it is just as arrogant to claim to KNOW that he doesn’t. So why all the proselytising?
Plotinus, sorry, failed Greek->Latin on my part.
@Goldfinger: Speak of the Devil.
que?
Erg, sorry, I meant ‘the same arguments as St. Thomas’ not Augustine. Fuck me silly.
You people are fucking crazy! Tiki must stay up late just laughing his ass off.
PRAISE JESUS!
reboot:
“EVOLUTION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW THE UNIVERSE WAS CREATED! Hell, it has nothing to do with how life started, all it describes is how life develops into distinct species with different characteristics.”
You see, kido. This is exactly why you get ass whipped on here every single night. You argue evoulution over creation theory, yet claim that one has absoutely nothing to do with the other.
That’s like saying apples are better than oranges because oranges don’t exist.
Hey, guys. Check this out. New guy thinks he knows more about science than me.
@the3g_ipwn
At this point, I’m going to have to ask you: are you literally crazy? Are you on your meds? I haven’t argued evoulution[sic] over creation theory anywhere in this thread. I just started off by pointing out the absurdity of your watered down version of Pascal’s Wager.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
The words “stars” or “universe” don’t even appear in that article. Now, please, explain to me how colliding stars has anything, anything at all, to do with evolution.
BTW @Caio
That’s a really great post up there. That’s something I’m really going to have to think about and do some research on. Its not often that I encounter a idea on the internet that is really new to me. Kudos, sir.
The problem I have w/ Pascal’s Wager (should’ve stuck w/ mathematics) is the assumption that you lose nothing by believing and being wrong. I think you do lose something, maybe a lot of somethings. If your wrong you’ve spent your very limited time “believing” something that is false and have based other beliefs and thoughts on that falsity. I think Pascal knew better and prolly didn’t believe, but like Descartes, decided to keep that to himself. Surely he would have deduced that a wager is not belief and any God
would know your “belief” was not true faith. The only other option is to make yourself truly believe and that negates the whole point of the wager. I think it was CS Lewis that said “The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”
Look douchebag, If you want to sit on your fat ass, eating cheetos and plagerising everone on the internet, go right ahead. When the hampster wheel in your head sparks an origional thought, let me know. Don’t pretend to be educated because you can regurgitate the published works of learned men.
nyokki: That was directed at reboot. I have absouletly no fucking clue what you are talking about.
@The Matrix: Rebooted: I’m glad you understood it because I said it in the stupidest and longest way possible.
What I should have said is this:
The local tribe, the Ktunaxa has this big long cycle of myths about a mountain spirit playing tricks on humans, who were defended by Wolf Spirit (a trickster like Cayote).
It’s pretty long, I heard it in full in three sittings, and heard parts of it from a couple other elders.
If you memorize this myth, you’ll memorize exactly all the mountain passes around this valley that are prone to landslide. And, according to the elder, that’s why you need to learn it.
Now a geographer would come in and start doing his normal aristotlean stuff: Defining various features based on common features, fitting rocks into their categories, blah blah blah. And in the end *he would come to the exact same conclusion*.
Because the elder and the geologist are teaching their community the exact same thing: To know which passes aren’t safe to climb.
Each is just a method of explaining the world to other members of your tribe, really.
If you’re interested in this kind of thing, the key word is ‘ethnohistory’. It’s basically like Boas/Sapir put into a diachronistic context; or like understanding now just how cultures via how they change. That’s pretty much everything I did in grad school and it is very new and exciting, and seems to actually fit the facts.
@Caio
That is really interesting, because on a smaller scale, its clear that major breakthroughs in science require changing the models of how we think. Such as going from classical to quantum mechanics. So its interesting to think about how, on a more fundamental level, our thinking is shaped (and maybe limited) by those cultural models. I would hope that eventually we would come to the same conclusions, like the geographer and the Ktunaxa, but there’s no guarantee of that. And there’s no reason to believe that development would be in the same order, like a culture that develops fusion before the wheel. I’ll definitely be giving this more thought in the future.
@the3g_ipwn
LOL, what have I plagiarized? I “pretend” to be educated because I have multiple degrees in scientific fields. Check out the forums, I think I’ve sufficiently demonstrated my credentials around here.
“I have absouletly no fucking clue what you are talking about.”
That’s the problem. She has a well thought-out point that directly addresses you’re main argument. Meanwhile you’re quoting Morpheus.
Sorry, if I seem like I’m picking on you. Its just that your the easy target of the day.
reboot:
“EVOLUTION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW THE UNIVERSE WAS CREATED! Hell, it has nothing to do with how life started, all it describes is how life develops into distinct species with different characteristics”- taken from your post-
“evolution is the process of change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next.”-taken from a link you also posted-
I’m sorry. You did change a few words around.
@the3g_ipwn,
I’m not going to argue with you, because your comments over the recent weeks have led me to the conclusion that you have the mental capacity of a small child.
You are the embodiment of ignorance and arrogance on the internet. I hate you.
I guess you’re going to have to take my word for it, but I didn’t even look at that link until long after I had submitted the comment that you just quoted. Really, I just know a fairly accurate definition of evolution off the top of my head. Education pays off.
You know who also Practiced religion? Hitler.
@the3g_ipwn
I’m fairly certain I wasn’t responding to whateverthehell you posted as mine was also directed at reboot and the posters he was referring to.
Raptor Jesus
Oh 3g_ipwn I love you. Best. Troll. Ever. That or a very illiterate soul indeed. Though who am I to criticize intelligence, I am a fucking idiot as Caio pointed out.(No hard feelings, because it’s true)
I also love how religion threads spiral out of control on MCS.
More I think about it, the more pointless it is to argue over the internet. There’s no way I am going to be convinced of god, and no way a believer will be convinced otherwise.
This has something to do with mankind having trouble admitting a wrong. Most people (including me) would rather die that admit doing a wrong. We’re not machines and we’re not gods, we do stupid stuff all the time.
I can imagine how stupid it must feel devoting your life to a faith, only to rejecting it later. That is a very harsh barrier to cross. Same goes with pseudoscientific medicine, spiritual healing, astronomy, pyramid schemes, and just about any other quackery of mankind.
Still, the dialogue is extremely insightful, especially at exposing the lack of education on the believer behalf.
the3g_ipwn. Here’s some reading to get you going:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang Begining of the universe.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth Beginning and history of the earth.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis The study of the begining of life.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution Evolution
Now don’t confuse these concepts together. I really smiled when you mentioned something about stars colliding. You got me there. How very clever.
Just take a moment to know your enemy if you really want to hit where it hurts. Nonsense just gets you laughed at.
If you really set off to collect all the knowledge about the atheistic model of the universe, you’ll note that it really doesn’t require two stars colliding(lol!). Just one blowing up hehe.
Really the only mystery that can’t be explained is the Big Bang. This is because there was no time before the Big Bang, and its really hard to do experiments or observations when there is no concept of time.
@Caio
That was some great reading there. What you’re describing is exactly why while I choose to live without the “supernatural” in my life, I still enjoy learning about religions, local beliefs, etc. I have not heard the label “ethnohistory” before. It is quite fitting.
Good job getting people to think. 😉