patrick.net

deepcgi says

"Religion" clearly does NOT agree on what is moral. Does atheism?

You may be interested in this article about science and morality:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-science-of-morality_b_567185.html

deepcgi says

To say there is no place for "morality" in modern society is ludicrous.

Strawman. Morality in General vs. Religious Morality != Morality vs. No Morality

You HAVE to draw a line somewhere. And it elludes science entirely. 89 days...abortion ok. 91 days...abortion not ok. 8 months 29 days...sometimes OK to some people (partial birth, baby half-way out). Baby all the way out but the chord is still uncut...not OK at all. Science couldn't care less. If it is anything but dispassionate, it isn't science anymore. Any Science of Morality is just a mixture of science with philosophy.

Actually, I personally believe that Quantum physics hints at the future of science and morality. Quantum Physics is the death of determinism and cause-and-effect, but the rise of evidence of consciousness preceeding chemistry. That is the skeleton in the closet of science right there. The damn Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser experiment has actually been confirmed! My old high school physics teacher suddenly becomes the monkey covering his ears. All of a sudden atheist scientists are dragged kicking-and-screaming into the realm of philosophy. Their only defence against the "logical" conclusions are semantical arguments. I love it.

Oh boy, looks like God found another place to hide, temporarily.

First he was in the trees, then the bees, then in clouds, then in the dome above the earth, then in the aether, then in another dimension, or sometimes in human consciousness (but not Ape or Dolphin consciousness, and certainly not rat or tse-tse fly consciousness). Now he's reduced to guiding particles, but only in specific circumstances.

The more direct explanation with less multiplying entities:
We don't know why this happens, yet. But since thunder and lightening was not caused by thor, and mental disease is not demon possession, let's hold off assigning this one to Yahweh.

Dan8267 says

Bap33 says

I agree the climate is changing. I do not think man has any part in it - good or bad.

Even if it weren't for climate change, pollution is wrong. It's a form of vandalism, theft, and assault.

Yes. Thank you.
The other question which the lawyers will ask is, "Who is being assaulted, vandalized, and stolen from?"

Your future self.

This is why I advocate for a change to the Bill of Rights that guarantees future people equal rights to life and property as present people.
In other words, you don't have the right to put your future self into debt obligations that they didn't choose.
Debt would be illegal unless you invent time travel.

;-)

thunderlips11 says

let's hold off assigning this one to Yahweh.

I don't. I'm agnostic. But atheism is hypocritical. I don't care what God thinks. God can kiss my ass. But Quantum Physics has rung the death knell of cause-and-effect. That's just loads of fun the way it pisses off traditional atheists. It may well mean that all of us collectively created the universe. How amusing.

You're also wrong about my opinions on the dolphins and such. Extensions of the argument include anything self-aware. I catch my pet Tse-Tse fly, Geraldo, staring at himself in the mirror all the time. The poser.

I personally think that Will Wright is God. He's the creator of the Sims and Spore. I'm fairly sure he eventually creates the Big Bang. He just hasn't gotten around to it yet.

deepcgi says

But atheism is hypocritical.

How so?

deepcgi says

Any Science of Morality is just a mixture of science with philosophy.

Why is that? Philosophy is a matter of semantic hygeine, science is about exploring the unknown.

Questions on morality can be answered with science.

deepcgi says

But Quantum Physics has rung the death knell of cause-and-effect. That's just loads of fun the way it pisses off traditional atheists. It may well mean that all of us collectively created the universe.

Hmmm. Since humans weren't around until recently, and for at least the first billion years of the Earth's existence, there were no living things. And I don't think it's a stretch, based on what we know about the universe. to assume that for at least a billion years since the big bang, that there were no lifeforms anywhere, because conditions did not exist to support them yet. So how did consciousness/self-awareness create the universe?

Atheists don't believe in Deities. That's it. You could be an atheist and believe in psychic powers. Or Bigfoot. Or UFOs. Or Crystal Resonance Healing. Or any kind of flim-flam that is not powered by a Deity.

Also, the death of cause-and-effect is also the death of the theist Kalam Cosmological Argument, too.

The atheist Dostoevsky wrote, "If there is no immortality, there can be no virtue, and all things are permissible." I think that is an honest statement.

I believe that declaring oneself an atheist requires making a moral judgement. It isn't admitting that you don't know or can't know, but that you reject the possibility on principle (probably because you have a bone to pick with some religious zealots, but i'm guessing. :-)).

An honest scientist, if asked should say, "I don't know if there is a god or not...I don't see any evidence that leads me to believe so, but others may disagree. I reserve the right to change my mind based on future facts coming to light."

The burden of proof argument doesn't relieve you from admitting you "don't know". Many scientists just can't admit they don't know something. They have-to-know in order to be superior in knowledge. I'm an opinionated sob, but there are many things I don't know. Is there a god? I don't know.

deepcgi says

An honest scientist, if asked should say, "I don't know if there is a god or not...I don't see any evidence that leads me to believe so, but others may disagree. I reserve the right to change my mind based on future facts coming to light."

Scientists do have a bias: To look for natural, material explanations. This goes all the way back to the Dark Ages, and a Christian Monk of all people, William of Occam.

"Don't multiply entities unnecessarily".

Nobody goes out of their way to say:
"There might be a unicorn. We've never seen one, but there are places in the Amazon and Central Africa and the SE Asian and New Guinea highlands that are barely explored. I don't see any evidence, BUT..."

No, people with half a brain dismiss unicorns out of hand. The onus is on the "Cryptozoologists" to produce any evidence of a unicorn or bigfoot. Funny how bigfoot never takes a shit in the woods that nobody steps on, collects, and brings back to a university.

Well, if God exists, where is his shit?

That what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

To misquote your Russian Author:
"If there is no evidence, there can be no reality, and all things are permissible."

The consciousness created the universe thing is quite a leap, I'll admit, but the ramifications of Quantum Physics (the Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser experiment in particular) is leading us to conclude that the past is just as uncertain as the future. We "remember" the past and "don't remember" the future, so we assume there was only one possible past. But conscious decisions clearly effect quantum reality - even in the past. It's like the universe we all share is entangled with us at some quantum level and that is why we find it in common. If i study quantum physics every day (which i do) for the rest of my life, I suspect i'll never get my head around this puzzler. I suspect it's because it isn't just "my" head that IS wrapped around it all.

I really do highly recommend looking into the eraser experiment. I absolutely guarantee that it will unhinge your mind. Not exactly light reading, Dr. Seuss material, but still loads of fun. There isn't a dyed-in-the-wool, determinist, cause-and-effect, atheist in the world who doesn't want that skeleton shoved back in the closet. Any of them that fight against the logical conclusion that conciousness preceeds chemistry finds themselves philosophizing in a tangle of semantics - just where they thought they weren't! The ultimate "i don't know". I'd point you to a good place to see it explained, but no one on earth understands it.

deepcgi says

An honest scientist, if asked should say, "I don't know if there is a god or not...I don't see any evidence that leads me to believe so, but others may disagree. I reserve the right to change my mind based on future facts coming to light."

But honest scientists are going to look for natural explanations, which leads them to:

http:/.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=742

6.00: Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'

thunderlips11 says

To misquote your Russian Author:
"If there is no evidence, there can be no reality, and all things are permissible."

A misquote indeed, because that was my very first point on my very first post. "if God is a perky south african sea otter..." my disbelief in that changes nothing. If i disbelieve in France...it still exists - whatever I think. (of course i didn't write that in the past, i'm ABOUT TO write that in the past, so that it will make me look more clever...yesterday. I'll get around to writing my past quotes in a few minutes. Benefits of a quantum education, you know).

You're just afraid to say you don't know. Scientists just can't do it. It's some disorder of the lips. I can say it in about eight languages (give or take). I don't know why it's so hard for them to say.

uomo_senza_nome says

6.00: Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'

fair enough, statement. Decently, honest, too. What is God, though now? Intelligent occurance? In the double-slit experiment the photon is collapsed (that is...the wave-function of the photon) is collapsed even when the slit it passes through is NOT the one that contains the measuring instrument! It can't have been interfered with, because the measuring instrument was on the slit through which nothing passed! Basically, the photon didn't exist at all, until we tried to detect it, and then we forced it into being in a predictable state by conscious decision. Interestingly, it isn't true just for the experimenter's consciousness but for all of us. That's where the collision of universal consciousness and determinism occurs. Is universal consciousness a definition of God?

Still I agree with the above. Chances are low that "HE" exists. Chances are fairly low that I do, for that matter. Maybe you just collapsed my wave function and i'm here because of some sequence of conscious decisions? I'm a pain in the neck and it's all your fault. Way to go.

deepcgi says

An honest scientist, if asked should say, "I don't know if there is a god or not...I don't see any evidence that leads me to believe so, but others may disagree. I reserve the right to change my mind based on future facts coming to light."

I don't think you understand the nature of atheism.

Atheism and the "honest scientist" viewpoint you described out are not mutually exclusive.

The "honest scientist" can say, "I don't know if there is a god or not, but the lack of evidence for a god(s) leads me to believe that there is no god. However, I reserve the right to change my mind based on future facts coming to light."

We don't know that russell's teapot is not out there, do we? It could be...

deepcgi says

The atheist Dostoevsky wrote, "If there is no immortality, there can be no virtue, and all things are permissible." I think that is an honest statement.

Other atheists have, convenient to ignore, differing viewpoints...

leoj707 says

deepcgi says

"Religion" clearly does NOT agree on what is moral. Does atheism?

You may be interested in this article about science and morality:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-science-of-morality_b_567185.html

deepcgi says

Still I agree with the above. Chances are low that "HE" exists. Chances are fairly low that I do, for that matter. Maybe you just collapsed my wave function and i'm here because of some sequence of conscious decisions? I'm a pain in the neck and it's all your fault. Way to go.

The only thing that I can know for sure is that I am experiencing some sort of conscious awareness.

Right I don't know if god(s) is/are real, if you are real, if my hands are real, etc.

However, within the framework of my experience there is evidence that my hands exist while there is absolutely no evidence that any deity described by man exists.

What is your point? I don't see why you think all your proposals on this thread would be difficult for an atheist.

What do you imagine the nature of atheism to be?

deepcgi says

What is God, though now? Intelligent occurance?

I can't think of a more loaded word in English than God. We can dispense with the word God and hope to have an intelligent discussion about Quantum Mechanics.

deepcgi says

That's where the collision of universal consciousness and determinism occurs. Is universal consciousness a definition of God?

Again without worrying about semantic definitions, what you are alluding to here is the mysterious nature of what we perceive as real. And I suppose the talk about "past" vs. "future" is related to the arrow of time.

deepcgi says

Chances are fairly low that I do, for that matter.

LOL, are you saying that the particle 'you' is not real, but the wave function 'you' is?

deepcgi says

The atheist Dostoevsky wrote, "If there is no immortality, there can be no virtue, and all things are permissible." I think that is an honest statement.

Ummm... yes that was indeed something written by Dostoevsky in his book The Brothers Karamazov.

Just to liven things up here why don't we post the entire quote (emphasis mine):

"Rack your brains — you’ll understand it. His article is absurd and ridiculous. And did you hear his stupid theory just now: if there’s no immortality of the soul, then there’s no virtue, and everything is lawful. (And by the way, do you remember how your brother Mitya cried out: ‘I will remember!’) An attractive theory for scoundrels! — (I’m being abusive, that’s stupid.) Not for scoundrels, but for pedantic poseurs, ‘haunted by profound, unsolved doubts.’ He’s showing off, and what it all comes to is, ‘on the one hand we cannot but admit’ and ‘on the other it must be confessed!’ His whole theory is a fraud! Humanity will find in itself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality. It will find it in love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity.’"

Hey deepcgi, we all know that you were showing off by quoting Dostoevsky, but are you also a "...pedantic poseurs, ‘haunted by profound, unsolved doubts.’" as suggested by Dostoevsky?

deepcgi says

You're just afraid to say you don't know. Scientists just can't do it. It's some disorder of the lips. I can say it in about eight languages (give or take). I don't know why it's so hard for them to say.

Nonsense. Scientists love not knowing, it gives them a challenge. They also enjoy finding out something is not the case, since that adds to their knowledge.

I know I don't know many things. There are things I don't know, and things I don't know that I don't know. However, on this subject, you also do not know. If you do know, and can prove it or even make it very plausible as an explanation, please submit your explanation to CalTech, MIT, or Brookhaven National Lab or any other educational or scientific institution.

It is possible, but not plausible (going by precedence) than this currently unexplained mechanism is ultimately unexplainable. I note the glee with which people grasp any unexplainable aspect of the universe as a place for their God of the Gaps can hide in.

thunderlips11 says

I note the glee with which people grasp any unexplainable aspect of the universe as a place for their God of the Gaps can hide in.

God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. - Richard Feynman

If you can't see it, it isn't there? Hmm...a bad mantra to live by. Some predators are very sneaky.

Only an hour ago or so, i offered God to kiss my ass. Not exactly the glee of which you speak. I'll even do it again. God? Kiss my ass! And yet, I STILL think determinism is a phenomenon destined for books that chronicle history from before the 21st Century.

The unexplained mechanism of QP does have explanations - and determinists gleefully reject them. Consciousness preceeds chemistry. Unfortunately, more and more scientists are putting forth just such explanations to explain the delayed choice. The determinist naysayers are responding in semantics surrounding the relativity of time to defend the treasured cause-and-effect.

And i do speak with scientists active in this field - quite often. Forget people trying to find hiding places for deity. What really should be worrying you is that your own consciousness isn't made possible BY your physical brain and all of its billions of electrical impulses, but by quantum operations that occur at faster than Plank time. You may be a part of the "god" you reject, and we may have already executed the experiment that leads to that conclusion. That's enough of that, I'm sure.

deepcgi says

If you can't see it, it isn't there?

Who here said that?

If you think you understand Quantum mechanics, you don't understand Quantum mechanics . - Richard Feynman

deepcgi says

Consciousness preceeds chemistry. Unfortunately, more and more scientists are putting forth just such explanations to explain the delayed choice.

Consciousness preceeding Chemistry is a grand claim. Care to offer a grand proof? At least recent citations where these scientists are putting forth such explanations?

deepcgi says

You may be a part of the "god" you reject, and we may have already executed the experiment that leads to that conclusion. That's enough of that, I'm sure.

Strangely for a person studying Quantum Mechanics, you have a constant inclination with the word 'God' and elude a conversation without the loaded connotation that comes with 'God'.

In fact if you keep connecting what we don't know about Quantum Mechanics with God, you sound more and more like Deepak Chopra, LOL. Your moniker 'deepcgi' seems to indicate that you may be his follower.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/CLwnqDvlXqI

http://www.youtube.com/embed/Z-FaXD_igv4

Deepcgi, you still haven't answered my objection to the fact that consciousness, by definition, requires lifeforms, and immediately following the big bang there were no lifeforms to provide "organizational power" through their consciousness.

I like this deepcgi guy.

@ deepcgi

You have to realize there are several people on this forum that to varying degrees can not relate to

1) An agnostic pov on Gods existence.

or

2) An adult kind of belief in God which is not centered on a very googoo gaga, daddy in the sky, being (that one can have a relationship with) definition of God.

I know that many adult believers including even priests and ministers, have mature and very undefined views of what "god" is or might be. For example an episcopal bishop whose videos I have posted here several times, who describes his belief as "walking in to the mystery."

http://www.youtube.com/embed/6AfFcAmx-Ro&playnext=1&list=PL4AFF1E93650B210B&feature=results_main

He also doesn't beat around the bush in discussing that all serious religious scholars (including priests and ministers) don't take all of the bible or all of Christian doctrine to be literally true.

Even without getting in to talking about consciousness (or all consciousness), or quantum mechanics which starts to get at contemplating what god might possibly be about if not a being, that is even if you want to just talk about Bishop Sprongs "walking into the mystery" which gets to a spritual prism through which he sees everything, this is very troubling to the atheists on this forum and I'm sure atheists in general.

We are talking about a perspective they can not comprehend. And yet they have a fierce need to judge it, to justify their deep beliefs that there is nothing spiritual or that might be thought of as God.

As you said they need this answer.

Thus you hear childish and silly arguments such as. "You say you don't know whether God exists is like me saying I don't know whether there are unicorns."
TO them this is profound logic, and the height of their reasoning on this question.

They have gone through a long and difficult struggle to reject god in any form. At this point they need to justify the belief that there is no god. TRying on an 'I don't know' point of view (which to you or I is so obviously the truth) is disturbing to them.

(maybe this is one of the reasons why it is considered bad form to discuss religion or politics in polite company)

deepcgi says

But Quantum Physics has rung the death knell of cause-and-effect.

Must resist temptation to write 100 page paper on Quantum Mechanics and why the proletarian don't understand it.

Actually, I don't have to do that because I've already have. Please read the post where I explain exactly what the Uncertainty Principle and the Copenhagen Interpretation mean. Don't worry, I make it clear and easy to understand.

Then read the post where I explain that Quantum Mechanics disproves god rather than supports the god of the gaps. Please note that post is a rebuttal to a Creationist video.

deepcgi says

I personally think that Will Wright is God. He's the creator of the Sims and Spore.

Your standards for games is -- no pun intended -- god awful. Spore was originally meant to be a substantive game, but the dumb asses took control of the project and made it entirely into meaningless fluff. The only thing they put effort into was the graphics, and even that sucked. The game play was atrocious, and it wasn't even a game. At best it was three unrelated mini-activities followed by a long, boring, and pointless grind.

Spore was over-hyped crap. It was the Facebook of games.

deepcgi says

If there is no immortality, there can be no virtue, and all things are permissible.

Why should I accept that statement? Why would immortality be a prerequisite of virtue. That makes as much sense as trickle-down economics.

uomo_senza_nome says

De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'

As I've written before, there are three types of knowledge: a priori, empirical, and corollary. There is an infinite amount of possible a priori knowledge, and all of it can be known with 100% certainty. There is a finite amount of empirical knowledge, but it can also be known to within the precision of your measuring stick. There is a finite amount of corollary knowledge, and this is the only knowledge that we can only be less than 100% certain of.

The existence of god, by any definition that merits worship and obedience, is an a prior question and can be proved or disproved with 100% certainty as I have done so, so many times on this site.

deepcgi says

Is universal consciousness a definition of God?

You can make "dog shit" the definition of god, but that does not mean people will worship it. Any definition of god used in an academic argument only to be discarded when talking to the faithful in church, temple, mosque, etc. is a disingenuous definition and serves no purpose. So, you proved the existence of dog shit. That doesn't prove the existence of the entity Christians say is the reason gays can't marry.

If you're looking for anything unknown to justify the use of the word god, don't. It's a pointless exercise. If someone discovers a new species of ape and decides to call it "Big Foot", doesn't mean that the Big Foot of legend actually exists. It just means the guy was being a dick for naming a real species after a bunch of hoaxes and lies. It may confuse the public, but it does not add legitimacy to the Big Foot legend. Neither does taking something completely irrelevant to all theologies that ever existed and calling it "god" add to the legitimacy of those theologies.

uomo_senza_nome says

I can't think of a more loaded word in English than God.

Other than "fuck".

The more meanings a word has, the less meaning it has.

deepcgi says

Consciousness preceeds chemistry.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/BNsrK6P9QvI

No, chemistry precedes consciousness.

marcus says

I like this deepcgi guy.

Of course. You like anyone who agrees with you and hate anyone who disagrees with you. You're best friend is the mirror.

Dan8267 says

You like anyone who agrees with you and hate anyone who disagrees with you.

I don't know that he agrees with me, and he (or she) isn't particularly like me. But I like the playfulness of his or her views, and some of the provocative suggestions, such as...

deepcgi says

Quantum Physics is the death of determinism and cause-and-effect, but the rise of evidence of consciousness preceeding chemistry. That is the skeleton in the closet of science right there. The damn Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser experiment has actually been confirmed!

I'm not sure whether all the inferences some get from the double slit experiments are correct or whether there is something very important about light that we just don't yet understand. But it's definitely bizarre stuff and pretty darn interesting in any case.

The thoughts cgi shares about some of the implications of quantum mechanics sound like he has really toyed with some of the big questions that come up. Where as your out of place long writing on the subject looked like they were just careful rewording of what you read in some encyclopedia. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I like the question "what if consciousness precedes chemistry ?"

One issue with this thread seems to begin in the title, i.e. "religious logic."

To quote Charles Blow, "Religion isn't defined by logic. It defies it." More sophisticated thinkers like Bishop Spong re-frame religion, and reduce it to a way of looking at the world, like rose colored glasses. The comments above analogizing religion to quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics, and Einstein's relativity can all be summed up with Hemingway's question, "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

Religion persists because it organizes people and motivates them to do individually irrational things on behalf of the group, like have 10 kids with no idea how to provide for them, then go crusade to kill infidels. The anger in the cartoon is intrinsic, i.e. the likelihood of an argument overheating into violence is inversely proportional to the evidence available to settle the question. In other words, because religious beliefs cannot ultimately be proved, they lend themselves easily to violence and more generally to the use of force.

Marcus and others like to believe that their professions of moderate belief protect them from fundamentalist fanaticism. Unfortunately, in a society based on religion, moderation is quickly banned. Witness our "allies" in officially Islamic Pakistan, where a young Punjabi woman wanted to convert to Christianity. The penalty in Sharia is death, but the Governor said she should not be killed. He was then assassinated for blasphemy. The assassins were caught, but huge crowds demanded their release. The region is desperately poor, but the crowds showered the assassins with rose petals. As in North Korea, fanatical devotion becomes a contest. The dynamic leads to ever greater shows of devotion and force.

If you don't think it can happen here, look at the history of Prop H8, where members of Romney's cult donated their life savings and crusaded door to door to stop gay couples from getting married. Watch "8: The Mormon Proposition" and you can't help noticing the intensity of their hatred, and the later scenes which can in essence be described as child sacrifice. Religion was by far the #1 predictor of how people voted, with more than 80% of Evangelical "Christians" voting to terminate the equal protection of the laws and more than 80% of Atheists voting to protect the Constitution. If you think it can't affect you, read _all_ of the prohibitions in Leviticus, including shellfish, most meats and fowl, clothing of mixed fiber, and cutting the corners of your beard. Exodus makes forgetting the one true sabbath a capital offense, and the Abrahamic religions have three different sabbaths: Friday for Muslims, Saturday for Jews, and Sunday for Christians. The Pakistanis' blood is the same color as yours, the Shi'ites and Sunnis' blood is likewise the same color; the Crusades, the Reformation, and the troubles in Ireland all showed abundantly that everybody's blood is the same color. The Enlightenment, as codified in our Constitution, provides a thin veneer of civilization over a prehistoric tendency towards religious crusade. Many have said, if the Constitution were put to a popular vote today, it would not pass.

uomo_senza_nome says

Russell's teapot

What if this said teapot cast a shadow on the moon that we could all see?

curious2 says

Marcus and others like to believe that their professions of moderate belief protect them from fundamentalist fanaticism.

That's not what I believe.

What I believe is that "spiritual beliefs" happen. That this is part of human nature.

And I believe that advocating for atheism, or proselytizing for atheism is no more likely to diminish fanatical fundamentalism in the world than advocating or proselytizing for more moderate religious beliefs is.

In fact, I even think that an good argument could be made that the growth of atheism may be more of a catalyst to the growth of fanatical fundamentalism than the growth of moderate or progressive religions would be.

Not too long ago science argued that the rabbit DID NOT chew it's cud, yet the bible said it did........Hmmmmm I wondered who was correct? Man also thought the earth was flat yet the bible said it was a circle/sphere.We all know now what happened.......yes they did not sail off the end of earth!

Man made things like the " Carbon time Clock" are full of holes but yet man is determined to prove we came from apes millions of years ago...yet we still have apes? WOW...The bible says we were created according to kind......Now that makes sense.

Don't always lean on your own understanding. Creation is proof enough to show there is a creator.

The question is now about faith. Do you have the faith he will clean up the mess and there is a plan in place or will you continue to lean on your "own understanding" >?

marcus says

At this point they need to justify the belief that there is no god.

There is no god is not a belief. It is an extremely likely conclusion based on cumulative scientific knowledge. To say "I don't know" is not enlightenment, it is rejecting the accomplishments of science and believing in God for the wooly concepts that we don't yet understand.

An atheist doesn't need the word 'God' to explain away things we don't yet understand. We can simply explore what we don't understand and hope to get closer to the truth.

In this sense, the childishness is actually on the agnostic PoV and not the atheist.

I can see why you would think atheists are being childish (because sometimes arguments can get very heated), but I don't agree with it because you are generalizing all atheists to be like the ones you've known before.

If the Jesus the Hippy Preacher belief is the correct version, or some nambly pambly Gnostic belief for that matter, the Inquisition, Witchburning, Abuse of Inuit Children, War on Hygiene (Since the prophets didn't bathe and were Righteous, to be righteous you shouldn't bath, either) etc grew out of that belief anyway.

Thus, even out of a benign form of supernatural belief, bad things can happen. See also the Buddhist thread.

JohnAlexander says

Man also thought the earth was flat yet the bible said it was a circle/sphere.

The Bible did not argue the earth was flat: Corners of the Earth, The Solid Metal Dome that God hammered out (Hebrew Verb: Rak'ia, to beat) and put over the land and hung the sun and moon on, etc. There are also talking Donkeys, Men living in Whales, Animals getting their coloring from what their mother stared at, stopping the sun in the sky during a battle, dead coming back to life, walking on water, etc. etc. etc.

In fact the Bible was quoted in defense of the flat earth for more than a thousand years by the Church. The OT conception of the Earth was similar to that of the Babylonians; a flat round disc suspended over water with a solid dome over it. Because much of the Bible is written in poetic language, you can stretch the meanings to make it defend most conceptions. However, the ancient Hebrews believed in a flat Earth, and they're the ones who wrote the damn thing. As did the Early and Middle Ages Christians.

The OT is a collection of myths believed by barely literate Goat Herders from a backwater part of the ancient world. The NT is a collection of rival tales about a fictional Jewish Carpenter who was the sun of God, and the inconsistencies (Not to bring peace but with a sword/Blessed are the Peacemakers. Obey the Law until all is fulfilled/Circumsize your heart instead) are because of rival groups of early Christians putting different words into the fictional Jesus' mouth to fit their own ends.

Just about every "Bible Scholar" wibbler admits the NT shows scars of battle between rival factions all over it; only a minority of the most Fundamentalist believers deny it.

marcus says

I even think that an good argument could be made that the growth of atheism may be more of a catalyst to the growth of fanatical fundamentalism than the growth of moderate or progressive religions would be.

We are not born with intelligence to which we cumulatively add; we are born with ignorance which we must successively shed. - Old Sanskrit Proverb.

An atheist is willing to successively shed this ignorance to reach closer to the truth. So of course it is going to rile the fundamentalists more because they want everyone to remain willfully ignorant.

An agnostic PoV (which obviously deepcgi espouses and you agree to) is someone who is satisfied with saying "I don't know".

In fact, we are asking deepcgi to substantiate his grand claim of consciousness preceeding chemistry (he claimed there are scientific papers that talk about this) and there has been no proper, precise response so far. Instead we have been treated with platitudes on Quantum mechanics and random usage of the word 'God', whatever that may mean.

marcus says

That's not what I believe... I even think that an good argument could be made [for what you started out saying you don't believe].

Defensive reactions are natural, people don't like to be called wrong about anything, so in that sense you illustrate (perhaps inadvertently) your point.

Also, there is current evidence to support your view. For example, countries with the best human rights protections tend to have moderate Christian governments (specifically Anglican, Catholic, or Lutheran). In contrast, the American government, which does not have an official religion, can at times become captured by "born again" believers whose sophistry can rationalize everything from torture to war all over the world.

But there is stronger evidence against it. Can you name any "moderate" Muslim country that you would want to live in? Even living next door to one can be hazardous, as India can attest. Combat Hair Stylist Romney dresses like a moderate, but he'd strip down to his magic underwear in a minute; he donates million$ to LDS "charity", including their support for Prop H8. As others have said, "for good people to do bad things requires religion." The reason is because, by outsourcing their morality to power-hungry preachers, otherwise good people get fooled into doing terrible things.

Also you seem quick to disagree with Dan and even to claim to disagree with me, yet when do you disagree with JohnAlexander, Bap, Quigley, or even wthrfork/freak80? I can't find examples, but if you can link to any I would be glad to see them. Instead, you concede their premise at least, which puts you halfway to accepting their conclusions, i.e. any 'compromise' would be based on a religious consensus involving the preferred characters (while rejecting the hapless Spaghetti Monster, who is only trying to help by feeding the hungry, and doesn't realize that too much pasta can be unhealthy).

marcus says

Thus you hear childish and silly arguments such as. "You say you don't know whether God exists is like me saying I don't know whether there are unicorns."

Actually when this say this I think they mean, "The amount of evidence that god(s) exist is equal to the amount of evidence that unicorns exist."

This is true regardless of how one chooses to define god(s).

marcus says

What I believe is that "spiritual beliefs" happen. That this is part of human nature.

I agree that "spiritual belief" is part of human nature and does just happen to some people, even the majority of people to varying degrees. A persons level of "natural" belief can even change over time and physical changes to the brain can also alter how this belief manifests itself. (see: being born-again linked to brain atrophy, and the God Helmet)

However, this natural inclination to spirituality certainly does not take place in every human. So,...

marcus says

They have gone through a long and difficult struggle to reject god in any form. At this point they need to justify the belief that there is no god.

...there is no "difficult" struggle for these people to reject god(s). It is just not in their individual nature to believe in god(s). The only evidence for god(s) comes from an individuals personal faith, and the root of this faith comes from an "internal" god helmet.

marcus says

TRying on an 'I don't know' point of view (which to you or I is so obviously the truth) is disturbing to them.

I don't think that it is that simple.

Yes, 'I don't know' is the philosopical truth.

I think what disturbs those that identify as atheist is that often when people say 'I don't know', what they are really seem to be saying is, 'I and you can't say that god(s) don't exist so there must be an equal probability that they do or do not exist.'

I have heard that argument many times, not from agnostics, but from died in the wool religious believers.

Also, agnosticism and atheism is not mutually exclusive. One can easily say, 'I don't know, but due to the lack of evidence I don't believe.'

marcus says

(maybe this is one of the reasons why it is considered bad form to discuss religion or politics in polite company)

Yes, only because most people can not restrain themselves from becoming impolite when discussing religion or politics.

Dan8267 says

Your standards for games is -- no pun intended -- god awful.

Hey! Hey! While I would not give the game designer god-hood status I enjoyed both Spore and Sims.

Dan8267 says

deepcgi says

If there is no immortality, there can be no virtue, and all things are permissible.

Why should I accept that statement? Why would immortality be a prerequisite of virtue. That makes as much sense as trickle-down economics.

Umm...I would say less sense than trickle-down economics. In the full quote Dostoevsky's response to the idea actually sounds a little like a response you would write Dan...

"An attractive theory for scoundrels! — (I’m being abusive, that’s stupid.) Not for scoundrels, but for pedantic poseurs, ‘haunted by profound, unsolved doubts.’ He’s showing off, and what it all comes to is, ‘on the one hand we cannot but admit’ and ‘on the other it must be confessed!’ His whole theory is a fraud! Humanity will find in itself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality. It will find it in love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity.’"

leoj707 says

Also, agnosticism and atheism is not mutually exclusive. One can easily say, 'I don't know, but due to the lack of evidence I don't believe.'

Technically speaking, agnosticism and theism are not only mutually exclusive, but are almost always copresent; after all theists are called believers, not knowers, so the very word clearly states a lack of certainty. People have their own reasons for describing themselves as atheist, theist, or agnostic; its pointless to quibble about the technical differences between the designations.