Religion: What it means to you

Not to restart the debate, but God was inserted into the pledge to separate us from the godless commies over in Russia.

(And I don't know if I'd consider Intelligent Design PC since it only seems to satisfy those religions that have a main creator.)

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Capo

If you're going to use that bullshit "logic", you can't prove anything to be fact.

Well, it's true. We can only say that observations follow a trend and that models seem to accurately predict measurements. Of course, how do we know that what we're actually using to predict is accurate and not correct due to a convenient set of errors which cancel each other out (actually a rather complex question and argument that one of my coworkers went through at the defense of his thesis this week)?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Sassafrass

I guarantee you that I have a HELL of a lot more experience with pain than you can fucking IMAGINE.

It was then that I found out my fiancee had died from an overdose while licking toxic glue on the wedding invitations I had picked out.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by RainMan

If there is no way to prove or disprove something, how can we determine its legitimacy?

Gonna start bringing in the solipsism.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Smelnick

Common sense tells me that the theory of evolution is bullshit. You're gonna sit there and tell me that something as complex as the human eyeball became perfected through random mutations. Common sense should tell you that ain't gonna happen. If you took apart a watch, and dropped the handful of pieces onto the ground over and over again. What are the chances of it landing in such an orientation as to work perfectly? Or even at all? Common sense will tell me that it's not going to happen. It's this level of common sense that is making scientists lean away from the theory of evolution.

I couldn't find the webpage that actually did a design review of the human eye in a humorous way, but this one does it in a pretty good fashion.

Evolution and the human eye

Not really sure what evolution has to do with God, but whatever.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by JackyBoy

your belief in religion stems only from the comfort it offers to you.

I can really see why religion is such a bane on human existence now.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by JackyBoy

I see we can agree on one thing. Religion is a bane to our species.

I don't think we can even agree on the use of sarcasm on the internet.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by JackyBoy

Sarcasm eh? Are you trying to fool me or the guy that lives down the street? I'd give you a 1 out of 10 but I don't think you were even trying. I've been meaning to ask actually, how would you describe yourself anyway? A Christian atheist leaning towards agnosticism perhaps? You have a really interesting position I've been able to gather from your replies. The, all you bitches are wrong I don't have an opinion, argument. It could be some post-modern philosophical view I haven't manage to research yet.

An agnostic who's not arrogant enough to consider himself an atheist.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by JackyBoy

This is a weighted statement since you should have included theist to complete the definition of agnostic. Also, your use of "arrogant" is simply a red herring. Since atheism is a term devoid of any philosophical content I'll use the more appropriate worldview positions of the atomists, materialists or the physicalists. I'm here to tell you that arrogance has no relation with someone who holds this philosophical worldview which merely describes the universe as being made up of atoms or "stuff" and does not contain anything immaterial such as souls. It's a very serious and interesting philosophical view started by Democritus and Epicurus and persists today in Daniel Dannett, dare I say myself, and many others.

Atheism is the denial of anything existing outside of our realm of observation. Are you arguing that because we don't see something it can't exist? How very solipsist of you.

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Now that you've broken out of your Socratic defense strategy, maybe you could share how your agnosticism works with regards to Santa Claus, Big Foot, Russell's Teapot, Sherlock Holmes, the inexaustable laundry list of other imaginery folk figures and the thousands of dead Gods which lie burried in that mass grave called mythology.

These are purported to exist within our realms of perception and not outside of our ability to grasp.

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If God could be disproven then the logical consequence of this would see atheism as a truism or a tautology and theism as entirely nonsensical. Since God, or anything for that matter, cannot be disproven, anyone who describes themselves as an atheist is in a strong language describing themselves as agnostic with a lean towards a disbelief in the existence of the object in question (90-10). The problem of agnosticism is that it gives a false idea that the existence of the "thing" in question has an equal 50-50 chance of either existing or not existing, which is, I'm sure you must agree on, an entirely false impression. If you disagree then I can only describe you as a fundamental agnostic (strictly 50-50) which is a rather odd and frankly hopeless view.

Are you just trying to use big words to make yourself sound smart or is there an actual point hidden in there?

I don't believe in any sort of supernatural being, though I don't see any reason why I should reject the possibility that one should exist.

PS: I'm a determinist (and it's a terribly boring belief).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by kinkymagic

Athiesm is a term that describes somebody who does not believe in God or deities.

I defined it that way as to distinguish between people who simply don't believe because they don't know (agnostics) and those who actively deny the existence in some supernatural being.

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I say that if there is no evidence that something exists then there is no reason to believe it exists, not that it can't exist.

See, that's the thing. Religious people see the universe as evidence that some sort of God(s) exist. I imagine it seems as self-evident to them as my belief in the electron existing is to me.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Sassafrass

But it's inaccurate to say atheists don't believe in anything outside of the realm of observation, man. At least I find it so. I may be in the minority

I suppose you could talk about people that believe in mysticism and eastern religions/philosophies and all of that junk, but then we're kind of just clouding the whole argument of what a god actually is (after all, aren't we all atheists to someone).

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by JackyBoy

Precisely. As an agnostic you certainly have a damaging argument against yourself. When you have the intellectual honesty to understand why you're an atheist in regards to the thousands of dead Gods which our ancestors believed in, you will understand why I am an atheist in regards to the Gods people believe in present day.

I'm not really sure which gods you're talking about. I mean, if you're talking about the Great Turtle upon whose back the Earth rests, well, I can understand not believing in it. But why should I deny the possibility of the existence of a god which exists outside of our universe even if its believers are gone? Why do the people with the correct set of beliefs have to roam the Earth today? Why can't the right answer be none of the ones proposed so far?

Most amazing jew boots

Well, if so many people have been wrong in the past (though I suppose we can't even verify that) what are the odds people are right today when it's really just a shot in the dark?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by kinkymagic

No, becase the scientific method has proven itself to work time and time again, while faith means having a belief in something despite lack of evidence.

Other than using the scientific method to measure things outside of its ability to be measured (it's fairly difficult to conduct controlled experiments when dealing with gods, I imagine), using induction to prove itself is also a little bit of a fun thing.

PS: Still waiting on science to come up with a test for free will.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by kinkymagic

Why is god outside of our ability to be measured? He's always proving he exists in the old testament so why can't he do any of that stuff now? On the other hand if god has only ever existed outside of our universe and has never had anything to do with our universe than whether he exists or not is as irrelevent as last-thursdayism or brain-in-a-vat, and so we can safely use Occum's razor to remove him.

Who said anything about the God you see in the Bible? I don't think I did recently.

Gods aren't measurable because we can't set up experiments to verify or disprove their existence.

And last I checked Occam's Razor only serves to point what is most probably correct, not that something can't exist as a definite proof. There's no reason I see why some god couldn't have created the universe and is just chilling out watching what's going on, maybe to intervene someday (or has in the past but decided to take a beer break or something).

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I'm sure neuroscientists are working on it as we type.

Well, as soon as they figure out why humans have free will yet computers, robots, dogs, insects, rocks, trees, and atoms don't, get back to me.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by kinkymagic

I was just using it as an example of a god that exists within our universe.

But the important thing to remember is just because one might not be true it doesn't necessarily make all religions untrue. Induction is well and good and everything, but there's no way it can disprove something's existence in the future.

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Then how are they different to last-thursdayism or brain-in-a-vat.

I imagine those are completely non-observable, while a god which can choose to interact with us at any given time it would so desire. I meant the setting up experiments part as in, we can't make a god do something at our whim, nor do we necessarily know how to go about testing if it was work done by a god, so it's existence would be difficult to test for.

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Occum's Razor states that 'entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity', or to put in another way, 'we should not assert that for which we do not have some proof'. That sounds like it covers the possibility that there is a god who exists outside our universe, has nothing to do with our universe (to say he created our universe is just 'god-of-the-gaps') and cannot be measured.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one," or alternately, "we should not assert that for which we do not have some proof."

Going by the former translation given on wikipedia it seems more like it's up to the individual what's actually a simpler explanation. Clever cutting and pasting, though.

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Then I assume you also don't see any reason to discount last-thursdayism, or brain-in-a-vat or the infinite amount of other things which might exist but for which we have no evidence.

As I've said before, I don't even know if I exist.

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Why do you think that humans have 'free will' and dogs don't?

Well, other than me not believing anything has free will, I just wonder where people try to make the distinction between things having and not having free will. Why is it bacteria only behave based upon the chemical impulses going on in their cells while we have some magic ability to not be held captive to our own chemical impulses?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Sorry for the late reply, been fairly busy the past few days and I wanted to actually think when I was replying.

Originally Posted by kinkymagic

Again, how is this different from last-thursdayism or brain-in-a-vat, as none of these proposals can be falsified in practical terms.

How is it any different than believing in the existence of particles we haven't observed yet or haven't determined a way to observe?

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Here's some more copy-and-pasting from the same article.

'In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities (although this is not always the same as simplicity)'

'Occam's razor is not equivalent to the idea that "perfection is simplicity". Albert Einstein probably had this in mind when he wrote in 1933 that "The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience" often paraphrased as "Theories should be as simple as possible, but no simpler." It often happens that the best explanation is much more complicated than the simplest possible explanation because its postulations amount to less of an improbability. Thus the popular rephrasing of the razor - that "the simplest explanation is the best one" - fails to capture the gist of the reason behind it, in that it conflates a rigorous notion of simplicity and ease of human comprehension. The two are obviously correlated, but hardly equivalent.'

Again, even with all of that, what is "as simple as possible but no simpler" can still be up to individual interpretation. Is it simpler to believe in the whole whatnot of the laws of the nature and that jazz, or is it easier to believe in something that put everything where it is. Frankly, I find nature to be a more beautifully simple explanation that I prefer it, but I understand how someone can feel it's just too absurd to happen on its own.

[quote]Skepticism is all well and good, but when it comes to things that can not be falsified then I find it best to disregard it rather than to stew over something that has no answer, other than 5 tons of flax of course.

I guess that's where we differ a little. I enjoy talking about all the different possibilities of what could be that we may not know. After all, what fun is science if you don't question everything?

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Snap, I don't believe in 'free will' either, although life is a lot simpler and more enjoyable if we allow ourselves the illusion that we have some sort of control over our actions.

Good to find a fellow determinist out there. Makes my solipsism rather frustrating since there seems to be nothing I can do to fight it.

I don't even know if I qualify as a solipsist since I'm not even sure if my own mind exists. ;_;

There's nowhere I can't reach.