Only because other people make it so. There isn't any innate difference, so my point stands. A point which had nothing to do with effect, anyway. It was about a particular line of argument which some people are putting forward but not really following themselves.
Bus Wars - The Christians Fight Back
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Only because other people make it so. There isn't any innate difference, so my point stands. A point which had nothing to do with effect, anyway. It was about a particular line of argument which some people are putting forward but not really following themselves.
You are looking at it way to politically. I don't think religions should have any "power". I'm talking about socially.
It's irrelevant why. You are only interested in this debate because in some way your position on it will effect you. It has everything to do with effect. Most people are agnostic to your supposed creature, because it has never effected them they would not have bothered to form an opinion on it. If we look at it critically though we cannot actually say either way, but there is no reason to pursue the truth on the matter as it does not effect anything. However in this case, we can safely assume that you have just made up this creature since you just said that you did.
Not even having a go, when you think about it.
If someone starts talking about religion as if it's true, you have every right to point out why their arguments are flawed and their assumptions based on nothing more than fairy stories.
Besides, a good debate is fun as long as the person you're talking to are more articulate than "the bible is true because god wrote it because the bible says that's what happened".
It's only outside the realms of science because that's what the religions say.
If you found scientific proof of god tomorrow, would all the religions turn round and say "no, we don't need that, we have faith" or would they be plastering it all over the world above the words "WE WERE RIGHT, JOIN OR BURN IN HELL"?
I can't imagine that the atheists would have wanted a "there's definitely no god" advert because, as mentioned above, that's a belief position that requires (almost) as much faith as what they're arguing against.
Yes you can, that's the point of probability. You can make a reasonable guess without having enough proof to make a conclusion.
QED my friend. You've just made my point
Only because of the number of believers willing to devote time or money or lives (their own or others) to it.
If there were no believers, the non-believers wouldn't be affected at all by the sensually undetectable creature that you worship
Unfortunately, they DO have power. So in your ideal world, religion may not be a problem, but in the world we actually live in, people can become important decision makers or get preferential opinions on public consultations simply because they happen to believe (some of) what's written in a 2000 year old book.
How is this in any way socially sensible?
It's actually the "atheists" that are bastardising the term atheism. It's only relatively recently that certain prominent atheists have tried to nominally collect as many followers as possible by applying the term extremely loosely. Atheism means the active nonbelief in a god.
Of course they don't have to conform to my faith, I'm simply pointing out that they're not conforming to theirs. What exactly do you disagree with in what I've said?
Well that's still pretty lose. All christians are atheists about most gods. If you ask them if Zeus exists, they'll say no.
Etc.
Not without assumptions you can't. Even base level assumptions such as what we observe is objective reality (ie we observe the mind independant universe) are still assumptions. You can argue that those assumptions are sensible, or that they seem obvious, or even that they have to be in place in order to enable useful conclusions, but they are still unprovable. (This is the scientific instrumentalist vs scientific realist debate).
I'd go with the latter, the consideration of whether something that is untestable exists or not is, largely, irrelevant to most things, apart from personal opinion, and personal opinion can be formed around non-transferable evidence quite happily.
If you want to believe that, that's your choice, I'm quite happy to ignore their existance or non-existance unless they start to influence my life directly
You can't prove the assumptions of science to be universe accurate either, that doesn't rob them of their utility in predictive modelling. Whether the statement can be proven true or false does not necessarily have any bearing on it's utility.
I agree, but I'd extend that to atheists claiming that science is universe accurate and demonstrate something other than predictive accuracy to support their views. In fact that the argument I regularly make.
No, it's outside the realms of science because the answer to the question isn't a predictive model. When the answer to a question isn't a predictive model, science cannot be used to evaluate it, as all it's assumptions are geared to that purpose. And that's without getting into the objective observation point I raised above.
I would imagine that would largely depend on the religion concerned. Remember, religion != christianity.
They wanted almost certainly, which is still a faith based position. Just because the assumptions that the faith is placed in seem obvious and make sense to atheists is largely irrelevant. Most theists think their beliefs are obvious and make sense to them too.
Only if you know what the evidence is likely to be, otherwise it just says what assumptions you hold about the world to be true.
If there were no believers, the non-believers wouldn't be affected at all by the sensually undetectable creature that you worship
If everyone just accepted their beliefs or disbeliefs are equally unprovable, then neither side would be affected by the other.
That's democracy for you. It's one of the reasons why I advocate being able to legislate on a proven harm basis only.
It's no more or less sensible than any opinion, as opposed to fact based, government. Religion itself isn't the problem here, allowing opinion into lawmaking generally is.
Atheism is derived from Atheos, which translates as Godless. A christian cannot be an atheist about other gods apart from their own, because atheism is a term referring to disbelief or denial of deities full stop. You can't be atheist and theist at the same time.
I may be wholly missing your point, but from where I'm sitting this looks like nothing more than scientific method; surely all that science does is the above, and then fits its results into its various scientific models. Short of taking up a phenomenologistic viewpoint, I fail to see how we can obtain sensory evidence without eventually placing it within a scientific model. As soon as we make the assumption that this evidence has come from a mind-independant world, we are heading down an inexorably scientific path.
Like I say, you may see a little gap into which you can slide evidence without it falling into science, but from where I'm sitting I could do with your help in explaining this gap!
Sometimes assumptions are all we have. I leave the house in the morning with the assumption I won't die, and I have to, otherwise life would be unworkable. Therefore it seems more prudent to assume no gods exist as then you can live a rational, hedonistic lifestyle.
Why assume gods do exist? It just shackles you.
I may be wholly missing your point, but from where I'm sitting this looks like nothing more than scientific method; surely all that science does is the above, and then fits its results into its various scientific models. Short of taking up a phenomenologistic viewpoint, I fail to see how we can obtain sensory evidence without eventually placing it within a scientific model. As soon as we make the assumption that this evidence has come from a mind-independant world, we are heading down an inexorably scientific path.
Like I say, you may see a little gap into which you can slide evidence without it falling into science, but from where I'm sitting I could do with your help in explaining this gap!
Science isn't the only means to gather evidence, nor is it the only means to evaluate evidence. It's a very good, consistent one for the purpose for which it was designed, namely making a predictively accurate model of the observed behaviour of our world, and presenting a possible mechanism by which the observations occur, but if you're not worried about prediction, for example, many of the assumptions are somewhat flawed with regards to objective reality. For example, if you're not trying to predict something, you don't need a repeat observation, you just need an initial one.
But to ensure I've clarified the point, if you can design a testable hypothesis, with confirmed evidence that you can guarantee you would see if the hypothesis is true, then you can, if you do not obtain that evidence, and know that you are using the correct detection methods to detect the evidence, should it be there, declare the hypothesis false. There's a lot of if's in there though, which is why it's not generally applicable to philosophical questions.
Sometimes assumptions are all we have. I leave the house in the morning with the assumption I won't die, and I have to, otherwise life would be unworkable. Therefore it seems more prudent to assume no gods exist as then you can live a rational, hedonistic lifestyle.
Why assume gods do exist? It just shackles you.
You can live a rational, hedonistic lifestyle either way, not all religions are christianity.
Why assume gods do not exist? Why not just accept we don't know either way and therefore it probably doesn't matter unless something occurs to you to make it matter?
The key part of my point is not that assumptions are bad, but that they do not make truth, nor do they make a decision rational, just because you share assumptions with other people. All a decision has to be to be rational is consistent with the assumptions and data you are using. Whether those assumptions are appropriate is an entirely different matter.
I can't work out why so many people are unwilling to admit they either don't know, or they don't know but believe one way or another.
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Soldato
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I'm waiting for yantorsen to tell us he doesn't believe in evolution.
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I agree here. It's pretty odd that as atheists they've backed off from what they truly believe, and claimed that their faith is only "probably" true.
I think that's because the ASA intervened and said they can't put that God certainly doesn't exist.
I don't know either way, I don't think that's what's important. Life seems (to me) a lot easier without religion, I don't go to church, am not forced to wear certain clothing and don't need to answer to anyone except myself (to an extent).
If I was going to go out on a limb, in terms of lifestyle, not in terms of trying to prove either way, then I think it makes more sense to presume a god does not exist. I can't see any benefit in believing in a god and only downsides.
*sigh*
No they didn't, the ASA had nothing to do with it, atheist paranoia that they might intervene may have done, but the only ruling the ASA has made regarding it is that statements of faith based opinion do not need to be (and indeed cannot be) objectively verifiable.
I'm not forced to do any of the above either, but I'm not an atheist, I'm rationally agnostic with theistic personal beliefs that I cannot (and do not claim to be able to) prove to anyone else, nor am I required to in order to justify them.
What you personally believe is entirely up to you, as is what you gain from those beliefs. I feel my faith provides positive benefits for me, irrespective of whether it's apparently true or not, and I don't see any downsides from my point of view, but it's down to everyone to find their own path and make peace with it, whatever that path may be
Im quite sure it was in the news that the ASA told them to add probably.
Slightly off topic, but if I'm interested in scientific realism/anti-realism/instrumentalism could you recommend any reading material? Thanks