Evidence of the Non-Physical

[ratiocinator]

If there is no God, then the mass majority of humans who have ever lived are out-of-their-minds, including myself, for sure.

Not out of their minds, seeing agency where none exists is a well known cognitive bias. What's more, even if there is a god (or gods) then the vast majority of humans that have ever lived would still be wrong. Even today, whichever god(s) you believe in, most people think you are wrong.

 

[DNB]

Humans evolved from Hominids over millions of years. Homo Sapien specifically evolved from H. Heilelbergensis over thousands of generations. Then humans were nomadic. They had proto-languages, hunted, survived. When cities finally formed stories were shared and became bigger, more important as lifestyle changed. Animal and nature Gods were appropriate for their needs.
With cities larger scale worship happened. MAny tales were combined into larger stories about even bigger Gods. These stories also evolved.

First, we were already fully evolved. Myths were a way to write down wisdom and knowledge but frame it in stories and fantastic tales. So people worshiped fictional creations? So? That is where humans were at. There is no cosmic law that says humans have to know all truths? For a long time it was assumed there were many Gods, Gods for weather, night, day, sickness, the Gods did everything. That was human science. Gods are the answer.
Religious fiction is re-used from Mesopotamian stories to Greek/Persian stories. Now in modern day places like Europe are largely secular and the US is growing more secular. We do not need old myths to frame law and wisdom in and to tell lies about an afterlife.

Has nothing to do with evolution. Man has also spent countless effort on war, political systems, nationalism, doesn't mean they are anything beyond man-made things.
And yes. Humans are smart but they do enjoy mythical answers to questions about death and what is reality. That's just where we are. Some people are placated by fiction and many are no longer satisfied with it.
Humans changed. We realized that the answer to why do things happen is no longer "Gods do it". We now have scientific ways of looking at the world and can review real evidence. Stories about Gods are no different than fiction about Froto returning the ring. Full of lessons, morality, friendship, struggle, doing the right thing, temptation. We just no longer need to worship the good characters to get the morality.
Older religions were not obsessed with an afterlife either. It was about living while you are alive and performing cultic acts to Gods for good weather, health and so on.

So just you, and the ones who share your sentiments, are the enlightened, and all the rest of the population that ever lived, still believe and mold their entire lives around a fictional fantasy, because we're either too much in denial to accept the truth, or hey, that's just where we're at?

 

[DNB]

Did it, you can evidence that then? You seem a little confused. Why are some theists so petrified to admit they don't know something?

Looking for answers, and making them up without evidence, are not nearly the same thing.

Who's looking, I have the answer, ....whereas you refuse to investigate.

 

[DNB]

It simply doesn't. Atheism doesn't say anything about origins. Science doesn't say something came from literally nothing either.

What's more, adding a creator explains exactly nothing because instead of a universe that just happens to exist for reasons unknown, we now have a creator that just happens to exist for reasons unknown.

It adds to the mystery of existence, rather than solving it. It's an evidence-free step in the wrong direction.

No one said anything about the reasons, we were talking about the plausibility of the process. Did something come from nothing?

 

[DNB]

Not out of their minds, seeing agency where none exists is a well known cognitive bias. What's more, even if there is a god (or gods) then the vast majority of humans that have ever lived would still be wrong. Even today, whichever god(s) you believe in, most people think you are wrong.

Erroneously ascribing a particular entity, that all have witnessed its existence, as the catalyst behind a particular action or event, is not the same as asserting the existence of the unseen and declaring all its attributes as intrinsic facts.
To pray, build churches and altars and shrines, condemn and ostracize, sacrifice and mortify, baptize and ordain, all in the name of the non-existent, is unequivocally the cause of flippin' delirium

 

[ratiocinator]

No one said anything about the reasons, we were talking about the plausibility of the process. Did something come from nothing?

As close to nothing as it's physically possible to achieve, possibly, I don't know, it's one hypothesis amongst many. Literally nothing is not a state that can exist (as far as I can see) because space-time is not nothing so there can never have been a time or a place at which nothing existed.

As I said before, something from nothing is not an idea atheism leads to, as you claimed.

 

[joelr]

Wel, there is still this: https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12

Well yes the morality comes from human stories and laws come from agreements humans make.

"science doesn't draw conclusions bout supernatural" - That doesn't mean that the supernatural cannot be studied if it was real. It means so far there is no seeming interaction that anything supernatural has with the real world. People claim to have relationships and conversations with the supernatural and that actually could be studied. Except it's very obvious that this is something taking place in peoples minds. Science may not claim to draw conclusions about the supernatural but that doesn't mean that you cannot discover all those ghost hunter shows are fake. It doesn't mean that Krishna, Romulus, Osirus or any other stories God is real in any way.

When it comes to religions, they all make claims that there was interaction with the real world, that angels showed up and spoke with and gave items to humans. Gods made themselves visible, heard and demonstrated their powers.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Well yes the morality comes from human stories and laws come from agreements humans make.

"science doesn't draw conclusions bout supernatural" - That doesn't mean that the supernatural cannot be studied if it was real. It means so far there is no seeming interaction that anything supernatural has with the real world. People claim to have relationships and conversations with the supernatural and that actually could be studied. Except it's very obvious that this is something taking place in peoples minds. Science may not claim to draw conclusions about the supernatural but that doesn't mean that you cannot discover all those ghost hunter shows are fake. It doesn't mean that Krishna, Romulus, Osirus or any other stories God is real in any way.

When it comes to religions, they all make claims that there was interaction with the real world, that angels showed up and spoke with and gave items to humans. Gods made themselves visible, heard and demonstrated their powers.

Well, you use one definition of religion. I use other ones:
religion | Definition, Types, List of Religions, Symbols, Examples, & Facts
What is Religion?
The Definition of Religion

 

[joelr]

Well, you use one definition of religion. I use other ones:
religion | Definition, Types, List of Religions, Symbols, Examples, & Facts
What is Religion?
The Definition of Religion

Uh huh.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Uh huh.

Yeah, that is well argued.

 

[joelr]

So just you, and the ones who share your sentiments, are the enlightened, and all the rest of the population that ever lived, still believe and mold their entire lives around a fictional fantasy, because we're either too much in denial to accept the truth, or hey, that's just where we're at?

Yes. But it has nothing to do with sharing sentiments. It's about evidence. Information is free. Evidence can be studied by anyone. I am familiar with apologetics from C.S. Lewis to Gary Habermas and Mike Licona.
It's incredibly easily debunkabe and bends the truth to such absurd degrees.

You say it as if there are 2 camps. Religious and non. Except Billions of Hindu, Islamic, Mormon, and other religions not yours are exactly as deluded by a fictional fantasy in your world view as well. Not to mention the alien abduction believers, ghosts, Law of Attraction, mediums and all sorts of new-age crank that people spend money on and shape their entire belief system around. Billions of people who have been deluded into a fantasy. You also believe that. You just make an exception for 1 belief you also happen to have fallen for. You are giving yourself a pass. So by your own world view we can demonstrate that the majority of people are in fact living a delusion. You just think that your version is the not deluded version.
But the point is that even in your view billions of people are in fact deluded. There are at least 1 billion Hindu. 2 billion in Islam. So what you just described as being a bit elitist and possibly unlikely turns out to be exactly what each religion thinks of itself.
On top of that, yes, each religion completely rejects historicity, uses concepts of "faith" that can be applied to ALL belief systems (even racist ideologies) and literally often lies. For example in "Historical Jesus" Bruce Chilton, an apologist scholar actually wrote that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was "new evidence proving the historical Jesus" then goes on to create a fictional childhood biography because "it must have been that case".....then people quote this guy as if it's good scholarship? The historicity studies are a complete and utter mess. Carrier covers all of this evidence in his historicity study and details all of the evidence.
Another apologist wrote a book "debunking" a historians work detailing dying/rising savior demigods prior to Jesus. Out of 35 similarities he debunked 5 but didn't really? "Osirus wasn't like Jesus because he was hung on a tree not a cross..." Yeah, no one said savior demigods had to die on a cross? That was a Roman means of execution and the Jesus story was right at that time and place?
Osirus was not. But it's still the same myth?
Yet apologists will wave this stuff around as if it's proof? It's all confirmation bias.

 

[joelr]

Yeah, that is well argued.

Oh, if you want an argument you have to make a point. You said you use a different definition and sent an encyclopedia entry? Ok? I'm supposed to guess what you mean? No thankyou.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Yes. ...

Yeah, I hope you manage okay in the everyday world. But you are just a product of nature and nurture like the rest of us.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Oh, if you want an argument you have to make a point. You said you use a different definition and sent an encyclopedia entry? Ok? I'm supposed to guess what you mean? No thankyou.

So you take for granted that your understanding is the correct one. Well, no! It is not and neither is mine. You haven't removed limited cognitive, moral and cultural relativism. You just take your own subjective understanding as an objective standard like most people do.

 

[joelr]

Yeah, I hope you manage okay in the everyday world. But you are just a product of nature and nurture like the rest of us.

I am interested in what is most likely true and value evidence and critical thinking. It has shown to be the best way to find out what is true.

 

[joelr]

So you take for granted that your understanding is the correct one. Well, no! It is not and neither is mine. You haven't removed limited cognitive, moral and cultural relativism. You just take your own subjective understanding as an objective standard like most people do.

Evidence helps us see past all that.
You say that, but then do you really think Zeus is a real God who causes lightning? Do you really think the Mesopotamian creation story should be considered more than modern cosmology?
Are there tides because a tide God makes them happen? We have a scientific method and it works.

 

[Sheldon]

Who's looking, I have the answer, ....whereas you refuse to investigate.

Well I'm not a theoretical physicist. I don't cut my own hair, or do my own dental work either, it's for the best. Or the mistakes would resemble your clumsy unevidenced assumptions here.

I don't know what preceded Planck time, nobody does, using a god of the gaps polemic explains nothing.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I am interested in what is most likely true and value evidence and critical thinking. It has shown to be the best way to find out what is true.

Yeah, that is all subjective and not even correct. It is the best way for you. I accept that and I accept that you don't accept that it can be done differently without it being wrong or whatever.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Evidence helps us see past all that.
You say that, but then do you really think Zeus is a real God who causes lightning? Do you really think the Mesopotamian creation story should be considered more than modern cosmology?
Are there tides because a tide God makes them happen? We have a scientific method and it works.

I am an atheist, but not like you, so stop trying to project unto me, that there are only atheists like you and the rest are theists.

 

[joelr]

Yeah, that is all subjective and not even correct. It is the best way for you. I accept that and I accept that you don't accept that it can be done differently without it being wrong or whatever.

That is a strawman. A Vague nonsense strawman.

Science is proven. The scientific method is also proven.
You can cross the street with the scientific method. Look both ways. Empirical evidence. Or you can pray to a God for your safety and run into traffic.

100 people can pray to Jesus for 10 years and 100 other people can pray to a broomstick. Then we can compare results and we will likely see things happen by rules of probability. No better/worse for either.
You are making no point so I cannot respond to a specific point. So those are a few examples of science vs superstition. Science and evidence based thinking already works better than superstition.