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If We All Became Atheists?
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
Clizby Wampuscat
Well-Known Member
Not at all. I take responsibility on how I evaluate evidence, but I have no choice in what I am convinced of and what I am not convinced of.
What won't you answer my question or at least say why it is a stupid question.
Can you choose to believe the moon is made from cheese?
firedragon
Veteran Member
A day, a week or a month is a no go. But you can read the research by Justin Barrett.
It's not me. It's others.
firedragon
Veteran Member
Justin Barrett. Born Believers. Google it and you will find.
When did that person become a "researcher"?
firedragon
Veteran Member
Do the research. And just like you asked me, ask the atheist for evidence that humans are born as atheists.
And do the research and find out about that person and the research rather than handwaving.
Dude, you know that I am not in the business of doing your homework for you.
And you would not like the results if I did.
firedragon
Veteran Member
Then you have such absolute double standards. You don't ask the atheist, but only the theist. That's bigotry.
You should do the research. Not be spooned.
Again. Maybe you just searched for the name. Maybe you are used to such shallow, lame research. Quick google search of a name. Not the whole thing someone said. Just because they are theists.
Born Believers - Justin Barrett.
There you go. I spoon fed you. Now you can go do some shallow research once more and come back with an ad hominem towards the research project as a whole. I didn't tell you to do the research for me mate. I told you to do a proper research about the person and the study I gave you.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
Only to accept, if one is convinced heart and soul, that is why we believe in peaceful dialogue with reasonable arguments, Atheism (et al) are no exception, right, please?
Regards
Not really. Looking at a few dictionaries, the definition of "vegetarian" usually includes something to the effect of "a person who eats vegetables."
Then newborn babies are generally vegetarians.
We Never Know
No Slack
Right. So if a day, a week, a month old baby has no belief in a god, then they are born without a belief in gods.
Its a failed concept. First of all religion creates itself repeatedly. History shows this. Secondly the Ahmadi have made no progress.
If you really believe its possible for the world to be atheist your best bet is to promote Buddhism, but Buddhism has serious obstacles, too; and the more superstitious varieties have the greatest number of members. People want to believe in eternal life, and we continually come up with strategies and obsessions about it.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
We Never Know
No Slack
Technically no. Their nutrition comes from what ever mom eats while pregnant and while breast feeding. If mom eats meat she passes that on to her baby.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
What is "root book" of Atheism (et al) with their consensus, please, kindly do tell us, right?
Regards
firedragon
Veteran Member
Who said that? You should ask the atheist to provide evidence for that claim. Don't be as bias as your effort could afford. That's an atheists claim and they made it here, including you. You should provide evidence to that claim rather than shifting the burden of proof which is a burden of proof fallacy. Logically fallacious.
I said 'my book ' i.e. my understanding, i said nothing about 'root'
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
Atheism (et al) have no basis, so they "sit pretty' doing nothing, right, please?
Regards
Secret Chief
Veteran Member
You need to look in a better dictionary. Or one at all. A vegetarian diet makes zero reference to vegetables. A vegetarian diet is defined by what is NOT consumed: specifically meat, (inc poultry) and seafood. It is a diet that is simply based upon a concern for animals. I've been a vegetarian for 40 years. From the UK vegetarian society website: "Being a vegetarian is easy: simply stop eating meat and fish!"
A meat eater also eats vegetables. They are clearly not vegetarians.
Yesterday I ate no vegetables. Did this mean I was not a vegetarian yesterday? Of course not.
Last edited:
Well, we all have a lot to say on the question of whether atheism might be better for the world than theism, and so far, they seem to be largely based on personal preferences rather than reason.
Remember the “ultimate question” in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?” Apparently the answer was 42, but I think that’s because the question was mal-formed.
Religion does seem to have a lot to say on that question, too – along with many more questions, like those asked by Gaugin in the painting below: “D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?
Science and reason – what atheists try to use because we have no religion to turn to – also seem to have a lot to say on them. So, which gets it better? Do our best answers come from religion or science and reason?
There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong, and, you know, that's perfectly alright – it's our window into finding out what is right. Science is a self-correcting process – to be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. Not so with religion, which is usually willing to accept the word of a “prophet” or “messenger” or scripture. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science.
Our human ability to grasp our present reality quickly, our so-called “common sense,” derives from a certain range of experience at scales that are appropriate for human existence. We know about things from a tenth of a millimeter to a few kilometers; from a fraction of a second to a lifetime and so on. So, when we are dealing with matters of quantum physics, where particles have a size of 10 to the minus 13 centimetres, or in cosmology where we are talking about 10 billion light years (60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles) or more, it is very reasonable that intuition, our common sense, is not adequate to the task.
Let’s consider the fact that every human culture has a set of creation myths, but they're in the realm of mythology or religion or folklore, and they are of course all mutually inconsistent. The great thing that is happening in our time is that we are able, through a method which can actually make some progress towards the real universe out there, to find out something about our origins. And this is the scientific method. The thing about science is, first of all, it’s after the way the universe really is and not what makes us feel good, and a lot of the competing doctrines are after what feels good and not what's true.
I think the essence of the scientific method is the willingness to admit one is wrong, the willingness to abandon ideas that don't work. The essence of religion, on the other hand, is not to change anything – that supposed truths are handed down by some revered figure and then no one is supposed to make any progress beyond that because we’ve got all the “truth” we need. My sense is that the scientific way of thinking, questioning and some delicate mix of creative encouragement of new ideas and the most rigorous and skeptical scrutiny of new and old ideas, I think that is the path to the future. And not just for science but for all human institutions.
We have to be willing to challenge claims to truth, because we are in desperate need of real truth. It's not that pseudo-science and superstition and New Age so-called beliefs and fundamentalist zealotry are something new. They've been with us for as long as we've been human. But we live in an age based on science and technology with formidable technological powers. Science and technology are propelling us forward faster and faster, sometimes, it seems, more so than we can control. And if we don't understand it (by we I mean the general public), if it's something like “I'm not good at that, I don't know anything about it,” then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children will have?
This combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. I mean who is running science and technology in our democracy if the people (what democracy is all about) don't know anything about it? Science is more than a body of knowledge – it's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs by the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes along. It's something that Jefferson laid great stress on – it wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a constitution or a Bill of Rights. The people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise, we don't run the government, the government runs us.
What is Faith? It is belief in the absence of evidence. Now I don't propose to tell anybody what to believe, but for me, believing when there’s no compelling evidence is a mistake. The idea is to withhold belief until there is compelling evidence, and if the universe does not comply with our predispositions, okay then, we have the wrenching obligation to accommodate ourselves to the way the universe is.
Ah, but the religious will ask, “how, then, do we reach for higher experiences?” Well, I have to ask, what are, those, really? And I don’t think anybody has an answer Sometimes, it seems to me, that claims of “spirituality” are just claims to know more than we actually do – to have tapped into something that is beyond us. Well, if it’s beyond us, it’s beyond us, and to say we’ve tapped into it may well be pretense.
I’ll admit that religion deals with history, with poetry, with great literature, with ethics and morals, including the morality of treating compassionately the less fortunate among us. All of these are things that I accept wholeheartedly. But we can do all of those things with the compulsion of religion.
Where religion gets us into trouble is in those cases where it pretends to know something about science. The science in the Bible, for example, was acquired by the Jews from the Babylonians during the Babylonian captivity of 600 BCE. That was the best science on the planet then, but we've learned a little something since then, haven ‘t we? Roman Catholicism, Reform Judaism, most of the mainstream Protestant denominations have no difficulty with the idea that humans have evolved from other creatures, that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, with the Big Bang. They don't have any trouble with that. The trouble comes with people who are Biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is dictated by the creator of the universe, to an unerring stenographer, and as a consequence, they reject the idea that religion is made largely of metaphor or allegory, but accept it as a “truth” that must be followed. That can tend to push reason and science aside, and lead us to needlessly circumcising baby boys or rejecting stem cell research that may possibly benefit millions in the future or rejecting fellow humans who are somehow “different.” We are led to making the wrong choices for the wrong reasons, and that can’t be right.
Who is more humble, the scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says “everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved in the writing of this book?
It seems that through the ages we have humans have created a mythological framework that has always involved some kind of “higher, spiritual powers,” and hope for “salvation” of some sort from “beyond.” But if I am right, if we are better off with reason and science, where does that leave us?
On our own!
And that, to my mind, is much more responsible than hoping that someone will save us from ourselves so we don't have to make our best efforts to do it ourselves. And if we're wrong, and there is some power that steps in and saves us, okay that's all right. I'm all for that, but if we follow science and reason, then you know, we hedged our bets. It's Pascal's bargain run backwards.
Remember the “ultimate question” in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?” Apparently the answer was 42, but I think that’s because the question was mal-formed.
Religion does seem to have a lot to say on that question, too – along with many more questions, like those asked by Gaugin in the painting below: “D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?
Science and reason – what atheists try to use because we have no religion to turn to – also seem to have a lot to say on them. So, which gets it better? Do our best answers come from religion or science and reason?
There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong, and, you know, that's perfectly alright – it's our window into finding out what is right. Science is a self-correcting process – to be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. Not so with religion, which is usually willing to accept the word of a “prophet” or “messenger” or scripture. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science.
Our human ability to grasp our present reality quickly, our so-called “common sense,” derives from a certain range of experience at scales that are appropriate for human existence. We know about things from a tenth of a millimeter to a few kilometers; from a fraction of a second to a lifetime and so on. So, when we are dealing with matters of quantum physics, where particles have a size of 10 to the minus 13 centimetres, or in cosmology where we are talking about 10 billion light years (60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles) or more, it is very reasonable that intuition, our common sense, is not adequate to the task.
Let’s consider the fact that every human culture has a set of creation myths, but they're in the realm of mythology or religion or folklore, and they are of course all mutually inconsistent. The great thing that is happening in our time is that we are able, through a method which can actually make some progress towards the real universe out there, to find out something about our origins. And this is the scientific method. The thing about science is, first of all, it’s after the way the universe really is and not what makes us feel good, and a lot of the competing doctrines are after what feels good and not what's true.
I think the essence of the scientific method is the willingness to admit one is wrong, the willingness to abandon ideas that don't work. The essence of religion, on the other hand, is not to change anything – that supposed truths are handed down by some revered figure and then no one is supposed to make any progress beyond that because we’ve got all the “truth” we need. My sense is that the scientific way of thinking, questioning and some delicate mix of creative encouragement of new ideas and the most rigorous and skeptical scrutiny of new and old ideas, I think that is the path to the future. And not just for science but for all human institutions.
We have to be willing to challenge claims to truth, because we are in desperate need of real truth. It's not that pseudo-science and superstition and New Age so-called beliefs and fundamentalist zealotry are something new. They've been with us for as long as we've been human. But we live in an age based on science and technology with formidable technological powers. Science and technology are propelling us forward faster and faster, sometimes, it seems, more so than we can control. And if we don't understand it (by we I mean the general public), if it's something like “I'm not good at that, I don't know anything about it,” then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children will have?
This combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. I mean who is running science and technology in our democracy if the people (what democracy is all about) don't know anything about it? Science is more than a body of knowledge – it's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs by the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes along. It's something that Jefferson laid great stress on – it wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a constitution or a Bill of Rights. The people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise, we don't run the government, the government runs us.
What is Faith? It is belief in the absence of evidence. Now I don't propose to tell anybody what to believe, but for me, believing when there’s no compelling evidence is a mistake. The idea is to withhold belief until there is compelling evidence, and if the universe does not comply with our predispositions, okay then, we have the wrenching obligation to accommodate ourselves to the way the universe is.
Ah, but the religious will ask, “how, then, do we reach for higher experiences?” Well, I have to ask, what are, those, really? And I don’t think anybody has an answer Sometimes, it seems to me, that claims of “spirituality” are just claims to know more than we actually do – to have tapped into something that is beyond us. Well, if it’s beyond us, it’s beyond us, and to say we’ve tapped into it may well be pretense.
I’ll admit that religion deals with history, with poetry, with great literature, with ethics and morals, including the morality of treating compassionately the less fortunate among us. All of these are things that I accept wholeheartedly. But we can do all of those things with the compulsion of religion.
Where religion gets us into trouble is in those cases where it pretends to know something about science. The science in the Bible, for example, was acquired by the Jews from the Babylonians during the Babylonian captivity of 600 BCE. That was the best science on the planet then, but we've learned a little something since then, haven ‘t we? Roman Catholicism, Reform Judaism, most of the mainstream Protestant denominations have no difficulty with the idea that humans have evolved from other creatures, that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, with the Big Bang. They don't have any trouble with that. The trouble comes with people who are Biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is dictated by the creator of the universe, to an unerring stenographer, and as a consequence, they reject the idea that religion is made largely of metaphor or allegory, but accept it as a “truth” that must be followed. That can tend to push reason and science aside, and lead us to needlessly circumcising baby boys or rejecting stem cell research that may possibly benefit millions in the future or rejecting fellow humans who are somehow “different.” We are led to making the wrong choices for the wrong reasons, and that can’t be right.
Who is more humble, the scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says “everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved in the writing of this book?
It seems that through the ages we have humans have created a mythological framework that has always involved some kind of “higher, spiritual powers,” and hope for “salvation” of some sort from “beyond.” But if I am right, if we are better off with reason and science, where does that leave us?
On our own!
And that, to my mind, is much more responsible than hoping that someone will save us from ourselves so we don't have to make our best efforts to do it ourselves. And if we're wrong, and there is some power that steps in and saves us, okay that's all right. I'm all for that, but if we follow science and reason, then you know, we hedged our bets. It's Pascal's bargain run backwards.