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"Lack of belief"

Augustus

Augustus

…
ArtieE said:
No you're not. You said and I quote: "This isn't a critique of your position, just that it is incompatible with the assertion that you 'lack belief' regarding god's existence. You very clearly don't.

De facto, you believe god doesn't exist whether you choose to acknowledge this or not." There's no mention of babies here but a lot of "you"...
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Yes. There was a context to that post...

Never mind. If you don't see the connection, we appear to be having completely different conversations.
 
Kartari

Kartari

Active Member
Hi Acim,

Acim said:
And part of my point addresses the part I highlighted in blue. As a weak atheist, there is (or ought to be) a requirement of no assertions regarding theistic belief. Otherwise, those assertions (by weak atheists) do reflect on the position / understanding / conception of one or more god concepts. The imagined position of infants and our interactions with them where intellectual conversations are moot, make the infants stay consistent with the requirement. Not so much with adult weak atheists who may move from no assertions to disbelieving type assertions and counterarguments.
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A weak atheist asserts nothing when s/he disbelieves in the existence of one or more gods. Disbelief is not an assertion. It is a position, but one which makes zero assertions.
 
Kartari

Kartari

Active Member
Hi Acim,

Acim said:
The belief in existence remains a matter of faith which may not be clearly explained or (objectively) demonstrated. If you feel otherwise, please provide your explanation. I shall not hold back in my scrutiny of the leap of faiths I feel confident will be made.
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We could get into a discussion of reality vs perceptions of reality as a valid and interesting tangential topic. But with respect to reality or existence itself being a matter of faith... ironically, the very definitions of the words "objective" and "demonstrate" require the existence of nature and the efficacy of reason and logic to even make any sense at all. In declaring that existence is something to be believed in by faith, you misuse the very definition of what objective or demonstrable existence actually is.

To use an analogy, your request for evidence of existence's existence is akin to using this online forum to write me the message, "Online forums do not exist. Prove me wrong." And I have only to point at the online forum that you've just used to communicate with...
 
Kartari

Kartari

Active Member
Hi Guy,

Guy Threepwood said:
? Atheist Hoyle, was the one who coined the pejorative 'Big Bang' to mock this 'religious 'pseudoscience', he refused to accept the theory, no matter the evidence, right up till his dying day not so long ago.

As another famous skeptic of atheism, Max Planck said, science progresses one funeral at a time.
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To be honest, I have not read up much on the private lives of Hoyle or Planck, I am only familiar with their work from physics classes when I went to college. I just mean that obviously the scientific community as a whole has generally embraced Lemaitre's work. Though I understand there is some newer work being done that could show the universe had no beginning.
 
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Kartari

Kartari

Active Member
Guy,

Guy Threepwood said:
Put it this way, we know that creative minds can create entirely novel things, that is an unambiguous observation

Not so for nature, the more we learn, the more we appreciate that those elements essential for life on Earth, were created according to extremely specific math, blueprints, instructions, at the subatomic level-

they were not, as previously believed, the sort of thing that just spontaneously happens with the handful of simple laws of classical physics and lots of time and space.
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If nature is showing itself to be discordant with your perception of it as always linear and derivative, then perhaps the problem is not that nature is not creative, but that you have a wrong perception of nature as such.

So too with the development of that life, tempting as may be, there is no direct observation, measurement, repeatable experiment, that shows how simple laws and time, space, millions of significantly lucky accidents, can morph a single cell into a human being. Any more than we could show how classical physics accidentally produced such specific functional elements in the first place. Without instructions to follow, simple laws don't just get bored, and start developing their own consciousness to ponder themselves with! that all has to be written in from the get go.
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I agree it's not very simple or straightforward to track the evolution of humanity back to life's Earthly origins. But your irreducible complexity argument, based on logical fallacies including arguments from ignorance and from complexity, is not persuasive to me. Through studying biology, it becomes apparent how life evolved from its simplest beginnings to the present day.

It's always tempting, to extrapolate the superficial observations of automated function, into simple explanations of automated origin, but the same rationale would conclude that the software running this site, wrote itself for no particular reason. No ID required.

Without the creative will, the plan, the desired outcome, and a consciousness to harbor these things, the automated functions encoded here do not exist in the first place.

This we know for sure, but can nature do the same? This we simply don't know yet.
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Apparently, you missed my point about how this is a bad analogy. You overlook too much for me to write about if you think that's a valid analogy.

One major fault in your thinking is that you perceive natural selection as a process with "no particular reason" to what it does. Natural selection is quite the opposite. It is the process by which naturally occurring genetic mutations either enhance or decrease the survivability of a given species... but it is their survivability which determines their persistence, not some kind of pointless randomness as many who do not understand evolution seem to believe. Unintelligent nature very much selects the most survivable traits simply by the fact that they are more survivable, not for "no particular reason."

Again... no offense, but I do not have time to give a biology lesson. I am convinced that, if you read some good biology books and learn more about what evolution is (and is not), you will come to agree with me.
 
Kartari

Kartari

Active Member
Guy,

Guy Threepwood said:
According to the most recent Gallup poll, belief in 'fundamentalist' evolution, (i.e. a purely natural process with no ID involved ) is around 19% (here) in the US.

Similarly, the number of fundamentalist creationists, is a minority

Like many I was taught in school to accept the former Darwinian extreme without question, and came to question it later with a little deeper investigation

Most us are somewhere between the two extremes, and so once again this often comes down to a semantic debate

I believe evolution has occurred if we define evolution simply as change; (as does the Bible) but it does not tell us how this change took place. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time.
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Sadly, 25% of Americans still believe the Sun revolves around the Earth. Only 48% acknowledge that humans evolved from earlier life forms.

Ironically, a mere 30% of respondents in this same study believe that there should be more science education.

The state of science education in America is very sad and depressing indeed. Many don't even fully recognize its crucial value.
 
metis

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Kartari said:
Guy,



Sadly, 25% of Americans still believe the Sun revolves around the Earth. Only 48% acknowledge that humans evolved from earlier life forms.

Ironically, a mere 30% of respondents in this same study believe that there should be more science education.

The state of science education in America is very sad and depressing indeed. Many don't even fully recognize its crucial value.
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And then we wonder why we're falling behind so many other countries when it comes to educational prowess.
 
A

Acim

Revelation all the time
Kartari said:
Hi Acim,

A weak atheist asserts nothing when s/he disbelieves in the existence of one or more gods. Disbelief is not an assertion. It is a position, but one which makes zero assertions.
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I think this has nothing to do with the post you quoted by me. I said: "As a weak atheist, there is (or ought to be) a requirement of no assertions regarding theistic belief."

So, I agree that the position itself asserts nothing. And am essentially saying it ought to stay that way. Assert nothing about theism, god(s), etc. ever. For once those type of assertions are made, the part that is allegedly lacking is no longer exactly lacking. The concepts will be made front and center, and then it'll will be defending the position from assertions that deal with concepts which are observably not lacking.

Putting babies in that same context, if babies were asserting a whole bunch of items regarding theism, I'm pretty sure we'd no longer consider them implicit atheists.
 
A

Acim

Revelation all the time
Kartari said:
Hi Acim,

We could get into a discussion of reality vs perceptions of reality as a valid and interesting tangential topic. But with respect to reality or existence itself being a matter of faith... ironically, the very definitions of the words "objective" and "demonstrate" require the existence of nature and the efficacy of reason and logic to even make any sense at all. In declaring that existence is something to be believed in by faith, you misuse the very definition of what objective or demonstrable existence actually is.
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Disagree strongly, and will not give up on this tangent because of your opinion of me misusing. Existence isn't required, it's assumed and that assumption is faith - or holding complete trust and confidence in something. The something being existence itself. Faith, easily, supersedes belief. It's only when doubt / uncertainty is entertained or considered, that faith is opened to further reasoning, further (counter) assumptions.

To use an analogy, your request for evidence of existence's existence is akin to using this online forum to write me the message, "Online forums do not exist. Prove me wrong." And I have only to point at the online forum that you've just used to communicate with...
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Which would be ultimately confirmed by my faith in my observations / experience with online forums. Thanks for serving that up on a silver platter. Now try doing the same thing with the material universe, without using anything perceived by physical senses (inherently biased). Or, I can show you God exists, because the Bible says so. Circular reasoning does not make for objectivity.

I believe a material universe exists, and understand this to rest entirely on my faith in that existence, or more accurately, faith in my physical self to perceive its existence.
 
Willamena

Willamena

Just me
Premium Member
Kartari said:
A weak atheist asserts nothing when s/he disbelieves in the existence of one or more gods. Disbelief is not an assertion. It is a position, but one which makes zero assertions.
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As well, the strong atheist only asserts her belief. Any statement about "god" is implicit in the statement of belief.
 
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