How many default states are there? There's a separate default state for before you hear about something and a default state for after you hear about something?
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"Lack of belief"
- Thread starter 1137
- Start date
That is not what is meant, however. No one would ever interpret in that way.
Unless you are purposefully attempting to be misleading.
Lol. I can't reject all gods because I can't possibly know all of them, but you can reject a definition without even hearing it.
Your beef, your thread.
Ok.
Theists believe in a god, thus they don't believe that gods don't exist. Seems pretty simple to me.
Augustus
…
Ah, the mystical 'red flags' that you can't actually discuss. The only time you referred to the content you were woefully incorrect as you didn't actually read it and seeing as you didn't read any of the methodology I rather doubt you found it to be full of 'red flags'.
Personally, I quite like to read things on topics that interest me to the extent I bother to discuss the repeatedly on the internet. I often find that I learn stuff from this process and that it helps me to challenge my assumptions. Perhaps we are different in that regard though.
Just say you weren't interested in reading it rather than pretending you found it to be full of 'red flags'. It is a perfectly reasonable response.
Again, many apologies for providing access to a well written and interesting article on a subject we were discussing and you didn't understand. Much better to stay ignorant and respond with facepalms and call it 'nonsense' as it doesn't support your assumptions.
You know my arguments because I made them previously in multiple threads you have been involved in, including one specifically on the Spinozan v Cartesian views. The reason I posted it was because I was bored with you misrepresenting all of my arguments and demonstrating that you didn't understand them.
Not much point in citing it now anyway as your thorough analysis has revealed it to be chock full of 'red flags' that mean it can be dismissed out of hand.
You've decided that I'm speaking nonsense, and also decided that any source that agrees with me must also be woefully flawed. Not much room for further worthwhile discussion really. C'est la vie.
I'll leave you with Daniel Kahneman's view of the methodologically flawed pop psychologist Daniel Gilbert:
“[Dan Gilbert] proposed that you must first know what the idea would mean if it were true. Only then can you decide whether or not to unbelieve it. The initial attempt to believe is an automatic operation of System 1, which involves the construction of the best possible interpretation of the situation. Even a nonsensical statement, Gilbert argues, will evoke initial belief.
Try his example: “whitefish eat candy.” You probably were aware of vague impressions of fish and candy as an automatic process of associative memory searched for links between the two ideas that would make sense of the nonsense.
Gilbert sees unbelieving as an operation of System 2, and he reported an elegant experiment to make his point. The participants saw nonsensical assertions, such as “a dinca is a flame,” followed after a few seconds by a single word, “true” or “false.” They were later tested for their memory of which sentences had been labeled “true.” In one condition of the experiment subjects were required to hold digits in memory during the task. The disruption of System 2 had a selective effect: it made it difficult for people to “unbelieve” false sentences. In a later test of memory, the depleted participants ended up thinking that many of the false sentences were true.
The moral is significant: when System 2 is otherwise engaged, we will believe almost anything. System 1 is gullible and biased to believe, System 2 is in charge of doubting and unbelieving, but System 2 is sometimes busy, and often lazy. Indeed, there is evidence that people are more likely to be influenced by empty persuasive messages, such as commercials, when they are tired and depleted.”
Kahneman, Daniel. “Thinking, Fast and Slow.”
The paper he is referring to is actually "How mental systems believe" It's another interesting read, and only 13 pages!
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
But, but... it's full of "red flags". Can't read it then. It has to have purple or green flags for me to read it.The paper he is referring to is actually "How mental systems believe" It's another interesting read, and only 13 pages!
There's one default state obviously. That's why I said default state full stop. If you have heard about something and believes it you have left the default state. Some people called that a default state too.
Augustus
…
Ahhh, that's what you were talking about. Sorry, didn't understand earlier.
I was using the word in a different context, contingent on being aware of something. It wasn't meant to have any connection to a 'default' state in general, so there has been a bit of a misunderstanding. It was just meant to mean that unless someone takes corrective action (which may be near instantaneous, and may correct to 'unsure', 'false', 'possibly' or anything else) the brain will consider it to be true. Automatically could be used instead of defaults to.
Experiments have shown that if you 'distract' the brain by making people remember a phone number or something, they will often remember information as being true, even if they are told at the time that it is false. This only works one way though, there is no trend of misremembering true things as false as would also be expected if the brain perceives things neutrally until you decide one way or the other.
If (and that's a big 'if') belief is a state, then not having that state is not a state. "Not a state" is just that, not a state, so not a default state.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
I agree with you. It is a marvellous point.
Regards
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
Hi Guy,
Breaking this up into 2 posts (I'm hitting the 12000 character post limit, lol).
Well, this is a little silly to say. Some disciplines are more subjective than others regarding interpretations of the evidence. History and psychology are more subjective endeavors, for instance. But within the hard sciences, peer-reviewed research is as objective as it gets for humanity.
That said, the facts are still the facts, regardless of opinions and interpretations. If the evidence tells us the Earth revolves around the Sun, wishing that the apparent movement of the Sun across the sky means the Sun revolves around the Earth has absolutely no effect on the factual reality that the Earth goes around the Sun.
The Big Bang vs Steady State debate of more than several decades ago remained up in the air for a time due to the lack of evidence for the Big Bang It had nothing to do with the subjective feelings of "atheist" scientists (whatever that's supposed to mean). When that evidence was discovered, Lemaitre himself disliked when the Pope declared his theory to be proof for Catholicism. He rightly discerned that not only had his theory not proven religious creationism, but he advised that the Pope refrain from making scientific predictions.
wow, thanks for the detailed response, I didn't even know there was a limit!
That definitely deserves a reply so I'm sorry I'm so slow, work is not nearly as much fun!
nothing to do with the subjective feelings of "atheist"
you could have argued that assertion with the atheists like Hoyle, It was THEY who complained of what THEY saw as overt theistic implications in a creation event, proposing the exact opposite explicitly for the opposite rationale (no creation = no creator)
On Lematire... that's EXACTLY my point, he followed the actual scientific evidence, not his own preferences
In stark contrast to atheists, he went out of his way to disassociate his personal beliefs from his science, even telling to Pope to stop gloating, that's how science is supposed to work.
But how does an atheist separate a belief, that he refuses to even acknowledge as such!?
i.e. it was not Lemaitre's faith in God that lead him to the truth, but his skepticism of atheism.
I will answer more later, you make lots of good points. This is an important one though, there has been a very strong atheist ideology leading a large part of this area of science for a long time, right up to Hawking today.
Leading in popularity, peer pressure review, books, TV documentaries, but not confirmed evidence for their theories, which have all been debunked where testable.
The only 'cosmogenic' theory that was ever supported by evidence- was the one atheists mocked and rejected as 'too religious for their liking' a unique specific absolute creation event of the entire universe as we know it. If atheists thought this suggested a creator, I agree with them.
(Wikipedia)
In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the steady state theory.[48] This perception was enhanced by the fact that the originator of the Big Bang theory, Monsignor Georges Lemaître, was a Roman Catholic priest
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
These are all questions that can, and do, take up entire threads, so I'll answer some separately to avoid confusion, mainly my own!
And many of these very interesting questions, unfortunately get mired in semantics, definitions, and the original substance gets lost.
So If we can set the word 'supernatural' aside for now, my point was that the human mind has a capability that sets it aside from the process of purely natural, automated, cause and effect,
and of course we really don't know how this works, consciousness, free will. It's an enduring mystery. But that aside, the capability itself is there.
Outside of a creative mind, natural mechanisms are limited by their own laws, they lack creativity, the capacity to genuinely create something genuinely novel.
The key element here is purpose, desire, will, that's ultimately what makes something entirely NEW happen that is not already predetermined by laws, processes.
The creative mind can create it's own new laws, new 'natural mechanisms' like software or a mechanical device, with functionality that nature alone could never produce without the help of creativity.
So that's one rationale for God, if we do not forbid the involvement of creative intelligence, we have a unique power of explanation, a hypothetical solution to what is otherwise a paradox of infinite regression of automated cause and effect.
To put it another way, if the origins of nature itself are not supernatural, do not transcend nature, then we are saying that the laws of nature were created by those same laws.
Semantics yes, but in this sense, the origins of nature by definition must be supernatural- whether automated/spontaneous, or creative/intelligent right?
Reminds me of a script for Professor Irwin Corey......I could never stop laughing when he came on.....
I'm bored so I figured I'd give the Penguin a response re god definition.
I have been reluctant to respond to his request for multiple reasons.
1. I didn't want to lend validity to what I find to be a ridiculous argument, namely, that we cannot have a general concept of gods.
The very fact that we can speak of "gods" at all, rather than having to resort to specific names; The fact that we know a god isn't a nothing-special-about-it banana; The fact that the word is meaningful and not gibberish, all demonstrate the argument's.... dubious nature.
2. What would providing my definition accomplish? It is unlikely to satisfy someone who has already decided that the word is undefinable. And it's not exactly fair to have an ignostic as the arbiter of Acceptable Definitions.
3. Why should he be Arbiter at all? The definition of atheism wouldn't hinge upon this minority opinion anyway. It's already accepted that strong atheists exist, which means that people already accept that people can have the belief that gods don't exist.
4. Interestingly enough, and has already been argued by others, you cannot claim that you lack belief in gods in general if you don't believe that there's a general definition for gods. Because, if we accept Penguin's argument, that means it is possible we do believe in something that is a god. This possibility means that you cannot classify yourself as a "lack of belief" atheist, since you do not, in fact, know that you don't have a belief in some god out there.
That's all I got for now.
I have been reluctant to respond to his request for multiple reasons.
1. I didn't want to lend validity to what I find to be a ridiculous argument, namely, that we cannot have a general concept of gods.
The very fact that we can speak of "gods" at all, rather than having to resort to specific names; The fact that we know a god isn't a nothing-special-about-it banana; The fact that the word is meaningful and not gibberish, all demonstrate the argument's.... dubious nature.
2. What would providing my definition accomplish? It is unlikely to satisfy someone who has already decided that the word is undefinable. And it's not exactly fair to have an ignostic as the arbiter of Acceptable Definitions.
3. Why should he be Arbiter at all? The definition of atheism wouldn't hinge upon this minority opinion anyway. It's already accepted that strong atheists exist, which means that people already accept that people can have the belief that gods don't exist.
4. Interestingly enough, and has already been argued by others, you cannot claim that you lack belief in gods in general if you don't believe that there's a general definition for gods. Because, if we accept Penguin's argument, that means it is possible we do believe in something that is a god. This possibility means that you cannot classify yourself as a "lack of belief" atheist, since you do not, in fact, know that you don't have a belief in some god out there.
That's all I got for now.
There's always a chance.
I wonder.....is belief in gods the "lack of disbelief"?
Thief
Rogue Theologian
nope
Just say "the default is" then instead of "the default state is".
Why does God exist? Is there a natural reason why he exists in the first place or was he created?
You can believe gods exist or you can believe gods don't exist or have an absence of both believes. Having an absence of belief in one doesn't automatically lead to having a belief in the other.
The question was pure mischief.
I don't deserve a real answer.
The default what?
"Default," used as a noun, means "something that is usual or standard." It doesn't exist without that "something."
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