Maybe, because I think life would not exist without supernatural. Or can you say how life came to exist from dead material naturally?
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No Magic
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
Maybe, because I think life would not exist without supernatural. Or can you say how life came to exist from dead material naturally?
I have no real natural nor super natural beliefs about that. Whatever I said would be a belief.
I simply accept that I don't know. I'm ok with not knowing and suspect I will probably die not knowing.
I've no real need to know or make up explanations about it.
So, yes, I don't have an answer for you. I could make up one or accept someone else's claim about how everything started but I feel no need to do that.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
What does anything I said have to do with a hobby?
I referred to deafness as a disability, because it IS.
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
That post doesn't tell me what I want to know, though. You say you know that God doesn't exist in the same way you know that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant. I'm asking how you know.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Because I believe that those who are atheists lack the ability to perceive the divine. They are wired differently. That's my opinion.
How I know? I don't know
I would say something in the line of
1) Does X have evidence of existing?
2) Is X necessary to explain Y, which either has evidence of existing, or it is the consequence of a chain of necessary explanations for something that has evidence of existing?
If both answers are no, then I will know that X does not exist.
Ciao
- viole
Setting aside the insulting nature of the analogy, you do realize that deaf people can infer that sound is real, right?
They can feel vibrations, they can infer from behaviour that speech really does work to convey information, they can interview people who hear the same noise and get the same description, etc.
None of this analogy works for an atheist trying to deduce whether "the divine" is real. From an outsider's perspective, it really does seem to be a delusion on the part of theists. The consistency in response that we would expect if it were real just isn't there.
Voltaire wrote in "Candide," about Dr. Pangloss. Panglossian philosophy is that we are in the best of all possible worlds. Yet, somehow, I think that there is always room for improvement.
How I know? I don't know
I would say something in the line of
1) Does X have evidence of existing?
2) Is X necessary to explain Y, which either has evidence of existing, or it is the consequence of a chain of necessary explanations for something that has evidence of existing?
If both answers are no, then I will know that X does not exist.
Ciao
- viole
Explanations of the world by early man were that a man (Atlas) holds the earth on its shoulders. Well, that's certainly fine if you believe that kind of thing. But, it begs the question, "If Atlas is holding us up, who is holding up Atlas?" This is the same thing that Lois Lane asked superman.
Not to be stumped, they said that Atlas stands on a giant tortoise.
Okay, but what is holding up the tortoise?
We can keep this game going forever, continually inventing new ideas to fill in missing pieces of the puzzle. Yet, we are no closer to a real solution.
It is only when we choose logic over myth that the world starts to make some sense.
Even so, there are gaps in our knowledge that theists attempt to exploit. Any mystery is used as proof that God exists. If we can't explain why life could spontaneously evolve so complexly, theists insist that God is the solution.
Jumping to conclusions got us the notion of Atlas, then the notion of the tortoise.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Right as I'm being cast down by God, I would snatch him by his beard and ride him like a surfboard down to hell. Then I would catch a gnarly wave on the lake of fire and use the momentum built up from that to propel myself out of there, landing in god's empty throne which I would claim as my own.
A contrasting analogy for everyone's consideration: theists are like synesthetes.
The fact that some people can't process the sacred without seeing the divine in it is a lot like how someone with synesthesia might not be able to process numbers without seeing them as certain colours.
They may even think that their synesthesia is normal and not realize that there are people out there who don't see numbers as particular colours.
With synesthesia, a group of synesthetes may agree that numbers have colours, but none of them will agree on exactly which colour each number is. This seems to be a much better metaphor for theism than hearing is.
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
How I know? I don't know
I would say something in the line of
1) Does X have evidence of existing?
2) Is X necessary to explain Y, which either has evidence of existing, or it is the consequence of a chain of necessary explanations for something that has evidence of existing?
If both answers are no, then I will know that X does not exist.
Ciao
- viole
People once would have said the same thing about quarks.
I'm happy. So sure!
I don't really like the tagging of my life as 'mundane' though (and yeah, I'm aware it has a double-meaning). Lots and lots of thoughts about this, if you really want me to crap on. But there is a bucket load of things that happen in my life on a daily basis that shouldn't be reduced to 'physics and repeatable cause and effect'. Love, for one. Humour for another. RF-posting, for another (which clearly needs it's own category!)
The least interesting thing for me is superstitions, prayers, etc. I find them horribly...well...mundane. Ahem.
As might you if you've bet on the wrong horse. As may any of us. Better, I think, to stick to what we honestly believe and let the chips fall as they may.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Yes. Knowledge changes, as more evidence or explanatory power becomes available.
ciao
- viole
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
But the fact remains that at one point both of your questions about quarks would have been answered "no," and yet someone who then claimed to know that quarks didn't exist would be wrong.
Yes. I could also be wrong about the speed of light. Knowing does not entail being right.
Ciao
- viole
As Donald Rumsfeld said that we don't know the unknowns, and we do know the knowns, but we don't know what we don't know, and we do know what we do know. Maybe if he assigned a probability to knowing something, we could figure it out? Rumsfeld was famous for being highly trained in intelligence gathering, yet he knew nothing about anything when questioned.
There are known knowns - Wikipedia