Shifting more towards atheism

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The church speaks nowadays like you.

That was in response to, "The church is why you don't know that the science that contradicts biblical mythology is correct." I know who taught you to be a creationist. Why don't you?

 

[F1fan]

Why do you call it a fraud, if you can't prove it wrong?

It's shown wrong quite consistently. There was no global flood. The universe is not 6000 year old. It's not the adjusted age of 10,000 years old. There's no created organisms in their current forms. Dinosaurs and humans did not exist at the same time. Evolution keeps proving creatiosm dead wrong. The frauds behind creationism tried ID as an alternative, and even that is proven wrong. They hung their hat on ireducible complexity and it got demolished. Even Michael Behe admitted in court court for the Dover lawsuit that ID is not science.

It's creationism that does no work to demonstrate it has valid explantions for how life exists as it does.

You don't understand science and evolution, why would you understand how creationism is fraud?

 

[shunyadragon]

That was in response to, "The church is why you don't know that the science that contradicts biblical mythology is correct." I know who taught you to be a creationist. Why don't you?

. . . generations of 'brain washing' cultural conditioning.

 

[shunyadragon]

Why do you call it a fraud, if you can't prove it wrong?

Your intentional ignorance of science persists. The objective verifiable evidence has demonstrated it is dead wrong.

There is direct verifiable evidence that 150,000 annual varves in a Japanese lake, no flood previous;y cited.

There is direct evidence of continuous human habitation of the Palestine region for 300.000 years previously cited, no flood or 10.000 year Creationist mythical scenario.

 

[F1fan]

I disagree. We would be wiser on how to behave given the changes. Pascals wager was a general decision making question applied to a specific proposition. Your making a fundamental mistake if you find fault in the process because you've applied logic irrelevant to the reference the question was framed in.
If your locked in a room, starving and asked to choose between two containers, the one is known to contain either delicious, nourishing food or nothing and the other poisonous food or nothing which is the most rational choice to ensure maximum expected utility?
It doesn't matter to the choice at hand that there might be myriads of other delicious foods outside the room or myriads of poisonous food which one may be forced to eat depending upon ones choice within the room.
Maximum expected utility can only be achieved with the choices given and the information supplied. That is how humans must make all their decisions.

The problem with your analogy is that you lock yourself in your room, and offer yourself the two options to force yourself into a decision. With pascal's wager there's no God forcing anyone to ponder the wager, it is die to cultural indoctrination, and the willing self to be indoctrinated. Critical thinkers don't fall victim to this trap that pascal's wager creates for itself. As I noted the weakness is that the wager assumes a god exists, but also that the God can be fooled.

The real wager is will a person be honest and doubt and disbelieve versus trying to deceive God (who will know you tried to cheat the system, and no doubt have a harsh judgment waiting).

Of course it wasn't. Pascal meant it to be applied to a particular proposition. However there's no reason the idea of its logic or illogicity cannot be applied to other propositions.

It was at best an exercise that was flawed, and would backfire. It's like playing with a timebomb because you think you can prevent it from going off, and instead the wise thing is to leave it alone.

And that was Pascal. The reasoning he used, the processes of thought, the resulting conclusions of the processes applied to other propositions, whether it be Gods or taking an umbrella with you can be legitimately applied to other decisions.
We cannot make any decision without wagering on the probability of a successful or least harmful outcome and with only the incomplete information we have to deal with.
Considering the negative effects of offending some other possibly existent God is itself a Pascals wager.

Right, you're better off not playing with timebombs.

The real wager is about honesty, integrity, and using reason as an effective tool, and all the while being grounded and mature to resist the influence of irrational cultural ideas. The wager suggests the person is like a robot, unaware that they have been influenced by irrational cultural ideas and think their options are limited. Atheists have escaped this trap.

 

[F1fan]

. . . generations of 'brain washing' cultural conditioning.

It's much like support for Trump, the more it is shown to be wrong and fraud the more people believe it.

As a phenomenon it's interesting and terrifying. I don't understand the blind willfulness to believe in something so thouroughly disproven.

 

[setarcos]

Presuming I either have to eat from one or starve to death (else I would refrain from eating), and presuming I have absolutely no way to determine which one is nourishing, I eat the food that seems better suited to my personal preference.

Yes...the process is the same. The preferences differ.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Yes… wikipedia includes a politically correct statement. “Depending on the atheist” IMV, simply means that there are some people who are not really committed to the definition because if they did actually use the definition, they would have to defend their position but because of lack of empirical and verifiable evidence, they can’t… so a politically correct statement is more beneficial.

That being said, the “narrower sense” is the correct definition

Well Atheism isn't a doctrine. Nobody starts out in life with a God.

 

[Koldo]

Yes...the process is the same. The preferences differ.

Pascal would disagree though. To him it is not a matter of preference (unless somehow one prefers hell over heavens). To him, everyone should eat from the same container.

 

[setarcos]

The problem with your analogy is that you lock yourself in your room, and offer yourself the two options to force yourself into a decision.

We're all locked into a room. Whether it be of our own making or someone else's it little matters when we are in there.

As I noted the weakness is that the wager assumes a god exists, but also that the God can be fooled.

The wager assumes the proper course of action given our lack of proof that God exists. His particular God. Pascal does not presume God is proven to exist. He simply presumes that either his God exists or no God exists.
To be clear...I'm not advocating for Pascals wager being correct in any particular manner - as applied to God.
I'm more interested in the process of maximum utility in decision making given a particular set of incomplete information.

With pascal's wager there's no God forcing anyone to ponder the wager, it is die to cultural indoctrination, and the willing self to be indoctrinated. Critical thinkers don't fall victim to this trap that pascal's wager creates for itself.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. A lot of thinkers have pondered "dying to the self" but I don't know how your using the phrase. By merely being born to experience is to be born into indoctrination so you've simply described everyone.
I think a lot of critical thinkers fool themselves all the time. Myself included.

The real wager is will a person be honest and doubt and disbelieve versus trying to deceive God (who will know you tried to cheat the system, and no doubt have a harsh judgment waiting).

I agree.

Right, you're better off not playing with timebombs.

Better off perhaps. But unfortunately in one way or another we are all playing hot potato with a timebomb. We just have to hope it doesn't go off when were holding it.

Atheists have escaped this trap.

Yeah they have. No one can fool an Atheist. Especially themselves.

 

[setarcos]

Pascal would disagree though. To him it is not a matter of preference (unless somehow one prefers hell over heavens). To him, everyone should eat from the same container.

Can't disagree with you here. Pascal was Pascal with all the accompanying baggage.

 

[setarcos]

Nobody starts out in life with a God.

Nobody starts being an Atheist either.

 

[metis]

I don't reject real science, it supports the Bible.

I think I have done it many times here already, but here are a list of evidence for the great flood:
1. Modern contiennts
2. Mid Atlantic ridge
3. The "ring of fire"
4. Oil, coal and gas fields
5. Marine fossils on high mountain areas
6. Vast sediment formations, like orogenic mountains
7. Stories about a great flood all around the world.

None of those support the "Great Flood" in reality. Instead, I believe it's best to view it as being a counter to the much earlier and more widespread polytheistic Babylonian account.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Nobody starts being an Atheist either.

Yes they do. Everyone has no god at the start of life.

 

[setarcos]

Yes they do. Everyone has no god at the start of life.

OR everyone has God at the start of life. You mean knowledge of the concept of what "God" means I'm guessing. That is being aware of a concept and its antithesis. Think about this...when you are born do you immediately ponder whether or not you believe something? If not then you cannot say that you belong to any particular ideological group. To be an Atheist is to be abstractly aware. Are Atheists thinkers? If they are then they of necessity must ponder what it is they say they have no belief in, lack of belief in, or whatever antithetical phrasing they wish to convey their claimed "no belief concerning".
I could hardly claim to be a theist if I had no idea what it is I believed in. Likewise I could hardly claim to be an atheist if I had no idea what it is I claim to have no belief concerning.
If we are born tabula rasa except for the most basic of instincts we quickly learn that there are things greater than ourselves which we do not understand but faithfully rely on for our continued existence and growth. The normal/healthy course usually starts with the development of a godlike mythos applied to our parents. Its quite a milestone when the child first realizes their parents don't know everything and aren't invulnerable. Another milestone is achieved when the child surpasses the parent in ability.
Formulating belief is the first act of conscious will clothed in faith in a power greater than the self. That is not Atheism. As atheists will insist after all - they have no belief concerning such things. Atheists learn to lose the faith they started with then define themselves by arguing that they've never had faith to begin with. (IN MY PERSONAL OPINION)

 

[Twilight Hue]

OR everyone has God at the start of life. You mean knowledge of the concept of what "God" means I'm guessing. That is being aware of a concept and its antithesis. Think about this...when you are born do you immediately ponder whether or not you believe something? If not then you cannot say that you belong to any particular ideological group. To be an Atheist is to be abstractly aware. Are Atheists thinkers? If they are then they of necessity must ponder what it is they say they have no belief in, lack of belief in, or whatever antithetical phrasing they wish to convey their claimed "no belief concerning".
I could hardly claim to be a theist if I had no idea what it is I believed in. Likewise I could hardly claim to be an atheist if I had no idea what it is I claim to have no belief concerning.
If we are born tabula rasa except for the most basic of instincts we quickly learn that there are things greater than ourselves which we do not understand but faithfully rely on for our continued existence and growth. The normal/healthy course usually starts with the development of a godlike mythos applied to our parents. Its quite a milestone when the child first realizes their parents don't know everything and aren't invulnerable. Another milestone is achieved when the child surpasses the parent in ability.
Formulating belief is the first act of conscious will clothed in faith in a power greater than the self. That is not Atheism. As atheists will insist after all - they have no belief concerning such things. Atheists learn to lose the faith they started with then define themselves by arguing that they've never had faith to begin with. (IN MY PERSONAL OPINION)

It's not an opinion. It's a solid provable fact there is no God involved whatsoever at the start of one's life.

That idea of God or applicable dieitys is introduced later by people to which the definition of atheism applies as a response.

That's just the way it actually is.

 

[setarcos]

It's not an opinion. It's a solid provable fact there is no God involved whatsoever at the start of one's life.

Okay, I'm open to the possibility...what proof are we talking about here.

That idea of God or applicable dieitys is introduced later by people to which the definition of atheism applies as a response.

So is the idea of atheism.

That's just the way it actually is.

It is? I hadn't got that out of reality.
Seems to me, the way it actually is, is faith precedes atheism out of necessity. Belief engages. Having no belief is a non entity to the matters of concern.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Okay, I'm open to the possibility...what proof are we talking about here.

So is the idea of atheism.

It is? I hadn't got that out of reality.
Seems to me, the way it actually is, is faith precedes atheism out of necessity. Belief engages. Having no belief is a non entity to the matters of concern.

Atheism isn't an idea. It's a response to theism.

You want to know how silly it would look before God was invented, to have somebody go around saying there is no God?

 

[1213]

None of those support the "Great Flood" in reality.

They are what we should find, if the flood happened as told in the Bible.

 

[1213]

There is direct verifiable evidence that 150,000 annual varves in a Japanese lake, no flood previous;y cited.

There is no way to confirm they are annual.

There is direct evidence of continuous human habitation of the Palestine region for 300.000 years

Please show one evidence for that.