That Religion Thing?

Jackobyte

Noel2k9 wrote: »

Nope, it's not okay with me. I'm sick of reading your posts here trying to force your view upon others.

No wonder people don't want a conversation with an atheist, it's like trying to sell oil to the Arab's. I don't try to push my religion upon you..

I don't think it is fair to claim anyone is trying to push their religion on someone else. I think everyone here is just trying to defend their own beliefs or lack thereof.

partyatmygaff

Jackobyte wrote: »

If a man was born today and walked around, claiming to be the son of god, he'd be marked as psychotic right away.

More than likely yes. Very few, if any would believe them unless there was a reason to do so. But you are forgetting something.

Jesus was accused of blasphemy and crucified for that reason. His followers were persecuted as well. Why would his followers have believed him if they did not have reason to do so? Why would they have risked persecution and death to follow someone being accused of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin?

Why is it reasonable to believe in something that offers no proof?

I could name many things that you believe in without proof.

"When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."

"Atheists are crazy" (Random insulting quotes are great, aren't they?)

Ad hominems such as labeling the opposite side of a debate as being insane are worthless. They offer nothing to a debate. They only embarrass the one repeating them.

SarahBeep!

partyatmygaff wrote: »

I could name many things that you believe in without proof.

Tear away there so.

Jackobyte

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Jesus was accused of blasphemy and crucified for that reason. His followers were persecuted as well. Why would his followers have believed him if they did not have reason to do so? Why would they have risked persecution and death to follow someone being accused of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin?

The same reason you believe him without reason to do so, perhaps?

Pygmalion

I believe science is about observation, and testing. Observation and testing is based on what occurs on a regular basis. Even atheistic philosopher David Hume suggested much the same. I can expect the sun to rise again tomorrow only in so far as it has done so repeatedly since the beginning. It is possible that it won't do the same thing in the morning, but all probability based on empiricism suggests that it will.

I can claim both to be compatible in so far as what science tells us can be true of what occurs on a regular basis. God is the ultimate cause of all things and in rare cases can manipulate the laws that He has given the universe. They only become incompatible when we assume that God doesn't exist.

You claim both to be compatible while stating that any laws or phenomena we observe are only to be believed when it doesn't contradict what $HOLY_TEXT tells us.
That's not really compatibility, that's just creating special cases for which our normal thought process shouldn't apply and any evidence we have gathered should be ignored.

Difference. I'm not using science to argue for my position. All I'm saying is that science doesn't pose any form of problem in terms of my religious belief. You on the other hand seem to be treating science as atheism's handmaiden.

I disagree that that's how I'm using science, for one I accepted right off the bat that belief in a creator is not a problem, merely belief in miracles.

I'll concede the rest of the paragraph.

Jaafa

Pygmalion wrote: »

You claim both to be compatible while stating that any laws or phenomena we observe are only to be believed when it doesn't contradict what $HOLY_TEXT tells us.
That's not really compatibility, that's just creating special cases for which our normal thought process shouldn't apply and any evidence we have gathered should be ignored.



I disagree that that's how I'm using science, for one I accepted right off the bat that belief in a creator is not a problem, merely belief in miracles.

I'll concede the rest of the paragraph.

Doesn't Heisenberg's uncertainty principle allow for these 'miracles' to occur?

philologos

Also, Jackobyte - I've no problem with you claiming that I'm deluded. I just think that most people who object to Christianity are objecting to a caricature of it rather than Christianity in earnest. I'm actually by nature a pretty skeptically minded person, it was only by a lot of research that I've come to my current position. I was 17 at the time, and I was surprised about what Christianity really was, about who Jesus really was, and naturally was quite excited at how this view of the world would and has changed my life forever. It was a big step, not made hastily and any condemnation that you or anyone else give won't really convince me otherwise.

Jackobyte

philologos wrote: »

Also, Jackobyte - I've no problem with you claiming that I'm deluded. I just think that most people who object to Christianity are objecting to a caricature of it rather than Christianity in earnest. I'm actually by nature a pretty skeptically minded person, it was only by a lot of research that I've come to my current position. I was 17 at the time, and I was surprised about what Christianity really was, about who Jesus really was, and naturally was quite excited at how this view of the world would and has changed my life forever. It was a big step, not made hastily and any condemnation that you or anyone else give won't really convince me otherwise.

And I'm willing to withdraw that remark, towards you at least. At the time, you were just openly stating that you thought it was reasonable to believe in a god, without any reason to back it up at which time you appeared deluded. I just read through your AH post and I can see you have actually put serious thought into your religious beliefs. I may not agree with them but I'm big enough to say that you have actually followed a reasonable thought process to come to your conclusion. Most believers follow through blind faith alone, because they were taught to believe by their parents, schooling, etc., whereas you have put in serious consideration.

partyatmygaff

SarahBeep! wrote: »

Tear away there so.

Gladly.

You are a rich and important businesswoman. Create a hypothetical person in your life and call them Person A. Person A claims that you are the love of their life. You and Person A have known each other for a very long time and you adore Person A and are overjoyed that you are the love of their life.

Ten years pass and you end up heartbroken. Person A has left your life without a single word. You simply woke up one morning and they were gone without a trace.

A year passes and you learn that Person A was actually a government intelligence operative assigned to learn more of your life for an undisclosed reason. They had succeeded in fooling you for ten long years. Their claims and expressions of love for you was all just one huge, orchestrated charade carried out by an actor. They played you like an organ and relied on your implicit trust and love for them to extract the information they needed.

My question is... Why did you love them? Why did you believe it all? Did you delve in to their mind and search for that specific instance of love in their minds dedicated to you? Did you then quantify it and compare it to all the other instances of love and ascertain whether or not their claim of "Love of my life" was genuine? No you did not.

Pygmalion

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Gladly.

You are a rich and important businesswoman. Create a hypothetical person in your life and call them Person A. Person A claims that you are the love of their life. You and Person A have known each other for a very long time and you adore Person A and are overjoyed that you are the love of their life.

Ten years pass and you end up heartbroken. Person A has left your life without a single word. You simply woke up one morning and they were gone without a trace.

A year passes and you learn that Person A was actually a government intelligence operative assigned to learn more of your life for an undisclosed reason. They had succeeded in fooling you for ten long years. Their claims and expressions of love for you was all just one huge, orchestrated charade carried out by an actor. They played you like an organ and relied on your implicit trust and love for them to extract the information they needed.

My question is... Why did you love them? Why did you believe it all? Did you delve in to their mind and search for that specific instance of love in their minds dedicated to you? Did you then quantify it and compare it to all the other instances of love and ascertain whether or not their claim of "Love of my life" was genuine? No you did not.

wat.

On a more serious note, we believe people when they tell us they love us (well, we usually believe them), because there is evidence.
Generally when they tell you that they love you they've at least committed to a semi-long-term relationship, regularly take the time to see you, spend a lot of time with you, and convincingly appear to enjoy all of this etc.

Might not be 100% proof if that's what you're looking for, but there's very often a substantial mountain of evidence, it's usually more rational to believe that they love you than to believe that they've been faking all of this.

Edit: That and hormones are bastards, as mentioned below.

Screaminmidget

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Gladly.

You are a rich and important businesswoman. Create a hypothetical person in your life and call them Person A. Person A claims that you are the love of their life. You and Person A have known each other for a very long time and you adore Person A and are overjoyed that you are the love of their life.

Ten years pass and you end up heartbroken. Person A has left your life without a single word. You simply woke up one morning and they were gone without a trace.

A year passes and you learn that Person A was actually a government intelligence operative assigned to learn more of your life for an undisclosed reason. They had succeeded in fooling you for ten long years. Their claims and expressions of love for you was all just one huge, orchestrated charade carried out by an actor. They played you like an organ and relied on your implicit trust and love for them to extract the information they needed.

My question is... Why did you love them? Why did you believe it all? Did you delve in to their mind and search for that specific instance of love in their minds dedicated to you? Did you then quantify it and compare it to all the other instances of love and ascertain whether or not their claim of "Love of my life" was genuine? No you did not.

Ah here...

Namlub

This is getting slightly tedious, no?

SarahBeep!

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Gladly.

You are a rich and important businesswoman. Create a hypothetical person in your life and call them Person A. Person A claims that you are the love of their life. You and Person A have known each other for a very long time and you adore Person A and are overjoyed that you are the love of their life.

Ten years pass and you end up heartbroken. Person A has left your life without a single word. You simply woke up one morning and they were gone without a trace.

A year passes and you learn that Person A was actually a government intelligence operative assigned to learn more of your life for an undisclosed reason. They had succeeded in fooling you for ten long years. Their claims and expressions of love for you was all just one huge, orchestrated charade carried out by an actor. They played you like an organ and relied on your implicit trust and love for them to extract the information they needed.

My question is... Why did you love them? Why did you believe it all? Did you delve in to their mind and search for that specific instance of love in their minds dedicated to you? Did you then quantify it and compare it to all the other instances of love and ascertain whether or not their claim of "Love of my life" was genuine? No you did not.

Emotions are controlled by hormones.

Brb guys....off to go check my boyfriend isn'r in the CIA and spying on me

Turtwig

This has probably been addressed already but those poll options are a lie. The atari jaguar was never purple and atheism isn't necessarily the position that God is a lie.What about atheists who never heard of the God concept?

Screaminmidget

Malty_T wrote: »

What about atheists who never heard of the God concept?

They still dont believe in god.

Pigwidgeon

Lads remember, attack the post not the poster and if you have issues with a post or feel that someone is trolling report the post don't bring it up on thread.

Lawliet

Screaminmidget wrote: »

They still dont believe in god.

I think they're talking about the poll misrepresenting atheism: it's not the belief that god is a lie as there are some cultures that have never heard of god and therefore are atheists without thinking that god is a lie.

Screaminmidget

Lawliet wrote: »

I think they're talking about the poll misrepresenting atheism: it's not the belief that god is a lie as there are some cultures that have never heard of god and therefore are atheists without thinking that god is a lie.

Ah, only saw the brackets part in the poll now

partyatmygaff

Pygmalion wrote: »

On a more serious note, we believe people when they tell us they love us (well, we usually believe them), because there is evidence.
Generally when they tell you that they love you they've at least committed to a semi-long-term relationship, regularly take the time to see you, spend a lot of time with you, and convincingly appear to enjoy all of this etc.

A trained actor could do as much. That is not rational evidence.

Screaminmidget wrote: »

Ah here...

Ah here what?

SarahBeep! wrote: »

Emotions are controlled by hormones

So what?

You seem to have completely ignored my questions. Good work.

Namlub

partyatmygaff, is a long-winded and frankly ridiculous hypothetical situation really the best evidence you can offer to show that everyone believes in things without proof? Because I'm trying to rack my brains for an example that is somewhat relevant to my life and I can't think of anything...

Screaminmidget

partyatmygaff wrote: »

I could name many things that you believe in without proof.

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Gladly.

You are a rich and important businesswoman. Create a hypothetical person in your life and call them Person A. Person A claims that you are the love of their life. You and Person A have known each other for a very long time and you adore Person A and are overjoyed that you are the love of their life.

Ten years pass and you end up heartbroken. Person A has left your life without a single word. You simply woke up one morning and they were gone without a trace.

A year passes and you learn that Person A was actually a government intelligence operative assigned to learn more of your life for an undisclosed reason. They had succeeded in fooling you for ten long years. Their claims and expressions of love for you was all just one huge, orchestrated charade carried out by an actor. They played you like an organ and relied on your implicit trust and love for them to extract the information they needed.

My question is... Why did you love them? Why did you believe it all? Did you delve in to their mind and search for that specific instance of love in their minds dedicated to you? Did you then quantify it and compare it to all the other instances of love and ascertain whether or not their claim of "Love of my life" was genuine? No you did not.

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Ah here what?

"Hypothetical"

There-in lies your problem. You have failed to list anything That any of us believe in without proof.

SarahBeep!

partyatmygaff wrote: »

A trained actor could do as much. That is not rational evidence.


Ah here what?


So what?

You seem to have completely ignored my questions. Good work.

Because that 'scenario' is bull. I'm sorry but I refuse to participate in absolute nonsense.

I'm out. Someone give me a shout if this thread is ever worth participating in.

Pygmalion

partyatmygaff wrote: »

A trained actor could do as much. That is not rational evidence.

Yeah, most people aren't trained actors.
Most people are, however, capable of experiencing love.
Most people are also unlikely to put in ridiculously long amounts of their lives in some insanely clever plot to trick someone into thinking they love them.
So yeah, you've failed to point out how it's not rational evidence.

I can't say for certain that a single one of my ex-girlfriends wasn't a highly trained actor sent to gather information on an unemployed teenager for the government, or an alien race.
It would, however, be more rational to assume that they weren't.

Also keep in mind that you're not looking for "Am I 100% sure that this is the case", which may never be possible, you're looking for "Is this the most likely explanation".
If, hypothetically speaking, there's a 99% chance that the person is serious, and a <1% chance that they're not, then believing them is the rational thing to do.

partyatmygaff

Namlub wrote: »

partyatmygaff, is a long-winded and frankly ridiculous hypothetical situation really the best evidence you can offer to show that everyone believes in things without proof? Because I'm trying to rack my brains for an example that is somewhat relevant to my life and I can't think of anything...

Sorry for my use of "hypothetical".

Let me give you a real world example from a thread I posted in on AH. It came from a completely different thread so it may be a tad irrelevant with regard to this specific thread but the general idea is still the same.

A person can use both faith and reason to make decisions in life. Not everything can be decided upon solely by reasoning.

Let me lay out a scenario for you

You are a rich and important businessman. A gold digger decides that they want to nab half your wealth. They set out a grand ten year plan to achieve this. They take acting lessons and they master how best to synthesise outward displays of love. They come close to you and you feel attracted to them. The gold digger proclaims to love you and appears to adore your very existence. You feel a genuine love for the person and believe that the love is mutual.

Four years of the play passes and the gold digger convinces you to marry them. You, fooled by their grand charade, marry them. All seems normal and six years pass. During those six years the outward displays and proclamations of love intensify and almost surreptitiously they manage to persuade you to transfer some of your wealth to them and you agree as you feel that you and your lover are truly one and the same.

Ten years have passed and you wake up to find you are alone. The gold digger has filed for divorce and you are left wondering what went wrong. You lose half your wealth and you feel hurt and deceived. You saw extravagant displays and proclamations of love and you fell for it. You never knew that for ten years it was all a careful and controlled charade. You believed that they truly loved you but in reality they never did. They played you like an organ.

What led you to feel that the gold digger's love was genuine? Did you delve in to their minds and find evidence of the emotion they claimed to feel for you? No. You had faith in their outward displays and their words. The purely rational mind does not love, it does not feel. It is a machine that is cold and inhuman.

Some decisions are purely based on faith. Some decisions are purely based on reason. Some decisions are based on both. All in all, people make decisions in their lives on both faith and on reason. They always have and always will.

We all know that love as an emotion exists. That is not the question however.

I am asking you "Does a specific 'instance' of love for you exist in the mind of the other?". There is a big difference between that and "Does love in general exist?" as the latter is obvious. I am asking you how exactly can you be certain that someone else holds any love for you in particular. Them saying "I love you" is not enough. That isn't proof as for all you know they could be deceiving you. What absolute and undeniable proof can the other person provide for you to prove their sincerity? Can they give you a full transcription of the mind so that you can examine their thoughts and their emotions?

As an aside, I have a challenge for you and your purely rational mind. Find a person who says that you're the love of their life. Found that person? Good.

Now, I would like you to prove to me that that person actually loves you. I need solid and absolute proof and nothing less. Once you have found said evidence of an instance of love designated for you in the mind of that other person, I would like you to quantify the level of that specific instance of love and its development and growth over time. Then I would like you to quantify all other instances of love that said person has 'running' in their mind. Following that, I would like you to chart your findings and present them to AH. Together we will compare and contrast the levels of the other instances of love with the instance of love dedicated to you and then we will use this comparative analysis to determine whether or not the other person actually views you as the "love of their life". However, if you cannot find solid, absolute or even just quantifiable evidence then I am afraid to say that by your way of thinking you are deluded and/or mentally insufficient to believe in something so baseless in solid fact.

philologos

Pygmalion wrote: »

Yeah, most people aren't trained actors.
Most people are, however, capable of experiencing love.

This is a good example for the limitations of the scientific approach.

Love as a feeling is created by the levels of oxytocin in the body.

Love as a reality is meaningful. It is about the bond between two people it is about a profound attachment to the very being of another person. It is about sharing in the life of another person.

Are both true? - Yes.
Are both explaining the same thing? - Yes.
Are both valid? - Yes.
Are both applicable to the subject? - Yes.

Screaminmidget

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Sorry for my use of "hypothetical".

You just did it again...

Never mind, im with sarah on this, gdlk.

partyatmygaff

Pygmalion wrote: »

Yeah, most people aren't trained actors.
Most people are, however, capable of experiencing love.
Most people are also unlikely to put in ridiculously long amounts of their lives in some insanely clever plot to trick someone into thinking they love them.
So yeah, you've failed to point out how it's not rational evidence.

That is not the point. The point is that you do not have rational evidence to believe any man or woman's claims of love for you. There is no undeniable evidence.

partyatmygaff

Screaminmidget wrote: »

You just did it again...

Never mind, im with sarah on this, gdlk.

Great. Two people throw hissy fits, completely miss the point and then get all high and mighty and leave the thread.

No great loss by all means.

Slow Show

To me, 'love of my life' feels like something from a teenage romance book...so no, I don't believe in that either. I could argue my point, and I will if anyone wants me to, but it would just end up going hilariously off-topic and irrelevant.

philologos

Skepticism is only useful where it is well placed. It would be also possible for me to be highly skeptical about Australia's existence because I've never been there. Some people might say that they have pictures, but why should I believe that they weren't doctored? I could presumably find some people who claim to live in Australia on these boards, but couldn't they be lying. So on and so on and so on.

I agree that skepticism is a powerful and useful tool for discerning truth from falsity, but it can also mean a lot of truth can be ignored because people don't want to consider it.