Atheism to defeat religion by 2038?

Zab

Min wrote: »

It is being argued they should keep a part of them quiet and private, that they should not be public about their faith or practice their faith in terms of what they believe is best for society.

Who is arguing that? I think what you were originally replying to was

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

The issue is when such people do not keep faith private and try to implement it in our society or our halls of power, education and science.

I'm guessing nozz has somewhat misstated his position here, but I could be wrong. Religion obviously has no place in science, and I assume you aren't arguing otherwise. If we have a state eduction system then it shouldn't have a religious leaning if you believe in freedom of religion. I think halls of power is the one you're referring to, and I don't think nozz was suggesting that politicians keep secret whatever religion they have, only that the government doesn't align itself with a particular religion. He'd have to confirm himself though.

No politician is restricted from saying whatever they believe. If they choose to restrict themselves it's because they think they'll lose popularity because of it. This is their choice to make, it would certainly be more honest for them to say what they believe.

Min wrote: »

It is - people shouldn't be restricted of what they are allowed to support or not support because their conscience is ruled by what they believe and the faith of a believer is a vital part of one's make up. Some want this part restricted in public.

I don't believe anybody in this thread has argued that believers should be restricted from holding any particular office (although you could in fact make arguments for some particular cases, rightly or wrongly). You keep on talking about restrictions that don't exist and nobody is arguing for.

Jimoslimos

Min wrote: »

Santa is real in that it comes from St (Santa/saint) Nicholas (Claus) who is reported to be buried in Kilkenny. Santa also means holy in Italian.
Basically Santa Claus is St Nicholas, anf then stuff was added on like the north pole and elves, down chimneys and so on but Santa Claus is based on a real person, St Nicholas of Myra.

So.....in the same way there probably did exist a real man called Jesus of Nazareth, who lived approx 2000 years ago. But like Santa, has also had a fantastical backstory and mythology written around his character.

grindle

Min wrote: »

Santa is real in that it comes from St (Santa/saint) Nicholas (Claus) who is reported to be buried in Kilkenny. Santa also means holy in Italian.
Basically Santa Claus is St Nicholas, anf then stuff was added on like the north pole and elves, down chimneys and so on but Santa Claus is based on a real person, St Nicholas of Myra.

Holy shît.
Santa isn't real in that he's been dead for quite a while, and thus doesn't use a flying-reindeer-powered sled to travel from continent to continent, to every home, delivering gifts via chimney in 24 hours to celebrate the day
Santa. Not real.
Jesus the saviour of all that he created, including himself, for he is his own father? Not real.

Doc Ruby

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

1) Brain dead does not mean what he thinks it does and the brain can still process events, input and more during this time and

There is no evidence to support this.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

The clue for these people really is in the N of NDE. It means "Near" which tells you the patient was not dead. If a patient has a DE then we have something worth discussing. NDE not so much.

As I already pointed out, and you conveniently ignored, many NDEs take place in a clinical environment, where dead is dead.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Why? We are pumping patients with unpredictable and varied inputs, for varied reasons, to deal with varied causes of illness and near death, while the patients are in varied states.

Such as what? Please tell us what these concoctions are, medical science will be both surprised and litigous upon hearing clinics are pumping people full of chemicals with unpredictable results. Never mind NDEs that occur without either trauma or chemical inputs.

This is a god of the gaps.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Add in the massive unpredictably of reasons why a patient might be dying and the stuff we pump them with

What is this stuff you keep referring to, specifically?

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

That was not what I was talking about... you may have misread what I was saying. I was not talking about NDEs in what you quoted. I was talking about research into things which are ALSO experienced during NDE, such as the sensation of floating outside ones own body.

However having said that if you are interested in studies on NDE... which I reiterate was not what I was referring to here... then I believe there is one due to be released this year and I am waiting for it with keen interest myself. From what I know of it it involved placing things in random operating rooms that the patient, the doctors and even many of the researchers do not know what it is. If a patient reports an NDE they are asked what they saw.

As I said the results are still being awaited, as far as I know, but I have not yet heard any reports of a patient saying anything like "Oh I floated above the room, I could see myself and the doctors..... oh and by the way did you know there is a big unmissable digital read out on top of that cupboard over there with the number 66677 written in big red numerals on it???"

I would certainly love to read ANY study myself with results of that nature.

That's an out of body experience, substantially different to an NDE, in fact being only one irregularly reported facet of an NDE. What is the name of this study?

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I am not surprised and again I do not think we need anything like NDEs or supernatural explanations to explain it. Many people think of "sight" as one thing and if you are "blind" then that is it, you are 100% totally blind.

It does not work that way.

There are actually areas of the brain designed for many things such as seeing objects, recognising and processing colors, judging distances, and much more. The optic nerve for example feeds input into those areas of the brain and they process them.

If a person is born with a buggered up optic nerve then clearly they do not get that input. That does NOT mean the areas of the brain involved in processing those inputs do not exist or are non functional. If something throws random input into those areas of the brain then those areas of the brain WILL process that input and the person WILL get subjective experience from that.

What input? this is complete nonsense. They are blind, there is no input, to say nothing of the large body of work on changes in the brain measured if sight is gained or regained.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

At the risk of saying the same name too many times VS Ramachandran is doing some really interesting work on this. He is studying people who have what people call "Blind sight". He has patients who are entirely "blind" but somehow can still walk around a room avoiding randomly placed objects.

Another interesting case is a guy who can not "see" anything. He can not tell you what is in front of him, what it looks like, what shape it is or anything. However if that object moves he can tell you in which direction it moved.

So you're against NDEs but extra sensory perception is fine? Blind is blind, is he using echolocation?

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

What this tells us is that, like what I was saying about "brain dead" above the word "sight" is not a simple word describing one thing, but a massive sequence of things, all with brain parts dedicated to it, and even if a patient is "Blind" many parts of the faculty of "sight" can still technically function.

Add in the massive complexity associated with the stresses, random activity and electrical cascades involved in dying or being near death or being resuscitated and I find no mystery at all in the idea that unusual and counter intuitive subjective experience are afforded such people.

And that is before I even point out that their subjective description is, like what you said in your own words "can only be described as being color". We have to remember that we are listening to patients describe near indescribable experiences.... they are doing it in a language that has been designed and written by sighted people.... and their descriptions are then being parsed by people who can see things like colour. Perhaps what they are experiencing is nothing like color at all, how can we know, but by the time they translate that experience into our language and we parse it we are just viewing it in terms of things WE understand, like color.

Again, god of the gaps.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

One wonders if the awareness is actually heightened or is it simply that some of the filters and distractions our brain normally puts in place have been stripped away.

I've never known a broken machine to work at its finest.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I remember a debate between Sam Harris and (forgive me this is from memory, I can check it if you want but I think I am right) Rabbi Bradley Artson Shavi. Shavi describes having an autistic son who is able to recount the content of conversations that happened 2 or 3 rooms away from him.

Argh. Autistic people are having an ongoing NDE now.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

therefore a spiritual/Supernatural explanation gains credibility". Our lack of explanation is evidence of nothing save our lack of explanation.

At no point have I posited a supernatural explanation, that signifies something beyond nature. On the contrary I think it is possible that we're looking at something science has yet to explain, not something science cannot explain, and I can't in good conscience rule out persistence after the gross biological machine has shut down.

Seriously, I have no idea who this VS Ramachandran is, can you supply a list of his publications, peer reviewed studies, etc.

Edit: okay, I've looked him up, quite distinguished, I like the cut of his jib. His work has nothing to do with what you're claiming it does, however.

philologos

Zab wrote: »

I strongly disagree. If religion ever dies off education and quality of life will have had a lot to do with it. Just because you know any number of people who don't follow that trend doesn't make any difference. Education leads to rationality and rationality leads to a lack of faith.

Look it's rather simple. We have the claim:
1. Education causes people to stop believing in God.

The reality doesn't fit.
2. Many Christians are educated but still believe in God.

3. Therefore education doesn't stop people believing in God.

If 2 is true, then it must be something else.

I don't believe that atheism is any more "rational" than Christianity, actually I'd probably say it is less rational. I don't blindly buy into the new-atheist assumptions that are peddled time and time again on these fora.

smash

philologos wrote: »

Blindly trusting the interpretation of others, isn't really free thinking in a meaningful sense.*

eh, that's exactly what you do when you believe the bible.

philologos

smash wrote: »

eh, that's exactly what you do when you believe the bible.

No it isn't

Most of my thinking on the Bible has come from personal reading of it. I don't blindly trust anyone in respect to it. If my pastor preached something without Biblical basis, I'd be asking for an explanation.

Why? - Because people shouldn't trust peoples interpretations blindly without following them up.

nozzferrahhtoo

Min wrote: »

Why should people keep their faith private, it is not something they are ashamed of, it provides a lot of good in a society, it brings people together by being public with it as seen in Croke Park today.

I think we might end up equivocating over the meaning of "private" here. I am not talking about people meeting up in churches, or parks, or having get together or never talking about their faith ever ever ever.

I am talking about "private" in a more society context such as keeping entirely unsubstantiated beliefs out of our halls of power, education and science.

Let me make the point without talking about the emotive topic of religion, by way of analogy, to make it clearer what most Atheists are talking about here.

Imagine you are a politician sitting in session and someone walks in with a page of statistics. Using this page that someone starts dictating all kinds of policy and law ideas and changes.

Naturally you ask where the page came from, how the figures were arrived at, who did the study, who the study was of.... lots of questions about the page. The person however refuses to answer any of these questions but says he is personally sure the figures are correct and good. You ask again and now the person gets offended that you would ask, even suggesting laws to make it an offence to ask. Worse, when you look around at your politician peers you find they are nodding their heads sagely and accepting the figures.

That is what I refer to when I talk about "private". Entirely baseless and unsubstantiated ideas should not only be dismissed, but resisted, in deciding public policy, laws, education, ethics, morality and more. If there is no reason to think an idea true, there is no reason to allow it to be used as a basis for others ideas.

And at this time the idea there is a god appears to not just be slight, but entirely, devoid of any argument, data, evidence or reasons to lend it even a modicum of credence.

nozzferrahhtoo

philologos wrote: »

Blindly trusting the interpretation of others, isn't really free thinking in a meaningful sense.

This is rich coming from the guy who has no supporting evidence for the existence of god... but just blindly follows the Bible based on it being true for no other reason that you decided to think of it as true.

nozzferrahhtoo

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

The issue is when such people do not keep faith private and try to implement it in our society or our halls of power, education and science.

Zab wrote: »

I'm guessing nozz has somewhat misstated his position here, but I could be wrong. Religion obviously has no place in science, and I assume you aren't arguing otherwise.

Is it possible you both merely mis-read what I wrote rather than me misstating anything. Read it again. I am saying the issue IS that people try to implement their faith in our halls of power, education and science. The issue being that they should not do this.

The post I just made above this one about an analogy to statistics should make it clearer though if this clarification does not help.

smash

philologos wrote: »

No it isn't

Most of my thinking on the Bible has come from personal reading of it. I don't blindly trust anyone in respect to it.

You blindly trust the people who wrote it. Or those who rewrote it based on their interpretation of the original text.

philologos wrote: »

If my pastor preached something without Biblical basis, I'd be asking for an explanation.

Why? - Because people shouldn't trust peoples interpretations blindly without following them up.

Then why trust the bible?

Everything you say and believe is based on interpreted scriptural writings that have no real basis or backup.

Min

It is pride rather than education that stops people believing in God.

Some believe their own wisdom means there is no need for a God, that if they know so much there is no need for a God.
If one uses their wisdom and builds up a fortune they might feel they don't need to believe in a God, as they are their own God able to decide their own future based on the wealth they have amassed.

Higher standards of living can lead to pride, in the bible it is pride that led Satan away from God, it is pride that made the ruler of Tyre feel he was a God and didn't need the Lord our God.

Today, it is the same sort of pride that leads others to dismiss the belief of others, they non believer talks about education making them somehow wiser as if the person they are talking to is uneducated, the higher standards of living leading to pride as they feel they are in control of their own destiny.
This pride is all just an illusion of oneself.

smash

^^^
That's a ridicules statement tbh.

nozzferrahhtoo

As with any normally useful formatting such as bold, capital letters etc, over use of the Quote function can make posts unreadable too. So I hope you forgive me if I reduce the number of breaks in the zebra crossing post I am replying to.

Doc Ruby wrote: »

There is no evidence to support this. As I already pointed out, and you conveniently ignored, many NDEs take place in a clinical environment, where dead is dead. Such as what? Please tell us what these concoctions are, medical science will be both surprised and litigous upon hearing clinics are pumping people full of chemicals with unpredictable results.

I think you are misunderstanding what I am talking about here in terms of "unpredictable results". Clearly we know what we are doing when we inject chemicals or zap electricity into a patient in order to revive them.

The "Unpredictable results" I am talking about is the side effects of this. If you are sending electrical impulses into a patients body, to restart the heart, then this is going to affect the nervous system and unpredictable input from that is going to reach the brain. Such activity is going to have effects in the brain we can not predict and all I am saying here is that I am not surprised that patients undergoing such administrations report all kinds of subjective experience from it, including no subjective experience at all.

The "variety" of concoctions I am talking about is not that special either and I think you may be over extending the implication of my choice of words there. By this I am merely referring to the fact that dependent on what is about to kill a patient the drug administered will be chosen. We may be restarting the heart using Defibrillation but we are also often treating the cause of it stopping depending on what that cause is.

Again we know the intended affects of such drugs... that is not what I meant by "random unpredictable effects".... but again all drugs have side effects and put the body under stresses and strains unique to each drug. And again the point I am making here is that we should not be surprised that patients report all kinds of subjective experience when their brains and bodys are under extreme stress of any kind, let alone the extreme stresses related to being close to death.

On top of this I repeat a concern you bypassed and did not address. If we want to establish that the patient did experience anything while actually brain dead then we need the evidence that this did in fact occur. This evidence is not being presented. The subjective experiences such a patient had could just as easily have occurred on the way into, or out of, consciousness. The onus is far from on me to provide the evidence here, but on those claiming that the experiences happened at a certain time to show they actually did.

Doc Ruby wrote: »

That's an out of body experience, substantially different to an NDE, in fact being only one irregularly reported facet of an NDE. What is the name of this study?

I know. It was an example. Again what I am referring to here was not NDE, but the study of things which are ALSO reported by people who have had NDE. I gave one example, that of the out of body experience. Giving one example is not the same as saying the two things are synonymous. I am rather suspecting at this point you are willfully trying to misrepresent what I say.

I believe it is Sam Parnia who is doing the study I mentioned. A few "news papers" like the Mail Online have already been talking about it but I am waiting to read the actual study, methodology and results myself. Given Parnia is somewhat biased towards finding a positive result I will read the report with some care. The three year study starting in October 2008 and given the amount of data involved I would expect it to be late this year before I get my hands on the study itself. Though someone more in the know than I will probably now tell me it has already been released and I have just thus far missed it.

Doc Ruby wrote: »

What input? this is complete nonsense. They are blind, there is no input, to say nothing of the large body of work on changes in the brain measured if sight is gained or regained. So you're against NDEs but extra sensory perception is fine? Blind is blind, is he using echolocation?

Blindness is not a 0..1 game, on or off, is the point that the research in question is making. There is no magic, or echo location or any of that required to explain the kinds of "Blind Sight" I am referring to.

It seems like a paradox, the patient can not see but he can see. However it turns out from the Eye to the Parts of the brain that interpret visual inputs there are not one but two separate pathways the stimulus takes which serve different aspects of vision.

The first, the one we think is evolutionary more recent, goes through the thalamus to the visual cortex of the brain. The visual cortex is where we "consciously" see something.

The second however, older evolutionary and more prominent in "lower" mammals goes to the brain stem. From there it eventually gets relayed to the higher centers of the brain. Specifically this is related to reflexive behavior.

In these "blind" patients the "main" pathway is gone. The other pathway is intact, and the patient eventually gets information such as what direction objects are moving in.

The only reason I mention this is to point out that things like "sight" and "Blind" are not just simply on/off things. They are many layered, many faceted senses which map to multiple pathways and centers in the brain. Even if you remove someones eyeballs, those centers in the brain remain intact and if you send electrical impulses coursing through a patients brain there is little to stop those centers becoming activated.

On top of all that I reiterate that we are using language mired in constructs understandable to sighted people to understand the subjective descriptions of unusual experience by blind people, and interpreting those descriptions in terms we as sighted people understand. You ran away from this and dismissed it with a throw away phrase but I think we should be very wary of this despite your baseless cut and run dismissal of it.

Doc Ruby wrote: »

Argh. Autistic people are having an ongoing NDE now.

Given this is not what I said or implied this is kind of reinforcing my impression you are trying willfully to misrepresent what I am saying. The reference here was another example of what I mean which is that "heightened awareness" might have many other kinds of explanation in that it is not awareness that is heightened but some of our natural filter which are lessened. The brain is applying filters all the time to the inputs you normally get from your senses. Were those filters removed or switched off you would likely notice sensory inputs you normally would not. More than that I am not saying.

Doc Ruby wrote: »

At no point have I posited a supernatural explanation

And I at no point suggested YOU were. I am talking WITH you but I am not only talking ABOUT you. I am talking with you about people who DO posit such explanations for phenomena there is no reason to do so with. This is not about "ruling out" supernatural explanations or the persistence of consciousness after death. It IS all about pointing out that there is currently no evidence at all for either of those things and were one to simply point to things we can not explain in an attempt to lend credence to such explanations then one is on seriously shaky ground rhetorically.

nozzferrahhtoo

philologos wrote: »

Look it's rather simple. We have the claim:
1. Education causes people to stop believing in God.

I think the problem here is not whether Education does or does not stop people believing in God, but that you are assuming there is only one reason for thinking there is a god.

There are many reasons why people might think there is a god and any one believer can have any one... or more.... of them.

Lack of education is ONE of those reasons so an education clearly will hamper the god belief for those people who think there is a god for that reason.

People who think there is a god for another reason.... such as wishful thinking or fear of death.... are likely not to lose their belief in god no matter what level of education they attain.

coffee_cake

I wonder why people delude themselves that just because someone else doesn't share their religion it must be "pride"
I suppose these same people can be considered full of themselves just because they don't believe in the other gods
not to mention I think imagining that a deity has created the entire universe just for you and actually cares about your thoughts or actions sounds pretty narcissistic to me

nozzferrahhtoo

Min wrote: »

It is pride rather than education that stops people believing in God.

Or it might be simply that when asked you have consistently failed each and every time to provide even a scrap of an iota of evidence, argument, data or reasons on which to lend even a modicum of credibility to the claim there IS a god.

philologos

bluewolf wrote: »

I wonder why people delude themselves that just because someone else doesn't share their religion it must be "pride"
I suppose these same people can be considered full of themselves just because they don't believe in the other gods
not to mention I think imagining that a deity has created the entire universe just for you and actually cares about your thoughts or actions sounds pretty narcissistic to me

The Gospel doesn't teach that the universe was created just for us by the by. God cares about Creation as a whole and by extension about us.

As for people feeling full of themselves this couldn't be any more contrary to the Gospel which very clearly says we can't be justified by works.

The point is that I become less. Jesus becomes more. Life should be less about me and more about Him.

smash

philologos wrote: »

The point is that I become less. Jesus becomes more. Life should be less about me and more about Him.

Why would life be about someone who is dead, and who's "powers" are completely subjective and in my opinion fictional.

It's quite sad that you think less of yourself because of him. Or that you dedicate so much of your short life to him.

Wibbs

philologos wrote: »

The reality is that the New Testament is the most reliable source that we have in all history, and is by far the most reliable source concerning Jesus.

That's hardly 'reality'. It's the largest source on Jesus that exists today, it's reliability historically on the subject is debatable. Your first point that it's the most reliable source in all of history is with respect a tad daft. It can't even agree on internal points between the various authors. I've already given examples of that regarding the sources for the resurrection and there are more examples of this internal inconsistency.

Min wrote:

It is pride rather than education that stops people believing in God.

Some believe their own wisdom means there is no need for a God, that if they know so much there is no need for a God.
If one uses their wisdom and builds up a fortune they might feel they don't need to believe in a God, as they are their own God able to decide their own future based on the wealth they have amassed.

Higher standards of living can lead to pride, in the bible it is pride that led Satan away from God, it is pride that made the ruler of Tyre feel he was a God and didn't need the Lord our God.

Today, it is the same sort of pride that leads others to dismiss the belief of others, they non believer talks about education making them somehow wiser as if the person they are talking to is uneducated, the higher standards of living leading to pride as they feel they are in control of their own destiny.
This pride is all just an illusion of oneself.

Where I have had a problem with the Abrahamic faiths in particular is this notion of pride. What's wrong with being proud of human achievements, while of course being mindful of our shortcomings and being very mindful of hubris. On the "thinking we're gods" front, to a 'caveman' we would appear as such. We can "cure the sick" and "revive the dead" in ways he or she would find magical and godlike, we can make the "barren" fruitful, we can fly through the air, swim in the deepest oceans and even stand on other worlds. He worshiped the moon, we've stood on the bugger. We're beginning to understand the very fabric of the universe and the life in it, we're even beginning to fiddle with these things in ways that would appear godlike to earlier cultures. If humanity keeps on this path and I'm optimistic it will, with silly detours along the way, imagine humanity in 1000 years time, 10,000 years time. I'm 99.999 % sure we'll have conquered aging and death by then, probably much earlier. After all it's an engineering problem. We may well one day be able to create new universes in other dimensions. We would be in control of our own destinies and could create new ones*. Where does that leave the notion of gods, because at that point we would be by most definitions gods?



*we already do this. There are people reading this who a century ago would be dead from illnesses and conditions that we can cure/manage. If they were born in the 16th century or Jesus' time their 'destiny' would be to die young. No longer and we do it without recourse to saints or demigods performing 'miracles'. So is that playing god? To some of the more insane religious sects it is hence they ban medical operations etc. But like I say they're insane, well fcuking stupid more like.

TheCosmicFrog

The only thing of significance that's guaranteed to happen in 2038 is "Y2K38":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

Min

bluewolf wrote: »

I wonder why people delude themselves that just because someone else doesn't share their religion it must be "pride"
I suppose these same people can be considered full of themselves just because they don't believe in the other gods
not to mention I think imagining that a deity has created the entire universe just for you and actually cares about your thoughts or actions sounds pretty narcissistic to me

I did not say that.

It was argued that education and a higher standard of living leads to atheism, even though there a lot of well educated people with high standards of living who believe in a God.

I know I have been told on various forums from people with no faith that I believe in sky fairies, myths, something that doesn't exist and that it is basically stupid people who cling onto a belief in a God, that one is somehow insecure to believe in a God, that one must not be well educated, must be poor and so on to still believe in God.
Then it is made out that there is somehow this conflict between believing in a God and loving science.
Why do some non believers choose to set the boundaries, why are they the ones who see themselves always right and the people who believe in a God as somehow inferior in how they view the world.
This comes from pride, I have never told anyone they were wrong to believe in what is different to what I believe. I may argue from my own position but that is to explain or enlighten others.

nozzferrahhtoo

Min wrote: »

It was argued that education and a higher standard of living leads to atheism, even though there a lot of well educated people with high standards of living who believe in a God.

The word missing is probably "more" then. If you generally increase education and standard of living you will likely increase atheism, but that does not mean those things lead invariably to atheism.

The latter meaning is indeed wrong, and if that is what you are saying then we are in agreement. However it should be noted that those who think there is a god due to their lack of education are likely to lose that faith if you educate them.

Those who have different reasons for thinking there is a god, reasons entirely opaque to me, likely will be unaffected by any level of education we currently have to offer.

Min wrote: »

I may argue from my own position but that is to explain or enlighten others.

All ears, whenever you are ready to start.

Sarky

Your arrogance offends me. Bloody militant Catholics, always shoving their beliefs down our throats.

coffee_cake

Min wrote: »

I did not say that.

you kind of did

It is pride rather than education that stops people believing in God.

Min

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Or it might be simply that when asked you have consistently failed each and every time to provide even a scrap of an iota of evidence, argument, data or reasons on which to lend even a modicum of credibility to the claim there IS a god.

So this is a confirmation that there is a pride involved.

It is called a faith for a reason, people may undividually see God in their own lives, it doesn't mean one is able to give the proof.
But then CERN had to build a super ultra modern facility in order to try and prove something that hadn't been proven as a fact.
But they claim what te so called God particle (nothing to do with God in the argument put forward by you) does exist.
The fact is science hasn't been able to prove everything and should one believe the CERN facility was built in vain because nothing has been proven yet?

From the Telegraph on June 2nd, 2012

The theoretical particle, nicknamed the God Particle due to its central role it has in explaining modern physics, has never been detected and scientists have been working for decades to prove its existence.

So do these scientists lack a credibility or is it a case of double standards by some people for what one can believe in science to exist and what a person of faith believes exists?

Min

bluewolf wrote: »

you kind of did

So are you going to argue that there are no well educated people who have high standards of living who believe in a God?

coffee_cake

Min wrote: »

So are you going to argue that there are no well educated people who have high standards of living who believe in a God?

You said it was pride because people felt they didn't "need" god, I said it can't be pride if you just don't believe
the education thing is a bit separate

Min

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

The word missing is probably "more" then. If you generally increase education and standard of living you will likely increase atheism, but that does not mean those things lead invariably to atheism.

The latter meaning is indeed wrong, and if that is what you are saying then we are in agreement. However it should be noted that those who think there is a god due to their lack of education are likely to lose that faith if you educate them.

Those who have different reasons for thinking there is a god, reasons entirely opaque to me, likely will be unaffected by any level of education we currently have to offer.



All ears, whenever you are ready to start.

The more one grows in wealth and wisdom, the more they are likely to grow in pride.

smash

Min wrote: »

It is called a faith for a reason, people may undividually see God in their own lives, it doesn't mean one is able to give the proof.

People will never see God in their lives. They have a false perception that a 'god' is controlling what happens around them. So false that even when things go wrong, they see it as a challenge from their god.