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baklava
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posted October 02, 2010 12:53 PM |
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This entire misunderstanding stems from me disagreeing with JJ on certain definitions. He's trying to widen the "atheist" label, by mixing nonreligious people up with them. There's a reason why these two groups are shown separately on surveys showing the percentage of religions followed in an area.
Anyhow, I'll stop dragging the discussion off course now. It just seemed to me that JJ tried to prove atheists rationally superior to theists with his response to Fauch, by using flawed definitions and logic.
We'll define God and discuss his philosophical and metaphysical attributes another time. It might be interesting. But let's let this discussion move on for now.
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is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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Salamandre
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posted October 02, 2010 01:21 PM |
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blizzardboy
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posted October 02, 2010 02:21 PM |
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JollyJoker
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posted October 02, 2010 02:40 PM |
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Quote:
It just seemed to me that JJ tried to prove atheists rationally superior to theists with his response to Fauch, by using flawed definitions and logic.
Not at all. It's not a question of superiority. Fauch said that atheism is a religion or belief as well, which was what I rejected. Agnosticism is no religion or belief either - even though a belief is involved, at least by the general agnosticists (who believe that it will always be impossible to know).
It's simply a logical error to claim that the rejection of a religious belief is a belief. It's just a rejection. It has a different logical quality.
In normal life "belief" means that something isn't sure, but one tends to something. There are always reasons for a belief - evidence.
Question: what evidence do we have for the truth of ANY SPECIFIC religion? This is a somewhat different question than the question, which evidence do we have that points to the existence of one or more suprior beings that would have to be defined with regard to the universe and what we know about it.
To the first question, I would answer - NONE.
Which is what religion is all about (as opposed to philosophy).
Which is why rejecting religious belief in specific gods is no belief.
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Corribus
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posted October 02, 2010 05:58 PM |
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Atheism is a belief system but it certainly isn't a religion.
Agnosticism is neither.
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baklava
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posted October 02, 2010 06:27 PM |
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A lot more things require belief than you may think, JJ. But we agreed not to introduce philosophy on the matter - and without it, we can't have any discussion on the issue.
Your views on belief, philosophy and religious teachings seem to be narrower than those things actually are. You, for example, regard religion and philosophy as things that can be discussed separately; I'm not the one to say I'm too well versed in philosophy and metaphysics, but I can't discuss something like the existence of God or even the truth behind particular religious teachings without introducing those, for me, elementary tools. It leads nowhere.
So I suggest we drop, or at least postpone, this conversation as we're not only needlessly flooding the topic, but are also unable to find a common tongue.
What we can discuss is how governments and religions could or should influence or not influence each other, and the inner setup of an Earthly state. The moment we dwell into religious beliefs for any reason except to judge whether it's directly harmful and whether it should be regulated, like blood transfusions to Jehovah's Witness children, we are doomed to pointlessness.
____________
"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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JollyJoker
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posted October 03, 2010 09:46 AM |
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Bak, I would let this rest easily, but when I read your posts ...
For example, you say something about "discussing the existence of God".
Which "God"? A god out of any religion? The Christian one? Which of the Christian ones? Any other?
Or a philosophically "defined" one? There is no universally agreed upon god model I'd know about.
So "discussing God" invokes the idea that there was a clear definition of "God" and that there would only be the possibilities of "God" or "No God" - which isn't true, though.
There is a fundamental difference between religion and philosophy, Bak: religion isn't DISCUSSING the "existence of God" - THAT is something you cannot discuss, because it's the prerequisite for religion. What's there to discuss with a believer?
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Elodin
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posted October 05, 2010 01:10 AM |
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Most people in the West will have think of God as the all-powerful original being who caused everything else to come into existence, so, no, figuring out what a person means when he says "God" is really not terribly difficult.
Ummmm, there is only one Christian God, you seem to be confused.
Yes, there is either God exists or he does not. All the evidence lends support to the idea of God's existence. The way the Bible describes God is pretty much the way God has to be in order for the universe to exist based on the facts we now know.
God has to be uncaused, self-sufficient, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal, and powerful. Exactly how the Bible describes God. The way other religions describe God simply does not fit the facts.
Frankly a person who does not believe in God can hardly be caused a reasonable person, based on current science, assuming they have at least an eighth grade education. The universe can't be eternal and can't have produced itself out of absolute nothing based on known science and current observations.
There is a fundamental difference between Christianity and philosophy. Philosophy is specualation and based only on the human intellect. Christianity is based on divine revelation, not human speculation.
But perhaps we should keep this discussion focussed on if the government should be allowed to dictate what religion you follow and what medical procedures you must undergo.
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Warlord
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posted October 05, 2010 04:02 AM |
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Elodin; how come God can produce himself out of nothing, but the universe can't?
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Mytical
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posted October 05, 2010 09:30 AM |
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That is one of the 'big questions'. Along with the age old "Can god make something ..." bit (ie can god make something so heavy he can not lift it). There should be an actual religion debate thread around somewhere however.
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Message received.
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JollyJoker
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posted October 05, 2010 11:51 AM |
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One should at least consider the possibility that it is impossible to fathom the nature of things with logic and abstract definitions alone. Russel has proven that no body of mathematics free of contradictions exist - you can ALWAYS construct a contradiction, with EVERY system of logic, and of course that includes "God", "God's attributes" and the existing universe.
It's not a given, that the human mind is even able to understand any of these.
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Fauch
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posted October 05, 2010 05:37 PM |
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maybe christianism shows evidence that god exists, but buddhism, for example, shows evidence of the contrary. warlord gave one of their arguments.
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Elodin
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posted October 06, 2010 12:52 AM |
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Quote:
Elodin; how come God can produce himself out of nothing, but the universe can't?
God is uncaused, timeless, eternal, self-existant. God has always been. God is a spirit, not matter or energy and thus the laws of thermodynamics are not applicable to God. God is the first Cause, the uncaused cause.
The universe is like a painting. God is the painter. The painter is not bound by the painting, but instead transcends the painting. The painting could not come into existence on its own and the painter is not dependent on the existence of the painting.
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baklava
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posted October 06, 2010 01:04 AM |
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Edited by baklava at 01:05, 06 Oct 2010.
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Quote:
What's there to discuss with a believer?
Well, you're the one doing that since you got here. 
Of course you can discuss things with believers for chrissakes. In fact, a well-versed, modern believer will probably be infinitely more fruitful and interesting to have a discussion with than any run-off-the-mill angsty atheist one might encounter on the Web. The same, of course, goes the other way - an intelligent, well backed-up atheist is far more enlightening and fun to talk to about the issue than an average American conservative religious semi-fanatic, sprouting the same lines over and over again.
To put it bluntly, your prejudice doesn't do much to enlarge either your credibility or my interest for discussion. And no matter how hard you try to conceal it behind the veil of flawed logic, it's still prejudice, and the discussion still wouldn't lead anywhere.
Anyhow, about your other points, fine, man, have the last word, for crying out loud... I still think you got most of it wrong (not everything, mind you; I in fact often even agree with you), that your logic sometimes resembles a goat in Saturn's orbit when it comes to making sense, and that you, simply, don't understand some things any more than Elodin does (I'm not trying to insult any one of you guys with this sentence, except perhaps both of you). Or, more probably, we simply understand them differently.
So I'm not going to push this any further. Like I said, this isn't the place or the time for it. Feel free to start a new topic if you insist. I recon mods'll lock it in a matter of days anyway.
____________
"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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Fauch
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posted October 06, 2010 01:10 AM |
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it's a dogma, not a proper explanation
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JollyJoker
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posted October 06, 2010 08:18 AM |
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Bak, I think you've just proven my point.
And I further think I prefer Elodin's way to say snow you over yours.
Logic is a very dangerous thing, especially in combination with language. It's no happenstance, that when it comes to religion, in English the word "faith" is used instead of belief (even though there is no verb).
These are translations.
In Latin, there are two verbs: "putare" (I don't really know, but I believe/assume) and credere (compare "credo") which means, putting your heart into something, trust into.
In Greek we have the same: the words pistis/pisteuein are used which have something to do with trust and loyalty, not with not-knowing.
In Hebrew, lastly, the word is aman (amen has the same roots). It means being steadfast.
Believing does NOT mean not knowing, when we talk about religion, but having faith, which is basically the opposite.
So someone who has faith in the existance of God - a believer - knows that God exists - in the end, whether you come with "modern" or not - a believer is someone who doesn't doubt what he believes.
You may discuss the why, but not the fact.
Now, for logic. You say I'm prejudiced - and I think you make a logical error.
One way to see it is this: Atheism is a NEGATION of something.
Now imagine the doomsayers there were before both millennium changes. Let's call them doomists - they believes that doomsday would come with the change of the millennium. Would it be correct to call the non-doomists Adoomists (basically those who would say that the doomists were a bolt or two short in their brainpan). Not really, because they just didn't fall for the hysteria, not believing anything else than before. (The maybe-maybe-nots would stzill be Agnostics).
Mindset in the theistic parts of the world is so, that the god idea is given a lot more credit than it actually deserves.
Think about how religions have developed and how many different religions and gods there habe been. To say that the basic idea of "God" is underlying them all and believing in "a creator" was intuitive is, in my opinion, rash.
I don't find it intutive, on the contrary. I find the idea a lot more intuitive that there is more than one first cause, that things are the result of a "union" or "merge" or "coming together" of maybe two things, whatever you may call them.
Atheism is no religion. Atheism is just rejecting something. It's a name like no-car-drivers, which just means the person doesn't have a car - it doesn't say anything about how that person actually moves and travels.
The monotheistic religions are belief systems, and rejecting them is none. If you have an ill person and 3 different doctors giving 3 different diagnoses, rejecting them all as false (because the symptoms are not fitting), doesn't deliever a 4th diagnosis.
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Corribus
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posted October 06, 2010 10:41 AM |
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@JJ
Quote:
Believing does NOT mean not knowing, when we talk about religion, but having faith, which is basically the opposite.
So someone who has faith in the existance of God - a believer - knows that God exists - in the end, whether you come with "modern" or not - a believer is someone who doesn't doubt what he believes.
You may discuss the why, but not the fact.
Hmm, we apparently have a different understanding of "knowledge". For that matter, we also have a different understanding of "fact".
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JollyJoker
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posted October 06, 2010 11:24 AM |
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Corribus that's not MY understanding of it. You may ask Elodin about it.
It has something to do with the etymology of words and religion.
"Religious belief" has a different meaning than general belief, and that is not my personal opinion, you can read that that everywhere.
Even today you might havethe opinion, that we do not know anything for objective fact in any meaningful sense.
Just think back now, and think about how it was in earlier times. "Knowing", "facts" and believing haven't been the same things in the course of history, and the words people usd in the old scriptures had a different meaning than the meaning we associate today with the word "belief" or "believe". Today it generally means, we don't KNOW and (therefore) it expresses kind of an uncertainty.
In earlier times the words used meant basically the opposite - in a world of which you didn't know much you put your trust into it - FAITH.
It had more the meaning of knowing by heart, absolutely trusting.
Consider this: let's assume you dearly love your wife. The dfference is, like, you believe your wife loves you and would never betray you and you have faith in your wife, to love and never betray you.
The first is the current meaning: you can't know, but you believe it, since there is maybe evidence or like to believe it.
In the second case, while you CANNOT know with absolute certainty -you still DO so.
Now someone, maybe a friend, comes and tells you, your wife has been unfaithful to you. In the first case you may discuss the evidence with him, and if the evidence is compelling you may decide to act accordingly, talk with your wife, look for clues, whatever.
In the second case you know, that what your friend is telling you can't be true. Either he's lying deliberately, maybe having dark plans of his own, or there has been a mistake or misunderstanding, getting some "facts" wrong to produce wrong evidence. Whatever the case, the possibility that your wife has indeed been unfaithful is basically not existing...
That's the difference between faith o religious belief and simple mundane belief, as we know it nowadays.
Thinking about life in the past - which was fundamentally UNSCIENTIFIC and not dominated by the scientific, empirical method to check and verify claims, collect evidence and so on - it even makes sense. You either BELIEVE or you don't - being in a limbo of uncertainty, trying to ascertain the facts, would have been a strange idea then.
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Corribus
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posted October 06, 2010 04:33 PM |
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Quote:
Corribus that's not MY understanding of it. You may ask Elodin about it.
Ah, ok. You had me worried there.
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JollyJoker
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posted October 06, 2010 08:42 PM |
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On the other hand - how is it supposed to work differently?
I mean, does it make sense to say, well, of course I don't know whether God and Jesus and stuff really exists - but I believe they might?
What "evidence" would you build that kind of belief on? I mean, it's not like the weatherforecast or something.
Bit like Indiana Jones, Part 3, Indy looking for the bridge that isn't there, and simply believes that it is there, placing a foot on it...
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This thread is pages long: 
