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Are you closed minded?

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
How true! If I closed my mind I would still be an atheist and never have discovered Baha’u’llah and the Baha’i Faith. I’m very glad I had the ability to admit it when I was wrong about my atheist beliefs otherwise I would have missed out on so much.

I'm glad that you found somebody to show you the way to happiness. I found my own way, outside of religion.

I’m definitely closed minded to things like hatred, prejudice, war and discrimination but open minded to what will serve and better humanity, to what will bring peace, love, unity and happiness to the world and to see the good in people

That's not closed- and open-mindedness. That is merely having an opinion about those topics, some of which you are biased in favor of, some against. Bias is not a bad thing if it is rational and promotes human well-being.

There’s good closed mindedness and bad closed mindedness.

Not id the terms are used properly. There is nothing good about closed-mindedness as I have already explained to you. With closed-mindedness, you concede the possibility of discovering that you are wrong if you are and there is evidence to support that. Closed-mindedness is the choice to refuse to consider it. How can that be good, unless you simply don't trust your mind to review evidence?

most people condemn Prophets having never read or known anything about them. Which is called prejudice not an opinion from an informed decision.

Yes, it is a prejudice, which is the same as a bias. We're merely talking about having come to a tentative conclusion about something being better or worse than something else, something being correct or not. In the case of prophecy, the only prophets with a good track record are the scientists who have confirmed the highly specific and unexpected predictions of their scientific theories.

The biblical prophets, fortune tellers, astrologers, psychics, spirit mediums, and the like haven't generate anything of that quality, and I no longer hold out hope that they can or ever will. At some point, one simply stops reading or listening to them. I have, at no visible cost.

Secular humanists of the physicalist kind have us all stubbornly reduced to being illusions caused by the brain.

Not in my experience. That's not this secular humanist's claim. We are not merely anything. We're many things all at once. We are living, thinking, material entities channeling energy as we meander through space and time. We are not merely anything. We're many things all at once. We can be described at the atomic level, the simple molecular level, the biomolecular level, the cellular level, the tissue level, the organ level, the organ system level, as an individual organism, as a member of a biological population, as a human being, as an inhabitant of a ecosystem, as a member of a culture, as the speaker of one or more languages, as a son or daughter, father or mother, husband or wife.

It's a straw man to claim that the secular humanists see man as nothing but [your preferred straw man here]. As you can see, this is a comprehensive, holistic view at multiple scales.

We see the same thing when somebody says that earth is nothing but an insignificant speck orbiting one of countless stars in countless galaxies. Sure, earth is that, but only from one perspective and scale.

It would be ok but for their passionate insistence that everybody must think like they do. Its worse than christianity.

I don't expect you to think like me. It's fine if you do, and fine if you don't. If I disagree with you, it's only to offer you an alternate perspective. You are free to accept or reject it, and I don't need to know which. They're both fine.

No one has a monopoly on rightfulness in interpreting the actuality of reality.

Reality itself is the arbiter of truth. Truth is the quality that facts possess, facts being linguistic strings (sentences and paragraphs) that accurately map some portion of reality.

Nothing can be called truth that does not derive from empiricism and conform with observatio. I assume that you would agree that even if there are truths that cannot be experienced empirically to be discovered or tested , they cannot be called true without that, and such ideas cannot be used for anything. Creationism would be an example if it were the truth. The idea can't be tested, confirmed, or used. Like angels dancing on a pin. Maybe angels exist, and the answer is six. Being divorced from experience, the idea is meaningless and useless.

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin. No matter what answer you give, literally nothing changes. No decision you will ever make in your entire lifetime can ever be influenced by the answer to this question. If nothing changes even in principle with respect to some proposition being true or false, then the distinction between them just vanishes.

"Truth has no meaning divorced from any eventual decision making process. The whole point of belief itself is to inform decisions and drive actions. Actions then influence events in the external world, and those effects lead to objective consequences. Take away any of these elements and truth immediately loses all relevance.

"We should expect similar decisions made under similar circumstances to lead to similar outcomes. Pragmatism says that the ultimate measure of a true or false proposition lies in its capacity to produce expected results. If an idea is true, it can be used in the real world to generate predictable consequences, and different ones if that idea turned out to be false. In other words, the ultimate measure of a true proposition is the capacity to inform decisions under the expectation of desirable consequences.

"All we need to know is that we have desires and preferences, we make decisions, and we experience sensory perceptions of outcomes. If a man has belief B that some action A will produce desired result D, if B is true, then doing A will achieve D. If A fails to achieve D, then B is false. Either you agree that truth should be measured by its capacity to inform decisions and produce results or you don't. If you agree, then we can have a conversation. And if we disagree about some belief, we have a means to decide the issue.

"If this is not how your epistemology works - how you define truth - then we can't have a discussion, and I literally don't care what you think, since it has no effect on anything.
" - anonymous Internet source

God has to come to us indirectly through humans

Funny thing about God. Whenever he has the choice to do something that could only happen if there were a god, and a choice that would be the one a godless universe would be constrained to make, this god always chooses to imitate the nonexistent god.

it seems like an awful lot of atheists who logically should believe "if there is no god, I don't have to care about religion" don't

We don't believe in God, and we do need to care about religion, especially Christianity in the States, at least until it has shrunk to a size where it affects only its adherents.

In order to be hostile to religion, you would have to presuppose that it's a threat to you. Why is something not real a threat to you?

Religion is real.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
You haven't denied it though.

I don't need other ppl to justify my belief.

No, but you denigrate and stereotype others beliefs, like atheists, to justify your beliefs.

But it seems like an awful lot of atheists who logically should believe "if there is no god, I don't have to care about religion" don't . All the ones I ever see in this forum (which would again logically be the only ones I'd encounter, since real atheists would ignore this forum entirely) are those with the approach, "God isn't real and you are wrong" or "God doesn't exist and I hate him."

This isn't atheism. In order to be hostile to religion, you would have to presuppose that it's a threat to you. Why is something not real a threat to you?

'But it seems . . . ' does not represent a meaningful argument when none of the above represents an unbiased assessment of what atheists believe and why they believe.

What you need to do is ask atheist what they believe and why, and allow them to express themselves without you telling them what they believe and why.
 
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Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Who created the formula?
You can do this forever, and when you finally get me to claim, in deep exasperation, "it must be a god," and then you can claim victory, right?

Then I will come right back at you and ask, "and who created this god?"

And you will then claim, "gods don't need to be created" for some fool reason or other, and think you've got a free pass. But you don't, you see, because all you are doing is changing your own rule (something that exists must be created) in the one special case you prefer. And I refuse to do that, because it makes no more sense to say "a god must exist" (and by a god, you mean something that is intelligent, purposeful and powerful, because it won't and can't create everything unless it has at least that), than what physics says, which is that something exists because nothing is impossible. (That means, by the way, that "it is impossible that nothing at all can exist.")

There's a huge amount of science around what I've just said, but science doesn't seem to be something that a lot of people care about, except making sure their cell phone and computer work, and their prescriptions are effective against whatever ails them. Which is unfortunate. But if you're not willing to look at any of it, we basically can't go any further, and you'll just have to claim "everything that exists must be created...except for my special exception, which is god."
 

osgart

Nothing my eye, Something for sure
I'm glad that you found somebody to show you the way to happiness. I found my own way, outside of religion.



That's not closed- and open-mindedness. That is merely having an opinion about those topics, some of which you are biased in favor of, some against. Bias is not a bad thing if it is rational and promotes human well-being.



Not id the terms are used properly. There is nothing good about closed-mindedness as I have already explained to you. With closed-mindedness, you concede the possibility of discovering that you are wrong if you are and there is evidence to support that. Closed-mindedness is the choice to refuse to consider it. How can that be good, unless you simply don't trust your mind to review evidence?



Yes, it is a prejudice, which is the same as a bias. We're merely talking about having come to a tentative conclusion about something being better or worse than something else, something being correct or not. In the case of prophecy, the only prophets with a good track record are the scientists who have confirmed the highly specific and unexpected predictions of their scientific theories.

The biblical prophets, fortune tellers, astrologers, psychics, spirit mediums, and the like haven't generate anything of that quality, and I no longer hold out hope that they can or ever will. At some point, one simply stops reading or listening to them. I have, at no visible cost.



Not in my experience. That's not this secular humanist's claim. We are not merely anything. We're many things all at once. We are living, thinking, material entities channeling energy as we meander through space and time. We are not merely anything. We're many things all at once. We can be described at the atomic level, the simple molecular level, the biomolecular level, the cellular level, the tissue level, the organ level, the organ system level, as an individual organism, as a member of a biological population, as a human being, as an inhabitant of a ecosystem, as a member of a culture, as the speaker of one or more languages, as a son or daughter, father or mother, husband or wife.

It's a straw man to claim that the secular humanists see man as nothing but [your preferred straw man here]. As you can see, this is a comprehensive, holistic view at multiple scales.

We see the same thing when somebody says that earth is nothing but an insignificant speck orbiting one of countless stars in countless galaxies. Sure, earth is that, but only from one perspective and scale.



I don't expect you to think like me. It's fine if you do, and fine if you don't. If I disagree with you, it's only to offer you an alternate perspective. You are free to accept or reject it, and I don't need to know which. They're both fine.



Reality itself is the arbiter of truth. Truth is the quality that facts possess, facts being linguistic strings (sentences and paragraphs) that accurately map some portion of reality.

Nothing can be called truth that does not derive from empiricism and conform with observatio. I assume that you would agree that even if there are truths that cannot be experienced empirically to be discovered or tested , they cannot be called true without that, and such ideas cannot be used for anything. Creationism would be an example if it were the truth. The idea can't be tested, confirmed, or used. Like angels dancing on a pin. Maybe angels exist, and the answer is six. Being divorced from experience, the idea is meaningless and useless.

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin. No matter what answer you give, literally nothing changes. No decision you will ever make in your entire lifetime can ever be influenced by the answer to this question. If nothing changes even in principle with respect to some proposition being true or false, then the distinction between them just vanishes.

"Truth has no meaning divorced from any eventual decision making process. The whole point of belief itself is to inform decisions and drive actions. Actions then influence events in the external world, and those effects lead to objective consequences. Take away any of these elements and truth immediately loses all relevance.

"We should expect similar decisions made under similar circumstances to lead to similar outcomes. Pragmatism says that the ultimate measure of a true or false proposition lies in its capacity to produce expected results. If an idea is true, it can be used in the real world to generate predictable consequences, and different ones if that idea turned out to be false. In other words, the ultimate measure of a true proposition is the capacity to inform decisions under the expectation of desirable consequences.

"All we need to know is that we have desires and preferences, we make decisions, and we experience sensory perceptions of outcomes. If a man has belief B that some action A will produce desired result D, if B is true, then doing A will achieve D. If A fails to achieve D, then B is false. Either you agree that truth should be measured by its capacity to inform decisions and produce results or you don't. If you agree, then we can have a conversation. And if we disagree about some belief, we have a means to decide the issue.

"If this is not how your epistemology works - how you define truth - then we can't have a discussion, and I literally don't care what you think, since it has no effect on anything.
" - anonymous Internet source



Funny thing about God. Whenever he has the choice to do something that could only happen if there were a god, and a choice that would be the one a godless universe would be constrained to make, this god always chooses to imitate the nonexistent god.



We don't believe in God, and we do need to care about religion, especially Christianity in the States, at least until it has shrunk to a size where it affects only its adherents.



Religion is real.


Your materialism is only one side of reality as comprehensive of that one side as it is.

Materialism is a philosophy!

And there are secular humanists that consider being and consciousness a persistent illusion, and free will an illusion as well. Obviously you are not one of them.
 

Bob the Unbeliever

Well-Known Member
Your materialism is only one side of reality as comprehensive of that one side as it is..

So you claim--- can you demonstrate otherwise? No? Well, then....

Materialism is a philosophy!.
|

It's outcome based-- you know-- reality. All other philosophies are based on Wishes and Magic.
And there are secular humanists that consider being and consciousness a persistent illusion, and free will an illusion as well. Obviously you are not one of them.

So? What about theists who don't believe as you do? Rabbit-trail comment.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
god is unique. he must have a difference from his creations.
You see, you are just doing what I said you would do. You are providing yourself your own, home-made justification.

So now, I'll ask you a question: what is it that you think god was doing (since you think it impossible for god not to exist) before the universe and everything in it...including time...were created?

And let me point out something that you find a bit hard to grasp: since time came into being with the (created, you suppose) universe, then god and the universe must in some way be simultaneous, since without time, creation...especially creation involving planning and deliberation...is impossible.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Your materialism is only one side of reality as comprehensive of that one side as it is.

Materialism is a philosophy!

And there are secular humanists that consider being and consciousness a persistent illusion, and free will an illusion as well. Obviously you are not one of them.
While I will admit that Sam Harris sees free will as something that don't have in any way the makes complete sense, I do not personally know of any secular humanists who think that consciousness is a "persistent illusion." We can just wander back to Descartes's "I think, therefore I am" ("cogito ergo sum) for a decent explanation for why I certainly do that. The fact that I am thinking seems to definitively establish that there is an "I." And that this I, and thinking, must be consubstantial … aspects of the same entity.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Who created the formula?

Curious, this question needs clarification. Science and the supporting math are descriptive from the human perspective through the falsification of theories and hypothesis based on scientific methods. This straight forward science, and does not address whether anything was Created or not.
 

osgart

Nothing my eye, Something for sure
So you claim--- can you demonstrate otherwise? No? Well, then....

|

It's outcome based-- you know-- reality. All other philosophies are based on Wishes and Magic.


So? What about theists who don't believe as you do? Rabbit-trail comment.

As humans we have the capacity to understand, interpret, appreciate, and other such things, How does those functions translate into a network of neurons? You cant explain or demonstrate how! Oh well.

Theists go way overboard with the idea of natural intelligence. I do not!
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
I propose that people who are absolutely certain about a topic, especially one as controversial as this, are closed minded. People who are closed minded cannot accept new information to the contrary; they’ll dismiss it without a thought. Even Socrates understood the immense problems with certainty. Even science does not use absolutely certainty.

Are you absolutely certain god exists or not?
VS Do you believe it’s most likely god exist but possible god does not exist or it’s unlikely but possible?

I think I'm in the latter camp. However, I think certainty seems like it's a usually something that can aid the life of a human if there align certainty as much as possible with truth. The road to truth is of course would contain numerous snares of false certainty, and the human adventure seems to broadly be one of often maneuvering the ego through traps of false truth. But I maintain that certainty is often good. Having been in jobs that involved danger, elsewhere sometimes having important decisions to juggle - it seems best to maintain oneself against the subjective.
 
Because the Message Must Be Divine-- else why bother?

A message can be divine. GOd could give it to someone to tell someone else. Why not?

Since all humans are very fallible and subject to mistakes? Especially anyone with such obvious ego issues as all--repeat--all self-professed Speakers For God!


ALL is your assumption.


A bare minimum of responsibility would be direct communication
-- no middlemen.

Again, thats your assumption. Your telling God how hes gotta do things. What if he chooses to have messengers? Aka, the chain of authority concept.

Would you trust a toddler to teach moral lessons to the class?

I dont know, id have to hear what the todler teaches first, then decide that. Just because hes a kid dont make him stupid.

The fact that this confuses you? Ought to be your first clue.... ironically, it is not.



Clue #2.



Clue #3.

Explain the clue because i havent a clue. :D
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
As humans we have the capacity to understand, interpret, appreciate, and other such things, How does those functions translate into a network of neurons? You cant explain or demonstrate how! Oh well.

Theists go way overboard with the idea of natural intelligence. I do not!

I believe there is more knowledge know concerning physical function of the brain (network of neurons) and the mind that many would not be willing to admit.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
Well, by pushing it to the unconscious mind, it isn't something I tend to worry about.
It isn’t something you can think about, so you cannot really worry about it.
We all have stuff like that... :)
God is really nothing to worry about, He just hangs around and He doesn’t usually do anything. :rolleyes:
 

Bob the Unbeliever

Well-Known Member
As humans we have the capacity to understand, interpret, appreciate, and other such things, How does those functions translate into a network of neurons? You cant explain or demonstrate how! Oh well..

Yes, actually, I can explain it. But it's going to take a great deal more than a few paragraphs....

Theists go way overboard with the idea of natural intelligence. I do not!
 

Bob the Unbeliever

Well-Known Member
A message can be divine. GOd could give it to someone to tell someone else. Why not?.

Why dilute the "message" by passing through fallible humans?

God can do anything-- according to your label. But cannot manage to communicate except to gullible and/or stupid people?

Hmmmm....



ALL is your assumption...
Nope. It's a consequence of your beliefs.


Again, thats your assumption. Your telling God how hes gotta do things. What if he chooses to have messengers? Aka, the chain of authority concept..

And? THE CONSEQUENCES OF THAT "CHOICE" IS A DEADBEAT, LAZY, INEFFECTIVE STUPID "GOD".


I dont know, id have to hear what the todler teaches first, then decide that. Just because hes a kid dont make him stupid..

Clue #5? 6? I have lost count...


Explain the clue because i havent a clue. :D

Obviously.
 
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