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Atheism and Faith

leov

leov

Well-Known Member
Left Coast said:
Uh, no. "Solid personal proof" is an oxymoron. If your evidence/experience can't be confirmed by anyone else, it's not good evidence. Independent verification is part of what makes evidence good. This is why we don't accept the hallucinations of schizophrenics as good evidence for what's real outside the schizophrenic's
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we entered a circle.
 
MonkeyFire

MonkeyFire

Well-Known Member
With only faith you can only tell the truth, where as skepticism only tells lies. Take it for what you will.
 
leov

leov

Well-Known Member
LuisDantas said:
With all due respect, I don't think that you explained anything.
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i think i did. i am not in a business to convert or persuade anyone, so, some things remain with me, i do not have a cubic foot of God to show to atheists., just personal miracles...
 
LuisDantas

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
leov said:
i think i did. i am not in a business to convert or persuade anyone, so, some things remain with me, i do not have a cubic foot of God to show to atheists., just personal miracles...
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No, you did not. I am not sure that you even attempted to.
 
Left Coast

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
PureX said:
That's not an accurate definition. "Undetermined" is undetermined, not "disbelief". Disbelief in not an undetermined position. It's a determined position. It is the position of determining that the lack of evidence proves the proposition false.
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Incorrect. Your bolded statement is the crux of your misunderstanding. A lack of evidence doesn't prove a proposition false. A lack of evidence indicates that one is not logically justified in believing the proposition - even if the proposition turns out to be true.

Of course it does. And you know it does. Or else you would simply have allowed the proposition to remain undetermined in your mind. But you didn't do that. Instead, you insisted that the only possible logical response to the lack of information is that the proposition must be presumed false: that you must "disbelieve" it.
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Again, this is misunderstanding on your part of what disbelief means. When atheists (myself included) say we dont believe in God, we are not saying we believe God does not exist. We are saying we aren't convinced he does.

I'm sorry, but that is exactly what it means.
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I'm sorry too, but no it isn't. Lack of belief in a proposition is not an endorsement of it's opposite.

Again, if you fail to comprehend this, you fail to comprehend what atheists are saying when they say they don't believe in God.

You're trying to hide a determined disbelief behind indetermination. And it's dishonest.
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Nonsense.

I understand the distinction fully. But in stating this, you become responsible for your determined "disbelief in God", the same as the theist becomes responsible for his determined "belief in God".
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If I adopted the position that God doesn't exist, you'd be right. But I havent done so.
 
T

Terry Sampson

Well-Known Member
Left Coast said:
No, enlighten me?
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You've answered my questions and satisfied my curiosity, so I don't have any more questions.
Since you asked, I suppose I'm obliged to say something about "the Paradox" and "relative simultaneity". But, as far as I've observed, there are a handful of folks here in RF that I believe you'd get a reliable, unbiased "mainstream science" explanation from. I'm biased and lack the mathematical skills to dazzle and impress you. So, here's my brief summary of each. {I'll leave it to you to explore them further, at your leisure, if you're interested.]
  • The Paradox of the Light Sphere
    • A sphere is a three dimensional object in geometry. All points in the sphere's surface are equidistant from the sphere's center point.
    • Imagine a sphere of light emanating, in a given reference frame, from a single source at a constant speed C. Obviously (I hope you'll agree), the sphere's "surface" will be equidistant from its "point of origin" AND its source at all times in the source's reference frame.
    • Imagine a second reference frame moving at a uniform velocity V relative to the first frame. In and relative to the second frame, the light's source will obviously (I hope you'll agree), be moving at the uniform velocity V . The light sphere's "point of origin" in the second frame will be fixed and stationary, but moving relative to the light sphere's "point of origin" in the first reference frame at the uniform velocity V
    • According to STR, the light sphere will expand from its "point of origin" in the second reference frame at the same constant speed C that it expands from its "point of origin" (and source) in the first reference frame.
  • Relative Simultaneity
Doc1.jpg


If I have made a mistake in either of my brief presentations on the Paradox or relative simultaneity, where is it? If I have not made a mistake, how would you answer the question in the box immediately above?
 
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Milton Platt

Milton Platt

Well-Known Member
Manoah said:
I have several half-baked thoughts on which I would enjoy seeing discussion and development.

1. Doubt may be an indispensable part of faith within an individual. I wrote somewhere once that a least a part of me is atheist as I have moments when I want to believe only what I see (at times almost a temptation to be cold blooded) and as sometimes my healthy skepticism keeps me from being superstitious or hyper spiritual.

2. Doubt may be an indispensable part of humanity. Like the blind men and the elephant, what each one is experiencing must be integrated to put the whole puzzle together, so perhaps it is with culture and knowledge. Even doubting Thomas had a role to play in the story of Jesus, and I assume other religions address the role of questioning and the need of faith not to be blind faith.

3. Faith my also be an indispensable part of atheism, as the the phantoms of imagination are separated from reasonable ethos and as legitimate intuition (arising from vast amounts of study and experience) is separated from gut feelings inspired by indigestion. I hope I do not go too far in saying that some atheists might love to be proved wrong, would love to see some legitimate reasons and evidence for faith.

I'll stop here as these are indeed half-baked thoughts.
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With sound logic and sufficient evidence, faith can be dispensed with.
 
T

tayla

My dog's name is Tayla
Left Coast said:
To believe means to accept something as true. You can believe things for rational, well-founded reasons, or for irrational, poorly founded reasons.
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Yes. People can strongly believe things that are untrue; things that don't correspond with reality.

I prefer to match my beliefs with truth, as much as possible, and to adapt my beliefs to reality as I discover I have non-matching beliefs.

At least, that's the goal.
 
T

tayla

My dog's name is Tayla
Left Coast said:
Independent verification is part of what makes evidence good. This is why we don't accept the hallucinations of schizophrenics as good evidence for what's real outside the schizophrenic's head.
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Also why, in my opinion, beliefs founded on deep conscious experience are not good sources for explaining the nature of reality. These are just imaginations, created from the mind.
 
T

tayla

My dog's name is Tayla
Left Coast said:
No, it isn't. It's based on the fact that it's irrational to believe something is true if you have no good evidence that it is. If you deny this, then you rationalize literally any belief, no matter how absurd and baseless, on the premise that it may be true but we're just unable to determine it. Sorry, that dog don't hunt. If you believe a thing is true, then you should rationally have good evidence for it. If you don't, then the default is that you shouldn't believe it - even if the thing turns out to be true.
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Yes, the goal should be to match our beliefs with reality.
 
T

tayla

My dog's name is Tayla
Mock Turtle said:
Inventing reasons, or believing in some spiritual existence, for example, to cope with life's issues seems to appeal to many whilst for some of us the lack of evidence just cannot prod us onto such a path.
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The same argument applies to understanding the mysteries of the universe and of life. There is no good reason to invent a supernatural realm or a creator God to explain it.
 
Left Coast

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
Terry Sampson said:
You've answered my questions and satisfied my curiosity, so I don't have any more questions.
Since you asked, I suppose I'm obliged to say something about "the Paradox" and "relative simultaneity". But, as far as I've observed, there are a handful of folks here in RF that I believe you'd get a reliable, unbiased "mainstream science" explanation from. I'm biased and lack the mathematical skills to dazzle and impress you. So, here's my brief summary of each. {I'll leave it to you to explore them further, at your leisure, if you're interested.]
  • The Paradox of the Light Sphere
    • A sphere is a three dimensional object in geometry. All points in the sphere's surface are equidistant from the sphere's center point.
    • Imagine a sphere of light emanating, in a given reference frame, from a single source at a constant speed C. Obviously (I hope you'll agree), the sphere's "surface" will be equidistant from its "point of origin" AND its source at all times in the source's reference frame.
    • Imagine a second reference frame moving at a uniform velocity V relative to the first frame. In and relative to the second frame, the light's source will obviously (I hope you'll agree), be moving at the uniform velocity V . The light sphere's "point of origin" in the second frame will be fixed and stationary, but moving relative to the light sphere's "point of origin" in the first reference frame at the uniform velocity V
    • According to STR, the light sphere will expand from its "point of origin" in the second reference frame at the same constant speed C that it expands from its "point of origin" (and source) in the first reference frame.
  • Relative Simultaneity
View attachment 34376

If I have made a mistake in either of my brief presentations on the Paradox or relative simultaneity, where is it? If I have not made a mistake, how would you answer the question in the box immediately above?
Click to expand...

I genuinely don't know, in part because I'm unfamiliar with the terminology ("reference frame?"). Perhaps we can skip to the punchline and you can explain what the answer is and how it's relevant to the thread?
 
PureX

PureX

Veteran Member
spirtual-philosophy said:
Yes, the goal should be to match our beliefs with reality.
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The problem, here, is that we have so little grasp of reality beyond the one we are imagining in our minds. It makes for a very 'incestuous' logic circle.

I think the problem is the human propensity for adopting "beliefs", rather than just accepting our profound lack of knowledge, and then working with what little we do have honestly and openly.
 
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