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Making fun of atheism
- Thread starter questfortruth
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- atheism
It's a secret. Not by design. We tell the theists what we believe and they can't seem to learn it. Here comes a good example of that:
I've personally tried to disabuse you of this straw man a half dozen times to no avail, as have other posters in this thread and other threads. I'll go so far as to say that you don't what my rebuttal was in any of those exchanges, or what it would be to the above. I'm sure that you would disagree even if you understood what you read, but I don't think you can paraphrase the rebuttal. You're simply not listening.
I'm sure that you already know that that's not going to happen. This is his shtick, his act for RF. He's committed to making this argument and to not seeing what others are saying. That's clear in the first two sentences of the quote above yours. You can tell him until you're blue in the face that that is not what you or I or any other atheist posting here believes, you will get no response to that, and you will see these same ideas repeated unchanged in a matter of days or weeks. And then you'll be told you're illogical.
How about "I have no need for gasoline. Therefore gasoline's existence or non-existence has no relative value to my reality."
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Yeah, but that has nothing to do with how I consider atheism. It is the disbelief/lack of beliefs in gods. You need more than just being an atheist for you to consider evolution.
That is indeed the point of the complaint of some posters here. Atheism is sort of meaningless in that it is only one limited aspect of being a human.
PureX
Veteran Member
I appreciate the reasoned response, but I have to disagree, somewhat.
It's true that we don't know ... a great many things. Which is why when it comes to the things that are important to us, we end up having to speculate, and ultimately to trust in our speculations. Doing this is so common that many of us don't even realize that we're doing it. This morning I got up and got ready and jumped in the car to drive to work without ever even realizing that I did not know that the car would start up. I simply trusted in the idea that it would because it has been designed to start, to drive, and get me to where I want to go, and it always responds according to it's design.
Likewise, when I wake up in the morning I don't know that the universe will not find some way to destroy me, today. Yet I have not even given this a thought because, just like the car, the universe has been designed to meet my needs, more or less, and so far it always has. So I trust in the idea that it will continue to do so even though I have no way of knowing that it actually will.
I call this trusting in the idea that all will be well even though I have no way of knowing that it actually will be, 'faith in God' because I'm OK with letting the word "God" represent the unknown source and sustenance of what I perceive to be a more or less benevolent universe. You can call it whatever you want to if you don't like the word "God", but you are trusting in that same universal/existential benevolence just as I am. And you are doing so for the same reasons.
And so is every atheist (and theist) in this thread. Because none of us actually knows squat about anything. We don't know what caused any of it, or what maintains it, or why, or even if there is a why beyond the fact of it all being here. All we know is that so far it's been more or less benevolent, and we need for it to continue. Everything else is just we humans deluding ourselves into thinking that we now things that we don't, really, and that we are therefor in control.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Well, as longs as you can spot those who are a part of the vast majority of atheists, it is okay.
As for rationality and logic, that is another subject matter than atheism.
PureX
Veteran Member
The problem is that 'atheism' as a word has suffered the same fate as "socialism" as a word. There are so many people with so many different agendas warping and twisting the definition of these words that they cease to have any cohesive meaning, anymore. Strictly speaking theism is a philosophical proposition, and atheism is the antithetical of that proposition. Neither term should even be applied to individual people. At best such an application could only indicate a person who is at that moment asserting one proposition or it's antithesis. What anyone "believes" about any of this is completely irrelevant. And no human is or should be defined by any given philosophical proposition. We are all much, much more then that.
But since we now have all this confusion caused by all these people identifying themselves and each other by alignment with some philosophical proposition or another, we have opened the door to all sorts of religious and anti-religious sentiment and resentment and bias that has nothing whatever to do with theism as a philosophical proposition, but that has people all "fired up" and ready to fight for "their team". Which only serves to render nearly every conversation on the subject a pointless clash of egos.
Once we strip away the personalities, and their beliefs, leaving just the philosophical proposition and it's antithesis, we can finally get back to the actual substance of the debate. But these days that just never happens.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
No, because there is a third wheel in that debate and that is skepticism or if you like the problem of knowledge.
PureX
Veteran Member
Yep, there are whole lot of "believers" on both sides of the proposition, and none of them are willing to doubt their own beliefs.
Personally, the older I get, the less I can find any need to 'believe in' anything. All 'belief' ever seems to be is just a self-assumed pretense of unquestioned righteousness. What we are believing when we say "I believe" is that our own opinions and presumptions are right.
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ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
You actually have a wealth of solid statistical evidence that your car is more likely to start than not (unless you have a very unreliable example). It isn't remotely like baseless speculation. Most cars start most of the time.
There is no evidence that the universe has been designed at all, let alone designed to meet your needs. There is (copious amounts of) evidence that humans evolved to suit the tiny speck of the universe we exist in, and that's why it probably won't kill you today. Yet again, we have statistical evidence aplenty that we're unlikely to die on a given day (unless we are seriously ill or something). On the other hand, almost all of the universe would kill us instantly, if we found ourselves there, so not much of a design if it was for us.
No, I'm trusting the evidence.
PureX
Veteran Member
That problem vanishes when we set aside personalities. Finally, all that's left is the proposition, and the logical reasoning upon which it rests. Same goes for the antithetical (anti-proposition).
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
PureX
Veteran Member
I didn't say it was "baseless speculation". I said it was speculation. The point being that we DON'T KNOW. And all the evidence we can conjure up isn't going to change that fact of reality. We can pretend to ourselves that it means that we do know (and we pretend like this all the time) but the fact remains that we don't know. Speculating is not knowing. So all this who-ha over "evidence" is just a smoke screen we use to BLIND OURSELVES to the fact that we know very little about anything at any given time in any given circumstance. Even something as simple as turning a key and starting a car is an action based on our trust in the idea that because the car is what it is, the car will start.
There is so much evidence for this that you are literally drowning in it. The whole endeavor of science is intent on discovering the physical component of existential design. If the design wasn't there, and functioning, science would have nothing to study.
Well, sure, because that's what the design determined would happen. That's how benevolence was injected into the design.
You're trusting the delusion that your "evidence" equals knowledge ... surety. But it doesn't.
stvdv
Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
But it does carry much more important Information
I have lack of gasoline,
I have lack of belief in "God"
Is a genius comparison WHICH proves "God" exists
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Nobody said we know, but we do have evidence that supports a reasonable expectation. It isn't just trusting in speculation.
None of this bluster changes the fact that we have good evidence for our expectations. We have no such evidence for any god-claims.
Such as (leaving aside the obvious infinite regress if it's true)?
Why should I take these baseless assertions seriously?
No, I'm not. You really do seem to have a big problem either with comprehension or believing what people say. I never said anything about surety. There is always a chance my car won't start or that I'll die today, it's just that we have enough evidence to indicate the approximate probabilities.
You're not comparing like with like at all. Trust based on experience and statistical evidence is nothing to do with people who make claims about god(s).
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
That "we" is not all humans nor is its use of reasonable expectation. You are not a "we". Neither am I, but I don't claim that.
I agree with most of what you're saying here, although a lot of things we expect out of a certain routine that we've grown up with. But there's also enough randomness out there that we also learn to expect the unexpected. Sometimes, I go out to my car, expecting it to start, but it doesn't. It happens.
A lot of the benevolence that we might see in today's modern world comes from humanity itself. At least in the sense that we're more comfortable than our Stone Age ancestors were. At least, if we look at the evidence, humanity's early ancestors came from an existence in which they were compelled to deal with the harsh and indifferent forces of Nature, which appear neither benevolent nor malevolent. They simply exist, although with a certain degree of predictability.
We don't really know if someone or something "created" it or why. We don't really know that, even if someone did create this place, whether it was what they truly intended. All we really know is that this is the hand we've been dealt, as a species, and the entire known history of humanity is our story of how we've played that hand. For all we know, our entire existence could be the side effect of some forgotten experiment, still sitting on some scientist's shelf - or maybe tucked away in some giant extra-dimensional equivalent of a warehouse of the kind seen at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Maybe God is truly embarrassed by the whole failed "human experiment." It could be something like that.
Well I'm not arguing against this, but that those without a belief in God(s) and hence probably no religious belief (even if some might have such), then this tends to leave their minds open to more rational explanations for our existence - and where the TOE is the best available at present for showing how we evolved alongside all other life. Hence I'm not saying that this inevitably follows from being an atheist but that it is more likely.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Oaky, I will try. It is a part of being skeptical about words and combination of words.
I am skeptical of the use of the word "best" in your post, because I can find no evidence for it.
Let me explain. It is possible to use science, but it is not possible to use for "best" as you do it. It runs into this:
https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12
Here is what you do. There are different human behaviour possible and doing science is one. Doing science on our existence is the best one as behaviour goes. The problem is that you have no evidence for it being the "best". All you can do is to note the different behaviors, there is evidence for that, but your evaluation is individual and not our evaluation. You don't speak for a best for all humans and nor do I.
If you want it as a joke, then if the world is natural, then religion is natural and a part of how the world works. If religion is not natural, the all the world is not natural. In other words religion is a part of how evolution works in humans. So what is the problem?