Those beliefs being what, exactly?
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Is religion inferior to logic ?
- Thread starter zerogain
- Start date
PureX
Veteran Member
That no gods exist unless and until it can be shown that they do.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Ah. So at best, you've seriously misunderstood what atheists have told you and at best you're just making stuff up about people you disagree with.
In either case, not anything that reflects on reality. Glad we cleared that up.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Usually belief in the superior intellect and reasoning powers of the one who declares, There is no God.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
And that the universe is real because otherwise it doesn't make sense to me, so I decide what the universe is, based on how that makes sense to me.
Audie
Veteran Member
If someone feels free to make up
whatever suits them about me personally,
why not about any grouping? Something about
Integrity might be a reason.
Audie
Veteran Member
Is that sarcasm?
Belief in God isn't even about intellect
or reasoning.
Figuring out that it makes no sense requires
some intelligence.
Declaring as fact that there is no God is
as sense-less as saying there is.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Well, if you can show me integrity with evidence, I will listen to you. If you don't have any evidence, you have made it up as it suits you.
So learn to differentiate between facts and norms.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
You keep on making this sort of claim, without the slightest bit of evidence (reference to any atheist every saying anything like it, for example) but I know literally nobody who believes it. I can only conclude that you're just making it up.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Well, we do have at least one strong gnostic atheist. So yes and no, if you want to nick.
In general it is more along the line off.
Gods are without evidence, therefore there are no good reasons to believe in them.
The problem is that the latter is not a fact, it is a norm.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Yeah, it’s sarcasm. Thought you’d recognise it…
I think unbelief in the supernatural (or anything else) is personal, whereas logic is a shared systematized version of aspects of human reason.
So I don't see a basis for comparison. It's like asking if an A380 is better or worse than Harrison Ford.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Well, is logic universal or does it have limits like any other human behavior?
Audie
Veteran Member
Just making sure
Audie
Veteran Member
Yep
You figure it's just randomly personal whether
someone is gullible, or that there's a commonality
of clear / honest logical thinking for those who
are not?
Do you think it's helpful to you or others to keep repeating this and being repudiated by actual atheists who, unlike you, know what atheism is? Do you know what an ideology is? It's more than one idea. It is "a system of ideas and ideals." What is so difficult to understand that atheism is nothing more than a no answer to the question of whether one believes in gods? Is that a difficult concept to assimilate? Where's the ideology there?
My ideology is humanism, not atheism. It's a *system* of ideas that comprise a worldview. Its metaphysics is godless. Its epistemology is empiricism (skepticism, valid reason applied to evidence) with an explicit repudiation of faith as a path to truth. And its ethical system is based in the application of reason to basic utilitarian intuitions in the furtherance of human well-being. Atheism has none of that except the tentative acceptance that the universe may be godless, a position amenable to revision should evidence arise pointing to a deity.
And you still haven't addressed (much less assimilated) my argument that rational bias is the same as knowledge, and that learning empirically is the accumulation of rational biases. It's going from having no opinion to having a preference based in the application of reason to evidence (experience).
The critical thinkers bias is one of the most powerful intellectual inventions of mankind. It's the one that converted alchemy to chemistry, astrology to astronomy, and creationism to Big Bang cosmology and evolutionary science. Skepticism is a bias against received "knowledge" and belief by faith.
I've found no use for faith. You apparently have some need it meets. However, learning to avoid accumulating unjustified beliefs has been quite helpful. How has faith helped you? Are your faith-based beliefs comforting? You call faith useful, but can you use your faith-based beliefs for anything else other than relieving existential angst or whatever it is they do for you? Do those beliefs inform choices in ways that lead to better outcomes and a better life than the choices you would make without them? Rhetorical question. I already know the utility of unfalsifiable beliefs - zero beyond some form of comfort or reassurance if that.
Audie
Veteran Member
Faith is very useful along with logic.
They cancel eachother.
Logic (when it's not loosely used as a synonym for reason) is one formal part of our understanding of reason, concerned with the relation of particular kinds of inputs to valid conclusions (rather than the accuracy or validity of inputs). If you wish to improve your cooking, your poetry, your love life, your politics, it may not be all that helpful.
But we've said over and over again that this is not what atheism is. Moreover, lack of belief is the logical, epistemic default position, is it not?
Belief in unevidenced things is not rational.