Shifting more towards atheism

[RestlessSoul]

I do not pretend to be be and believe something I am not as referenced. It is your problem if you like to play games and pretend..

You’re doing it now; you’re playing the part you have chosen for yourself, in a play directed by your ego.

We all do this btw. Not just you. The trick is to recognise it.

 

[F1fan]

So, if people don't accept your pseudoscience,

I have no science or pseudoscience. What I refer to is valid science by experts all over the world, and who understand creationism is nonsense and fraud. You prefer the fraud that creationism sells to its ignorant audience. There aren't two sides to facts. You either get science right, or you don't.

because it has nothing substantial supporting it, you blame the church?

I blame those who spread the fraud of creationism. That includes some churches. This influence has led to nearly half of all Americans believing that the Genesis myth is true to some degree. Some even believe that the universe is 6000 years old. This is all due to evangelicals not living in the 21st century as far as science goes.

40% of Americans Believe in Creationism

Four in 10 Americans have a creationist view of human origins, while 33% believe humans evolved with God's guidance and 22% without it.

news.gallup.com

It's not public schools spreading this fraud, it is instituions, religious businesses like AiG, and churches. It's also the social learning of older creationists telling their children that a literalist interpretation of Genesis is true.

 

[shunyadragon]

Correct...as I said the arguments are generally against specific proofs imagined or believed that have been offered for the existence of God or gods.

Please acknowledge there are no 'proofs' involved with these arguments. Your previous post was vague and misleading on this. Atheists DO NOT seek such proofs,

As I've said...all objective evidence is probabilistic in its nature of necessity. However that goes for relevant scientific evidence as well.
There are brilliant contemporary scientists who have theistic leanings. Including some Nobelists.

Objective verifiable evidence is NOT probabilistic when you are asking questions or presenting hypothesis dependent on the evidence. Those scientists, like myself, and some Nobel prize winners do acknowledge their subjective beliefs are not supported by objective verifiable evidence.

This depends on what texts and how those texts are received. Anthropomorphism when it comes to God is inevitable with mankind's attempt at making sense of such concepts. Its a symptom of our limitations not Gods. I cannot see how one can claim no miracle is relevant to anything happening today. One would have to be aware of any and all miracles that happened if they did and any and all relevance to anything happening today if there were any. That's a pretty big potato to swallow. That miracles lack science is patently obvious. That fact alone does not preclude their possibility. It would be irrational to think an irrational event were impossible.

Anthropomorphism is NOT a necessary of humani making sense of Gods. Taoism and basic beliefs of many Buddhists DO NOT make such assumptions. Neither do Muslims and Baha'i believe in anthropomorphic God.

I don't think this is quite accurate. I think it is more about how they interpret the data not about rejecting science...generally.
I do acknowledge there are groups who reject the obvious as being obvious.

Unfortunately it is rejecting science directly. Data in science must be verified objectively by Methodological NAturalism and NOT interpreted loosely. Do you have a basic understanding of science, and the problems with the literal interpretation of the Bible.?

Its true...circular arguments abound among theists...mostly due to their overzealous desire to prove their points. But no group is immune to such things. An atheist that argues their point from a foundation of claiming no belief is a circular argument.

Misuse of what is defined as a circular arguments as in the apologetic arguments for the existence of God where the assumptions of the argument assume the existence of God as in the conclusions. This is not the case for the atheist belief. It is simple a question of objective verifiable evidence as in science. As in science the atheists simply present a hypothesis and require evidence . This is not a circular argument.

I disagree. That a subjective belief is a true belief is as dependent on probability as any scientific proposal or statistical research.

You apparently DO NOT understand the proper use of "probability in scientific research. You have to have the objective verifiable evidence that is representative of the physical nature of your hypothesis to be a valid test if your data is sufficient to falsify your hypothesis. Again again and again, you cannot falsify a subjective hypothesis without physical data.

 

[shunyadragon]

You’re doing it now; you’re playing the part you have chosen for yourself, in a play directed by your ego.

We all do this btw. Not just you. The trick is to recognise it.

I do not pretend to be be and believe something I am not as referenced. It is your problem if you like to play games and pretend..

 

[setarcos]

If every single instance of it freely allowed changing up the axioms concerning god, we would be none the wiser on how to behave. And this is the crux of the issue.

I disagree. We would be wiser on how to behave given the changes. Pascals wager was a general decision making question applied to a specific proposition. Your making a fundamental mistake if you find fault in the process because you've applied logic irrelevant to the reference the question was framed in.
If your locked in a room, starving and asked to choose between two containers, the one is known to contain either delicious, nourishing food or nothing and the other poisonous food or nothing which is the most rational choice to ensure maximum expected utility?
It doesn't matter to the choice at hand that there might be myriads of other delicious foods outside the room or myriads of poisonous food which one may be forced to eat depending upon ones choice within the room.
Maximum expected utility can only be achieved with the choices given and the information supplied. That is how humans must make all their decisions.

The axioms concerning God, in Pascal's Wager, were never meant to be freely changed in accordance to every single god concept one could come up with.

Of course it wasn't. Pascal meant it to be applied to a particular proposition. However there's no reason the idea of its logic or illogicity cannot be applied to other propositions.

Pascal simply never presumed that other gods were even worthy of consideration. This is how he ends up with a conclusion on how we should behave.

And that was Pascal. The reasoning he used, the processes of thought, the resulting conclusions of the processes applied to other propositions, whether it be Gods or taking an umbrella with you can be legitimately applied to other decisions.
We cannot make any decision without wagering on the probability of a successful or least harmful outcome and with only the incomplete information we have to deal with.
Considering the negative effects of offending some other possibly existent God is itself a Pascals wager.

 

[Koldo]

I disagree. We would be wiser on how to behave given the changes. Pascals wager was a general decision making question applied to a specific proposition. Your making a fundamental mistake if you find fault in the process because you've applied logic irrelevant to the reference the question was framed in.
If your locked in a room, starving and asked to choose between two containers, the one is known to contain either delicious, nourishing food or nothing and the other poisonous food or nothing which is the most rational choice to ensure maximum expected utility?

Let me use your analogy to explain the problem with Pascal's Wager: it is factually incorrect to say there are only two containers in the room. There is, rather than that, an infinite number of containers, and you can't know which one, if any, contains nourishing food until you eat from it.

 

[setarcos]

There are no beliefs that derive from rejection of god claims

I disagree. Depending on what god claim you are rejecting myriads of beliefs might arise in you related to such rejections. Decision making would be vastly different between those who've rejected god claims outright versus those who believe or at least haven't rejected the possibility when considering the consequential results of their decisions. We can very easily see that in human behavior today.

This is exactly analogous to avampirism or aleprechaunism. Each is also the rejection of an existential claim for lack of sufficient supporting evidence to believe those claims, and there are no other beliefs apart from things like not needing garlic to repel vampires and searching for lucky pots of gold that derive from that unbelief.

And yet there are people who keep garlic near and who search for gold supposedly hidden by leprechauns. Wouldn't you say that their behavior is directly derived from their beliefs?
Beliefs can arise just as easily from those who reject such things as those who don't.
Beliefs fill vacuums in human sentience. Where one belief is rejected another directly related belief consequently arises to fill the void.

it doesn't include my argument of the opportunity cost of being a Christian if Christianity is a false religion:

It doesn't have to if the how the question was framed only includes the proposition that either the Christian God exists or doesn't exist.
In light of how the question is framed let me ask for the sake of argument what opportunity costs might be incurred if Christianity is a false religion?

Irrelevant to a discussion of the beliefs that come from atheism or any harm that comes from atheism. Being an atheist doesn't make one want to kill, and being an Abrahamic monotheist doesn't prevent that desire in people.

This is a response to what I said which was...
setarcos said:
How many have died at the hands of communist ideologies for instance?

Your response may be correct as stated above here but I'd say what I said is relevant as a representative example response to what you said previously concerning politicized religion versus atheistic humanism.

It Aint Necessarily So said:
They believe that organized, politicized religion is a net harm to society and should not be permitted to make laws.
You seem to be implying that the non religious are better suited to lead. The "They" being atheistic humanists as said prior.
And....
Many seem quite harmed by it, and the more zealously religious they are, the more the harm both to themselves and their neighbors.
This can hardly be demonstrated as being more quantitatively applicable to the religious than to those that aren't. Heck the two major wars currently occurring are neither religiously motivated nor being carried out in the name of religion. One might argue that the one is clearly motivated by secular ideologies.

Giving a reason is not promoting reason.

Interesting phrase. And what promotes reason? Being reasonable? And what is reasonable?

The reasons given are believed by faith, not derived from the application of reason to evidence.

Not all reasons given are by faith. Faith is supplemented by reason but reason is not or should not be unrealistically subjugated by faith. That is not what Peter was saying. Our reasons should be demonstrated through action, rational demonstration, eyewitness testimony, and record in light of what people actually experience in life. The last in other words....the faith addresses what actual people are actually experiencing...suffering, hopelessness, why their expectations and desires will always fall short of what is realistic in this current world, etc. Miracles and revelation aside it addresses why its good to behave one way versus another, why even though this world can offer no true justice there's still hope for such things to be realized. It promotes study of the scriptures, reigns and puts into perspective expectations of favorable treatment, experiences of miracles and wondrous signs and declares that faith must not contradict reality when the two intersect.
Christianity is a reasonable faith in my opinion.

 

[setarcos]

Let me use your analogy to explain the problem with Pascal's Wager: it is factually incorrect to say there are only two containers in the room. There is, rather than that, an infinite number of containers, and you can't know which one, if any, contains nourishing food until you eat from it.

I understand how your approaching Pascals wager but you will notice that you had to change the initial parameters of my analogy in order for you to formulate yours.
Lets say you don't know which one or if any contains a nourishing food until you eat from it. Do you choose or decide not to choose any?
So you've framed your question with the conditions of having an infinite number of containers to choose from and the possibility of one of them containing a nourishing food. What then would be your most rational decision?

 

[Koldo]

I understand how your approaching Pascals wager but you will notice that you had to change the initial parameters of my analogy in order for you to formulate yours.
Lets say you don't know which one or if any contains a nourishing food until you eat from it. Do you choose or decide not to choose any?
So you've framed your question with the conditions of having an infinite number of containers to choose from and the possibility of one of them containing a nourishing food. What then would be your most rational decision?

Presuming I either have to eat from one or starve to death (else I would refrain from eating), and presuming I have absolutely no way to determine which one is nourishing, I eat the food that seems better suited to my personal preference.

 

[Augustus]

I legit wonder how this line of conversation relates to our initial conversation though.

There is a difference between assuming something doesn’t exist until shown otherwise and accepting there is a reasonable possibility something exists although its existence is uncertain.

For me, someone who thinks there is a reasonable possibility of gods existing is not really an atheist.

 

[Augustus]

I do not pretend.

Don’t undersell yourself, you often pretend to know things which you do not

 

[osgart]

The only acceptable morality is in choosing to be good because of the genuine desire to be so and not by all the coerced methods many religions offer. Those methods are false, and contrived.

Atheism doesn't need nor have any use for being good by way of threats of hell, nor any other external condition from some presupposed God of righteousness. Christianity is immoral. So is Islam for that matter. Humanity doesn't need fear tactics that gain power, nor does it need some feign of righteous love.

I'm all for letting people have their own truth so long as they do no harm and abuse to others. Anything that suppresses, and denies valid reasoning I'm against. Some of these religions need to be conquered on their own terms, as well as by empirical methods.

 

[1213]

...I blame those who spread the fraud of creationism....

Why do you call it a fraud, if you can't prove it wrong?

 

[1213]

...rejecting science.,..

I don't reject real science, it supports the Bible.

As per the subject at hand. Can you present objective verifiable independent evidence for Noah's flood?

I think I have done it many times here already, but here are a list of evidence for the great flood:
1. Modern contiennts
2. Mid Atlantic ridge
3. The "ring of fire"
4. Oil, coal and gas fields
5. Marine fossils on high mountain areas
6. Vast sediment formations, like orogenic mountains
7. Stories about a great flood all around the world.

 

[1213]

The church is why you don't know that the science that contradicts biblical mythology is correct.

The church speaks nowadays like you. If I would believe it, I would believe you.

The problem with your pseudoscience is that in a more civilized era I learned what real science is.

 

[Koldo]

There is a difference between assuming something doesn’t exist until shown otherwise and accepting there is a reasonable possibility something exists although its existence is uncertain.

For me, someone who thinks there is a reasonable possibility of gods existing is not really an atheist.

I see. I don't view it this way. Being a theist is not grounded on an assessment of likelihood.

Either way, I neither believe in the existence of gods nor find their existence probable.

 

[Mock Turtle]

I don't reject real science, it supports the Bible.

I think I have done it many times here already, but here are a list of evidence for the great flood:
1. Modern continents
2. Mid Atlantic ridge
3. The "ring of fire"
4. Oil, coal and gas fields
5. Marine fossils on high mountain areas
6. Vast sediment formations, like orogenic mountains
7. Stories about a great flood all around the world.

More a product of tectonic plate movement though.

 

[shunyadragon]

I don't reject real science, it supports the Bible.

I think I have done it many times here already, but here are a list of evidence for the great flood:
1. Modern contiennts
2. Mid Atlantic ridge
3. The "ring of fire"
4. Oil, coal and gas fields
5. Marine fossils on high mountain areas
6. Vast sediment formations, like orogenic mountains
7. Stories about a great flood all around the world.

We have been over this many times, and I have responded in detail where the above is evidence against the Noah flood, and you have failed to respond to actual geologic facts concerning the REAL facts. Your assertions above only reflect your intentional ignorance of science created more contradictions..

Yes you reject the REAL science.

 

[shunyadragon]

Don’t undersell yourself, you often pretend to know things which you do not

Degrading insulting behaviors instead of coherent responses are your modus operandi.

 

[shunyadragon]

The church speaks nowadays like you. If I would believe it, I would believe you.

The problem with your pseudoscience is that in a more civilized era I learned what real science is.

What other era did you live in?