The Atheist - Agnostic - Non religious thread

Gerinski wrote: I do not believe in any religion.   I'm a strong supporter of the scientific method but I doubt that it can ever give us the answers to all the big questions, at least within the foreseeable future with humans being the kind of beings we are.   It is provincial to think that what we know about the universe is all what there is. The very existence of our universe is extremely thought-challenging and even if we have theories which can explain its existence out of nothing, they are far from satisfactory. At the very least, why sould the physical laws of our universe come out of nothing is largely misterious. Even random-quantum multi-universe theories in which the explanation is that anything can happen and we just happen to live in a universe where the laws and conditions for our existence happened, unavoidably reach an infinite regression in which you are bound to wonder: OK but why did "anything" happen rather than "nothing" happening?  Where did the possibility of anything happening come from in the first place?   I tend to think that humankind and humans as individuals are not trascendental, not different from what we think about eathworms, no afterlife, when we die we die and that's it. Therefore no religion on a human level. Nobody is watching us, nobody is gonna help us, nobody is gonna punish us.   But I fancy thinking that life as a phenomenon is trascentendal. It is the way how the universe will eventually get full circle and realise itself. Quantum theory and in particular John Wheeler's views suggest that the universe looks to us as it does only because we experience it. More extremely even if controversial, it exists only because life has evolved in it.   Freeman Dyson also forwarded the idea that life gathers information, in principle without limit, to the point when eventually long far away in the future (when life would be something quite different from current humans) life would posses the information required to understand itself. In some sense, life would close the circle by making itself happen.   Even if these are ideas far removed from our human lifespans these are the kind of ideas I am more comfortable with rather than traditional religious teachings.

My "gut" feeling is that when you die, you die, for real. Death is a complete and permanent loss of conciousness.
                As far as the Universe goes, my hardest "leap" is accepting getting something out of nothing-matter out of nothingness. I find it is easier to comprehend the concept of Time and Space being infinites, though. Even without a material universe or creator at all, i bet that Time and Space would exist, and are not relying on anything else.
                Yes, i believe in the scientific process, but it is limited in that it relies on an audience of "observers" to be real and understandable. If there were no-one to carry out a scientific experiment, and no-one to watch it, well, that would be difficult.
                  I have no use for religion, or a desire to investigate it any further than i already have.

No True Atheist Spams Unless The Spam Is Well Cooked, Disguised Under A Different Name, And Served With Mash Potatoes and Vegetables.

--- Epistle of Atheist Paul, Non-Revelations, 21:12

Dean wrote: I cannot disagree with anything you have said, and I don't think I said anything that disagrees either.   We cannot say anything absolutely - everything is asymptotic to absolutely, what we have to gauge is when close enough is good enough (pragmatism). When the probability of the possibility of change approaches the probability of change then we are fast approaching a "good enough" situation. There is little point in building machines whose operation relies on inverse gravity when the probability of gravity changing from attraction to repulsion and the probability of the circumstance where that could occur both tend to zero, however that has never prevented people from trying. (one of the most disappointing being when one of my schoolboy "heroes" Professor Eric Laithwaite essentially ended an illustrious career with his theories of gyroscopic propulsion [the claim being that gyroscope weigh less when spinning... ie since their mass is unchanged then gravity must have changed]).   Each statement involving religion and absolutes is fallacious to somebody. My statement that "... all the evidence suggests that all gods were created by Man" contains no absolutes and is subject to change - all future evidence will either support it or refute it, but can never prove it... just like every other valid hypothesis.

I think you cleared up my misunderstanding of what you were saying. I agree; I see nothing I disagree with there (although I would say science needs "fools" who spend their whole careers on fruitless searches at the fringe of their fields.)

Equality 7-2521 wrote: RoyFairbank wrote: *Tears Out Hair* The fact that we're both tearing our hair out is probably predictive of the amount of success our responding back and forth all day will have. I don't quite get the point you're trying to make. You don't quite get that the truth value of the content of a statement P can be distinguished from the origin of the statement P. It might be best to stop before we start getting into multicolored quote pyramids.

Explain what you mean by origin.

I have a feeling you mean "how the idea came into use"

The whole thing for agnostics is making the idea independent. Thus if the idea came into use it implies the idea existed before it came into use.

It always existed, and would exist whether or not it ever came into use. Therefore it has to be independently tested.

This is called idealism. If you acknowledge an idea's existence and its coming into use are identical, are part of an identical process, that it does not exist otherwise and every bit of its truth and existence comes from its coming into use: then you are a materialist.

If you are a materialist you can see religious assumptions are a part of the lawful and natural process of the universe, and they could not exist without that process. The religious claims are as they are only because of a concrete material process - is there a God? is there an afterlife? are there souls? these are questions which could only exist and emerge as part of natural, physical universe in its historical course.

You cannot treat the "questions" raised by religion in isolation. But if you are an idealist, this just makes so much sense, you want to detach it and say: is this true or is this false, empirically speaking? If you know the historical necessity behind religion and the fact that there is nothing outside of historical necessity for anything in the universe, idea or otherwise, you will understand that religion is not meant to be handled empirically. It doesn't exist as an empirical phenomenon to be tested, but as a social/historical phenomenon, and objectively too. If you want to isolate religious concepts, which are human subjective concepts about the universe, from human society and the historical process, then you are unraveling the entire thing, positing eternal, non-material concepts which exist in some gap of limitation in reality.

This still may not make sense, but this is as clear as my writing gets.

Thanx, peace out, RF

 




Edited by RoyFairbank - April 09 2012 at 20:58

Equality 7-2521 wrote: As you're the first one to start hurling insults, I'll consider myself the victor.

wo wo wo*,

I say no insults, much less hurl them.

I feel insulted that you thought I insulted.

I merely said it is hard for agnostics to understand certain lines of thinking. Like if you said to a religious person "I know this is hard for you to understand."

It may be slightly patronizing, but it is not insulting.


I removed the offending part, btw.

*whoa whoa whoa

What a awfully, awfully written word for English. I don't see wo being used anywhere? Hello, Webster?


Edited by RoyFairbank - April 09 2012 at 21:09

RoyFairbank wrote: Explain what you mean by origin. I have a feeling you mean "how the idea came into use"

I mean the impetus for creation in the individual possessing it.

RoyFairbank wrote: The whole thing for agnostics is making the idea independent. Thus if the idea came into use it implies the idea existed before it came into use. It always existed, and would exist whether or not it ever came into use. Therefore it has to be independently tested.

You speak of us as if you're talking about bowling bowls. It's a construct that means nothing in regards to the behavior or understanding of individuals.

I certainly don't adhere to this notion you speak of.

RoyFairbank wrote: This is called idealism. If you acknowledge an idea's existence and its coming into use are identical, are part of an identical process, that it does not exist otherwise and every bit of its truth and existence comes from its coming into use: then you are a materialist.

Okay, I'll accept your label. I'm a materialist.

RoyFairbank wrote: If you are a materialist you can see religious assumptions are a part of the lawful and natural process of the universe, and they could not exist without that process. The religious claims are as they are only because of a concrete material process - is there a God? is there an afterlife? are there souls? these are questions which could only exist and emerge as part of natural, physical universe in its historical course.

Okay I'm with you.

RoyFairbank wrote: You cannot treat the "questions" raised by religion in isolation. But if you are an idealist, this just makes so much sense, you want to detach it and say: is this true or is this false, empirically speaking? If you know the historical necessity behind religion and the fact that there is nothing outside of historical necessity for anything in the universe, idea or otherwise, you will understand that religion is not meant to be handled empirically.

This marks our point of divergence. You're making some really heavy claims here with no justification. There's nothing besides historical necessity for anything in the universe? How do you justify that. More importantly, what do you even mean precisely by historical necessity? Especially since you mark ideas as just another natural process, does this apply to all natural creations? Do all binary star systems exist out of historical necessity?

RoyFairbank wrote: It doesn't exist as an empirical phenomenon to be tested, but as a social/historical phenomenon, and objectively too.

Why must these things be mutually exclusive? Take a Catholic claim such as the virgin conception of Jesus. This could theoretically be tested empirically. You can also examine the origins of the claim from a social/historical perspective. The two would be independent of each other.

RoyFairbank wrote:  If you want to isolate religious concepts, which are human subjective concepts about the universe, from human society and the historical process, then you are unraveling the entire thing, positing eternal, non-material concepts which exist in some gap of limitation in reality.

I'm not attempting to isolate anything. You seem to be too finely dividing lines and isolating yourself.

You are starting to catch on, I can smell it... or is that just Chinese food from last night?

Especially since you mark ideas as just another natural process, does this apply to all natural creations? Do all binary star systems exist out of historical necessity?

Yes, it applies to all natural processes within the universe we live in. HOWEVER, one should not make the mistake of conflating prior determination for everything with historical necessity. Remember that the past and future is an aspect of the present. In other words, everything is necessary, but its necessity is unified with and submerged in an ongoing process. The best illustration that makes sense is the argument over free will and determinism. We are the agents of historical necessity, it has to move through us, and we directly determine it, just like the forces of gravitation and ancient dust dispersal directly acted over eons to create the binary star system. The historical necessity was an aspect of their own nature and actively unfolded as a a part of their interactions. 

Why must these things be mutually exclusive? Take a Catholic claim such as the virgin conception of Jesus. This could theoretically be tested empirically. You can also examine the origins of the claim from a social/historical perspective. The two would be independent of each other.

First of all, a metaphysical claim should be ultimately untestable to be categorized as such, which is the common conception among nearly all parties involved in discussing religion. The point is that religion is a claim that there exists contrary to the movement of matter X super-natural phenomena. If it did not claim this, it wouldn't be religion.

Why do these ideas exist? Do they reflect natural possibilities, objective possibilities, that were just waiting for humans to find them? No, they reflect subjective possibilities which are a specific product of human history. This is why these ideas exist, and they posit subjective possibilities that appear to allow for a world beyond the material, but really they don't.

 The claims of religion are objective elements of the material world warped through the subjective lens. They really do not reach beyond and make a real claim about reality beyond the material world, these claims are formed out of pieces of the material world itself. They are non-metaphysical in nature. To treat them as if they do make a claim that touches on the objective is wrong. You are trying to test something which is a shadow cast by human history. You will not get any results, but you end up treating shadows as real things.




Edited by RoyFairbank - April 10 2012 at 10:20

^
You do not necessarily have to limit things to metaphysical statements, but dealing with the idea that aliens created the Earth is different from God created the Universe. You can use some of the same historical analysis, but overall the question is not worth asking unless it is a practical question (there is evidence).

The real issue with religion is that it is a matter of perspective, anti-material perspective. The question is really moot besides that. If someone believes something that doesn't particularly rest on anti-material perspective, then it is not particularly religious, except in the cultural sense. However,

If you take something like the early American belief held by some (including Andrew Jackson) that Welshmen occupied North America before the Indians and were killed by Indians, so they could in turn kill Indians and "take back land." I see a lot of similarities with religion in terms of evolution of a concept, but it is not religion because it is based on pressured interpretation of facts in a way that hasn't turned against matter as such. They saw ruins and said the Indians couldn't build them, so their pressured reasoning resulted in a civilization prior to the Indians that must have been white and European.

Religion is a relative perspective. A particular version of a general pattern of thinking inherent in the human race's subjective experiences.

Views you have about matter tend to reflect how you think about other things.... human society particularly.



Edited by RoyFairbank - April 10 2012 at 11:39

Equality 7-2521 wrote: Any question is worth asking and the question of God creating the Universe to some degree can be explored empirically. Why would that bother you about religion? Unless unfalsifiable beliefs result in tangible effects on you or others, why would that concern you? Is that last you a 2nd person you or a general you?

general you.

btw The whole point of doing anything is the practical effect on the human race. The validity of religious claims - of any claims, would be a moot point if it had no bearing on human practice.

got to go right now, I'm typing standing up with my backpack slung over my shoulders. I'm already late and the class is across campus.

on short religion is slowing our process of  logical thinking thats why we need to hate it.