While I understand this point of view, I personnaly think religion, mythology and beliefs such as this one give much more flavor and diversity to the world than what rational thought will ever produce. Religious people made magnificent temples, cathedrals, songs, paintings and so on : what if this way of thought was in fact beneficial for societies, in some aspects?
Non-religious people may not have made temples or cathedrals, but I can promise you they have made songs, paintings, theaters, other random impressive looking buildings, and so on. The only things that really prevents the existence of more massive, impressive looking buildings is current worry about sustainability, safety, accessibility, and not having the budget of the entire Catholic/Christian/Other church to build them.
While different religions all still agree on the idea of a higher power to explain the unexplained, my believe system is the most radical of all. Because it leaves no room for any other gods except science. I don't just dismiss their gods as false, but also dismiss the whole underlying structure all religions are built on, but without being aware (or if so I'm dismissing it) that my belief is just another religion.
yes totally (in this argument) ignoring anyone that might have been historically or currently been agnostic, atheist, or anti-theist.
> this is basically an appeal to authority argument no?
I think so. And I couldn't think of a better example then what you just gave with mentioning "appeal to authority". The fact that we deconstruct language the way we do in order to decide the validity of the argument is already a scientific process.
Sibling comment just mentioned trust which I also agree would be an important element of religious belief systems. In scientific process this trust is only temporary until we either managed to learn enough about this subject to see the truth for ourselves, or gave up on it and trust that those specialists who know (your appeal to authority argument) are qualified to know it for us.
I can't. It's self-contradictory. Religion is wholly based in faith: believing when you have no concrete, demonstrable, scientific reason to. No religion can exist without that core concept, you have to be willing to believe when you have no proof. More broadly all mysticism is based on faith, and all mysticism (ghost hunters! magic rocks! miracles!) similarly runs counter to science accordingly.
So non-religious scientifically-oriented people have more faith (willingness to base their lives and beliefs around things they can't prove exist) than religious people do? No.
In terms of religion, asking for proof, requiring evidence, is the true first sin: thou shalt not! Religion builds upon that first step, you must first suspend your rational mental self and then turn your brain over to someone else's opinions as fact (which you then must accept as true, even if there's no way to prove such; religion is always based on subservience to someone else's faith-based opinions; religion begins at the point where you turn off your brain and hand it to someone else who says: because I say so, and you must believe what they're saying and specifically not let reason interfere). Here's how religion begins for everyone: someone tells you a (typically fantastical) story, with absolutely no evidence to support it, and then you believe it; to believe it you have to shut down inspection, debate, skepticism, reasoning, and so on. One of the core tenets of all religion is: don't ask such questions; who are you to question; etc. Even the more docile religions fold at those corners eventually and require that you stop asking questions or challenging (aka shut your brain off and just believe on faith).
Science is contrary to faith. People occasionally try to worm around that in touchy-feely ways, you'll run across historical quotes by famous scientists saying dumb things like: my science is rooted in a powerful faith, dur dur dur. But that's just someone smart (at a thing) saying something exceptionally stupid about a different realm of thought and should be regarded as such. Like putting much stock into the dumb things Stephen Hawking used to say in the political or economic realm; geniuses are quite typically gifted at one thing, very rarely at two things, and people commonly seem to make the mistake of thinking that translates widely, when the opposite is true and it very rarely translates widely.
Science grows stronger through questioning, debate, inquiry, challenging notions, requiring evidence to believe. Religion - and all faith based systems - wither when confronted by such, without exception. They react in such opposite manners, because they are indeed opposites.
Pro-tip, instead of asking for "proof" like an interrogation, ask for clarification to understand the story or viewpoint. Getting in a fight over something neither side can prove is ridiculous.
But if you want to debate what we cannot know, riddle me this, how do you know we're not in a simulation made by a higher being? Math and science is the reverse engineering of our created universe. It's more probable we were created in some way than a random occurrence.
This is a thin excuse. These stories were held up as literal truths for centuries. The moral principles they embody are held up as serious until they become too unfashionable, then those are dismissed as metaphor too. If you claim a given religious lesson is good and valid today, what basis do we have for believing that someone in 40 years won't be saying that that lesson too was something that was never meant to be taken seriously?
> Getting in a fight over something neither side can prove is ridiculous.
Note how you're contradicting your previous argument, because you don't have a position beyond throwing a bunch of arguments at the wall and hoping something will stick. The burden of proof is on the one making claims; otherwise we should all take Russell's teapot seriously.
> But if you want to debate what we cannot know, riddle me this, how do you know we're not in a simulation made by a higher being?
We don't. Act accordingly.
It's not an excuse, it's reality. Your perception of religious people is outdated, ignorant, and generalizing. Should we not let any tradition modernize? Should all tradition and culture be discarded because it was once done differently at one point in time? Should we all practice life how you see fit?
> Note how you're contradicting your previous argument, because you don't have a position beyond throwing a bunch of arguments at the wall and hoping something will stick. The burden of proof is on the one making claims; otherwise we should all take Russell's teapot seriously.
A bit hostile there. No one is trying to claim anything, they are practicing their beliefs that make them feel good.
> We don't. Act accordingly.
Exactly, just be smug that you have it all figured out and let people go about their business.
Or you can keep judging something you know nothing about and generalizing billions of people.
You can't simultaneously claim that it's valuable because it's a tradition but my perception of it is outdated. Either you're practicing traditional religion - in which case you need to stand by the literal meaning of your religion's teaching. Or you're practicing something new, at most loosely inspired by past religious practices - in which case your new practice should be evaluated solely on its own merits, which are limited to say the least.
> No one is trying to claim anything, they are practicing their beliefs that make them feel good.
Doing something because it makes you feel good is not an approach with a good reputation (indeed it's something religious people often vigorously oppose). If it's just a set of practices and not a factual claim, why do you care about other people pointing out that it's not factually true?
> Or you can keep judging something you know nothing about and generalizing billions of people.
Ironic to accuse me of judging or generalising while falsely and ignorantly claiming I know nothing about religion - I guess it's fine for you to judge and generalise people you know nothing about, hmm.
But yeah I'm judging you, based on your responses, not based on theism. You haven't talked to the billions you are judging and grouping together (generalizing).
Seriously: if you reread your text, do you see no errors (or at least potential errors)?
So yeah, atheists and really religious folk are very similar, mostly in their "certainty about things around them." As a former Catholic, this is a thing I'm trying to discard in both directions? E.g. when I was younger, "It's important to be Catholic to recieve communion in the church." A little older, "Aha, I will NOT recieve communion." A little older than that? "Lol, it doesn't matter, I'll do this myself, at home, with a donut and grape juice with the kids because why not."
"Science" isn't a god. You don't believe in science, you don't have faith in science. You might have faith, or believe in people or textbooks that describe the current state of "science" but they're not divine.
Science doesn't "leave no room for any gods", if there was evidence of a god (or gods), then that would be science too. There just isn't any evidence to support such a thing.
Assuming the "my belief" here is still talking about science, I think it would be wrong to say that it dismisses gods as false. Instead, it dismisses most arguments of the existence of a god as unfalsifiable, and thus cannot be reasoned one way or the other. There is no proof one way or the other for something unfalsifiable, and instead time can be spent on what is.
There are certainly religious scientists who maintain their faith and scientific contribution without compromising one or the other.
Atheism is not an assertion that there is no god. It is the understanding that we cannot with our current level of technology prove there IS a god. Therefore, we cannot believe in a god.
That is the baseline argument: Prove it. You can't. That is the end of the conversation.
In other words, the assertion you make here is one of the very few things we CAN prove and DO know. We CANNOT prove there IS a god. We CANNOT prove there is NO god. Therefore, we abstain from believing in a religion until sufficient evidence is provided.
That is why atheism is not a religion. There is no belief involved. Because we do not pretend to know. We assert that we do not, and currently can not, know.
But it's a highly debated topic itself (as most things are in this realm).
In general though, people mean it as they don't believe in God, and use agnosticism to indicate they do not believe one way or another.
However, by dictionary definition and from citing Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
"Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities."
Anti-theism is the assertion there is no god. The prefix "a" can mean "not" or "without." "anti" means "against", "opposite of."
So no, it is not the assertion there are no deities. It is an absence of the belief in any deities.
The perspective I am arguing from is that there is no other coherent argument to be made about the existence of deities. We cannot currently prove there is no god. We cannot currently prove there is a god.
Wikipedia's first sentence is the broadest definition but not the de-facto, the second sentence you left out shows that.
If you don't want confusion you'd want to use atheism for belief no God exist and agnosticism to indicate you don't feel one way or another. Which I believe is what most people do.
Otherwise you start a semantic debate which is as pointless as a religious one. If you want to communicate the nuance of your beliefs without much explanation, use the two different words, otherwise use atheism as an umbrella term, which is what the "broadest sense" wikipedia is hinting at.
I wouldn't be against an interpretation of agnosticism that is functionally identical to my interpretation of atheism, but at a certain point one word to describe a world-view is never going to be sufficient and explanation of the nuance is going to be required.
You can say "Christianity" and you would be referencing both the Westborough Baptist Church and Christian Unitarian Universalists.
I already described in detail in my first comment my interpretation of Atheism so I don't know where confusion could possibly come in.
Therefore, I reject your premise that I "have to use the interpretation of what people mean, not the broadest one" because:
- that varies from person to person and I cannot read people's minds.
- Your interpretation is not universal
- the interpretation I presented is actually quite widely understood and common.
So while you are correct that I cannot assert "Atheism is X", you are wrong that I am wrong.
Also you are the one having the pointless semantic debate about something I already explained and clarified in my first comment. Call me agnostic I don't care, even though an interpretation of agnosticism is that god CANNOT be proven, which is NOT what I said.
> So while you are correct that I cannot assert "Atheism is X"
Yes, that is my point. You said "Atheism is (not an assertion that there is no god = X)"
> you are wrong that I am wrong.
You are wrong that GP is wrong. Everyone is also right.
If you don't want confusion you spell out exactly what you mean instead of just using labels, since both "atheism" and "agnosticism" cover broad ranges of beliefs. With that said, "strong atheism" is generally understood to be a positive belief that there are no gods, "weak atheism" is understood as a passive lack of believe in the existence of god(s)—but with a bias against their existence in the absence of compelling evidence. "Agnosticism" meanwhile can be either a synonym for weak atheism (mostly through misuse IMHO) or the belief that it is impossible for anyone to know whether or not god(s) exist—with the connotation that equal weight should be given to both possibilities.
The most scientific of the three positions is weak atheism. Strong atheism makes claims which can't be supported by the available evidence, or possibly by any amount of evidence, while granting equal weight to mundane and extraordinary claims runs counter to the scientific principle of seeking the simplest possible explanation consistent with the observations.
That's why I said "If you want to communicate the nuance of your beliefs without much explanation". Weak/strong atheism is another label too though, just a less known one.
"Spelling it out" would be an explaining it. I've never heard of the strong/weak qualifiers and I would assume there are less people that have than have heard of agnosticism. It's a good classification of the spectrum of theism, but you would have to explain it, which is fine if you want an even higher degree of nuance vs the broader atheist / agnostic terms.
You don't always need to communicate the nuance, sometimes you just need a quick general statement "oh no I'm atheist/agnostic" when asked if you're part of a religion or a similar scenario.
Anti-theism, read literally, seems more like the position that god(s) exist and should be opposed. It's not a common belief system, but one can put together a plausible storyline where God is just a supremely powerful entity with neutral or negative disposition toward humanity but with a good Public Relations system. Given the claims of omniscience and omnipotence, how could one distinguish perfect propaganda from truth? One work of fiction I recall described a belief system which was a mirror image of Christianity holding that Satan actually rebelled against a negligent or malicious God for humanity's sake, fighting on our side but losing in the end—but as they say, history is written by the victors. It's an interesting thought exercise, anyway.
I doubt it's the one you're thinking of, but this was also the gist of Memnoch the Devil, the 5th Vampire Chronicles book.
If you're interested, you can find a free copy of March to the Stars in the Baen CD which accompanied Storm from the Shadows, available here[1]. (These CDs were issued along with certain printed books, with a license from the publisher to redistribute them, as a means of advertisement.) Unfortunately there is no longer a direct link to the book available on this site; you have to download the full CD.
Science had almost no relevance to real life until maybe 100-200 years ago. Before that it was pretty much just imagining stuff for fun. Who could have expected that to lead anywhere useful?
Suppose I spill a bunch of puzzle pieces on a table and ask two friends to tell me what picture is on the puzzle. My friend Alice blurts out "Elephant" because she has seen a lot of grey pieces. My friend Bob spends more time and looks beyond just the color, at the shapes and the other colors present and determines the image is Fort Knox.
In this case does it matter what is actually on the puzzle? Even if Alice gets it right, she's basically just guessing in the dark. She's ignoring all kinds of other evidence and reaching a conclusion. Does she deserve a reward if she happens to have guessed correctly despite not developing an understanding of what she's actually seeing? (Put another way, is real life like a gameshow?) Conversely, is Bob 'less correct' for having taken the time to understand other details of the image?
I say, no. I don't think Alice can be correct here. Her view can only align with truth coincidentally. That she got lucky this time has no meaning.
I don’t understand what’s negative about the folklore. I feel as if you’re conflating this folk tale to an organized religion or something.
The comment I replied to reads "religion, mythology and beliefs such as this one".
I don't know. The religious and mythological concepts such as punishment, judgment, sacrifice, angels, daemons and elves look like a derivative reflection of humans and their society. By comparison, the concepts from science and technology such as force fields, wavefunctions, wormholes and black holes seem genuinely novel and weird.
Personally, I would certainly not give up on the scientific truth - often in conflict with religion and mythology - to enjoy some of that mythological flavor.
If you believe you will live forever in heaven blowing yourself up might be an entirely rational decision. The premisse is irrational, and people would usually maintain a sense of ultimate uncertainty ... this fails catastrophically in case of fear. That's not irrational in face of better judgement. It's just not rational, so it's useless to bring up that word, unless to stress the western philosophical angle, which you have carefully avoided.
Thoughts on the two clocks?
https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/ https://longnow.org/clock/
Ironic?
Spoiler alert: it's not about love.
One might take my point of citing the century as a statement on the (lack of) originality of such thought, but tbh I mostly meant as a resource: other people, out there, have already thought and reasoned about those issues for literally hundreds of years at this point, so parent might find some solace (and some critical developments) in their production. This is not restricted to Romantic issues, btw - most of the stuff we pass for original in places like this, are likely to have already been discussed ad nauseam in philosophical circles all the way to the 1970s (at which point academia kinda ran out of stuff to talk about, and started focusing on the meta -- but I digress).
I got absolutely none of what you said here from your original comment and perceived you entirely as attacking them or a troll; but in the nearly lowest effort troll way possible, and it even took me a day and 3 messages to get any real content from you.
It’s hard to distinguish well-meaning content from meaningless content nowadays and I know it’s an annoying bit of extra work, but I hope you can see the value in doing a little more to be heard.