Atheist Bible

[martyrdrebel27]

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It wasn't an argument and you are missing my point.

I did not say that science is not testable. I said that blindly believing in somebody you never met because they have a PHD is no better than believing in a book written by people who were alive thousdands of years before you.

It's still blind faith until you get thet microscope and test it for yourself.

Oh, and do not make the assumption that I am a Christian, just because I do not support Atheism.

but you're missing MY point. you don't have to blindly follow the PhD'd person to get scientific facts. you are completely capable of doing it on your own. if you're blindly following scientific facts, its just because you don't feel the need to verify for yourself, but the option IS there. whereas religion just tells you something, and you have no way of verifying or denying it, you've got no choice but to blindly follow.

Actually I wasn't missing your point at all. Hence the sentence in bold.

Atheism is not blind faith for those that actually do test these things. The vast majority do not so however, they are following as blindly as any religion based on books written thousands of years ago.

Maybe the option is there, but until you test it you are just as blind so it does not matter if the option is there or not.

i guess we're at an empasse then, because now were just talking about two differing, valid perspectives on the situation.

i believe that because the information is testable and repeatable, it's not faith, even if you choose not to prove it yourself. it's still possible to be done, therefor doesn't need to be.

whereas you feel that unless you yourself test scientific theories, you're placing blind faith into it.

my problem with that is that all of science is based on taking for granted the discoveries of the past. an astrophysicist doesn't need to prove that the earth is round, someone already did, so he goes with that scientific assumption to do his astrophysizing, figuring out orbits and whatnot.

 

[caross73]

*snip*

*snip*

It wasn't an argument and you are missing my point.

I did not say that science is not testable. I said that blindly believing in somebody you never met because they have a PHD is no better than believing in a book written by people who were alive thousdands of years before you.

It's still blind faith until you get thet microscope and test it for yourself.

Oh, and do not make the assumption that I am a Christian, just because I do not support Atheism.

but you're missing MY point. you don't have to blindly follow the PhD'd person to get scientific facts. you are completely capable of doing it on your own. if you're blindly following scientific facts, its just because you don't feel the need to verify for yourself, but the option IS there. whereas religion just tells you something, and you have no way of verifying or denying it, you've got no choice but to blindly follow.

Actually I wasn't missing your point at all. Hence the sentence in bold.

Atheism is not blind faith for those that actually do test these things. The vast majority do not so however, they are following as blindly as any religion based on books written thousands of years ago.

Maybe the option is there, but until you test it you are just as blind so it does not matter if the option is there or not.

i guess we're at an empasse then, because now were just talking about two differing, valid perspectives on the situation.

i believe that because the information is testable and repeatable, it's not faith, even if you choose not to prove it yourself. it's still possible to be done, therefor doesn't need to be.

whereas you feel that unless you yourself test scientific theories, you're placing blind faith into it.

my problem with that is that all of science is based on taking for granted the discoveries of the past. an astrophysicist doesn't need to prove that the earth is round, someone already did, so he goes with that scientific assumption to do his astrophysizing, figuring out orbits and whatnot.

Its a web of trust. The trust standards in religion are uniformly low. I know dozens of scientists, I know how they operate, I trust them to have high evidential standards and not make things up. I also know dozens of preachers and evangelists. I know how they operate. I don't trust them to have high evidential standards and not make things up. I know the Bible. I know how it was made. I know how it was translated, edited, canonized. I know history. I know what people were like. I've seen cults before. I don't trust it not to make things up. I have what I think is a highly coherent view of my environment. I can make predictions on the validity of claims that are largely borne out with additional observations.

Was I there when the Bible was made? No. Could I be wrong? Yes. The universe could have appeared 5 minutes ago with the appearance of great age. These sort of skeptical arguments are pointless, because in truth, no one can be certain of anything. However, in the absence of certainty we need to make good guesses, and I'd rather trust people that I can shake hands with, who have colleagues constantly checking their work, studying things that I can observe myself if I have the inclination, and who are constantly cross-referencing and checking for consistency, than the alternative; namely, people who take issue with every other religion (all religions are wrong but mine, I'm absolutely sure) and in the absence of any evidence, any consistency, declare themselves to know the answers to these untestable existential questions. There is no trust in that relationship.

If God wants me to know Him, He knows where I live.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

*snip*

*snip*

It wasn't an argument and you are missing my point.

I did not say that science is not testable. I said that blindly believing in somebody you never met because they have a PHD is no better than believing in a book written by people who were alive thousdands of years before you.

It's still blind faith until you get thet microscope and test it for yourself.

Oh, and do not make the assumption that I am a Christian, just because I do not support Atheism.

but you're missing MY point. you don't have to blindly follow the PhD'd person to get scientific facts. you are completely capable of doing it on your own. if you're blindly following scientific facts, its just because you don't feel the need to verify for yourself, but the option IS there. whereas religion just tells you something, and you have no way of verifying or denying it, you've got no choice but to blindly follow.

Actually I wasn't missing your point at all. Hence the sentence in bold.

Atheism is not blind faith for those that actually do test these things. The vast majority do not so however, they are following as blindly as any religion based on books written thousands of years ago.

Maybe the option is there, but until you test it you are just as blind so it does not matter if the option is there or not.

i guess we're at an empasse then, because now were just talking about two differing, valid perspectives on the situation.

i believe that because the information is testable and repeatable, it's not faith, even if you choose not to prove it yourself. it's still possible to be done, therefor doesn't need to be.

whereas you feel that unless you yourself test scientific theories, you're placing blind faith into it.

my problem with that is that all of science is based on taking for granted the discoveries of the past. an astrophysicist doesn't need to prove that the earth is round, someone already did, so he goes with that scientific assumption to do his astrophysizing, figuring out orbits and whatnot.

Its a web of trust. The trust standards in religion are uniformly low. I know dozens of scientists, I know how they operate, I trust them to have high evidential standards and not make things up. I also know dozens of preachers and evangelists. I know how they operate. I don't trust them to have high evidential standards and not make things up. I know the Bible. I know how it was made. I know how it was translated, edited, canonized. I know history. I know what people were like. I've seen cults before. I don't trust it not to make things up.

Was I there when the Bible was made? No. Could I be wrong? Yes. The universe could have appeared 5 minutes ago with the appearance of great age. These sort of skeptical arguments are pointless, because in truth, no one can be certain of anything. However, in the absence of certainty we need to make good guesses, and I'd rather trust people that I can shake hands with, who have colleagues constantly checking their work, studying things that I can observe myself if I have the inclination, than the alternative; namely, people who take issue with every other religion (all religions are wrong but mine, I'm absolutely sure) and in the absence of any evidence, declare themselves to know the answers to these untestable existential questions. There is no trust in that relationship.

If God wants me to know Him, He knows where I live.

^yeah, that.

 

[Sparrow]

I don't believe in a God, or any religion, but I have to agree a small amount of Zen Buddhism makes sense.

Also, I don't see the reason that I don't believe in a God an opportunity to rub this in people who have one's faces. I'm not a complete dick.

 

[caross73]

You only THINK the act of thinking proves you exist. That logic might be faulty if you are being kept in the dark. Maybe in fact, nothing can indeed think. Nothing being Not Something.

If nothing can't think, how can I think the act of thinking proves I exist?

If I do not exist, what is being kept in the dark?

Not really referencing the two towers, but what I meant was, you've been trained to think that only something is capable of thought, and since you think, therefor you are something. If in fact NOT something can think,

That's just playing with words. There's still a difference between the kind of "NOT something" that can think, and the kind of "NOT something" that cannot.

Not if the evil genius is tinkering with your syllogisms.

These aren't syllogisms. They are things that can be known because to deny them would be self-referentially incoherent.

They would appear coherent to you because of the Evil Genius' influence. Its like a rootkit on your brain.

That's...not how coherency works.

At some point you come down to a question, are all these facts internally consistent, ie., are they a coherent self-reinforcing system of ideas. And your evaluation of that question, true or false, has been tampered with. You could not evaluate coherency of arguments if you were indeed in an evil genius scenario.

You and I both agree that 1+1=2. A and not A is false. A and A is True. Because 1+1=2, 2-1=1. These are all coherent. Evil genius says "you believe 1+1=3", and I say sure, 1+1=3, 2-1=1. Then I say, is that coherent? Does it make sense that because 1+1=3, 2-1 must equal 1? And then the evil genius tells me to say 'YES'.

So, you may be living in a universe that you only think makes sense. Thoughts may in fact be the absence of stuff, stuff might have the property of freezing thought so only in a vacuum is thought possible. Ie., nothing is thinking because you don't need something to have a thought. And this is all fine with you, because the system of logic, all the truth tables, are being dynamically manipulated so that you can't see reality.

I know... you will say, how is it possible to be thinking without existing. I don't know. Maybe it is, and we've been mislead our entire lives into thinking that only something that exists can have a thought. I know it appears to make sense, but thats exactly how it WOULD appear from within the system.

Essentially without being able to exit the system, I can not verify that the system is in fact consistent. I think this is a conclusion of Godel's Second Incompleteness Theorem., ie., "If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent and complete from within itself, then it is inconsistent."

 

[USSR]

"There are an infinite number of ways to be wrong, only one way to be correct. You'd be a fool to make a claim you don't have any evidence for." Really, because you seem to think the terms believe and fact are the same thing.

Because there are no facts, only things we believe very strongly because we have a lot of evidence. We could always be wrong. Just sometimes its unlikely. Other times its VERY likely.

You are very likely to be wrong if you "believe" in things without evidence. You are almost CERTAINLY wrong if you believe in very complicated things, like Messianic Savior Sacrificing PseudoJudaic Deities with Anger Management Issues and Split Personalities with NO evidence whatsoever.

I don't understand why you are having such a hard time understanding this very simple concept.

With your own logic, everything leads to a question that cannot be answered. Which in other terms that I can give an example about is, Prove that you exist?

Give me full blown evidence you are real, or how any other living (or with your logic, possibly dead or alive since there are no facts) thing in this world is real?

 

[caross73]

"There are an infinite number of ways to be wrong, only one way to be correct. You'd be a fool to make a claim you don't have any evidence for." Really, because you seem to think the terms believe and fact are the same thing.

Because there are no facts, only things we believe very strongly because we have a lot of evidence. We could always be wrong. Just sometimes its unlikely. Other times its VERY likely.

You are very likely to be wrong if you "believe" in things without evidence. You are almost CERTAINLY wrong if you believe in very complicated things, like Messianic Savior Sacrificing PseudoJudaic Deities with Anger Management Issues and Split Personalities with NO evidence whatsoever.

I don't understand why you are having such a hard time understanding this very simple concept.

With your own logic, everything leads to a question that cannot be answered. Which in other terms that I can give an example about is, Prove that you exist?

Give me full blown evidence you are real, or how anyone other living (or with your logic, possibly dead or alive since there are no facts) thing in this world is real?

Not really, no. I have degrees of belief in things based on how well they fit my observations. Its only when I have no observations that questions cannot be answered. There is always some probability that the answer will be wrong, but we can make that probability arbitrarily small by having lots of evidence. It doesn't ever go to 0, because that would require perfect knowledge about the universe which is unobtainable from within the universe.

Look, ask yourself why you don't believe in unicorns. Yes yes, you admit a small possibility that unicorns exist, but why is that different than believing in politicians? Yes, you admit a small possibility you could be wrong and politicians aren't real, but in general, what is the difference between the two cases?

There is no such thing as absolute proof. I'm sorry. That doesn't exist. It doesn't mean that some ideas aren't poor bets, and other ideas aren't good bets. In any other field, people who consistently make bad bets about reality are considered insane. Its only in existential philosophy that we have to treat them with deference.

 

[caross73]

At some point you come down to a question, are all these facts internally consistent, ie., are they a coherent self-reinforcing system of ideas. And your evaluation of that question, true or false, has been tampered with. You could not evaluate coherency of arguments if you were indeed in an evil genius scenario.

You and I both agree that 1+1=2. A and not A is false. A and A is True.

Not really, but...

Because 1+1=2, 2-1=1. These are all coherent. Evil genius says "you believe 1+1=3", and I say sure, 1+1=3, 2-1=1. Then I say, is that coherent? Does it make sense that because 1+1=3, 2-1 must equal 1? And then the evil genius tells me to say 'YES'.

If I do not exist, who did the evil genius tell to say 'YES'?

You can't have a deceiver unless you have a deceived.

Even if I have no thoughts because the evil deceiver is acting on me, he's acting on *something* and I'm that something.

Essentially without being able to exit the system, I can not verify that the system is in fact consistent. I think this is a conclusion of Godel's Second Incompleteness Theorem., ie., "If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent and complete from within itself, then it is inconsistent."

But it's still a system ;-D

Also, I'm not talking about n axiomatic system.

All your rules about 'somethings' are subject to manipulation. You have no way of identifying whether your axioms (yes, formal logic is an axiomatic system) are correct from within the axiomatic system. There is no way I can logic myself around the fact that I am performing logic that may in fact be flawed. Who says you must have a deceiver and decieved? This is another syllogism. If there is a decieved, then there must be a deceiver.

I can't prove that my logic is complete and consistent with logic.

This statement is a lie.


If you want to say that life is not an axiomatic system, thats fine, its incomplete because humans make mistakes. But that doesn't get around the fact that you can not prove that its consistent from within the system.

 

[caross73]

There is no such thing as absolute proof. I'm sorry. That doesn't exist. It doesn't mean that some ideas aren't poor bets, and other ideas aren't good bets. In any other field, people who consistently make bad bets about reality are considered insane.

And when they make a bad bet and call it a good bet after telling someone else using the same logic but looking for a different 'payout' that they're making a bad bet.

Its only in existential philosophy that we have to treat them with deference.

No, actually, existential philosophy is all about 'good faith' that you don't hide the fact that you're making bad bets from yourself. You're free to make any kind of bet you want, but the important thing is that you never pretend that a good bet and a bad bet are the same thing.

Just a minor quibble over the term 'existential'.

The payout is consistency, not some reward structure, if you're back to religion.

Yes, existential philosophy admits an awful lot of crazy. Thats what I said.

 

[caross73]

All your rules about 'somethings' are subject to manipulation. You have no way of identifying whether your axioms (yes, formal logic is an axiomatic system)

Leaving that question aside, coherency isn't.

There is no way I can logic myself around the fact that I am performing logic that may in fact be flawed.

Then there is something I am performing.

See, this is the thing--no matter how many times you explain away "I think, therefore I am" you're going to have to explain it in terms. The reason "I think, therefore I am" works is because no matter how far down the rabbit hole you go saying 'you don't really think, you X' you're still talking about me using the concept of 'you' which means I exist, because if I didn't how could I be doing X? I am always at the very least the thing doing X.

Who says you must have a deceiver and deceived? This is another syllogism. If there is a deceived, then there must be a deceiver.

If there is no deceived, what did the deceiver deceive? See my point from above?

I can not trust that idea! You can't verify that the whole question 'who did the deceiver deceive' is even well-formed.

Its not a rabbit hole. The first time you attempt that statement, you have assumed that statements MUST have someone who states. Thoughts MUST have someone who thinks.

What if that is not true? What if thoughts exist all on their own, without thinkers? Maybe every possible thought is floating out there in some sort of functional thought space, and there is merely the illusion that thoughts are grounded in the mechanisms that compose them. That thoughts must have thinkers. Perhaps you are a thought. And therefore you exist. But then what the hell does it mean to exist? Ultimately you are still doing an A and NOT A is false. Which cannot be relied on.

I can't use logic to get around that possibility without being able to exit the system, call upon a higher plane, so to speak, where it is possible to see that yes, these things are true within the subsystem.

 

[BNguyen]

Much as your argument has no use. The point is that The God of The Christian Bible is patently false. We can CLEARLY prove that the world was not created in 6 days. We can CLEARLY demonstrate that women did not originate from ribs. We can CLEARLY show that the entire human race was not narrowed down to 8 inbreeds a few thousand years ago.

These are facts, by any useful definition.

And so is this: Observing that all physical objects in the universe share a common origin, we can SEE that there was life a point in time when life could not, in any form, have existed. We can SEE now that life does exist.

ERGO life arises from non-life. Though we do no know how, why, or when, it is, more than fact, a SIMPLE OBSERVATION that non-life gives rise to life.[/quote]

You cannot CLEARLY prove anything that happened so long ago because no one was there to record it as it happened. You cannot Clearly prove that the world wasn't formed in 6 days and that the first woman was formed from a man's ribs. You have no proof, so trying to say that you do and trying to say that a possibility is false without being 100% sure is impossible.
Besides, science is never right, facts are for courtrooms, data and evidence only leads to support a belief, not to prove that it is true.
And I do not believe that no matter how much time has passed, the possibility of life and the universe arising to what it is now is basically impossible, it had to be planned out to become what it is.
A plan will not form itself without the planner and builder, therefore, it is logically possible that God does indeed exist.

Ergo, life cannot form from non-life. If it was still occuring, we could still observe it, but as it is not, then life does not rise from that which has no life. Non-life cannot come together and give you emotions or memories or personalities. Each of us has a soul which is both a life force and what separates us from non-life. Non-life does not possess a soul nor will it ever.

 

[BNguyen]

I find it rather insulting when anyone says the Bible is required for morals, or questions where an atheist gets theirs from. We're (almost) all rational beings, and it doesn't take a priest/rabbi/imam/televangelist saying so for me to know that killing is wrong. Likewise, a person needs to base their morals on the world they're currently in, rather than strictly adhering to concepts from 200+ years ago. The bible makes no mention of drunk-dialing, but I think we call agree that it's stupid.

The Bible itself is not required for morals, simply put, it contains a set of morals and examples of how to act out those morals written within. It is basically from these morals that most others form. We all know that killing and theft are wrong, that is written in the Bible, but since then, people have expanded from those basic morals and formed new ones that still originate from those.

 

[GothmogII]

Hey...careful now! You two don't want to start blowing peoples heads up now with all that psycobabble! At this rate you just may tear the very multiverse asunder. Certain dark and shapeless Elder Things don't take kindly to that kind of messing about.

Anyway, on-topic...I've thought about it a bit more, I guess all it would be in the end is a guideline of how to act around your fellow human. I mean, it's not really that hard to understand...the only people who seem to have issue with the idea is those that think that without the bible or other divinely inspired sources morality cannot exist. So, I guess that applies to them aswell right? 'Clearly' without such things to back their morality up they'd be amoral monsters too huh?

 

[BNguyen]

I don't have to give you an answer. I have no evidence to favor one conclusion over any other. There are an infinite number of ways the universe could have started. I don't know which way it was. I wasn't there. Maybe somebody has some evidence to suggest a way, but I don't know of anyone who can look beyond the beginning of time.

What you refuse to do is your problem. Bold text doesn't trump Bayesian epistemology.

There are an infinite number of ways to be wrong, only one way to be correct. You'd be a fool to make a claim you don't have any evidence for.

And if you insist, I will insist you tell me how God began. Its just as useless a question.

After reading many of your remarks, I've come to realize how stupid you truly are. You claim to understand this and that and that this is more likely to happen/exist/etc. than that, but you can't see yourself for how little you know. Just because you've studied this or that you immediately think you know it all, but the truth is that almost nothing in science or these studies is correct because we go by human standards, which are the way they are because we believe them to be true. Wisdom and intellect are illusions.
And by the way, if you can't prove that the universe began because of God, then you can't mark it out as an impossibility.

Wow,way to be respectful. To be honest,I thought you would have been banned or suspended by the time I got back from school,because of your clear lack of respect for anyone with a different opinion and obvious hypocricy.

I find it truly hard to respect anyone who does not respect me on the same level.
If you've read this persons posts, they continuously go against what they said just a minute ago and sometimes in the same post the go against the point that they are trying to make, I was just pointing that out, that this person continues to say that he/she has proof, but then that there is essentially no proof at all for any answer. I just find it hard to respect those who think of themselves as all-knowing but then say that there is no evidence of data to prove that I know it all.