Split Thread Atheism and lack of belief in the afterlife

[acbytesla]

It should be noted that none of those articles actually promote or point to the idea there is a god. They are generally poorly written arguments that ID proponents think support the idea of ID.

 

[Thermal]

I want to address a couple specific things but not get into a long back and forth with you. I'll leave that to the others already doing so.

Fair enough. I'll keep replies short, and hopefully you will at least get an indication of where my head is at.

The problem with this analogy is we have evidence of rocks. The one you describe may or may not exist but it's feasible whereas a god by most of the definitions here isn't. The imaginary god that created the Universe but no longer interacts with it is an irrelevant god that might as well not exist.

Ok, three points: analogies are meant to convey a general idea, not to be a flawless one to one. Second, while rocks are known to exist, that by no means suggests that the priceless one I am referring to does. Third, whether or not a god is interacting with the universe is still entirely unknown, at least until we nail down exactly it is we are talking about. That's a couple questions down the line, IMO.

Science requires one always have an open mind to new evidence turning up. But one acts on the assumption there are scientific facts because if we didn't we'd have chaotic nonsense.

The Earth is not flat.
God beliefs originated from human imagination.
There's no evidence of some sort of consciousness that can exist outside of the brain.
Once all the cells in the brain cease to function, that's it, no afterlife.​

Could scientific evidence be found that there actually is an afterlife one would change what one previously acted on as scientific fact. And it sounds like you agree.

Yep, pretty much. That's why I think that statements like "there is or can be no god" are unscientific. They are unreceptive to modification. Which is what Sagan and others have said, too.

But here is where I find fault in your logic:
So how do you act as if there is and as if there isn't a god? Why say that as opposed to saying you act as if it is scientific fact there are no gods but like all scientific facts, one has an open mind to new evidence being found that can change that view.

Why put god beliefs in an agnostic category while you accept other science supported facts like the Earth not being flat?

For the same reason I keep repeating: I have substantial information about the shape of the earth, enough so to draw a meaningful conclusion. And beer cans and garages and cars. These are tangible, quantifiable things which we can set down in front of us and measure. I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the measurements taken.

I don't see a supportable rationale here for agnosticism about god beliefs. I can see a rationale to be agnostic about things for which there is some theoretical evidence like string theory. There is no math that explains or requires an intelligence directing things.

I agree that the idea of a god carries a strong suggestion of an intelligence and "personality", and that is a persuasive arguments against such a thing existing unnoticed and it gets hard to say why it wouldn't interact with its creation more directly. A parent is involved with its kids and all that. But again, the interaction I think is a couple questions down the line.

No they don't require an intelligence any more than the Universe we occupy requires an intelligence. I've heard the theory that everything began from nothing, and all the string theory stuff, the multiple universes stuff, all of which is mostly speculation. There might be mathematical evidence people use to support those theories but I don't believe there is any direct evidence. One thing the theories and the math don't require is any kind of intelligence directing things. Adding a god layer does nothing to explain 'the standard model' (particle physics), or the dual function of particles and waves or anything else.

I hear that. Most of what I'm arguing here is not that a god is or isn't likely; it's that the arguments against one put forth are not that hot.

Or one could ask the right question, what best explains god beliefs that so many humans have? And the answer is human generated fiction.

I'd say that what generates god beliefs is that we are not all that far from where a god was the only explanation for phenomena. In the big picture, we are only a handful of generations past thinking god was throwing lightning bolts around when he was pissed. So maybe less an outright fiction, as much as it being the best primitive explanation.

 

[Thermal]

Yes... indeed... exactly right....

Hence all concepts of gods that have a coherent definition have been and are and will be false.

Accordingly....as opposed to the plebeian god-hawkers who are always defining their gods in concrete tangible terms... the wily ivory tower god-hawkers have realized that they need to obfuscate and devise esoteric ethereal slithery contortions and word legerdemains to for ever keep wriggling and writhing and cramming the god they are CONCERNED to never stop hawking, into any nook and cranny.




That is exactly what the god of the wily god-hawkers is.

But here's the thing: I prefer to keep a more open mind in order to be more receptive to what may present itself.

Like, what we think of as a god may not be an intelligence. It may be something much more mundane, a psychological phenomena that in every meaningful way is consistent with a spiritual experiences or whatever you want to call it. I found that to be the case when I wanted to fly. No, I couldn't leap off the ground like Homelander, but by every substantial standard I was able to fly, just not in the idealized way that I started imagining it (courtesy of a skydiving logbook and USHGA pilot ratings and the like). God experiences may end up working the same way. A lot of people said men couldn't fly, until a few refused to make that their starting assumption.

 

[acbytesla]

But here's the thing: I prefer to keep a more open mind in order to be more receptive to what may present itself.

Like, what we think of as a god may not be an intelligence. It may be something much more mundane, a psychological phenomena that in every meaningful way is consistent with a spiritual experiences or whatever you want to call it. I found that to be the case when I wanted to fly. No, I couldn't leap off the ground like Homelander, but by every substantial standard I was able to fly, just not in the idealized way that I started imagining it (courtesy of a skydiving logbook and USHGA pilot ratings and the like). God experiences may end up working the same way. A lot of people said men couldn't fly, until a few refused to make that their starting assumption.

I have no idea what this means. It seems more of an excuse than anything else. I have no idea what is a "spiritual experience." Sure many of us have moments that are awe inspiring.

For me, it was making a great golf swing that propelled a golf ball 320 yards around a dog leg and then hitting an approach shot that left me a few feet away from an eagle. Or maybe it was the first time I rappelled down a mountainside. I can think of so many experiences I have had in my life that were wonderful. But none of it had anything to do with a fairy tale being that supposedly made the universe.

 

[Thermal]

I have no idea what this means.

Ya I get that a lot.

It seems more of an excuse than anything else. I have no idea what is a "spiritual experience." Sure many of us have moments that are awe inspiring.

For me, it was making a great golf swing that propelled a golf ball 320 yards around a dog leg and then hitting an approach shot that left me a few feet away from an eagle. Or maybe it was the first time I rappelled down a mountainside. I can think of so many experiences I have had in my life that were wonderful. But none of it had anything to do with a fairy tale being that supposedly made the universe.

And I have similar transcendent experiences, which I guess are what religious types are experiencing. But some seem to have more going on, to the point where they dedicate their lives to it, and others willing to die for it. So let's say I'm interested, maybe more so than others, in what they are experiencing. Enough so to afford a lot more benefit of the doubt to them. It's not going to make me think differently, but it might help.me understand their perspective to cut them some slack on the nuts and bolts end and hear them out.

 

[Leumas]

But here's the thing: I prefer to keep a more open mind in order to be more receptive to what may present itself.

Keeping your door ajar in the hope that a good guy can come in and give you a winning lottery ticket is not wise because long before that much more nefarious individuals will come in and destroy your home.

Like, what we think of as a god may not be an intelligence. It may be something much more mundane, a psychological phenomena that in every meaningful way is consistent with a spiritual experiences or whatever you want to call it.

You mean like the one of Scientology?

I found that to be the case when I wanted to fly. No, I couldn't leap off the ground like Homelander, but by every substantial standard I was able to fly, just not in the idealized way that I started imagining it (courtesy of a skydiving logbook and USHGA pilot ratings and the like). God experiences may end up working the same way. A lot of people said men couldn't fly, until a few refused to make that their starting assumption.

In the case of flying we have and had EXAMPLES of things that fly... and we have air and aerodynamics has been studied by the Greeks and Chinese for millennia.

In the case of "god" we have Bupkis of precedents and Nil of examples and Naught of anything to go by.

In fact... I take that back... we have scads and oodles to go by... unfortunately for the god hawkers... all these oodles and scads of things to go by in fact rive asunder any possibility of a god.

Flying, which if we go by evidence and reality, was not a fools' errand like that for god which the evidence of reality shows is indeed a fools' errand.





.

 

[Olmstead]

Maybe there is a god who made creatures in its image and granted them glorious things. And then a few billion light years away on a random backwater planet some hapless animals evolved into sentient beings. Whoops.

I don't actually believe that, but it's telling that all believers go for a god that cares.

 

[acbytesla]

Ya I get that a lot.

And I have similar transcendent experiences, which I guess are what religious types are experiencing. But some seem to have more going on, to the point where they dedicate their lives to it, and others willing to die for it. So let's say I'm interested, maybe more so than others, in what they are experiencing. Enough so to afford a lot more benefit of the doubt to them. It's not going to make me think differently, but it might help.me understand their perspective to cut them some slack on the nuts and bolts end and hear them out.

Great experiences are not religious experiences. That some individuals insist on suggesting a fairy tale character is responsible for those experiences is inherently dishonest.

 

[Thermal]

Keeping your door ajar in the hope that a good guy can come in and give you a winning lottery ticket is not wise because long before that much more nefarious individuals will come in and destroy your home.

My literal doors are usually wide open. Some fun people have happened by. No nefarious ones. So yet again, you are dead wrong.

You mean like the one of Scientology?

No. Odd question.

In the case of flying we have and had EXAMPLES of things that fly... and we have air and aerodynamics has been studied by the Greeks and Chinese for millennia.

In the case of "god" we have Bupkis of precedents and Nil of examples and Naught of anything to go by.

In fact... I take that back... we have scads and oodles to go by... unfortunately for the god hawkers... all these oodles and scads of things to go by in fact rive asunder any possibility of a god.

Flying, which if we go by evidence and reality, was not a fools' errand like that for god which the evidence of reality shows is indeed a fools' errand.

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Applies to both of us, interestingly. But only one of us is aware of it.

 

[Leumas]

... But some seem to have more going on, to the point where they dedicate their lives to it, and others willing to die for it.

You mean drug addiction?

So let's say I'm interested, maybe more so than others, in what they are experiencing. Enough so to afford a lot more benefit of the doubt to them.

I would not recommend that at all...

When I was 15 in school centuries ago, some "friends" offered me an LSD tablet in the woods surrounding our school.

I had the intelligence to not refuse lest they think me a prig... but also to pretend to take the damned thing but not actually take it and then sit there to see what it did to them.

The same thing with alcohol offerings in the same woods at the same age...

An interesting thought went through my head at that age... why is it that these people were so nice and generous with giving me FREELY what they must have spent good money on... why were they so wonderfully generous?

It's not going to make me think differently, but it might help.me understand their perspective to cut them some slack on the nuts and bolts end and hear them out.

Drugs induced euphoria and religions induced euphoria have the same physical bases and are well understood and researched and reproduce phenomena in clinical studies. I suggest you read some of those research papers.

Euphoria is the experience (or affect) of pleasure or excitement and intense feelings of well-being and happiness. Certain natural rewards and social activities, such as aerobic exercise, laughter, listening to or making music and dancing, can induce a state of euphoria. Euphoria is also a symptom of certain neurological or neuropsychiatric disorders, such as mania. Romantic love and components of the human sexual response cycle are also associated with the induction of euphoria. Certain drugs, many of which are addictive, can cause euphoria, which at least partially motivates their recreational use.

 

[Olmstead]

Ya I get that a lot.



And I have similar transcendent experiences, which I guess are what religious types are experiencing. But some seem to have more going on, to the point where they dedicate their lives to it, and others willing to die for it. So let's say I'm interested, maybe more so than others, in what they are experiencing. Enough so to afford a lot more benefit of the doubt to them. It's not going to make me think differently, but it might help.me understand their perspective to cut them some slack on the nuts and bolts end and hear them out.

Escapism brought about by existential angst turned up to eleven. Seems pretty easy to understand.

 

[Leumas]

My literal doors are usually wide open. Some fun people have happened by. No nefarious ones. So yet again, you are dead wrong.

I am happy for you... unfortunately... in REALITY, the ones who are "dead wrong" statistically are the ones who keep their literal doors wide open....

And the ones who keep their metaphorical doors wide open end up with all sorts of viruses infecting their equipment... be they electronic or biological.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

... Most of what I'm arguing here is not that a god is or isn't likely; it's that the arguments against one put forth are not that hot.

I'd say that what generates god beliefs is that we are not all that far from where a god was the only explanation for phenomena. In the big picture, we are only a handful of generations past thinking god was throwing lightning bolts around when he was pissed. So maybe less an outright fiction, as much as it being the best primitive explanation.

That is still an outright fiction.

It has been and probably will be for a long while the position one cannot prove the negative that gods don't exist. Yet people have little trouble with the position Zeus and fairies and other recognized myths are fictional characters.

To use the excuse one can't disprove god(s) exist because we can't look everywhere or test every specific god belief is a comfortable fallback for people that just can't manage to say it (for many reasons*), gods don't exist, full stop. (* I can politely not bring the topic up in many social circles so this is not about that.)

I see no point in going past agreeing to disagree as I shifted paradigms years ago and not everyone else has. Once you look for evidence of any actual gods existing all you find are human generated myths. I fail to see how it's any less fictional because people had a specific excuse for developing the myths. Your comments about that puzzle me, but no matter.

Stop asking the question, do gods exist? Start asking the question, what best explains the evidence of peoples' god beliefs? The latter is an answerable question and once you answer it there isn't one scintilla of evidence left that needs to be addressed.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

....
That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Applies to both of us, interestingly. But only one of us is aware of it.

This is so pointless I can't tell which of you both that you are referring to and what it is supposed to mean.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

No, I'm not. How many times do I have to repeat myself on this topic? ID is wrong.

How many ways can people explain to you, ID cannot be tested for, therefore ID is not science, it is a religious concept.

Maybe if you would just move past calling ID a scientific concept that can be tested for this conversation could move forward.

HOWEVER: to overturn a consensus requires a body of work behind it. A body of work that explains the evidence better than the existing consensus. That hasn't happened with ID.

Of course not, because there is no "body of work" be it one that is beginning to accumulate or one that might possibly accumulate in the future.

My claim is that ID articles have appeared in peer reviewed journals. My claim is true. But you've built up this fantasy position that admitting there are such ID articles in peer reviewed journals means that somehow ID must therefore be true. It doesn't. It shows that SCIENCE WORKS!

And yet you cannot cite one single article that has appeared in a peer reviewed journal that supports ID. Find ONE so we can see what you are talking about.

TOTALLY AGREE! End of story. No proof for IC, thus ID fails.

Do you even have a single peer reviewed paper published in a scientific journal that talks about proving ID? Even Behe in his published papers didn't address the designer question. Know why? Because the peer reviewers would have jumped all over him for it.

For evolution theory to be overturned, ID will need more published research to be accumulated that explains the evidence better than evolutionary theory. The peer reviewed ID articles haven't done that.

Suppose an alternative theory posed some clear challenge to evolution theory. How would that support an intelligent designer?

Now, this is where we start to disagree.

No, we started to disagree long before this because you can't get it through your head there is no test for ID. I asked you for ONE single peer reviewed published scientific paper that supports ID. You can't do it because there isn't a single one.

"It's not going to happen" starts to border on anti-science. THAT's part of what I've been arguing against here.

Is it anti-science if I say it's not going to be found that Miasma causes cholera?

Sheesh. Defending science is hard, but someone has to do it.

You just think you are defending science but you are not. Dunning Kruger fits here. If you would take the time to understand why ID is not science you could move forward. As long as you think you know something the rest of us don't you won't.

 

[GDon]

Do you even have a single peer reviewed paper published in a scientific journal that talks about proving ID?

Who said anything about "proving" ID? Has any ID proponent presented a paper that they've claimed "proved" ID? No. They are doing the right thing by publishing in peer reviewed journals, building up a body of work to question the scientific consensus.

There is a list of articles supporting ID in peer reviewed journals. I've given the list several times. They have been shown to be full of mistakes. That's science in action. SCIENCE WORKS!

Here is a review of Meyer's peer reviewed paper:
https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/08/meyers-hopeless-1.html

“Intelligent design” (ID) advocate Stephen C. Meyer has produced a “review article” that folds the various lines of “intelligent design” antievolutionary argumentation into one lump. The article is published in the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. We congratulate ID on finally getting an article in a peer-reviewed biology journal...

It is gratifying to see the ID movement finally attempt to make their case to the only scientifically relevant group, professional biologists. This is therefore the beginning (not the end) of the review process for ID... Only through this route – convincing the scientific community, a route already taken by plate tectonics, endosymbiosis, and other revolutionary scientific ideas – can ID earn a legitimate place in textbooks.

The reviewer is correct. ID has been evaluated and rejected by the scientific community. Science for the win!

You just think you are defending science but you are not.

I think I am defending science. I think you are defending orthodoxy, which is the enemy of science, by rejecting that ID can be formulated in any way that borders scientific legitimacy. You need to accept that ID has published in peer reviewed journals and has been found wanting. Otherwise you are rejecting science.

 

[psionl0]

Make no mistake. ID's only purpose is to destroy science and replace it with the Bible. Any 'distancing' is just obfuscation.

Is the claim that the very creationists who want to "replace science with the bible" put an article in a peer reviewed journal or is somebody else responsible?

It wouldn't make much sense for creationists to publish an article in a peer reviewed article. It would be shot down in flames in double quick time.

 

[Leumas]

<Snip the same errors as in all the other posts>....

Incessantly repeating over and over errors will not magically make them pass consensus and then become facts....

 

[acbytesla]

Who said anything about "proving" ID? Has any ID proponent presented a paper that they've claimed "proved" ID? No. They are doing the right thing by publishing in peer reviewed journals, building up a body of work to question the scientific consensus.

There is a list of articles supporting ID in peer reviewed journals. I've given the list several times. They have been shown to be full of mistakes. That's science in action. SCIENCE WORKS!

Here is a review of Meyer's peer reviewed paper:
https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/08/meyers-hopeless-1.html

The reviewer is correct. ID has been evaluated and rejected by the scientific community. Science for the win!

I think I am defending science. I think you are defending orthodoxy, which is the enemy of science, by rejecting that ID can be formulated in any way that borders scientific legitimacy. You need to accept that ID has published in peer reviewed journals and has been found wanting. Otherwise you are rejecting science.

No, just like Meyer and the Discovery Institute you're not. You only touched the surface of that review of Meyer’s article.

Meyer’s paper predictably follows the same pattern that has characterized “intelligent design” since its inception: deny the sufficiency of evolutionary processes to account for life’s history and diversity, then assert that an “intelligent designer” provides a better explanation. Although ID is discussed in the concluding section of the paper, there is no positive account of “intelligent design” presented, just as in all previous work on “intelligent design”. Just as a detective doesn’t have a case against someone without motive, means, and opportunity, ID doesn’t stand a scientific chance without some kind of model of what happened, how, and why. Only a reasonably detailed model could provide explanatory hypotheses that can be empirically tested. “An unknown intelligent designer did something, somewhere, somehow, for no apparent reason” is not a model.https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/08/meyers-hopeless-1.html

 

[acbytesla]

Is the claim that the very creationists who want to "replace science with the bible" put an article in a peer reviewed journal or is somebody else responsible?

It wouldn't make much sense for creationists to publish an article in a peer reviewed article. It would be shot down in flames in double quick time.

It was published. Not that it withstands critique.