Ask a Radical Atheist

[Darat]

If anyone would like to prove Piggy wrong I'm happy to become your God. I do require a tithe of 10% of your earnings for the rest of your life. (Given the current financial situation in the USA for USA worshippers this has to be in Euros or gold not USA dollars.)

I promise I will be a more responsive God than the one with the long white beard that lives above the clouds and I will not demand the sacrifice of your first born - unless they repeatedly kick the back of my seat on a transatlantic flight.

 

[GreyICE]

I agree, but could there be some concept of god that is impossible to define because of our own limitations?

As I said earlier, an ant can't do math, never will be able to, but still the concepts and principles of math exist.

Am I making sense?

It makes sense to me. The possibility that we haven't thought of a possibility (or that we simply lack the capacity and ability to conceive of that possibility) exists. Its like the description of superior intelligence (versus simply being very smart) in a book I read - there are probably mental and logical planes we are just not operating on.

 

[Tricky]

If the person is seeking honest communication they will be able to acknowledge their language preference. Hence, it will be possible to separate those who wish to communicate honestly from those who don't - leaving us with the "good" theist to communicate with.

You've just summarized the history of the R&P boards.

 

[CFLarsen]

There is quite a difference to you. How do you know there is a difference to the dog?

We know quite a bit about dog behavior/psychology: It's a pack animal, it needs to know its place in the pack, and can be trained to do various things, etc. There is nothing that tells us that dogs have supernatural beliefs.

Do you want to argue that animals have supernatural beliefs? That is indeed an extraordinary claim.

 

[Piscivore]

I have confused people obviously, I was agreeing with you. Or trying to.

Sorry, it happens so rarely I have trouble recognising it sometimes.

 

[Piscivore]

We know quite a bit about dog behavior/psychology: It's a pack animal, it needs to know its place in the pack, and can be trained to do various things, etc. There is nothing that tells us that dogs have supernatural beliefs.

Do you want to argue that animals have supernatural beliefs? That is indeed an extraordinary claim.

No, I don't think animals have any "beliefs" whatsoever. I think that statements like "he sees you as his top dog" are common, yet unfounded, anthropomorphic misstatements that postulate an unevidenced level of cognition to explain a simple behaviour pattern.

 

[CFLarsen]

Would you mind defining him for me?

Depends. Usually, we call it supernatural, but if it is the god you believe in, then only you can define him. There may be more to it for the individual than the mere supernatural.

No Hahnemann did not have a point about diluting stuff as it was wrong. The consequences of this wrong action were right. It's the equivalent of giving Hahnemann the credit for placebo.

Not merely that. He had a point in lowering the doses until they became harmless. Only he didn't know what was really happening.

Some were "cured" by their own bodies' ability to heal themselves. Some were "cured" by placebo.

 

[CFLarsen]

No, I don't think animals have any "beliefs" whatsoever. I think that statements like "he sees you as his top dog" are common, yet unfounded, anthropomorphic misstatements that postulate an unevidenced level of cognition to explain a simple behaviour pattern.

Unfounded? What pattern is that, if not seeing you as top dog?

 

[Vincent Vega]

I am an atheist.

I don't pretend to know there is no "god" however.

If you consider anything supernatural is outside of nature as we understand it, we could no more pretend to know the supernatural than a fish could understand the concept of space travel. There is certainly the possibility there is an omniscient intelligence that resides outside the universe we can comprehend, that can influence our universe in ways that we can't begin to comprehend.

I leave room for caveats.

 

[Piggy]

Piggy what's your follow up to this?

No follow-ups to non-questions. It's "Ask a Radical Atheist", not "Chat with a Radical Atheist".

Or alternatively, if I say: "I have absolutely no idea where the laws of matter and energy came from and how stuff began to exist, and so any explanation is as good as any other . . . namely good for nothing"

Then would there be any difference between your stance and mine?

Yes, we would be talking about different topics.

But also, you would be wrong. Any explanation is not, in fact, as good as any other.

Just because we don't know what caused X doesn't mean that anything you care to dream up could have possibly caused X.

 

[Piggy]

Seemed a very straightforward question to me. I've been reading a thread this morning that holds there is "the atheist" viewpoint so I was wondering what the correct preference was for coffee or The TEA for a radical atheist.

What's TEA?

 

[Piggy]

It has not a lot of qualities we know about, right. How does that rule out its existence?

As you defined it, it had no qualities whatsoever. Saying what something did is not the same as saying what it is.

Suppose I said, "There is a force which causes the motions of planets and stars."

You say, "You mean gravity, inertia...."

"No," I interrupt, "this is a supernatural force."

"Ok," you venture, "what is this force?"

"I call it Force X", I say.

"All right," you say, "what is this Force X?"

"I already told you," I reply. "It's supernatural and it causes the motion of planets and stars."

But I haven't really made any claim at all here. I've said what Force X is not (natural), and what it supposedly does, but I haven't said what I think it is, and I've denied that it is equivalent to those forces we do have some description of.

So when the deist argument is phrased as "Suppose God created the universe then had nothing more to do with it", I'm forced to ask "Suppose what created the universe then had nothing more to do with it?"

 

[Piscivore]

Unfounded? What pattern is that, if not seeing you as top dog?

"Unfounded, anthropomorphic misstatements", not patterns. Dogs do evidence behaviour that appears subservient, but that does not necessitate they hold or understand abstract concepts such as "rank" or "superiority", does it? Do you think the dog is weighing in his mind all the parameters affecting his relationship with his owner before "deciding" to act subservient or not?

Do you think dogs "see" us in any abstract way? If so, what informs that opinion?

 

[Piggy]

And He's such a tease; always posing with that bit of cloth strategically clinging to his midrift.

Oh, you're gonna love my calendar shot.

I only ask because a... friend of mine... has been having these... thoughts lately... and wants to know if they're... normal... or indirect proof of God, somehow?

I think there's an interesting question behind there.

Seems to me if we somehow destroyed all evidence and memory of religion overnight, it would have reinvented itself by next Thursday.

I believe the urge toward religious thought is an artifact of the way our brains are built.

 

[Jimbo07]

If something is irrelevant it is usually not useful.

My mistake. I thought that by using the / notation that it was clear that I found the words irrelevant and useful to be similar in this context, since both had been used in this thread. I was contrasting them with "forbidden."

Forbidden?

It is how I interpreted "cannot."

What is the difference between "useless" and "forbidden?" I don't believe that one can say that since an idea is useless, it's subject is forbidden from existing (like the trivial solution to a math problem, say).

 

[Piggy]

Why do you consider yourself a skeptic?

Because I'm hyper-rational, I suppose. I can't get by just accepting things. Someone's gotta show me the money.

Like Adams, I didn't come to the strong atheist position without many years of study and thought.

 

[Piggy]

It has claimed qualities.

Hence, there's a claim.

Hence, if you want to call yourself a skeptic, you can't reject the possibility of it existing.

So why do you claim to be a skeptic?

Nope. It has no qualities. At least, not as it was presented in the post I was responding to.

Other definitions do have qualities, of course.

These invariably end up being nonsensical, empty, contrary-to-fact, humpty-dumptyisms, or indistinguishable from the qualities of not-God.

 

[CFLarsen]

Because I'm hyper-rational, I suppose. I can't get by just accepting things. Someone's gotta show me the money.

Like Adams, I didn't come to the strong atheist position without many years of study and thought.

Nope. It has no qualities. At least, not as it was presented in the post I was responding to.

Other definitions do have qualities, of course.

These invariably end up being nonsensical, empty, contrary-to-fact, humpty-dumptyisms, or indistinguishable from the qualities of not-God.

But if it has no qualities, what's to accept?

 

[Piggy]

Piggy,

Is Spock a woo? How about Luke Skywalker? I assume you're familiar with teh Star Trek & Star Wars.

Is the term "atheist mystic" an oxymoron?

Have you read any books by Karen Armstrong?

Given a chance, would you make religion illegal?

Fictional characters are fictional. I'm not really concerned with them.

Oddly enough, I don't think "atheist mystic" must necessarily be oxymoronic, but in practice it probably always is.

No.

No.

 

[Piggy]

So, my question, Piggy, as god's advocate, is this: Do you not believe that love, beauty, hope, and truth does* not exist?

Love certainly exists. Its effects are seen all the time.

It's hard to say if beauty exists, but the experience of beauty certainly does. (I'm fascinated, for instance, by why it is that we find our world beautiful, and if there could be creatures out there on some world who look out every day and think, "Geez, what an ugly universe".)

Hope also certainly exists.

Truth is an alignment of thought and reality.