Atheism 3.0

That might account for some converts, but not all of them. (It would also account for some, possibly many, converts to atheism.) There are those who actually are sincere about their conversions, and not simply dissatisfied with their previous church.

It's also important to note that even those who change churches because of dissatisfaction would fall within my original statement. When they find that their prior church no longer aligned with their personal beliefs, they left to find another one that was more in line with their beliefs.

Shouldn't you be saying that about a fisherman?

Kimball Kinnison

 

Of course. You'd need to ask all followers of faith why they converted. It'd be an impossible task, but I think most of those I listed are likely. Same with Atheism. I won't deny that there are Atheists who are strongly anti-religious because they want to be accepted or are dissatisfied with their church. It's all human nature to switch if things aren't working for you.

And yes, fishermen, farmers, carpenters, writers, etc. Pretty much any profession that just seems...odd for a prophet to come from. I dunno, I guess there's still a bit of a religious belief in my head which states that prophets or religious types that receive the word of God should be...well...religious types. Not the average Joe. And most assuredly definitely not sci-fi authors.

 

I agree with KK, actually. There's definitely a portion of the atheist community that came to that due to religious dissatisfaction.

I don't think it's as large a portion as the religious (not KK specifically, I'm not putting words in his mouth) tend to think -- most seem to think that ALL "atheists" actually do believe in God, they're just angry about something or other -- but certainly there are people who stop believing in God for emotional rather than rational reasons.

And I do think likewise it's possible to hear the tenets of a religion that you agree with more than the one you are raised into and convert. Certainly people do it all the time. However this gives the lie a bit to concepts of universal truth/morality (which, again, KK did not specifically express and I'm speaking more generally), as it's an open admission of creating God/religion in one's own image and not the reverse.

 

*about to some up with an interesting formula containing, at least, the word 'susceptibility'*

 

(hope/belief in the afterlife) + (paying props to one's heritage) = The Ordinary Believer.

I know I could phrase that more eloquently but there you have it, for now.

 

If anyone were to look back through the many threads on Atheism that we've had over the years, you would see that I have regularly pointed out that you can find both rational and emotional people on both sides of this topic. Believing in God is not inherently more irrational than the converse, because whether something is rational or logical has to do with the process used to arrive at the conclusion, and not what the conclusion itself is.

Just because you followed a rational process to (accept/reject) God's existence doesn't mean that everyone else who came to the same conclusion you did followed the same process. Think of it like defusing a bomb. One person might trace out the circuits and choose to cut the red wire based on that, while someone else might cut the red wire simply because they like (or don't like) that color. Just because they both reached the same conclusion (wire) doesn't mean that they were both rational (or irrational) about it.

Personally, some of the Mormons who drive me up the wall the most are the ones who don't tend to question or test the Church's teachings. The same goes for people of other religions, when they just mindlessly accept what their pastor/priest/bishop/etc says. If you don't question your beliefs, how can you ever hope to actually understand what you believe? If you don't question what your church teaches, how can you understand what they teach? If you don't understand both of those, how do you know whether you beliefs really match those of your church?

Does that mean that you will always find the answers to all of your questions? No more so than we find all of the answers to our questions in other parts of our lives. Yet, it's through the process of asking those questions that we really gain both knowledge and wisdom.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Pretty words, Kimball. And I agree that one should always be open to questioning.

But the fact remains that, even though there is no logical way to disprove that there is a god, that doesn't mean it's equally logical to believe or disbelieve. If there's nothing whatsoever to point to the fact that there might be a god*, then hypothesizing that there is one still makes no sense logically.

*and I have never seen any, including the fact that there are believers (because I find the hypothesis that gods are a human invention to be extremely likely for a virtually endless list of reasons, involving human curiosity and imagination and the way our mind works as explored through modern social and neuroscience, and not just because there is no evidence otherwise).

 

It's been my experience that people who really start reading the scripture of their faith and thinking critically about it, end up leaving their faith.

For example, there is a widespread belief among Christians that Christ was born in the year 1 A.D. He was not, for the simple, historical fact is that the King Herod who supposedly persecuted him and his family died in the year 1 B.C.

The calendar was switched from whatever they were using previously to A.D. to denote After Christ and B.C., to denote Before Christ, sometime in the 530's by a bishop or monk who had no knowledge of Roman history and just took it on blind faith that Christ was born in the 28th year of the reign of Caesar Augustus. However, Augustus ruled for 4 years as Octavianus before the Roman Senate changed his name to Augustus. So, there's a 4-year error right there.

And there was no year zero inserted between 1 B.C. and 1 A.D., so the dates that we refer to as B.C.E. now are one year earlier. No one at the time the switch was made realized that zero was a real number and so they made another error in their calculations.

So, unless you read very carefully and with an eye to the actual historical era the events described in your holy book, you are just going to keep making the same errors.

 

I'm sorry, but here you are rather mistaken. I cannot logically prove to you that there is a god, but I can do so to myself, because of my own experiences.

To use an analogy, if I experience an alien abduction, then it is logical and rational for me to say that I have experienced proof that aliens exist. However, I cannot logically prove that to you simply on the basis of my experience. What is proof to me (my experience), is merely testimony to you (I claim to have the experience). In the same way, Saul of Tarsus (later called Paul in the New Testament) could prove to himself that Christ had risen from the dead (Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus), but he could not prove it to anyone else. He could only testify to others about what he had experienced.

For someone who has an experience like that, it can most certainly be more logical to believe in the existence of a god (or aliens, etc) that it is to believe that such do not exist.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Actually, it isn't. Without outside confirmation, you may very strongly believe that you have had such an experience but it is indistinguishable from a dream, delusion, or hallucination. It is not rational to believe something when your only evidence is an "experience" that could have been misinterpreted. It's rational if you have auxiliary proof (Neal DeGrasse Tyson suggests stealing something from the alien ship and bringing it back with you) to demonstrate that some event outside the norm definitely happened. But to say it is logical/rational based solely on personal experience is incorrect, and personal experience is extremely susceptible to mistaken perception.

It may seem to make more sense to the person who has had an intense experience that the experience was real, than that it was not or they were mistaken in their interpretation, I will give you that. And I agree that it is a very easy thing to convince yourself that something is true. But to say it is logical/rational for them to hold this belief based on nothing but their own interpretation of an isolated experience is inaccurate.

 

That's actually why I said *if* there is nothing to point to the existence of a god. And, imo, it would still depend on the nature of the apparent revelation and how strongly the person was willing to consider alternate explanations. [/Scully]

 

If you are going down to that level, though, how is it possible to gain any "outside confirmation"? How do you know that any other "outside confirmation" isn't "indistinguishable from a dream, delusion, or hallucination". If you cannot trust what you have personally experienced, then how can you trust any "confirmation" of it that you encounter?

Ultimately, everything you experience (including what you call "outside confirmation") filters through your senses. If you cannot trust your senses (because they could be "a dream, delusion, or hallucination"), then you cannot trust anything, and therefore you cannot know or prove anything. At some point, you need to take something on faith, and the most basic thing that you can take on faith is that your senses accurately report on the world around you. (You have to take it on faith, because you can never prove that your senses do accurately report the world around you.)

That is why logically speaking a personal experience can serve as evidence/proof for an individual, but it is merely testimony for someone else.

Kimball Kinnison

 

I'm of the opinion that your senses cannot be trusted at all times. Or I should say your conclusions based off of those senses. For instance: there's an inner ear problem called minears disease, it affects your balance and gives a 'dropping' type sensation sometimes. Your brain tells you you're falling or dropping based on the information that it's receiving. You can't trust it. You also can't trust your eyes completely either. Sometimes your eyes see shadows or anomalies which cannot be explained. This does not mean you're seeing things and the conclusion shouldn't be, "I saw something therefore ghosts exist," what the logical course of action would be is to conclude something odd happened and get checked out for any sort of visual problems.

This doesn't mean your senses are wrong all the time. Like right now, I can definitely smell the spaghetti cooking in the kitchen behind me and I can logically conclude that it is in fact spaghetti. However I am not taking that on faith or drawing conclusions. I know it because that's what is for dinner. Therefore to conclude otherwise would be illogical. Same goes for a religious experience. While I am sure you and others have experienced something I tend to think that your conclusions are faulty. Or that what happened isn't what you think happened. Of course I have no evidence of this, but I am aware of how the mind can deceive itself. This happens when lying. Or feeling betrayed without actually being betrayed. Liars (good ones at least and sociopaths) actually fully believe their lies or halfway believe them. As such they can hide their lies. Especially sociopaths who mimic their emotions.

Imagined slights work the same way as well, someone is seemingly giving you the cold shoulder and you're unsure of why that is. So, while it would be logical to ask why a lot of people make assumptions and then base their reality off of those assumptions. It couldn't be that the person is busy. No, this person hates you and doesn't want anything to do with you. So you act in a manner that's consistent with someone who's been burned. Likewise, religious experiences function in the same way. Whether a light is seen on a highway and you're convinced it was God or a sign or whatever. Not that it was something unusual, but maybe there's a real world explanation for it. These kind of things work on predispositions normally. If you're religious it's God and if you're a sci-fi nut it's an alien. Or if you believe in ghosts then it's a ghost. etc. etc.

I want to say that this is not to doubt what you've experienced. I have no idea what your personal proof is. So I think you saw something that convinced you or experienced something. But the jump from, "Hey, that was strange," to, "Hey, that was God speaking to me," is a large one and an easy one if there's no explanation right in front of you. The whole point behind this rant is that your senses aren't infallible and they can be tricked, but it's the conclusions based off of these imperfect senses that can lead us to illogical conclusions.

 

On the topic itself, I've got two friends that have converted religions. One went from Unitarian (I think) to Mormon, which her whole family did. The whole religion topic was discussed a fair bit, especially when she and I dated for a few months, and because her personal views alligned well with the church, it meant that she also used some flexibility in deciding which guidelines she would bother to worry about. Examples being that I believe there are guidelines recommending against dating non-Mormons, and that in the same category, that people of opposite sex should not be unchaperoned, something that she ignored when we went to Comic-Con because she knew that she'd not do any of the things that guideline was intended to prevent, which was the important part. I do consider her to be one of the most intellectual people I've ever known.

The other is a long time friend of mine (18 or 19 years) who has been converting into Catholicism from previously not being religious. Back before he'd really decided to this, I know in conversations that he'd said he definitely believed in a higher power, but he didn't really believe the whole... Jesus thing and was trying to figure out if he could still be Catholic. I suspect for him, while he does have the higher power belief, that his reasoning for Catholicism stems from thats where he was first taken because we've got some common friends that are practicing Catholic and all go to the same church, and so it seems like community plays a large role in this for him. Although I'm not in any rush to call him OUT over that.



Regarding the last part of conversation.... and this'll stem from my agnostic third.... Given that I don't think you can really know about the god question one way or the other, I'm not sure I particularly object to someone deciding which way they want to lean on the question based off of personal experiences. I've had stuff that I've experienced or seen that I can't explain, and I've always opted to use the term ghost to label it all because its in line with what other people have seen and called ghosts, although I don't get into what that MEANS it was, beyond those sorts of weird things (lights, outlines of people, objects moving, etc). On the religion part though, if someone uses their experiences to have faith in a god but doesnt presume that because THEY had an experience, that then someone else should believe the same as they do, then I don't personally mind that much. Kimball has always been consistent that while he has had experiences that verify his beliefs, that he wasn't going to expect other people to believe in his god because of HIS experiences alone, as I recall.
There is still a danger, of course, of unchecked faith without critically examining the evidence, but I'm personally more concerned when that happens with anti-vaccers and global warming than things like if there's a god, which is, to me, more removed from day to day life.

 

If people want to believe in God on the basis of personal experiences then more power to them. Religious faith should always be a private matter between a person and his/her God.

I only get annoyed when that personal faith translates into actions which detrimentally affect those who do not share that same faith. Basically I won't demand proof that your God exists if you don't treat your personal beliefs as a justification for meddling in my affairs. God's designs on the meaning and purpose of marriage should never influence the secular definition of marriage as being the relationship between the parties to the marriage and the state.

In short, if it is reasonable to say that "I believe in God but I don't expect you to", then it is completely unreasonable to expect others to live their lives in accordance with those very same beliefs.

 

No, he could not, as Christ did not appear.
Mr. Saul/Paul either lied, was hallucinating, or had a failing memory.

Or show me some proof that people rise from the dead.

 

I can't prove that to you. I simply stated that Saul/Paul could prove that to himself.

In fact, if you have quoted my entire sentence (which grammatically represents a single thought), you would have gotten the other part:

Unless you are personally Saul of Tarsus, then you would fall into the very category I gave in my original sentence ("anyone else"). You aren't, by any chance, Saul of Tarsus, are you?

Except, how do you draw the line on this. Some people's religious beliefs lead them to believe that a fetus is a person, and therefore abortion is killing a person and a form of murder. Aren't they justified in speaking out to protect people (from their perspective) that are defenseless?

Ultimately, the solution is to emphasize the democratic process and give those who are religious the same voice as someone else, because all types of beliefs can lead to "meddling in [your] affairs", not just religious beliefs. An atheist's political beliefs about how much taxes I should pay can meddle just as much as a religious person's beliefs can when they get written into law. The religious beliefs are not more meddling just because they are religious.

Kimball Kinnison

 

That's a stretch. He could also have been lying intentionally; very likely, considering that the statement involves people rising from the grave.

 

Except that logically, you are using circular reasoning. How do you know that it is impossible for someone to rise from the grave, if you immediately discount people who say that they say someone rise from the grave because they say that they saw someone rise from the grave? You are merely using your initial assumption to prove itself.

That's the exact same thing that you accuse religious people of doing when they start by assuming that God exists in order to... prove that God exists.

The real key is that you don't determine what the standard of proof is for everyone, and there is no universal standard of proof. You can only determine what your standard of proof is. Everyone has to determine for himself whether or not the evidence and testimony presented to them meets his own personal standard of proof.

Kimball Kinnison

 

I would agree if we were talking about boiling water. But we're talking about rising from the dead, which is technically impossible.

There absolutely is a universal standard of proof when it comes to death and it's being presented many times a day.

 

Victor Frankenstein could reanimate a body, but that was fiction. There is no way that currently exists to be able to do it in the real world.

 

There is no such thing as a universal standard of proof. To someone 100 years ago, someone could have argued that a stopped heart and no breathing met a "universal standard of proof when it comes to death", and yet today thousands of people have "risen from the dead" against that standard thanks to defibrillators and CPR. What previously would have been called a "universal standard of proof" turned out to not be so universal. How do you know that what you currently call a "universal standard of proof when it comes to death" is actually universal?

What you are doing instead is taking your paradigm and assumptions, and then assuming that they hold true for everyone else.

That's purely circular reasoning. You are essentially saying that because we don't currently know of a way to reanimate a body, that it is therefore impossible, and so any claims that someone ever has done so must be false. Since no true claims have been found, it must therefore be impossible.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Nonetheless, to date there is no way, natural or artificial, to "rise from the dead" after a very brief period of time (something like 5-10 minutes, I believe), after which the brain cells start to die and cannot be recovered.

Whether we eventually find such a thing to be possible or not is irrelevant, as it has never been possible to date and thus all claims to date are suspect, to put it mildly.

 

I think the greater issue is that simply him having seen it isn't really 'proof' per se, anymore than I think I can call some of the things I've seen as proof of the paranormal (which I don't consider it to be).

 

Kimball, there is NO empirical evidence that people rise from the gave. All you have are a few stories in a fiction novel.

If you're going to be having a legitimate, intellectual discussion, you can't entertain thoughts of things that have absolutely not empirical evidence and instead follow the laws the nature.