is there a term for not believing in god but also not being an aetheist ?

[chiplee]

 

Hah, what a load. You are going on about god without any physical evidence to back it up.

 

For the record, and to at least try to get this back on topic, I honestly have no interest in physical evidence for God. I would take a logical argument in favor of the conjecture. There aren't any arguments that make it reasonable to select one god over another.

[ucw458]

For the record, and to at least try to get this back on topic, I honestly have no interest in physical evidence for God. I would take a logical argument in favor of the conjecture. There aren't any arguments that make it reasonable to select one god over another.

 

 

The problem is that it's hard to have a logical discussion with someone when it comes to whether or not there is a god. Most religious people are so entrenched in their beliefs they will never listen to you. No matter how much evidence you have.

[chiplee]

that exchange was not welcomed nor wanted here so I never brought it up, I am a guest here and I try to abide with the rules

I dont feel good about it

 

What are you saying? Your "skepticism" of my career started on these forums, in this thread http://www.starquestclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=84582&view=findpost&p=822814. Was that exchange welcomed or wanted here? Do you also not feel good about it?

[chiplee]

The problem is that it's hard to have a logical discussion with someone when it comes to whether or not there is a god. Most religious people are so entrenched in their beliefs they will never listen to you. No matter how much evidence you have.

 

Oh believe me, I know, but you're never going to have "evidence that there's no god", and evidence for evolution isn't evidence against religion, per se. Evolution is the theory of the diversity of life, not the origin. Just as the big bang is the theory of the currently observable expansion of the Universe, not what caused the expansion to begin. It's the fault of scientists and those who argue in favor of it that believers choose to deny certain scientific theories. We don't explain them well. Because of the frustrating reality you've identified you're going to have to argue your stance on another basis. Evidence isn't entirely necessary anyway. It has an equal in the "proof" department, which is reason.

 

Technically we can never prove anything, because except in math and logic, everything is conjecture. This is because we would have to observe every instance of a thing to prove that it's true in every case, and we could always gain access to better information that changes things. Stephen Jay Gould said (and it is an axiom of science) that the proofs in math and logic are possible specifically because they are not about the empirical world. In matters pertaining to the empirical world, the best we can do is gather additional evidence in favor of our various conjectures, and use reason to draw consistent conclusions. In the case of evolution this body of evidence is mountainous and conclusive, but science has the intellectual integrity to admit to us that everything is always technically conjecture, so we don't label it the "fact of evolution" even though it is. We have to remain open to updating our stance if better information becomes available, but only as a concession to the tentative nature of all knowledge. Science has learned its lessons the hard way. Take the conjecture, "the sun rises in the east." Once accepted as proven fact, we now know that the earth rotates toward the east and creates the illusion of a rising sun. We've taken a huge step in the right direction, but is it fully proven? It hasn't always been this way, and it will one day cease to be this way again, so our conjecture, "the earth rotates toward the east and creates the illusion of a rising sun" is true for now, but it will not always be true, so it is not "proved". This reveals the creationists' demands for us to "prove god doesn't exist" as the marked departure from the intellectual field of strife that they are. We shouldn't join them in making such unrealistic and unscientific demands.

 

We have exactly two tools at our disposal for classifying and ranking our various conjectures. Those tools are evidence and reason, and we can get VERY close to proof through careful use of these tools. So close in fact that we come to regard certain of our conjectures as "functionally true", and we live our lives as if they are 100% fact. We all use these tools every day, believer or not. This is why the debate is still worth having. Aside from the fact that you never know when you'll plant a seed of doubt that blossoms into full blown skepticism, and despite the fact that some of the devout believers are just entirely too far gone, you can find common ground. I'm out of practice so I tend to forget lately, but on the religious forums I used to frequent I would try to start the debates from common ground. There are all sorts of things believers and non-believers do the same way. One of my favorite examples is our demand for medical professionalism. If a doctor were to throw his hands in the air and say "I give up, let's pray" while operating on our child, both the non-believer and the average believer would demand that he finish the operation.

 

There are things that none of us is willing to leave up to God. Our sick children tend to get the best medical science has to offer if we can afford it, regardless of our religious beliefs. In fact, both believers and non-believers go to other humans for ALL things that are actually important. We leave nearly nothing to God, because we know it is humans that actually get things done. I believe the saying goes, "Two hands working accomplish more than a thousand folded in prayer." None of us denies the science that went into making our cars and airplanes safer and our life spans longer. But some of us do deny certain science that is inconsistent with our worldview.

 

Once we establish our similarities, it's a little easier to identify and discuss the causes of our differences. In this case, it's that the believer's thought bias prevents him from accepting the "functional truth" of evolution, but has no effect on his ability to "believe" seat belts save lives and doctors should be expected to finish surgical procedures. The intellectually honest non-believer is not burdened by this thought bias, and is therefore able to accept the truth of evolution, right along with the truth of medical science, as each poses an equal threat to his world view, which is none at all.

 

Someone always comes along and says the debate is pointless, but don't believe them. It's that mental laziness that has allowed the religious to go on living a lie without anyone questioning their delusion. You have to interrupt the social norm. You have to engage believers wherever they agree to listen.

 

Indeed the devout may never break free. Sometimes they're hanging on by a thread psychologically and their belief in God is the glue that holds their frail minds together. If they let go of it they could actually suffer an emotional break down. With the truly devout, it is very much like trying to get a drug addict to quit, except it's socially acceptable to be religious, so you can't arrange an intervention.

 

My religious debate has worked once; the one time it needed to.

Edited December 28, 2010 by chiplee

[JAinsworth]

This is the last time I will clean up the personal attacks in this thread. State your points without attacking other members or this thread is history.

Jimmy

[chiplee]

This is the last time I will clean up the personal attacks in this thread. State your points without attacking other members or this thread is history.

Jimmy

 

Jimmy, this forum is yours to run as you see fit obviously, but please keep in mind that a policy like that gives members quite a bit of power. Basically anything someone objects to can be censored simply by launching a person attack in the thread that contains the information. I am in no way suggesting anyone would do such a thing, but "believers" have used more shady tactics than that to prevent dissenting views from being heard. There's enough information in this thread to debunk all religion, and according to your post all it takes to hide that is for someone to call someone else a name. Obviously, if you can fit it in, a MUCH more preferable policy would be to delete the posts that violate the TOS, vice the threads where the TOS are violated.

Edited December 30, 2010 by chiplee

[FlattopMike]

I actually think that this community has gotten much better about it.

There's no way that this discussion would have been able to go on this long a year or so ago.

[JAinsworth]

Chip, this thread has 173 posts. Do you have any idea of how long it takes me to read, re-read, and edit. It is easier to toss the whole thing rather than have to censor each post where names are called and personal insults are thrown. This is the reason that for the most part political and religious threads are usually deleted as soon as they appear. I feel like I have been patient with this thread and I know I've spent way too much time with it.

Respectfully,

Jimmy

[chiplee]

Chip, this thread has 173 posts. Do you have any idea of how long it takes me to read, re-read, and edit. It is easier to toss the whole thing rather than have to censor each post where names are called and personal insults are thrown. This is the reason that for the most part political and religious threads are usually deleted as soon as they appear. I feel like I have been patient with this thread and I know I've spent way too much time with it.

Respectfully,

Jimmy

 

Oh I'm sure it's a serious pain, which is why I said "if you can fit it in". I also just wanted to put it out there about the ease with which people can censor each other. If I see someone making personal attacks I'm going to assume it's because they're trying to get the thread deleted.

[SOTTY]

RIBBIT...!

[BandY]

chiplee said it perfectly:

 

Faith is born of need. I'm not needy

[Shelby]

chiplee said it perfectly:

 

Faith is born of need. I'm not needy

 

 

posibly but man never knows if he's in need untill it's too late to be nice and go to school and ask questions, when that time comes he'l make up his own mind and many times it's not what he thinks it will be

 

sadly there are no supermen , in the end we're all human

[Edde]

Wow. I finally made it through to page 9 and I read almost every word this time.

 

I am confident that if proof or (even substantial evidence) of the existence of a God was to be found those of us on one side of this question would accept it. True? I think so. Why? It's because science is not an end, it is a process. An evolving and fluid process with no end.

 

If the situation was reversed - if evidence proved otherwise? Would it change anyone's beliefs? I suppose some, but not many or not enough. In fact, I think things would get really ugly then.

 

I've read this same thread at least a dozen times over the years and I still just can't understand why a moral code for living is so difficult to conjure in one's own mind. Maybe this is an unfair observation on my part, I don't know. But this seems to me to be what it's all about.

[chiplee]

 

 

I've read this same thread at least a dozen times over the years and I still just can't understand why a moral code for living is so difficult to conjure in one's own mind. Maybe this is an unfair observation on my part, I don't know. But this seems to me to be what it's all about.

 

I completely agree on the first point. Whatever "doing science" happens to reveal is what intellectually honest people tentatively accept. As I said in my novella, we ALL accept the scientific advances that benefit us without threatening our worldview. We just need to get rid of the bias that prevents us from accepting the things that do threaten our worldview. It's pretty transparent when people do that though. This brings to mind a nice succinct quote. "Science deals with questions that may never be answered, and religion deals with answers that can never be questioned." Which one would a thinking person prefer?

 

Now, on to your second point, with which I also agree. It's definitely true that some people think a world without religion would be an immoral world. Chris Hitchens crushes this argument about three different ways. My favorite is his point about the time before the bible. We now know humans coexisted for at least 100,000 years before God's "gift" of the moral code in the ten commandments was delivered. To believe we get our morals from the bible is to believe we didn't know the things in the bible were bad for that 100,000 years. It also requires believing that God watched us hack each other to bits for 100,000 years and then delivered commandments that hardly changed a thing. We still hack each other to bits. Some plan. Here's another great treatment of the 'morals from religion' point.

Edited December 31, 2010 by chiplee