Is atheism a religion?

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Hey Taza, you seem to be a big fan of proving things. Absences of proves apparently warrant a refusal. So here is one for ya:



* Proves only have meaning relative to the context of the axioms from which they were derived. Proves cannot be derived from empirical observations since there might always be something outside our perception that we cannot accurately measure and might alter the outcome of our measurements at some observations. The existence of everything that we observe cannot be proven.

There is nothing you can do to prove that the universe didn't came into being 2 seconds ago, with all our memories at the ready. Neither can you prove that whatever you perceive around you, your computer, your bed, this forum, actually exists. Just because a supernatural force isn't always observable, doesn't mean it's not there. The question whether God either exists or doesn't only becomes meaningless when he cannot be detected at all, e.g: a noumenon: A thing in itself. But since we cannot prove whether he is never detectable, or just not at this moment, the question cannot be simply meaningless. One day, a supernatural force might show up and overset the applecart; but that might be another illusion, sure.

I am agnostic exactly because of this. I will never be able to prove anything. It's not that I am lazy, scared or stupid (how quaint, you sound exactly like a religious fundy, with your violent and insulting demeanor and your holier-than-thou attitude. Are you sure atheists never killed anyone? I do remember self-proclaimed atheist countries like the USSR, the People's Republic of China and the Khmer Rouge. These three combined have slaughtered more people than all of the Crusades. I guess that without religion, there is no meaningful basis onto which to justify the sanctity of human life. Oops.)
It's just that I have realized that the absence of proof doesn't mean anything.

 

Mmm, yes and no. There are plenty of scientific theories, readily and seriously discussed among scientists, that have never been experimented with because we don't have the technology. A theory doesn't have to be tested to be accepted as a theiry, but once it can be tested, it is usually accepted that it should be. The other thing to realize is that each and every one of those theories you've said are unlikely to see major revisions in the future have had major revisions in the fairly recent past (last century or so). This is the nature of science, of course, and a major revision does not invalidate the theory or process at all, but there's nothing to say we won't have a major re-write of the theory of gravity in the next decade or so. Any discovery of anti-gravity or gravity manipulation (things very seriously being worked on in a number of labs, if not showing any particular promise yet) would require such.

The point is that science isn't certain at any given time. It's more than a best guess, yes, but it's less than proven, or even exceptionally strongly supported. This is the point of saying science can't prove anything. All the given evidence that supports the current theory may also be used to support other theories. Accepting science as absolutely right (which a lot of people do) does require a stunning level of faith (to some degree even for the well-founded ideas like gravity).

Chandos, I've never heard that in any Baptist church I've ever been to, and that ranges from New Hampshire to Georgia. Of course, that's only my personal experience, and it's a selection that's been informed by my relatives' and friends' experiences, who tend to be well educated and progressive in regards to science, so it may not be representative of the whole, but at least a strong portion of the community.

Joacquin, that's Southern Baptists. There's also a lot of fried chicken. Southern Baptists are still Baptists, though.

 

Hey, hey. Wonders. So religious countries never slaughtered people for non-religious reasons? ... oh wait.

Are you sure you aren't an offended theist instead?

And oh, to everyone: Reason I've mostly stopped replying here is because a) I do not want to fall foul of the moderators and b) because the interesting arguments have stopped and it's just not-so-subtle ad hominem and repetition.

Looks like attacking some beliefs causes a mighty uproar and haphazard defense.

 

The point of the second video is to watch the other maybe 6 in the series to get the entire presentation and Q&A section at the end. Did everyone just watch that first one and think it was it? I said there was others after it that are linked to at the end of the video. So watch the entire series before saying it has nothing to do with the discussion, because it indeed has a lot to do with the discussion on the natural reasons for why we have religion, belief in god etc. At the end when the box that says ">> NEXT <<" click on that and it will take you to the next one, and so on.

If you dont want to be linked off site to youtube I will post the others here too.

Part 1 - Human Evolution And Natural Selection Made Easy


Part 2 - How Religious Ideas Parasitise The Brain


Part 3 - How Religion Solves Existential Problems


Part 4 - How Religion Hijacks Cognitive Mechanisms


Part 5 - God's Messenger And Social Uses Of Religion


Q&A Part 1 - How God Is Generated By The Human Mind


Q&A Part 2 - Historical Origins Of Religion

 

Replace unicorns with Sasquatch, then. A good number of people have talked about seeing Sasquatch. Whether or not they were just seeing things can be debated, but there are nevertheless a decent number of people who have told others about their experience seeing the Sasquatch. Using Sasquatch, we have witnesses on both sides.

If you don't like Sasquatch as an example, we could use Alien abductions, instead. There are plenty of people out there who claim to have been abducted by aliens, too.

Now, I disagree with the Atheistic assertion that God doesn't exist since we can't prove it, but I would certainly agree with them that God is no more likely to exist than the Sasquatch or Alien abductions.

 

Exactly. The atheist 'belief' in' there being no god is based on probabilities, not faith. They agree that god 'may' exist, but the probability of that being the case is extremely slim. Another one of the co-hosts on that show, Tracie Harris, said that for a while after she stopped being a christian (or mormon, I think), she continued to believe in god, and it was only after she started thinking about what she considered god to be that she realised she was using god to explain everything, and that she was basically an atheist. God is a fuzzy term, there is no set standard of what a god actually is. My idea of god is different from the christian god, the jewish god, the islamic god, and it is even different from the idea of god within my religion itself.

I particularly like the part in the presentation I posted above where the guy talks about how religion can be defined by the ecology of the area. I had never considered that before, though I do think its a bit far fetched to say that polytheist religions are rainforest religions. India, for example, isnt a rainforest, nor was Scandinavia or what is now Germany or Europe in general, and yet the Indo-European religions prevailed in Europe for thousands of years until they were wiped out by a desert religion that was totally alien to the cultures it supplanted. An interesting note though is the Zoroastrian religion, which while it has the same roots as Hinduism, it is a desert religion with a triune god-head (Mithra = Jesus btw). Also the Northern Afro-Asiatic religions were polytheistic, yet they were the same oppressive religions that their southern desert dwelling cousins practiced.

 

I think you may have crossed the line from being an atheist to a doubtful agnostic without realizing it. The point that many have tried to make about the former is that he/she isn't really dealing with probabilities and has settled on an answer. The responses from the speakers in the 1st video of yours that I commented on indicate that they think the probability is 0%, not even 20% or 10% but 0% as they seemed pretty sure of themselves.

About the rest of the videos (namely the 2nd). It shouldn't be surprising that when I started to feel like I was wasting my time watching the 1st one it was unlikely I'd watch further. Maybe I wasn't giving it full attention, but it didn't seem to be getting anywhere in terms of our discussion when I watched it.


Drew, we could each agree to there being possibilities that aliens and/or big foot exist I can argue there is still a better chance God and/or some basis for religious understanding exists as there appears to be more people who could serve as possible witnesses for that topic than on bigfoot.

 

Im not an atheist. I believe in many gods and goddesses.

Too bad you didnt watch the rest of them, because they do add to the discussion. That is, unless you dont accept evolutionary theory etc.

 

Sorry, I did not watch any of your links, Nataraja. I will take your word for it that there is plenty of good, well-argued, anti-God propaganda in them. I tend to be generally suspicous of any group that tries to win converts as hard as you guys. I know a few buddies in the Christian community who could learn from your techniques and passion to win over converts. It's like the same techniques in selling, it doesn't matter what the product is, it's how well you can pitch it that makes the sale.

That's one of the reasons I never pitch Christianity to anyone. I must confess, one half of me could not care less if other people accept it anyway. I don't feel the big desire to "win" converts. The other half is that there are some aspects of my life that I deliberately want to keep selling out of. I don't know if that makes me a bad Christian. Nevertheless, my walk with Christ has been an invaluable part of my life. It has made me a better person. And that's where I will leave it.

Also, there have been a lot of attempts to belittle the notion of miracles. Really, speaking of unicorns, big foot, and the like, is just a deflection for the ignorant. They are things that happen to people that cannot be explained - readily. For instance, in his book Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Carl Jung writes of visiting Ravenna with a friend and how they visited the Tomb of Galla Placidia. He and his friend paused in front of a mosiac of Christ holding out his hand to Peter, who was sinking below the sea. Jung and his friend spent some twenty minutes in front of the scene discussing its beauty and impact. Upon returning to Zurich, Jung requested some photographs be sent to him of the mosaics within the tomb, only to be informed that no such mosiac existed. But Jung and his friend could both clearly remember it in great detail.

Jung never used the term "miracle," only that it was something he could not explain. He commented that it was a "subjective experience beyond discussion." I tend to agree, since referring to the experience as a "miracle" would draw wonder on the one hand, and ridicule on the other. So why bother. Yet, Ravenna is an odd place. It was Dante's last refuge and he is buried there. Then there is the story of how his son discovered the last portion of the Divine Comedy, which Dante had hidden there. But let's get back to the "unicrons, big foot and aliens." We should take history, literature and art away from Christianity (which is a great part of its real heritage) and frame it within the context of the National Enquirer. That will teach us Christians from getting too uppity.

Here is a link to the tomb in Jung's story. http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/ravenna-mausoleum-of-galla-placidia.htm

 

It isnt anti-god propaganda, it is evolutionary explanations for why humans have religious beliefs. One could easily watch them and say that the gods intended for us to evolve that way so that it would be natural for us to believe in their existence.

Im not an atheist, Im not trying to 'win converts' to atheism, I am just pointing out that there are natural reasons for why we are who we are. Natural selection selected for people who have brains and minds that are geared towards the same sort of reasoning that takes place in religion, which religion has then gone and hijacked. You really should watch the videos Ive posted, they include a lot of psychology in them.

 

Well, then I apologize, Nataraja, for misunderstanding your intentions.

Yes, on the evolution thread, you made this very point, and many of us agreed with you. This is really a different thread, with a different topic, and thus my confusion. I thought that your examples were "proof" of atheisim. To be fair, I watched the first set you posted, and did not see all that much about evolution, but a lot on atheism.

 

No, they were evidences for the natural reason for why people believe in god, and how this is different from atheism. Atheism is not a religion because the parts of the human brain that religion takes advantage of are not taken advantage of in atheism. The only similarity between religion and atheism is they both have 'belief in' methods of reasoning. Religion takes advantage of natural mechanisms that were present for our survival, atheism does not. Id say that atheism has more to do with the Age of Reason than with the Agricultural Revolution. Perhaps you could even go as far as saying that atheism is the supplanter of religion in this age. With very little left for the gods to actually control now that science has explained away most of the responsibilities that the gods presided over.

 

My internet connection dropped as I was just a bit more than halfway through the 2nd Q&A video (last video of them all). But here is what I have to say. This guy is a propagandist. The more I watched him the less I was impressed with him. Before while I thought he was just a knowledgeable guy talking about evolution in the 1st video by the 5th video I saw him as deeply biased and providing very edited versions of history. I place him in the same level as people who occasionally put out a video on how Global Warming is a big lie. In sum, I find him misleading rather than informing. I think he speaks on subjects that your average person doesn’t have that much knowledge of so he comes across as smart (which he is), but people watching him may not be able to pickup on where he is not talking about the whole story. Of what I watched (which is the vast majority of the videos presented) I pointed out things that I thought were questionable for each one. It took me a long time to do/go through (far longer than I expected). If you want to watch them feel free. However please read through my points where they relate to what he said and see if they are valid.

And Nataraja, organized atheism can and likely already has taken advantage of some of the socio-behavoral patterns that he claims religion does. And if you want a bigoted dogma for atheism just look to atheists who whip out the idea the religion is made to exploit the believers for the benefit of the elites/leaders and is the cause of most of humanities problems today (the ideology of blaming religion for problems that don’t end up getting fixed in places where it is absent.... scapegoating perhaps?)



atheist “freethinker” youtube video 2

Saying that “religious ideas parasitize the brain” is a statement full of bias in that it assumes that if there is a relationship between religious ideas and the brain that it is a detrimental one. This bias is further reinforced by his that comments compare (and put religious thought on the same level as) parasites that cause insects to commit suicide so the parasites can further their life cycles. This is a very detrimental picture and it part of his bias that religious thought is somehow bad for you.

As far as I know reading and writing is not a biological process. It takes intellects and cultural understandings to occur but this is different from biological processes as they are generally known. Yet he repeatedly refers to reading and writing as a biological process.

He refers to a study that showed people being controlled/manipulated by authority figures into doing things they otherwise wouldn’t. He used this study to show we “all” are vulnerable but this was factually untrue as a majority rather than a totality (all) of the people tested gave into authority, a minority refused to. Thus some are less vulnerable than he acknowledges. Also some instances of people refusing to bow to unfair/unjust/cruel authority comes from religious people-this indicates that people who are religious are not all of the type that are easily manipulated by authority (a thought he may have been trying to impress upon viewers).

He says that Mother Teresa lost her faith. This is a historically incorrect representation of her (according to my understanding of the situation) as there was a time she did have doubts God existed but she came to the conclusion/understanding that God does. Also it is notable that he mentioned she suffered for doubting the existence of God because he is briefly making a martyr out of her to the cause of atheism. This is an irony as she came to disagree with atheism if she had ever even agreed with it at all. Inaccurately describing her personal history (as it has been described to me) and subtly making it appear that religion persecutes nonbelievers. The former has happened at times but what he seems to be doing is misrepresenting events.

I don’t know if most people see the Dali Lama as an older brother but I don’t. It is possible that I’ll use transference in a thought of relationship with him, but even if I did that isn’t how I picture him.

He also tries to portray religion as poking a hole in our perception of reality that starts small so it is unnoticed. Is this really how religion operates? Even if it is a variation of this (which it may not be) is this a bad thing as some great realizations have taken place in a person’s mind as something that starts with a small idea that is refined and expanded further. Is he describing this activity as that?


atheist “freethinker” youtube video 3

He talks about the attaching one’s self to thoughts the group has and being unlikely to initially believe something that contradicts what a person was raised thinking. This may be true. However the argument that this is why we believe in religious thought leaves atheism open to the same criticism if someone is raised in an atheist group (such as a people from a former Soviet state). The person will have been raised as an atheist and thus tradition creates an tendency toward that. Thus the argument about if religion is real or not is not actually resolved by the realization that people tend to stick with early life traditions and thoughts accepted by a social group an individual is part of. People could be atheist utterly because of social reasons rather than any evidence or realizations they may make. This doesn’t prove or disprove religious thought, it is simply noting human behavior patterns which can fit many different ideas (a good number of which have nothing to do with religion).

People can imagine they feel another’s pain. This doesn’t disprove religion.


atheist “freethinker” youtube video 4

Religious people can be committed to what they do, thus it is not unreasonable that some of the things they do are/can be seen as signals of commitment. He is acting like we should feel they (religious people) are deceiving us when they may be being sincere. Why is it that signals of commitment are to be distrusted when they relate to religion? He does not appear to be saying we should view other signals of commitment as as suspect (such as those between a couple that care about each other).

He claims religions “hijack” our morality. There is a negative connotation/bias associated with the word he uses. While it is true that people can have a sense of morality without belonging to what the rest of us perceive as a religion it is also true that religions can and have reinforced and helped develop the sense of morality an individual has/feels.

His definition of what religious morality is strikes as very skewed. He says that it is doing whatever you are told without regard to if it is moral. This statement is skewed/unfair in that it implies that religion promotes immoral actions by encouraging people to disregard if something is actually moral to do. Much of the core of religious understanding in relation to how others should be treated is very much promoting moral actions. Unless he views the idea of loving one’s neighbor as one’s self as immoral. If nothing else it seems that religion may agree with a moral compass rather than encourage someone to disregard it.

He mentions the terrorists who killed many people by hijacking and using planes as weapons on 9.11.01 So he brings up religiously related violence. However he leaves out any good things religions do such as the work of Catholic Charities (which are regarded as using money to help people), Islamic mandates to help the poor, as well as incidents of violence carried out by atheists-such as Khmer Rouge members killing Buddhist monks because they belong to a religion (Buddhism). Thus he filters evidence unfairly to portray religion in a bad light. In a similar vein to my mentioning of religion doing good things I’ve heard of a story of an Afghan Imam who was going to approve of the death of a teenage boy and girl because they were from different groups and had been caught talking to each other over the phone. A person promoting more thoughtful/liberal understanding of what Islam taught pointed out to him that there isn’t a requirement for this to happen in Islam-thankfully the children were spared and the Imam (as well as the person who he talked to) realized that what had been happening was a tribal custom had assumed the guise of religious requirement when there was no actual religious requirement.

He complains about pseudo kinship in religiously affiliated organizations but leaves similar feelings in other organizations unmentioned or criticized. In addition, is it a bad thing to encourage some sort of bond between people? He acts like it is if you are referring to people in religious organizations. Does this means he thinks that people shouldn’t bond with others or have friends in general? If not, then why is it somehow improper for that to happen with religious people.... this is something of a double standard.

If (and this is a big if) different terrains have different social aspects relating to the religious organizations practiced in those areas is it possible that social customs relating to social organizations based on local conditions are influencing the religious organizations rather than the religious thoughts providing the dominant influence and thus are the source of these organizations’ attributes. Does the problem relate to society rather than religious thought when and where social thoughts rather than religious ones are the dominant influence on the other. Is he blaming religion for problems societies may have already had? Relating to the maybe I mentioned earlier, were Mayan gods viewed as noninterventionists? If so why were blood rituals (even if it was a person shedding his/her own blood rather than some other unfortunate victim) performed?


atheist “freethinker” youtube video 5

He compares religious people to car salesmen and mafia members-subtly implying that religious people are untrustworthy and bad. More bias slipping through or an attempt to get the viewers to associate religion and untrustworthiness? Either way this is still treating religion unfairly.

He puts forward the argument that religious people try to manipulate others into doing what they want by claiming to be just a messenger of a stronger power as they personally may not be able to back up a threat. The problem with this is that others (maybe not everyone but definitely some) can also make their own judgments over if this person is truly a messenger. He mentioned mothers using fathers as a threaten children in families. He is correct in that my mother has used my father to make threats at me but I was and am able to judge her credibility because I’ve also come to know something of my father’s personality/patterns of action. If she tried to threaten some punishment though him that I know he likely wouldn’t do she may well end up loosing credibility rather than gaining it with me. The same is true for religious leaders who are found to be hypocritical-people tend to trust them less.

The pope dominated the recent years of our history? He says this and yet it is hard to argue the pope dominates things these days. The pope is a highly recognized and visible figure who may try to influence people. But he generally hasn’t “dominated” much of anyone this century. He may try to influence people in many nations including my own but the last time I checked my national, state, and local governments were responsible for creating and enforcing what many think of as the law. And as I can legally vote I don’t tend to think of even this as domination. Kings and popes may have tried to wrestle for power centuries ago, but that isn’t what I think of as recent years.

He talks about religious groups thinking they are better than other people so that their leaders can benefit. This is an excessively cynical view of religious leaders that pays no attention to the possibility that a religious leader may actually care for his/her followers, merely that the leader wants to benefit from them. In a conversation with a priest I discovered the lack of time some pastors have as they frequently try to help people with this or that problem-including trying to resolve disputes between spouses. Raise your hand if you are eager to stand between two bickering people.... granted this may not be the literal image of what a pastor does each time he/she meets with a couple but the point stands that allot of what a religious leader is expected to do is help other people.

He is also wrong in a few ways when he mentions that religions require the elimination of rivals. While there definitely are a number of religious rivalries that have existed throughout history, there are other things like modern day centers of inter-religious dialogues or a council of inner city churches (this is a multi-denominational group that tries to work with poverty related issues in my home city). Thus there are times and places where both members and leaders of religions (or branches thereof) work with each other cooperatively. In addition, group rivalries that have gone to the point of getting people to kill each other have existed in many places and times without regard to religion (religion is not the main/only source of them) and he gives little attention to this fact. In part I’m referring to violence, or genocide even, occurring between ethnic/tribal groups-note that this violence relates to and is supported by the kin loyalties the speaker complained religion undermines.

He said that the main things religions did historically is facilitate “terrorism and war”. This is very misleading as it is my understanding that if you go to a good number of Christian Masses/Services on a given Sunday in the US you will not find priests/pastors calling for people to wage war on each other. It isn’t hard to find people encouraging the use of religion in calls for war (Islamic fundamentalists are frequently thought of in relation to terrorism today) but there are a good number of people of many different religious faiths (including Islam) that promote peace rather than war. Some conscientious objectors (people who refuse to join the military based on what they view as moral grounds) are devout religious people. Anabaptists (not who we think of as Baptists today) centuries ago in Europe refused to be part of the feudally based governments of Europe because they viewed it as improper for Christians to wield the “sword”. The speaker is only telling part of history and this is misleading and inaccurate, but it does play to an anti-religious bias.

Religion is good at “turning off” compassion.... while this is correct in situations of religious intolerance religion is far from the only reason/excuse given for intolerance. And one of the whole points about religion organizations when they try to help others is compassion. Again he is only telling part of the story and is very biased in the way he does it.

“We know that in all religions there is a clear dictate that apostates are to be killed.” This is an actual quote of what he said and it is both biased and inaccurate. Note previous points I mentioned already. I would love to hear him explain how an Anabaptist of the past or a modern day JW (what some view as a modern religious cult but also one that refuses to join the military and is pacifistic) is required as members to kill people.


Q&A 1

Note that he contradicts himself from earlier here. Before he said the main purpose of religion was to facilitate war and now he said it is to explain biology and cosmology. Not only does he contradict what he said earlier but both comments of his are inaccurate. I already gave reasons why I disagreed with his claim that religion existed to make war easier, now I’ll disagree with his newer claim. Many religions do have what some anthropologists refer to as a “creation myth”. Use the world “myth” in front of a fundamentalist believer are you are bound to offend-just so you know. However, this account does not make up the majority of religious teaching. If you use Christianity as an example the Book of Genesis could arguably serve as an explanation of biology. However, look at the size of the Book of Genesis compared to the rest of the Bible. If the main point of religion is supposedly to explain biology then why is it that explaining biology takes up so little space compared to everything else that is written?

Is he simply using unpopular (among intellectuals) ideas to pick whatever he says the main point of religion is? Before you write me off as being as big of a propagandist as him ask if war is a popular thing right now (or generally has been since Vietnam)? How about creationism? Most intellectuals/highly educated people think evolution has and is happening and that creationism in nonsense. But that is what he lets slip is the main goal for religion. Even if you ask a fundamentalist (which I’m not one of) what the main point of religion is I suspect neither of these two supposed main points will come up.


Q&A 2

Maybe I’m reading too much into this but I think it is also interesting that the speaker tries to deny intellectuals had a part in the formation of early religion(s). Even if the explanation serves as a stress reducer (which it may or may not do) the whole prospect of trying to figure out why something is occurring is an intellectual endeavor on some level. Speaking of intellectuals and religion it is a historical fact that a great many thinkers were involved in religion and exploring and explaining it. As well as the fact that as the Western Roman Empire fell religious leaders and organizations were responsible for the preservation of much of the knowledge that was saved. I could be picking too deeply into this but does the speaker want to avoid any intellectual/knowledge related aspects of religion so he doesn’t have to admit a positive side to religious organizations?

 

I know from my own religion that the elite do indeed manipulate the lower socio-economic classes. This is why the buddha broke away from the repressive control of the brahmins to find his own path towards 'salvation'. Religion does do a lot of good things, and it also does a lot of bad things too. It is as imperfect as any construct of human intellect.

While I dont agree with a lot of the things mentioned by the speaker in those videos, I do agree with the biological, sociological and psychological parts. The rest is clouded by his bias towards atheism.

You have to know that I am not in favour of atheism, but I do like to see both sides of an argument. But I shouldnt really be posting this, Ive had 5 beers already tonight so my mind is a bit non-working.

 

NOG,

I think you missed my point, but simulatneously proved my point in that you tried to oversimply four major theories and say that they didn't really prove anything, and may need to be re-written in the future. I think you and I have very different views of science, even down to the terminology we use to describe science. I disagree with just about everything you wrote.

No. You're once again using the layman's definition of a theory. If it hasn't yet been tested, or cannot be tested it's not a theory. This is what I'm talking about when I say we use different terminology. What you are describing here could possibly be termed a hypothesis, but certainly nothing more than that.

Um... let's see... The Theory of Relativity and Genetic Theory did not exist a century ago, so yeah, they've changed in the last 100 years. Evolutionary Theory relies on Genetic Theory for it's mechanism of action. (Remember that Darwin's Evolutionary Theory was not accepted as a theory in his lifetime - it could barely even be termed a hypothesis. It wasn't until about 50 years later that the theory started gaining some steam when Gregor Mendell's research became better known.) I'll deal with the Theory of Gravity a little lower down, but I'll just say for now that the Theory of Gravity (sometimes referred to as the Law of Gravity), has not undergone any major revisions in about 400 years now - with the caveat that we are discussing Newtonian physics.

The Theory of Gravity was originally postulated by Sir Isaac Newton, and works for any decent sized object. The research I think you are referring to uses particle accelerators and gets into the realm of quantum physics. It's well known (and is part of the Theory of Relativity) the physics of particles do not follow Newtonian physics. Secondly, for macro sized objects, the reason we are able to perform experiments in gravity manipulation is we understand how the Theory of Gravity works. (You can manipulate gravity without changing the properties involved in what makes gravity work.) The Thoery of Gravity will not be rewritten - and in fact could not be rewritten - without invalidating a huge chunk of Newtonian physics.

And this is the point where our views diverge so greatly, that I'm not even sure there's any point in continuing this discussion. I feel that last sentence is fundamentally wrong.

 

Morgoth, the USSR, North Korea and other communists countries were or are very devout and religious countries. They may not believe in any god in the traditional sense but they sure had a church and a religion. They, just as they Nazis turned political ideology into religion replacing what they scorned with petty much the exact same thing only changing the terminology.

Chandos, why do you not preach? If you believe in god, christ and salvation (which I am not completely sure you do as I have a real hard time grasping your beliefs) then if you care about your fellow man is it not your duty then to try and convert them? Is it not in our best interest to see the true path instead of missing out on the good stuff that is supposed to happen to those that accept Jesus Christ as the lord and saviour?

Again, the difference between agnosticism and atheism is mostly about semantics. I went from agnostic to atheist when I came to the conlusion that although it is impossible to disprove the existence of any god just as I can't disprove the existance of invisible purple space monkeys the likelyhood and probability of such a thing to exist was so slim that for all practical purposes it is zero. Calling myself agnostic would be the equivalent of going around acknowladging the possible existance of more or less everything. To me an agnostic is someone who is ambivalent towards religion, who is of hte opinion that the bible may or may not be true, that the koran may or may not be true. An atheist is someone who is convinced that it is baloney.

My "preaching" is a bit of a personal thing, I get offended when people believe in what I find to be stupid things. Whether it is conspiracy theories, ghosts, vampires, god, leprechauns or any of the millions of irrational things I deem to be stupid. I at least want them to really think things through and not just accept wild claims at face value alone.

 

Let's really look at this for a second. The issue is personal experience, eye-witness statements. They are taken as almost a joke in science, unless they are repeatable. Even the soft sciences generally want the phenomena being reported to be common enough to be readily observable. But what about other widely respected forums? Let's look a the law, the courts. Ok, enough laughing, I respect them, mostly. Seriously, though, in courts of law, eye-witness statement are standard fare, and are generally well accepted. The character and abilities of the witnesses are called into question, yes, but once those questions are answered, the testimony is judged by the credibility of the people who bear witness. In many cases, innocence and guilt are assigned on nothing more than (or little more than) eye-witness testamony. Let's take a look at common reality, then, day-to-day life. If someone you trust says they've seen a movie, and it was really good, yet you fully expected it to be really bad, are you more likely to believe your trustworthy (and not known for joking) friend is suddenly lying to you, or that the movie turned out much better than you thought it would be? Now let's say that same friend said they saw the movie a week before it was out. You ask how this could be. They say it was some kind of special advanced screening. You ask to see the ticket. They happily fumble through their clothes, only to discover it's not there. Maybe they accidently threw it out when they emptied their pockets last. Maybe it slipped out of their pocket instead of into their pocket when they thought they put it in. Maybe they never had one to begin with. Again, this is a friend not known for practical jokes. Are you more likey to believe this friend is lying, has suddenly developed the most bizzare case of delusional psychosis ever, or that he actually went to some kind of advanced screening and saw the movie? There's no evidence either way. Now seriously consider why you would believe what you believe. My guess is, you'd all believe said friend saw the movie. My guess is you'd believe this because, one, the source of the info is trustworthy, and two, the information itself isn't too radical, it doesn't challenge any deeply-held beliefs.

Now let's say this non-joking, rational, well-educated, atheist, and sceptical friend suddenly had a deeply moving spiritual encounter and converted to, oh, Hinduism, to take a random example. Do you believe he's lying about his experience to try to get you into the religion with him? Why? What promped his conversion if not a real event? Do you believe he's had a hallucination or delusion? What if he says he's been to every specialist there is and no one's found anything wrong or has any way to explain it? Do you believe he's serious and right? My guess is a lot more of you would pick option one or two, and the only difference is that the claim presented challenges your perception of reality, a perception that I think most of you will admit is far from absolutely proven.

Personal experience is the complete foundation of our entire experience of reality. Without personal experience you are left with nothing more than pure logic, and pure logic, without any basic assumptions, is utterly useless. You can't prove anything. You can't even begin to. For that reason, I posit that the evidence contradicting personal experience has to be of the utmost credibility and certainty before you should even begin to discard said personal experience. Of course, for such extreme experiences as I have described, such evidence should be looked for, but if and when none is found, the experience must be accepted on face value. To do otherwise means to question everything. You couldn't even be sure you were human, or even that you existed at all at that point.

Now I'm not trying to say that my personal experience should be proof for you, but if you trust me, if you believe I am serious and sane and well-educated (which I suspect several of you doubt), then it should be entered into evidence for consideration. This is how many religious people begin. People they trust, people who are stable and not prone to being taken advantage of, tell them of personal experiences that they have had, they bear witness. The evidence mounts and the person in question begins to investigate things for themselves. They find evidence of their own. Suddenly, you have a brand new religious devotee.


EDIT
Aldeth:
I'm sure we have different perspectives of science, but I don't think I misunderstood you at all. Yes, I vastly simplified them, but that's because the details of the theories weren't important to the discussion, merely the progression. I also consider each new theory likely far more accurate than the last, and thus more trustworthy, but science is a fluid thing. You implied with your statement that you took science to be a relatively stable thing with few significant changes happening only rarely. Recent history disagrees with that. For hundreds of years it was true, but in the las hundred years or so, the rate of learning has progressed to such a rate that new theories are created and tested on a fairly regular basis, and some of them are very significant. At least two major re-writes to the theory of gravity have been presented in the last century. One (relativity) has been widely accepted, while the other (gravitons) has been almost relegated to sci-fi (there is still a search out for them, but few people are holding their breaths). I'm not trying to argue that science isn't trustworthy, merely that those who take it as 100% true and reliable do so out of faith, and a poorly founded one at that.

If it cannot be tested, it is not a theory, but if it can, we just don't have the technology yet, it is still a theory. Higg's Field Theory has been a theory for decades. We're only now setting up the technology to test it. The theory made testable predictions, though. This is how I use 'theory'.

Ok, let's reorganize things a little. Relativity is, among other things, a re-write to the theory of gravity. Yes, it leaves Newtonian physics behind, but that's not because Newtonian Physics covers certain stages, while other laws govern others. Everything follows the same laws, it's just that the details of how tiny things work isn't too important on the large scale. We now understand Newtonian physics to be a simplification, as in it is wrong (incomplete), but close enough to still be useful. There's some question about Reletivistic Physics and Quantum Physics and how you get the two to merge, but that's not to say they are different realms that are both true, yet exclusive. Rather, they are two perspectives on reality. The fact that they are mutually exclusive simply goes to prove that neither one is 100% right. There are 'kinks' to work out. Things like super-string theory (now M-theory) do this, but it is debatable whether or not they will ever be testable, thus 'theory' is more a title than a category for them. Genetic theory (or it's predecesor) was presented by Johann Gregor Mendel in 1865. The idea of heredity presented by him is what I count as the original theory of genetics, it's just missing the biochemistry. I'm not sure when that was originally presented, but I'm sure it was the last century. Whether you start in 1865 or in more recent years, though, the theory has gone through many major revisions since then, and there are still sizable revisions being made today, though not nearly as many.

I think the problem we're having is that I consider addendums, adding details later on, to be revisions, whereas you seem to consider them a seperate process. If you are solely concerned with the validity of the original claim (which is generally preserved, yes), then addendums are unimportant, but if you are concerned with the grand picture of the universe that science presents, then addendums are huge. Relativity didn't change anything in highschool physics. Hell, it didn't even change anything in us getting to the moon, but in terms of our understanding of the universe, it turned the world upside down.


Joacqin:

The people were deeply religious, but the nations were not. The same is true of China today. I think, though, that what you are trying to say is that they turned communism into a state religion. They did not. If I am correct, you are trying to re-define 'religion' to suit your purposes. The problem is, this definition leaves you vulnerable. If anything, they turned atheism into a state religion.

This is very telling for why we are not understanding each other. You can't grasp Chandos's beliefs, so you doubt that he has them? Just because you don't understand a thing does not invalidate it.

I would agree with this 100%, but that makes the difference far more than semantics. An agnostic is someone who is in genuine doubt, not someone being PC. An atheist is someone who has come to a complete conclusion, not someone who has just stopped beating around the bush. It's like the difference between thinking about buying a new car, maybe that Honda, or maybe that Chevy, or maybe I don't really need one at all, and firmly deciding that a new car is not in your budget and you shouldn't be buying anything.

The problem is that this isn't an irrational belief. It is a non-rational belief. An irrational belief is one that defies rationality (i.e. it is disprovable), while a non-rational belief is one that extends beyond what is rationally provable and into what cannot be proven or disproven.

 

I am no expert but I do know that eye witness testimony has been devaluated a lot in recent years after study after study had shown them to be extremely unreliable. There have been uncountable instances of people being pointed out by eyewitnesses, convicted only to be set free after DNA or other technical evidence has come to light. The human mind and eye is extremely easy to trick and one of the largest functions of the brain is to trick itself.

Memory is also very easily manipulated and you can easily create memories of your own that you are convinced are real. I know that I have on a few occasions had problem separating a real memory from a dream for instance and there are still a few childhood memories I am unsure of whether they are dreams or really happened. You can't trust yours senses and you can definately not trust your brain.

 

Ok, false memories are not 'easily' created. They can be created, as every attempt to remember something is an act of reconstruction in and of itself. The other thing to realize that the studies of eye-witness accounts have shown when and where testamony is reliable. In cases of traumatic events, whether physical or emotional, there is a chemical released in the brain that causes some types of memory to encode very rapidly and with a high level of precision, while others encode very poorly. This is why a rape victim may remember exactly what the rapist smelled like, but not have any idea what kind of clothes he was wearing. There are more than that. The point is, eye-witness testamony is still heavily relied upon in many courts of law today. It is taken with more of a grain of salt these days, but it is still readily admissible.

 

Trusting someones personal experience or personal whatever is flawed solely because of the way the human brain works. When there are gaps it instinctively fills in the gaps, when things dont make sense on a subconscious level the brain tries to make sense of things in light of previous experiences, expectations, pre-conditions and so on. What we perceive to be real is for the most part just constructs of the brain. When it comes to events that happen in the past, the longer the time since those events took place, the fuzzier the memories of the event are. Dreams are also highly unreliable as any sort of evidence because they are the chaotic recombinations of things that are presently on your mind. Last night I dreamt about this thread, about drinking beer, about listening to oldskool happy hardcore, about painting my friends fence, and about playing Morrowind and Icewind Dale...things which I have been doing recently and which are the most important things for me at present. Can any sort of prophecy be determined from my dreams? Not at all. To say that my dreams have any sort of prophetic properties is akin to finding prophetic revelations in a chickens liver or the tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. These things are just not reliable, they are not repeatably testable.

Atheism has none of these sort of irrational means of divining knowledge. Atheism does not take advantage of the adaptations of our brain the way religion does. Atheism does not state that we are all brothers in No-God, and that No-God is our father, and it does not say that if you do bad things then No-God will punish you. Atheism does not have a strict hierarchy of a top-down chain of command. Atheism is not a religion. Not even having a 'belief in' no god qualifies it as being a religion.