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Damian
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I can’t do anything with this definition since its too ambiguous. Could you be more specific here?
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Damian
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Of course I want answers but I want to make sure those answers are verifiable, independent from my desire to have an answer. How do we falsify religious claims for example?
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Bradskii
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Personally, with my atneist hat on, I have never gone around stating that THIS is a reason why gods don’t exist and THAT is a good argument for not believing in God. So it’s been impossible for anyone to argue against my position. I have no arguments FOR my position. I self descri e as an atheist because I am not convinced by the arguments of others that God (or gods) exist.
It’s not a belief - it’s simply a reaction to a specific claim that others make. It is most definately not one side of the debate trying to convince the other by the weight of positive arguments for their position.
‘I believe God exists’
‘I believe you are wrong’
If you think that the second statement represents a belief system, then I’m not sure how to convince anyone that it isn’t the case. Surely a belief system must have a set of positive claims. And this atheist is not making a positive claim that god(s) don’t exist. He is refuting the positive claims of others that they do.
It’s not a belief - it’s simply a reaction to a specific claim that others make. It is most definately not one side of the debate trying to convince the other by the weight of positive arguments for their position.
‘I believe God exists’
‘I believe you are wrong’
If you think that the second statement represents a belief system, then I’m not sure how to convince anyone that it isn’t the case. Surely a belief system must have a set of positive claims. And this atheist is not making a positive claim that god(s) don’t exist. He is refuting the positive claims of others that they do.
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gregoryphealy
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Marriage is a contract between man, woman, and God according to the Bible. So it’s arguable that it’s not really a violation of your marriage. Beyond that, Joseph was also visited by an angel and told not to send Mary away because he didn’t want her to be disgraced. So you wouldn’t be the first to have reservations regarding your theotokos wife.
Sure, so if we’re purely discussing spirit in the context of humans (as it might pertain to you) I’d first mention that it’s, generally speaking, synonymous with “soul” (CCC 367 backs this up). And there is no shortage of discussion on the matter in Catholic circles that may help you out. There’s this brief explanation, there’s Aquinas’ interpretations which can be found here and here and here, among other places of the Summa, and of course bountiful threads on this forum asking the same.
I suppose the issue I take from your approach is that you believe everything is apprehensible by human reason. Falsifying religious claims can be achieved through reason, I believe. It’s a matter of reasoning what the essence of a god may be (or at least a crude human approximation) and applying that rubric to different religions. For instance, if it were reasoned that a god must be omniscient, yet in your holy book it reads “god did not foresee this happening and he was mad”, then we could conclude that your god is not omniscient and therefore doesn’t meet the criteria for a worship-worthy god.
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Vonsalza
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So statism. I can see the patriotic tears in Mao’s eyes as I type it.
Morality isn’t that simple.
I don’t want to be charged taxes. Others don’t want to be assessed speeding tickets. Many argue that “victimless crimes” shouldn’t exist as crimes.
It seems to be just a hair more complicated than that… Which becomes obvious when you actually try to codify your good-will into actual law.
It helps keep people “in check”. But it doesn’t impair one’s will to be unable to resist it.
There have been countless times in my life where I had the opportunity to do some wrong thing like cheat on a test or excessively bill a client. But my sneaking suspicion that there’s a divine cop that I can’t get away from kept me from doing those very things. It’s a substantial factor, even as you may not want to admit it. A lot of non-Christian religious describe it as “karma”. What you do comes back to visit you. It’s a purely religious idea.
An atheistic viewpoint lacks such a mechanism, regrettably.
About that, I’ll grant that the Catholic classification of masturbation as a mortal sin might be a bit over-board, but there are pretty reasonable arguments to be made that don’t include religion at all against the normalization of masturbation and, particularly, homosexuality.
Your lack of awareness of these doesn’t present a good argument. It just betrays a lack of knowledge. Which is fine, but ignorance is hardly a convincing justification for a particular view.
Bold statement. Your morality hasn’t not shown me why, though. At least, nothing beyond “I just don’t like it”. And that is what the argument from morality is all about. Why???
No, it’s definitely a straw-man. Did science “move the goalposts” when it decided that gravity is not a property of massive bodies themselves, but rather a property of displaced space-time?
They stake a position and they revise. Both religion and science. Your being “ok” with one doing it and not the other may betray a smidge of hypocrisy. Inconsistency at the very least.
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Vonsalza
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The only standing gripe I have with that presentation of it is that it assumes that the correct hypothetical default you reject to is some form of negative like “no”. And from an academic standpoint, that’s not completely correct. Lacking any previously established fact, hypothesis testing rejects in favor of “undefined”.
To put it more bluntly, my college stats teachers were emphatic about the fact that failure to confirm the hypothesis is NOT NOT NOT the same as evidencing its lack of reality. There is no further conclusion one can correctly draw from a rejection other than “the test failed to confirm the hypothesis in this trial”. That’s it. “…thus the hypothesis is more likely to be untrue.” got an “F” on the test.
I don’t think it’s a belief system. But I do know it’s a posit.
The belief systems come as necessary auxiliaries when the honest and responsible atheist then answers the question “Ok, so if we reject god, how do we repalce the cultural constructs that employ god as a necessary component”.
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laylow
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It has nothing to do with polls. It’s just straight up deception. The US operates under the guise of freedom of religion. In reality, it’s freedom of religion, as long as your religion is Christianity.
Can we just drop all of these childish absurdities of fanatical superstition and get on to working on solutions for solving the issues that plague our world.
The trick must be to do it gradually and hope no one notices.
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Vonsalza
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Well, it was founded by deists with a penchant for Episcopal Christianity. Someone has to answer the moral “why”. From a purely atheistic viewpoint, there isn’t really any such thing as morality. It’s more metaphysical tripe.Vonsalza:
It has nothing to do with polls. It’s just straight up deception. The US operates under the guise of freedom of religion. In reality, it’s freedom of religion, as long as your religion is Christianity.
That’s what the religious try to do. It’s why every culture on the planet arose with a religion. Atheism is not innate to humankind because it has been unable to convincingly provide solutions to the problems you mention.
Not true at all. You’re just a little biased against the construct.
Nothing sneaky about Galileo or the Catholic Church’s likely eventual allowance for married clergy or female deacons.
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laylow
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Morality is not synonymous with the supernatural, even though humanity’s perception as such may have aligned that way historically. You could have a supernatural component exist without morality. Wishful thinking and fantasies may paint a picture that humanity wants to look at, but logically if the supernatural exists and life after death for humans is in the cards, it is more likely to exist in a form differently than humans have contrived in their imagination. The one thing that has always amazed me when talking to religious people is that they always mention God’s perfect justice. I always try to get them to imagine the horrific sufferings that people in history have endured. Then I tell them to think of the lives that many of them live or of people that they know. I try to get them to conceptualize how, under a system of perfect Justice will this be resolved? So I ask if the people who had it good will have to suffer equally ‘later’ or if the earthly sufferers get more rewards in the afterlife, etc. and most of the time and get an answer like “Well, it just doesn’t work that way.” They fail to see the irony of the statement of perfect justice with a clear case of inequality, because I assume they are so indoctrinated to even think about it.
I really do not see how religion provides morality. In many ways, it further complicates it.
Religion may possibly be more effective for the under educated and misinformed societies. At some point the training wheels need to come off.
No, I consider it sneaky standing by an idea as a truth from God and then moving the goal posts and saying, well you know, God was never really against priests marrying anyway, it was more like a suggestion to aid in the priests being more dedicated to God. Then you are basically admitting that God never revealed anything in the first place and that you need to change with society since society really has a better grasp of morality then the old ideas. By not changing, survival would be impossible. I do agree with changing, but I don’t agree with not admitting the reality of not knowing better in the first place.
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Bradskii
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To the first part, I am NOT saying that the failure to convince me of the existence of God means that, therefore, God does not exist. I am more than happy to allow for the fact that He does. But arguments FOR his existence do not convince me. Therefore…use whatever term you would like to describe my position, but the one I will use is ‘atheist’. That is, desperately trying to avoid the use of the word ‘belief’ which seems to cause so much confusion, I am not convinced by your arguments for the proposition.Bradskii:
The only standing gripe I have with that presentation of it is that it assumes that the correct hypothetical default you reject to is some form of negative like “no”. And from an academic standpoint, that’s not completely correct. Lacking any previously established fact, hypothesis testing rejects in favor of “undefined”.
To put it more bluntly, my college stats teachers were emphatic about the fact that failure to confirm the hypothesis is NOT NOT NOT the same as evidencing its lack of reality. There is no further conclusion one can correctly draw from a rejection other than “the test failed to confirm the hypothesis in this trial”. That’s it. “…thus the hypothesis is more likely to be untrue.” got an “F” on the test.
I don’t think it’s a belief system. But I do know it’s a posit.
The belief systems come as necessary auxiliaries when the honest and responsible atheist then answers the question “Ok, so if we reject god, how do we repalce the cultural constructs that employ god as a necessary component”.
As to your second point, I would agree. Up to a poInt. If you claim that God exists and therefore X, Y and Z pertain to various facets of our existence, then it is indeed encumbent on me to offer different reasons why we should accept X, Y and Z. Or reasons why A, B and C are better. But these will be MY particular reasons. Not ‘atheist’ reasons. There are no ‘atheist’ reasons because an atheist simply doesn’t believe that the premise of your arguments for X, Y and Z are correct in the first instance.
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Vonsalza
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I’ll happily concede that they’re not synonyms. But morality is a metaphysical concept. It’s an “ought” instead of an “is”. And metaphysics is supernaturally driven. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be metaphysics. It would be more like “physics”.
It’s an endless problem. How do we reconcile a god that is merciful with a god that is just? How do we reconcile those in a way that allows the apparent free-will of humanity?
If god knew you were going to be a sicko that wore the skins of other people as clothing, wouldn’t this god be more merciful obliterating your ability to freely choose and force you, marionette-style, to bake cakes for homosexuals for a living?
But “there’s a problem here” doesn’t mean “god doesn’t exist”.
It frames and defines it. I’m not sure how morality exists outside of it, to be frank.
I get it. But god does serve a function. I’ve not seen a decent presentation of a suitable replacement.
That’s revising a position in light of better understood truth. It’s no different that when science tells us “Ok, gravity is no longer generated directly by massive bodies. Now it’s generated by the space-time those massive bodies displace!”
People and their collective knowledge evolve. I don’t see why religion has to be an exception to it.
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Bradskii
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People and their collective knowledge evolve. I don’t see why religion has to be an exception to it.
Says V (getting quotes on a tablet is a pain).
But religion (at least as far as Catholocism is concerned) is just a formal method of connecting with God. And God doesn’t change. God doesn’t evolve. So if there are changes in the way religion is perceived, if it evolves (heresy!) then religion doesn’t accurately represent God’s views.
Says V (getting quotes on a tablet is a pain).
But religion (at least as far as Catholocism is concerned) is just a formal method of connecting with God. And God doesn’t change. God doesn’t evolve. So if there are changes in the way religion is perceived, if it evolves (heresy!) then religion doesn’t accurately represent God’s views.
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Vonsalza
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Sure. What we think about gravity changes. So does what we think about god/religion.
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Bradskii
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Cross post. I was quoting you. I don’t agree. Or rather, I do agree. But that’s not what religion is meant to be. You are saying: ‘Hey, we (as Catholics) may know better in the future. We may be wrong’.Bradskii:
Sure. What we think about gravity changes. So does what we think about god/religion.
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Vonsalza
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I don’t think anyone gets to make so large a decision as to what religion was meant to be. It is a lot of things.Vonsalza:
Cross post. I was quoting you. I don’t agree. Or rather, I do agree. But that’s not what religion is meant to be.
They won’t come out and say that. But in effect, yeah.
And you’re right. Tablets don’t “do” this very well.
And if anyone gets to speak for the Catholic Church, it certainly isn’t me.
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goout
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If morality is a evaluation of acts, what will you use as a reference point?
You will say something like “consensus by experience”.
And that is a moving target. Evaluations with moving targets are not good evaluations.
This is not to say that all societies and belief systems can’t attempt good moral evaluations, but…
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Damian
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Her body, her rules. There was no concent given for her to be used that way or for us to have an open relationship with a deity. This deity treated her as an object to fulfill its own means and does not understand what it means to have a respectful relationship with people by this action. Relationships are concentual by both parties. It still hasn’t figured this out because it gets upset and sits with folded arms when I just ask it to say hello but I still reserve the right to kick it out the door if it comes across as someone I wouldn’t have a relationship with.
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Bradskii
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But who speaks for God? Who says that, in this particular moral problem, God says X?wkj_123:
If morality is a evaluation of acts, what will you use as a reference point?
You will say something like “consensus by experience”.
And that is a moving target. Evaluations with moving targets are not good evaluations.
This is not to say that all societies and belief systems can’t attempt good moral evaluations, but…
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goout
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“your holy book reads…”
Catholics are not fundamentalists. The bible reveals God in human words and understanding. But the book is not God in his essence. Human words are insufficient to reveal omniscience and omnipotence etc…So the bible’s “deficiencies” cannot be used to disprove a divine attribute.
it’s like you trying to explain physics as a layperson. You might explain it in a way that leads someone to further discovery, but you are not able to reveal the subject in it’s fullness.
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Damian
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Okay, so what is a soul? You just solved a mystery with another mystery. Basically what I am getting at is the idea that the religious have all these terms they use that are characteristics found in the supernatural realm. But since we can not investigate that realm at all, its like me tell you about all the characteristics of the realm of Hogwarts. Interesting to talk about but how do you demonstrate that it is there at all other than religious assertions?
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