Is God Santa Claus for adults?

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As a child, I went through a similar educational process as TallyMan and came to similar conclusions. In religion class I was taught one view of the history of life on earth and in science class I was taught a different one. I did honestly consider both sides and over the course of my childhood (not just on one day) decided that the view that did not involve God was more plausible and more consistent with the evidence.

Why did I conclude that? Because of the global consistency of the scientific view of the history of life on earth (and the history of the universe, Big Bang etc.). The religious view varied depending on where you were born and which religion your parents raised you in. It seemed too arbitrary to be plausible. But the scientific view was consistent around the world and also throughout history. It remains consistent. The only thing that changes is the accumulation of data. The data available to Archimedes, Newton, Darwin and scientists today has changed, but the way of assessing it has not. I found the absolute consistency to be convincing. Nobody was creating stories. They were assessing data. But religions don't assess data. They create stories and these stories are arbitrary.

Like TallyMan said upthread, everyone is an athiest about the religions they don't believe in. Somebody who believes in Yaweh or Jesus will necessarily not believe in Zeus or Thor. It's the arbitrariness of what (or who) to believe in that convinced me that religion is not the path towards figuring out what really happened on earth and throughout space and how things really work. It may work just fine as a way to come up with rules for the smooth functioning of society. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is an excellent value. But those values and rules don't have anything to do with figuring out how life and matter actually operates. That's why posters have been trying so hard to get you to disentangle "value" from "fact".

Because every human has values you as a person base your decisions on those values. You decide what is factual and opinion based upon those values. That's the connection between value and fact.

I can decide to be an Atheist simply because it agrees with my values and facts that I choose to adhere to. It isn't just an absence of belief, that's superficial.

My point is this; Atheism is a belief and value system because the person chooses to not to believe in a "Deity" and associates their values with that.
Calling Atheism not a belief system or a lack of belief is a statement that does not hold water. It is a belief system, the belief system of not believing is the belief system. It ties along with your values of non-belief. And those values that you cherish, along with non-belief is the foundation for your belief system and value system.


You can choose not to decide, but you still have made a choice




Best Regards,

Jake

again a non sequiter,

if you wanted to ask him if he felt guilty then you should have done so, instead you said you wanted to investigate why, implying that he already felt guilty.

this is going nowhere, you seem to have misunderstood the very nature of many of the conepts relevant to this debate and that coupled with the lack of listening immediately removes any motivation for anyone to respond or engage with you, out of sheer futility.

again there is plenty of points that you quite simply have refused to even acknowledge and instead responded with logical loops or non sequiters.

as for your last post,

yes strong atheism is a value, but only one, there doesnt need to be any other common denominators.
people can have thousands of values and it often isnt a clear cut case either, the human brain does not function on a strict binary pattern.

Last edited by Oodain on 04 Dec 2012, 4:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Not true Actually they do, they determine, what/why/how people believe what they believe. Those values and "rules" determine many things on how life and matter actually operate because they set an objective standard. Otherwise, man would drift aimlessly through life in a deterministic, moral relativistic life.



Because every human has values you as a person base your decisions on those values. You decide what is factual and opinion based upon those values. That's the connection between value and fact.

I can decide to be an Atheist simply because it agrees with my values and facts that I choose to adhere to. It isn't just an absence of belief, that's superficial.

My point is this; Atheism is a belief and value system because the person chooses to not to believe in a "Deity" and associates their values with that.
Calling Atheism not a belief system or a lack of belief is a statement that does not hold water. It is a belief system, the belief system of not believing is the belief system. It ties along with your values of non-belief. And those values that you cherish, along with non-belief is the foundation for your belief system and value system.


You can choose not to decide, but you still have made a choice




Best Regards,

Jake

The values and rules determine how people interact with each other and interact with the enviroment. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how life and matter operate. The way living organisms operate and evolved (all living organisms, not just people), the physical laws that govern the universe. Human values have no effect on these things. The values and rules aren't objective. They are just methods people have devised in order to get along with each other. But I'm talking about the actual facts about such things as gravity, how organisms live in their enviroments and how they evolve, what else there is in the universe besides earth and so on. None of those subjects have anything to do with humans or human values and religion is useless for figuring out anything about them. All atheism is is relying on science, rather than religion, as a way of figuring out how these things all work together.

Human values have nothing at all to do with figuring out what is beyond our solar system and how life evolved. Human values and religion can't explain why the earth goes around the sun instead of vice versa. Talking about God doesn't help anyone solve that problem. (I know that particular puzzle got solved long ago. I'm just using it as an example.) Atheism isn't a belief system. It's just acknowledging that talking about the existence or non-existence of God is irrelevent when you are trying to figure out how the universe and life actually works.

Last edited by Janissy on 04 Dec 2012, 6:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Or maybe your choosing not to agree with me because it doesn't agree with your values?


I can decide to be an Atheist simply because it agrees with my values and facts that I choose to adhere to. It isn't just an absence of belief, that's superficial.

My point is this; Atheism is a belief and value system because the person chooses to not to believe in a "Deity" and associates their values with that.
Calling Atheism not a belief system or a lack of belief is a statement that does not hold water. It is a belief system, the belief system of not believing is the belief system. It ties along with your values of non-belief. And those values that you cherish, along with non-belief is the foundation for your belief system and value system.


You can choose not to decide, but you still have made a choice




Best Regards,

Jake[/quote]

Not true Actually they do, they determine, what/why/how people believe what they believe. Those values and "rules" determine many things on how life and matter actually operate because they set an objective standard. Otherwise, man would drift aimlessly through life in a deterministic, moral relativistic life.



Because every human has values you as a person base your decisions on those values. You decide what is factual and opinion based upon those values. That's the connection between value and fact.



Or maybe your choosing not to agree with me because it doesn't agree with your values?


I can decide to be an Atheist simply because it agrees with my values and facts that I choose to adhere to. It isn't just an absence of belief, that's superficial.

My point is this; Atheism is a belief and value system because the person chooses to not to believe in a "Deity" and associates their values with that.
Calling Atheism not a belief system or a lack of belief is a statement that does not hold water. It is a belief system, the belief system of not believing is the belief system. It ties along with your values of non-belief. And those values that you cherish, along with non-belief is the foundation for your belief system and value system.


You can choose not to decide, but you still have made a choice




Best Regards,

Jake

it is not that i dont agree, it is that in many of those arguments there is nothing to agree to, it isnt even internally consistent.
which is what people are saying to you, logic is not a value and value has no impact on logic, so when the logic fails people can per defintion tell you are wrong, that is a fallacy.


on a completely different note; what happened with the extra posts?

I don't think people use their value systems to differentiate opinion from fact. I say this because people with markedly different value systems will agree on facts if they have the same incoming data. What they will disagree on is how to interpret those facts. Science is about trying to figure out what exactly the facts are. This is completely independent of values. A accurate list of the components of an atom is a fact. Deciding whether or not to build and use an atomic bomb once you have that knowledge is a value. Facts are independent of values.

I was explaining more than arguing.


Best Regards,

Jake

When you decide your next phrase or statement, you will use your values as a reference.
If I say "The sky is red" I'm forcing my fact to force your hand, either you speak up and say that that statement is clearly wrong and use your values as a reference or I hold my case that, yes. People do use values to differentiate opinion. What's the alternative? Do they just pick a topic they agree with and stick with it?

Best Regards,

Jake

Uh... what? I'm sorry, but laughing at someone who is stupid, ignorant, or insane enough to say "the sky is red" and then correcting them is not a matter of values, beyond basic humour at any rate.

(I changed the quote from GGPViper to Janissy because it was actually me you were quoting. Embeddded quotes can get discombobulated.)

If you say the sky is red and I disagree and say that it is blue, we are disagreeing because we are not getting the same data incoming into our eyes (perhaps one of us is color blind- that changes the perception). But the objectivity of facts resides in how they can be measured. Light has a measurable wavelength. Our disagreement can be settled by objectively measuring the wavelength of the color. Neither of us is using values to determine the color of the sky. We're using data coming into our eyes to gauge the wavelength. If our eyes are sufficiently different from each other, we can use an instrument to measure the wavelength rather than relying on our eyes.

Facts rely on objective measurements, not on value systems. When two people disagree on a fact because their perceptual systems are different and therefore they are getting different sensory data (as in your example), an instrument can be used to take the measurement.

you dont sem to understand what i am saying,

there was nothing to explain either,

Get mad, write down some derogatory words and give yourself satisfaction that you've "won"
All in all this is just a forum.

Best Regards,

Jake