Do Internet Atheists Have Anything New To Say?

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I find your reply most curious. "Complete trust in someone or something" fully implies that no validation is required or demanded because validation is in itself an act of mistrust. The solidity of science is entirely based on mistrust and validation. That science can be found to be wrong is a triumph of science for then correctness can be sought. Religion does not approve mistrust and, throughout its history and into the present, rewarded mistrust with severe punishment. This is crucial in distinguishing the methods of the two.

A trust is not blind, Sand - it can be, but need not be. My trust tends to necessitate being earned over being blindly given. Again, you appear to be saddling my words with additional meanings that neither I or the definition point to. Science is rooted firmly in the faith that empirical evidence is the route to finding answers. Religion is built on mistrust as well; or are the various factions and sects the result of fancy? We disagree in our root observations; I do not think we are going to find common ground here.

Fuzzy: That's not too far off, actually. Where religion tends to seek to be the answer, science seeks answers. However, I've known those fixed in science who were as unrelenting and intolerant as those whose faith has been challenged... I think it has more to do with the person than the belief.


M.

Nobody's disputing the reasonableness of believing in science.


Sorry, the thread was busy, so I was starting at the end of the thread and working backwards.

I'm not really sure why you asked what truth is, so my answer may miss the point -- truth is the set of all statements that correctly represent reality.


Let's call your statement "statement A". Statement A states that any statement must be verified in order to be true. Statement A is a statement. If statement A cannot be verified, then by statement A, statement A is false.


I agree. But in order to say that, you have to believe in logic. And you have to believe it on faith, since any proof of logic would be logical and therefore circular and therefore invalid according to logic.


They do produce perceptible results. Religious morals affect the behavior of many millions of people. Why do you need a non-philosophical use for them?

Science and religion aren't the same thing. They ask and answer completely different questions in completely different ways.

But in the context of the comparison of science and religion, religious trust must be blind as there are no reliable witnesses alive today to the many miracles cited in religion and there is no way of testing the phenomena. Religion is brimming with descriptions of how things came to be and a very large number are in direct conflict with the way natural phenomena today can be tested. Religion makes no pretext of earning trust, it demands it absolutely and through the ages when people questioned it they were most frequently severely punished. When Einstein questioned Newton he was not punished, he was tested in many ways and proven correct. And I am reasonably sure that Newton would have been delighted to discover how he had been wrong and what the corrections were. If the leaders of any religious sect are questioned the response is violence. Witness the conflicts in Iraq between the two Muslim sects. When science is proven wrong, that is a triumph of science because then new and fascinating facets of nature are revealed.
There seems to be a confusion in this discussion between faith and assumption. When I go to bed at night I assume in the morning I will not wake up as a giant cockroach, that the Sun will rise for the next day, that my nose will not be upside down and that I will not be on Mars. This is not faith, is is an assumption and there is a remote possibility that the Earth will stop spinning and I will remain on the dark side but I confidently discount that as a very small possibility. The others also seem relatively of negligible possibility.Religious people never assume the possibility of the non-existence of God. That is faith. And they can build upon that faith all the total nonsense of Heaven and Hell and the morality dependent upon that faith.

Agree that there is a problem in definition, but I am not conceding that yours is right. I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow; whether or not it does is something entirely different. You presume that a historical figure would be delighted that he was proven wrong - how the world is that any different than the supposition of people of a religious persuasion? My apologies, but I'm discarding that argument as being simply unusable. Let's see... science has contributed to many social and environmental ills in the world today; being shown that the technology is damaging hasn't changed things substantially or made people happy to hear that their assumptions of safety were wrong. And again, another presumption - that religious people do not question their faith or the existence of god, as well as the presumption of a Western religious code. These filters through which we are conversing do not serve this discussion well.


M.

I have tried to indicate that there is a difference between a presumption and faith. I presumed that Newton would be delighted to discover his errors because it is reasonable that he was a man concerned with discovering the laws of nature and where facets of those laws have been revealed that he was not aware of it is not unreasonable to assume he would be happy to discover them. I cannot see that as a gross misapprehension. I am also well aware that religious people do question dogmas that disagree with each other but almost never to the point of discarding belief in God. When that does rarely occur they then are no longer faithful.
I must disagree with you about the nature of our discussion. It seems to me not to digress from points worth considering.

I am fully aware that technological advances have been a very mixed bag and that enthusiasm, for instance, for the use of fossil fuels has done great damage to the environment but science has also clearly shown us that our behaviors have been dangerous and we should change our ways and how to change them. I do not think humanity would have been better off subject to the plagues of the middle ages due to poor sanitation and misunderstanding of disease. Knowledge is never bad. It is the poor application of it that has caused all the problems.

What a bunch of bullsh*t! There are PLENTY of other explanations for religious morals other than them coming from a supernatural being. Also, WHAT makes you so sure that God wishes to remain undetectable? Has he told you this?
You claim that if we try to come up with an experiment to verify his existence that he will interfere with in order to keep his existence non-falsifiable. Im sorry but that is clearly a proposed explanation for results of which there is a much simpler explanation. I mean, surely God has the power to take control of our senses and reveal his presence to us does he not?
What if I told you that I have an invisible purple dragon that lives in my house and if you try to do something to see that something is actually there he will disappear into another dimension...would you believe me? SHOW me God! If you cannot show him to me through my senses than show him to me through my mind. One of the biggest reasons I dont believe in God is having NO personal contact with God(externally OR internally). These rhetorical tricks and flowery words STILL leave me unconvinced.



You're using circular reasoning there buddy. If "statement A" is false than I can make a statement and its automatically true even without verification. I can make statements that are INCONSISTENT and they are assumed to be true.
If truth is a set of statements that correctly represent reality, HOW can you know if Statement A correctly represents reality without verifying it??? If I make a statement that the Earth is a flat plate on the back of a giant cosmic tortoise is that automatically a VALID statement? If you made that statement I would insist that you show me in person where the edge of the Earth is so that I could VERIFY that such a statement is valid.You're treating statements as though they are axioms, and many axioms are NOT consistent with one another. Many people claim to speak on Gods behalf, yet I have NEVER, EVER heard God himself speak up and say that those people are accurately presenting Gods word.

I see the "internet atheists" have come in and made the offensive thread started by an "internet christian" very intellectual. I'll be the one to say the OP needs to rethink their thread titles to not attempt an insult at those they're asking a question of. The title "internet atheist" is obviously an attempt to make our hobby (intellectual discussion) seem petty.

With that said, I'll offer some quotes from "IRL atheists" since I am a simple creature of the interwebs.

"I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion, I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case." - Christopher Hitchens

"Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s?" - Nietzsche

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." - Nietzsche

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Gandhi

"Shake off all fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

"If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor." - Voltaire

"Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires." - Freud

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Edward Gibbon

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." Isaac Asimov

But it seems we are the only ones that would miss technology. I have a feeling neither we nor our technology would be missed if to disappear. Do you think the dogs might miss us just a little?

It is not our job to provide evidence, that is your job.

And we use the same arguments against your [removed - M.] argumentation that is the same. You use the BIBLE (a work of fiction that is just as much scientific proof of god as a the yellowpages are) to "prove" that god exists. You use non-science or pseudo-science to prove the same thing [removed - M.]

A most interesting read: http://www.godvsthebible.com/book
And the author's YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/DeistPaladin

I think the standard, run of the mill, general argument coming from atheistic thought still holds true: postulating God’s existence provides little to no explanatory power and unnecessarily complicates our current conceptual scheme (if you have a highly particular version of god, you have to rectify problems pertaining to that God’s existence and various scientific concepts/discoveries). Even believing in a minimalistic, deistic god further complicates matters as God’s own origin must be established or the concept of a “self-causing” agent must be clarified. This still leaves his causal operations vastly unexplained. Therefore, following the principle of parsimony, it is best to not postulate its existence.

The argument is unoriginal or old. But it still holds.

Well, Ancalagon is right, there are perceptible effects of religious beliefs, as the morals do impact people. There aren't usually other explanations given for religious morals other than religion, simply because the morals are religious. I think what likely happened here was a miscommunication, as Ancalagon likely gave an answer that was not meant to be a prediction so much as an alteration caused by religion.

Also, technically, to hold a belief, Ancalagon does not have to persuade every person who disagrees with it. In any case, I do not think anyone has really used too many apologetic arguments, and given that I do not seek to argue the case at this moment, I do not have to argue that religion does have arguments that attempt to persuade that one is more reasonable than the other.

Well, Ancalagon's argument is still valid. Even though you cannot imagine another way to figure out what is true without verification, Ancalagon's argument against verificationism leading to an insoluble circle is still a valid argument against verificationism being true. In any case, Ancalagon does not have to defend verificationism if the goal is to argue in favor of religion, as all that must be done is that the belief can be shown to have warrant, and the belief must avoid out and out falsification. For religions, this can be pretty easy to do. Now, Ancalagon might not have a perfect ability to know that a certain belief is true, but given the warrant, there is justification in believing it does, for Ancalagon can go with a quote William James:

"The philosopher’s logical tranquillity is thus in essence no other than the boor’s. They differ only as to the point at which each refuses to let further considerations upset the absoluteness of the data he assumes."

And thus deny that things can truly be verified while maintaining that things can be accepted as true. The turtle does not have to be taken as true if verificationism does not exist, all that changes is verificationism is an invalid philosophy. You can claim that the turtle is the foundation and such, and the claim would then get into warranted belief and falsification, but not much else.

There is an unspoken assumption that morality would be quite different without religion and although that might be true I see no way to determine it. The viciousness and uncivil behavior of humanity seems quite equally distributed over cultures whatever their religious beliefs.

"I think all people ought to be offended, at least in their deepest integrity, by the religious proposition that without a supernatural, celestial dictatorship, we wouldn't know right from wrong." - Christopher Hitchens

I'm certainly offended.