Oh yeah, I totally get that.
Religion, what's the point?
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Oh yeah, I totally get that.
It came hot on the heels on my comment trying to lay out the ways religious people tend to make sense of evolution coupled with their faith, so I’m just curious: was my post one of those you were directing it at? Because I really don’t think I said anything disrespectful.
My objection is that your generalisation about atheists, which is clearly not a homogenous group of people, is silly. And it is. It is also very US-centric but that's not so important.
The fact that this thread is prone to immature and simplistic mocking of the religious doesn't in anyway support your statement.
I do not, and never have, believed in any sort of god. I am, by any reasonable and non pedantic definition, atheist. I have no similarity to the MAGA crowd and your irritation with people on this thread doesn't justify your sweeping statement.
You asked a pretty leading question to which the answer is rather obvious resulting in the inevitable simplistic jeering. Not your fault, but inevitable outcome.
Clearly, not all who are religious are creationists.
Faith makes absolutely no sense to me but, as always with this topic, it turns to shit very quickly. Hence why I tend to just avoid discussing the matter. Faith is a debate blocker and on such an emotive subject almost always ends in tears.
What question?
I just answered someone’s question about how religious people square evolution with their faith.Yeah. Apologies. Confused you with the asker of the question you responded to. Really should stop trying to multitask.What question?
My post was sweeping and generalized, and unfair, even if I had contextualized it as I had meant to. I am going to bow out of the thread as I don’t think I’m in a good frame of mind for this type of discussion right now.
Atheists are definitely the problem, not religion. Look at all the bad things atheists are doing in the world, I've no idea why they're so jaded.
No no, your post was actually a great comparison, you just got it the wrong way around.
The MAGA movement is known to believe in things that sound and can often be found to be completely outlandish, just like...
Those groups are bad all over, atheist arguments in those kinds of spaces are 99 % garbage. Online atheism is in dire straits.
Absolutely, but I’ve seen a lot more disrespectful and dismissive comments directed at atheists from Christians than the other way around, without anything negative from the other side to prompt it. Religious people are still the majority in the world, they have their certainties (usually) drummed into them from a young age, and often don’t even know how insulting they are being. I wouldn’t say both sides are the same, because arriving at atheism takes some examination of self and prior held beliefs. That’s not to say there aren’t ignorant assholes on the atheist side.
I think that probably varies from place to place, depending on demographics and other factors. You mentioned Facebook, and while I've never looked at those kinds of groups on there I can absolutely see you being right based on my preconceptions of Facebook users. If you go on Reddit, like r/DebateAnAtheist or r/DebateReligion, I think atheists generally come off worse.
And I don't really agree that being an atheist necessarily requires any examination. In online atheist spaces it's often pretty popular to use the homebrewed definition of agnostic atheism, that this is just absence of belief, and that therefore the "burden of proof" is on the theists and the atheists don't have to argue for their position. In the worst examples of this the result is that a theist presents their reasons or arguments for why God exists, the atheist goes "nope", the theist asks why they disagree, and the atheist replies that the burden of proof is on the theist so they don't have to say.
#NotAllAtheists, of course, but it happens a lot.
Which one? There's plenty to choose from and they're all 100% right somehow so good luck.
The smighty one, with the horns and lightning.
I'm a Christian but don't think you need to follow everything to the letter. I just believe in God and believe in trying your best to be a good person.
Sometimes i wonder if some people in this thread has only ever met the worst of religious folk rather than the best. Half my family are exemplary christians. They have build a hospital in Uganda using their own funds and have of course worked there themselves since they are doctors and nurses. Im not Christian, but from my life long experience with them i havnt met kinder people. Im not Christian, but i have admiration for the positive ethics it inspires in some people. By contrast my brother in law is a doctor and hardcore atheist but he's really a bit of dick. Of course this is tiny sample size, im just talking from my personal life experience
Spirituality v. religion.
If god exists, he also created homosexuality, so there's that...
I suppose they'll just say that's the devil's work!
Though olif God is omnipotent, why doesnt he just feck Satan off. Oh right, because our lord made life a sort of weird exam for us to pass only if we sufficiently dedicate our entire life to how amazing he is. Insecure much??
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"To test your faith" or some other gobshite
If god exists, he also created evil, so there's that...
Religion is just lies, and lies create inconsistencies that are impossible to reconcile. That's why the emphasis is always in "faith", meaning "blind faith without any proof", because you never hear god himself, you have to trust others that claim they heard god.
How do religions know about god? You have to trust that some guys (it's usually guys) heard god's voice and that voice told them the truth. Any believer today basically has blind faith in the guy that claimed he "heard god" sometime in the past. It is as simple as that. In reality, nobody has faith in god, they never heard god, they have no idea what god wants, they never communicated with god, and god never wrote anything himself... The believers only have blind faith in some guys (who claim they heard god).
That's harsh. Atheists have a thesis and are quite intelligent, unlike MAGAts. I'd say atheists are zealous, like militant vegans.
I waste far too much of my time listening to all kinds of debates and conversations between theists and atheists and I've not once come across what you're describing here. Atheists can give some proper dick replies to theists trying to prove their god but I've never seen anyone hide behind the burden of proof in a way to get out of explaining why they don't agree with something.
The burden of proof is on the theists though, I don't know why you put it in quotes, and atheists don't have to argue for their position because their position is that they are simply not convinced that there is a god. Not believing is the default position for anything that has not been proven to be true, and until it has the only justification the non-believers need is the fact that it's not been proven.
I put it in quotes because it's not really a thing, at least not in the way it's often used. In a discussion, everyone should have a reason for their position, if not it's not a discussion at all. If, for instance, the theist presents an ontological argument as justification for their belief in the existence of God, then the atheist should explain why the argument doesn't hold. Does the conclusion not follow from the premises, meaning that the argument isn't valid? Is it valid, but one or more of the presises are false, meaning that the argument is unsound? If so, why? Then, if things are to carry on, then it's back to the theist, where they should explain why the atheist's objections are wrong, and so on.
If one of the parties just go "nuh-uh", then there's no discussion at all, and proclaiming that the other party has the burden of proof doesn't change that. It's perfectly fine to say that you shouldn't believe things until you have a good reason to, it is in fact very reasonable, but you still have to to justify why those reasons don't exist if you want to be taken seriously.
Say that I believe that the tooth fairy exists, and you don't. My reason for believing is the following:
P1: All men are mortal.
P2: Socrates is a man.
C: Therefore, the tooth fairy exist.
Even if you think that disbelief is the deafult position, it doesn't make any sense for you to just say that I can't prove that the tooth fairy exists and that the burden of proof is on me, because I just attempted to prove it! In this case it's super easy for you to explain why the argument is invalid, but you still have to actually do it.
In people's own personal lives as well, outside of any discussion or debates with other people, if they are interested in believing true things then it shouldn't be very controversial to say that they should examine those beliefs.
It's absolutely insane what Christianity turned into, given the source material. There's a lot of fecked up shit in the bible too, but at the very least it began as a religion of compassion and forgiveness. Not that this change is a new thing, mind, it basically happened as soon as Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire and never looked back.
Did it? Didn't god drown the planet for using free will wrong?
Maybe I misunderstood your previous post then because I agree to all of that, except that the burden of proof is very much a thing.
I think I may have addressed that before the "but", but unfortunately there's no way to be sure since you removed it.
You know Kant's noumenal is proven, right? What else do you need beyond that?
I mean, you don't have to agree on religion, but the necessity of God, as existing/necessary, is now fact. Truth. As to how you define God, religiously, you contravene your own belief systems if you decide to use "I told you I was right" as the response to God necessarily (Common God) exists. The point is not to use it as self-capital. It is a fact about the universe and beyond - ontological - which belongs to everyone.
I mean, you don't have to agree on religion, but the necessity of God, as existing/necessary, is now fact. Truth. As to how you define God, religiously, you contravene your own belief systems if you decide to use "I told you I was right" as the response to God necessarily (Common God) exists. The point is not to use it as self-capital. It is a fact about the universe and beyond - ontological - which belongs to everyone.
Consider.
Salt-Snail-Poison
Salt-Human-Savoury
Salt-Human-Poison
What is salt? In itself? When it necessarily cannot be savoury or poison? Both? Yes, but relative to? The subject.
Thus, Quality-Subject-Quality.
QSQ
Q to S? = Q or Value, but not the value as it is in itself which is V(X). X always beyond (noumenal). And that holds for all logic, physics, and metaphysics (being metaphysical, it comes first, thus all the other epistemological dominos must take note of it).
The "thing in itself" is that which proves the noumena's existence necessarily. Now, the noumenal goes back to the Greeks. Why make it a poly-mono (for metaphysically it is necessarily common and necessarily true/good).
Salt-Snail-Poison
Salt-Human-Savoury
Salt-Human-Poison
What is salt? In itself? When it necessarily cannot be savoury or poison? Both? Yes, but relative to? The subject.
Thus, Quality-Subject-Quality.
QSQ
Q to S? = Q or Value, but not the value as it is in itself which is V(X). X always beyond (noumenal). And that holds for all logic, physics, and metaphysics (being metaphysical, it comes first, thus all the other epistemological dominos must take note of it).
The "thing in itself" is that which proves the noumena's existence necessarily. Now, the noumenal goes back to the Greeks. Why make it a poly-mono (for metaphysically it is necessarily common and necessarily true/good).
Now, Jesus tells you - religion is terrible. Not the enitre thing nor the practice when true, but organized religion which forgets the principle of life over law. Which is? All organized religion as it has become. The Romanic usurpation of the Catholic Church as the Catholic Church (instead of iconoclastic Judaistic grouping of truth/reason/faith).
Be not as the pharisees (or scribes) if you wish to enter the kingdom of heaven.
What do you think that means? "There is one greater here than the Sabbath [law]". He means "Life". He means life over law. The absentia of totalizing/positivist doctrines which rule absolute tyrants like Stalin or Hitler or Mao or whomever you like out of the equation forever. Now proven via V(X) which Marxists, as positivist dialecticalists, must understand.
Religion is not God. Broken and Holy halleljuahs. God's will (the will of truth and go(o)d). Be good to each other.
Uphold the first commandment - which even atheists, sometimes taking moral highgrounds against religion, but not God, as it goes - understand to be true: thou shalt not kill. = ? Peace.
From whence comes the idea of dying for truth and peace but not killing for it? The Old and New testaments. Consistently. Thus? religion - as Jesus in revelation says: "I have a few things against thee" - generous. You build monuments to prophets your own fathers have killed - make idols of the prophets who tell you not to do it (then done to Jesus).
Be not as the pharisees (or scribes) if you wish to enter the kingdom of heaven.
What do you think that means? "There is one greater here than the Sabbath [law]". He means "Life". He means life over law. The absentia of totalizing/positivist doctrines which rule absolute tyrants like Stalin or Hitler or Mao or whomever you like out of the equation forever. Now proven via V(X) which Marxists, as positivist dialecticalists, must understand.
Religion is not God. Broken and Holy halleljuahs. God's will (the will of truth and go(o)d). Be good to each other.
Uphold the first commandment - which even atheists, sometimes taking moral highgrounds against religion, but not God, as it goes - understand to be true: thou shalt not kill. = ? Peace.
From whence comes the idea of dying for truth and peace but not killing for it? The Old and New testaments. Consistently. Thus? religion - as Jesus in revelation says: "I have a few things against thee" - generous. You build monuments to prophets your own fathers have killed - make idols of the prophets who tell you not to do it (then done to Jesus).
Huh
Evolution and Religion. It's ridiculous. There is not this need to be at odds with each other. Learn from Augustine. A man of God and a logician. He understood it.
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Genesis tells you? In the beginning... there was what? A living spirit (God, as Jesus tells you) upon the water. Evolutionary science tells you what? That our common ancestor was a living? organism upon the water which dates about four billion years.
What else does Genesis say? That human civilization began in Ethiopia and moved through the Fertile Crescent. Where does E.S. put the same thing? The same place.
You want to beat religious people with science and scientists with religion? Look for the commonalities and stop treating each other, ourselves, as adversaries. More in heaven and earth than we know of - no reason to mock it. Esp. when nec. of Common God is now given. (logically).
The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) or universal most recent common ancestor (UMRCA) is the most recent population from which all organisms now living on Earth share common descent—the most recent common ancestor of all current life on Earth. This includes all cellular organisms; the origins of viruses are unclear but they share the same genetic code. LUCA probably harboured a variety of viruses. The LUCA is not the first life on Earth, but rather the latest form ancestral to all existing life.
While no specific fossil evidence of the LUCA exists, the detailed biochemical similarity of all current life confirms its existence. Its characteristics can be inferred from shared features of modern genomes. These genes describe a complex life form with many co-adapted features, including transcription and translation mechanisms to convert information from DNA to RNA to proteins. The LUCA probably lived in the high-temperature water of deep sea vents near ocean-floor magma flows around 4 billion years ago
Did the Hebrew scribes arrive at that by chance? Does tribal memory go back four billion years? Does it even extend 200k years to the origin?
---------------
Genesis tells you? In the beginning... there was what? A living spirit (God, as Jesus tells you) upon the water. Evolutionary science tells you what? That our common ancestor was a living? organism upon the water which dates about four billion years.
What else does Genesis say? That human civilization began in Ethiopia and moved through the Fertile Crescent. Where does E.S. put the same thing? The same place.
You want to beat religious people with science and scientists with religion? Look for the commonalities and stop treating each other, ourselves, as adversaries. More in heaven and earth than we know of - no reason to mock it. Esp. when nec. of Common God is now given. (logically).
The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) or universal most recent common ancestor (UMRCA) is the most recent population from which all organisms now living on Earth share common descent—the most recent common ancestor of all current life on Earth. This includes all cellular organisms; the origins of viruses are unclear but they share the same genetic code. LUCA probably harboured a variety of viruses. The LUCA is not the first life on Earth, but rather the latest form ancestral to all existing life.
While no specific fossil evidence of the LUCA exists, the detailed biochemical similarity of all current life confirms its existence. Its characteristics can be inferred from shared features of modern genomes. These genes describe a complex life form with many co-adapted features, including transcription and translation mechanisms to convert information from DNA to RNA to proteins. The LUCA probably lived in the high-temperature water of deep sea vents near ocean-floor magma flows around 4 billion years ago
Did the Hebrew scribes arrive at that by chance? Does tribal memory go back four billion years? Does it even extend 200k years to the origin?
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What is happening?
You understand the idea of the noumena? If you read about it, or already know it, then you understand that it refers to a permanence - the heavens, more or less. Kant's idea was rejected as Aristotlean - unchaging. No proof. But there is proof now. And the burden falls the other way.
it's a good question. put it all together - or refute it - and find out. the only way is to come up with a counter if you cannot agree, right? or to ignore it because you cannot counter or accept?
These past few posts would work well in the ‘discuss religion’ thread.