Hardly. This is a perfectly reasonable, non-emotional philosophical debate. I'm not going to start a flame war or anything.
Vamos wrote:I think the more important side of things is what your beliefs are based on mine are based on logic reason and probability with a willing to change should and when more evidence arrives the same cant be said for religious beliefs though.
I think you may be confusing Dogma with religious beliefs. Dogma is an enshrined, constant and very difficult to change, set of religious beliefs. If a person's beliefs are dogmatic, then yes, you are correct. But what if you're not? The religious beliefs of an agnostic are subject to change based on the information the receive and choose to believe.
BareknuckleRoo wrote:
njiska wrote:If you choose not to believe in gods, you still have beliefs.
Atheism does not necessarily require a conscious 'choice' not to believe. A person who has never heard of deities nor any concept of religions or gods would technically be an atheist by default.
Via a lack of options, you are correct. The point that I was trying to make wasn't really that being an Atheist is a required conscious choice, just that even if you don't believe in Gods you still have some form of beliefs. Not believing is a belief.
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MX7 wrote:I'm not a fan of a racist, gun nut brony puking his odious and uninformed arguments over every thread that comes up.
If an 'opinion' about the existence of something you're claiming to be true is not supported by credible evidence (and I don't mean a taste preference like what kind of ice cream you prefer), then it is merely faith/belief, and not equivalent to an informed opinion backed up with relevant data. You might as well be saying that creationism is an equally valid 'opinion' as evolution is for an explanation to the diversity of life on the planet. At this point, I agree that there is nothing further to be gained from this discussion.
"Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists."
So, I'd say it is not much a religion per se, since atheism is either about having an empty set of beliefs about deities (standard version of atheism); or harass people also to have an empty set of beliefs about deities, except a curious belief in Natural Selection being THE explanation for everything, perhaps even the sheer tediousness of Cricket and Soccer (Dawkins-style of atheism).
Of course, if one considers the empty set of beliefs about deities as an element of the (super-)set of beliefs about deities, then Atheism is a peculiar type of religion. It strikes me more as an argument about Set Theory than Religion.
I am atheist, but I firmly believe in Petra Verkaik, even if she's like 40+ or something.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
Randorama wrote:Of course, if one considers the empty set of beliefs about deities as an element of the (super-)set of beliefs about deities, then Atheism is a peculiar type of religion. It strikes me more as an argument about Set Theory than Religion.
Well said. That's kind of what I was getting at with my original post on the matter:
njiska wrote:Though it is a very broadly defined collection of beliefs and is less of a religion in the traditional sense and more a super set of religions alongside mono- and polytheism.
Also Dawkins is a douche. An interesting person at times, but mainly just a douche.
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MX7 wrote:I'm not a fan of a racist, gun nut brony puking his odious and uninformed arguments over every thread that comes up.
that was always Hitchens' department, and the people he was douchey towards tended to deserve it anyways
Being douche-y to people who deserve it, doesn't mean you're not still a giant douche. I have major issues with the smug and preachy way that both Dawkins and Hitchens conduct/conducted themselves with relatively normal people who had differing opinions. I'm not saying both haven't done a lot of good and called out the right people, but both tend to take things a little beyond what is needed.
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MX7 wrote:I'm not a fan of a racist, gun nut brony puking his odious and uninformed arguments over every thread that comes up.
Nijska: yes, I tried to make more explicit the point you were making, I think.
Just for fun, I'll ramble a bit on what seems to be the discussion on Atheism about.
A certain view on religion can be reduced to what attributes we associate with one or more deities, even if we don't have proof about their existence whatsoever. What we BELIEVE about deities is what defines a religion (or lack thereof).
If we talk Set Theory, then Atheism can be a sub-set of all forms and beliefs about deities.
The empty set of beliefs about deities can be part of any set of beliefs about deities, since technically the empty set is part of any set.
The intuition is that a set of beliefs is a set of "attributes" a person believes about some deities.
Say, we have the toy model of religions (capital letters are sets/religions, normal letters attributes):
M(odel):= J(udaism)={0,a,b,c}, C(thulhuism)={0,n,a,s}, A(theism)={0}, etc.
Since the attribute "0" defines the Atheism set and it is in each other set, then in our toy model Atheism is a "religion", a set of beliefs about deities.
In simple words, someone who believes in some deity also believes that this deity may have no defining attributes. So, said deity turns out to be some kind of "empty" entity.
Atheism, standardly defined, does something more than just believing in "the empty" deity. It requires that beliefs must also be justified and true, i.e. they must be Knowledge. It is something more than the empty set of beliefs about deities.
In simple English, it requires that we must be able to prove that entities with certain attributes must turn out to be real. The model above must represent something in the world, that we can offer an empirical proof about. No proof, no party.
Now, given standard definitions about attributes of deities, hence of religions as sets of beliefs, the burden of proof for any Religion seems not trivial.
So, an atheist would say more or less the following thing.
"Since we atheists can ultimately offer an empirical proof only about the "empty deity", i.e. about an entity that has none of the supposed properties about deities, we can only have an empty set of beliefs about deities. What we know about the non-divine world offers indirect evidence against any "non-empty deity".
So, as atheists we do not just entertain beliefs about deities, even empty ones. We test them, and we claim that only the empty ones are true.
Believers, on the other hand, do not do bother to test their beliefs and turn them into knowledge. So, we do something more than believers, hence we can only accept the negation of beliefs about deities".
So, while at a level of Belief Atheism is not that a different thing from other "Religions", at a level of Knowledge it is very different thing: it seems a position that does not clash with, like the rest of Knowledge about the world we have.
All in all, the bottom line is that Atheism, standardly defined, does some extra yards with respect to Religions, so it really seems to be something a bit different than Religion, although it starts from a common origin, to an extent.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
Mortificator wrote:You're assuming an objective reality exists.
I don't. I don't assume anything about reality, let alone an objective one, and not a videogame forum.
What evidence do you have that's the case?
...The world is the totality of facts, not of things (Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge, also translated as "the world is everything which is the case", Wittgenstein's Tractatus).
Moniker: pure skepticism could be seen as a form of solipsism. there are several positions which can be way more "extreme" than solipsism, although we could argue that they're not exactly the mark of healthy minds. My favourite is Coutard's syndrome, for instance.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
njiska wrote:I think you may be confusing Dogma with religious beliefs. Dogma is an enshrined, constant and very difficult to change, set of religious beliefs. If a person's beliefs are dogmatic, then yes, you are correct. But what if you're not? The religious beliefs of an agnostic are subject to change based on the information the receive and choose to believe.
It's quite possible to be a dogmatic agnostic - the belief that it's impossible to know whether or not there is a god is an agnostic position and is certainly dogmatic.
Further, you seem to be misusing the word 'atheism'. It can mean the belief that there is no god, but it can also mean that you simply don't believe in god (ie. that you aren't convinced there is a god). It's quite possible to be both an agnostic and an atheist - they're not mutually exclusive at all. I really don't think you're equipped for this discussion. Go read wikipedia, the entry on atheism is straightforward enough (in that it's clear that it's not straightforward).
njiska wrote:I think you may be confusing Dogma with religious beliefs. Dogma is an enshrined, constant and very difficult to change, set of religious beliefs. If a person's beliefs are dogmatic, then yes, you are correct. But what if you're not? The religious beliefs of an agnostic are subject to change based on the information the receive and choose to believe.
It's quite possible to be a dogmatic agnostic - the belief that it's impossible to know whether or not there is a god is an agnostic position and is certainly dogmatic.
Further, you seem to be misusing the word 'atheism'. It can mean the belief that there is no god, but it can also mean that you simply don't believe in god (ie. that you aren't convinced there is a god). It's quite possible to be both an agnostic and an atheist - they're not mutually exclusive at all. I really don't think you're equipped for this discussion. Go read wikipedia, the entry on atheism is straightforward enough (in that it's clear that it's not straightforward).
Are you honestly try to attack a debaters knowledge rather than their argument? Was that snip about being equipped for this discussion really necessary?
I do know full well the meaning of the words involved (from actual study, not wikipedia) and I don't seem to recall ever making the claim that Atheism and being agnostic were mutually exclusive. In fact i've been arguing exactly opposite. That Atheism is a super-set of religious theory, though still a valid option for the above poll. I've also been arguing that a belief in no god is still a religious belief. Which is where the quote you took comes from. There I was trying to counter Vamos assertion that religious beliefs need to be stiff and unyielding, i.e. Dogmatic. I used an agnostic as an example because agnostics are generally far less held to enshrined beliefs and more inline with Vamos stance. Though they certainly can be dogmatic.
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MX7 wrote:I'm not a fan of a racist, gun nut brony puking his odious and uninformed arguments over every thread that comes up.
Why is it called the Vic Viper/Warp Rattler? Because the Options trail behind it in a serpent-like fashion, and the iconic front fins are designed to invoke the image of a snake's fangs.
Moniker wrote:Anyone who isn't a pure skeptic accepts some things on faith. And I hold that it's psychologically impossible to be a pure skeptic.
Yes, religious thought processes are still used by people who don't participate in an organized religion. Like here...
Randorama wrote:...The world is the totality of facts, not of things (Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge, also translated as "the world is everything which is the case", Wittgenstein's Tractatus).
... where a quote from an old book is used as evidence for the nature of reality.
RegalSin wrote:You can't even drive across the country Naked anymore
Randorama's quote reminds me strongly of the Copenhagen theory view of knowledge (which, although it was built for quantum mechanics, has obvious implications for everything else related to science and epistemology). It brings some useful ideas to the discussion, but it ought to be a humble doctrine when used correctly - even though Copenhagen theorists like to say "indeterminacy" rather than "uncertainty," they cannot make that jump from skepticism about knowledge to being able to prove a negative (i.e., there is no objective reality). Interviews from The Ghost in the Atom reflect this - the CT physicists there were generally not willing to say anything about the possibility of objective reality other than "I don't know what that is" or "all we have is a description of events..." Incidentally, I think just a little bit of knowledge about quantum mechanics will get you to this point - no Wittgenstein required (although I don't mean to put him down, he was quite remarkable).
Mortificator wrote:
... where a quote from an old book is used as evidence for the nature of reality.
No, it's an assertation about what can be the case, hence the other possible translation usually used.
Assertions can be right and wrong, and all that jazz, insofar as they are part of a model. A model might turn out to correctly represent some aspect of reality, perhaps (should I hedge some more comments, though...?). Whatever they are right or wrong, they are still part of the world, hence the case. As per proposition 1 of the Tractatus which is still fresh and actual, or your money back!
But please be convinced of whatever you want to be convinced, regarding my posts.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
