I tried to reconcile the idea that the church made up Jesus as a messiah, however, I could never find a motive for why. Christ didn't preach like a political messiah. He didn't tell his followers to revolt against their occupiers. The early church, meaning the 12 apostles, were so small and lived during a time of might is right, that advocating people follow a peace preaching enemy loving messiah who was crucified and who said His followers should expect the same treatment, seems like an odd selling tactic if you're trying to get already oppressed people to follow you.
My point is that religions don't focus on rationality, it isn't a main goal or focus of whatever doctrine is preached. Religions tend to focus of the aspect of morality, human suffering, and aspects of the divine. For atheism however, rationality is the main focus. Atheism centers and prides itself on everything around empirical evidence and what can be rationalized by the human mind... it doesn't focus on any other aspects of life. Hence atheists (not all) tend to criticize others who are not atheist as being irrational. Yet they often don't realize that their standard to judge what is deemed rational or irrational is often based in a belief system formulated by things they have been exposed to and taught by others without actually diving deep into the evidence. Whether your religious or not, we all have belief systems imbedded in us that we don't have any actually evidence for, the only difference is that the religious folks don't usually go around parading their extreme intelligence and rational thinking. Take this forum for example, all the atheists on here (except you) are bringing out arguments as if they are some sort of philosophers yet non of them, not one stated that their thinking might be wrong. But hey! that's just my opinion... I'm probably just pulling things out of my butt
Are you ignoring my above post? Sorry, but I'm not going to sympathize with a religion that says an infant is a sinner and not enough and needs to submit to the control system or it will go to hell for eternity. Christianity = low self esteem. Pure filth, filled with errors and contradictions. The bible can not be trusted or relied upon.
LOL, for real. This is why i don't waste time arguing with them. I don't believe in the tooth fairy, but you're not going to see me busting into some 6 year old girls room as her mom is putting a dollar under her pillow like, "It's all a fucking lie!". I don't have an issue with people disagreeing with me but I think it's straight up asinine for an athiest to insult my intelligence for believing in something that I have no material proof for while not even being able to live up to their own standard of proof. How you gonna demand scientific proof for my belief in the existence of God while being unable to provide scientific proof against the existence of God and have the nerve to act morally superior. That's fucking moronic.
What you say about atheism here is inaccurate, that it focuses only on the rational and not any other aspects of life. That is not always true, historically speaking. Look up the philosophies of existentialism or absurdism, with such atheistic thinkers as Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre. They are certainly concerned more with the non-rational aspects of life. And then there are also the religious existentialists, like Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, whom I would also recommend
The stupidity is with any athiest demanding measurable proof of an being who's very nature makes them immesurable. How could you ever quantify an angel/demon or a God? It would be like a pilot saying they won't believe in cars until they can fly. They look to natural science to provide them with evidence for something which is outside its abilities and then think that justifies their position, lol.
OK, I promised to get the fuck outta here but I have an idea for a play that I wanted to show you guys. I think it's Broadway material. Narrator: The 夜神月's God department was empty. There was just nothing there, no Zeus, no zxhbhbhzxb, nothing. We don't know who the fuck zxhbhbhzxb even is but he's not there. Enter @夜神月, @This Guy, @The Unfadeable TU: "Hey, I hear your God department is empty. Is that true?" 夜: "Yeah" TU: "Why?" 夜: "Well I'd say that putting anyone in there would require a strong reason and there doesn't appear to be any." TU: "I want to see some evidence of that." 夜: "Evidence of what?" TU: "That there's no strong reason. You know, a claim is a claim and you have to prove it" 夜: "Well, ehm, no scientist thinks that we need to have anybody in that department. It seems that the whole department is redundant" TG: "LOL scientists" Enter 6-year-old girl Girl: "I think Mommy's crazy. She talks about Tooth Fairy all day. But there's no Tooth Fairy" 夜: "You might be right. Does Mommy do drugs?" TU: "Respect her beliefs, you fucker. If she says Tooth Fairy is real, you better shut up and nod." TG: "I don't mean to interrupt but I think you should let my buddy Jesús lead your God department. Come in, man." Enter Jesus 夜: "I don't think so, man. I mean the scie-" TG: "There's this old book bro and the old Mexican prophecy and ..." TG goes on for another ten minutes. Jesus leaves in disgust. TG: "Hey, Jesús, come back!" Girl: "I think he got tired of your bullshit" zxhbhbhzxb: "YOU PATHETIC MORTALS I'M GETTING SICK OF YOU DIE MOTHERFUCKERS" Ensuing thunderstorm kills everybody
I never said wanting evidence is daft. I said looking toward science to provide you with measurable evidence of a spiritual being is daft becaus spiritual beings are immaterial and cannot be measured. SCIENCE CAN ONLY VERIFY WHAT IT CAN MEASURE! This means you would have to look for evidence that would point toward the necessity of a God, then you work toward Who is God, and so on and so forth.
I mostly agree with you. I'd like to add a few things. While rationality is important, it is just as important to see its limits. Rationality is always a means, never a cause. If you use rational decisionmaking to make "good" decisions instead of "bad" ones, you are already bringing in normative categories here, which are not derived from rational consideration at that point. For example, wanting humanity to survive, or wanting life continue to exist, is not rational. This cause, coming from a will, is irrational, which doesn't make it less valuable in normative categories. However, you can use rationality to secure it. Rationality probably stems from the experience humanity has made in the attempt to survive, especially thousands of years ago, when you still had to watch your step (although you needed your instinct for that, too, of course). I like to think that rationality can secure our survival short-term, while only instinct/intuition/empathy can secure it long-term. This is because rational thinking always requires abstraction. "Abstraction" comes from latin abstrahere, which can be translated as "to take away from": You always need to take away something from what actually is there to become able to handle it in your thinking. Abstraction always means fragmentation. Intuition, on the other hand, is holistic, it is required to actually see the whole picture. If you leave away some details (by overlooking them in the process of abstraction) this may not make a big effect for now, but these details might turn out to be important, which you thus have to expect. Imagine a complicated and chaotic mathematical curve. Take a little part out of it: It is relatively easy to find a function that is a good fit. But the function you found does not make any safe prediction about what lies far beyond that part, and the further you get, the les predictable the behavior of the curve becomes.
ahem... I think this should be in the back of every atheists mind. Fundamentally, claim for existence of God is an untestable claim, cant be proven nor disproven. Coincidentally, falsifiability is one of the basic requirements for any scientific theory. This is getting ridiculous, we need some jihad in this joint to sort things out. I agree with this. I like how old atheists and theist express their irrational beliefs. There is such peace, consideration and wisdom in their expression. Not always though...
Yup, there is the difference between faith and knowledge again. May be god is such that it is not possible to know that god exists, as in proving it via evidence or argumentation. That's why you have to "believe" it, not "know". May be god is such that trying to prove his existence would be a contradiction in itself. The bible contains an offering, not a philosophical discourse. You can believe or reject it. That's it. (I guess this sketch makes mainly fun of a specific kind of Atheists, may be of both Atheists and Christians. If it was only against Christians, it would be really pathetic.)
Used to be a Christian, now am agnostic. I have long been curious about people who say they “believe in science”. Because, who doesn’t? Science to me is: we named things in our reality and repeatedly tested things in our reality to find out what is constant 99% of the time. Yes, we’ve learned a substantial amount. But we can’t even conceive of all of the things we don’t know. And actually, though I don’t go to church, I’ve found a little bit of faith (in god) in studying evolution of all things. Thank you for sharing the article!
You obviously didn't read the blog, it's her personal story. She isn't trying to make other people not believe, it's just what she thinks. She isn't saying it's a 'fucking lie'. This post suggests that you do. Maybe I should have posted more than just one sentence so there's more context but it's straight to the point I was making. Even with this sentence it's clear she's talking about her mind, or do think her mind should be exactly like yours?
Sure, nobody (at least not me) is contesting that. What I want to hear from theists or anyone, really, is that the only objective standard we have is the scientific method. Everything else including religion is inherently subjective. That doesn't make it a bad thing per se but people should refrain from stating stuff like that as facts. Value judgments are exempt from this but history, chemistry, economics, biology just shouldn't be up for interpretation. Sure, build a subjective mental model but don't treat it as dogma others have to subscribe to. When someone says that they know that Muhammad flew on a winged horse, I look for the exit. If they weren't a member of a popular religion, they would be pronounced mentally ill.
People subconsously believe in science but some would never admit to it. In this video Jordan Peterson talks about it.
Jordan Peterson is my hero. Because you linked that video I will probably just watch his stuff until the sun comes up. I’ll try to come back to respond.
I'll delve into your post soon, but if the gist is that even atheists can blindly follow a Hitler, Stalin etc, then yes. Look at the mass hysteria when the Beatles played Shea Stadium, look at the party faithful beaming with joy when their candidate gets elected (yes, even tears!), look at the fanaticism displayed over the latest cause. Of course this doesn't mean that a supernatural divine entity actually exists. Physics is revealing some pretty spectacle stuff, though, so the universe is looking pretty beautiful! And let us mainly focus here on stopping PMO/ogling women etc. And fantasies.
