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Ribtorus wrote:

radarman wrote:

To state with certainty that something does or doesn't exist with no evidence either way is to have faith in something. You have as much faith that God doesn't exist, as I have faith that he does. Neither of us can prove our position with certainty.

No. You're confusing what one believes, with why one believes it.

Lack of evidence is in no way related to faith. An absence to an athiest is a non-presence, or a void. It is faith which fills that void. If there is no need to fill the void, there is no need for faith.

So atheists believe in "nothing", right? Can you prove there is nothing? No? How is this not faith?

We aren't talking about why atheists believe in nothing, but that they believe in nothing with no way to prove that there is, in fact, nothing.

The fact that the belief is in "nothing" doesn't negate the fact that it requires faith to believe it.

That, I believe, was the real point the SC was trying to make, BTW.

radarman wrote:

mo' ron wrote:

radarman wrote:

I find it interesting that atheists don't see the glaring irony of stating another person's god doesn't exist. It wasn't without reason that the US Supreme Court called atheism a religion - it requires just as much, and possibly more, faith than any other.

Atheism requires far less faith than religion.

The type of "faith" required by atheist are things like "matter is made up of atoms." We (humanity) have no way to detect this for ourselves with our senses, we just have to have faith that the scientific community won't lie to us.

Religious people have faith that god will give them guidance in their lives, and this is based on believing that their religious texts and religious leaders won't lie to them.

The difference is that an atheist can go through a certain amount of work to "prove" their beliefs of faith are in fact based on concrete things, where as a religious person has no means of proving their faith.

I believe in the ability of science to answer questions just as much as you do. I'm an engineer, so I have to believe in science, or my work is meaningless.

What does that have to do with a belief in god? I can believe in quarks, even though I've never seen one, and I can believe in God, even though I've never seen Him.

However, this strongly implies something I've thought for a while. Atheists worship science, and human understanding, as the answer to everything; a belief that I believe is misplaced. (interesting sentence...)

Faith does not equal worship was my point.

The scientists faith in quarks is based on empirical measurements, that a non-scientist atheist just has "faith" in. But this not-scientist atheist could learn certain skills so that he/she could directly "experience" the knowledge of the existence of quarks. LIkewise if another scientist offered proof that this belief was wrong, the atheist would readily change their stance. Even if science could prove god, and atheist would change their stance.

A religious person doesn't have this ability. They can only rely on their non-empirical internal faiths.

I would point out though that there are heuristics an atheist can use to eliminate the possibility of particular religions (Christianity included) outright, depending on what brand of Christianity you choose to believe in.

In all seriousness, though; science can't help you here. As a Christian, you ask me to prove that there is a God. As an atheist, I ask you to prove that there is not. Who has the easier task?

Proving a negative is near impossible because you have to eliminate all possibilities. Even considering this, the tasks are of equal magnitude (when amortized over an infinite time span...) because an atheist (of which I don't consider myself btw) at least has some place to start.

I've never met, and most likely never will, John Adams (the second president of the United States). I have read biographies, and histories, and even though I have never seen him, or even his grave, I believe that he existed. Are those biographies and histories completely accurate? Of course not. (though, in fairness, there wasn't a claim that they were.)

The "Bible" is not a single work. It is comprised of personal letters, memoirs, song books, histories, and a couple of guidebooks from a father to his son. The claim to inerrancy refers to the Bible's description of the character of God, not that there won't be problems with the number of times the Jews had to say a certain word during a certain ceremony, or other minutiae.

At the end of the day, though; I have made my decision, and I'm comfortable with it. One day, hopefully far in the future, I will find out if I made the correct one. Until then, I hardly think my life is being wasted believing in God. You are, clearly, free to disagree with that choice, as I'm free to disagree with yours. The fact that not everyone agrees or disagrees with me has nothing to do with my beliefs.

Huh?

I never claimed you were wasting your life (i don't believe I even implied that).

My question was if you don't think religion exists in one place (a very common view btw, not something unique to you) why do you think it exists in the Bible?



offtopic:

This thread reminded me of this picture that I recently saw somewhere though:

I don't know how accurate it is, but i could see it being accurate (with the flood and soddhom and gommora and all).

Last edited by mo' ron (2007-04-10 9:18 pm)

radarman wrote:

Ribtorus wrote:

radarman wrote:

To state with certainty that something does or doesn't exist with no evidence either way is to have faith in something. You have as much faith that God doesn't exist, as I have faith that he does. Neither of us can prove our position with certainty.

No. You're confusing what one believes, with why one believes it.

Lack of evidence is in no way related to faith. An absence to an athiest is a non-presence, or a void. It is faith which fills that void. If there is no need to fill the void, there is no need for faith.

So atheists believe in "nothing", right? Can you prove there is nothing? No? How is this not faith?

If I give you an empty bucket, and I say it's empty, and you say it's full of god, what can I say to make you think it's actually empty?

mo' ron wrote:

radarman wrote:

Ribtorus wrote:

No. You're confusing what one believes, with why one believes it.

Lack of evidence is in no way related to faith. An absence to an athiest is a non-presence, or a void. It is faith which fills that void. If there is no need to fill the void, there is no need for faith.

So atheists believe in "nothing", right? Can you prove there is nothing? No? How is this not faith?

If I give you an empty bucket, and I say it's empty, and you say it's full of god, what can I say to make you think it's actually empty?

Bad analogy. No bucket can ever be truly empty, except maybe in space - and only until we resolve the matter of whether dark matter exists or not.

You say the bucket is empty. I say it's full of air.

Agnosticism is more sound than atheism or theism when the discussion is about testable evidence. That is just a fact. Does that mean atheists have "faith?" I dont care, I dont think thats the real issue anyway.

Here's the beef I have though with Russell's teapot and GSM etc: people dont actually believe in them. There are some people who believe in Poseidon, thats an actual belief. But to say "I dont believe in [something you claim to]- how could I? I might as well believe in [something no one actually believes to exist]" is not any sort of refutation. It just is an analogy to something neither believes. But just because neither believes in one thing, doesnt add weight to the non-belief of something that someone else really does assert to exist.

radarman wrote:

Ribtorus wrote:

radarman wrote:

So atheists believe in "nothing", right? Can you prove there is nothing? No? How is this not faith?

We aren't talking about why atheists believe in nothing, but that they believe in nothing with no way to prove that there is, in fact, nothing.

The fact that the belief is in "nothing" doesn't negate the fact that it requires faith to believe it.

That, I believe, was the real point the SC was trying to make, BTW.

You're not getting it.

I can't distill the concept any more than I have. If the notion that there is no need for faith does not compute, then I don't know how else to put it.

I agree, but for different reasons. Somehow, we have managed to link faith with worship of a deity, when in fact, faith simply means belief in something unproven/unprovable.

Until someone manages to prove there is no god, atheism involves an element of faith.

Almost. We're dealing with the semantics of a word.

The word "faith" happens to be the english word we're using, and it has a dictionary meaning as well as an implied or understood meaning, given various contexts.

"I have faith that two plus two equals four."

But in this case, "faith" is a poor choice of word. It's gramatically correct, but there's an implication in that sentence that "faith" is required to believe 2+2=4. For the sake of clarity, It would be better to say, "I know that two plus two equals four". Knowing what we know of mathematics, an unambiguous and valid statement.

I have faith that there is a god.

The word "faith" takes on significant meaning here, with plenty religious and philosophical overtones. The word "faith" is central to the sentence's meaning because it implies (due to the religious context), a certain type of belief.

An honest athiest needs no type of belief that encompasses faith. The word "faith" may be used to describe all sorts of beliefs, but it is often the wrong word, and leads to poor and incomplete understanding.

We're caught in the limitations of our vocabulary.

That's what popular religion has turned into these days, it seems. Instead of actually going out and living to what you believe it usually turns into a semantic game to let you get away with something.

NAG wrote:

That's what popular religion has turned into these days, it seems. Instead of actually going out and living to what you believe it usually turns into a semantic game to let you get away with something.

Who gets away with what (since we're talking semantics…)?

mo' ron wrote:

radarman wrote:

This, at least, I can agree on. I did not mean to imply that atheists were religious, only that they displayed an equally strong, though perfectly opposite, belief as theists.

That is implying that they are religious though.

I don't think you understand the belief-in-nothing thing, yet.

It's like if you are accused of stealing (and are innocent). In a court of law, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff to show that you stole, you merely have to show that they are wrong. You can't actually prove that you didn't steal anything, only show evidence that you couldn't have stolen anything. Only the plaintiff can conclusively show that you in fact stole something. Imagine if the legal system were set up so that defendants had to prove their innocence.

Or, imagine if a majority of people in the world were atheist, and a small sect of people were theist. How is an atheist suppose to react to the theist claiming that god does in fact exist? There's no reason at all that the atheist should pre-suppose the existence of god. From the time you are born, nothing happens to you that indicates a god, there's no reason to pre-suppose god's existence. That's what atheism is. The default state of our (humans) observations are that no gods exist.

I don't mean to sound demeaning, but it's like santa or the easter bunny. Kids would never pre-suppose their existence, unless the parents didn't teach them about these things (then un-teach them).

We have to willfully seek out god to try and find some inkling of its existence.

The difference between the supernatural, and the easter bunny, is that virtually every society has some form of religion which involves the supernatural. It is practically the second question anthopologist ask when they study a new tribe or civilization. There is something in humans that makes us want to believe in the supernatural. The same doesn't appear to be true of the lower order animals.

You could argue it is a genetic quirk, or that it implies the existence of the supernatural - or even both. Personally, I believe that a "god-gene" will be found, and that it is supernatural in origin. It would stand to reason that if there is a God, and he wanted to ensure that we would seek him, that we would be genetically preprogrammed with an interest in the supernatural.

As near as I can tell, the same cannot be said about the easter bunny.

In this case, the statistical relevance of atheists to non-atheists is significant.

mo' ron wrote:

We have to willfully seek out god to try and find some inkling of its existence.

I think it's a natural part of homosapien behavior to turn to the supernatural to explain the unexplainable.

radarman wrote:

Wow - I never realized that the forums automatically convert certain words to smurf. I figured it was just something everyone agreed to.

You can turn those filters off.

resedit wrote:

Quite honestly, the empirical evidence should be provided by the folks claiming god's existence.

Well, when all is said and done, you just may find that it was you that needed to prove your worth to God - rather than the other way around.

Of course, none of us are worthy, but he has taken care of that - for those who appreciate his worth.

Excellent, in this hypotethical, after I'm damned for not believing all the charlatans out there, I'll ask why this god let the charlatans go unanswered.  And why he didn't smite all those who committed evil in that god's name.

Mysterious ways indeed.



(I think I've been infected by the Beagle/Bro. virus!)