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Poll: What is your religion?

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Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#171

Post by petercooper »

jbm wrote: post #32

It seems disingenuous to mix Agnosicism with Atheism. Both are utterly different - one makes a knowledge claim (atheism) while the other is in a position of neutrality or indifference (agnosticism)

Both are utterly different - one makes a knowledge claim (atheism) while the other is in a position of neutrality or indifference (agnosticism)

Sure, but making a knowledge claim doesn't make it any less objective or wise than being neutral.

I can say that there is definitely not a red 1982 Chevy Silverado orbiting Jupiter and that's a "knowledge claim", yet someone who says they're not sure or are neutral about my claim don't hold a superior position in any sense and would, in fact, look a little silly given the lack of evidence against it.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#173

Post by mortenjorck »

augustl wrote: post #28

Whenever I (atheist) meet religious people and start nerd raging, I remind myself of the following: The world makes equally amounts of sense for a religious person as it does to an atheist. It's easy to dismiss religion when you're an atheist, because science makes so much sense that it is a perfectly adequate explanation of the world around us (in the sense that it acknowledges that proving things are difficult). Bu…

If more atheists thought that way about theists, and more theists thought that way about atheists, I think we'd all have a better time on this planet.

Message boards would be a dying business, though.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#174

Post by Gormo »

indiefan wrote: post #124
Gormo wrote: post #105

It's fairly common for people to respond to this sort of question by saying something along the lines of "I disapprove of organized religion, but have spiritual faith." My own view is exactly the opposite. I see the value in the ritual, community, and psychological "anchor" that organized religion can provide. But spiritual faith seems absurd; why mix your emotional security and your sense of identity up with a bunch…

This is actually a faith claim In and of itself. Your basically saying you don't believe there is a God who desires (or worse, requires) anything from you. Otherwise it would be in your best interest to care. You're completely entitled to your own beliefs, but passing it off as a position of "non-belief" is illogical. It's the same paradox as "there is no truth" being a truth claim. You sound like a person of great d…

That's an excellent point. I'd agree that I have a somewhat Kantian conceptualist worldview, in that I consider that I have access only to my own experience of the world, not to the world itself, so all knowledge is inherently subjective and particular.

But thinking this way, "there is no truth" is only a synthetic claim of truth, not an analytic one; that is, it is "true" because the terms are logically consistent with each other given the rules that define their context (i.e. language), not because it expresses an objective representation of reality.

In other words, given the subjective and particular nature of my experience of the world, I have no basis on which to construct a universal understanding of the world, so I am therefore incapable of making any analytical claim of truth in any universal sense.

More practically, I'd say that ideas, including the idea of God, and including the processes of science, are useful tools that enhance our experience of the world, not objective and "true" representations of the world, and are best judged on how useful they are, not whether they are "true".

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#175

Post by sjwright »

nwomack wrote: post #116
chc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't agree with this assessment. Atheism is not a knowledge claim; it's just disbelief in God. Similarly, I don't believe in intelligent life on other worlds, but that isn't a knowledge claim — there's just no good reason to believe in it. Agnosticism, however, is a knowledge claim: It's the claim that God is is unknowable.

I have to respectfully disagree. I think you have your definitions mixed up. Agnosticism is 'There may be a god, but I don't care enough to claim one way or the other', I think the 'fence sitting' argument is good. Atheism is: 'There is no god' ie, Richard Dawkins Atheism is a stronger claim than Agnosticism.

Your description of agnosticism is also wrong; you described apatheism.

Agnostic: Unsure. Apatheist: Doesn't care. Atheist: Rejects theism.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#176

Post by 10ren »

oblig. Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer. Fred Brooks, p. 184 The Mythical Man-Month 2nd ed.

It's interesting to me that several people I greatly admire in comp sci/technology are religious: Fred Brooks, Knuth, Larry Wall and Clayton Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma).

To me, one aspect of the idea of God is as a workable label for all the things I don't know (especially those questions I know not of; the doors I have not suspected exist; the things my philosophy does not dream of; the unknown unknowns). Also helps me to seek questions (define problems) even if I can't imagine knowing the answer (finding solutions). It helps me to just let it be.

Another aspect is political: human beings, like other apes, tend to organize around a dominant male (and even chickens have a pecking order). When groups grew in size due to agriculture and civilization, this scaled to super-dominant males - gods embodied in persons (I'm thinking ancient Egypt). This was dangerous. The next innovation was to transfer that "super-dominance" to a person who doesn't actually exist. This is safer, and of course this imaginary personage can embody all those ideas an actual human can only move towards but never attain. Although wars were still fought in the name of a God, there was a separation. That's a theory of mine anyway. Feel free to poke holes, build it up, tear it down (esp with evidence).

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#177

Post by jswinghammer »

philwelch wrote: post #165
jswinghammer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there is evidence but it's not evidence that you're presently accepting. The Bible is a sort of evidence and people's testimony is as well. For my part I believe in God because he speaks to me regularly and I'm the last person you'd expect that to happen to. I was minding my own business when I started hearing from God. Everyone I knew at the time was totally shocked and it took me over two years to accept what…

You have presented the only religious argument I can't actually argue with. I can only humbly say I haven't had the same experience as you, and if I did, I would freak out.

The only way I know about to get started is to pray which is hard for anyone. Say hi sometime. If God is there he'll say hi back.

You know what freaks me out? The idea of seeing an angel. No idea why but it freaks me out good. I hear kids often say they see them and it freaks me out whenever they tell me that. I am no one a kid would ever try to impress mind you. I just hear these things because kids are so free to share with you. Weird I know but I don't want to see one till I am dead.

This whole crazy stuff started while reading GEB if you are familiar with that book. I really was minding my own business.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#178

Post by aik »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #127
adamzap wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your disbelief in God solely based upon Occam's Razor? If so, could you elaborate on it a bit?

Not solely, but mainly. The following is by no means a iron-clad tight argument, but here goes. When the concept of God is invoked, it is usually not precisely defined. In various interpretations, it is a life force permeating the universe itself, or a being that is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient, or a being that has a "personal guiding light" relationship to every individual human, or a force that was "the pr…

How do you go about weighing assumptions? I imagine not all assumptions could be worth equally. What is that scale and how do you determine it? An interesting quandary also arises out of contemplating the weight placed on the assumption/belief whether Occam's razor is true in the first place.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#179

Post by sjwright »

10ren wrote: post #176

oblig. Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer. Fred Brooks, p. 184 The Mythical Man-Month 2nd ed. It's interesting to me that several people I greatly admire in comp sci/technology are religious: Fred Brooks, Knuth, Larry Wall and Clayton Christensen ( The Innovator's Dilemma ). To me, on…

That's all fine as long as you don't make the leap from "my imaginary friend is useful" to "my imaginary friend is real".

I would however assert an unnecessary semantic overloading -- why use a word (God) that has so many assumptions built into it? Invent a new word, and confuse fewer people.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#180

Post by rubinelli »

aik wrote: post #169
rubinelli wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faith is the belief in what you can't prove. From a strictly rational point of view, it's a kind of madness, and the gospels explicitly point it out. To use a source I'm sure you know, in I Corinthians 13 there is an apparent contradiction: even if you act piously, you act in vain if if you don't feel love. The religious experience is emotional and visceral, not logical. It comes before codes and rules. From this per…

I'm not familiar with this contradiction. Could you explain further? Where does it mention it's important to "feel" love? I've always thought it says "have love" - as in your pious nature is pointless unless you are capable of loving; as in it serves no purpose because it will not be acted upon. Similar to the idea that knowledge is pointless unless used. Or ideas are pointless unless executed...

You're correct in that it uses the term have instead of feel, but my understanding is that it's the other way around: "And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." In other words, if you act only because you expect a reward in the after-life, or because you want to show how pious you are, or simply because you are self-destructive, you aren't practicing true charity. I believe this is a deontological argument, but I'm not really equipped to discuss theology or ethics.
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