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How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

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Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#71

Post by baldfat »

baldfat wrote: post #44
mullingitover wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also the greatest tool that has ever been created for destroying superstition and myth. We're in the golden age of critical thinking, something that is very destructive to religious belief.

> something that is very destructive to religious belief I think history's greatest logical thinkers would beg to differ with you. The history books are always trying to be rewritten by someone BUT religious thought has driven this critical thinking and logic for millennial. Also explain why more people are Christians now then ever? Percentage and Numbers???

Sorry I tried to say that Logical Thinkers of history were very religious. I'll tell Issace Newton and Pascal to shove it!

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#72

Post by Snail_Commando »

dang wrote: post #11
raldi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's confusing enough already that this post is filled with obsolete NPR and NPR-quoting comments. (Though I appreciate that your change wasn't done invisibly!) I think it would be better to let someone submit the paper separately, or for us all to just upvote your comment.

People say this a lot, but it isn't clear to me how this would work. Would you like to discuss it? Email to hn@ycombinator.com is probably best so we don't disrupt the thread. Edit: Oops, version conflict. I was talking about a bit you edited out (about multiple links).

This might be a situation where a story merge feature would come in handy.

In a "merged thread" the title could have more than one link value (but still have a canonical (by mod standard) top ranked url.) And the discussion could be merged to one thread (or version controlled in correspondence with a particular top level link.)

I also think it would have some other benefits:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7564254

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7564289

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#73

Post by gonvaled »

dllthomas wrote: post #67
gonvaled wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Faith and science can co-exist, but atheism has a belief that they can't." Of course they can co-exist, and atheism has nothing to say against religion: religion, by definition, is non-falsifiable, so atheism can not negate it. Atheism is, nevertheless, very sceptical about the actual existence of a supreme being. It can't prove its non-existence, but still considers it as veeeery improbable. As "there are a million…

Words have shifted a bit. In the strictest possible senses, "It's not possible to know for sure" is an agnostic position and the atheistic position would be either "I believe there is no god, whatever the evidence" or "I believe there is no god, here is the evidence". These strict uses sometimes confuse more typical uses, where "probably not, because I haven't seen sufficient evidence to make 'there is any sort of a…

There are lots of atheism and agnostic variations. Actually an agnostic can be also an atheist (or a theist, by the way). But here you have a nice explanation: http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Atheist_vs_Agnostic

As explained in the link, there are two kind of atheists: gnostic-atheists (strong-atheists) and agnostic-atheists (weak-atheists)

In my opinion, since proving the existence/non-existence of gods (and spaghetti monsters, and pink unicorns) is impossible, gnostic-atheism is untenable (in the same sense that gnostic-theism is untenable).

But, and I think this what matters for an atheist to identify as such, the fact that the non-existence of god can not be proved does not make it an important subject. It is just one of those things that can not be proved or disproved (by construction), and has no more relevance that the orbiting of a tea pot around the sun.

EDIT: actually, I stand corrected by this very interesting article and I will stick to the Sagan Plausability Scale for these discussions: http://www.skepticink.com/incredulous/2013/08/20/why-the-fam...

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#74

Post by dllthomas »

gonvaled wrote: post #73
dllthomas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words have shifted a bit. In the strictest possible senses, "It's not possible to know for sure" is an agnostic position and the atheistic position would be either "I believe there is no god, whatever the evidence" or "I believe there is no god, here is the evidence". These strict uses sometimes confuse more typical uses, where "probably not, because I haven't seen sufficient evidence to make 'there is any sort of a…

There are lots of atheism and agnostic variations. Actually an agnostic can be also an atheist (or a theist, by the way). But here you have a nice explanation: http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Atheist_vs_Agnostic As explained in the link, there are two kind of atheists: gnostic-atheists (strong-atheists) and agnostic-atheists (weak-atheists) In my opinion, since proving the existence/non-existence of gods (and spaghetti…

I want to be clear that I don't think it is in any way unreasonable to use "atheist" to mean "I don't think God is any more likely than Russell's teapot", just that this isn't always what it is used to mean and the two meanings are sometimes confused/conflated.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#75

Post by gonvaled »

dllthomas wrote: post #74
gonvaled wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of atheism and agnostic variations. Actually an agnostic can be also an atheist (or a theist, by the way). But here you have a nice explanation: http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Atheist_vs_Agnostic As explained in the link, there are two kind of atheists: gnostic-atheists (strong-atheists) and agnostic-atheists (weak-atheists) In my opinion, since proving the existence/non-existence of gods (and spaghetti…

I want to be clear that I don't think it is in any way unreasonable to use "atheist" to mean "I don't think God is any more likely than Russell's teapot", just that this isn't always what it is used to mean and the two meanings are sometimes confused/conflated.

It is not unreasonable to think that "God is less likely than Russell's teapot", but it is definitely unreasonable to say "I am sure god does not exist" since, by definition, god is untestable.

I guess that what I am trying to say is that a "strong atheist" (with judgements based on reason), can not really assert with 100% confidence that god does not exist. He can, nevertheless, be convinced that the likelihood of its existence is for all practical purposes 0.

It is not that he "believes that god does not exist", it is more that he thinks along the lines of "why should I care about this particular teapot?"

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#76

Post by dllthomas »

gonvaled wrote: post #75
dllthomas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to be clear that I don't think it is in any way unreasonable to use "atheist" to mean "I don't think God is any more likely than Russell's teapot", just that this isn't always what it is used to mean and the two meanings are sometimes confused/conflated.

It is not unreasonable to think that "God is less likely than Russell's teapot", but it is definitely unreasonable to say "I am sure god does not exist" since, by definition, god is untestable. I guess that what I am trying to say is that a "strong atheist" (with judgements based on reason), can not really assert with 100% confidence that god does not exist. He can, nevertheless, be convinced that the likelihood of i…

It is that he believes that God does not exist, in that he asserts that the probability of God is substantially less than the probability of no God. In the same way that he believes that, having looked both ways and seen no car, he won't be hit by a car when he's crossing the street (though I'm not asserting any relationship between the magnitude of the respective likelihoods). There's the possibility he's wrong, and that'd be unfortunate, but it's what he believes in that it's what his understanding of the world says and it's what determines his actions. Using the word "atheist" for such people seems entirely reasonable. Most of them will agree that they are, in some senses, strictly agnostic as well - the categories needn't be mutually exclusive.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#77

Post by dragonwriter »

gonvaled wrote: post #60
afhdshufdufdo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion is defined as, 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.' Notice the word "especially". Scientology is based on the idea of what some might call aliens having superhuman powers. In atheism, a number of superhuman powers, i.e. things that humans cannot do, are ascribed to science- even though there is nothing that disallows that God could be involved in e…

"Faith and science can co-exist, but atheism has a belief that they can't." Of course they can co-exist, and atheism has nothing to say against religion: religion, by definition, is non-falsifiable, so atheism can not negate it. Atheism is, nevertheless, very sceptical about the actual existence of a supreme being. It can't prove its non-existence, but still considers it as veeeery improbable. As "there are a million…

> So yes, you can accept science and religion, but accepting the later can not be based on reason (because there is no logical method to disprove the existence of god)

Reason doesn't rely on falsifiability (science does, but science is a subset of reason, not the same thing as reason.)

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