Aren't all these atheist/theist debates better housed on reddit with all the other dreck and stale debates the host? Hacker News is for news, not for silly things that just make people waste oxygen arguing about them.
Thursday = Thor's day
141–150 of 196 posts
Re: Thursday = Thor's day
#142"You and I are almost identical in our beliefs! If history has named, say, 520 gods, you don't believe in 519 of them, I don't believe in 520 of them." This argument comes from Dawkins book The God Delusion. It's clever, but also kind of dumb. Trying to discredit contemporary religion based on what people believed 2,500 years ago is like trying to discredit science based on alchemy.
I don’t remember anymore whether Dawkins also argued with past beliefs but I do know that he often emphasizes the geographical distribution of religions, not so much the history of religions. You can view a example here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYigmGyN2RQ I do think it is quite baffling how you can be consciously aware of all the myriad of religions in the world and still not be a atheist. They can’t all be r…
"They can’t all be right and there exists no method of picking the right one except trusting you own feelings."
I agree wholeheartedly with the first half of that statement: "They can’t all be right". The religions of the world have conflicting beliefs that cannot be reconciled. If there is one true God, then the other religions that worship other gods have to be false. You can't have it both ways.
However, at least with respect to Christianity, the second half "and there exists no method of picking the right one except trusting you own feelings.". is most definitely not true. Christians who believe the Bible to be true and accurate would tell you the opposite -- do not trust your feelings, because feelings don't determine what is true and what is false. In the Bible-believing Christian realm the argument would be "Read the Bible, decide for yourself whether you believe it or not."
Re: Thursday = Thor's day
#143The logic here doesn't hold with respect to monothestic religions such as Judaism or Christianity. The Ten Commandments, which are common to these two religions, have two "tables," the first of which (commandments 1 - 5) defines the relations between God and man and the second of which defines the relations between men (6 - 10). The very first commandment is "thou shalt have no other gods before me. The next proscrip…
This is a very typical religious argument. It puts religion, in this case Christianity, on a piedestal where it doesn't belong if you don't happen to be Christian. The original statement in it's logic form is this: You believe in 530 gods, I believe in 529 gods. 530 minus 529 is 1, so we agree on not believing in most of the gods. That's it. Nothing more to it. And assuming the date didn't secretly worship Zeus it's…
But it seems an awful way to dismiss the discussion on a date. Comparing the belief in Christ with the belief in Zeus!? I know it may be logical for an atheist, but for a Christian it may actually be insulting.
Re: Thursday = Thor's day
#144Interesting. Knowing a little bit of English/Spanish you can guess the origin of most of the days of the week. * Sunday/Domingo - Sun/? * Monday/Lunes - Moon/Luna * Tuesday/Martes - ?/Mars * Wednesday/Miercoles - ?/Mercurio * Thursday/Jueves - Thor/Jupiter * Friday/Viernes - ?/Venus * Saturday/Sabado - Saturn/?
Domingo -> from the Latin 'Dies Dominicus' -> The Lord's day
Lunes -> Luna -> Moon
Tuesday -> Martes -> Marte (Mars)
Miercoles -> Mercurio (Mercury)
Jueves -> Jove -> Jupiter
Viernes -> Venus
Sabado -> Sabbath
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor%C3%ADa:D%C3%ADas_de_la_...
Re: Thursday = Thor's day
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
why should religious belief have a special place in the continuum of silly thoughts? (you say they should be respected) if you can make someone believe anything (e.g. there's this god with x,y,z attributes), you can make them do anything.
I make a distinction between religious belief and religion. The former I respect, ultimately, as a personal choice (that is not to say I wouldn't try to present an alternative if it was appropriate!). The latter I have little respect for :)
But that's a problem. We don't pretend to respect people for having silly beliefs, except when it is religious - why this exception? I find it helps to think of religious belief/conviction as a socially acceptable form of mental disease, comparable to examples in drug use.
Re: Thursday = Thor's day
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
but he won't. and neither would any other deity. they're just made up.
Now now, that's a skepticism failure. A proper skeptic should acknowledge that it's very very unlikely that Thor exists, but that there is a small nonzero probability that he might .
Yes, technically you are correct. But we think in terms of absolutes all the time in order to live in this world (e.g. The statue could wave it's arm, but it is such a remote possibility that we can discount it for practical purposes.
Re: Thursday = Thor's day
#147The logic here doesn't hold with respect to monothestic religions such as Judaism or Christianity. The Ten Commandments, which are common to these two religions, have two "tables," the first of which (commandments 1 - 5) defines the relations between God and man and the second of which defines the relations between men (6 - 10). The very first commandment is "thou shalt have no other gods before me. The next proscrip…
I think the argument is fairly sound and is great at concisely explaining why religion is a product of humanity's imagination and current culture. (With all due respect, don't take this as an affront on your beliefs.)
I like the argument for a number of reasons:
- It beg's the question "Why do I reject those other 529 gods?" Generally there is no good answer for this other than being indoctrinated at a young age. You realize that you believe what you believe because of the circumstances in which you were born. This leads to the conclusion that the religion you follow has more to do with where you live than what is "correct". (Noting that there are plenty of exceptions to this).
- It drives home the point that humanity has been creating gods for thousands of years. Most of those gods have likely been created before your god had even first been mentioned. Any rational person would ask why did humanity move past those gods? You can never disprove the existence of a god, so what happened? Ideally, you realize that religion is much like any trend, just with longer than average turn around.
- If you follow the trend of gods, you realize that humanity has been generally moving away from polytheism towards monotheism. This makes you wonder why and conclude that it is tightly correlated to (and arguably directly caused by) humanity's understanding of the universe. As we understand more about everything, we don't need gods to fill in these gaps of knowledge. For instance, we understand why the Sun rises or lightning strikes. As humanity has progressed, one by one we killed the need for Roman and Greek gods. This leads you to wonder what role a monotheistic god fills and realize that the god is generally used to bring understanding to things we don't understand and reason to things we can't control. This is hardly a rational reason for a figment that "solves" all unsolved problems.
In short, I like the "(n-1) vs n gods" argument because when you think through everything implied by it, a rational being has no choice but to conclude that in all likelihood the religion they follow is not correct. Unfortunately, emotion plays a huge role in religion, making rational thought difficult. On a personal note, I was a theist for 20 years, backed by 12 years of formal study in my religion. Making the mental shift to realizing everything I'd believed was wrong was difficult to say the least, but years later my life is all the better for it.
Re: Thursday = Thor's day
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I make a distinction between religious belief and religion. The former I respect, ultimately, as a personal choice (that is not to say I wouldn't try to present an alternative if it was appropriate!). The latter I have little respect for :)
But that's a problem. We don't pretend to respect people for having silly beliefs, except when it is religious - why this exception? I find it helps to think of religious belief/conviction as a socially acceptable form of mental disease, comparable to examples in drug use.
I suspect you're preaching to the converted :-) I rationalise it by accepting this phenomenan exists - I will fight when it is detrimental of course, but otherwise just let it slide.
Re: Thursday = Thor's day
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
" In that case, the person who believes in the true deity can consistently say that he as a theist believes in the true one while rejecting all the false ones while the person who denies all of them includes in that denial the one true deity and hence is an atheist." This looks to be a matter of definition of "atheist". (Or "theist", for that matter.) Is an atheist one who does not believe the claims of the existence…
An atheist can be either one who does not believe the claims of the existence of deities (if no such deity exists) or one who does not believe in what is in fact a true deity (if the deity does exist). I will grant that, if the atheistic view is correct that there is no true deity, then it is the believer who suffers from reality distortion. That, of course, is the nature of that debate. But I don't think the point I…
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Re: Thursday = Thor's day
#150Reddit was down?