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Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

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Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#81

Post by card_zero »

mrob wrote: post #72
balamatom wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I could use more meaning in my life." Telling. (Me, I could definitely use even less .) I think GP has a point, but it kinda works the other way around. (Which is common among unexamined intuitions.) Basically, you can't represent any data with just ones, or just zeros. And the most basic unit of meaningful sensory data is "suffering/not suffering". As long as there's any difference between "more preferable" and "le…

You're not working with just suffering and non-suffering, you also have death. The existence of death makes the concept of an absolute threshold of suffering meaningful. If, assuming an experience lasts an entire lifetime, you would rationally prefer to be dead, that experience is below the absolute threshold of suffering. In practice most experiences do not last entire lifetimes, but this isn't relevant to the defin…

Huh, that's a good idea, to create a benchmark to rescue the concept of suffering from relativism. But it won't work for me. I'm very anti-death, I don't see death as an escape, or as an action at all: I'm here to live, however unpleasant it gets. Death would be no more pleasant, because being dead is not an experience. It can't logically be an improvement.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#82

Post by mrob »

card_zero wrote: post #81
mrob wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not working with just suffering and non-suffering, you also have death. The existence of death makes the concept of an absolute threshold of suffering meaningful. If, assuming an experience lasts an entire lifetime, you would rationally prefer to be dead, that experience is below the absolute threshold of suffering. In practice most experiences do not last entire lifetimes, but this isn't relevant to the defin…

Huh, that's a good idea, to create a benchmark to rescue the concept of suffering from relativism. But it won't work for me. I'm very anti-death, I don't see death as an escape, or as an action at all: I'm here to live, however unpleasant it gets. Death would be no more pleasant, because being dead is not an experience. It can't logically be an improvement.

It logically can be an improvement if experiences can have negative value. I think most people would prefer non-existence to endless torture with no hope of escape.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#83

Post by card_zero »

mrob wrote: post #82
card_zero wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, that's a good idea, to create a benchmark to rescue the concept of suffering from relativism. But it won't work for me. I'm very anti-death, I don't see death as an escape, or as an action at all: I'm here to live, however unpleasant it gets. Death would be no more pleasant, because being dead is not an experience. It can't logically be an improvement.

It logically can be an improvement if experiences can have negative value. I think most people would prefer non-existence to endless torture with no hope of escape.

No, it's not a zero-value experience: it's no experience. Ugh, how do I express this ... in preferences, an experience of some kind is the goal, or at least, my goal. That means death isn't among the options: putting it in there is a category error.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#84

Post by mrob »

card_zero wrote: post #83
mrob wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It logically can be an improvement if experiences can have negative value. I think most people would prefer non-existence to endless torture with no hope of escape.

No, it's not a zero-value experience: it's no experience. Ugh, how do I express this ... in preferences, an experience of some kind is the goal, or at least, my goal. That means death isn't among the options: putting it in there is a category error.

That sounds more like your personal absolute threshold of suffering is unusually low, not a category error.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#85

Post by card_zero »

mrob wrote: post #84
card_zero wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not a zero-value experience: it's no experience. Ugh, how do I express this ... in preferences, an experience of some kind is the goal, or at least, my goal. That means death isn't among the options: putting it in there is a category error.

That sounds more like your personal absolute threshold of suffering is unusually low, not a category error.

No, it just makes no conceptual sense to me to "prefer non-existence". It's a contradiction. The concepts of preference and not existing can't go together.

I guess I'll allow that death is the ultimate undesirable thing, disrupting all intentions, negating all possibilities.

I can see how this could be interpreted as unusually high tolerance for suffering, by any normal, latently suicidal person. But from my point of view you're just all getting it wrong. I've never heard anybody else express this position, though, so perhaps I'm an irrelevance.

Late edit: there's more to preferences than mere experiences, mind you. So "I prefer that I not exist" makes logical sense, but not by the reason "because my experiences are so horrible": perhaps some philosophical notion could be the reason for it, though I can't imagine one. Oh, self-sacrifice to save others, for instance, or for knowledge in the abstract, that kind of thing.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#86

Post by surgical_fire »

missedthecue wrote: post #40
kelseyfrog wrote: post #5

I left in my teens. Religion seemed, at that time and still does, appears to reinforce systems of power and conformity rather than do good. Non-believers often ask themselves, "what god would have the ability to eliminate suffering and choose not to?" We should also ask, "What religious institution and followers, having amassed the riches of the world, would choose not to eliminate suffering when they could?" The wei…

It always seemed a logistical disconnect to me that people conclude god isn't good, therefore he doesn't exist. It's a non-sequitur.

That's not how it works.

"God exists and he is good" is mentioned as fact. The evidence of the existence of God would be his goodness - call it miracles if you will.

In a world where you perceive the absence of this goodness removes the only evidence provided. The logical consequence is not that god exists and is malevolent, the logical consequence is that the goodness is not there because God does not exist.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#87

Post by surgical_fire »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #70

Religion means very little to most people --- even those who say they believe. Their actions are the proof.

My main problem with religion is ironically not the belief in a Deity (or deities). I can accept that as an allegory, a sort of personification of the system of values said religion upholds.

My main issue is how a lot of people I see that are strongly religious also don't seem to accept the core tenets of the religion in their hearts. As an example, Christianity is a religion that professes love, but many practitioners are quick to hate others, etc.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#89

Post by missedthecue »

surgical_fire wrote: post #86
missedthecue wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always seemed a logistical disconnect to me that people conclude god isn't good, therefore he doesn't exist. It's a non-sequitur.

That's not how it works. "God exists and he is good" is mentioned as fact. The evidence of the existence of God would be his goodness - call it miracles if you will. In a world where you perceive the absence of this goodness removes the only evidence provided. The logical consequence is not that god exists and is malevolent, the logical consequence is that the goodness is not there because God does not exist.

The 'miracles' can easily exist alongside his badness. I'm not sure why everyone makes it out to be either/or. There is no universal law that says being both can't logically be true. I mean, there's an easy way to prove this. If I said humans exist and humans are good, you could point out Hitler, and all it does is prove humans are good and bad, and doesn't test whether they exist. And in fact it doesn't even prove that they aren't good, just that they are also bad.

So if someone says "god exists and he is good" and all you end up doing is disputing the second statement... you didn't even touch the first.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#90

Post by krapp »

missedthecue wrote: post #89
surgical_fire wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it works. "God exists and he is good" is mentioned as fact. The evidence of the existence of God would be his goodness - call it miracles if you will. In a world where you perceive the absence of this goodness removes the only evidence provided. The logical consequence is not that god exists and is malevolent, the logical consequence is that the goodness is not there because God does not exist.

The 'miracles' can easily exist alongside his badness. I'm not sure why everyone makes it out to be either/or. There is no universal law that says being both can't logically be true. I mean, there's an easy way to prove this. If I said humans exist and humans are good, you could point out Hitler, and all it does is prove humans are good and bad, and doesn't test whether they exist. And in fact it doesn't even prove t…

When people say that "god isn't good, therefore he doesn't exist," they are very likely referring specifically to the Abrahamic God, and this is likely the only God they can conceive of as possibly existing.

Of course you're correct that, in the abstract, the set of potential divine deities is infinite. But most people in the Western world turning away from religion are turning away from some flavor of the Abrahamic religious complex.

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