Religion

[JCC]

(whom I find amusing, since I 100% share RogueHunter's view that Atheism is a religious belief in itself, so atheists claiming to be anti-religious are sadly deluding themselves IMO)

... The word Atheist in itself means non-theistic, non-religious.

Atheists have faith that God does not exist. We believe that he does not exist, though you can't disprove the existence of God in the same way that you cannot disprove the existence of Santa.

We have faith. We do not have religion.

 

[InsaneMystic]

... The word Atheist in itself means non-theistic, non-religious.

Atheists have faith that God does not exist. We believe that he does not exist, though you can't disprove the existence of God in the same way that you cannot disprove the existence of Santa.

We have faith. We do not have religion.

It's a scientifically neither confirmable nor deniable statement of faith, regarding a spiritual/supernatural matter (the existence of God), so I'm not really sure where you draw the line between your definitions there...

Granted, there is no "Church of Atheism" (to my knowledge at least - I wouldn't be too surprised to hear of one over in the US, though :lmao🙂... but there are many (myself included) believers in some kind of godly entity/power who aren't affiliated with one of the "thought clubs" either.

So does that make me a non-religious believer in God? Or are we just quibbling over semantics here? 🙂

 

[JCC]

It's a scientifically neither confirmable nor deniable statement of faith, regarding a spiritual/supernatural matter (the existence of God), so I'm not really sure where you draw the line between your definitions there...

Granted, there is no "Church of Atheism" (to my knowledge at least - I wouldn't be too surprised to hear of one over in the US, though :lmao🙂... but there are many (myself included) believers in some kind of godly entity/power who aren't affiliated with one of the "thought clubs" either.

So does that make me a non-religious believer in God? Or are we just quibbling over semantics here? 🙂

Dictionary definition of religion:

Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.

You are religious. Atheists are not religious. It's a pointless argument stated by the religious to wrongly assume that atheists are hypocrites.

 

[RogueHunter]

By that definition, Buddhists are not religious, since their belief is one that transcends the realm and influence of God.

 

[JCC]

By that definition, Buddhists are not religious, since their belief is one that transcends the realm and influence of God.

Hence why whether Buddhism is a religion is a hazy subject.

 

[RogueHunter]

Yet Buddhists recognize the existence of Gods and Demons.

It comes down to defining religion as a belief system or a worship system. I know some people that believe in God but hate his guts, certainly not revering him. Clearly not religious but not atheistic because they believe there is a god.

Our minds are finite and incapable of understanding a true paradox, or the concept of infinity or limitlessness. we can only accept its nature. So if we acknowledge that some things are unknowable, and from that we draw absolute conclusions is itself a contradiction.
As my Tai Chi master says, the more you know, the more you know you don't know.

 

[justanotherjen]

I wasn't raised in an overly religious house. My mom was Christian, although more spiritual then religious. She didn't belong to a church and I don't think she believed in organized religion any more. My dad is agnostic. I spent 13 years in Catholic school and I don't fault my parents for sending me. Sometime I wonder how my dad survived with us believing stuff he didn't (I'm going through the same thing with my kids going to Catholic school now).
It was some time in high school that I gave up on organized religion...too confining for me and none of their interpretations of the Bible seemed to match mine. Looking back I realize I was more of a deist during that period. I believed in a higher power but it didn't seem like it was the Christian god and I didn't think Jesus was a huge deal. I believed that way pretty much until a few years ago when my youngest daughter was born and my oldest was in kindergarten and a friend told her about god and she suddenly became afraid we were all going to burn in hell. That made me mad and I realized I just didn't believe in any of that superstitious stuff any more.

I consider myself agnostic atheist. I'm agnostic because I acknowledge the fact that a higher power may exist. There are millions of possibilities to explain things in this world and I can't disprove it. I'm atheist because I don't believe if there is a higher power it is anything that man has believed in since time began. Those gods are all man made. I lean very heavily on the atheist side of things and really can't understand how people have blind faith (which, to me, is different then regular faith which is backed up by experiences--like I have faith my family will help me when I need it because they have done so in the past).

I just don't get religion at all. It makes no logical sense to me.

 

[InsaneMystic]

Dictionary definition of religion:

Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.

You are religious. Atheists are not religious. It's a pointless argument stated by the religious to wrongly assume that atheists are hypocrites.

Well then, I don't think I share that definition. 🙂 Anyway, a dictionary, just like every other book written by a human being (including each and every one deemed a holy scripture by one faith or another), can't ever contain "the final truth". :wink:

I'm not going to keep arguing here, since you did concede the central point around which my criticism is based: even if you don't label it religion, you agreed that atheism is your faith. That's a statement I can respect and easily live with it - after that, to me it really does seem to be nothing more than just a matter of semantics.

I just deeply hope we both agree that any atheist who denies that his atheism is a matter of faith and considers it to be "scientific fact" does go toe to toe with any other religious (or, if you prefer that term, faith-bound) fundamentalist - thus making his criticism of religion a clear sign of hypocrisy and/or plain old leatherheaded ignorance.

Sadly, these "fundamentalist atheists" are very, very common... they're clearly the vast majority of atheists I've personally had dealings with, and I make no apologies for finding them as hard to stomach as the religious types of the variety "it's THE TRUTH because [insert deity] said so in [insert holy scripture]".

 

[Aethra]

Regarding the "stone paradox": there really is a simple (well, as simple as these things go ) logical solution to it. An omnipotent being (be it God or whoever) could create a stone so large that it fills the entirety of the space-time-continuum, leaving no physical space in relation to which any lifting might occur. So there.

So this stone takes up the entirety of space. Then, god is squished by the stone, and therefore cannot lift it. Or else, if god can exist outside of space, the stone still can't be lifted, because as you said, there is no room for the lifting.

 

[InsaneMystic]

My point was, the answer to the "stone question" is yes. The word "cannot" in the question doesn't detract from the concept of godly omnipotence, it's just inherent as a limitation of "stonyness", "heaviness" and "liftyness" with regard to the space-time-continuum as humans understand it.

Probably, an omnipotent entity could also change the rules so totally that literally anything goes, but that would create a cosmos human thought couldn't even begin to grasp (since it would be fully non-causal and non-linear), so there's not really a point in someone with a human brain discussing it. You'd have to settle for "gee, yes, because he's GOD", for that's as logical as you could get in such a universe. :wink:

But we're getting veeerrryyy philosophically abstract here... hope we're not boring the stones in the question to sleep.

 

[JCC]

There's no philosophy about it.

Nothing is omnipotent, because if you can't make a stone so heavy that you can't lift it, you're not omnipotent, and if you can't lift the stone, you're not omnipotent.

You can't be omniscient. If you don't know how to not know something, there's something that you don't know.

That, however, doesn't mean that God isn't there. It just means that calling him omnipotent or omniscient is hyperbole.

 

[RogueHunter]

The flaw in your logic is that humans are incapable of understanding how anything is created. We can't understand where anything comes from, even a single grain of sand much less a super rock. Our 'laws' of physics tell us that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed and yet everyday we find more evidence that the 'laws' as we understand them, aren't absolute. Its like saying what team is going to win a baseball game before you know who's playing. To be intellectually honest the only "answer" you can have is that we don't know anything, there is only what we believe.

 

[Rowan Hawthorn]

Our 'laws' of physics tell us that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed

Actually, that's not strictly true, since the Special Theory. Matter can be destroyed by converting it to energy. Now, you can argue that matter is just a form of energy and vice versa (since either can be converted to the other,) but there's a difference in the two types of defined mass - I'm just not up on my quantum physics enough to explain it. And also, a small amount of matter is destroyed in nuclear and anti-matter reactions.

 

[JCC]

The flaw in your logic is that humans are incapable of understanding how anything is created. We can't understand where anything comes from, even a single grain of sand much less a super rock. Our 'laws' of physics tell us that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed and yet everyday we find more evidence that the 'laws' as we understand them, aren't absolute. Its like saying what team is going to win a baseball game before you know who's playing. To be intellectually honest the only "answer" you can have is that we don't know anything, there is only what we believe.

Actually, we know a lot of that. Have you ever studied Geology?

 

[anyatara]

My Dad is an athiest, so are my brother and sister, my Mum's a catholic, and I'm...Well, I believe things from lots of different religions, so I really have no clue.

 

[InsaneMystic]

Leaving the omnipotence stone aside, as I'd only be repeating myself...

You can't be omniscient. If you don't know how to not know something, there's something that you don't know.

I really don't see the point of your argument there. You don't have to not know something in order to know how to not know something.

Seems to me that you fail to differentiate between knowledge and experience here... which, according to my own religious conviction, is the reason God (if God exists) bothered creating a physical universe (if it exists): A scientist setting up an experiment in the lab, already knowing how it will turn out and why, because that information is written in the textbook he already read. No reason in making that experiment, other than the conversion of theoretical knowledge into practical experience.

 

[JCC]

Leaving the omnipotence stone aside, as I'd only be repeating myself...


I really don't see the point of your argument there. You don't have to not know something in order to know how to not know something.

Seems to me that you fail to differentiate between knowledge and experience here... which, according to my own religious conviction, is the reason God (if God exists) bothered creating a physical universe (if it exists): A scientist setting up an experiment in the lab, already knowing how it will turn out and why, because that information is written in the textbook he already read. No reason in making that experiment, other than the conversion of theoretical knowledge into practical experience.

Okay then, how can God know that God knows everything, like if he was himself created? Since what we know is based upon what we experience, what if the God that you revere was created by something else, another higher being or merely a natural phenomenon. Since this God does not know if a being or phenomenon has created him if he has never seen it or experienced it, it is intrinsic that God cannot know if he knows everything. If he does not know if he knows everything, he's not omniscient.

There's a bunch of different paradoxes on why he can't be omniscient.

Plus, if he were omniscient, you're not living out your life, you're living out a preordained set of formulae. You're not a life at all, you're an automaton, a robot, a puppet.

 

[RogueHunter]

Actually, we know a lot of that. Have you ever studied Geology?

We have no idea where the matter came from that formed those rocks.

There is no true free will because everything is cause and effect. Our minds cannot calculate all of the infinite variables but if each individual action were able to be analyzed there is only one possible outcome in any situation.

What you're arguing is that its impossible for anything to be omniscient or existing outside of the realm of existence you exist in.

 

[JCC]

We have no idea where the matter came from that formed those rocks.

I have no idea how to make cookies. Does this mean that all cookies are invented by God?

There is no true free will because everything is cause and effect.

The chemicals in your brain that tell you what you're about to do are not the same as an omniscient omnipotent superpower in the sky.

Our minds cannot calculate all of the infinite variables but if each individual action were able to be analyzed there is only one possible outcome in any situation.

Well yeah, if you analyse each individual action, each action leads to an end. But you still make that action, and if you do, God cannot be omniscient, and if you don't, you don't have a mind at all.

What you're arguing is that its impossible for anything to be omniscient or existing outside of the realm of existence you exist in.

... Eh?

 

[RogueHunter]

You discuss creating a heavy rock, first tell me how any matter is created. If it is in fact created that would be evidence for a creator. In other words you can't discuss creating something unless you accept a creator.

If the chemicals in your brain tell you what to do then you don't love your parents you only have high serotonin levels for them.

Lets say you are approaching a traffic light and it turns yellow. Do you speed up or slow down? Depends on how close you are, if there is a cop around, if you have to pee, if there's a truck coming up fast behind you. With enough information the results are predictable. Every decision you make is based on knowledge, previous experience and your mood that day. All things that have been influenced by other things in predictable levels. Its the illusion of free will but since we can't keep track of all our influences we have a catch all.

You are trying to formulate an hypothesis of something infinite, when all you can possibly know is the finite.
There are many things in the universe that aren't bound by the same laws we are. We haven't found a universal theory, theory being the operative word. You are making absolute statements when without any basis. If someone were to say that "God" was the guy that lived down the street, then you could apply the criteria of your existence to "God".
Lets examine your model. Weight is determined by gravitational pull so it is not constant. Gravity pulls against other objects with gravity so in order for your model to play out you must, in theory suspend the effect of physical laws while at the same time insisting "God" is subject to physical laws.
Its telling an apple to be an orange and then pointing out its not really citrus because its trying to be an apple.
The bottom line is that there is far more unknown than is known. So you cannot make an absolute statement and hold it as truth when there isn't enough information to back it up. When scientists are saying that dark matter may comprise 99.9% of the universe and we don't understand .00000001% of our known universe its a bit premature to deal in absolutes.
We really aren't that impressive of a species. We think we are smarter than we truly are, and wisdom is taking a backseat to knowledge. We like think how evolved we are when the internet's main purpose is porn. The funny thing is that mankind will have extinguished itself long before any of the really big questions will be answered.